Diary of a Maniac, or the Mysterious Disappearance of Lucy Blackman
British Lucy Blackman was a tall and beautiful girl. By the age of 21, she had worked as a waitress, model, and flight attendant for British Airways. But the girl could not provide herself with a decent standard of living. Debts were growing, and an easy and well-paid job remained a dream. Therefore, when Lucy learned about high earnings for girls in Japan, she quickly made a decision.
Lucy decided to go to Japan for several reasons. The first, of course, was her debts, which had exceeded 6 thousand pounds. The second reason was the desire to visit a distant exotic country. And the third was her friend Louise, who encouraged her, convincing Blackman that in Japan they would have an easy and interesting job as a hostess in a bar, which did not exclude meeting rich single men.
In the end, Lucy didn't think long and soon, together with her friend, she was already receiving her luggage at the Tokyo airport. The girls couldn't count on an official work visa, so they got a tourist visa for 90 days. After it expired, they planned to stay in Japan illegally.
The friends quickly found work as hostesses at a club in Tokyo, in the Rappongi district, where entertainment and downright vice establishments are traditionally located. It is worth clarifying that in the Land of the Rising Sun, hostesses are not girls who escort a guest to a reserved or free table in a bar or restaurant. In Japan, they entertain the client with conversation and encourage him to order as much food and drink as possible. The hostesses themselves also treat themselves at the client's expense, but instead of drinks, they are brought water or juice similar in color to alcohol.
Sometimes girls leave with a customer to continue communication outside the establishment. This service is called "dohan". Usually the hostess goes to the man's home, but this does not imply intimacy. It is assumed that they will also have a nice conversation, but already on the client's territory. Of course, only two people know what actually happens during dohan.
Usually, it is not the most popular girls or newcomers who go to dohans. They are given a condition - to participate in a certain number of dohans per month. Lucy was just new and did not know the language, so she went with the bar's clients more often than others. After another trip on July 1, 2000, Saturday, she disappeared.
Her friend Louise was the first to sound the alarm. Before Lucy disappeared, she told her that the man she was leaving with would bring her to the bar at 8 p.m. But she didn't show up at that time, or even in the morning. Louise didn't know who her friend had left with, but she told her that she was dating the man more than once and that he was decent, although a little strange. The host club administration had no information about this client either.
When Lucy didn't show up on Sunday, Louise went to the police. She told them that her friend had gone on a date and disappeared. She hid the fact that they both worked at a host club, which is illegal if you only have a tourist visa.
After the police, the girl visited the British Vice-Consul Ian Ferguson. She was extremely frank with him. The diplomat learned a lot about his compatriots who come to "see" Japan. The Vice-Consul immediately realized that this was not just a disappearance, but a kidnapping.
When Louise left the consul, a man called her from an unknown number. He said he was calling at Lucy's request and gave her some strange information:
When the girl asked to pass the phone to Lucy, the man suddenly got angry and said that she would never see her friend again. After that, he hung up. Louise immediately returned to the consulate and told about the call. There she was advised to go to the police and this time tell everything, without hiding the details.
Louise was forced to call Lucy's parents, who lived in Kent, UK. The girl's father Tim and her mother Jane were divorced, but maintained a relationship. The missing girl's father decided to go to Japan to help with the search. He took Lucy's sister Sophie with him. The mother and her youngest son Rupert stayed at home to wait for news.
When Tim and Sophie arrived in Tokyo, all the newspapers were trumpeting the disappearance of the foreigner. Journalists put forward the wildest versions, escalating the situation. The arrival of the missing woman's relatives coincided with the G8 summit, attended by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Tim managed to meet him and tell him what had happened. The politician promised to assist in the search and asked his Japanese colleague Yoshiro Mori to take control of the case.
By early autumn, 150 police officers were working on the Lucy Blackman case. Tim and Sophie were flying back and forth between home and Japan. Tim was giving press conferences and interviews. He understood the importance of keeping the public interested in the case. He was so active that some people began to accuse him of using his daughter's disappearance as a PR tool.
The police and Tim personally received daily calls from people who claimed to have seen Lucy or knew where she was. Unfortunately, they all gave false hope. But one day, a call came that helped the search move forward. An Englishwoman who worked as a hostess in Rappongi four years ago called the police. She remembered a strange client who persistently invited her to his house on the coast.
When the girl agreed, he brought her to a luxurious apartment and fed her a good dinner. After that, she passed out and came to only in the morning. Her clothes were in the wash, and the man said that she needed to rest for a few days. What he slipped into her drink and what he did while she was unconscious is unknown. The hostess was sure that she had been raped, but she did not go to the police, fearing deportation from the country.
After that, a girl from Canada called and told about a certain Kazu, who invited her to visit back in 1996. He arrived in an expensive sports car and took the hostess to a house by the sea. There, the guest drank a glass of wine and the same thing happened to her as to the British woman. There were other calls with similar stories.
Bit by bit, the police managed to gather information about the strange rich man. Soon his name became known - Jedzi Obara. He was a Korean who had lived in Japan for many years and even changed his name. He was rich and was involved in the construction business, and was also noted for his connections with the yakuza. He brought girls to the elite residential complex Moto-Akasaka Towers, where he rented spacious apartments near the surf line.
Obara owned several apartments and houses, and police raided them all. They eventually found bottles of chloroform, large quantities of sleeping pills, and gamma-hydroxybutyrate, often called the "date-rape drug." But the most valuable find was Obara's diary, which he had kept for 13 years.
Obara's diary mentioned 209 women, next to whose names he indicated the means by which he put his victims to sleep. The maniac wrote that he dreamed of sleeping with 500 women before he was 50. He recorded sex with unconscious victims on video and photographed them. The scoundrel had a huge archive, but neither it nor the diary mentioned Lucy Blackman.
The detainee denied knowing Lucy. It seemed that the investigation had reached a dead end and the forensic experts could not find a single clue. But after 4 months, it was decided to search the house and its surroundings again, using service dogs and ground penetrating radar. This time, the police were successful. A few dozen meters from Obara's house, they found a cave in the rocks. In it lay a package with parts of a woman's body.
The bag contained a hand, feet, ankles and knitted gloves. Three more bags filled with body parts were soon found nearby. Experts determined that the woman had been dismembered using a chainsaw. Decomposition made identification of the remains much more difficult, but dental impressions revealed that it was Lust Blackman. Traces of the narcotic drug Rohypnol were found in the girl's mouth.
After this, Obara admitted that he knew the girl and that she had visited him in July 2001. He never confessed to her murder. It turned out that in July the maniac had bought a chainsaw, plastic bags and gloves. The court charged him with kidnapping, rape, murder and concealment of a body.
In addition, Dzedzi Obara was accused of another murder - that of Australian Karita Ridgeway, as well as 8 rapes. Obara brought 21-year-old Karita unconscious to the hospital and claimed that she had been poisoned by seafood. Without giving his name, the criminal left. Karita soon died in intensive care without regaining consciousness. The forensic expert determined that she had been poisoned by chloroform. Unlike Lucy, Karita was on Obara's recordings, so his guilt was quickly proven.
In 2007, the court found Dzedzi Obara guilty on all counts except... Lucy's murder. The judges cited a lack of direct evidence. Nevertheless, the maniac received a life sentence. In 2008, the Blackman family's lawyer secured a retrial and Obara was convicted of the murder of the British woman.
This story has a very sad ending. The troubles in the Blackman family did not end with Lucy's death. The girl's brother, Rupert, developed depression, which caused him to drop out of college. Her sister Sophie tried to commit suicide the night after her sister's funeral. Tim Blackman set up a foundation in his daughter's name. It was based on the sum of 453 thousand pounds that was given to him by a friend of Dzeji Obara as compensation. This served as a pretext for accusing the man of betraying his daughter's memory and profiting from her death.