Killer of Nicola Furlong in Tokyo returns to US after release from prison

The man convicted of murdering Irish exchange student Nicola Furlong in a Tokyo hotel room has returned to his home in the United States.

Richard Hinds was released on November 19th after serving 10 years in prison. He was found guilty in 2013 of strangling the Co Wexford woman (21) the previous year.

Hinds was transferred to Japanese immigration officials and deported back to his family in Memphis, Tennessee, on a commercial flight.

Ms Furlong’s family from Curracloe, who called the original verdict “a travesty”, said they are “devastated” at Hinds’s return to civilian life.

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“I just buckled over when I heard the news,” said Angela Furlong, Nicola’s mother. “I spent 10 years wondering how I would feel and now I know – it is hard to deal with. He goes ahead and lives his life and we just have to live ours.”

[ Family of Nicola Furlong, the Irish student murdered in Tokyo, brace for the release of her killer ]

Hinds’s family has remained silent since the 2013 verdict and has never contacted the Furlongs. His older brother Claude hung up when asked to comment on his release.

Hinds, a travelling musician then aged 19, admitted he strangled Ms Furlong in room 1427 of the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo, claiming that she wordlessly indicated she wanted rough sex. His sentence of “not less than five and no more than 10 years,” with labour was the maximum allowed in Japan because he was a minor.

He served the full term in Fuchu Prison, in Tokyo’s western suburbs, after reportedly showing no remorse for his crime. During his time there, Hinds was classed as a “category-three prisoner”, meaning prison authorities believed he had only a “moderate expectation” of rehabilitation back into society.

James Blackston, a dancer and choreographer who was convicted of sexually assaulting Ms Furlong’s friend during the taxi ride to the Keio Plaza, was freed in 2015 after serving three years. He has since returned to his life in Los Angeles and reportedly recently married.

Hinds gave discredited testimony in which he said that he and Blackston had been approached outside a train station by the two Irish women who wanted to “party”.

[ Father of murdered Irish student hopes killer ‘haunted forever’ as release expected ]

In their victim impact statement, the Furlongs asked for the “gravest possible punishment” and for the judges to recognise the “cruel nature” of the crime and the fact that Mr Hinds had attempted to portray their daughter as a “lecherous drug addict”.

Passing sentence in 2013, lead judge Masaharu Ashizawa said Hinds had showed no remorse and that his statements had “dishonoured” his victim. Judge Ashizawa said that the Furlong family’s demand for harsher sentencing was “very understandable”.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin, on a visit to Tokyo in June, suggested the Furlong family should be consulted before Hinds is freed. “Justice is never served, in my view, when somebody is murdered,” he said.

“I’ve met parents in similar situations, and the grief and the disruption and the destruction of their lives has been a life sentence for them, much more at times than the actual person who did the deed. My own sense is that the authorities whether in Japan or Ireland, have to take the victims more into account.”

Angela Furlong said she has no interest in hearing from Hinds. “I think at this stage we just have to put it behind us. I don’t want to know what he has to say. He told a whole load of lies in court and so why would I want to hear what he has to say.”