Linda Jane Rule was 16 when she was last seen on September 26, 1982, in north Seattle. Family members called her Janie; after her parents’ divorce she had left high school and was living a troubled life, staying with her boyfriend at a Seattle motel and reportedly planning to marry him. She was reported last heading toward a Kmart on Aurora Avenue and did not return.

On January 31, 1983, skeletal remains were found under a bush at a construction site near the Northwest Hospital campus. Dental comparison four days later identified the remains as Linda’s. The medical examiner could not determine a precise cause of death from the condition of the remains, but the death was classified as a homicide.

In 2003 Gary Leon Ridgway, later known as the Green River Killer, confessed to Linda’s murder. He told investigators he picked her up in his truck, paid her for sex, strangled her, and later set her hair on fire after death; those details were corroborated by his describing a book of matches found in her pocket. Ridgway was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

If anyone knew Linda’s whereabouts in late September 1982 or remembers her time in north Seattle, please share what you know.