This is a bittersweet ending…
Back on April 3, 2000, Jeremy Bechtel, 17, and Erin Foster, 18, disappeared into thin air. The two teenagers left Foster’s home in White County, Tennessee in Bechtel’s 1988 Pontiac Grand Am and were never seen again. Understandably, both families were tortured by not knowing what happened, but the mystery has finally been solved, at least in part, and it’s all thanks to YouTube channel Exploring With Nug.
See how a similar missing person’s case was also recently solved here.
Like a few other YouTubers, Jeremy Beau Sides (who runs Exploring With Nug) has scuba equipment and likes to dive into rivers and lakes to pull out cars and other items submerged in the murky waters. Some of the junk is just that, other items are identified as lost and are returned to their owner. And then there are those rare occasions when poking around in waterways leads to solving a missing persons case that’s 21 years old.
Funny enough, this story started at church. White County Sheriff Steve Page said that back on November 11 he was at church when a relative of Erin Foster asked if he’d ever seen Exploring With Nug on YouTube. Page had never even heard of the channel, but he asked for a link, which he checked out when he got home. Immediately, the sheriff realized the YouTuber, who was actively searching for Foster and Bechtel, could be of help. There was just one problem: Page felt Sides was looking in the wrong area.
Acting on the advice from Sheriff Page, Sides started searching the Calfkiller River by Highway 84 on November 30. Not long after he discovered a Pontiac Grand Am and called the sheriff, who sent a team out to investigate. They were able to confirm the vehicle was in fact Bechtel’s.
Human remains were found in the rusty Pontiac, however DNA testing and a possible dental records match are in the process of being run, so there’s no confirmation they are in fact Bechtel and Foster. Divers have been combing the river in case the bodies turn out to belong to others. Oddly, the same area of the river had been searched before, but Page believes they didn’t dive in that exact spot.
It’s believed the teenagers accidentally ran off the highway and into the river. There are guardrails up no, but back in 2000 there were none.
