Japanese man who admitted to raping and strangling

A Japanese guilty of killing British teacher

A British teacher found guilty and sentenced to life in prison that’s a Japanese man who admitted to raping and strangling.

The same way the Casey Anthony trial the United States month-long trial of Tatsuya Ichihashi riveted Japan.

The victim Lindsay Hawker's battered, naked body was found in a bathtub in Ichihashi's apartment in March 2007 -- buried in sand.

Ichihashi then went on the run, altering his face through cosmetic surgery several times to elude arrest.

After arrested two and half years later, Ichihashi acknowledged killing Hawker. But the question at the center of the trial was whether he intended to.

Hawker's parents who were in Chiba District Court, east of Tokyo, for the verdict had asked prosecutors to hand down the harshest sentence: death.

Later, he told Hawker to follow him to his apartment so he could pay her, prosecutors said. Killing when police arrived to interview Ichihashi, he fled. he would drop in at clinics to undergo more cosmetic surgery, prosecutors said.

Before the verdict was read Thursday, hundreds of people lined up outside court to take part in a lottery that would allow 57 of them seats inside.

Authorities offered a 10 million yen reward ($127,000) reward for information leading to Ichihashi's capture. They finally caught up with him at a ferry terminal in the western Japanese city of Osaka in November 2009.