The mother of a 30-year-old woman charged with killing and beheading a man in Sapporo last July denied Tuesday that she provided assistance to her daughter.
"I didn't intend to help," Hiroko Tamura, the 61-year-old mother, said in the first hearing held by the Sapporo District Court in the capital of Hokkaido.
Her husband, Osamu, a 60-year-old doctor, has also been indicted along with their daughter, Runa, for allegedly helping Runa in the case.
Making an opening statement, the prosecution first pointed out that Runa killed the 62-year-old corporate worker and beheaded the man with a saw at a hotel in the northern Japan city's Susukino entertainment district and brought the decapitated head back home using Osamu's car driven by the father himself.
It then claimed that the mother continued normal life while allowing the daughter to hide the head in their house and that she, at the request of Runa, asked the husband via social media to take a video of the daughter damaging the severed body part.
Meanwhile, the defense in its opening statement pleaded not guilty, arguing that the mother did not call the police because she was believing that the daughter would be arrested in the not-so-distant future and that she was not informed by Runa about what would be videoed.
Start dates for the trials of Runa and Osamu have yet to be fixed.
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