People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished From the Streets of Tokyo--And the Evil That Swallowed Her Up

by Richard Lloyd Parry

  “So I was very alone. The burying of Lucie’s ashes was the most significant day of all for me. For me, that was the end of her life—I would never see her again, and I didn’t feel in a position to get through it.”

  Over the past year, Sophie had been prescribed a series of antidepressants. She had tried several different drugs; none had helped very much. But now, in between shots of neat vodka, and after carefully and neatly disposing of the empty packets, she laid out her collection of pills.

  “I was sitting there on my own, getting obliterated. I don’t clearly know what I was thinking. I don’t remember making a decision about what I wanted to do. But at some point I took every tablet I could find. I can remember doing it in handfuls. I was popping them out of the packets and taking them in handfuls and handfuls. People say, ‘Wasn’t it just a cry for help?’ But it wasn’t. I just wanted to die. I didn’t want to be alive. I didn’t see the point.”

  * * *

  Emma and her boyfriend returned home to find Sophie asleep on the sofa in what they took to be no more than a vodka stupor and lifted her into bed. The next day, Emma left at dawn for two days of flying. Recollections differ about what happened next. Tim had the idea that it was Emma’s mother who raised the alarm, but Sophie remembered coming to groggy consciousness and phoning for an ambulance herself. Either way, it was early on Friday morning, more than twenty-four hours after she took her overdose, that the ambulance took her to the hospital, where her life was saved.

  Rupert was the first to get the news of what had happened. He rushed to the psychiatric clinic to which Sophie had been transferred and was appalled to see her shuffling and mumbling and rubbing her hands together compulsively, more like a zombie than the scathing, energetic sister with whom he had had a boozy meal just two days earlier. Tim drove over from the Isle of Wight and had Sophie transferred to a private clinic, where she was briefly committed under the Mental Health Act. He was struck by the pallor of her skin and by the way that, even after the drugs had been flushed from her system, she still seemed to be hallucinating. Jane was the last to be tracked down. When she visited the hospital she saw for the first time the scars on Sophie’s arms where for several months she had been cutting herself.

  After a few days, Sophie was discharged into her father’s care and went to the Isle of Wight to live in the old vicarage with Tim, Jo, and her children. She spent ten weeks there, calmly and happily, and finished the dissertation required to complete her degree in clinical physiology at the City of Westminster College. When the results were published that summer, she was awarded a first-class degree.

  The following year, she was admitted as a residential patient at Cassel Hospital in Richmond-upon-Thames, which specialized in treating people with severe psychiatric problems related to their families. She spent nine months there. She didn’t see Jane again.

  * * *

  “You might think that a disaster like Lucie’s death would draw everyone back together,” Tim said. “In fact, even in a happy family, people often unravel after something like that. They blame one another, they withdraw from one another. When things have already broken up, as in our case, the pain makes you less able to cope. So it becomes even more difficult to deal with the strain and stresses which were already there.” One summer day in 2006, Tim visited Sophie in the hospital with news that would add to the pressure on the Blackmans: Joji Obara had offered him half a million pounds and he had decided to accept it.

  This approach had first been made in March 2006, in the form of an e-mail from one of Obara’s lawyers. The offer was for a one-off cash payment of £200,000; in return, Tim would promise not to make a statement to the Tokyo District Court. Jane received a similar proposal and responded with contemptuous rejection. But Tim entered into a brief e-mail correspondence on the subject—although not, he insisted to me at the time, with the intention of accepting any money. “Here I was, almost in direct contact with Obara,” he said. “I wanted the opportunity to engage with him. I wrote back, pretending to negotiate—first, to see how far it would go, and second, to raise his hopes and then dash them in a pathetic effort at having a stab at him … I was just playing … There is no agreement, there is no money [that has been paid], and there is no forgiveness.”

  But Obara’s lawyers were keeping copies of the e-mails, and they were taping and transcribing their telephone conversations with Tim. When these were published the following year, they suggested that he was more eager to accept the money than he admitted. “I have received the offer from the accused,” Tim wrote. “I am prepared to consider it and prepared to consider the condition.” He asked for £500,000: Obara made a counteroffer of £300,000; and for this Tim agreed to a series of statements to be delivered to the court. “The accused has shown contrition and expressed sorrow at Lucie’s death,” he promised to say. “As Lucie’s father and as a Christian, I am able to forgive the accused, and … our relationship is resolved. I hope that he will rehabilitate himself into the community.” A few days later, however, Tim abruptly withdrew from the negotiation.

  He explained in a telephone call to one of Obara’s middlemen, which was duly recorded, transcribed, and published, “I am informed by the British police, who talked to the [Japanese] prosecutors,” Tim said, “that they are not happy for me to receive money and then go to court.”

  Carita’s mother, Annette Ridgway, had been approached with a similar offer, which she too had rejected. All three parents went to Tokyo the following month and described the effect on their lives of the loss of their daughters. “The terrible, terrible acts played out on my beautiful girl are acts of a disgusting creature, a filthy animal preying on beauty and vulnerability,” Tim told the court. “These are acts of depravity by a monster which has grown unchecked for decades in a hothouse atmosphere without law or control.”

  This monster has shown not a single tear of contrition, shame, or guilt for the perversion or crime against humanity. Instead there are only lies and denial; from denial at the start, of even knowing Lucie, to denial in her death. Quite simply, my beautiful daughter would be alive today if she had not been preyed upon by this creature …

  These despicable crimes against us must receive the absolute maximum penalty, and longest possible sentence. The eyes of the world believe the charge should be murder—the sentence death. I concur. Any sentence less than the maximum permissible will not deliver the deserved justice and would be a dishonorable insult to Lucie’s life and Lucie’s death.

  But over the next six months, Tim resumed his exchanges with Obara’s team. At the end of September, he traveled to Tokyo and met them in the New Otani Hotel. The timing was no coincidence: in October, Obara’s lawyers would begin their closing arguments in his defense. Just five days before, ¥100 million, which at the time was worth $850,000, was wired to Tim’s bank account in the Isle of Wight.

  * * *

  The payment of cash from perpetrator to victim is a well-established procedure in Japanese criminal cases, frequently encouraged by prosecutors. A dangerous driver who has injured a pedestrian, a shoplifter, even a rapist, can reduce his sentence, and occasionally avoid prosecution altogether, by making a financial settlement, often accompanied by statements of forgiveness or appeals for leniency from his victim. To a Western mind, such agreements are a dangerous interference with the impersonal workings of justice. But to many Japanese it is common sense that an offender should do what he can to compensate someone whom he has hurt. In one gang-rape case, for example, defendants who paid ¥1.5 million to the victim received a three-year jail sentence, compared to four years for those who did not, or could not, find the money. “In cases of this kind, ¥1.5 million is about the ‘exchange rate’ for a one-year reduction of sentence,” writes David Johnson. “In murder cases, where terms of imprisonment range from three years to life (and capital punishment is a possibility), the desires of the victim’s survivors have an effect that must be measured in years, if not in life itself.”

  But the
re was a difference between this practice and the settlement being proposed by Obara. In a conventional case, the accused offers money as an expression of atonement, a concrete token of his desire to put right a wrong for which he has admitted responsibility. But Obara admitted nothing. The hundreds of thousands of pounds that his lawyers flourished were not accompanied by apology or confession. In fact, they were careful to point out that this was not compensation, but rather mimaikin—a “solatium” or “consolation money”—which implied no criminal liability whatsoever. Obara had done nothing wrong but, like many decent people, he was terribly sad about what had happened to Lucie and Carita and wanted simply to help the families in their grief.

  If he had pleaded guilty, then reparation to his victims might have persuaded the judges to reduce his sentence. But to pay money to someone to whom he had done no harm made little sense. Several of his lawyers deplored the strategy. But Obara pursued the goal of distributing this charity with aggressive determination.

  Lawyers and private detectives tracked down each of the eight surviving women he was accused of raping, offering them ¥2 million each. Several of the women refused, but the offer was repeated with a persistence that verged on harassment. A lawyer named Mikiko Asao acted for three of the rape victims. She advised them that they were entitled to compensation from Obara but that if they accepted money, they should give in return nothing more than a receipt—no statement, no request for leniency, nothing that might influence the deliberations of the court. Most of the victims signed anyway. The documents drafted by Obara’s lawyers acknowledged receipt of “nuisance compensation,” agreed that the case was now “settled completely,” and asked the court “to withdraw the prosecution and the complaint on my case … because I do not have [the] intention of seeking his criminal punishment.”

  “These detectives contacted them repeatedly,” Mikiko Asao told me. “At their jobs, at home, on their mobiles. Even when they changed their mobile phone numbers, they found them out. They even found out their private e-mail addresses. This is how they get what they want—by telling lies, by making threats, by upsetting them psychologically. As soon as I heard about this, I protested to the defense lawyers. But it didn’t stop, and they forced them to sign these documents.”

  No one made threats to Tim Blackman. But on the same day as the bank transfer of ¥100 million, he signed and fingerprinted the following document, which would be presented to the judges by Obara’s lawyers the following week.

  Written Statement

  I did not know that the cause of death of my daughter Lucie Blackman was unknown, the DNA or so on of defendant Obara were not detected from the body of my daughter at all and the defendant Obara lodged at the Japanese style hotel on that day and at the time supposed when my daughter would have been dismembered and deserted.

  I would like to state and ask to the Japanese Court the following matters:

  1. What was the real black material flooded from mouth at all, and what was the real black material veiled the head of my daughter Lucie Blackman at all?*

  2. Constituent Analysis of the concrete veiled the head of my daughter Lucie Blackman.

  3. When and how transferred my daughter Lucie Blackman from Zushi Marina to Aburatsubo?

  Hereinbefore, and as father of Lucie Blackman, I would like to wish you please inspect the most important these three points supposed to be able to clarify the cause of death and this case.

  If the black material filled in the mouth and veiled over the face that could be clarified the cause of death would be discarded by the Police or the Prosecution, such act is illegal, and as a father who loves his daughter, I can not forgive even if that person will be a policeman or a prosecutor.

  The clotted grammar and preoccupation with baffling detail made it obvious that none of these were Tim’s words, that he had signed it without caring, and perhaps not really understanding, what it said. But for many people it was all the more shocking that he would casually undermine the prosecution case for nothing more complicated than half a million pounds.

  * * *

  “In public, I was very supportive of Dad’s decision,” Sophie said. “In fact, I didn’t support it at all. It’s not that I disapproved of him taking the money in itself. I just knew that he was going to commit public suicide by doing it, that he’d be torn to shreds by Mum and by the media. Everyone would have an opinion, and no matter how he justified it, people would judge him, and it would affect his life, his livelihood, everything. And it has.”

  It was Obara’s lawyers who announced the payment, the day after Tim’s return to England. The weekend papers in Britain all carried the story; their headline was supplied by Jane’s description of the transaction: “blood money.” “I have rejected all and any payments from the accused, as have my daughter, Sophie, and my son, Rupert,” she said in a statement. “He is conducting these negotiations against my wishes and the pleas of his children. Lucie’s loyal family and friends are sickened by Tim Blackman’s utter betrayal.”

  Many people in his situation would have discreetly gone to earth until the brouhaha had abated. But Tim had never sought to avoid journalists, and he did not begin now. Dutifully, he submitted to a round of television and newspaper interviews, all with the same question: Why? He talked about the losses he had suffered during the months that Lucie had been missing, and of the Lucie Blackman Trust and his hopes of putting it on a secure financial footing. He pointed out that because of the expense and duration of Japanese litigation, and Obara’s status as a bankrupt, there was no chance of winning compensation through a civil case. He didn’t help himself with certain of his claims: that the payment had been made not by Obara himself but by a university “friend” of Obara, a Mr. Tsuji, and that far from helping Obara, the payment “could actually make him look more guilty.” He came across as tepid and defensive. The television interviewers, who had formerly addressed him with simpering compassion, were hectoring and self-righteous. Rather than the bereaved father of a slain daughter, it was as if Tim Blackman had become an offender himself.

  It got worse the following week, when the Daily Mail, beneath the headline “A Father’s Betrayal,” ran a two-thousand-word character assassination of Tim. “It is an astonishing U-turn, and one that has caused immense anguish to Lucie’s mother, Jane,” the paper reported. “Intriguingly, however, while his conduct may have caused grievous upset, it has not, it seems, come as a huge surprise to many who know Tim Blackman well.” Nowhere in the article was Jane quoted directly; instead “friends” described her “quiet dignity” in the face of betrayal by Tim. “They paint a picture of a shallow and vain man who callously abandoned his family ten years ago to live with another woman, refusing to support them financially in any way … an arrogant and selfish man who quickly eroded the well of goodwill among the [Tokyo] community.”

  Of the “many,” only one was quoted by name: Huw Shakeshaft, or “Sir Huw of Roppongi,” the financial adviser who had turned so violently against Tim in Tokyo.* “I have long felt shocked and disappointed by the way he behaved,” Huw “revealed” to the Mail. “I have kept quiet until now but after hearing what he has done, I felt I could no longer keep silent.” Huw rehearsed his complaints: the liberties that Tim had taken with his office, the use of Huw’s restaurant tab to entertain journalists, Tim’s decision to leave Sophie on her own in Tokyo for two days. Another “friend” of Jane had further revelations about how little maintenance Tim had paid her, his relationship with Lucie (“To say they were close is laughable”), and his failure to consult with Jane about the founding of the Lucie Blackman Trust. The Mail had further “learned” that Jane was planning to write to the charity’s trustees “to question her former husband’s suitability” in running the organization.

  Tim sent a stricken letter to the court in Tokyo. “The condolence from [Obara’s] friend is accepted just as we have received condolences from around the world,” he wrote. “It is accepted because it makes the defendant more guilty of th
e crime against Lucie. Because he is bankrupt and this adds to his punishment. The defendant is guilty and continues to pretend he is innocent. He is a mad and wicked criminal, preying on our daughters.” It was too late: no one was listening. A month after receiving the money from Obara, it would later come out, Tim spent £64,500 on a yacht—his second. He tried to explain that the boat was an investment purchased on behalf of a yacht charter company that he ran, but no one was interested in this either.

  Jane Blackman’s shyness about speaking of Tim in her own words was conquered a few months later, when she gave an on-the-record interview to the Mail. The headline to this piece was “HE IS IMMORAL.” “It is like fighting two battles, one against her killer and one against my former husband,” she said. “Whose side is he on? How is this helping justice for our daughter?… As far as I am concerned, Tim accepted a hundred million pieces of silver. Judas was content with just thirty.”

  * * *

  The first time I met Roger Steare, Jane’s second husband, he gave me some advice. “You need to understand at the outset that there are two versions of this story,” he said. “There’s Tim’s version, and then there is the truth, which Jane will tell you.”

  Jane had met Roger two and half years after Lucie’s death. There was no doubt that his love and practical support enabled her to emerge from a period of the most extreme desolation. She had been alone since 1995. “I thought that I would never meet anyone,” she said. “I thought that that side of my life was over.” One evening some friends offered to introduce her to a single man they knew and, rather tipsily, she agreed. The date had an auspicious beginning. In the years after Lucie’s death, Jane had become aware of small signs, rarely noticed by other people, that had to her a profound significance. Butterflies, white feathers, stars, the image of angels in pictures and designs, the singing of a bird, the unusual behavior of objects and machines—all of them, Jane became convinced, were manifestations of Lucie. “She’s been here recently,” she told me on my second visit to her home. “Things have been going missing, the fire alarm went off for no reason.”