Crime & Courts

Japanese Inmate, Raita Fukusaku, Stabbed to Death in Hawaii Prison; Convicted in 1994 Murders of Well-known Japanese Fortuneteller and Son

Yomiuri Shimbun file photo
Raita Fukusaku, center, arrives at Narita Airport to be extradited to the United States in August 1994.

By Kayo Goto / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

15:55 JST, October 16, 2024

Hawaii Department of Corrections via AP
Raita Fukusaku in 2021

LOS ANGELES — Raita Fukusaku, a 59-year-old man who had served nearly 30 years in prison for the 1994 murders of a Japanese woman and her son in Honolulu, was killed in a Hawaii prison, local police announced Monday.

According to Honolulu police and other sources, Fukusaku was found on early Monday bleeding on the floor of his cell with stab wounds and trauma to his head and neck. Investigators suspect a 38-year-old prison cellmate of the assault and stabbing.

Fukusaku is from Kanagawa Prefecture. In 1994, he was charged with second-degree murder for the shootings of Kototome Fujita, 56, a well-known Japanese fortuneteller and her 21-year-old son, Goro in Honolulu. He was convicted and sentenced to a life imprisonment in 1995.

Fukusaku had returned to Japan right after the murders, but he was extradited to the United States under the Treaty on Extradition Between Japan and the United States of America for the first time that a Japanese national was extradited under the treaty for murder charges.