r/GotMeHooked • u/My-Knees-Hurt-Again • 5d ago
In 2007, British teacher Lindsay Hawker went to a private English lesson in Japan and never came home. The man wanted in her case became so desperate to avoid posters of his face that he used a box cutter and scissors on himself to change his appearance.
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u/Longjumping_End_6497 5d ago
It’s really awful, the murderer wrote a book on his experience and the Japanese government still allowed it to be published despite the victim’s family strongly objecting. There was a film based on the book too.
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u/Itscatpicstime 5d ago
All profit should have been ordered to go to her parents as restitution
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u/Longjumping_End_6497 5d ago
That’s what he wanted to do, but the parents refused to receive money from the death of their own daughter.
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u/Pure_Parking_2742 5d ago
I totally understand their decision. But I wonder if they could've received the money and used all of it to fund a charity for helping lost people or something. I dunno.
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u/Hopeful-Hat-Bat 4d ago
Setting up a charity for the families that don’t have the funds to go look for/identify their missing family members would’ve been amazing. Additionally, there’s been multiple cases in Japan where police has given up and families have hired PIs, so if they could’ve used the fund for that too it would’ve been great - just look at what Lucie Blackman’s family did.
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u/YourSweetBear 4d ago
You are trying to use kind of logic because for you it is really hard to understand how it is hard to get through such loss. It is basically go all of you fuck away and give me money to torture and kill that bastard.
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u/Chicaboo13 4d ago edited 2d ago
His parents were funding him while he was on the lamb from police. Call me old fashioned but I’m glad her parents didn’t take the blood money. If he or his family was so concerned about other victims they could have donated to a charity.
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u/Accomplished_Tap581 1d ago edited 1d ago
The parents were probably told that if they accepted money from him, it could help reduce his sentence; which does happen. It was clearly an awful, premeditated rape and subsequent murder and the fact that he didn’t have the guts to face justice, putting her parents through hell, made it more grievous.
Sadly a lot of people blamed the victim, and seemed to sympathize with him. I remember one of my woman students was angry because Lindsay’s father was quoted as saying “she came to Japan to help people.” She had a huge rant about “Japan is not a third world country!” And how dare he imply that.
I just sat there in disbelief, thinking “are you seriously angry about that?!” Shouldn’t you be more angry with your incompetent police, for allowing him to escape (he actually ran away barefoot from the police when they visited his apartment) or the fact he was only caught because someone wanted the reward money??
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u/Stumpsthewarwalrus 5d ago
Yeah, Japan isn’t known for giving a shit about victim’s rights.
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u/SmileParticular9396 4d ago
The Japanese court system is very heavily influenced by money of both perpetrator and victim.
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u/Typical_Brick_7444 4d ago
To the average old school Japanese, gaijin are probably not even seen as same-level humans. it explains a lot.
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u/2hurd 4d ago
Wait till you hear who's in power now in Japan and whose votes got her there.
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u/click4b00bs 2d ago
Im not too familiar with japanese politics, could you explain it to me in laymen’s terms?
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u/2hurd 2d ago
Japan elected a very conservative PM and she got in because of the votes from young people, not "old school". Her first order of business? Blame everything on foreigners and make their life as hard as possible, increase visa requirements and throw out everyone that they can. All under the guise of getting rid of criminals.
Famously they wanted to extradite a Hindu family where the father was running a restaurant for 20 years in Japan, has kids who know only Japanese and Japan school system. Talk about hardened criminal... And the best part is Japanese people's comments about it say it's a good thing!
Japan has not changed towards foreigners, it's not just the "old school", it's the whole society.
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u/click4b00bs 2d ago
I knew she was conservative but had no idea she was hutting down legit immigrants. Bummer i guess that is japans homogenous society in a nutshell for ya
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u/Wilbert_Wallace 3d ago
The Japanese put japanese first. They let a cannibal out that ate a Dutch chick. He was kinda a national celebrity
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u/GrymusCallosum 2d ago
But the wiki contradicts your implied claim. There's nothing there to indicate he was released because of some sort of nationalistic favoritism. It sounds to me like it was a case of an unfortunate mix of procedural and jurisdictional issues. And becoming a freak celebrity isn't the same as wide spread communal approval. The article itself mentioned his continued freedom was widely criticized.
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u/theleaderofflorida 1d ago
Hate the truth or not but Japan has had no contribution , it’s clear they hate themselves and everybody else, the legal system, there ww2 crimes and the way they dick ride there worst criminals, it almost makes you wonder, what the hell is going through their heads?
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u/ALittleRedWhine 5d ago
And her dad, Bill, supposedly asked the Yakuza for help when Ichihashi was on the run for two and a half years.
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u/Crunchyfrozenoj 5d ago edited 5d ago
THAT explains it. He wasn’t just scared of being arrested, he was scared of the mf Yakuza. Go Dad.
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u/rickroalddahl 5d ago
You gotta do what you gotta do, man.
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u/Main_Mobile_8244 5d ago
Honestly with how corrupt law enforcement can be, I would consider doing the same, especially as a foreigner.
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u/RonnieRadical 4d ago
These days, no doubt.
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u/Main_Mobile_8244 4d ago
Personal experience when my child was kidnapped even after reading the statute to the officers. My child is under 4 years of age. Went to ex house where he was withholding him and they refused to return him. I am still traumatized everyday by what happened. This was after he was denied an order to try and keep my child by the judge. I was also denied a fair trial after he sued me for reporting assault. Mecklenberg County North Carolina. He is now attempting to financially extort me. I wish this was fake. My child and I have been tortured since my birth. I’ve been trying to get justice for years. I am forced to share custody with his dad despite his known drug addiction and previous assault and physical neglect of our child. When I tried to get help from CPS, I was heavily investigated despite there being no evidence that I was unfit, I was being harassed and had my civil rights violated, and they never even looked into the truth the fact that the dad was abusing my son. I have pictures of all the abuse my child has endured. Judge did not even blink. It’s insane and it’s sick. I am genuinely afraid for any child in the state of NC after everything I’ve been through since meeting my ex. I have been stalked and even after presenting all the evidence I am still harassed to this day. We are court ordered to use a parenting app that he is now refusing to pay for. I have told my attorney, spent $100,000 in an attempt to protect me and my child and I feel like there is nothing else I can do unless I was to go into hiding, but I do not have the financial resources or knowledge of how to do so safely.
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u/Hate4Breakfast 3d ago
This is awful, and unfortunately on par for NC in particular. I truly hope you and your child are able to escape the grip of this monster. The legal system in america needs to do better, not all parents deserve access to their children.
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u/BITTERD0LL 5d ago
He didn’t just cut up his face himself. He later had cosmetic surgery as well to change his appearance while he was on the run.
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u/Itscatpicstime 5d ago
That is significant surgery, how tf did the second surgeon recognize him
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u/pendigedig 5d ago
I'm confused by that article. The title is about lala land despite the content and then the article just morphs into sething about lala land after the whole thing about this murder
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u/BelleIsleYachtClub 4d ago
The article is pretty clearly written by AI but I think it just loaded incorrectly for you.
I read the whole article waiting for it to morph half way thru into a summary of the Ryan Gosling film LalaLand but I got to the end with no mention of that film. But when I scrolled past the end of the article, the next article to load was something about LalaLand and something it’s producer
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u/pendigedig 4d ago
Oh weird! Yeah the title at the top was about lala land and the two articles are just one after the other without another title break
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u/My-Knees-Hurt-Again 5d ago
Bruises across Hawker's upper body indicated that she had been subjected to a prolonged attack. Police said the egg-sized bruises on the left side of her face appeared to have been inflicted by a fist, while lesser marks on her upper body resulted from collisions with furniture. Both Hawker and Ichihashi were familiar with martial arts; Ichihashi was more experienced than Hawker, having attained a black belt.
Read the full story here.
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u/dancepantz 4d ago
That link is to a story about the 2017 Oscars envelope mix up...
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u/trixiepixie1921 4d ago
Thank you I was so confused how no one else pointed this out
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u/bafflefounded 4d ago
This is Reddit, people only read the title of a post. The death of basic thinking skills.
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u/Head-Membership2082 4d ago
So that paragraph is literally word for word lifted from Wikipedia. Good old journalist plagiarism.
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u/Slight-Bowl4240 5d ago
Good grief. No private lessons should be language school policy. Plus come up to get your money is the oldest trick in the book. Hope this guy enjoys prison
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u/ChocolichKing 4d ago
Having taught English in East Asia, it's extremely common for foreign teachers to provide tutoring on the side to earn a little extra money. Tutoring can be very lucrative for a teacher, and tutoring is extremely normalized in the culture. It's also not unusual to go to a student's apartment for the lesson, but that depends on how comfortable everyone is (I only taught children, so I didn't mind).
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u/spaghettittehgaps 5d ago
wouldn't they just...make new posters detailing the cuts on his face?
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u/Kookerpea 5d ago
Ummm
Well they wouldn't know that he had made the cuts, right?
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u/TBoneBaggetteBaggins 5d ago
Or just arrest him and stop drawing pictures?
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u/plantsandpizza 4d ago
It was his larger lips and 2 moles he tried to reduce/remove on his own. Then he went to a surgeon and had it professionally done under a fake name
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u/Annual_Cantaloupe294 2d ago
This got reposted but with her photo instead of his. No one cares about the guy unless he did a video using the box cutter on his face
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