Murdered Briton had her hair cut, hands and feet bound in sand+

CHIBA, Japan, Dec. 4 Kyodo -
The hair of British woman Lindsay Hawker had been cut and her hands and feet
were tied with ropes when police officers found her body buried in a
sand-filled bathtub at murder suspect Tatsuya Ichihashi's apartment in Chiba
Prefecture in March 2007, investigative sources said Friday.

The Chiba prefectural police believe Ichihashi, 30, tied her up with synthetic
resin ropes, which are sold at regular stores, before raping her and cutting
her hair, and prepared the sand and the bathtub to conceal her body and foul
odors in case of the body decomposing, according to the sources.
The police discovered an empty bag for the sand for gardening, and cut-off
hair, several tens of centimeters long, from a trash bin in his apartment when
they found the body of the 22-year-old Hawker on the veranda, the sources said.
Ichihashi was sent to prosecutors Friday from a detaining facility in Chiba
Prison as he was served with a fresh arrest warrant on the charges of murder
and rape Wednesday.
He was initially kept at a police station but was transferred to the facility
due to health concerns as he refused food for two weeks following his arrest.
Ichihashi was arrested Nov. 10 in Osaka after being on the run for 32 months on
the charge of abandoning Hawker's body at his apartment. He was indicted on the
body-dumping charge on Wednesday.
He has been eating since the transfer and has gained weight compared with when
he was initially arrested, according to the investigative sources.
Ichihashi fled from police officers on the evening of March 26, 2007. They went
to his apartment after the language school where Hawker worked reported that it
had lost contact with her. The police subsequently found Hawker's body in the
bathtub on the balcony.
Ichihashi had remained at large since, using false names and altering his
appearance by undergoing a series of plastic surgeries.
One of the clinics that performed the surgery provided a photograph of his
post-surgical face.
He was spotted and arrested at a ferry terminal in Osaka waiting for a ship
bound for Okinawa.
==Kyodo
2009-12-04 23:44:15