Current Legislator Suspected of Killing Wife Makes Strange Claims Before Arrest

An incumbent politician has been indicted for the murder of his wife.

The pre-trial proceedings in this shocking case have been completed, and the jury trial will begin on October 16. The man accused of the murder is Daisuke Maruyama, 50, a former member of the Nagano Prefectural Assembly.

The incident took place in September of 2009. Maruyama is alleged to have murdered his wife, Mrs. A. (47 at the time), by squeezing her neck at their home and brewery in Shiojiri City, Nagano Prefecture. Maruyama has consistently maintained his innocence. Even before his arrest, he claimed to have an alibi, saying that he was at the Diet members’ building on the day of the murder.

FRIDAY Digital” reported on this mysterious case in detail in an article distributed on November 30, 2010, immediately after Maruyama’s arrest. We would like to recount the whole story of the trouble that took more than a year until the arrest and Maruyama’s puzzling statements (some parts of the article have been corrected).

Arrested more than a year after the incident

An incumbent Diet member was arrested for the murder of his wife.

On November 28, 2010, the Nagano Prefectural Police arrested Maruyama, a member of the prefectural assembly, on suspicion of murder. Maruyama was the chairman of the prefectural assembly’s General Affairs, Planning, and Police Committee and was serving his second term at the time. He was also the owner of Shokame Sake Brewery (Shiojiri City, Nagano Prefecture), a long-established sake brewery that had been in business since the Meiji era.

The incident was discovered shortly after 6:30 a.m. on September 29, 2009. Maruyama’s wife, Mrs. A, was found lying on her back on the first floor of their home and office next to the brewery, near the safe. Her son found her and called the police 110. She was immediately pronounced dead. The autopsy revealed that the cause of death was asphyxiation due to strangulation.

The prefectural police set up an investigation headquarters at the Shiojiri police station to investigate the murder, and a 140-member team began investigating the case, appealing for information.

The investigation was difficult due to the lack of physical evidence. We narrowed down the scope of the investigation little by little by interviewing people in the area and analyzing security camera footage, and finally managed to arrest Maruyama more than a year after the incident. Maruyama had denied committing the crime at the time.

Poor business conditions at the brewery

In September 2010, just prior to his arrest, Maruyama was responding to a gathering of media representatives. He explained that he learned of the incident when his son called him at around 7:00 a.m. saying, “My mother is in trouble. He commented that he wanted to know what had happened rather than punish the culprit, and said that it was weird to have a couple who had been close for decades.

As for his own alibi, he explained, “I was at the prefectural assembly [that day]. On the day of the incident, I was staying at a Diet member’s house in Nagano City in order to attend a meeting of the prefectural assembly. Indeed, it is confirmed that on the night of September 28, the day before the incident, Maruyama had been drinking with his colleagues and was at the assembly hall until around 11:30 pm.

However, car driving data and a drive recorder revealed that Maruyama took more than two hours to travel to his home in Shiojiri City, about 80 km away. The police believed that after killing his wife in the early hours of the 29th, he returned to the assembly hall again”.

Around the safe at the crime scene, there were marks left by someone who entered the room with dirt feet. It is believed that the robbery was disguised as a break-in. No details are known as to the motive for the crime.

It seems certain that the business situation at the Shokame Brewery, of which Maruyama was the president, was not good. The police were investigating the case on the assumption that there was some kind of trouble between the couple.

At the jury trial mentioned at the beginning of this article, Maruyama is expected to plead not guilty once again. The verdict is scheduled to be handed down on December 23.