Neatly written on a scribbled notebook page, 30-year-old Hannah Kobayashi had written down everything she planned to do on a 4,500-mile “bucket list” trip from Hawaii to New York.
Instead, her journey has ended in a chaotic double tragedy after she went missing earlier this month. On Sunday, her distraught father took his own life after fruitless attempts to find her.
Ryan Kobayashi, 58, was found dead near Los Angeles airport after jumping from a multi-story parking garage — two weeks after his daughter, an aspiring photographer, was expected in the Big Apple for a five-day trip to see live music performances to photograph and visit relatives out of town.
After spending thousands of dollars on hotel rooms and concert tickets, she had just received a press pass and, her family says, couldn’t be more excited.
But in a deeply confusing mystery that has gripped the US even before her devastated father’s suicide, investigators now fear Hannah never made it beyond LA.
Mr. Kobayashi, who was separated from Hannah’s mother, was among relatives and friends who flew from their home on the Hawaiian island of Maui to look for Hannah.
A support group for the family said his death had “immeasurably exacerbated the family’s suffering.” They are still very concerned for her safety and fear she has been kidnapped after she was photographed leaving LA’s main airport with an unknown person.
Mr. Kobayashi, also a photographer, had spent 13 days scouring LA, including Skid Row, where homeless people and drug addicts live in a squalid tent city. He had previously told CNN: “Hannah loved to travel. She loved photography, art, music. I wasn’t that close to her. . . growing up.’
Latest CCTV footage of 30-year-old Hannah Kobayashi in Los Angeles
He added: “I’m just trying to make it right. I’m trying to get her back.’
His former sister-in-law, Larie, said he “just died of a broken heart.” She added: “Being on the streets and seeing the possibilities of where his daughter could be. No sleep. The speculative rumors going around. It just took its toll.”
She said the increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories circulating on social media may have exacerbated Kobayashi’s fragile mental state. They include bizarre speculation that she was brainwashed by a New Age cult called Twin Flames or that she was being blackmailed by African hackers.
Her family tried to quell another wild strain of suspicion by insisting that Kobayashi had no involvement in his daughter’s disappearance. They also addressed claims that Hannah had suffered a psychotic breakdown, stressing that she had no history of mental illness.
And yet a more mundane explanation for her disappearance remains elusive.
Hannah flew from her native Maui to LA on November 8, arriving at 9:53 pm local time. She was scheduled to catch a connecting flight to New York, after booking tickets with a boyfriend with whom she had since broken up.
They decided to keep their tickets because they couldn’t get a refund and just went their separate ways in New York.
But while the ex-boyfriend – who has not yet been named – was able to make the connection, Hannah told her family she had missed it and tried to get on a new flight. But security camera footage showed her leaving the airport carrying only a backpack. And the next afternoon, she entered an art bookstore in an upscale shopping center called The Grove in downtown LA – ten miles away – for reasons her family can only blame on her love of discovery.
Ryan Kobayashi holds a photo of his missing daughter Hannah in LA. He was later found dead nearby after jumping from a multi-storey car park in the city near the airport
Employees at the Taschen bookstore say she asked if she could charge her phone while she went to get some food. She even filled out a mailing list and provided her Hawaiian address. According to the staff, she seemed cheerful. However, she then sent an electronic payment to two people whose names her family did not recognize.
The next day – November 10 – Hannah returned to the same shopping center and, say, the staff, to the same bookstore. At 3:40 p.m., she appeared in the background of a video recorded outside a Nike event at The Grove featuring basketball star LeBron James. She posted a photo of the event on Instagram. Hannah, who has a tattoo of a knife on one forearm, wore the same clothes – a black hooded sweatshirt and tie-dye leggings – that she had worn when she stepped out of Hawaii.
A day later, she was back at LAX Airport to arrange an American Airlines flight to New York. Again she didn’t think of it. But by then, her family and friends were receiving strangely worded messages that her aunt described as “super strange and alarming.”
“We were getting texts saying she didn’t feel safe, that someone was trying to steal her money, that someone was trying to take her identity,” said her aunt, Larie Pidgeon. In one, Hannah wrote, “I have just had a very intense spiritual awakening.” She said she was heading to New York, but “I might need some help getting there, it’s a long story.”
Another message apologized for her “craziness” and added that she had been “intercepted.” In other cases, she said she feared someone would try to steal her money and identity. “I was tricked into giving away all my money,” read one message to one of Hannah’s friends. A second to the same recipient added: “For someone I thought I loved.”
One particularly sinister text read: ‘Deep Hackers erased my identity, stole all my money and have had me on their minds since Friday.’ In another she said: ‘Matrix style. . . I am safe. . . For the good of all. . . I’ll keep you informed.’
Her relatives now believe they were sent by someone else or by Hannah under duress.
As her aunt explained, Hannah often used emojis for words – and yet the messages they received did not contain any emoji. ‘There were words like ‘funds’. . . Who uses that word?’ she said.
Hannah’s phone was reportedly turned off at the airport and has not sent any messages since. However, she was later seen on CCTV boarding a subway in LA on November 11 with an unidentified person whom she did not mention to her family.
“She doesn’t know anyone in LA. Our whole family doesn’t know anyone in LA,” her aunt said.
Around 10 p.m. that evening, the pair are seen leaving the Pico subway station in a rough neighborhood in downtown LA, where her family insists their daughter would normally never visit.
Images have not been released – but Hannah’s family said in a statement: ‘It is clear that Hannah does not look well and she is not alone.’
The next day they filed a missing persons report and LA police launched a social media campaign to find her, although Hannah’s loved ones have complained that authorities failed to take their claims seriously for 10 days.
Her aunt Larie said Hannah was determined to go to New York and had been planning the trip for months. “She finally got a press pass… it was one of the greatest achievements of her life,” she said. She dismissed speculation that she was drunk or on drugs when she disappeared.
“Everything just isn’t right,” her father Ryan said shortly before his death. “There’s so much confusion.” His death, tragically, only exacerbated it.