This Thursday, at the Vesoul Assize Court in Burgundy-Franche-Comté, it was the turn of the judicial police officer responsible for the investigation into the disappearance of Japanese student Narumi Kurosaki in 2016 in Besançon. go to the bar. He delivered a precise, detailed and damning account for Nicolas Zepeda, who is appearing for murder. If in front of the jurors, David Borne, the chief brigadier at the PJ of Besançon recognized that “it is a weakness in a criminal case not to have a body”, he nevertheless confides that this “made it possible to push the investigations to the depths of what we could do, to respond to everything. »
What followed was a detailed account lasting two hours, during which he recounts the investigations carried out over four years, mobilizing French investigation services, but also Spanish, Japanese and Chilean, compiled in a file of 8,000 pages. The Brigadier-Chief began by mentioning the first suspicions placed on Arthur Del Piccolo, Narumi’s boyfriend at the time of her disappearance. “It’s true that his behavior is peculiar. He intellectualizes everything, he does an investigation with his friends,” explains David Borne.
But investigators have not collected any evidence that would allow him to be placed in police custody. On the contrary, they quickly direct their research towards another suspect, Nicolas Zepeda, the previous boyfriend of the Japanese student. As a reminder, the testimony of the investigator in first instance had changed the trial, which resulted in the Chilean being sentenced to 28 years of criminal imprisonment.
It is not surprising that defense lawyers Renaud Portejoie and Sylvain Cormier once again contested the fact that he was testifying at the bar based on notes. “He reads his statement in full, it’s forbidden in the criminal court,” annoys Renaud Portejoie. “The principle of orality of debates is of public order, that poses a problem to me. » “I am going to ask you to detach yourself from your notes,” then intervenes the president of the court, Arnaud François, to put an end to the incident. Regardless, the police officer continued without blinking his story of an extraordinary investigation that he knows like the back of his hand.
The officer therefore returned to the “screams of horror” heard in a university residence on the night of December 4 to 5, 2016. “We realized that that evening, there was really something serious happening. “passed near Narumi’s room,” explains the investigator. Earlier in the evening, Narumi Kurosaki had dinner at the restaurant with Nicolas Zepeda. The judicial police thus shed light, using the use of telephone demarcation and credit card payments, on the progress of the Chilean’s stay in France.
An intriguing shopping list
“He buys items that are disturbing to say the least: a box of matches, five liters of flammable product and a spray of detergent,” explains David Borne: “that surprises us. » Video surveillance revealed an individual with a hidden face who “is interested in the university residence” a few days earlier: “he takes a photo of it, tries to enter through the laundry room door. » The appearances of the individual in front of the surveillance cameras correspond exactly to the hours and days when Nicolas Zepeda went to campus.
The officer also describes how the accused had “taken possession” of the victim’s social media. “Jealous”, he “does not accept that Narumi could have made male friends on French territory”, he observes. “He has a particular obsession with Arthur Del Piccolo.” Messages, sent in particular by Facebook from the victim’s account several days after his last public appearance, “considerably delayed the start of the investigation”, underlines the police officer.
The officer also specifies that Nicolas Zepeda had stopped at night on December 1 in a forest area “absolutely not touristy”, near a river. He returned there on the 6th, after the disappearance, in the early hours of the day, still in the darkness. For the prosecution, these stops correspond to “spottings”, then to the abandonment of the body. “We called in the river brigades, the dog handlers. We carried out searches, searches by boat, but we did not find him,” regrets David Borne. Narumi Kurosaki “did not leave on her own, and we cannot imagine that she committed suicide,” he finishes. “The only solution we have is that she was murdered. And the one and only suspect is Nicolas Zepeda. »