Steven Koecher

Koecher's family believes, given his financial circumstances at the time, that Steven had gone to Henderson that morning for a job opportunity. Despite the odd location where he parked his car, on the video the neatly dressed Koecher is walking purposefully, suggesting he knew where he was going and what he was going there for. "He doesn't look confused or dazed", Steven's brother Dallin said in 2018.

But beyond that, there is no evidence to suggest what happened afterwards, nor has anything emerged subsequently which could. "We know about as much now as we did the second we realized he was gone", the St. George police detective in charge of the case said in 2018. Koecher's difficulties notwithstanding, his family does not believe he chose to voluntarily disappear in order to escape them, or take his own life. Deanne Koecher said that in her last conversation with him, on December 10, he was optimistic about his ability to find another job and the two were making plans for his Christmas visit home.

In 2015, a local search and rescue group organized another effort, this time going high up the hills south of Anthem, on a different theory of what Koecher might have been doing. They did not find anything.

Rolf Koecher, Steven's father, died in February 2011 after a brief illness that may have been toxic shock syndrome. Rolf had, with his wife and family, recently finished filming an episode of the Investigation Discovery cable channel's show Disappeared about Steven's case. It aired two months later.

Police investigated the connection, but found nothing to support it. A Koecher family friend who by 2011 had taken over managing the Facebook page on Koecher called the allegations, which came up frequently in posts to it, "nonsense". Josh Powell moved to Washington, where he died along with his sons in a 2012 murder-suicide; his father, who had been convicted of child pornography and voyeurism after, among other things, explicit pictures he had secretly taken of Susan were found on his computer, died in 2018, a year after finishing his sentence.

At some time the same day, Koecher spoke with his ward's bishop, who also described Koecher's mood as positive. The bishop was also trying to help him, and had promised Koecher he would have a job available by the beginning of 2010.

In April 2010, another party of searchers scoured the open desert south of the Henderson Executive Airport to the west of where Koecher had parked in response to a tip passed along to a former LVMPD officer working as a private investigator for the family. A group of 70 covered about a half-mile (1 km) stretch in two hours. Bone fragments were found, but they were not human.

Early in the Koecher investigation, tips were posted to the Internet and brought to the family's attention suggesting a connection between the two disappearances. In 2010, Josh Powell's family began making those allegations publicly, claiming on a website they had set up to find Susan that she had, with her family's help, framed her husband for murder and escaped with Koecher. Steven Powell, Josh's father, outlined the theory in a February letter to police and FBI agents investigating his daughter-in-law's case.

At midday on December 13, 2009, Steven Koecher (born November 1, 1979) got out of his car, parked at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Anthem neighborhood of Henderson, Nevada, United States, an action recorded on a nearby home's security camera. After returning shortly afterwards, he retrieved something from the vehicle and walked away, with another security camera capturing his reflection in a car window. He has not been seen since, although some activity was recorded on his cell phone over the next two days.

At first he had work with another Internet advertising firm, Matchbin, but that employment ended soon after he relocated. With the Great Recession underway, it was difficult for him to find a new job. He was able to find some work for a local window-washing firm, handing out flyers for it. It did not provide him with enough income to meet his expenses, and by November 2009 he was several months behind on his rent. Greg Webb, the singles' ward president, claims the local electric utility was threatening to terminate Koecher's service for nonpayment, although his mother says that would have been the landlord's responsibility. So he was actively seeking another job, using connections from the local ward where he volunteered.

On December 10, 2009, Koecher apparently left St. George in the early morning hours and drove his 2003 Chevrolet Cavalier 300 miles (480 km) north on Interstate 15 to Salt Lake City, where he bought some gas with a debit card. He then traveled west on Interstate 80 another 125 miles (201 km) to West Wendover, Nevada, where he again pulled off the highway to refuel. After that he continued another 100 miles (160 km) to the Ruby Valley ranch of the Neff family.

In 2007 he began working for the Salt Lake Tribune' s digital advertising division. He liked the work, according to his mother, but not working the overnight shift. The many temperature inversions in the Salt Lake City area that winter also bothered him, so after a year he decided to leave his job at the newspaper and relocate to St. George, in the warmer southwestern portion of the state.

Koecher was born in 1979 in Amarillo, Texas, one of four children of Rolf and Deanne Koecher. He was active in the Boy Scouts, eventually making Eagle Scout. After graduating from Amarillo High School in 1998, Koecher, a devout Mormon, attended first Ricks College (now Brigham Young University–Idaho) and later the University of Utah, where he received a degree in communications. He did his missionary work in Brazil, and learned to speak Portuguese.