UK NEWS

DISGUISES OF JAPAN’S ‘BATH TUB STRANGLER’

MURDERED: Lindsay Hawker

Saturday March 15,2008

By Padraic Flanagan

Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(0)

Police in Japan have issued a new wanted poster for the prime suspect in the murder of English teacher Lindsay Hawker.

Lindsay’s battered body was found buried in a sand-filled bath in the Tokyo apartment of Tatsuya Ichihashi a year ago.

The jobless loner has been on the run since escaping from police seconds before officers made the grisly discovery.

Up to 4,000 posters and 30,000 flyers were distributed across Japan this week, showing how Ichihashi would look with dyed blond hair or even disguised as a woman.

A police official said: “It’s been almost a year since the incident. We know that he might have changed in that time.”

Lindsay, 22, of Brandon, near Coventry, went missing last March shortly after meeting Ichihashi in a cafe, where it is believed she gave him an English lesson.

Days later her naked body was found buried in a bath at his flat. Her hair had been chopped off and chemicals had been added to the sand to decompose her remains. It later emerged she had been tortured for up to 36 hours before being strangled.

Police launched a nationwide search for Ichihashi. Video pictures of him walking into the cafe with Lindsay and travelling in the lift at his apartment building were shown repeatedly on television last year but since then the trail has gone cold.

Lindsay’s parents, Bill and Julia, visited Japan last year to plead for information and also wrote to Ichihashi’s father, Masayoshi, a wealthy dentist, calling on him to break his silence and make a public appeal to his son to give himself up.

It has been reported that Ichihashi was living rough in a park in the city of Osaka or working in Tokyo’s red light bars. It was even claimed he had become a drag artist at a nightclub to avoid being recognised.

Despite speculation that he may have committed suicide, police remain convinced he is still alive.

Amazon.co.uk Widgets