JAPAN: A Japanese teenager who was inspired by a notorious British serial killer to attempt to kill her mother with poison was yesterday sent to a juvenile correctional facility for treatment.
The 17-year-old, who cannot be named because she is a minor, has admitted poisoning her mother last year with thallium, an ingredient of rat poison, according to the Shizuoka family court in central Japan.
The girl, a promising chemistry student who attended an elite high school, recorded her mother's deteriorating health in chilling posts to her weblog and took photographs of her as she lay in a coma in hospital. She had apparently been inspired by Graham Young, who was convicted of killing three people and poisoning dozens of others in the 1960s and 1970s.
During a search of her bedroom police found animal parts - including a cat's head preserved in formaldehyde - and a copy of Anthony Holden's book about the British serial killer, The St Albans Poisoner: The Life and Times of Graham Young.
The girl's mother began to feel ill in July last year and was rushed to hospital in October. She has not regained consciousness.
Handing down the decision, presiding judge Hiroyuki Anegawa said: "The girl had early developmental problems and we have found she has a distorted personality. Her abilities to distinguish right from wrong and to control her actions have been inhibited to a certain extent." The judge added that she would remain in the reformatory for a "considerable" length of time.
Police were alerted by her brother. The girl initially denied the allegations but later admitted poisoning her mother.
- (Guardian service)