Yamaji Yukio
Executed July 28, 2009 (More)
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Double-killer lets death sentence stand
The Japan Times: Saturday, June 2, 2007
OSAKA (Kyodo) The death sentence handed to a 23-year-old man convicted of killing two sisters in Osaka in 2005 has been finalized after he withdrew his appeal, his lawyers said Friday.
Yukio Yamaji was accused of stabbing to death Asuka Uehara, 27, and her sister Chihiro, 19, in their apartment in Osaka, stealing 5,000 yen and torching the premises on Nov. 17, 2005.
Two years earlier, in October 2003, he had been released from a reformatory where he had been detained after killing his mother, 50, with a baseball bat in the city of Yamaguchi in July 2000.
Although Yamaji's lawyers appealed the death sentence handed down by the Osaka District Court last December, the defendant was reluctant to pursue leniency and the appeal was withdrawn, they said.
The Japan Times: Saturday, June 2, 2007
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Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2005
Man admits to slaying Osaka sisters
OSAKA (Kyodo) Police issued an arrest warrant Monday to a 22-year-old man after he admitted killing two sisters in Osaka.
He had been detained since early this month for allegedly trespassing in a building adjacent to the women's condominium, police said.
The man, who killed his mother in 2000, told investigators he murdered the sisters Nov. 17 because he "could not forget the feelings" he experienced when he killed his 50-year-old mother, police said.
He was identified as Yukio Yamaji, 22, unemployed with no fixed address.
The two victims are Asuka Uehara, 27, and Chihiro Uehara, 19.
They did not know Yamaji. Police suspect he killed them for pleasure.
"I wanted to see human blood," Yamaji was quoted as saying by an investigation source.
The two women were found with deep stab wounds to their chests and faces at their condominium in the early hours of Nov. 17.
The man was institutionalized after beating his mother to death with a baseball bat in August 2000 in the city of Yamaguchi when he was 16.
The Yamaguchi family court had sent him to a reform center for minors after concluding that the attack on his mother was not deliberately planned and "it is possible to correct" him "although he does not have deep sense of guilt." He was released from the reform center in October 2003.
According to police, Yamaji told the investigators about the knife he used in the murders and they found it at a Shinto shrine a few hundred meters from the building.
His fingerprints were allegedly detected at many locations on the wall and duct at the third-floor level.