The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts. All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages. Listener discretion is advised. I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski. And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski. And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases. Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm your host, Ali, and it will just be me coming to you this week. My darling husband, Eli, is a little bit under the weather, so he's taking the week off to rest and sleep. So I am very thankful for that. And I still wanted to bring you a new episode of the podcast. I wanted to take a moment just here at the top to say thank you again to everyone who has rated and reviewed us. But I wanted to get into this week's episode. We are on episode 104, and it is a missing person case.
So just as a bit of a content warning at the top, this case does involve a young person, and there is a brief mention of death by suicide. Today we are talking about the missing person case of Stephanie Crane. And this takes place on October 11, 1993, in Challis, Idaho. But first, a little bit about Stephanie. Stephanie is nine years old in October of 1993. She had just celebrated her birthday a few weeks before. Stephanie lives in the small mountain town of Challis, Idaho.
She lives there with her sisters and both parents, and Stephanie's family has lived in Challis for generations. Stephanie was a rough and tumble kind of kid. She loved to explore the rugged terrain around her community, and she was often her dad's shadow during hunting season. Her dad, Ben, says, quote, she was very much tomboy, very outdoorsy, end quote. She was energetic and outgoing, full of life. She loved playing in the dirt and outside and with trucks, and could get along with anybody.
She was very popular at school because of her outgoing and funny personality. And now, a timeline of events. On Monday, October 11, 1993, Stephanie attends school and everything is reported as normal during the day. Stephanie is wearing maroon sweatpants and a maroon and white sweatshirt with the words GIMME written boldly across the front in white, and maroon and white striped tennis shoes. After school, she was part of a bowling league, so she headed to Challis Lanes to play.
The bowling alley was very close to her house, only about a quarter of a mile away. Reports say that she could see her house from the bowling alley. A bowling alley worker said this about Stephanie, quote, she's a good kid. I saw her five minutes before she left. I put away her shoes, end quote. Jean Morph, a family friend, saw Stephanie at the bowling alley and offers her a ride home. Jean declines the offer and says she'll walk. It's only a few minutes away.
A few minutes later, and this would be around 4.45 p.m., after bowling has wrapped up, a friend of Stephanie's and that friend's mom also sees Stephanie in the bowling alley parking lot. But this time, she is headed back towards the school and not towards her home. When the friend and mom stop to ask Stephanie where she's going, Stephanie says that she forgot her backpack at the soccer field and was going to grab it and then head home.
As the minutes tick by and it gets later and later, Stephanie is usually home by now. At around 5.30, her mom Sandy begins to wonder where she is. Sandy calls her mother-in-law, Stephanie's grandmother, and asks if she's over there and she's not. Then Stephanie's mom, Sandy, calls the bowling alley to see if Stephanie's still there. The owner of the bowling alley, Peggy, says that she's not there and that she left some time ago.
From here, Sandy and Ben start calling around and looking for Stephanie. They're calling her friends, her grandmother is driving around looking for her. When no one has seen or heard from her since the bowling alley, they go to the sheriff's office at around 8.16 to report her missing. Everyone that knows Stephanie knows that she wouldn't be outside in the dark. She was deeply scared of the dark, even sleeping with the lights on.
Before we get too much into the rest of the timeline, I just want to point out a couple of things about this section of time that kind of contradict each other. The FBI poster for Stephanie's case mentions that Stephanie's mother, Sandy, was actually the last person to see her. There are also reports that Stephanie's mother went to the bowling alley that afternoon to pay for the game and give her a dollar to buy snacks before leaving.
Some additional reports say that Stephanie was seen around 6 p.m. at the school. So jumping back into the timeline, when police are notified that Stephanie is missing, they and Stephanie's family and friends begin searching for her. To get home from the bowling alley, Stephanie would have needed to cross Garden Creek, so this is where the search starts. When police are searching the creek, they don't see anything, however it's dark and they're nervous that they could miss something.
Police continue to search and call friends, and family and police hope that Stephanie is simply at a slumber party and that she'll arrive at school the next morning. At around midnight, police call the search off for the evening and everyone waits to see if Stephanie will show up to school in the morning. The next day, Tuesday, October 12, when Stephanie doesn't show up at school, police start searching again full tilt. Hundreds of people show up to help search.
Worcester County Sheriff's Spokesperson says, quote, we're a small town and the community has turned out in full force. A lot of people have closed their businesses and are out looking, end quote. Police call in a search and rescue team, tracking dogs and horseback riders help cover rougher terrain. Police also launch an aerial search to cover more ground in the search for Stephanie. Again the first place police focus is on Garden Creek.
They focus here as they worry that she drowned and was swept into the Salmon River. They don't find any sign of her in the creek and a member of the fire department who was helping search says, quote, my personal opinion is that Garden Creek isn't deep enough or strong enough, end quote. As police find no sign of Stephanie at the creek or anywhere else around town, they start to worry that this is an abduction.
Her parents Ben and Sandy make a plea on local news saying, quote, please don't hurt her, please bring her home, end quote. On Wednesday, October 13th, so Stephanie has been missing since Monday, police announced that the FBI will join the search as they consider more and more heavily that she was abducted. Police also announced that they're looking for a yellow truck with red pinstripes.
Police say that the car was seen in the area around the time that Stephanie disappeared and since it was such a small community, they knew that this car didn't belong to anybody in town. However, this time of year, there's a lot of traffic in Challis due to the hunting season. So people come from all over and drive through Challis to do deer and elk hunting. The community is outraged that Stephanie could be a victim of a stranger abduction.
Nothing like this has ever happened in the small town before. A community member says, quote, people here consider this utopia. Things like this don't happen in Challis. If something happens to one of your kids, you usually know before they get home. That's why we're so outraged, end quote. Another searcher quipped, quote, somebody wasn't looking out the window at the right time, end quote. Older students are excused from classes to help aid in the search.
These businesses either close down or work on a skeleton crew so that way more people can be out searching. The hunters that were in the area cancel their plans and descend on Challis and offer their help to cover the more rugged terrain. So many high schoolers volunteer to babysit kids so parents can search that at one point they have more babysitters than kids. The next day, Thursday, October 14th, the search continues throughout the day.
But as the hours tick by and there aren't any signs of Stephanie, police start telling people to go home and they start winding down the search efforts. The search team is cut down to 20 people. Fire chief Doyle Lamb says, quote, we're not giving up. We're just scaling back. If something comes to you, even in a dream, let us know. We're grasping at straws now, end quote. The search had covered thousands of square miles between land and air searches.
The family is shocked by the lack of progress the search made. They refuse to talk to media as they deal with their anger and grief. They really thought that she would be home by now. On Friday, October 15th, Stephanie has been missing since Monday, Custer County Sheriff Al Finley makes a plea to the public during a news conference. He asked that anyone who was in central Idaho mountain area on Monday to call him if they saw anything unusual.
The sheriff is hopeful that with deer and elk season going on, more people were in the area and may have noticed something. He says to call no matter how small, quote, let us check it out. Anyone who is in the area Monday, give us a call, end quote. The smaller group of searchers are still looking in remote areas and double checking other spots to make sure nothing was missed. And that Friday evening is the homecoming game and dance for the high school.
The high schoolers paint everything in purple, Stephanie's favorite color. They paint banners that say bring Stephanie home and the football team dedicate their game to her. All of the high school football players have a purple S on their helmets. And over the past week, the community was able to raise $25,000 for reward fund, which is quickly doubled to $50,000 by an anonymous donor. Over the weekend in the next few days, family and friends cover Idaho in missing persons flyers.
They leave stacks at truck stops asking truckers to take them out of state and they do. They get pizza places to tape her missing person poster on the pizza boxes. Family and friends start focusing on getting the flyers all across the United States. A volunteer says, quote, this is a huge country and the rest of the country doesn't know who she is, end quote. On Saturday, October 23rd, Stephanie has been missing for 12 days.
Police have created a sketch of a person of interest who was at the bowling alley when Stephanie was there and her other friends who were playing in the league. According to Stephanie's friends, this man had been watching them pretty intently from inside the bowling alley. And as no one had recognized him, they assumed that he was not from Challis. A few days later, police start mentioning here that Stephanie was last seen by the school.
So this would have been in the opposite direction of her home as I previously mentioned. Police also say that they're still looking for the yellow truck and that the truck had been parked at the school the day that Stephanie went missing. The next day, October 29th, Stephanie has been missing for 18 days now. Police announced that they are looking for Stephanie's great uncle. He's wanted for a probation violation. He had been serving probation for a DUI and the violation was from 1989.
Police want him for the violation and also to question him about the disappearance of Stephanie. Police also mention that her great uncle had a yellow truck as well. It takes a few weeks, but police are finally able to track him down in Colorado. Police ultimately are able to eliminate him as a suspect as he had a strong alibi. By the end of October, there seems to be a shift in the community. They close their doors to the media.
Police call the media a pain in their ass and no one wants to go on record to talk about anything anymore. In February of 1994, it's approaching four months since Stephanie vanished and her mom goes on Jerry Springer with other mothers of missing children to raise awareness about them. This is before Jerry Springer kind of turns into what we think of Jerry Springer. It was a more tame talk show in the beginning.
Police at this point don't have any new leads in the case and hope that the national attention from the Jerry Springer show helps bring in more leads. They do conduct a search of a cistern in town that had been abandoned for years. They want to make sure that she hadn't fallen in there or her body placed in there. Police say that they didn't have any specific tip leading them to this cistern, but they want to check every avenue and make sure that they are looking at everything for Stephanie.
On Tuesday, September 27th, 1994, the town gets together to celebrate what should have been Stephanie's 10th birthday. It's just a few weeks before the one year anniversary of her disappearance and Stephanie's family is trying to manage. Stephanie's mom Sandy says, quote, We take it one day at a time. That's all we can take right now. I have a feeling she is alive. She is alive until I find out different, end quote. The case goes cold over the next year and by the end of 1995.
So it's been over two years now since Stephanie disappeared and her parents have gotten a divorce. Ben tells the media that the stress of Stephanie's disappearance was a driving force, but there were other things too. Ben says that the police continue to question Sandy again and again. He says, quote, I still wonder about that. It pretty much bothers me that they want to look at her again, end quote.
Sandy has been asked to undergo a polygraph test, but she maintains that she has no idea what happened to her daughter. Sandy says, quote, They have just about accused me of killing my own daughter. I can't see any mother doing it. I just can't believe that a mother can kill her own kids, end quote. Ben admits that he has no other reason to suspect his ex wife, except that the police kept wanting to talk to her.
Sandy will pass away just a few years later in 1997, four years after the disappearance of her daughter and without having any answers. In December of 1999, so it's been over six years now, police secure an underwater camera to search an old silver mine shaft. They had gotten a tip that the girl's body could be found there. However, nothing is recovered from the shaft. As we enter the 2000s, two suspects come to light to the police.
So in 2000, it's been about seven years since Stephanie disappeared, and a man comes to police attention. He was a convicted sex offender and drifted between Idaho and Oregon. A woman who rented a room from the man is told by neighbors that they could hear screaming and a girl crying in the man's basement. The man wouldn't let anyone go into the basement at all.
Eventually, police will get a warrant to search the basement and they'll recover several items, but it's all inconclusive and it can't be directly tied back to Stephanie. Police will also interview the man and he'll undergo a polygraph test about Stephanie's disappearance, which he fails according to police. Police will interview him again years later in 2018, but they are very tight lipped about who this man is.
They never publicly name him and they never give any details about the interviews, citing that it's an ongoing investigation. So I think that this person is a big suspect to police. And then in 2002, so at that point, it had been nine years since Stephanie vanished, police announced that they have a strong lead in the case. A man named Keith Glenn Hescock, but he also went by Mark, may be involved in Stephanie's disappearance.
Police are able to confirm that Hescock was in the Challis area on October 11th of 1993 hunting and during this time, he also owned a yellow pickup truck. The way he comes to police attention is in 2002, he abducted another young girl when she and her sister were outside sleeping on a trampoline. He had handcuffed the young girl and left for work.
While he was away at work, the young girl grabs a fire extinguisher and bashes on these handcuffs until they release and she's able to escape and call police. When Hescock comes back to his house, police are waiting for him and they engage in a chase. At the end of the chase, Hescock ends up taking his own life. So police are never able to question him directly about Stephanie's disappearance.
Police do obtain a search warrant for his home and take truckloads of evidence hoping to be able to tie him to other unsolved crimes. The girl who had escaped, she said that Hescock had told her that he had done this before and he had killed the girl. However, police are never able to tie him to Stephanie directly, but they say he is still considered a suspect in the case. This is where the case stands as of 2024.
Stephanie's case pops up in the media again and again over the years, but really there's no new information or details released about the case. She's also featured in a 2018 episode of ID Investigates Disappeared, but again, no new details really emerge from this show. So if you know anything about the disappearance of Stephanie Crane in October of 1993 or her whereabouts today, please call the Custer County Sheriff Department at 208-879-2232. So that is the case of Stephanie Crane.
This is a case that might be a little bit more well known to some of our listeners, but for me, this was a case that I hadn't really ever heard about or looked into myself. So when I came across Stephanie's case, it was something that I really wanted to look into. Some of my first reactions of this is how scary this case really is, like her being seen in this parking lot after bowling by several people and then minutes later just kind of vanishes.
Whenever there's those really tight timelines, it's always really scary to me. It's just a reminder of how quickly these things can happen and really how in an instant so many lives can change and be impacted. It's always just a scary reminder of that. But I was also quite moved at how the community came out for Stephanie, hearing that these businesses closed and everyone was there to search or help support in the effort.
There's so many news stories about food being dropped off, volunteers with the babysitters, having more babysitters than kids to watch. Everyone really, it was all hands on deck for this community. Everyone jumped in and everyone kind of had a role to play to try to support Stephanie and her family and the police in trying to get some answers. One of the first things that I wanted to do just to kind of understand the area is I looked up Challice on Google Maps and it is a very small town.
Like a lot of the residential roads are still dirt roads. And whenever I looked at Garden Creek, this creek that she had to cross in order to get home from the bowling alley, it is a very small creek. I know sometimes the word creek, it can kind of mean like a little bit of a strong body of water. There's a lot of variations of what it is, but this is really just like a small creek.
I don't know how to explain it other than that, but when that fire department worker who was quoted was saying like in his opinion, it wasn't deep enough or strong enough, I would think that this is pretty accurate. I know that you can drown in a very little amount of water, but if something like that had happened, if she slipped, fell, hit her head and tragically drowned, I do not think that the creek would have been strong enough to push her body out to the river.
There just wasn't that much flow happening there. So the fact that no sign was found of her in the creek, and I know they also searched the Salmon River as well, it makes, it really does lean more towards the abduction, just the way that she vanished without a trace completely.
Some of the questions that I have in this case, if I could sit down, read the case file and ask investigators anything I wanted, I would really want to drill down into that timeline between the bowling alley and her parents starting to call and notice that she's missing. So really like between 4pm and 530. It does seem like she was at the bowling alley till about 430, 445 right in there. But then from there, there's a lot of questions. So I would just want to really clear that up for myself.
Like did her mom come before the start of all the games to pay for her bowling and shoes and give her money for a snack? Because the FBI does say that her mother was the last person to see her, but by these other accounts that people say, her friend remembers talking to her as she was walking towards the school, like she was waiting to cross the street to go towards the school. So to me, it seems like that might have been one of the last people to see her outside of the abductor.
So I would just really want to clear up like that timeline between 4 and 530. Just really understand who saw Stephanie, where did they see her, what were the circumstances around it. My next questions in this case really surround the suspects that have kind of cropped up in the 2000s. So there's the drifter, the guy who kind of goes between Oregon and Idaho, and then there's Hesscock.
So the drifter really interests me because, you know, police who interviewed this guy and worked on Stephanie's case really like him as a suspect and they all felt that they were close to maybe even getting a confession out of him about Stephanie, but they never did obviously. But the fact that they haven't released his name and haven't given a ton of details around him makes me think that they're really kind of trying to build a case around this guy.
And then again with the drifter, the story of the neighbors saying that they heard screams and cries coming from the basement. You know, like the true crime person in me and even beyond that, just the person in me is like, how can you walk by a house and hear that? And it does seem like they heard it more than once and not call police, not try to report it, not try to get a welfare check done, especially when you hear that it's a kid.
Why was nobody trying to get help or trying to see what was going on here? I know police did find some evidence in the basement. There was blood, but testing came back inconclusive. They couldn't even tell if it was human or animal blood. And then there was also some fibers and hair found on a rope, but they weren't able to do any DNA sequencing because the follicle wasn't on the hair.
So there are these things that are there for this suspect, this guy, but it's just like it's missing that piece to really be able to pin this and hopefully get some answers. But it does sound like this drifter is still alive. So hopefully there's possibility that police can go and question him again or more information can come out about him.
And then the second person, Hescock, who died by suicide in the police chase, I have so many questions about, I don't necessarily believe suspects all the time, but there is deeply a part of me that thinks that if he told the girl that he kidnapped, who ultimately was able to escape, that he had done this before and killed the girl, I'm inclined to believe him there.
You know, it's a pretty bold crime to kidnap anybody that's very bold, but also she was sleeping outside next to her sister on a trampoline, which I'm assuming was, you know, right outside their home. So like this was a very bold crime. So it seems like for someone to pull off that bold crime, they maybe would have done this before. Obviously there are outliners, people sometimes just do things that they've never done before. But this is just one of those times where I'm inclined to believe him.
And so I have to believe that if it's not Stephanie, he's definitely tied to some other missing person case, specifically of a young girl, it sounds like. So I would be interested in learning more about him from investigators, what they know, who they suspect could be involved. But ultimately, for Stephanie and her sisters who are still alive, both of her parents have passed now, but her sisters are all still alive and they want answers.
And I can't imagine what her sisters have gone through all these years and the impact that Stephanie going missing has had on that family. But Stephanie sisters and the rest of her family and the rest of Challis deserve answers. So many of her friends still live in that area and still remember her, still think about that day and are still affected by it. So the community really needs answers. This changed a town where people didn't lock their doors typically at night.
Basically overnight, everything changed and people locked the doors, walked their kids everywhere, didn't let them ride their bikes. They also need to answer for all of that. And Stephanie deserves to come home. And if she's still alive out there, again, we've seen it happen from time to time. So there's always hope that this can happen for any missing person. If she is alive out there, she deserves to come home and get to know her family and have that relationship in her life again.
And if she's no longer with us, she deserves to come home so that way she can be placed to rest and her family knows where she is and knows where she's resting. There needs to be answers. And over the years, again and again, that's all the family has asked for is we just want to know what has happened to her. So that question needs to be answered.
Again, if you know anything about the disappearance of Stephanie Crane in October of 1993 or her whereabouts today, please call the Custer County Sheriff Department at 208-879-2232. We'll have pictures of Stephanie up on our Instagram. And the picture that we have and that is on the cover of this podcast is actually the sweatshirt that she was last seen in that gimme sweatshirt. So take a look at that. Please share around sharing your communities.
This is such a great way to advocate for the missing and murdered. So be sure to check us out on Instagram at cold and missing will pop right up. Again, if you have time this week or this weekend to leave us a review, I would appreciate it so much.
And if it motivates you just a little bit that it's my birthday this weekend, I would appreciate it all the more you can do that on Apple podcast in your podcast player that you're listening to right now, or you can go to our website www.coldenmissing.com. We also have transcripts there if you or someone you love is hard of hearing, you can follow along with the podcast there. But that is all I have. Thank you so much for listening to cold and missing.
I'm your host Ali. Have a good week and stay safe y'all.