Six Years Lost: The Astonishing Survival — and Second Disappearance — of Jasmine Kensington

APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS, W.Va. — When 32-year-old architect and avid hiker Jasmine Kensington set out alone into the Appalachian wilderness in September 2017, her brother, Andrew, expected her back in a matter of days. She never returned.

Her car was found neatly parked at a remote trailhead. Two weeks of coordinated search-and-rescue operations yielded nothing — no tracks, no gear, no trace. For six years, the case sat cold, sustained only by a photograph of a smiling Kensington in a bright blue jacket, taken days before she vanished.

Then, in the fall of 2023, a team of amateur geological explorers stumbled across an anomaly — and with it, a discovery that has upended every theory about what happened to her.

The 2017 Disappearance

Kensington’s September trek had been planned with a friend, but when he fell ill at the last minute, she went alone. An experienced outdoorswoman, she told her brother she would stick to her route.

By the evening of Sept. 18, 2017, with no check-in call or text, Andrew reported her missing. A large-scale search began the next morning.

Crews scoured more than 100 square miles over 14 days, aided by helicopters, tracking dogs, and dozens of volunteers. One apparent lead — a scrap of turquoise fabric — proved unrelated.

With worsening weather and no new clues, the official search was suspended. Kensington’s disappearance joined a long list of Appalachian cold cases.

A Cold Case Revives

In 2019, a separate homicide investigation — the murder of a solo female hiker hundreds of miles south — briefly put the Kensington file back on investigators’ desks. Parallels between the two cases raised the specter of foul play, but no concrete link was found.

The case went dormant again, its classification quietly shifted to “suspected foul play.”

The 2023 Cave Discovery

On Oct. 7, 2023, members of the Appalachian Geological Survey Group were mapping electromagnetic anomalies in a remote, seldom-trodden section of forest when their EMF meter began picking up an unusually strong, localized signal.

Clearing debris, they found a narrow vertical fissure in the mountainside. At chest height inside the opening, wedged between two rocks, was a weathered two-way radio.

Looking down into the fissure with headlamps, they spotted camping gear — a blue sleeping bag and beige frame pack — 60 feet below. They called 911.

A cave rescue team rappelled into the pit, recovering the gear. The backpack bore a distinctive patch Andrew Kensington immediately recognized as his sister’s.

The Radio That Changed Everything

Forensic testing on the radio produced the most shocking finding: The lithium batteries inside were not six years old.

A state police electronics specialist concluded the device had been actively powered on within the past 18 months — most likely placed in the crevice in spring or summer 2022.

“This completely rewrote the timeline,” said Detective Wallace of the regional cold case unit. “It meant Jasmine — or someone with her equipment — was alive far longer than we ever imagined.”

A Cave Built for Survival

Mapping of the fissure revealed it connected to a sprawling cave system with a second, walk-in entrance half a mile away.

A meticulous forensic sweep of the caverns uncovered a makeshift fire pit, animal bones, and sharpened sticks — clear evidence of repeated hunting and cooking.

Investigators now believe Kensington may have fallen into the fissure in 2017, survived thanks to her pack cushioning the drop, and eventually discovered the walk-out entrance.

“She may have lived in and out of that cave for years,” Wallace said. “The evidence points to a sustained survival effort — hunting, making fire, creating tools.”

The Unanswered Question

If Kensington had found the walk-out entrance, why didn’t she retrieve her radio or make contact?

The working theory: her flashlight batteries died before she could navigate back to the fissure. Without light, returning through the dark labyrinth to the device would have been too dangerous.

That leaves a chilling final unknown — what happened after she walked out?

Proof of Life

In February 2024, hunter and landowner George Petri retrieved memory cards from remote trail cameras on his property, about 20 miles from the cave’s exit.

One infrared clip, timestamped Aug. 14, 2022, showed a gaunt, long-haired woman in tattered clothes walking an overgrown logging path. She glanced toward the camera; her facial features matched Kensington’s.

The path leads to a state highway five miles away. Authorities believe she was heading toward civilization. No sightings were reported.

Theories and Dead Ends

Investigators have ruled out voluntary disappearance as unlikely. “She had every reason to contact her brother if she could,” Wallace said.

The prevailing fear: that after surviving six years in the wilderness, she encountered a human predator in the final miles to safety — echoing the unsolved 2019 hiker murder.

Multiple canvasses of the area, including truck stops and businesses along the highway, produced no leads. The trail camera footage remains the last confirmed evidence of her existence.

A Mystery Without Closure

For Andrew Kensington, the discoveries bring as much anguish as hope. “Knowing she survived all that, only to vanish again…it’s unbearable,” he said.

Authorities continue to treat the case as an active investigation, appealing for tips from anyone who may have been on that stretch of highway in August 2022.

The fissure has been sealed to preserve evidence; the walk-out entrance remains under periodic surveillance.

A Final Silence

The Appalachian wilderness, long blamed for claiming Jasmine Kensington, may not be where her story ended.

Her journey — from a 2017 fall, to years of survival in darkness, to a final image on a night-vision camera — now stands as one of the most extraordinary and unsettling missing-persons cases in recent history.

Somewhere between the cave and the road, the trail goes cold. And in that last, uncharted gap, the mountains are silent again.