Rotten Mango - #61: Vanished In Tokyo (Case Lucie Blackman / Joji Obara)

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

A Japanese Hostess Club - purchase a table by the hour - female hostesses will come and sit with you the entire time. They pour your drinks, light your cigarette, flirt with you, and stroke your ego.�� There’s an unspoken law that all the flirting - was nothing but a fantasy.  But when a British Airways flight attendant disappears while working at a hostess club - a question arises…  Was her abduction someone’s fantasy? Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today's case is going to be a rabbit hole. I'm going to take you down this journey in Japan. It's a Japanese case, but there are so many moving elements. There's so many different parts. It's all about a woman, and actually a British woman who is a flight attendant, that's what everyone said. British Airways Flight Attendant Dismembered in Japan. Buried, in a cave by the beach. And that's not even just the gist of it. I mean, there are so many parts, there's a porn producer who gets involved. The underground world of the Japanese Mafia, known as the Yukusa gets involved. There is a serial rapist just operating in the shadows of Japan for the past 30 years. I am talking his victim count is anywhere between

150 to 400 women and it all starts with something called hostessing. Do you guys know what hostessing is? Are you talking about the... I think you know right? I watched some documentary before. Okay so hostessing in Japan This is this is not chitchat. This is all really really pertinent information to understand the full depth of this case It's very fascinating. I want to put a quick disclaimer though I feel like when it comes to different countries and different cultures You don't really understand the gist of it unless you've experienced it now. I've never been to Japan But I read a book on it that I'm gonna mention later

I watched a bunch of videos of people being interviewed on the streets of Japan. Like people going up to Japanese people being like, hey, what do you guys think of Hostesses clubs? So I try to get the gist of it, and essentially it's like this. You know how in America, we've got a strip club. We've got clubs where you go with your friends, right? And then they have like the hostesses that bring you bottle service and stuff, but they don't necessarily hang out with you. Like they're not your friend, they're not going

to sit and like chitchat. And then strip clubs, you know, they're dancing, you pay for dances. But a hostessing in Japan is an establishment that you go to. Sometimes it's a bar, sometimes it's a club, sometimes it's a cafe where they serve coffee, sometimes it's a hot pot shot where they just serve hot pot and these hostesses There's women there right and they will sit at the table with you and you pay by the hour They pour your drinks, they flatter you, they essentially stroke your ego And they're just your company for a little while but that's it Essentially that is it, there is no touching, there is no groping, there is no, you know, there's none of that involved

There's no nudity, there is no, you know, there's none of that involved. There's no nudity. There's no dancing involved That's it. You literally just flatter their egos and essentially it just seems like these hostesses They are just filled with um, they just have to sit through dull conversation That's what a lot of these interviews are exposing. Nobody is there being like hey show me your tits You know like come back to my hotel. That's what they said. It's not like that at all. It's completely different So there are different levels of clubs in Japan So you've got the hostess, you know cafes or bars where you sit at the table you talk to them It's kind of like you're you're mingling. It's kind of like you're flirting almost

There is this undertone of like flirtatiousness But everyone walks away at the end of the night knowing we're not doing it You know she's not gonna show me her boobs. She's not we're not doing it. She's not going to show me her boobs. She's not going to show me her butt. That's not what's happening. And then you have gentlemen's clubs, which I think are more equivalent to the strip clubs that we might be familiar with in America.

And then they also have no pants shops. So these are shops that you walk into, where you are not allowed to touch anyone. And essentially, no one's dancing, but they're just serving you without pants on. Which I find to be fascinating. Yes, so there's literally a no pants Shabu Shabu, which means hot pot. Which I find to be dangerous. That's really a hot pot, you know. And so the only job of these hostesses at the club is to light the client cigarettes, pour their drinks, and a lot of the time, sing karaoke with them, okay?

So they've got this massive karaoke machine in the middle of the room, you go up there and you're like singing with them, and you get paid money to do this, it sounds nice, right? Sounds nice. Your whole thing is to just keep them spending money. So think of it like that, it's weight-tracing, but you stay with them after the food is served,

and you know, you're just talking to them. Now the talk is super mundane. That's what everyone says. All these former hostesses that are interviewed is like, it is the most boring skirts you will ever talk about. You just talk rubbish. How was your day?

Oh my God, you're a banker. That's amazing. Like, what do you do at a bank? You just have to be so fascinated. Sometimes they talk about traveling. They say that the experience is bizarre at first. And then it just gets really boring. But overall, most most hostesses say that you know, I feel really safe Like I don't feel like my life is in danger and my managers are looking out for me and none of these guys really feel like

Oh, yeah, you got to come home with me. So Japanese men love spending money at these places and they mainly spend a company money here It's considered a respectable business gathering place, and I'm gonna give you the psychological breakdown of it, which just blows my mind. It makes so much sense, okay? So these Japanese salary men is what they call them, a K business men, right? They've got all these clients, they're trying to close the deal.

You're like a real estate agent, you're trying to close that deal. You bring them after hours to these hostess bars, and it rewards the employees for their good work but also now the client is here and they're talking with these girls. These girls are essentially doing the work for the business man. They are essentially entertaining this client. Meanwhile the girls are also flattering the ego of the man who's paying so it makes this

person who's trying to close this deal look important look influential in front of this person just I mean it works really well doesn't it I mean it's to me it makes so much sense and it got even bigger because you know Japanese salarymen would start having a ton of foreign clients so then up came these only foreign women you know hostess. So those started popping up all around the place, which side note, there are going to be some racial undertones that we're going to have to go through in this case, but I do want to mention side note, and it might sound weird now, but it's going to make sense at the end of this.

Most of the highest respected clubs are usually all Japanese women with very few foreigners, because there was a lot of racist undertones later on because we'll get into it. So it makes sense. Everybody's a winner. The hostess gets paid. The club gets there, you know, share, and the businessman probably closes the deal.

The client has a fun time, especially if they're a foreigner. They're like, oh my god, what is this land? What an exotic place to be. Why are these girls so into me? Am I that hot? No sir, you're not, okay? So you're taught a few things when you first start hosting, which is how to lie to client cigarette,

how to pour his drinks, don't eat in front of him because it shows lack of subservience. You know, you wanna look a little bit more submissive. You shouldn't have your elbows out on the table. If he wants you to be loud, you got to be loud. Now, there was this one hostess who is interviewed and she said, it's kind of degrading. Like at the end of the day, it's not dangerous in my opinion, but I can't say that I enjoyed my time there.

I mean, if he wants you to be horny, you got to pretend like you're horny. Like there's no touching or anything, but you got to act like you're just so attracted by this guy. You know, you're just gonna be like, oh my god, for some reason the stars are not aligned, and I know logically it doesn't make sense because when I get off of work, I mean, why can't I go home with you?

But it's just like, we can't, you know? There's like these fate is working against us. That's what's happening. It's like interesting, It's kind of like role play. So she said that, you know, someone would ask me how tall I am and I would tell them and they would tell me how long their penis is. I wanted them with like mine's 50 centimeters long. And his friend was like, why beat you because mine's two feet long. And then their third friend will he's like, I can jump rope with my. To be fair, it's not even funny because walking is a huge inconvenience for me.

You know, it's been difficult. It's like a third leg. What do I do? Is she can't laugh? No. So she's just sitting there politely being like, oh my gosh, do you guys want another bottle? You know, pouring more drinks.

You make them believe that they are the most wonderful person in the world that you are just dying to jump inside their bed But you just can't because of you know fate Whatever that is and you're just fascinated by his mundane office stories But at the end of the night what's so fascinating about this is I can't imagine that this works in America Like this only works in places like Japan in my head, right at the end of the night even with all of this sometimes super sexually explicit talk You guys go your separate ways nobody even ask none of these men ask so what are you doing after work? No one says what time do you get off? No one says oh my hotel's just right around the corner. Nobody. That's very cool

Yeah, it's very interesting So the more expensive a club the more intolerant expensive a club, the more intolerant they are of touching. The more intolerant they are of groping. Now, Japanese men that are a part of this culture, they know what they're going in for. They're going in for the fantasy, the flirting, the flattery. Most of these men are in their 40s, their 50s,

their business men, their married, they have kids. And these women, they're in their 20s, and they're being flattered. Their ego is being boosted by this young 21 year old who's like, you're the most handsome man I've ever laid my eyes on, are you George Clooney? When did you get here? And most of these clubs say that they have the most difficulty

with foreigners. They have a lot of experiences with foreigners coming in being like, wait, what the fuck? Like, what do you mean you're not coming home with me? Well, why would you even come on to me so strong then? If you're not gonna sleep with me, they've had a lot of instances where they had to kick out Westerners, they're like you are getting rowdy, don't touch these women, that's a part of it, that's not the gig. So, they're really interesting. And a lot of these hostesses, they said it's

not the best work, it's a little bit degrading, but you never really have a situation that you feel like you can't handle. She felt a lot of these women, they felt safer in the red light district in Tokyo than anywhere in New York City. Wow. Yeah. So what's the pricing for something like this? The way that it works, you walk into it. I don't think you will.

And it's really important, okay? And it's really important, okay? So the way that it works, when you walk into one of these hostesses' clubs, you pay $200 an hour usually. That's like the average. They have some cheaper ones. They have even more expensive ones. Yeah.

$200 an hour, US dollars. About $200 an hour, you get unlimited beer and cheap whiskey, so unlimited drinks on the house, and you get the company about one or two hostesses sitting at your table. Now, out of this, the girls were paid. New girls would only be paid around $ 20 to 30 dollars an hour. So if you worked five hours a night, six nights a week, which is kind of like the standard schedule for a lot of these women, you were making anywhere between 2400 to 3600 dollars a month. USD. Which is you know relatively good, but that's not including the bonuses or

the commissions, which is where the real money comes in. There's like a whole system to this. So if a man walks in and he requests a specific girl, by name, you get an extra $100 for that. Just because, you know, it's like you brought in this business. They want to see you so they came to this club. They're assuming that you... This is up-to-date price? Yes.

Yes. But again, this is like the average. I don't know there could be I'm sure there's a ton of clubs that charge way less and a ton that are like oh my gosh I don't even know what these prices are. That's like a bajillion dollars So this is like what I've seen is everyone says is about the average a hundred to two hundred dollars a night or an hour You know kind of more closer on the 200 side if I can if I you know my research serves me right So if you get the client to then order bottles, because like I said, you get unlimited beer

and whiskey, but they have these massive champagne bottles that they sell for an average price of like $500. If a girl says, oh, but like, please, I don't really like this whiskey and I'm like, beer, I just want some champagne, they will get this and they get a commission off of that. But their main moneymaker is something called a Tollhan, which is private dates with men. Now it sounds scary, I was a little bit alarmed like oh, this suddenly doesn't sound as safe anymore, but essentially what would happen is you go on these dinner dates with these clients.

So they take you out to this nice fancy restaurant in Tokyo and immediately after you say oh but I have to go into work and you bring him and his friends in over to the club Where then you become their hostess and you get a massive commission to it now? You're probably thinking that these are optional, right? This this is extra money a toll hunt, right? No, these are required you have to have a certain amount of toll hans every single month Toha meaning you're bringing a group of clients. Yeah Going on outside dates because that's the only way to build rapport with these guys. So at first, you know, if they like you, they might come and request you a couple of times.

But if you don't even kind of somehow entertain them a little bit more outside of work, not in terms of like sexual, right? Not that I'm judging, but just in terms of like they want to build rapport with you. So you go on these dinner dates with them and they feel nice. I mean, think about it a 50 year old with a 21 year old on his arm. You look cool. but just in terms of like they want to build rapport with you. So you go on these dinner dates with them and they feel nice. I mean, think about it a 50 year old with a 21 year old on his arm. He looks cool. So it's kind of all part of the business.

If you don't get enough to Han for the month, you get fired. And these people probably know, right? Yeah, I mean, these men know. They're not like, oh my god, she loves me now. You know, they're not like, oh, I can't wait to take her home. They're like, okay, yeah, she's going to take me to the club, but that's just part of it. You still get what you want it. This dinner with this beautiful young girl who is listening to your every word

like you are the next, you know, profit, you get it. So because this is some of the hardest part of the job, they said it's incredibly anxiety inducing. Just getting these two hens, you know, it's a lot, I can't imagine it seems so stressful. And then the managers of these clubs are completely different breed. These managers are insane. So the way that they manage everything, because you're still thinking, okay, walk into a club, maybe it's like a lottery system, maybe they take turns,

the girls take turns and they just sit down, and then, you know, eventually you leave, they get their cut. No, the girls rotate from table to table. Do they do it in a way that makes sense? At first you don't think so, but the managers, they watch over their girls like a gambler with a hand of cards. It's so fascinating.

So every single manager knows exactly all the strengths and the weaknesses of every single girl and they have to use them carefully. So the hostesses are constantly in and out of each table and it feels natural to the client It feels just like a bustling place where these girls aren't even being paid to be here They just seem like they're just bouncing from table like, oh, what are you guys talking about? But in reality, it's the manager controlling the movement so right on entering the customer is you get that first hour of payment The customer is immediately seated with the most attractive girls, okay?

So they start drinking, are they connecting, you know? And then the waiter, the waiter is the spy. So the waiters are usually men, they're spying. So they'll be like, okay, boss, like they're not really connecting over there. So then he'll go in and he'll swap these girls out. The main goal is to get to like one hour and one minute because even one second into the second hour,

boom, they're charged for the second hour, boom, they're charged for that second hour. So that's their whole thing, okay? They're trying to get to the second hour. Immediately, they take away the girl that he starts connecting with in the second hour, replaces that girl with, and I quote, an uglier girl.

Now, if he wants that prettier girl back, they either say, hey, you got to pay for that, you got to pay to request her, or oh, she's like really busy right now, someone requested her, but she'll be ready in like half an hour, just like, wait, you got to pay for that. You got to pay to request her. Or, oh, she's like really busy right now. Someone requested her. But she'll be ready in like half an hour. Just like, wait, we'll get you some free food on the house. Just give it a wait.

Just 30 minutes. Eventually, they bring her back boom. He's in his third hour. That's about $500 and going. So then, once he gets his girl back, then he's like, oh, well, why don't you buy us some champagne? This girl is really coming on to him. Like, hey, let's do some champagne.

Again, boom, $500, just like that, on a bottle of champagne. And the manager has all of these crazy cues. If a man walks to the bathroom and he checks his watch even once, that means he's thinking about leaving. So what the manager does is he gets the prettiest girl, takes her from the table, drops her off at the men's bathroom entrance, and she says hello to him, grabs him by the hand, and walks him back to his table,

and starts flirting with him, until the next hour approaches. It's insane. This is insane. So before you know it, these manners spending upwards of a thousand to $1,500, if done right right all because the manager is good at moving the tables around. All these men going home filing bankruptcy is after nights. Exactly. And they said that the trick is finding the right girls.

Now, from what I can tell, all of these interviews done on the streets of Japan, like asking Japanese people what they think of hostesses, they say that most of the girls are some of the most street smart, read the room type of gals. They know how to pick up on social cues really quick. They're really witty and they're really smart because you gotta make conversation with these businessmen. So it's all about tricking, you know, picking. Not tricking these men.

Tricking these men into picking, they're amazing. You know, it's all about picking the right men. So the most successful hostages is they said, they're more on the naive side in front of these men. They pretend to be more on the naive side, more on the innocent side because customers seem to like having conversations with someone that they perceive to be less intelligent than them.

So that's kind of their thing. Now, I do want wanna put a side note. It sounds amazing, right? Okay, anything that I've watched about this, I saw this one on Vice Video on YouTube, where the number one host is in a very high end hostessing club. She makes $50,000 a month.

That's insane. So it all sounds amazing and you're like, oh, I don't have to get naked, I don't have to touch anyone. This sounds like easy money, right? But it is still, you're like, oh, I don't have to get naked, I don't have to touch anyone. This sounds like easy money, right? But it is still, you're tilling, you're walking kind of a fine line in terms of, even in these interviews, a lot of Japanese men were asked,

is it cheating if you go to these hostess clubs? And they said absolutely not, they say men were asked, what would, how would you feel if your girlfriend started working here? And they were really upset by that question. So you just have to realize that there are dangers to this. I mean, there are always going to be very, very scary people, especially in environments like this. So please don't get motivated.

Don't be like, I'm booking my ticket to Japan right now. Okay. So let's talk about Lucy Blackman in the United Kingdom. This is where our story all starts and guys, it all starts with a good reads, little search that I did. I was browsing through good reads and I found this book called People Who Eat Darkness. And I was like, that's a banging title. It's by Richard Lloyd Perry. And I had no idea what this book was about. Going in, I knew it was true crime. Started reading insane. I don't know why I haven't, I haven't heard everyone talk about this. This case

is bonkers. This case is bonkers This book is bonkers This is the type of book where you want to Google the author afterwards and find every single book that they've ever written and read every single word That has ever come out of their mouth because they are that good at writing and this is one of those books So it all starts with Lucy from the United Kingdom and she was born to a mom Jane and dad Tim. Now, the way that the parents met is very interesting. So Tim, they're really pivotal parts in all of this, the parents, so that's why I'm gonna go

a little bit more in depth. So Tim, he had a mutual friend with the mom Jane when she was 22 years old. So he had just returned from the South of France where he was staying with his French girlfriend, yeah, very bougie, and he starts flirting with Jane. And she's like, what? I literally just heard from our mutual friends that you just got back from the south of

France with your French girlfriend. So why are you flirting with me? And she immediately just like shut him down. And he was like, oh my god, she's the girl I got married then. How is she going to shut me down like that? This was like the first person in young 23-year-old Tim's life that just didn't fall at his knees. So within 18 months, they get married. On his 23rd birthday.

So they have their eldest daughter Lucy and then they have another daughter Sophie and a young son by the name of Rupert. Now Lucy, her name is the Latin word for light. And she ended up hating the dark as a kid. So I don't know if that's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? And she growing up, she was just super conscientious. Like if she was given peace to Shell, like her mom is like, hey, I need you to D shell these edamame's, for example, she would examine each single P and throw away anyone that had imperfections. Just incredibly meticulous, so tidy and so

neat. That's kind of Lucy as a person. So when she's young she starts developing a bit of childhood illnesses. I don't know what these illnesses were, she just kept getting ill. The doctors didn't even know. I mean, she would be propped up in bed and her mom would try to like smack her back because she had all this like flamin' her system and she could hear like her, her lungs rattling every time she was breathing it was just really alarming so she missed school a lot I mean she didn't make a ton of friends but eventually things start looking up you know and she's 17 years old when she's sitting and watching a movie with her entire family everyone's there she's 17 Sophie's 15 at Rupert is 13, right? So they're all teenagers. And the dad, you know, Tim turns to Jane and says,

I love being a family. She was like, wow, that's a really crazy moment. Like we're watching this beautiful movie with these beautiful kids of ours. We've been married for 19 years and he loves being a family. The next day, the very next day, Jane gets a phone call from a strange man who says,

hey, I just wanna let you know that your husband is sleeping with my wife. So she confronts Tim and he admits to it and she immediately demands that he moves out. So this is like the divorce. This is, I mean, an earth shattering divorce. Like she had no idea. She didn't see it coming. It was out of nowhere. So now Jane is supporting

the three kids. Tim wasn't giving them any money because his company had just gone bankrupt around this time and they move into this smaller house. Now this house had a weird history okay. A woman named Diana Goldsmith used to live there and she's like vanished after dropping off her kids at school just like into thin air. So the kids they would make these jokes to their mom and they'd be like, I hope she's not under the bathtub. But they were only half joking, like they hated it. It was just a shit show.

The kids really did not take this divorce easily, especially because it seemed that Tim was going to marry the woman that he was having in a fair with. Who also had kids of our own, and he was going to live in the same house with the stepped kids. Meanwhile, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of emotions of like, what? You're just gonna be like a dad to new people now and like, what about me? That doesn't make any sense.

And it made it worse because Jane had a lot of resentment towards the dad. So they kind of felt like, oh, do I have to pick between these two? And Lucy became a mother figure. She was the peacemaker in the house. So the mom and Sophie, her younger sister, constantly fighting. She's the one that's like in the middle like breaking them apart And Jane became the child the mom was just so upset and so depressed that she became a kid and Lucy

This 17 year old had to be the mom should have taken care of her She had to take care of everyone and you can see why she was good at it So Lucy's appearance, right? She's got this beautiful blonde hair She's got these dimples when she smiles these just beautiful blue eyes. She's tall and she seems really self-conscious. There's journal entries that she's really anxious about her weight. She doesn't like the birthmark on her thighs. She has this mole in between her brows that everyone thought was charismatic, but she hated it. She was like, I don't like this. And she was really meticulous with the way that she groomed. Now, I see that Sims sources online kind of make it out to be like, oh, she's so vain.

She cares so much about her hair. She spends hours doing her hair. But Lucy was so meticulous about everything in life. She just wanted everything to be incredibly neat, everything to be incredibly tidy. So she would keep these to-do list on her journal. These goals, she had a library of self-help books in her journal. This is her New Year's resolution, which is making me really ashamed, okay? Go to the gym three to four times a week. Learn Italian. Scrub in tan every other day. Put lotion on days in between. Start putting money away, starting in March. She also had a separate journal with a list of how to handle men. So her rules for men, number one, keep cool.

Let him do all the work, the calling, the everything. Keep your cards close to your chest. If he wants to know how you feel, he's gonna ask, keep chat light. You are not falling for him in all caps. Which kind of makes sense because she did attract a lot of men. She was like almost never without a boyfriend. Men loved her.

I don't know if it's the charisma. There was just something about Lucy. That's what everyone says. And her best friend was a Louise Phillips. She's going to end up going to Japan with Lucy. So she's really important. Louise Phillips had been her best friend since they were like 13 years old. They did everything together.

Their family called them soulmates. It was just like a thing, you know. And the way that they interacted was that Louise could talk. It's called babbling. They said Louise babbles. Lucy babbles. They just babble, babble, babble, and they just find each other hysterically funny.

And nobody else finds them funny. But them, too, they will be in the corner just babbling and laughing at each other. And everyone's like, wow, they are so made. Now Louise, she was a little bit of the opposite of Lucy really fearless, like really adventurous, just kind of like a wild child. And Lucy's family loved her. adventurous, just kind of like a wild child, and Lucy's family loved her,

but they were kind of worried about her influence. They were like, oh man, but she's like underage drinking already, you know? There was just a lot of that, like an undertone of like, I love you, but you're so wild. What do I do? And Louise loved Lucy. I mean, like loved her, to the extent

where Louise depended on Lucy almost. So Lucy had stayed with her during her dad's passing during her struggles with anorexia, so they just were bonded, like, fused. So right after high school, they get the same job at a French investment bank in London. And this is an intense job. So Lucy was an assistant to the traders.

So she would go out onto the trading floor and she would input orders as they're being called out by the trading floor. Now, the traders themselves, they're highly competitive, young, highly paid men. So it's just like a fast-paced, super aggressive environment. It's just literally like, I'm just picturing wolf of Wall Street, but make it French, okay? Like, that type of vibe. And she starts fitting in really well. So well, this is like her environment. Everything's fast paced.

There's like new things going on on her way to work. Rush hour traffic. She's on the train to London. She would stand up on a moving train and finish her French manicure perfectly. And everyone was like, that's so impressive. What? Does even make sense. Now because you are working in an environment like this there was a ton of upkeep with this job like you can't just show up with like some ratty clothes

you can't like just show up without manicured nails you have to go out with all these co-workers afterwards so her salary was around $24,000 I know some people like when I do inflation calculations it's like around $35,000 in today's money. This is in 2000-ish. So yeah, it was around $24,000, and that is when she initially started going into debt. So about a year of working there, she's like, I want a new job.

I can't do this anymore. I keep going into debt, I don't like this. And you know what? I kind of want to travel. Now, the thing with Lucy is that she's not the type of backpacker traveler. She's not the type that's like, you know what? I want to go to all these countries with my little backpack staying in these hostels and just like really experience the culture, you know? She's like the type that's like, I want to hotel with a hair dryer in there. And that's completely fine. That's just who she was.

So she applied to be a flight attendant at British Airways. So she goes through this month long training course. They teach you some crazy stuff. How to deliver a baby, how to put on handcuffs, and how to deal with an on-board bomb. You know, just really intense. So for the first 18 months, because there's a hierarchy in flight attendance, which like, oh my gosh, if I could get into like a whole podcast on flight attendant hierarchies, it's insane. We have a family friend who was a flight attendant for a Korean Air. The stories that you hear, the stories. So, 18 months of her first initial, you know, from getting hired,

she worked mainly domestic short flights. So, this isn't really the traveling that she was expecting, like this sucks. I'm like, still in the UK. And then whenever she started doing long haul trips to foreign countries, she's like, this sucks. I am so jet-laugged. I'm so exhausted. I go to the hotel room, I barely know what time it is, and I sleep the whole time. I'm not experiencing shit. Like, what are you doing? What am I doing with my life, you know?

And so by the early 2000s, she's like, I can't do this anymore. I'm still in debt. I just, I need to do something different. So Louise Phillips, who is also a flight attendant, her best friend, also moved into British Airways with her. She's like, why don't we move to Japan? Nero, I know it sounds crazy. Okay, think about it. Just a couple of months, my sister went there. So my older sister was in Japan two years ago.

You can live an exciting life and earn a crap ton of money. No, listen Lucy, we can go for like three months. We will have so much fun. You and me in this crazy noose, you've never even been to Tokyo. It's gonna be crazy, okay? And then you're gonna make all of this extra cash.

You're gonna pay off all your debts in three months. Are you kidding? You can't do that in the UK. That's what we're gonna do. So she knew about hostess. Yeah, she was like, my sister, you know, she had so much fun two years ago. We can do the same thing and she made so much money. And I will pay for half of your plane ticket.

So Lucy just felt like, I mean, shit, like there's, this is an amazing opportunity. So they tell Jane's, or they tell Lucy's parents Jane, and they're like, all right, well, Louise is not lives in Tokyo. And we can stay there rent free. Can we go? Wait, did they tell the parents what they're doing?

Not initially. They won't tell them until they get there. They said that there's some money making opportunities, but they were very vague. OK. So they were kind of marketing this to their parents as some, like a foreign opportunity, kind of how you would think, oh, if an American goes to Korea,

you might immediately assume, oh, English teacher, right? So kind of like that, kind of up in the air, kind of like, well, you know, there's just, there's money to be made. And so they were like, well, her, her aunt lives in Tokyo. So it's not like we'd be staying at like a random place. This wasn't true. They don't have an aunt. No, her aunt is married to a Japanese man, I believe, but they live in London. They don't live in Tokyo. Yeah. So they were just like making shit up. Okay. Just to make Jane feel a little bit better and it was working, but Jane tried really hard She did not like the idea of her going to Tokyo, especially for months

So she started um getting newspaper clippings of how shitty the economy was in Tokyo and just like leaving it in Lucy's room Like how are you gonna pay off your debt when their economy is not doing well and it just didn't work Okay, Lucy was like I'm gonna gonna go. I already made this commitment. Now before Tokyo, Lucy was acting a little bit strange. That's what people said. She was doing this really intense spring cleaning spree, but it was even extreme for her standards, you know, just really intense. She bought this new $1,500 bed. So at this point now, she's around $10,000 in debt and she just kept saying like, I'm excited to like sleep on my bed when I get back. She seemed really reluctant. People stated that it seemed like she was talking herself

into wanting to go to Tokyo. Okay. Now, Lucy also, you know, what people say is she seems like the type of person that would just want to go through it with her commitments. If she told Louise, she was gonna do something. Louise is so excited about it. She's not gonna really pull back.

So she's like, you know what, it's only like three months. It's going to be fine. She writes in her journal while she's traveling. And she says, I am sitting on a suitcase at the railway underground feeling completely overwhelmed. I'm very tired, also afraid, anxious, lost, and so hot. Wait, this is where is she? What do you mean? Just arrived in Tokyo at the airport? I see yeah, so you know she gets to Tokyo her family is like okay It's just three months. You know she's 21 now. We got a letter shine She's gonna be back her dad's gonna be paid off. It's good

So now that I said the aunt lives in London they have nowhere to stay in Japan But her older sister had called another hostess that she had met and was like hey Do you remember me from like a couple years ago, we used to hostess at this place together? Do you think that you can get a place for my sister to say? And like her other friend, please, please, please, please. So they get a room at what's called the Sasa Saki House. And they knew it wasn't going to be lavish.

They knew it was probably going to give them like hostile vibes. But instead it was worse. It was filled with a bunch of foreigners. And they were just non-stop smoking weed, which is incredibly illegal in Asia, especially Japan. And you couldn't even see through the lobby because of the smoke is what they said. They said it was filthy, the mirrors were cracked, there was just like futon mattresses on the ground with no sheets. They called it the shit house. The bathroom, six different people share it,

and they said it was really vile, just like not a homey place. So I'm sure that was adding to a lot of like the, oh my god, that Lucy was feeling. So immediately the girl that was helping Luisa's older sister's friend, right, that had got them this place was like here's a list of clubs that we recommend, you know, that your sister and I put together. So just kind of like whenever you're done settling in, go buy and they should have some vacancies and you can start working literally tomorrow. So they're like, oh, amazing. So they go to the first club.

They have no vacancies. The second club immediately, they're asked, what's your age, nationality, where you staying, and there are offered jobs on the spot. So within days of arriving, they are now hostesses. Did they have trainings? There's like a one day training where they teach you how to light cigarettes and pour drinks and that's it.

And they also were on a travel visa which prohibits them from working. But they're working under the table, you know. I see. Okay. So they start working. And the clients who loved Lucy really loved her. They said that, you know, all the other hostesses that met her said, she's really different from Canadians and Americans. Yeah, she says, um, you know, Canadians

and Americans, they have these big laughs, and they're a little bit too lively sometimes, especially for Japanese men. Sometimes, you know, it's just a lot. Oh, man, I can so totally see that. But with Lucy, her conversations weren't over the top. Like, she seemed really authentic, and I think a lot of men gravitated towards that. They were like, oh, she genuinely seems like she likes me. And she's not doing these fake laughs because I'm like, wait, I didn't even say anything funny. Why is she laughing, you know?

You know, that's my myth. And she just looked very gentle and refined. And she had this grace about her. You can almost immediately tell that she comes from good education. She's cultured. She's really well spoken. All of that. So when Lucy is emailing her friends back at home, she's saying things like, you know, I'm earning good money, it is so different from the United Kingdom. The men are so respectful. Obviously, you get the odd one, but so far, I've only met really

nice people. So the odd one that she was referring to is a man walked in and offered her $15,000 to sleep with him. $15,000 US dollar? Yeah. And she was pissed. She went straight up to the manager and was like, you better kick him out and he got kicked out. Wow. Yeah.

So, she's working. Louise honestly does a little bit better than Lucy because like I said, the people who love Lucy, love Lucy. But Louise is just extroverted. Her personality is super outgoing so it was very easy for her to build rapport with these clients. Now once they get off of work, they change and it's about 2am. Now they have a choice.

You either go home and you sleep in this shit house that they call or you go drinking. But if you go drinking, they said that the bars in Tokyo are so cool that you stay out until seven in the morning. Like there is no way that you get in, you know, before that. And then what's even crazier is that some of these bars that the hostesses had connections to, you can go to them and get paid more.

So if you are a female at this bar, and a male buys you a drink, you can make commission off of that. There was a woman that these hostesses knew that was making like $4,500 a month just going to these bars at night and having men pay for her drinks. She would make a commission off of that. So Louise loved going out, so it seems like most of the nights that they were in Tokyo, they went out.

Lucy, I mean, don't get me wrong, she liked party, she liked a good club, she liked a good bar night, but she didn't seem all that happy, that's what everyone said It seemed like she was a little bit more stressed and I think it was it was the death You know she realized with all of these expenses in Tokyo it would take a lot longer to pay off her debt Way more than three months So now she has all of this stress and she starts writing in her diary I am so fucking up to my neck and dead and I so badly need to do well. This is not a bad thing to do with Lou.

I'm really happy for her. I'm a crap hostess. I've had one tohahn only because of Shannon. Another one stood me up. I mean how shit must you be for a tohahn to stand you up? Louise gets all these men just like falling over themselves to request her. And I get stood up. And she talks about how extremely hard and emotionally taxing Tokyo is, she calls Tokyo

the extreme land. You're either high as a kite, or lower than you can imagine here. There is nothing in between the two. She started writing, I don't know what's wrong with this place, but it seems to be bringing out the absolute worst in me. I cannot stop crying, I have such pain in my stomach like a real physical symptom of feeling absolutely crushed. I'm cried out, like tears don't even come out anymore, they only come in exhausted ways. I feel so ugly and fat and invisible here. I constantly

hate myself, I'm so average, every single part of me from head to toe is completely average. Now if you see a picture of Lucy, she is the only one that would think that. She's beautiful and she continues to write, I must have been kidding myself that I could make it out here. I hate the way I look, I hate my hair, I hate my face, I hate my nose, I hate my slanty eyes, I hate the mole on my face, I hate my profile, I hate my neck, I hate my boobs, I hate my fat hips, I hate my fat stomach, I hate my flabby bump, I hate my birthmark, and I hate my bashed up legs, I feel so disgusting and ugly and average. It's really heartbreaking.

So these are a big portion of her journal entries and then it starts getting better in June. So Louise, she made a boyfriend, a French man by the name of Combe, like Nankom, that's how they described it. Like saying Nankom, but just the Combe. So that's his name. And he was like, oh, let me introduce your good friend, Lucy, to a friend that I have. I think that they're going to get along amazing. So they meet up at a bar and she gets introduced to Scott, who she later emails her friend and says, is the sex god of the century is Scott. So he's a 20 year old American from Texas. He's got this accent that makes you melt, which is like the first time.

Oh, yeah, she's from, she's British. And she thinks the American accent is like the sexiest one, like just makes you melt. Maybe he's like a southern accent, I'm assuming. Like a Texan accent maybe. She'll like that accent makes me melt. I he's like a southern accent. I'm assuming like a Texan accent maybe. Maybe she'll like that accent makes me melt. I'm like what? I feel so honored. You know, he's got these blue eyes. He's six two and get this. He's a man in uniform. He's part of the US Navy Marines and he's based in Japan. So for the next month, they start dating and in her journal entries, you can see her starting getting excited in June.

Now she disappears July 1st, so keep this in mind. This is like the month right before her disappearance, okay? So they shared their first case on a bridge over looking these trees. She writes in her diary like, this is the first time I'm like 100% content since I can remember. I mean things were looking great. She finally developed a roster of clients who come in requesting her. You know, she's making better money.

They're getting paid on Monday. Everything's looking good. And then July 1st, 2000 comes around. It was a Saturday and she was only 21 years old. And she will vanish. So the day that she goes missing, she had an appointment meet a toll hand, right? So she's going to go to lunch with this client, and then she's gonna,

I think they were gonna go to dinner or something of that sort, okay? They were gonna spend a couple of hours from 3.30 to like maybe 7 o'clock, and then she would come home, get ready to go to the club, and then he would meet them at the club later. So that was her plan. She gets a phone call at the communal phone

inside of this shit house as they call it, and it's the client, and he's like, oh, wait a minute, I'm gonna be 30's the client and he's like oh wait a minute I'm gonna be 30 minutes late so she's like oh that's fine and she tells Louise like it's gonna be fine I'm just gonna go meet him and then I'll be right back so she goes off and around 5 o'clock Louise gets a phone call from an unknown number she picks it up and it's Lucy Lucy's like hey like I'm excited for tonight like I'm really excited, but right now I'm headed to the sea side.

He's going to take me to the beach and we're going to have lunch at the beach. Don't worry, I know that sounds like it's super far, but no need to change plans. I'm still going to be home on the same time, like I'm still going to get ready with you and then we're going to head to the club, okay? Like I'm going to be back in an hour or two. I'll see you soon. Now, this is kind of weird because this was very unlike Lucy to just like leave Tokyo with a unknown man, you know, like a client that just doesn't seem like her.

But at the same time, it is so very much like Lucy to call Louise and let her know. So Louise is kind of feeling uneasy about this. Now what's very interesting is that for some reason Louise had no information about this client. I think maybe she had a name that wasn't his real name. We later find out, but nothing really else. So then Lucy calls again, a little after seven, and she's like, hey, like he's so nice, guess what?

He promised to buy me a phone, because I'd broken my phone. You know what, I'm using the communal phone. So he's gonna buy me a phone. He said that I can take home this bottle of dawn, the really expensive champagne, and we can drink it later, so I'll be back in an hour. I know it's a little bit late, but I'll be back in an hour. So he's just like, okay, just be safe.

I'll see you in one hour on the dot, okay? Bye. So then Lucy calls Scott, her boyfriend, from the same phone, and he doesn't pick up. So she just leaves a message, and she sounds really happy, and she just says, oh, I can't wait to see you tomorrow. So she's making plans with people. And then she has never seen from again. She's never heard from again.

She just vanishes. She's gone. So when Lucy is late by more than an hour, Louise starts, you know, freaking out. She's like, no, no, this is, this is not like her. Lucy is always on time. She actually calls her mom and the United Kingdom and saying, something's happened to Lucy. I don't know what to do. And her mom's like, it's okay. She's only an hour late. Calm down. Everything's going to be good. So then Louise goes to the club that they work at and she's like, hey, boss, Lucy's missing. They're like, what do you mean she's missing? She went on a to one and she was supposed to be back an hour ago and she's not back. And they're looking at her like she's crazy. Like she was supposed to be back at eight. It's like nine o'clock, like calm your tits.

It's not like three in the morning, like it's normal. It's nothing strange. Maybe it's the traffic. And she's like, no, no, this is unlike her. So she and another coworker, they go literally from every single club, every single restaurant that her and Lucy had ever visited. Maybe she's there, but she is not there. So her fellow coworkers start calling all these local hospitals. None of them have heard of Lucy. None of them said that they have this, you know, British woman that checked in, nobody said of anything of a car accident.

Nothing. Maybe she's spending the night with this customer, but she would never. You know, she's saying she would, she called me twice today. If she was changing plans, she would have called me. This isn't making sense. So why don't they go to the police station, right? Well, like I said, they were on tourist visas. This is a 90 day visa. It's not like she disappeared when she was buying something at 7-Eleven. Like she went on a tour on, like how would you explain that? So it was just all sorts of complex. And then finally, another day passes.

So she's like, okay, I gotta go into the police station. I'm gonna completely leave out the part of hostessing and I'm just gonna file a missing person's report, say that she's a tourist who went missing after meeting up with a Japanese man and I'm gonna mention no work. Now the police, they take this and they do not care at all. Really?

Yeah, they're like, maybe she's on a date, like, maybe, you know, she's a little lost. They don't care. So she goes straight to the British Embassy. She's like, I don't think so. She walks into the British Embassy in Tokyo and they cared a little bit more, but they were still victim blaming. They were like, well, why would she get into the car of an unknown Japanese man? You know, that doesn't make sense.

She's on holiday with you. And she started saying, okay, fine, we were hostessing. So she tells the British Embassy exactly what they were doing. They're like, what? That sounds crazy. These businesses just want you to go on dates with these strange men. And she's like, that's not the point. My friend is missing. And they're like, well, we'll keep a look at, we'll stay in contact with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, but there's nothing we can do. So she's like, ah, useless. So then, as she's walking out, she gets a phone call from an unknown number. So she picks it up, she's like, oh my god, it's gotta be Lucy, right?

And it's a man's voice, who is confidently speaking English, but he's doing it with a distinct Japanese accent. And he seems super calm. And he says, am I speaking to Louise Phillips? My name is Akita Takagi, and I'm ringing on behalf of Lucy Blackman. Lucy? Like where is she? Oh my god! I'm so worried, okay? Well, can I talk to her? I am with her. She is here. She is fine. But she must not be disturbed now. Anyway, she is in our dormitory. She is studying and practicing a new way of life.

She has so much to learn this week. She cannot be disturbed, okay? So what happened was I met up with her and just before I put her on a train to go meet you that night Saturday, she met up with my guru and they made this life changing decision in a split second. Anyway, she's decided that she's going to be joining our cult now. He said cult? He said cult. OK. You're like, that seems like not good marketing. Yeah, he said cult. And so she's like, what?

No, let me talk to her. It sounds crazy. She's not even a religious person. Like, she's never really been religious. What are you talking about? She's not feeling well. She doesn't want to talk to anyone. Maybe she'll call you at the end of the week.

But she's started a new life, and she won't be coming back. I know that she's in debt, and's paying them off but in a better way. What? Anyway, she wants you and Scoto, so I guess that's how they say Scott, to know that she's okay. She's just planning a better life. So this person knows a lot about her. She's in debt, she's dating someone named Scott, just a lot is happening.

She has written a letter to her employer to let them know that she's not coming back to work. Now Louise, what's your address? Why do you need to know that? I will be sending some of her belongings. Well, Lucy knows. I mean, it's her address too. Yeah. Like I said, she's not feeling too well and she can't remember. Well, I can't remember either.

And there's just silence. So then she starts begging, okay, you know what? Like, I got to get my Lucy back. So she's like, hey, I want to join this cult too. Like, I know that we didn't really say anything, but it sounds really good. And I just want to be with Lucy. And I'm really excited. I can convert.

We were both women Catholics, but I love cults. So she's like, really trying to be a part of this cult. And it tells you. That's a good's good friend. Yeah, really good friend. And they said, anyway, I have to go now. I'm sorry. I just had to let you know that you won't see her again. Goodbye. So they hang up. So you're saying the sound she feel like it was a foreigner. It wasn't a Japanese person. No, she's saying it was a Japanese person, but they knew English really well. More so than the average Japanese person would know. So, I mean, it was very interesting. This summer, I'm trying to be the main character. I'm trying to eat out in the garden,

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So within a week the press start picking up on this you know she goes to the police and all the press They start picking up it in the UK. They're saying British Airways, Stewardess, you know, flight attendant kidnapped, Colton, Japan, force turned to sex work, her dad and her sister are now flying to Tokyo. Like, it just was, it was going crazy. 20 British reporters flew out to Tokyo and that's just, that's just the ones that were connected to major networks. You had freelance reporters that were headed out there. You had freelance British reporters that were based in Tokyo. And it was just a combination of everything. Her past job as a flight attendant, you know, her age 21, she's British, she's got blonde hair, the job that she was in. So everyone's like, why are she doing hostessing now? And

these other Westerner countries were like, what the fuck is house to seeing and it just opened these doors to this explosive like what is happening right now so they get there and she becomes essentially you know the book describes her as like this poster child for the young woman who meets her end in an exotic land everything was made very like oh japan what's going on in Tokyo like it was just made really intense you know? And so the family, they get to Tokyo. The Tokyo police don't give a fork. They do not care.

They just don't care at all. So the family, they're faced with this choice of people. They call usually international cases, they're freaking out. Yeah, because so she was working as a hostess. And it seems like every country has this universal underlying tone of anything remotely related to sex work is not something we care about. That's so odd because you're saying like most Japanese men or society have the respect at least to respect this woman, but I guess there is still underlying.

Like a stigma. It would be very different I guess if she was like um like that you're saying that was the reason the cops yeah initially and then and then it blows up because the prime ministers get involved it gets real crazy yeah it gets crazy so now the family they're not getting anything from the police the police don't really want to talk to them they don't do anything with them so now they have this choice of choosing the media or the police which this book also draws a lot of attention towards how families of missing family members have to react. If you choose the media, if you are comfy comfy with the media, your story gets out there. It puts pressure on the police, but now the police almost see you as an enemy.

But if you are, you know, happy, happy with the police, then maybe they're not doing their best job and you can't say anything in the media. So the question is, who do you choose? I choose the media. Yeah. Because I think pressure is the best thing to put on any institution. Yeah, because you can't count on them. No, because they might tell you they're doing everything they can, but they're not doing everything they can until the whole world is talking about it. Then they start doing everything they can. So they, they didn't really have a choice because Luis's sister in the UK did an interview. So to the Tokyo police it was like oh well you guys chose the media. So now you know 10 black men the dad who had just

come and Sophie she flies to Tokyo and they start doing interviews and these were some explosive titles. All of them were like Lucy being held as a sex slave by evil Japanese cult. Now mind you, it was just like five years ago when we talked about, well we didn't talk about a five years ago, but five years prior to this was Om Shinrico, the Japanese cult that tried to blew up the train. Yes, so I mean the cult talk was like really hyped up. They were like evil Japanese cult, sex slave, blonde woman.

Ah, it was just a lot. So Tim and Sophie, they start doing these press conferences and it was not what anyone was expecting, which just made the story blow up even more. So the way that these families in Japan operate is if you have a missing child, you do a press conference and you look down. You say very few words, you express love for your child, you ask the community for help. There would be tears, but at the end you apologize for causing inconvenience in the community. Okay.

Now in the Western world, it's less apologetic, right? Like we've seen it, we're all part of this true crime community, but you still see like really two or full cries. There's like this unspoken code for missing family members, where you have to show emotions, show like, I'm a mom that's grieving for my child Tim did not care about this code at all He didn't care. He did not care. He was super composed. He showed no obvious emotions And he was so straight to the point you would think that this is a police officer not a family member So when they asked well, well, what about that cult that phone call with that cult? He would say, yeah, well, Lucy's a Roman Catholic and she just really didn't have great interest in religion anyway.

So the thought that she might suddenly become interested in a religious cult over a Saturday afternoon is highly unlikely. Like just really composed and straight to the point where people were kind of getting confused. Like, how do I feel about this? It kind of gives me reassurance that he knows Lucy? Really well, but also it's just so weird. At one point, they ask the sister Sophie, like, did you hear about her boyfriend?

Doesn't she have like an American boyfriend in Japan? And the sister says, yeah, of course she mentioned him. She's my sister. She met him here and they're dating. That's all you need to know. The details of anything else are none of your business. So they're like, what's going on with this family? It's getting confusing. Now the timing of everything really worked in the family's favor because the 26th, G8 summit, where all the worlds strongest leaders from the most powerful countries meet was taking place in Japan.

So the whole world was watching Japan. The British high minister was about to show up in Japan. So the whole world was watching Japan. The British high minister was about to show up in Japan. So now Tim is like, all right, I'm going to keep pushing this story out there. And he was really good about the marketing, which is crazy, because there's marketing with missing people. Is that not insane? So Westerners have no idea what host is seeing is. So most of them will assume it's sex work because they have no idea.

And then once it's sex work, you know, in the Western world, we suddenly stop caring because the victim is a sex worker, right? But, he did it in a way that marketed Lucy as this naive girl who came to this foreign country 21 years old with a sparkle in her eye and she was just excited for what life had to offer and she was in over her head. And all these parents started relating, because they're like, oh my god, my kids, they would be so excited to travel,

they would be in over their heads. So he immediately took that hostessing gray area out of the conversation, and most people called her a British Airway stewardess for the titles. So the press in turn also started getting a little bit racist, okay? So they started saying things like the Japanese male and his penchant for Western blondes, the men in Japan can be twisted sexually

because of their restricted upbringing. They were just saying a lot of stuff like that, okay? It was just not cool. So this is happening in the UK, these years? Yeah, the UK, the Western world is talking about it. Like that, Japan is feeling very uncomfortable, you know? Yeah. And also, here's what I thought, you know, side note, of when you have missing people in foreign

countries, these press conferences can be so tricky because you want to be like, please help me. But there's this thin line of like, hey, one of you did something, you know, to one of us, like kind of like this thin line of coming into their country and like pointing like something, you know, to one of us, like kind of like this thin line of coming into their country and like pointing like someone helped me now, you know? So it was like a very thin line that the press was also walking, it was just a lot, a lot of undertones of weirdness.

And then there was obviously pushback from these Asian countries who saw these headlines, so I was like, oh, usually it's Western men who come here and try to take advantage of Asian women, what's going on? Suddenly it's not like who come here and try to take advantage of Asian women. But what's going on? Suddenly it's not. Like, it was just like this back and forth of nonsense. But still, most importantly, it doesn't matter because Lucy Blackman is missing.

That's all that matters. And Tim and the Black men, they would go out to dinner with these journalists. Like, they were really in cahoots with them, like, trying to get them on their side, push out this story. Finally, the sixth press conference in like two weeks. Tim cried for the first time.

Journalists were all over this. They finally got that picture that they needed for the front page. Morning Dad, Greaves missing daughter. That's what they wanted. Tim later told Richard Perry, the author of the book, I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but the tears, well, we plan that in advance. Like, everything they were doing was marketed, which sounds crazy, but can you blame them? I mean, that is how the way the world works. You need press to find missing people.

How do you get the press interested? Marketing. Crazy. Crazy. It's so sad, but it makes sense, you know? Yeah. So, like, would you say it was effective? It was so affected. He met up with a British Prime Minister. The British Prime Minister met up with a family at the height of his power At the height and at the summit afterwards. He went up to the Prime Minister of Japan and said Thank you for the Tokyo Police for their efforts and we ask everything possible To be done to find Lucy and bring her home. Wait, so how did he get to the prime minister?

Because the UK prime minister asked the Japanese prime minister. It was prime minister to prime minister at the G8 summit. Oh, so the father never personally. No, the father met the UK prime minister because the press was blowing up. So he met up with his prime minister, and then the British prime minister went to the Japanese prime minister, but imagine the pressure of Japan now. They're like, okay, well now we have to do something

for sure, and it worked, because Japan started getting stressed, and it went from a simple missing persons to a full blown criminal investigation. They put some of their best officers on there. The one officer that worked that was like the head of the Omshinrico case that we talked about. He was put on this case as well. So he's doing this case. 40 detectives were working on the case.

There were multiple volunteers. They put up 30,000 posters of Lucy Blackman all over Tokyo and a British man by the name of Hugh. Out of nowhere, comes up to Tim after like a press conference, just hands him $5,000 and is like, you're probably spending a lot of money living here looking for your daughter. He's like I'm a finance guy from the UK but now I'm based in Tokyo. Hey, I have an office. Why don't you set up a tip line? Like an anonymous tip line because I heard Lucy was in hostessing and there's probably

a lot of hostesses who don't really want to call the police. They probably want to call an anonymous tip line so So I can rent you, like, for free. You can have a little space in the office and do your thing. So it was kind of like this British to British, like we got each other's back type of moment and they were really, really thankful. So they set up a tip line. That same British man, really good entrepreneur, I guess.

He told the owner of the local restaurant that he loves. Anytime if Sophie and Tim come here, they eat for free, put it on my tab. So he was really helping out a lot. Either he's a really nice person or he's up to something. He's really nice. Okay. There's gonna be people who are up to something.

So that tip lied at first. It didn't provide much. You know, there was one man who called and said, can I take Sophia out on a day because I think she's cool. Breathe the room. But yeah, obviously that didn't work. And then suddenly a Japanese man calls into the tip line and we're going to call him Mr. Oh, so all of their identities are hidden. A lot of the other victims will get into their identities are hidden. So this Japanese man calls and he seems really excited and agitated, just kind of not

normal, almost like, oh my god, like freaking out. And he says, I have crucial information, but I can only tell you in person. So of course Tim is like one gonna go. So he goes to his apartment, and this is not a regular apartment. Every single room was filled with lights, cameras, beds. There was machines, of video tapes, everywhere naked women posters all over the walls. This man was in his 40s, and he used to run a computer business. But now he's a porn producer. So he says, listen, I'm a porn producer now, but on the side,

I'm a, I'm a sadomasochist. I'm a part of the SNM community, you know? And I, I had this circle where we would share these videos, these magazines. Sometimes we would have these orgies where we hired sex workers and it was just like 50 people just like having this massive orgy. Anyway, that's besides the point, a few years ago, I used to be a member of this circle run by Mr. M, his identity has hidden too. Mr. M, he was obsessed with the idea of kidnapping a Western woman, having sadistic sex with her, a blonde woman, you know,

with big breasts, that's what he wanted. And he would film a scene where he would torture her to death, like a snuff film. So I decided, you know, this circle is too deep for me. I can't do this, so I dropped out, I joined a new circle. But I had a good mutual friend, you know, and his name is Mr. T. And he's still part of that circle. So then one day, Mr. T comes to me. And mind you, this is a respectable man.

He is a family man with wife and kids and he's a senior manager at Fuji film. Yeah, Fuji film. The one that we know, Fuji film, the Polaroid company. I'm sure they're known for a lot more than the Polaroids, but you get it. And so, he's like, well, he came to me and he said, Hey, I think I know what happened to that missing girl. What? Mr. M finally did it.

What do you mean? Maybe do you think he has a video of it? Do you think we should go to his place and try to steal his video? Did you know that Mr. M bought a new dungeon recently? He rented this new place, outfitted it as this crazy dungeon, but usually you show this type of stuff off to your SNM circles, you take pictures, you invite them over, right? You test it out, you break it in. But he didn't, he would allow any of us near his SNM circle. Like his room. His dungeon. He wouldn't even tell us where it's located. Isn't that weird? Don't you think it's him? Don't you think he killed Lucy? Blackman? Don't you think so? Is he excited? Seems like it. Wow. So he's like

what? That doesn't... that doesn't make sense. Me says but it does because he was telling me that after he kn kidnapped and kills a foreign woman, he is going to call the family and say that she joined a cult. What? Now at this point, Mr. O is like, okay, there's something going on here because Mr. M has always been known for treating women like dolls. That's what he says. This is the type of person who would kill a woman and think nothing of it because they're like dolls to him. Just a misogynistic, raging murder is the vibe that we who would kill a woman and think nothing of it because they're like dolls to him.

Just a misogynistic raging murderer is the vibe that we're getting from this guy. So the producer, the porn producer, Mr. O, goes to the police and they do absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. So two weeks past and he gets a phone call from a Mr. T's wife. And she's like, hey, I know you guys are friends. He hasn't come home from work. He's been missing. Now what? Whoa wait. Mr hasn't come home from work. He's been missing. Now what the point is-

Whoa wait, reverse that. Mr. T is the mutual friend. Oh, the wife is calling? Yeah, he's like, I know you guys are like business partners and friends. You know, like what happened? Do you know where he is? Now the wife doesn't know that he, Mr. T, also has his own dungeon. It seems like all these family men have this own little rented apartment and secret from

their wives and they have a little dungeon. So you know the porn producer, Mr. O, he knows about this dungeon. The wife doesn't so he's like okay well I'm gonna check up on him and his little dungeon. So he goes to his little SNM dungeon, he's knocking, no reply. He tries to you know unlock the door and it's unlocked. He opens the door, Mr. T's shoes are at the entrance. So he must be here, but there's like this strong smell.

So he walks inside and there's these pale legs, just super pale near the cupboards. He rushes over, Mr. T is dead. There is a rope around his neck, he is naked from the west waist down, and he has poop, he has feces in his mouth, and all over his face smeared. And all the walls are covered with posters of Lucy Blackman's missing poster. What? We call the police, the police investigate. But they deemed that he died of his fixia. He was masturbating, but he cut off his oxygen supply to get a deeper rousal, and it has

caused a lot of deaths in the past year or so, you know, in Tokyo and across the world. So they tell the family that the family usually get so embarrassed that they just straight up tell everyone that they died of suicide. But the porn producer, he doesn't believe it. He believes because it's the poop in the mouth. In SNM culture, he said, I don't know if this is true, but in their little community, if the poop in your mouth belong to, sorry, that sounds kind of crazy. Sorry. If the poop in your mouth belong to, sorry, that sounds kind of crazy. Sorry, if the poop in your mouth belong to another person, it's kinky. It's not your poop, but if it's your poop, it's a sign of disrespect. It's, it's an insult.

It's like, um, you know, it's almost like doing, defacing someone. It's really, it's really bad. So the porn producer believes that Mr. M killed Lucy Blackman and then Mr. T found out and he was killed. So Tim's like, oh my god, this is a lot. Like also imagine, you know, now you're saying she's not just Spanish, but she's murdered in one of the most horrendous ways possible. Like, that's a lot. So they track down Mr. M's dungeon. They track it down and they break in. They find a TV and a video player, mattresses on the floor porn magazines everywhere porn videos everywhere

Dill does clamps harnesses just lots of instruments of humiliation So right now the cops are investigating No, Tim broke into the apartment. Oh, Tim. Yeah, the dad used the dad broke into mr. Amstund Yeah, cuz he even find it. They um, So Tim's brother-in-law is a wealthy businessman and he was paying for a lot of private investigators. They spend like, I want to say like over hundreds of thousands of dollars on private investigators. So they tracked down Mr. Amst Dungeon and they found all these like crazy things. You know, instruments of humiliation, paying all of that. They scanned the floor for any blonde hairs and they couldn't

find anything. They even stalked my stride at one point. Nothing strange there. So it kind of seemed like a dead end. The police weren't interested. The porn producer started getting weird. He started getting too excited. Like he was like in an action movie, you know? Like he's just like, we gotta sneak in and put on these masks and shit. And they were just like, all right, maybe it's like a grudge between these two. Like, what's going on? Maybe it's like something personal and not about Lucy at all. Maybe it's him.

But it's not later. But like, I mean, yeah, maybe it is him, right? So it was just all sorts of weird. And the whole family, they were just facing constant fake leads and constant scams. I mean, just tens of thousands of dollars of scams. Now the police, they've got this high pressure now, you know? The Japanese Prime Minister specifically told the police, you better get this freaking solved.

So they start going through the list of suspects. The first one is a client. His name is, let's call him Ken, okay? So his name is omitted. So let's call him Ken for the purpose of this, right? He comes in every night for weeks. He speaks good English. She's a man in his 40s.

He's unmarried. And he constantly talks about how lonely he is. He spends tons of money on her. And he's sent her a ton of emails. Now Sophie, the younger sister of Lucy, thankfully. Sophie had the password to Lucy's emails. So she can see all of her email correspondence. And he seemed obsessive.

He would talk almost like he's like a middle schooler in love, you know? Just like if she doesn't respond he would be like, oh I guess I ruined this relationship. You know kind of like that type of energy. And it was just really unsettling for everyone. He even started noticing when she started dating Scott because he would send emails. Obviously she's not going around telling him that she has a boyfriend. But it seems like he knew what was happening because he kept saying, I know, like I understand the hostess job is draining a lot of energy from you, but I'm sure my small heart is to be broken as usual.

But it's okay, ha ha ha ha. Because she was like pulling away from him. You know, she would go on these torrents from him and she would zone out and think about Scott or maybe she wasn't as into him anymore And so he started noticing and he would send these emails. Sometimes he would spend multiple emails a day They look into his finances. He's a struggling businessman So he's spending a ton of money when his business is under fire So this sounds like a recipe for a disaster. This sounds like he's gonna snap But when they question him he has an alibi. He honest, and he is just kind of a weirdo. That's it. He's cleared. So then the next next suspect is Scott. Scott Frazier.

The American man. The US Navy Marine. But his alibi was airtight. He was on board of the USS Kitty Hawk at the time that she went missing. And he was really straightforward and honest. There didn't seem to be anything weird. So then the last suspect is Louise Phillips. The best friend, you know? The police are like this. This makes sense. I mean, you guys spend every single day together

and you have no idea who took her? You have no idea whose car she went into. You're the only one that, you know, had this random phone call from this cold leader. You're the one that reported her missing. You're the one that last saw her. Maybe, maybe you guys came out here and you guys started fighting. Do you like Scott? and a phone call from this cold leader. You're the one that reported her missing. You're the one that last saw her. Maybe, maybe you guys came out here

and you guys started fighting. Do you like Scott? Maybe that's what is this a love triangle? And they would just spend days grilling poor Louise like straight up for a whole day. They interrogated her for like eight hours asking her if Lucy ever had climidia. She's like, what do you,

I don't even know how this is important to anything. Like they just non-stop pounding her her and then they started showing her letters. So what the police did not tell the press is that Lucy was sending letters to the police station. What? But they were hand typed. They were signed by Lucy, but Lucy's family will say that it looks like someone had copied her handwriting, but we know it's not her.

And the writing of these typed letters seemed weirder. So these letters, one of them was for Louise. And it says, Louise, I love you like a sister, but you fuck up my plans by making me famous. He took me to the hotel and fucked me. Fuck hostesses, I want to be what I want. Louise, you think you know me, but you don't. And like, I just read you entries of, you know, Lucy's journal.

She is very eloquent. She doesn't have these harsh language. She calls Louise Lou in her journal entries. And when were these letters sent? After, like weeks after. Like, once the police start heavy investigating. Oh Yeah, that's weird. The end of July towards the end of July So it could very much be someone who's faking it right? Yeah, but there was enough information to show that this was someone who probably New Lucy okay because later they'll also send another envelope stuffed with cash

And they said it's it's to pay off Lucy's debt signed Lucy like stuff like that Which is very strange because this is when the whole cult theory right because maybe the last suspect is really What if it is a cult now first things first cults usually want your money? They don't want to give you money. They don't want to pay off your debts. Let's be real They want your money so now that they have this letter showing up with an envelope full of cash to pay off Lucy's like close to 10,000 USD in debt. That's a lot. Just like doesn't sit with it right with them. It also doesn't sit right with sex trafficking, like human trafficking. That doesn't seem like you would pay off the police $10,000. You

would just make someone vanish. What does that letter even say it when? Just like, oh, I am now, well she's the P word, but now I'm a sex worker to pay off my debts. So here we go. Like, here's your money. So it was written in Lucy's name. Yeah. That's saying, stop looking for me. Yeah. So there was like four or five letters. Two of them were written in first person. Like, oh, I'm Lucy. Here's my money. Stop looking for me. I'm a prostitute. Like, that's how they phrased it at the P word. I'm a sex worker now. And then you had the other half from the cult leader being like, oh yeah, she's being taken care of.

She's fine. They also stated that she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and disassociative identity disorder. So that's like, really random? They couldn't get any prints off of them, so there's that. Like, it was just weird. Just really oddball stuff. So, this is, I think, what made the press go even crazier about this case. It's not a cult, it's not human trafficking, because everyone is thinking, okay, if it's not a cult, it's definitely human trafficking. But now it's not that, because no human trafficker does this. This is dumb stuff. You just make them vanish, and that's it. You just don't pay any attention. Yeah, so the motive gets even more confused, right? So then, this is when they start finding out that, oh, they thought the family, the black men's, they thought,

well Lucy's gonna get found. She's this blonde tall woman, the way that people described it. There's no way that you could see her if she ran away, if she's with a cult. There's no way that you could see her in a sea of Japanese people and not be like, huh, not the girl that's with him you know, it's just, she's not blending in. But then they hit a roadblock that maybe a lot of these Japanese people see all foreigners kind of the same because Tim was out with Sophie and they were handing out posters. Now Tim's new wife Josephine happened to be in Tokyo too and she's handing out posters somewhere else and these Japanese girls, they start going crazy. They're like oh my god. Oh my god. Follow us. We saw her. We saw her

We saw her so Tim and Sophie they drop everything and they're like what? They're like literally right across the road. We saw her so they rushed this store and they point through a shop window Just like tapping on the glass and the woman turns around and it's literally Tim's wife It's literally Lucy stepmom who is 20 years older than Lucy. Who's in her 40s. I mean, she's blonde. They were like, okay, well maybe they think all blonde women look the same. Like, I don't know what's going on here. Like, it was just a lot.

So then the family, they get called into the station literally every day and they are shown these letters. It doesn't make sense. You know, Lucy is telling the family like, I've disappeared by my own free will. I wish not to be found. Don't worry about me. I'm fine. I want you to return to England and I'll call you there. Now what's weird is that it's dated July 17th of 2000. That is Tim's birthday. And Lucy has never forgotten a birthday of any of her family members. So it's like they know just enough information to know that they have a connection to Lucy that they know this is not like a random serial

killer, a stranger, a complete stranger. This is someone who has talked to Lucy, but not enough that it is Lucy, you know. So it's just really strange, but the police tried to argue. Well, maybe, I mean, she might be alive. They're like, no, no, she's not. Why do they think she's not alive? Because she would have reached out. Like these are weird, you know? They're just saying like, no, no, this doesn't make sense. It's not Lucy riding this, you know?

I don't know if she's not alive, but it's not her. So then Tim gets a phone call when he returns to the UK. So now the family members are taking shifts. They wanted to have a family member in Tokyo at all times, but you know, each one by one they would come back and take turns and the day literally he comes back to the UK for the first time and he gets a call from a guy By the name of Mike Mike Hills, a Norwegian man And he says that he does business in Japan and he's got contacts in the underworld the Yakuza And I want to help you find Lucy

Yakuza wants to find Lucy? Yeah, which you're like, what? Why, right? Well, the Yakuza, they're really big on the important export of guns. And because of this international news, the police are everywhere in Tokyo. I mean, they're just monitoring everything. They're checking all our cargo to make sure we don't have a blonde woman in there. So, we're knowing we're just trying to do other illegal things this time. So you know, the faster that we find her and return her, the better it is for business,

you know? So we want to help. And what makes us even better is that my kills just happen to be in the UK. He's like, usually I do business in Tokyo, but right now I'm in the UK and I'd love to meet up with you. So they meet up the next day and he spins this crazy tail and he says, okay, so I know this man by the name of mr. Nikonny and he says that she is alive and well He's part of the Yakuza she was kidnapped it and she is being sold in the sex trade right now That's run by the Yakuza. I know mr. Nikonny knows the kidnappers and if he's incentivized enough We can bring her back the whole operation is gonna cost anywhere let's say, $50,000 to $80,000. Did you bring the cash that I told you?

The initial upfront cost. So Tim, he grabs his wallet and takes out $20,000 in cash. And he said that, you know, this is beyond his life experience. Like, what do you do? You nobody else has leads. The police have nothing in this man says he has Yakuza ties in this foreign country that you know nothing about. It would be so hard for a parent to say no. It would be so hard.

So he gives that $20,000 and the plan is in motion. Tim flies out to Tokyo immediately again and he goes straight to the British Embassy and he's like, we're getting her back. This is what's happening. He tells the whole story. The British Embassy is incredibly skeptical. They're like, are you sure? But just in case they clear out a room for her, they have a med team on standby in case she

is brought into the British Embassy by the Yucuzzi, she might need some medical attention. And they wait a week passes and Mike calls back and he says, nah, man bad news, she's no longer in Tokyo. Her kidnappers got super scared, too much press, you know? And so they transported her with three men wanted to buy her. So she is on a ship called LeoJ. It's on its way to Manila right now. What?

So he calls around. Indeed, there is a merchant ship vessel called the LeoJ owned by a German company and it is bound for Manila. So he's like, oh shit. So then my calls back a couple days later and he says, okay, well from Manila, she got on to another ship. Now it's headed towards Australia where she's gonna be sold. But we're gonna try to intercept her, okay. The Armonac is the vessel, but I need another $15,000, because I need to personally fly Mr. Nakani and me to intercept her from being sold. So he pays the other $15,000. Now we've

got, you know, $35,000 being paid. And he calls back a couple days later and he says, Oh my God, you'll never believe it. Mr. Nakani has been murdered in his car. The Yakuza's pissed. I need more money. Tim has no doubts. Okay, so this is how Tim describes it. Okay, and I'm laughing because I'm like, you know, when you're like so sad, you can't. So, Tim was believing, okay? And then a family reached out to him. The winter family. They live in the UK and they say, hey, are you Tim Blackman? I heard from a friend of a friend that you were talking to someone they might call. Well, we know Michael and you should not trust Michael. So, the Winder family, they have this son who was 24 years old.

He was in an investment banker in the UK. And he decided that he was going to go to Columbia and hunt for these rare orchids with a group of friends. And he disappeared. He vanished in Columbia. And then suddenly one day, a Michael started calling their family because they saw them all over the news. And so that he has contacts in the underworld of Columbia

Probably with the cartels and in Japan. It's the Yakuza that know the whereabouts, but we need to pay them the ransom So they pay him $10,000 But then they never hear from them again So they go to the police and now you know Tim is in the news They're like hey, we heard from a friend of a friend that you are experiencing stuff like this Yeah, that's his his his, his name my call. He's like, oh shit, his name is my call. So eventually he gets caught, he goes on trial in 2003 and he was charged with two counts

of obtaining property by deception. He claimed that his wife had cancer and he needed money to cure her. And he was only sentenced to three and a half years. What? And so everyone in the press, I mean, even before he was caught and tried, everyone hated him. They said he's evil, despicable. How do you do something like this?

It's disgusting. But Tim, he said that this was the only hope that he had. So he doesn't even feel mad. He doesn't even feel that, like, oh, I feel so sad about the money that's gone. But when he found out that Mike was a fraud, he was so sad because that was his last bit of hope. Like the police didn't have any leads, nobody knew anything. This was his only hope. And that makes it worse. That's so fucked up. Yeah. But he said that it was hard to hate him because he kind of missed like, you know, before

he found out it was a con. So then around this time an anonymous businessman in the United Kingdom offers up a $1 million reward for anyone who has information on Lucy Blackman. So there's a lot of, um, yeah, like I guess the British really come together. Yeah. So then the Tim controversy starts around this time because he was doing a lot of research in these hostess bars. And a lot of, you know, people were talking a lot of research in these hostess bars. And a lot of people were talking a lot of the British press who were also doing research on

British tabloid money at these hostess bars. And a lot of Japanese people felt like, don't you think the dad of this missing hostess girl is enjoying himself a little too much at these hostess bars? Like you just seemed like he was having a little bit too much of a good time. You know, and you know, hew the person that had rented in the office space for free to set up that hotline. He said that Tim seemed more interested on how much money he can raise when his next TV appearance was. Like they started having a falling out because it's just weird. Then the British press, they started digging up all about Tim Blackman's life because once you, you know,

it's so a little seated out on someone, he suddenly became like a public enemy number one. So word came out that he only saw Lucy a handful of times in the last five years because he went to start a new family. So he's a man who didn't even take time out to see his daughter and now he's on every television, you know, across the world, crying. A lot of

people didn't like it. It was just weird. Meanwhile, Jane though, she did get a lot of sympathy because she was playing the part. That's how the book describes it, playing the part of someone who you, you know, you want to feel pity for the family. You want to feel these things. You want to help them so you can feel good about yourself. And Jane was the perfect family member because she showed her emotions. She was crying. She had her head down. She was, you know, frantic.

Tim, he was collected. He's going to these hostess bars. It was much easier to feel sympathy for Jane. And then you find out that he cheated on Jane. Left the family, started a new family. I mean, Jane, now this like single mom raising these kids, her kids lost in Tokyo, it's just a lot. So these two women come to Tim and they tell them a crazy story.

So they call into the tip line and let's call them, so we're going to call them Susie and Michelle. So Susie and Michelle, their former hostesses, who ended up marrying like rich western bankers while they were hostessing, so they like met them while they were on business and they were introduced to Tim with new information. So they said that they had this instance with a toon, with a wealthy Japanese customer who took them to an apartment by the sea. Ring a bell?

Yeah. And then they went into his apartment, they ate some food, drank some wine, and then the next thing they remember is waking up naked in a bed. Now, one of the women, the women, Michelle, she woke up with a man filming her naked body with a video camera, and she freaked out, snatched the tape from the machine, ran out and blackmailed the man for tens of thousands of dollars. Years past, nobody remembers where this apartment

by the seaside is. It seemed like some sort of resort, like one of those buildings that had tons of units, kind of like holiday apartments like vacation homes There was palm trees. They remember that but they weren't the only ones There had been talks around the hostess community. So there was another woman. Let's call her Emily She came to Tokyo to escape, you know her dad was an attorney. She grew up in an upper class in Australia and she was excited about Tokyo

She came when she was 19 completely alone. She starts hosting. She goes on a to-on and this nice Japanese older man in his 40s comes, picks her up, they go hang out, and then they go on dinner, and he's like, do you wanna go back to my apartment? It's by the sea side. So she's like, oh my God, that's amazing.

So they get into the cart. Now he is rich, like really, really rich. Every time he had seen her, it was always in a new Rolls Royce or a new Porsche. Like he had rich, like really, really rich. Every time he had seen her, it was always in a new Rolls Royce or a new Porsche, like he had three different kinds of Porsche's, a Mercedes, a Ferrari, like she was like, okay, this feels safer because there's nothing like he wouldn't do anything crazy to like jeopardize his status. I think that's the scariest thing is you think that these powerful people won't do something so blatantly fucked up because why would they risk their entire, you know, fortune?

But they do! It's like literally the opposite. They think they can get away with it so they'll do even crazier shit, okay? So the her biggest memory is as they're driving to the seaside town, he's just non-stop sweating. Just non-stop. He's like one of the sweatiest people she had ever meet. Just constantly wiping off his sweat, the AC was pumped to the max in that Rolls-Royce

just non-stop sweating. So they get there. Now they go into his little bachelor pad and after a while the sun starts coming up. It's like seven in the morning. She's like, well I should probably get back to my place and he says, oh no, no, before you go, before I drop you off, I have this rare wine from the Philippines. Drink it.

So she's like, okay, drinks a small glass of it, slightly chemical taste. And the next thing she knew was that she felt like she was going under general anesthesia. And she said that was the scariest thing because you're too gone to even be scared, but you're conscious. You're like, nope, I know something's going to happen. And then it's just lights out. And she woke up dressed in a bed alone. So at first she was like, wait, I know what should have happened, but why my dress? You know, this doesn't make sense. Then she checks the time and realizes she had been knocked out for more than 12 hours.

He had redressed her. So he comes into the room, she's laying on the bed, and he's sitting there just staring at her. He's waiting for her to accuse him, but she doesn't, because she's so scared. I mean, she's like, well, how am I going to get back to Tokyo? I don't even know where the fork I am, you know? So she's like, well, I should probably go home now. Like, can you drop me off?

So he's like, sure. So he puts her in the car and the whole time, she's just blaming herself. She just kept thinking, I thought I understood the rules of hostessing, but I guess I was naive. I mean, I did come to his place. So maybe that's when things change. I don't know. Like she just kept blaming herself, right? And she took a few days off of work, went back to working.

He never showed up in the club again. I mean he was coming all the time when they met. Never showed up. Four years later, she's working in a different part of Japan. And she meets another foreigner who says, oh my god, there's this guy who's like praying on woman in Tokyo. He's like taking them to some seaside apartment and drugging them. He's like, what? And this is when she realizes, oh my god. Like she said that the past four years, she tried not to think about it. She didn't even think of herself as a victim because she just wanted to blame herself. She was like, that was my fault.

You know, you get what you ask for. Like that was like the vibe, right? And now she's like, oh my god, this is a full blown predator. I'm a victim. Like it was hitting her what had happened that she had been raped, you know, and drugged. So then a few months later, it's all coming full circle. She gets a call from a friend. There's a former hostess who is a foreigner from the UK and says, hey, my younger sister Louise and her best friend Lucy are headed to Japan. Do you think you can find a place for them? It's her. So she booked some room at the Sasaki house and she said it was insane because Louise looked just like her older sister and they were like

best friends when they were hostessing together, and Lucy looked kind of like herself. And this brought her back to like when she first got to Japan, and like the, oh these two girls, like in this land of, you know, we don't know, like the big concrete jungle of what dreams are made of, like that type of vibe. Two months later, Lucy goes missing. So this friend Emily is talking to all of the other, you know, the Phillips, Louise Phillips, the best friend and her older sister that she's friends with. And they're like, yeah, well, she said that she was going to the sea with the customer and she hasn't come home. That's what she went missing. So she's like, oh my god, it's got to be the same guy.

So then the girls in the hostessing community, they start talking and come to find out it has happened to at least seven or eight women that they know of. And every single time the guy gives a different name. Same seaside apartments, same ammo, some of the girls even knew each other, some of them were like best friends, some of them like barely knew each other, it was just weird. And when all of them heard about Lucy, they had the same reaction. It's gotta be him. But there was only one report to the police. Most of the girls were scared they were on tourist visas, but an American woman by the name of Katie. She showed up. So the guy is targeting foreigners. Yes, and Japanese women, but not Japanese hostesses, oddly.

So he would target foreign women and Japanese women looking for boyfriends in Japan. Okay, very fascinating. So then, um, yeah, a woman named Katie had gone to the police. Three years before Lucy went missing, she was the only report prior to when Lucy went missing, and she said that she was working at a club, and a middle aged, middle aged man named Koji came in, and they start drinking, they go on a tour later, she ends up at a seaside apartment, she woke up passed out. 15 hours later. 15 hours she was passed out wearing just her underwear and he had the weirdest explanation. She's like, why am I in my

underwear? What did you do to me? He says, no, no, no, I didn't do anything to you. There was a gas leak. The gas was leaking in the air. You knocked out, I knocked out. I've got this terrible headache and she just wanted to get home. She's terrified. So she's like, okay, well, can you give me a cab back to Tokyo? And he puts her in a cab and he had stuffed a bunch of money in her purse, thinking that she wouldn't go to the police, but she did. Now, she goes to the police. The police don't even care. They don't even take her into a room.

They straight up take her statement on a scrap piece of paper, like not even a no pad. And she's like, I see what you're doing. Like I can see that. She even brought in a Japanese speaker, like one of her managers at the club. And they just literally didn't care. They wrote it on a scrap piece of paper. Three years later, after she hears Lucy Blackman is missing, she goes straight back into the police station

and they still didn't care. So she tells all the other girls, like they don't care. So then all of them start reaching out to Tim because the police don't want to investigate. And like let's call the hotline then. So finally, Tim puts enough pressure on the police and the police are like, okay, fine, we'll look into it. And they reach out to those girls, they come in and they put them in a police car and now the police start driving them around the coast. And they're like, we need to find this place, right?

We don't have any solid leads. This is it. C side apartment, we need to find the apartment, we need to find everything. And at the same time, they start finally tracing the numbers because Lucy had gotten a phone call. She had called Louise's phone off of one of these phones. But that kind of hit a dead end because the phone was purchased in June of 2000 with 70 other burner phones, 7070. So this sale was made a few days before Japanese law

was introduced that required buyers to show an ID. Oh my god, so the guys like, I have a couple days left? Yeah, so you got 70 under a fake name, of course you did. Only a few had been activated since then. One of them had called Lucy, one of them had called Louise and, you know, Scott. So they knew it was coming from these burner phones, but they had no idea who it was connected to. And it pinged off of a town called Zushi. So then they take the girls to Zushi.

And they're like, oh shit, that's it. That's the building. They all point to the same building. This is the building, but now this building has like hundreds of units in it. And most of them are vacant because they're like vacation homes from rich Japanese people. So they're like, we need to run background checks

on everyone that lives on this building. Tone of them have criminal records, but only one of them was a sex offender. Only one of them. He was arrested for peeping into a woman's bathroom with a camera in his hand. And this was the second time that he did this. So he pled guilty and guess how much he was fined? $90.

That's less than one hour at one of these clubs. He was just fined $90. So they tracked down the sky, they tracked down his cars, and he had multiple cars. You know, he had Mercedes-Benz, his Porsche, his Ferrari's, and he was traveling from Tokyo to Zushi, the day that Lucy disappeared. They saw CCTV footage of it, and then from there, he made a bunch of small journeys to and from and around the town and back to Tokyo, like the dude was busy after the next couple of days.

So they start surveillance on this man, and they contact the police in another seaside town. He had another apartment. So they find out that this guy has like a million apartments. Like he's rich. He's like worth, I think, close to $60 million, OK? So he's rich. Yeah, so he's rich. So they start, yeah, we'll get into it.

So they start tracking him down. And another police department comes forward to the Tokyo Police Department. And they say, hey, so we have a little seaside town that we govern, you know, that our little police station is in charge of, and we got a call from the Blue Sea apartment building. And the manager was like, hey, I don't, there's less like the Brandon person who's trying to open a unit with a locksmith and I don't know what's going on, I don't think they live here.

I've never seen this unit even being used, right? So the police show up at apartment 401 has been unused for several years. The man said he doesn't have a key. The locksmith opened it He had parked his Mercedes right outside and when the police passed this Mercedes They have no idea that it belongs to this man But they just saw that they saw these on strange lumps under like sheets in the car Like if you were to roll up like a pillow under a sheet and then put it in your car But there was multiple of them and it just was strange like they weren't shaped like a pillow like shaped like things that you would immediately be like Oh, that's definitely like a butt cushion under there, right?

So they go to that unit they knock on the door They hear him. I mean, there's a lot of noise But he doesn't open so they keep slamming on the door eventually. He no opens up the door half naked wearing just his pajama trousers And he's got sweat all over his face chest. He's doing some vigorous work in there slamming on the door, eventually he no opens up the door, half naked, wearing just his pajama trousers. And he's got sweat all over his face, chest, he's doing some vigorous work in there. So like, can we talk to you? Like, do you live here? And he's like, let me change my clothes.

Then he comes back out again, and they see some concrete inside of the unit. Like just buckets of concrete, which is really weird. So like, well, can we search your place? Because we heard from the caretaker that yours is a suspicious person. And he says, no, showing you inside my place is like showing you my naked body. Now, they have no warrant, they have no physical evidence.

They call the police station, turns out the man is the legal owner of this unit. So he just wasn't around. So the caretaker had no idea who this guy was. But he was the legal owner. Now, here's where it gets weird. A couple hours, the police get a call from Unit 401, the one that they were just investigating.

And they say, hey, officers, I need you guys to come to my apartment. So they rush back to the same apartment, and it's the same guy. He opens up the door, and he's holding something wrapped in sheets, and they see it's the head of a dog. And he says, my beloved dog has died. I thought you guys would think it's strange,

so I didn't let you in. But that's why I was acting so suspicious, because beloved dog has died. I thought you guys would think it's strange, so I didn't let you in, but that's why I was acting so suspicious, because my dog is dead. My dog's body was just here. Now, the police, they're like, that's weird. But they realized that the dog's body was so stiff. Like, it's not the body of a dog that just died. Like, it's like the body of a dog

that's like been frozen or something. And that is where I leave you with part one. I'm so sorry, I don't like to do two parters, but this one's intense, and I'm actually going to be posting the part two on Friday, instead of our regular Sunday upload schedule. Now, here's the thing with part two. I mean, the reason that there has to be a part two is because we're going to get into his childhood. There is a landmine of evidence that we find at this person's place. I mean, there are suspected victims in the counts of maybe 150 people all the way up to 400 people. This monster has been operating in the shadows of Tokyo for so long.

Day tuned for this Friday because it's about to be an even bigger shit show. Done done. Okay, sorry. Done done. So, done, done. Okay, sorry. Done, done.