VANCOUVER — A man charged with the murder of a Japanese student whose decomposed body was found in a suitcase in Vancouver’s West End two years ago told his wife in Japan by phone, “I did it,” or “I killed her,” the Crown told the opening day of his trial on Monday.
William Schneider, 51, pleaded not guilty before a judge and jury to second-degree murder in the death of Natsumi Kogawa, 30. He also pleaded not guilty to a second charge of interfering with human remains.
Two weeks after she was reported missing by friends — and police released a photo showing him and Kogawa walking side-by-side at Harbour Centre mall with a tent in a black bag — Schneider told his brother, Warren Schneider, that her body was in a suitcase at a construction site at Nicola and Davie streets, Crown prosecutor Geordie Proulx said in his opening statement in B.C. Supreme Court.
A black suitcase containing a naked body was located later that day at Gabriola Mansion, former site of a restaurant, by a police dog. A cause of death couldn’t be determined because the body was badly decomposed. The body, later identified as Kogawa’s, was also covered with twigs, moss and leafy plants, Proulx said.
As Proulx recounted the last known details of Kogawa’s life, Schneider, his thinning hair neatly trimmed and wearing a grey-and-white striped collared shirt, sat quietly in the prisoner’s dock, his back to Kogawa’s mother, a few metres away in the public gallery.
Proulx told court police were unable to find the tent, Kogawa’s clothing, cellphone or any belongings, nor did they find any physical evidence linking Schneider to where the body was found.
But the Crown laid out the case against him that will include evidence from Warren Schneider about his brother’s relationship with Kogawa, surveillance video of Schneider from the homeless men’s shelter he lived in in August and September 2016, testimony from the shelter staff of his relationship with a Japanese woman, her credit-card statement showing purchases of vodka and snacks the last day she was seen, and a police interview with William Schneider in which he discussed her death and gestured holding his nose.
Schneider was linked to the crime when Warren Schneider’s daughter recognized her uncle in the police-issued photo on Sept. 27, 2016, of Kogawa and Schneider together.
Warren Schneider travelled to Vernon from his Kelowna home, and the two drank together in a park over the next day and night.
Warren Schneider is expected to testify he overheard his brother during that time asking if his wife had heard about Natsumi’s death and telling her he killed her.
Proulx said surveillance video from the Catholic Charities Hostel will show William Schneider leaving the hostel on Sept. 8, 2016, the last day Kogawa was seen alive, carrying the tent bag, and will also show him carrying a large suitcase the next two days but returning on the second day without it.
The trial will be shown video of Schneider and Kogawa walking together on Hastings Street toward Stanley Park as far west as Thurlow Street, just before 2 p.m. on Sept. 8, 2016.
