Rita Marie Bartschot, 40, was last seen on the morning of August 24, 1990, tending the yard at her deceased mother’s home in Seattle’s Ravenna District. A chemistry professor at Columbia Basin Community College in Pasco, she was in Seattle handling her mother’s affairs and then vanished without notice. A neighbor later found the house with the television on, the cat unfed, and a full pot of moldy coffee, suggesting an abrupt departure.

Two weeks after she disappeared, $3,200 was withdrawn from her accounts. Police charged unemployed landscaper Drew Richard Thompson with using her debit card; his fingerprints were found in the car, another of her bank cards was recovered at his home, and two former cellmates testified he said he killed her and her body would never be found.

In November 1991 Thompson was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 32 years. No body has been recovered. Did anyone in the Ravenna or University District area see Rita or her Honda around late August or early September 1990?