Loni Kai was a 28-year-old Pacific Islander transgender woman who was last seen in the pre-dawn hours of August 26, 2001, walking and hitchhiking along Tualatin Valley Highway in the Hillsboro area after a night out. Two Beaverton police officers stopped to check on her that morning; she declined their offer of assistance. A few hours later a jogger found her body in an overgrown field off Southwest Farmington Road, miles from where she was last seen.

The autopsy found severe blunt force trauma to the head and evidence of strangulation. Detectives with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office came to believe she was targeted because of her gender identity; the prevailing theory is that someone picked her up while she was hitchhiking and reacted with lethal violence upon discovering she was transgender. Investigators have pursued leads over the years, including a 2003 tip about a medium-sized SUV and the possibility that the killer had help moving her body, but no suspects have been publicly identified and no arrests have been made.

Does anyone who lived in the Hillsboro or Beaverton area in August 2001 recall unusual vehicles or people near Tualatin Valley Highway or Southwest Farmington Road that morning?