A 63-year-old man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for strangling a 50-year-old woman and then throwing her body into a lake in Kiyokawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, last year.
The Yokohama District Court handed down its ruling against Kazuo Iida who was convicted of strangling a female acquaintance, Hiromi Iotani, with a necktie in his car, on Feb 1, 2018, Fuji TV reported. He then threw her unconscious body into Lake Miyagase from a 15-meter-high bridge.
Initially, Iida was arrested on a charge of corpse abandonment after admitting to disposing of the body in the lake. However, he was released from custody because police were unable to find the body despite his statement.
On June 18, 2018, Kanagawa prefectural police reopened the investigation and this time, divers covered a wider area and were able to find Iotani’s body on the ninth day of the search. An autopsy showed Iotani was still alive when she went into the water and that she had drowned.
Iida was quoted by police as saying killed Iotani over a financial dispute.
© Japan Today
9 Comments
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Vernon Watts
Like I have always maintained, you will get a shorter prison term in Japan for rape or murder than tax evasion -- just wait until you see what happens to ex-CEO Ghosn...
Strangerland
I'm surprised they were able to discern that after five months in the water.
kochikame
Just 15 years, for killing and throwing down her body from a bridge? Very little punishment for such horrendous crime.
Speed
The absolute minimum for murder like this should be 25 years.
martin.s. johnson
Tax evasion is considered a crime against the government, any other crime where the government is not considered the victim is treated more leniently, every day I'm open to learning, so will someone please explain logic , in this sense.
Strangerland
He confessed to dumping the body, not to the murder.
wnp
Probably, he watched too much violent movies and was unconscious how much pains he had caused to the victim and her family; 15 years for purposely killing someone? it's a joke.
darknuts
So he confessed but they let him go anyway? So much for confession being the king of evidence. I guess that's only when they want it to be.