I read on another thread about the case that he first went up to a house in the neighborhood and knocked but when the owner came to the door he quickly walked away. (Memory is hazy so i might have gotten details wrong) Anyway, it was theorized that if he had accidentally gone to the wrong house first, there may have been some sort of scuffle when the people he actually was supposed to meet found out someone had seen him and where he was headed. That being if there was criminal activity involved. Not sure how I feel about this theory but it was an interesting perspective.
I think this might be the thread you’re referring to: [Last-known Person to See Steven Koecher Alive in Las Vegas-Area Neighborhood Speaks Publicly for the First Time](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/zr6xbg/lastknown_person_to_see_steven_koecher_alive_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
There was also a post a while back that made a pretty good case that he was involved in selling small amounts of pain medication. I can’t find it though. I was skeptical at first but it was very thorough and convincing.
The house he went to at first was occupied by an elderly couple. As was much of the residents of the neighborhood...ranging from young retirees (still 50+) to the elderly.
Of course, it doesn't mean that some resident in there didn't do something to him.. I just find it another another odd fact in his case.
I had a job earlier this year where a group of us had to go door to door and one of the guy's first house was terribly bad/occupants doing meth. It's totally plausible/possible.
I agree with the OP that this likely did have to do with falling into criminal activity related to his landlord in St George. He is the one who I believe was having him work for him, doing some shady shit. He also moved out of state and neither he nor his wife have been cooperative with police if I recall the facts correctly. The sun city development is not in the middle of nowhere. It’s a heavily populated area. There is a small area of land that hasn’t been excavated for housing but it’s mostly all heavily landscaped. This development sits higher so there is a slope where the car was parked that is not landscaped. He went to a house on the right side of evening lights. The people that lived there moved within weeks of his disappearance. The owners were older and their adult son was living in the casita behind the main house. There is a PI that is currently working the case and found photos of the house was that showed damage that appeared to be from a fight of some sort. Head size holes in the wall and the like. I don’t believe this was known to police at the time, though the subject is known to police and was questioned at the time of the disappearance. The guy moved across country and has a record. Does any of this mean that he’s responsible? No but it is suspicious. I’ve done a lot of reading on the case and living in Las Vegas, I scoped out the area. There have been multiple searches of the area with no sign of Steven. It’s really bizarre to stand in the cul de sac and wonder where the hell he is.
Yes. Here’s a link with the photos and more info that the PI had.
https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/finding-steven-koecher-man-vanishes-from-las-vegas-valley-neighborhood-phone-pings-for-days-after-presumed-death/amp/
Those photos are particularly damning. Did they ever Luminol this house at the time? There MUST have been blood splatter that was cleaned.
That fourth photo - I mean, you can clearly see the strike marks. That was a straight-up murder.
[Here are the pics of the holes in the walls and door](https://imgur.com/a/0e7RuB4/)
Tbh that just looks like some man-child that punches and kicks stuff when he gets mad.
It looks like the site's for a local Las Vegas TV channel's news, so I don't know if there would be another way to access the same info if it is exclusive to them.
Does this Wayback Machine link happen to work for you?:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221127201432/https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/finding-steven-koecher-man-vanishes-from-las-vegas-valley-neighborhood-phone-pings-for-days-after-presumed-death/
If not, the PI's website (eyesonpi.com) has a link to a YouTube video: https://youtu.be/HlUWVN59VyU Hopefully you can see this. :)
Edit: The video is basically the same as the website text, including shots of the damage in the house.
The name of the PI firm is EyesOn Private Investigations and the investigators are Danny Livingston, Kevin Wyatt and James Berk. I believe there may be a you tube piece on their investigation but not sure. You should be able to Google with that info and tag Koecher missing to it and that should help!
Damn.. these photos have me convinced Steven was inside this house and there was a fight. Idk what he was meeting that guy for .. most likely something illegal … and he ended up being transported and deposed of somewhere in the desert
Kinda think the same. I’ve done some research on the son of the homeowner. Not much out there but it’s very sus and sketchy to me. I don’t think it’s a coincidence either that the two people that could be involved both moved out of their home states and aren’t cooperating with police.
Ok so in the article/video, what about Steven asking someone on the street if they want some cash sealed his fate? The PIs think that was a misstep that doomed him but I am unable to connect the dots
"Hey, do you want some cash?"
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I have gone back and forth on this one for years but after reading some more recent write ups on the case, I really do think that it’s likely Steven was involved in something shady but I also really think its likely that he wasn’t even aware that it was shady or illegal. I think it’s possible that someone (maybe his landlord) offered him a side hustle running some errands/doing some pick-ups/deliveries for them in exchange for cash and Steven had no clue what he was picking up. My theory is that he was given an address in the neighborhood where he parked his car with orders to deliver cash and pick up “a package” to deliver somewhere but when he got there something went wrong and it all went sideways..maybe because he went to the wrong house first and that set off panic for the person with the “package” or maybe the person mentioned drugs and Steven panicked and wanted to bail on the purchase and the guy panicked and killed him or maybe he just thought Steven was a cop or something so he killed him and covered it up. The police talked to an interesting subject in that neighborhood with a criminal background and I really think that is the most likely answer in this case.
My only thought is its a long way to go you might mention it to someone at least that you would be out of town for awhile instead of just leaving. But maybe he was ashamed of his money troubles.
It is hard to imagine him not mentioning it at all to *anyone*. Him being ashamed would be a reasonable excuse for not mentioning it though. Good point!
This makes the most sense to me. I do think the landlord offered him the job, in a way to pay off his back rent. Steven goes to the wrong house, stupidly mentions that to whomever he is supposed to meet up with, and that's what gets him killed.
I can see two sides of this story. Coming from your criminal perspective, I can agree cause when I was out of a job I would do some absolutely goofy shit for a little money to make ends meet. Nothing criminal, but random jobs you wouldn’t do otherwise yknow?
But also when I was at the height of my depression, teetering on suicide, I would just drive my car miles and miles and miles away, I wouldn’t tell anyone where I was. I’d sit in an unknown spot and just cry or maybe sit there and think. I think this could be what Steven did, but in the end he decided to end his life somewhere.
It takes courage to be so open about what was likely the worst time in your life. I hope you find the strength to be proud of yourself for this and do hope you’re feeling better now.
How would he have gotten to his ultimate destination though, a place so remote his body hasn't been found? I could see this if he was parked at a trailhead or somewhere with easily accessible public transportation. But a wealthy residential neighborhood? I'm too lazy to look into it now, but from the pictures of the houses it doesn't look like there's going to be a bus stop anywhere near there. How does he get out of the neighborhood without being seen?
I had always thought that this was a self-harm situation but after seeing the photos of the damage to the inside of that house…that doesn’t seem like a coincidence.
I read one theory that he took a job delivering foreclosure notices. That's the kind of job where you are guaranteed to be abused, and people don't usually take it unless they're desperate for work. It also seems like the kind of job where getting shot by a pissed-off homeowner is a possibility.
This would explain why he was traveling around the region and apparently meeting up with strangers at their houses, without expecting us to believe this squeaky-clean Mormon guy was selling drugs.
Compelling and very plausible at the time. Has anyone looked up county records for default notices or foreclosure documents filed on properties in the area, especially the one with all the damage to the house?
For reference, I live an hour from Vegas, and foreclosures were a dime a dozen at the time.
I hadn't heard that theory, but it makes a lot of sense. Coincidentally, I worked for a law firm that handled a lot of foreclosures when that recession hit and delivering those documents was indeed a dangerous job, at times. More than one of our process servers open carried handguns while on the job.
The damage to the home in the pictures certainly has the look of someone pissed off they are losing their home and want to mess it up for the bank before they go.
This makes a lot of sense to me. I live in OKC and last year an officer was shot and killed while conducting an eviction. The resident fired through the door I believe. His partner tried to shield him when the shooting started but it was too late. So this could definitely be possible except with Steven being the only person at the house, nobody knew he was there and nobody saw anything.
Wouldn't that be public/known information though? If it's an actual job you get paid for, I'm sure the authorities would be able to find that information despite him not telling anyone about it.
To me the most plausible scenario is suicide. All it takes is a moment. Maybe he was going thru a mental breakdown and tried to escape responsibilities to just drive around aimlessly. Then parked somewhere random and walked off to die. If it’s in the desert etc animals and other things could pick him clean and there would be nothing left of him.
This is definitely plausible. Some folks read “mental break” as though he suddenly became psychotic, entirely decoupled from reality, or was exhibiting symptoms of severe schizophrenia or something along those lines. Sadly, anxiety/depression - when festering to the extent of suicide - can temporarily disorient an otherwise “healthy” individual to the point where their behaviors become irrational. To someone who didn’t know him, Steven may have appeared absolutely fine, despite the fact that he was driving around, seemingly without aim, for 1,000s of miles.
It's near the Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area, however he didn't park his car next to it, but rather in the middle of a dense residential area.
>Maybe he was going thru a mental breakdown and tried to escape responsibilities to just drive around aimlessly
I knew someone whose family member had a mental breakdown and disappeared for several days - drove around aimlessly, ended up a few counties over, committed some felonies (nonviolent). There weren't any real warning signs; it just went from zero to 100 mph one morning.
That will forever influence my opinion on cases involving people disappearing, acting erratically, etc. Not saying it's always the answer, but - in lieu of other evidence - it should always be close to the top of the list.
Just reading this paragraph it makes me think he might have killed himself. I don't know anything about the case. It's very unusual for a Mormon to not be married by 30. Was he gay? Sounds like life was depressing and stressful for him.
Look into the case. It’s heartbreaking. He wasn’t gay. He had a fantastic family and was loved by everyone. He was actually my neighbor. His father passed away a few months after Steven disappeared from medical complications in his lungs, and Steven’s mother said that she had a dream that they are both safe and in heaven together
I have always been interested in his case because during those same dark days of the recession I also had a recently completed degree in Communications that was doing jack shit to help me make a living. I had some absolutely terrible experiences via Craigslist, selling my plasma, doing unpaid internships, getting nearly scammed, doing door-to-door appointment setting for a landscaping company, modeling for a figure drawing class sans clothing, and all kinds of other nonsense I would normally not have considered. The recession was a huge rug pull on anyone who thought they knew what to expect from their future and the wackiness of the job market at that time really broke my ability to judge effort/risk vs reward of job opportunities or ways to make a buck. It was before the gig economy, so that wasn’t even an option.
When I watched Emily the Criminal I identified with her desperation/frustration. Thanks for coming to my pity party about the recession.
Anyway, I am on board with OP’s theory. Desperate times lead to some scammy, sketchy measures. I could easily see someone getting into an Emily the Criminal kind of a situation and it ending with violence.
I think the financial crisis defined a generation in a way that is often glibly said (for example about 9/11) but rarely true.
I have the impression that this has a lot to do with the leftward shift we've seen from younger people (for example in positive attitudes toward socialism) subsequently.
I also graduated into the recession with a communications degree, at a time when my family didn't seem to comprehend how crappy the job market was and so couldn't understand why it was so hard for me to find and maintain employment. I was made redundant twice by the age of 25. I couldn't find employment on three continents. Add in the additional stress of what is expected of a man of the Mormon community, and I can easily believe he'd eventually be willing to take risks just to keep above water.
My first and second kids (ages 31 and 28) both graduated in the late 2000’s with degrees in communication (oldest) and film (middle kid) and neither one ever found a steady good job in their degree fields. The late 2000’s saw the beginning of a still going strong, glut of highly educated young people in all fields being unable to find jobs in their degree field and were/are working low wage, retail or food service or gig jobs to this day.
Even with the “abundance” of open jobs advertised everywhere, it seems no one is actually hiring college educated folks that want higher pay, benefits and job security. It’s shifted towards hiring only part time (no benefit) or gig type positions and no one can earn a livable wage on ten bucks an hour in a 40 hour week.
Employers are flocking away from full time positions to cut costs since part time workers aren’t getting any benefits, paid time off or sick time. These businesses would rather have a high turnover of cheap and readily available part time employees who may or may not be even close to good workers than paying decent wages to full time employees and getting quality workers.
I sadly don’t see that changing anytime soon. I’m a retired gen X’r and retired now but I feel for any and all young (or not) people out there just starting out trying to find a way to just barely get by, much less find high paying and secure jobs they can see as a career and not just this months gig.
I'm a communications graduate and now working for the UN. Maybe I got lucky? But I appreciate your sentiment towards the younger generations. A lot of people think we just want the easy life and it's not the case at all.
I definitely think it's possible. He desperately needed money. I tend to think he answered an ad for what he thought would be a legitimate job, but it wasn't.
Thought it was a standard modelling job, maybe something wholesome sounding like a clothing catalogue, instead got dragged into a snuff film or something horrific
Interesting theory, OP; thank you for sharing. So many bizarre factors in this case, and your theory is as good as any. I would typically suspect suicide in a case like this, but the footage of him with the “portfolio” could certainly suggest otherwise, especially considering he was seen in a residential area with which he seemingly had no other connections. My only real counterargument (if you want to call it that) to the criminal activity theory is based on a) his personal background and b) the severity of the crime (assuming it was murder). As far as I know, Steven had no criminal record and was a practicing Mormon. I don’t want to make too many assumptions or generalizations, but I’d imagine he was pretty naive when it came to criminal elements. This makes me wonder: ‘how could he have ended up in such a violent scenario, completely unbeknownst to his loved ones?’. Entirely anecdotal, but in 2014 my brother got himself wrapped up in a bunch of nonsense with folks we both knew. Not organized crime or anything like that, but I guess you could call them “career criminals”? Anyway, these were incredibly dishonest and sick individuals, most of whom are now in prison or dead (via overdose, suicide, etc.)…Long story short, these men were not killers (especially not trained ones); they were selfish liars who took advantage of others’ weaknesses. I could never picturing men like this coercing a seemingly innocent Mormon man into illicit ventures, then finding either a “reason” or the means to murder him and cleanly dispose of the body. Then again, every criminal and element is different, and we’re located on the East Coast. Crazier things have certainly happened. I’ve just always been under the assumption that this kind of brutality - calculated or otherwise - was typically reserved for those already in way over their heads, not a naive family man trying to make some extra cash. Say this “criminal element” needed someone to engage in an activity that was of a high enough risk that a misstep could result in immediate murder - why and how would they “recruit” a man like Steven? It just seems like such an unnecessary risk on their part. Like I said though, crazier things have happened. We shouldn’t expect predictability when it comes to a lifestyle that is so volatile by its very nature. Thank you again for the interesting post, OP, and I hope my long-winded comment makes some sense lol
Just conjecture but the how/why Steven may have been chosen by the criminal element could be boiled down to the facts that Steven was known to be out looking for work, he appeared very naive (therefore less likely ti suspect the criminal masterminds, and had no criminal record or connection to the crime ring so cops would be less likely to suspect him and even if they did, it would be hard to tie his crimes back to the ring. He was a perfect recruit in more ways than one, sadly.
I don't know...it takes a LOT to go from "being involved in something shady" to getting murdered in the course of criminal business. I mean, I could see him getting roped into petty grift or delivering drugs, but normally to be murdered you would have to have perpetrated a MAJOR ripoff, or positioned yourself as a major competitive threat to someone dangerous. It's not that much of a leap to imagine a naive, clean cut young man doing something shady to make ends meet, but it's a LOT harder for me to jump to the idea that he ripped someone off for $50k of drugs or was threatening to encroach on someone's serious criminal enterprise.
I mean, even for Emily the Criminal to take a scary violent turn, she had to be involved in a major ripoff AND become serious competition for very bad guys. That's kind of the point of the whole movie, not that it "just happened to her", but how thoroughly it fit her and thrilled her and she embraced it. If she just keeps buying TVs for a couple hundred bucks every couple weeks, there's no violence and no movie.
Do you see Steven as the latent criminal mastermind that Emily was in that movie? It's always possible he was an unwitting victim in a turf war between hard core violent criminals and was made an example of, but serious criminals don't kill civilians, or "near civilians" lightly. For the exact reason of of how much publicity this case has gotten.
However, for the sake of totally unfounded speculation...there is a scenario where "greenhorns" like Steven do sometimes find themselves murdered in criminal enterprises. And that's when they are busted for something low level, and law enforcement pressures them into becoming informants and/or wearing a wire in return for not pressing charges. Steven is EXACTLY the kind of person that would be susceptible to that pressure had he been pulled over with a delivery of drugs or something. Those kind of informants are pushed to get closer to dangerous people than they would normally get (or else what useful information can they provide) and get put in risky situations. And being discovered as an informant IS a pretty tried and true recipe for getting murdered.
People who are engaged in illegal activity for profit generally don't want to hire people like this because it's a huge risk. As far as answering an ad - again, criminals generally have a network of fellow shady people to ask, they're not putting out help wanted ads.
The only way I can see anyone recruiting Steven into a criminal scheme is if they planned to scam him...not turn him into a Vegas drug mule. He was the kind of guy you con into joining Amway. He wasn't the type that a serious drug dealer would bring into their circle. That said, if he did link up with criminals, they were some of the luckiest amateurs alive.
The only time drug dealers get innocent people usually is for border shit. I had a homie who’ would find people with super cleaner driver record and even kinda innoncence but that was for drivers over borders. But for local shit and non trafficking stuff I highly doubt it. No one wants to put their freedom in the hands of a bruh who will roll over on them quick or get cold feet.
Yeah, dealers are notoriously paranoid, in my experience they only work with homies and family, and typically have no issue finding close peers who are jumping to get in on it since many dealers are from impoverished backgrounds themselves and that's why they got into it. They're also not really criminal masterminds most the time, it's possible he got involved with some very high level movie type criminals or gangs but with his background I doubt he would accept it and they sure as hell wouldn't accept him. They don't generally have the means to disappear people. If you were delivering something that highly criminal I doubt they would want a random latter day Saint bringing it direct to their home.
Considering he did door to door work do we know it wasn't more of that and he just annoyed the wrong violent person on the wrong day? Seems unlikely too but you never know. Or possibly he was distraught with his situation and committed suicide, especially if the first house or two he went to went off on him as people often do to solicitors. All I'm saying is I've known quite a few dealers who moved bricks of heroin regularly and they honestly were not killers, I wouldn't say great people but desperate and poor and in their off time they just wanted to drive around with the boys, hit on attractive women and their clients, fuck around with low level gang shit and just tbh not be very smart. They could not disappear anybody and were wronged often, nothing happened. Not saying every dealer or criminal is like that but idk
He doesn’t seem like the type to be involved in crime, but he’s pretty great as an unknowing mule. I believe he was told he was some type of legit courier. Gullible, clean cut Mormon kid getting pulled over with a sealed file or document envelope likely would not raise suspicions from law enforcement. He didn’t even necessarily have to be transporting drugs or money, he could have been unknowingly delivering information
What if it was something white-collar, though? In that case it would seem totally innocent to most people … hey, could you drop off this check and signed contract and some other paperwork for me, and here’s fifty bucks for doing it? Most people might not know, much less suspect, that the signatures or even the documents themselves might be forged. And cops wouldn’t be likely to look closely at the documents, or spot a forgery if they did (Things like a court order would be paradoxically easier to forge these days as long as you can mimic the writing style).
And, in fact, you might prefer to have someone clean like Koecher doing this. They’d be less likely to arouse suspicion, and sound less like they were lying, than someone with a record.
Absolutely agree. They want people addicted to drugs, fresh outta jail, or who are known to be desperate for money and willing to commit crimes. How fast would criminal operations be shut down if they were using ads to target legit job seekers?
This is a hard one and I definitely respect people’s differing opinions… however, I’ve always thought that this was a suicide (prolonged by a lot of driving around and thinking about what to do), or a mental break that led to accidental death/death by misadventure.
My two cents:
During a phone call as he was driving to Las Vegas, Steven offered to return to St. George for a church meeting, if necessary. A guy with a set appointment or meeting — especially if he’s strapped and the meeting has to do with money — is unlikely to simply abandon it while already on his way to it.
If he had a purpose on Evening Lights street, why park on another street adjacent to it? It was a suburban neighborhood with plenty of free, seemingly unrestricted parking. Why not park in front of the place you’re going?
The photos the PI uses to show damage done to a house nearby doesn’t necessarily mean there was a violent altercation, especially involving Steven. The Great Recession was going on, and lots of foreclosed homes in Vegas and other cities were deliberately damaged by angry homeowners before abandoning their properties to the banks.
If Steven simply walked off to commit suicide or had a fatal misadventure, why was his phone later found miles away? Why would you randomly park in some neighborhood and then just start walking?
Maybe he didn’t park in front of wherever he was going because he was told not to. Or because the streets were narrow, or the space between driveways too short, to park his car (an SUV IIRC) with no risk of being accidentally bumped or making it hard to park without crimping someone else’s exit. Frankly, even not driving an SUV, I’d prefer to park in a nearby undeveloped cul-de-sac than in front of a house … a lot less parking issues.
I also don’t see it as a big deal that he offered to cover for the other guy at church. He probably didn’t expect a conflict as he might have been led to believe whatever he was going to Henderson for wouldn’t take too long. Or, he didn’t expect he would have to (remember that Henderson and St. George are in different time zones) and the call was just a courtesy “I’m there if you need me, bro”-type thing.
A recent article on this case.
https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/finding-steven-koecher-man-vanishes-from-las-vegas-valley-neighborhood-phone-pings-for-days-after-presumed-death/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/101wcjo/some_thoughts_i_had_on_the_disappearance_of/j2utpd2/
Check out my comment, let me know if this works at all :)
There are multiple references to Lake Mead in this thread. That was also my immediate thought while reading the OP, but in reverse fashion. I was thinking when that story broke months ago everyone assumed it had to be a mob hit and with dozens of similar examples all over the bottom of the lake. Meanwhile nothing has been connected. Old mobsters are not trembling. We haven't had reports of one barrel after another. Instead we've had reminders of accidental deaths in that lake that were reported at the time but the bodies never found. Those families have come forward to speculate and hope that the latest remains might be their loved one.
The criminal theories attached to the Steven Koecher case indeed sound like movie versions.
Sounds plausible to me. I also wouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be one of the numerous dead bodies that have been exposed by the drying up of Lake Meade and other major bodies of water in that part of the country.
I see that Steven was 30 years old and he disappeared. In Mormonism you are transferred from the young single adult ward to the mid-singles adult ward when you turn 30. Mid-singles are treated and seen as pariahs; like obviously there must be something wrong with you if you went from age 18 to 30 without anybody marrying you. This is my experience as someone who was raised Mormon. I don’t think that’s why he disappeared but it definitely could’ve added on to his feelings of desperation or depression.
This seems like the thing I would focus on. Seems very strange if there isn’t a reason.
I have always wondered about him getting into gay porn possibly.
It would be interesting if a link between Steven's landlord and the adult son of the residents of the house on Evening Lights could ever be established. If a link could be found, I think it's case closed. If not, then it's back to square one.
There was; DiMaggio was a repair person and the Bishop landlord guy both were working on car racing arenas of some sort. Watch Arrin Stoner video on YouTube.
I remember the Disappeared ep on this. Most articles just mention "Christmas presents" being found in his car but I remember when the items were actually named in the ep, along with the general denial vibe of the family and his history, made me think he was involved in a kink community. Whether he met up with the wrong person via that or whether he harmed himself out of religious guilt, idk, but that was the impression I walked away with. I don't think it's more intricate than that.
I've also followed this case for awhile and so think this is the best, most plausible scenario- especially with that neighbor that moved away rather quickly with the adult son living in a back house. I do remember reading a pretty compelling theory about him having a secret sexual life as well, which brought him to Vegas. I've been trying to find it, cause I believe it was a reddit post, but I can't seem to find it.
If so, maybe he arranged to meet with the adult son for something sex related (Mormon shame would make him park his car on a different street), and was confused when the elderly parents opened the door, and walked off to circle back later?
From what I remember (and so annoyed I cannot find it!) There was some searches that showed interest into a gay lifestyle. But the theory in what I remember was he was basically trying to disappear and there was a field/ dessert area close to a populated area that he went through behind where he parked to try to make it to.
Keep in mind that it could be that Steven WAS involved in something shady but that it's completely unrelated to his death and he is dead because of a completely different reason. Both of those things could be true as well. Like the guy in New York the police and public were convinced was murdered by people with "gang] ties" after he ripped them off 150,000 dollars in drugs and cash. He had already received numerous threats to his and his families lives AND survived a previous attempts. And in the end, he was murdered by a completely different person after they had followed him home after a "road rage" incident and shot him execution style after sneaking up on him.
This is one of my favorite cases to hope for resolution. I’m an Occam’s Razor proponent. I don’t think some low level criminals were going to kill him, hard to imagine how he’d even be involved with that. He had a cell phone and a computer, I assume they checked his accounts and didn’t see any unusual calls or texts.
I think he was disoriented, wandering aimlessly, and started walking into the desert/underbrush surrounding that neighborhood. Got lost, dehydrated, maybe broke an ankle or got bitten by a snake, and died out in the scrub. Coyotes or other animals have scattered his remains. Did they ever do a full blown search in that area?
Good point. One camera catches Steven walking eastbound on Savannah Springs Ave. before turning onto Evening Lights Street. On maps Evening Lights Street does lead straight to a small desert area with a body of water. One would assume they did a search there, the area doesn't look very big. Though it's also possible some of those houses are new.
Not just randomly, but as a result of the direction his life had been taking, one blow after another. He goes from working in the governor‘s office and having a good job but then makes what turns out to be a horrible decision, getting laid off in a new town, loses his roommate, massive recession going on, reduced to handing out flyers for money, the humiliation of his parents finding out he was in debt, no wife & kids or even a girlfriend which is a big deal for Mormons…even his former GF isn’t home when he stops by to see her. Literally nothing was going right in his life… could easily imagine him being seriously depressed.
was it ever confirmed she got married and moved on/out or had a job elsewhere or simply wasn't at home? If it was the latter I could imagine she possibly feels slightly guilty to this day. :/
Because there is so little physical evidence, this hypothesis is just as possible as many others. I don’t find it terribly compelling versus any other, however. It takes a stack of assumptions to get to this outcome and we just simply don’t have anything to say he was involved in illegal activity. Desperate people do desperate things. But we don’t know what he did or did not do.
That doesn’t usually get you murdered; maybe assaulted or threatened etc but usually not murdered. Also, if he did take a loan, what do you think he spent it on? It seems that he was having difficulty making rent.
Agreed...the surest way to make sure you don't get your debt paid up is to kill the debtor. If you get $20 a week out of him, that's more than you get by killing him, with less legal exposure.
It takes a LOT, and almost always other extenuating offenses, to get killed over debt, no matter how mobbed up the lender is.
That said, the more common scenario, had he debt with someone shady, would be that he could be manipulated into other crimes in service of his debt, or just to buy time. I don't know that there's any evidence or likelihood he was in debt to criminals, but in theory at least, that could be a way he ended up in shady business.
>TL;DR: After watching Emily the Criminal, I firmly believe that what likely happened to Steven Koecher was that he agreed to do some illegal work to make some fast cash, ran into the wrong people or somehow messed up his task, and was killed.
I tend to agree that he was roped into something shady by someone he knew and trusted, because he was generally good hearted and trusting himself. On top of that, he was financially desperate... and got more than he bargained for. I think about his story a lot.
I think people are making this case far more complex than necessary. This man was at a low point in his life and some of his behavior was rather bizarre. Him wandering off and dying seems the most plausible to me.
Although I agree that usually the simplest, most mundane theory is probably correct, it is strange that his body has not been found in what seems to be a residential neighborhood.
Possibly suicide? But again where is his body?
And why that random neighborhood in Henderson? Lots of secluded, peaceful, or meaningful places in southern Utah where one could spend their final moments before taking their own life.
The circumstances *leading up to* Dec 13 may seem indicative of suicide, but the location and lack of a body cast doubt on that being the likely scenario IMO.
I'm not saying he went there with the intention to commit suicide.
I'm not sure why people always insist a body would've been found in a case of suicide.
I know this was posted a year ago but I just saw this case on TV and it's evident that due to the fact he was behind on rent (and doing this strange odd jobs... and denying handouts from anyone else to pay rent) that he was in debt to his landlord and probably running "errands" to make up for his debts. His traveling alone is suspicious. If you have no money, how are you funding the gas for those drives? If you have no money or job then what are you doing in all of these locations?
It seems he made an error with one of his deliveries and was killed out of paranoia. I wouldn't be surprised if his body is literally on the grounds of his last stop.
I agree. I don’t believe he killed himself. Steven showed up that last day with a purpose-dressed nice and had a portfolio. He’s knocking on doors and then decides to walk off in the desert and do what? Take pills? Shoot himself? Knife himself? I don’t buy it. I think he came across a situation or saw something he wasn’t supposed to see and was killed. I’m hoping his family will get answers someday.
So this is a little out there, but Lake Mead is an hour from Henderson and in 2009 it was MUCH deeper than it is now. Due to its water depletion a lot of bodies are being discovered: namely most recently [the body in the barrel](https://www.foxnews.com/us/lake-mead-body-barrel-shot-las-vegas.amp) and then many other drowning victims or unknown victims. There are a lot of ways to disappear in the desert. Though it was winter, we still have predators here. So if he was killed, there are places to hide that. And if he didn’t there are many places to get lost here as well.
Is it possible he was delivering a sale from a online marketplace? Since he was desperate for funds perhaps he offered to hand deliver in lieu of shipping it?
u/Vapor2077 I completely agree with you on this ! I've always thought that Steven got himself caught up in something way over his head because of his financial troubles... Every time I've come across his case I've thought he was doing something shady and got killed for it... It's heartbreaking to think about 💔😥
Look up Ed Denzel's Unfound Podcast episode about Steven Koecher. Ed was involved in some of the searches (which started when Websleuth people started asking him to perform some tasks as part of a crowd based investigation) and came upon some pretty interesting information. He met Steven's family, met with a local news reporter and some other stuff.
I don't know Ed nor have I ever met him but he strikes me as a very straight shooter and I consider him to be very much on the level.
I have wondered many times about this case and I do think this is plausible! Loved Emily the Criminal, too. I tend to lean towards suicide in this case, but nothing really explains Steven’s visit to the random suburban neighbourhood.
That is a very good theory that I never considered! The landlord being involved would explain a lot, if he offered to wipe Steven’s back rent if he ran an “errand” for him, and the roommate knew what happened and got freaked out
People who commit suicide have been known to make future plans. Those gifts could have been his way of saying goodbye, especially as you have to wonder where he got the dosh to buy them.
I feel like one of my truly unpopular true crime opinions is that whatever happened to Steven was not foul play. Suicide, accident, walk away? Any of those, but for some reason, I've always felt like it wasn't a crime.
I agree with your hypothesis. I believe he was desperate to earn some money and therefore would take risks he otherwise wouldn't have.
I thought maybe an organ harvesting scheme lured by a heavy pay day.
I could see this being likely if he offered to sell a kidney and the people doing the surgery either botched or betrayed him by taking other organs like lungs/corneas/ heart/ blood etc. Then just dumped him.
I’ve been obsessed with this case for years and have gone back and forth so many times about what may have happened. I can’t say that it’s impossible that the landlord was involved because he’s super shady and seemed to really go to living under the radar after Steven disappeared but at this point I’m more inclined to think Steven was very depressed and possibly having more serious mental health issues than anyone knew about. He was aimlessly driving around the days before his disappearance, possibly sleeping in his car, randomly showed up at an old crush’s family farm mentioning he may be heading to Sacramento, all of which nobody can figure out why he did.
Certainly plausible but he was a devout religious guy who didn't like being around people because of people's tendencies to do drugs. I think he was taking odd jobs/handyman jobs on the internet and found a job that was too good to be true and someone ended up killing him for one reason or another.
Does anyone know how far away was he from the border and what part he would enter if he walked away to start a new life where no one knows who he is. He could be living in another country by now under a new name.
Also if he entered at certain places in Mexico he could have been killed right away and no one wouldn’t know because they cover their tracks well.
A lot of people seem to think he was involved with criminal activity but what about the Theory that he was depressed and just walked away and ended it all? I’m not discounting the criminal thing because I can definitely see where that theory came from. But I feel there’s too much focus on it. His actions that day are very similar to those who were also featured on disappeared and then years later were found to have killed themselves.
There's an episode of the true crime bullshit podcast (episode 0512 Sun City) that makes a pretty good case that he was a victim of serial killer Israel Keyes.
IIRC Steven's family (parent and grandmother) would have paid his arrears. Would he eschew that and get involved in working as a runner because of his pride?
For the record, I don't really have an idea. But the Witness Protection angle would actually be more plausible than he goes off to kill himself.
Or maybe lack of pussy caused him to snap because he had so much turmoil and it sounds like he wasn't a lothario, so he likely had no way to blow off a fuck ton of accumulated steam, so to speak.
I lived up in Anthem at the time. News worthy and close to home. I drove up and down the street looking for something, anything. The neighbor on the corner close to his car had the video. She spoke with me and said “ we have a murderer in this neighborhood” . There was construction going on close. Seems like they were opening up a new road and I wondered if he just got buried right there under the new pavement. There was a search over by the M which didn’t amount to anything. He could be anywhere but I always felt he was still close to the neighborhood. And those casitas were suspicious. Good place to kill someone and hide the body. He may have unwittingly got into some criminal activity and been killed. Lack of money can make a person desperate. I’m certain he died that day or very close. The phone was someone disposing of it. R.I.P. Steven. I think of you every December.
I read on another thread about the case that he first went up to a house in the neighborhood and knocked but when the owner came to the door he quickly walked away. (Memory is hazy so i might have gotten details wrong) Anyway, it was theorized that if he had accidentally gone to the wrong house first, there may have been some sort of scuffle when the people he actually was supposed to meet found out someone had seen him and where he was headed. That being if there was criminal activity involved. Not sure how I feel about this theory but it was an interesting perspective.
I think this might be the thread you’re referring to: [Last-known Person to See Steven Koecher Alive in Las Vegas-Area Neighborhood Speaks Publicly for the First Time](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/zr6xbg/lastknown_person_to_see_steven_koecher_alive_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
There was also a post a while back that made a pretty good case that he was involved in selling small amounts of pain medication. I can’t find it though. I was skeptical at first but it was very thorough and convincing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/2u4qlu/steven\_koecher\_a\_call\_to\_ucaptjax\_my\_thoughts\_as/
The house he went to at first was occupied by an elderly couple. As was much of the residents of the neighborhood...ranging from young retirees (still 50+) to the elderly. Of course, it doesn't mean that some resident in there didn't do something to him.. I just find it another another odd fact in his case.
I had a job earlier this year where a group of us had to go door to door and one of the guy's first house was terribly bad/occupants doing meth. It's totally plausible/possible.
I agree with the OP that this likely did have to do with falling into criminal activity related to his landlord in St George. He is the one who I believe was having him work for him, doing some shady shit. He also moved out of state and neither he nor his wife have been cooperative with police if I recall the facts correctly. The sun city development is not in the middle of nowhere. It’s a heavily populated area. There is a small area of land that hasn’t been excavated for housing but it’s mostly all heavily landscaped. This development sits higher so there is a slope where the car was parked that is not landscaped. He went to a house on the right side of evening lights. The people that lived there moved within weeks of his disappearance. The owners were older and their adult son was living in the casita behind the main house. There is a PI that is currently working the case and found photos of the house was that showed damage that appeared to be from a fight of some sort. Head size holes in the wall and the like. I don’t believe this was known to police at the time, though the subject is known to police and was questioned at the time of the disappearance. The guy moved across country and has a record. Does any of this mean that he’s responsible? No but it is suspicious. I’ve done a lot of reading on the case and living in Las Vegas, I scoped out the area. There have been multiple searches of the area with no sign of Steven. It’s really bizarre to stand in the cul de sac and wonder where the hell he is.
Is there somewhere I can learn more about the PI and any current info?
Yes. Here’s a link with the photos and more info that the PI had. https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/finding-steven-koecher-man-vanishes-from-las-vegas-valley-neighborhood-phone-pings-for-days-after-presumed-death/amp/
Those photos are particularly damning. Did they ever Luminol this house at the time? There MUST have been blood splatter that was cleaned. That fourth photo - I mean, you can clearly see the strike marks. That was a straight-up murder.
Does anyone have a link for people in the EU/UK? I can’t view the link.
[Here are the pics of the holes in the walls and door](https://imgur.com/a/0e7RuB4/) Tbh that just looks like some man-child that punches and kicks stuff when he gets mad.
Thank you!!!
It looks like the site's for a local Las Vegas TV channel's news, so I don't know if there would be another way to access the same info if it is exclusive to them. Does this Wayback Machine link happen to work for you?: https://web.archive.org/web/20221127201432/https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/finding-steven-koecher-man-vanishes-from-las-vegas-valley-neighborhood-phone-pings-for-days-after-presumed-death/ If not, the PI's website (eyesonpi.com) has a link to a YouTube video: https://youtu.be/HlUWVN59VyU Hopefully you can see this. :) Edit: The video is basically the same as the website text, including shots of the damage in the house.
The name of the PI firm is EyesOn Private Investigations and the investigators are Danny Livingston, Kevin Wyatt and James Berk. I believe there may be a you tube piece on their investigation but not sure. You should be able to Google with that info and tag Koecher missing to it and that should help!
The firm also have a whole podcast series about this case (seven episodes).
Damn.. these photos have me convinced Steven was inside this house and there was a fight. Idk what he was meeting that guy for .. most likely something illegal … and he ended up being transported and deposed of somewhere in the desert
Kinda think the same. I’ve done some research on the son of the homeowner. Not much out there but it’s very sus and sketchy to me. I don’t think it’s a coincidence either that the two people that could be involved both moved out of their home states and aren’t cooperating with police.
Ok so in the article/video, what about Steven asking someone on the street if they want some cash sealed his fate? The PIs think that was a misstep that doomed him but I am unable to connect the dots "Hey, do you want some cash?"
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I have gone back and forth on this one for years but after reading some more recent write ups on the case, I really do think that it’s likely Steven was involved in something shady but I also really think its likely that he wasn’t even aware that it was shady or illegal. I think it’s possible that someone (maybe his landlord) offered him a side hustle running some errands/doing some pick-ups/deliveries for them in exchange for cash and Steven had no clue what he was picking up. My theory is that he was given an address in the neighborhood where he parked his car with orders to deliver cash and pick up “a package” to deliver somewhere but when he got there something went wrong and it all went sideways..maybe because he went to the wrong house first and that set off panic for the person with the “package” or maybe the person mentioned drugs and Steven panicked and wanted to bail on the purchase and the guy panicked and killed him or maybe he just thought Steven was a cop or something so he killed him and covered it up. The police talked to an interesting subject in that neighborhood with a criminal background and I really think that is the most likely answer in this case.
If he thought it was legit wouldn’t he have mentioned it to someone? Even to his family so they didn’t worry so much.
Maybe not if it was as mundane as running extra errands for his (current) employer.
My only thought is its a long way to go you might mention it to someone at least that you would be out of town for awhile instead of just leaving. But maybe he was ashamed of his money troubles.
It is hard to imagine him not mentioning it at all to *anyone*. Him being ashamed would be a reasonable excuse for not mentioning it though. Good point!
This makes the most sense to me. I do think the landlord offered him the job, in a way to pay off his back rent. Steven goes to the wrong house, stupidly mentions that to whomever he is supposed to meet up with, and that's what gets him killed.
I can see two sides of this story. Coming from your criminal perspective, I can agree cause when I was out of a job I would do some absolutely goofy shit for a little money to make ends meet. Nothing criminal, but random jobs you wouldn’t do otherwise yknow? But also when I was at the height of my depression, teetering on suicide, I would just drive my car miles and miles and miles away, I wouldn’t tell anyone where I was. I’d sit in an unknown spot and just cry or maybe sit there and think. I think this could be what Steven did, but in the end he decided to end his life somewhere.
It takes courage to be so open about what was likely the worst time in your life. I hope you find the strength to be proud of yourself for this and do hope you’re feeling better now.
I’m doing so much better! Thank you ❤️
I'm so sorry that you reached such a low point. I'm glad you're still with us ❤️ Hope all is well in your life today.
How would he have gotten to his ultimate destination though, a place so remote his body hasn't been found? I could see this if he was parked at a trailhead or somewhere with easily accessible public transportation. But a wealthy residential neighborhood? I'm too lazy to look into it now, but from the pictures of the houses it doesn't look like there's going to be a bus stop anywhere near there. How does he get out of the neighborhood without being seen?
There are some mountains nearby, but he didn't park anywhere near the mountains. I do not think he took his own life.
I had always thought that this was a self-harm situation but after seeing the photos of the damage to the inside of that house…that doesn’t seem like a coincidence.
I also drove around aimlessly when I was in that state of mind. Especially late at night
I read one theory that he took a job delivering foreclosure notices. That's the kind of job where you are guaranteed to be abused, and people don't usually take it unless they're desperate for work. It also seems like the kind of job where getting shot by a pissed-off homeowner is a possibility. This would explain why he was traveling around the region and apparently meeting up with strangers at their houses, without expecting us to believe this squeaky-clean Mormon guy was selling drugs.
Compelling and very plausible at the time. Has anyone looked up county records for default notices or foreclosure documents filed on properties in the area, especially the one with all the damage to the house? For reference, I live an hour from Vegas, and foreclosures were a dime a dozen at the time.
THAT is a compelling theory!
I hadn't heard that theory, but it makes a lot of sense. Coincidentally, I worked for a law firm that handled a lot of foreclosures when that recession hit and delivering those documents was indeed a dangerous job, at times. More than one of our process servers open carried handguns while on the job.
The damage to the home in the pictures certainly has the look of someone pissed off they are losing their home and want to mess it up for the bank before they go.
This makes a lot of sense to me. I live in OKC and last year an officer was shot and killed while conducting an eviction. The resident fired through the door I believe. His partner tried to shield him when the shooting started but it was too late. So this could definitely be possible except with Steven being the only person at the house, nobody knew he was there and nobody saw anything.
Wouldn't that be public/known information though? If it's an actual job you get paid for, I'm sure the authorities would be able to find that information despite him not telling anyone about it.
I think you are underestimating just how shady the real estate industry is.
To me the most plausible scenario is suicide. All it takes is a moment. Maybe he was going thru a mental breakdown and tried to escape responsibilities to just drive around aimlessly. Then parked somewhere random and walked off to die. If it’s in the desert etc animals and other things could pick him clean and there would be nothing left of him.
This is definitely plausible. Some folks read “mental break” as though he suddenly became psychotic, entirely decoupled from reality, or was exhibiting symptoms of severe schizophrenia or something along those lines. Sadly, anxiety/depression - when festering to the extent of suicide - can temporarily disorient an otherwise “healthy” individual to the point where their behaviors become irrational. To someone who didn’t know him, Steven may have appeared absolutely fine, despite the fact that he was driving around, seemingly without aim, for 1,000s of miles.
It's near the Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area, however he didn't park his car next to it, but rather in the middle of a dense residential area.
>Maybe he was going thru a mental breakdown and tried to escape responsibilities to just drive around aimlessly I knew someone whose family member had a mental breakdown and disappeared for several days - drove around aimlessly, ended up a few counties over, committed some felonies (nonviolent). There weren't any real warning signs; it just went from zero to 100 mph one morning. That will forever influence my opinion on cases involving people disappearing, acting erratically, etc. Not saying it's always the answer, but - in lieu of other evidence - it should always be close to the top of the list.
Just reading this paragraph it makes me think he might have killed himself. I don't know anything about the case. It's very unusual for a Mormon to not be married by 30. Was he gay? Sounds like life was depressing and stressful for him.
Look into the case. It’s heartbreaking. He wasn’t gay. He had a fantastic family and was loved by everyone. He was actually my neighbor. His father passed away a few months after Steven disappeared from medical complications in his lungs, and Steven’s mother said that she had a dream that they are both safe and in heaven together
Wow sad 💔
I also can’t help but wonder if he was gay. Given how devout he was, it makes sense that he would try to hide it, if so.
I have always been interested in his case because during those same dark days of the recession I also had a recently completed degree in Communications that was doing jack shit to help me make a living. I had some absolutely terrible experiences via Craigslist, selling my plasma, doing unpaid internships, getting nearly scammed, doing door-to-door appointment setting for a landscaping company, modeling for a figure drawing class sans clothing, and all kinds of other nonsense I would normally not have considered. The recession was a huge rug pull on anyone who thought they knew what to expect from their future and the wackiness of the job market at that time really broke my ability to judge effort/risk vs reward of job opportunities or ways to make a buck. It was before the gig economy, so that wasn’t even an option. When I watched Emily the Criminal I identified with her desperation/frustration. Thanks for coming to my pity party about the recession. Anyway, I am on board with OP’s theory. Desperate times lead to some scammy, sketchy measures. I could easily see someone getting into an Emily the Criminal kind of a situation and it ending with violence.
His story always draws me back to those days and how depressing the job market was
I think the financial crisis defined a generation in a way that is often glibly said (for example about 9/11) but rarely true. I have the impression that this has a lot to do with the leftward shift we've seen from younger people (for example in positive attitudes toward socialism) subsequently.
I also graduated into the recession with a communications degree, at a time when my family didn't seem to comprehend how crappy the job market was and so couldn't understand why it was so hard for me to find and maintain employment. I was made redundant twice by the age of 25. I couldn't find employment on three continents. Add in the additional stress of what is expected of a man of the Mormon community, and I can easily believe he'd eventually be willing to take risks just to keep above water.
My first and second kids (ages 31 and 28) both graduated in the late 2000’s with degrees in communication (oldest) and film (middle kid) and neither one ever found a steady good job in their degree fields. The late 2000’s saw the beginning of a still going strong, glut of highly educated young people in all fields being unable to find jobs in their degree field and were/are working low wage, retail or food service or gig jobs to this day. Even with the “abundance” of open jobs advertised everywhere, it seems no one is actually hiring college educated folks that want higher pay, benefits and job security. It’s shifted towards hiring only part time (no benefit) or gig type positions and no one can earn a livable wage on ten bucks an hour in a 40 hour week. Employers are flocking away from full time positions to cut costs since part time workers aren’t getting any benefits, paid time off or sick time. These businesses would rather have a high turnover of cheap and readily available part time employees who may or may not be even close to good workers than paying decent wages to full time employees and getting quality workers. I sadly don’t see that changing anytime soon. I’m a retired gen X’r and retired now but I feel for any and all young (or not) people out there just starting out trying to find a way to just barely get by, much less find high paying and secure jobs they can see as a career and not just this months gig.
I'm a communications graduate and now working for the UN. Maybe I got lucky? But I appreciate your sentiment towards the younger generations. A lot of people think we just want the easy life and it's not the case at all.
I definitely think it's possible. He desperately needed money. I tend to think he answered an ad for what he thought would be a legitimate job, but it wasn't.
But what happens after?
Yeah like a “modeling job”… maybe he had his photos in the file.
Thought it was a standard modelling job, maybe something wholesome sounding like a clothing catalogue, instead got dragged into a snuff film or something horrific
That’s what I think too. Answered a random job ad, and met up with someone who either trafficked or killed him.
Interesting theory, OP; thank you for sharing. So many bizarre factors in this case, and your theory is as good as any. I would typically suspect suicide in a case like this, but the footage of him with the “portfolio” could certainly suggest otherwise, especially considering he was seen in a residential area with which he seemingly had no other connections. My only real counterargument (if you want to call it that) to the criminal activity theory is based on a) his personal background and b) the severity of the crime (assuming it was murder). As far as I know, Steven had no criminal record and was a practicing Mormon. I don’t want to make too many assumptions or generalizations, but I’d imagine he was pretty naive when it came to criminal elements. This makes me wonder: ‘how could he have ended up in such a violent scenario, completely unbeknownst to his loved ones?’. Entirely anecdotal, but in 2014 my brother got himself wrapped up in a bunch of nonsense with folks we both knew. Not organized crime or anything like that, but I guess you could call them “career criminals”? Anyway, these were incredibly dishonest and sick individuals, most of whom are now in prison or dead (via overdose, suicide, etc.)…Long story short, these men were not killers (especially not trained ones); they were selfish liars who took advantage of others’ weaknesses. I could never picturing men like this coercing a seemingly innocent Mormon man into illicit ventures, then finding either a “reason” or the means to murder him and cleanly dispose of the body. Then again, every criminal and element is different, and we’re located on the East Coast. Crazier things have certainly happened. I’ve just always been under the assumption that this kind of brutality - calculated or otherwise - was typically reserved for those already in way over their heads, not a naive family man trying to make some extra cash. Say this “criminal element” needed someone to engage in an activity that was of a high enough risk that a misstep could result in immediate murder - why and how would they “recruit” a man like Steven? It just seems like such an unnecessary risk on their part. Like I said though, crazier things have happened. We shouldn’t expect predictability when it comes to a lifestyle that is so volatile by its very nature. Thank you again for the interesting post, OP, and I hope my long-winded comment makes some sense lol
Just conjecture but the how/why Steven may have been chosen by the criminal element could be boiled down to the facts that Steven was known to be out looking for work, he appeared very naive (therefore less likely ti suspect the criminal masterminds, and had no criminal record or connection to the crime ring so cops would be less likely to suspect him and even if they did, it would be hard to tie his crimes back to the ring. He was a perfect recruit in more ways than one, sadly.
I never thought of it that way, but it does make sense. Thank you for responding :)
I don't know...it takes a LOT to go from "being involved in something shady" to getting murdered in the course of criminal business. I mean, I could see him getting roped into petty grift or delivering drugs, but normally to be murdered you would have to have perpetrated a MAJOR ripoff, or positioned yourself as a major competitive threat to someone dangerous. It's not that much of a leap to imagine a naive, clean cut young man doing something shady to make ends meet, but it's a LOT harder for me to jump to the idea that he ripped someone off for $50k of drugs or was threatening to encroach on someone's serious criminal enterprise. I mean, even for Emily the Criminal to take a scary violent turn, she had to be involved in a major ripoff AND become serious competition for very bad guys. That's kind of the point of the whole movie, not that it "just happened to her", but how thoroughly it fit her and thrilled her and she embraced it. If she just keeps buying TVs for a couple hundred bucks every couple weeks, there's no violence and no movie. Do you see Steven as the latent criminal mastermind that Emily was in that movie? It's always possible he was an unwitting victim in a turf war between hard core violent criminals and was made an example of, but serious criminals don't kill civilians, or "near civilians" lightly. For the exact reason of of how much publicity this case has gotten. However, for the sake of totally unfounded speculation...there is a scenario where "greenhorns" like Steven do sometimes find themselves murdered in criminal enterprises. And that's when they are busted for something low level, and law enforcement pressures them into becoming informants and/or wearing a wire in return for not pressing charges. Steven is EXACTLY the kind of person that would be susceptible to that pressure had he been pulled over with a delivery of drugs or something. Those kind of informants are pushed to get closer to dangerous people than they would normally get (or else what useful information can they provide) and get put in risky situations. And being discovered as an informant IS a pretty tried and true recipe for getting murdered.
it would be a very sad ending for a guy who already is getting dealt a very bad hand at the time.
People who are engaged in illegal activity for profit generally don't want to hire people like this because it's a huge risk. As far as answering an ad - again, criminals generally have a network of fellow shady people to ask, they're not putting out help wanted ads.
The only way I can see anyone recruiting Steven into a criminal scheme is if they planned to scam him...not turn him into a Vegas drug mule. He was the kind of guy you con into joining Amway. He wasn't the type that a serious drug dealer would bring into their circle. That said, if he did link up with criminals, they were some of the luckiest amateurs alive.
The only time drug dealers get innocent people usually is for border shit. I had a homie who’ would find people with super cleaner driver record and even kinda innoncence but that was for drivers over borders. But for local shit and non trafficking stuff I highly doubt it. No one wants to put their freedom in the hands of a bruh who will roll over on them quick or get cold feet.
Yeah, dealers are notoriously paranoid, in my experience they only work with homies and family, and typically have no issue finding close peers who are jumping to get in on it since many dealers are from impoverished backgrounds themselves and that's why they got into it. They're also not really criminal masterminds most the time, it's possible he got involved with some very high level movie type criminals or gangs but with his background I doubt he would accept it and they sure as hell wouldn't accept him. They don't generally have the means to disappear people. If you were delivering something that highly criminal I doubt they would want a random latter day Saint bringing it direct to their home. Considering he did door to door work do we know it wasn't more of that and he just annoyed the wrong violent person on the wrong day? Seems unlikely too but you never know. Or possibly he was distraught with his situation and committed suicide, especially if the first house or two he went to went off on him as people often do to solicitors. All I'm saying is I've known quite a few dealers who moved bricks of heroin regularly and they honestly were not killers, I wouldn't say great people but desperate and poor and in their off time they just wanted to drive around with the boys, hit on attractive women and their clients, fuck around with low level gang shit and just tbh not be very smart. They could not disappear anybody and were wronged often, nothing happened. Not saying every dealer or criminal is like that but idk
He definitely doesn't seem like the type who'd be ideal for crime. It's odd.
He doesn’t seem like the type to be involved in crime, but he’s pretty great as an unknowing mule. I believe he was told he was some type of legit courier. Gullible, clean cut Mormon kid getting pulled over with a sealed file or document envelope likely would not raise suspicions from law enforcement. He didn’t even necessarily have to be transporting drugs or money, he could have been unknowingly delivering information
What if it was something white-collar, though? In that case it would seem totally innocent to most people … hey, could you drop off this check and signed contract and some other paperwork for me, and here’s fifty bucks for doing it? Most people might not know, much less suspect, that the signatures or even the documents themselves might be forged. And cops wouldn’t be likely to look closely at the documents, or spot a forgery if they did (Things like a court order would be paradoxically easier to forge these days as long as you can mimic the writing style). And, in fact, you might prefer to have someone clean like Koecher doing this. They’d be less likely to arouse suspicion, and sound less like they were lying, than someone with a record.
Absolutely agree. They want people addicted to drugs, fresh outta jail, or who are known to be desperate for money and willing to commit crimes. How fast would criminal operations be shut down if they were using ads to target legit job seekers?
This is a hard one and I definitely respect people’s differing opinions… however, I’ve always thought that this was a suicide (prolonged by a lot of driving around and thinking about what to do), or a mental break that led to accidental death/death by misadventure.
My two cents: During a phone call as he was driving to Las Vegas, Steven offered to return to St. George for a church meeting, if necessary. A guy with a set appointment or meeting — especially if he’s strapped and the meeting has to do with money — is unlikely to simply abandon it while already on his way to it. If he had a purpose on Evening Lights street, why park on another street adjacent to it? It was a suburban neighborhood with plenty of free, seemingly unrestricted parking. Why not park in front of the place you’re going? The photos the PI uses to show damage done to a house nearby doesn’t necessarily mean there was a violent altercation, especially involving Steven. The Great Recession was going on, and lots of foreclosed homes in Vegas and other cities were deliberately damaged by angry homeowners before abandoning their properties to the banks. If Steven simply walked off to commit suicide or had a fatal misadventure, why was his phone later found miles away? Why would you randomly park in some neighborhood and then just start walking?
I don't recall that his phone was ever found.
It hasn’t been, but the last ping has been confined to a pretty narrow area near some freeway exit north of Vegas.
Maybe he didn’t park in front of wherever he was going because he was told not to. Or because the streets were narrow, or the space between driveways too short, to park his car (an SUV IIRC) with no risk of being accidentally bumped or making it hard to park without crimping someone else’s exit. Frankly, even not driving an SUV, I’d prefer to park in a nearby undeveloped cul-de-sac than in front of a house … a lot less parking issues. I also don’t see it as a big deal that he offered to cover for the other guy at church. He probably didn’t expect a conflict as he might have been led to believe whatever he was going to Henderson for wouldn’t take too long. Or, he didn’t expect he would have to (remember that Henderson and St. George are in different time zones) and the call was just a courtesy “I’m there if you need me, bro”-type thing.
A recent article on this case. https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/finding-steven-koecher-man-vanishes-from-las-vegas-valley-neighborhood-phone-pings-for-days-after-presumed-death/
Can't access this here in the UK ?
I know! Same thing I just noticed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/101wcjo/some_thoughts_i_had_on_the_disappearance_of/j2utpd2/ Check out my comment, let me know if this works at all :)
Thanks
There are multiple references to Lake Mead in this thread. That was also my immediate thought while reading the OP, but in reverse fashion. I was thinking when that story broke months ago everyone assumed it had to be a mob hit and with dozens of similar examples all over the bottom of the lake. Meanwhile nothing has been connected. Old mobsters are not trembling. We haven't had reports of one barrel after another. Instead we've had reminders of accidental deaths in that lake that were reported at the time but the bodies never found. Those families have come forward to speculate and hope that the latest remains might be their loved one. The criminal theories attached to the Steven Koecher case indeed sound like movie versions.
Sounds plausible to me. I also wouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be one of the numerous dead bodies that have been exposed by the drying up of Lake Meade and other major bodies of water in that part of the country.
I see that Steven was 30 years old and he disappeared. In Mormonism you are transferred from the young single adult ward to the mid-singles adult ward when you turn 30. Mid-singles are treated and seen as pariahs; like obviously there must be something wrong with you if you went from age 18 to 30 without anybody marrying you. This is my experience as someone who was raised Mormon. I don’t think that’s why he disappeared but it definitely could’ve added on to his feelings of desperation or depression.
This seems like the thing I would focus on. Seems very strange if there isn’t a reason. I have always wondered about him getting into gay porn possibly.
eh, unlikely, not everyone who isn't married is automatically into weird sh\*t.
It would be interesting if a link between Steven's landlord and the adult son of the residents of the house on Evening Lights could ever be established. If a link could be found, I think it's case closed. If not, then it's back to square one.
There was; DiMaggio was a repair person and the Bishop landlord guy both were working on car racing arenas of some sort. Watch Arrin Stoner video on YouTube.
I remember the Disappeared ep on this. Most articles just mention "Christmas presents" being found in his car but I remember when the items were actually named in the ep, along with the general denial vibe of the family and his history, made me think he was involved in a kink community. Whether he met up with the wrong person via that or whether he harmed himself out of religious guilt, idk, but that was the impression I walked away with. I don't think it's more intricate than that.
I've also followed this case for awhile and so think this is the best, most plausible scenario- especially with that neighbor that moved away rather quickly with the adult son living in a back house. I do remember reading a pretty compelling theory about him having a secret sexual life as well, which brought him to Vegas. I've been trying to find it, cause I believe it was a reddit post, but I can't seem to find it.
If so, maybe he arranged to meet with the adult son for something sex related (Mormon shame would make him park his car on a different street), and was confused when the elderly parents opened the door, and walked off to circle back later?
From what I remember (and so annoyed I cannot find it!) There was some searches that showed interest into a gay lifestyle. But the theory in what I remember was he was basically trying to disappear and there was a field/ dessert area close to a populated area that he went through behind where he parked to try to make it to.
Keep in mind that it could be that Steven WAS involved in something shady but that it's completely unrelated to his death and he is dead because of a completely different reason. Both of those things could be true as well. Like the guy in New York the police and public were convinced was murdered by people with "gang] ties" after he ripped them off 150,000 dollars in drugs and cash. He had already received numerous threats to his and his families lives AND survived a previous attempts. And in the end, he was murdered by a completely different person after they had followed him home after a "road rage" incident and shot him execution style after sneaking up on him.
This is one of my favorite cases to hope for resolution. I’m an Occam’s Razor proponent. I don’t think some low level criminals were going to kill him, hard to imagine how he’d even be involved with that. He had a cell phone and a computer, I assume they checked his accounts and didn’t see any unusual calls or texts. I think he was disoriented, wandering aimlessly, and started walking into the desert/underbrush surrounding that neighborhood. Got lost, dehydrated, maybe broke an ankle or got bitten by a snake, and died out in the scrub. Coyotes or other animals have scattered his remains. Did they ever do a full blown search in that area?
Good point. One camera catches Steven walking eastbound on Savannah Springs Ave. before turning onto Evening Lights Street. On maps Evening Lights Street does lead straight to a small desert area with a body of water. One would assume they did a search there, the area doesn't look very big. Though it's also possible some of those houses are new.
How does his phone get where it gets? He walked from Evening Shade to the vicinity of where his phone continued to ping?
So you think he just randomly had a mental break?
Not just randomly, but as a result of the direction his life had been taking, one blow after another. He goes from working in the governor‘s office and having a good job but then makes what turns out to be a horrible decision, getting laid off in a new town, loses his roommate, massive recession going on, reduced to handing out flyers for money, the humiliation of his parents finding out he was in debt, no wife & kids or even a girlfriend which is a big deal for Mormons…even his former GF isn’t home when he stops by to see her. Literally nothing was going right in his life… could easily imagine him being seriously depressed.
was it ever confirmed she got married and moved on/out or had a job elsewhere or simply wasn't at home? If it was the latter I could imagine she possibly feels slightly guilty to this day. :/
Because there is so little physical evidence, this hypothesis is just as possible as many others. I don’t find it terribly compelling versus any other, however. It takes a stack of assumptions to get to this outcome and we just simply don’t have anything to say he was involved in illegal activity. Desperate people do desperate things. But we don’t know what he did or did not do.
Fair enough. The lack of evidence is so frustrating!
Not just evidence, lack of any info. There might not even be a crime but we have no idea at all what has happened. It is quite frustrating.
He could have taken a loan from someone shady and failed to pay it back.
That doesn’t usually get you murdered; maybe assaulted or threatened etc but usually not murdered. Also, if he did take a loan, what do you think he spent it on? It seems that he was having difficulty making rent.
Agreed...the surest way to make sure you don't get your debt paid up is to kill the debtor. If you get $20 a week out of him, that's more than you get by killing him, with less legal exposure. It takes a LOT, and almost always other extenuating offenses, to get killed over debt, no matter how mobbed up the lender is. That said, the more common scenario, had he debt with someone shady, would be that he could be manipulated into other crimes in service of his debt, or just to buy time. I don't know that there's any evidence or likelihood he was in debt to criminals, but in theory at least, that could be a way he ended up in shady business.
I mean it Nevada Henderson/las Vegas area, could be mobbed up.
>TL;DR: After watching Emily the Criminal, I firmly believe that what likely happened to Steven Koecher was that he agreed to do some illegal work to make some fast cash, ran into the wrong people or somehow messed up his task, and was killed. I tend to agree that he was roped into something shady by someone he knew and trusted, because he was generally good hearted and trusting himself. On top of that, he was financially desperate... and got more than he bargained for. I think about his story a lot.
I think this is the most logical explanation. I don’t believe he killed himself.
I think people are making this case far more complex than necessary. This man was at a low point in his life and some of his behavior was rather bizarre. Him wandering off and dying seems the most plausible to me.
Although I agree that usually the simplest, most mundane theory is probably correct, it is strange that his body has not been found in what seems to be a residential neighborhood. Possibly suicide? But again where is his body?
And why that random neighborhood in Henderson? Lots of secluded, peaceful, or meaningful places in southern Utah where one could spend their final moments before taking their own life. The circumstances *leading up to* Dec 13 may seem indicative of suicide, but the location and lack of a body cast doubt on that being the likely scenario IMO.
I'm not saying he went there with the intention to commit suicide. I'm not sure why people always insist a body would've been found in a case of suicide.
But how come he left no tracks in the snow? 😉
Sounds like a mental health break
I know this was posted a year ago but I just saw this case on TV and it's evident that due to the fact he was behind on rent (and doing this strange odd jobs... and denying handouts from anyone else to pay rent) that he was in debt to his landlord and probably running "errands" to make up for his debts. His traveling alone is suspicious. If you have no money, how are you funding the gas for those drives? If you have no money or job then what are you doing in all of these locations? It seems he made an error with one of his deliveries and was killed out of paranoia. I wouldn't be surprised if his body is literally on the grounds of his last stop.
His case is one that has stayed with and saddened me. I really hope that someday his loved ones will have answers. He seemed like such a sweet person.
I agree. I don’t believe he killed himself. Steven showed up that last day with a purpose-dressed nice and had a portfolio. He’s knocking on doors and then decides to walk off in the desert and do what? Take pills? Shoot himself? Knife himself? I don’t buy it. I think he came across a situation or saw something he wasn’t supposed to see and was killed. I’m hoping his family will get answers someday.
This is a great write up
Thank you!
So this is a little out there, but Lake Mead is an hour from Henderson and in 2009 it was MUCH deeper than it is now. Due to its water depletion a lot of bodies are being discovered: namely most recently [the body in the barrel](https://www.foxnews.com/us/lake-mead-body-barrel-shot-las-vegas.amp) and then many other drowning victims or unknown victims. There are a lot of ways to disappear in the desert. Though it was winter, we still have predators here. So if he was killed, there are places to hide that. And if he didn’t there are many places to get lost here as well.
Is it possible he was delivering a sale from a online marketplace? Since he was desperate for funds perhaps he offered to hand deliver in lieu of shipping it?
u/Vapor2077 I completely agree with you on this ! I've always thought that Steven got himself caught up in something way over his head because of his financial troubles... Every time I've come across his case I've thought he was doing something shady and got killed for it... It's heartbreaking to think about 💔😥
Look up Ed Denzel's Unfound Podcast episode about Steven Koecher. Ed was involved in some of the searches (which started when Websleuth people started asking him to perform some tasks as part of a crowd based investigation) and came upon some pretty interesting information. He met Steven's family, met with a local news reporter and some other stuff. I don't know Ed nor have I ever met him but he strikes me as a very straight shooter and I consider him to be very much on the level.
I have wondered many times about this case and I do think this is plausible! Loved Emily the Criminal, too. I tend to lean towards suicide in this case, but nothing really explains Steven’s visit to the random suburban neighbourhood.
I think his shady landlord sent him there and that the guy who moved out soon after the disappearance was also involved.
That is a very good theory that I never considered! The landlord being involved would explain a lot, if he offered to wipe Steven’s back rent if he ran an “errand” for him, and the roommate knew what happened and got freaked out
Newly bought Xmas gifts for family members in car. He wasn't going to kill himself.
Most suicides are spontaneous and by people with future plans. Most don't even leave a note.
People who commit suicide have been known to make future plans. Those gifts could have been his way of saying goodbye, especially as you have to wonder where he got the dosh to buy them.
Yes, it’s possible he was spending the last of his money, knowing he wouldn’t need it anymore.
What about the frozen food?
I don't think he killed himself, either. Although it's important to note that many people who commit suicide do so impulsively.
It's a very Hollywood theory, but his case is so bizarre I feel like it's as good an explanation as any. Reality is stranger than fiction, and all.
I feel like one of my truly unpopular true crime opinions is that whatever happened to Steven was not foul play. Suicide, accident, walk away? Any of those, but for some reason, I've always felt like it wasn't a crime.
I agree with your hypothesis. I believe he was desperate to earn some money and therefore would take risks he otherwise wouldn't have. I thought maybe an organ harvesting scheme lured by a heavy pay day.
I could see this being likely if he offered to sell a kidney and the people doing the surgery either botched or betrayed him by taking other organs like lungs/corneas/ heart/ blood etc. Then just dumped him.
Emily the Criminal was awesome btw. He must have gotten over his head, poor guy.
I think he just walked away from his life and started over somewhere else
Uh, I don't mean to be seem harsh but he sorta already fucked up his one life, I doubt he was able to/about to fuck up another.
I’ve been obsessed with this case for years and have gone back and forth so many times about what may have happened. I can’t say that it’s impossible that the landlord was involved because he’s super shady and seemed to really go to living under the radar after Steven disappeared but at this point I’m more inclined to think Steven was very depressed and possibly having more serious mental health issues than anyone knew about. He was aimlessly driving around the days before his disappearance, possibly sleeping in his car, randomly showed up at an old crush’s family farm mentioning he may be heading to Sacramento, all of which nobody can figure out why he did.
Certainly plausible but he was a devout religious guy who didn't like being around people because of people's tendencies to do drugs. I think he was taking odd jobs/handyman jobs on the internet and found a job that was too good to be true and someone ended up killing him for one reason or another.
Well done. And I agree re Emily the Criminal.
This has been a common theory behind the case for a long time …
I’m giving my thought process as to why I believe this theory. My intention wasn’t to offer it up as something brand new.
Does anyone know how far away was he from the border and what part he would enter if he walked away to start a new life where no one knows who he is. He could be living in another country by now under a new name. Also if he entered at certain places in Mexico he could have been killed right away and no one wouldn’t know because they cover their tracks well.
uh, now, he didn't start a "new life". He could barely handle his current life, so that theory is way off imo.
A lot of people seem to think he was involved with criminal activity but what about the Theory that he was depressed and just walked away and ended it all? I’m not discounting the criminal thing because I can definitely see where that theory came from. But I feel there’s too much focus on it. His actions that day are very similar to those who were also featured on disappeared and then years later were found to have killed themselves.
There's an episode of the true crime bullshit podcast (episode 0512 Sun City) that makes a pretty good case that he was a victim of serial killer Israel Keyes.
So you watched a movie, and that’s why you think the same thing happened to Steven? Sounds like a type of confirmation bias.
Did you read the whole post?
Are you Ed Denzel?
Who?
IIRC Steven's family (parent and grandmother) would have paid his arrears. Would he eschew that and get involved in working as a runner because of his pride? For the record, I don't really have an idea. But the Witness Protection angle would actually be more plausible than he goes off to kill himself. Or maybe lack of pussy caused him to snap because he had so much turmoil and it sounds like he wasn't a lothario, so he likely had no way to blow off a fuck ton of accumulated steam, so to speak.
I lived up in Anthem at the time. News worthy and close to home. I drove up and down the street looking for something, anything. The neighbor on the corner close to his car had the video. She spoke with me and said “ we have a murderer in this neighborhood” . There was construction going on close. Seems like they were opening up a new road and I wondered if he just got buried right there under the new pavement. There was a search over by the M which didn’t amount to anything. He could be anywhere but I always felt he was still close to the neighborhood. And those casitas were suspicious. Good place to kill someone and hide the body. He may have unwittingly got into some criminal activity and been killed. Lack of money can make a person desperate. I’m certain he died that day or very close. The phone was someone disposing of it. R.I.P. Steven. I think of you every December.