Japan court again convicts man for helping daughter in beheading murder case

TOKYO - A Japanese high court on Jan 27 sentenced a 62-year-old man to one year in prison, suspended for three years, for helping his daughter damage a corpse in a

2023 beheading murder case in Sapporo

.

The Sapporo High Court scrapped a district court ruling that had sentenced psychiatrist Osamu Tamura to 16 months in prison, suspended for four years. Unlike the lower court’s ruling delivered last March, Tamura was not convicted of aiding in the abandonment of the corpse.

Presiding Judge Kiyoshi Aonuma said that while it could be established that his daughter, Runa, had abandoned a corpse by taking the man’s head into her home’s bathroom, Tamura only became aware of this later, as argued by the defence.

The defence counsel in the appeal trial maintained Tamura’s innocence, claiming he only came to know of Runa’s actions afterwards.

Mr Aonuma, meanwhile, said Tamura played a significant role in the crime by filming Runa as she desecrated the severed head, but added that a suspended sentence was appropriate, given that Tamura acknowledged the seriousness of his actions.

The judge said it was impossible to conclude that Tamura knew beforehand that his daughter would kill or harm the victim, and therefore rejected the charge of aiding murder, upholding part of the lower court ruling.

Prosecutors insisted that Tamura knew of Runa’s murder plot beforehand and that he should be held accountable for assistance in an assault causing death even if it was not possible to uphold a charge of aiding and abetting a murder.

On July 2, 2023, the victim, Hitoshi Ura, 62, was found naked and headless at a hotel in Sapporo.

Runa, 31, allegedly stabbed him in the neck on the evening of July 1, then severed his head and took it home in a suitcase.

The victim’s head was later discovered in the bathroom of the Tamuras’ residence in Sapporo. KYODO NEWS