On September 22, 2002, Aiqiu Chen, who was 33 years old, disappeared from Toronto, Ontario, after leaving her brother’s home. Although some records may identify Chen differently, the official Royal Canadian Mounted Police Canada’s Missing profile identifies Aiqiu as female and lists her year of birth as 1968. According to the federal missing-person record, Chen was last seen as she was leaving her brother’s residence, and an especially significant detail is that she departed with all of
her belongings. The publicly available record does not explain why she was leaving, where she intended to go, whether she had made plans to travel or relocate, or whether anyone was expecting to hear from her afterward. There is also no publicly stated destination connected with her departure. What began as Chen leaving a family member’s home therefore became a long-running missing-person investigation when she could no longer be located and her whereabouts remained unknown. The RCMP record also notes that Aiqiu Chen may be known by the alternate spelling or alias Aiqin Chen, an important detail for anyone attempting to recognize her name in records or recall an encounter with her.
At the time she disappeared, Chen was described as an Asian woman with black hair, a medium build, standing approximately 149 centimetres, or 4 feet 11 inches tall, and weighing about 55 kilograms, or 121 pounds. The federal profile does not provide a description of what she was wearing when she was last seen and does not list distinguishing scars, tattoos, jewelry, or other identifying features in its publicly available description. It similarly provides no public account of a vehicle associated with her disappearance or a specific Toronto street, neighbourhood, transit station, workplace, or other destination connected with her final known movements. This lack of publicly released detail leaves the circumstances surrounding her disappearance unusually sparse. The central known sequence remains that Chen was at her brother’s home in Toronto, left that residence on September 22, 2002, took her belongings with her, and was not subsequently accounted for. For her loved ones, the absence of a publicly documented explanation for what happened after she walked away has left a profound unanswered question extending across more than two decades.
The official case file also identifies a man named Chia Chin Chen as an associated person in the investigation. He was born in 1959 and is described by the RCMP only as a “known associate”; the public record does not state what role, if any, he played in the events surrounding Aiqiu Chen’s disappearance, and no inference of wrongdoing should be drawn merely from his inclusion in the file. The federal profile provides no publicly released information describing witnesses to Chen’s departure, later confirmed sightings, telephone activity, financial transactions, border crossings, transportation records, or other evidence establishing where she went after leaving her brother’s home. Nor does the published profile describe a particular theory explaining her disappearance. These omissions do not necessarily mean investigators lack additional information; Canada’s Missing explains that the information displayed publicly is determined by the investigating agency and is not necessarily a complete investigative file. In Chen’s case, the primary investigating agency is the Toronto Police Service Missing Persons Unit, which lists the investigation under case number 1438371.D14.
Aiqiu Chen’s disappearance continues to be preserved in Canada’s national missing-person system, ensuring that her name, identifying information, alternate name, and last known circumstances remain available to the public and investigators. The Toronto Police Service Missing Persons Unit asks anyone with information concerning the case to contact the unit at 416-808-7411, while information can also be provided anonymously through Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS. Even after many years, information that may once have seemed insignificant—including knowledge of where Chen intended to go after leaving her brother’s home, whom she may have planned to meet, transportation she may have used, or contact with her after September 22, 2002—could potentially help investigators understand what happened. At its core, the case is the unresolved disappearance of 33-year-old Aiqiu Chen from Toronto: she was last seen leaving her brother’s home on September 22, 2002, carrying all of her belongings, and the publicly available investigation contains no confirmed account of where she went afterward. More than two decades later, the unanswered question remains the same—what happened to Aiqiu Chen after she walked away from her brother’s home, and where did her journey lead?Last Seen: Sep 22, 2002
