The murder of Lindsay Hawker, the British teacher whose bound and naked body was buried in a bath of earth, has “brought shame” on Japan, her father said yesterday in a statement pleading for information about the whereabouts of her suspected killer.

A week after he fled under the noses of nine police officers, there is no sign of Tatsuya Ichihashi, 28, the son of a well-to-do medical family, who is suspected of having murdered Ms Hawker when she went to give him an English lesson at his apartment in a Tokyo suburb. Mr Ichihashi fled barefoot in the clothes he stood in, having left behind a backpack of clothes that he had prepared for his flight.

His face has appeared on Japanese television and newspapers scores of times every day. It seems likely that, unless he has quietly committed suicide, he is being helped.

“My daughter’s killer has now brought shame on your country,” William Hawker said in a statement read on his behalf by Sir Graham Fry, the British Ambassador to Tokyo. “He must be caught. He cannot be allowed to hide away. The Japanese police are making every effort to catch him.

“I still respect this country and its people. I know that you place great importance on family and community links. So, as a father, I appeal to you – if anyone can help the police to find my daughter’s killer, I beg you to come forward.”

Last Thursday 20 officers raided a sex motel close to Ms Hawker’s home in the city of Nishi-Funabashi, after a tip that a man resembling Mr Ichihashi had been seen there. But a 45-minute search of the “love hotel”, where rooms are let by the hour, was in vain.

According to police leaks in the Japanese media, Mr Ichihashi approached Ms Hawker, 22, at a railway station five days before her death and followed her home, eventually persuading her to give him a private English lesson at his apartment on Sunday, March 25. Police found her body the next day.

Her hands and ankles had been tied with plastic cord used to bind plants, and she was buried in horticultural soil in a plastic bathtub on the balcony of the apartment. Egg-sized bruises on the left side of her face appear to have been inflicted with a fist, while lesser marks on her upper body were the result of a collision with furniture, probably during a struggle, police said. Police have refused to confirm or deny whether there were signs of sexual assault.

Ms Hawker’s Australian and Canadian flatmates reported her missing on Monday afternoon and police called on Mr Ichihashi that night after finding his name and telephone number on a piece of paper in her apartment.

After he fled while they were questioning him, police found a backpack containing two days’ underwear and the suspect’s shoes. His socks had been cast aside a few hundred metres from his home. Police dogs lost his scent soon afterwards, suggesting that he had escaped in a car or on a motorbike. Detectives have removed from Mr Ichihashi’s apartment building a shopping trolley, in which he is believed to have transported the bags of horticultural soil in which Ms Hawker was buried.

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