OSAKA -- The Osaka High Court upheld the death sentence Thursday for a former mob boss over the 1991 robbery and murder of a wealthy Kobe company president and his daughter.
The high court upheld the Kobe District Court's 1999 sentence for Masahira Yamaguchi, 54, the former leader of Yamakatsu Sogyo, a gangster group affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest underworld syndicate, for the slaying of Akira Okada, 75, and his daughter, Yumiko, 42.
The high court also upheld life sentences for Masami Fujinaka, a former member of the gang, and another former member, who was a minor at the time, for their roles in the robbery-murder. Another man, Kengo Asada, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for his role in the crime.
Presiding Judge Kazuhisa Shirai rejected Yamaguchi's arguments that he was innocent and said the crime was well-planned and brutal.
The four conspired to rob Okada in July 1991. Fujinaka and the minor, whose name has been withheld, took about 200,000 yen from Okada and his daughter, and took them by force to their group's office in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, on Yamaguchi's orders.
The four men strangled Okada and his daughter at the office and disposed of their bodies in an incinerator prepared in advance after Okada refused to comply with the gangsters' demands for more cash, the court said. Prosecutors had demanded death sentences for Yamaguchi and Fujinaka, life imprisonment for the minor and 15 years in prison for Asada.