By pepko The remains of Pattie Wu-Murad of Connecticut have been identified, more than two years after she first went missing in 2023 during a 700-mile hike in Japan
Pattie’s family shared that search and rescue expert retraced the area near where her backpack was found last year and discovered her remains on April 27
“Although we had tried to prepare ourselves for this outcome, the finality of this news is heartbreaking. It offers a measure of closure, but many questions remain unanswered, including the exact circumstances and cause of Pattie’s death,” her family wrote in an update on Facebook
More than two years after a Connecticut woman went missing while hiking in Japan, investigators have found her remains and confirmed her death.
According to an update shared by her family on Saturday, May 17, the remains of Pattie Wu-Murad — who went missing on April 10, 2023, while hiking in the Nara Prefecture in central Japan — were found near a hiking trail where some of her belongings, including her backpack, were found last year.
“On Friday, May 9, 2025, our family received confirmation that our beloved Wife, Mother, Sister, Daughter, Aunt, and Friend, Pattie Wu-Murad, is deceased,” the family said in the update, which was posted on a Facebook group dedicated to finding the missing mom.
They revealed that a member of a U.S. search and rescue team who was in Japan retraced the area near where the backpack had been found and found her remains on April 27.
“During his hike, he discovered several of Pattie’s personal items and what appeared to be a femur. He delivered the remains to the local Japanese police, who confirmed they were human,” the family said.
Authorities tested the DNA and compared it to Pattie’s daughter’s DNA. They confirmed they were a match on May 9, her family said.
“Although we had tried to prepare ourselves for this outcome, the finality of this news is heartbreaking,” they wrote in the update. “It offers a measure of closure, but many questions remain unanswered, including the exact circumstances and cause of Pattie’s death.”
Pattie was last seen checking out of a guest house at around 7 a.m. local time on the day of her disappearance in 2023. The mom of three was in the middle of a 700-mile solo journey hiking the Kumano Kodo trail when she failed to show up at the guesthouse and was reported missing to local authorities that same day.
At the time, her family said the local police searched for 72 hours, but were unable to locate her, leading them to create a GoFundMe to raise money for private search and rescue teams.
The family raised more than $200,000 in an effort to bring Pattie home, but decided to stop accepting donations on June 10, 2023.
Pattie’s relatives shared on Saturday that the years-long search process involved 24 American search and rescue (SAR) professionals, local Japanese SAR experts, law enforcement, U.S. Embassy officials in both Japan and Washington, D.C., the FBI and resources from U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal.
In an October 2024 update, the woman’s family shared that her backpack and a single shoe were found. Her daughter Murphy Murad said in another social media post that “a person who was fishing in Totsukawa village found a backpack in a stream” on Sept. 15.
“He found Pattie’s email (which is more or less her name) and her family’s home address written on a ziplock bag inside the backpack, and he reported it to the Gojo Police Station,” Murphy wrote, noting that the next day, police retrieved the backpack.
Authorities then searched the area and located the shoe downstream from the backpack’s location. Both were found in a stream northeast of the Mandokoro guesthouse.
The family is now working with authorities to transport Pattie, who was 61 at the time of her disappearance, back to the U.S.
“Pattie was an incredible woman whose love and friendship touched many lives,” read the family’s Facebook post, signed by Pattie’s husband Kirk Murad and three children, Rachel, Murphy and Bryce. “While we are devastated, we are also humbled by the global community that rallied to help find her. We will continue to honor her memory with love and gratitude in our hearts.”