A young Japanese widower who Googled words such as ‘perfect crime’ and elderly death’ has been cleared of her husband’s murder, six years after he died of a mysterious drug overdose.
Saki Sudo, 28, was acquitted after prosecutors in the town of Wakayama were unable to prove to judges that she had killed her 77-year-old author husband Kosuke Nozaki in May 2018.
Nozaki, who wrote a best-selling memoir titled The Don Juan of Kishu in which he boasted of spending millions pursuing his ‘boundless desire to have sex with beautiful women’, was found dead at his home in Tanabe just three months after marrying Sudo.
The 28-year-old, a model, was the only person present at the time of her husband’s death, and prosecutors accused her of drugging him to inherit his fortune of 1.3 billion yen (£8.6 million).
There were no syringe marks on his body, adding to suspicions that he was poisoned.
Eighteen days earlier his pet dog, had also died unexpectedly.
Sudo has always maintained her innocence, but she admitted that she had bought the drugs at her husband’s request.
And while prosecutors found that she had Googled the words ‘perfect crime’ and ‘elderly death’, she successfully argued that these were searched out of curiosity.
The 28-year-old, a model, was the only person present at the time of her husband’s death, and prosecutors accused her of drugging him to inherit his fortune of £8.6 million
Saki Sudo, 28, has been acquitted after she was accused of poisoning her wealthy 77-year-old husband Nozaki Kosuke in 2018
Sudo has always maintained her innocence, but she admitted that she had bought the drugs at her husband’s request
Nozaki’s best-selling 2016 memoir details his sexual escapades in which he wrote: ‘My goal in life is to have sex with beautiful women. It will never change … and there is no retirement age.’
He published a sequel about his marriage to Sudo, in which he said: ‘People ask me, ‘Can you really do it?’, and I reply, ‘Oh yes — three times a day on average.’ I have never used Viagra, but am always vigorous. There is a risk that I might die during intercourse, but to go to heaven like that is just what I want.’
Nozaki built his fortune from nothing, selling everything from metal scraps to condoms to liquor, according to the website of the book’s publisher.
In a column Nozaki wrote for the Gendai Business website in 2018 – months before his death – he said he was ‘confident of becoming happy’ by marrying Sudo, even though people had warned him she was probably after his money.
He said they met at Tokyo’s Haneda airport when he tripped over on purpose to get Sudo, who he said was a model, to help him.
In previous columns, Nozaki said he had started to become well known in Japan after a 2016 incident in which a 27-year-old woman he met and dated stole 60 million yen worth of cash and goods from him.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
