Yoshinori Ueda (serial killer)

His claims were disregarded, and on March 20, 1998, he was sentenced to death by the Osaka District Court. Ueda then appealed to the Osaka High Court, which upheld the earlier verdict on March 15, 2001. His third and final appeal to the Supreme Court was similarly dismissed on December 15, 2005, finalizing his death sentence. As of July 2022, Ueda remains on death row and awaits execution.

On February 10, 1995, investigators excavated the training ground and successfully located the remains of all five victims. Due to this, Ueda was charged with five counts of murder and remanded to await trial. At the trial, he pleaded not guilty, claiming that he had been coerced into confessing by the police.

Suspecting that the recent disappearances might be connected, the National Police Agency formed a special unit to investigate them. They eventually linked the victims back to Ueda, resulting in his arrest on January 26, 1994.

Circa August 1991, Ueda befriended Koh Kashiwai, a 22-year-old construction worker from Osaka, to whom he offered a part-time job at his business. On July 27, 1992, Kashiwai told his acquaintances that he was going to attend his part-time job, but was never seen alive again.

In May 1992, Ueda met 25-year-old Hiroshi Seto, an unemployed man from Sakai, while the latter was walking his dog. The two were acquainted, as both had previously worked at a logistics company, and often went out drinking together. One night, Seto revealed to Ueda that he was a homosexual, and on the next day, rumors started to spread about his sexuality. Because of this, Seto confronted Ueda about the rumors, and after the latter declined responsibility for spreading them, the two got into an argument that almost resulted in a fistfight. Apparently angered by the encounter, Ueda contacted Seto sometime in July 1992 and invited him to his training ground on the pretense of making up, whereupon Seto disappeared.

The next victim was 35-year-old Sanpei Fujiwara, an unemployed man from Osaka, whom met Ueda through a magazine for pet dogs and befriended him. In July 1992, he transferred 300,000 yen to Ueda's bank account, all the while planning to visit him at the training ground in Shiojiri. Around August that same year, he gave a final phone call to his ex-wife before vanishing.

Around October 1992, Ueda encountered Sachiko Takahashi, a 47-year-old housewife from Osaka, at a veterinary clinic. Upon offering her his services, she transferred 800,000 yen to his bank account and agreed to go to his training ground one day. She did so on October 25 of that year, but never returned home afterwards.

Around September 1991, Nobuko Shiji, a 47-year-old housewife from Sakai, was approached by Ueda on the street while she was walking her dog. Intrigued by his offer, she left a note on October 29, 1992, that she was going to deliver a puppy to the training ground, but disappeared soon after.

Yoshinori Ueda (上田宜範 Ueda Yoshinori; born 1955) was a Japanese serial killer responsible for the so-called Osaka Dog Lover Murders (大阪愛犬家連続殺人事件), in which five people were poisoned with suxamethonium in Shiojiri, Nagano from 1992 to 1993. Ueda was convicted of the murders and sentenced to death, and is currently awaiting execution on death row.

Yoshinori Ueda was born in 1955 in Yao, Osaka, the only son of a wealthy couple that owned a liquor store. Little is known about his upbringing, but when he was 30 years old, Ueda was asked by a friend to become a guarantor for a loan of 70 million yen. He agreed to, but after the friend disappeared, Ueda was left to pay the entirety of the loan by himself. Mortified by this, he begged his parents to pay it off, which they did, but then prohibited him from spending the family inheritance without supervision. After this incident, his personality reportedly changed completely.