Connection: Shared Loss

Western tourists, including a psychologist from Spokane, have also disappeared in Kashmir because of the civil unrest, leaving families wondering about their fate.

Suspected Muslim separatists kidnapped Donald Hutchings in 1995 while he was vacationing with his wife, Jane Schelly.

When the ransom demands for Hutchings and four other kidnapped tourists weren’t met, the rebels broke off contact. One hostage was beheaded, but traces of the others have never been found.

Schelly, an elementary school physical education teacher, returned to Kashmir for four years looking for clues of the hostages’ fate. Recently she said she can accept the fact that they were probably killed, and their bodies may never be found.

Without proof, however, Hutchings can’t be declared legally dead until he has been missing seven years.