ICHIHASHI ARRESTED BY POLICE IN OSAKA
OSAKA —
Police on Tuesday night arrested the suspect in the 2007 murder of a British woman after fingerprints confirmed he is Tatsuya Ichihashi, a 30-year-old fugitive wanted in the case.
Currently, Ichihashi is wanted only on a technical charge of abandoning the body of language school teacher Lindsay Hawker, who was 22 at the time of her death, at his apartment, but the police will upgrade the charge to murder.
The case has attracted widespread public attention as Ichihashi, who media reports once suggested had killed himself, was found alive and with a new look after undergoing plastic surgery on several occasions.
Ichihashi escaped from police officers when they called at his apartment in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, in March 2007 and then found Hawker’s body inside a sand-filled bathtub on the balcony. The police later distributed fliers and offered a 10 million yen reward for information leading to his whereabouts.
Hawker’s family also visited Japan to ask for help in resolving the case, but no significant progress had been made over the last two and a half years.
The case took a sudden turn when Ichihashi showed up at a clinic in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, in late October for another round of plastic surgery. The police soon released a photograph of his post-surgery face with double-fold eyelids instead of single, a higher nose bridge and thinner lips, and it was widely displayed.
It led to numerous further discoveries about him, including his attempt to receive another plastic surgery operation in Fukuoka Prefecture. He was also found to have lived and worked at a construction company in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, for over a year up until this October. See original here
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1 comment:
As a forensic nurse for 21 years, I always feel a sense of relief when a suspected perpetrator of a horrible crime is apprehended. If there is a trial ( I don't know how the Japanese justice system works ) and this man is found guilty, I know it will give a sense of closure to the poor girl's parents. If he is not guilty, then he has certainly gone to a lot of trouble to change his identity, hasn't he. Also, criminals of this nature, seldom stop at one crime.
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