Bill Hawker, the father of slain 22-year-old teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker, displays a life-size cardboard cutout of the suspected killer, Tatsuya Ichihashi, during a press conference at the British embassy in Tokyo on Tuesday.

(Credit: AFP Photo/Yoshikazu Tsuno)

If you’re looking for someone wanted for murder, you could put up a wanted poster at a few post offices. You could set up Web sites with images of the felon or mail people the pictures. These days, however, we’re bombarded with information, and the bulletins could–and most likely would–get lost in the static.

Or you could cut through the sea of info by putting the identities right in the public’s face with life-size, talking, cardboard cutouts of the evasive culprits.

Such a test case is currently underway in Japan as police try to track down Tatsuya Ichihashi, a man wanted in the 2007 murder of 22-year-old British English teacher Lindsay Hawker. Ichihashi barely slipped out of an arrest situation and has been at large ever since.

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