On the 12th, the Wakayama District Court handed down a jury verdict to the ex-wife of the murder of a wealthy man known as “Don Juan of Kishu.” In May 2018, wealthy man Kosuke Nozaki (then 77) was found dead in his home in Tanabe City, Wakayama Prefecture. A post-mortem autopsy determined that Nozaki’s cause of death was acute stimulant poisoning, and in 2021, three years after the incident, Nozaki’s wife, Saki Sudo (28), was arrested and indicted on suspicion of murder and other charges. At the lay judge trial that began in September this year, defendant Sudo claimed innocence, saying, “I did not kill the president (Nozaki), nor did I give him stimulants.” He made it clear that he had married her for the sake of her inheritance, and consistently denied murder. In the absence of direct evidence pointing to the crime, the prosecution pointed out, based on security camera footage and an analysis of the defendant’s smartphone health care app, that “there was no one other than the defendant Sudo who could have committed the crime.” Based on his communications with acquaintances and family, as well as his internet search history for searches such as “stimulants death,” “perfect crime,” and “inheritance,” the prosecution concluded that “he married her for her fortune, and then used stimulants to kill her so that it would not appear to be a crime,” and called for a life sentence, saying, “It was a heinous crime and he shows no remorse.” In response, the defense pointed out that the prosecution’s arguments were insufficient and vague, such as not verifying “how the stimulant was administered.” He maintained his innocence, arguing that “the prosecution’s hypothesis is nothing more than a figment of the imagination” and that he should not be found guilty based solely on suspicious circumstances.
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