National Park After Dark - What Happened to Sheila Kearns? Mount Rainier National Park

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

In the fall of 1996, 43 year old Sheila Kearns had just finished her first summer season working in Mount Rainier and was excited to begin a winter season in the park she had grown to love. When she failed to show up for work at the National Park Inn, a search was dispatched. It wasn’t until seven months later when her scattered remains were found less than a mile from her housing. 30 years later her death remains unsolved. Internal Memo NPS Guidance For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodes For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials: Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdark Support the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to this week’s partners! Avocado: Find an Avocado near you or shop online at http://AvocadoGreenMattress.com/NPAD and check out their mattress and bedding sale! PAKA Apparel: To grab your PAKA hoodie, go to www.pakaapparel.com Quince: Go to quince.com/npad for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Cash App: Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/zf2267at #CashAppPodCash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cardsissued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flexcard. Cash App Green features, Savings, Direct deposit, Round ups, Overdraft coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. Hello Fresh: Go to HelloFresh.com/npad10fm now to Get 10 Free Meals + a Free breakfast for Life! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For most of the year, Majestic Tahoma or Mount Rainier is shrouded. Due to its frequent cloud cover and atmospheric haze, many in the Seattle Tacoma and Puget Sound communities live and work knowing the formidable 14,410-foot peak is present, but not visible. For locals, is the mountain out, is embedded in daily conversations, and there are several 24-7 live feeds and interactive maps dedicated to the sole purpose of reporting and checking the status of the mountain. From Seattle, Mount Rainier is only visible approximately 83 days per year.

That's roughly once every 4.4 days, but when it is visible, there's no mistaking it. The mountain is out is a phrase that needs to be experienced to be understood. Gazing upon its glaciated peak is mesmerizing, and not just because the view is a cherished rarity. Tahoma is the most prominent mountain in the lower 48, meaning no other mountain blocks its view. You can see its massive snow-covered summit in every direction for miles around, from as far away as Oregon and Canada. There are 20 known indigenous names for the peak, from tribes all across the state, including the Puyallup, Nisqually, and Snoqualmie. And unlike some national parks, which require careful planning, travel, and effort, millions of people in western Washington,

can see Mount Rainier as they go about their day-to-day lives. You don't need to spend days backpacking, weeks on a raft, or hundreds of miles on the trail in order to feel like you know this mountain. You just need to look out the window. But just because the mountain may be out doesn't mean you can see everything. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hello everybody. I'm Cassie. I'm Danielle. And we're going to Mount Rainier, which is really excited. because we haven't visited this park in a long time and this is kind of your backyard park for a long time. Yeah. And I actually, when I was going through this, my first little bullet here, I just had to note.

I said, well, well, well, this park brings a tear to my eye. And I think it's because, you know, Mount Rainier or Tahoma has served as this backdrop to my most cherished memories and also some of the most painful memories I have. So it just gets me a little emotional. I really love this park, but the mountain has borne witness to a lot of sad things in my life, too. But yeah, we have not been to this park in a while. I think we've only ever done two episodes on it. And I think I did them both, which is kind of crazy because so many things have happened in Rainier. I know. It's like I just avoid it for now. I'm like, okay, I just, you get me emotional, but we're revisiting it today because this, I'm putting my big girl pants on because I really wanted to share the story of Sheila Kearns because it deserves to be told. Well, I'm excited. I've never heard this story before, so I am excited for you to tell it. Okay. All right. Well, let's begin.

For most national parks, summer is the busy season. So each spring, like migratory birds, seasonal employees flock to national parks. Your rangers, construction crews, restaurant workers, and hotel staff come from across the country and throughout the world to make the tourist season possible. And each spring, those seasonal workers get a new home, meet new people, and a new, albeit temporary little community. For many people, a park job is a rest stop, a place to stay. day for the summer before moving on to somewhere new. But for some people, in some places, you get hooked and fall in love with the view out the window. And that's what seemed to happen in 1996 to Sheila Kearns at Mount Rainier. Ah, the good old days. The 90s. And who's to blame her?

I mean, Mount Rainier is. The more I thought about it and now that I've been, you know, people ask this all the time, what are your, what is your favorite park? Mm-hmm. It doesn't, my answer has not changed. It is still Yellowstone, but Mount Rainier is probably really high up there. A really close second. Yeah, a close second or at least in the top three or four. Yeah, well, I think it's interesting because even though I think when you look at Yellowstone,

I can obviously see why that would be your favorite just with the wildlife that's there. And the geology is also amazing and really cool. But when you have a park that you have such a sentimental connection to, it doesn't matter that it doesn't have those things that you like love from another place because you have such sentimental value there. True. Very, very true. And also, you know, Mount Rainier was my first visit there was really like the spark of, you know, back in what year was that? 2017, I think, or 16 when I was like, I am moving to the Pacific Northwest one day. because I came here. I saw this park and I'm like, I need to experience life in this part of the country for a few years or I will lose my mind.

You know, so. Yeah. There's also that too. And then anyway, so back to Sheila. She was described by friends as an adventurous person. She had a wide smile, the kind that reached her dark eyes framed by bangs, which I wish I could pull off bangs, but that's for another time. I won't. I'm not going through something.

but just no. Anyone who can wear bangs, I'm so jealous of any dream of being a girl that can have bangs. Because gross with bangs are so cute. I know. Even like the micro bangs to curtain bangs, it doesn't matter what type of bang you have. If you have them, you are always pulling it off, even if you're panicking about them inside. Yeah. I mean, you do have to actually style them, which is tough to commit to.

but you always look cute. Bangs are so good. And they hide your age a little bit because you don't have forehead wrinkles. You have bangs. Yeah. Well, I have a giant widow's peak, so I would never be able to do things because I would just have like a unicorn piece of hair sticking out, but whatever. I love that for you.

So my widow's peak. Yeah. Thank you. No, your unicorn piece of hair. Oh, yeah. So Sheila graduated from UC Boulder with. a psychology degree, went to Africa with the Peace Corps, traveled to hike in Chile, and backpacked throughout Europe. At 43, she decided her next adventure would be a seasonal position working in Mount

Rainier National Park. In the summer of 1996, Sheila and her friend Mary visited the Paradise region of Mount Rainier, which to that choice, I say, absolutely fantastic selection, because if you have not been to paradise, it is one of those places that just truly lives up to its name in all senses of the word. I mean, there's these beautiful meadows of alpine flowers. There's stunning cascading waterfalls. There's unparalleled views in all directions. The mountain you thought couldn't get any bigger is somehow even larger, even though

you're like on it. It's just, it's really hard to describe. So whoever named that, great job. There's a visitor center up there and a historic hotel. called the Paradise Inn, which opened for business in July of 1917. Sheila fell in love with The View, picked up an application for the hotel, and they hired her right away. It was August, and some of the Paradise Inn's employees had left to go back to school, so Sheila was hired to help close out the season at the front desk, and despite the late arrival,

her colleagues quickly grew to like her. Her co-worker Jules Hayden said that Sheila was extremely kind, always making a point to say hi to everybody. She was beautiful, had that contagious smile, bright eyes, that another co-worker compared to the mountain streams outside. She was also soft-spoken and introspective. Some of her coworkers got the impression that Sheila was starting over and rebuilding her life from perhaps some event in her past, but that's a fairly common reason to come to a park as an employee or a visitor, so that detail didn't really stand out to anyone until later. Whatever Sheila was looking for that summer, she seemed to find it. In a yellow-lined notepad, she wrote her feelings about being on the mountain. When I am old and all who I can be,

I want to be like Mount Rainier. She's rugged and tough, yet soft and gentle. She creates havoc among those who want to control her, yet she invites anyone with courage enough to come join her. Jules Hayden had worked for the hotel company for several seasons and on October 4th through a farewell bonfire. One last opportunity for the seasonal community to get together before going their separate ways, continuing their migrations to the next job. That night, Jules remembered Sheila was glowing, smiling ear to ear. She had told Jules that she had been offered a position with the winter crew, which meant she got to stay at Mount Rainier. For a close, quick lay of the land, the Paradise Inn is the highest elevation hotel in the park. And while Paradise

is a popular spot for winter sports, the Inn is only open seasonally, so it's only open in the summertime. But if you go to Longmire, which is just about six miles down the road and a couple thousand feet lower in elevation, you're going to get to another hotel and that one is called the National Park Inn. And it's there that Sheila was offered one of the few coveted spots on the winter team. So for her, this campfire was the start of the next great chapter and the chance at a year-round life on the mountain that she had come to love so much. A few days later on October 6th, Sheila had her first shift at the new lodge, except she never showed up for work. Her manager went to the employee housing in Longmeyer and checked the room that Sheila had just moved into, but Sheila wasn't there either.

Nobody had seen her since dinner at the National Park Inn two days prior, but her car was parked outside of her home undisturbed. Inside her bed was neatly made and the only items missing were her door key and the clothes that she apparently had on. Immediately, the park launched a search. Sheila was an active hiker and search teams assumed she'd simply gotten turned around on the trail. But after three days of searching with teams of bloodhounds, they didn't pick up on anything. After three more weeks of unsuccessful search efforts, the FBI got involved. The FBI concluded that if Sheila was lost on a trail within walking distance from her house, these initial searches would have turned up something,

some sort of evidence, clue to indicate that she had been present there. But if she'd been abducted, that would be a different story. If someone had kidnapped her and taken her from the area, it would explain the lack of results from those searches that had been unfolding for the previous few weeks. The FBI released a picture of Sheila to the press along with a description, 5'7, long dark hair, last seen in a gray sweatshirt and hiking shoes. They also offered a $5,000 reward for any information on the case. Sheila's family hadn't heard anything from her after her disappearance. Her mother, Olive, lived in North Carolina, and her brother Jerry lived in Southern California.

And together, they contributed an additional $25,000 to the FBI. reward for information. But as days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, nobody called the tip line. No one came forward with any information about the case or any reported sightings of Sheila somewhere else. It was if she had vanished completely. With an uneasy tone, winter at Mount Rainier came and went. By May, spring pushed snow higher up the mountain and woke wildflowers from their slumber. Seasonal employees began to arrive from a the country preparing for another busy summer. Some of those staff had a navigation course planned as part of their onboarding process hosted at the Longmire Community Building. But one day, as a

park volunteer was setting up the navigation course, they stumbled upon something unexpected. They found Sheila. Seven months after she went missing, Sheila's body was found just one mile from her employee housing, or rather, pieces of her body were found. Her remains were scattered across a 300-yard area in the woods near the Longmeyer community building and were confirmed to be hers via dental records. The discovery was a gut-punched to the park community. Not only had their friend and colleague gone missing from within the park, she was found dead in their neighborhood. It was a traumatizing experience. Alexa Martin, the co-worker who described Sheila's eyes as clear as the mountain streams, was haunted by it. This place she loved had suddenly become

very eerie, saying later that the fear from Sheila's death limited how she lived her own life. Yeah, I can only imagine having someone that you know and work with and like and to have a person and to have them found where you live and work and recreate and love. I mean, that's so traumatizing. And one of the things I was thinking the whole time that you were describing the search efforts for her and how they immediately sent out search teams for her when she didn't show up was how awful it must have been to be one of the people surrounding her who work with her and to be the ones trying to find her. That's just it's a lot. And then the ensuing months of no answers and then suddenly this discovery and, you know, that brings some sort of resolution like, okay, we know where

she is, but what happened? What happened to her? You know, so now there's this. whole other part of the story that is just beginning. Yeah, and what happened to her, but also are we safe? Are we next? This episode is brought to you by Activia. You might already be eating yogurt, but not all yogurts are created equal. Activia contains over one billion probiotics per serving to survive and reach the gut alive. When it comes to gut health, Activia is the number one family doctor recommended probiotic yogurt brand. Choose Activia, good from the inside out. Visitactivia.ca for more details. Sheila's remains had been scattered, like I said, across a pretty large area and showed clear

evidence of animal activity. The FBI believed it was possible she'd been attacked by wildlife. There aren't any grizzlies in Mount Rainier and fatal black bear attacks are extremely rare, so Mountain Lions became the lead suspect. And while gruesome, the theory lines up with mountain lion behavior. Mountain lions are elusive predators. They silently stalk their prey and are known to make swift kills. After a kill, mountain lions are known to drag their prey to somewhere they won't be disturbed and bury what they don't initially consume under debris on the forest floor, tree branches, pine needles, dirt, snow, etc.

A behavior known as cashing. Since they can't eat large prey items in one sitting, cashing their kill in one place keeps it relatively safe from scavengers and allows them to come back for up to a week to consume it all. That could have been what happened to Sheila, but the FBI couldn't be certain. Again, cougar attacks are exceedingly rare. There have been zero documented fatal mountain lion attacks in Washington states, national parks, and only two confirmed fatalities in the last 100 years throughout the entire state.

The first was in 1920 on a 13-year-old boy in Okanogan County, which is east, just east of North Cascades National Park. The other was in May of 2018 when a severely underweight three-year-old cougar attacked two mountain bikers near North Bend, which is about 30 miles east of Seattle, and that attack left one of the men dead. While still very rare, non-lethal attacks are more numerous. In the same period of time, so the last 100 years, there have been roughly 20 documented attacks in Washington State. In relatively recent news, the absolutely insane story in 2024 came when five competitive women cyclists all in their 50s and 60s were out on a bike ride and fought for and ultimately saved one of their friends' lives after she was attacked. And are you familiar with this story? I slightly, but no, not really.

I kind of remember it. It took over my life. It was my Roman Empire for a while. while. It's the story is absolutely insane. If tooth and claw have not covered yet, I don't know if they have, but this is my formal petition for that. I think just because for so long, a lot of my algorithm was Washington coded, you know? I got fed a lot of Washington news and this one was just all over the place. But I mean, these women, literally there's photos of this mountain lion pinned underneath one of their bikes.

So it attacked this woman mid-bike ride. Her friends, there's four other people there, are actively beating it, slamming it with rocks, trying to get it off this woman. It's not letting go. They finally get it off her. They pin it under their bikes. They're literally standing on top of their bikes after like almost a half an hour long struggle trying to get this mountain lion off.

And then they have it pinned under there. until officials can come euthanize it. And it swallowed one, because it had the woman's face, and it swallowed one of her earrings. And in the neocry, they got the earring and the woman took it back and wears it. Like a total badass. Bad ass. And what could friends also get you a group of girlfriends that are going to protect you in the midst of a mountain lion attack? Truly.

Yeah. So anyways. So there's that one. And then if we're going to kind of obviously, I'm not going to go over every attack. That's not my job. But more specifically, kind of narrowing it down to national parks. There was one that came from this time around July of 2025. So last year, there was a four-year-old child was attacked while hiking on Hurricane Ridge with his family.

and the child's father managed to act quickly and pull his son out of the animal's jaws. And Hurricane Ridge is an Olympic National Park, by the way. Whoa. The child was airlifted to a hospital and ultimately survived. But officials were like, yeah, this child would likely have not survived this if the dad didn't leap into action as quickly as he did. So it could have had a very different outcome. And of course, both of those cougars involved were euthanized. But back to Sheila.

So given all of that information and that knowledge of cougar behavior, the history of cougar incidents in the state of Washington, and the evidence that animals did clearly disturb Sheila's remains, that's all well and good. But no one could be sure that that was her exact cause of death or if scavenging sin. simply happened after another event. Gotcha. Co-workers were also incredulous about the wildlife theory. If she had been killed so near to where she lived, whether from a Black Bear attack or a cougar attack, and was cached, why did the search team with bloodhounds find nothing? And she was only a mile away from her front door.

Yeah, it feels like she wasn't there during the search party. Right. And that's kind of what is getting people's eyebrows to raise because that part is a big red flag to that theory. So without any definitive proof either way, the wildlife theory remained plausible, but there were still questions around it. The other explanation, though, was that a person killed Sheila. There was no evidence at the crime scene of another person. No silver bullet DNA evidence that identified a culprit. So the FBI started by interviewing everyone close to the case. They spoke to all of her co-workers, including Jules Hayden, who hosted the bonfire, and Alexa Martin. Longmire is a quiet and close-knit place, so the list of suspects included the people who knew her and the people who didn't, hotel staff, park staff,

anyone who could be plausibly connected. But yet again, nothing definitive came up. Just like with the wildlife theory, the FBI couldn't guarantee that the human suspects were innocent or guilty. No one was charged and the case stayed open. Years later, an FBI special agent would clarify that if new information emerged in the future, they'd be able to act on it and even charge some of the suspects they had cleared in the past. But nothing would change until something new came to light. While the FBI searched, the people who knew Sheila were left grasping at straws, trying to make sense of what happened. It's hard to swallow the explanation of a wildest. life attack because with a human killer, there's a motive and a face that you can condemn and bring

to justice. But with wildlife, there's the uncomfortable reminder that nature doesn't care what happens to you. Along with investigators, those closest to Sheila were doing their best to uncover anything that could lead to a suspect. They replayed their memories of her teasing out anything suspicious. And remember earlier when I was saying that some of the co-workers got the vibe that maybe Sheila was like starting over in her decision to like she had a weird past but it wasn't really everyone kind of had a past and that's why she was there yeah right like there was no definitive evidence of that it's just something that people got the feeling that she was like oh just starting over fresh and then they started thinking okay is she is she running from something is she running

from someone is she real rebuilding her life because of something tragic that happened Like they're just trying to think of anything that they could deduce from conversations or just weird things that may have happened. And especially if they're leaning towards a person did this trying to find any link to her past life. Right. And some people recalled that before she worked at the park service, Sheila had been married. And according to one memory, she had paid to put her husband through medical school only for him to leave her after he got her. his degree, which is a dick move. Such a dick move.

But so now people are like, is it the husband? Was there bad blood there for some reason? Like, did they get into some? Sounds like if anything, she should have murdered him. Right. Not condoning murder or anything. But if it was like, it sounds like if anyone had a gripe, it was probably her. Right.

But they were like, okay, is there some tension going on here? Yeah. Another coworker named Ryan Hill described Sheila as careful and always on edge. like, quote, something from her past was coming to catch up with her. So, again, leading to more questions if she was running from something or hiding out from something. She's kind of always looking over her shoulder like, are they going to find me? In the end, these theories led nowhere. No new leads, just more questions.

And without any answers, Sheila's case went nowhere. Technically still open within the FBI, but with no announced suspect or even a definitive cause of death because remember they still don't know that. For most, it would be easy to lose hope. 30 miles east of Longmeyer, you'll find the town of Eatonville, one of the last towns along the road between Seattle and the Nisqually entrance on the southwest corner of Mount Rainier National Park. And it's also home to the Northwest Trek Wildlife Park.

I just had to shout them out. They're AZA accredited and they're a really cool spot to see some iconic North Pacific Northwest Wildlife. So if you're in the area and you're going to Mount Rainier and you want something to do, I definitely recommend it. But anyway, back to Eatonville and why we're there not for the park. Dixie Walter was born in Eatonville, a town of less than 3,000 people. She was raised in a military family that moved all across the country when she was a kid.

And supposedly, she went to 22 different schools before she graduated. So she moved around a lot. but as an adult, she made her way back to Eatonville, started a family, and never really left. Once back in her hometown, Dixie became a fixture in the community. She started a local craft fair and started writing columns for the local paper, now called the Eatonville Dispatch. She wasn't a trained journalist, but nonetheless grew from a calmness to a reporter and eventually up into the editor for the newspaper.

In the words of her husband, Bob, Dixie was petite and precocious. She covered small town news like ladybug infestations, and in small town fashion wound up in arguments with people that, like, they would send in letters to the editor, and she would kind of go back and forth with them. She'd write back. Yeah. You know. Because it could be me.

If someone ever wrote anything mean to me, they'd never hear from me ever. That's so brave of you. That's not true. That's my red flag. It's like anyone who critiques me or criticizes me at all. I'm like, that can't be true. That's nothing. I mean, that couldn't be me.

I take everything personally. Not me. Well, one of the Eatonville residents who wrote in to her and like kind of complained about her, she was upset because the photo that Dixie used in each of her columns was her posing with her cat and that person didn't like it. So she was like, how dare you? What do they have against cats? Cats. I know.

And see, that's dumb. But I would be like, do you want to talk about this? I love my cat. I would write back. See, I would look at it and I'd be like, stupid. And then I literally never think about it ever again. Oh, I want to be you. I really do.

Dixie was also deeply invested in Eatonville's history and its future. She uncovered the history of Japanese Americans in Eatonville before World War II, tackled politics and covered crime. So when Sheila Kearns disappeared in 1996, Dixie latched on to the story. She ran multiple advertisements about the $30,000 reward in the Eatonville dispatch, always providing the phone number to contact the FBI. And only counting the articles that I could find digitized online, in four years, she wrote about 20 articles all about Sheila's case, with headlines like FBI search for missing woman

in park, all possibilities remain open in Sheila Kern's case, and Kern's body found, foul play suspected. In time, she was doing more than just offering publicity about the Kern's case. She was leading her own investigation into it. Dixie interviewed everyone she could from Sheila's life. Co-workers like Jules Hayden, her mother, Olive Kerns, her brother, Jerry, and her lifelong friend Mary, who was traveling with Sheila that initial time that she went into the hotel and ask for an application. Dixie saved tape recordings of each interview, collected letters she was sent, and copied writing she'd made during her time at Mount Rainier. Altogether, Dixie's reporting across articles in the Eatonville dispatch offers more detail

into this story than any other publicly available record. And as she did more and more research, she came to a conclusion. And here are some direct quotes from a piece that Dixie published in January of 2000, titled An Open Letter to Sheila Kearns Killer. I think it is quite possible you will read this at some point. You should know Sheila Kearns was finally laid to rest November 13, 1999, in Florida, 36 months after you killed her. What little remained of a once lovely and loving woman was buried in a child's metal casket. Her mother, all of Kearns, wrote before the service,

I will be surrounded by friends, which I am thankful for, but seeing the casket I know is going to bring home to me how she died, and I try not to think about that. In the open letter, Dixie aimed a stream of questions at Sheila's supposed murderer, probing at their mindset. Do you have a sister, wife, or daughter? Does a killer care about the anguish they cause? Is Sheila Kearns your only victim? She also used the opportunity to provoke the killer in what seemed like an appeal to their ego, saying, not just anybody can stab a woman to death in a national park and allude the FBI for years. I would think if you hadn't bragged to someone by now, it must be very difficult to keep quiet. It must be frustrating being so clever and being the only one who knows how clever you are.

Dixie believed that Sheila was murdered not because she found some smoking gun that the FBI had missed, but based on how she saw the story. Jerry Kearns said his sister attracted men like a magnet. And in a letter, Sheila wrote while visiting her brother, she said that she liked walking his Rottweiler because she could use the dog as an excuse for men to not get close to her. Dixie argued that the Longmire area was rather obscure for the average visitor, and Sheila was a savvy and mature woman who wouldn't have followed a stranger into the woods. And considering the FBI was still offering a reward for her death, Dixie believed that Sheila had walked into the Longmeyer area with someone she knew well, and that person stabbed her to death.

Sheila scattered remains seven months later were from animals that arrived after her death. Dixie closed her open letter to the killer with a warning. So far, it looks like you got away with murder, but somewhere, someday, you may get a tap on the shoulder, turn and be face to face with the FBI. Only then will justice serve Sheila Kearns and her family. I hope that day comes soon. But that day never did come. Dixie Walter passed away in 2021, and Sheila's case remains unsolved today. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this.

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Wayfair, every style, every home. In the 2000s, Dixie turned her attention to other problems in Eatonville and even started her own website in 2022 called the Eatonville News.net. And while you're there, if you visit it, you'll find all sorts of local stories like Banks Changing Names and a school bond failing to pass, but you can also find articles about Sheila, suggesting Dixie never did forget about the Kern's case. While Sheila's death remains unsolved, Dixie's dedication to the case kept it alive. In 2023, a documentary team at Seattle's NBC season produced a piece about Sheila as part of their Unsolved Northwest series.

They tracked down and interviewed Sheila's old coworkers, spoke to FBI special agents, and they got access to Dixie Walter's interviews. Dixie had recorded each conversation she had with Sheila's friends, family, and co-workers. And in the Unsolved Northwest episode, which you can watch for free on YouTube, they play some of those old tapes. including a heartbreaking exchange with Sheila's mom Olive, who says, I don't really care now about finding who did it. I know I shouldn't feel that way. Maybe I'll face up to it better if I just put her to rest. The Unsolved Northwest piece does a really nice job summarizing the story as we know it,

but if there's something that really stands out about it, is that we don't really know anything. In total, this two-part video about Sheila Kearns is less than 10 minutes long. It's been 30 years since Sheila disappeared at Mount Rainier. The odds of learning more now feels pretty slim. But if we fast forward to present day, I think this is a pretty good opportunity to discuss something that just made headlines this last month. The headline of a Washington Post article from June 24, 2026, reads,

Internal Memo orders staff not to reveal deaths in national parks. Reportedly, the Department of the Interior, instructed park employees not to confirm deaths, the severity of injuries, or other related such details in national parks. The DOI argues that this guidance is to maintain consistent and professional communications. In parks that share jurisdiction with local law enforcement, a clear process will help avoid headaches, and this policy will also ensure that no information is released to the public about a victim before the victim's family is informed. And they insist that this is not intended to conceal fatalities or other information from the public.

Several current and former park employees have called BS on that. When someone dies in a national park, NPS policy has long been motivated by public safety, with an approach described as maximum disclosure, minimum delay. For example, if someone in the Grand Canyon dies of heat exhaustion on a specific trail, the park can warn other visitors, and the warning can either steer someone, else away from getting in trouble themselves or encourage them to prepare better. Now, according to this reported memo, staff have to stay quiet about deaths or talk around them if visitors ask them directly about them. Yeah, that's an interesting policy. And I guess I just don't know too much about

the nuance behind it. And I get the whole, I think too many people have found out about loved ones dying via social media. And I don't think that's right at all. I think, that's horrible. But there's also something to be said that the public needs, deserves to know what's going on, especially when you're talking about the murder of someone like this story today, or if you're talking about heat exhaustion or a grizzly attack or something like that, there are ways people can prepare and to know if you're safe. I mean, if there's someone on the loose who just murdered someone, the public deserves to know, especially if they're recreating in that area. And then, of course, if there's a grizzly mauling and you're planning

to do that trail, you deserve to know that there's a bear there. And same thing, there is a level of being prepared. But I do think that there also needs to make sure that you are keeping people's identity before, at least until the family is informed. But I think that law enforcement is pretty good about doing that. I agree. So I don't really get it. I think it would also lead to a lot of unnecessary speculation because you don't know anything. And if some little detail gets out, but nothing can be confirmed because park staff are being advised to not say anything, then the rumor mill is just going to get out of control and maybe go in a completely different direction than what reality is. So those against the guidance point out that the park

already protected sensitive information, like you just said, and cooperated with local law enforcement pretty well to begin with. And they argue that this policy could lead to increased visitor deaths, erode public trust in the park system, and make staff look stupid, you know, because you're like, hey, so what's going on? I don't know. Can't talk about it. I don't know. Can't tell it. Yeah. And I think that's a great point where you just said about the trust factor. I mean, how are we supposed to trust our local government and trust the people within the National Park Service if you can't be honest? And I think, again, this has nothing of course keeping people's identity private especially before the families are notified but there has to be some level of communication here it can't just be like can't tell you

you're here you're right near where this happened but you have you don't deserve to know right because the other thing is you know not all of this is going to happen in a bubble so say someone dies but you don't hear about it but someone nearby sees something, a coroner's vehicle, you know, yellow tape, crime scene, some sort of something to indicate that something just went down. But no information is released and no one is telling anybody anything. That one person is going to tell other people, hey, I saw that over there. And then it's going to just get out of control. So I would be very, very interested to hear from our listeners that are working in the park service or have any insider, you know,

information or feelings about this, you know, because we clearly don't. Is this an official policy now or is it just on the table? This is something that is on the table right now. Okay. And it's just made news because it's like moving forward. So I just don't see the, I guess I just don't see the point of it. I think I would need more information about what. like what's been happening that makes someone to change this policy?

Like have there been so many deaths that have been getting out that family members have not been notified and now they're trying to make a change in that? Or is that truly just how you said people are calling BS on this? But if people are calling BS on it, what is the point of hiding all these deaths? What is the point of not telling people? Right. So, yeah, I would love to hear from people who firsthand, had firsthand experience. experience here and and what it doesn't make sense to us. And if there is a world in which there's

a very good reason for it, we would love to know. I'm just saying that this is something, I'm not arguing for or against it. I'm just saying that this is something that's big news right now. And really it impacts visitors, but it also impacts us. Not that we report on current, you know, we try and stay away and respectful from anything, anything. anything relatively recent, but yeah, just wanted to say that. But because we know so little about Sheila, Sheila's case, I wanted to, because like you said, you mentioned a little bit, you're like, you're like, you know, if someone's murdered, like Sheila, and we don't know if she was murdered. No one knows what happened to her. Her case is still unsolved. That's pretty, all the information

I have on it is what I just told you. There is no resolution. Sorry, I just thought of another thing. If someone is murdered in the park and the park service can't tell anyone, how are you supposed to ask the public for their help in identifying a person that might have been with this person or find out this person's last movements or who last saw them? Yeah. If you can't tell anyone, anything. Right. I don't know. I don't know if it's they can't notify people because I don't see a world in which it's, it's, it's.

If someone truly had their life taken by another individual on a trail, that there wouldn't be a massive effort to remove other people from that area. And by doing that, you're informing someone that somebody else just got killed. Like removing people from the area, but also trying to find out who did it. Right. You know, how are you supposed to get the public help? You know, if you find this woman, you don't know who she is, you need to identify her, but you can't tell anyone that she's. that she was murdered. There's got to be nuanced this policy.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Someone tell us because we're confused. Yeah. And just, you know, I brought it up because it's in the news and it's relevant. And it pertains to, you know, this case and others like it now and in the future, if this does go through.

But just because I brought it up, we're allowed to have conversations if we don't know something. You know, we do all the. research we can but there are times I don't know it seems like we know everything and that is mostly true if you ask me but occasionally we do want to learn new things and we apologize for not knowing everything as you would like us to all the time all the time about every sub-direct I usually do if you ask Al I know everything I'm right about everything being right out about everything I can say yes, we are all the time. All the time.

Okay. That's up. Anywho. Well, to wrap up that little sidebar about the policy, if you do want to learn more about it and have a better understanding than we do. You can read and judge for yourself. I'll include some links in the show notes for you if you want to look at the policy a little more. But I want to just quickly go over a couple of other unsolved cases in Mount Rainier. There are many.

So I'm not going to go through and list them all out. I just want to highlight three really quick just because Sheila's isn't the only unsolved death and or disappearance in the park. Gotcha. On Memorial Day weekend in 1979, a 24-year-old woman named Elaine Robertson arrived in Mount Rainier, with her dogs. She borrowed a tent for the night from fellow campers at the sunrise campground, but the following morning she and her dogs were gone. Her stuff was still with the tent, and a hundred-person search team went out looking for her, but neither she or her dogs were ever located. In 1999, a 24-year-old journalist named Joseph Lee Wood Jr. was visiting Seattle for a

journalism conference. He was an up-and-coming reporter on race and culture in America, and he was also a former Eagle Scout and passionate birder. During a break in the conference, he rented a car and drove to Mount Rainier, but never returned. A hiker had encountered Joseph on the trail near some steep terrain, and that helped rescue teams know where to begin their search, but a five-day search effort came up empty. Woods agent even hired a private investigator to look into his disappearance further, but his body was never located. And finally, just a few short years ago in 2020, a 25-year-old man named Vincent G.

disappeared after going on a hike in the park. The young Indonesian immigrant had just completed a master's degree in Seattle and set out hiking from Longmeyer. An enormous multi-agency search team with helicopter and German Shepherd crews combed the mountain looking with infrared cameras for signs of body heat. Again, they found nothing, no clothing, no gear, and no body was ever found. Like Sheila, each of these people were drawn to Mount Rainier. They looked up at the mountain and in some way found meaning.

It's hard to find meaning in an unsolved death. Often it's hoping that something might change in the future. Someone could come forward with new information or the missing person could reemerge somewhere else. The kinds of details that lead to a 10-hour docu series, not a 10-minute news program. Elaine, Joseph, and Vincent were all loved. Sheila was loved. Their friends and family mourned them even without the closure. that some people receive after a loss.

They cried in their cars on the way to the grocery store and wiped away tears at red lights. They waited by the phone for the police to call. They got tired of well-meaning coworkers asking, how are you today whenever they came into a room? They wondered how to plan a funeral without a body and laid awake at night, wondering, hoping that their loved one was still alive. Sheila's mom eventually chose to accept the uncertainty that surrounded her daughter's death. She had stopped looking for answers if that meant she could lay her daughter to rest at last.

And that is the story of Sheila Kern's mysterious death in Mount Rainier. Well, thank you for telling it because I think like you mentioned at the beginning that it's a story worth telling. And, you know, it's been 30 years and I know after so much time has passed, the likelihood of something else coming up kind of dwindles. However, you never know who's out there, who's listening, who might have seen something, who might know something that will come forward. And I think it's important to keep stories like this at the forefront of people's minds and remind them. And, you know, maybe in conversations if you're listening and your parents were in Rainier at this time or your friend's parents worked in Renier at this time, you know, someone might have something that they might know. Yeah. And I mean, Dixie made it pretty clear that she was on board with somebody killed her. You know, she was very in the camp of this was a murder and that the murderer was local and reading the news and keeping track of the case or at least hoping for that, right? You know, she tried, she tried every tactic to get that person to come forward. And of course, they never did. But that doesn't mean that she. She was wrong and that she, Sheila wasn't murdered, you know.

I'm not sure if I have a gut feeling either way. I think that it is plausible that she was attacked by wildlife, but her not being located by the search teams and bloodhounds seems suspicious. I don't know. It's tough. It's really tough. But that's it. That's the case.

And hopefully there comes a resolution in some way, shape, or form because we do love to know, you know, what happens to mysterious cases like this and whether she had a medical event, maybe, you know, she could have just had a medical event and then was scavenged on by animals. There's so many different possibilities and yeah. But anyhow, she seemed like a really cool lady. She did a lot of cool things. Africa, Europe, South America, national parks, just doing, living her life, you know.

truly yeah well thank you everyone so much for listening and we will see you next time in the meantime enjoy the view but watch you're back bye bye thanks for joining us for another episode we hope you learn something new and have another location to put on your list if you want more mpAD content make sure to follow along with our adventures on all socials at national park after dark for more stories just like this one with the added bonus of exclusive content you can join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. If you prefer to watch our episodes, head over to our YouTube channel. And if you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform.