Crime Widow of ‘Don Juan of Kishu’ acquitted of murder by Osaka High Court

This case caused quite a stir in Japan, not least because of the alleged AV past of the victim's wife:

On Monday, the Osaka High Court upheld the acquittal of Sudo Saki, 30, in the case over the death of her husband, Nozaki Kosuke, a wealthy local businessman, who'd given himself the moniker "Don Juan of Kishu" for having allegedly spent "3 billion yen on over 4,000 young ladies." The ruling follows an earlier acquittal by the Wakayama District Court in December 2024. Prosecutors had initially pushed for a life sentence.


Nozaki, 77, was found dead in May 2018 at his home in Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture. The cause of death was acute methamphetamine poisoning. Nozaki had married Sudo only three months earlier. She was indicted in 2021 on suspicion of murder. Prosecutors said she had made him take a lethal dose of the drug, which she had denied, maintaining she did not kill him or force him to take methamphetamine.

The ruling acknowledged that Sudo had bought a substance suspected to be methamphetamine from a dealer and searched online for phrases like "methamphetamine, overdose" and "elderly man, perfect crime." But the court concluded it could not rule out the possibility that Nozaki had digested the drug himself by mistake. Prosecutors appealed, and in the first hearing at the Osaka High Court last December, they argued that Sudo had a clear "motive to kill." They claimed she married Nozaki for his fortune, and he had recently told her of his intent to divorce her. But the defence countered that prosecutors again failed to disprove the possibility that Nozaki had obtained and ingested the drug on his own.

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However:

Some still vociferously argue that Sudo must've done it. Most commentators seem to agree, though, that there wasn't enough there to convincingly find Nozaki's ex-wife guilty. This doesn't mean that Sudo is a free woman. A Wakayama court found her guilty in a separate case in September of tricking a man out of 29.8 million yen and handed down a three-year-and-six-month prison sentence. As for the Don Juan of Kishu's fortune, Sudo isn't getting that either. The city of Tonabe is arguing that it owes Nozaki's entire 1.5 billion yen (USD $9.7M) fortune based on a handwritten will Nozaki left behind. Nozaki's brothers are disputing the city's claims, saying the note's a fake. In June, a court in Wakayama sided with the city.

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thomas said:

who'd given himself the moniker "Don Juan of Kishu" for having allegedly spent "3 billion yen on over 4,000 young ladies."

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That's a 'John', not a 'Don Juan'. I don't think Sudo-san knows what 'Don Juan' means