JPN: Tokyo 'demon' who chopped up woman gets life
18 Feb 2009 4:17 PM
TOKYO, Feb 18 AFP - A Japanese court on Wednesday handed a life sentence to a man who abducted and killed a young woman before chopping up her body and flushing her remains down the toilet, a court official said.
Takanori Hoshijima -- a 34-year-old computer programmer labelled a "demon with a human face" by the victim's relatives -- was found guilty of murder and sentenced in Tokyo District Court, a court spokeswoman said.
"It is cold-blooded and makes me shudder that he treated a woman like an object and cut up her body. The sorrow and agony of her family are too grave," chief judge Kiichi Hiraide was quoted as saying by public broadcaster NHK.
Hoshijima kidnapped his neighbour Rurika Tojo, 23, at knife-point from her Tokyo apartment on April 18 last year and took her to his own apartment on the same floor, planning to turn her into his "sex slave", the court heard.
Fearing police would catch him, Hoshijima stabbed the woman in the neck, chopped up her body with a saw and knife and flushed body parts down the toilet or put them in garbage bags which he threw away on his way to work.
Reports said he cooked some body parts to prevent odour from decomposition.
He was arrested in May after a part of his victim's remains was found in the sewers near his apartment.
Hoshijima in January asked for the death penalty and, according to the Mainichi Shimbun daily, told the court: "I want to be executed and apologise in hell."
