The parents and sisters of Lindsay Ann Hawker, the British teacher whose strangled body was found in a bath filled with sand, watched yesterday as a Japanese court was shown a video from the last hours of her life, and prosecutors described the frenzied attack that killed her.
Bill and Julia Hawker and their daughters, Lisa and Louise, were attending the trial of Tatsuya Ichihashi, an unemployed man who admits killing Ms Hawker, 22, in 2007, but denies murder.
After he entered the court in Chiba, a city east of Tokyo, Ichihashi, 32, prostrated himself before Mr and Mrs Hawker in a full-length bow and had to be lifted from the floor by guards.
He pleaded guilty to charges of rape, causing injury resulting in death and unlawfully disposing of a body, which carry a sentence of between three and twelve years. He denied murder, which can carry the death penalty.
“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.
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“I did rape Miss Lindsay. I did cause her death. I am truly sorry for what happened,” he said. “Only I and Miss Lindsay know what happened that day. Because of my actions she can no longer say what she knew, so I think it’s my duty to tell the truth.”
Ms Hawker, an English teacher, went missing in March 2007 after giving Ichihashi a conversation lesson in a coffee shop.
According to the prosecutors he lured her to his apartment by claiming that he had left his money there, and then violently raped and killed her.
The prosecutors showed footage from security cameras of Ichihashi and an uncomfortable-looking Ms Hawker arriving at his apartment building in a taxi and going up in the lift.
“He bound her by the legs and wrists and punched her in the face . . . [and] raped her in his apartment,” one of the prosecutors said.
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“It is clear that the accused intended to kill Ms Lindsay to prevent his act of rape coming to light. He continued to press her neck with considerable force for at least three minutes or longer. It was a cruel and inhumane act.”
Mr and Mrs Hawker flinched, wept and held hands as large screens on the walls of the court showed photographs of their daughter’s clothes and underwear that had been cut off.
Scratches on the floor mats of the apartment and a broken door suggested that a violent struggle had taken place. Detectives also recovered a large amount of tape and plastic ties that the prosecution said were used to bind Ms Hawker.
When nine police officers visited his apartment in the suburban town of Gyotoku in Chiba prefecture, Ichihashi escaped barefooted and then spent 31 months on the run. He was caught after a plastic surgeon — one of several who carried out operations on his face — became suspicious and reported his new description to police.
Ichihashi had also attempted to alter his appearance by cutting his lips with scissors, removing a mole with a knife and using a household needle and thread to alter the shape of his nose, actions that had led to permanent scarring.
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He earned money working as a construction worker, travelled tens of thousands of miles around Japan and spent weeks living in an abandoned military observation post on a tiny island.
After his arrest he wrote a book about his time on the run, which has become a bestseller. Ichihashi’s lawyers have offered the proceeds from the book, amounting so far to ten million yen (£77,000), to the Hawker family but so far have had no response.
Last year he wrote a letter addressed to the Hawker family expressing his remorse, which was dismissed as a ploy by her mother.
“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 said.
A thousand people had queued for the 60 public seats in the courtroom. Ichihashi’s trial will be one of the most high-profile cases to be held under a new system introduced in 2009 in which six “lay judges” sit alongside three professional ones.
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Mr Hawker will be able to question witnesses and to offer an opinion on sentencing.
“I’m here to get justice for my daughter,” he said when the family arrived at Narita airport in Chiba on Sunday. “It has been a long time coming and we’re looking forward to getting justice.”
The rocky road to justice
July 2000 Lucie Blackman, 21, from Sevenoaks, who had been working as a bar hostess in Tokyo, disappears
February 2001 Her dismembered body is found in a cave. Joji Obara, a businessman, is charged
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October 2006 Lindsay Hawker begins teaching English in Tokyo
March 2007 A manhunt for Tatsuya Ichihashi begins after Ms Hawker’s body is found bound and buried in sand on his balcony in Tokyo
April 2007 Obara is found not guilty of killing Ms Blackman but receives a life sentence after been found guilty on eight other charges of rape and one charge of killing an Australian hostess
December 2008 An appeal judge finds Obara guilty of abducting and dismembering Ms Blackman but rules that there is insufficient evidence that he caused her death
November 2009 Mr Ichihashi is captured after having plastic surgery
December 2011 Obara is jailed
January 2011 Mr Ichihashi releases a book about his two years on the run
July 2011 He admits killing Ms Hawker but not murder
Sources: BBC; Times research