Maureen Leianuhea Kelly, whom everyone called Anu, was 19 when she decided to venture naked into the woods. It was a Sunday in June 2013, around five in the afternoon, on a steep stretch near Canyon Creek Campground in Washington. She carried only a fanny pack with a knife, a compass, and matches. That night, the temperature dropped to between 7 and 9 degrees, with drizzle.
Her barefoot tracks crossed a stream and climbed up the other side, until suddenly disappearing on the asphalt of a paved forest road. That is where all physical evidence of Anu ends: not another trace, no clothing, no fanny pack, nothing. And yet, the official search was closed just six days later, on June 15, 2013.
It was pressure from her family and friends that forced the search to resume briefly, with no results. Thirteen years later, while some of her friends—such as Yazmin and Amanda Ziegler—maintain that Anu chose not to return as part of her spiritual quest, the question no one answers is another: why was the investigation into a young woman lost in hostile terrain abandoned so quickly?