Masumi Hayashi (murderer)

Masumi Hayashi (林 眞須美, Hayashi Masumi; born July 22, 1961) is a Japanese mass murderer convicted of putting poison in a pot of curry being served at a 1998 summer festival in the Sonobe district of Wakayama, Wakayama, Japan.

Masumi Hayashi
Born	(1961-07-22) July 22, 1961 (age 64) Japan
Conviction	Murder (4 counts)
Criminal penalty	Death
Details
Date	July 25, 1998
Country	Japan
Location	Wakayama Prefecture
Killed	4
Injured	63
Weapons	Arsenic
Date apprehended	October 4, 1998

Crime

A communal pot of curry being served to residents of Sonobe district, Wakayama, was poisoned with at least 130 grams of arsenic—enough to kill over 100 people—on July 25, 1998.

Two children and two adults died after consuming the curry, and 63 others suffered from acute arsenic poisoning. Killed in the incident were 64-year-old Takatoshi Taninaka and 53-year-old Takaaki Tanaka (council president and vice president of Wakayama, respectively), 10-year-old Hirotaka Hayashi, and 16-year-old Miyuki Torii.^[1]

Attention quickly focused on 37-year-old mother of four Masumi Hayashi as a witness had seen her at the curry pot, and she had easy access to arsenic because her husband was an insect exterminator. Prior to the murders, Hayashi had been an insurance saleswoman. After her arrest, she and her husband were indicted on a number of insurance fraud charges as well. Hayashi has also been tried for three other attempted murders by poison that had occurred during the previous 10 years, with the motive in those cases being life-insurance benefits. She is believed to have tried to kill her husband at least once. Her motive for poisoning the curry has been said to be anger at her neighbours for shunning her family. The arsenic found in the curry was identical to the arsenic she had in her own home from her husband's extermination business.

Trial

At her trial she pleaded innocent, but Wakayama District Court sentenced her to death in 2002. On June 28, 2005, Osaka High Court upheld her death sentence. However, her lawyers (Yoshihiro Yasuda among them) insisted on her innocence because only circumstantial evidence existed.^[2]

On April 21, 2009, the Supreme Court of Japan rejected her final appeal.^[3][4]

In July 2009, Hayashi formally petitioned for a retrial.^[5] Wakayama District Court rejected her petition in March 2017. Hayashi appealed to Osaka High Court by April 2017,^[6][7] but the request was rejected.^[8] A third petition for retrial was filed in June 2021.^[8]

Impact

The crime inspired a wave of copycat poisonings.^[9]

On June 9, 2021, Masumi's 37-year-old daughter jumped off a bridge at Kansai Airport, killing herself and her four-year-old daughter.^[8] Her eldest daughter, 16 years old, was found bludgeoned to death earlier the same day.^[8]

In popular culture

The 1998 Wakayama poison curry incident was the primary inspiration for Japanese screenwriter Hisashi Nozawa's 1999 television drama "Kōri no Sekai [ja]"^[10], staring Yutaka Takenouchi and Nanako Matsushima.^[11] The television drama depicts an insurance investigator who investigates an insurance-related murder case.