MIYAGI (TR) – A 32-year-old man on trial here over the alleged murder of an acquaintance and the destruction and abandonment of his corpse and other charges in Sendai City in 2022 has admitted to the allegations.
At the Sendai District Court on October 17, Koki Maeda, of no known occupation, admitted to murdering Daiki Sato, 22, dismembering the body and burying it. “There is no mistake,” he told the court, according to Kyodo News (Oct. 17).
According to the indictment, Maeda conspired with his roommate and boyfriend Yu Yamaguchi, 33, to strangle Sato with a towel-like object inside the apartment the three of them shared in Aoba Ward on November 10, 2022.
Over a two-day period starting on November 12, 2022, the pair are said to have dismembered Sato’s body with a chainsaw, put it in a suitcase and buried it in Wakabayashi Ward.
The case, which emerged when both defendants turned themselves over to the Aomori Prefectural Police in December 2022, is a dark tale of a soured relationship that eventually resulted in fraud, assault and, eventually, murder.
Became close friends
October 17, Maeda entered the courtroom in a wheelchair. According to his lawyer, he suffered a cardiac arrest episode after his arrest. He had short black hair, was wearing a navy blue tracksuit top to bottom, and was seen to have tattoos on the backs of his hands, fingers and neck, according to TBS News (Oct. 19).
Since Maeda is deaf in both ears, the trial began with a written interpreter. All told, Maeda has been accused of assault, coercion, murder, destruction and abandonment of a corpse, blackmail and fraud.
Maeda’s registered address is in Minami-Alps City, Yamanashi Prefecture. After graduating from junior high school, he changed jobs several times. He had been in a relationship with his accomplice, Yu Yamaguchi, for four years and lived together in the apartment in Aoba Ward.
Maeda frequented a bar in the Kokubuncho area of Aoba Ward, where Sato worked. They then became close friends.
Maeda was fond of Sato, who treated him kindly despite his hearing loss. To express his love for him, Sato used the term aniki (big brother) to refer to Maeda.
Physically and mentally cornered
Around July 2022, Maeda began to regularly bring Sato to his apartment, where he lived with Yamaguchi. Shortly thereafter, the three of them began living together. Yamaguchi then became unhappy with this.
The house soon fell apart. In August 2022, Maeda heard that Sato was making fun of his disability. Angered, Maeda began to assault Sato. He also made Sato lie so that he could extort money that he had borrowed from his father and friends.
However, around October to November 2022 the flow of extorted funds stopped. Maeda then escalated the assaults.
Maeda injured Sato by stabbing him in the leg with the tip of an electric screwdriver, and forced him to choose between leaving the house they shared or eating feces. Feeling physically and mentally cornered by Yamaguchi and others, Sato was unable to resist.
On November 10, 2022, Maeda broke his toe during one of the assaults. He went to the hospital with Yamaguchi, and when he returned home, Sato was found collapsed due to a seizure caused by his chronic epilepsy.
As a result, the apartment was in cluttered state, which enraged Yamaguchi. The two then strangled Sato to death.
Between November 12 and 14, they dismembered the body in the bathroom of their home with the chainsaw. They put the dismembered corpse in a suitcase and took a taxi to the Arahama district of Wakabayashi, where they dumped it.
Sato’s heart and lungs stopped
In their opening statement, the defense said that they would not contest the murder allegations (or most of the other crimes Maeda is accused of). But they did defend Maeda’s actions at the time.
Overcome with remorse, Maeda tried to perform a life-saving measure after Sato’s heart and lungs stopped, the defense said. The defendant also tried to turn himself in, but gave up after Yamaguchi requested he not do it.
However, the defense did contest the charge of coercion, whereby Maeda allegedly forced Sato to eat feces. They argued, “Maeda proposed the condition to get Sato, who was sleeping in the same room, to move out of the apartment, and so coercion did not occur.”
Regarding allegations of fraud, Maeda and Yamaguchi defrauded the friends of the victim. Because they needed money to move out of the apartment where the murder took place, they defrauded his friends out of a total of 1.05 million yen and then moved from place to place.
Crime would eventually be discovered
The cause surfaced in December 2022. Suffering from acute hepatitis while in Aomori, Maeda used the Sato’s health insurance card to impersonate him and enter a hospital.
However, he turned himself in to the police, thinking that the crime would eventually be discovered anyway.
At the first hearing on October 17, the prosecution and defense made opening statements that lasted about an hour. Just as the trial was about to resume after a 30-minute recess, Maeda complained of feeling unwell, causing the trial to be cut short earlier than scheduled.
The verdict will be handed down on November 7. Yamaguchi’s trial has not yet begun.
