Murderer still at large.

Lindsay Hawker's murderer (Tatsuya Ichihashi), has still not been captured after he ran away barefoot from 9 Japanese "police officers" as they surrounded his apartment while investigating her disappearance. They soon found her body in a sand-filled bathtub on his balcony. She had been beaten and strangled.

Was this unusual in "safe" Japan? Well, murder is unusual in most places. But the stalking, assaults, rapes and so on do happen. The Japan Times has another article about this:

Reported stalking cases likely just the tip of the iceberg.

"A whiny male voice asked me in Japanese if I was Laura," Fitch recalls of the morning two years ago. "I was tired, I wasn't thinking about who he could be, and I answered yes. "Then he said, 'Is this the Laura that lives at such and such an address?' and I said yes again. Then he said, 'You just got out of the shower, right? ' " Fitch explains, adding that she had a small window in her bathroom that looked out to the front of her building. "At that point I clued in and freaked out. I hung up immediately, checked my locks and called my friend who lived next door...

...After receiving her first freaky phone call, Fitch went straight to the police, who she says were "not too concerned"..."I was told that he was just a boy having fun, that I should change my number and forget about it....

...."I could hear him jacking off on the phone and he asked me if I had ever seen a Japanese penis and then he would proceed to blow his load"...."However, that still wasn't enough for the police and they said that he had to want to date me"...

How, you wonder, can The Japan Times be so open about stories that other Japanese newspapers gloss over or ignore? One, it is made for foreign residents, and secondly it is not a member of the kisha, the "press club" used by the government to control and manipulate the press by eliminating access to official sources to those who piss it off.

The Victim Support Center in Tokyo is at (03) 5287-3338 should one need to contact an organization who will help with a similar problem when the Japanese "police" are too busy playing mahjong to help.