Missing The Lucie Blackman Case is the latest Netflix documentary that re-examines the case of a 21-year-old British national who went missing in Japan. It is directed by Hyoe Yamamoto and produced by Vesuvius Pictures and Beach House Pictures. The documentary has a runtime of about 1 hour and 40 minutes.
The film features Tim Blackman, Jake Adelsten, Ryutaro Nakamura, Akira Mitsuzane, Masahiko Soejima, Suzy K Quinn, Clare Carpool, Junichiro Kuku, Tokie Maruyama, Yuji Nozoe, Katsuyoshi Abe, Keizo Harfuji and other people who were connected to the case.
Missing The Lucie Blackman Case Review
When 21-year-old British Air hostess Lucie Blackman leaves her life in London to move to Tokyo for an adventurous year of exploration – her parents and friends never imagine that just three weeks later, she will vanish without a trace. Blackman had been working as a Hostess in a club in Roppongi but when her friend couldn’t contact her for days, an alarming search to find her led to the dark side of Hostess culture and a predator lurking in those shadows.
What really brought international attention to the case was the victim’s father’s tenacity to find her by any means. If Tim Blackman had lost hope or relied only on Japanese forces to uncover the mystery, then the family would have never known what happened to Lucie and other women might have become another victim in future.
Even then, it took almost a year or 223 days since her disappearance on July 1, 2000, for the investigators to discover what went down. If anything, the documentary shows how a country that seems pretty safe, also has a hidden side that one shouldn’t overlook. The hostess culture was one of the key factors in Lucie Blackman’s case and how young women are often pressured to entertain their guests outside of the club’s premises. Even though the featured former hostess claims that their work didn’t involve anything sexual but making them retain the guests to come back again & again, the work also extended outside the club premises unofficially.
Initially, the Japanese authorities weren’t onto the case as they suspected that maybe Lucie went to a neighbouring country and didn’t tell anyone or could be in hiding like many other tourists who overstay their visas to look for work. Also, being a foreigner her case wasn’t given as much importance until Tim brought international media attention and even reached out to Tony Blair for help. It definitely put much pressure on the authorities to solve the case with utmost urgency since a nation’s reputation was also on the line.
What Happened to Lucie Blackman?
Since there were no leads in the case, the police started looking into previous complaints from the clubs at Roppongi or the people working there. They found a report by one of the hostesses who filed a complaint against a customer who seemingly drugged her on a paid date and she couldn’t remember what might have happened to her. On further investigation, they found a pattern but couldn’t identify the man. One of the victims had the phone number of the man written in her diary, through which they were able to identify the residence of the man and that he had actually called Lucie’s number on the day of her disappearance.
It was when one of the victims revealed the exact location where she had been taken, the police came across more evidence of the man being linked to Lucie when a restaurant staff identified her picture and told that she was accompanied by a man. The only thing known about the man was that he owned many luxurious cars and that was the lead that led them to Joji Obara, a wealthy man with various inherited properties.
The police were on a stakeout until they arrested him over Lucie’s disappearance case but what they found in his house was much more heinous than they expected. They found at least 400 videotapes that contained the recording of him sexually assaulting unconscious women.
Among them was a woman named Carita Ridgway, who had gone missing in 1992 and was dropped off at a hospital by a man stating that she had food poisoning. It was Obara only who performed sexual acts on unconscious Carita. However, she started trembling in between due to chloroform poisoning and was pronounced dead in the hospital.
These video tapes were nothing less than a horror story but they couldn’t find Lucie in any of them. What they found was the receipt of all the things that Joji spent on that day and later. Among them were a chainsaw, cement and portable tent which indicate that he must have killed her and then attempted to hide her body. While they had enough evidence to indict him for the rape and murder of Carita, but nothing that would prove his involvement in Lucie’s case.
Thus, finding her body was the only solution to put him behind bars. With only one week to find evidence, the police were able to locate her body in a cave at the beach, near his house. Yet the man was found not guilty and was only charged with Carita’s case and given a life sentence. It wasn’t until 2008 when they appealed again and made their case stronger that he was found guilty of dismembering and abandoning Lucie’s body. His life sentence was made irreversible.
Missing The Lucie Blackman Case is currently streaming on Netflix.
Also Read: The Deepest Breath Review: Tragedy While Testing the Limits of Human Ability
Leave a Reply