The accused, of Chilean nationality, is accused of murdering his Japanese ex-girlfriend in 2016. Life imprisonment is requested against him.
Life imprisonment was requested this Wednesday, December 20 before the Haute-Saône assizes against the Chilean Nicolas Zepeda, tried on appeal for the assassination of his Japanese ex-girlfriend Narumi Kurosaki.
“Everything, I insist, everything leads to Nicolas Zepeda in the death of Narumi Kurosaki,” declared Attorney General Étienne Manteaux.
Despite the absence of the student’s body, which was never found, he underlined the “solidity of the accusations” brought against the accused.
Narumi Kurosaki, victim of Nicolas Zepeda’s “control”, was the victim of “feminicide”, declared the lawyer for the student’s relatives before the Haute-Saône assizes, which is judging the Chilean on appeal for the murder of his Japanese ex-partner.
The day, which should see the Attorney General present his submissions, experienced a new moment of intense emotion when Narumi’s mother and her two sisters burst into tears during the pleadings of their lawyer, Sylvie Galley. They had to leave the crowded courtroom, leading to a suspension of the hearing.
A “wandering soul”
Narumi’s family, whose body will likely “never be found,” is caught in “impossible grief” and “perpetual pain,” Mr. Galley said on the stand. She reads “Tomorrow, from dawn”, the poem by Victor Hugo dedicated to his daughter Léopoldine, who died of drowning.
Narumi’s mother, Taeko Kurosaki, “imagines her daughter’s soul wandering in the forest” where investigators believe Nicolas Zepeda left the body, she explained.
Narumi found herself in a “toxic relationship”, insisted the lawyer, who at length gathered the elements showing, according to her, the responsibility of the accused in the disappearance of the student in Besançon at the end of 2016.
She was “a victim of femicide,” she told jurors. “Victim of control, of an unhealthy jealousy, of a desire for possession, of control and of being too free, too independent” for having gone to study in France and having left Nicolas Zepeda, which he would not have not supported.
He “was her first love,” the lawyer recalls. He is also “the last person to see Narumi alive” and “the first and only person to see her dead since he was the one who murdered her”.
In charge of the prosecution, the Attorney General Étienne Manteaux must immediately take the floor to present his requisitions. Tuesday, December 19, he bombarded the accused with questions, pushing him to his limits, as is often the case in this appeal trial.
Last year, at first instance before the Doubs assizes, he requested life imprisonment but was not completely followed by the jurors who sentenced Nicolas Zepeda to 28 years of imprisonment. The Chilean appealed.
A “morbid jealousy”
According to the prosecution, he came voluntarily from Chile to France at the end of 2016 and killed Narumi, probably by suffocating or strangling her. He then disposed of the body, which was never found, in a wooded area near the town of Dole (Jura).
This Tuesday, December 19, the prosecutor confronted the accused with his authoritarian messages sent to Narumi to order him to delete his male friends from his Facebook account; buy a can of gasoline and matches, potentially to burn a body; or even the Chilean’s rental car trips near Dole.
He also highlighted the “wounded male pride” and the “morbid jealousy” of the Chilean who, according to Mr. Manteaux, could not bear that Narumi left him and erased him from his life by establishing a new relationship with Arthur Del Piccolo, a student from Besançon suspected for a time but quickly exonerated.
Civil party to the trial, he was Narumi’s last boyfriend.
The defense will plead after the attorney general’s arguments. Nicolas Zepeda, who reiterated his innocence on Tuesday, will speak last. He faces life imprisonment. The verdict should fall this Thursday, December 21.
During their deliberations, the jurors will have to answer two questions: Did Nicolas Zepeda kill Narumi Kurosaki? If so, did he premeditate his action?
If they exclude premeditation, the president of the court, François Arnaud, underlined Tuesday that the jurors will then have to answer a particular question: was the couple in cohabitation when Nicolas Zepeda lived in Japan, as the debates actually revealed? watch ? If they answer yes, then it would be a murder committed by an ex-spouse, also punishable by life imprisonment.
