Missing Southington woman’s family returned to Japan 16 years later in quest for answers

SOUTHINGTON— The family of Skye Budnick, a Southington woman who went missing 17 years ago during a trip to Japan, visited the country to provide DNA that might have led to discovering what happened to their loved one.

But while no DNA match was made with anyone in a database of unidentified bodies, Budnick's mother did make a discovery when she was informed by police.

“I realized something that I didn't realize before: I didn't want to know,” Susan Budnick said. “I guess hope is a horrible thing to have to deal with, but to give up on it totally. I know (Budnick's sister) Megan wanted some peace. I thought I wanted peace too, but to actually want someone to tell me my daughter's dead. No, I didn't want that.”

Megan Lebron was encouraged to start a GoFundMe by her TikTok supporters to travel back to Japan and hopefully return with some answers. She created the GoFundMe in February 2024, and they were able to raise $16,417.

Lebron and Susan Budnick both said the first trip was a huge undertaking, and that they were grateful and amazed by the amount of support they had received. 

The mother-daughter-duo's June trip to Japan lasted 10 days. 

“Everything happened really quickly,” Lebron said. “Initially the detective had gotten, I think, the go ahead from Interpol and the Japanese government and they were like, ‘can you fly out in two weeks?’ But then they changed it, and gave us a little bit more time.”

Lebron, her husband and their child were in the process of moving back to Connecticut during this time, but her and her mother took flight just two weeks after getting back. They were accompanied by a Southington detective, along with a U.S. Marshal. They were given a brief run down on what would take place and had a meeting with the Japanese National Police, who were headquartered in Hokkaido. 

“When we first met with the U.S. Marshal in Hokkaido, (an investigator) had like a binder of all the research that their investigative analyst had done on anything pertaining to Skye and any Internet activity. But it had been a long time. So, I think it was like 2010 there was a fundamental shift in how the Internet stored its data and since Skye went missing in 2008 there wasn't much that they had found and whatever they did find there was no hits,” Lebron said.

Budnick, who was a 21-year-old junior at Central Connecticut State University at the time, booked a one-way ticket to Japan and was last seen on American soil on March 31, 2008.   

During their most-recent visit, Lebron and Susan Budnick took a two-hour train ride to Noboribetsu, Budnick’s last known location before she was deemed missing on April 7, 2008. They looked around the area and stopped by the inn where she last stayed at, but all that brought about was more questions, her mother said. It was up in the mountains in the middle of the wilderness with a bamboo forest, and the inn was full of cats. To them it didn't seem like a place you would take a vacation. But if it was just a pit stop for Budnick they don't feel like she made it to her next destination.

“One of the one things myself and Meg were adamant about was there was no way Skye could not be found because she just stuck out in our mind at the time,” Susan Budnick said. "When we went back, it was like a different place. We literally walked around, and were sitting in a park people watching, and Meg looks at me and says, 'yeah, she could disappear in here.' I don't know what we saw back then, but it just was a different time, different place, different circumstances."

Lebron and Susan Budnick submitted their DNA swabs, and a DNA swab that was collected from Budnick’s father by the U.S. Marshal prior to the trip was submitted, as well. 

“The DNA was going to be cross referenced with their Jane Doe database,” Lebron said. "During that time frame when Skye went missing it had a number of unsolved cases and unidentified bodies on file, so the town of Noboribetsu had agreed. And that was really the whole point is to see if Skye was there."

At the end of September, the family received the results. There were no hits. 

Lebron said she was hoping for some finality.

“I wanted kind of a reason to stop looking,” she added. “It takes so long to, I think, find balance. And I think if you get answers even within like, five years or so, it would feel different, but this has become what we live with. And so, it's like, you already made peace with it.”