May 23, 2025
SINGAPORE – More than two years after she was last seen leaving a Nara guesthouse in Japan for a hiking trail, Ms Patricia Wu-Murad, the wife of a former Singapore women’s basketball coach, has been confirmed dead by her family.
Her husband Kirk Murad said the family received confirmation of her death on May 9.
Pattie, as the Taiwanese-American woman was known to those close to her, was reported missing on April 10, 2023, after failing to show up at another inn where she had a reservation.
She had planned to stay there after completing a hike of about seven to eight hours along the ancient Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route in Japan’s southern Kansai region.
A search for the 60-year-old retiree involved dozens of search and rescue professionals from the US and Japan, local police, embassy officials and a personal intervention from US Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, urging 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.
In September 2024, a local fisherman found Ms Wu-Murad’s backpack and a hiking shoe in a stream near another hiking trail.
In April 2025, a rescuer hired by the family discovered several of her personal items and what appeared to be a femur, or thigh bone, in the same area where the backpack was found.
Ms Wu-Murad’s backpack was found by a person fishing in Totsukawa village near a stream in September 2024, around 18 months after she went missing. PHOTO: HELP FIND PATTIE/FACEBOOK/THE STRAITS TIMES
A comparison of the remains with their daughter’s DNA proved a match, Mr Murad said.
“(The discovery) offers a measure of closure, but many questions remain unanswered, including the exact circumstances and cause of Pattie’s death,” Mr Murad, who led the Singapore basketball team at the 2017 SEA Games and was also a visiting lecturer at Ngee Ann Polytechnic from 2000 to 2003, wrote on Facebook.
“We finally have time to grieve because we never really grieved her passing,” he said. “It was just… always hoping on that 0.1 per cent chance that she might still be alive.”
Now based in the US, he thanked search and rescue (SAR) team members who refused payment beyond their expenses.
Initial search operations for Ms Wu-Murad in 2023 were conducted by their daughter, Ms Murphy Murad. The family raised more than US$200,000 (S$260,000) for the search.
Based in Singapore, Ms Murad had been the family member living closest to Japan. After the latest remains of her mother were found, she returned to the Kansai region to tie up loose ends with 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.”
Ms Murad is the 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.