Beware Japan's Black Widows
One partner dead. Then two. Then three. Then four, five, six ... then SEVEN partners dead?!
No wonder they call her the Black Widow.
Japanese police yesterday arrested Chisako Kakehi is a 67-year-old, multi-millionaire from Kyoto, Japan, whose seven partners - yes, seven - have died in suspicous circumstances.
Police believe that she poisoned them with cyanide in order to inherit her seven million dollar fortune. Incredibly, it's not an isolated case.
Japan in fact has a number of famous Black Widows - also called dokufu or poison ladies - who are suspected of killing more than one of their lovers (the term Black Widow comes from the female spider that devours its mate after coupling.)
In this latest case, police say that Chisako's husband had cyanide in his blood. But he's not the first of her paramours to die suspicously:
Kakehi's experience with the death of her partners began in 1994 when her first husband passed away at the age of 54.
In 2006, her second husband, whom she had met through a dating agency, died of a stroke aged 69, while the third marriage ended in 2008 with the death of her 75-year-old partner, Jiji said.
A boyfriend, believed to have been suffering from some form of cancer, died a year later, and in 2012 her then-fiancé met his fate after collapsing while riding a motorbike.
There have since been two more. When asked about her bad luck in this regard, Chisako shrugged and said: “It happens from time to time. That’s just my fate.”
Other famous cases include Kanae Kijima, sentenced to death in 2012 for the murders of three men she met on Internet dating sites. She drugged her victims with sleeping tablets and then killed them by burning charcoal briquettes, which give off a noxious gas.
It does seem incredible that anyone can suffer the death of seven partners, including four husbands, before suspicion falls upon them. Louisa Collins suffered the loss of two husbands and police barely waited for the body of her second husband to cool before she was arrested.
Still, in Australia, it's beware the redback. In Japan, beware the Black Widow!
