The Stars & Stripes has an update on the brutal murder of an Okinawa woman by a Kadena Air Base contract worker who happened to be a former Marine stationed on the island. The killer’s lawyer has given the Stars & Stripes transcripts of interviews with him in an effort to show the guy is mentally incompetent. These records show how brutal the murder of this young woman was and why this guy should never be let out of jail:
Rina Shimabukuro is seen in an image from a Fuji Television broadcast. Kenneth Franklin Gadson, a former Marine working as a civilian at Kaden Air Base, Okinawa, has been charged with murder and rape resulting in death in the slaying of the 20-year-old local woman.
A former U.S. base worker charged with raping and killing an Okinawan woman fantasized about raping women for years and thought about shooting fellow Marines as a way of attempting suicide, his lawyer said.
Former Marine Kenneth Franklin Gadson made the revelations, including gruesome details of the crime, during a jailhouse interview with his lawyers. The transcripts were released to Stars and Stripes under the condition that they not be released in their entirety.
Gadson, who worked at a Kadena Air Base cable and internet company and went by his Japanese wife’s surname of Shinzato, has been charged with murder, rape resulting in death and the illegal disposal of a body in the death of Rina Shimabukuro, 20, who disappeared April 28.
Gadson was interrogated two months later when police said he confessed to the crime. He then took police to her body in a heavily wooded area.
The crime shocked Japan and led to a surge in anti-American sentiment on Okinawa, home to about 30,000 U.S. troops. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but I don’t believe for a minute that this guy had no intention of killing her. For example he claims he just happened to have a shovel in his car to bury the body because he keeps it there for gardening purposes. Who keeps a shovel in their car for gardening?
