Shinji Aoba was handed the death penalty on Thursday for setting a Kyoto Animation studio on fire in 2019 and killing 36 people, in one of Japan’s deadliest mass murders.
The Kyoto District Court found the 45-year-old man guilty of setting the three-story building on fire because of a grudge he had against Kyoto Animation. He claimed the studio had stolen his ideas after it rejected his novels in an annual contest the company hosts. There is no evidence the company plagiarized any of his work.
Aoba also sustained heavy burns over most of his body in the attack.