Miura

Miura is the coastal setting of the searches for Lucie Blackman and the eventual discovery of her remains. The first search of the apartment building where Obara had taken women and the surrounding area found no body; when police returned months later, they located her remains in a cave along the oceanfront.

The First Search

Police searched the apartment building associated with Obara and the surrounding Miura area but found no body on that first attempt. The absence of a discovery left the search unresolved, and the area remained central to the investigation.

Return to the Coast

On February 9, nearly four months after the earlier search, almost a hundred officers returned to the beach in Miura. Police said that analysis of the distance recorded on the speedometer of a car Obara had rented shortly after Lucie disappeared helped them determine where he was likely to have buried her. A veteran Mainichi Shimbun reporter offered a different possibility: police might have found the body during the first search but delayed announcing it until Obara substantiated their discovery. The account presents this as speculation, not an established explanation.

Discovery and Its Communication

During the renewed search, police found Lucie’s remains concealed in a makeshift wall inside a cave along the oceanfront. The remains could not be formally identified that day. Googly called the narrator from the scene; knowing that the narrator was speaking with Tim, he apparently wanted the news to reach him. Miura thus marks both the investigative breakthrough and the point at which the discovery began to be conveyed to Lucie’s family.