Tokyo ( CNN ) -- A Japanese man who admitted to raping and strangling a British teacher has been found guilty and sentenced to life in prison . Tatsuya Ichihashi was convicted Thursday of rape , murder and discarding a body after a month-long trial that riveted Japan in much the same way the Casey Anthony trial did the United States . 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 he was 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 . The case began in March 2007 when surveillance video showed Ichihashi meeting up with Hawker at a coffee shop in the town of Ichikawa in Chiba Prefecture for an English lesson . Later , he told Hawker to follow him to his apartment so he could pay her , prosecutors said . After the killing when police arrived to interview Ichihashi , he fled . He snipped his own lips with a pair of scissors , cut off two moles and -- as he flitted from one construction job to another across the country -- he would drop in at clinics to undergo more cosmetic surgery , prosecutors said . 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 . Ichihashi went on trial in July , amid wall-to-wall coverage in local media . Just as in the case of Casey Anthony -- the Florida mother who was accused and later acquitted of killing her 2-year-old daugther -- television stations offered play-by-play accounts of every development . 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 .
Ichihashi has admitted to raping and murdering Hawker . The investigation centers around whether he continued to do so . Officials : During the time he resisted arrest , he underwent cosmetic surgery . The case has received wall - to - wall coverage in Japan .