LYON, FRANCE ¨C A court in Lyon, France, on Thursday sentenced a Chilean man facing murder charges over a case in which a Japanese woman went missing in France in 2016 to life in prison.
The sentence for Nicolas Zepeda, handed down by presiding Judge Eric Chalbos, was heavier than the 30-year imprisonment sought by the prosecution.
The 35-year-old defendant is a former boyfriend of the victim, Narumi Kurosaki, a student of Japan¡¯s University of Tsukuba who was studying in France when she went missing at the age of 21.
Zepeda again claimed his innocence in his closing statement on the day, stating that he did not kill Kurosaki.
The judges and jury concluded that Zepeda murdered Kurosaki and that a severe sentence is appropriate. The defense is expected to file an appeal.
Kurosaki¡¯s body was not found despite extensive police searches. Amid a lack of physical evidence, public prosecutors built the case against Zepeda based on his suspicious remarks and actions before and after Kurosaki¡¯s disappearance and by gathering circumstantial evidence.
According to the ruling, Zepeda came up with a plan to kill Kurosaki out of jealousy after she started a relationship with a new boyfriend. He murdered Kurosaki, the ruling said, in a room of a student dormitory in Besancon, eastern France, in 2016, and abandoned her body in a secluded location.
Zepeda then returned to Chile but was extradited to France in 2020 and later indicted on suspicion of murdering Kurosaki.
The defendant was sentenced to 28 years in prison in both the first- and second-instance rulings in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
In 2025, however, France¡¯s supreme court scrapped the second-instance ruling and ordered the trial to be redone, accepting the defense¡¯s claim that there was a mistake in the trial proceedings.
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