It was a crime so strange, cold, and calculated that it united two nations in shock and despair, and with the suspect soaring to the top of Japan's most wanted list, he would deform his own face to keep his real identity hidden to the world. My name is Adrian, and welcome back to Coffeehouse Crime. Today we're looking at the case of Tatsuya Ichihashi and his victim, Lindsay Hawker.
There are many strange and disturbing details to this case, including a body in a flower pot, plastic surgery to avoid detection, And a world hunter a suspect that would take police years across the entire nation of Japan to capture. So pull up a seat, grab a coffee and sit back. This is the case of Tatsuya Ichihashi.
Although our story today takes us to Japan, we're starting it in England, in a city called Coventry. Coventry is located deep in the Midlands of England. Known for its medieval cathedral and, sadly, also for its destruction during World War II, Coventry has bounced back in the last few decades to become an engineering powerhouse to the United Kingdom.
With easy access to both London and Birmingham, and most of the country less than a two-hour drive away, it's a well-situated city with a lot to offer to its residents. And one of those residents was Lindsay Hawker. Lindsay was born on December 30th, 1984, to her father Bill and mother Julia Hawker.
She was a happy child growing up, and had two sisters named Louise and Lisa. She was schooled at King Henry VIII School, and at the end of college, she ventured to the University of Leeds to study biology. She met university with academic success too, and in 2006, she achieved a first-class honours grade.
Being both very serious about her future career while also being popular among her friends, Lindsay had a lot going for her. She was bright, nurturing, caring, and successful. But she also had an appetite to try something new before pursuing her master's degree, and so in mid-2006, she hatched up a plan.
Lindsay decided to take a year out of a busy schedule to do a bit of travelling while she worked. She figured that a year out of education would bring a new perspective to her life. And so in October 2006, she signed up to Nova Teaching School. and found herself on a plane to Japan.
She had signed up to NOVA, Japan's largest private English school, which recruits adults from around the world to teach the language in both Osaka and Tokyo. NOVA is considered to be a prestigious assignment, and Lindsay was one of the lucky few who managed to grab a spot. After touching down in Tokyo, Lindsay was finally assigned to Koiwa, a district in the Edogawa ward of Tokyo. and she would quickly find both comfort and excitement in her surroundings. Located only 17 minutes away from Akihabara and 22 minutes away from Asakusa, there's a plethora of sights, activities and fun things to do near Koiwa.
Whether you're there for food, parks, shopping, temples, or just a good drink, Tokyo has it all. She had found herself in one of the most interesting cities that the world has to offer. and she was loving it.
She decided to move a little further east from Tokyo's center to a place called Acheva. Here the rent was cheaper. She also moved in with two other teachers, both of them also working at Nova School, and very quickly the three would become friends. And soon after, Lindsay's time in Tokyo started to fly by.
Although she was loving her time away from home, Lindsay often still thought about home. She had a loving family, a large group of friends, and a boyfriend back in England. And so with that said, the homebird often kept in contact through Facebook, Skype, text, and phone call. It was six months into her stay in Tokyo in March 2007 that Lindsay had an awkward encounter. She had finished work for the day and travelled back to Chiba Station before collecting her bike.
As she was unlocking her bike, a man approached her from behind. When she turned around, the man greeted her by saying, You are my English teacher. Lindsay was confused by the situation.
She was sure that he was not one of her students. She awkwardly declined to comment, but the man continued following her. She jumped on her bike and began to cycle away, but still the man followed her. She sped up. His walking turned into jogging, and then his jogging into running.
And with cheap as many roads and intersecting walkways, it was almost impossible for Lindsay to escape him. He continued to strike a conversation, asking Lindsay where she was from and where she studied. She still tried to shake him off though. She eventually reached her apartment, and this is where she stopped her bike. The man was known as Tatsuya Ichihashi, and he had been running after Lindsay for the entire duration back home.
When he finally caught up with her, he had a proposal to make, and despite his strange performance, the offer was simple and innocent enough. Tatsuya asked Lindsay if she'd be interested in providing him English lessons. He felt like he needed a little bit of help with the language.
They could meet in a cafe, and he'd pay her generously by the hour. Lindsay politely refused. Her work schedule was busy enough, and the time she did have off was on her own terms, having fun.
Tatsuya was disappointed, but he did seem to accept her answer. It was here, though, that he asked her one final strange question. He was thirsty after pretty much chasing Lindsay throughout the streets of Chiba. He asked her if she'd politely provide him a glass of water in her apartment.
Lindsay was hesitant, but reluctantly, she did allow him into the apartment. Sure, he was a strange man, and he did make her feel uncomfortable, but she had two roommates. This was a good opportunity to indirectly show the man that she did have company at all times, and it was an opportunity for her friends to see his face, should it ever come up again in the future. They entered the apartment together, and it was inside her apartment while having his drink that he made the offer again.
It came with a price tag this time. He'd pay Lindsay ¥3,500 or $32 an hour, and the interaction would be strictly business. This was an offer Lindsay couldn't refuse.
Although Nova was helping her get by in Tokyo, she could do with some extra cash, and this was easy money. She agreed to his request, deciding to meet him at a coffee shop a few days later. Tatsuya was appreciative, and he thanked Lindsay for the offer.
Before he'd leave her apartment though, he wanted to give her one last thing. He whipped out a pen from his back pocket and grabbed some scrap paper, and then he started scribbling something. A few moments later, he handed her the note. It was a sketch he had just drawn, one of Lindsay, and along the sketch was his name and his phone number. Tatsuya Ichihashi was a 28-year-old man from the city of Ichikawa, also located in Chiba Prefecture.
He was born in Gifu Prefecture on the 5th of January 1979, and initially grew up there before moving to Chiba. He was born into a successful family. His father was a medical doctor at a local hospital in Chiba, while his mother was also a professional dentist. In his younger years, Tatsuya had ambitions to follow his father's footsteps in becoming a medical doctor. But when he failed his exams and was denied in advancing his studies, he settled for a degree from the Department of Horticulture.
He graduated from Chiba University in 2005, and although he passed his degree relatively well, Tatsuya did not make effort to find any work. Instead, he lived on an allowance of 100,000 yen, or $920 a month, from his parents. And this is where we learn a little more about the dark half of Tatsuya Ichihashi. Tatsuya had no previous convictions with the law, but he had been the subject of an allegation of prior theft and injury. Allegedly, he had assaulted a woman on the street during a robbery, but the matter had been settled out of court.
It is alleged that his father paid the woman off with around 1 million yen, or $10,000. He was also described as a loner with an obsession for physical fitness. Tatsuya regularly attended his local gym, and he often cycled over 25 kilometers every day. In addition to this, Tatsuya was known to be a little reclusive, rebellious, and had no intention to find any work. And with only $900 a month to get by, were weekly sessions at $35 an hour really that sustainable?
Back to Lindsay's apartment though, after handing her the sketch with his name and his number, Tatsuya thanked Lindsay for a time and the glass of water. He wished her well, until they'd meet a few days later. Fast forward several days, and it is now Saturday the 24th of March 2007. Lindsay had contacted Tatsuya a couple days prior, and they'd arranged for their first English lesson in a local coffee shop.
CCTV captured the two conversing while in the queue to grab a drink. Lindsay seemed relatively relaxed, but she did make clear steps backwards whenever Tatsuya moved too close. The pair sat and spoke for what is assumed to be a little over an hour, and progress was good. At the end of it though, Tatsuya awkwardly pointed out that he'd forgotten his money.
No worries, he said. Lindsay agreed, and so the two hopped into a taxi. Lindsay hadn't brought her bike with her that day, and she also had work later on in the afternoon. So when she arrived at Tatsuya's, she asked the taxi driver if he'd be so kind to wait for her. He agreed, and so Lindsay followed Tatsuya into his apartment.
Several minutes later though, Lindsay still hadn't returned. That's a little strange, the taxi driver thought. but maybe she's had a change of plans. No worries, and so on that note, he left, completely forgetting about the incident. Lindsay failed to show up to work late that afternoon, however, and even worse, she never made it back to her apartment either.
Her housemates, already noting that she wasn't at work that day, started to worry about Lindsay. They called the police later that night to report her missing. But Saturday turned into Sunday, and Sunday turned into Monday. The family and friends of Lindsay, back home in the United Kingdom, were already starting to grow worried over her radio silence. It was only after Monday though, when she missed her second day of work, that panic really started to set in.
The school contacted her parents to let them know that she had now missed two days in a row, and straight after that, they contacted the police. It was only then though that the police started taking Lindsay's disappearance a little more seriously. Police search efforts started at Lindsay's home, and her housemates were the first to be interviewed.
And with luck, they already had a suspect in mind. They knew that Lindsay went to see a man in a coffee shop shortly before she disappeared, and she'd also left his sketch back in the apartment. This was their first clue. It was around 5.40pm that two officers were dispatched to Tatsuya's home, but after knocking on his door, no one answered it. His neighbours, though, were at home, and kindly, they let officers peer over from the balcony and into Tatsuya's living room.
There were no lights on in the property, but there did appear to be somebody lurking around inside. And weirdly enough, his detachable bathtub had been moved from the bathroom to the balcony. On a hunch, the two officers called for backup.
They were worried that maybe Lindsay was inside, being held hostage. And within the hour, seven more officers arrived. Three hours and nine officers later, and police were getting ready to raid Tatsuya's home. It was then in a surprise moment that Tatsuya opened his front door, with a rucksack in bare feet.
In that split moment of panic, Tatsuya stormed past police. They tried to grab him, but only managed to get his rucksack. Tatsuya himself slipped by.
They didn't manage to keep up with Tatsuya either. With the building's hallways being so narrow and confusing, he managed to get by. And with police officers lacking any radio equipment, they lost all sight of the man, so in the middle of Tokyo City, Tatsuya vanished into the night.
It was as if the man had literally disappeared into thin air, because Tatsuya was nowhere to be found. Police officers investigating his property just moments later would be in for a gruesome scene. There they had found the naked body of Lindsay Hawker.
She was found buried in Tatsuya's detachable bathtub, which he had moved himself to the balcony. The tub had been filled with a mixture of sand and soil, almost entirely covering Lindsay, with only her right hand emerging from the surface. She had been bound and gagged, with plastic ties and scarves, and bruises were present across her upper body.
In her final hour, she had been subjected to an extended assault. her possessions still scattered across the room. Along with the body, sand and soil in the balcony bathtub, it also contained a decomposing agent to speed up the process of decomposition, and flower seeds were placed on top to disguise the bathtub as a flower bed.
The seeds eventually would be feeding off Lindsay's body. To add to the harrowing discovery, it was also strangely noted that Tatsuya had shaved all of Lindsay's hair off of her head. Police would also discover several wigs in Tatsuya's apartment, alleging that perhaps he was a cross-dresser. This quickly became public knowledge, and soon after, rumours even started circulating to suggest that maybe Tatsuya had killed Lindsay to wear her hair as a wig.
By the next morning, Tatsuya Ichihashi was officially a wanted man across all of Japan. Police distributed wanted posters across the city. His face was shown across multiple news sites.
Interviews given to anyone who may have potential information, and raids were witnessed at locations of possible sightings of the suspect. But despite all efforts, just like a ghost, Tatsuya was nowhere to be seen. Hardly any sightings of the man are reported over the following weeks. In fact, all of them turned into dead ends.
Police were so keen to capture the suspect, though, that they decided to release photoshopped images of Tatsuya wearing wigs, just in case he was out in drag. But Tatsuya was good at remaining unnoticed. In fact, he was so good at evading the police that his disappearance turned from weeks, into months, into years.
And this frustrated Lindsay's family, because in addition to the relentless pain that they had to experience from the loss of their daughter, was the feeling that a killer got away. It was not just that, but they also felt that Japanese police were growing lazy and sloppy in their investigations. It angered Lindsay's parents so much actually that, just months after her death, the two would travel to Japan and single-handedly assist in raising awareness of Lindsay's killer. Her father Bill even met members of the Japanese Mafia, the Yakuza, in a bar, giving them two bottles of whiskey as a present before asking them for their help. And as time went on, Japanese police soon found themselves in the centre of the spotlight.
How did nine police officers let one man slip by? Why did they take a month to quiz vital witnesses? And did they know that their wanted poster had a picture seven years out of date? Police and the Hawker family would slowly start to argue against each other, and soon British and Japanese media were involved too.
And while all of this was happening, Tatsuya was still out there. He had actually travelled across most of Japan during his time on the run. Ranging from Aomori, one of the most northern cities on Japan's main island, right down to the southern island of Okinawa, Tatsuya had remained unnoticed.
He even lived on a remote island in a concrete bunker at times to avoid detection too. A year after Lindsay's death in 2008, and right through 2009, Tatsuya found himself in Osaka. Located 250 miles west of Tokyo, Osaka is a large port city and a commercial center to Honshu. It's known for its modern architecture, nightlife, and hearty street food.
It was during this time that Tatsuya routinely lived in internet cafes and worked on construction sites to get by. With the money that he could save up, he would put that towards plastic surgery, to change its appearance and avoid being caught by the law. However, he had actually already changed his appearance through self-mutilation, ever since becoming wanted by the law. He'd cut off his moles, used scissors to cut off part of his lower lip, and eventually sewed a thread through his nose to alter its shape.
By the summer of 2009, police were painfully desperate to find Tatsuya. It was here that the National Police Agency raised the cash reward for information leading to the arrest of him from 1 million to 10 million yen. They also released a new statement advising it was believed that Tatsuya had plastic surgery performed to his face to alter his appearance, and that people should be on the lookout for resemblances of Tatsuya's special identifications. And it worked, because in October 2009, a plastic surgeon located in Nagoya informed police that he believed that he had just worked on Tatsuya.
Tatsuya had foolishly accepted to take a before and after picture of his operation. The same photos would be shared with police, and eventually, the world. This rattled Tatsuya.
He knew that the newly released photos by police had blown his cover. In fact, it was so successful that one of his colleagues back at a construction site in Osaka recognized him. Tatsuya knew that he had to get out of Osaka and hide, fast. His plan was as he had done before in several other close calls.
flee to Okinawa and take refuge in one of the abandoned concrete bunkers found across its many remote islands. On the 10th of November 2009, he discreetly fled to Osaka's ferry port, three days of keeping his head low on a slow ferry to Okinawa, and he would finally be in a much safer position away from justice. But before he could even reach the boat, Tatsuya's luck would finally run out.
A worker at the ferry port had actually recognized his face, and informed security that this could very well be the Ichihashi. And they were right, because only moments later, Tatsuya came face to face with a handful of officers. They asked him for his name, and at this stage he knew it was over.
He told them yes, I am Tatsuya Ichihashi. The game was over. He was then formally arrested by police and was initially charged with abandoning a body. He would later be served two more warrants for rape and murder, and it would take eight months for him to finally meet his jury. On the 4th of July 2011, his trial began, and with the outcome pretty certain from the very beginning, deliberation wouldn't last long.
A lot of attention was focused on how Japan's court system would punish Tatsuya. Although Japan does enforce the death penalty, not a lot of single-person murderers find it to be their fate. But Tatsuya was a well-publicized man in the media, and many voices supported the idea. During his trial, Tatsuya admitted that he enticed Lindsay into his apartment, raped her, and then strangled her because he feared neighbours would hear her scream and call the police.
On the 21st of July 2011, Tatsuya Ichihashi was officially sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Lindsay Hawker. And although Lindsay's family had asked for the death penalty for Tatsuya, the court felt that the death penalty was not appropriate as he had no previous convictions. And at the age of 32, there was still a chance that he could one day become rehabilitated. The trial would not come without its fair share of new devastation and pain to Lindsay's family, however.
Not only would they have to relive her final moments again, but they would also have to see new images of Lindsay's body, something they regret ever seeing. Following Tatsuya's sentence, Lindsay's parents shared the following to state media. We've waited a long time for today.
We've waited four and a half years for justice. Lindsay loved Japan, and you have not let her down. Ichihashi, you have taken away a precious life, destroyed a whole existence, and stolen countless memories from us.
The verdict which puts Tatsu behind bars for life was welcomed by most people in the nation, and Tatsu himself accepting his own fate. Shortly before trial, Tatsu had actually authored and published a book confessing to Lindsay's murder, most of his biography describing how he'd spent two and a half years on the run, and what he had to do to avoid detection. The book, which was named Until I Was Arrested, was offered with all royalties and profits to Lindsay's family.
and over 100,000 copies would sell worldwide. But Lindsay's family rejected the offer, and despite Tatsuya's strange attempt at a good deed, nothing could bring them back their daughter. Lindsay was well-loved, successful, cheerful, and irreplaceable.
She was in the middle of an incredible experience abroad, doing good by teaching others a valuable new skill. And in the end it was her kindness that was used against her by a strange heartless man. She will be dearly missed by her parents, her sisters, and all of her friends. Thank you so much for watching another video today by Coffeehouse Crime, and thank you for supporting me in my other videos too. To all of you coming back for more, I really appreciate you and your enthusiasm.
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Goodbye.