A Japanese man admitted in court today to killing Lindsay Hawker, 22, the British teacher, and disposing of her body in a sand-filled bath but denied her murder.
Tatsuya Ichihashi prostrated himself on the floor of the court as he pleaded guilty to charges of rape, unlawfully disposing of a body, and causing injury resulting in death, which carry a sentence of 3 to 20 years in prison. But he denied murder, which can carry the death penalty in Japan.
After he entered the court room in Chiba, east of Tokyo, 32-year old Ichihashi had to be lifted from the floor by guards as he bowed full length before Ms Hawker’s parents, Bill and Julia, who were in court along with their two daughters.
Mr and Mrs Hawker looked on grim faced as he was lifted to his feet by guards, and performed another deep bow before taking his place facing the judge.
“I didn’t have any intention of killing Miss Lindsay but I am responsible for her death, and I am ready to take responsibility,” he said, his voice breaking after the charges were read out. “I did rape Miss Lindsay. I did cause her death. I am truly sorry for what happened.”
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He added: “What happened that day only I and Miss Lindsay know. Because of my actions, she can no longer tell what she knew, so I think it’s my duty to tell the truth. Throughout this trial I will tell the truth to explain the reality of that day.”
Mr Ichihashi was arrested in 2009 after two-and-a-half years on the run, in a case which embarrassed the Japanese police. It was February 2007 when Ms Hawker, an English conversation teacher, went missing after going to Mr Ichihashi’s apartment following a conversation lesson in a coffee shop.
When nine police officers visited his apartment in the suburban town of Gyotoku in Chiba prefecture, adjacent to Tokyo, he escaped from them in his bare feet. Inside, they found Ms Hawker’s naked body in a bathtub on the balcony. Her hands and ankles had been tied with plastic cord used to bind plants and she was buried in horticultural soil. The post mortem showed that she had been brutally beaten.
After letting him slip through their fingers, the police of Chiba prefecture were further humiliated by their failure to find Mr Ichihashi. Ms Hawker’s parents and sisters, from her home town of Brandon near Coventry, made repeated visits to Japan to appeal for information leading to her killer.
He was eventually caught after a plastic surgeon, one of several who carried out operations on his face, became suspicious and reported Mr Ichihashi’s new description to police. Before then, he attempted to alter his own appearance by cutting his lips with scissors, removing a mole with a knife, and by using a household needle and thread to alter the shape of his nose, permanently scarring himself.
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Having earned money working as a construction worker, he had travelled thousands of miles to the far north of the main Japanese island and to its southernmost reaches in the islands of Okinawa. There he spent weeks living in an abandoned military observation post on a tiny island which had only one other elderly inhabitant.
During his time on the run, he says, he had no help from anyone else and formed no friendships. He entertained himself by watching DVDs and reading a Harry Potter novel with the aid of an English dictionary — an exercise which he said had been recommended by Ms Hawker.
His most bizarre escapade was to visit Tokyo Disneyland, a few miles from the spot where he had killed Ms Hawker. In a book published earlier this year, he described walking past a large poster of himself in front of a police station. Disguised by dark glasses and a moustache, he passed by unrecognised.
He claims also to have walked the route of a famous Buddhist pilgrimage on the island of Shikoku in the hope of magically restoring Ms Hawker to life. “For Lindsay to come back to life as if nothing has happened — that was my wish,” he said in Until I was Arrested: the Record of Two Years and Seven Months of Nothingness, the book he wrote about his life on the run, which was published earlier this year.
“I have done something unforgivable,” he wrote. “Because I was afraid, like a coward, I escaped. By doing so, I deeply injured Lindsay’s family, my parents and many other people. I am truly sorry.”
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But last year Mrs Hawker dismissed as a ploy a letter written by Mr Ichihashi expressing his remorse. “He was trying to escape, and to change what he looked like with plastic surgery, and to remain free for the rest of his life,” she told The Times. “I’m here to get justice for my daughter,”
Mr Hawker said as he arrived at Narita airport on Sunday. “It has been a long time coming and we’re looking forward to getting justice.”
Mr Ichihashi’s trial will be one of the most prominent cases so far to be held under a new system introduced in 2009 in which six “lay judges”, similar to jurors, sit alongside three professional judges.
Mr Hawker will be able to question Mr Ichihashi at the discretion of the court and offer an opinion on sentencing.