Two Doctors Indicted for Murder of ALS Woman, Yuri Hayashi, at Her Request

By Barrier Free Japan, Jiji Press

August 13 2020

KYOTO – The Kyoto District Public Prosecutors Office on Thursday indicted two doctors for allegedly killing a woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), an intractable disease, at the victim’s request.

The two suspects, one aged 42 and from Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, an one aged 43, from Tokyo, are suspected of administering Yuri Hayashi, 51, with a drug via a gastrostomy in a conspiracy when they visited her apartment in the western Japan city of Kyoto at her request between around 5:21 p.m. (8:21 a.m. GMT) and 5:37 p.m. on Nov. 30, 2019, and causing her to die of acute drug poisoning at a Kyoto hospital around 8:10 p.m. on the day.

The two doctors were not the ALS patient’s attending doctors and had never met her before their visit to her home, informed sources said. They started to exchange messages with the patient on social media at least a year before the murder, according to the sources.

A total of 1.3 million yen, believed to be a reward for the alleged assisted suicide, was remitted to a bank account of the suspect from Tokyo on two occasions right before the incident.

The patient’s condition suddenly worsened after the two doctors left her home. A caregiver for Hayashi, who was in a different room at the apartment at the time, contacted her attending doctor, and the patient was sent to a hospital, where she was confirmed dead. Barbiturate sedatives were detected from her body, according to investigative sources.