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Transcript: 11. The Hostess Murders - Carita Ridgway and Lucie Blackman (Joji Obara) | Japan
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You are listening to: The Evidence Locker.
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Our cases have been researched using open source and archive materials. It deals with true crimes and real people. Each episode is produced with the utmost respect to the victims, their families and loved ones.
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It was Tokyo, 1992 and Samantha Ridgway was an Australian living in Japan, teaching English. She was excited when her sister, Carita, came to live with her in Japan for a while. Carita was a 21-year old aspiring actress from Perth. She was worldly and bright and started travelling at the young age of 17. Her travels had taken her to the US, Mexico and Nepal. Japan was the next tick on the list.
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But things would end in tragedy for Carita. One Monday morning, her sister Samantha received a call from a hospital, notifying her that Carita had been admitted and was seriously ill.
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Samantha rushed to Hideshima Hospital. Her sister was slipping in and out of consciousness. Carita held out her hand, so Samantha could hold it, but she couldn’t speak anymore.
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Hospital staff explained that Carita had eaten a raw oyster, which caused liver failure. A man called “Akira Nishida” had brought her in, said that Carita had been on a date with him when she’d eaten the oyster.
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Within days Carita was declared brain dead and her family had to make the heartbreaking decision to switch off her life support.
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Samantha was suspicious of the man who claimed that he had been on a date with Carita. Carita was in a serious relationship and would not have dated someone else. Samantha knew that Carita’s condition was caused by this man, perhaps he poisoned her. But why would anyone want Carita dead?
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It would take eight, gruelling years for the Ridgway family to understand what had happened to Carita in February of 1992.
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Carita Ridgway went to Tokyo in December 1991, hoping to teach English like her sister. She was saving up to pay off a student loan after studying at a drama school in Sydney. Back home in Australia, her fiancée, Robert Finnegan, who was still at law school, was waiting for her to return and they were looking forward to starting their life together.
Tokyo cannot be compared to any other city.
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It is vibrant, colourful and busy. A blend of modern technology and a culture steeped in tradition. It is regarded as a safe city with one of the lowest homicide rates in the world. Anger or aggression is regarded as shameful in Japanese culture and honour and respect of fellow human beings is extremely important.
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Carita soon found that teaching jobs were hard to come by in Tokyo in 1992. She needed to find a job soon, so she scoured the newspaper and found a job as a hostess at a club in an upmarket area. The fact that it was an easy job with good money made it very attractive.
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The role of hostess in Japan, is slightly different to what Western culture would expect it to be. A hostess is someone who makes sure her client’s drink is frequently topped up and his ego is boosted. Good money can be made, simply by keeping wealthy Japanese businessmen company. Hostesses earn around $150 - $400 a night, and that’s not counting expensive gifts from clients. Young, foreign girls find this to be a great way to make good money in a short amount of time.
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In the 1980’s, non-Asian hostesses became increasingly popular. It was the ultimate ego-boost for a Japanese businessman to have a pretty, young English speaking, Caucasian girl on his arm. Some clients specifically go to a hostess club to feed the fetish for blonde girls with blue eyes.
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Typical clients are well-to-do businessmen who come into the hostess club to blow off steam at the end of a hard day. Nothing sinister takes place, there is a strict policy against men touching hostesses or making sexual advances. A hostess is almost like modern-day geisha, who entertains and who is adored, but never touched.
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If a client were to touch a hostess, he would be thrown out of the club and banned for life. A hostess club is simply a place where men go to feel attractive and important. Beautiful, exotic women fill their drinks, light their cigarettes and engage in conversation. A mama-san (or female manager) keeps a close eye on the girls working in the club to make sure everything is OK.
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If clients want more, they can arrange a paid date with a hostess. This is called a douhan. No sex is expected when going on a douhan. It is up to the girls, as some may choose to sleep with a client. It is important to note that hostesses are not prostitutes or sex workers. They are more like well-paid platonic companions, pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Hostesses are encouraged to accept invitations to douhans, which usually means dinner around 7pm, after which the client accompanies the hostess to the club around 9pm.
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Some hostess clubs keep a scoreboard of sorts, keeping track of douhans. Each hostess is expected to have a certain amount of douhans in a specified time, or else she would be fired.
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Carita Ridgeway’s family was sceptical when they heard about the job at first, but Carita ensured them that she was basically a glorified waitress who earned good money. Many young, foreign girls were working with her and she didn’t feel unsafe.
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On Friday evening, Valentine’s Day 1992, Carita and a group of hostesses she worked with, went on a date (or douhan) with several customers. A friend saw her leaving with an older gentleman who had offered her a lift home. This was the last time anyone saw Carita, alive and well, before her sister rushed to the hospital the following Monday.
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Carita’s sister, Samantha, was puzzled when she received a strange message from Carita, which said that she was going away for the weekend. Worried and unable to reach her sister, Samantha’s worst fears were confirmed when she found her sister in hospital, fighting for her life.
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Carita’s parents, Annette Foster and Nigel Ridgway, who flew to Tokyo from Perth, were shocked to learn that Carita had been diagnosed with hepatitis E. She had suffered complete organ failure and was declared brain dead.
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Samantha was desperate to speak to the man who had reportedly brought Carita into hospital. He did call her a couple of times, asking about Carita, who, had slipped into a coma at the time. However, “Mr Nishida” never left specific details about himself or how Samantha could reach him. He left no number and no address when he checked Carita into hospital either.
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Forced to believe the shellfish story, her family agreed to have Carita’s body cremated, as is Japanese custom. Before she was cremated, however, there was a post mortem examination, however despite many efforts from Carita’s family, they never received any results.
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Without support from Japanese or Australian authorities, Samantha and her parents were left at a dead end.
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Before they left Japan to return to Australia, the man who called himself Akira Nishida met with them at a hotel near the airport. He told them the whole story about the oyster again and said that he felt terrible about everything. He handed over a diamond necklace and a ring that he had bought for Carita. Carita’s family remembered the man being quite nervous and kept wiping sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. He also said that he’d loved Carita and wanted to spend more time with her.
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He also offered to pay 1 million yen to cover the family’s travel costs and Carita’s funeral. At first the family wouldn’t accept it, but being suspicious, Samantha accepted it, hoping the deposit into her bank account would leave a paper trail, should they ever need to track this man down. Unfortunately, when he deposited the money, he wasn’t required to show identification and it showed up on Samantha’s account statement with the only name: ‘Nishida’.
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Samantha Ridgway and her Japanese boyfriend contacted police and urged them to look into Carita’s death. But Japanese police weren’t interested. Carita chose to work as a hostess, making herself vulnerable to misfortune. Besides, she was a foreign national without the legal right to work in Japan. Because of Samantha’s repeated attempts police even threatened with charging her with malfeasance.
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The Ridgway family had no choice, they had to back down and start grieving for the beautiful girl with the happy smile who was ripped from their lives way too soon.
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Unfortunately, Carita’s death didn’t cause much of a ripple in the Tokyo hostess community. At the turn of the millennium Tokyo’s nightlife was as bustling as ever. The main strip is a neighbourhood called Rappongi, a cramped half-square mile of Central Tokyo. There you’ll find bars and restaurants, nightclubs, cabarets, strip clubs and hostess clubs. A mixed bag of people hang out in Rappongi, but it is mostly foreigners like off-duty US military personnel, expats living in Tokyo and business people.
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Clubs vary in size and flavour, with some catering for upmarket clientele and others more for students or young tourists.
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When 21-year old Lucie Blackman from Sevenoaks, England heard about the top dollar a friend’s sister was making pouring drinks and making small talk with Tokyo businessmen, she was ready to start her own oriental adventure.
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Lucie loved to travel. She worked as cabin crew for British Airways for a while, but she and her childhood friend Louise Phillips – decided to take some time out and work in Japan. They arrived on the 4th of May 2000 and entered the country on a 90-day tourist visa.
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Her diary entry written moments after arriving in Tokyo read:
“It is 9:13 here in Tokyo, making it 12:10 midnight behind in England. I am sitting on suitcase at the railway underground feeling completely overwhelmed. I am very tired…also afraid, anxious and lost and very hot! I only hope that I will look back at this with hindsight and laugh at my innocence – of how I was so unaware of what was in store for me.”
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Less than three months later, Lucie would be dead. And what happened to her, was no laughing matter.
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Lucie and Louise found lodging in a gaijin (or alien) house in central Tokyo – an apartment building called Sasaki house. The majority of residents were foreigners, the deposits were low, and the checks on visas were almost non-existent. They shared a six-tatami (or six-floor mat) room with a couple of other young expats.
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Their adventure was about to begin. Back in England, Lucie worked at the Société Générale, a French investment bank, which took her out of Sevenoaks into London. She loved the fast pace and high energy of the trading floor, where she worked as an assistant to the traders. After work, they would go out to trendy bars in the city, sipping champagne. Her salary also afforded her nice clothing and jewellery – she was a bombshell and enjoyed the flirting game.
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Her taste for the high life and finer things caused her to chase up credit card debt. After a relationship with a trader broke up and she left the bank, she applied for a job at British Airways and was hired. However, the constant jetlag was getting her down and she felt she needed a change – which brought her to Tokyo.
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Lucie was attractive and had no trouble finding a job as a hostess at a club. She was tall with naturally blonde hair and was always well groomed. Like Carita Ridgeway’s family eight years earlier, Lucie’s family was also concerned about her new job: pretty girls being paid to keep businessmen company didn’t sound innocent.
00:13:26
Lucie put them at ease – she emailed her sister and told her the job was “like being an air hostess without the altitude”. She admitted to her mom that a customer once offered her “fantastic amount of money to sleep with him.” She laughed at the proposal and reminded the suitor that her job was to pour drinks and discuss mundane topics and perhaps sing karaoke together. Lucie told her sister, Sophie, that she couldn’t believe she was being paid so much money, just to pretend she was listening to someone.
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Lucie and her travel-companion friend, Louise, were very close and they both worked at the same hostess club, Casablanca, in the heart of Rappongi. They watched out for each other and kept in regular contact with their families back in the UK.
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They settled into the regular hostess routine of late nights, daily sleep-ins and afternoon shopping. Lucie met an American marine called Scott Fraser, who was stationed on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kittyhawk in Yokosuko and they started dating casually.
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On the very first night Lucie was booked for a douhan she was quite excited as the money was good. She made plans with Louise and some other girls from the club to go out for a night of dancing. It was a Saturday afternoon, around 3pm when she left the apartment to meet a client for coffee.
00:14:46
Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor of The Times of London who is based in Tokyo, says:
“Japan has a way of disabling one’s instincts of caution.”
00:14:52
Because Japan is – for the most part – a safe place where virtues like trust and honesty are still highly regarded, one does tend to let your guard down somewhat. He carries on saying:
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“Lucie would never have dreamed of doing a similar job anywhere else in the world. I don’t think at home that she would get in a car with a stranger... Japan disarms people.”
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At 5pm on Saturday afternoon the 1st of July 2000, while out on a douhan, she called Louise from an undisclosed number and said everything was fine. From her tone, Louise gathered that Lucie was in a car with her date when she made the call. Lucie told Louise that the man she was with had bought her a pre-paid cell phone.
00:15:37
This was big news, as in the year 2000 foreign nationals who worked illegally in Japan could not legitimately acquire a cell phone. Louise had a cell phone; thanks to a client she went on a douhan with. Lucie ended the conversation by saying that she was given a bottle of French Champagne that she promised to share with Louise when she returned home.
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Ten minutes later Lucie called her boyfriend, Scott’s cell phone and left a cheery message, saying she’ll see him the following day.
After her phone call with Lucie, Louise felt somewhat uneasy. It was unlike Lucie to jump into a car with someone she barely knew. But at least Lucie did call and she had promised that she’d call again soon. She was reliable and would not let Louise down.
00:16:24
As promised, Lucie called Louise again at 7pm. This time she was at the man’s place at the seaside and that she was leaving in about 30 minutes. She would be home soon, and they could go out dancing as they had planned.
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As the hours dragged by, Louise waited for Lucie, but she never came home. Louise immediately knew something was wrong. If Lucie had changed her plans, she would have called to let Louise know. They were in perpetual contact and it was extremely unusual for Lucie not to show up when she said she would.
00:17:03
Back in England, at her home in Kent, Lucie’s mom, Jane Steare was putting together a care package for Lucie, with shoes and some treats from home. She was just about to head out to the post office to send it off when a desperate Louise called to tell her Lucie hadn’t come home. Jane was overcome with shock and the sense of dread overcame her. In a panic she started calling anyone and everyone who could advise her on what to do next.
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At a loss in Tokyo, Louise took to the streets and started looking for Lucie in Rappongi, she searched all the places where they would usually hang out. She asked around, but nobody had seen Lucie.
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She went to the police, but they didn’t take it too seriously. Lucie was a grown woman, out on a date and she hadn’t even been missing for a whole day. Louise was frustrated, she didn’t know the name of the man Lucie had left with, what car he drove or even where they went. “The seaside” was all Lucie said and that hardly narrowed it down.
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By Monday – two days after Lucie was last seen – Louise and some of Lucie’s expat friends were frantic. As they were huddled together, discussing what to do next, Louise received a phone call from a strange man. He identified himself as “Akira Takagi” and explained that Lucie had met a Guru and made a life-changing decision. She was alive and well but had decided to join the Guru’s cult and had run away to a place called Chiba, east of Tokyo. Lucie was living in a hut with cult members of a religion called “The Newly Risen Religion”.
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Despite Louise’s insistence to speak to Lucie, the calm and controlled voice on the other end of the line said that Lucie wasn’t feeling well and had a lot of studying to do if she wanted to fit into her new way of life. Lucie allegedly asked the man to call Louise to let her and Scott know that she was OK. Also, she was sorry, but she wouldn’t be coming back. Louise knew this couldn’t be true and called the man’s bluff.
00:19:13
Louise said she wanted to join the cult too. The man promised to discuss it with the guru. In the meantime, he wanted to send Lucie’s things to Louise, if she could only give him the address. Again, Louise called him on it: Lucie knew the address. The man hung up.
00:19:33
This bizarre phone call confirmed Louise’s fears: something was terribly wrong. There is no way Lucie would have converted and ran away with a cult in the space of one evening. It simply didn’t suit her lifestyle and beliefs. Lucie loved glitz and glam and the idea of her living in a hut studying scripture simply didn’t fit.
00:19:56
Lucie’s dad, Tim Blackman was divorced from her mom, Jane and lived on the Isle of Wight. After he received the news of Lucie’s disappearance, he made various phone calls to the Japanese Metropolitan Police and the British Consulate in Japan to find out what was being done to find his daughter. The time difference and language barrier made communication tricky. Lucie’s younger sister, Sophie, decided to take action and made her way to Tokyo as soon as she could. Lucie’s ex-boyfriend, Jamie Gascoigne, offered to go with her.
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When the two of them arrived in Tokyo two days later, on the 4th of July, they were overwhelmed by the enormous task of finding Lucie – it was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Tokyo is densely populated with locals, business people and tourists populating every square inch like ants. Sophie and Jamie soon realised it was impossible for a foreigner who didn’t speak the language or knew the lay or the land to find a missing person.
00:20:44
Sophie and Jamie tried to involve police and were shocked when they found out that absolutely nothing had been done to find Lucie. No-one but Lucie’s friends and family believed there was something wrong. Sophie explained to her father, Tim, what was going on and he joined her in Japan as soon as he could get there.
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Within a week of Lucie’s disappearance her family and friends had 30,000 flyers printed out with a photo and description of Lucie.
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“She was last seen in Tokyo on Saturday July 1st. Since then she has been missing. If anyone has seen her, or has any information relating to her, please contact the Azabu Police Station or your nearest police station.”
00:21:34
The photo showed Lucie in a little black dress with her hair down and make-up done beautifully, similar to how she looked on the afternoon she went missing. Lucie’s friends and family took to the streets and handed out flyers, asking for anyone with information to come forward. A reward of 100,000 pounds was offered to anyone who could lead them to Lucie.
00:21:56
At this point, police weren’t overly concerned about Lucie. They felt she had left for Bali or the Philippines with a new boyfriend and that she would resurface soon. Lucie’s family pleaded with them to trace the call Lucie made to Louise. If they could pin down where she was when she made her last contact, they would at least have a starting point. But police refused, said it was against Japanese law to investigate phone conversations due to stringent privacy laws.
00:22:25
Very frustrated at the inaction of Japanese police, Tim Blackman went to the media to appeal to the public for help regarding his missing daughter. Even Sir Richard Branson made a televised appeal for information about Lucie.
00:22:39
By an enormous stroke of luck, British Prime Minister Tony Blair happened to be in Okinawa for the G8 summit. When he passed through Tokyo Tim made him aware of Lucie’s disappearance and the fact that Japanese authorities weren’t investigating the matter. Blair raised the issue with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and pressure was on Japanese law enforcement to find Lucie.
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After this meeting, police announced that they had assigned 80 officers to investigate Lucie’s case. Despite this, the Blackman family felt like there was a polite wall of non-disclosure between them and the police. The police would not share any information with them, cautious that any leaked information could jeopardise the case.
00:23:22
Lucie’s case turned out to be one of the biggest missing persons cases in Japanese history.
00:23:27
Yet, the Blackmans felt that, if they wanted to find Lucie, they would have to make a personal effort.
00:23:33
Lucie’s mom hired a private investigator who went to Tokyo to assist. The PI felt that the Casablanca Club where Lucie had worked, held the key to her disappearance. Tim Blackman also questioned the owner of the club and couldn’t understand why they didn’t have more information about the man Lucie had met while working there.
00:23:52
A hostess that worked with Lucie, was able to provide Jane’s PI with a description of a man she saw at the club with Lucie a couple of days before her disappearance. She was able to work with an artist and they came up with a composite sketch. The PI showed the sketch to many other hostesses and people in Rappongi, but it yielded no concrete results.
00:24:13
Father-and-dauther team, Tim and Sophie Blackman, set up a phone hotline that people could call if they had any information – or anonymous tips – that would lead them to Lucie. British expat volunteers manned the phones.
00:24:26
Hope flared up when, on the 20th of July, three weeks after Lucie’s disappearance, a letter arrived at the Azabu Police Station. The letter was typed in English and signed “Lucie” in black ink. It was postmarked: Chiba, where the alleged cult was based. The letter stated that Lucie just wanted to be left alone. It also called for her father Tim and sister Sophie to stop looking for her and return home.
00:24:51
The punctuation and the wrongful use of the words ‘a’ and ‘the’ made police believe the letter wasn’t written by Lucie, a native English speaker, but rather a Japanese speaker. Handwriting analysis also proved that it wasn’t Lucie who had signed her name. The letter was a hoax, probably written to throw investigators off track.
00:25:11
The 1st of September 2000 was Lucie’s 22nd birthday and there was still no sign of her.
00:25:16
Tim Blackman did whatever he could to keep his daughter’s story alive in the press, hoping someone would come forward. Because of the publicity surrounding the case, several women, hostesses who worked in Rappongi, came forward with similar stories. They describe going on a douhan to a seaside restaurant with a Japanese businessman who was well presented and spoke English fluently. He drove a flashy sports car and liked the thrill of driving fast.
00:25:43
At the club the man kept a low profile and didn’t draw much attention to himself. Contrary to the Japanese custom of handing out business cards as a way of formally introducing one self, he never gave out any. Although all the women described the same man, they remembered different names. He used a different pseudonym with each woman, calling himself “Koji”, Yuji” or “Kazu”.
00:26:08
On the douhan, after dinner, he took the ladies to his seaside condo. He would then give them special drink of wine, after which none of the girls had any memory of what happened after that. They were knocked out cold, almost immediately. When they woke up the next day they were confused and ill and took a couple of days to recover. He said to one of the women that she had finished a whole bottle of Vodka and was suffering from alcohol poisoning.
00:26:34
As it turned out, some of them had reported the man to Rappongi police, nothing was done to follow up. Many of these women were working in living in Tokyo illegally and didn’t press further charges when they were ignored by police.
00:26:49
The Blackman family handed the information to police, hoping that police could find this man with the fast car and the seaside condo. Police took notice and reopened several cases of rape in the Rappongi-area.
00:27:02
British Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine assisted the Blackman family with his legal expertise. He managed to convince the Japanese authorities to track Lucie’s last phone call. He assured them that a police investigation is a confidential matter too, so they won’t be exploiting the public’s privacy by tracing phone calls. Amazingly, Japanese authorities conceded.
00:27:24
They finally traced where Lucie made her last phone call from: the seaside resort of Zushi. This, coupled with the stories from the other hostesses (who called the hotline), led police to a man called Joji Obara, 48 - a playboy tycoon with a fleet of luxury vehicles. He was arrested on October 12th 2000, three months after Lucie’s disappearance.
00:27:47
Obara denied knowing or ever having met Lucie Blackman. This investigation was far from over.
00:27:54
Joji Obara was born in Osaka in 1952. At birth, his name was Kim Sung Jong. His parents were poor Zainichi Koreans, the Japanese term for Koreans residing in Japan. His father was a scrap collector and a taxi driver, who eventually owned a fleet of taxi’s and turned his fortune around by investing in lucrative pachinko parlours. This is the Japanese equivalent to a casino, where people play on machines similar to slot machines.
00:28:24
Obara had a prestigious education with private tutors. When he was 15 years old, his parents enrolled him in a prep school affiliated with Keio University. The prep School was in Tokyo, away from his home in Osaka. His parents bought a house in Tokyo where he lived alone, cared for by a maid.
00:28:42
When he started his tertiary education at Keio University, he changed his name to a more Japanese sounding “Seisho Hoshiyama” to avoid discrimination. He also had cosmetic surgery to make his eyes look ‘less Korean’ and took growth hormones in an effort to boost his size.
00:28:59
Joji Obara was fluent in English and studied law and politics. During his education holidays he would spend time in the United States and in Sweden.
00:29:11
In 1969, his father died under suspicious circumstances in Hong Kong. At the time it was believed that his father had been involved in the underworld through his pachinko parlour business.
00:29:22
Obara and his two brothers inherited his father’s fortune, which included multiple properties in Osaka and Tokyo. His mother took control of the pachinko parlour business.
00:29:30
With his education completed and his pockets filled with inheritance cash, he walked away from his family and his Korean heritage and changed his name once more, to Joji Obara. He also became a naturalized Japanese citizen.
00:29:49
Real Estate speculation in the 1980’s and 90’ brought Obara into the Big League. His assets were estimated to be 38 Million Dollars. He lived lavishly, only buying the best clothing, dining in the finest restaurants. His fleet of flashy cars included a Ferrari, a Maserati, a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud and an Aston Martin.
00:30:12
Unfortunately for him, this wouldn’t last and when the bubble burst he lost everything. When Obara found himself in debt and in trouble, his mother paid off a creditor – close to the amount of 33 million Dollars. Despite all of his perils, he kept all of his luxury vehicles.
00:30:30
However, Obara’s company didn’t close its doors, which led to speculation that the business was a money laundering front for the yakuza syndicate, Sumiyoshi-kai. Yakuza is one of the largest mafia groups in the world. Obara was the perfect front-man for this scheme: he didn’t have many friends or acquaintances, so the chances of someone spilling the beans to police were slim.
00:30:52
Obara was also a peculiar person, who refused ever having his photo taken. He always wore oversized sunglasses and lived a nocturnal lifestyle, feverishly cruising between his seaside properties and central Tokyo residences. He was a recreational drug user, who was reported to have an fixation with western women.
00:31:11
In 1998 Joji Obara was arrested in a beach town south of Osaka called Shirahama for dressing up in women’s clothing and entering a female public restroom to record women on video.
00:31:24
Back in Tokyo in October 2000, after police arrested him, Obara still denied having anything to do with the disappearance of Lucie Blackman. In Japan, 95% of cases are solved with a confession. Defendants are urged to honourably confess to crimes. But Obara didn’t budge: he steadfastly refused to admit guilt. Investigators were frustrated and assumed that he didn’t confess because he wasn’t technically Japanese, but Korean. As Richard Lloyd Parry explains:
00:31:57
“They were suggesting that Japanese criminals at least have a sense of decency and confess. Police were complaining that it was their bad luck being landed with a dishonest criminal.”
00:32:08
Perhaps it’s more relevant to remember that Obara had studied law and it was more likely his legal expertise than his cultural background that made him keep his mouth shut.
00:32:18
Police set out to search Obara’s properties across Japan and found tonnes of incriminating evidence. A large amount of pharmaceutical drugs were found, including the anaesthetic chloroform.
00:32:29
Amongst the chaos of years and years of hoarding, police found a large freezer. When officers opened it, they found the carcass of Obara’s dog, a German Shepherd frozen in a solid block, covered with roses. When asked about this strange find, Obara shrugged it off by saying he had preserved his dog’s remains, hoping that science would one day enable him to clone his beloved pet.
00:32:56
At his properties, more than 100 videotapes were confiscated. The videos were commercial pornography and also many home videos recorded by Obara himself over a span of 18 years. Obara appeared in many of the videos, naked, wearing nothing but a Zorro-like mask. He would assault his unconscious female victims for 12 hours or longer, recording the entire event. He had a cloth with chloroform at hand, which he would use to render his victims unconscious whenever they started showing signs of consciousness.
00:33:34
The video evidence confirmed the allegations that Obara had drugged women in his apartment. His victims were unaware of the attacks and were left confused by their injured, recovering bodies.
00:33:48
Obara’s crimes echo a common theme in Japanese pornography of men having sex with sleeping women. In Tokyo, ‘yobai’ there are clubs where men pay to fondle prostitutes who pretend to be asleep.
00:34:02
After reviewing the videotapes, police estimated that Obara may have been involved in the rape of more than 200 women, starting in 1972. He was the worst of the worst when it comes to sexual predators.
00:34:17
Tim Blackman was holding his breath in anticipation, but Lucie Blackman wasn’t on any of Obara’s videos. However, the walls were closing in on Obara when police found naturally blonde hairs that matched Lucie’s in his seaside condo.
00:34:32
Amongst the videotapes, there was also a roll of undeveloped film. Once developed it had a number of photos of Lucie Blackman: on the beach and in Obara’s apartment. Eyewitnesses came forward, saying that they saw Lucie and Obara on the beach in Zushi on the afternoon of the 1st of July.
00:34:55
Confronted with the evidence, Obara admitted to meeting Lucie on that fatal Saturday. He said they met at a train station in Tokyo, went on the date, he took her to his beachside condo. He had taken photos, but he still denied having anything to do with her disappearance.
00:35:13
Another chilling discovery made Obara the author of his own downfall. In his condo was his journal. It had the names of 209 females in, with notes next to their names. He describes the act of rape as ‘conquer play’ and outlines that ‘I cannot do women who are conscious.” His hatred for women is clear:
00:35:40
"Women are only good for sex, I will lie on them. I will seek revenge. Revenge on the world... Foreign hostesses are all ugly. Not in the sense of appearance, but in their minds."
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Next to one name, the note read: too much Chloroform. The name was: Carita Ridgeway.
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Across the ocean in Australia, Robert Finnegan, Carita’s fiancée at the time of her death followed Lucie Blackman’s story when it made Australian news. He immediately made a connection between Carita’s death and Lucie’s disappearance and contacted Japanese authorities.
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Investigators realised their captive could be more than a serial rapist, he could be a murderer. After reviewing hours and hours of nauseating video footage, police found the video of Obara raping Carita Ridgeway.
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Unbelievably the hospital where Carita died, had kept a sample of her liver. Forensic scientists were able to test her liver sample and it showed traces of chloroform. An overdose of chloroform would attack the liver, induce toxic hepatitis and organ failure. This proves that that it was not a bad oyster that had killed her, but rather a very bad person.
00:36:59
A receipt for a cash transfer to the Ridgway family, made by Nishida, was also recovered. Samantha’s instinct to create a paper trail against the man she suspected had murdered her sister, finally paid off after eight years.
00:37:17
Evidence that Obara killed Carita Ridgway made police approach Lucie Blackman’s disappearance as a homicide for the first time. Records show that the day after Lucie vanished, on Sunday the 2nd of July, Obara called a couple of local hospitals and asked how to resuscitate a drug overdose victim.
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During this week in early July, Obara’s computer hard drive showed that his internet searches included ‘how to dispose of a body’ and ‘sulphuric acid.’
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Four days later, neighbours at Obara’s Miura condo heard strange noises coming from his place. Miura is near Zushi and Obara owned a condo near the beach which he rarely visited. The caretaker confronted him about the noise and an argument ensued.
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Two local policemen showed up, and Obara opened the door, naked from the waist up. Even though Obara appeared agitated and sweaty, the officers did not feel warranted to force their way into his home. Obara later told police that he was in a shower and was annoyed by the interruption. The two officers did notice a bulky sack in the room and something that looked like a gardening hoe and asked Obara about it. He explained that he had been removing tiles. With no reason to suspect anything different to what they were told, the two policemen implored Obara to keep the noise down and left.
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When police investigating Lucie Blackman’s case came knocking, neighbours added that they saw Obara on that same evening pacing the small 15m-wide beach a stone’s throw away from his condo.
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Hospital records show that the next day, July the 7th, Obara was treated for bug bites after being outdoors all night.
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On February 9th 2001, seven months after Lucie was last seen alive, at the mouth of a cave on the small beach near Obara’s Miura condo police found an upturned bath. 50cm beneath the sand were eight plastic bags containing dismembered human remains. A severed head with long, natural blonde hair, was found, cast in a block of cement. Dental records confirmed that the remains belonged to Lucie Blackman.
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At the end of March 2001, Lucie’s funeral service was held in Sevenoaks, Kent near her mother, Jane’s home. Her ashes would only be released to her family in 2005, four years after her body was found.
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Joji Obara (who was still in custody since October the year before) was charged with eight cases of rape, the rape and murder of Carita Ridgeway and the abduction, rape resulting in murder, dismemberment and disposal of Lucie Blackman’s body. He pleaded not guilty to all of it.
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In Japan, rape isn’t seen as a serious crime. Being prosecuted for rape is highly unlikely, but in the event of going through the court and found guilty of rape, one would only face a maximum prison sentence of two years. If the offender is a first time offender, a slap on the wrist is all he would get.
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The prosecution were confident they had enough evidence against Joji Obara in the Carita Ridgway case to get a conviction. But the murder case of Lucie Blackman was only circumstantial. Prosecutors needed concrete evidence linking Obara to Lucie’s murder.
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It is safe to assume Obara used the same routine of drugging and raping Lucie the night when he was on a douhan with her – and that he had given her too much chloroform. Unfortunately, by the time her body was found, is was too decomposed to do a chemical analysis to find traces of the drug.
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Forensic scientists examined Lucie’s dismembered remains and concluded that the tool used to dismember her was a chainsaw. Investigators found a receipt at Obara’s property showing that he had bought a chainsaw, cement mix and other tools from a hardware store days after Lucie disappeared. The actual chainsaw was disposed of and never found.
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The first court hearing was on 3rd July 2001, almost a year to the day Lucie was killed. In this hearing the trial date was set to start in November of 2001. This was only to be the beginning of a painfully slow trial, as in Japan trials typically progresses very slowly, with only one short court session per month. There is no jury and a judge (or a panel of three judges as in Joji Obara’s trial) convicts and sentences the accused.
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Obara’s wealth afforded him a team of the country’s best defence attorneys. They argued that all the women accusing Obara of drugging them took recreational drugs by choice and that the sex was consensual acts of prostitution for which Obara had paid. As for Lucie Blackman… They tried to show that her life was spinning out of control.
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Her debt was sky-high and she was an habitual marijuana user who was lonely and seeking attention. They even published a website with exerts from Lucie’s diary to taint her character. Defence argued that Lucie’s death was a result of a self-inflicted recreational drug overdose.
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Lucie’s family and friends came to her defence in the media, stating that Lucie did not use drugs and she had many friends who loved her. She was anything but lonely. The picture Obara’s defence painted of her was done to invoke reasonable doubt, nothing else.
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The prosecution hit back, simply telling the court what all the women who crossed paths with Obara had told them: he would meet a woman at a hostess club, then take her on a douhan, promising a ‘dinner by the sea’. He would then also promise expensive gifts like jewellery (as was the case with Carita Ridgway) or cell phones (as with Lucie Blackman).
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The unsuspecting victim would then join him and spend a lovely afternoon in Zushi, before going to his condo where he would prepare a meal. Afterwards, he would offer his date a drink, saying it’s a special wine from India or the Phillipines, which would explain the strange taste. Neither country is known for its fine wines. In fact, the drinks were laced with rohypnol, known as the date rape drug.
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He would proceed to rape them, recording the whole sordid affair. If the women woke up, he would use a rag soaked in Chloroform to knock them out again. He would rape them in their unconscious state for hours on end.
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Three years into the trial, Obara’s defence team contacted both of Lucie’s parents and offered each of them a sum of 450,000 Pounds (100 Million Yen each). In Japanese culture it is common to give ‘an atonement payment’ or mimaikin to a victim's family. This is not an admission of guilt, but an offer for reparation. The defendant is not responsible to pay mimaikin in terms of law, but it is regarded as a moral obligation.
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Tim Blackman was told by police to expect this kind of gesture and accepted the money offered to him. Lucie’s mom, Jane Steare, refused to accept anything from the man believed to have killed her daughter. She called it blood money and publically stated that her ex-husband’s acceptance of the pay-off was an ‘unbelievable betrayal’. Tim explained that due to the time, trauma and expense the loss of Lucie had caused, he accepted the offer.
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In Japanese court, an offer of retribution by an offender who confesses to a crime will be taken into consideration by judges when sentencing. Acceptance of the offer is regarded as forgiveness, which could lessen the sentence. However, in Joji Obara’s case, he never admitted guilt, so the payment did not influence the judges’ decision.
00:45:37
In April 2007, 55-year old Joji Obara was found guilty in Tokyo High Court in on all charges laid against him: the murder of Carita Ridgway and eight cases of rape. But he was acquitted of Lucie Blackman’s murder, due to a lack of physical evidence. For the other crimes, he received a life sentence.
00:45:58
Carita’s family was relieved that Obara was finally held accountable for killing their daughter and sister. But their anger and disappointment in relation to the 1992 investigation would haunt them for years to come. Had police listened to their pleas, the animal who gave himself the name of Joji Obara would have been off the streets long before he had the chance to hurt anyone else.
00:46:23
Lucie Blackman’s family and the prosecution were not going to accept his acquittal of her murder and appealed the verdict. In December 2008, a harrowing eight years after Lucie’s murder, Joji Obara was found guilty of abducting, dismembering and concealing Lucie Blackman’s body. He was NOT convicted of her murder. One of the prosecutors referred to him as the “Beast with a human face.”
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While serving his life sentence in jail, Obara was declared bankrupt with debts of 23.8 billion yen (or more the 22 billion US Dollars).
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His prison cell is filled with stacks of documents and his lawyers visit him regularly, hoping to appeal his verdict. That is quite optimistic, seeing as the Supreme Court of Japan upheld his life sentence when he lodged an appeal in December 2010.
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To this day Joji Obara denies any involvement in Lucie Blackman’s death.
00:47:32
A trust promoting personal safety, especially to young people travelling abroad, was established in Lucie’s name. The Lucie Blackman Trust offers advice, logistical support, repatriation assistance and fundraising solutions to British manslaughter or murder victims’ families abroad. Tim Blackman used a part of the atonement payment given to him by Joji Obara to establish the fund.
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If you’d like to read more about this case, have a look at the resources used for this episode in the show notes. People Who Eat Darkness is a detailed account by the journalist who followed the story from the start, Richard Lloyd Parry. You’ll find it on Amazon. There are also links in the show notes to The Lucie Blackman Trust.
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This was The Evidence Locker. Thanks for listening!