WA WA - Sheila Kearns, 43, Mt. Rainier National Park, October 4, 1996

[Wilma_W]

I found out about this case from watching the Youtube videos from King 5 Seattle's Unsolved Northwest series. (Note: I think that ALL of the Unsolved Northwest videos are great. This case in particular is very interesting and I could not find a Websleuths thread for it.)

The main story is here:

Friends, detectives and a small-town journalist keep the 1996 case of Sheila Kearns' killing alive

Youtube video Part 1:

Youtube video Part 2:

Short Excerpt:
"In 1996, Sheila Kearns was reported missing and seven months later, her remains were found scattered in Mount Rainier National Park. Kearns was 43 years old at the time of her disappearance and worked at the Paradise Inn located inside the park.
Her coworkers remembered her as beautiful, kind and "incredibly careful.""

The inn closes for the season on October 1st, and she was last seen at a farewell dinner for the staff. She had been hired for the winter crew and had moved into housing which looks like it was located in the area of the old Longmire campground within the national park.

Her remains were located in May 1997 near the Community Building in the Longmire campground area. It looks like they were not able to determine a cause of death. There was animal activity and her remains were scattered, but apparently they couldn't determine for sure whether all of the animal activity was after death, or whether her death could have been the result of an animal attack.

Their series mentions a reporter named Dixie Walter who worked for the Eatonville Dispatch newspaper. She apparently did a number of stories and interviews (2 of the interviews are included with the King 5 article) about this case.

Because this happened within a national park, the primary law enforcement agency is the Seattle FBI Field Office; contact information is:

Seattle FBI Field Office
Phone
(206) 622-0460
Address
1110 3rd Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101-2904
Territory
Entire state of Washington
Special Agent in Charge
W. Mike Herrington

 

[Wilma_W]

Question for any other Websleuthers who are interested in this case: If anybody has access to newspapers.com I would be interested in whether the Eatonville Dispatch articles are available there.

They mention more than once that it seemed like Sheila "had a past" and was very careful, hinting that she may have been afraid of something or someone from her past, but no details were given. She was divorced, but from the information given, it sounds like her ex just wanted to move on (i.e. he left her, not the other way around).

If someone from her past was there in the Longmire campground area at that time, some park facilities were closed, so you would think that a non-employee, either on foot or in a vehicle, would stand out. (If anybody is familiar with the park, especially in the off season, please speak up!)

Since the farewell party was the last chance for the non-winter employees to see each other, it would make sense for that to be the time for someone to 'make a move', so perhaps that went wrong and Sheila ended up dead. I believe that the area her remains were found in (after apparently being buried under snow from October until May) was close to the housing facility she was living in. It doesn't sound like anyone heard anything unusual.

Not a lot of information and this one is a real mystery!