Utah man's disappearance remains unsolved 17 years later
Security footage shows Steven Koecher's last known location in Nevada.
Steven Koecher, a 30-year-old member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, parked his car in a Nevada retirement community two hours away from his Utah home in December 2009. He hasn't been seen by his family since.
With no evidence on why he left or where he was going, the devout Mormon's disappearance has been shrouded in mystery, leaving his family devastated and questioning how well they knew him.
Was Steven running from something? Where was he going? Is he still alive?
The third episode of "Somebody Knows Something," "Disappeared in the Desert" premieres Monday, Aug. 17 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Freeform, and streams the next day on Disney+ and Hulu.
Host Kara Robinson Chamberlain, a true crime influencer, kidnapping survivor and former law enforcement officer, takes viewers to Steven's hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah, to meet with his siblings in hopes of uncovering answers to the mystery of their brothers' disappearance.
"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." Lisa Koecher, Steven's sister, told Chamberlain.
Steven's car was found in the small town of Henderson, Nevada, that Dec. 13. The family had no idea what he was doing in a town far from his home of St. George, Utah.
"Did he get himself hurt? You go through these different scenarios, but we just don't know what's happening," Dallin Koecher, Steven's brother, added.
There was no sign of damage on his car, he noted.
"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," Dallin told Chamberlain. "To me, that's saying, I am intending to come back to this vehicle. And then he just doesn't."
Then Dallin noticed a nearby house with security cameras and was alarmed by what he saw when the resident shared the footage with him.
"We see the car come in, we see Steven walk across the field of vision in that camera, and then walk off." Dallin told Chamberlain.
Robert McKay, the former primary investigator on the case, told Chamberlain that there was nothing that "indicated there was foul play involved," though he found it "very unusual that Steven had parked there and walked away."
"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?" he said.
Timeline
Two Utah based private investigators helped put together a timeline of Steven's whereabouts leading up to the disappearance. Phone records and credit card statements show that he went on a road trip between Utah and Nevada, driving over 1,000 miles in just one day shortly before his disappearance.
"It was definitely a secret. Nobody knows he's on this trip. No friends, no family," private investigator Jim Berk told Chamberlain.
On his journey, Steven showed up at the doorstep of the mother of Annemarie Beatty, a woman that he briefly dated, without advance notice.
Beatty recalled in an interview with Chamberlain that her mother said something like, "he just seemed down." She also noted that Steven mentioned that he was on his way to California, but there is no indication he was going there.
According to the private investigators working the case, phone records indicated there was a call between Steven and a member of his church where he said he was planning to go to Las Vegas.
But with a timeline full of gaps, Stevens disappearance was still a mystery. Why was Steven being so secretive? Who was he really meeting in Las Vegas?
Visiting St. George, Utah, Chamberlain learned more about Steven's life and financial struggles leading up to his disappearance.
"He was selling advertising or door-to-door type stuff, but about a month after he got down here, he was let go from that business," private investigator Kevin Wyatt said. "He had started working for a local window and blind cleaning company, selling advertising. But Steven didn't have a lot of money. Steven barely had a job."
He also owed his landlord $1,500. Suspicions surrounding the landlord grew when phone records revealed an obsessive 11 calls made by the landlord to Steven shortly after he disappeared.
Wyatt told Chamberlain that, during an investigation of the landlord, they found a stolen Porsche in his garage and that police raided his primary residence, where they seized a plethora of automatic weapons and found a large quantity of prescription medication.
When the landlord was questioned about the medication, he allegedly replied, "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." Wyatt told Chamberlin.
When questioned by the private investigators, Steven's landlord offered a concerning remark.
"I hope that 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," he allegedly said. "Whether my troubles were related to Steven's troubles, I don't know that. But ... worst case scenario, someone's trying to make me look bad. By doing something to him and trying to frame me for it."
This led the investigators to think that Steven may have been asked to do something with the drugs that put him in a bad situation.
After piecing together the footage of Steven's movements off the security camera, the private investigators zeroed in on the house they believed Steven may have been heading to before he disappeared.
"There was suspicious activity at this house that started right after Steven disappeared. The sounds of construction day and night." Berk told Chamberlain.
Berk questioned why there was construction on a house that was going into foreclosure.
In an interview with a neighbor, the private investigators learned that there was a cargo van outside the house at the time. Two people were seen carrying heavy objects from the house into the van before driving off in a hurry.
Wyatt and Berk speculated that something may have happened to Steven at this house, but there was no search of the premises due to the circumstantial nature of the evidence.
It's been a long and frustrating 17 years for the Koecher family without Steven or any definitive answers to why he disappeared, Michael Koecher, Steven's brother, told Chamberlain.
"We think that unwittingly or knowingly he got himself into a bad situation and is now gone," he said.
"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." Dallin Koecher added.
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