JAPAN:The businessman accused of raping and killing British woman Lucie Blackman (21) was acquitted of all charges relating to her death by a Tokyo court yesterday, but jailed for life for raping nine other women.
In a stunning end to one of Japan's most notorious criminal cases, Joji Obara was convicted of drugging and assaulting the women, including Australian Carita Ridgeway (21), who died after ingesting chloroform, Obara's date-rape drug of choice.
The acquittal, seven years after Blackman's concrete-encased body was found in a cave yards from Obara's luxury seaside apartment, was a blow to her family, who have campaigned relentlessly to find and punish her killer.
Her father, Tim Blackman, called the verdict "a bitter disappointment".
"Today we witnessed Lucie giving her life for others, but unfortunately today we have not received justice for Lucie," he said. His family had been left feeling "completely unresolved" by the apparent failure of the court to accept crucial evidence.
Lead judge Tsutomo Tochigi said there was "nothing to prove that the defendant was directly involved" in the rape and death of the former flight attendant, but nevertheless acknowledged "suspicion", along with substantial circumstantial evidence linking Obara to the crime.
The police investigation found that Obara went online to search for ways to dispose of a body in the summer of 2000 after Blackman disappeared from her job as a Tokyo nightclub hostess, later visiting a hardware store to buy concrete mix, a chainsaw, lengths of rope and some other tools.
The verdict ends the brutal career of a man who will go down in history as modern Japan's most prolific serial rapist. Police believe that the multi-millionaire may have targeted hundreds of women in a history of assaults going back to the 1980s. The son of Korean immigrants, Obara made a fortune speculating in real estate during the years of Japan's bubble economy in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Driving a series of expensive sports cars, he cruised the nightclub districts of Tokyo in search of sex, often targeting the blonde foreign hostesses he preferred.
After luring victims back to his condominium, he drugged them, removed their clothes from the waist down, donned a mask and had sex in front of a video camera.
Police found thousands of video tapes when they broke into the apartment, along with journals in which he recorded his ambition to sleep with 500 women "by the time I am 30". In other entries, Obara said he was incapable of having sex with conscious women.
Last year Mr Blackman called the man he believes murdered his daughter "a monster" who had shown "no shame or guilt" for what he did. However, he also sparked controversy by accepting a £420,000 "consolation money" payment from Obara.