Ichihashi's former mentor sheds new light on 2007 Hawker murder case

‘I want to atone for my crime in a way no one can know.’”.... so i decided to write a book about it. What? I:m sorry but trying to paint him in some sort of good light, aint working at all. And it seems from the story that HE was the one ending it with his ex gf so, what exactly was HE having to endure to have made him commit the crime??

Spare us all the sob story. His act of murder cannot be justified. He's just a spoilt sociopathic killer and he's where he belongs.

it was then I realized that something had happened during that time that provoked him to commit the crime.

Reading this provokes me enough to want to do something violent, but I shan't, because I know right from wrong. Cry me a river, then go jump in it.

So it begins.

The Japanese media starts to paint him as a distraught man who carried out an action he now regrets.

Next up, the murdered victim will start to get the blame, and once again, Japanese responsibility for their actions will be passed somewhere else.

Am I suppose to feel sorry for Ichihashi 'kun" now? Whatever. A spoiled child who didn't get what he wanted. The media needs to stop with this crap and be done with it. An innocent girl is dead because of this monster. Let him rot in jail with no visits from anyone. Period.

Ichihashi KUN????why the Kun? Do u respect him? Weird?????!!!!!!

Maria:

Cry me a river

Those were my exact thoughts as soon as I read the first paragraph.

It's always the pampered ones born with a silver spoon in their mouths.

Ewan Huazamu: . . . . EXACTLY ! - like he's the victim !

I realized that something had happened during that time that provoked him to commit the crime

She’d had many fond memories of their times together, she told him; the encounter made it possible for the two of them to dispel any bad feelings

The best thing will be for him to reflect on his act in a quiet environment, and rehabilitate himself

The headline should have read, "Trials and Tribulations of Hapless Ichihashi, Victim of Circumstances."

Very insensitive and shameful indeed. Lindsay Ann Hawker's parents, other family members and friends will surely be devastated should they happen to read this story depicting an essentially good-natured boy provoked to make a single bad decision. Please remove.

I find the man disgusting personally. We do often wonder why they did it though. Take that guy in Connecticut who shoot all those children then offed himself. We'll never know.

Most men and women know that women have the power to push some men over the edge. This is true. No one wants this kind of guilt on their soul but yes. one thing begets another. The women just don't want any of the responsibility or the culpabilty.

Take O.J Simpson. We all know he's a train wreck. I'm not a fan. However, there are those of us who are honest enough with ourselves to say "I understand".

The ladies are like "OMG, click Bad". Please....no double standards. Ladies you understand when a woman goes off the handle and cuts off some guys penis cause he was cheating around. She was hurt deeply. Nobody hates. We all know it's wrong but "I understand".

Nobody to turn to, nobody to talk to. Just crushed by his ex-GF. The economy sucks and he can't even support himself. I'm not saying what he did was right (Lock him up) but I can also see the recipe for disaster.

I know a lot of guys who were deeply hurt by their SO's and they held it together. One common factor for those that wanted to run over their cheating wives was that they had someone to talk to.

Pain and anger eat at the heart and soul of people who are left alone in a dark room with it. It is unreasonable to believe that everyone will handle it as well as you do.

Ishihara will do his time. The longer the better I say. However in this case, we have a chance to learn from this. When you are hurting, when someone has just destroyed everything you believed in, you need to call someone. This is one of those few occasions when I think we should thank JT for helping us learn and understand.

You always want more details on so many incomplete stories. Well, this is it.

Up to 3 a.m. on the day of Hawker's murder, his ex-girlfriend had been at his residence. They quarreled and she fled his apartment, but apparently sat fuming in her car for the next two hours in the apartment's parking lot before going home. The next day she returned in the hope of patching up their relationship, and saw that the police had strung up tape to block it off as a crime scene.

What is this nonsense? This suggests Hawker met Ichihashi, was killed by him, reported missing, and found all on the same day?

Everything in this story paints this nut as someone we should feel sorry for, it was a big mistake, was provoked, bla bla bla. Do murderers really feel terrible about their actions?

This guy is a real good con artist. If he was really sorry, he would have not gone in hiding from the law!

People say he is where he belongs. Technically yeah he's in jail bit he ain't suffering. 3 meals a day, a secure place to sleep at night, medical expenses paid.

The homeless out here have it much tougher.

Seriously come to think about it. He's living really okay. He can breathe air everyday, talk to people who want to hear his story, write books and get it published. Tell me this guy is suffering ?

Ms Hawker does not breathe anymore. Brutally murdered and had her life taken away. I saw her Father on TV. His life was ruined. So is her families.

And this guy sits all pretty in jail writing books telling his story.

This is what life is prison is about for murders.

So what are you trying to say Mr Motoyuki? Because in amongst the vast piles of crap you seem to be spewing about this scumbag seems to be the suggestion that the poor, sensitive, misunderstood little love raped and brutally murdered an innocent young girl because he had a "quarrel with his girlfriend" and this somehow explains it as the "thing that happened to provoke him to commit the crime". Is this supposed to evoke some kind of twisted sympathy?

THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR WHAT HE DID. NONE WHATSOEVER.

The guy is a spoilt sociopath who couldnt handle not getting his own way. End of.

If he wants to atone for what he has done, he should quit whining and take his punishment like a man.

Ladies you understand when a woman goes off the handle and cuts off some guys penis cause he was cheating around.

No, we absolutely dont! Ive been cheated on. Quite a few times. Most women have. And yet I have oddly never felt the compulsion to hack off anyones tackle to get back at them. 99.9% of reasonable women will shrug, say "your loss, loser" and move on.

When you are hurting, when someone has just destroyed everything you believed in, you need to call someone

You think this is a sudden burst of insight no one ever realised before? Its common bloody sense. Nothing new to learn from this. We already know why Ichihashi killed Lindsay - he told the court.

Hi parents paid for his 3ldk? Rich spoiled mama boy... he cant atone for his crime...because he just was not raised in that way. Honestly - it is all parents fault! He should get death sentence

Marilita Fabie-FujisawaJan. 09, 2013 - 08:59AM JST

Ichihashi KUN????why the Kun? Do u respect him? Weird?????!!!!!!

Actually I think its worse than that, its not respect that he is showing him, it is the Sempai Kohai way, the Sensei Seito way , he is treating him the way he always did and by doing this he attempts to influence the readers to think he was a young misunderstood person, someone who made a mistake and deserves pity if not sympathy.

U said it! All4faj!

“I’d already told Ichihashi beforehand that she had plans to wed. He said to her, ‘You’ll be getting married, won’t you?’ Then she asked him, ‘Can I come to see you one more time?’ He just shook his head from side to side without speaking. I guess he felt concern for her new life.”

Aaaahh, see? He's such a sweet guy! You wouldn't have thought that he beat, raped, and then took about 3 minutes to strangle a woman to death, and dump her in a bath full of sand...

When are the Japanese media going to stop portraying this failure as a nice guy? He deserves the rope.

This is an article that should never have been put up on this website! Ichihashi brutally raped and murdered a young woman who had done nothing to him in anyway. The fact that this idiot professor is now trying to "justify" his brutality and mindset on the day in question makes me want to puke. I met Lyndsey when she first came to Japan to work for Nova and she was a bubbly, friendly and very outgoing young lady who had a long life ahead of her that Ichihashi cut short for his own demented pleasure. STOP trying to make this beast out to be a lamb and let him rot in prison for the rest of his life where he belongs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seems like bad timing for Ms.Hawker to be there. BUT no mater what the emotional truth is he is a rapist and a murderer and deserves to be isolated for safety.

Echoing many of the above comments from other reviewers, reading this article really made me feel quite sick. Wake up j-media. He doesn't feel remorse!!!! Not one damn shred of it!!! He doesn't need your sympathy. He is a con-artist playing you around his little finger! If you want to sympathize with someone, started with the 30,000 + people who top themselves every year not someone who rapes and murders someone in cold blood!

We can translate his feeling 'sorry' as his feeling 'scared' and 'desperate' about being locked up for life. But that's what he deserves. Don't give him the death penalty I say. If you really wants to atone for what he did, give him jobs like cleaning sewers for the rest of his life.

He should never be released, he's an animal. He escaped the police, went on the run and even had plastic surgery to change his appearance. He's not shown any real remorse but only to try and lessen his sentence at trial.

He brutally killed Lindsay Ann Hawker who had tried to help him.

matter* oops

A “NEET” (Not in Education, Employment or Training), he’d been receiving an allowance of several hundred thousand yen per month from his parents, enabling him to rent a 3LDK apartment.

Several hundred thousand yen per month? This dude was one spoiled brat, maybe one of rich parents too. No wonder the GF in the story wanted to kiss and make up, she saw a meal ticket waiting to get away and thought better of it.

This garbage has to stop. He committed a brutal murder and then like the brat he is ran away thinking Mommy and Daddy would take care of it.

Anyone want to bet that the parents are paying this mental, opps I mean so called mentor of a man cash to rehabilitae their son's image? How much else do you want to bet that he doesnt serve life either.

I think the lot of you fail to see the purpose of this article. The article itself provides some insight as to how the LHawker tragedy came to be.

A majority of the comments posted here are filled with emotion. This Ichihashi guy is a monster. Nothing he or anyone could ever say could detract from that.

There's no need to jump over JT or Mr. Motoyama for providing some insight and detail about the events that took place prior to L. Hawker's murder.

The fact that these kinds of murders continue to happen should make you wonder where and under what conditions are these people breeding. What cultivates these murders.

Mr. Motoyama seems like a very intelligent man who tried to get the facts. I don't believe Mr. Motoyama condones or supports what Ichihashi did. Thank goodness he's more intelligent than the eye for an eye posts I see here.

If there's an outbreak, some sort of viral disease, the solution to the problem is NOT to simply kill the host who's infected. The cure is to find the source of the outbreak. Quite simply, understanding why Ichihashi did what he did is important.

Logical insight. IMO that's the goal of the article. The writer already knows that he can't convince the mob of anything less than guilty.

Finally @ChibaChick, Double standards do exist. So does the devil in case you forgot. In public, you say one thing, but in the privacy of your living room (when the shoe is on the other foot) "I understand". Any attempt to say that they don't exist is futile. Don't try to iceskate uphill. What you can't see is the truth, gravity.

“I also had an opportunity to hear Ichihashi give details about the girl he had been seeing around the time of the incident

I think the writer should use.... brutal murder instead of incident..

Not one word from the professor about Lindsay. Never even mentions her name. Just boo-boo for the manipulative little pr*ck who attacked her and took her life. Motoyama sickens me. Ichihashi is exactly where he should be for life. I hope he's as miserable as possible, but no matter how much that is, it would never be enough.

Methinks his ex gf really dodged a bullet.

The perp is doing his PR campaign. He regrets sincerely being in jail, that's concern for himself, not the victim. The family is probably looking for some legal loopholes and/or some corrupted judges and/or some special political favor. They'll do anything to get him out. Remember the creep that had eaten his girlfriend, rich and influent families and o-miracle he was in the streets very few years later, on TV promoting his book.

Nobody to turn to, nobody to talk to.

He had this sensei, the mentor.

Just crushed by his ex-GF.

Apparently no, she was still enough with him to visit in jail.

The economy sucks and he can't even support himself.

He didn't need to support himself as he had family money, otherwise he could ask them to find him some botchan position in a business they own. Then, he was able to support himself during months after the murder.

Man I wanted to ralph my guts out reading this CRAP! WTF!

This dude was one spoiled brat, maybe one of rich parents too.

Mommy and daddy are both dentists who had a private clinic from what I recall. They were rolling in it. Who needs an apartment that large when a useless NEET? Oh, right. A spoiled child who kills an innocent girl who meets some reporter who wants everyone to feel sorry for him. Poor Ichihashi... JT, can you please remove this story as I find it disgusting your would even allow such crap on JT, a site read by foreigners in Japan. Some of whom may have known this girl.

I understand everyone blames him for the murder he committed-- he committed it. I don't feel sorry for him in the least.

But fpsRussia is right, understanding the story behind his crime is very important to protecting yourself and loved ones from other crimes. The point isn't to get outraged and exclaim "what a loser, he had a fight with his girlfriend so he decides to kill someone?" It is to see the point where a weak self centered narcissist finally completely broke and went beyond a tragic point of no return. Everyone has their breaking point, almost everyone, including those posting here, I think. It is good to know about this. ppl you think are sane and trustworthy around you may not be so.

Unfortunately tho, this article opens up as many questions as it tries to answer- It is unclear whether he broke up with his girlfriend or she with him, and the whole thing about getting supported by his parents and then wanting to support himself and about to become "unhinged" begs more explanation and implicates a poor relationship with his family which of course one would be suspecting all along from someone so narcissistic.

It looks to me like Ishihashi led a privileged and fairly normal life up to the time he split up with his Japanese girlfriend. Sort of makes one wonder what pushed him over the edge. Anyway I can't see how anything he says or writes can mitigate his crimes. The authorities will see to it that he stays in prison for a long, long time.

I suppose he will need more time to deal with it.

He has plenty of time now.

But fpsRussia is right, understanding the story behind his crime is very important to protecting yourself and loved ones from other crimes. The point isn't to get outraged and exclaim "what a loser, he had a fight with his girlfriend so he decides to kill someone?" It is to see the point where a weak self centered narcissist finally completely broke and went beyond a tragic point of no return.

Nothing Motoyama has revealed here qualifies as "insight" into why Ichihashi committed murder, so we're no closer to "understanding" his crime. So you're saying that by identifying the breaking point of a spoiled, self-centered narcissist who had the best of everything handed to him (apparently having a fight with his girlfriend, i.e., the first time things didn't go as he'd have liked), we can somehow "protect" ourselves in the future? His crime was selfish and cruel in the extreme, and a woman that had nothing to do with his pathetic girlfriend troubles is dead because of it, and lives of her relatives are shattered as well. So the lesson is to never deny the spoiled rich anything, or else justifiable murder will result? Ridiculous.

. Sort of makes one wonder what pushed him over the edge

As with all spoiled brats, he threw a hissy fit because he couldnt get what he wanted from Hawker, so he went over board, killed her, and then ran away thinking he did no wrong.

‘I want to atone for my crime in a way no one can know.’

So stay in prison and darken the world with your evil no more. That's the best way Ichihashi can 'atone'.

This is maddening. Utterly infuriating. It doesn't matter how bad he felt after his relationship before. Everyone has bad relationships - it is no excuse for killing or hurting someone else. He had control over his own actions; he knew what he was doing.

This whole story proves two things: the first is that Motoyama is a fool; the second is that Ichihashi is a very skilled manipulator. He was skilled to get the late Ms. Hawker to his apartment in the first place. Now that he's been caught, he knows very well how to play to the media and to doddery old fools like Dr. Motoyama. Have a look at the way impressionable teenagers have been fetishising and romanticising him, feeling "sympathy" for his plight, He now has a sob story that not only convinces people to sympathise with him, but even to potentially blame two perfectly innocent women: his ex-girlfriend, and Lindsey Ann Hawker. I would not be surprised if this is how the story will come across.

Psychopaths like Ichihashi are often very good at affecting a superficial charm; it's how they're so successful. We've seen that he was willing to use this charm to lure a woman into his flat to brutally murder her; now he is using that skill to get the public on his side by sobbing at the appropriate cues and presenting himself as a victim. Don't fall for it.

i can't help thinking that ichihashi is using motoyama to put out a story to gain sympathy so he can be released early. if he was truly repentant, he wouldn't have run for 3 years.

This us disgusting, how a professor diesnt even consider the victim but is all about painting his former student ( a violent murderer) in a goodlight? Ridiculous, ludicrous and down right insulting to to the victim and her family.

Ichihashi's former mentor sheds new light on 2007 Hawker murder case

Based on what I read in this article no light, new or othewise, was shed.

This so called prof is dumber than DUMB!

He had couple of things (probably among many others) against him:

1. Parents who weren't interested in helping him try to live on his own, but rather just throw money at him so he could live in apartment that is much too big for one person, and doing nothing.

2. What seems to be a high maintenance or clingy girlfriend who can't let go. If I were her fiancee, I would be LIVID that she went to visit this fool in jail and asked if she could visit him again. That would be a deal breaker for me...she's got issues.

I wish that Lindsay Hawker was a few years wiser to know not to show up alone at night at some strange guy's house. This guy was weird from the beginning and he even followed her to her house begging for an English lesson. That would have been the warning alarm not to associate from this guy. The one thing that everyone learned from this case is that Japan is not the "safe" country it is made out to be. Though of course it is safer than my gun-riddled country.

I am not saying it is her fault, no one deserves to be met by a psychopath.

I got to the bottom of the article and I'm thinking where is the new light shed here? Are we supposed to be surprised that his parents were paying for his life, or that he had a girlfriend he didn't get along with, or that he had a weird Disneyland fetish?

I consider this article to be drivel from top to bottom. And shame on the "mentor" (that's kind of a creepy word to use in this case if you think about it) for trying to stir up sympathy for such an awful person. RIP Lindsay.

"I want to atone for my crime in a way no one can know."

Mr. Hawker wanted the death penalty for Ichihashi. There's your atonement.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013013/Lindsay-Hawkers-killer-Tatsuya-Ichihashi-sentenced-life-guilty-murder-verdict.html

The one thing that everyone learned from this case is that Japan is not the "safe" country it is made out to be

I certainly hope that no one "only" learned this from this case. Anyone who has been here long enough, or read the newspapers or saw any news about Japan knew that Japan had it's problems with safety decades before this murder happened. To think otherwise would have been both foolish and naive.

Japan is a "relatively" safe country, but common sense, not Nathan Algren naiveity, is all one needs to know. Even with that, crap happens, no matter where one is.

I would change what you wrote here to say this instead;

The one thing I learned from this case is that Japan is not the safe country that I thought it was.

"huge tears ran down his face"

But unfortunately they were not like the huge REAL tears that ran down the face of this girls poor family.

Spoilt rich kid who finally crossed the line with terrible consequences. He deserves to stay in prison until he is in his 70's.

And as for Professor Motoyama he should be removed from Chiba University and someone should give him a reality slap in the face. What attention seeking VULTURE. - The man has no SHAME.

A "NEET" (Not in Education, Employment or Training),

In America we spell it "BUM", or at the very least "SPONGE"

Hey professor, whose tears do you care more about - Ichihashi's or the parents of Lindsey Hawker? I can see a kind of pattern in Japan where sympathies go to the perpetrator rather than the victim. Prof, stick to your plants, eh?

When people are in good economic terms and having a great time, they do not need advice. So, they they fall from grace, there will also be nobody to seek advice from. His ways become righteous in his own eyes. And there will be nobody to save him from himself.

He killed an innocent foreign woman and now he has achieved celebrity status. There are lots of "unstable" people who do not commit murder. Put this guy away and block any access to the public.

But fpsRussia is right, understanding the story behind his crime is very important to protecting yourself and loved ones from other crimes. The point isn't to get outraged and exclaim "what a loser, he had a fight with his girlfriend so he decides to kill someone?" It is to see the point where a weak self centered narcissist finally completely broke and went beyond a tragic point of no return.

Nothing Motoyama has revealed here qualifies as "insight" into why Ichihashi committed murder, so we're no closer to "understanding" his crime. So you're saying that by identifying the breaking point of a spoiled, self-centered narcissist who had the best of everything handed to him (apparently having a fight with his girlfriend, i.e., the first time things didn't go as he'd have liked), we can somehow "protect" ourselves in the future? His crime was selfish and cruel in the extreme, and a woman that had nothing to do with his pathetic girlfriend troubles is dead because of it, and lives of her relatives are shattered as well. So the lesson is to never deny the spoiled rich anything, or else justifiable murder will result? Ridiculous.

Don't know if you are reading this anymore, but if you read my post, I said that it wasn't a well-done article, as it left more ?'s than it answered.

As for justifiable murder- I DID NOT SAY THAT! "

o you're saying that by identifying the breaking point of a spoiled, self-centered narcissist who had the best of everything handed to him (apparently having a fight with his girlfriend, i.e., the first time things didn't go as he'd have liked), we can somehow "protect" ourselves in the future?

Yes, because nearly 100% of the ppl around me, and around you too, are spoiled, self-centered narcissists, (tho not everyone had the best of everything). Ppl have different faults and different breaking points, and you are fooling yourself if you think that the majority of those around you would not commit murder for selfish reasons. They just haven't got to that point. It is important to keep your eyes open and really understand the cases that do occur, the more extreme ones, so if something does start to happen around you, you can recognize it.

CORRECTION

second paragraph should've been a qoute too. From "Nothing MOtoyama revealed here..."

quote of tenguleavings above.

Why does JT even entertain this kind of article expressing apologetics for a killer. . . . and how long deos JT intend to milk public sympathy for this hyena - keeping this page open now for days on end.!?.........Honestly

Murderer, rapist, fugitive: he made his choices and deserves to rot. Glorifying violence and barbarism only undermines the suffering of victims, encourages criminality and detriments society.

-I stumbled across this old link while surfing a few topics related to NOVA (the English conversation school), & being curious about the murder case, gave it a read.

-I was immediately struck by Dr. (I assume as a professor emiratus, that he has a Ph.D) Motoyama's use of the affectionate term "kun" for Ichihashi- it was jarring right off the top- especially for a convicted (and confessed) rapist and murderer, and completely inappropriate. The tone of the rest of the piece was just as puzzling and indeed off-putting.

-One of the reasons it's puzzling is that Dr. Motoyama must be an intelligent, and it would appear, sensitive man, but he wrote this piece with a rather singular lack of awareness of the sensibilities of his potential readers. It's written from a very personal point of view- almost as if from the inside of a personal bubble- and is off-putting in it's lack of regard for the situation of the victim or her family. The fact that they aren't even mentioned once is quite telling.

-Little wonder it evoked such a passionate response on the part of so many readers. Yes, compassion and an attempt at understanding is called for even in the case of murderers, and is especially understandable when one has had a close relationship with them, but how about some for the victim and those left behind, Dr. Motoyama? In writing a piece such as this, a better sense of balance is not only called for, it's demanded.