Chilean Nicolás Zepeda was sentenced Tuesday in France to 28 years in prison for the murder of his former Japanese girlfriend Narumi Kurosaki in December 2016.
When the nine-member jury's decision was announced, after four hours of deliberation, the Chilean, dressed in a blue shirt and a dark tie, remained unmoved on the bench of the defendants, with a tired face.
The sentence issued in Besancon, in eastern France, includes a “definitive ban” on entry into French territory and the carrying of weapons, said Judge Matthieu Husson.
During the trial that began on March 29, Zepeda, 31, repeatedly denied the charges: killing Kurosaki in December 2016 in Besançon - where the young woman was studying the language - and disposing of the body, moved by “jealousy”.
“I never wanted to be in the middle of the pain of Narumi's family, I never wanted to be in the midst of my own family's pain, my own pain, but I'm not a murderer, I'm not Narumi's killer,” Zepeda said Tuesday at the beginning of the hearing, speaking for the first time in French since the trial began, in his last statement before the jury withdrew to deliberate.
On Monday, prosecutor Étienne Manteaux had requested that the Chilean be “sentenced to life imprisonment”, insisting that Zepeda “deliberately killed his ex-girlfriend with premeditation”, having failed to get her to resume the relationship, which had ended the previous fall.
Separation difficult to bear
Zepeda and Kurosaki met in Japan in autumn 2014 and a few months later they began a romantic relationship, marked by “breakups and reconciliations,” according to the victim's mother, Taeko Kurosaki, during the trial.
At the end of August 2016, the Japanese woman, who was 21 years old at the time, moved to Besançon to study French, after having obtained a scholarship. Two months later, her relationship with Zepeda ended.
A separation that Zepeda would have been unable to endure, according to the prosecution, so he decided to travel to France from Santiago de Chile.
On December 4, 2016, Zepeda reunited with Kurosaki in Besançon and they went to dinner together in a nearby town.
After that, they returned to the university residence where the young woman was staying, spent about 30 hours together, and there he killed her, according to the prosecution.
However, in the absence of a confession, the details of how the crime was committed remain a mystery.
According to the prosecutor's thesis, the Chilean would have “suffocated” or “strangled” the young woman on the night of December 4-5, when several witnesses say they heard “beatings” and “horrifying cries” of a woman in the university residence, around three in the morning.
After that, the prosecution suspects that Zepeda had disposed of the body in a forest in the area or thrown it into the Doubs River, in the same area.
In the following days, according to the investigation, Zepeda hacked into his ex-girlfriend's social media accounts, sending messages to the young woman's relatives, making them believe that she was still alive and thus gaining time before returning to Chile.
The Chilean was extradited to France in 2020.
No answers
According to the version that Zepeda defended until the end, when he left the residence, on December 6 in the morning, Kurosaki was in perfect health.
On Monday, the Chilean defense, composed of lawyers Jacqueline Laffont and Julie Benedetti, criticized the “harshness” of the penalty sought and dismissed the clue of a “project of premeditated murder.”
On Tuesday morning, one of the lawyers for the civil party, Sylvie Galley, who represents the victim's family, lamented once again “the absence of confession and answers” on the part of the Chilean, claiming that the family “expected more.”
Taeko and Kurumi Kurosaki, Narumi's mother and sister, traveled from Tokyo to Besançon, in which court they directly asked Zepeda, whom they called a “monster” and a “demon”, to communicate the whereabouts of the body.
(By José Vicente Bernabeu - AFP)
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