Tragic missing persons case finally solved by YouTuber 21 years after teenagers vanished
A content creator was responsible for uncovering a cold case and solving it a whopping 20 years after it happened.
Known as a scuba diver and civilian crime investigator, Jeremy Beau Sides is a YouTuber who looks to bring closure to families who have lost loved ones in unsolved cases.
The American has over 637,000 subscribers on the platform, through his channel titled 'Exploring with Nug', where he documents his amateur investigating across the country.
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On 3 April, 2000, two high school students names Jeremy Bechtel and Erin Foster vanished, and the mystery surrounding their disappearance continued to haunt their hometown of Sparta, Tennessee for two decades.
The search from authorities would roar on but it wouldn't be police or the local Sheriff that would crack the case open - it would be Sides himself.
Back in 2021, he headed to Sparta, where the teenagers left Foster's home in her car never to be seen again.
The father and diver was determined to uncover the case himself, getting his scuba equipment together, as well as sonar and other exploration bits and bobs, to search the Calfkiller River, where he suspected they had gone missing.
Sources had told him that they drove by the river often, and scanned it with his sonar to see what was under the surface, only to find a vehicle 13 feet deep into the river.
He decided to dive into the river the following day, finding a car that was a Pontiac Grand Am - the same model owned by Foster and taken by the pair on that fateful April day 20+ years ago.
Shocked, the explorer got in touch with authorities, as White County Sheriff Steve Page told News Channel 5: "Of course, I’m shocked. I’m like really? I didn’t believe it until I got there."
Other officers showed up to the scene afterward, finding Foster and Bechtel's remains, still inside the car, though there is a guardrail along the road now, as dive teams over the years believed that the rail would have shown signs of damage if the car went into the river.
On the day the teens left, they drove down Highway 84 alongside the river, which lacked guardrails in several places, and it is believed that Foster lost control of the car as it fell into the river, sinking and disappearing for decades.
As the river was murky and full of algae, it was hard to see the car through the water.
It also wasn't until 2021 that investigators realised that there was no guardrail in that area back in 2000, and as the car was intact, it was believed that they just ran off the road.
In the video, Sides shared footage of his dives and videos of authorities retrieving the car from the river.
After solving the case, he explained: “There’s no red tape involved. We’re just doing what we do and we make the rules - and end of the day, we try to find these people who are missing. We focus on the waterways because that’s what our specialty is...
"We all have the same objective: Just keep looking and bring closure to these families.”
Sheriff Page told the Washington Post: “We have gone in wells, dug up areas, we have used ground-penetrating equipment looking for bodies, but was right under our noses the whole time."
He called the situation 'heart-wrenching' that it was 'that simple'.
Sides said he was just glad to give the families closure, explaining: “I was very humbled that I could just help out. …I would like to think the police did what they could. But this one just slipped through the cracks.”
Joshua Nair