TOKYO (TR) – A court here this week convicted a 33-year-old man of murdering his teenage girlfriend and abandoning her body in a forest three years ago, reports Nippon News Network (Mar. 16).
At the Tokyo District Court on March 16, the presiding judge handed Ryoma Atsumi a 22-year prison term for murder and abandoning a corpse.
In 2023, Atsumi stabbed his girlfriend, 18-year-old Yurika Nomoto, in a parked car. He then abandoned her body in a forest in the village of Kosuge, Yamanashi Prefecture.
Judge said that “it is recognized that [Atsumi] killed the victim with intent to kill, stabbing her in the chest and other areas with a knife.”
During the trial, Atsumi maintained his innocence regarding the murder charge, claiming he did not stab her. However, he admitted to abandoning a corpse.
In its opening statement, the prosecution pointed out that the defendant’s relationship with Nomoto had deteriorated by around May 2023. He then killed her with a knife while they were alone in the car.
After that, he called a male friend, 33, with the promise of lending him money. They together abandoned the body, wrapped in a blue tarp.
In response, the defense argued that the friend was also in the car at the time. The defense said, “After a dispute arose, the victim took a knife out of her bag. The friend then tried to intervene, which ended [in the victim] being stabbed.”
The court ruled that “[the defendant] transported the body to the mountains and abandoned it to prevent detection, and the tragic result is that some of the remains have yet to be found, making the manner of the crime extremely malicious,” and “the series of crimes as a whole were extremely selfish.”
