An Arizona mother who murdered her two kids, ages 7 and 9, using a meat cleaver “designed to cut the bones of animals” will die behind bars after being handed two consecutive life sentences on Friday for her heinous crimes.

Yui Inoue, 44, was sentenced by Maricopa County Superior Judge Jeffrey Rueter, according to AZFamily, and he didn’t mince words when speaking to her.

“Words can’t adequately describe what occurred,” Rueter said, per AZFamily.

“I can’t imagine what those children went through in their last minutes,” he told the court. “The fear, the pain, the suffering. It’s incomprehensible.”

Inoue, who spoke through a Japanese interpreter, said that she believed her children were not dead. She was given the two life sentences plus two 20-year sentences to be served consecutively.

“They are spending time with my parents,” Inoue reportedly said. “I love my children very much so it’s very strange. My children are with my parents.”

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Inoue, who lived in Tempe, was accused of killing her two kids in a heinous 2021 murder case that wrapped up in February 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 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 guilty 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 May 2021 murders of her children Mia and Kai Inoue, who were identified by local officials.

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.

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 in February, 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’s attorney, Rebecca Felmly, had previously said that 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 her 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.”

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.”

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.

Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.

A Michigan man who shot his girlfriend during an argument about the paternity of one of their children learned his fate during a sentencing hearing on Friday.

Vaughn Smith, who was 35 years old at the time of the shooting, sobbed in court during his sentencing hearing. Almost a full year after the May 2024 altercation between Smith and his girlfriend, whose name was being kept private, Smith stood before a judge as he pleaded guilty to assault with intent to commit murder and two firearms charges. In addition to his admitting to the crime, his girlfriend also asked for leniency.

But ultimately, it was up to the judge.

A mixed martial artist in Florida is heading to prison for murdering his fiancee while he was “super high on Molly” — telling an acquaintance, “I killed her, bro” — after gunning the woman down at their apartment while arguing over the MMA fighter’s drug use.

“I killed her high,” Phillip Keller told the acquaintance during a recorded phone conversation, according to Brevard County prosecutors and the local CBS affiliate WKMG. “I did it. I don’t know how I did it, but I can’t live with myself knowing that,” Keller said. “I’m a piece of s—.”

Keller, who was 39 when the killing unfolded, was sentenced Monday to 50 years behind bars for the 2021 shooting death of Alicia Campitelli, who was a popular piercing artist on Merritt Island known as “Red.” Keller accepted a plea deal during his sentencing hearing to reduce his charge to second-degree murder after originally being charged with first-degree murder in 2021, WKMG reports.

A mother from Michigan has learned her fate for abandoning her 1-year-old son on Florida‘s Daytona Beach. The boy’s teenage brother reportedly called the cops on her on the day in question — claiming she was “possessed by demons.”

Shamika Mitchell, 38, was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison for her son’s abandonment. She was found guilty in November 2024 of aggravated child abuse and unlawful desertion of a child.

Florida’s Seventh Judicial Circuit Judge Karen Foxman said Mitchell had been using marijuana, drinking alcohol and possibly using meth while caring for the child, who was in the surf and could have drowned if he had not been rescued, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported.

The newspaper reported her public defender saying the defendant struggled through a difficult childhood and had a psychotic episode at the time of the incident.

A man who helped his son hide the bodies of four murder victims in a Wisconsin cornfield after the younger man “snapped” has learned his fate.

Darren Osborne, 59, was sentenced Thursday to 16 years in prison, online court records show. He was found guilty in October of four counts of hiding a corpse involving the deaths of Jasmine Sturm, 30; her brother, Matthew Pettus, 26; her boyfriend, Loyace Foreman III, 35; and her friend, Nitosha Flug-Presley, 30.

An Oklahoma man was sentenced for killing his girlfriend’s grandparents and burying their bodies in their own backyard.

Lucas Anthony Walker, 22, was sentenced to 35 years in federal prison for the murders of Deborah and Larry Dutton, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a Friday press release. Walker pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder.

The victims were murdered in their home in Dewey, about 50 miles north of Tulsa, on Dec. 19, 2022.

Their bodies were found the following month in their backyard, reported Andy Dossett of the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise.

An Arkansas football coach and his wife who were busted in an online child sex abuse sting operation after trying to meet with an extremely young child for sex have learned how they will spend the next decade and beyond: behind bars.

As Law&Crime previously reported, Benjamin Coney, 30, and Emily “Grace” Brinley, 26, were accused of one count each of internet stalking of a minor and conspiracy to commit rape, according to court documents obtained by Law&Crime. Coney had once worked as a minor league football coach in Little Rock — until the “To Catch a Predator”-like sting operation.

Federal authorities have announced that they have been sentenced to a combined 378 months in prison without the possibility of parole. Coney was sentenced to more than 17 years — 210 months — behind bars, followed by 25 years of supervision, and Brinley was sentenced to 14 years in prison, followed by 15 years of supervision. They were sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks, a Barack Obama appointee.

A man from Washington, D.C., has learned his fate in the shooting death of a 13-year-old boy killed outside the shooter’s home in 2023.

Jason Lewis, 42, was sentenced to 12½ years in prison on Friday for the killing of Karon Blake, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a press release. Lewis was convicted in August of voluntary manslaughter, assault with a dangerous weapon, and firearm charges.

A 26-year-old man in Michigan will spend decades behind bars for killing his 2-year-old son last year, starving the boy to death inside the home they shared with the child’s mother. Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Edward Servitto on Wednesday ordered Jonathan Matthew Cheek to serve a sentence of 24 to 50 years in a state correctional facility in connection with the toddler’s horrific death, authorities announced.

Cheek in October reached a deal with prosecutors in which he agreed to plead no contest to one count of second-degree murder and one count of second-degree child abuse. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to recommend a maximum five-decade sentence for Cheek, who had been facing the possibility of life in prison.

A North Carolina gang member who was 16 years old when he fired a barrage of bullets into a car, killing one and paralyzing the victim’s friend, has learned his fate.

Nathan Christopher Jackson, 18, was sentenced to life in prison with parole possible after 40 years in the 2022 shooting that killed Alex Shirley, 21, and paralyzed his friend, Sophie Hagy. Before being sentenced, Jackson was found guilty of first-degree murder, attempted murder and discharging a firearm into a vehicle, inflicting serious injury.

Shirley’s mother, Kristi Lee, described her mixed emotions to the outcome to local NBC affiliate WRAL.

“I felt a lot of relief,” Lee said. “It’s not closure. You don’t get closure when you have to bury your child and see the gruesome things that we saw.”