SAITAMA (Kyodo) The man accused of fatally stabbing a health ministry bureaucrat and his wife and wounding the wife of another former official pleaded not guilty Thursday at his first trial session, saying he killed "beasts," not humans.
"I assert innocence," Takeshi Koizumi, 47, said at the Saitama District Court. "I killed not people but beasts with evil hearts."
But Koizumi also said he acknowledged a large part of the indictment, although it "contains elements different" from what he may have done.