Mikiko Kasahara, a 21-year-old exchange student from Japan, was studying English at Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, Texas. She was known for her academic excellence, for always having a group of friends around, and for being well-liked in general. She had made the Dean's List in her first semester.
On the evening of December 13, 2002, she hosted a small end-of-term gathering with friends—mainly fellow Japanese exchange students—that lasted until around 5 AM. According to some of those present, nothing unusual occurred and the celebration went smoothly.
DISCOVERY
Around 9:23 AM on December 14, 2002, firefighters responded to a blaze at her apartment on San Antonio Street, Seguin. Her charred remains were found inside after the fire was extinguished .
Investigators estimate the murder and arson occurred between roughly 6:00 and 9:23 AM
INVESTIGATION
The autopsy concluded that Mikiko died from homicidal violence, including strangulation, and reported a broken larynx bone, and another joint was fused. In addition, she had profound injury with much hemorrhage within the pelvis, but that remains a mystery due to the burned state of her body.No drugs or alcohol were found in her system .Investigators said that if dental examination wasn’t possible due to a lack of records, they would have to resort to DNA testing because of the unrecognizable state of her body.
A burned laptop was recovered. Its contents revealed pornography featuring Asian women accessed around the time of Mikiko’s murder; due to fire damage, no fingerprints or other physical evidence could be recovered .
Numerous people were interviewed—including party attendees—but no conclusive suspects were ever publicly identified. Investigators noted they believe the perpetrator was likely someone who knew her, but not one of the Japanese students .
In 2005, the then-police chief stated that the killer was probably male, though it was not necessarily a crime of passion .
For many years, Seguin Police Captain Maureen Watson worked the case obsessively, maintaining annual reviews and staying in contact with Mikiko’s family, who have reportedly forgiven the killer but seek only an apology and explanation .
THEORIES AND CURRENT STATUS
The police reportedly stated on some occasions that persons of interest had been identified—some were ruled out, while others were not—but the case remains completely cold.
For many years, Seguin Police Captain Maureen Watson worked the case obsessively, maintaining annual reviews and staying in contact with Mikiko’s family, who have reportedly forgiven the killer but seek only an apology and explanation .
FINAL THOUGHTS
It seems unlikely that someone completely "from the outside" committed the crime. Analyzing the scene, one of the party attendees would seem more probable; however, sources report that early in the morning of the 14th, the Japanese students (including Mikiko’s fellow partygoers) left the country to return to their homeland—something common at the end of the semester. The tight timeline between the end of the party and the murder makes this hypothesis unlikely. Furthermore, they later returned and were interviewed, and the police did not name any of them as suspects.
Sources
https://guadalupecountycrimestoppers.org/team/2002-murder-seguin/
I wrote about this case a few years ago (also posted in this sub) and I must admit that I’m disappointed that her murder doesn’t seem to be getting any closer to being solved. 😞
I just read your previous post on this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/s/9rgcaVcxhh
Thank you!
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It's actually coming to light with DNA genealogy that some people do commit a violent crime/murder just once, and never do it again, as far as anyone knows at least.
The burned laptop with the porn on it makes me think it was someone who might have been fetishizing her.
Yeah,and that makes me think that it was not another japanese student.
I wonder how they couldn’t track the owner of the laptop? Surely there must of been something like a google log in or an app with the owners name?
Honestly I assumed it was Mikiko’s laptop that someone else was using, but that’s a good question.
This was two years before Gmail even came out as an invite only beta. While you can usually figure out a laptop owner by some of the data on there, this was the Windows XP days where there weren't even really proper separate accounts or user profiles.
It was also 2002 levels of computer forensics. If there wasn't an obvious "Jim" as the account name or a ton of documents that are clearly school related, not much was happening.
Possibly a man in her apartment complex, attracted by the party, or whom already had noticed her and used the party as a cover.
*who
Sounds like she was sexually assaulted and then burned to destroy the evidence. The culprit undoubtedly has something in their history that suggests they could be capable of such a heinous crime. Sounds like solving the case is not a priority and that's really unfortunate.
Any determination by the police whether the laptop belonged to the victim or someone else entirely?
It seems odd that a 21-year-old female exchange student would have that specific type of p0rn on her own computer (I have had my laptop searched for similar such files in order to get a pre-clearance to make it easier to fly with my laptop in 2007), and the timeline makes it unlikely the killer would have spent time downloading such material onto her computer after killing Mikiko.
But again, why would a murderer leave evidence that could lead directly to him at the scene of a crime, unless he was sure the laptop was going to be destroyed in the fire?
You know, I've read of a few cases where Asian women were killed and there was a computer nearby that had looked up porn with Asian women in it, the assumption always being that obviously it was a non-Asian man who was looking at that porn and killed her for his fetish. I'm not pretending there aren't fetishists out there obviously, and there's a really big cultural issue of fetishization and objectification of Asian women, especially in porn. But it's interesting to me that the assumption is always that the porn is someone else's. Are we making that assumption because of the type of porn we often think of when we hear about Asian women in porn (violent, degrading, fetishizing), or because we're assuming the victim is too innocent to be interested in porn?
I was thinking its not that far-fetched for a Japanese person to watch Japanese pornography, whether it was the victim or perpetrator
Yes, I agree it's a problem to assume it must not be the victim. Oh, and just to be clear, I'm not making any moral judgment on the use of pornography- if anything, I think it's overly assumptive to suggest a woman must not have been looking at pornography, whether or not it (arguably) sexualizes or fetishizes people like them.
Maybe they're down with that sort of thing. They could've even been curious, and just wanted to see what was out there. (FYI, I believe one of the other instances was in the death of Rebecca Zahau- someone had been looking up asian bondage porn, or something to that effect.) It's also possible someone would pull it up to throw investigators off the trail, i.e. suggesting there's a sexual element to the crime when there was not, or casting aspersions on a male, when the killer was actually a woman. (Surely a killer might do that kind of thing!)
Yes, Rebecca Zahau was the other case I was thinking of! While I know there's some subjectivity around Rebecca's case, Mikiko obviously was murdered (she didn't crush her own larynx and set herself on fire). The reason I bring them up together is because I see a pattern in the discussion of the cases that I think shows off some underlying biases we have as a culture.
I agree with your point and admit my first thought was somebody else but of course many women watch porn. The timing of the porn viewing is really what seems suspicious to me.
So it happened within the 4-hour window?
Most likely culprit is a party attendee. If it's 2002 what kind of porn it had can also offer clues if it was some Japanese produced stuff it wasn't the easiest to get on the US except some of the most mainstream stuff even via the internet unless you knew what you were looking for. How the porn was titled would be a huge clue. If it was coded, with letters and numbers, more than likely it's someone deep into Japanese porn and understood that culture. Or the file type, etc.
Culturally, while a lot of Japanese students kind of throw out their usual culture and behaviors abroad, but still culturally, it's unlikely she'd have let just one person stay in her apartment with her alone unless she felt a kinship or wanted a relationship with this person.
But from what it sounds like it was probably a case of someone tried to sleep with her or rape her while she was asleep, and it went wrong.
If the porn was viewed around the time of death, it could be that s/he was rebuffed and decided to watch porn instead, and then still went after her, or they were watching porn together, and things escalated in the wrong direction.
My gut says it's one of the Japanese students, and they got away with it. My gut also says that at least the Japanese students know better than others who it could be. I feel like if it was one of the Americans... I don't know... I feel like the police could have work them over better, and we'd have the answer right now. But with the Japanese, language barrier, body language differences, etc. etc. the police might have had a harder time getting a read.
She was found dead
I think we should get more answers from people who knows her like if she had fantasies (because the porn that was found on her laptop) maybe she had some type of fetish or something
...
A laptop, not necessarily her laptop.
Part of me was going to comment "2002 laptops weren't as easy to transport, it seems likely it was hers" but then thought to Japanese people I know who tend to use older hardware and not laptops, though admittedly those people live in Japan and only travel locally, within the country. This is an excellent call out though, all the same!
2002 wasn’t the dark ages lol. I had a personal laptop and a work one.
lol sure, and I had one before the turn of the century too but they were fairly heavy and it feels unlikely some guy decided "I reckon I'll go have my way with this Japanese exchange student but I need to make sure I can have porn available so let me bring this laptop just in case"
https://www.reddit.com/r/computers/comments/1hpzabg/found_my_moms_old_notebook_from_2002_anything/
A picture of a typical 2002 era laptop.
Check the comments, that's a netbook from 2009 at earliest, more likely 2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_G4
Here are more photos of examples of laptops from that time. They weren't bulky.
Ah, I've no opinion either way on the laptop in this case, I only used desktops until I was an adult later in the decade, just pointing out that the OP in that linked post got it wrong.