Body Parts in Japan May End Mystery

Feb. 9, 2001 -- The mysterious case of the young British woman who disappeared in Tokyo months ago appeared to be heading towards a solution with Japanese police finding parts of a woman's body that could belong to Lucie Blackman.

Blackman, a 22-year-old former airline stewardess who worked as a bar hostess in Tokyo's trendy Roppongi entertainment district, went missing on July 1.

Her mysterious disappearance has gripped the Japanese media after Japanese police revealed there were links with Joji Obara, 48, a wealthy Tokyo property developer who has been arrested on charges of raping several foreign and Japanese women.

NHK national television said a partial corpse — including a head, torso and hands — had been found in a cave on a beach near the town of Miura, about 30 miles from Tokyo today.

A spokeswoman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said they were trying to identify the body parts. "It looks like a woman's body, but because it is so badly damaged, we have yet to make a final determination," she said.

But back home in Kent, England, Blackman's father feared the worst.

"The assumption is that these are parts of Lucie's body," Tim Blackman told the BBC. "I got a phone call from a member of the press in Japan and he was just telling us that parts of a body had been found and that he received this information from the police. We will have to wait if that is confirmed or not through DNA testing."

Hair in the Bathroom

For the Blackmans, the discovery is the latest in an ordeal that began the day the blonde Briton disappeared during a day-trip to the Chiba coast east of Tokyo with an unidentified man more than seven months ago.

The case has gripped Japan — where crimes involving Western women are very rare — especially after Japanese police said hairs found in Obara's apartment may be Blackman's.

Obara has denied any involvement in Blackman's disappearance although he has admitted having drinks with her at the bar where she worked.

The Tokyo police however, have not filed any charges against Obara in connection with the Blackman case.

At a trial for allegedly raping two foreign women last month, prosecutors told a Japanese court they found videos of Obara having sex with foreign women. Prosecutors accused him of lacing the women's drinks with pills that temporarily knocked them out.

Obara is pleading not guilty and has said the women had consensual sex with him.

The Japanese Times had earlier reported that hair samples found in Obara's apartment in Zushi, a seaside town, appeared to be linked with samples of Blackman's hair provided by her family.

But the Times reported DNA analyses could not definitely prove samples such as hair, nails, skin, bone and blood belonged to a specific person, but they could prove they didn't. Fingerprints are a more accurate form of identification, said the paper.

A Family’s Trauma

But Blackman's father suspects Obara is responsible for his daughter's disappearance.

"It's been an extremely traumatic time for us particularly when this man was originally arrested. We started to fear the worst at that stage," he told the BBC.

"I think we started to feel that Lucie had run into an awful situation and that potentially what he had administered to her could have been fatal."

The last the world heard of Blackman was on June 30 when she called a friend saying she was going on a day trip to the seaside with a customer.

Blackman was only 21 when she entered Japan as a tourist in early May.

Since her disappearance, her father has been a frequent visitor to Japan, making emotional appeals for help from the Japanese public.

Her family has put up a $15,000 reward for information leading to her discovery, and distributed more than 30,000 leaflets with her photograph around Tokyo.

They have also established a hotline in Tokyo and hired British and Japanese private investigators to help with the search.