The Case of the Missing Tourist (True Crime Documentary) | Real Stories

real stories tapes true crime is your new true crime podcast fix in our first season we'll explore suspicious deaths at a california hospital and a skydiver landing dead on a suburban driveway with a bag containing guns drugs and night vision goggles to join our investigation search and subscribe to real stories tapes true crime on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you find your podcasts [Music] this story has always seemed odd right from the beginning and when i say odd i mean unique tourists going missing is unusual even just the fact she had a bright pink parka when it comes to tourists in yellowknife especially japanese tourists they usually come as a group and they're usually well protected well cared for while well welcomed it would almost seem impossible that someone could go missing matsumi's case was definitely the first case i ever heard of in my nine years here some of those articles at the time are saying um you know it's one of those destinations where you plan to disappear but i don't know how many people i know that have planned to come yelling to disappear [Music] two years after you cover most stories you understand what happened this one we're still making guesses that's unusual for us [Music] there's a lot of stories about people coming here for a week and they're still here 20 years later i got here in november of 2012 and i saw all these people walking through the downtown dress the same they all had the same bright blue parkas and white boots i found out quickly that a large number of thousands of japanese tourists come to yellowknife every year mainly to view the aurora historically when we're talking aurora visitors it always was japanese market we have one core asset that protects this place as a tourist destination we do not get tourists because of our marketing because of our services we get tourists because we are scientifically the best located major center in the entire world to view the aurora [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i had run home for lunch and i had seen her walking along old airport road she caught my eye she was all dressed in pink very pretty lady she made me look twice or think you know should i stop i thought to myself it was very cold but she seemed to be dressed she had on a hat she had mitts she had a camera she wasn't in any distress she wasn't running she didn't seem panicked and so i proceeded on to on to work i was practicing with some guides driving up and down the highway and then i saw tommy walking by and to me i had i felt it was weird there was no reason for the young lady going that way just giant mine back there the dump is back there there's also big rocks and i felt maybe you should want to go higher up to take beautiful pictures of real life in the lake but [Music] good evening i'm juanita taylor rcmp and yellowknife are looking for a missing tourist from japan atsumi yoshikubo has shoulder-length black hair and brown eyes she's approximately five feet two inches tall and weighs about 100 pounds anyone with information is asked to call yellowknife rcmp or crime stoppers [Music] we simply got a call early in the morning it was around 10 o'clock in the morning saying that we had a missing tourist that had been missing for several days and it kind of progressed from there basically from the time the rcmp revised that someone was missing until the time we were called was probably a matter of hours and then it was a few hours after that that we had people on the ground searching the way i found out that atsumi had gone missing was through seeing that my colleague was covering this beautiful woman who had been going from souvenir shop to souvenir shop he said i have this video surveillance of this tourist nobody knows where she is and really that was unbelievable a news release came from the rcmp detachment here in yellowknife and i knew that i had an important hot story if you will we have had other missing people in the northwest territory since i've been here as a reporter i think that the overriding thing that made this one different is the fact that she was a tourist this is somebody who's come to yellowknife from thousands of kilometers away across the pacific ocean and now she's lost and i'm thinking god help her the search for a missing japanese tourist continues today atsumi yoshikubo disappeared last week while visiting yellowknife her disappearance wasn't discovered until she failed to check out of the explorer hotel and catch her flight home to japan the last reported sighting said she was walking along the highway towards jackfish lake i heard it on the radio so i immediately phoned the police and said that i had seen her i was sick to my stomach i felt guilty regret and certainly if i was in that position again in the future would listen to that sixth sense that you have and follow your gut and i should have stopped the management told me that there was a japanese tourist missing then i put the news on and it was all over the news so i just organized a searching crew i feel like she couldn't be far and there's not much place to go and she might have fell or something i felt like we had to help like we're all human i was asleep it was middle of the night i get a call from my boss saying we're going to yellowknife in the morning and just my experience coming in on the plane and flying over all of that barren wilderness to get into this one small town was very exciting and i'll tell you my first impression when i got in i thought it was the wild wild west i thought it was unusual for a lot of reasons first it's rare that japanese travel on their own not unheard of but certainly unusual and then when i heard that she was asking about northern lights tours and heard that it was out of season it seemed odd to me on a bunch of levels and i didn't really know what to make of it i think we had a mystery on our hands obviously a missing person is a mystery by its nature but now it's starting to deepen a little bit [Music] yellow knife rcmp are expanding their search for a missing japanese tourist atsumi yoshikubo coming from the policing background my feeling was somebody had picked her up and that she was in trouble i remember in the office at the ledge at the time a lot of us were talking like what could have happened to her was she hitchhiking did she slip and fall my ex-wife time and i we we thought maybe she was picked up human trafficking because that does happen here once in a while it's not talked about very often but uh sometimes you see it in asian taurus and and some inuit people they look very similar and we thought gee on earth that she was picked up thinking she's a girl and girl from one of these northern communities you don't want to think about the worst case scenario you don't want to think that somebody has taken her but you don't want to think that somebody's hit her and she's in a ditch somewhere you don't want to think that she was attacked all these things were things that people were saying but it's all speculation people didn't know what to think though it doesn't happen i remember kind of discussing three levels of possibilities one we've got a malicious act two we've got an accident and three we've got an intentional act of the individual and was everybody in in government and the tourism office sitting there sweating and crossing their fingers and hoping this would just get quickly resolved and absolutely no no doubt there [Music] the interesting thing about covering the story was that there was a huge appetite for the story from tokyo and from japan it started off as a little bit of a smaller story and then as networks slowly started on the scene people in tokyo started to realize wait this is this is really interesting so it slowly gained steam and within i'd say about three days it was the top story in japan and everyone was talking about it and tokyo just wanted more and more and more footage from us [Music] rcmp are continuing air and ground searches in and around yellowknife for a missing japanese tourist 45 year old atsumi yoshikubo was last seen more than a week ago she was walking along highway 4 toward the ingram trail crews are looking in the wooded areas within walking distance from the explore hotel yoshikubo's family spoke to japanese media they say she's a doctor who often traveled alone her younger brother says he's at a loss for words and wants her to return safely police held a news conference earlier today they say there's no indication of foul place so far [Music] people were very well aware of what she was up against there's snow on the ground there's little daylight there's nothing out there there's animals you're spending an hour out there and you need to get inside i've seen bears on the ingram trail i know that they're there they come into the city on occasion people were concerned that because of where she was walking she could have encountered a bear and that wouldn't be a good thing the big consideration up here initially was you got someone who's been missing for five days you can only walk so far so you're thinking you know even somebody with an injury could drag themselves out so when that's not happening you're starting to get really really concerned very quickly as time goes on i mean you're still hopeful you know you hope that if she was in the bush that she had found a trapper's cabin or something to stay warm and so you never give up hope you never give up hope until you found the person [Music] [Music] tonight called off yellowknife rcmp are no longer searching for a missing japanese tourist atsumi yoshikubo was last seen nearly two weeks ago now police say they've solved the mystery surrounding her disappearance our police investigation has determined that atsumi yoshikubo is now considered a missing person presumed dead and our investigation has also determined that she arrived in yellowknife with a plan to go into the wilderness alone and become a missing person and that she took steps to avoid being found that release of atsumi went into the wilderness with a plan to not be found opened the door to so much speculation and a huge demand for more information and i didn't know what that meant nobody in the newsroom knew what that meant so we were baffled we felt weird about putting it out into the public like that but i remember calling the rcmp and asking for more information but there was no more information available [Music] i don't know if i can emphasize this enough i think people were really upset when when the search was called off for it sue me so soon it seemed kind of cold and notch a lot and not typical of evil life that was like what you're calling it off like it's only been like a week my past experience had been that when a body is found you obviously end the search or the person has been located alive you call off the search this was none of that this was we're calling off the search for the missing japanese tourists with virtually no explanation as to why and i thought well so what let's get looking for her i knew that they had had information that would have led them to make that decision they weren't just calling it off it would have been done with careful consideration this was nothing like i had ever encountered in previous missing person cases i wanted to know from the rcmp on what basis they were giving us this information that they were and was quite frustrated that they wouldn't help in that regard in releasing this media release we said what we could say and uh and we couldn't see more at that time my role as an investigator isn't really the answer to the media uh it's to answer to the victims and to answer to the family and uh you know i think in crafting that that's that's the kind of the the the tight rope that we were walking but i find it kind of ironic that the whole story that the story uh or at least what we're talking about now is about immediate release because really the story is about a middle-aged woman who came to yellowknife at sumi yoshikubo's brother says the missing japanese tourist wrote a note to a friend and in it she suggested suicide but as aaron broman reports her brother isn't convinced kenji yoshikubo says japan's foreign ministry won't tell him who his sister wrote the letter to and what information it contained he says he's hearing more about his sister's disappearance from the media than officials it's not clear whether atsumi yoshikubo and her brother have been in touch in recent years but he tells journalists he doesn't think her actions before she disappeared make sense [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] as soon as they they use and the authorities found this alleged letter from mitsumi it seemed like as a former communications person but also as a journalist it's like okay well that handles that she wanted to disappear behind the public wasn't that wasn't enough i felt like it she wrote it because she didn't want to be found but i felt like she was trying to have herself a new identity and cut her hair short and move on to another place not one bit i've in my mind that i thought that she would have suicide herself no my shoulder is [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] m um hmm foreign [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] is foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] this [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] suicide has been always common in certain prominent areas in the case of japan there has been a strong affiliation with deep mountains and forests so there is a very dense forest foot of mount fuji which has been historically a preferred area for many suicides they weighed in without any hope of being found they want to disappear they don't want to face the world and shout here i am dying type which is american pattern so they are fat to me of particular interest there has been over the years some distinct cultural patterns as well [Music] in western cultures suicide has been somehow condemned always as a serious offense against god was in the case of japan to my last investigation there have been 39 japanese words all related to suicide and not one introduces moral judgment this is a crucial difference japanese do not condemn suicide by itself [Music] my own feeling is that she wanted to be divorced from japanese culture in a total return to nature beyond national boundaries it is something that you don't see as often we often see people doing geographical solutions to complex interpersonal problems clinically one of the things you see is that people sometimes don't get to the stage of harming themselves but they'll run away they'll just go and hide somewhere they'll escape it's a temporary death it's always like testing out the idea now what will people do if they can't find me do they really love me do they really care what would it be like [Music] when you're training psychiatry one of the things that people used to say was beware of the smiling depressive because it's almost like they've already made the decision to die and that's a weight off their shoulders now and they just get on with stuff they don't have to worry about it anymore and of course the other things that sometimes people just play a role publicly now what baffles me is she even bought a certain souvenirs rate that still indicates a link with this world instead of severing completely and escaping to oblivion [Music] there's a renewed search for a missing japanese tourist in yellowknife atsumi yoshikubo went missing while visiting the city alone last october rcmp say search and rescue has been looking in areas where she may have gone missing as part of its regular search exercises i think people really knew how important it was regardless of whether she was alive that she would be found i remember when i was driving like watching people inside the street is there somebody with a pink jacket and then i left town for a while but even while i was a white horse wondering are they when's the next update we're going to find out was it really a suicide did she want to disappear i had doubt because the police wouldn't tell me why they had this feeling i knew nothing of a note back home in japan the rcmp had not shared that with us so as a journalist i'm skeptical of everything i believe that's my job i guess what was frustrating having been involved and being in a small community is people still want to know you know what led them to call it off and i don't think that was ever properly um relayed to the public when you engage the public whether it's coming to the visitor center to seek out evidence whether it's you know engaging search and rescue for people to volunteer their time you've now asked for help from those people so do they not have a right to receive the conclusions of you know and i'm not saying they do but i think that's the question that needs to be asked is you know courtesy versus obligation was there a courtesy that was due absolutely but was there an obligation that was due and and i'd leave that to the people involved it might seem a bit cryptic but we have to work within the parameters that we're given about what we can release and what we can say it's hard to make assumptions about an investigation if you haven't found the person you know we had a letter that indicated a certain intent um but we really don't know if that that intent was followed through so you have to be very cautious about uh about what what you say and given like i said the respect for for her family and her and you know adding all of those things up uh it it does seem a bit uh perhaps a bit cryptic but um you know could we phrase it differently in another time perhaps uh but i think the message would have been very very similar if we had to write it again [Music] we're still waiting for word tonight on the identity of human remains found in the woods north of yellowknife this afternoon rcmp confirmed personal items found near the remains belonged to atsumi yoshikubo the japanese tourist disappeared last october police called off their search once japanese media reported she had sent a suicide note rcmp say forensic testing still has to be done on the remains that could take months [Music] [Music] rcmp and yellowknife confirmed today bone fragments found near the city last year belonged to atsumi yoshikubo a japanese tourist was reported missing in october of 2014. rcmp working with japanese officials determined there was no foul play and now extensive dna analysis has confirmed the remains found by a hiker last summer are hers as death investigators the golden triangle is sort of how we determine what has happened to the person it's based on you know the three points of the triangle the scene the body and the history and you try to put the three pieces together to determine what has happened to the person we had the history already we had the history of what was going on in them when we had a scene but we had a very limited scene and we had almost nothing of a body she made her intentions quite clear in the letter that she'd left to a friend she spoke about her health issues she spoke about job losses estrangement with the family and so we knew that was her plan was to come to canada and um [Music] and die here this is all very personal this isn't as a journalist but i just wish that somehow at sumiyashi kubo could have been found before she died there wasn't enough human remains left to determine a cause of death that's the part of this story that will i'm not going to say haunt me that would be a little bit strong but it's going to bother me for the rest of my life how the heck did that woman die and how sad is that that we couldn't get her when she was kilometers from town and we couldn't help her that actually it does haunt me it does haunt me you know i believe if somebody's in crisis there's always that one person who can make a difference to reach out to somebody and would it have made a difference if i stopped would it have made a difference if somebody at the hotel had spoken to or was there something or was there a definite you know you know a plan that nobody's gonna find me [Music] suicide is still very hard i think in our culture to discuss i think we've come we've made leaps and bounds in discussing and talking about it but we go back to that golden triangle again you're seeing your history and the body all have to match to determine what has happened to that person so even if somebody left a suicide note and then they went outside and they were hit by a truck you know were they hit by the truck because of the suicide note like what happened you have to look at the whole investigation of what happened so even if she may have had this intent could she have written this letter a year ago could she have written this letter six months ago those are questions that every investigator has to ask himself if she completed her plans if she got lost if something else happened if she changed her mind and came back to town and was going the wrong way we will never know and that's truly the sad part we just will never know [Music] in the 16 years that i work for japanese tv i've never covered a story that had as many interesting and intriguing and mysterious elements as this most major news stories are a lot more straightforward this for a lot of reasons is very different [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] i know um [Music] there was a small note that she had left in her possessions it outlined her wishes she wished to remain in canada [Music] she felt yellowknife was beautiful she loved the aurora the northern lights she found the people to be very very friendly and kind and wish to have her remains here if she was found [Music] you know the citizens of yellowknife were deeply concerned about her missy many of them volunteered in search parties and looking even for us the investigators myself you all feel like you get to know a little bit of the person i felt for toomey that her ending is to have her spirit be with the northern mice [Music] i know she's out there she's up there now with the lights whether it was an accident or not i know she's up there and i'm satisfied with that [Music] my foreign [Music] [Music] uh

Channel: Real Stories

Views: 179,994

Keywords: Real Stories, Real Stories Full Documentary, Real Stories Documentary, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, full documentary, full episode, Atsumi Yoshikubo, missing people documentary, missing person japan, missing natives in canada, missing persons in canada, missing in canada podcast, the missing tourist documentary, the missing panama tourists, The Missing Tourist

Id: Id7paUfZyyQ

Length: 44min 39sec (2679 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021