By TATSUYA HARADA/ Staff Writer
June 3, 2021 at 18:19 JST
The building housing the Kyoto District Public Prosecutors Office (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
KYOTO--Two doctors indicted on a murder charge in the death of a woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) were indicted on June 3 on charges of murdering the father of one of the doctors.
The Kyoto District Public Prosecutors Office indicted Naoki Yamamoto and Yoshikazu Okubo, both 43, as well as Naoki’s mother, Junko, for the murder of the 77-year-old father in March 2011.
The lack of solid evidence led prosecutors to admit in the indictment that they still had no idea how the man was killed.
The only evidence that points to foul play are doctored documents and emails sent between the three suspects. Yamamoto and Okubo exchanged emails about the death certificate and cremation, while Naoki and his mother exchanged emails that said the father was making everyone around him unhappy.
Yamamoto and Okubo were indicted in August 2020 on a charge of murdering Yuri Hayashi, a Kyoto woman with ALS who contacted the doctors through social media asking for their help to end her life through lethal injection.
The father had been hospitalized for a long period in a psychiatric ward of a Nagano Prefecture hospital, but was released on March 5, 2011.
On the same day, Junko submitted a report to the Chuo Ward government building in Tokyo that said he had died that very afternoon in an Edogawa Ward apartment. The doctor who was looking after him in the Nagano hospital told police he did not have any conditions that could lead to sudden death.
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