Inquest opens into death of murdered Tokyo teacher Lindsay

An inquest into the death of a teacher found buried in a bath of sand in a Tokyo apartment has been formally opened.

A post-mortem last week showed that Lindsay Ann Hawker, 22, an English language teacher from Brandon, Coventry, had been badly beaten and strangled.

Warwickshire Police said Miss Hawker's body had been flown into Heathrow airport and Michael Coker, the Warwickshire coroner, opened and adjourned the inquest into her death at Leamington Spa Town Hall.

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Miss Hawker's father Bill and boyfriend Ryan Garside, who had flown to Japan to identify her remains and made emotional television appeals to find her killer, flew back to the UK on Saturday.

CCTV images released by Japanese police at the weekend showed Miss Hawker chatting to the prime suspect in the investigation, 28-year-old Tatsuya Ichihashi, who fled barefoot from the apartment where her body was found when detectives arrived.

Ichihashi is believed to have approached Miss Hawker, who worked for a language school, about private English lessons after following her home from a railway station.

Her body was found buried in sand - with one hand exposed - in a bath on the balcony of a flat in the east of Tokyo on March 26 after her employer, the Nova language school, reported her missing.

It is not clear whether she had been sexually assaulted.

A spokeswoman for Warwickshire Police said the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was keeping the Hawker family updated on the progress of the Japanese police investigation.