UDGE: Please verify that your name is Zhang Zhe-zhong, a native of Dayi City, Baoxing County, in Sichuan Province of the People’s Republic of China, born February 10, 1966.

DEFENDANT: Yes, that is true.

JUDGE: You presently reside at apartment 404 of the Matoya Building, 4–5 Maruyama-ch, Shibuya Ward, in the city of Tokyo; and you are employed by Dreamer. Is that correct?

DEFENDANT: That is correct.

JUDGE: You’ve stated that you do not need an interpreter. Are you certain?

DEFENDANT: Yes. My Japanese is good. I’m certain.

JUDGE: Very well. Will the attorney for the prosecution read aloud the indictment?

INDICTMENT

On this day of November 1, the twelfth year of Heisei (2000), the District Attorney for the city of Tokyo, as herein represented by D.A. Noro Yoshiaki, indicts Zhang Zhe-zhong, a citizen of the People’s Republic of China, born February 10, 1966, currently a hotel employee and residing at Matoya Building #404, 4–5 Maruyama-ch, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, before the Tokyo District Court on the following charges:

COUNT NO. 1

While the defendant was an employee at the Shangri-la, a Chinese restaurant in Kabuki-ch, Shinjuku-ku, he went to unit number 205 of Hope Heights apartments, 5–12 kubo, Shinjuku-ku, on June 5, 1999, and at approximately 3 a.m. used both hands to strangle Yuriko Hirata (then 37), thus causing her death by asphyxiation. Thereafter the defendant removed from the purse of the afore-named victim ¥20,000 and took an 18-carat gold necklace (valued at the time at ¥70,000) from her person.

COUNT NO. 2

The same defendant went to unit number 103 of Green Villa Apartments, 4–5 Maruyama-ch, Shibuya-ku, on April 9, 2000, and at approximately midnight strangled with both hands Kazue Sat (then 39), thus causing her death by asphyxiation. Subsequently he removed ¥40,000 from the victim’s purse.

CHARGES AND PENALTIES

Count No. 1: The defendant is charged with burglary and murder in accordance with Article 240, Part Two, of the Penal Code.

Count No. 2: The defendant is charged with burglary and murder in accordance with Article 240, Part Two, of the Penal Code.

JUDGE: We will begin the trial on the charges the district attorney has just read. But before proceeding I will inform the defendant of his rights. You have the right to remain silent, and so during these pro ceedings you may choose to remain silent. Should you answer a question, you are not under obligation to answer subsequent questions. However, should you choose to answer a question, anything you say may be used in evidence against you, so I urge you to exercise caution. You have heard the aforementioned conditions. I would like to take this opportunity to ask you if you have any response to the charges against you as read into the record by the prosecuting attorney.

DEFENDANT: I admit to killing Yuriko Hirata, but I did not murder Kazue Sat.

JUDGE: You plead guilty to the charges in the first count but not to the charges in the second count?

DEFENDANT: Correct.

JUDGE: And what about the charges of robbery?

DEFENDANT: I stole Miss Hirata’s money and necklace, but I did not steal from Miss Sat.

JUDGE: Attorney for the defense, what is your statement?

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I concur with the defendant.

JUDGE: Very well. Will the attorney for the prosecution please read your opening arguments.

OVERVIEW OF THE PROSECUTION’S OPENING ARGUMENTS: COUNT NO. 1 OF THE INDICTMENT

Item 1: The Defendant’s Personal History

The defendant was born on February 10, 1966, in Sichuan Province of the People’s Republic of China as the third son of Zhang Xiao-niu (currently 68) a farmer, and Zhang Xiu-lan (currently 61). The defendant has four siblings: his oldest brother, An-ji (currently 42); a second older brother, Gen-de; an older sister, Mei-hua (currently 40); and a younger sister, Mei-kun. Note that the second brother, Gen-de, died in childhood and the younger sister Mei-kun died in an accident in 1992. The defendant graduated from the local elementary school at the age of 12 and henceforth began to help the family with farming.

In 1989 the defendant decided to leave home to secure better employment. He and his younger sister, Mei-kun, boarded a train to Guang-dong Province and sought employment in Guangzhou City. In 1991 they moved to Shenzhen City, also in Guangdong Province.

In 1992 the defendant and his younger sister, Mei-kun, stowed away on a ship sailing from Fujian Province, planning to enter Japan illegally. Although Mei-kun drowned in the process, the defendant was successful and entered our country illegally at Ishigaki Island. While concealing his illegal status, he found successive employment in the cleaning and cooking sectors. He also had jobs in construction. In 1998 he worked at a bar in Shinjuku known as Nomisuke, and in 1999 he began working at a tavern, also in Shinjuku, known as Shangri-la. In July of that same year he began employment at Dreamer, a love hotel in the Honmachi neighborhood of Kichijji, Musashino City. The defendant is not known to be married. According to housing records, he lives with individuals known by the names Chen-yi, Huang, and Dragon, all Chinese nationals.

On June 30, 2000, the defendant was brought before the Tokyo District Court on the charge of entering the country illegally. He was sentenced to two years of incarceration with a suspended sentence of four years. (Decision dated July 20 of the same year.)

Item 2: Victim Yuriko Hirata

The victim Yuriko Hirata (hereafter Hirata) was born May 17, 1962, as the second daughter of Jan Maher (a Swiss national) who is currently employed by Schmidt, a textile manufacturer in Switzerland, and Sachiko Hirata. As her parents never legally married, the victim went by both Maher and her mother’s name Hirata. Hirata and her parents moved from Kita-Shirakawa in Shirakawa Ward to Bern, Switzerland, in March of 1976. In July of that year, Sachiko died in Bern and Hirata left her father and returned alone to Japan. Because her elder sister was currently living with Sachiko’s father, Hirata boarded at the house of an American acquaintance and entered the junior high division of the Q School system. Subsequently, Hirata advanced to the high school division but was expelled during her third year of high school due to inappropriate behavior.

After her expulsion she moved out of the American acquaintance’s house and began to live alone. She signed on with a modeling agency and worked in advertising and magazine modeling until 1985, when she took employment as a hostess in Mallord, a club in Roppongi. In 1989 she moved to the club Jeanne, also in Roppongi, and after that she changed employment any number of times. While working as a hostess, Hirata engaged in prostitution in Shinjuku and Shibuya.

Item 3: Circumstances Leading to the Crime

The defendant, as previously stated, was employed as a waiter in the tavern Shangri-la in Shinjuku. But the salary was low and he felt ostracized by the owners of the business, who were natives of Fujian. The other employees criticized Zhang for being “a bumpkin who put on the airs of a sophisticated urbanite,” so he did not have many personal associations with others at the establishment.

He was known to pinch off bites of food for himself when he carried food to customers; he poured the beer or whiskey left in the bottles he had served into a plastic container that he then carried home for his own consumption. He was warned about the inappropriateness of this behavior on numerous occasions.

Despite these lapses, he worked hard, was punctual, and never missed a day on the job. Claiming that he had to send money home to his family, he worked part-time at the neighborhood flophouse, Futomomokko, heading there after his tavern job ended at 10 p.m. His duties at Futomomokko included taking out the trash and washing the towels. Once finished here he would rush through the streets of Kabuki-ch to catch the last train back to his apartment in Maruyama-ch, Shibuya Ward.

Every day of the week except Wednesdays, the defendant worked at the Shangri-la from noon to 10 p.m. He earned ¥800 an hour plus a monthly transportation fee of ¥6,500, so that every month he received approximately ¥315,000. In addition to this, his part-time job at the motel paid ¥2,000 for two hours.

The rent on unit 404, Matoya Building, came to ¥65,000 a month. But because he charged his three roommates, Chen-yi, Huang, and Dragon, ¥35,000 a month each, he made a profit of ¥40,000.

He often told his coworkers that his parents were rebuilding their house back home and he needed to raise ¥3,000,000 to send them. But he had expensive tastes and wore flashy clothes and accessories such as a 24-carat gold bracelet and a ¥50,000 leather jacket that he bought at the Isetan Department Store.

Item 4: Events Related to the Crime

At approximately 10 p.m. on June 4, 1999, the defendant came across Hirata in front of kubo Park in the second block of Kabuki-ch as he was rushing to his job at Motel Futomomokko. She was holding an umbrella. He knew that streetwalkers frequented ¯

Okubo Park, but this was the first time the defendant had seen Hirata there. His interest in her was immediately piqued because he mistook her for an American, and he had always thought that eventually he would travel on to America.

“You have a nice face” were Hirata’s first words to him. Since she spoke to him in Japanese, he realized she was not American, and initially he was disappointed. Her flattery, however, appealed to him and he was interested in following up but worried about missing work at the motel. So he just waved to her, smiled, and rushed ahead to the Futomomokko. There he went about his usual tasks.

Unable to get Hirata out of his mind, the defendant took the same route past ¯

Okubo Park on his way home. He reached the park at approximately 12:05 on the morning of the fifth and saw that Hirata was still standing there in the rain.

When Hirata saw the defendant, she called out to him cheerfully, “I’m about to freeze, standing here waiting for you!” At this point the defendant decided to have sex with her.

At that time the defendant had ¥22,000 on his person. When he asked Hirata what she charged, she replied that it would be ¥30,000. Since he did not have that much money, the defendant was ready to give up the idea; Hirata offered to lower the price to ¥15,000. The defendant then proposed that they move to a hotel. At this point Hirata informed the defendant that she had an apartment nearby. The defendant was relieved that he would not have to pay extra for a hotel and accompanied the defendant to her room.

On the way, Hirata stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought four cans of beer, a packet of chili peanut chips, and two bean-jam buns. The food cost ¥1,575, and Hirata paid for it out of her own pocket.

The room that Hirata led the defendant to was in a two-story building of wood and concrete construction just behind the Kitashin Credit Union on the fifth block of kubo. The building, Hope Heights, had five units on the ground floor and five on the second. Hirata’s apartment, number 205, was on the second floor, farthest to the north and just next to the exterior stairway. Hirata had been renting the room, under the name Yuriko Hirata, from December 5, 1996, at the rate of ¥33,000 a month. The sum was withdrawn monthly from her bank account. Hirata, it seems, rented the space for the purpose of prostitution. The unit consisted of a six-mat Japanese-style room with tatami flooring, and in the small space between the entry vestibule and this room were a kitchenette, toilet, and sink. Hardly any furnishings were on the premises, though a futon mattress was folded and ready for use.

The defendant and Hirata each drank two beers in the Japanese-style room, pulled the futon out, and had sex. The defendant wanted to fall asleep afterward but Hirata requested that he leave. When he asked her again to let him stay because it was raining and he had already missed the last train, she refused.

Hirata insisted that the defendant pay her ¥20,000 to cover the use of the room and the cost of the provisions she had bought at the 7-Eleven. When the defendant learned of these charges, he realized that not only would he have to spend all the money he had with him, he would also have to walk back to Shibuya in the rain. He refused to pay Hirata. When Hirata reproached the defendant, he decided to kill her. At approximately three o’clock in the morning on June 5, he strangled Hirata with both hands, bringing about her death by asphyxiation. The defendant then remained in the room, sleeping, until 10 a.m. that same morning.

At approximately 10:30 a.m., the defendant took ¥20,000 from Hirata’s wallet. He removed the 18-carat gold necklace that she was wearing (valued at ¥70,000) and put it around his own neck. He then fled the apartment without locking the door, leaving Hirata’s body just as it was.

Item 5: Events Subsequent to the Crime

The defendant arrived at the Shangri-la one hour earlier than his scheduled noontime start. He spoke to the owner about resigning effective immediately. When the owner refused to allow such a sudden resig nation, the defendant cleaned out his locker and left the premises without any discussion of collecting the salary currently owed him. As he was leaving the Shangri-la, the defendant encountered Mr. A, another employee. They stood and spoke briefly in front of the restaurant. The defendant told A he had quit and then turned and headed toward Yasukuni Avenue. Mr. A noticed the defendant was wearing what seemed to be an expensive gold necklace that he had not seen before.

After the defendant left the Shangri-la, he took the Japan Railways Yamanote Line to Shibuya Station. From there he returned on foot to his apartment, number 404 in the Matoya Building on the fourth block of Maruyama-ch. This unit was rented by a certain Chen, a man the defendant met while a stowaway. Chen began renting the apartment in April 1998, and even after he moved out he kept the apartment under his name while the defendant remitted the monthly rent of ¥65,000 into Chen’s bank account.

Matoya Building is a four-story ferroconcrete building. It has no elevator. The building and land are owned by Mrs. Fumi Yamamoto. Unit 404 consists of a six-mat and a three-mat Japanese-style room, a kitchen, and a bath. The defendant occupied the three-mat room. At noon on June 5, the man known as Dragon and the one named Huang were sleeping. Chen-yi (no relation to the aforementioned Chen) had already gone to his job at a pachinko parlor in Shinkoiwa and was not home. Dragon, Huang, and Chen-yi are all male Chinese nationals whom the defendant had met in Tokyo. They did not discuss their personal history or their work with one another.

The noise the defendant made when he entered the apartment woke Dragon and Huang, and they left shortly thereafter. After the defendant fixed himself a meal in the kitchen, he ate and went back to sleep. He awoke later that day, when Chen-yi returned, and the two of them went out to eat ramen at the Tamary Noodle Shop on the east side of Shibuya Station. They played a game at the Shibuya Meeting Hall bowling alley and returned to their apartment at around eleven o’clock that night.

When no news of the murder came to light, even after several days had passed, the defendant asked Chen-yi to help him find another job. Chen-yi suggested that the defendant join him at the pachinko parlor, an offer the defendant declined, saying the establishment was too noisy. Chen-yi promised to continue looking on the defendant’s behalf.

Item 6: The Discovery of Hirata’s Body and Subsequent Circumstances

Hirata’s body was discovered ten days after the crime on June 15 when the occupant in the neighboring apartment, a Korean national, reported an offensive odor to the building owner. The owner went to the apartment to investigate and found the door unlocked. When he entered the apartment he found Hirata’s corpse. She was clad only in a T-shirt, a light blanket covering her head.

Decomposition had already set in, but it was still possible to discern unusual marks on Hirata’s throat and blood had pooled in the soft tissue of her neck region and the membrane along her thyroid gland. When the news of Hirata’s death broke, the defendant realized he would not be able to return to the Shangri-la to collect his back wages. And fearing the necklace he had stolen would link him to the crime, he hid it in the pocket of one of his suitcases. Finally, worried about running out of money, he went back to Chen-yi and told him he would take any job he could find.

Chen-yi introduced the defendant to a part-time job as a janitor at the love hotel Dreamer, located at 1 Honmachi in Kichijji, Musashino City. The defendant accepted the job and began work from July of that year.

OVERVIEW OF THE PROSECUTION’S OPENING ARGUMENTS: COUNT NO. 2 OF THE INDICTMENT

Item 1: The Victim Kazue Sat

The victim, Kazue Sat (hereafter Sat), was born April 4, 1961, the eldest daughter of Yoshio and Satoko Sat. Yoshio was employed by G Architecture and Engineering Firm. When Sat was in her first year of elementary school, her family moved from miya in Saitama Prefecture to the Kita-Karasuyama area of Setagaya Ward, Tokyo. Sat attended local elementary and middle schools, advanced to Q High School for Young Women, and from there entered the economics department of Q University.

Sat’s father died when she was in her sophomore year of university, and as a result Sat had to take part-time jobs as a tutor and cram school instructor in order to pay her tuition fees.

Sat graduated from Q University in March 1984 and was employed in April by G Architecture and Engineering Firm, where her father had worked. As the largest firm in the industry, G was known for close relations among employees, earning the nickname G Family Company. Moreover, the company actively recruited the children of employees. When Sat, who had a distinguished university record, entered the company as a member of the General Research Department, she was the first woman to be assigned such a high position, and her future with the company held great promise.

In 1985, Sat was promoted to the position of assistant manager of the research office. This office is responsible for analyzing economic factors affecting construction, developing new analytical software programs, and so forth. Sat mostly conducted research on the economic effects of high-rise buildings. Her work was valued highly by others in the firm, and she was dedicated to her job.

However, she did not socialize with her superiors or colleagues after hours and, because she had no close acquaintances within the firm, no one really knew what she did after work. Sat never married. She lived with her mother and a younger sister. After her father died, Sat provided the main financial support for the family.

In 1990, when Sat was twenty-nine, she was sent provisionally to an engineering research laboratory affiliated with G firm. At this time she was hospitalized for anorexia. Sat had been diagnosed with and treated for anorexia when she was a sophomore in high school. In May 1991, Sat began to work part time as a hostess at a club in the evenings after work. In 1994, she started meeting men in hotels for compensated sex; finally, in 1998, she became a full-fledged prostitute working out of the Shibuya area.

Yuriko Hirata, the victim named in Count No. 1, and Kazue Sat both attended Q High School for Young Women, but they were in different classes and did not interact with each other either during or after their years in the school.

Item 2: The Defendant’s Personal Circumstances as They Relate to the Present Case

After the commission of the crime described in Count No. 1 of this indictment, the defendant resigned his jobs at both the tavern, Shangri-la, and the flophouse, Futomomokko, and took up employment at the love hotel in Musashino City known as Dreamer. However, he did not change his domicile and continued to live at 404 Matoya Building, 4–5 Murayama-ch in Shibuya. Other than the aforementioned Dragon, Huang, and Chen-yi, two other Chinese nationals, by the name of Niu-hu and A-wu, stayed at the apartment from time to time.

The defendant worked at Dreamer every day of the week but Tuesday, from noon to ten at night, cleaning the guest rooms, washing the linens, and doing other menial tasks.

When he began working in 1998 he was industrious and dependable, but in the following year his attitude toward work gradually changed. He would arrive late and leave early and frequently missed work altogether. Cleaning the guest rooms was a two-person assignment. The defendant’s behavior affected the work rotation and inconvenienced his partner, an employee from Iran, who lodged a complaint against him. Moreover, the defendant was written up for taking naps in the guest rooms; pilfering soap, shampoo, and towels; watching adult videos in the rooms; and other such inappropriate behavior.

In February of the same year, a local resident reported seeing the defendant take the condoms the hotel supplied its guests, fill them with water, and hurl the water-filled condoms from a hotel window at the cat owned by the sushi shop next door. At that point the hotel owner first considered terminating the defendant.

At that time the defendant earned an hourly wage of ¥750 yen for an average monthly salary of approximately ¥170,000. He received no additional allowance for transportation costs. The defendant, whose income had been reduced in comparison to what he had earned while working at the Shangri-la, began to borrow from his apartment mates. He borrowed ¥100,000 from Dragon, ¥40,000 from Huang, and ¥60,000 from Chen-yi. He told them his mother had been hospitalized back in China, and he had to send her more funds.

He also borrowed from Niu-hu and A-wu, who occasionally stayed over in the cramped apartment. And he continued to receive rent from Dragon and the others as before. Consequently, the relations between the defendant and his boarders grew progressively worse. Even Chen-yi, with whom the defendant had been on relatively good terms, grew embittered when the defendant lost his standing with his employers at Dreamer. Chen-yi had been the one to introduce the defendant to his employers.

On March 25, 2000, Dragon, Huang, and Chen-yi, knowing it was the defendant’s payday, decided to press him to return the money he had borrowed from them. The defendant had planned to pay each man half the sum he had borrowed but, because the three knew he had over ¥240,000 in cash in a locked suitcase, they refused to accept his terms of repayment. They also argued with him for extorting so much rent from the three of them.

Under pressure, the defendant had no choice but to accede to the new terms his boarders presented. He agreed to pay a total of ¥200,000 back to the three men to cover the money he had borrowed and an additional ¥50,000 each to cover the past disparity in rent. The defendant had to resort to his Dreamer salary and the money he had until then been hoarding.

As a result, the defendant had only ¥60,000 left, which he had to stretch over the rest of the month, until his next paycheck. The hardship this imposed further weakened his relationships with Dragon, Huang, and Chen-yi.

About the same time, Chen, under whose name the apartment at 404 Matoya was being rented, had been pressuring the defendant to find another place to live. Beginning in January, Chen informed the defendant several times that he wanted him to vacate the apartment by mid-March. When the defendant complained that he had nowhere else to go, Chen offered to let him stay until the end of April. He also informe

d him that there was a vacancy in a neighboring building: unit 103 in the Green Villa Apartments at 4–5 Murayama-ch, Shibuya-ku. For a fee of ¥150,000 he would assist the defendant in renting the apartment. As these circumstances make clear, the defendant faced endless and escalating money problems.

The Iranian who worked with the defendant at the Dreamer later revealed that the defendant’s reason for borrowing money—even though he had a sizable sum stashed away—was because he was saving up to buy a passport. It was his goal to travel to America.

Item 3: Conditions at 103 Green Villa Apartments

The Matoya Building at 4–5 Maruyama-ch in Shibuya-ku was a four-story ferroconcrete building about one hundred yards north on a narrow one-way road just across from the north side of Shinsen Station on the Inokashira-Keio Train Line. The Green Villa Apartments, scene of the crime under discussion, was a wooden building to the north of the Matoya Building. With one floor belowground and two above, space in the Green Villa was occupied by a number of small shops in addition to residences. Both buildings were owned by Fumi Yamamoto.

There were three residential units in the Green Villa Apartments. The crime under discussion took place in unit 103, which faced out on the one-way street. Unit 102 was unoccupied; Kimio Hara lived in unit 101. On the west side of the building was a metal exterior staircase leading to the second floor. In the basement, directly below unit 103, was a small eatery known as Seven Fortunes.

On the south side of the building was a narrow concrete sidewalk providing residents of the building access to their apartments from the road. On the south side of unit 103 was the exterior door that led to this sidewalk, as well as a window at about eye level. Upon entering the apartment, the kitchen was on the south wall and next to it a six-mat Japanese-style room with tatami flooring. Between the entry hall and the six-mat room was the toilet.

Chen had been introduced to Fumi Yamamoto by relatives and had rented unit 404 in the Matoya Building for ¥45,000. He in turn had rented the apartment to the defendant for ¥65,000. His relatives had opened a Chinese restaurant in Niiza City, Saitama Prefecture, and needed the apartment as a place to board employees. That is why the defendant had to vacate the premises. When the defendant complained that he had no other apartment to rent, Chen spoke with the landlady, Ms. Fumi Yamamoto, and made plans to rent the unit in Green Villa Apartments from her. When the defendant said he wanted to see the unit, Ms. Yamamoto gave him the key to unit 103 on January 28, 2000.

Shizu Kakiya had rented the apartment in question up until August 18, 1999, when she passed away. The apartment had been vacant ever since. The gas was cut off in September of 1999 and the electricity the following month.

There was only one key to the apartment, which Ms. Yamamoto possessed. She lent it to the defendant on January 28, 2000. Until that time, no one else had used the key.

Item 4: The Relations Between the Defendant and the Victim

On or around November 1998, the defendant learned from his apartment mate Huang that he had “met a Japanese woman on a dark street and had had sex with her.” The woman’s distinguishing features were that she was thin and had long hair. When he heard this, the defendant was convinced it was the same woman he’d seen in the neighborhood from time to time. Toward the middle of the next month, the defendant ran into Sat on his way home. Recalling Huang’s story, he turned to look at her. When she saw this, she called after him, “Do you want to fool around?” When the defendant did not respond, she continued, “Can we go to your room?” The defendant declined, stating that he “had friends staying there.” To this Sat replied, “How many? I’ll do them all.” When he heard that, the defendant brought Sat back to his apartment at 404 Matoya.

At that time two of the defendant’s roommates were in the apartment, Dragon and Chen-yi. The three of them took turns having sex with Sat. Later, around January of the following year, the defendant was walking with Huang when they came across Sat in the Murayama-ch area. “Is that the woman you slept with?” the defendant asked Huang. When Huang nodded, the defendant said he’d slept with her too. Huang had already heard from Dragon around December 1998 that the defendant, Dragon, and Chen-yi had had sex with the woman in the apartment. When he told the defendant as much, the latter replied, “Well, actually, I first met that woman about a year ago.”

Item 5: Events Leading to the Crime

On (Saturday,) April 8, 2000, at approximately 4 p.m., Sat left her home without saying where she was going. At approximately 6 p.m., she met up with a company employee whom she had seen on several occasions earlier. They met at the statue of Hachiko in front of Shibuya Station. From there they went to a hotel in Maruyama-ch, Sat received ¥40,000 from the man and, just before 9 p.m., she and the company employee parted ways at the top of Dogenzaka. Sat was seen heading toward Shinsen Station.

That same day the defendant had gone to work at Dreamer. At 10 p.m. the late-shift worker arrived and replaced the defendant. The defendant boarded the 10:13 Keio-Inokashira Line train bound for Shibuya and headed home. When he reached Shinsen Station, he got out and began walking toward the Matoya apartment building, which was only two minutes away.

The defendant encountered Sat within a few feet of his apartment building and decided that he would have sex with her again. But Dragon, Huang, and Chen-yi were at home by now, and he was no longer on good terms with them. He hesitated, therefore, not wishing to take her back to the apartment that he shared with them. As luck would have it, however, he happened to have the key to unit 103 in the neighboring Green Villa Apartments, for reasons already described. He took her to that apartment and had sex with her there.

Sat had condoms with her, taken from hotels she had visited with customers. She selected one from among her stash—a condom from the Glass Palace Hotel, as the wrapper read—and had the defendant put it on before they had sex. After the sex act, the defendant tossed the used condom along the sidewalk to the south of the Green Villa Apartments.

As previously noted, the defendant was short of money. When he saw Sat preparing to leave, he decided he would steal from her. Just after midnight, Sat put on her coat and began to pull herself together in preparation to leave. The defendant snatched her brown leather handbag. However, the victim struggled with him. He punched her in the face, and then, seized with the desire to kill her, he placed both hands around her neck and strangled her until she was dead. Then he unclasped the metal fitting on her purse and pulled out the wallet inside, taking from it ¥40,000 that she had received earlier. Leaving her body as it was, and leaving the door to the apartment unlocked, he fled back to his room at 404 Matoya.

Satoko Sat, the victim’s mother, began to worry about her daughter when she did not return home on the evening of April 8. Up to this point, Sat had never been out all night. On Monday, April 10, when Satoko learned that her daughter had not gone in to work that morning, she filed a missing persons report.

Item 6: Events Following the Crime

The defendant calmly reported to work at Dreamer on April 9 as though nothing had changed. After work he went with two colleagues to Inokashira Park to drink beer. At approximately 11:30 p.m., he boarded the Inokashira Line at Inokashira Station and headed home.

The next day, after he had finished work at Dreamer, the defendant met Chen-yi at Shibuya Station. They went to the ramen noodle shop Tamary on the east side of the station. Following this they went bowling at the Shibuya Meeting Hall alley. When they had finished, they discussed Green Villa and decided not to move there, as it was even smaller than their current apartment in Matoya Building. Further, the defendant indicated that he was planning to move to ¯

Osaka to find work there.

The eleventh of the month was the defendant’s day off. He went to Niiza City in Saitama Prefecture to meet Chen. The defendant gave Chen ¥100,000, informed him he would not move into the Green Villa Apartments, and gave Chen the key to unit 103. That night Chen returned the key to the landlady, Ms. Yamamoto, at her residence in Sug

inami Ward. Yamamoto in turn handed the key to her son, Akira, who ran the company that supervised both the Matoya and the Green Villa apartments.

Item 7: Discovery of the Body

On April 18, when Akira Yamamoto was on his way to visit an acquaintance who lived on the first floor of the Matoya Building, he decided to check to be sure the door to unit 103 in the Green Villa Apartments had been locked. Once he approached the apartment, he looked through the eye-level window which was beside the apartment door. A small opening in the window allowed him to peer into the apartment where he saw, in the inner room, the upper body of someone who appeared to be sleeping. He speculated that the person was either an acquaintance of Chen’s or a Chinese national who was employed in his restaurant. Akira Yamamoto called out and tried the door. It had been left unlocked. A woman’s shoes were lined up just inside the entryway. Yamamoto was unpleasantly surprised when he realized the interloper was a woman. It was at this point he noticed a strange smell permeating the apartment and, without making a sound, he turned and left the apartment, locking the door behind him. The door was the kind that could be locked from the inside without a key. One only needed to push the button on the knob.

The following day, April 19, Akira Yamamoto grew concerned about the person he had seen sleeping in the apartment. What if the person continued to stay there? And what about that smell? Worried, Yamamoto headed back to the apartment with the key. When he looked in through the window he noticed that the individual was lying just as she had been the day before. Yamamoto unlocked the door, entered the apartment, and discovered Sat’s corpse.

Other than the strangulation marks on Sat’s throat, there were contusions on her head, face, and limbs—indicating that she’d been struck with a blunt object—and scratches on her as well, as though she’d been dragged. The soft tissue of her neck region and the membrane along her thyroid gland had hemorrhaged.

Item 8: Conduct of the Defendant Following Discovery of the Body

On the evening of April 19, 2000, shortly after the defendant returned home from his job at Dreamer, he was visited by a police detective who was conducting a routine investigation of the neighborhood. Dragon, Huang, and Chen-yi were still at work and had not yet returned to the apartment. The detective asked the defendant to answer numerous questions related to his current domicile and his work, and then he left. As soon as he had departed, the defendant tried to contact the others who shared the apartment.

The defendant called Chen-yi’s cell phone and reached him while he was on the job in Dogenzaka. “The police were here,” he said. “Lots of them. They showed me the picture of a woman I didn’t know. They said they’d be back. If they find you here they’ll figure out we’re illegal.”

When Chen-yi heard the defendant’s account, he immediately called Huang at his place of work, the Mirage Café in Koenji, Suginami Ward. He planned to tell Huang not to return to the apartment. But Huang had already gotten off work and was on his way home. Chen-yi next raced to Dragon’s place of employment—Orchard Tower—in the second block of Kabuki-ch, Shinjuku Ward. When he told Dragon what had happened, they both went to stay with an acquaintance of Dragon’s.

While Huang was on his way home, unaware of the events that had transpired, he was met by a police detective and shown a photograph of the victim. Huang told the detective that he had seen the woman before. He also told him that the defendant had a key to one of the Green Villa apartments.

Around the same time, the defendant left unit 404 in the Matoya Building and stayed the night in a capsule hotel. Policemen went to question him at the Dreamer the next day, but he did not show up for work. The next day, April 21, the defendant left the hotel and went to Chen’s house in Niiza City in Saitama Prefecture. He asked Chen to cover for him by telling the police that he returned the key to Green Villa apartments, unit 103, on April 8, the day before the crime. At that time he had also delivered ¥100,000 in cash. Chen informed him that he had already spoken to the police, and he refused to adhere to the defendant’s request. Moreover, he told the defendant that the police were looking for him—since they knew he had had the key in his possession—and he ought to turn himself in. The defendant refused.

On the way back from Chen’s the defendant began to worry about money. He decided to stop by his place of employment, resign, and ask to be given his back wages. So he headed toward the Dreamer in Musashino City.

When the police detective questioned the owner of the Dreamer, he discovered that the defendant had either entered the country illegally or was working without a proper visa. The defendant was therefore apprehended later that day and held on charges of entering the country illegally and working without appropriate documentation. He was brought to trial on June 30 of the same year and found guilty of the immigration and employment crimes for which he had been charged.

Subsequently it was discovered that the fingerprints found in unit 205 Hope Heights, the scene of Yuriko Hirata’s murder, belonged to the defendant. Moreover, he was discovered to be in possession of the victim’s necklace. After a thorough police investigation, the defendant was charged with the murders of both Hirata and Sat.