The 28-year-old widow of a self-styled Japanese “Don Juan” has pleaded not guilty to murdering him at the opening of her trial in western Japan.
Sudo Saki is charged with killing 77-year-old company president, Nozaki Kosuke, by having him ingest a lethal amount of stimulants at their home in Wakayama Prefecture in May 2018.
Nozaki likened himself to the fictional Spanish womanizer. He wrote in a published memoir that he had given the equivalent of about 21 million dollars to more than 4,000 women.
He married Sudo three months before his death.
In the first court hearing at the Wakayama District Court on Thursday, Sudo testified that she did not kill her husband, nor get him to ingest stimulants.
Prosecutors allege the defendant married for money, and that she searched online using the terms “perfect crime” and “drugs” two months before the incident.
They added that she ordered stimulants through an illicit sales website the following month.
The prosecutors said Sudo had ample opportunity to kill her husband, as she was the only person at home with him when he is believed to have ingested the drugs.
Twenty-eight people are scheduled to give testimony over the course of the trial.