The search for a woman from Storrs who went missing after going hiking in Japan has ended after nearly two months.
Pattie Wu-Murad went missing on April 10 while hiking in the Nara Prefecture in central Japan. She was last seen checking out of the Mandokoro guest house around 7 a.m.
After she went missing, local police conducted a 72-hour search with officers and helicopters, but were unable to find any leads.
Together, Wu-Murad's family worked with local officials and private search teams from the United States to spread out and search other parts of the trails.
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Despite bringing in several specialized teams and conducting multiple searches of the area since Wu-Murad's disappearance, she has not been found.
According to Wu-Murad's family, this is the largest search effort the Japanese team has ever seen.
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On Sunday, Wu-Murad's family posted in their GoFundMe that the search has ended due to the "underwhelming amount of evidence found."
"If we had the time, resources and financial capacity to search every trail in the area with as much depth and precision as we did this one, we would. However, the reality is all search efforts have ended as of May 30 due to the underwhelming amount of evidence found," Wu-Murad's daughter Murphy posted on GoFundMe.
Since day one, the Murad family pushed to get her cell phone data so they can pinpoint her last known location before her phone died. Her husband Kirk said he thinks that could be the key to finding her, but they’ve been hitting nothing but roadblocks.
“Whether it's privacy laws, whether it's because it's a U.S. cell phone with a Singaporean sim and Japanese towers makes that complicated, we don't know, but we're not going to accept that there's no data, there's there has to be something,” said Kirk Murad, Pattie’s husband.
The Murad family plans to continue working with Japanese police and the FBI to get that data.
Local police have interviewed anyone who last saw her on the trail or at the hostile and searched the hostile owner’s property to no avail. Murad has his own suspicions.
“My gut tells me that she trusted the wrong person. That she accepted a ride from somebody. I have no evidence of that. That's just my gut based on things she's done in the past,” said Murad.
Wu-Murad's family plans to close their GoFundMe to new donations on June 10, which marks two months since Pattie disappeared. To date, they've raised more than $200,000. The Murphy family wanted to thank the community for their phone calls, text messages, prayers and donations to keep the search for Wu-Murad going.
“Every single one of those phone calls, text messages. You know, everything was heartwarming, everything helped us get through this. We never felt isolated,” said Murad.
As for what’s next, Kirk Murad said he plans to return to Connecticut, but will have bi-weekly meetings with police. They also have a team on hand ready to search if there is new information. People in Japan will also continue to make posters, translate updates and the keep Pattie a priority so her case doesn’t go cold.
“Everybody says, don't give up, don't give up. We're never going to give up. We're going to keep searching for any little piece of information that we can to bring Pattie home,” Murad said.
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