Footage Shows Murdered Japan Teacher With Suspect

A security camera captured images of the murdered English teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker and the man being hunted in connection with her death hours before she was killed in Japan, it emerged today.

The body of Ms Hawker, 22, was found late last Monday buried in a bathtub of sand on the balcony of an apartment in Ichikawa, near Tokyo. She had been beaten and suffocated and her body tied up with gardening cord.

Today police refused to confirm or deny reports that her neck had been broken and her hair cut off and placed in a plastic bag in the home of the suspect, 28-year-old Tatsuya Ichihashi.

The grainy footage, taken eight days ago in a cafe near Gyotoku subway station, near Ms Hawker's home on the eastern outskirts of Tokyo, shows the suspect and Ms Hawker ordering drinks at the counter.

Ms Hawker appears to be wearing a knee-length white coat and repeatedly brushes her hair from her face as Mr Ichihashi, dressed in dark casual clothes and a black or grey woolen hat, gestures as if to ask her what she would like to drink, and then pays.

They are believed to have conducted an English lesson at the cafe - a common practice in Japan.

Local media reported staff at the cafe as saying that the pair arrived a few minutes before 9am on March 25, conducted an English lesson and left at 9.45am.

Ms Hawker was due to begin a shift at her regular workplace, the Koiwa branch of Nova English conversation school, at 10.50am but appears to have agreed to visit Mr Ichikawa's apartment first.

Ms Hawker, described by staff as "a beautiful foreign women", and Mr Ichihashi were seen leaving the area in a taxi, apparently for his apartment, where her body was discovered exactly a week ago.

More than 100 officers are involved in a nationwide manhunt but several leads have led to nothing and a senior detective has told the Guardian that police are no closer to finding Mr Ichihashi, who fled barefoot and dropped a rucksack containing clothes and cash during a brief struggle with officers last Monday night.

"We have received lots of information from members of the public," the detective said. "We are doing our best to find him as quickly as possible."

In the past few days police have raided a hostess bar staffed by Eastern European women thought to have been frequented by the suspect, as well as a house just outside Yokohama whose owner had made several calls to Mr Ichihashi's father on his mobile phone. Both raids proved fruitless.

Yesterday the victim's father appealed for more information about Mr Ichihashi's whereabouts and said his daughter's killer had "brought shame" on Japan, a country she had grown to love during her short time there.

"My daughter's killer has now brought shame on your country," Bill Hawker said in a statement read out by the British ambassador to Japan, Graham Fry. "He must be caught. He cannot be allowed to hide away.

"I still respect this country and its people. I know that you place great importance on family and community links. So, as a father, I appeal to you - if anyone can help the police to find my daughter's killer, I beg you to come forward."

Mr Ichihashi, who at this stage is wanted only for abandoning a body, had followed Ms Hawker home on March 20 and begged her to teach him English. She reportedly agreed to give him his first lesson the following Sunday.

"My daughter loved this country," Mr Hawker said. "She loved meeting Japanese people and thought of Japan as an honourable society, built on trust and respect. When we visited her in Japan, she was proud to show us her life here."

Ms Hawker, from Brandon near Coventry, had been teaching English since last October and was described by school officials as a conscientious and popular teacher who tried hard to adapt to life in Japan.