WAKAYAMA -- Police served Masumi Hayashi with a warrant Wednesday, charging her with murdering four people and attempting to kill 63 others by poisoning a vat of curry served up during Wakayama's Sonobe district summer festival.
The warrant, based on circumstantial evidence, was obtained late Tuesday from the Wakayama District Court.
Hayashi was put in jail Oct. 4 in connection with several attempted murder-for-insurance cases in which police arsenious acid was mixed into pots of curry prepared for the July 25 event. On Wednesday, prosecutors charged her with attempting to murder her 53-year-old husband, Kenji, a former termite exterminator, with arsenic-laced food in an attempt to collect insurance money.