Recently photos of Tatsuya Ichihashi have surfaced showing what he looked like after having plastic surgery in Tokyo. There are rumors on the net that he has been working as a male prostitute, or somewhere in the gay red light districts of Tokyo. Because of this, and the size of the community, many people think it’s just a matter of time before his whereabouts are made known. Some internet commenters also seem to believe that the police are shirking their duties and should be making more of an effort to find him.
Ichihashi’s parents are doctors, and other theories suggest that his parents are hiding him, and used some of their influence in the medical community to help him get his appearance surgically altered.
Here are the before and after pictures:
Let’s hope he gets caught and faces the music. I leave you with the thought of one of the Japanese commenters on the “Mudaijp Blog” to help keep the case in perspective…
He wrote, “I don’t know why he’s going through all this trouble to flee. He just killed one foreigner. It’s not like he’s going to get the death penalty for that.”
Maybe that’s the mentality held by the police who haven’t been able to catch him these two and a half years.
I heard this about the plastic surgery yesterday. Where has this photo come from? Surely the person who took it might have an idea where he is!
That comment from the blog is really a pretty sad indictment of the whole incident. I was talking to a few people yesterday about it as the 2-year anniversary of Hawker’s death passed, and they were asking me if I truly thought that she was a teacher, and not a hostess/prostitute.
My understanding is that these photos were released by the clinic that did the surgery. I haven’t heard about any charges against the clinic, although I think there should be. They certainly knew who he was when they did the work.