A fourteen-year-old girl with shoulder-length blonde hair vanishes from a bus stop after an afternoon at the fair. Her mother spends the rest of her life searching for answers. Thirty-three years later, the question still haunts Washington state.
On September 17, 1992, Misty Copsey and her best friend spent the day at the Washington State Fair in Puyallup. Around 9:20 PM, a bus driver saw her at a stop, asking for a ride home to Spanaway. There were no more buses that night. She walked away. No one has seen her since [citation:7]. Police initially dismissed her as a runaway. Her mother Diana knew they were wrong. Five months later, a search party found Misty's jeans, socks, and underwear crumpled along an isolated highway. The area was a dumping ground for the Green River Killer and other predators [citation:2][citation:3]. The investigation focused on Ruben Schmidt, an eighteen-year-old friend Misty called for a ride that night. He told police he blacked out and couldn't remember why he drove to his grandmother's farm the next day. His roommate said Ruben left to pick her up. Items linked to Misty were found near that property [citation:4]. Diana passed away without ever learning what happened to her daughter. Misty's body has never been found [citation:6]. Turn down the lights, put on your headphones, and press play because the bus driver was the last person to see Misty alive, but he was never the only suspect.
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