Murder of Narumi Kurosaki
Japanese student murdered in France in 2016
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Narumi Kurosaki (Kurosaki Narumi (黒崎 愛海); born 23 July 1995) was a 21-year-old Japanese exchange student who disappeared from her university residence in Besançon, France, on the night of 4–5 December 2016. Her body has never been found. Her former boyfriend, a Chilean named Nicolás Zepeda, who had traveled to Europe without telling her family or friends, was the last person known to have been with her. French courts concluded that he killed her out of jealousy after she ended their relationship and began seeing someone else. Zepeda has consistently denied involvement.
| Murder of Narumi Kurosaki | |
|---|---|
| Location | Besançon, Doubs, France |
| Date | 5 December 2016 c. 3:20 a.m. (CET (UTC+1)) |
Attack type | Murder |
| Victim | Narumi Kurosaki, aged 21 |
| Perpetrator | Nicolás Zepeda, aged 26 |
| Verdict | Guilty (26 March 2026) |
| Convictions | Premeditated murder |
| Sentence | Life imprisonment |
| Convicted | Nicolás Zepeda |
With no body, weapon, or confession, the prosecution's case rested on circumstantial evidence: surveillance footage, GPS and banking records, DNA traces in Kurosaki's room, messages sent from her accounts after she vanished, and Zepeda's own statements. The case involved authorities in France, Japan, and Chile and drew extensive media coverage on three continents.[1][2][3]
Zepeda was extradited from Chile in July 2020. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 28 years in prison on 12 April 2022, and the assize court on appeal upheld the conviction in December 2023. In February 2025 the Court of Cassation annulled the appeal verdict because slides shown at trial had not been disclosed to the defense, and ordered a new trial.[4] At that third trial, held in Lyon, Zepeda was convicted of premeditated murder on 26 March 2026 and sentenced to life imprisonment. His lawyers said they would again appeal to the Court of Cassation.[5][6]
Background
Narumi Kurosaki
Kurosaki was born in Edogawa, Tokyo, and grew up with her parents and two younger sisters, Honami and Kurumi. She attended Tokyo Metropolitan Kokusai High School from 2011 to 2014.[7] A student at the University of Tsukuba,[8] she arrived in France on 26 August 2016, aged 21, to study at the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon. She took French classes at the Center for Applied Linguistics before joining the Faculty of Economics in January 2017, and lived in a student room on the second floor of the Théodore Rousseau residence hall on the La Bouloie campus.[7]
Nicolás Zepeda
Nicolás Humberto Zepeda Contreras was born on 11 December 1990 in Temuco, Chile. His family moved to Antofagasta in 2009 and later to La Serena. He studied administrative sciences at the University of Chile[9] and went to Japan in 2014 to continue his studies.[10]
Relationship
Zepeda and Kurosaki met in October 2014 at a party on the University of Tsukuba campus and began a relationship in February 2015. From 6 September to 1 October 2015 they traveled together to Chile, where he introduced her to his family as his partner.[10] Zepeda left Japan at the end of the 2015 academic year and returned on 12 April 2016 to look for work. After Kurosaki moved to France, she formally ended the relationship; according to Zepeda, this happened on 6 October 2016. He left Japan on 9 October.[11]
In Besançon, Kurosaki made new friends, among them Arthur del Piccolo, a student at the National Higher School of Mechanics and Microtechnologies, who became her boyfriend.[12] Del Piccolo later described Zepeda to investigators as jealous and possessive.[10]
Disappearance
On Sunday 4 December 2016, Kurosaki attended her usual dance class, leaving at about 4:00 p.m. That evening she and Zepeda had dinner at La Table de Gustave, a restaurant in Ornans, about 20 km (12 mi) from Besançon. Surveillance cameras recorded them leaving at 9:57 p.m. and arriving at her residence hall at 10:58 p.m.[10] A prosecutor later told the press that several students had heard screams that night, though no one called the police.[13]
At about 3:20 a.m. on 5 December, around fifteen students in the building heard screams followed by a thud. Rachel Hope, a British student, messaged a friend: "I'm scared, I heard a noise like someone was being killed." Another student, Nabil Drissi, went into the corridor but could not tell where the sounds came from.[11] Zepeda later testified that the sounds were Kurosaki's moans, saying the couple had sex for two and a half hours after returning to her room.[10] The next day her classmates noticed her absence; she had never missed a class.
Over the following days, Kurosaki's family and friends received text and social media messages from her accounts saying she had a problem with her passport and had to go to the Japanese consulate in Lyon. On 6 December her bank card was used to buy a one-way train ticket from Besançon to Lyon. However, her consular jurisdiction fell under the Japanese consulate in Strasbourg, and the office in Lyon handled only administrative matters. Passengers seated near her assigned seat said they had seen no one matching her description. Later messages said she had a new boyfriend and was traveling alone. None arrived after 12 December.[11] According to the first-instance judgment, Zepeda used her accounts to impersonate her and delay the start of a search.[14]
On the night of 5 December, Del Piccolo waited outside Kurosaki's residence, intending to go in, until he received a message from her number saying she had "found someone else" and was leaving him.[15]
On 14 December the Center for Applied Linguistics alerted the police, who entered her room on 15 December. Investigators first suspected Del Piccolo. During his questioning he named Zepeda, saying that he had hacked Del Piccolo's Facebook account. Because Zepeda was believed to be in Chile, this was at first not considered decisive. It became significant when geolocation data from Kurosaki's phone placed her at a restaurant on the night of 4 December, where the bill had been paid with a Chilean bank card.[10]
Investigation
Kurosaki's room
Police entered Room 106 on 15 December at 5:31 p.m. and found it unusually tidy, although friends said she was typically messy. Her only coat, her laptop, and a wallet containing 565 euros were still there, but a blanket, a suitcase, her passport, and her phone were missing. Fingerprints on a cup were identified as Zepeda's, and DNA analysis found traces of him on a water bottle, a T-shirt, the walls, the bathroom floor, and the sink.[11] Investigators initially reported finding what appeared to be blood near the rear emergency exit of the residence, which Zepeda was believed to have used to leave the building. During the 2022 trial, however, the prosecutor clarified that the stains were paint rather than blood and acknowledged that he had mistakenly described them as blood in the case file. The DNA associated with the stains was that of Jonathan Cottet, a residence employee, rather than Kurosaki.[16]
Zepeda's movements
Investigators reconstructed Zepeda's movements across Europe from the GPS unit in his rental car, his mobile phone, and his Banco de Chile Visa card. He landed at Geneva Airport on 29 November 2016 after a stopover in Madrid, and the next day took a FlixBus to Dijon to collect a car he had reserved on 17 November. On 1 December he bought a five-liter heating-fuel canister, a box of matches, and a chlorine-based cleaning spray at a Carrefour hypermarket in Dijon. GPS data from the rented Renault Scénic showed that he then spent half a day exploring secondary roads in the Chaux Forest, east of Dole.[11]
Between 1 and 4 December he went to Besançon each day. Phone-antenna records place him near Kurosaki's residence hall and her language center, and on 2 December two students saw him inside the residence hall and exchanged a few words with him. After the 4 December dinner, his car stayed parked outside her building until it started moving again at 4:23 a.m. on 6 December. Between 5:55 and 7:44 a.m. it was recorded in the same parts of the Chaux Forest as during his earlier reconnaissance.[11]
He returned the car in Dijon at midday on 7 December. Rental agency employees said it was covered in mud outside and inside, on the driver's side and in the trunk. Zepeda then took a bus to Geneva and flew to Barcelona, where he spent several days with his cousin, Juan Felipe Ramírez. On 12 December he flew from Geneva via Madrid to Santiago, arriving in Chile on 13 December.[11]
Digital evidence
On 5 September 2016, after Zepeda asked her to remove some contacts from Facebook, Kurosaki replied by SMS: "I will never delete Arthur." Two days later Zepeda posted a video on Dailymotion discussing the relationship in menacing terms: "She has to pay a little for what she has done and accept that she cannot continue making these kinds of mistakes with someone who loves her." He added that "certain conditions are applicable during her stay in France, and others are applicable forever," and that if she could not follow them for two weeks, he would enforce them "with immediate effect."[10][2][17]
Prosecutors also relied on Zepeda's Blogspot page, where he published fictionalized accounts of the relationship, his activity on sites such as Smule, last.fm, and DeviantArt, and intercepted private messages that they said showed jealousy and possessiveness.[11]
Witness statements
Ramírez, a medical student, was questioned by Catalan police on 24 January 2017. He said that Zepeda had hidden his meeting with Kurosaki, claiming he was in Europe for a conference in Geneva, and had asked him about death by suffocation. Ramírez also noticed that Zepeda spoke of Kurosaki in the past tense: "Narumi really liked the sea."[11][18]
Legal proceedings
Diplomatic involvement
In January 2017, the foreign ministers of France and Japan discussed the case at a bilateral meeting in Paris. Japan's vice-minister for foreign affairs then traveled to Santiago to meet Chile's foreign minister and its national prosecutor.[19]
Extradition
An Interpol notice was issued on 26 December 2016, and France formally requested Zepeda's extradition in late 2019. On 2 April 2020 a Chilean Supreme Court justice approved the request, and on 18 May 2020 the court's criminal chamber unanimously confirmed that decision.[20][21] Zepeda, who was under house arrest in Viña del Mar, was taken by Chile's Investigative Police to Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport on 23 July 2020 and handed to French officers.[22] He landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport on the morning of 24 July and was driven to Besançon, arriving at about 4:40 p.m. An examining magistrate formally charged him with murder, and he was placed in pretrial detention.[11]
First trial (2022)
The trial, which the French Ministry of Justice called a "Great Trial" (grand procès), opened on 29 March 2022 before the Cour d'assises of Doubs in Besançon, a day after the jury was empaneled.[23] Because of its international scope, the proceedings were interpreted simultaneously by six interpreters (three for Japanese and three for Spanish), and the courtroom had three clocks showing the time in France, Japan, and Chile. Thirteen witnesses (ten in Tokyo, two in Santiago, and one in Scotland) testified by videoconference, and two additional rooms allowed journalists and the public to follow on large screens.[1][2]
Zepeda was defended by Jacqueline Laffont. The prosecution was led by Attorney General Étienne Manteaux, and Matthieu Husson presided. Zepeda pleaded not guilty.[1] On 12 April 2022 he was convicted of murder and sentenced to 28 years in prison, with the first 15 to be served in France and the remainder potentially in Chile.[24][25][26]
Appeal (2023)
Zepeda appealed, and a new trial was scheduled for 21 February 2023 before the Cour d'assises of Haute-Saône in Vesoul. In November 2022 Laffont's office had ended its collaboration with him by mutual agreement, and he was represented by Antoine Vey.[27]
On 18 February, Vey told the court president by letter that he had been informed his client no longer wished to retain him, writing: "I have been informed that my client no longer wished to maintain my mandate of representation... I inform you that I will not be present on Tuesday morning. The situation will prevent me in conscience from ensuring his defence."[28] The proceedings were suspended for 48 hours. Zepeda's new lawyers, Renaud Portejoie and Julien Dreyfus, then asked for more time to prepare, and the trial was postponed.[29][30]
On 17 November 2023, Dreyfus withdrew as well, and Zepeda hired Sylvain Cormier of the Lyon bar, known for representing footballer Karim Benzema in the "sextape" case.[31][32] The defense sought to call witnesses who claimed to have seen Kurosaki alive after 2016, including one who said she was hiding with a French soldier.[33]
The appeal trial began on 4 December 2023.[34] On 21 December the court upheld the conviction and the 28-year sentence, changing only the place of imprisonment: Zepeda would serve the whole term in France rather than 15 years in France and 13 in Chile.[35] His lawyers immediately announced an appeal to the Court of Cassation.[36]
Court of Cassation (2025)
In January 2025 the defense filed a brief with eight arguments for annulling the conviction.[37] On 26 February 2025 the Court of Cassation annulled the appeal verdict, citing irregularities in how evidence was presented, specifically the use of slides that had not been disclosed to the defense, and ordered a new trial.[4][38] Zepeda was not released and remained in custody.[39]
Third trial (2026)
The third trial opened on 17 March 2026 before the Cour d'assises of the Rhône in Lyon, with the court scheduled to sit into early April.[40] The panel consisted of three professional judges, presided over by Éric Chalbos, and nine jurors.[5] Zepeda's lawyer was Robin Binsard.[41] On 25 March the prosecution asked for a 30-year sentence,[42] and Zepeda again told the court he had not killed her.
After eight days of hearings, the court convicted Zepeda of premeditated murder on 26 March 2026 and sentenced him to life imprisonment, a heavier sentence than the prosecution had requested. It also ordered him to pay damages to Kurosaki's relatives and to Del Piccolo.[5] According to the ruling, as reported by the Japanese news agency Jiji Press, Zepeda planned the killing out of jealousy, murdered Kurosaki in her dormitory room, and left her body in a secluded place.[8] The defense said it would appeal to the Court of Cassation.[6]
Media coverage and adaptations
The case received heavy coverage in Chile, Japan, and France, and members of Zepeda's family were reportedly harassed by journalists after it became public.[10] On 27 July 2023 the Televisión Nacional de Chile program Enigma aired an episode about the case.[43]