SAITAMA (TR) – A court here on Tuesday handed down a 9-year prison term to a 54-year-old woman over the murder of her husband with a lethal dose of insulin at their home in Saitama City last year, reports the Sankei Shimbun (June 18).
At the Saitama District Court, presiding judge Toshiya Kawamura said that while the actions of Kinuko Wakui cannot described as non-malignant they were carried out in a “spontaneous” manner. “I can feel sympathy for an environment in which there is nobody once can depend upon,” the judge said.
According to the indictment, Kawamura, repeatedly beat the chest and head of her husband, 70-year-old Toshio, before injecting him in the buttocks with a dose of insulin at their residence in Uruwa Ward on June 3, 2017.
The cause of death was later determined as being due to respiratory failure resulting from a low blood-sugar level, the indictment said.
The court acknowledged that the defendant committed the crime after becoming angry with her husband over how he spent money.
The prosecution sought a 12-year term in the case, which also included the defendant being accused of abandoning the corpse of her husband.
Turned away by police 3 times
After committing the crime, Wakui visited police stations in Tokyo multiple times to confess, but was turned away each time.
On June 9, 2017, Wakui approached officers at a police box in the Akabane area of Kita Ward to report that she had murdered her husband. However, the officers did not pursue the case and turned her away.
About 30 minutes later, Wakui visited a police station whose personnel declined to take her seriously. Early the next morning, she revisited the same police box but was once again ignored.
Police found the body of Toshio in the residence on June 11 after the defendant divulged to staff members upon arrival at a hospital that same day that her husband died in the residence some time ago.
