t/w murder, sexual assault/rape, blood, asian fetishization, not proofread I'm tired
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the last photo Aiko ever posted on her socials, two hours before she went missing July 1st, 2001 - July 3rd, 2022
SOLVED
Aiko Hashimoto (橋本愛子; Hashimoto Aiko) was a Japanese influencer.
Aiko was born in Osaka, Japan, the youngest of two children. Her childhood was normal, her mother, Kanako Hashimoto (橋本加奈子; Hashimoto Kanako), was a hairdresser, her father, Minato Hashimoto (橋本みなと; Hashimoto Minato), ran a small restaurant in downtown Osaka, she got along well with her brother, Kiyoshi Hashimoto (橋本清; Hashimoto Kiyoshi).
Aiko really began to gain traction on the internet when she was sixteen, in June of 2018, after posting a video of her walking around Tokyo on her Instagram, aiko-in-love. The video went viral all over the internet and a few weeks later, just the day after her seventeenth birthday, Aiko would post the video with English subtitles. Aiko, by that point, was conversational in English and over the next few years, she would pick up a large following.
Aiko traveled all over the world, doing brand deals in multiple different countries. She often included her family in this, making sure they weren't left out. She moved to Tokyo in January of 2020.
At the time of her death, her Instagram had 1.3 million followers.
For her twenty-first birthday, Aiko decided to go to Los Angeles to celebrate. She went with Kiyoshi and, upon arriving on June 29th, met up with another influencer friend, Rose French. Aiko planned to celebrate with her parents when she returned to Japan on July 2nd. So, Aiko had her little party at Rose's home, and took the above photo. Aiko often posted her captions in both English and Japanese. This was the caption of the photo;
Today, I made it to twenty-one years of life. I will post more photos of tonight tomorrow once I return home to Japan. I hope you are all well and I can't wait to celebrate my 22nd birthday with you all!
That night, Aiko left her hotel room to go downstairs to apparently get something from the front desk. But she didn't come back. When Kiyoshi went downstairs, he asked if Aiko had come down there and they said that she had, and that she'd left the hotel with a taller white man.
Kiyoshi attempted to contact Aiko before realizing she'd left her phone in the room. He called Rose. She hadn't heard from Aiko. He even called his parents to see if they heard from her. Nope. He contacted just about everyone in her contacts to see if they'd heard from her and to let him know if they did hear anything.
Two days later, Aiko was found dead behind a 7-11. Her right eye was missing, her hair had been cut very short, and her heart was missing. There was also evidence of sexual assault. Aiko was identified the following day when Kiyoshi finally contacted LAPD. She was taken back to Japan and buried on July 20th, 2022.
Her death would be announced by her family on July 8th, 2022. Aiko's death went viral across the news and became the source of many theories. The most popular theory among netizens was that Aiko had been killed by one of her many followers.
December of that year, a fifteen year old girl, Samantha Preston, would approach LAPD and say that she believed her father, a surgeon, Martin Preston, might had killed Aiko. She said that when going through some things in the attic, she found a wig of black hair, an eye, a heart and several pictures of Aiko, naked.
She'd been a follower of Aiko and had sometimes shown Aiko's page to Martin. When Martin was approached by police, he broke down into tears and confessed.
His story was that he had found Aiko so beautiful whenever his daughter showed him her page and he often masturbated to pictures of Aiko. When he saw her in the same hotel as him, as he'd been seeing a friend there, he, quote, 'couldn't believe his eyes' and was desperate for her to come with him so he could have sex with her. He believed the stereotype that Asian women were submissive and obedient and was 'shocked' when Aiko did not want to go with him, so, he coerced her. He held a pocket knife against her throat and forced her to come with him. As he and Samantha's mother, Vivian, were divorced, he wouldn't have to worry about either of them being at his home. So, he brought Aiko home, and held her captive in his basement, repeatedly raping her before deciding he wanted to keep parts of her forever. In the very early morning of July 3rd, he cut her hair short and then put her under anesthetic and surgically removed one of her eyes and then her heart before disposing of her body.
Many netizens believe that Martin had a fetish for Asian women and this does seem to be the case, as Vivian is Vietnamese, making Samantha partially Vietnamese.
Martin was convicted of Aiko's murder on October 11th, 2023, and given sixty years in prison.
Today, Aiko's socials continue to be run by loved ones who will say how they are doing. On July 1st, 2023, the Hashimoto family made a birthday post for Aiko where they made a cake, like the one she had for her twenty-first birthday, where they all blew out a candle for her. Two days later, July 3rd, 2023, they made a post that read;
Aiko, it has been one year without you. Today, we should be laughing with you. You should still be with us today. We will miss you forever and you will always be smiling and laughing in our hearts.
