Disappearance of Amy Wroe Bechtel

Amy Joy Wroe Bechtel was born in 1972 in California and largely raised in Jackson and Douglas, Wyoming. A record-setting distance runner at the University of Wyoming, she aspired to qualify for the 2000 Summer Olympics. She met Steve Bechtel at the university in 1992, and the couple married in June 1996 after moving to Lander, Wyoming.

On July 24, 1997, Bechtel taught a fitness class, ran errands, and inquired about a photography competition. She was also organizing a 10-kilometer race scheduled for September 7, 1997, in Shoshone National Forest, and is believed to have driven through Sinks Canyon State Park to the Loop Road to scout the race route. That same day, her husband Steve traveled to Dubois, Wyoming, with a friend to scout rock climbing routes, returning to Lander at 4:30 p.m. to find Bechtel not home. After contacting her parents and then the Fremont County sheriff's department, friends began searching, and around 1 a.m. on July 25, 1997, Bechtel's white Toyota Tercel was found unlocked at Burnt Gulch along the Loop Road, with no indication of her whereabouts.

An extensive search began by 3 a.m. on July 25, involving law enforcement, family, and friends. By July 27, police were fielding roughly 1,000 calls per day, and lakes and mines in the area were searched without result. Investigators initially considered the possibility that Bechtel had fallen victim to the elements or an animal attack, but later focused suspicion on Steve after finding journals he had written describing violence toward women, including his wife. Detectives interrogated Steve on August 1, 1997, falsely claiming to have evidence of his guilt; he ended the interview in response. Steve later said the journals were song lyrics for his band and unrelated to his wife's disappearance. In 1998, local police said Steve was not a central suspect but that his lack of cooperation, including his refusal—on his attorney's advice—to take a polygraph, prevented them from formally clearing him. Friends corroborated his alibi that he had spent the afternoon rock climbing, though a woman driving through the area reported seeing a truck matching his.

In August 1997 the FBI requested satellite imagery from NASA, and in January 1998 obtained images from the Russian Mir space station; neither provided useful information. In June 2003, a hiker found a Timex Iron Man watch near the Popo Agie River similar to one Bechtel had owned, but law enforcement could not confirm it was hers. In a 2007 interview, a sheriff's sergeant stated his belief that the case was a homicide and that Steve was the only person he wanted to question further. Dale Wayne Eaton, a convicted murderer on Wyoming's death row, has also been named as a possible suspect, reportedly having been near the area at the time, though he has declined to discuss the case. Amy Wroe Bechtel was declared legally dead in 2004. The case has been the subject of extensive media coverage, including People magazine, Outside, Unsolved Mysteries, Disappeared, Runner's World, and the 2020 book The Cold Vanish, but remains unsolved.