On June 19, Le Thi Nhat Linh’s parents opened a restaurant serving Vietnamese food in Nihonmatsu, a city in Fukushima Prefecture.
In March 2017, the murder of Linh in Matsudo, a city east of Tokyo, was widely reported. She was nine years old.
She went missing after leaving home for school. Her body was discovered two days later. The murder horrified and outraged millions of Japanese and Vietnamese people.
More than a year later, the culprit, a Japanese man named Yasumasa Shibuya, now 52, received a life sentence.
He was the girl’s neighbor and head of the parents’ association at the school she went to.
According to the indictment, Shibuya kidnapped Linh on the morning of March 24, 2017 in his car. He molested and then strangled the girl to death and left her naked body near a drainage ditch.
Blood and saliva matching Linh’s DNA was found in Shibuya’s car, indicating that he was…
