Japan Police Say Remains Are of British Hostess

Police have identified the dismembered remains found in a beach cave near Tokyo as those of a British bar hostess who disappeared in July, authorities said Saturday.

“Experts agreed that the teeth of the body matched with her dental records. There is no discrepancy in the height, and the hair was blond,” Tokyo police investigator Akira Hiromitsu said.

A DNA analysis is expected to take seven to 10 days, and the cause of death is still under investigation, he said.

Lucie Blackman, 22, a former British Airways flight attendant, was working in a Tokyo bar when she disappeared July 1. She had told a friend that she was going on a drive to the coast with a customer who promised to buy her a cell phone.

Authorities found the body in the resort community of Miura south of Tokyo near the seaside apartment of Joji Obara, a Japanese businessman who was taken into custody Oct. 12 and has since been charged with the rapes of five foreign and Japanese women.

Obara, who went on trial in December, has not been charged in the Blackman case and has maintained his innocence.

Now, “it is definite that we will charge him with abandoning a corpse,” Hiromitsu said.

Obara was said to be a regular at bars in Tokyo where foreign hostesses pour drinks, light cigarettes and make conversation with men willing to pay as much as $100 an hour for the service.

Soon after Blackman’s disappearance, her roommate received a call from someone who said she had joined a religious cult.

Her disappearance led to one of Japan’s highest-profile missing persons cases in years.

The corpse found Friday was cut into eight parts and the head encased in concrete, police said.