ARRESTED !!!! / NOVEMBER 10TH 2009

TATSUYA ICHIHASHI

¥ 10,000,000 REWARD

Most Wanted: : Murder of Linsay Ann Hawker

ICHIHASHI ARRESTED BY POLICE IN OSAKA

Tuesday 10th November, 09:10 PM JST

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.

Ichihashi, who had altered his appearance through cosmetic surgery, was taken to Suminoe police station. He is currently only wanted 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. Chiba prefectural police said they will upgrade the charge to murder.

Ichihashi was taken into custody on the second floor of Nanko ferry terminal after police received a phone call at 6:44 p.m. from another passenger at the terminal saying that a man resembling Ichihashi was sitting by himself. Two police officers arrived at first and approached Ichihashi who was wearing a gray jacket, black cap and sunglasses. Two other officers arrived shortly after.

Witnesses told NHK that Ichihashi remained calm and could be heard telling the police his name. He had been reportedly waiting to board a ferry for Okinawa after coming from Kobe earlier in the day.

Ichihashi was transported from Shin-Osaka station to Chiba by bullet train later Tuesday night.

NHK also aired comments from Ichihashi’s parents. His father said they were relieved to hear that their son had been taken into custody. They expressed sorrow for the Hawker family and urged their son to explain clearly what he did.

Meanwhile, Hawker’s father Bill told TBS in a telephone interview on Tuesday night that his nightmare is finally over. “I very much look forward to seeing Ichihashi across a courtroom, so I can look him in the face,” Hawker said.

His Murder Victim

Lindsay Hawker

The 22-year-old from Brandon, Coventry, U.K. was murdered after she taught private student Tatsuya Ichihashi in a coffee shop in Tokyo on March 25, 2007.

Lindsay Hawker moved to Japan in October 2006 to teach English at the Koiwa branch of Nova, which was Japan's largest private English conversation school. She originated from Brandon, a village outside Coventry, and was an alumna of Leeds University, where she studied biology and had achieved a first-class honours degree, graduating in 2006. Linsay Ann HawkerHawker was popular and outgoing, and although she had a view to studying for a Master's, she opted to teach English for a year in Japan. She shared her accommodation with two other female teachers; one from Australia, and one from Canada. On the day she went missing, her family became distressed due to her lack of contact—she had used a variety of mediums, including email, Skype, and telephone to regularly stay in contact with her family during her time there

Tatsuya Ichihashi

Tatsuya Ichihashi (市橋達也, Ichihashi Tatsuya?), aged 28 lived in the city of Ichikawa, in the Chiba prefecture, just east of Tokyo. Born in Gifu prefecture on January 5, 1979 Ichihashi grew up in Chiba and Gifu, as his father relocated his family due to a job assignment as a medical doctor, along with his dentist wife. After graduating from Department of Horticulture, Chiba University in 2005, Ichihashi did not work, and lived on an allowance of roughly over ¥100,000 (over £600 at that time) a month from his parents. Little has been made public about him due to the comparatively restrictive nature of Japanese privacy laws, and the reticence of his parents to speak about him. Ichihashi had no previous convictions, but he had been the subject of an allegation of "theft and injury" six years before Hawker's murder. Ichihashi had allegedly assaulted a woman on the street during a robbery, but the matter had been settled out of court. Ichihashi had been in a stable, year long relationship with a Japanese woman at the time of the Hawker's killing. Police described him as a loner with an obsession for physical fitness: he regularly attended a gym, and cycled 25 kilometres a day.

Meeting

Hawker recited the story of how she met Ichihashi to her boyfriend, who lived in England, by email. Four days before the killing happened, she was approached by him on her train journey home from work. Ichihashi at first claimed she was his English teacher (she was not); and then asked her to confirm if she was an English teacher. Ichihashi ran after her as she cycled home, and asked for a glass of water when she arrived. Hawker had felt sorry for him, and decided, as a precaution, to let him in, in order to show him her two flatmates. Once inside, Ichihashi took out a pen and paper and drew a picture of her, signing it with his name, telephone number, and email address. At some point, the pair agreed to meet for an English lesson four days later, at a café, which was something the Nova school allowed.

The Murder

Hawker and Ichihashi met on the Saturday of March 24 in the café. When the session had been concluded, they caught a taxi to Ichihashi's apartment, which was a few hundred yards down the road. Hawker told the taxi driver to wait for a short time, and went up to Ichihashi's apartment. Seven minutes later, the taxi driver left after she failed to arrive. Hawker's naked body was found buried in a sand/soil-filled bathtub on the apartment's balcony. She had been bound and gagged with plastic ties and scarves, with one of her hands lying outside the mixture. Both Hawker and Ichihashi were familiar with martial arts (Ichihashi was much more experienced, having attained a black belt), and it appeared, from the bruises that were present across Hawker's upper body, that she had been the subject of a prolonged attack—her possessions were found strewn across the room as well. Police said that the egg-sized bruises on the left side of her face appeared to have been inflicted with a fist, while lesser marks on her upper body were the result of collision with furniture. Hawker had died when her assailant began strangling her, and broke the cartilage of her neck. Her head was then shaved after she was killed.
It had been widely reported in the days after her death that Ichihashi had buried her only in sand. Ichihashi had buried the body in sand and compost soil, and then sprayed it with a substance used to compact and decompose waste. It is believed that this had been done with a plan in mind to either bury the body in concrete, or to wait until it had decomposed. Ichihashi had bought the materials over six visits to his local hardware store; these visits had been made in the hours leading up the arrival of the police force, on March 26.

After failing to attend her lessons that were scheduled for March 25 and 26, Nova reported Hawker missing at 2.30 pm on the 26th. Hawker's friends had tried to contact the police previously, but the message was not passed along adequately amongst the authorities. Two officers were despatched, and reached Ichihashi's apartment at 5.40 pm. After being made aware of the previous allegation made against Ichihashi, and noticing that there was no light on inside the apartment, but that there appeared to be somebody in there, these officers called for back-up at 7.00 pm (they were not permitted to knock without proper cause). Within the next hour, seven more officers arrived. Two hours after the nine officers had assembled outside, Ichihashi walked out of his front door, with a rucksack on and in bare feet (this would be unusual since, though shoes are traditionally left in a front alcove and not worn inside, they are almost always worn out of doors.) Ichihashi was made aware of the situation, and attempted to run away from the officers. One was able to grab his rucksack, but he continued to flee. Ichihashi's escape was aided in part by the fact that none of the officers had walkie-talkies, and so the officers on the fourth floor could not alert those on the ground. Ichihashi lost the officers after vaulting the last few feet of the stairway to the ground, but was later rediscovered, having found a pair of trainers, before escaping again by zigzagging through the street. The contents of his rucksack did not suggest that he was trying to escape: all it contained was his gym clothes, and police believed that he was going there to wash.

Investigation

Police suspect that between Sunday night and early Monday, Ichihashi moved the bathtub from the bathroom to the balcony and put Hawker's body into it. Neighbors said they heard sounds of something striking metal and something being dragged during that time period. Police obtained an arrest warrant Tuesday for Ichihashi on suspicion of abandoning her body, and put him on the nationwide wanted list. On March 29, detectives removed a shopping trolley from Ichihashi’s apartment building, in which he is believed to have transported the bags of horticultural soil where Hawker was buried.
On March 29, a team of twenty Japanese police officers raided Hotel Chateau, a love hotel near Nishi-Funabashi Station, east of Tokyo, where rooms are rented to couples by the hour, but did not find Ichihashi.
On March 13, 2008, Japanese police released a new wanted poster of Ichihashi, which included an enhanced image of the suspect disguised as a woman. They also released images of a drawing he had made of Hawker in the hopes that someone will recognize the drawing style.
The police are now investigating sightings of Ichihashi among the gay sections of Kabukicho in Tokyo, where he had tentatively been identified by his male sexual partners. Between March 26, 2007 and as of January 15, 2009, in an article from Japan Today, it is believed that Ichihashi, who turned 30 on January 5, 2009 fled and went ground in the Philippines according to a reporter from "Spa!", the weekly magazine. For years, Japanese criminals wanted by Japanese authorities have fled to the Philippines to escape arrest making the Philippines something of a haven for Japanese criminals.
In March, 2009 the Hawker family returned to Japan once more for the second year anniversary of the death of Lindsay Hawker, meeting with the new local police chief and handing out leaflets.

Reward

On June 26th 2009 the Japan National Police Agency raised the cash reward for information leading to the arrest of Tatsuya Ichihashi, from the current ¥1 million to ¥10 million. Police usually offer cash rewards of ¥1 million to ¥3 million for information leading to arrest in serious cases.

Wanted International and U.S.A.

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