Lucie Blackman was working as a bar hostess in Tokyo at the time of her disappearance.
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If anything, the arrest of Obara proved even more agonizing for the Blackmans. In addition to what they had learned about his assaults on other women, police leaked disturbing details of his activities during the first days of Lucie's disappearance. Late on the night of July 2, Obara called area hospitals asking how to treat a victim of a drug overdose.
On July 3 Obara purchased a chainsaw, cement mix and other tools from a hardware store. That afternoon, the manager of Obara's seaside condominium in Miura called police to report a tenant who was behaving suspiciously. Even in the terse language of police reports leaked to the media, the scene that afternoon at Obara's apartment has a Hitchcock-like caste. Obara had cement mix on his hands when he greeted the police at his door. Suspicious, they asked to look around his apartment. Obara consented, but then became agitated when the police asked to look in his bathroom. When he refused to let them in, the police left without pressing the issue further.
Neighbors subsequently reported seeing Obara that evening pacing the small, 15-m-wide beach adjacent to his apartment building. The next day, records showed Obara was treated at a hospital for extensive bug bites as a result of being outside all night. Despite all this information, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police failed to thoroughly search the area around Obara's apartment until early February.
Many in Japan, even hardened reporters, bought into a myth that the police had known the location of Lucie's remains for months. Respected weeklies hinted that the remains had been left undisturbed in order to somehow trap Obara. The reality is, the police blew the murder case against Obara by failing to discover the body much sooner. Lucie's corpse was so badly decayed, the autopsy was unable to reveal her cause of death. Authorities have hinted they possess a video of Obara assaulting Lucie, but without proof of chloroform in her liver, they cannot directly link Obara to her murder.
Even more serious allegations of police ineptitude have been raised by Kazuo Iizuka, the owner of Club Cadeau, another Roppongi hostess joint. Iizuka says that on a Saturday night in early October 1997 one of his employees, a young British hostess, came into his club seriously ill after going on a dohan with a man now believed to be Obara. She had been drugged and, she suspected, sexually assaulted. Iizuka says she was so pale and weak, he had an ambulance take her from his club to a doctor. Tests revealed her liver function was seriously depleted. Iizuka says he took her to the police on more than one occasion and attempted to help her file rape charges against the unknown assailant, whom, he believes, could have been identified. "But the police asked me, 'What are you doing here?'" says Iizuka. "I am a club owner, and she was a hostess. They looked down on that. They refused to open a case."
After Obara was arrested, Iizuka says he found out that three more women who worked at his club had been drugged and assaulted. A source in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police acknowledges that Iizuka contacted the Azabu police department in 1997 but he says, "there were not enough concrete details to judge whether there was an issue of crime."
A little before noon on March 1, Tim Blackman, his girlfriend and his two surviving children opened a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne on the beach where Lucie had been recovered. With representatives from Scotland Yard and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police looking on, as well as dozens of paparazzi buzzing the water in speedboats, the Blackmans planted a small evergreen tree in Lucie's memory. Tim said of his daughter's end, "I hope Lucie had a glass of champagne, felt a bit woozy and passed out." They prayed. They cried. And then, for some reason, they started to laugh. Tim says this might be difficult to understand, but "with Lucie, laughter was always present."
It could be that because murder is so rare in Japan, the public has the luxury of according its most outrageous murderers near-celebrity status. A decade ago, when Issei Sagawa was returned to Japan from a European mental hospital, after murdering and cannibalizing his girlfriend, he became a pundit on television shows and was given his own newspaper column. Obara's arrest prompted a deluge of phone calls to the British embassy from Japanese who wanted to express their shame. But at the same time, hostesses in Roppongi report a rash of male customers introducing themselves as "Joji Obara." Amelia, one of the young women working at Lucie's old club, says a customer told her recently: "'I know a girl like you would never sleep with me. The only way I could get you would be to drug you."
Casablanca, Lucie's club, is no longer listed on the directory of the narrow, six-story building just off Roppongi's main drag. In an effort to erase their club's history, management has changed its name to Greengrass. Everything else is the same. Customers are still greeted when they enter the joint by a maître d' in an ill-fitting tuxedo. The lounge area is still dark. The black leather modular couches are still so mushy that customers and hostesses almost collapse into each other when they sit down. There are a dozen small tables, each just big enough for the decanter of Suntory whiskey, the water syphon and ice bucket, all of which are provided as part of the basic $150 entrance fee.
At 11:00 on a recent Friday night, a glassy-eyed senior citizen treats the club to a warb-ling, sick-dog rendition of John Lennon's Imagine. Beside him a young blond girl wearing a ruffly white dress she might have worn to her prom smiles happily, her hands poised, ready to clap when her elderly companion finishes his song. At another table a man dressed in a white V-neck sweater and cream-colored golf pants is flanked by two big-boned Nordic women. In halting English, he regales them with tales of how much his hotel accommodations cost on a recent trip. "Very much expensive," he repeats, as they dutifully nod. Across the room a powerfully built man in his 30s — displaying the latest Tokyo gangster style with his buzz cut and loud, metallic-colored tracksuit — sprawls on a couch, sleeping. A young blond sits by his side staring into space.
Ten young women waiting to be selected by customers perch on couches. Nearly all of them are blond, their average age perhaps 22. They sit upright, jumbled together like a doll collection. Careful not to disturb makeup and hair, they move with exaggerated stiffness but their eyes flit eagerly when a new prospect enters the club. Soon, each of the young women is sitting next to a total stranger. They hand out their business cards. They know about Lucie, but that's history. Last week, two girls at Greengrass were sacked because they didn't meet their dohan quotas.