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Lucie Blackman death: timeline of events
16 Dec 2008
This is the timeline of events surrounding Lucie Blackman's disappearance and death, and the subsequent trial of Japanese businessman Joji Obara.
May 4, 2000: Miss Blackman, 21, from Sevenoaks, Kent, and her friend Louise Phillips, also 21, from Bromley, Kent, arrive in Tokyo on 90-day tourist visas after giving up their jobs with British Airways to travel around Asia. They share a first-floor room in a lodging house near Tokyo's Olympic Stadium and get jobs at the Casablanca bar, in Tokyo's Roppongi district.
July 1: Miss Blackman vanishes after telephoning Miss Phillips to say she was going out for the afternoon with a man. She was believed to be wearing a one-piece black dress and black sandals, a silver necklace with heart-shape diamond, and to have carried a black handbag.
July 2: Miss Phillips receives a telephone call from a man calling himself Akira Takagi, who says Miss Blackman has joined a religious cult and is undergoing "training" - and adds that she will not see her friend again.
July 3: Miss Phillips telephones the Blackman family in England to say she does not know where Miss Blackman is or what has happened to her.
July 4: Miss Blackman's younger sister Sophie flies to Japan to try to find her.
July 12: Miss Blackman's father Tim, a property developer from the Isle of Wight, arrives in Tokyo.
July 13: Mr Blackman holds a press conference in Tokyo and prime time news programmes in Japan carry the story of the disappearance. He rejects suggestions that his daughter might have run away to escape credit card debts or that she would willingly have joined a religious cult. About 30,000 posters of Miss Blackman are distributed in Tokyo.
July 15: Mr Blackman meets then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who is in Japan for a summit, and Mr Cook urges the Japanese public to help in the hunt for the missing hostess.
July 18: Nationwide appeals have prompted 100 calls from the public which detectives follow up. Mr Blackman and Sophie carry out their own investigations, establishing an office in Tokyo near the Casablanca bar. They open a confidential hotline, staffed by sympathetic ex-patriates, for people who have information but are afraid to go to the police. The Blackman family offer a £9,500 reward for Miss Blackman's release, which is increased to £100,000 by an anonymous businessman.
July 21: Prime Minister Tony Blair meets the Blackmans during a flying visit to Tokyo and promises to raise the matter with his Japanese counterpart at a G8 summit in Okinawa that same day. Mr Blair says: "It is every parent's worst nightmare to have a child working abroad who then disappears."
August 1: Tokyo police receive a letter from someone purporting to be Miss Blackman which says: "I am doing what I want so please leave me alone." Detectives and her father dismiss it as a fake.
August 23: A Japanese businessman, who was questioned by police about Miss Blackman's disappearance, is reportedly found dead in an apartment with a missing person poster of her.
September 1: On Miss Blackman's 22nd birthday her family release balloons in Sevenoaks. Mr Blackman tells a press conference in Tokyo that police are investigating a tip-off that she could have been kidnapped and shipped to Hong Kong with four other Western girls to be sold to wealthy men as sex slaves.
September 3: Miss Blackman's mother, Jane, discloses that Sir Richard Branson has secretly funded a 30-second information appeal to be screened in Japanese cinemas. An Australian research chemist also claims to have seen a woman resembling Miss Blackman withdrawing money from a cash machine in Hong Kong between July 16 and 18.
September 20: Mr Blackman, close to despair, flies back to England after having spent tens of thousands of pounds in the unsuccessful effort to find his daughter.
October 11: Police question businessman Joji Obara, 48, over Miss Blackman's disappearance as well as the drugging and raping of other women.
November 11: Obara admits having met Miss Blackman but denies playing any part in her disappearance.
February 9 2001: Police find parts of a body buried in a cave on a beach near Obara's seaside home close to Tokyo. The remains are later identified as being those of Miss Blackman.
March 30: Miss Blackman's funeral takes place near her mother's home in Kent and 500 mourners attend.
April 6: Police arrest Obara in connection with Miss Blackman's death. He has been in police custody since October on charges of drugging and raping other women. Obara is later charged in connection with Miss Blackman's death and pleads not guilty to fatal assault - or rape resulting in death.
October 10 2002: Property developer Obara goes on trial in Tokyo charged with the abduction of Miss Blackman, rape resulting in death, and the disposal of her body. He is also charged with killing Australian Carita Ridgway - another foreign hostess who died after allegedly being drugged and raped by him in 1992 - and with raping eight other women.
July 18 2003: Conman Michael Hill, 60, is jailed for three-and-a-half years for tricking £15,000 out of Mr Blackman. Hill, 60, of Waterloo, central London, claimed he had contacts in the Japanese Mafia who could help to trace her. He admitted deception.
September 2003: The trial moves on to Miss Blackman's case after 23 hearings.
November 27: Mr Blackman and Sophie come face to face with Obara for the first time at Tokyo District Court.
December 2 2004: Father and daughter make an emotional visit to the cave where Miss Blackman's body was found to pay their respects.
December 24: Mr Blackman launches a safety text scheme to protect women while they are out socialising at Christmas. The scheme allowed people to send a delayed text message if they felt unsafe for any reason but might not want anyone to know where they were or who they were with.
March 23 2005: The ashes of Miss Blackman are buried in Sevenoaks, Kent, more than four years after her body was found in a remote cave in Japan.
July 27: Miss Blackman's family are horrified when Obara claims in court she smoked dope, was heavily in debt and was mentally ill.
April 25 2006: Mr Blackman tells the Tokyo court that the death of Miss Blackman had made her sister attempt suicide because of her grief.
April 21, 2007: Mr Blackman, now 53, and Sophie, now 26, fly out to Tokyo ahead of a verdict.
April 24, 2007: Obara is cleared of Miss Blackman's manslaughter but is sentenced to life imprisonment after he is convicted of eight rapes and one count over the rape and death of Australian Carita Ridgway who died in 1992.
December 16, 2008: Tokyo High Court rules that Obara was guilty of dismembering Miss Blackman and abandoning her body. The sentence was unchanged as he is already serving a life sentence.
