The Utsunomiya District Court on Tuesday sentenced to death a 35-year-old man for murdering his wife and an acquaintance in the late 1980s.

Katsuhisa Cho, who owned a personnel business, suffocated his 18-year-old wife, Chiaki, in November 1988 in Oyama, Tochigi Prefecture, and beat to death Mikio Wada, 26, a factory worker, in November 1989, according to the ruling.

Chiaki went missing after going to meet Cho. In 1996, police found some of her bones buried in the yard of a house in the city of Tochigi belonging to a relative of Cho.

Wada also went missing after going to meet Cho but his body has not been found, the court said.

Cho was arrested over Wada's death in July 1996 and over Chiaki's death a month later.

Prosecutors sought the death penalty for Cho, who denied responsibility for the murders.

Cho was also convicted of seriously injuring two employees of a sex shop he owned in Kawasaki between 1995 and 1996 by burning their hands and backs with cigarettes and whipping them with an electrical cord.