A man is reportedly set to plead guilty to killing 19 people with disabilities at a care home in Japan, having allegedly told a local newspaper he stabbed them to death “for the sake of society”, Sky news reports.
Satoshi Uematsu, 29, is in prison awaiting trial for the murders of 10 women and nine men aged between 18 and 70, who were stabbed to death where they lived in the city of Sagamihara in July 2016.
He is accused of using a hammer to break into the building, before tying up a worker, stealing their keys and going from room to room to stab his victims in the necks as they slept in the early hours of 26 July. Uematsu, who used to work at the facility, turned himself into a local police station a few hours after the incident and goes on trial on 8 January.
According to the Reuters news agency, Uematsu will not dispute the accusations against him and will “admit” to all of his crimes before the verdict is due on 16 March.
The case has attracted enormous media attention and since March 2017 the suspect himself has given some 26 interviews to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.
