On December 16, the body of Miki Kuroda, 37, was found by male acquaintances inside her third-floor apartment in Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture.
The victim had been beaten and stabbed with a knife.
On June 4, prefectural police arrested Yoshinori Kurumi, a 29-year-old Buddhist monk from Tokushima City, Tokushima Prefecture on murder charges.
According to Friday (June 26), the suspect repeatedly stalked the victim before he killed her.
“She worked part-time in the fuzoku (sex-related) trade, and he was her customer; that’s how they became acquainted,” an investigator tells the tabloid. “On several occasions, he stalked her. He posted defamatory messages on adult-service promotion sites.”
These posts, which described her quality of service as “bad,” and surveillance camera footage eventually lead police to Kurumi. According to Nikkan Sports (June 26), the suspect hired a private detective to do a background check on the victim.
In getting inside her apartment, the suspect posed as a delivery man. According to prosecutors, he attached a delivery slip to a cardboard box that concealed a survival knife, the weapon used to carry out the crime.
“He said that he carried her mobile phone and the knife used to kill Kuroda from the crime scene and threw them ‘into the sea,'” the investigator continues.
Kurumi is a monk at the Chokenji temple in Tokushima City. In January of last year, he was married in a ceremony that was attended by more than 100 people.
He entered his family’s temple, whose history goes back hundreds of years, after getting a teaching credential from Okayama University. Until April, the suspect served as the vice president of a Shikoku Buddhism youth group.
For Kuroda, she was primarily employed as a nail artist and insurance agent. (Her evening work was described as being in the “hospitality industry” in most mainstream news outlets.) She also coached a local basketball team, one member of which describes her as a “reliable older sister.”
“We were aware of her night work,” says the member. “So when the incident took place, we were at a loss for words.”
On the day of the murder, the team held their end-of-the-year party. When Kuroda did not arrive at the appointed time, some members visited her apartment.
It was a grisly scene: She had suffered deep wounds to her neck that extended to the carotid artery. An investigator tells Nikkan Gendai (June 7) that given all of the wounds on the body it seems that the perpetrator must have held tremendous resentment for the victim. Yet no motive has been provided for the murder. (A.T.)
Source: “Matsuyama shinkon no soryo 29-sai ga toshiue bijo ’37-sai neirisuto’ wo sutookaa satsujin,” Friday (June 26, pages 28-29)