Now they bring in the experts

Psychic, cops . . . all clueless | The Japan Times Online

On March 27, the naked corpse of Lindsay Ann Hawker, a 22-year-old conversation-school instructor from England, was found buried in a sand-filled bathtub on an apartment veranda in Ichikawa City, Chiba Prefecture.

Tatsuya Ichihashi, age 28, occupant of the apartment, is wanted in connection with the slaying. His whereabouts remain unknown.

Yeah, the guy snuck out of a room full of cops and got away. But what can they do about it. 120 some million people in the country, how do you find a fugitive. Well you could try police work but that's hard. I know lets bring in a pro:

The bizarre aspects of the slaying continue to provide grist for the media mill. In the June 30 installment of its "Tokuso! Terebi no Chikara Special," TV Asahi brought in a celebrated British psychic, "Dream Detective" Chris Robinson, to "assist" the police in tracking down the culprit.

Oh, for fuck sake people. Have you never even heard of Penn and Teller? Or James Randi?
There's a lot of credulity in Japan (just google blood type astrology to get a taste) and there's shitty television galore, but come on:

Promising "new revelations" from a closed circuit recording of the suspect, show hosts Hideki Takahashi and Chizuru Azuma issued a string of unsubstantiated claims, to the effect that Ichihashi is alive, probably still in Chiba and was likely to be even watching the program at that very moment. With Lindsay's parents shown looking on, the program also broadcast a tasteless melodramatic re-enactment of the crime, showing the suspect assaulting his victim and stripping her body.

I feel like I'm in the McCarthy hearings. Have you no shame. At long last, have you no shame?
So how's that psychic thing working out?

The National Police Agency, meanwhile, appealed to the public on June 28 with the offer of up to 1 million yen in rewards for information related to the Hawker murder and four other cases.

What, no clues? But you brought in a psychic!
I can understand how people get desperate for closure in the death or disappearance of a loved one. The pain of losing their daughter, especially at such a young age, is something I try not to imagine. Desperation will push people to do most anything to get results and as time moves on and the trail gets cold, they'll start reaching for further and thinner straws. My heart goes out to them.
What I don't understand, and maybe refuse to, is how these people can be paraded around on TV to have the scab on their emotions picked at in such a way. And I will not understand how a fuckball psychic can look in the mirror in the morning after doing such a low fucking thing.

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