One Disappearance From Murder

Amy Bechtel, My cousin, Stacie went to high school with her husband, Steve Bechtel. Twenty-four-year-old Amy Wroe and Steve Bechtel were married in 1996. They were avid fitness enthusiasts; she loved running while he loved climbing. They moved to Lander, Wyoming, because its rugged terrain made it a perfect training ground for them. They had recently bought a home of their own and planned to move in sometime during late July 1997. Amy was a strong distance runner and had aspirations of qualifying for the 2000 Olympic Marathon Trials. At 9:30AM on July 24, Steve left to go rock climbing with a friend while Amy left to teach a fitness class. Steve's plan was to drive with his yellow lab, Jonz, to Dubois, 75 miles north, meet his friend Sam Lightner, and scout some possible new rock climbing routes. Amy had a long list of errands that day: call the phone company, get the gas turned on, and buy home insurance. She called at the Camera Connection photo store at 2.30 pm after teaching her class and then stopped by Gallery 331. Her conversation with the owner, Greg Wagner, was the last confirmed sighting of Amy before her disappearance. After leaving the photo shop, she drove to the area near Shoshone National Forest to map out the course of a 10K run she was organizing with the local gym. When Steve returned from his all-day rock climbing trip at 4:30pm, she was not home. He and Amy were not in the habit of leaving notes about their whereabouts, and anyway, Steve had returned earlier than he'd planned. No reason for alarm. At 8:15PM, he visited his neighbors, Todd and Amy Skinner, who were making dinner. She was still not home at that time, but he was not too concerned. At about 10 P.M., he called her parents to see if perhaps Amy had driven there on the spur of the moment. When they asked him if anything was wrong, Steve, who later said that he was starting to worry at this point, replied with a casual white lie: "No." However, at around 11PM, when the Skinners returned from a movie, he came to them and said that she still had not returned. By this time, Steve had called the Fremont County sheriff's office, which sent two deputies to the house, alerted the night shift, and began to organize a search-and-rescue team to head out at daybreak. Meanwhile, the neighbors, The Skinners drove along several roads where they believed Amy would have went jogging, known locally as the Loop Road, a 30-mile affair through the Shoshone National Forest. Steve stayed behind, hoping that she would call. At around 1AM, after driving on Loop Road for about an hour, the Skinners found her white Toyota station wagon. They searched the area, but found no trace of her. There was no sign of struggle inside or beside her car. By morning, the search expanded dramatically. The search began with just Steve and two dozen of his friends, but later that day there were ATVs, dogs, dirt bikes, and over 100 volunteers looking for any sign of her. Getting lost or injured near Lander is like having your house catch fire next to the fire station. Scores of rescuers—fit and mountain-wise—live within rifle shot of city hall, and Amy's disappearance prompted an all-out response. She should have been found. The next day horses and helicopters joined in, and by the third day, the search area had been expanded to a 30-mile radius. Eventually, more than 500 people covered a twenty-mile radius. Only one clue was found: a footprint similar to her sneaker was found on Loop Road, but it was lost before police could retrieve it. But it took until a week after Amy’s car was found for the area around it to be declared a crime scene. Investigators at first thought Amy had fallen and been injured in the forest, been run over on the road or been attacked by a bear or mountain lion. Investigators found that Amy's sunglasses, to-do list, and car keys were on the seat of her car; only her wallet was missing. It was believed that foul play was involved in her disappearance. After eight days, the massive search was called off. Soon, Steve was investigated as a suspect in the case. He was questioned extensively, but he denied any involvement. Their home was searched; several suspicious journals were found, belonging to him. They included song lyrics and writings about power, death, and killing. Steve said those writings had nothing to do with Amy at all; he had written them when he was in high school, long before he met Amy in college. Questions remained whether Steve had an opportunity during the day to get to Shoshone and carry out the crime, despite the distance from Dubois. The cops pull a ruse they often use to elicit confessions. They tell Steve they have evidence that ties him directly to her disappearance. Steve was floored and felt like they were trying to pin something on him that he would never do. So he asked for a lawyer. Steve’s lawyer says he tells all his clients to never take lie detector tests. They’re inaccurate and can’t be used in court and they come in at about 1/3 of the time as a false positive. He felt like if Steve fell into that 1/3, he’d get blamed for it and they wouldn’t look for who really took Amy. Amy's brother, Nel, remembered that she had a suspicious bruise on her arm a few weeks before her disappearance. She said that Steve would get a little "rough" sometimes. She did not act as if it was serious. However, Nel believed that he was abusive. Nels, was especially angry at Steve’s reluctance to take the polygraph test and cooperate fully with investigators. When Amy’s sisters, appeared on The Geraldo Rivera Show on February 3, 1998, the host made a plea for Steve to be more cooperative with authorities. Authorities visited the Bechtel's old house with a search warrant to conduct Luminol searches with the FBI and brought in cadaver dogs. They found nothing. A tip that Steve had buried Amy below the driveway of their would-be new home at 965 McDougal Drive before the concrete had set also came to nothing. In late August 1997, the FBI requested satellite photos from NASA of the area on the day of Bechtel's disappearance, but the satellite images provided no information. In January 1998, satellite images taken by the Russian space station Mir were also obtained by the FBI, but they also revealed nothing of value as cloud cover had obscured the area of interest. A tip came from a man named Richard Eaton, who told the Sheriff that his brother, Dale Wayne Eaton, may have been involved. But the investigators ignored the information as they were focused on Steve Bechtel at the time. By not pursuing the lead, they may have allowed the notorious Great Basin Serial Killer to get away as on July 30, 1998, nearly a year after Amy’s disappearance Dale Eaton was finally arrested for another murder. Richard Eaton knew that Dale had been camping in the Burnt Gulch area at the time of Amy’s disappearance, and coincidentally this was a favorite hunting and fishing spot of the Eaton brothers. A $100,000 reward out for information leading to a resolution of Amy’s case, meant that investigators were suspicious of Richard’s motives. In June 2003, a watch believed to be Amy's was found in the middle fork of the Popo Agie (Puh – Po Shuh) River. Some bones were found near it, but were later found to be from an animal. Police have not been able to determine if the watch was indeed hers. She was legally declared dead in 2004. However, she has never been located. In 2010, a Detective travelled with an FBI agent to Colorado to try to interview Eaton but he refused to speak with them and with the threat of the death penalty no longer hanging over him the investigators had little leverage. Dale eaton is most likey the Great Basin Serial Killer the serial killer whom they think was responsible for the murders of at least nine women in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada between 1983 and 1997. The Bechtel case is much like that involving Riverton's Kathleen Pehringer, who disappeared in a similar manner in April 1989 and remains missing.