Missing Tacoma woman’s remains found nearly 40 years after disappearance
A Tacoma woman’s remains have been found almost 40 years after she went missing.
According to a Facebook post from the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office, officials found a “partial human skull” in a wooded area near milepost 27 of Entiat River Road within the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest on May 10.
Deputies used search-and-rescue volunteers and K-9s to search the area for additional remains, the post said, but found no other remains or evidence.
Authorities determined the remains belonged to Patricia Colyer, a woman who was 38 years old when she vanished July 4, 1986. She would be 77 years old today.
“Colyer was identified thanks to a relative who submitted a DNA sample more than 20 years ago,” the post said.
Next of kin has been notified, the post said.
“Because the bone was only a partial cranium, a manner of death cannot be determined; the cause of death is listed as undetermined,” Chelan County Coroner Earl Crowe said in the post.
According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, Coyler was last seen at the intersection of Tacoma Avenue South and South 11th Street. Her boyfriend reported her missing on July 4.
The Tacoma Police Department has taken over the investigation, the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office said, but there are no leads or suspects.
What happened to Colyer?
According to News Tribune archives, Colyer wasn’t reported missing until July 21, 1986.
She was last seen leaving her mother’s residence on July 4 with “a strange woman known only as Dee, who intimated that she was a truck driver,” according to an article in the March 13, 1987 edition of The News Tribune.
Roger Price, a detective with the Tacoma Police Department at the time, told The News Tribune that Colyer had been living on Social Security income and might have met Dee at a local tavern a few days before she went missing.
When Colyer left her mother’s home on July 4, she allegedly told her family she would “be going away for a few days with Dee and Dee’s husband, who was not seen by the family.”
“Since then, there’s been no contact with Patricia,” Price said. “And we don’t know who these people, this Dee and her husband, are.”
Anyone with information on Colyer’s disappearance can contact the Tacoma Police Department at 253-287-4455.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include extra context on Colyer’s disappearance from The News Tribune’s archives.
This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 10:00 AM.
