- Chizuko Okamoto
nihongo|Chizuko Okamoto|岡本 千鶴子|"Okamoto Chizuko"|extra=born
July 17 ,1951 is a Japanese woman who was convicted of killing her own daughter. Okamoto was also suspected as aserial killer who might have killed at least four others.Asahi Shimbun described her mysterious incident as "house of horrors". [cite web|url=http://web.archive.org/web/20060520031458/www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200605100191.html|title=TV Timer: 5 bodies, few answers in house of horror|date=2006-05-10|accessdate=2008-05-12|publisher=Asahi ShimbunInternet Archive ]Early life
Okamoto was born in
Aomori Prefecture . She ran away from her first husband in 1975 and began a relationship with the man who would later become her common-law husband. Her first husband died in aTsunami onOkushiri Island in 1993.Deaths
Her six-year-old son, Toshihide, disappeared in 1984. She gave birth to two children in 1985 and 1987, but did not report their births. Her common-law husband died of illness in 1997. She began to insist that her disappeared son was abducted by agents of the North Korean government. At the time, Okamoto lived with her 35-year-old stepson Minehiro Yamauchi and her 19-year-old daughter Rikako. Her daughter died in October 2005, and Yamauchi died in March 2006.
Yamauchi's mother found the bodies of her son and Rikako in Okamoto's apartment in
Hiratsuka ,Kanagawa Prefecture onMay 1 ,2006 . Upon investigation of the apartment, police discovered the remains of Toshihide and her two other newborns. The police also found a memo suggesting that Okamoto was the murderer, and, on May 3, 2006, she was arrested.Controversy and trial
The death of Minehiro Yamauchi was ruled a suicide. Autopsies performed on the bodies of the three children were inconclusive, and because the three-year
statute of limitations on the crime of abandoning a corpse had passed, no charges relating to the children were pursued.During the trial, Okamoto insisted on her innocence and claimed that Minehiro had killed Rikako. Despite a lack of admissible physical evidence and witnesses, Okamoto was convicted. On July 23, 2007, district court in Yokohama sentenced her to 12 years in prison for the murder of her daughter. [cite web|url=http://www.thefreelibrary.com/LEAD:+Hiratsuka+woman+gets+12+yrs+for+killing+daughter,+but+mystery...-a01610729739|title=LEAD: Hiratsuka woman gets 12 yrs for killing daughter, but mystery remains|author=Kyodo World Service|publisher=The Free Library|date=2007-07-23|accessdate=2008-05-13] She has appealed against the guilty verdict. Her appeal trial commenced in the
Tokyo High Court on May 8, 2008. [cite web|url=http://sankei.jp.msn.com/affairs/trial/080508/trl0805082245024-n1.htm|title=平塚５遺体事件の控訴審初公判|publisher=Sankei Shimbun|language=Japanese|date=2008-05-08|accessdate=2008-05-13]References
External links
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,1769888,00.html Woman, 54, held after five found dead in Japanese flat] "
The Guardian "May 8 ,2006
* [http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070724a4.html Flat full of bodies; mom guilty of killing daughter] "Japan Times "July 24 ,2007
* [http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060505a9.html Son missing since '84 may be among bodies found in flat] "Japan Times "May 5 ,2006
*Japanese Wikipedia entry on the incident case
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