CT CT - Skye Budnick, 21, Southington, 31 Mar 2008

[Pennysmom2]

Surviving Skye — Surviving Skye

www.survivingskye.com

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[AubrieC]

Happy Birthday Skye!

Also Skye's sister Megan has a GoFundMe, shes raising funds to donate DNA samples, investigators, translator's and lawyers in Japan.

Please share the link out! Donate if you can!

Donate to Submitting DNA in Japan for Skye Budnick’s case, organized by Megan Lebron

Sixteen years have passed since my sister Skye Budnick took a one-way tri… Megan Lebron needs your support for Submitting DNA in Japan for Skye Budnick’s case

www.gofundme.com

 

[TwinkieDefense]

March 12, 2024 article

‘I hope she’s still alive’: Family still searching 16 years after daughter disappears while on trip to Japan

Skye Budnick disappeared in 2008 after booking a one-way ticket to Japan.

www.fox5vegas.com

[…]

Skye Budnick’s sister Megan started a TikTok page dedicated to her sister’s case. The family is also raising money to send Susan Budnick back to Japan, to supply DNA to Japanese investigators to match against Jane Does.

Police in Southington have been involved in the investigation into Skye Budnick’s disappearance and have provided DNA to Interpol in Japan.

[…]

 

[Skigirl]

I stumbled on her sister’s tiktok the other day and am binging her podcast. I used to live about ten minutes from where Skye went to school and always follow CT MP cases, so I am stunned that I had never heard of Skye before this week. Her interview with her mom absolutely shredded my heart - the brutal honesty, the self recrimination, her gratitude toward Skye’s sister keeping it together in those first few days and weeks. It was so real and raw. What a nightmarish situation. I hope that this family can find some answers.

 

[AubrieC]

I stumbled on her sister’s tiktok the other day and am binging her podcast. I used to live about ten minutes from where Skye went to school and always follow CT MP cases, so I am stunned that I had never heard of Skye before this week. Her interview with her mom absolutely shredded my heart - the brutal honesty, the self recrimination, her gratitude toward Skye’s sister keeping it together in those first few days and weeks. It was so real and raw. What a nightmarish situation. I hope that this family can find some answers.

Her sister is currently working on going to Japan to have a new DNA sample taken, as well as doing investigative work. Megan said she'd bring us along with her so def recommend keeping an eye on her Tiktok.

 

[Diavola]

in one of her TikToks Megan showed a document which showed which inns in Noboribetsu Skye stayed at.First was Noboribetsu Onsen, Kiyomizu-ya (I think I got the right one) for nights, and then Karurusu Onsen, Suzuki Ryokan for one night (link).

Her last inn is literally in the middle of a huge forest. looking at pictures of trails the forest has a lot of low bushes. I'm a big anime fan, and although Skye is older than me I can't think of anything that would lead her there. It seems like a really random place in Japan, unless she was meeting someone there.

Look how much space there is.

 

[Skigirl]

Wow, cool to have an anime fan looking at this.

I am realizing how little I know about Japan.

I agree with you and with her family that it seems like she had to be meeting someone. The place my mind went was that she met someone online through anime (I would assume that in 2004 there were some kinds of online message boards where people congregated? Chat groups? My space? Do you know what it would have been back then?). The other thing I wondered about is if she was also into MUDs or MOOs or multi-player online games? I had a boyfriend in the early '00s who was super into online gaming and he had tons and tons of friends that he hung out with while playing -- that seems like fertile ground to strike up an international relationship.

There was online dating back then, so I guess she even could have been on something like match.com, but it would have taken some work for her and a person in Japan to connect that way, unless she had set her location as Japan or something. I wish they still had the computer she was using so that it could be looked at forensically. I believe that the computer belonged to her brother and is no longer accessable.

 

[Diavola]

The issue with meeting someone is that Japan always had their versions of popular sites. For example, when Deviantart was popular there weren't many japanese artists because they were all on Pixiv, and all their sites were in japanese so if you don't know the language navigation would be difficult. The only site everyone shared was Twitter.
If she did meet someone I feel like this person had to know english pretty well because they had to persuade her somehow.

 

[Diavola]

Skye's sister Megan and mom are going to Japan again. Hope something comes out of it.

 

[sleepyhead25]

Skye’s mum and sister are staying at the inn she was staying at in Japan before the disappearance. My heart aches for them, hope they get closure

 

[StillDiggin]

Can TikTok solve mystery of US student who vanished in Japan?

Skye Budnick, from Connecticut , alarmed loved ones when she went missing in April 2008 - having taken little to nothing with her as she left.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[dotr]

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"Jul 1, 2024 #missing #SkyeBudnick #banfield
Skye Budnick was 21 when she left for a trip to Japan in 2008 and never returned. Budnick’s sister Megan shares an update to the case on "Banfield."

 

[Diavola]

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The DNA Megan and her mom went to submit in Japan has come back with no matches. It will continue to be on file, though.

 

[Aurora90]

Bumping for Skye

 

[Same Old Stella]

The mention of Japan and a potential suicide in this case immediately makes me think of Aokigahara Forest, which is unfortunately known as a "suicide forest."

The forest is about 19 hours away from Hokkaido, so I don't know how feasible that would've been. But if she decided to end her life there, it could explain why she hasn't been found yet.

Skye disappeared in March 2008, and according to the Wikipedia article, suicides (both attempted and completed) were increasing between 2003–2010 (maybe because of social media?). Most of these occurred in March, the end of the fiscal year in Japan.

Skye's family has stated they believe she was talking to someone who lured her to Japan. Could that person have wanted to end their life in March and suggested a suicide pact? Maybe the money Skye was collecting wasn't just to fly there, but also for the train ride from Hokkaido to the forest.

Aokigahara was my first thought too. Skye isn't on Charley Project. Has anyone done an age progression picture of her? She isn't going to look the same after 16 years.

 

[SovietKitsch]

Have followed this case for a few years. I remember Skye's sister mentioning when she was in Japan, that it is a possibility that there may have been more of a lead on Skye at the time of her disappearance, but because of the investigation changing hands it may have been lost. The Japanese police also refused to share what they deemed 'sensitive' information with Skye's family. Japan is also strict with privacy laws, and it is possible that if Skye was found by Japanese police and she expressed that she did not want to be found, that they would not share this with her family.

I personally don't believe Skye went to Japan to commit suicide. When she first went missing, her sister said they 'played up' the suicide thing in order to get the police to act faster, of course with no malicious intent. What stands out to me is that Skye left $400 in her bank account when she withdrew around $800 on route to Japan. As the money she did take was about the amount she needed for her short stay in the days leading up to her last being seen, this does suggest she didn't plan to be spending any more. She also packed light.

The above, along with the email draft her family discovered after her disappearance (which some have interpreted as a kind of suicide note) obviously points to an intention to end her own life. However, how is it that none of her belongings have ever been found? Skye was also active on some forum boards where she talked about anime etc. It is possible that she could have met someone on one of these sites and been promised something in Japan. What remains very strange to me is that her family lost access to her email account and never kept a record of the draft or her other communications on that account.

Some people theorise that Skye started a new life in Japan. Having never been there, I obviously don't know, but from what we do know, Skye's Japanese level was moderate at best, and Japan seems like a country that would be very strict about immigration etc. So for this theory to work it seems she would need to be in contact with someone who could speak Japanese and possibly 'smuggle' her to another part of Japan and help her build a new life. Foul play is obviously a possibility. It seems strange to me that she would go to such a remote area, instead of say, Tokyo or another major city, since she had been dreaming of going to Japan for so long (if she planned to take her own life). I personally believe she may be alive, and after she was last seen in the onsen, she met up with someone who helped her get to a larger city, where it would be extremely easy to 'disappear' (Tokyo has a population of 14 million people). This would explain why she took just enough cash to get her through the first few days, if she knew she would be meeting someone who would help her.

If she is alive, it is true that she would have to continue to keep silent while knowing the pain her family is going through, still looking for her almost twenty years later. However, we don't know what the family dynamic was like, and Skye could want to remain missing.

Everything my own opinion.

 

[masrayah]

This was discussed on WS back in 2015, which I noticed the thread is mostly quiet now. I wanted to create a new one with more updated information collected in one spot. Skye's sister also has a website, podcast, and Tiktok where she discusses Skye's case, which can be found by searching SurvivingSkye, or Megan Lebron. I've also included the link to her website here: Surviving Skye

Skye Lynn Budnick was a 21-year-old college student from Southington, Connecticut, who disappeared on April 1 2008 after traveling alone to Japan. A junior at Central Connecticut State University majoring in East Asian studies, Skye had a deep interest in Japanese language and culture. Without informing her family or friends, she purchased a one-way plane ticket and flew from Connecticut to Tokyo on April 1. She was last seen in the USA on March 31 2008. After arriving in Japan, she traveled north to the island of Hokkaido, where she was last seen on April 7 2008 by an innkeeper in Noboribetsu. She told the innkeeper she was planning to go to Sapporo, but no confirmed sightings were reported after that.
Megan (Skye's sister) as well as her mother traveled to Japan on after her disappearance to search for her and work with local authorities, but they found no clear leads. The Japanese police opened a missing persons case, but progress stalled early on, partly due to jurisdictional limitations and language barriers.

In June 2024, Skye’s mother and sister, accompanied by a U.S. Marshal and a detective, traveled back to Hokkaido. They retraced her last known steps, spoke with local residents, and submitted familial DNA samples to Japanese law enforcement for comparison with unidentified remains in national databases. In September 2024, the family was notified that there were no DNA matches, meaning Skye had not been identified among Japan’s unidentified deceased.


To this day, Skye Budnick remains missing.

 

[Pennysmom1]

May 1, 2025

https://www.ctinsider.com/recordjournal/article/skye-budnick-southington-missing-japan-20292295.php

<<The family of Skye Budnick, a Southington woman who went missing 17 years ago during a trip to Japan, visited the country to provide DNA that might have led to discovering what happened to their loved one.>>

<<Lebron and Susan Budnick submitted their DNA swabs, and a DNA swab that was collected from Budnick’s father by the U.S. Marshal prior to the trip was submitted, as well.

“The DNA was going to be cross-referenced with their Jane Doe database,” Lebron said. "During that time frame when Skye went missing it had a number of unsolved cases and unidentified bodies on file, so the town of Noboribetsu had agreed. And that was really the whole point is to see if Skye was there."

At the end of September, the family received the results. There were no hits. >>