L'Est Republicain,
live blog day 4
Key points from the fourth day of hearings
First of all, what's not to remember? Saïd Nemeri's out-of-the-blue testimony. The court was quick to forget this bricklayer who conducted his own "investigation", trying to convince the court - after giving numerous interviews to certain media - that the investigators had not taken their work seriously. Nicolas Zepeda's own lawyers put him on the ropes.
The main hearing of the day was dedicated to David Borne, the director of the investigation. It was time for the investigations, the many clues and the scenarios that had been drawn up. After checking, the possible involvement of Arthur Del Piccolo, Narumi's new boyfriend, was quickly ruled out.
The investigators are relying on technology: telephone records, video surveillance, bank details and even the IP address used to connect to Narumi Kurosaki's Facebook account...
For David Borne, everything points to Nicolas Zepeda. "Everything that could be verified has been verified," he says. "The one and only suspect is Nicolas Zepeda."
The defence lawyers sought out the slightest detail that might raise doubts. Did they succeed in instilling doubt in the minds of the jurors? No one knows.
BBM
Parts from the liveblog
11:13
The investigating detective faces the jury: the hearing gets to the heart of the matter
In the coming hours, the Nicolas Zepeda appeal trial will gain momentum. David Borne, the head of the investigation, is about to give a detailed account of the investigations into the disappearance of Narumi Kurosaki. This is an essential moment in a criminal trial. The court allows him to rely on his notes.
David Borne had barely begun when Mr Portejoie quickly interrupted him. "You get the impression that he's reading his document, and that bothers me". Was this a minor attempt to destabilise the defence? The real showdown would come later.
With clear phrasing, David Borne continued his monologue unperturbed. The police officer discussed the findings made in mid-December in Narumi's bedroom, where a suitcase, a blanket, her telephone and a sheet were missing. "On the other hand, there was a handbag, a wallet with €565, her computer, her clothes, her only winter coat, her bank cards, her bus pass and her phone charger, which surprised us and led us to believe that she had not left voluntarily."
The white overalls went into action, taking a large number of scientific samples. The Blue Star - which was supposed to reveal any traces of blood that had been cleaned - did not yield any "conclusive findings". Another clarification: "No letter was found that could explain her departure, but her diary showed that she had many projects. A sign, he says, of "an active life".
The police officer took the court by the hand, moving it forward chronologically.
(...)
11.34
The first to be suspected was Arthur Del Piccolo
Arthur Del Piccolo caught the attention of the entire PJ department. "He gave us leads that were unverifiable at the time, told us about a Chilean ex-boyfriend, and talked about details that were a bit confusing and that drowned us. He shows us a chart in which all the last events of Narumi's life are recorded. In fact, he started a proper investigation before the police did".
This behaviour doesn't work in his favour.
"This approach is disturbing us and at the moment, no one among the investigators is considering the Chilean lead. As far as we're concerned, it's completely inconceivable that a Chilean national would cross the whole world to harm his ex-girlfriend. We have the impression that he's pushing us to go and investigate Zepeda... We immediately suspect Arthur Del Piccolo".
David Borne invites jurors to put themselves in the police officers' shoes: in cases of this type, we suspect the individual closest to the victim. "He gets dumped on the day of the separation, he behaves in a strange way... There's nothing to accuse him of per se, but we decide to question him, tap his phone and laptop, and bug him.
Not a single piece of evidence came to light in any of the attempts we made".
(...)
11:40
"Like in a horror film
David Borne now turns to the neighbourhood investigation. Starting with the terrifying screams of a woman, "just like in a horror film", accompanied by muffled noises that could have been banging against the walls, heard in the student residence and which terrorised those who heard them.
The investigators also interviewed two female students who said that they had also spotted an individual "of European type, black hair, who spoke sometimes in Spanish and sometimes in American" prowling around the hall of residence and then caught on two occasions hiding in the kitchen, notably on the 5th, the day after the disappearance, "his eyes reddened and swollen with tears, looking devastated".
At the same time, telephone investigations showed that Narumi's mobile phone had been pinging on 4 December in Champagney-sur-Loue, Quingey and then in a small village above Ornans. This same phone stopped transmitting on 5 December at 9.23pm. From then on, it would never be active again. But that was the precise moment when Arthur Del Piccolo and his friends were standing in front of the door of the missing student's room...
11:52
From Gustave's table in Ornans to the "Chilean trail
The PJ investigator looks back at the investigations based on Narumi's phone records, which led the police to Ornans the day before she disappeared.
An idea was hatched on the 4th floor of the police station. What if she had gone to dinner in a restaurant? David Borne went round the establishments in the little town on the Loue two weeks later, armed with photos of Narumi with Arthur Del Piccolo ("our only suspect at the time", the policeman recalls).
And at Gustave's Table, bingo! The waiter remembers this customer perfectly, but the young man with her at the time was not the one in the photo. "He was European, didn't speak French, and looked nothing like Arthur Del Piccolo," David Borne says.
The bill for the meal was unequivocal: payment had been made using a Chilean bank card. The trail of the ex-boyfriend, Nicolas Zepeda, opens with a bang.
The investigators had another winning idea, to investigate the speed camera on the voie des Mercureaux, a formidable trap for motorists unfamiliar with the area. Once again, bingo! Among the cars flashed was a rented Renault Scenic, hired in Dijon by a certain Nicolas Zepeda, who had booked it on 17 November...
When the vehicle was found, the search turned up nothing. But the next customer remembers how dirty it was when it came back, "with dirt in the passenger compartment, a tear in one of the tyres and grass under the rubber of the wheels".
As the vehicle is equipped with a tracker, a kind of map that works like a telephone, it was possible to geolocate its route "extensively".
12:02
The PJ follow in the footsteps of the Chilean, who buys "5 litres of flammable products".
The Judicial Police also followed the banking trail. Once again, the data recovered enabled Nicolas Zepeda to be tracked, with his motorway tolls and various purchases. David Borne lists them all.
"He bought some very disturbing items at the Toison d'Or shopping centre in Dijon on 1 December. We have a till receipt from Carrefour which tells us that he bought a box of matches, five litres of flammable products and a 4-in-1 bleach-based detergent, Saint-Marc brand. The PJ wants to recover all the video surveillance images from the Toison d'Or. "They are kept for 14 days before being deleted. Our call comes at 2pm and 4 hours later, the videos are automatically deleted.
David Borne continues to track the Chilean during his stay in the region, day by day, sometimes hour by hour, using his phone and the tracker in his hire car.
He made a surprising stop four days before Narumi disappeared, in a "remote wooded area south of Dole. It was 4.45pm, it was dark and he had been there for over 2 and a half hours". The investigators later likened this diversions to scouting. It was in this area that they suspected the South American had disposed of the body on 6 December.
Dijon, Ornans, the Doloise region, Besançon, sometimes in the city centre, sometimes on campus. The police know where and when Nicolas Zepeda went.
(...)
12:17
"Irrefutable material proof" that Zepeda took possession of Narumi's accounts
Sitting in his box, Nicolas Zepeda turns round and asks for a notebook and pen.
David Borne launches into the question of Narumi's true-false messages after the night of the screams. The police want to verify the hypothesis of relatives, who believe that "someone has taken possession of her phone and her social networks".
"Two young Japanese women explain that Nicolas Zepeda contacted them to translate some sentences", David Borne continues. Notably this sentence: "I'm going away for the weekend with my new boyfriend, I don't have wifi"... What's disturbing", notes the police officer, "is that these same sentences were sent to Narumi Kurosaki's family after 5 December. Exactly the same sentences."
David Borne continued: "We obtained irrefutable material evidence, because we were able to determine that on 10 December, Narumi's Facebook account was connected to an IP address similar to the one used by Nicolas Zepeda, while the latter was staying with his cousin in Barcelona. The user of Narumi's account is exactly where Nicolas Zepeda is".
As in the trial at first instance, the investigating officer's meticulous demonstration moves like a steamroller over the accused, whose version suddenly appears fragile in the eyes of the jurors. Facing the police officer, many of them took notes... One clear sign: David Borne has their full attention.
12:23
Narumi's purchases after her disappearance
When investigators looked into the purchases made from Narumi's bank account after her disappearance, they were surprised to find a computer address scrambler "even though she was no good at computers". Then there was the Besançon-Lyon train ticket, bought via the wifi in the Toison d'Or shopping centre in Dijon, at a precise moment when Nicolas Zepeda was there! What's more, contrary to Narumi's usual habits, the ticket was not purchased from the SNCF, but from a site frequently used by the accused.
"Narumi never travelled on this train, as the investigations carried out with passengers showed", David Borne explains.
On the computer side, by using Narumi's computer and Google account ("which is a friend of the investigators"), the investigators found that her email inbox was "very well kept until 3 December, all the messages were read, all of them! But from then on, only two were read. Then none.
The user of Narumi's account also made some surprising searches, including for a car wash. Narumi for one doesn't have a driving licence.
12:29
Jealousy, pregnancy and threats... Focus on the tensions in the relationship
David Borne continues his damning account of the accused. Simultaneous translation headphones on, legs crossed, Nicolas Zepeda fills in the pages of his notebook.
The director of the investigation plunged the court into the conversations found between Nicolas and Narumi.
"He reproaches her a lot, in particular for leaving for France when he had returned to Japan to find her, behaving in a childish way. He takes back her presents, demands answers in writing, and is very troubling". The investigator was astonished. "She has to respect the rules, and in a break-up message, he attached a link to a Dailymotion video".
The video was deleted, but the police unearthed it. "And then it's terrifying", the investigator describes, "Nicolas Zepeda addresses Narumi on camera and sets conditions to be met, which sound very much like threats".
In Skype exchanges, "Narumi reproaches him for 'knocking her up' and Nicolas never refutes this idea. We haven't been able to confirm or deny this pregnancy, but that's what they say to each other".
David Borne sums up what they said: "It's clear that Nicolas Zepeda is particularly jealous, because he won't accept that Narumi can have male friends in France. He demands that Narumi deletes them". Among them was Arthur Del Piccolo.
(...)
In response to a request, the Chilean judicial authorities forwarded Nicolas Zepeda's bank statements to the PJ. In the weeks leading up to his trip to France, the South American attended a mysterious "behaviour therapy centre". Due to medical confidentiality, the police in Besançon will not know any more.
David Borne also praised the "remarkable work" of the Japanese, "who managed to extract all the data from all the connections in Narumi's computer session at the University of Tsukuba". Nicolas Zepeda connected to it from his own devices. A session that was active even when Narumi was already in France".
For example, when Narumi, in Besançon, wrote to a friend "Did you eat at Yann's yesterday? From Japan, Nicolas Zepeda Googles "Yann Besançon" on Narumi's session.
"In reality, you realise that Nicolas Zepeda has been watching Narumi from Japan. And that he has an obsession with Arthur Del Piccolo, who is having a budding relationship with Narumi in France". Del Piccolo's account has been consulted numerous times from Japan...
13:01
"Easy" to get rid of the body "without being noticed", according to the investigator
With his hands on the desk, David Borne is already anticipating the questions that will soon be put to him... "On a campus, is it possible to remove the body without being noticed? The police officer answers his own question: "It's very easy. At night, there are very few people passing through, so it's very easy not to be noticed. But how? A dead body the size of Narumi can fit into a suitcase, and there's a court case in Savoie where that was the case."
For the police officer, it was obvious that Nicolas Zepeda had prepared his plan. "He had plenty of time to spot all the CCTV cameras and their blind spots, as he spent four days around the residence".
13:09
The fruitless search for the body "We did everything we could"
The police officer talks about the void that plagues all this work: the absence of a body. David Borne details the considerable efforts made to fill this judicial gap: s
earch parties, aerial searches to find possible sources of combustion, the use of drones, helicopters and specialised dogs, water searches, and so on.
"We even set aside all the household waste from Greater Besançon in December 2016: 800 tonnes of rubbish were sifted in search of human bones. And nothing", the chief brigadier recalls.
"There's nothing unusual about that in itself. There have been examples in the news recently of bodies never being found or being found with difficulty. The body of little Maëlys would not have been found if the murderer had not indicated the precise location. And why not? Because it had been laid on the ground and there was no organic matter left. Dogs need it to smell it," explains David Borne.
Then there's the possibility that the body was submerged...".
If the body was thrown into a river, with all that current... After Dole, there are no more dams for tens of kilometres, so it could have been carried far away", the police officer imagines. Before envisaging another, even more sinister scenario:
"We spoke to the fishermen over there, the local aquatic fauna is very aggressive and carnivorous, with catfish capable of eating a body completely."
David Borne agrees that "it's a weakness not to have the body in a criminal case", but takes his reasoning to the extreme: "In this case, paradoxically, it's a strength because it led us to push the investigations to the limit: we had to have the answers to everything. We pushed ourselves as far as we could."
13:10
"Everything that could be verified was verified"
"All criminal cases stir up rumours", says the director of the investigation, before mentioning the case of Saïd Nemeri, who took the stand before him on Thursday morning. "His report was taken seriously, as they all were", continued the police officer. "But we quickly managed to identify the young Thai woman he had mistaken for Narumi. She herself confirmed that she had been with the soldier that day, in the Besançon snack bar where he had met her.
The same applies to the young Korean woman in the Verdun bar-tabac. The reports were 100% verified, with purchase receipts," the investigator points out.
There was also another report of an Asian person in the toilets of a shopping centre... No Asian person appeared on the CCTV. "Everything that could be checked was checked," the chief investigator sums up.
13:12
"The one and only suspect is Nicolas Zepeda".
David Borne approaches the conclusion of his statement. "
In view of the evidence, Narumi is dead", he asserts, "she has given no further sign of life. The last time we heard her voice was in agonising screams on the night of 4 to 5 December. She did not leave of her own accord, nor did she take her belongings or her bank cards. We can't imagine that she committed suicide. The only explanation is that she was murdered."
The police officer continued:
"Nicolas Zepeda continued to keep her alive on social networks while he was in Europe, but as soon as he returned to Chile on 13 December, no one heard from Narumi Kurosaki. This delayed the investigation. Five days earlier, he would not have been able to get back on the plane, because he would have been identified...".
The conclusion of this long presentation without notes is without appeal:
"The one and only suspect that we are able to retain at the end of this investigation is Nicolas Zepeda."
The hearing is suspended. It will resume at 2.15pm. The director of the investigation will then take questions from the parties.
BBM
