Somebody Knows Something (2026) s01e03 Episode Script
Disappeared in the Desert
[news reporter 1]
It is truly haunting video.
Thirty-year-old Steven Koecher
walking through this Henderson community,
never to be seen again.
[person 1]
Want to say who you are?
I'm Steven Koecher.
[news reporter 2] Steven
rolled into a neighborhood,
parked his car, and vanished.
[news reporter 3]
Where he is now is a mystery.
[Chamberlain] True crime fans all over
are fascinated with Steven's case.
[TikToker 1]
No one knows why Steven was in Nevada.
[person 2] The details
of his disappearance
have been shrouded in secrecy.
There was no evidence
that he left voluntarily.
[Chamberlain] Was Steven meeting someone,
or was he running from something?
Nobody knows he's on this trip.
So, definitely sticks out to me.
[Beatty] When LDS members do
something that is contrary
to those teachings and beliefs,
they can be good at covering that up.
[Chamberlain] He was going in and out
of a window?
[John] Yeah.
-Why would he not go out the front door?
-I don't know.
Something that is new information
is that he called him 11 times.
Why would he be
calling him that many times?
Every year, more than 600,000
people go missing in the United States.
[news reporter 4] The story
of Jaycee Dugard shocked the nation.
Amy Bradley simply disappeared
without a trace.
[news reporter 5] Asha Degree went to bed
one night and was gone in the morning.
I'm Kara Robinson Chamberlain,
and in 2002,
I was one of those victims.
[news reporter 6] At just 15 years old,
Kara was abducted by a serial killer.
[news reporter 7] Assaulted and tortured
for 18 hours,
but somehow she managed to escape.
[Chamberlain]
I went on to a career in law enforcement.
[Leon Lott] Then she wanted to be
a victim advocate
and show them
how they can be a survivor like her.
[Chamberlain] Now I'm investigating the
cases true crime fans are obsessed with
because there are people who don't know
what happened to their loved ones.
Somebody knows something.
Somebody saw something.
And if I can bring
one person some answers,
then it's worth everything.
This is the case of Steven Koecher.
[TikToker 2] Steven Koecher drove
his car several hours…
His phone kept pinging cell towers…
Steven Koecher's car turned up
in a retirement community
in Henderson, Nevada, in December of 2009.
Henderson is a suburb
just outside of Las Vegas
which lies about two hours west
of where Steven was living
at the time, in St. George, Utah.
And he has not been seen since.
He was 30 years old. Not married.
Member of the LDS Church.
As far as I understand, there was
not a lot of active investigation
into the case by police after the first
few days following his disappearance.
Stephanie Harlowe has done
a lot of coverage of Steven's case,
so someone whose brain I would
absolutely love to pick about this.
Hi.
So, tell me a little bit about what
caught your attention about his case.
I think the mysteriousness of the case.
Five to seven people go
missing around the Vegas area a day,
whether because they go there
to go missing,
or the Vegas lifestyle leads to that.
[Chamberlain] So maybe that's why
the police let it go cold.
Yes. Initially,
police did not take this seriously.
[Chamberlain] Makes sense.
A grown man goes missing outside of Vegas.
There's not a huge imperative for
law enforcement to investigate that.
-He could have gone missing on his own.
-[Harlowe] Right.
But when you learn who Steven was,
you see that
none of this really adds up
and none of it makes sense.
Steven was raised as a Mormon,
which meant he wouldn't gamble,
he wouldn't drink,
wasn't really anybody to party.
Did you find anything about him
being in Henderson or Vegas before?
I did not.
So, what was he doing there?
Was he meeting somebody?
[Chamberlain] Right.
He could have been meeting someone.
But what if he did go missing on his own?
Was there anything that would
point to him hurting himself?
There were no known
mental health issues with Steven,
and nobody he had encountered
in the days, weeks, or months
before he went missing
said he was acting bizarrely.
That makes sense. But could
he have left town for any reason?
[Harlowe]
His parents did recover his passport.
And there's no bank usage,
there's no cell phone usage
after the day he went missing.
So nothing points to that direction.
So that leaves us with one other option,
and that's that Steven
ran into somebody in Henderson
who ended up doing him harm.
How would he be stumbling upon someone
who means him harm?
[Harlowe] We don't know.
Like I said, there would be no reason
for him to be in Las Vegas
for the typical reasons
that you would go to Vegas.
Really, the only friends Steven had
were through his ward at the LDS Church.
And his family,
they were very, very close.
[Chamberlain]
I feel like that's the place to start.
-I'm Kara.
-I'm Dallin. Come on in.
-Nice to meet you.
-You too.
This is my sister, Lisa.
-[Chamberlain] Hi, Lisa.
-Hi.
-Nice to meet you. I'm Kara.
-And my brother, Michael.
-Kara, nice to meet you.
-Michael, nice to meet you.
Tell me a little bit about your family.
-There are five of us, total.
-[Chamberlain] Mm-hmm.
I'm number four of five.
I'm number three of five
and the only girl.
And I'm the-the youngest.
-Oh, my goodness. Bless your mother.
-[laughter]
-Goodness. And a house full of boys too.
-House full of boys.
-[Chamberlain] What was that like for you?
-Lot of teasing.
We had a lot of teasing, but Steven and I
were closest in age and we hung out a lot.
He was pretty fun.
He was a little clumsy,
but mostly just fun…
fun-loving and didn't
take things too seriously.
I didn't think it was
a big deal till now, but
[Lisa] This is, like, a book that
our sister-in-law put together of Steven.
[Chamberlain] He just looks like
such a nice guy.
-Yeah.
-[Chamberlain] Oh, my goodness.
-[Lisa] What a haircut. Yeah.
-[Dallin] Yep.
-Everyone with the bowl cuts.
-[Dallin] Yep.
[Chamberlain] So, it seems like y'all were
a pretty tight-knit family?
[Dallin] Yeah. We were.
Hi, I'm Steven. I have been playing
in tennis tournaments.
I'm actively involved in church.
[Dallin] I think the way we value
our relationships with each other
has been definitely
influenced by our faith.
And the church kinda became
an additional extension of family.
We all served a mission for our church.
[Michael] I think Steven and my dad
had the strongest bond.
They both served their missions in Brazil,
so they loved talking about Brazil.
[in Portuguese] It's been a while
since I've done a message in Portuguese,
but I'm going to read verse 40.
[Michael] And my mom thought
he was just a pretty funny guy,
always laughing around him.
You're all up here in the Salt Lake area,
so tell me about why
Steven moved to St. George.
It's a few hours away.
[Dallin] Steven was working at
The Salt Lake Tribune, like ad work.
His shift was overnight.
And it seemed like he was searching for,
like, "What's the next thing?"
And to be on his own…
I do think being single kinda wore on him.
-Amber? Dallin?
-Yes, sir.
[Michael] You know, his older brother
and his younger sister
and younger brother were married
and started having kids.
I think maybe he was really hoping, yeah,
for that next step.
[Dallin] I think
Steven wanted just to be happy,
but there are parts of Steven
that I don't know.
He enjoyed playing the guitar.
He actually wrote a song
before he went missing.
[Steven]
It's been 10 days ♪
It's never gone away ♪
[Dallin] It's a song of remorse.
It sounds like Steven's saying,
"I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to cause this much pain."
[Steven] I didn't know how to act
Didn't know how to think ♪
[Dallin] I don't think he knew
his life was gonna take this turn,
but when I listen to it all these
years later, it's very foreboding.
I wanna talk about finding out
that Steven was missing. [sighs]
I was in final weeks at school,
and my dad called me
and said, "Hey, his car was found."
Yeah. Had been there for a few days.
Did anybody know
he was missing before that?
No.
His car was found in Henderson,
in the Las Vegas area.
We had no idea why Steven was there.
It wasn't an area we had family
or that he frequented.
We first started calling him,
and he didn't answer.
And my mom called
all of our family members.
No one had heard from Steven
for a few days.
At that point, we just hoped
that, um, he's okay.
[Dallin] Did he get himself hurt?
You go through those different scenarios,
but we just don't know what's happening.
So my dad and I jump in the car
at about 5:00 a.m. to find Steven.
Then we get to Henderson and find the car.
It looked normal.
The tires weren't slashed.
The glass wasn't broken. No dents.
It was locked.
And in the car,
we see a blanket and a pillow,
food that's been in there
for days, molding,
Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews.
To me, that's saying, "I'm intending
to come back to this vehicle."
And then he just doesn't.
We don't find him in any hospital.
So each and every step along the way,
my confidence in finding
a happy ending is dipping.
So we called the police.
My name's Robert Mckay.
I was a primary investigator
in the missing person of Steven Koecher.
The neighborhood
where Steven parked his car
at the end of a cul-de-sac
is a 55-and-over gated community.
The car was parked for four days.
Nothing around it indicated
there was foul play involved.
But I found it very unusual that
Steven had parked there and walked away.
[Dallin] There was a house by the car.
He happened to have cameras.
And we just knocked on the door,
asking, "Do you have footage from Sunday?"
Surveillance video captured
what are believed to be
Steven Koecher's last moments alive.
[Dallin] We see the car come in.
We see Steven walk across
the field of vision on that camera…
and then walk off.
We canvass the area, contact neighbors.
We had a metro helicopter
and some ATVs come out
in case he went out in the desert.
Maybe he fell or got hurt
or did something terrible to himself.
But nothing came up at that.
I thought, "He's an adult.
It's not unusual for adults
to just pack up and go somewhere."
But as time goes on,
it basically went cold case.
I've been retired for 13 years,
but this is one of those cases
that sticks in the back of my mind,
how he could just walk away and vanish.
[Chamberlain] It's a shame that
Steven's case wasn't pursued.
A lot of the time,
missing men aren't treated
with the same urgency
as women or children.
But over the years,
Steven's case built up a following online,
and that's what attracted a few
Utah-based private investigators.
I'm going to speak with them
to build out Steven's timeline
in the days before his disappearance.
After you got the surveillance video,
what other things did you find?
Phone records?
We did have his phone records,
and we had some credit card receipts,
which kind of gave us a road map
of what Steven was doing.
So tell me kinda what was going on
leading up to his disappearance.
Steven went on a road trip.
[Berk] We show here on Thursday the 10th
at 2:15, he left St. George.
And you see he's coming up north,
and then he heads out
to Ruby Valley and out to Elko,
and back down.
[Chamberlain] Three days
before he goes missing?
-[Wyatt] Six.
-This is a full day of driving
-if he's driving it there and back.
-Yep. Yep.
[Berk] He was over a thousand miles
through Utah and Nevada.
[Chamberlain] That's a lot
to drive in one day.
[Berk] Yes.
[Chamberlain] Does he tell anyone
what he's doing on these road trips?
It was definitely a secret.
Nobody knows he's on this trip.
No friends, no family.
[Chamberlain] Definitely sticks out to me.
[Berk] There's just lots of gaps in this
time that we don't know what he was doing.
Did he meet anyone or talk to anyone?
[Berk] Yeah, in the Ruby Valley,
he did stop and he did have lunch there.
These are some journals that I had from
that time in my life when I knew Steven.
This was actually the day that
I found out that he had disappeared.
And so I had called one of my friends.
It says, "She told me some bad news.
Um, Steve Koecher,
who I went out a little bit with last year
but wasn't interested in, is missing.
Steve's car was found
in Henderson on December 14,
and he's been missing ever since."
My name is Annemarie Beatty,
and I met Steven in my church
maybe a year and a half to two years
before he had disappeared.
We were in a congregation of other singles
between the ages of 18 and 30.
A big focus in our religion
is getting married to somebody
that would be not just for this life
but for also eternity.
In a single's world,
everybody's goal is to get married.
We went on a few dates and hung out.
I believe our first date, he had asked me
to go to, um, an opera or an operetta.
He was very quiet, really nice.
And he was funny.
He enjoyed music and cultural arts.
But, you know,
I told him I just wanted to be friends.
And then my interactions with him
were limited to our church activities
and services.
The last time I had probably spoken to him
was about two months
before he disappeared.
After I had found out he was missing,
I was pretty concerned.
So I got on the phone with my mom,
and she had told me,
"Hey, your friend Steven
showed up at the house
couple days before he had disappeared."
"She said that I was in Salt Lake,
but invited him in for lunch.
He was on his way to Sacramento to see
somebody and decided to stop by.
I thought it was weird that he never
called me to see if I was even home."
First, you know,
things that go through my mind was like,
"What was he trying to accomplish?
Was he still interested
in kind of a relationship,
and just wanting to, like,
try one last time?"
I remember my mom said
just something like,
"He just seemed down."
I'm sure that Steven
was feeling that pressure,
especially as a man in the LDS Church.
Like, "Hey, you need to get married."
But I think that
something else was going on.
Something that almost wasn't noticeable,
but you just know there was--
there was something.
Something that could be
completely under the radar.
I think that LDS members,
when they do something
that is in contrary
to teachings and beliefs,
they can be good at covering that up.
If there was something that he was hiding…
Anything could be on the table
as a possibility.
[Chamberlain] Paying a visit
to the mother of a woman he barely dated
is truly bizarre behavior.
Even stranger, Steven lied to her.
He said he was going to California
on Thursday, December 10,
but he was only traveling
in Utah and Nevada that day.
So why did he lie?
I wonder who he was in touch with
before he disappeared.
[computer voice] Recording in progress.
[Chamberlain] Tessa, you were a private
investigator on Steven's case.
Through the course of the investigation,
one of the things that you guys did
was looking at phone records.
So who were the last people
that Steven was speaking to?
We were able to get in touch with
the person that Steven last spoke with,
a member from his church.
He called Steven to ask if
he would cover a church meeting for him.
And Steven said that
he was out of town in Vegas.
But the church member
said that if Steven was going
to miss a church meeting,
he would call ahead of time.
[Chamberlain] So he didn't tell
his friends about his trip either.
Why was he being so secretive?
Yeah. So, a lot of people
had the question if he was gay.
Because he wasn't married.
And generally, LDS people
are married by the age of 30.
We asked the church member
if he heard any rumor that Steven was gay.
And he was very quickly, very adamant
that Steven was not gay.
Which I thought was interesting.
[Chamberlain] Definitely. I mean,
who was he really meeting in Vegas?
[Lisa] It's hard to know
if Steven had other struggles,
and that's why he couldn't find a wife
or have a different lifestyle.
But I hope he would've known
we would've been okay with it.
[Dallin] Our family's really close.
I think we're willing to share with
each other what's going on in our lives.
When it gets too deep, too personal,
I think we kind of put up that protection.
So, I may not have known
everything about Steven's life.
Was he this way or was he that way?
We don't care.
He was a part of our family.
That's all that matters.
How you doin', big guy?
[Dallin] But I wish
I had asked more questions,
because I do think something
happened to him that hurt him.
[Chamberlain] I'm in St. George, Utah.
And it's, like,
a little town on the outskirts of Zion
and pretty close to Bryce Canyon.
So as you can imagine, it's beautiful.
I mean, you look around,
and you see these rock formations,
you see a lot of LDS churches.
I'm getting ready to go meet one of
the private investigators on Steven's case
who has some more information
about where Steven was living.
-So this is, uh, where Steven was living?
-Yes.
He was living up, just up the street here.
The white with the flagpole.
[Chamberlain] Yeah.
[Wyatt] That's the house
that Steven was living in.
He was selling advertising
or door-to-door type stuff.
-Mm-hmm.
-But about a month after he got down here,
he was let go from that business.
He had started working
for a local, um, window and blind cleaning
company selling advertising.
But Steven didn't have a lot of money.
Steven barely had a job.
How did he get hooked up
with this rental situation?
I would dare to say
he probably responded to an ad.
[Chamberlain]
So we don't have any known connection
in between Steven
and the roommate or the landlord here.
[Wyatt] Correct.
And so, Steven moved in.
And Steven complained to his family
about his roommate,
like, eating his food and doing drugs.
[Chamberlain] Interesting.
So, how much was Steven
paying in rent here?
-We believe it was about $400 a month.
-Okay.
And he was about $1,500 behind.
His roommate, who was renting a room,
was also behind in rent,
and he disappeared,
-moves out in the middle of the night…
-Mm.
-…and allegedly takes some property.
-Mm-hmm.
I don't know if it was appliances or what.
How long before Steven went missing
did his roommate move out
in the middle of the night?
-The roommate moved out in mid-November.
-Mm-hmm.
And we know Steven went missing
in mid-December.
-So, it was about a month.
-Right. Okay.
Kinda curious timing in terms of
how these things are lining up.
It makes me wonder
if Steven's disappearance
is somehow related to
what's going on in this house.
It's a pretty small community here.
-[Wyatt] Little cul-de-sac.
-Right.
You notice people coming and going.
-Right?
-Yeah, it's very quiet.
So, the across-the-street neighbor…
-[Wyatt] That's John's house.
-Okay.
-[Wyatt] I believe we did talk with him.
-All right.
John, I-I'm Kevin.
You spoke to my investigator
a year or two ago.
-And this is Kara.
-[John] Yeah.
-Hey. I'm Kara. It's nice to meet you.
-I'm William.
So, when Steven moved in,
was the other guy already living here?
The roommate, was he--
No, he was with him.
[Chamberlain] Okay, they both moved in
around the same time?
Yeah.
And that window on the west side.
The bedroom.
That guy went and raised the window up
to get in and out of that house.
-[Chamberlain] Oh. Is that that roommate?
-Yeah.
[Chamberlain]
He was going in and out of a window?
[John] Yeah that's where he lived at,
in the bedroom in there.
-Why would he not go out the front door?
-I don't know.
He did that three or four
different times. I noticed it, too.
That odd, huh?
Straight off… up the road in his car.
It was kind of strange.
[Chamberlain] Yeah. I mean, that's…
that's pretty strange to me.
Yeah.
So, on December 12
was the last time y'all saw Steven.
The night before he disappeared.
Yeah.
[Wyatt] I think
when Jim talked to you before,
you had mentioned that
he came home around 10:00
but he was only here for about 30 minutes
and then he left again.
-Yeah.
-And that was the last time…
Yeah that was the last time
we ever did see him.
Did he tell you where he was going?
[John] No.
[Chamberlain] Was the roommate with him?
I don't think so.
[Wyatt] Okay.
[Wyatt] When we start seeing odd behavior
and things with the roommate,
we're thinking, "Okay,
now maybe we're gonna get somewhere."
So we interviewed him,
and we did a background on him.
He was a young kid.
He was about 18, 19 years old.
Found nothing concerning.
And our investigation into the roommate
really didn't lead us
to believe that
he was still in St. George.
There was just nothing to suggest
that he had any involvement whatsoever.
[Chamberlain] Steven's case has gotten
a lot of play on Reddit.
I'm seeing a lot of posts
about the guy from Steven's church
who called him a few hours
before he went missing.
So, 7:52, he talks to this church member.
This person was calling Steven because
they couldn't make a church meeting.
It turns out, this guy was in Vegas
at the same time Steven was.
Why were both of these people,
who were heavily involved in their church,
in the Vegas area on a day
when they were supposed to be
at their ward, at church?
The other thing that I'm seeing
just reading through…
This person also was in Steven's house
after he went missing.
Searching, looking around,
took a notebook.
What was in the notebook?
Why would he have been at Steven's place
to begin with?
Anytime something comes up,
and you're like,
"Hmm, that's weird, that's coincidental,"
I think requires more digging.
[line ringing]
Hello, my name's
Kara Robinson Chamberlain.
I am investigating, uh,
Steven Koecher's disappearance,
and I would love to talk to you
if you have a couple minutes.
Yesterday, I called
the last person to speak with Steven
before he parked in that cul-de-sac.
And he said he was busy,
but he would talk to me another time.
I just got this text from him.
"I apologize for the delayed reply.
Of course I remain deeply sympathetic
to the Koecher family
and wish there were more
I could do to help them.
Over the years,
I've shared all the information
and perspective I have
regarding this matter,
and at this point,
I'm not able to provide anything further."
I mean,
he has a right to decline.
It's disappointing that he is not willing
to just answer some questions for me. Um…
So I guess I'll just have to look for
other ways to answer those questions.
I know Jim talked to him.
[chimes]
So, I want to get to the bottom of this.
Because it is strange
that they were in the same city
on the day that Steven went missing.
Steven's friend said some college friends
of his came down to St. George,
and then they drove down to Vegas
to visit other college friends.
I also noticed
that this friend from church
was actually in Steven's house
and took some things?
We too were concerned that basically
the story was that the Koecher family
had asked the local church
to go into Steven's house
and get his, uh, computer.
And there was a notebook.
It was, uh, suggestions and ideas
for home teaching,
um, which is part of the LDS church.
So that was returned to the family
with the computer.
You know, we checked with the family,
and the family didn't raise
any red flags with it.
That computer was turned over to
the Henderson Police Department.
-Okay, good.
-And there was
nothing they could find out of it.
The family couldn't remember a notebook,
but it was a long time ago.
And that notebook I'm sure is gone.
It's nothing that anybody saved.
[Chamberlain] Okay.
That explanation
from Steven's friend is plausible.
So, for now,
I think the best way to figure out
what Steven was doing when he disappeared
is to take a closer look
at the surveillance video of him
taken before he went missing
in the cul-de-sac in Henderson, Nevada.
-So, this is the front of the house.
-[Chamberlain] Mm-hmm.
[Berk] Steven's car come in from the top,
and it goes all the way
to the end of Savanna.
-[Chamberlain] Where the cul-de-sac is?
-Cul-de-sac is, right.
[Chamberlain] He's kinda going fast.
-It seems like he knows where he's going.
-Right.
[Berk] Yeah. So, six minutes later,
he comes walking by.
[Chamberlain]
And he is walking with purpose.
And his arms aren't moving.
See? Like, you don't see his arms
swing back and forth. They're still.
[Berk] Almost like zipping his jacket or
hands in the pocket or holding a folder.
[Chamberlain] Yeah. Something, right?
[Berk] He could have something.
[Wyatt] We wanted to know,
what was Steven doing there?
Who was he associated with?
[Berk] And then we found the neighbor
in the second house here.
Says that earlier in the week,
Steven came to his door
and asked, "Do you want some money?"
[Chamberlain] That's definitely strange.
[Wyatt] It's also odd,
because Steven was behind in rent.
He didn't have any money.
And why are you asking a stranger?
We don't have any video
of the days before, right?
So, what do you think it means?
[Wyatt] I think he's at the wrong house.
Maybe he was just confused.
That begs the question,
is he delivering something for someone?
[Chamberlain] Oh. Do you think
he was delivering money? Maybe?
[Berk] Either that or paying for something
and getting something back.
[Chamberlain] Okay.
Was anyone calling or texting him
around this time?
I'm thinking that could help indicate
who he was meeting with.
-[Berk] No.
-[Wyatt] But just after he went missing,
the landlord called him 11 times
in a short period of time.
[Berk] A couple days.
[Wyatt] Which is odd to me. I mean,
Steven owes him money, but 11 calls?
-Because 11 is obsessive.
-Yeah.
[Wyatt] We started running
a background on the landlord.
We found out the home in St. George
had the stolen Porsche in that garage.
In the landlord's home in Orem,
which is where he was living primarily,
had been raided by the police
by search warrant more than once.
Guns had been seized,
and he had automatic weapons.
[Berk] And in the landlord's garage
in Orem,
there were bottles of prescriptions
under other people's names.
So, definitely some suspicious behavior
in the background of this guy.
And did you find him?
-We did.
-[Berk] Yeah.
[Wyatt] He agreed to meet us,
and we did a recorded interview.
You know, he said a lot of things,
and he talked circles a lot.
[Berk] He said he liked Steven
and that Steven was working towards a plan
to get caught up on rent.
The landlord,
he had a lot of different jobs.
One of them was some bookkeeping
and ordering in a closed-door pharmacy.
Closed-door pharmacies take drugs
and package them up for nursing homes.
Those drugs could easily
be diverted to the street.
When we asked the landlord
about the prescriptions in the garage,
he said that his boss
told him to get rid of them.
If meds expired or a patient died
that no longer needed the meds,
I would throw them in a box.
Returned medications
have to be disposed of
according to the DEA's regulations.
They're not thrown in someone's garage.
[Berk] And we found out
that somebody wrote a letter to the boss
and stated
that the landlord was stealing drugs.
I don't think the closed-door pharmacy
filed charges, but they did let him go.
[Wyatt] Could Steven have been asked
to do something with those drugs?
And one of the things that really
stood out to me in the interview was
the landlord's comment,
"I hope some of the things
that I was involved in,
or the people that I were associated with
didn't have anything to do
with Steven's disappearance."
[Chamberlain] Oh, wow.
Whether my troubles were related
to Steven's troubles.
I don't know that. But,
the worst case scenario,
someone's trying to make me look bad.
By, by doing something to him.
And trying to frame me for it.
[Chamberlain] Steven's landlord was
obviously in close contact with Steven
around the time he disappeared.
And he has priors
and stolen merchandise in his homes.
Was Steven here running
an errand for a felon?
And if so, what was he doing?
I'm hoping that a visit
to the place Steven disappeared
might help me figure that out.
So tell me about where Steven's car was
and kind of what was going on
leading up to him going missing.
Okay, so it was a Sunday,
December 13th of 2009.
-Mm-hmm.
-And Steven Koecher was caught on video
coming down this way,
and he parks
approximately where your car is
-right there.
-Wow.
Uh, we're outside
of the camera view right now.
As we walk,
I'll show you were the view starts.
So here's the camera.
-He gets picked up on the camera.
-Okay.
[Berk] And it's the camera
that caught him coming in also.
So right about here, he angles over
and goes straight to the sidewalk.
And there's a van parked in the driveway,
-like this vehicle is here.
-Mm-hmm.
And the camera's pointing this way,
and in the window reflection,
you see Steven walking this way.
[Chamberlain] Oh, wow.
[Berk] So he disappears out of the video…
somewhere about in here.
And that's the last that we've seen him.
So, where do you think he was heading?
Well, we think he was heading
to this next house.
-[Chamberlain] Why?
-Because there was suspicious activity
that started
right after Steven disappeared.
This neighbor across the street
was interviewed by the police,
and she said that, during the time
that Steven went missing,
she had noticed strange things
happening at that house.
It was going to foreclosure.
The sounds of construction, day and night.
And so you're not making payments
on the house,
you're gonna give it back to the bank,
but you're doing construction.
[neighbor]
You could hear for days and days,
drilling, sawing.
[Berk] Did it sound like it was inside,
or in, like, in the backyard?
[neighbor] No, the backyard.
[Berk] In the backyard, okay.
[neighbor] We were all talking about it,
because everyone thought that
something happened at that house.
[Berk] She had also saw
a cargo van at this house,
and two people
were carrying down, uh, hand trucks,
stacked three to four high with, like,
buckets of real heavy stuff.
[neighbor]
They were putting the buckets in the van,
they would leave,
and you would see
the red dirt left on the pavement.
And then anywhere
from thirty minutes to an hour,
and they would come back.
[Berk] From the indication that
the truck was coming and going,
we feel it's driving out wherever there
was red dirt, somewhere in the desert.
And she said, on Sunday she remembers
seeing a moving van out in front.
And they were moving out quick.
[neighbor] I remember seeing
two things in the moving truck.
-A large piece of furniture…
-[Berk] Okay.
[neighbor]
And a big piece of carpet rolled up.
And it happened so soon
after Steven went missing.
It's like, they've gotta be
taking him and burying him
out in the desert somewhere.
Your best guess is that maybe
something happened to Steven here?
Yeah, and that he got killed.
We have a picture of Google Earth
from before and after,
and you can see that
there's a difference in the cement.
We feel that possibly they were
removing any evidence of blood
or of a crime scene,
went out to the desert and dumped it.
Was Steven inside the van? We don't know.
[Chamberlain] When I think about the fact
that there was some construction
on this house that was in the process
of being foreclosed on,
it's definitely a little suspicious.
But is there a connection
between Steven's landlord in Utah
and the house that they think
that Steven went to in Nevada?
[Wyatt] We found that the person
living in the home in foreclosure
was taking high doses of opiates.
And then on the same day,
Steven got these multiple calls
from the landlord who had worked
in a closed-door pharmacy.
Was he making a delivery for the landlord?
To me, it's just too coincidental.
And when the police, during the interview,
showed this person
a photo of Steven,
he said Steven looks like a church boy.
You know, "What's he doing down here?
He looks like a church boy."
[Wyatt] To me, that's odd.
I mean, if he didn't know Steven,
to make that type of a comment
for a missing person,
again, raises a red flag, right?
And then when he vacated that home,
it had been destroyed.
[news reporter 8] There's this clue.
These photos from inside
a home in the neighborhood,
taken shortly after
Steven's disappearance.
-[Chamberlain] Hey again!
-I can't wait to see what you found out.
So, Steven's landlord
had all of these pills in his home.
[Harlowe] What was he doing with them?
He worked at a closed-door pharmacy,
and he said, "I was just keeping them."
Which… It just doesn't make sense.
-Why? Why are you keeping them?
-Yeah.
And something that was really curious,
that is new information,
is that his landlord called him 11 times
in the days immediately
following his disappearance,
where they were not in contact
like that before.
Why would he be calling him
that many times?
The private investigators have made
the connection that it could be possible
that these pills had something
to do with what Steven was doing.
Yeah, I mean, it could,
and if you think about
what Steven was seen with on surveillance…
We don't know exactly what it was,
but it could've been
a manila or padded envelope
with pills in them.
So I'm actually curious, because now,
we've kind of isolated
the landlord as potentially being,
you know, connected.
Was there any connection you found
between him and anybody
that was in that neighborhood?
[Chamberlain] From the surveillance video,
it looked like Steven
was purposefully heading to a house
where a tenant that was a drug user lived.
So, he's on narcotics.
Could there be a connection?
And they actually learned
that there was also
some construction at the exact time
Steven went missing.
Even though the house has been foreclosed,
they were breaking up concrete
all hours of the night.
One of the neighbors stated
that what they saw during this time,
this family was moving buckets
into the back of a van, that moving van,
and would leave and come back.
So the assumption
from the private investigators
is that something happened to Steven
and evidence had to be busted up
and taken away.
Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
That would be a great place
to start looking.
And I hope they can get
law enforcement support
if they do find an area
-that's worth looking into more.
-Right.
Police have asked the current owners
to search their property,
but they said no, because
the evidence is entirely circumstantial.
There's not enough to get a warrant.
-Mm-hmm.
-Nothing that gives us
any definitive answer
to what happened to Steven.
Where do you think Steven is?
I think he's passed on.
I'm not sure how that happened.
-I don't think he's here anymore.
-[Michael] Yeah.
I think that's the general consensus.
We think that, unwittingly or knowingly,
he got himself
into a bad situation and is now gone.
We hope that it was quick,
and if that was the…
-if that's the scenario.
-[Chamberlain] Yeah.
I remember praying for a miracle, and that
didn't happen, but then the miracle came
is that family was here
and friends were here
and people rallied around us.
We just want to know what happened to him.
I think somebody knows something,
and I speak for the family when I say,
we don't hold any malice or anger
or ill intent to anybody
that might know something.
And if this can be that inspiration
to help them come forward,
we'd be eternally grateful.
[Dallin] At this time,
there's a little bit of, uh…
bliss in ignorance…
not knowing what happened,
because I don't know
if he was hurt or suffered.
But then you just don't have
that final closure.
Uh…
It's been ten days ♪
It's never gone away… ♪
[Dallin] I miss the fun
that he brought to our life.
That joy, that spark,
that only he had is missing.
We just want to know.
And I've never ♪
Felt like this before… ♪
Steven's family deserves to know
what happened to him.
The biggest puzzle piece
that we're missing is
why was he in this neighborhood
where he was last seen?
Unfortunately,
Steven kept a lot of secrets.
And, at this point, it seems likely
that those secrets
exposed him to someone who hurt him.
If you have any new information
about what might have happened to Steven,
please call law enforcement directly.
Visit the Somebody Knows Something channel
on abcnews.com
for further discussion
about Steven's case.
And don't forget to watch
weekly new episodes on Freeform and Hulu.
[person 1] The cruise line was saying
they had no knowledge of what happened.
[Chamberlain] Did Kevin jump?
[Amara] If Kevin jumped overboard
we would have saw something.
[person 2] The video was not conclusive
to a person falling in the water.
So then, where is he?
And I noticed somebody's feet.
Could it have been Kevin?
It is truly haunting video.
Thirty-year-old Steven Koecher
walking through this Henderson community,
never to be seen again.
[person 1]
Want to say who you are?
I'm Steven Koecher.
[news reporter 2] Steven
rolled into a neighborhood,
parked his car, and vanished.
[news reporter 3]
Where he is now is a mystery.
[Chamberlain] True crime fans all over
are fascinated with Steven's case.
[TikToker 1]
No one knows why Steven was in Nevada.
[person 2] The details
of his disappearance
have been shrouded in secrecy.
There was no evidence
that he left voluntarily.
[Chamberlain] Was Steven meeting someone,
or was he running from something?
Nobody knows he's on this trip.
So, definitely sticks out to me.
[Beatty] When LDS members do
something that is contrary
to those teachings and beliefs,
they can be good at covering that up.
[Chamberlain] He was going in and out
of a window?
[John] Yeah.
-Why would he not go out the front door?
-I don't know.
Something that is new information
is that he called him 11 times.
Why would he be
calling him that many times?
Every year, more than 600,000
people go missing in the United States.
[news reporter 4] The story
of Jaycee Dugard shocked the nation.
Amy Bradley simply disappeared
without a trace.
[news reporter 5] Asha Degree went to bed
one night and was gone in the morning.
I'm Kara Robinson Chamberlain,
and in 2002,
I was one of those victims.
[news reporter 6] At just 15 years old,
Kara was abducted by a serial killer.
[news reporter 7] Assaulted and tortured
for 18 hours,
but somehow she managed to escape.
[Chamberlain]
I went on to a career in law enforcement.
[Leon Lott] Then she wanted to be
a victim advocate
and show them
how they can be a survivor like her.
[Chamberlain] Now I'm investigating the
cases true crime fans are obsessed with
because there are people who don't know
what happened to their loved ones.
Somebody knows something.
Somebody saw something.
And if I can bring
one person some answers,
then it's worth everything.
This is the case of Steven Koecher.
[TikToker 2] Steven Koecher drove
his car several hours…
His phone kept pinging cell towers…
Steven Koecher's car turned up
in a retirement community
in Henderson, Nevada, in December of 2009.
Henderson is a suburb
just outside of Las Vegas
which lies about two hours west
of where Steven was living
at the time, in St. George, Utah.
And he has not been seen since.
He was 30 years old. Not married.
Member of the LDS Church.
As far as I understand, there was
not a lot of active investigation
into the case by police after the first
few days following his disappearance.
Stephanie Harlowe has done
a lot of coverage of Steven's case,
so someone whose brain I would
absolutely love to pick about this.
Hi.
So, tell me a little bit about what
caught your attention about his case.
I think the mysteriousness of the case.
Five to seven people go
missing around the Vegas area a day,
whether because they go there
to go missing,
or the Vegas lifestyle leads to that.
[Chamberlain] So maybe that's why
the police let it go cold.
Yes. Initially,
police did not take this seriously.
[Chamberlain] Makes sense.
A grown man goes missing outside of Vegas.
There's not a huge imperative for
law enforcement to investigate that.
-He could have gone missing on his own.
-[Harlowe] Right.
But when you learn who Steven was,
you see that
none of this really adds up
and none of it makes sense.
Steven was raised as a Mormon,
which meant he wouldn't gamble,
he wouldn't drink,
wasn't really anybody to party.
Did you find anything about him
being in Henderson or Vegas before?
I did not.
So, what was he doing there?
Was he meeting somebody?
[Chamberlain] Right.
He could have been meeting someone.
But what if he did go missing on his own?
Was there anything that would
point to him hurting himself?
There were no known
mental health issues with Steven,
and nobody he had encountered
in the days, weeks, or months
before he went missing
said he was acting bizarrely.
That makes sense. But could
he have left town for any reason?
[Harlowe]
His parents did recover his passport.
And there's no bank usage,
there's no cell phone usage
after the day he went missing.
So nothing points to that direction.
So that leaves us with one other option,
and that's that Steven
ran into somebody in Henderson
who ended up doing him harm.
How would he be stumbling upon someone
who means him harm?
[Harlowe] We don't know.
Like I said, there would be no reason
for him to be in Las Vegas
for the typical reasons
that you would go to Vegas.
Really, the only friends Steven had
were through his ward at the LDS Church.
And his family,
they were very, very close.
[Chamberlain]
I feel like that's the place to start.
-I'm Kara.
-I'm Dallin. Come on in.
-Nice to meet you.
-You too.
This is my sister, Lisa.
-[Chamberlain] Hi, Lisa.
-Hi.
-Nice to meet you. I'm Kara.
-And my brother, Michael.
-Kara, nice to meet you.
-Michael, nice to meet you.
Tell me a little bit about your family.
-There are five of us, total.
-[Chamberlain] Mm-hmm.
I'm number four of five.
I'm number three of five
and the only girl.
And I'm the-the youngest.
-Oh, my goodness. Bless your mother.
-[laughter]
-Goodness. And a house full of boys too.
-House full of boys.
-[Chamberlain] What was that like for you?
-Lot of teasing.
We had a lot of teasing, but Steven and I
were closest in age and we hung out a lot.
He was pretty fun.
He was a little clumsy,
but mostly just fun…
fun-loving and didn't
take things too seriously.
I didn't think it was
a big deal till now, but
[Lisa] This is, like, a book that
our sister-in-law put together of Steven.
[Chamberlain] He just looks like
such a nice guy.
-Yeah.
-[Chamberlain] Oh, my goodness.
-[Lisa] What a haircut. Yeah.
-[Dallin] Yep.
-Everyone with the bowl cuts.
-[Dallin] Yep.
[Chamberlain] So, it seems like y'all were
a pretty tight-knit family?
[Dallin] Yeah. We were.
Hi, I'm Steven. I have been playing
in tennis tournaments.
I'm actively involved in church.
[Dallin] I think the way we value
our relationships with each other
has been definitely
influenced by our faith.
And the church kinda became
an additional extension of family.
We all served a mission for our church.
[Michael] I think Steven and my dad
had the strongest bond.
They both served their missions in Brazil,
so they loved talking about Brazil.
[in Portuguese] It's been a while
since I've done a message in Portuguese,
but I'm going to read verse 40.
[Michael] And my mom thought
he was just a pretty funny guy,
always laughing around him.
You're all up here in the Salt Lake area,
so tell me about why
Steven moved to St. George.
It's a few hours away.
[Dallin] Steven was working at
The Salt Lake Tribune, like ad work.
His shift was overnight.
And it seemed like he was searching for,
like, "What's the next thing?"
And to be on his own…
I do think being single kinda wore on him.
-Amber? Dallin?
-Yes, sir.
[Michael] You know, his older brother
and his younger sister
and younger brother were married
and started having kids.
I think maybe he was really hoping, yeah,
for that next step.
[Dallin] I think
Steven wanted just to be happy,
but there are parts of Steven
that I don't know.
He enjoyed playing the guitar.
He actually wrote a song
before he went missing.
[Steven]
It's been 10 days ♪
It's never gone away ♪
[Dallin] It's a song of remorse.
It sounds like Steven's saying,
"I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to cause this much pain."
[Steven] I didn't know how to act
Didn't know how to think ♪
[Dallin] I don't think he knew
his life was gonna take this turn,
but when I listen to it all these
years later, it's very foreboding.
I wanna talk about finding out
that Steven was missing. [sighs]
I was in final weeks at school,
and my dad called me
and said, "Hey, his car was found."
Yeah. Had been there for a few days.
Did anybody know
he was missing before that?
No.
His car was found in Henderson,
in the Las Vegas area.
We had no idea why Steven was there.
It wasn't an area we had family
or that he frequented.
We first started calling him,
and he didn't answer.
And my mom called
all of our family members.
No one had heard from Steven
for a few days.
At that point, we just hoped
that, um, he's okay.
[Dallin] Did he get himself hurt?
You go through those different scenarios,
but we just don't know what's happening.
So my dad and I jump in the car
at about 5:00 a.m. to find Steven.
Then we get to Henderson and find the car.
It looked normal.
The tires weren't slashed.
The glass wasn't broken. No dents.
It was locked.
And in the car,
we see a blanket and a pillow,
food that's been in there
for days, molding,
Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews.
To me, that's saying, "I'm intending
to come back to this vehicle."
And then he just doesn't.
We don't find him in any hospital.
So each and every step along the way,
my confidence in finding
a happy ending is dipping.
So we called the police.
My name's Robert Mckay.
I was a primary investigator
in the missing person of Steven Koecher.
The neighborhood
where Steven parked his car
at the end of a cul-de-sac
is a 55-and-over gated community.
The car was parked for four days.
Nothing around it indicated
there was foul play involved.
But I found it very unusual that
Steven had parked there and walked away.
[Dallin] There was a house by the car.
He happened to have cameras.
And we just knocked on the door,
asking, "Do you have footage from Sunday?"
Surveillance video captured
what are believed to be
Steven Koecher's last moments alive.
[Dallin] We see the car come in.
We see Steven walk across
the field of vision on that camera…
and then walk off.
We canvass the area, contact neighbors.
We had a metro helicopter
and some ATVs come out
in case he went out in the desert.
Maybe he fell or got hurt
or did something terrible to himself.
But nothing came up at that.
I thought, "He's an adult.
It's not unusual for adults
to just pack up and go somewhere."
But as time goes on,
it basically went cold case.
I've been retired for 13 years,
but this is one of those cases
that sticks in the back of my mind,
how he could just walk away and vanish.
[Chamberlain] It's a shame that
Steven's case wasn't pursued.
A lot of the time,
missing men aren't treated
with the same urgency
as women or children.
But over the years,
Steven's case built up a following online,
and that's what attracted a few
Utah-based private investigators.
I'm going to speak with them
to build out Steven's timeline
in the days before his disappearance.
After you got the surveillance video,
what other things did you find?
Phone records?
We did have his phone records,
and we had some credit card receipts,
which kind of gave us a road map
of what Steven was doing.
So tell me kinda what was going on
leading up to his disappearance.
Steven went on a road trip.
[Berk] We show here on Thursday the 10th
at 2:15, he left St. George.
And you see he's coming up north,
and then he heads out
to Ruby Valley and out to Elko,
and back down.
[Chamberlain] Three days
before he goes missing?
-[Wyatt] Six.
-This is a full day of driving
-if he's driving it there and back.
-Yep. Yep.
[Berk] He was over a thousand miles
through Utah and Nevada.
[Chamberlain] That's a lot
to drive in one day.
[Berk] Yes.
[Chamberlain] Does he tell anyone
what he's doing on these road trips?
It was definitely a secret.
Nobody knows he's on this trip.
No friends, no family.
[Chamberlain] Definitely sticks out to me.
[Berk] There's just lots of gaps in this
time that we don't know what he was doing.
Did he meet anyone or talk to anyone?
[Berk] Yeah, in the Ruby Valley,
he did stop and he did have lunch there.
These are some journals that I had from
that time in my life when I knew Steven.
This was actually the day that
I found out that he had disappeared.
And so I had called one of my friends.
It says, "She told me some bad news.
Um, Steve Koecher,
who I went out a little bit with last year
but wasn't interested in, is missing.
Steve's car was found
in Henderson on December 14,
and he's been missing ever since."
My name is Annemarie Beatty,
and I met Steven in my church
maybe a year and a half to two years
before he had disappeared.
We were in a congregation of other singles
between the ages of 18 and 30.
A big focus in our religion
is getting married to somebody
that would be not just for this life
but for also eternity.
In a single's world,
everybody's goal is to get married.
We went on a few dates and hung out.
I believe our first date, he had asked me
to go to, um, an opera or an operetta.
He was very quiet, really nice.
And he was funny.
He enjoyed music and cultural arts.
But, you know,
I told him I just wanted to be friends.
And then my interactions with him
were limited to our church activities
and services.
The last time I had probably spoken to him
was about two months
before he disappeared.
After I had found out he was missing,
I was pretty concerned.
So I got on the phone with my mom,
and she had told me,
"Hey, your friend Steven
showed up at the house
couple days before he had disappeared."
"She said that I was in Salt Lake,
but invited him in for lunch.
He was on his way to Sacramento to see
somebody and decided to stop by.
I thought it was weird that he never
called me to see if I was even home."
First, you know,
things that go through my mind was like,
"What was he trying to accomplish?
Was he still interested
in kind of a relationship,
and just wanting to, like,
try one last time?"
I remember my mom said
just something like,
"He just seemed down."
I'm sure that Steven
was feeling that pressure,
especially as a man in the LDS Church.
Like, "Hey, you need to get married."
But I think that
something else was going on.
Something that almost wasn't noticeable,
but you just know there was--
there was something.
Something that could be
completely under the radar.
I think that LDS members,
when they do something
that is in contrary
to teachings and beliefs,
they can be good at covering that up.
If there was something that he was hiding…
Anything could be on the table
as a possibility.
[Chamberlain] Paying a visit
to the mother of a woman he barely dated
is truly bizarre behavior.
Even stranger, Steven lied to her.
He said he was going to California
on Thursday, December 10,
but he was only traveling
in Utah and Nevada that day.
So why did he lie?
I wonder who he was in touch with
before he disappeared.
[computer voice] Recording in progress.
[Chamberlain] Tessa, you were a private
investigator on Steven's case.
Through the course of the investigation,
one of the things that you guys did
was looking at phone records.
So who were the last people
that Steven was speaking to?
We were able to get in touch with
the person that Steven last spoke with,
a member from his church.
He called Steven to ask if
he would cover a church meeting for him.
And Steven said that
he was out of town in Vegas.
But the church member
said that if Steven was going
to miss a church meeting,
he would call ahead of time.
[Chamberlain] So he didn't tell
his friends about his trip either.
Why was he being so secretive?
Yeah. So, a lot of people
had the question if he was gay.
Because he wasn't married.
And generally, LDS people
are married by the age of 30.
We asked the church member
if he heard any rumor that Steven was gay.
And he was very quickly, very adamant
that Steven was not gay.
Which I thought was interesting.
[Chamberlain] Definitely. I mean,
who was he really meeting in Vegas?
[Lisa] It's hard to know
if Steven had other struggles,
and that's why he couldn't find a wife
or have a different lifestyle.
But I hope he would've known
we would've been okay with it.
[Dallin] Our family's really close.
I think we're willing to share with
each other what's going on in our lives.
When it gets too deep, too personal,
I think we kind of put up that protection.
So, I may not have known
everything about Steven's life.
Was he this way or was he that way?
We don't care.
He was a part of our family.
That's all that matters.
How you doin', big guy?
[Dallin] But I wish
I had asked more questions,
because I do think something
happened to him that hurt him.
[Chamberlain] I'm in St. George, Utah.
And it's, like,
a little town on the outskirts of Zion
and pretty close to Bryce Canyon.
So as you can imagine, it's beautiful.
I mean, you look around,
and you see these rock formations,
you see a lot of LDS churches.
I'm getting ready to go meet one of
the private investigators on Steven's case
who has some more information
about where Steven was living.
-So this is, uh, where Steven was living?
-Yes.
He was living up, just up the street here.
The white with the flagpole.
[Chamberlain] Yeah.
[Wyatt] That's the house
that Steven was living in.
He was selling advertising
or door-to-door type stuff.
-Mm-hmm.
-But about a month after he got down here,
he was let go from that business.
He had started working
for a local, um, window and blind cleaning
company selling advertising.
But Steven didn't have a lot of money.
Steven barely had a job.
How did he get hooked up
with this rental situation?
I would dare to say
he probably responded to an ad.
[Chamberlain]
So we don't have any known connection
in between Steven
and the roommate or the landlord here.
[Wyatt] Correct.
And so, Steven moved in.
And Steven complained to his family
about his roommate,
like, eating his food and doing drugs.
[Chamberlain] Interesting.
So, how much was Steven
paying in rent here?
-We believe it was about $400 a month.
-Okay.
And he was about $1,500 behind.
His roommate, who was renting a room,
was also behind in rent,
and he disappeared,
-moves out in the middle of the night…
-Mm.
-…and allegedly takes some property.
-Mm-hmm.
I don't know if it was appliances or what.
How long before Steven went missing
did his roommate move out
in the middle of the night?
-The roommate moved out in mid-November.
-Mm-hmm.
And we know Steven went missing
in mid-December.
-So, it was about a month.
-Right. Okay.
Kinda curious timing in terms of
how these things are lining up.
It makes me wonder
if Steven's disappearance
is somehow related to
what's going on in this house.
It's a pretty small community here.
-[Wyatt] Little cul-de-sac.
-Right.
You notice people coming and going.
-Right?
-Yeah, it's very quiet.
So, the across-the-street neighbor…
-[Wyatt] That's John's house.
-Okay.
-[Wyatt] I believe we did talk with him.
-All right.
John, I-I'm Kevin.
You spoke to my investigator
a year or two ago.
-And this is Kara.
-[John] Yeah.
-Hey. I'm Kara. It's nice to meet you.
-I'm William.
So, when Steven moved in,
was the other guy already living here?
The roommate, was he--
No, he was with him.
[Chamberlain] Okay, they both moved in
around the same time?
Yeah.
And that window on the west side.
The bedroom.
That guy went and raised the window up
to get in and out of that house.
-[Chamberlain] Oh. Is that that roommate?
-Yeah.
[Chamberlain]
He was going in and out of a window?
[John] Yeah that's where he lived at,
in the bedroom in there.
-Why would he not go out the front door?
-I don't know.
He did that three or four
different times. I noticed it, too.
That odd, huh?
Straight off… up the road in his car.
It was kind of strange.
[Chamberlain] Yeah. I mean, that's…
that's pretty strange to me.
Yeah.
So, on December 12
was the last time y'all saw Steven.
The night before he disappeared.
Yeah.
[Wyatt] I think
when Jim talked to you before,
you had mentioned that
he came home around 10:00
but he was only here for about 30 minutes
and then he left again.
-Yeah.
-And that was the last time…
Yeah that was the last time
we ever did see him.
Did he tell you where he was going?
[John] No.
[Chamberlain] Was the roommate with him?
I don't think so.
[Wyatt] Okay.
[Wyatt] When we start seeing odd behavior
and things with the roommate,
we're thinking, "Okay,
now maybe we're gonna get somewhere."
So we interviewed him,
and we did a background on him.
He was a young kid.
He was about 18, 19 years old.
Found nothing concerning.
And our investigation into the roommate
really didn't lead us
to believe that
he was still in St. George.
There was just nothing to suggest
that he had any involvement whatsoever.
[Chamberlain] Steven's case has gotten
a lot of play on Reddit.
I'm seeing a lot of posts
about the guy from Steven's church
who called him a few hours
before he went missing.
So, 7:52, he talks to this church member.
This person was calling Steven because
they couldn't make a church meeting.
It turns out, this guy was in Vegas
at the same time Steven was.
Why were both of these people,
who were heavily involved in their church,
in the Vegas area on a day
when they were supposed to be
at their ward, at church?
The other thing that I'm seeing
just reading through…
This person also was in Steven's house
after he went missing.
Searching, looking around,
took a notebook.
What was in the notebook?
Why would he have been at Steven's place
to begin with?
Anytime something comes up,
and you're like,
"Hmm, that's weird, that's coincidental,"
I think requires more digging.
[line ringing]
Hello, my name's
Kara Robinson Chamberlain.
I am investigating, uh,
Steven Koecher's disappearance,
and I would love to talk to you
if you have a couple minutes.
Yesterday, I called
the last person to speak with Steven
before he parked in that cul-de-sac.
And he said he was busy,
but he would talk to me another time.
I just got this text from him.
"I apologize for the delayed reply.
Of course I remain deeply sympathetic
to the Koecher family
and wish there were more
I could do to help them.
Over the years,
I've shared all the information
and perspective I have
regarding this matter,
and at this point,
I'm not able to provide anything further."
I mean,
he has a right to decline.
It's disappointing that he is not willing
to just answer some questions for me. Um…
So I guess I'll just have to look for
other ways to answer those questions.
I know Jim talked to him.
[chimes]
So, I want to get to the bottom of this.
Because it is strange
that they were in the same city
on the day that Steven went missing.
Steven's friend said some college friends
of his came down to St. George,
and then they drove down to Vegas
to visit other college friends.
I also noticed
that this friend from church
was actually in Steven's house
and took some things?
We too were concerned that basically
the story was that the Koecher family
had asked the local church
to go into Steven's house
and get his, uh, computer.
And there was a notebook.
It was, uh, suggestions and ideas
for home teaching,
um, which is part of the LDS church.
So that was returned to the family
with the computer.
You know, we checked with the family,
and the family didn't raise
any red flags with it.
That computer was turned over to
the Henderson Police Department.
-Okay, good.
-And there was
nothing they could find out of it.
The family couldn't remember a notebook,
but it was a long time ago.
And that notebook I'm sure is gone.
It's nothing that anybody saved.
[Chamberlain] Okay.
That explanation
from Steven's friend is plausible.
So, for now,
I think the best way to figure out
what Steven was doing when he disappeared
is to take a closer look
at the surveillance video of him
taken before he went missing
in the cul-de-sac in Henderson, Nevada.
-So, this is the front of the house.
-[Chamberlain] Mm-hmm.
[Berk] Steven's car come in from the top,
and it goes all the way
to the end of Savanna.
-[Chamberlain] Where the cul-de-sac is?
-Cul-de-sac is, right.
[Chamberlain] He's kinda going fast.
-It seems like he knows where he's going.
-Right.
[Berk] Yeah. So, six minutes later,
he comes walking by.
[Chamberlain]
And he is walking with purpose.
And his arms aren't moving.
See? Like, you don't see his arms
swing back and forth. They're still.
[Berk] Almost like zipping his jacket or
hands in the pocket or holding a folder.
[Chamberlain] Yeah. Something, right?
[Berk] He could have something.
[Wyatt] We wanted to know,
what was Steven doing there?
Who was he associated with?
[Berk] And then we found the neighbor
in the second house here.
Says that earlier in the week,
Steven came to his door
and asked, "Do you want some money?"
[Chamberlain] That's definitely strange.
[Wyatt] It's also odd,
because Steven was behind in rent.
He didn't have any money.
And why are you asking a stranger?
We don't have any video
of the days before, right?
So, what do you think it means?
[Wyatt] I think he's at the wrong house.
Maybe he was just confused.
That begs the question,
is he delivering something for someone?
[Chamberlain] Oh. Do you think
he was delivering money? Maybe?
[Berk] Either that or paying for something
and getting something back.
[Chamberlain] Okay.
Was anyone calling or texting him
around this time?
I'm thinking that could help indicate
who he was meeting with.
-[Berk] No.
-[Wyatt] But just after he went missing,
the landlord called him 11 times
in a short period of time.
[Berk] A couple days.
[Wyatt] Which is odd to me. I mean,
Steven owes him money, but 11 calls?
-Because 11 is obsessive.
-Yeah.
[Wyatt] We started running
a background on the landlord.
We found out the home in St. George
had the stolen Porsche in that garage.
In the landlord's home in Orem,
which is where he was living primarily,
had been raided by the police
by search warrant more than once.
Guns had been seized,
and he had automatic weapons.
[Berk] And in the landlord's garage
in Orem,
there were bottles of prescriptions
under other people's names.
So, definitely some suspicious behavior
in the background of this guy.
And did you find him?
-We did.
-[Berk] Yeah.
[Wyatt] He agreed to meet us,
and we did a recorded interview.
You know, he said a lot of things,
and he talked circles a lot.
[Berk] He said he liked Steven
and that Steven was working towards a plan
to get caught up on rent.
The landlord,
he had a lot of different jobs.
One of them was some bookkeeping
and ordering in a closed-door pharmacy.
Closed-door pharmacies take drugs
and package them up for nursing homes.
Those drugs could easily
be diverted to the street.
When we asked the landlord
about the prescriptions in the garage,
he said that his boss
told him to get rid of them.
If meds expired or a patient died
that no longer needed the meds,
I would throw them in a box.
Returned medications
have to be disposed of
according to the DEA's regulations.
They're not thrown in someone's garage.
[Berk] And we found out
that somebody wrote a letter to the boss
and stated
that the landlord was stealing drugs.
I don't think the closed-door pharmacy
filed charges, but they did let him go.
[Wyatt] Could Steven have been asked
to do something with those drugs?
And one of the things that really
stood out to me in the interview was
the landlord's comment,
"I hope some of the things
that I was involved in,
or the people that I were associated with
didn't have anything to do
with Steven's disappearance."
[Chamberlain] Oh, wow.
Whether my troubles were related
to Steven's troubles.
I don't know that. But,
the worst case scenario,
someone's trying to make me look bad.
By, by doing something to him.
And trying to frame me for it.
[Chamberlain] Steven's landlord was
obviously in close contact with Steven
around the time he disappeared.
And he has priors
and stolen merchandise in his homes.
Was Steven here running
an errand for a felon?
And if so, what was he doing?
I'm hoping that a visit
to the place Steven disappeared
might help me figure that out.
So tell me about where Steven's car was
and kind of what was going on
leading up to him going missing.
Okay, so it was a Sunday,
December 13th of 2009.
-Mm-hmm.
-And Steven Koecher was caught on video
coming down this way,
and he parks
approximately where your car is
-right there.
-Wow.
Uh, we're outside
of the camera view right now.
As we walk,
I'll show you were the view starts.
So here's the camera.
-He gets picked up on the camera.
-Okay.
[Berk] And it's the camera
that caught him coming in also.
So right about here, he angles over
and goes straight to the sidewalk.
And there's a van parked in the driveway,
-like this vehicle is here.
-Mm-hmm.
And the camera's pointing this way,
and in the window reflection,
you see Steven walking this way.
[Chamberlain] Oh, wow.
[Berk] So he disappears out of the video…
somewhere about in here.
And that's the last that we've seen him.
So, where do you think he was heading?
Well, we think he was heading
to this next house.
-[Chamberlain] Why?
-Because there was suspicious activity
that started
right after Steven disappeared.
This neighbor across the street
was interviewed by the police,
and she said that, during the time
that Steven went missing,
she had noticed strange things
happening at that house.
It was going to foreclosure.
The sounds of construction, day and night.
And so you're not making payments
on the house,
you're gonna give it back to the bank,
but you're doing construction.
[neighbor]
You could hear for days and days,
drilling, sawing.
[Berk] Did it sound like it was inside,
or in, like, in the backyard?
[neighbor] No, the backyard.
[Berk] In the backyard, okay.
[neighbor] We were all talking about it,
because everyone thought that
something happened at that house.
[Berk] She had also saw
a cargo van at this house,
and two people
were carrying down, uh, hand trucks,
stacked three to four high with, like,
buckets of real heavy stuff.
[neighbor]
They were putting the buckets in the van,
they would leave,
and you would see
the red dirt left on the pavement.
And then anywhere
from thirty minutes to an hour,
and they would come back.
[Berk] From the indication that
the truck was coming and going,
we feel it's driving out wherever there
was red dirt, somewhere in the desert.
And she said, on Sunday she remembers
seeing a moving van out in front.
And they were moving out quick.
[neighbor] I remember seeing
two things in the moving truck.
-A large piece of furniture…
-[Berk] Okay.
[neighbor]
And a big piece of carpet rolled up.
And it happened so soon
after Steven went missing.
It's like, they've gotta be
taking him and burying him
out in the desert somewhere.
Your best guess is that maybe
something happened to Steven here?
Yeah, and that he got killed.
We have a picture of Google Earth
from before and after,
and you can see that
there's a difference in the cement.
We feel that possibly they were
removing any evidence of blood
or of a crime scene,
went out to the desert and dumped it.
Was Steven inside the van? We don't know.
[Chamberlain] When I think about the fact
that there was some construction
on this house that was in the process
of being foreclosed on,
it's definitely a little suspicious.
But is there a connection
between Steven's landlord in Utah
and the house that they think
that Steven went to in Nevada?
[Wyatt] We found that the person
living in the home in foreclosure
was taking high doses of opiates.
And then on the same day,
Steven got these multiple calls
from the landlord who had worked
in a closed-door pharmacy.
Was he making a delivery for the landlord?
To me, it's just too coincidental.
And when the police, during the interview,
showed this person
a photo of Steven,
he said Steven looks like a church boy.
You know, "What's he doing down here?
He looks like a church boy."
[Wyatt] To me, that's odd.
I mean, if he didn't know Steven,
to make that type of a comment
for a missing person,
again, raises a red flag, right?
And then when he vacated that home,
it had been destroyed.
[news reporter 8] There's this clue.
These photos from inside
a home in the neighborhood,
taken shortly after
Steven's disappearance.
-[Chamberlain] Hey again!
-I can't wait to see what you found out.
So, Steven's landlord
had all of these pills in his home.
[Harlowe] What was he doing with them?
He worked at a closed-door pharmacy,
and he said, "I was just keeping them."
Which… It just doesn't make sense.
-Why? Why are you keeping them?
-Yeah.
And something that was really curious,
that is new information,
is that his landlord called him 11 times
in the days immediately
following his disappearance,
where they were not in contact
like that before.
Why would he be calling him
that many times?
The private investigators have made
the connection that it could be possible
that these pills had something
to do with what Steven was doing.
Yeah, I mean, it could,
and if you think about
what Steven was seen with on surveillance…
We don't know exactly what it was,
but it could've been
a manila or padded envelope
with pills in them.
So I'm actually curious, because now,
we've kind of isolated
the landlord as potentially being,
you know, connected.
Was there any connection you found
between him and anybody
that was in that neighborhood?
[Chamberlain] From the surveillance video,
it looked like Steven
was purposefully heading to a house
where a tenant that was a drug user lived.
So, he's on narcotics.
Could there be a connection?
And they actually learned
that there was also
some construction at the exact time
Steven went missing.
Even though the house has been foreclosed,
they were breaking up concrete
all hours of the night.
One of the neighbors stated
that what they saw during this time,
this family was moving buckets
into the back of a van, that moving van,
and would leave and come back.
So the assumption
from the private investigators
is that something happened to Steven
and evidence had to be busted up
and taken away.
Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
That would be a great place
to start looking.
And I hope they can get
law enforcement support
if they do find an area
-that's worth looking into more.
-Right.
Police have asked the current owners
to search their property,
but they said no, because
the evidence is entirely circumstantial.
There's not enough to get a warrant.
-Mm-hmm.
-Nothing that gives us
any definitive answer
to what happened to Steven.
Where do you think Steven is?
I think he's passed on.
I'm not sure how that happened.
-I don't think he's here anymore.
-[Michael] Yeah.
I think that's the general consensus.
We think that, unwittingly or knowingly,
he got himself
into a bad situation and is now gone.
We hope that it was quick,
and if that was the…
-if that's the scenario.
-[Chamberlain] Yeah.
I remember praying for a miracle, and that
didn't happen, but then the miracle came
is that family was here
and friends were here
and people rallied around us.
We just want to know what happened to him.
I think somebody knows something,
and I speak for the family when I say,
we don't hold any malice or anger
or ill intent to anybody
that might know something.
And if this can be that inspiration
to help them come forward,
we'd be eternally grateful.
[Dallin] At this time,
there's a little bit of, uh…
bliss in ignorance…
not knowing what happened,
because I don't know
if he was hurt or suffered.
But then you just don't have
that final closure.
Uh…
It's been ten days ♪
It's never gone away… ♪
[Dallin] I miss the fun
that he brought to our life.
That joy, that spark,
that only he had is missing.
We just want to know.
And I've never ♪
Felt like this before… ♪
Steven's family deserves to know
what happened to him.
The biggest puzzle piece
that we're missing is
why was he in this neighborhood
where he was last seen?
Unfortunately,
Steven kept a lot of secrets.
And, at this point, it seems likely
that those secrets
exposed him to someone who hurt him.
If you have any new information
about what might have happened to Steven,
please call law enforcement directly.
Visit the Somebody Knows Something channel
on abcnews.com
for further discussion
about Steven's case.
And don't forget to watch
weekly new episodes on Freeform and Hulu.
[person 1] The cruise line was saying
they had no knowledge of what happened.
[Chamberlain] Did Kevin jump?
[Amara] If Kevin jumped overboard
we would have saw something.
[person 2] The video was not conclusive
to a person falling in the water.
So then, where is he?
And I noticed somebody's feet.
Could it have been Kevin?