On a recent summer evening, tranquility reigned in this small neighborhood in Wakayama, where nothing but the occasional barking of dogs and chirring of grasshoppers broke the peaceful silence.

This rural idyll, however, was somewhat marred by the eerie sight of an empty lot that — sandwiched between neighboring houses — remained conspicuously neglected, with walls bearing illegible traces of graffiti and weeds growing with wild abandon.

Today this lot is about the only remnant that the city's Sonobe district retains of the harrowing killings that catapulted one of its communities into the national spotlight more than 20 years ago. It's the place where Masumi Hayashi, a convicted killer currently on death row, used to reside, and where she once famously hosed down a throng of reporters with a sinister grin on her face — the symbolic moment when she perfected her reputation as a dokufu (poisonous wife).