Her convicted teen killer, a lanky, pimply-faced boy, told how the attractive 22-year-old Tokyo girl had caught his eye.

There was something about her long jet-black hair, doe eyes and innocent smile that struck him.

It was his first day at work on his first job. He was helping Elvis impersonator Warren Ellis fix a truck parked inside the derelict Elphinstone’s building.

Life had been tough. He’d had a troubled childhood. He was facing eviction from his caravan home for not paying the rent.

To some he was gentle and caring. Others saw a dark side.

Sitting outside the old warehouse, the youth sipped a can of soft drink, and watched the attractive young female tourist walk down Grafton St.

Michiko, a swimming pool attendant, had come to Cairns to learn how to be a dive instructor amid the dazzling corals of the Great Barrier Reef.

She’d caught a bus into town, posted some letters, and was on her way to buy some groceries.

She was a complete stranger to the 16-year-old boy. She could not speak English. But she felt safe. Cairns was a renowned tourist destination, known as being warm and friendly, a holiday mecca in tropical paradise.

It was broad daylight, about 12.30pm on September 20, 1997.

The sandy-haired killer, convicted of the “heinous” and “macabre” murder, told police how he watched his victim walk to within 20m.

But he could not remember anything else because he “blacked out”.

Somehow the innocent girl was lured inside the disused office and warehouse which contained a steel vault.

“It must have been terrifying for Michiko,’’ prosecutor Jim Henry told the jury.

“In a foreign land, in a small windowless vault, being subjected to serious violence by a stranger.

“And knowing there was no way anyone could help her.”

She was bludgeoned to death, her face repeatedly smashed into the large steel door of the vault.

Whether she was raped or subjected to other horrors is unknown because of the state of decomposition of her body when it was found two weeks later.

How long she was kept alive before she was murdered in the soundproof vault is also unclear after a neighbour of the warehouse reported hearing screams almost ten hours later at 10.30pm.

The “how” and “why” are a mystery because the killer, who could not be named because he was a minor at the time, never confessed to the murder in a case that made international headlines.

Hundreds turned out in an emotional outpouring to support Michiko’s family as Cairns was dubbed the “city of sorrow”.

The youth, found to be of high intelligence, even led police on a wild goose chase brazenly giving a witness statement and walking into the police station to claim salvage rights on an old car.

He gave media interviews about the “Lost Tribe” of teens who lived in the squat and sold sex for drugs.

During the murder trial, he showed no remorse, did not take the stand, and maintained his innocence.

He claimed he found her naked, bloodied body the next day and kept her in the vault — until the stench of death became too much.

He stuffed her body in a wheelie bin and hauled it 5km across town “in front of half of Cairns”.

But not before police came knocking.

Constable Peter Stevens, of Cairns CIB, told the jury he searched the warehouse 10 days after the murder in response to a complaint about a vile smell.

He traced the stench to the wheelie bin and ordered the youth to open the lid and empty it.

The detective became the butt of jokes of fellow officers after he inspected the odious contents and swore there was no body inside.

The accused said he knew the girl was in the bin when police asked to see inside.

``My legs were about to collapse under me,’’ he said in a video-taped interview.

``I opened the lid and I put cardboard and paper on top of her. They saw the paper and stuff but didn’t want to look too close because of the smell.’’

Little over an hour after the police visit, the youth had tied the wheelie bin’s lid down with ropes and was pushing it down Florence Street when businessman Gordon Sleigh stopped him.

“I jogged up to him and said, `That’s my wheelie bin you have there’,’’ Sleigh told the court. They argued until Sleigh said: “Yes, it is my bin and I can identify it. There’s a split on the back near the bottom.”

When the pair inspected the bin the split definitely was there and a nasty-looking black liquid was oozing from it.

The youth calmly told him it was “rotting vegetables” and continued on his macabre journey.

He said her body just “slid out” as he dumped it in a swamp, and covered it in pandanus fronds, near Trinity High School.

He kept “trophies” of his victim. When police later searched his caravan they found her blood-soaked panties, bra, shirt, black leather shorts and “bum bag”.

They were hidden in a box under three teddy bears and a framed picture of his mum.

It took a jury about 50 minutes to find him guilty of murder.

He was the first youth in Queensland to be sentenced to life imprisonment for the particularly heinous crime.

In dismissing his appeal, the court found: “Death was inflicted by vicious and violent means.’’

“The victim, a stranger who could speak no English, had been innocently walking along the street,’’ the judgement said.

“It was a callous and brutal attack.

“There was no motive for the killing. He showed no remorse at all. His conduct after the death was macabre.’’

“It was within the worst category of murders.’’

Every year the dignified parents of Michiko Okuyama, Toshie and Mikio, fly to Cairns on the anniversary of her death.

They pay pilgrimage to a Japanese-style memorial garden at the Cairns Civic Theatre built in honour of their daughter.

“We come to talk to Michiko,’’ said her mum Mikio.

“She will never be forgotten.’’