Japanese Rapist Guilty of Lucie Blackman Kidnap

A court in Tokyo today found a Japanese serial rapist guilty of kidnapping and mutilating the body of the British woman Lucie Blackman, in a partial reversal of an earlier ruling acquitting him of involvement in her death.

Joji Obara, a wealthy property developer, was acquitted last year of killing the 21-year-old. Today, Obara showed no emotion in room 102 at the Tokyo high court as the judge described how he had taken Blackman, then 21, to his beach side apartment near Tokyo and later cut her body into 10 pieces with a chainsaw before burying her remains a nearby beach side cave.

The judge said there was no proof that Obara, 53, had killed Blackman, a former British Airways flight attendant from Sevenoaks, Kent.

His acquittal last year in Blackman's killing was greeted with shock by Lucie's mother, Jane Steare, and her estranged husband, Tim Blackman, who said their daughter had been "robbed of justice".

Obara, seated yards from Steare in court today, frequently mopped his face with a towel as the verdict was delivered, raising his eyes only to exchange brief comments with members of his defence team.

Blackman was working as a hostess at the Casablanca nightclub in Tokyo's sleazy Roppongi district when she met Obara, a frequent customer with a reputation for preying on foreign women.

She disappeared in July 2000 after agreeing to accompany Obara to his beach side apartment in Miura, about 35 miles south of Tokyo. His acquittal in her killing came despite a large volume of circumstantial evidence. In the days after Lucie's disappearance he bought a chainsaw, a camping table and a vinyl mat, as well as cement in which he was suspected of encasing her head.

Her remains were discovered in early 2001 in a cave 100 metres from Obara's apartment. Obara, whose life sentence remains unchanged after today's appeal ruling, consistently denied the charges.

Obara was jailed in April 2007 after being found guilty of raping nine women and causing the death of one of the victims, Carita Ridgway, an Australian bar hostess. Ridgway, then 21, died of liver failure in February 1992 after Obara drugged her with chloroform and raped her. Obara filmed himself during the attacks.