In the late summer of 1983, a 17-year-old White female named April Dawn Buttram vanished from the Seattle area, leaving her family suspended in a heart-wrenching state of uncertainty for two long decades. April had journeyed from her parents' home in Spokane in May of that year with plans to live with her sister in Seattle. However, shortly after her arrival, she left her sister's residence and was not heard from by her family again.
The last confirmed sighting of April was in August 1983 at a bus stop in the Rainier Valley. Before her disappearance, she had been arrested in July on suspicion of prostitution near the airport area but never made it to her court date. A mysterious phone call to her mother in late 1983 from a man named "Jimmy," who claimed to have spoken with April in September, only deepened the mystery surrounding her whereabouts.
For years, April's case remained cold, one of many unsolved disappearances that haunted the King County region during that time. She was long suspected to be one of the many victims of the notorious Green River Killer, a serial murderer who preyed on vulnerable young women. This grim suspicion cast a long shadow over her family's hope of ever finding her alive. The Green River Task Force, dedicated to solving these brutal slayings, tirelessly pursued leads, but April's fate remained unknown as the years turned into a decade, and then two.
The painful mystery finally found its resolution in the fall of 2003. In a muddy bog near Snoqualmie Parkway, bone fragments were discovered. Through DNA testing, these remains were positively identified as belonging to April Dawn Buttram. The confirmation brought a somber end to her family's agonizing wait, providing them with the devastating certainty of her death. The discovery of her remains was not a matter of chance; investigators were led to the location by the Green River Killer himself, Gary Ridgway. In a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, Ridgway confessed to a string of murders and agreed to lead authorities to the locations of his victims' bodies. He had been arrested in 2001 after advances in DNA technology linked him to several of the murders. Ridgway ultimately pleaded guilty to the aggravated first-degree murder of April Buttram, along with 47 other women, bringing a close to one of the most prolific and terrifying serial murder cases in American history.
