Few answers in 1997 disappearance of Wyoming runner
eartha...@yahoo.com
Few answers in 1997 disappearance
Runner's family irked at husband; others defend him
By Joe Garner,
Rocky Mountain News
July 23, 2005
One indisputable fact is that Amy Wroe Bechtel disappeared July 24,
1997.
Eight years ago Sunday, she was last seen in Lander, the central
Wyoming town where she had moved with Steven Bechtel, her husband of 13
months, to join a community of ardent high- country athletes. Wearing
black shorts and running shoes, she stopped at an art gallery about
2:30 p.m. to discuss matting one of her photographs.
And then the 24-year-old, petite, blond Olympic marathon hopeful
vanished.
Steven Bechtel, a rock-climber who is now 35, refused to be interviewed
by investigators after he felt initial questioning turned accusatorial.
He also refused to take a lie-detector test on the advice of his
lawyer. He did not return calls from the Rocky Mountain News to be
interviewed for this story.
His refusal to cooperate with authorities frustrates the Wroe family,
who accuse him of being selfish, even heartless, not to tell what he
knows.
"The way Steve is not helping points to Steve, but it doesn't rule out
the possibility that it also could be someone else," said JoAnne Wroe,
63, mother of the missing woman.
"I do not know if Steve had anything to do with Amy's disappearance,"
she said. "However, Steve is the one who could be most helpful if he
would sit down and talk about Amy's last hours, days and weeks."
The ties between the Wroe and Bechtel families have long since
unraveled in grief, anger and disillusionment. The Wroes never have
held a memorial service for their daughter and sister, while Steve
Bechtel had his wife declared legally dead last year and then
remarried.
To the FBI and the Fremont County Sheriff's Department, the case
remains as active today as the night when Steve Bechtel reported his
wife had not come home from a run.
"In my opinion, Steve was the only suspect when she disappeared, and
Steve is the only suspect now," former Sheriff Larry Mathews said.
"There are no other suspects who had the motive or the opportunity."
Defenders are confident
But Steve Bechtel has a cadre of defenders, beginning with Marit
Fischer, 33, a former Denver woman who met him in Lander on the Labor
Day weekend after Amy vanished. Introduced through friends, Fischer and
Steve Bechtel gradually began a relationship that lasted on and off for
six years.
"I am absolutely 100 percent confident that Steve had nothing to do
with Amy's disappearance," said Fischer, a triathlete who relocated
from Lander to Salt Lake City to resume her career in writing and
public relations after they separated.
In public, "Steve needed to stay positive and upbeat," she said. But,
in private, "he was carrying the weight of her loss on his shoulders
and trying to keep up the search for her," which soon moved from the
Shoshone National Forest, where she may have gone running, to computer
screens that tracked countless leads to nil.
"The fact that we started a relationship some would say so soon after
her disappearance doesn't diminish the pain he felt and still feels
about (Amy's) disappearance," she said. "He was torn inside and
devastated. I really believe there were nights, when we talked for
hours, that I stopped him from killing himself."
Early in the relationship, before she moved to Lander, Fischer lived in
an apartment on Denver's Capitol Hill and worked for Women's Sports and
Fitness, a magazine then published in Boulder.
Sometimes, Steve Bechtel would come to Denver, where they could lose
themselves in the city like any other attractive young couple, away
from small-town eyes that tracked him in Lander as the handsome husband
whose wife had vanished.
During her years with Steve Bechtel, there never was abuse or threats,
Fischer said.
"Sometimes, things just don't work out," she said. "But I still support
Steve."
She returned to her career, and he married a blond runner who works
part time at Wild Iris Mountain Sports, the same sporting goods store
where he and Amy took jobs when they first arrived in Lander.
Steve and Ellen Bechtel live in the house he and Amy purchased a few
days before she vanished.
"Steve wouldn't be with a woman who wasn't an athlete," Fischer said.
"We have to give Ellen credit for being Ellen, not a replacement for
Amy."
Steve operates a fitness center and "is very much a respected member of
the community," said Mike Lilygren, 36, who was Bechtel's roommate and
climbing partner when Bechtel met his future wife Amy at the University
of Wyoming.
Staying put
"Steve and Amy had been married just about a year, and they seemed to
be very much in love," said Tom Bechtel, 70, a Casper architect who is
Steve Bechtel's father.
Buying the Lander house seemed evidence to him that the marriage was
solid, the father said.
In a series of late-night calls, Steve Bechtel notified their families
of her disappearance. He also called on his mountain-savvy friends in
Lander, including staff members from the well-respected National
Outdoors Leadership School. They set out into the summer night to find
her, before authorities launched a search.
The couple's friends went looking for an injured runner, not for a
crime victim.
When searchers found her white Toyota station wagon at about 1 a.m. on
a road through the Shoshone National Forest, it became the de facto
command post for the widening search, with any potential clues of a
crime obliterated - if a crime had been committed.
Inside the car were some keys, her $120 sunglasses and a to-do list,
with four of its 13 items checked off. At the bottom of the list, she
had written notes about the road, suggesting she might have driven the
Toyota herself while scouting the route for a 10K run she was
organizing.
No other evidence was ever found: no sign that she actually had arrived
in the car, no verifiable tracks, no shreds of cloth, no blood stains.
As the investigation progressed, searchers found no evidence of a
wild-animal attack, no clues to a kidnapping and no corpse.
"From the beginning, I had strong support for Steve, and then things
got more and more tense," said Jenny Newton, 35, the sister closest in
age to Amy. "I tried to encourage him to cooperate with law
enforcement."
But, "While a typical, normal loving husband will do anything to find
his wife, (Steve Bechtel) got lawyered up," said Mathews, the former
sheriff.
And not just any lawyer, but rock-climbing lawyer Kent Spence, son of
high-profile defense lawyer Gerry Spence, of Jackson, Wyo.
Steve Bechtel presented himself through surrogates as the target of a
police conspiracy to cover up their shoddy work.
"There has been a failure by the Fremont County Sheriff's Department
and the FBI to follow up on leads," the senior Bechtel said. "Except
those that point to Steven."
While investigators said Steve Bechtel has not asked about progress in
the case for years, Bechtel's father said his son would be willing to
answer their questions, with Spence present.
"He's innocent," the senior Bechtel said. "He's going to stay there and
make Lander his home."
Not knowing hurts family
Nels Wroe, 36, of Longmont, thinks of angels when he thinks of his
missing sister. She had a collection of angels, but their smiling faces
don't capture his sister's grit, independence and determination.
Amy asked Nels Wroe, in the role of older brother, to speak at her
wedding. Nels Wroe consented, but reluctantly.
To Nels Wroe, his brother-in-law-to-be presented himself as charming,
entertaining and "your best friend from the moment you meet him." But,
Wroe also sensed Steve Bechtel was distant, obsessed with Amy and
manipulative to keep himself the focus of attention.
Wroe was the first of the family to voice doubts about Steven Bechtel
after Amy disappeared.
"My sisters didn't accept that Steve could have had anything to do with
it," he said.
Casey Lee, the missing woman's oldest sister, plans a quiet observance
of her sister's disappearance Sunday.
"I'll probably do what I do every year," Lee said. "Go out on the lake
and say a prayer."
"I wish I could accept that she was dead or just missing," she said. "I
wish it was as simple as that.
"Sometimes, in my dreams, I have closure that she is dead, and,
sometimes, in my dreams, I have closure she has come back. It doesn't
end.
"It would be wonderful if I knew what happened to her."
Kris Baker
<eartha...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1122149690.4...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_3948118,00.html
> Few answers in 1997 disappearance
> Runner's family irked at husband; others defend him
> By Joe Garner,
> Rocky Mountain News
> July 23, 2005
>
>>
> Fischer, 33, a former Denver woman who met him in Lander on the Labor
> Day weekend after Amy vanished. Introduced through friends, Fischer and
> Steve Bechtel gradually began a relationship that lasted on and off for
> six years.
>
> "I am absolutely 100 percent confident that Steve had nothing to do
> with Amy's disappearance," said Fischer, a triathlete who relocated
> from Lander to Salt Lake City to resume her career in writing and
> public relations after they separated.
>
> In public, "Steve needed to stay positive and upbeat," she said. But,
> in private, "he was carrying the weight of her loss on his shoulders
> and trying to keep up the search for her," which soon moved from the
> Shoshone National Forest, where she may have gone running, to computer
> screens that tracked countless leads to nil.
>
> "The fact that we started a relationship some would say so soon after
> her disappearance doesn't diminish the pain he felt and still feels
> about (Amy's) disappearance," she said. "He was torn inside and
> devastated. I really believe there were nights, when we talked for
> hours, that I stopped him from killing himself."
Every time I hear this story, I think "Liars. They already
knew each other............."
Kris
earthage2002
"Kris Baker" <kris....@prodigyyy.net> wrote in message
news:mQxEe.5646$IG2...@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com...
I remember this case but I can't remember where I first heard about
it. I find it pretty unbelievable that he met that other woman a
week later, but why didn't he just divorce his wife? Do you think
there was a fight?