A Japanese man made headlines after performing plastic surgery on himself.
Tatsuya Ichihashi is a criminal who was responsible for the murder and rape of 22-year old English teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker. She was found dead in March 2007 in a bathtub filled with sand and composite soil on the balcony of Ichihashi’s apartment in Chiba, Tokyo.
Police offered a reward of 10 million yen ($121,000) to help find him, and he was eventually arrested in 2009 after a nationwide manhunt. While in jail, Ichihashi released a book entitled Until The Arrest that detailed his life after the murder, living in constant fear of being found and put in prison. It was here where he admitted to becoming obsessed with plastic surgery to help him escape the watchful eyes that could lead to his capture.
His tinkering with plastic surgery started after he narrowly escaped the police who came to question him in his apartment following the murder. Looking for a way to make it difficult to trace him, he decided to bind his nose with a thread and needle, tightening it to make it appear more narrow.
Later in the Aomori prefecture, he attempted to cut off part of his lower lip to make it thinner. He failed the first time due to “excruciating pain” then finished up the job in a public bathroom a few days later.
He also dug two moles out of his cheek to remove more identifiable marks from his face.
Ichihashi performed various cosmetic procedures in the two and a half years that he was on the run. It was easy for him to hide his scars by wearing surgical masks, a common practice in Japan especially during the spring season to avoid pollen allergies.
He was eventually captured in Osaka in November 2009. The Chiba District Court sentenced him to life imprisonment for the murder of Hawker, denying the request of the latter’s family to give him the death penalty. The court believed that this was inappropriate due to his lack of previous convictions. They also claimed that there was a good chance he could still be rehabilitated given his young age of 32 years old.
