John Jefferson
Inset: Yui Inoue (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office). Background: Authorities at the Arizona apartment where Yui Inoue killed her two children (AZFamily/YouTube).
Using a meat cleaver “designed to cut the bones of animals,” Arizona mother Yui Inoue killed her two kids — ages 9 and 7 — in a heinous 2021 murder case that wrapped up this week with her conviction.
“Mia and Kai Inoue were sleeping soundly in their beds when their own mother came into their bedroom holding a knife, a meat cleaver … and she attacked them with it,” prosecutors said Monday during closing arguments, according to AZFamily. “She had to think. She had to act. And there’s nothing unclear or speculative about any of that.”
A Maricopa County jury found Inoue, 44, guilty Monday of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of child abuse in connection to a prior investigation by the Arizona Department of Child Safety and the murders of Mia and Kai Inoue, who were identified by local officials, in May 2021.
Prosecutors say Inoue set upon her two children after claiming to hear “voices telling her to kill” them. She called 911 afterward and then went to flag down officers at a police substation on East Apache Boulevard near Arizona State University.
The distraught mother was primarily speaking Japanese, police said, and she reportedly confessed to the officers on the spot about the slayings. Authorities went up to her apartment in response and found the mutilated bodies of Inoue’s kids.
“[S]he was hearing voices telling her to kill her children,” charging documents said.
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Inoue later told police that she woke up with blood on her hands around 4:30 a.m. to find her children dead and also covered in blood near a doorway. After that, she said she took a bath and finally “woke up” to the reality of the violence she committed. Her lawyers claim Inoue had no memory of carrying out the killings. According to local ABC affiliate KNXV, Tempe police said a blood-soaked meat cleaver was discovered inside the vehicle Inoue drove to the police substation.
“We are here because this woman tried to decapitate two souls,” said Maricopa County prosecutor Shaylee Beasley during her closing arguments Monday, according to the Arizona Republic.
Beasley described in detail how Inoue “delivered chop after chop” to the children while they both “tried to protect their heads.” She reportedly showed close-up photos of the children’s horrific injuries to the jury and claimed their deaths were connected to a bitter divorce she was having with their father.
Inoue, meanwhile, was not in the courtroom as she had waived her right to be present.
Her attorney, Rebecca Felmly, reportedly said she believed there was enough reasonable doubt presented at Inoue’s trial for the jury to deliver a verdict of not guilty. During her first court appearance in 2021, Inoue told the judge “I did not kill anybody” through a Japanese interpreter.
“(The medical examiner) likened the amount of force to a guillotine,” Felmly said, according to AZFamily. “She is a very tiny, very slightly-built woman. She doesn’t have the energy, the power, or the strength to cause that type of injury to those kids.”
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Felmly noted how there are seven other apartments in the building where Inoue and her husband lived with Mia and Kai. “You didn’t hear from any of the neighbors,” she said. “Nobody saw or heard anything. If they did, the state would have called them.”
The child abuse case that Inoue was convicted of stemmed from a report made by Inoue’s husband in March 2021 — just months before the killings — saying Inoue “took Kai” and their whereabouts were unknown. “Police eventually located Ms. Inoue and Kai behind a convenience store,” DCS officials said in a May 2021 statement. “Ms. Inoue was taken to a psychiatric hospital and Kai was returned to his father.”
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DCS investigators said they did not observe any “visible signs of abuse or neglect on the children” and the kids claimed “they felt safe with their parents.” The investigation did not find any evidence to warrant removal from the home, according to DCS officials.
Inoue faces the possibility of life in prison for crimes, according to the Arizona Republic. She is scheduled to be sentenced on March 21.
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
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