‘Heaviest punishment’ call for teacher’s killer

Leeds University graduate Lindsay Hawker, 22, was found dead at Tatsuya Ichihashi’s apartment in Ichikawa City, east of Tokyo, in March 2007.

Ichihashi, 32, this week admitted raping and strangling the English language teacher but said he did not intend to kill her.

Miss Hawker’s father Bill yesterday asked for Ichihashi to receive the “heaviest punishment” available under Japanese law when he gave evidence to the trial in Chiba District Court.

Ichihashi went on the run after Japanese police discovered the teacher’s battered and bound body buried naked in a sand-filled bathtub on the balcony of his flat.

He was finally arrested at a ferry terminal in the city of Osaka in western Japan in November 2009.

Miss Hawker, from Brandon, near Coventry, travelled to Japan in 2006 to work as an English teacher.

She was last seen alive after giving Ichihashi an English lesson in a coffee shop on March 25 2007.

The suspect was caught after it was disclosed he underwent cosmetic surgery in an effort to change his appearance at a clinic in Osaka.

While at large, he claims to have travelled through 23 states across Japan, becoming obsessed with plastic surgery due to fears of his arrest – even attempting procedures on himself with scissors.

A verdict in the case is expected by July 21.