LUCIE BLACKMAN’S dead body was cut up with a chainsaw and contained traces of a date-rape drug, a court in Tokyo was told yesterday.

The gruesome facts surrounding the killing in Japan of the British bar hostess who went missing nearly five years ago are beginning to emerge only now, 4½ years after the arrest of her suspected killer.

Masahiko Kobayashi, a pathologist from the University of Texas, told the packed courtroom that Ms Blackman’s body had been cut into ten pieces with a toothed blade that sliced through bone as well as tissue.

The post-mortem examination carried out on Ms Blackman, who was 21 at the time of her death, also detected traces of the drug Rohypnol.

“From the marks on the bones and the fact that large sections were sawn off in one motion, it is probable that an instrument like a chainsaw was used [to dismember the body],” Dr Kobayashi told the Tokyo District Court.

“The fact that parts of the severed edges of the bones were smooth while other parts were jagged suggest that the bones may have been sawed through almost completely and then perhaps broken off.

“Traces of flunitrazepam [the scientific name for Rohypnol] were detected in the body, but it’s unclear at what quantities this drug was present and how long before her death the victim took the drug.”

Dr Kobayashi was speaking at the trial of Joji Obara, the 53-year-old property- owner charged with the killing of Ms Blackman and another foreign bar hostess, and the rapes of six other women.

In the 49 months since Mr Obara was charged with Ms Blackman’s killing, witnesses for the prosecution have set out a detailed account of his suspicious behaviour before and after her death.

However, as Dr Kobayashi’s testimony confirmed, there is no direct evidence — no irrefutable “smoking gun” — to prove that he killed her.

Ms Blackman was working as a hostess in the Roppongi area of Tokyo when she disappeared in July 2000. More than a hundred detectives worked on the case, tens of thousands of missing persons posters were displayed and Tony Blair discussed the case with the Japanese Government during a visit to Japan.

Yet, despite repeated appeals for information by her father, Tim Blackman, nothing more was heard of her. Then, in February 2001, her dismembered body was found buried in a seaside cave a few hundred yards from a flat owned by Mr Obara. Her head had been embedded in concrete, traces of which were found in the apartment.

A police officer who was called there by suspicious neighbours a few days after Ms Blackman’s disappearance described in court Mr Obara’s refusal to allow a search of his property. After his arrest, police found scores of videos in Mr Obara’s various properties showing him having sex with drugged and insensible women.

The day after Ms Blackman’s disappearance, the prosecution alleges, Mr Obara drove to Tokyo and made a telephone call to her flatmate identifying himself as a member of a religious cult that Ms Blackman had joined.

He visited a series of shops and bought camping equipment, quick-drying concrete, mixing equipment, cutters, scissors, hammers and a chainsaw.

Mr Obara has admitted meeting Ms Blackman in the club where she worked and spending the evening before her disappearance with her at one of his seaside flats, but he denies having sex with her or causing her death. Rather than murder, Mr Obara has been charged with rape resulting in death.

Dr Kobayashi said yesterday that he was unable to determine the cause of Ms Blackman’s death, but witnesses in other cases against Mr Obara have described how they fell unconscious after accompanying him to one of his seaside flats and drinking drugged wine.

The prosecution believes that Mr Obara killed Ms Blackman unintentionally after she suffered a fatal reaction to the Rohypnol and chloroform.

Dr Kobayashi found no chloroform in the body, but said that it could have evaporated in the seven months that the body remained buried.

The Blackman case has revealed a catalogue of incompetence and failures by the Japanese police. Videos taken from his properties suggest that Mr Obara had been a serial rapist for at least 15 years. Despite complaints by several other women, police took no action until the disappearance of Ms Blackman. Even after the arrest of Mr Obara, it took them another four months to locate her remains.

The trial continues.

ON THE TRAIL

• Lucie Blackman disappeared in July 2000 while working as a nightclub hostess in the Roppongi district of Tokyo
  
• In February 2001 her body was found dismembered and in a shallow grave at a beach near Tokyo
  
• The property developer Joji Obara, 53, was charged over her death in April 2001. He denies killing her
  
• Mr Obara is also charged with six counts of rape and the killing of another hostess
  
• In 2003 Michael Hills, now 62, from South London, was jailed for tricking the Blackman family out of £15,000. He had said that he could trace Lucie

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