Steven Koecher Pt. Two

just happened. He was having trouble securing full time employment and paying his bills, and by December of two thousand and nine, he started going on some inexplicable road trips where he would drive through various places in Utah and

Nevada and nobody really knew where he was going. There was one point where he stopped to visit the parents of a woman he used to date, but she wasn't around at that time, so he just had lunch with them, and they pretty much could just track what Stephen was doing through his cell phone and his bank card and credit card records, but nobody knows why he decided to make these lengthly trips. One of them was nearly eleven

hundred miles long. So finally, on December the thirteenth, two thousand and nine, Steven decided to make an unexplained trip to Henderson, Nevada, just outside Las Vegas, about one hundred and thirty five miles away from Saint George, and he would go into an affluent community for retired people over the age of fifty five that he didn't seem to any connection too, and one of the residents's cameras would show him parking his car and just walking away, and

then he just vanished without a trace. Nobody knows what

Stephen was doing there. They would get some pings off his cell phone over the course of the next few days, and even evidence that his cell phone has been used, but no trace of Stephen has ever been found, and over the years have been a number of speculation about why he made that trip there, wondering maybe he was offered a job, maybe he got roped into something illegal, and We went through the known facts of the case on part one, and here on Part two, we're going

to talk about some theories about that, and then in our next episode, Part three, we're going to share some new information about this case that has come out in recent years and may shed some more light on what happened to Stephen. So, if you've listened to the Trail Went Cold and the Path Went Chili long enough, I'm sure you're well aware that I've always had a particular fascination with unsolved mysteries where a victim goes missing or winds up dead after traveling to a location they had

no reason to be at. This certainly applies here because we have Stephen Kosher making unexplained one hundred and thirty mile trip from Saint George, Utah, to Henderson, Nevada. Before

he exited his vehicle and vanished without a trace. That would be unusual enough on its own, but what makes this case extra bazaar is that Stephen made multiple unexplained road trips in the days prior to his disappearance, including a nearly eleven hundred mile round trip through Utah and Nevada, which he drove over the course of less than twenty four hours. So why did Stephen decide to make these trips and did they have any connection to his disappearance.

Could these trips be an indication that Stephen might not have been in his right state of mind at the time, or did he get himself involved with something that his friends and family did not know about. There have been so many theories pushed forward about Stephen's disappearance, such as him being the victim of foul play, or disappearing to start a new life, or walking off into the Nevada

desert to take his own life. But the one theory we haven't mentioned yet, which I'm one hundred percent convinced is not true, is that Stephen ran away with another missing persons from Utah who vanished during that same time period.

I truly feel like because he was so active in his faith, he would have left some message for his family or some message for the elder in the church discussing why and where his heart was because of a desire to be in heaven right, because I think his faith truly was his driving force. And if you have been around people of the Mormon faith, there is just such a beautiful component of the importance of family and the future and what family means for your admittance into heaven.

And so I would have thought to you'd see some kind of communication to his family or to the elders of the church. Also, remember Stephen had lost his job, it was the recession had hit. It was a horrible time in America, and so his finances were struggling. And yet you see him out shopping. You see him making plans to visit family for Christmas, and you see him making these trips while denying financial assistance from anybody who's offering.

And so I think that you have to step back and say where were his finances coming from.

the night in hotels to get to our destination. And so if he's struggling at that point and yet he's making all these trips, it has to be for something or someone.

still costs money. So that's why there has always been speculation that he might have gotten himself involved in something and that all of these road trips were somehow connected to and that it was allowing him to make some extra money on the side, but they've just never been able to conclusively prove this.

that he had taken Charlie and Braden camping. According to Josh, Susan did not come with them and was still sleeping when they left the house. Josh maintained that he had no idea where Susan was, but given that the temperatures were below freezing at that time and the weather was miserable, nobody believed his camping story, and since the couple had been experiencing marital difficulties, Josh quickly became the prime suspect

in his wife's disappearance. Well the following year, Josh and his family and started to publicly express their belief that

Susan disappeared voluntarily and ran off with Stephen Kosher. In fact, Josh's father, Steve Powell, sent law enforcement a nine page letter outlining the similarities between the two cases, and the letter contained a lot of points which he believed supported the theory that Susan and Stephen had been conducting a secret affair and orchestrated their disappearance in order to frame

Josh for murder. Like Stephen, Susan was a devout Mormon and had briefly lived in West Valley City for a few months in two thousand and seven, and the Powell suspected that they'd taken off to Brazil since Stephen had

previously done missionary work there. While investigators never found any evidence that the two cases were connected, and since Stephen's movements and communications during the last week of his life are pretty well documented, there did not even seem to be any opportunity for him to orchestrate a disappearance with Susan.

Highly suspicious, and it's really interesting that even the family jumps on board with no evidence to say, hey, it's not Josh. It's got to be the fact that she ran off and is having some affair. I'll tell you, a deeply devouted Mormon mom with two little boys probably has goals to have more babies, and those boys were her world, Like I said, they're her worth here on earth. I doubt if she's truly devout in her faith, she's

walking away from those children. And as a mom myself who's not Mormon, but a woman of faith and just a mom my children in my world. Even if my husband Nirad odds, those babies are not going to leave me, so I'd fight tooth and now to make sure I had access to my children. And so Susan's death seems quite suspicious and geared towards Josh, and this just looks like a pretty desperate move.

like really creepy love songs. So I know Josh was a bad person, but when you see how creepy his father is, you're somehow not surprised, so as I'm sure many of you probably know. Due to Josh being a suspect in his wife's disappearance, Susan's parents eventually got custody of Brayden and Charlie, and Josh was only allowed supervised visitations.

On February the fifth, twenty twelve, when the two boys showed up for a scheduled visitation at Josh's house, he locked their social work outside and proceeded to attack Brayden and Charlie with a hatchet before setting off an explosion, which killed both himself and his children in a murder suicide.

It goes without saying that virtually everyone believes that Josh Powell murdered Susan and disposed of her body in a desert area during the time period he said he was quote unquote camping, but she has still not been found

to this day. Steve Powell died of a heart attack in twenty eighteen, and since he was always suspected of being complicit in Susan's disappearance, it's believed that when he heard another Utah resident, Stephen Kosher, went missing just one week later, he attempted to exploit the situation in order

to deflect suspicion away from himself and his son. But West Valley City and Saint George are located three hundred miles apart, and there's nothing to suggest that Stephen and Susan ever met each other, so I think the timing of their disappearances is nothing more than a coincidence. If you want to learn more about Susan Powell's story, I'd recommend checking out Suason, one of the long form podcast Cold. But I think we can safely move away from the theory about these cases being connected.

I always find it haunting when I see the names of missing and murdered people listed in older news articles which were published long with before before they became a victim. At that particular point in his life, Stephen had recently graduated high school and seemed to have a bright future ahead of him, and he probably never would have guessed that just over ten years later he would be single, childless, broke, underemployed,

and wind up going missing. Mormonism is a religion which puts a lot of focus on getting married and starting a family, and unlike his siblings, Stephen had not done that yet even though he just turned thirty. For this reason, I've seen a lot of speculation in online discussions about this case about how Stephen may have been a closeted gay man and made up a trip to Henderson for some sort of secret gay hookup, but there's no evidence

to support this theory at all. We do know that Stephen once had a fairly serious relationship with a woman which wound up ending before they became engaged, but I'd be curious to know more about his relationship with Anna Marie Ness, as Stephen took a lengthy trip to her

family's ran three days before he vanished. All we know is that Stephen first met her as part of an activity for his LDS Singles Ward, But even though they dated and Stephen seemed to enjoy Anne Marie's company, their relationship never developed into anything serious, so it really makes me wonder why he felt inclined to drive three hundred and sixty miles to Ruby Valley, Nevada in order to

show up at her family's ranch unannounced. We'll talk more about this whole road trip momentarily, but I've always wondered was Stephen hoping to rekindle his romance with Anne Marie and drove up there for the express purpose of seeing her, Or did Stephen make this lengthy trip for completely different reasons and only decided to pay the Neft family a visit because he just happened to be in the area.

But I could also see that he's truly just one of these people that is devoted to faith, devoted to work, lost his job continues to be active in church, but just hasn't been aligned with the right person. I mean, thirty is young, not in the Mormon faith and looking at not being married, but it is still young. So I could see something like Anna Marie and saying, hey, you know what, I'm thirty, I'm getting older. I don't like this singles word mess because I'm not being matched

with anybody. I don't feel it connections with anyone. But I do care about Anne Marie. But my question becomes, wouldn't he have made sure she was home because it was just her parents right when he got there.

have called first before making this lengthy trip. So that's why I've always suspected that he was there for other reasons, and it's just by pure chance he decided to stop by and see the nefts because he happened to be in the area.

starting to date again. So in addition to the social pressures of starting a family, it definitely sounds like Stephen was facing huge pressure to find steady employment and a steady income. Obviously, since this was one year removed from the Great Recession, Stephen was far from the only person in America who was facing these struggles. But given how unwilling he was to accept financial assistance from his family, you get the sense that he may have felt like

a failure. And while he supposedly did not show any outward signs of being suicidal, stephens struggles could have given him a potential motivation to end his own life. Yes, it doesn't make much sense for him to drive one hundred and thirty miles to another state in order to kill himself, but we've seen examples like the Gael Delano case from unsolved Mysteries where suicidal people have done that

very thing. So if Stephen decided to wander out into the Nevada desert, perhaps his body has just never been found. In spite of his precarious position. Stephen was also described as having no obvious signs of depression. But I find it interesting how eight months before he vanished, he made the decision to relocate from Salt Lake City to Saint George, apparently because he couldnot stand the cold Salt Lake City winters.

This took him three hundred miles away from his family, so I have to wonder if there might be more reasons for this decision. Perhaps he was suffering from an undiagnosed case of seasonal effective disorder, which causes depression to hit during the fall and winter months before its subsides

in the spring and summer months. If Stephen found himself feeling very down during the cold Salt Lake City winters, that would shed some light on his decision to move south to a city located near the Nevada and Arizona borders, which had a much warmer climate. But I think it was just Stephen's bad luck that he was laid off only one month after his relocation, and he was now residing in a city where the job market was poor, and he likely had too much pride to move back home.

You could assume that Stephen may have decided to move so far away from his family because he felt trapped in an oppressive religion. But it sounds like Stephen took his faith very seriously, which is why he've remained heavily

involved in LDS activities in Saint George. I really do get the impression that Stephen was close with his family, and during their interviews on the Disappeared episode, Rolf and Dann Kosher come across as loving parents and genuinely nice people, which is why I've always found it hard to believe

that Stephen disappeared voluntarily. It's really heartbreaking today see Rolf get emotional and cry a few times during his Disappeared interview, knowing that he would pass away only a few weeks after his interview was filmed, and he was already deceased by the time the episode aired. I think the fact that Stephen did not even resurf as following the death of his father is a pretty strong indicator that he's no longer with us unfortunately.

that he would have been moving to. Like you said, yes, if he was struggling and he needed to go back home, I think he would have known he could. I would also imagine a thirty year old man saying like, oh, come on, I'm going to try to make it, and I'm going to try to push through this. But he would not have been a lot. Remember, he was involved in multiple things in his church, and so I think he would have had his own little community there as well. And he had plans and he was even making actions

towards those plans to go home for Christmas. There were, if I recall correctly, Christmas presents in the back of his seat for his nieces and nephews, and so he had intent to go home. He had intent to follow through with his word to reconnect with family for the holidays, and he never made it. And so again I think had he wanted to complete suicide, someone in that church or his family would have gotten some kind of communication about I'm sorry. I had to do this. But here's why,

because I think his faith truly drove him. Whether he was at conflict because of sexuality, whether he was in depression because of money, whatever it was, I still think he would have wanted an earthly representation of what his desire was for his heavenly body. And so I don't know. I just I'm really stuck on that idea that he just walked away. I don't think he was a kind of person to do that.

take it. His grandmother had written him a check and he refused to cash it. So part of him doesn't want to be seen as not being able to support himself. So if it was the case and there was pride involved, like in the situation, with not taking the help from

your family. I could see a scenario where there is a potential that he might not have wanted to say or give answers as to why, and he may have had his own relationship with God and may have reconciled how he chose to leave the earthly plane, and explaining to other people might not have been part of that plan. I'm not saying I believe that's what happened. I could just see a scenario where that is possible.

tenth and twelfth. So, according to Diane, this sort of thing wasn't all that unusual for Stephen, as one of the reasons he moved to Saint George was to research his family history in the area, and he often went on tours of cemeteries looking for ancestors graves. Stephen was known for being a spontaneous person, so Dian theorized that her son could have made these trips in order to keep himself busy while he was underemployed.

affect his finances. But the main hole in that theory is that Stephen purchased Christmas gifts for his brother and newborn child, which suggests that at the very least, he was planning to visit his family for the holidays, like you promised.

we didn't know about. Who knows, Or he was doing something more nefarious or something that was behind closed doors where he was getting money. But in the idea, we do see that Stephen is spending money. He has money from somewhere, and that idea, like you said, the Christmas gifts for those for the baby, that's a so special I remember remember you my brother for Teddy's first birthday

and Teddy's first Christmas. He doesn't have children, and so to give my baby presents, it was really important that he got to be a part of that holiday celebration. And so I really see Stevens purchasing those Christmas gifts as one of the biggest signs that he had an intent to go home.

his family. However, let's look at the timeline for Steven's road trip on December of the tenth, which was very odd. His first confirmed transaction was purchasing gas in Salt Lake City at six forty five am Mountain time, which is nearly a four and a half hour drive from Saint George.

This means the latest that Stephen could have left his home was shortly after two am, meaning that he completed an eleven hundred mile drive on little, possibly no sleep, and the timeline throughout the day doesn't leave much opportunity for him to pull over and take a nap. So could this mean that Stephen was not in his right state of mind at the time. You also have to wonder if there's a specific reason why he traveled to Salt Lake City, because he then drove west from there

to the Neft's ranch in Ruby Valley. If visiting the Nests was the primary purpose of his trip, he could have just driven straight from Saint George to Ruby Valley, as making that detour to Salt Lake City added an extra few hours to his journey. And we mentioned earlier that if Stephen really wanted to see am Ree, why not call ahead to make sure she would be there

that day before making the drive. So it makes you wonder if Stephen had another reason for traveling to the Ruby Valley area and made a spontaneous decision to visit the ranch because he just happened to be there. Another odd detail is that Steve he even told the Nefts he was planning to travel to Sacramento to visit family and friends, even though it does not sound like he

knew anyone there. Since it takes around seven and a half hours to drive from Ruby Valley to Sacramento, there's no way Stephen could have gone there that day, So why did he bring it up? And once again after leaving Ruby Valley? I'm not sure why Stephen took a winding route and drove back to Salt Lake City because if he had just traveled southeast directly to Saint George, he would have arrived home a lot quicker.

They had no idea that he was in Nevada when he was receiving their calls. But they didn't show any outgoing calls from his cell phone. The shit any light on why he was making this trip. And as we're going to talk about, there has been speculation that if he was doing something nefarious, maybe he could have had a burner phone or something like that.

So where was Stephen during that nearly eight hour gap. He probably wasn't driving the entire time, because otherwise he would have needed to stop for fuel. Again, he made his purchase at the kmart near Saint George at seven fifty eight pm Mountain time, even though driving there from Mesquite would only take about forty five minutes. So there's another gap of time in which Stephen's whereabouts are unaccounted for, and you have to wonder if this influenced his decision

to travel to Henderson. I have to say these trips are giving me flashbacks to the unsolved nineteen ninety four disappearance of twenty three year old Karen Denise Wells, which was covered on both the trail went cold and the path went chili. As a quick recap, Denise left her hometown in Oklahoma on a cross country road trip to visit a friend in New Jersey, but she wound up going missing, and her abandoned rental car was discovered in

rural Pennsylvania. A check of Denise's movements, as well as the odometer of the vehicle showed that she inexplicably drove an additional seven hundred miles on her trip, which were never accounted for. So it's been speculated that she may have become involved in drug trafficking and this caused her disappearance. Not surprisingly, it's been theorized that Stephen's lengthy road trips

may have been connected to drug trafficking as well. Even though he was known for being a morally upstanding individual and unlikely candidate to participate in anything illegal, he was also in a desperate financial situation. So could he have been roped into doing something he ordinarily wouldn't have?

It could have been something like sex work. It could have been something like a financial pyramid scheme or some kind of you know, quote business that he had been talked into by somebody, and he's going to try to meet with people or plan some kind of of I don't know, crooked kind of scheme with people. That's probably less likely because of the financial crash, no one had

money to be sparing. But I mean, it could have been something that we're not even thinking of, like a odd business his action where he's trying to go recruit people or get customers in on something that's not necessarily on the up and up.

So after his neighbor noticed the missing car at ten thirty pm the previous evening, did Stephen return to his residence at any point before he drove to Vegas or did Stephen spend the night at an altogether different location. The fact that a blanket and pillow were found inside the abandoned cavalier suggests that he may have slept there when Stephen arrived in the Sun City, Anthem neighborhood in Henderson.

He was last seen passing by the security camera exactly at noon, which means that he may have had an appointment at one of the houses at a specific time. But here's the big issue with that theory. When Greg Webb called Stephen, he said that he might not make it back in time for the Singles Wards morning service and asked Stephen to fill in for him, even though Stephen said he was in Vegas. He told Webb that he would be willing to return to Saint George to

do the service until Webb told him not to bother. So, if Stephen had a scheduled appointment in Henderson that day, why would he offer to go back home. Even though there's no indication that Stephen was a gambler, I guess he could have become desperate enough to travel to Vegas

to attend have to win some money. I'm not sure if law enforcement attempted to check the security footage at any of the casinos to see if Steven ever showed up to one, But even if he went there to gamble, that still doesn't explain why he went to Henderson, and we don't know anything about Stephen's possible movements in the Vegas area that morning.

wanted to go serve his church. And so whatever he was doing and whatever the plan was, isn't something where he thought like, well, my life is on the line if I don't stay put where I am, or this is going to put me in significant risk. He knew that, hey, if I need to, I can drop what I'm doing

right the second and go home. So that makes me kind of question a drug involvement unless he knew it was a very quick drop off, because because you have this plan on this route, you need to go make all these drops that you couldn't guarantee someone not involved in that operation you can easily just pivot and come home.

in his body language, but fear about it. Could something have happened to Stephen beforehand, and another man decided to abandon his car in the neighborhood and walk away from the scene. Alkham's razor tells me that it is Stephen, as the consensus from the private investigators working on this case is something bad happened to him. Only minutes after he walked past that camera, and he never left the

neighborhood alive. Of course, even though there are no more confirmed sightings of Stephen, his cell phone pinged off various towers located outside the neighborhood in the days following his disappearance, and someone checked the phone's voicemail two days after the fact, even though there's nothing to indicate that Stephen was still

alive at that point. So if Stephen was dead, either the perpetrator kept his phone in their possession or the phone was kept alongside Stephen's body, and these pings might provide a clue about the area where he's buried. While we're on the subject of Stephen's cell phone, all the calls on his phone records had been accounted for and offer no insight into why he would have traveled the Henderson.

Steven's laptop and email account also turned up no leads, but it's worth reiterating that all of his Internet activity took place on computers at the library. So if Stephen had a meetup or an appointment for an employment opportunity scheduled in Henderson, perhaps all of his communication was done on the library computers. Through websites like Craigslist. But perhaps there is no digital or paper trail to explain Stephen's trip because any arrangements he made were done verbally.

communication with his family if he was alive. I feel like he would have reached out if he could, and he was in trouble by the time it got to a point where he felt scared and he was in trouble, I think he would have called his family. And I definitely think, like you said, you have incidences where like the holidays came and he didn't show up. You have the death of his father and he didn't show up.

There's things in life where if he could have I feel like there would have been some kind of communication and there wasn't. And so that idea that his cell phone was pinging and someone was checking the voicemails on his phone makes me think that he had already been deceased or was gravely injured, and that phone just happened to be near his body, And then it makes you think where was he, what happened, and who had him?

unearthed information to shed more light on this case. Join us next week for the conclusion of our three part series about the disappearance of Steven Kosher Robin.

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