Murder in Japan: Suspect charged in the killing of Lindsay Hawker

It was a dread­ful night on March 24, 2007. Lind­say Hawker was an Eng­lish teacher at Nova, a well known lan­guage school in Japan. She had met Tat­suya Ichi­hashi by chance in a café a few days ear­lier, and that night had agreed to go up to his room. The next day she was found dead in his apartment.

The evi­dence was over­whelm­ing against Tat­suya Ichi­hashi. Lindsay’s body had been found in a bath­tub on the bal­cony filled with sand and other mate­ri­als, which Ichiro had been pur­chas­ing from the local hard­ware store. The taxi cab dri­ver had been told to wait for Lind­say to come back down from Ichiro’s apart­ment, but she never returned. He also fled the scene once police offi­cers arrived.

Ichiro had evaded arrest until late Novem­ber 2009 when police finally caught up with him in Osaka. Today the news­pa­pers reported the offi­cial “charges” being brought by the court against Tat­suya Ichihashi.

Asahi “The Chiba Dis­trict Attor­ney charges Hayashi with Rape Killing” On Decem­ber 23^rd the dis­trict attorney’s office in Chiba pre­fec­ture charged Tat­suya Ichi­hashi (orig­i­nally brought up aban­don­ing a corpse charges) with rape killing. The deci­sion was based on the fact that Hayashi had an intent to kill when he raped Lind­say on the evening of March 24, 2007.

The Chiba Court claims that Ichi­hashi bound her hands together, hit her many times in the face, and killed her by suf­fo­ca­tion. Ichi­hashi has yet to enter a plea, accord­ing to the Asahi.

Nikkei “Hayashi is charged again, this time with Rape Killing. The court is to include a Cit­i­zen Jury Sys­tem” The clear dif­fer­ence between the Nikkei and the Asahi’s account of the inci­dent is the Nikkei com­mented on the trial being decided by Japan’s “Cit­i­zen Jury Sys­tem.” This would be a ground break­ing case, as the Japan­ese jury sys­tem was just intro­duced this past year.

The Nikkei also men­tioned Ichihashi’s defense, claim­ing “Lind­say cried out very loudly. I put my arms around her from behind to hug her, not to kill her.”

Related posts:

1. Death Threats on Wikipedia, in Japan
2. Baby Boy Found in Freezer
3. Ichiro Breaks Record
4. One of the Brains of Postal Pri­va­ti­za­tion Charged with Theft