Joji Obara

Joji Obara (織原 城二), born Kim Sung-jong (born on 10 August 1952) is a Korean-Japanese serial rapist who raped between 150 and 400 women.

Joji Obara was born on 10 August 1952 to Zainichi Korean parents in Osaka, Japan.

During his youth, Obara's father worked his way from scrap collector to immensely wealthy owner of a string of properties and pachinko parlors.

Obara was educated at private Tokyo schools, and received daily tutoring in a variety of subjects.

At age 15, he enrolled in a prestigious prep school affiliated with Keio University, virtually guaranteeing his acceptance into the university.

Two years later, after his father's death in Hong Kong, Obara inherited property in Osaka and Tokyo.

After traveling extensively and graduating from Keio University with degrees in politics and law, he became a naturalized Japanese citizen and legally changed his name.

Obara invested heavily in real estate speculation, gaining assets estimated as much as $38 million.

Carita Simone Ridgway (March 3, 1970 – February 29, 1992) was an Australian model from Claremont, Perth, Western Australia, who was working in Tokyo's Ginza area as a bar hostess to earn money for acting school.

Common in East Asian nations, "hostess" in this sense describes a modern form of geisha entertainer, i.e. young women at bars who are paid to engage in conversation with men, light their cigarettes, sing karaoke, and sometimes dance – with a strict policy against men touching the hostesses or making sexual propositions.

Popular hostesses often receive drinks, presents and social invitations from their favourite customers.

Ridgway, who was offered a lift by Obara, was drugged; this led to chloroform-related liver failure and brain death.

Obara's culpability was exposed when, while using an alias (Nishita), he had taken an unconscious Ridgway to the hospital claiming that she was suffering from shellfish (oyster)-related food poisoning.

Ridgway died after life-support was stopped at her family's request; she was then cremated and repatriated to Australia.

The cause of death was initially deemed hepatitis E, and there was no support for an investigation by the embassy or Japanese police as requested by the family.

When police later searched Obara's home, they found a diary entry that read, "Carita Ridgway, too much chloroform", and a videotape of Obara raping Ridgway.

Lucie Jane Blackman (September 1, 1978 – July 1, 2000), known as Lucie, was a British woman from Sevenoaks, Kent, who worked as a hostess in Tokyo.

Blackman had previously worked as a flight attendant for British Airways and went to Japan to see the world and earn money to repay her debts.

At the time of her death, she was working as a hostess at Casablanca, a nightclub later known as Greengrass, in Roppongi, Tokyo.

On July 1, she went on a dōhan (paid date) with a Casablanca customer.

Other than a few calls to a friend during the date, no one heard from her again.

Blackman's family, wanting to find her, flew to Tokyo and started a high-profile media campaign.

They approached British foreign secretary Robin Cook, who was visiting Tokyo at that time.

Newspapers started publicizing Blackman's disappearance on July 13, when British prime minister Tony Blair mentioned the case during an official visit to Japan, where he met with Japanese prime minister Yoshiro Mori.

An information hotline was staffed by British expatriates, and an anonymous businessman funded a reward of £100,000.

As a result of the publicity surrounding the case, three foreign women came forward to describe waking up sore and sick in Obara's bed, with no memory of the night before.

Several of them had reported him to Roppongi police, but were ignored.

It was also around this time that police made the connection between cases via the man known as Nishita and Obara.

After losing his fortune and his firm in the 1990s recession, he was pursued by creditors, and reportedly used his business as a money laundering front for the yakuza syndicate Sumiyoshi-kai.

Obara was a drug user who was reported to have a fetish for white women.

He developed a pattern of criminal behavior, beginning with unlawfully administering drugs to render his victims unconscious, then abducting and raping them.

Obara victimized women of both Japanese and Western backgrounds.

He recorded his attacks on videotape, at least 400 of which were recovered by police, giving them cause to believe that he might have raped anywhere from 150 to 400 women.

Police found extensive journals in which Obara made reference to "conquest play", a euphemism describing his sexual assaults on women whom he wrote were “good only for sex" and on whom he sought "revenge on the world" drugging them with chloroform.

He was charged with drugging, raping and killing a British woman, Lucie Blackman, in July 2000, the rape and manslaughter of an Australian woman, Carita Ridgway, and the rape of eight other women.

On February 9, 2001, Blackman's body was found, buried in a shallow grave under a bathtub in a seaside cave at Miura, Kanagawa, about 50 km south of Tokyo and a few hundred meters from Obara's apartment.

The body had been cut into 10 pieces and put inside separate bags, her head shaved and encased in concrete.

In 2007, Obara was jailed for life on multiple rape charges and manslaughter, but was acquitted of Blackman's rape and murder for lack of direct evidence.

In December 2008, the Tokyo High Court found Obara guilty on the counts of abduction, dismemberment and disposal of Blackman's body.

Blackman's death, as well as Obara's trial, received extensive press coverage internationally, especially in Britain.