The twists in the ongoing story of Hannah Kobayashi, who went missing in Los Angeles last month after she was unable to catch her connecting flight to New York, have captivated the public for nearly a month.

But now, amid a family tragedy that includes the death of Kobayashi’s father by apparent suicide, police have determined that Kobayashi may have voluntarily fled her life.

Los Angeles police said Monday that they had reviewed surveillance video showing a woman they believe to be Kobayashi from Nov. 12, the day her family reported her missing. Kobayashi, who is from Hawaii, was unable to make a flight from her home state to New York City. The footage shows a woman who appears to be Kobayashi at a bus station in Los Angeles buying a ticket to the border. Police said she used her passport to make the purchase and then traveled from San Ysidro to Mexico.

The investigation is the second high-profile missing person case in recent weeks that took an unexpected turn after the person emerged seemingly unharmed. On November 11, the day before Kobayashi’s family reported her missing, a Wisconsin man resurfaced after being missing for months and admitted that he had faked his own death in a dramatic kayaking accident to save his life escape and start over in Eastern Europe. Investigators in Los Angeles believed that Kobayashi had also given up on her own life and that there was little they could do until she decided to resurface.

“To date, the investigation has not revealed any evidence that Kobayashi is a victim of human trafficking or a victim of a crime. She is also not suspected of any criminal activity,” Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said during a press conference. “She has a right to her privacy and we respect her decisions, but we also understand the concern her loved ones feel for her.”

There are several alarming differences between the two cases, starting with the sharp and sudden turn in Kobayashi’s trajectory. The 30-year-old Maui resident was a free spirit with a love of art, photography and the outdoors before she boarded a flight to visit a relative on Nov. 8. It was supposed to be her first trip to New York City – something she had on her “bucket list” of things to see – and she planned to see a Broadway show with a friend before traveling to the state.

She shared the flight with an ex-boyfriend, although they were reportedly in different parts of the plane and he apparently had nothing to do with her disappearance. Kobayashi did not accompany him on their connecting flight from LAX. Instead, she left the airport. Security footage showed her boarding the subway heading toward downtown Los Angeles. After her family reported her missing, several people reported seeing her at The Grove shopping center on November 9th and 10th. Eagle-eyed web sleuths spotted her on camera 31 seconds into a video filmed at a LeBron James Nike event there. Hannah even uploaded a photo from the event to her own Instagram – the last post she’s posted there so far.

During her days in the city, she sent a series of alarming text messages to family and friends. One text spoke of “deep hackers” who “deleted my identity, stole all my money and drove me crazy since Friday,” while another claimed she was “pretty much tricked into giving away all my money.” “. From someone I thought I loved.”

She also told her family that she had missed her flight to New York, but reportedly used language that family members thought did not sound like her. One such suspicious text, which contained strange endearments she didn’t normally use, said: “I’m just very scared darling and the redwoods when they call me and I know that’s where I’m supposed to be, I’m going there.” guided, so to speak. “You’ve done it before… I’m risking my freedom if this goes wrong for me, darling.” Another spoke of having “just had a very intense spiritual awakening.” Kobayashi reportedly claimed in a text that she was scared and afraid to go home.

“Even though she had contact with us, she was not of sound mind,” her aunt Larie Pidgeon told USA Today.

“I just need to rest and then I’ll think better,” a text message to her mother, sent on November 11, reportedly said. “But it’s very complicated Matrix underworld shit.” It was one of her last messages to her family. Her last text messages indicated she was returning to the airport and promised to keep her family updated. Although she returned to the airport, she ended up just picking up her luggage to fly back to LA from New York. According to a Facebook post from her family, she was seen getting off the subway near the Crypto.com Arena (formerly Staples Center) that evening. Her family claimed in the post that they had seen footage of the sighting that suggested Hannah “does not appear to be in good condition” and that she is not alone.

After November 11, her phone was turned off, and by the following week, Kobayashi had disappeared from the network – she had stopped sending text updates, and family and friends had flocked across the city looking for her. We now know that she had already crossed the border into Mexico, but her family claimed they only received radio silence from the LAPD about what, if anything, they had learned, leaving her to search for answers on her own. After the family held a public rally on November 21, police finally contacted them, although it would take another week for answers to arrive.

Amid the family’s fears that she had been kidnapped or trafficked, and amid enormous and growing public speculation about what happened to her, her father, Ryan Kobayashi, searched for her.

On Nov. 15, he told KHNL Hawaii News Now that he experienced “a lot of worry, a lot of confusion.” It seems like everything is just a blur because I haven’t slept well since I heard the news.” He then asked Hannah to contact the police or her family.

“There are a lot of people out there who care about you and love you, Hannah,” he said. “If you can just reach out to someone, whatever you can do… just let us know you’re OK.”

Sometime around 4 a.m. on November 24th, Ryan Kobayashi died by suicide in Los Angeles.

“I will continue to stay strong for you,” Hannah Kobayashi’s sister Sydni wrote on social media. “We’re going to find Hannah.”

Although there were suggestions that Kobayashi may have been suffering from a nervous breakdown or some other form of mental illness, Pidgeon dismissed this possibility. “She has no record of this,” she told NBC on November 15. “She doesn’t take any medication. Hannah is someone we can call and she will call us back within the hour.”

Pidgeon also criticized the public speculation surrounding Hannah’s disappearance, saying it had pushed her father to a breaking point. There are numerous conspiracy theories circulating online about what happened to her, from run-ins with the new-age Twin Flames cult to bad drug trips gone haywire. “If Ryan’s looking at all this crap, can you imagine that it’s weighing on him?” She told the New York Post, which previously reported sensational details such as Kobayashi paying for a tarot reading while she was was traveling in LA.

In their announcement of changing Kobayashi’s status to that of a “voluntary missing person,” the LAPD claimed that Kobayashi had expressed a desire to “step away from modern connectivity.” These included old social media posts in which she appeared to “want to disconnect from her phone,” according to missing persons investigator Lt. Douglas Oldfield.

Still, the family continued to push for answers and vowed to continue the search for Hannah. However, things will no longer be as public as before. The burgeoning Facebook group “Help Us Find Hannah,” which has grown to over 25,000 members, was privatized following Monday’s announcement, with family members reportedly claiming “threats against her life and the lives of her young children.” have. It’s unclear what, if anything, sparked the threats, but it’s clear that public speculation and investigation surrounding Kobayashi’s disappearance has increased significantly in the weeks since she first left LAX. On Tuesday, moderators of Reddit’s r/Hawaii subreddit disabled her post about the disappearance because “a lot of baseless conspiracy theories were popping up there.”

As complicated as Kobayashi’s story is, it seems abundantly clear that her family is rightly concerned for her safety. It is also becoming increasingly clear that, while the age of social media and increased public scrutiny of police investigations can be extremely beneficial, it can also be extremely overwhelming, confusing and frustrating for family members, friends and officials searching for loved ones . While the many looks Hannah observed during her journey undoubtedly helped find her, false sightings and far-fetched rumors may have made it more difficult for the family. Hannah Kobayashi’s situation was and is potentially solvable, troubling as it may be. It’s impossible to know whether the tragedy of her father’s suicide could have been avoided if her disappearance hadn’t made headlines, but it almost certainly didn’t help.

While it’s tempting to blame the media and public outcry for Ryan Kobayashi’s death, the real stressors may have been much closer to home. He had told CNN that he and Hannah weren’t close when she was growing up and that they “haven’t been in touch for a while.”

“I’m just trying to reconcile,” he said. “I’m trying to get her back. That’s my main focus.”

The grim but less complicated conclusion from this series of tragic events may be just this: the powerful apparatus of true crime theories and crowdsourced web sleuthing can often turn family tragedies into labyrinthine mysteries when it doesn’t. Sometimes the answers may be undramatic and unsatisfactory – but the simpler they are, the less likely they are to mislead us.