Nearly a year and a half after Hailey E. Athay was last seen by her family, her fate has been confirmed — not by investigators, but by two young men who happened to walk into the right stretch of Washington state forest on a Sunday afternoon.
The Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday that skeletal remains discovered over the weekend in a wooded area of Rose Valley have been positively identified as those of Athay, a 33-year-old woman from Cowlitz County who was last seen in Kelso, Washington in November 2024.
The discovery was made on Sunday when two hikers came across skeletal remains and clothing in the woods near Rose Valley. They contacted authorities, and a photograph of the bones was sent to a forensic anthropologist for preliminary assessment. The expert confirmed they were human.
The following day — Monday — the Cowlitz County Coroner’s Office coordinated with the sheriff’s office and multiple search and rescue teams to conduct a systematic search of the surrounding area. One of the two men who had originally found the bones returned to lead the search party back to the location.
What they recovered was significant: nearly complete skeletal remains, along with multiple items of clothing and personal belongings — a collection of evidence substantial enough to anchor a formal identification effort.
Why That Location Mattered
The spot where the remains were found was not random in the context of the investigation.
According to the Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Office, the location fell within the boundaries of an area that a detective had already flagged through investigation and interviews as a place of specific interest in connection with Athay’s disappearance. Prior searches had been conducted in nearby areas — but no evidence had been recovered until the hikers made their find on Sunday.
The fact that the remains were ultimately located within that identified zone of interest suggests the investigation had been tracking in the right direction, even as earlier searches came up empty.
Hailey Athay was last seen by her family in Kelso, Washington in November 2024. Notably, she was not reported missing until January 2025 — a gap of approximately two months between her disappearance and the formal report.
A friend told local affiliate FOX 13 Seattle that before she vanished, Athay had gone mushroom picking with a man. That detail has been part of the investigation’s backdrop, though authorities have not publicly named any suspect or person of interest in connection with her death.
Identification and What Comes Next
The positive identification was made on Tuesday, when a forensic odontologist examined the recovered skull and compared its dental characteristics against Athay’s dental records. The match was confirmed.
The manner and cause of her death have not been determined. Both remain under active investigation, pending a full analysis by a forensic anthropologist who will examine the skeletal remains for evidence of what happened to Athay in the months between her disappearance and the discovery of her remains.
That analysis — and whatever it ultimately reveals — will be central to determining how investigators and prosecutors proceed.
For Hailey Athay’s family, the discovery in Rose Valley brings a resolution of the most painful kind — the end of uncertainty, replaced by confirmed grief. For the Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Office, the identification of her remains opens the next phase of an investigation that now must answer the question her disappearance has always carried: what happened to a 33-year-old woman in the woods of Washington state, and how did she come to be there. Those answers are still to come. The search for her, at least, is over.