Missing for two years, wife of former Singapore basketball coach confirmed dead in Japan

The Star

22-05-2025

Patricia Wu-Murad was confirmed dead on May 9, more than two years after she went missing during a solo hike in Japan. - HELP FIND PATTIE/FACEBOOK
SINGAPORE: After more than two years since she was last seen leaving a Nara guesthouse for a hiking trail in Japan, Patricia Wu-Murad, wife of a former Singapore women's basketball coach, has been confirmed dead by her family.
Her family received confirmation of her death on May 9, said her husband Kirk Murad.
Pattie, as the Taiwanese-American woman was known to those close to her, was reported missing on April 10, 2023 after not showing up at another inn she had reserved. She had planned to stay there after her estimated seven- to eight-hour hike along the ancient Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route in Japan's southern Kansai region.
A search for the 60-year-old retiree had involved dozens of search and rescue professionals from the US and Japan, local police, embassy officials and a personal intervention from US Senator for Connecticut Richard Blumenthal for local authorities to restart the search after initial efforts proved futile.
Over the past two years, there were a couple of incremental discoveries, one of which led to a conclusive finding.
Wu-Murad's backpack and a hiking shoe were found by a local fisherman in a stream near another hiking trail in September 2024.
In April 2025, a rescuer hired by the family found several of her personal items and what appeared to be a femur, or thigh bone, in the area where the backpack was found.
Checks compared the remains to their daughter's DNA and proved a match, said Murad.
'(The discovery) offers a measure of closure, but many questions remain unanswered, including the exact circumstances and cause of Pattie's death,' wrote Murad, who had led the Singapore basketball team at the 2017 SEA Games and was also a visiting lecturer at Ngee Ann Polytechnic from 2000 to 2003, on Facebook.
'We finally have time to grieve because we never really grieved her passing,' he said.
'It was just... always hoping that 0.1 per cent chance that she might still be alive.'
Now based in the United States, he thanked search and rescue team members who did not accept payment beyond their expenses.
Initial search operations for Wu-Murad in 2023 were conducted by their daughter Murphy Murad. The family raised more than US$200,000 for the search.
Based in Singapore, Murphy had been the family member living closest to Japan. After the latest of her mother's remains were found, she also returned to the Kansai region to tie up loose ends with the local authorities and rescuers.
'Returning to Japan was equally nostalgic and heartbreaking,' she wrote on Facebook.
'Having the American SAR expert guide me through the terrain in which my mother's remains were found was empowering and helped paint a better picture of where it all went wrong.'
Murphy is general manager of Fastbreak Basketball Club, which conducts private training programmes in Singapore. She has also won the Women's National Basketball League playing for Siglap Basketball Club. - The Straits Times/ANN