Family Appeals for Help to Find Killer in Japan

The family of the murdered British teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker yesterday made an emotional appeal for help in finding her alleged killer, a year after her body was found buried in a sand-filled bathtub in a flat near Tokyo.

The body of Hawker, 22, was discovered on the balcony of a flat in Ichikawa, east of Tokyo, on March 26 last year. She been tied up with gardening tape and her hair had been cut off; a postmortem examination found that she had been suffocated, and there was evidence that she may have been tortured before her death.

The suspect, Tatsuya Ichihashi, 29, evaded police officers when they arrived at the flat to question him about her disappearance. Hawker, a teacher at a nearby English conversation school, had accompanied him to his home after giving him a private lesson at a cafe earlier that day.

Her father, Bill Hawker, called on the "honorable people" of Japan to help find Ichihashi, a former horticulture student from a family of wealthy medics. "She came to this country to teach, not to be murdered," Hawker told reporters after arriving in Tokyo with his wife, Julia, and their daughters Lisa and Louise.

Lisa Hawker appealed directly to the suspect in Japanese. "You have taken one life and destroyed many more. You have taken away my best friend and broken our hearts. Ichihashi, please atone for your crime."

Bill Hawker refused to criticise Japanese police, but said he remained "distressed" and "disappointed" that his daughter's killer had yet to be found. In a sign of their desperation, police last month released mock-ups of Ichihashi disguised as a woman. Last week they posted video footage of the suspect on the internet.

Today the family are handing out packets of tissues carrying Ichihashi's photo. They are also expected to lay flowers in the apartment where Hawker's body was found, before returning home tomorrow.