Ichihashi CAPTURED!!!!

[TFG]

NHK just reported that the police have captured ICHIHASHI!:D

Japanese police arrest prime suspect in murder of British teacher Lindsay Hawker

Japanese police have arrested the man they believe murdered British teacher Lindsay Hawker and left her naked body buried in a bathtub filled with sand.

Tatsuya Ichihashi was caught just hours after Linday's mother appealed on television for him to turn himself in.

The arrest comes just days after police released new images of what they believed Ichihashi now looks like after undergoing a raft of cosmetic surgeries while a fugitive.

[GuyJean]

NHK just reported that the police have captured ICHIHASHI!:D

They're saying the man looks very closely like Ichihashi.. TBC..

GJ

[TFG]

They are saying he was captured trying to board a ferry bound for Okinawa & they have just reported this to the Hawker family.

[Mike Oxlong]

http://home.kyodo.co.jp/modules/fstStory/index.php?storyid=469802

[gomichild]

Good.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

It's a pity....I would have preferred vigilantes got to him first. Instead, he'll go before a Japanese court and get the typically lenient sentence they give to killers of foreign women, despite sending the country on a wild goose chase for more than two years.
Chances of that happening are even higher in this case with mummy and daddy sure to open the coffers for his defense.

[TFG]

Me too, mind you the British embassy being involved adds some serious weight to the situation.

He needs a stiletto slipped through his ribcage.

[GomiGirl]

YAY - this is great news. I had been so looking foward to this post.

The amount of extra press lately was encouraging that they were closing in.

Lets see how this pans out... also would be very eager to know where he has been getting his funding!!

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Me too, mind you the British embassy being involved adds some serious weight to the situation.

He needs a stiletto slipped through his ribcage.

Embassy involvement (which has always been the case when foreigners are killed) won't mean SFA to a Japanese court. He'll get a few years' prison, have the sentence cut in half for good behavior, then go out and murder another foreign woman again like those perverted creeps Obara and the guy that chopped up Honiefaith.

[Mulboyne]

He needs a stiletto slipped through his ribcage.

I think the parents need to know more about what happened that day to their daughter so I hope he's kept on suicide watch.

[Mike Oxlong]

No way TFG! Guantanamo should be his next home...wait, with the luck he's been having, he'd hook up with Harold & Kumar.

[Tsuru]

Good... now let's hope he doesn't get the chance to reach celebrity status like that freak Sagawa.

[Mike Oxlong]

...but the comments point to the Mainichi paper and say he was nabbed trying to board a ferry.

Police took into custody Tuesday the suspect in the 2007 murder of a British woman and said the man identified himself as Tatsuya Ichihashi, 30.

Police authorities said the man was seized in Osaka and is in custody at Suminoe Police Station.

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.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/ichihashi-turns-himself-to-osaka-police

[GomiGirl]

Well the police PR machine will be on high alert I am sure.

(BTW I rang Caroline Pover who has been heavily involved in a campaign to keep the media and public aware of this case and is in contact with the Hawker family today. She can't stop crying she is so happy... )

[Mulboyne]

Apparently, Ichihashi's mum had spoken on TV before his capture:

Earlier Ichihashi's mother called a TV programme to plead with her son to give himself up, the first public comment made by his parents, both wealthy medical professionals, since his disappearance. "It's mum, Tatsuya," the woman said in an audio message aired on Fuji TV. "Dad and mum have decided to speak about our feelings, although we know you won't like this." She said she and her husband were pleased to hear comments in the media by his construction site colleagues that he had been a hard worker and wanted to be good to his parents. "If so, please go to [the] police station and tell them the truth. Please."

From here

Mr Hawker speaking on TV:

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[GomiGirl]

The BBC have the story.

They are saying Osaka though. I thought it was in Fukuoka that he was captured.

[Mike Oxlong]

The BBC have the story.

They are saying Osaka though.

So is Kyodo via JT. Suminoe ward in Osaka.

As to his mom's TV pleas...two and half years too late!!!:flame:

[GomiGirl]

Can somebody get a recording of the NHK news at 9pm please? Caroline Pover doesn't have NHK and is hoping to see the report.

I suggested that somebody will probably post a YouTube clip of it - I am at work otherwise I would do it.

[Samurai_Jerk]

I'm watching NHK news right now (sorry, can't record it) and they said that Ichihashi was waiting to board a ferry to Okinawa at the port in Osaka and someone called the police and reported seeing him. They swooped in and he gave up and admitted that he was Ichihashi.

[BO-SENSEI]

I think the parents need to know more about what happened that day to their daughter so I hope he's kept on suicide watch.

Suicide would be too nice for him, he needs a date with a rope. i heard he was waiting for a ferry to Okinawa in kobe, but there was no ferry that day, it would seem weird for him to go to Okinawa but i guess it was lucky that he did not check the ferry schedule.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Suicide would be too nice for him, he needs a date with a rope. i heard he was waiting for a ferry to Okinawa in kobe, but there was no ferry that day, it would seem weird for him to go to Okinawa but i guess it was lucky that he did not check the ferry schedule.

NHK said that they told him in Kobe there wasn't a ferry today and suggested he go to Nanko (?) in Osaka. That's where he got busted.

[Mulboyne]

Looks like he's on the 21:20 shinkansen from Shin-Osaka to Tokyo which gets in at 23:45.

[Iraira]

I'm just hoping that Japan decides to set just one example on the table (preferably his disembodied head on the table) for the world to see. This has garnered way too much negative publicity for Japan not to have him at least tossed in the clink for the next 15-20 years. Hopefully, the judicial system will feel he's dirty enough to sacrifice. Or at least let us have at him.

[Samurai_Jerk]

This has garnered way too much negative publicity for Japan not to have him at least tossed in the clink for the next 15-20 years.

I don't know. NHK was saying that police have been looking for him on suspicion of disposing of Hawker's body. If that's all they convict him of, he'll be out in a few years like Honniefaith's killer.

[BO-SENSEI]

I don't know. NHK was saying that police have been looking for him on suspicion of disposing of Hawker's body. If that's all they convict him of, he'll be out in a few years like Honniefaith's killer.

Sad, I find it weird they keep saying he is unemployed and I also doubt they will ever state how this fucker eluded police barefoot. I wonder what the reporters were yelling while he was boarding the Shinkansen.

[Mulboyne]

I don't know. NHK was saying that police have been looking for him on suspicion of disposing of Hawker's body. If that's all they convict him of, he'll be out in a few years like Honniefaith's killer.

That gives them an initial charge to hold him while they look to get a confession for the major crime. There's always a chance he might start by claiming it was an accidental death or something.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

That gives them an initial charge to hold him while they look to get a confession for the major crime. There's always a chance he might start by claiming it was an accidental death or something.

Agree with Mulboyne...the disposal of the body charge would only be the initial arrest.
Even if he does try to argue accidental death, I think he will almost invariably be charged with murder, especially in light of his attempts to conceal the body and subsequent flight. And, if they're really keen, they can throw a whole lot of other charges on him, like mutilation of a corpse, destruction of evidence, resisting arrest, obstruction of official duties, even tax evasion if they really want to. I don't see prosecutors getting that keen, though.

[TennoChinko]

YAY - this is great news. I had been so looking foward to this post.

The amount of extra press lately was encouraging that they were closing in.

Lets see how this pans out... also would be very eager to know where he has been getting his funding!!

Same here. I find it hard to believe he made enough doing construction work (or bjs in gay bars) to fund his travels and plastic surgery.

[tidbits]

News on TV now are reporting Ichihashi were planning to apply for passport. Glad that they caught him before he flee to overseas.

(Another live interview with Lindsay's dad on TV now)

[Mulboyne]

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