- [Narrator] What is up, EWU crew?
Today, we are covering five eerie cases
of people who have disappeared in national parks, forests,
and vast wilderness areas.
The first case is of Jared Negrete,
a 13-year-old boy who vanished during a hike in 1991.
He had gone on a camping trip with his Boy Scout troop
in San Bernardino National Forest,
which was reportedly
his first ever overnight backpacking trip.
On the morning of July 19th,
the troop left their base camp for a day hike
on Mount San Gorgonio.
As they approached the summit of the mountain that evening,
they realized that Jared was not with them.
He had somehow been separated from the group
and no one was sure when it happened.
Apparently, another group of hikers on the trail noticed
that the eighth grader had fallen behind.
They informed the troop leader
and he told them that he would pick Jared up
on their way back down the trail,
except they never saw Jared when they headed back.
The troop leader decided to return the boys to base camp
before setting out on foot, in the dark, to get help.
A sheriff-lead search was launched immediately
over an area of 130 square miles.
After three days, they restricted their efforts
to an area of six square miles.
It was in this zone
that they were said to have discovered a shoe print
that matched Jared's shoes.
They also found wrappers from beef jerky and candy
which they thought Jared might have dropped
after he disappeared from the trail.
Then they found Jared's camera.
It had only 12 photos on the film roll.
Most of them were pictures of landscapes
which he had likely taken along the way,
except for the last one,
an eerie close-up of Jared's face from the nose, up.
Although you can't see his whole face,
it's pretty clear he was not smiling.
It appears to have been taken in the dark,
or perhaps just in a very shady area.
People have speculated
that the photo may have been taken by mistake,
that Jared was attempting to use the camera's flash
to light his way at night.
Law enforcement and search-and-rescue teams put in
more than a combined 45,000 hours
looking for him extensively.
No other signs or clues were found
after the discovery of the shoe print,
food wrappers, and camera.
No remains, no clothing, nothing.
And, to this day, nearly 30 years after his disappearance,
no one has ever seen Jared Negrete again.
Number four on our list is a case
that's been dubbed, "The Death Valley Germans."
It is rumored that Eastern California's
infamous Death Valley National Park is a place
where lots of human remains are found.
Accidents are known to take place in this desert.
It has tremendously rough, rocky terrain
with extremely high temperatures during the day,
and is very cold at night.
So hikers and visitors must come prepared before they go in.
Back in the summer of 1996,
four Germans arrived in the United States
for an exciting family trip.
Egbert Rimkus, a 34-year-old architect,
took his 11-year-old son
as well as his 27-year-old girlfriend
and her four-year-old son on the trip.
When they landed in Los Angeles in early July that year,
they rented a car to explore the California coastline
and then headed toward Los Vegas.
On July 22, they went to Death Valley National Park.
Apparently, they intended to make their way
to Yosemite National Park
before finally catching their flight home on July 27th.
But they never made that flight.
When they got to Death Valley National Park,
they bought informational materials about the area
that included a map of historic and defunct roads.
That night, they reportedly opted to camp out
at Hanaupah Canyon,
and, interestingly, claims have been made
that Egbert was running low on cash
and sent a fax to his ex-wife,
requesting her to wire more money to him.
But it appears he never obtained it.
This may explain some of the decisions they made
over the following days.
They continued to make stops along old mining sites
and unoccupied geological stations throughout their journey,
and even signed the guestbooks at some of these places.
It seemed that they were following a shortcut they found
on their map.
But these roads were super rugged
and would have required a four-wheel drive vehicle to cross,
definitely not a minivan.
The family struggled as the road conditions worsened
and they eventually found themselves unable
to go any further after riding on three flat tires
for quite some time.
They're thought to have then exited their vehicle
and headed out on foot toward the China Lake military base,
which they would have seen on their map.
But they didn't make it there.
Fast-forward three months.
A ranger discovers their abandoned vehicle in Anvil Canyon
while conducting an aerial search
for illegal drug operations.
When he ran the plates,
he found out it had been reported stolen
by the rental company.
An investigation was launched
and while footprints, food wrappers,
and alcohol containers were discovered,
the family of four was not.
Inside the van, they found a few film rolls
that included some pictures of their travels
in Death Valley.
A number of searches were carried out
over the years to come,
but they, too, were unsuccessful.
A lot of theories emerged
to explain what happened to the Germans.
Some people say they staged the disappearance
so they could start a new life elsewhere,
while others claim Egbert had an obsession
with covert military operations,
and their case may have been linked to conspiracy theories.
However, no evidence came up to support any of these ideas.
Finally, in 2009,
Los Angeles search-and-rescue worker Tom Mahood
and his friend, Les Walker,
decided to search the area themselves.
They hoped to find something
that would explain what happened to the family.
And they had a theory about where to look for clues
based on all of the acquired knowledge on the case
up to that point.
Near the China Lake Naval Weapons Station,
they eventually found some answers.
It was there that they discovered a wine bottle,
the girlfriend's wallet, a few other personal items,
and human remains.
Two sets of adult human bones were found
eight miles from the van.
An expanded search
of this immediate area revealed more human bones.
However, they did not contain enough DNA
to confirm if they did, in fact, belong to the two children.
Now, moving on to number three,
we've got the case of Douglas Legg,
an eight-year-old boy from Syracuse who went missing
in New York's Adirondack Mountains.
In July of 1971,
Douglas and his family were staying at their cabin
in the Santanoni Preserve.
The boy had spent a great deal of time
in the woods surrounding the property,
even earning the title of mini-woodsman.
But one day that summer,
something went terribly wrong.
On July 10th, Doug and his relatives left the homestead
to hike in the surrounding forest.
Not far down the trail,
his uncle saw poison ivy and sent him back to the cabin
to put on some long pants.
Given his experience and familiarity with those woods
as well as the fact that it was a very short distance
to the cabin,
they knew he'd be safe and would return quickly.
Douglas did as he was told
but never came back.
His family frantically searched the cabin
and the immediate area, but saw no sign of him.
They were panicked and perplexed.
None of it made any sense.
Douglas was just gone.
One of the Adirondack's largest search operations
began immediately.
More than 600 people were involved
in the efforts,
including the Sierra Madre search-and-rescue unit,
which Legg's family had paid to have flown in.
Six full weeks of tireless searching
would yield not a single sign of the mini-woodsman.
As the years went by,
desperate to find out what happened to Doug,
his relatives began to grow suspicious of friends
and even each other.
However, this didn't change anything.
And the police stood by their initial beliefs
that the child had somehow become lost
after separating from his family on the trail that day.
A few leads have popped up over the years,
but none of them have ever panned out.
It's been nearly 50 years now since Doug went missing.
Some of his relatives have since passed away,
including his mother and father,
and the cabin was sold a few months after the incident.
Sadly, the boy was never found.
We're now at case number two,
which is the eerie disappearance
of 16-year-old Teresa Lynn Gibson,
also known as Trenny,
who was a high school student in Knoxville, Tennessee.
On the morning of October 8th, 1976,
Trenny and 30 to 40 of her classmates loaded
onto a school bus for a field trip.
At the time, none of them knew where they were going
until their teacher announced they'd be going
to the Smoky Mountains to explore the nature there.
On the bus, Trenny sat with her older brother's friend,
Robert Simpson.
Her brother had asked Robert
to look after his sister on the field trip,
so when she had failed to bring a coat that day,
Robert gave her his own.
When the class arrived at their destination,
the plan was to hike the Forney Ridge trail
from Clingmans Dome to Andrews Bald and back.
The students broke into smaller groups
as they walked along the trail.
Up at Andrews Bald,
Robert and Trenny ate lunch together
before heading back separately.
Classmates say the young woman was walking hastily,
like she was on a mission,
as she passed several groups along the way.
In fact, at the time she was thought to have gone missing,
she should have had one group of peers ahead of her
and behind her,
making it even more difficult
to understand how any of this could have happened.
One classmate reported
that she watched Trenny after she had passed their group.
She said she had seen Trenny come to a stop
and bend over to look at something on the ground.
She then looked toward her right
and walked off the trail in that direction.
The classmate says this last image
of the missing girl haunts her to this day.
When the group reached the point
where she had exited the trail, they did not see her,
even after calling out her name.
That was the last anyone ever saw of Trenny Lynn Gibson.
When everyone got back to the bus,
the teacher did a head count
and realized he was one student short.
After checking the immediate area,
he decided to send the students back to the school
while he called the National Park Service for help.
A thorough search of the area would yield no sign
of the young woman.
Police dogs did pick up her scent at an intersection
where Forney Ridge Trail meets the Appalachian Trail.
They followed it back down to Clingmans Dome Tower
and eventually to the road,
where it ended about a mile and a half away.
Nearly 44 years later,
Trenny has yet to be found.
Over the decades, a number of theories have emerged.
A few months before the class field trip,
a frightening incident had taken place
at the Gibson family home.
A young man named Kelvin Bowman
had drunkenly broken into their house
in the middle of the night to get a hold of Trenny,
and her mother actually shot him in the foot
to defend her child.
He went to jail
and vowed to get revenge when he was released.
However, there is no evidence linking him to this case.
It was before the time of cell phones,
so he would have had to follow the bus that day
to know where she was.
And, at that time, he did not have a car.
The other ideas about what could have happened
to Trenny include theories from getting lost
to falling off a cliff, to being attacked by a wild animal,
to being taken, to even being lured from the trail
by somebody.
And then there's Robert Simpson.
Some people wonder if he tried to make a move on her
while they ate lunch at Andrews Bald.
And that would explain why they descended separately.
Later on, Trenny's comb,
which her mother said she wouldn't be caught dead without,
was discovered in Robert Simpson's car.
However, he was never arrested
nor named a person of interest.
Interestingly,
when the kid was questioned about his whereabouts
after separating from Trenny,
he told investigators that he had left the trail
to track a bear.
So no one knew where Robert was
from the time everyone left Andrews Bald
to when he appeared on the bus after 3 PM.
To this day, nothing more has developed within the case.
Finally, the last case is that of Amy Wroe Bechtel,
a woman who disappeared in Wyoming's Shoshone National Park
back in 1997.
At the time, Amy was working with a local gym
to organize a 10k marathon.
On July 24th, she headed out to run some errands,
teach a class at the gym,
and planned to enter the national park
to map out the marathon route.
But she never returned home that day
and has not been seen since.
Thankfully, Amy's proposed map for the marathon
gave searchers some indication of where to begin looking.
Sure enough, at the location where the run would have ended,
they found Amy's vehicle.
The doors were unlocked and Amy was nowhere to be seen.
Her car keys and sunglasses were on the passenger's seat,
but her wallet was gone.
A large and extensive search was launched immediately,
but yielded absolutely no results.
And, quickly, the missing person case turned
into a criminal investigation.
Unfortunately,
the crime scene seems to have been compromised
during the searches.
Any evidence, such as tire tracks, fingerprints,
fibers, or DNA that may have been in the car was compromised
by someone tampering with her unsecured vehicle.
The case left people confused.
None of it made sense.
But then law enforcement began to look at Amy's husband,
Steve.
Although he did have an alibi
that was corroborated by his friend,
a few things seemed amiss.
Before calling the authorities,
his friends had described Steve as extremely panicked,
flustered, and worried sick about his spouse.
But when Steve made the call around 10:30 PM
to report his wife missing,
he allegedly seemed quite calm.
He even jokingly told the 911 operator,
"Hey, this is Steve Bechtal calling."
"Um, I've got a missing person,
and I'm wondering if you maybe have an extra?"
At some point,
investigators did search the couple's property,
and discovered some of Steve's journals.
In them, he described violent acts against women,
and, more specifically, against his wife.
That's when the investigation shifted its focus
onto Amy's husband.
Investigators began to question the guy.
And, at first, he was cooperative
and even agreed to take a polygraph test.
On August 1st, eight days after Amy disappeared,
they brought him in for an interrogation.
At some point, their questions got to him.
Apparently, they falsely claimed they had evidence
linking him to his wife's demise.
Steve became enraged and immediately left the interrogation.
He lawyer-ed up
and informed detectives he would no longer be available
for questioning,
nor would he follow through with the lie detector test.
And without any evidence,
they were unable to charge him with anything.
Several witnesses had told the police
that they had seen Amy running on the national park road
where her vehicle had been found.
A witness even claimed she saw a pickup truck
that matched the description of Steve's truck.
She saw it speeding away from where Amy had last been seen,
adding that the driver was a white male,
and a female who looked like Mrs. Bechtal was riding
in the passenger seat.
Steve's refusal to cooperate
with the investigation upset her family members,
especially her brother, Nels.
Less than a year after Amy's disappearance,
her sisters made an appearance on the Geraldo Rivera Show
in which they begged Steve for answers
on what happened that day.
10 years later,
Sheriff Sergeant Roger Rizor told the Billings Gazette,
"I believe it was a homicide."
"And I believe what happened to her
happened on the day she disappeared."
"In my mind, there is only one person
that I want to talk to,
only one person who has refused to talk to law enforcement,
and that's her husband."
Yet he walks free to this day.
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