Narumi Kurosaki

Nicolás Humberto Zepeda Contreras (born 11 December 1990) was born into a Chilean family of three children.

His father, Humberto Zepeda, is one of the main executives of the telecommunications provider Movistar.

His mother, Ana Luz Contreras, is an engineer who worked as a secretary to Senator Francisco Huenchumilla at the time and also worked in the human resources department of the municipality of La Serena.

Narumi Kurosaki (黒崎 愛海, Kurosaki Narumi, born 23 July 1995 – disappeared 5 December 2016) grew up in a family of five, with her parents and two younger sisters, Honami and Kurumi.

Nicolás grew up with his twin sisters, Belén and Josefa, in Temuco in the south of the country, attending Colegio Centenario until 2008 and obtaining his high school diploma.

In 2009, the family moved to Antofagasta and later to La Serena.

Nicolás studied administrative sciences at the University of Chile.

After the case became public, various members of Zepeda's family were harassed by journalists.

From 2011 to 2014, she attended Tokyo Metropolitan Kokusai High School.

In 2014, Nicolás arrived in Japan to continue his studies, where he met Narumi during October at a party held on the campus of the University of Tsukuba.

They began a romantic relationship in February 2015, and the couple traveled to Chile from September 6 to October 1, 2015, where Nicolás introduced her to his family as his partner.

Narumi Kurosaki was a Japanese woman who disappeared in the city of Besançon, France, during December 2016 and is believed to have been murdered.

The primary suspect in her case is Nicolás Zepeda, her former boyfriend from Chile, whom she had met while in Japan and separated from two months prior to her disappearance.

The international nature of the case garnered significant attention, as authorities from three different continents—France (Europe), Japan (Asia), and Chile (South America)—were involved in the judicial process.

On 12 April 2022, Zepeda was found guilty of murder and subsequently sentenced to 28 years in prison.

A retrial commenced on 4 December 2023, originally starting on 21 February but temporarily suspended when Zepeda's defense lawyer, Antoine Vey, withdrew from the case.

The retrial concluded on 22 December and found him guilty a second time, upholding the original sentence.

Narumi was 21 years old when she arrived in France on 26 August 2016 to study at the University of Franche-Comté in the city of Besançon.

There, she took French classes at the Center for Applied Linguistics before being joining the Faculty of Economics in January.

Narumi lived in a student room on the second floor of the Théodore Rousseau residence hall located on the La Bouloie campus.

Nicolás left Japan in 2015 at the end of his university year but returned on April 12, 2016, to look for work.

According to statements by Nicolás himself, Narumi officially ended her romantic relationship with him shortly after arriving in France on October 6.

Zepeda left Japan on October 9.

In Besançon, Narumi met new people, including Arthur del Piccolo, a student at the Higher National School of Mechanics and Microtechnology, who became her new boyfriend.

On Sunday, 4 December, 2016, Narumi went to her dance class as usual, leaving at around 4:00 PM.

In the night between Sunday and Monday, at around 3:20 AM, about fifteen students from the residence where Narumi was staying 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 out into the hallway to investigate, but was not able to determine the source of the sounds.

The following day, Narumi's classmates were concerned about her absence from class, stating that she had never missed a class.

Over the next few days, Narumi's family and friends received messages from her phone via text and social media claiming that she had a problem with her passport and needed to go to the Japanese consulate in Lyon.

On 6 December, her bank card was used to purchase a one-way train ticket to Lyon.

However, all the train passengers who occupied seats close to the one assigned on her ticket claimed not to have seen any young women resembling Narumi.

Other messages reached her relatives in the following days, indicating that she had a new boyfriend and that she was going alone.

No more messages were received after 12 December.

On December 14, the Center for Applied Linguistics in Besançon alerted the police, who entered Narumi's room on 15 December in the late afternoon.

Upon quickly realizing the seriousness of the situation, investigators initially suspected Arthur, Narumi's new boyfriend.

During his interrogation, Del Piccolo mentioned Narumi's former Chilean lover, Nicolás Zepeda Contreras, whom he presented to investigators as a jealous and possessive man who had even hacked into Del Piccolo's Facebook account.

Initially, this information was not considered decisive given the geographical distance.

However, thanks to the geolocation of Narumi's phone, investigators discovered that she was in a restaurant on the night of 4 December and that the bill had been paid with a Chilean bank card.

In fact, on the night of Sunday, 4 December, Narumi Kurosaki and Nicolás Zepeda Contreras had dinner at La Table de Gustave restaurant, in the small town of Ornans located about twenty kilometers south of Besançon.