Chet Bitterman

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Chet Bitterman was an American linguist and missionary who was kidnapped and killed by revolutionaries of the 19th of April Movement (M-19) in Colombia in 1981.

Originally from Pennsylvania, Bitterman attended Columbia Bible College in South Carolina, where he first heard of the Christian mission organization Wycliffe Bible Translators. After graduation, he received linguistics training from the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in North Dakota, and married Brenda Gardner, a fellow alumna of SIL's training program. Together, they traveled to Colombia to begin mission work with Wycliffe in 1979.

As an inexperienced missionary, Bitterman was not immediately assigned to a tribal group where he could begin to translate the Bible into a new language as many Wycliffe missionaries do. Instead, he worked primarily at Wycliffe's base in Lomalinda, first working in the radio tower and later serving as security coordinator. Their time at Lomalinda was broken up by a six-month service trip in Bogotá where Bitterman and his wife assisted a more experienced translator couple. However, by 1981, plans began to fall into place for Bitterman and his wife to attempt to reach the Carijona tribe in the Colombian jungle.

But at 6:30 a.m. on January 19, 1981, seven M-19 guerrillas entered the Bitterman's home. Not finding the director of SIL, they kidnapped Bitterman instead. Several days later, the guerillas demanded that Wycliffe leave the country. Finally, 48 days after his abduction, on March 7, 1981, Bitterman's body was found in a bus near Bogotá, having been shot in the chest.