Murder of Rachael Runyan

Rachael Marie Runyan was born on June 23, 1979, in Weber County, Utah, the second child and only daughter of Jeff and Elaine Runyan.

She had an older brother, Justin, and a younger brother, Nathan.

The Runyan family had moved to Sunset from Tennessee just before Rachael's birth; her mother would later recall she and her husband had believed Sunset—then a community of 6,000 inhabitants —would be a "wonderful and safe place" to raise their children.

Rachael was a child beauty queen, having been crowned "Little Miss Sunset" the year before her murder.

She has been described by her mother as a well-behaved child who, often being too young to participate in playground games with Justin and other children, was content to simply sit aside and suck her thumb watching the other children play.

This habit had led to her mother occasionally teasing Rachael that she would become "bucktoothed" as an adult, to which Rachael would simply giggle.

Despite the sense of security Jeff and Elaine Runyan felt within the community of Sunset, both parents repeatedly warned their children of the dangers of trusting anybody they did not know who attempted to lure them from their home or any safe environment.

The family lived in a modest home adjacent to the Doxey Elementary School playground.

A park the three children were fond of in which they regularly played, Mitchell Park, was also near their home.

The murder of Rachael Runyan is an unsolved child murder which occurred in Sunset, Utah, on August 26, 1982, when a three-year-old girl was abducted from a playground and murdered by an unknown individual.

Her body was found three weeks later in a creek bed in nearby Morgan County.

In the summer of 1982, Jeff and Elaine Runyan installed a gate in their backyard fence, so the family could easily access this playground.

In the late morning of August 26, 1982, Rachael Runyan and her five-year-old brother Justin asked their mother if they and their younger brother Nathan, aged 18 months, could play in the playground of Doxey Elementary School.

Although Elaine Runyan had never allowed her children to play unsupervised anywhere outside the family home, because she was preparing lunch for her children when they made the request, and the school playground was just 15 ft from her home, well within sight of her kitchen window, she agreed to it.

Nonetheless, Runyan looked repeatedly out the kitchen window and conversed with her children as she prepared the meal.

When she called her children to lunch at approximately 12:55 p.m., only Nathan and Justin returned home.

Justin blurted out to her that Rachael had been taken from the park by force moments before by a young black man who had initially offered to buy her ice cream and bubble gum at a nearby supermarket.

According to Justin, the man had approached them as they played in the sandpit, attempting to lure the siblings into his car with an offer to purchase candy for the trio.

When they were close to the man's car, Rachael told him she liked bubble gum–flavored ice cream.

The man claimed to have this flavor of ice cream in his car.

Justin said when he warned Rachael not to accompany the man any further, she began to turn and walk away from him.

In response, he simply picked Rachael up and placed her over his shoulder before bundling her, screaming, into his car as Justin stood frozen in fear with Nathan standing by his side.

Elaine rushed to the supermarket the kidnapper had mentioned, repeatedly asking staff and shoppers: "Have you seen a little blond girl? A 3-year-old with a black man?"

Nobody she encountered had seen her child.

Approximately 20 minutes after her daughter's disappearance, Elaine reported Rachael's abduction to the Sunset Police Department.

Immediately upon learning of Rachael's abduction, the Sunset Police Department set up roadblocks in and around the city.

This tactic failed to help police apprehend the suspect or to recover Rachael.

In the hours following her abduction, a task force consisting of ten law enforcement investigators was formed to investigate the child's disappearance.

These investigators were recruited from several Utah counties and supervised by Sheriff Brant Johnston.

Both Justin Runyan, and a 10-year-old child who had also been approached by the man at the playground, described him to investigators as being a light-complexioned African-American, aged between 30 and 35 years old, 6 ft tall, with a medium build, an afro-style haircut and a handlebar mustache.

He drove an older model four-door dark-blue car with wood-grain stripes along the sides.

The man had been at Mitchell Park, talking to various children and drinking coffee for a minimum of 15 minutes before abducting Rachael.

Investigators also discovered this individual had played with the three Runyan children for several minutes before they had accompanied him partway to his vehicle.

Although eyewitness memory enabled police to obtain an accurate physical description of the child's abductor from which they were able to construct a detailed composite drawing, the only witnesses to Rachael's abduction had been the three children.

No CCTV had captured her abduction from the school grounds.

The abduction and murder of Rachael Runyan was a factor in the 1983 passage of the US Congressional Missing Children's Act, which mandated an allocation of additional resources for the investigation of ongoing missing children cases.

One of Utah's most notorious cold cases, Rachael's murder ultimately proved a catalyst to establish the "Rachael Alert" child abduction alert system, which remained in use in the state of Utah until 2003, when the state adopted the national Amber alert child abduction emergency alert system.

In 2017, the Rachael Runyan Missing and Exploited Children's Day was signed into legislation in Utah.

The purpose of the annual observance is to raise public awareness of missing and exploited children within the state; the annual awareness date is August 26, the date of Rachael's abduction.

Runyan's abduction and murder remain unsolved.