<figure id="attachment_98058" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-98058" style="width: 1000px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="b6c3097f"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2020/02/0b3954816e2de75871f905e1b16f87a6.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-98058" class="wp-caption-text">Death row inmate Ueda holding his child at home. He was not a good cook and only cooked occasionally.</figcaption></figure>
<p> The suspicious deaths of six men shook Japan. Miyuki Ueda, 49, the perpetrator of the crime and a death-row inmate, died at the Hiroshima Detention Center, where she was being held. She collapsed during dinner a little past 4:00 p.m. on the evening of January 14, and although a staff member immediately removed the food from her throat, she became unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital, but was pronounced dead about two hours later.</p>
<p> Ueda was convicted of robbery and murder and sentenced to death in August 2005 for drowning a man in the sea or a river after giving him sleeping pills so that he could avoid paying his debts. Ueda was a hostess in Tottori City at the time of the crime. Nonfiction writer Ikko Ono reported the details of the case in an article published on February 25, 2008 (some corrections have been made).</p>
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<p> A woman was arrested on suspicion of fraud, and men were dying &#8220;suspicious deaths&#8221; one after another around her.</p>
<p> The woman arrested on November 2 was Miyuki Ueda (35 at the time of her arrest), who lived in Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture. When I visited Miyuki at her apartment in the city, where she had been married twice before and lived with her five children, three girls and two boys, I was first of all speechless at the unusual &#8220;garbage mansion&#8221; she had built.</p>
<h2> A large amount of trash, bicycles, and toys: &#8230;&#8230;</h2>
<p> In front of the room, which rents for 25,000 yen and is a single room of 8 tatami mats, there were piles of garbage in plastic bags, children&#8217;s bicycles, toys, etc. In addition, there was a white light-automated car parked in front of the house. In addition, a white mini-car parked in front of the house was also filled with plastic bags containing clothes and daily necessities.</p>
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<p> Miyuki, who is about 150 cm tall and weighs over 70 kg, used to work as a hostess at a snack bar in Tottori City where all large women worked. A director of a news program on a Tokyo-based TV station said, &#8220;A series of suspicious deaths have come to light.</p>
<p><strong> The serial suspicious deaths came to light on October 7, 2009, when the body of Ms. A (57 at the time of her death), who ran an electronics store in Tottori City, was found in the Mani River, which flows through the city. Mr. A had sold home appliances totaling nearly 1 million yen to Miyuki, and the day after he went out to collect the money, he was found in a changed state.</strong></p>
<p> This has raised suspicions of &#8220;suspicious deaths&#8221; of six men in Miyuki&#8217;s vicinity, including Mr. A. In addition, some of the men were newspaper reporters, and some of them were also involved in the case. Moreover, a newspaper reporter and a police officer were also among them.</p>
<p> The first man who is said to have died in her vicinity is Mr. B (41 at the time of his death), a reporter for a national newspaper. He was killed by a train on the tracks in the suburbs of Tottori City in May 2004 while wearing a cardboard box. He left behind a scribble that read, &#8220;I knew true love when I met Miyuki,&#8221; and the Tottori Prefectural Police ruled the death a suicide.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Contents of Ueda&#39;s masterfully written love letter to death row inmate"></div>
<p>The next deceased was Mr. C (27 at the time of death), who was living with Miyuki at the time. Mr. C&#8217;s relatives said that he had been subjected to domestic violence by Miyuki while he was living with her.</p>
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<p><strong> &#8220;She used to beat him with a frying pan and tie him up with a rope, saying, &#8216;You have to pay the rent. Once, C ran back to his parents&#8217; house, but Miyuki stormed into the house, kicked him in the leg, and brought him back.&#8221;</strong></p>
<p> In February 2008, Mr. D (in his 40s at the time of his death), a detective with the Shimane Prefectural Police, was found hanged in a mountain in the same prefecture, and like Mr. B, his death was ruled a suicide. Mr. D, who had a wife and child, had met Miyuki at a restaurant where he stopped by to gather information, and they had developed a relationship.</p>
<h2> Why were the men attracted to Miyuki?</h2>
<figure id="attachment_98060" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-98060" style="width: 1000px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="d172cf37"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2020/02/a17a82f1b992be1782db725b2e360e39.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-98060" class="wp-caption-text"> A love letter sent by Death Row inmate Ueda to a man. The skillful and familiar writing is striking.</figcaption></figure>
<p> Next, in April 2009, Miyuki&#8217;s former boyfriend, truck driver Mr. E (47 at the time of his death), was found drowned in the waters off Hokuei-cho, Tottori Prefecture. Following the discovery of Ms. A&#8217;s body on October 7, 2009, as already mentioned, an acquaintance of Miyuki&#8217;s, Ms. F (58 at the time of her death), who lived in an apartment next to Miyuki&#8217;s, died 20 days later on October 27. Mr. F, who lived alone, had been driving a car borrowed from Miyuki in September of the same year when he was involved in a rear-end collision, but his health had been deteriorating rapidly since then, and Miyuki had started bringing him home meals.</p>
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<p> The same sleeping aid ingredients were found in the bodies of this Ms. F, as well as Mr. A and Ms. E. A person who knew Ms. F well told my interviewer the following: &#8220;The reason Ms. F was not feeling well was that she was having a hard time sleeping.</p>
<p><strong> A person who knew Mr. F well told me in an interview, &#8220;Mr. F fell ill before and after the accident. He used to go out for a walk normally, but then he started saying, &#8216;Sometimes I feel lightheaded. He also explained that he felt lightheaded at the time of the accident. Miyuki and her husband (common-law) took over the other party&#8217;s car repair and medical expenses for this accident, and Ms. F was supposed to pay them monthly from the money she received as welfare.</strong></p>
<p><strong> At the end of September, Ms. F paid them 60,000 yen. The day before he died, Mr. F was already in a half coma and the door to his room was left open. When I peeked into Mr. F&#8217;s room around 8:30 p.m., Miyuki and her husband were in the room, laughing and talking with each other. So I did not enter the room and did not see Mr. F.&#8221;</strong></p>
<p> A resident of the same apartment who has known Miyuki for a long time reveals, &#8220;Miyuki told me about the drugs.</p>
<p><strong> Miyuki called the medicine &#8216;minzai&#8217; (sleeping pills), and the old lady next door said that Miyuki had given her &#8216;minzai. Apparently, she had received a large quantity of them, and when the woman asked Miyuki in my presence, &#8220;Can I take some? She warned in a harsh tone, &#8220;You shouldn&#8217;t say such a thing every time. I myself was once asked by Miyuki, &#8220;Shall I give you a sleeping pill? I myself was once asked by Miyuki if I wanted to give her a sleeping pill.</strong></p>
<p> As a result, Miyuki was arrested and charged with two counts of robbery and murder, 15 counts of fraud, and one count of burglary and theft. She was sentenced to death by the Tottori District Court in December &#8217;12, and her death sentence was later confirmed when the Supreme Court rejected her appeal in July 2005.</p>
<p> The question remains as to why so many men have been attracted to and deceived by Miyuki regarding this case. We were able to interview a former boyfriend of Miyuki&#8217;s (then 66) about her manipulations. The story is a bit long, but we will include it here.</p>
<p><strong> Miyuki and I met in the fall of 2005 at a snack bar where he worked, and he was very aggressive from the beginning. I told her that my shoulders were stiff, and she told me to get in her car because she had brought some medicine. He took me to a love hotel and said, &#8216;I&#8217;m going to apply it here, so take off your clothes. It was the first time I had ever been taken to a hotel by a woman.</strong></p>
<p><strong> We started dating, but within a month, he started asking me for money. Miyuki is sneaky because she uses her children as a pretext. When her oldest son was with her, she would make him call me &#8220;father. Then, the child would say, &#8220;Father, let&#8217;s live together. That&#8217;s how it works, you know. I thought that if we were going to be together, I had to do a lot of things for him, so I started providing him with money.</strong></p>
<p><strong> After that, he started asking me for more and more money, for example, to pay for renting a new house, or to pay for Miyuki&#8217;s hospitalization because she had heart and kidney problems. One month, for example, he asked me to pay 150,000 yen for plumbing for a new house he was renting, 80,000 yen to change tatami mats, and so on. I think I have given him about 3 million yen in cash and about 1.5 million yen worth of rings and other precious metals. I used to be a dump truck driver and made good money, but after I quit my job. I had no savings or anything, and all I had left was debt.</strong></p>
<p><strong> He told me he had rented a new house, but he wouldn&#8217;t show it to me. And when I asked him to return the ring he had entrusted to me, he said he had given it to his mother. He was just full of lies. One time he told me he was having a baby. Well, he broke down and said, &#8216;Forget about it,'&#8221; he said.</strong></p>
<p> When this man learned that Miyuki was living with her common-law husband, he began to distance himself from her. If he had not, it is not certain what fate would have befallen her.</p>
<figure id="attachment_98061" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-98061" style="width: 1000px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="0ff6802d"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2020/02/e129d9bb16ee29991d388f82d645311c.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-98061" class="wp-caption-text"> A newspaper reporter (far right) and the family of death row inmate Ueda. Initially, the reporter was believed to have committed suicide.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_98063" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-98063" style="width: 1000px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="27f15c65"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2020/02/3f2ee2842fa494ef36e045c6eb45ab92.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-98063" class="wp-caption-text"> The room where Ueda lived. It was covered with mold and reeked of bad odor.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_98065" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-98065" style="width: 1000px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="b925a2e6"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2020/02/df5eecf784f2c76f33f5cb7433356e48.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-98065" class="wp-caption-text"> Ueda was not enthusiastic about education, and the man he was dating sent his children to school.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_98100" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-98100" style="width: 1000px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="eeda8368"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2020/02/b55cd62b295733c2e031133f8dd715e3.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-98100" class="wp-caption-text"> Letters sent to Ueda&#8217;s boyfriend jointly signed by the five children.</figcaption></figure>


 Born in 1966. Born in Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture. After working as a magazine editor and a magazine reporter, became a freelance writer. He has covered the Afghan Civil War, the Great East Japan Earthquake, and various crime scenes. His major books include "Shinpan Kazoku Kokui: Amagasaki Serial Henshin Jiken no Shinso" (Bunshun Bunko), "Zenpaku: Gozumigyo no Onna: 'Kinki Serial Seishin Jiken' Chisako Kakehi Told" (Shogakukan), "Hitokushin no Logic: Interview with an Evil Murderer" (Gentosha Shinsho), and "Serial Killers" (Bunko).

 Ikko Ono

 The serial suspicious deaths of six men in Tottori Prefecture occurred between 2004 and 2009. A former hostess on death row died in jail. She died of asphyxiation caused by choking on food. Nonfiction writer Ikko Ono looks back on the details of the case and its modus operandi from his interviews.

Choking and choking in jail&#8230;6 men died suspiciously, Miyuki Ueda, death row inmate, &#8220;Love letters sent to victims&#8221; and bewitching methods.

Choking and choking in jail…6 men died suspiciously, Miyuki Ueda, death row inmate, “Love letters sent to victims” and bewitching methods.

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