Opal Charmaine Mills was a 16-year-old Black girl with ambitions to become a model. The daughter of a white mother and a Black father, family described her as loving, outspoken and active in church; she had reportedly read the Bible cover to cover. On August 12, 1982, she called her older brother, Garrett, asking for a ride and saying she was at Angle Lake State Park to do a painting job with her friend Cynthia Hinds. Garrett, who had worked late, was asleep and could not take her—this was the last time her family heard from her.

On August 15, 1982, her body was found in undergrowth along the Green River in King County, Washington, near the bodies of 17-year-old Cynthia Hinds and 31-year-old Marci Chapman. Investigators determined Opal had been brutally strangled; her blue trousers were found knotted tightly around her neck. The murder remained unsolved for years until DNA from semen collected in 1982 produced a match to Gary Leon Ridgway. Ridgway was arrested on November 30, 2001, later charged with aggravated first-degree murder and in 2003 pleaded guilty to numerous counts, including Opal’s.

Did anyone who knew Opal in 1982 ever see her at Angle Lake State Park or recall her plans that day?