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Lucie Blackman and Carita Ridgway Lost Their Lives to A Sexual Predator

100s more who had to settle for the justice only a dozen or so of Joji Obara’s victims received

By A.W. NavesPublished 2 years ago 7 min read
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Joji Obara (Photo: Murderpedia)

The Killer

Obara was born Kim Sung Jong on August 10, 1952. His parents were Koreans living in Osaka, Japan. Obara’s father worked his way up from being an impoverished scrap collector to becoming the wealthy owner of numerous properties and pachinko parlors, which are similar to slot machine casinos. Thus, Obara was able to attend the best private schools in Tokyo and had a personal tutor that prepared him for entry into an impressive prep school operated by Keio University.

Two years later, when Obara was only 17, his father died, leaving him property in Osaka and Tokyo. This paved the way for him to finish his education at Keio University, achieving degrees in politics and law. He traveled quite a bit and became a naturalized citizen of Japan, where he legally changed his name. His real estate investments served to expand his fortune to nearly 40 million U.S. dollars.

However, the recession of the 1990s hit both Obara and his firm hard. His real estate speculations cost him dearly and he lost his entire fortune. Dogged by creditors seeking payment, it is believed that he began using his failed business as a front to launder money for the Yakuza syndicate, Sumiyoshi-kai.

Obara was also known to abuse drugs, a habit that only escalated with his failed empire. He developed a preoccupation with white women, who were considered status symbols by many men in Japan. This seems to be when his sexual crimes began to take hold.

Obara would dose his victims with chloroform to incapacitate them, then abduct and rape them. Though he preferred white women, his sex crimes didn’t discriminate. Many of his victims were Japanese. At the time of his eventual arrest, more than 400 tapes he had made of him sexually assaulted women were recovered.

Police also found journals in which Obara referenced “conquest play.” This seemed to be his euphemism for sexually assaulting women who he described in his writings as being “only good for sex.”

The Victims

Carita Ridgeway (Photo: Murderpedia)

Carita Ridgway was born on March 3, 1970, in Claremont, Perth, Western Australia. In 1992, she was working in the Ginza area of Tokyo as a hostess in a local bar and saving money for acting school. A hostess in this area typically acts as a modern geisha performer who entertains the men by engaging them in conversation, lighting their cigarettes or cigars, singing karaoke, or dancing. There is a strict policy in such establishments against men touching or propositioning the hostesses. However, hostesses are allowed to accept drinks, gifts, and invitations to outside social occasions.

After a night in the bar, Obara offered Carita a ride home. Once he had her alone, he dosed her with chloroform to rape her. The dosage proved to be too much and led to liver failure and brain death. Panicked, Obara took her to the hospital. He used an alias when speaking to staff there, telling them that she was experiencing food poisoning from eating oysters.

Carita was later unplugged from life support by her family and allowed to die. She was cremated and her ashes returned to Australia. Initially, the cause of her death was listed as Hepatitis E, so no further investigation was made by the Australian Embassy or Japanese police, despite requests from the family. It was only after the later arrest of Obara that her death was ruled a homicide. The items recovered during the search of his home included a videotape of him raping an unconscious Carita. There was also a journal entry that read: “Carita Ridgway, too much chloroform.”

Lucie Blackman (Photo: Tumblr)

Lucie Jane Blackman was born in Sevenoaks, Kent, England on September 1, 1978. Like Ridgway, she worked as a hostess in Tokyo. She had landed there after working as a flight attendant for British Airways and deciding it was a good place to set up a base for seeing the world while earning money to pay off some debts.

While working as a hostess at a nightclub called Casablanca in Roppongi, Tokyo, she accepted a paid date with a Casablanca customer. Friends received a few phone calls from her during the date on July 1, 2000, but then she disappeared.

Lucie’s family flew to Tokyo once they learned she was missing and began a public campaign to find their missing loved one. They enlisted the help of British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook who happened to be in Tokyo at the time. Newspapers were also contacted and began posting public pleas for help in finding the missing woman after the situation was mentioned by British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.

A tip line was set up and an unknown businessman funded a £100,000 reward for any information about the case. The heavy publicity that was created drew out three women who had previously been in Tokyo to report that they had woken up sore and feeling ill in Obara’s bed with no memory of what had happened the night before. There had been reports made to the Roppongi police, but nothing had been done to help them.

It was not until February 9, 2001, that Lucie’s remains were discovered in a shallow grave beneath a bathtub that had been dumped in a seaside cave in Miura, Kanagawa, about 30 miles south of Tokyo and about 325 yards from Obara’s apartment. Her head had been shaved and her body was sawed into 10 sections that were then placed in separate bags and encased in concrete. Her advanced decomposition made it impossible to determine a cause of death.

According to the indictment against Obara, he had prepared a drink for Blackman which contained a drug that rendered her unconscious. He then raped her at his condominium in Zushi and killed her. Obara insisted he was innocent and that she took drugs voluntarily and without his assistance.

The Trial

Even before Lucie’s body was recovered, Obara was charged with killing her. He was accused of drugging, raping, and killing both her and Carlita Ridgway, along with raping eight other women who had come forward about their own sexual assaults or could be identified from the videotapes.

Obara was brought to trial in July 2001 and found guilty of multiple rapes based on the reports from various women and the recovered videotapes. He was also convicted of the rape and manslaughter of Carlita, but acquitted of Lucie’s murder due to a lack of direct evidence. While there was a videotape of his encounter with Carlita and he was identified as the man who had taken her to the hospital, there was no such evidence to tie him to Lucie’s death.

Lucie’s father, Tim Blackman, was given £450,000 by a friend of Obara’s as “mimaikin” — a gesture of condolence in the form of payment for the loss. He used it to set up a trust to promote personal safety in Lucie’s name. While Obara no doubt thought this gesture, which was made to a number of his victims, might buy him some grace with the court, he was wrong. The judge told him he attached no importance to the gesture in deciding his fate. He sentenced him to life in prison for his crimes.

The decision to acquit Obara in the Lucie Blackman case received much criticism. The public prosecutor appealed the Blackman-related verdicts based on forensic evidence that had not been available during the original trial. On December 16, 2008, an appeals court found Obara guilty on the charges of abduction, dismemberment, and disposal of Lucie’s body. Obara’s defense attorney filed an appeal, and it was rejected in December 2010 by the Supreme Court of Japan, which upheld his life sentence.

As for the many other suspected victims of Obara, their only justice comes from knowing that Obara is set to remain behind bars for the rest of his life.

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About the Creator

A.W. Naves

Writer. Author. Alabamian.

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