Masumi Hayashi and her husband Kenji Hayashi, were not well liked by their Wakayama, village community. They were deemed aloof and stand offish, never wanting to mix with their neighbours. This changed in 1998 when Masumi helped to cook up a pot of curry that would be eaten at a local festival. Instead of grasping this olive branch and using it as a way to finally be included, she decided to lace the curry with poison in an act of mass killing.