Missing Yakima woman identified 40 years after body found in Tri-Cities | North West

KENNEWICK — Patricia Kay Rodriguez stopped at a Yakima restaurant on her way to work in 1983 and was never seen again.

For more than 40 years, this mother of four's disappearance haunted her family and perplexed detectives.

Now, thanks to DNA testing, they know his body was found nearly three years later, about 85 miles away in the Tri-Cities.

The mystery of some partial remains pulled from the Columbia River near the Blue Bridge in Kennewick has been solved thanks to a Texas-based forensic company, the Benton County coroner and detectives.

It's been nine months since Coroner Bill Leach and the Benton County Sheriff's Office exhumed Jane Doe's remains from her grave at Resthaven Cemetery in Richland.

Leach was working with the Spokane medical examiner's office and Texas-based Othram Labs to try to identify the woman.

She had been buried there since she was found in the river on September 2, 1986 by construction workers on the Highway 395 Blue Bridge.

At the time, an autopsy showed she had given birth to at least one child, and authorities hoped the clue would help identify her family members.

After at least one false positive result, the coroner, detectives and Othram were able to track down one of Rodriguez's relatives living in the Midwest.

From there, they tracked down one of his daughters in North Dakota.

Rodriguez was 33 when she disappeared from Yakima, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

She was last seen at Peking Palace in Yakima after leaving to go to her office. Investigators found his car at the restaurant.

Benton County sheriff's officials say many of the circumstances surrounding her disappearance remain a mystery.

“We have reviewed relevant reports to the extent that they still exist,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement to the Tri-City Herald. “Information and witnesses from this period have been difficult to reach due to relocation, name changes and/or death.”

Search for a name

Leach initially began researching the woman's identity after receiving a call in July 2023 from someone looking for headstones in the Richland area.

The caller wondered if the coroner's office had any information about the woman who was buried as Jane Doe at Richland Cemetery.

By that time, the case had been forgotten by those working at the Coroner's Office and the Benton County Sheriff's Office. There weren't many existing records, and others who might have known more have since died.

The only documentation found of the woman's death were two Tri-City Herald articles written around the time she was found.

Without further information on her identity, she was buried.

Once he discovered the mystery, Leach was determined to find out who this woman was. He wanted to at least bring closure to his family.

Leach discovered that the Spokane medical examiner's office had a grant to pay for work with Othram to help solve some of their cases.

Their lab helped solve a 1978 murder in Spokane, identify the body of a man found in a wooded area near Newport, and identify a man from a small fragment of his skull found in the Spokane River .

So, in September 2023, a team consisting of Benton County sheriff's detectives and coroner's office employees exhumed Rodriguez's remains.

They sent one of the leg bones to Othram to extract DNA, Leach said. They received a list of possible relatives of the woman, identified using a genealogical database.

9 month search

Rodriguez was not the first possible person to be linked to the body. Instead, they thought it might be someone related to a Spokane man whose brother had a missing child.

But it soon became clear that it wasn't the same woman who had been discovered, particularly because she was adopted, Leach said. She would therefore not share her DNA with her uncle.

As Benton County looked for its best chance, Othram looked to other potential matches. One of them was a woman named Heather Richardson, who was third on their list,

She contacted Patricia's sister, Beverly, who Leach said called her.

“She said, 'I think it's my sister you're trying to identify,'” Leach said. “She told me all this information. I wrote it down and passed it on to the detectives, and then the next day I got a call from Patricia's daughter. She had spoken to Othram.”

Once Othram examined Rodriguez's daughter's DNA, they were able to confirm who it was.

Leach is still working on how to deliver the remains to his family in North Dakota. But he is satisfied to learn who she was.

He also thanked the Benton County commissioners for their support of the research.

“That’s the ultimate positive outcome,” Leach said. “I can’t imagine burying people without knowing who they were.”

Although Rodriguez has been identified, a number of mysteries remain and some of them may never be solved.

It is unclear how she died and how she ended up in the Columbia River.

3 other unidentified bodies

There are three other unidentified bodies buried in the Tri-Cities, including a baby found in the Richland landfill in 1989.

Leach hopes to continue his efforts and plans to ask commissioners to set aside money over the next two years to conduct further research.

Rodriguez's research cost about $10,000, a little less than half of which was funded by the grant, Leach said. He doesn't have enough money in his current budget to fund further research.

But by continuing these efforts that are close to his heart.

“What price is too much to pay to find out where your loved ones are?” he said. “It makes no sense to me that we can’t find out who these people are because it’s the right thing to do.”