when english tourist lucy blackmon disappeared from the city of tokyo friends and family feared the worst but never did they imagine that her disappearance would become a fundamental aspect to revealing the dark and hidden crimes of one of japan's most notorious killers welcome back to coffee house crime my name is adrian and in today's video we'll be talking about the dark case of joji abara but before we start today's video i had one small announcement to share with all of you if i timed this correctly coffeehouse crime should have just hit 1 million subscribers starting
this channel 17 months ago i would have never expected us to reach such a milestone what we have growing here as a community really is something special and i want to thank each and every single one of you for being here with me on this journey it means the world to me simply sitting down and thinking how many of you watch my videos is honestly terrifying i just can't wrap my head around it we do have one slight problem though with this channel becoming so big i can no longer fit all of you in this
coffee house which is why i've made the decision to sell up shop and move into somewhere bigger and more fitting and so on that note let me quickly turn the lights off and on welcome back to the new coffee house crime pull up a seat and make yourself comfortable seriously though folks a wholehearted thank you to each and every single one of you although the stories i cover may be dark what we have here as a community is warm and positive and i wish i could meet every single one of you and a massive thank
you to gordon mcbride from featherwack studios for creating our new coffee house it was a real pleasure to work with you okay that'll do for now i have a coffee to brew and a story to tell and you know the drill by now pull up a seat grab a coffee and sit back this is the case of jojiabara [Music] our story today begins in the southeast of england welcome to kent there's a lot of history in this part of the uk but now ken's economy is primarily focused upon services known as the garden of england
kent is full to the brim of old cathedrals and castles but recently it's building itself a reputation for its food and wine found towards the western border of kent lies a small town named seven oaks and here lived lucy blackman lucy was born on september 1 1978 to her mother jane and father tim blackman lucy was the oldest of three siblings and her younger sister sophie and younger brother rupert completed the family of five but sadly her parents were divorced in the middle of lucy's childhood and throughout this separation lucy along with her mother brother
and sister would find themselves moving to kent lucy was described as a very happy child always full of energy and forthright with positivity she was a meticulous planner and this served her well in school following her graduation from school lucy made the decision to become a flight attendant for british airways a job which obviously would allow her to fly all over the world but over the following couple years she had grown exhausted from the constant travel and work and with many of these jobs not paying very well this left lucy short on money and as
a result she spiraled into a small debt like many of us going through her first job it was in this moment of exhaustion that lucy began to question her choice in career and direction lucy loved to travel and although her job with british airways was relatively good it wasn't doing her any favours financially or for her mental health this was when lucy and one of her friends and colleagues louise hatched up a plan travelling didn't have to be hopping from one country to another every week they could settle in one foreign location find a good
job and earn good money the two flight attendants had always liked the look of japan a country which is seriously like no other being home to more than a dozen unesco world heritage sites japan's traditions and principles run deep throughout the country add its food modern technology and sprawling suburban lifestyle to the mix and you're only just touching the surface with this interest in mind lucy and louise decided to leave their jobs at british airways and instead find a job in japan to repay their debts the idea was nerve-wracking but they had each other and
so with that said they purchased their tickets headed over to heathrow airport and boarded their flight to japan in may of the year 2000 lucy and louise found themselves in the heart of tokyo settling for an apartment near roppongi a district well known for its nightlife and western culture they spread out to find a job and soon after that they came back with an offer they began to work at one of the local nightclubs called casablanca where they became hostesses to its many patrons among many other aspects japan has its own way of doing things
when compared to the western world and host and hostess clubs also known as kyapakura fall into this category hostesses are paid to light cigarettes provide drinks converse and perhaps flirt with their customers this may include karaoke but it's worth mentioning that dancing stripping and anything otherwise are generally banned in kia bakuras it's a place for businessmen or women to relax and enjoy themselves all within a pg atmosphere and particularly in roppongi many of these bars sought to hire western women for their japanese patrons the pay was fine and they both had good experience and public
customer service how hard could it be anyway as part of casablanca club's rules all hostesses are encouraged to meet their customers for dinner prior to bringing them to the club where their shift would begin and this kind of dinner date is known as a dohan in japan lucy's parents were concerned about their daughter's choice in work but she was confident and made it very clear that she knew her limits she described the job as still being an air hostess but without the altitude july the 1st 2000 in the warm saturday afternoon lucy slipped on her
sandals and black dress as she made her way to the front door seeing her friend louise in the adjacent room she explained that she was going on a dohan with a customer from the casablanca club she said he'd offered her a new mobile phone in return and the date would only be an hour long at a restaurant near the beach louise understood she told lucy not to take too long as the girls had plans late that evening her boyfriend scott fraser was also in the area and the three of them were looking forward to the
weekend plans lucy would message louise three times later that day her first message sent at 1 30 pm said i am now with my lunch date and at 5 pm she sent louise another text message to say i'm being taken to the sea and finally at around 6 45 pm she sent her third and final text message i'll be back in half an hour this same text message was sent to scott a few minutes later but as the clock struck 8pm lucy still hadn't returned home and as tokyo slipped further into the night lucy remained
unaccounted for despite having evening plans telling a friend and her boyfriend that she was on her way no one had seen or heard from lucy quite simply she had vanished what do you do when your friend disappears in a foreign city and not just any foreign city but the capital of japan with the greater tokyo area holding a population of 34.4 million residents finding a needle in a haystack would be much easier adding unfamiliarity to the country's language law and practices and you're now in very uncomfortable territory louise contacted local police but they didn't seem
too interested and as saturday crawled into sunday and then into monday there were still no signs of lucy no one at the club had seen her and all phone calls and text messages to her mobile were seemingly ignored but then suddenly in the evening of monday the 3rd of july louise received a phone call it was from a man with a thick japanese accent he spoke english well but slowly he said lucy can't talk at the moment lucy is okay but she isn't coming home she has joined a newly risen cult she is safe and
training in hutton chiba back at home in england and lucy's mother jane had just been made aware of lucy's disappearance and her reaction was swift and violent from the very moment that she knew her daughter was missing she was terrified the anonymous call was concerning in its own right but it was also extremely out of character for lucy to just vanish without saying anything just the very next morning lucy's sister sophie and her ex-boyfriend jamie were now on a flight to tokyo and the challenge they now faced before themselves was both expansive and daunting although
missing's person's report had been filed police were very lethargic to look into lucy's case and over the following days working with authorities was both cumbersome and frustrating they simply didn't care they exclaimed that she was an adult free to do whatever she wants and quite frankly it wasn't their problem at the time police effort was very poor lucy's silence could mean a life or death situation not to add to her family's extreme anxieties but time really was of the essence they realized they were not going to get anywhere with this current momentum and so as
a result they directed their attention towards the media instead perhaps if lucy's case publicly blew up it would garner tips and information and finally kick local police into action making public appearances in front of the japanese press nurtured strong results and over the following days lucy's disappearance grew in notoriety and attention the japanese public started to weigh in and help many tips came through to the new private hotline and although this sounded encouraging there were a lot of red herrings and as lucy's family approached the two-week mark both anxiety and aspirations started to boil by
now both english and japanese media were obsessed with the case even prime minister tony blair and virgin's richard branson making appeals to the public and this put a lot of pressure on japanese police by the end of the third week a handwritten letter had made its way to the police this note was apparently written by lucy in which she said she was okay and didn't want to be contacted however this signature was proven to be forged somebody out there was playing games with the police in parallel to this lucy's family made the decision to hire
private investigator from england and being assigned the job he flew over to tokyo immediately he began to prowl the streets of roppongi and ginza and eventually he found his way to club casablanca while he was here one of the other western hostesses came forward she admitted seeing lucy with another man in the nights before she disappeared so maybe he knew something using his contacts from scotland yard back in the uk this private investigator had an artist impression created from the given description which in return created this profile image and as lucy's disappearance spread like wildfire
multiple western women would eventually come forward all of them gave very concerning stories of their experience with a man thought to be the same person in this profile image and as one account turned into several a very worrying pattern emerged in each and every case this man would take the young woman on a dohan promising them money and luxurious gifts before luring them back to his apartment and after arriving he would spike their drink and assault them although the name of this man varied from victim to victim his appearance did not he was described to
be a middle-aged man he had medium-length hair for a man and he was handsome charming and visibly rich the collected accounts of several young women when combined with the police sketch was encouraging news to investigators it gave them a definitive lead to work towards however despite this no new discoveries were made and as lucy's disappearance slipped from weeks into months many started to doubt if they would ever hear from her again as time goes by both the public and media attention tend to grow less interested in a missing person's case and realistically so does the
opportunity to collect evidence surveillance tapes get written over fingerprints are weathered away and people's memories of the day begin to fade it was beginning to look less and less likely that this case would ever be solved when suddenly in the fourth month of police investigation officers made a breakthrough as october rolled around a prime suspect had at long last been identified the man's name was jojobara he was known to frequent casablanca club but always under a different name nevertheless he perfectly fit the description given by multiple victims born on august 10 1952 jojobara came from
a hard-working family hard work that for his father turned into fortune his father was a korean immigrant he moved to japan as a young adult with no money but big dreams his tenacity and hard work ethic served him very well he may have begun his career as a scrap collector but by the time he and his wife gave birth to joji he was extremely wealthy building an empire through taxi companies pachinko parlors and real estate business along with his two brothers joji earned himself reputation as the stereotypical rich kid at school he was often protected
by his father's wealth and by the time he enrolled in takeo senior high school in kanagawa his father rewarded him with a house unfortunately at the age of 17 his father sadly passed away leaving joji and his two brothers over 40 million yen in assets across osaka and tokyo the equivalent to 25 million pounds or 33 million dollars after graduating from ko university with a degree in politics and law he became a naturalized japanese citizen with his brothers moving on to become doctors but progressing into his 30s joji found his everyday job to be tedious
and boring it was around this time from 1986 to 1991 that japan experienced an economic bubble meaning that the real estate and stock market prices began to rocket joji heavily invested into this believing that prices would continue to indefinitely rise but in the early months of 1992 this bubble burst causing real estate prices to plunge and japan's economy to stagnate he lost the risk and as a result his firm collapsed his fortune almost entirely gone but he wasn't out of the fight yet instead he began to use his company as a money laundering front for
the yakuza also known as the japanese mafia so as soon as joji was recognized as the man in the police sketch officers began to build a case around him and of course keep him under close observation and finally in early october he was officially arrested and charged on five counts of indecent assault therefore allowing officers to raid and investigate his property what they found inside was devastating he had a large library full of videos of himself taking advantage of his drugged victims with some of these crimes dating back all the way to the early 90s
he had been committing these awful acts of violence for almost an entire decade despite police findings and victim accusations joji denied all acts of violence and also denied ever meeting lucy this is on the contrary to multiple reports placing him in the same bar as her only days prior to her disappearance with joji behind bars but as evidence mostly circumstantial lucy's family needed more information to feel comfortable that he was lucy's suspect off the back of this an international appeal was launched to ask anyone who may have had experience with joji ibarra to come forward
and this would strike a chord with an australian man eight years earlier in february of 1992 he was in love with a woman named karita ridgway in fact they were engaged looking forward to spend the rest of their lives together but things didn't quite turn out that way karita was an aspiring actress but with her dream of making it big she needed money to attend acting school and i'm sorry if you can see where this is going karita decided to pay for tuition by becoming a hostess in tokyo's kapakuras and as part of this agreement
she would go on dohan's on february 27 1992 karita attended a dohan with a rich japanese man but after this date she was dropped off unconscious karita was rushed to hospital in which doctors did the very best they could to save her but tragically two days later she died of liver failure the cause of her death was officially deemed to be hepatitis e or natural causes but this idea never felt plausible to her family or boyfriend karita was a healthy woman she had no concerning medical history and she was always clean the boyfriend contacted japanese
authorities who in return reopened karita's case with a sharp focus to link her with jojobara and the conclusion they were looking for came very quickly amongst the 400 videotapes found in joji's home was one named creta ridgeway and in his diary on february 27 1992 he had written karita ridgeway too much chloroform as tragic as this development was this information was all that police needed to upgrade joji's charges from assault to murder and although this fresh evidence was successful in strengthening his role in lucy's disappearance it sadly didn't confirm it but then in january of
2001 six months after lucy had vanished a very sad and solemn discovery was made on january the 10th 2001 investigations led police to a cave off the shores of mira in kanagawa and this cave was only 100 meters away from joji's apartment while here they noticed uneven concrete underneath the basin of a bathtub rather puzzled they began to remove the concrete and what they found underneath were a series of packages they slowly opened these packages up and tragically inside each of them were dismembered body parts with even the head entombed in concrete when post-mortem examiners
cut into the cement they hoped to find teeth to match with dental records but instead they immediately found one identifiable feature it was long natural blonde hair as you can probably guess the body was later confirmed to belong to lucy blackman lucy's family were devastated the long spell of silence from their daughter already painted a very grave reality for her but they always held on to the hope that maybe one day she would return and this discovery would put an end to their hopes the discovery of lucy's body would ignite a very long exhausting legal
battle between joji ibarra and not just the family of lucy and karita but the family of many other victims too joji had now been charged with nine counts of indecent assault the murder of krita ridgeway and now the murder of lucy blackman who but he would still deny having anything to do with lucy's death and this was despite her body being found not even two minutes from his apartment joji admitted that he'd spent the evening with her but insisted that shortly after 5pm she had left the apartment apparently she was high and therefore he asked
her to leave the entire trial would last almost seven long years which was full of disappointing spectacles by joji in one of his days in courts he refused to leave his jail cell and instead he stripped naked held onto his toilet basin and repeatedly screamed no there is some extremely frustrating evidence coming up but before that i wanted to share with you that joji was found not guilty of the murder of lucy blackmon which makes the following details all the more enraging through the multitudes of analysis investigators were able to confirm the following at around
4pm on july 1 2000 lucy met up with joji an hour later she rang louise to say that they were on their way to the coast mobile phone data confirms this at 5 30 pm a japanese couple saw joji and louise together at a seaside resort and a photo from a camera from joji's flat confirms that they were on the beach shortly after blonde hairs belonging to lucy were found in his flat and this was confirmed by dna analysis mobile phone records confirmed that lucy made a final call in the evening while in his home
this was confirmed by triangulating her mobile phone's coordinates copies of a forged signature were found in his apartment proving that he was the fraudster who'd pretended to be her through a letter we don't quite know what happened later this evening but the very next day on july the 2nd phone records show that joji had called several hospitals in his area asking how to treat someone who's experienced a drug overdose the very next day on july the 3rd receipts confirm that joji purchased a chainsaw cement mix and other tools from a hardware store and later that
afternoon police were called by joji's neighbor who'd complained about suspicious activity and noise as apparently they had heard terrified shouting the day prior it gets even more suspicious police reports indicate that late that afternoon officers arrived at joji's apartment to request that they look around upon entering they found that he had cement mix on his hands and he was visibly shaken when police requested to look in his bathroom he became aggressive and refused to let them in instead exclaiming that they'd already seen enough the police left without pressing this issue any further neighbors reported that
later in the evening on the same day they witnessed joji pacing the small beach next to his apartment several times and hospital records show that he was treated for extensive bug bites the next day as a result for being outside all night however despite the text messages phone calls witness reports police reports forged signature mobile phone data dna previous cases and bug bites he was still found innocent over lucy's murder granted he was found guilty on nine counts of indecent assault and the murder of karita ridgway therefore sentencing him to life but really the reason
for this is the prosecutor couldn't find any of his dna on her body and also they couldn't determine the cause of her death so technically he was dismissed and thankfully one year later after being appealed joju was re-trialled on the murder of lucy blackmon where he was finally found guilty but seriously this should have happened the first time around at least to me but this case highlights the show incompetence of japan's former police force i know in recent years they've reformed to become more compassionate and responsive but back then they really didn't care about their
tourists a few side notes from this case but while jojo was under trial and not yet found guilty he offered lucy's mother condolence money formally requesting her to stop the trial for 450 000 pounds understandably she refused but only days later her ex-husband which is lucy's father took the money instead obviously this caused a massive rift in the family and i'll let you be the judge on how moral this was to his own daughter joji's case is unique he truly is a deviant and a monster to the highest degree he assaulted not one but hundreds
of women and technically became a killer through his own ventures and despite over 99 of japan's murderers confessing once caught he remains as part of the one percent who refuses to accept responsibility and blame joji ibarra is a chronic liar who denies any accountability and obviously he is used to getting everything he desires who knows how many more women he would have terrorized if it wasn't for the tenacity and strong will of lucy's family in france all of which even 22 years later continue to live their lives with a hole in their heart and so
concludes the case of jojobara lucy blackman and karita ridgeway thank you so much for watching another video today by coffee house crime if you found this video interesting or insightful then please remember to like the video and subscribe if you haven't yet just to share it one more time but a heartfelt thank you to all of you who are here supporting me on this channel i can't begin to express how much i love and appreciate you all so thank you and as always please share your thoughts on this case in the comments section down below
of course i'll see you again real soon in the next one but until that moment arrives look after each other goodbye [Music] you
