A 32-year-old Japanese man was yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment for raping and killing British teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker in 2007, before burying her battered body in a sand-filled bathtub.
Tatsuya Ichihashi — who spent more than two-and-a-half years on the run after the 2007 crime and had plastic surgery to evade capture — had admitted raping the English teacher, but said he killed her accidentally.
Prosecutors had demanded life for Ichihashi, condemning his crime as “coarse and extremely self-centered.”
Photo: EPA
As the presiding judge read out the ruling, a motionless Ichihashi stared at the ground, NTV reported.
Hawker’s family — her father, mother and two sisters visiting Japan to hear the verdict — repeatedly wiped tears and nodded many times in approval as the sentence was read out, it said.
Hawker’s father, Bill, had earlier urged the Chiba District Court to show “no mercy” and called for the death penalty — a punishment usually reserved for cases of multiple homicide.
Hawker’s parents were also present at Ichihashi’s trial, which took place between July 4 and 12, and gave testimony.
Their daughter Lindsay, from a village near Coventry, was 22 when her body — naked and bound at the wrists and ankles — was found in a bathtub filled with sand on the balcony of Ichihashi’s apartment.
The autopsy showed she died of suffocation, and prosecutors said Ichihashi strangled her after the rape.
Ichihashi testified that after raping her, he bound her and spoke to her for hours, seeking forgiveness. He says she choked to death when he covered her mouth to stop her from screaming for help, but he did not mean to kill her.
After the killing, Ichihashi went on the run, working in temporary jobs between Aomori in Japan’s north and Okinawa. He used the money from odd jobs to pay for cosmetic surgery, altering his eyelids and nose and having a facial mole removed in an effort to evade police.
Ichihashi, whose wanted poster was a common sight at police -stations and public offices across Japan, was caught in November 2009 after a witness tip-off at a ferry terminal as he tried to catch a boat to Okinawa.
He wrote a book titled Until the Arrest about his life on the run and offered the proceeds to the Hawker family, an offer they have declined.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS