July 1, 2000

July 1, 2000, marks the last known contact between Lucie Blackman and her friend and coworker Louise Phillips before Lucie disappeared. Lucie first called from Shibuya to say that she was meeting a customer from the club who would buy her a cell phone. She called again that evening, saying she was on her way home; she never made it back.

The Last Calls

At the time, Lucie and Louise were working at Casablanca, a hostess club. Lucie’s first call conveyed excitement about the promised phone and the meeting with a customer. Her later call seemed to place her on the way home, but offered no explanation for what happened next. The contrast between the two ordinary updates gives the date its significance: it is the point at which Lucie’s known movements stop.

From Disappearance to Investigation

Two days later, Louise received a call from a man identifying himself as Akira Takagi, who claimed that Lucie had joined a cult in Chiba Prefecture and could not return. Worried, Louise sought advice from the British Embassy and reported Lucie missing at the Azabu police station. The police were initially reluctant to take the case, but the unexplained call made it difficult to ignore; on July 9, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Investigative Division took over. In retrospect, July 1 is the beginning of the disappearance timeline, while the calls and the subsequent false-sounding explanation shaped the first steps of the search.