A housewife in her 50s who was sentenced to seven years in prison shed tears at her trial.

Mother-in-law kept demanding money from her…

Michiko Watanabe, 55, was convicted of murdering her mother-in-law, who lived with her in Saitama City, and dumping the body under the floor of her house in April 2011.

However, Watanabe is dissatisfied with the sentence and has decided to appeal to a higher court. Behind the decision, there was a “bad relationship” between Watanabe and his mother-in-law.

Whenever I asked my mother for money, she would make up a false script and tell me to become an actress. If things didn’t go well, she made me call my parents’ house as many times as I could until I got the money, saying, ‘It’s your fault for the way you said that. I didn’t like it, but I was too afraid to tell her that I wanted to quit.

On January 31, the third day of the trial, the defendant continued to be questioned.

During the questioning, the judge asked the defendant how she felt when she asked her own mother for money.

Since around ’14, defendant Watanabe had been living in a maisonette-style apartment in Saitama City with her husband, son, mother-in-law, and two sisters-in-law. They lived mainly on her husband’s income, and he managed the household finances. The younger sister put 30,000 yen a month into the family budget, but the mother-in-law did not put any money into the family budget even when her pension was paid.

Then, as ordered by her mother-in-law, Watanabe made false phone calls to her own mother, saying that she had spent the money she had accumulated and that she had stalked her and had to pay compensation, and over a period of three years from August ’18 to June ’21, she sent a total of approximately 7.7 million yen to her own mother on 20 occasions. He had his own mother remit a total of approximately 770,000 yen over a period of about three years, from August 2006 to June 2009. Almost all of the money was given to his mother-in-law.

In August 2007, she ran away from home to a man in Iwate whom she had met on a game site because she felt guilty about having lied to her mother and was unable to disobey her mother-in-law’s orders. However, he was violently attacked there as well, and returned home after about a month. When asked by her defense attorney, “How did you feel when you came home after running away from home? Watanabe answered, “When I came back from running away from home, how did I feel?

I felt that my actions were wrong, that I wanted to go home, and that I wanted to see my husband and son. My husband did not blame me or ask me why I ran away from home.

However, I did sign a written pledge prepared by my husband that said, ‘I admit to being unfaithful and will pay 1.5 million. There was no infidelity, but I didn’t tell her because I thought she wouldn’t believe me anyway. （My older sister told me not to let him cross the threshold, and my younger sister simply ignored my apologies.