In 1992, This 14-Year-Old Girl Vanished After Attending The Washington State Fair And Some Of Her Clothes Were Later Found Along The Highway
In 1992, Misty Copsey of Puyallup, Washington, was just 14-years-old. She was known to be a popular student at school who always got good grades and never got into trouble.
But, on September 17 of that year, everything changed for Misty after she attended the Washington State Fair.
She and her friend, Trina, had been dying to go to the big event that Thursday afternoon. So, the pair begged Misty’s mom, Diane, to take them.
At first, Diane reportedly refused since she was caring for an elder Alzheimer’s patient at the time. But eventually, Diane gave in to the girls’ pleas and dropped Misty and Trina off there.
What exactly the girls did while at the fair is unknown. However, the event was packed with both locals and attendees who drove in from out of town. Puyallup only had a small town population of about twenty-six thousand people normally, but the fair’s wide appeal increased that number by four times.
And by the end of a presumably fun-packed evening, Misty ended up calling her mother, Diane, to inform her that she had missed the bus. Then, Misty claimed she would be able to get a ride home with a boy named Rheuban.
Rheuban was eighteen-years-old and had dropped out of high school, but Misty had befriended him earlier that year.
Diane was not too fond of their friendship, though, so she asked Misty to get a ride home with someone else. Then, Diane told her daughter to call back when she found another ride.
Facebook; pictured above is Misty
Misty did not argue with her mother and reportedly began searching for another contact in her electric organizer. But Diane never received another call from her daughter and had just assumed Misty found a ride home anyway.
Well, by the time Diane got home later that evening, she discovered that Misty wasn’t in her bedroom. So, she began to panic and immediately called the police. Unfortunately, though, the authorities dismissed Diane’s concerns and wrote off Misty’s disappearance as a runaway.
This meant that Diane was forced to rack her brain in hopes of finding Misty by herself. And she quickly began to suspect eighteen-year-old Rheuban.
Apparently, Rheuban had a large crush on Misty and did not fail to make that known. One time, Diane even overheard Rheuban making inappropriate comments to Misty on the phone.
She was disturbed and forced her daughter to hang up. And even though Misty never showed any personal interest in Rheuban, Diane knew that he had a car. So, she had to consider that Misty may have gone against her wishes and asked Rheuban for a ride anyway.
This thought pushed Diane to phone Rheuban, but the call did not go how she expected. Rheuban actually revealed that Misty had called him looking for a ride, but he did not have enough gas to get to the fair.
So, Diane was left back at square one and began reaching out to anyone else who may have seen her daughter that night.
She first talked to the bus driver who drove the route from the Washington State Fair to Misty’s home. And the bus driver did reveal that Misty had asked when the next bus to Spanaway– her neighborhood– would be departing.
But, the driver was forced to tell Misty that he was the last bus. Then, he advised the fourteen-year-old to hop on a bus to Tacoma and get a transfer there. After the conversation, Misty reportedly walked away, and that was the last time anyone saw her.
The following morning, Misty’s friend Trina also phoned Diane to ask where Misty was. Trina had lived closer to the fair, so she decided to just walk home after the event. And according to Trina, she last saw Misty walking toward the bus stop.
Even with all of these question marks, though, the police were uncooperative. Authorities in Puyallup believed the young teen had been a victim of foul play; meanwhile, the Spanaway police chalked Misty’s disappearance up to a runaway case.
So, for one month, the jurisdictions were caught in a stalemate and refused to investigate the case.
It also did not help that Diane had a turbulent history– one that did not give authorities much confidence in her. The mother had divorced her husband not long after Misty was born in 1978. Then, Diane was left to raise Misty by herself while in her twenties.
This tough reality led Diane to work a lot, rely on food stamps, and succumb to alcohol addiction.
On top of that, Diane had also reported Misty missing only a few weeks before the Washington State Fair. But that was a false alarm, and Misty was later found in her bedroom later that same night.
Diane was still too embarrassed to share that information with the police, though. So, by the time Misty really did go missing at the Washington State Fair, her daughter’s missing person report was still open from weeks prior.
Ultimately, the police were simply wary of Diane’s credibility and were unsure if she had been “crying wolf.” This fact also eventually led authorities to question if Diane had been involved in her daughter’s disappearance.
A Puyallup Resident Gets Involved In The Investigation
Following Misty’s disappearance, Corey Bober, an ordinary Puyallup resident, later came to turn the investigation on its side.
He was especially interested in serial killers and had meticulously researched over two hundred throughout his lifetime. Corey kept all of his findings in neatly organized folders and was somehow even able to obtain information from police and medical examiners that were not readily available to the public.
And while Corey was investigating a murderer known as the Green River Killer– who had taken the lives of at least forty-nine teenage girls between the 1980s and 1990s in Washington State– he believed he unearthed the killer’s identity.
Corey long suspected another Puyallup resident named Dan since Dan apparently made a comment to Corey about how the killer had placed rocks inside the victims’ bodies.
Corey knew that detail was only known by law enforcement, though. And even though Dan claimed to have overheard an off-duty police officer discussing that detail at a bar, Corey did not believe it for a second.
So, he continued working the case as a civilian and was actually ultimately proven wrong when another man, Gary Leon Ridgeway, finally pled guilty to forty-eight counts of murder as the Green River Killer.
Still, Corey’s efforts were not lost– because all of his research eventually helped him make an important discovery in Misty’s disappearance.
One day, while Corey was organizing all of his homicide and missing persons cases chronologically, two Puyallup cases stood out to him. One was a fifteen-year-old girl named Kim Delange, who was murdered in 1988. The other was a fourteen-year-old girl named Anna Chebetnoy, who was murdered in 1990.
Both of the girl’s remains had been discovered on Highway 410, and Corey believed he had unearthed a pattern. Not only were their remains found in the same place, but their murders were two years and one month apart.
So, by the time Misty went missing in September of 1992, her disappearance was two years and one month after the last murder.
This finding led Corey to immediately contact the police, but the authorities were getting tired of the civilian constantly involving himself in police matters. So, Corey was forced to take his knowledge to Misty’s mother, Diane.
And together, they and twenty-five volunteers searched Highway 401 on November 28, 1992. To Corey’s shock, though, no traces of Misty were ever found.
It was following that search that the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department altered Misty’s case status from runaway to missing under suspicious circumstances. Diane also felt a sense of relief that her daughter’s remains were not where Corey had suspected.
He was still fervently attached to his theory, though, and began to reassess his case research. Then, after contacting the King County Medical Examiner’s office again to confirm where the prior two victims had been found, Corey realized he had led the search party to the wrong place.
The two girls had been discovered on the southern side of the highway– not the north one, where he and Diane had searched.
So yet again, on February 7, 1993, Corey and a dozen more volunteers ventured toward Highway 410. And there, they discovered the blue denim jeans and socks that Misty had worn to the Washington State Fair before she disappeared.
“Diane cracked in thirty million pieces,” Corey recalled of Misty’s mother after she found her daughter’s clothing.
Following this positive identification, police then organized and launched a helicopter search equipped with infrared scanners. Unfortunately, though, no other evidence of Misty was ever found.
Rheuban Comes Back Into The Picture
After Misty’s jeans and socks were discovered, Rheuban apparently attended a barbecue with coworkers and claimed to have known the exact location of Misty’s body. He said Misty was buried six miles away from where her clothing had been found.
The comment made its way back to the police, who ended up questioning Rheuban. But, he claimed to have only made that comment to “get his boss off his back.” Rheuban also ended up revealing that Misty had called him twice on the evening of the fair.
During the first call, Misty asked him for a ride home– which was when Rheuban said he did not have enough gas to go get her. Then, during the second call, Misty urged Rheuban to drive to her house, pick up money, and get some gas to make it to the fair.
Rheuban reportedly refused, though, which he claims made Misty angry. And weirdly, while the police were investigating this information, Rheuban’s car was secretly crushed at a scrapyard without the authorities’ knowledge.
Trina Provides A New Lead
While police continued working on Misty’s case, her friend, Trina, revealed that she had lied about how she got home on the night of the fair.
Rather than walking home, as she had previously claimed, Trina had actually gotten a ride from her secret boyfriend– twenty-three-year-old Michael. And because Trina was unsure where Michael went after he dropped her off, police began to suspect that perhaps Michael had gone back to pick up Misty, too.
It did not help that Michael already had a criminal record also. At sixteen, he was accused of assaulting an eleven-year-old girl after offering her a ride home in his car. Michael ultimately denied ever picking up Misty, though, and forensic analysis revealed no links between Misty’s clothing and his car.
8 Years After She Disappeared, Misty Was Declared Legally Dead
After Michael was ruled out as a potential lead, Misty’s case remained cold for years. And by 2000, the Pierce County Medical Examiner officially declared Misty legally dead.
They provided Misty with a memorial service filled with both music and tears and supplied an age-progressed photo in hopes that community members might submit new tips. But nothing credible came in, and there was no further action in Misty’s case until 2009.
That year, a detective named Jason Visnaw decided to reopen Misty’s case and reexamined all of the evidence. He looked at old leads, requestioned old suspects, and searched for new clues. Diane was glad to see her daughter’s case reopened and given further attention, but her hope for answers continued to dwindle.
And to this day, no further information regarding what happened to Misty on the night of September 17, 1992, has ever been uncovered. Misty stood at about five foot eight and had blonde hair, green eyes, and a mole under her right eye. If you have any information regarding Misty’s disappearance or whereabouts, you are urged to contact Detective Don Bourbon at [email protected].
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