Saki Sudo suspect in poisoning death of Japan’s ‘Don Juan’
Things started to go sour just weeks after Japan’s self-described Don Juan married his third wife.
Kosuke Nozaki, 77, bristled at warnings that Saki Sudo, then
22, was only interested in his money when he married her in February 2018.
“I am sorry for the 99 percent of people who wish for this
marriage to fall apart, but I am confident that I will be happy,” wrote the
real estate mogul and playboy who had gained celebrity status in Japan after
the publication of “Don Juan of Kishu,” a best-selling 2016 memoir that detailed
how he had seduced 4,000 women.
But Sudo seemed to have other plans for the marriage. The
tall, raven-haired beauty was frequently away on shopping trips in Italy,
Singapore and Dubai, snapping up designer wardrobes with her new husband’s
cash. She preferred the posh waterfront condo that Nozaki rented for her in
Tokyo to his home in the sleepy city of Wakayama almost 300 miles away,
according to reports.
Nozaki seemed to have good reason to put up with the
absences and his new wife’s penchant for pricey Chanel clothes. “She has white
skin with a firmness that repels water,” he wrote in a second book published in
2018. “Our time in the bedroom is also fun. I’m convinced that is the secret to
staying young. We have a quota of sex three times a day and I don’t need
Viagra. I know having so much sex may cause my death, but if I can die having
sex and go to heaven then I am good.”
A 25-year-old woman married to a wealthy man who described
himself as the “Don Juan” of his locality in western Japan was arrested
Wednesday for allegedly killing him three years ago, police said.
Nozaki who described himself as the “Don Juan” was found dead
just three months into his marriage with Sudo.
Screenshot NHK World Japan
But it wasn’t the sex that killed him. It was poison.
Three months into their marriage, on May 24, 2018, Nozaki
was found dead in his bedroom. He died of “acute stimulant intoxication,” with
a high level of undisclosed narcotics in his bloodstream, according to an
autopsy.
His widow moved quickly to appoint herself president of the
million-dollar company he founded, according to reports. She also had plans to
leave Japan shortly after the funeral. But her escape was foiled when the
pandemic made travel impossible.
Police, along with Nozaki’s family, had long suspected that
Sudo may have been responsible for his death, especially when they found phone
records that showed internet searches for “stimulant drugs” and poisons on
Sudo’s phone, according to sources cited by the Japanese press.
Last week, police arrested Sudo in Tokyo and extradited her
to Wakayama, where they charged her with murder.
Nozaki was a self-made businessman who rose from humble
roots in Tanabe, a city of 70,000 in western Japan. He bailed on his education
after middle school, selling metal scraps, condoms and alcohol before making a
fortune in real estate, a money-lending venture and a string of liquor stores,
according to his memoir.
Autobiographies by Kosuke Nozaki, a wealthy man who suddenly
died last month at his home in the western Japan.
But his life was marked by a seemingly insatiable desire for
sex.
“The reason I make money is to date attractive women,” he
wrote in “Don Juan of Kishu: The Man Who Gave Three Billion Yen to 4,000
Beautiful Women.”
“When I find a woman of my type, tall and voluptuous, I
would tell her … I want to go out
with you and have sex with you … I’ll give you ¥400,000
[$3,600 in US dollars] if you agree,” he continued. “Some people may frown at
my sense [of relationships], but this is exactly why I have been working in
various occupations and earning money. Everybody has a different dream. I don’t
feel guilty about anything.”
The book, which sold more than 50,000 copies in Japan, also
included tips on how to stay fit, and how to pick up flight attendants and college
students. Nozaki was inspired to tell his story after one of the young women he
dated stole the equivalent of $550,000 in cash and other valuables from him in
2016.
He said he wrote the memoir partly to restore his faith in
humanity. Although the unidentified woman was arrested, he did not press
charges, famously declaring that the cash she took “is like toilet paper to
me.”
“The theft gave me a good life experience,” said Nozaki,
who, despite his womanizing, largely kept to himself, according to a neighbor.
Whenever he met an attractive young woman, Nozaki would give
her his card along with the equivalent of $100 as an incentive to call him.
He said he met Sudo in the fall of 2017 at a Tokyo airport,
when he pretended to stumble to get her attention. But some reports suggest
they met through a third party — and that Sudo allegedly worked as a high-end
call girl. Prostitution is illegal in Japan.
When they started dating, Nozaki promised Sudo an apartment
in Tokyo and an allowance of $10,000 a month, according to reports.
It was a new world for Sudo, who had attended beauty school
before reportedly working as an actress in porn videos.
But something had apparently soured before Nozaki’s death,
and Sudo was at risk of losing her fabulous life. According to Japanese
broadcaster NHK, Nozaki was thinking of divorcing her.
Her family had no idea where she was living or that she had
married Nozaki until after her arrest. Sudo had told them that she paid for the
lavish trips she flaunted on social media thanks to savvy real estate
investments.
“I don’t even know where to go to see my daughter,” Sudo’s
mother told reporters after the young woman’s arrest. “I only went to her home
in Tokyo once and only heard about things from TV and the Internet.”
Nozaki died 18 days after the demise of his beloved
miniature dachshund, Eve, who succumbed suddenly and mysteriously in his arms
on May 6, 2018. He was devoted to the dog and had told his wife and anyone else
who cared to listen that he planned to leave his inheritance to Eve after his
death.
“Eve suddenly became ill, and was taken in the middle of the
night to a veterinarian,” according to a report.
Friends said that Nozaki, who had no children, was
devastated after the canine’s death and asked a monk at a local temple to
conduct a memorial service. He tearfully buried Eve in the backyard and, in the
days before his own death, was planning a June celebration in honor of Eve —
busily inviting friends, business associates and even securing musicians for
the event.
After Nozaki’s own death, authorities suspected foul play in
Eve’s passing and went so far as to exhume the dead dog. In the end, they were
unable to conduct a necropsy because the remains had deteriorated too much.
It’s not clear if police uncovered new evidence in Nozaki’s
case before the surprise arrest of Sudo, now 25, last week.
Police said she had been a suspect for years because she was
in the Wakayama house when her husband died. Sudo initially told authorities
that she heard a noise from the couple’s bedroom and went to investigate — and
found Nozaki slumped on a couch in his bedroom. Police, who also questioned the
man’s longtime housekeeper, who was also in the home, now claim that Sudo gave
Nozaki a poison-laced cocktail shortly before he died.
Weeks after the funeral, Sudo moved quickly to secure her
late husband’s fortune. She unilaterally appointed herself president of his
firm on July 30, 2018, after calling a meeting of his relatives and
shareholders, who refused to attend.
“Sudo, who deemed that the relatives had entrusted her to
handle administrative procedures, created minutes saying that she held an
extraordinary general shareholder’s meeting on July 30 at Nozaki’s house,”
according to a report in the Mainichi daily newspaper. “Sudo, who was the only
one present, served as the chair, and appointed herself as the company’s
representative director.”
Later, she transferred more than $300,000 to her bank
account from the company’s coffers, according to auditors who have accused her
of stealing from the firm and filed criminal charges against her last year.
In addition to leaving his $11 million fortune to Eve,
Nozaki had planned to bequeath some of his assets to Tanabe, the city of his
birth.
“He was saying positive things recently, like he wants to
contribute to the local community. [His death] is truly regrettable,” a
childhood friend of Nozaki’s told the Kyodo News.
In 2018, 77-year-old Kosuke Nozaki, a wealthy man who was
also known as "Don Juan", died of acute stimulant addiction at home.
Local authorities had been in the process of negotiating
with Sudo over the cash at the time of her arrest.
Sudo initially denied any involvement in her husband’s death
in 2018, and now, according to police sources cited by Mainichi newspaper, she
has decided to remain silent.
But she had already made her feelings clear at Nozaki’s
funeral, where she spent most of the proceedings on her cell phone.
As mourners lined up to pay respects to the young widow, one
guest lamented, “It must be hard considering the death of your husband.”
Shrugged Sudo: “Not really.”
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