Background
Yamaji was born into a poor family, his father died of cirrhosis in January 1995.
山地 悠紀夫
Yamaji was born into a poor family, his father died of cirrhosis in January 1995.
After graduating from junior high school, he did not enter high school and began working at a newspaper store. Matricide
He killed his 50-year-old mother with a metal baseball bat in Yamaguchi city, Yamaguchi Prefecture at the age of 16 on July 29, 2000. He called the police and was arrested on July 31, 2000.
He stated that his motives to commit matricide were his mother"s silent telephone calls to the woman with whom he fell in love and his mother"s mounting debt.
He was paroled in October 2003. Double homicide
On November 17, 2005, Yamaji raped and murdered a 27-year-old woman and her 19-year-old sister with a knife, in Naniwa, Osaka.
He then set fire to their apartment and fled. The two victims had never met Yamaji before.
He was arrested on December 5, 2005.
Sentence
On December 13, 2006, the Osaka District Court sentenced him to death. His defense made an appeal but according to his lawyers he retracted it because he was "reluctant to pursue leniency." He was executed by hanging alongside Japanese serial killer Hiroshi Maeue in Osaka on July 28, 2009. At the age of 25, he is the youngest murder criminal executed in Japan since 1972.
