“I give happiness, and then I take a life,”the woman thinks as she walks down the street on the way to the dating agency. “Those that succumb to my allure deserveeverything they get,” she muses, impressed by her own heartlessness. “They come to me desperate, like hypnotizedfools, enchanted by my deadly charm.” She catches a glimpse of her reflection ina store window, appraising herself for the effort she’s made to look beautiful andserene in her aging years. “Pity those idiots,” she says under herbreath, as if speaking to an audience, “because anyone who falls for me will soon get bittenand die.”
The woman walks into the agency, exuding confidence,elegantly dressed, dolled up for the profile photo she’ll soon be taking. “What kind of fella are you looking for,”asks the agent, completely unaware that he’s setting someone up for a death sentence. “Hmm,” she replies, knowing full wellwhat kind of man she’s looking for.
It’s not as if she hasn’t been throughthis routine countless times before. She turns to the agent, feigning innocence,and tells him. “Well, I am not a rich lady, and life ishard being a single woman without a proper income, so I think I’d like to meet a guywho has a certain amount of wealth…Oh, and just to keep things uncomplicated, it wouldprobably be better if he doesn’t have any children.”
In her mind she’s chuckling, thinking, theywon’t get me for this…and even if they do, and they hang me, I’ll die with a smileon my face...men...men have been the bane of my life.
They deserve to die. And that was one of the ways Kaheki Kakehi,possibly the world’s most deadly “Black Widow” serial killer to date, found hermen. Over a decade she racked up around $8.8 millionfrom the men she killed, making her certainly the richest Black Widow. She made men fall for her, and she was a geniuswhen it came to that. Before she killed her man, his will wouldstate that everything he owned would go to her.
The term “Black Widow” when related tomurder is given to a woman who kills her partner or husband, just like the female black widowspider may kill its partner.
Those female spiders sometimes engage in what'scalled “sexual cannibalism”, meaning they sometimes kill and eat the male they’vejust mated with. In Kakehi’s case, we must use the plural,partners and husbands. How many men did she dispatch, well, we’llget around to that soon.
She was born on November 28, 1946, in Kitakyushucity on Japan’s Kyushu Island. She grew up in a middle class family and gotall the things she needed when she was a child.
As she neared her late teens she wanted topursue a career, and before that gain a higher education, although her father clung on toold fashioned values and told her she must forget about education and find a good manto settle down with. Kakehi dutifully followed her father’s advice,except her idea of settling down was perhaps not what her father had envisioned.
Her relationships never seemed to last verylong. Over the years she had serious relationshipswith up to 14 different men, and many of those guys died a mysterious death. Kakehi would support herself in between relationshipswith a job as a bank teller, fitting for a woman who would spend the rest of her lifetaking other men’s money.
As the years went by though, Kakehi just couldn’tseem to make a relationship stick, her boyfriends had a nasty habit of dying. Her traditional father wasn’t too happythat his 21 year old daughter still hadn’t met a man and let him support her while shedid the traditional womanly thing and had children. Lucky for him though, a few years later shewould meet the man of her twisted dreams- or so it seemed- and finally settle down. Did she have murder in her mind at first sight? No one can be sure, but there was only oneway this relationship would end…
Her father was delighted though, not onlybecause she had settled down, but because the guy she had met soon went from being atruck driver to becoming a very successful entrepreneur with a fabric-printing company. They also had two kids together, and to allthat knew her, she was living a very ordinary life. That was far from the truth, though...shehad a bloody plan in mind.
There’s something you might not know aboutthe fabric-printing industry, and that’s the fact that something called potassium cyanide,a colorless sugar-like substance, can be used for dyeing and printing. This poisonous substance would come in handyfor the world’s worst black widow. You might also not know that death from cyanidepoisoning can look like death from a heart attack, or other natural causes, and the victimcan go in a matter of seconds.
As any former Soviet spy would have told you,when you want to get the job done and want to get away with it, cyanide is a wonderfulthing. In 1994, when Kakehi was 48 and her dear dyerof a husband was 54, the man was taken into hospital having suffered from a heart attack– or at least that’s what it looked like. After seeing a doctor he was soon deemed tobe in a fit state and he was told to go home. The heart attack had been minor, he was told,he was lucky. Sadly, after checking out of the hospital,he wouldn’t make it through the night.
After her husband’s death, Kakehi took overthe business, but over a period of nine years she ran it to the ground. Business was never her strong point, murderwas . Kakehi was broke and down on her luck, butjust a year after her business failure a silver lining formed around the cloud above her headwhen she met a 66 year old man who worked as a pharmaceutical wholesaler.
The unfortunate man had met Kakehi througha dating agency, one of many dating agencies she would go on to use. This relationship lasted around three years,and then the lovestruck gentlemen died suddenly from what was thought to be a stroke, anothertype of death that cyanide poisoning can mimic. To those that knew Kakehi, it was startingto look like she had some pretty bad fortune when it came to husbands. At least, they thought, she inherited fortuneswhen her beloveds passed before their time was rightly up.
The problem was, whenever she got hold ofher lover's cash, she squandered it making bad decisions on stocks and investments. Kaheki mourned her loss in public, but athome she soon began cooking-up her plan to meet another guy. She was no spring chicken at this point andwas approaching 60, but in a country where people tend to live a long time, there wasno shortage of aged, single, lonely men. The lonely old man industry in Japan was boomingthen, and still is today.
Her modus operandi never changed. She would get spruced up for the photo andtell the agency that she was looking for a childless man who was self-made and financiallysecure, or at least he must earn above $80,000 a year. He had to have his own place, although shealways said she didn’t much mind if the man had any pre-existing health issues. She would of course “take care” of himif need be. She soon met the ideal man, a 75 year oldnamed Toshiaki Yamamoto.
He was down on his luck and feeling all alonewhen Kaheki seemingly became his perfect match. The guy was smitten with her…obsessed withher sultry charms and her way of making him feel wanted and secure. Unfortunately, the relationship didn’t lastvery long, and this old boss who ran an agricultural cooperative, suddenly dropped dead from aheart attack just three months into their marriage. We don’t need to tell you by now that hedidn’t die of a heart attack.
While married to Yamamoto, she had met a manby the name of Toshiaki Suehiro. Yep, she was a cheat, and it wouldn’t bethe last time she’d cuckold a guy. In 2007, Suehiro suddenly collapsed in thestreet, as one might do when they have been poisoned with cyanide. But the man didn’t die right away this time,and for two years he was kept on life support. He would however die of cancer. A convenient turn for Kaheki. In 2011, she met the wonderful Mr. MasanoriHonda, a man who also ticked all the boxes at the dating agency that Kaheki was using.
The two got engaged after six months and justas love was blossoming the man went out for a bicycle ride and never came back. The cause of death was said to be an abnormalheart rate, or what’s known as arrhythmia. There wasn’t really a pseudo-mourning periodthis time, because while Kaheki was engaged to Mr. Honda, she was also seeing a sicklyman who’d once worked as an architect. This man, one Minoru Hioki, died in 2013 afterhaving dinner with his lover.
The death certificate said Mr. Hioki had diedfrom his cancer, but that’s highly unlikely. Something in his dinner might have pushedhim over the edge. Just weeks after old man Hioki met his end,Kaheki married yet another man and he would be her fourth and final husband and the manwho’s last name she would keep. She would have his surname when her worldturned upside down.
Their relationship lasted a matter of weeks,before Mister Kakehi suddenly died from what looked like natural causes. We should say here, that the police and themedia don’t exactly know just how many men Kaheki dated, or killed, throughout her life,but what was becoming quite apparent was the fact that this woman had something of theMedusa touch in her.
The fact didn’t escape the media, and notlong before Kaheki was finally arrested she was interviewed by a Japanese newspaper Thepoor woman was asked about her ill-starred affairs and it was pointed out that it wasstrange that so many of her lovers and husbands gave up the ghost so soon after meeting her. Kaheki replied, saying, “I want to knowwhy all these things happened.
I want to make it clear. I am not the type of woman who wishes to remarry. As it happens, people that I met happenedto have a strong desire to marry.” That, of course, was an outright lie. She was the seducer, not the men. The police were now on to her, and they wentto the hospital where her former partner, Mr. Suehiro, had spent two years on life support. The hospital still had blood samples fromthis man and it was soon revealed that cyanide was found in that blood.
Now things started to make sense, but therewas nothing they could do about the men whose bodies had already been turned into ashes. When Kaheki was finally arrested the copsfound traces of cyanide in the trash can at her home in Kyoto. The police also discovered medical books atanother apartment in the same city, books that contained advice relating to poisoningand the administration of drugs. At the time of her arrest in 2017, she wasdating another man already, a guy that had fallen head over heels for her and told acourt that she seemed like a really sweet lady.
The police even unearthed an email she hadsent him that read in part, “I will stay with you for the rest of my life.” What she really meant was, I will stay withyou for the rest of your life. The trial lasted 135 days and hundreds ofpeople queued up to get inside the courtroom. Kaheki was eventually convicted of three murdersand one attempted murder for Mr. Suehiro.
As you can see from this story, it’s likelyshe killed a lot more people, perhaps as many as ten husbands and lovers. During the trial, Kaheki was asked by a journalist,“But didn't you feel fear when you killed people?” With an angered expression painted acrossher face she replied, “You are bold enough to ask me such a question!” At first she refused to say anything at allin court, but the evidence was conclusive. In the end she admitted to killing her lasthusband, telling the court that he was greedy and gave other women his cash.
She admitted to hating her last husband, althoughshe didn’t comment on the other men she had been accused of killing. When she was told she was going to hang bythe neck for her crimes she acknowledged that and told the court that she would “die smiling.” She then said, “Please hang me.” Alas, she withdrew her statements and herlawyers argued that she had dementia and didn’t know what she was saying, in spite of herbeing so calculated when finding men and quickly dispatching them to the afterlife.
Maybe Japan didn’t want to see an old womanhang from a rope, and that hasn’t happened yet due to the fact her lawyers managed topersuade the court that her dementia diminished her responsibility. As we speak, the Black Widow’s home is aprison cell.
In 2019, a judge in the Osaka High Court rejectedKaheki’s lawyers claims that her dementia played a part in the murders, and she stillmay hang. The case is ongoing, keeping the Japanesepublic on the edge of their seats. Now you have to watch this show, “America'sStrangest Serial Killer - Ed Gein (The Butcher of Plainfield)”, or have a look at this,“The Most Evil Person in the World - The Bikini Killer.”
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