Tokyo Artist Uses Poison to Rob Banks

 

 On the 26^th of January 1948 a man entered a bank in Tokyo and told staff that he was there to inoculate them from an outbreak of dysentery. He wore arm bands and claimed he was an epidemiologist sent by the Metropolitan Government, and the sixteen employees at the Imperial bank believed him. They took the pill and several drops of liquid that the man gave them. Soon they were writhing on the floor in agony. Stepping around their dying bodies he looted the bank for a meagre £5,300.

 Miraculously four employees survived the poisoning and were able to provide a description of him.

 This was the third time in recent months where a lone man had used poison to rob a bank. The first time he offered staff a joke business card, whilst at the second he offered a real one > Shigeru Matsui of the Ministry of Health and Welfare Department of Disease Prevention.

 Cleared by an alibi Matsui said he had given out ninety-two of his cards to clients, and always made a note of the time and the date on the back of each one he received. Using this data, the police were able to track down and cleared sixty-two recipients of the cards, a further twelve were investigated and eventually cleared as well.

 One recipient: Sadamachi Hirasawa stood out as suspicious, he said he was unable to hand over his card to the police as he had been recently pick-pocketed. His alibi also could not be confirmed, and two surviving witnesses identified him as the poisoner. He also had a vast amount of money in his possession, and he could not disclose where he had obtained it.

 Sadamachi was arrested on the 21^st of August 1948. He protected his innocence, initially, then he admitted to prior bank fraud, which he later retracted. By the time of his trial in 1950 he blamed coercion and mental illness for his confession. He was sentenced to die, but instead spent thirty-two years on death row, dying of pneumonia at the age of ninety-five. There was no order of execution because of some widespread doubt over his guilt. He painted many paintings, and wrote his autobiography whilst incarcerated, also making a case to exonerate himself.