“Everything, I insist, everything leads towards Nicolas Zepeda in the death of Narumi Kurosaki,” insisted Attorney General Etienne Manteaux before the Haute-Saône assizes.
Despite the absence of the student’s body, which was never found, Mr. Manteaux underlined the “solidity of the charges” against the accused, who again proclaimed his innocence on Tuesday while his appeal trial is coming to an end. The prosecutor also requested a permanent ban on entry once the sentence has been served.
Last year, at first instance, Mr. Manteaux requested life imprisonment but was not completely followed by the jurors who sentenced Mr. Zepeda to 28 years in prison. The Chilean, now 33 years old, had appealed.
According to the prosecution, Nicolas Zepeda came to France from Chile on purpose at the end of 2016 and killed Narumi, probably by suffocating or strangling him. He then disposed of the body in a wooded area near the town of Dole (Jura).
On Tuesday, the prosecutor confronted the accused with his authoritarian messages sent to Narumi ordering him to delete male friends from his Facebook account; purchasing a can of gasoline and matches, potentially to burn a body; or even the Chilean’s rental car trips near Dole.
He had also pinpointed the “wounded male pride” and the “morbid jealousy” of the Chilean who, according to Mr. Manteaux, could not stand Narumi leaving him and erasing him from his life by forming a new relationship with Arthur Del Piccolo , a student from Besançon once suspected, but quickly exonerated. Civil party to the trial, he was Narumi’s last boyfriend.
A body not found
The morning hearing was marked by a new moment of intense emotion when Narumi’s mother and 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. In his box, Nicolas Zepeda remained unmoved.
Narumi’s family, whose body will probably “never be found”, is caught in “impossible mourning” and “perpetual pain”, declared Me Galley. She read “Tomorrow, from dawn”, the poem by Victor Hugo dedicated to his daughter Léopoldine, who died of drowning. Narumi’s mother, Taeko Kurosaki, “imagines the soul of her daughter 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 gathered at length the elements showing, according to her, the responsibility of the accused in the disappearance of the student.
She was “the victim of femicide,” she told the jurors. “Victim of control, of a sick jealousy, of a desire for possession, of control and of being too free, too independent” for having left to study in France and having left Nicolas Zepeda, which he did not would not have supported it. He “was her first love,” recalled the lawyer. He is also “the last person to see Narumi alive” and “the first and only person to see her dead since it was he who murdered her”.
The defense will plead after the attorney general’s submissions. Nicolas Zepeda will speak last. He faces life imprisonment. The verdict is expected on Thursday.
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 rule out premeditation, the president of the court, François Arnaud, stressed Tuesday that the jurors will then have to answer a special question: was the couple in cohabitation when Mr. Zepeda lived in Japan, as the debates show? actually showed? If they answer yes, then it would be murder by an ex-spouse, also punishable by life imprisonment.