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A man accused in the murder of a Japanese student pleaded guilty Monday to interfering with the victim’s dead body.

The surprise move came just before the Crown and defence delivered final submissions to the jury in the case of William Schneider, 51, who has pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder of Natsumi Kogawa, 30.

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During his final submissions, defence lawyer Joe Doyle told the jury that his client, a homeless, drug-addicted man who had dated Kogawa several times, had placed her body in a suitcase after she died and had left the suitcase at a property in Vancouver’s West End.

“There’s no question that it’s a terrible thing to have done,” Doyle said, adding that one inference from the evidence is that Kogawa had died for unexplained reasons and that his client had panicked.

“He didn’t know why. He didn’t know what was going on, and he made a lot of very poor decisions.”

Doyle argued, however, that Schneider had nothing to do with the victim’s death, noting that pathologist Dr. Carol Lee was unable to determine a cause of death.