40 years later, Utah mother still hopes for answers in 3-year-old daughter’s murder

SUNSET, Utah (KSL.com) — Forty years later, telling the story still makes her emotional.

Elaine Runyan fought tears as she again recounted how, on Aug. 26, 1982, her 3-year-old daughter Rachael was kidnapped from the park behind her home where she was playing with her two brothers. A man lured her across the park with the promise of bubble-gum-flavored ice cream, Runyan said, then threw her, screaming, into his car. Her body was found 24 days later in a mountain canyon stream in Morgan County.

The case has never been solved. No arrests have ever been made. But Runyan has never given up hope that someone, somewhere, knows something.

“Though it is an unsolved 40-year case, I’ve had enough,” Runyan said. “I want a new chapter in my life and that of my family’s.”

Runyan told the story to family, friends, law enforcement officials and members of the media during Rachael Runyan and Missing and Exploited Children Day, established in 2017 and observed each year on the anniversary of Rachael’s abduction. The group gathered at the park where she was taken, which was renamed Rachael Runyan Memorial Park at her mother’s request in 2007.

Runyan pointed to the house where the family lived in 1982 and where, on the day that changed everything, she’d been making lunch for her children while watching them through the window as they played.

They’d never gone further than the “big toy,” the playground directly behind the home, Runyan said. So when she realized they were across the field, she hollered at them to come back.

That’s when her then 5-year-old son told her he had some “real bad news” about Rachael, Runyan said. She first looked for the girl at a local grocery store; then she called 911.

The suspect was described at the time as a Black man with a medium brown complexion, an afro haircut and a mustache. He was also believed to be between the ages of 25 and 35, between 5 feet 8 inches and 6 feet tall, with a slender to medium build. Police released two composite sketches at that time, which were on display Friday.

Additionally, authorities at the time believed he drove a blue 1973 Ford Pinto Squire station wagon with woodgrain stripes on the sides. A similar car was on display Friday at the park.

In the decades since her daughter’s murder, Runyan has championed the cause of missing children. She’s advocated for laws like the 1982 Missing Children Act, which authorizes the attorney general to exchange information that would help identify bodies and locate missing people. She’s run fundraisers, posted flyers and hung banners; she’s spoken to law enforcement groups, at conferences and in a congressional hearing.

And her efforts have paid off: Rachael’s case was fundamental in initiating the Rachael Alert system, an early child abduction alert program. The first Rachael Alert went out for the abduction of Elizabeth Smart from her home in Salt Lake City in June 2002. The alert system was later united with the national Amber Alert.

Additionally, the Rachael Runyan Award is presented to Utah residents who help recover a child after an Amber Alert has been activated.

“So I’ve pretty much had to dedicate my life to keeping her story alive, so people would keep talking about it and perhaps a killer would surface,” Runyan said.

During Friday’s memorial, Runyan presented local law enforcement officers with a plaque for their four decades of “dedicated, unwavering service” in investigating Rachael’s murder.

Sunset Police Chief Brett Jamison said Rachael’s case has “always been a high priority.”

It’s been analyzed by multiple agencies over the years, he said, including the Davis County Sheriff’s Office crime lab, the Utah State Crime Lab, the Utah Attorney General’s Office and several in-state and out-of-state forensic DNA laboratories.

The Sunset Police Department is currently working with “one of Utah’s top cold case” teams, Jamison said, and the case is reassessed every time a potential lead comes up.

“While the case has been frustrating to prior investigators and to the Runyan family, today’s continuous advancements in DNA technology could best exploit the primary solvability factors of changes in technologies and changes in relationships, hopefully turning the concept of time as the enemy into time as our friend,” Jamison said.

However, the case faces several challenges, he continued. One is that DNA collection practices in the 1980s differed from current DNA collection practices, meaning the original investigators may not have collected the evidence needed for today’s technology.

Another is that DNA analysis in the 1980s consumed “a great deal of evidence,” Jamison said, so little evidence remains for analysis today with newer technologies. At this time, all of their DNA tests have come back inconclusive, he added.

Jamison said he’s confident, though, that the suspect lived in the community or had ties to it, and that someone knows something.

He also acknowledged a new potential lead: a woman who recently said her uncle was a sexual predator and drove a vehicle like the one described in Rachael’s case. They’ve received the woman’s information and are in the process of contacting her and other family members, Jamison said.

He also said a $65,000 reward is available for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for Rachael’s disappearance. Anyone with information is asked to call the Sunset Police Department at 801-825-1620.

Or, for anyone who might feel uncomfortable talking to law enforcement, private investigator Jason Jensen said potential tipsters can call his office at 801-596-2455.

Jensen has been helping the Runyan family investigate Rachael’s case since 2019, he said, and one possibility they’re exploring is that the suspect is an ethnicity other than Black.

He continued that Rachael’s kidnapping probably wasn’t the perpetrator’s first or last crime against children, and urged people to notice potential clues like a fixation with the Aug. 26 date or with Rachael’s story.

Runyan added that she hopes anyone who’s previously been afraid to come forward with information will do so now that 40 years have passed.

“I tried changing the story and it never changed. She’s never there,” Runyan said. “And so … what I’ve done is just keep it in front of the public and keep her story alive.”