The man convicted of one of Japan's most shocking postwar crimes is insisting on his innocence from "beyond the grave."

On tapes recorded secretly in prison, Sadamichi Hirasawa declared he did not kill 12 people by conning them into drinking poison in a Tokyo bank in 1948.

Hirasawa died of natural causes in a prison hospital in May 1987 at age 95 after living in the shadow of the gallows for nearly 40 years.