American woman Skye Budnick was 21 in 2008 when she packed a few things into a bag. Unbeknownst to her family, she had purchased a one way plane ticket to Japan. She arrived in the country on April 1, 2008 and was last seen there on April 8. She has never been seen again.
As some background, her mother Susan said “Skye was a very quiet girl, very quiet, very shy.”
Skye had two siblings – Matt and Megan.
“We were together but separate,” said Skye’s sister, Megan said. “We were off doing our own things but were always there for one another.”
Megan has spoken about how Matt and Skye had a lot in common.
“They had similar interests like video games and things like that,” she said. “I remember one time they had a certain game that they played with certain people from all over the world, so they wanted to go to New York to meet these people and they didn’t know how to go so I chaperoned them essentially. Another time I brought Skye to see this rock band she loved called Dir En Grey performing in New York with one of her friends.”
Skye was studying Japanese at Central Connecticut State University. She loved learning about Japanese culture and had always dreamed of traveling there. Reports say that she was also working at a supermarket.
Megan has said that in 2008, Skye was showing symptoms of clinical depression. Skye was said to be sleeping a lot and failing her classes. Skye refused to see a doctor for treatment. She allegedly told some friends that the only reason she hadn’t dropped out of college was so that she could stay in the anime club.
This is an excerpt from a social media post made by Skye.
“I hate me”, one post read, “I hate how easy it is to get my hopes up, and how it’s even easier to send them crashing down into the abyss. Is it strange? One moment I can be fine, or even extremely happy; and then some little bad thing happens and all joy shatters and I want to die, or rip myself to shreds.”
Skye had missed some previous opportunities to travel abroad to study due to her failing grades.
This timeline of the days prior to Skye’s disappearance has been pieced together from podcasts/social media discussion.
Skye visited her family on March 31, 2008 and told them that she was going to stay with a friend the next day.
It is believed that Skye then drove her car (2005 Chevy Aveo) to the airport and she left the vehicle there. She withdrew $800 from her bank account.
She flew out of Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, CT to Hokkaido in Japan on April 1. She flew United Airlines.
When Skye purchased her plane ticket, she did not tell anyone, even her closest friends. Her family had no idea.
When they did not hear from Skye by April 4, they became concerned and reported her missing. The family managed to get access to Skye’s email account that day and discovered the plane ticket purchase on her account.
Megan spoke about what Skye packed for the trip.
“She only took her computer and Nintendo DS both of which have internet capabilities, and her debit card; she didn’t take anything else.”
Skye would have had to have taken a passport to fly to Japan. Some reports say that she also took a few changes of clothes. Skye did not own a cell phone.
There is an online forum post from 2008 where Skye’s family beg for information about her:
She never told any friends or family about this trip, but she has been very depressed, and has always said that she wanted to leave to go to Japan and just kill herself there.
Thats what we think she is going to do, or has done already.
A missing person report has been filed, her school has been contacted, her friends have been notified, and calls have been non stop just trying to find her.
I’m posting this, cause I dont think the word can get out there fast enough, Her Itinerary said she was going to Japan, stops in Tokyo and then there is another flight afterwards that goes to Sapparro.
She is suicidal and she needs help.
Susan has spoken about finding out that Skye had left the country.
“It’s kind of like as a mom you should know,” she said while sobbing. “But I just don’t understand leaving like that. Just leaving your car at the airport and everything behind.”
Skye’s family have said that they do not know how she paid for the expensive plane ticket. Comments on reddit do say that Skye had been selling her belongings prior to leaving. She also had the reported job at the supermarket.
The last sighting of her was at an inn in Noboribetsu, a town in the southern part of Hokkaido.
“Skye was extremely shy to the point of social anxiety so for her to do this she had to have help, someone who was encouraging her to go over,” said her mother Susan. “We don’t have proof, but we truly believe that’s what her motivation was. And that was the scary part.”
We have spoken before about how much more difficult things are when someone vanishes overseas – Patty Wu Murad also vanished in Japan, Nancy Ng, Taylor Casey.
After Skye had not been heard from for several weeks in 2008, Susan and Megan flew to Japan. They planned to file police reports, do interviews and pass out translated “missing person” fliers.
“The language barrier alone is enough to shut you down,” Susan said.
Susan and Megan discovered that Skye had told employees at the inn where she was last seen that she planned to travel to Sapporo in Japan. She made stops at spas and onsens (hot springs) during the week before she vanished.
Skye’s family looked through her email account for more clues as to her whereabouts. They discovered what could be interpreted as a suicide note in the drafts of her email. It was addressed to a friend, Brittney Davis, but it was never sent.
According to the Case Remains podcast, Brittany told police that she and Skye had argued just one week before she vanished, when Skye came up to her and said “her Japanese sucked”
The same podcast also wrote the following on their page for Skye:
She had even made the troubling comment that if she could only see the cherry blossoms in Japan, she would be able to die happy.
The search for Skye has been ongoing since 2008. She has an entry on the Doe Network and Megan has appeared on multiple podcasts to talk about her sister. She also has her own podcast called ‘Surviving Skye.’
Megan spoke to the media in 2024 about roadblocks they have faced in the search.
“About a year or so ago I realized that the (familial) DNA that we submitted back in 2008 was never submitted to Interpol or Japan,” she said. “It was still sitting in the Connecticut State Lab and nothing was done. And I think part of that was due to the language barrier. But the Southington police, with the help of Interpol, was able to get into contact with the Japanese government and they were informed that a new DNA sample was needed due to new technologies being used.”
Megan also spoke about the costs involved with trying to find a loved one overseas. The family had a GFM at one point that raised over $16k and that is what Megan discusses in this quote:
“The last time we went we were met with the realities of what a missing person is like and there’s really a lack of resources, so we were two weeks into our trip and the bill was getting bigger and bigger,” Megan explained. “So, at this point we don’t want to be put in that position again and I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of people on social media be really supportive and at a lot of people’s requests I set it up.”
Megan and Susan traveled to Japan in 2024 and provided this update:
The time has come. We have a date to go to Japan to submit a new familial DNA sample.
This has been quite the logistical undertaking involving the Southington police, Interpol, and the Japanese National Police to get to this point.
My mother and I will take this trip to Japan in hopes to get answers as to what happened to Skye. But we are still very much in the dark as to what may be in store for us. We are as prepared as one could be in this type of situation but the truth is we are scared, anxious, overwhelmed, exhausted, and above all ready for anything.
Susan has spoken about how the family has handled Skye’s disappearance.
“It’s kind of like how we handle everything separately but together,” Susan said. “My husband got angry. He doesn’t talk about it ever. He doesn’t want to hear about it. I was crushed, but I haven’t hit the angry part yet. My thing was always blame; what did I miss? I missed a lot. My son actually made a comment and said, ‘I would like to talk about it mom, but you cry so I don’t.’”
Megan moved across the country to try to escape the pain and has always tried to keep Skye’s story in the spotlight through social media.
“I always used work and keeping busy as a way to avoid feeling anything,” she said. “When I stopped working for a period of time my husband suggested I start a TikTok to deal with my feelings. At first, I was like ‘Eww.’ What held me back for so long was I didn’t have the right medium to talk about it and I thought my vulnerabilities would be a hindrance. But over time I think it has been an asset in just trying to relate to other people. And I’ve gotten a really good response and, not that a lot of people can relate to having a missing person, but they relate to so many of the other things that I’ve been talking about and that’s been really helpful.
“It’s become like a community and I feel like I’ve gotten better in just the past two years than like the other years,” she said.
POINTS OF DISCUSSION
There were some alleged sightings of Skye.
On her flight into Japan, she did not have a return ticket and they still let her in the country. This is quite rare in Japan for a tourist visa. She was also helped by an Austrian Man with buying a train ticket. The man said that Skye was quite frustrated and crying. Her family doesn’t believe Skye could have handled a massive international trip on her own without prior knowledge from a local.
This account was made by someone with a user name that Skye had previously used in the past.
“Whoa, I find it interesting that the photos on this Flickr are from Noboribetsu, which was the last known sighting of Skye… they were uploaded in 2013.”
Many people bring up Aokigahara, the “Suicide Forest” in Japan as a possibility of where Skye may have taken her life. Megan does not believe this is where Skye ended up as it was far from where she was last seen and it was costly to travel to. According to Google maps, it would be around a 15-16 hour drive.
Info about the forest:
The forest has a historical reputation as a home to yūrei: ghosts of the dead in Japanese mythology. At least since the 1960s, Aokigahara has become associated with suicide, eventually becoming known in English by the nickname “Suicide Forest” and gaining a reputation as one of the world’s most-used suicide sites. Because of this, signs at the head of some trails urge suicidal visitors to think of their families and contact a suicide prevention association.
SOURCE LIST
https://web.archive.org/web/20201024113121/https://www.caseremains.com/post/skye-budnick
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13566629/Skye-Budnick-Japan-Missing.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyeBudnickDiscussion
https://www.facebook.com/skye.budnick
https://www.survivingskye.com/https/anchorfm/survivingskye