Three men were sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for stabbing the parents of one of them -- killing the father and seriously wounding the mother -- at the victims' house in a bid to collect about 140 million yen in insurance money.
The Yonago branch of the Tottori District Court handed down the sentence on Keiichiro Nowaki, 20, and the two other 20-year-old men, who were 19 at the time of the crime. Prosecutors had demanded life terms.
Nowaki stood accused of conspiring with the two and breaking into the Yonago house of his parents, Toshihiko, 55, and Teruyo, 51, at around 3:15 a.m. Sept. 6.
Tottori Prefectural Police had said earlier that the heavily indebted Nowaki approached the two, his junior high school classmates, and proposed the plot to kill his parents in a bid to obtain insurance money to marry a non-Japanese woman he had been dating.
Police alleged Nowaki guided them to his parents' house, where the two stabbed the couple.