Steven Koecher Pt. One

but never told anyone why. Since Stephen was struggling financially, it is theorized that he might have traveled to that area in order to seek employment or earn some money, but there is no conclusive evidence of what happened to him, and Stephen is never found.

inexplicably seemed to vanish into thin air. What makes this story even stranger is that in the days prior to his disappearance, Stephen would make some other unexplained road trips through Utah and Nevada before he returned home, and one

of the trips was nearly eleven hundred miles long. Since Stevo was experiencing financial problems and had trouble securing full time employment due largely to the recession which was taking place in the United States at that time, there have been two primary theories pushed forward to explain his actions. Either Stephen was feeling depressed or suicidal over his situation and this caused him to experience some sort of mental breakdown which prompted him to disappear voluntarily or take his

own life. Or he became so desperate for money or employment that Stephen was roped into doing something which compelled him to make these lengthy trips and he wound up becoming the victim of foul play. For the longest time, I found myself completely perplexed by this case. But in recent years, two forms of media have been produced that revealed previously undisclosed information which seemed to shed some more

light on what might have happened. One of them is a YouTuber named Aaron Stoner who has done a deep, multi episode dive into the disappearance on his channel, and the other is a long force podcast titled Eyes on Justice, which came out in twenty twenty one and was produced by a team of private investigators who were hired by Stevens family, and they have done extensive work on this case.

I learned all this new information when I covered the case on an episode of The Trail Went Cold nearly three years ago, and it caused me to look at things in a different light. In fact, there's so much to talk about here that our series of episodes on The Path Went Chile is going to be a three parter. Well start off by sharing the primary details about this case, which you'll find in most mainstream sources, before we discussed these new revelations that have come out in recent years.

that perhaps he had gotten incredibly depressed. That makes sense. You saw incredible rises in things like family annihilations, where the main breadwinner would come home and kill their entire family and then complete suicide to spare them of the financial distress. You saw suicide rates go incredibly high. But this is interesting because this is not the only trip

that Steven takes. He's starting to make these really bizarre trips on a pretty regular basis, where he's traveling at this day one hundred and thirty five miles, but another time eleven hundred miles on these just unexplained trips. I'm almost leaning towards the idea that he had gotten caught up in something or there was a group of people that he was involved with for some reason that he was making these these long haul destination trips for no one around him seemed to know what was going on.

So I'm really excited to know more.

very devoted to Mormonism. Following his graduation from high school, Stephen would travel to Brazil to perform missionary work, and he eventually earned a degree in communications from the Universe City of Utah. By this point, the Coachers have relocated to Utah, and Ralph and Dianne live in the town of Bountiful, just outside Salt Lake City, where Ralph works

as the editor for the Davis County Clipper newspaper. Stephen wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and publish some freelance stories in the Clipper before he took a position with the Salt Lake City Tribune's digital advertising division. While Stephen liked the job itself, he did not like the fact that it required him to work overnight hours, so he wound up taking a new advertising position with the

website match bin dot com. Stephen was also not too fond of the cold winter weather of Salt Lake City, so in April of two thousand and nine, he decided to move to Saint George, which was located three hundred miles away in the southernmost section of Utah near the Nevada and Arizona borders. He would rent a room at a house which he shared with another tenant named Jordan Zirkle, but the two roommates couldn't have had more opposite personalities.

While Stephen was very devoted to his church and faith, Jordan liked to drink and smoke weed and had a prior conviction on his record for possession of a controlled substance. But while they did not become close friends, they were still able to maintain an amicable relationship. Upon his arrival in Saint George, Stephen became a member of the Bloomington

Hills Seventh Ward, a local singles ward. While Stephen's siblings had gotten married and had children by this point, he continued to remain single and once broke off a serious relationship with a woman who did not hold the same interest in the LDS church that he did. Unfortunately for Stephen, one month after he moved to Saint George, he would be laid off from his job at matchbin dot com.

Since the United States was in the midst of the Great Recession and the job market in Saint George was scarce, Stephen had trouble finding steady employment, though he did manage to get a part time job handing out flyers for

a business called Travis's Window and Blind Cleaning. However, this job did not provide Stephen with enough income to pay his bills, and by the end of November Jordan Circle had moved out of their house and he was now three months and fifteen hundred dollars behind in his rent.

the heart of who you are. And so he's thirty, which is you see him join this local singles ward, but I guarantee you most of the people and there were not thirty year olds, and so I guarantee you there's that pressure on his shoulders as well, that he has been in relationships where quote he would have been doing the right thing or he would be close to the goal of having the family that is expected, and

then he calls it off. He's looking for other people who might be interested in the same kind of things in the local singles ward. But then he gets exposed to this roommate who's not very much like him. And eventually the roommate moves out and he's behind in his rent. So he has got a lot of pressure on his shoulders, losing his job, not being the ideal Mormon young man that he was quote supposed to be, and then having

these financial struggles. And so when you describe that the options become turned to something that'll get you money quick. Very that's very that's very possible when you look at this case. And then also when you say, well, wait, what if he made this trip and he went to complete suicide. But again, I think because this was not the only time you saw this kind of trip, that makes me less inclined to think that suicide was the goal at the at the front.

even though they loved him no matter what. And I think that would shed a lot of light on many of his decisions, Like you said, either he traveled to a far away location because he thought suicide was the only option, or it became so desperate that he could have been roped into doing something that he ordinarily wouldn't have done just for the chance to earn money or steady employment.

ask his family for help. So he's stuck in this situation where Jordan moves out and now he doesn't have a roommate and all the rent is on his shoulders.

I can't imagine how he felt. It would have opened him up to the possibility that if somebody had some kind of illegal work that would have been cash in hand quickly, then potentially he would have taken it because I'm sure a lot of people in that time period when they needed work would be open to doing things that they wouldn't normally do just because they needed the money.

on his rental agreement. Bischof let Rolf know that Stephen was way behind with paying his rent, which prompted Rolf to call him on a cell phone while he was out grocery shopping. Rolf told his son that he was willing to offer financial support, but Stephen seemed defended by the suggestion and abruptly hung up. The following day, Steven sent his father a text which read quote, Hi Dad,

I'm okay. At six fifty six pm Mountain time, Stephen received a call on a cell phone from his mother, Dianne, and told her that he was planning to come home to visit their family and Bountiful for Christmas and would likely be arriving on December the twenty third. To assist him with his financial issues, Diane also transferred some money to her son's bank account, but it was never touched.

That same day, Stephen also received a phone call from his sister, and both she and Dianne would describe Stephen as sounding like he was in an upbeat mood, but at the time they were both completely unaware that Stephen had taken both calls in the midst of a lengthy road trip. Before we start talking about this trip, I just just wanted to clarify that the locations will be discussing in Utah our mountain time, and locations in Nevada our Pacific time, so we'll try to differentiate between them.

Dad just wants to make sure you're okay. Mom's checking in with him, and he's sounding upbeat and excited, and he's even making plans that he's going to be home for Christmas. And so to detail those kinds of plans, if you knew that you were going to complete suicide, I wonder if you would continue to play along with those or if maybe his mind would change at some

point after he had confirmed those plans. But when you see people who have a purpose and they have people who care about them and who plan and expect them to be home, that's always a good sign. When you're talking about, hey, where's his mental health? That he's communicating, he's making plans, he's seeming like he's upbeat with his family. Now again, people who are having mental health crises often

can hide those things. But right now, you know, from this phone call, the family seems to think we have issues. He's struggling, but not to a point where we were concerned to this extent right that he was going to go missing or that something would have happened to him.

So I do think that possibly the reason he sounded upbeat is because he may have been making this road trip for other reasons that he felt we're going to solve his problems, which is why he was in a much better mood. But I don't think anyone expected that within a few days he would go missing.

And also, like we discussed before, the literature supports that people make that decision typically in a very short period of time, based on those people who've survived attempts. So to think that like somebody has to plan it way in advance, that doesn't seem to be true according to the studies. So it could be a situation where there was maybe the intention to do that, but then that intention changed in a split second. But again it's just

to play devil's advocate. I don't think that, But I just think that there's always that possibility.

But then again, like Robin said, my gut wants to think he's on this mission because he's excited. I'm going to get to go home for Christmas and I'm going to get to tell my family that some of these issues are resolved. And maybe he was doing something a little nefarious that gets him into trouble, but he thinks, hey, I have a solution. Remember, there are not. In that time, it was a really really difficult time financially in the United States. This is people are getting laid off and droves.

People's accounts are just completely wiped out. People's you know, resources are completely dried up. People aren't hiring, and so it was a really desperate time for a lot of people. And so I could see someone who would normally not be inclined to do something that's you know, illegal or shady, to say, hey, it's so it's a way to make a buck right now, and I'm desperate.

twenty five miles away. After that, Stephen traveled another one hundred and fifteen miles to the unincorporated community of Ruby Valley, where at eleven am Pacific time, he stopped at a ranch owned by a couple named John and Cathy Nef. Years earlier, when Stephen was a member of Salt Lake City's LDS Singles Ward, he became acquainted with their daughter, Anne Marie Nef, and while they dated for a brief period,

they never developed a serious relationship. Stephen wanted to see Anne Marie, and even though she was not there at the time, her parents still invited him inside for lunch. During their conversation, Stephen mentioned that he was planning to visit friends or family members in Sacramento, California, but he wasn't sure if he would continue in that direction because of the bad weather. This remark would later strike Stephen's loved ones as odd because, as far as they knew,

Stephen did not know anyone in Sacramento. After leaving the ranch, Stephen headed back into Utah and deba transaction showed that he purchased food at a convenience store in Salt Lake City, fuel in Springville, in food in Nephi. During the afternoon and early evenings, Stephen received the aforementioned phone calls on his cell phone from his sister and mother, but never mentioned that he was driving through the state at that time.

By the time he arrived back in Saint George, Stephen had driven nearly one thousand miles.

been a big question. Did he go there for the express purpose of seeing them, or did he go to the area for another reason and then just decided to visit them because he happened to be there.

don't know why he was at these specific locations. So on December the eleventh, Stephen spent the day handing out some more flyers for the window washing business, and he also had a meeting with the Bishop of the Bloomington Hills seventh Ward, who promised that he would help him find a job by the new year, and would later say that Steven seemed to be in a positive mood.

On December the twelfth, Stephen left Saint George on another unexplained road trip to Nevada, and at eight nineteen am Pacific time, his cell phone would ping off a tower near Overton, about eighty miles away. Nearly eight hours later, Stephen used his debit card to purchase gas and Mesquite, Nevada, which is located at the approximate halfway point between Overton

and Saint George. Shortly before apm Mountain time, Stephen stopped at a kmart just outside Saint George, where he purchased a baby's bib, little ornaments, and decorated cookies, which were likely going to be Christmas presents for his older brother Matthew and his newborn baby he had drawn their names

and the family's annual Christmas gift exchange. One of Steven's neighbors would report that he saw Steven's car parked outside his house at around ten pm Mountain time bo When he looked back a half hour later, the car was gone, and it's unclear if Stephen ever returned after that and spent the night there.

and prioritizing life. So it shows in importance of family to him. It shows that desire and expectation that he's going to be able to make that delivery, and very interesting. You know that the neighbor says, hey, the car was parked outside, but then later in the evening I saw it gone again and I can't recall if it ever came back. Fascinating because we know at some point he is seen in his car again in parking in that

retirement community. So tell me more about what happens to Stephen after this Christmas shopping spree.

He knows he doesn't have a job, he knows that he's behind in rent, yet he seems to be pretty confident in going to get presents, going to do gas, going on this trip. Is he getting another stream of income and maybe rent just wasn't his priority, or he has this plan, Hey, I'll just do this lump sum payment later and take care of that. But maybe he does have access to money we don't know about.

performing that morning service. The service was scheduled to begin at eleven am Mountain time, but Webb wasn't sure if he would make it back in time and asked Stephen if he would take over in his absence. To Webb's surprise, Stephen said that he was currently in the Las Vegas area, and while he said he was willing to head back to Saint George to do the service, Webb told him

not to worry about it. At nine fifty three am Pacific time, Stephen received another call on his cell phone from a member of his ward who also heard Stephen say that he was in Las Vegas. Neither caller noticed anything unusual about Stephen during their conversations, but he never told either of them why he decided to travel to Vegas, and it was uncommon for him to miss Sunday services.

For the next four days, no one heard from Stephen, but on December seventeenth, Dianne received a surprising voicemail from the parking authority for the homeowner's association called Sun City Anthem, an affluent retirement community located in Henderson, Nevada, just outside Las Vegas, even though Henderson is over one hundred and thirty miles away from Saint George. Diane learned that Stephen's abandoned Chevrolet Cavalier had been found in the cul de

sac of a residential neighborhood in Sun City Anthem. The Homeowner's association noticed that the vehicle had been parked there for days, and when they looked in through the window, they saw a flyer for Travis's window and blind cleaning, so they called the phone number on it. This led to them receiving Stephen's cell phone number, and they proceeded to leave a voicemail about his car, but when they were unable to get in touch with him, they decided

to call Dianne. Diane soon learned no one else had spoken to or heard from Stephen for days, so she became concerned enough to contact at the Saint George Police Department and file a missing person's report for him.

he used to date. He's making phone calls to check in with his sister, to check in with his dad, to check in with mom, and so he seems to be a pretty good communicator, and he seems to be a very social person who has purpose and makes stops to see individuals. So when Diane learns that no one else has spoken to or heard from Stephen for days, you know that her gut just completely turns upside down and she's thinking, Okay, something's not right, something's happened to him.

We know the last time he's seen right is when we see him leaving his vehicle here. But if if he had a mission and he was going to do other things, or he had met with people, that would help us establish that maybe that's not the last time, right that he leaves that vehicle. That's not the last

time that we know that he's alive. But from the sounds of it, he didn't live much longer after that, because I think he still would have kept in communication with people, even if he was doing something actively in that city. He still would have been responsive to people.

thin air. So you can understand the concern and just the fact that he was willing to miss Sunday services and travel to Las Vegas or near Las Vegas, and he never explained to anyone why he was going there is one of the big mysteries of this case. So Rolf Kocher and two of Stephen's brothers traveled to Saint George to check his house and discovered that most of

his clothing and personal possessions were still there. He had also left behind his laptop, cell phone charger, and passport, and since there were recently purchased groceries at the residents nothing suggested that Stephen had planned to take off voluntarily. A search of Stephen's laptop and email account would not turn up anything unusual or shed any light on why

he decided to travel to Henderson. However, it's worth noting that since Stephen's residence did not have an Internet connection, he often used computers at the Washington County Library in order to go online. While their system required Stephen to sign in using his library card, it did not keep track of any websites that Stephen visited. Ralph and his sons traveled to Henderson to pick up Stephen's car and discovered that it was in good working order and add

half a tank of gas. Items left in the car included Stephen's shaving kit, coats, pillows, a blanket, receipts, flyers for the window washing business, copies of job applications, and the Christmas gifts that Stephen had purchased from the kmart near Saint George. Stephen's cell phone, wallet, and driver's license were never found, and there would be no further activity

on his debit or credit cards. It turns out that one of the residents in Sun City, Anthem had a home security camera outside his home, and when investigators checked the footage, they saw Stephen's Cavalier driving west through the neighborhood down Savannah Springs Avenue in the direction of the cul de Sac at eleven fifty four am on December of the thirteenth. Six minutes later, a man could be seen walking down the sidewalk past the camera in the

opposite direction. Even though the footage was shot from a distance, it was not particularly clear the man was believed to be Stephen, who was dressed in a white shirt and white slacks and appeared to be carrying something which may have been a file folder or portfolio. It's also worth noting that before Stephen walked past the camera, a white suv could be seen driving down the street and after Stephen disappeared from the frame, the suv suddenly reappeared and

pulled up to the curb next to a house. However, the driver of the suv turned out to be a realtor who was ruled out as having any connection to Stephen's case. It's also been reported that another security camera mounted on a garage on the adjacent Evening Light Street captured a reflection of Stephen in the windows of a park minivan, and he could be seen crossing the street and disappearing out of frame.

Maybe he's out trying to I don't know, secure a position. He's surely not doing his own work, because he wouldn't be shit caaring flyers about the window washing company over in this city. It has no relationship to where he lives. Oh, I don't know. I just feel sick to my stomach knowing that you see him park, you see him walk with purpose. There's something that he's going to do, and it seems more business related in my opinion.

But of course what's frustrating is that there were no calls on Stephen's cell phone to indicate that he had an appointment in Henderson that day, And of course, because he did all of his Internet activity in the library, they were unable to turn up any correspondence or information to shed any light on why he made the trip there. So if he was going for some sort of job interview or something related to employment, where's the paper trail for it.

to indicate this. It was speculated that due to his financial difficulties, Stephen may be desperate enough to perform a legal activities such as trafficking drugs, but police performed a thorough search of Stephen's car with the drug sniffing dog, which did not turn up any hits and seemed to rule out the possibility that drugs were ever in the vehicle.

When investigators checked Stephen's phone records, they did not provide any additional insights into why he went to Henderson, as everyone he spoke to during his incoming and outgoing calls was accounted for. However, it turned out that at four thirty six pm on December thirteenth, over four and a half hours after Stephen parked his car in Sun City, Anthem, his cell phone pinged off a tower at the intersection of a Royal Grand Boulevard an American Pacific dry a

spot which was located over ten miles northeast. Just over two hours later, it pinged off another tower two miles

north of that, near Whitney Ranch subdivision. Early that next morning, there was another ping off a cell phone tower at the interchange between Interstate five point fifteen and Russell Road, which was an additional two miles from the previous ping, Stephen's phone pinged off a tower near that same location at six or four am, and most curiously, the phone was then used to check Stephen's voicemail, though it's unclear if Stephen himself did this as far as anyone could tell,

The phone remained in that vicinity for the next two days before its signal was lost, likely because its battery went dead. While an extensive search effort was performed of the desert area surrounding Henderson, it turned up no trace

of Stephen. Since Stephen had promised his family that he would return home to Bountiful on December twenty third in order to spend Christmas with them, they held out hope that he might show up that day, but he never did, making it a very sad holiday season for them.

that he's coming home. And then the reality is they know him better than anybody else, and when they realize there hasn't been communication, when they realize that they haven't seen any kind of activity on his credit cards or debit cards, then you know, something isn't right, and so the idea that they're trying to be hopeful and they're saying, you know, maybe at Christmas he would definitely come home for Christmas. They're holding out that hope, but just imagine

when Christmas comes and he's not there. You know, I was trying to think of what could be in that file folder he's holding, and I was almost thinking like, could he be in some kind of Ponzi scheme? Could there be some kind of financial scheme he's trying to

get people in on. But remember this is during that big market crash, and even incredibly wealthy people were feeling completely gutted financially, where every account was just being drained completely, where all the stocks had plummeted, where retirement accounts were you know, just completely reversed. And so that's not possible. And then you see that there were no drugs in that car, that a dog had gone in and sniffed

for drugs, no hits on the vehicle. If he was running some kind of drugs and he was actually one of the individuals carrying the drugs, there's no way that his car would have passed that. So does it mean he couldn't be some other role in a drug scheme, No, but it seems like someone who's a low level would be running drugs not necessarily doing some kind of you know, high end business things for them.

that folder or portfolio he was caring? But they just never found any information at that time to support that. The coaches would perform numerous searches through the Las Vegas area and offered a ten thousand dollars reward for information,

which led to Stephen being found. One if Stevens's cousins had a friend who worked for Anderson Dairy, and they agreed to have Stephen's photo and personal information circulated on their milk cartons in January of twenty ten, the coaches responded to reports that a transient matching Steven's description had been seen frequenting an Eye Hop restaurant on Boulder Highway several times over the previous three weeks. The family spent four nights hanging around the eye hooph hoping that this

man might stop by again, but he never did. The coachers ultimately concluded that the man was probably not Stephen, since he was described as being shorter than him and displayed some unusual habits at the restaurant, such as wrapping his seat in saran wrap before eating with plastic gloves on.

At one point, a private investigator working for the Kocher family received an anonymous tip advising him to search the desert area near Henderson Executive Airport, But even though an organized search effort turned up an abandoned tent containing clothing and trash and some bones, these bones actually belonged to

an animal and no trace of Stephen was found. When the one year anniversary of Stephen's disappearance arrived, his family made a vow to keep the lights on their Christmas tree lit until Stephen returned home, and the lights remained

on until they burned out. In July of twenty eleven, the investigation Discovery true crime series Disappeared agreed to produce an episode about Stephen's case, and it featured interviews with his parents rolfin but tragically, on February tenth, twenty eleven, only three weeks after Roll filmed his interview, he suddenly passed away at the age of sixty one. Prior to his death, Rolf would suffer through a brief illness, and he may have died as the result of toxic shock syndrome.

The Disappeared episode would air two months later on April eleventh, and was dedicated to Rolf's memory.

kind of access to a Stephen who's alive. And functioning. I think even if you were you, you had a break or you had some kind of delusions in your head. If you're holding a cell phone or you have a wallet in your back pocket and you need something, I feel like you would still show some kind of movement for at least a short period after you disappeared.

new information. The segment contained interviews with Kevin Wyatt, James Burke, and Dannia Livingstone, who all worked for the Utah based company Eyes On Private Investigations and had spent the past few years interviewing new witnesses and combing through documents about Stephen's disappearance at no cost to the coach or family, and like we mentioned in the intro, the group produced a long form podcast about the case in twenty twenty

one titled Eyes on Justice. During the eight News Now segment, Kevin Wyatt stated, quote, there's not one shred of evidence that suggests that Stephen did this to himself or that Stephen walked away. We'll be going into more detail about this in part two of our series, But long story short.

On the very same afternoon Stephen went missing, a resident who lived on Evening Light Street in Sun City, Anthem reported that they saw what appeared to be someone moving out of the house across the street, and they seem to be doing so rather quickly. Police soon went to this house and knocked on the door, but there was no answer, and when they looked in through the windows,

they did not see any furniture in there. It took two months for investigators to finally track down and interview the person who'd lived there, and while he appeared to be nervous, he claimed that he did not know Stephen and denied having any knowledge of what happened to him.

may have realized he went to the wrong address. Before he rounded the corner and headed down Evening Light Street. The segment contained this cryptic quote about Stephen from Kevin Wyatt. Quote he says, hey, guys, do you want some cash? Something about money? I think he went to the home he was supposed to go to and actually says, oh, kind of funny. I told the guy and asked him if he wanted some money. I think that's what resulted

in Stephen's disappearance. Was that error? End quote? So the implication seems to be that due to his financial issues, Stephen received an offer from someone to travel to Anderson and make a delivery to an individual in Sun City, Anthem. But because Stephen initially went to the wrong address, he inadvertently wound up putting his life at risk, and this led to his disappearance. The new segment also showcased some photographs that the private investigators had obtained of room inside

the aforementioned house on Evening Light Street. These photos were taken shortly after Stephen vanished and showed noticeable damage, including several holes in the walls and doors, suggesting that a violent struggle might have taken place there. However, it's worth noting that the Henderson Police Department declined to be interviewed for the segment, claiming that they had no updates to provide.

They have never named anyone as a suspect or person of interest or publicly commented on this theory about Stephen being a victim of foul play. The investigation continues to remain at a standstill, and after nearly sixteen years, there's still no conclusive answers about what actually happened to Stephen Kocher. So, I guess you could say the path went chili, okay.

So the theory seems to be that Stephen had been pushed into doing something illegal, but initially went to the wrong address, and then when he went to the right address, Stephen told this person that he had gone to the wrong address beforehand. That person might have gotten really paranoid

and overreacted, and this ultimately caused Stephen's death. Yeah, so it just could to be a thing where the key to his disappearance is him I'm going missing because he made a mistake and told the wrong person about it, and this person overreacted in a huge way, and that could be the reason they add all these signs of violence inside that particular house. So I think that about

brings an end to Part one. During our next episode will provide our analysis of all the information we have shared thus far, and in part three we'll start discussing the new information about this case which has been unearthed in recent years. So join us next week as we present part two of our three part series about the disappearance of Steven Kocher.

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