On October 21, 1991, 12-year-old Rebecca West and her 11-year-old classmate Iryll Nicki Wood were last seen together at a service station in Spokane after asking for money to buy snacks. Their families reported them missing when the girls did not return home. A few hours later searchers found Nicki’s body, burned and strangled, under pine needles in a remote area north of Spokane known as Seven Mile, near Riverside State Park. Rebecca was not found at the scene and has never been recovered.

Investigators focused on Michael W. Tarbert, who lived in a cabin near where Nicki’s body was found. Witnesses placed the girls getting into his car, bloodhounds tracked both girls’ scents to his cabin and Tarbert’s scent from the cabin to the body site, and later DNA testing linked blood on his pants to Nicki. Tarbert was charged in January 1996 and, four days before his 1998 trial, entered a no-contest plea to two counts of first-degree manslaughter; he was sentenced to 20 years and was released in August 2022. He died in November 2022 without disclosing Rebecca’s location.

Rebecca’s body remains missing and her family has not had full closure. If anyone has information about Rebecca West’s whereabouts in October 1991, please come forward.