OSAKA -- Mamoru Takuma, who stands accused of fatally stabbing eight schoolchildren in June 2001, told the Osaka District Court on Thursday that he came up with the idea of committing a massacre when he was arrested for rape in 1984.
At that time, he remembered thinking, he would want company to go with the misery he thought his life would sink into.
"I wanted companions if my life was going to be messed up," Takuma, 38, said when asked by his lawyers in his 12th trial hearing why he came up with the idea of the mass murders.