Body found in suitcase, court hears
Suspect in Japanese student’s death told his wife ‘I did it,’ Crown prosecutor says
A man charged with the murder of a Japanese student whose decomposed body was found in a suitcase near the old Macaroni Grill in Vancouver’s West End two years ago told his wife in Japan by phone, “I did it,” or “I killed her,” Crown told the opening day of his trial on Monday. William Schneider, 51, pleaded not guilty Monday before a judge and jury to seconddegree murder in the death of Natsumi Kogawa, 30. He also pleaded not guilty to the second charge of interfering with human remains.
Two weeks after she was reported missing by friends — and police publicly released a photo showing him and Kogawa walking side-byside 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, site of the old grill, 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, according to Proulx.
As Proulx recounted the last known details of Kogawa’s life, Schneider, his thinning hair neatly trimmed and wearing a grey-andwhite-striped collared shirt, sat quietly in the prisoner’s dock, his back to Kogawa’s mother, a few metres away in the public gallery. Schneider was linked to the crime when Warren’s daughter recognized her uncle in the police photo on Sept. 27, 2016, of Kogawa and Schneider together.
Warren is expected to testify he overhead William during that time asking if his wife had heard about Natsumi’s death and telling her he killed her.