How a YouTuber Solved the 21-Year-Old Mystery of Jeremy Bechtel and Erin Foster's Disappearance

When someone goes missing from a community and is never found, the mystery of it can haunt the area.

This sort of misery is only multiplied when two people disappear together, especially when they are young.

On April 3, 2000, two teenagers named Jeremy Bechtel and Erin Foster vanished, seemingly into thin air.

The disappearance of both teens shook their town of Sparta, Tennessee, to its core and started a search for them that would last over twenty years.

Incredibly, when Bechtel and Foster were finally located, it wasn’t by the local authorities or grieving families but by a YouTube star.

Read on to find out more about the disappearance of Jeremy Bechtel and Erin Foster, and how they were finally found after more than two decades.

The Disappearance Of Jeremy Bechtel And Erin Foster

Overview of the disappearance:

● Bechtel and Foster went missing on April 3, 2000, in Sparta, Tennessee.

● Both teens attended White County High School and were childhood friends.

● Erin Foster was 18, and Jeremy Bechtel was 17.

● They were last seen driving Foster’s 1988 black Pontiac Grand Am around 10 pm.

Monday wasn’t the usual day for high schoolers to party, but Jeremy Bechtel and Erin Foster were seniors close to graduation.

With less than two months to go of their high school career at White County High School, the rules had been loosened somewhat.

Bechtel and Foster were childhood friends, and while they had never officially been romantically involved, there were rumors that the two had fallen for each other.

But on the night of April 3, the two teenagers were simply friends attending a party together, probably one of many in their last few weeks of school.

The Monday night party must have been held somewhat early because sometime during the evening, they arrived back at Erin Foster’s house. Bechtel spoke to his father on the phone one last time.

Later, near 10 pm, the two teens loaded back into Erin Foster’s black 1988 Pontiac Grand Am. Foster was driving with Bechtel in the passenger seat.

It was the last time Jeremy Bechtel and Erin Foster would be seen alive.

When the two friends didn’t come home that Monday night, there was worry, but not alarm just yet. But by the second evening, both families were understandably panicked and reported their missing children to the police.

With the party being the last place Foster and Bechtel were seen, authorities focused their search nearby. As the days passed and the search for the friends ramped up, nothing was uncovered to give police even a hint where they could be.

**School photos of Erin Foster and Jeremy Betchel.**

The community of Sparta rallied around the Bechtel and Foster families, but there was still no sign of their children. Hopelessness settled over the families as time passed with zero sign of the teen friends.

As to be expected in any small town, rumors began to spread regarding the disappearance.

Investigation And Theories

Extensive searches were conducted to try and find Foster and Bechtel. Where could two happy, healthy teenagers and an entire car disappear to?

It seemed impossible for the friends and their car to vanish into thin air, but there seemed to be no trace of them.

This brought up questions and rumors that would spread like wildfire, even if the rumors were totally unfounded.

Some believed that Jeremy and Erin might have taken off to start a new life together as a couple. Young love can be volatile and cause even the most level-headed teenagers to make rash decisions.

This theory was disregarded by most who knew the teens because they had never been more than friends.

They would also need money to survive if they left to live elsewhere, and neither teen ever picked up their last checks from their jobs.

With Bechtel and Foster being kind and well-liked among their peers, the possibility of foul play was quickly dismissed.

Other ideas that were floated were the possibility of a robbery or carjacking gone wrong, or revenge from Erin’s jealous ex-boyfriend.

As the years passed, the rumors began to fade away, leaving just the mystery behind.

There were no persons of interest in the case as the first decade began to roll into the second, and the families were beginning to think they’d never know what happened to their loved ones.

Enter Youtube sensation Jeremy Sides and his channel, Exploring with Nug.

The Breakthrough: YouTuber Jeremy Sides Finds Bechtel And Foster

In 2021, White County Sheriff Steve Page took over the long-cold case of Jeremy Bechtel and Erin Foster.

He wanted to see if there was anything that may have been missed in the initial investigation, and quickly struck gold.

The first searches were conducted near the party that Bechtel and Foster had attended on April 3, but that was not the last place they were seen.

Instead, the files on the case stated that the friends had returned to Foster’s house to ask permission to stay out later.

They had even driven her younger brother home, meaning they had a witness to this visit after the party.

Investigators had focused all their energy near the party, which was on the other side of town from Foster’s house–the completely wrong place for them to have searched.

Sheriff Page was familiar with a form of search and recovery that had become popular on YouTube, where divers would use SONAR to scan waterways for lost vehicles.

One such diver was Jeremy Beau Sides, who ran the YouTube Channel Exploring With Nug.

Before speaking with the Sheriff, Sides had come out of his own accord to search for the missing teens.

But like the investigators before, he searched bodies of water near the infamous April 3 party, not knowing that it was the wrong area altogether.

After being shown the initial video at church, Sheriff Page contacted Sides himself and explained where he believed Foster’s car may have sunk.

He asked the YouTuber to come out a second time to search, hoping that the advanced technology Sides used would be the key to cracking the cold case.

Sides agreed to come out and search the waterways near Foster’s home, taking leads from the Sheriff on where to look. He spent some time on a few different bodies of water, and during his investigation of Calfkiller River, he spotted a car on his SONAR.

**The vehicle that was pulled from the water. Photo by New York Post.**

The style of the car’s silhouette in the image looked similar to the shape of the 1988 Grand Am. Jeremy suited up and dove down, wiping away the decades of moss and algae to reveal the world ‘Pontiac’ in silver lettering.

Then, he wiped away the detritus from the license plate, and it matched the plate number of Erin Foster’s lost Grand Am.

After 21 years, Jeremy Sides had found Jeremy Bechtel and Erin Foster.

What Happened On April 3, 2000?

After years of wondering, the authorities and the families of the teenagers were able to piece together what led to the disappearance of Jeremy Bechtal and Erin Foster.

After leaving the Foster’s house around 10 pm, the teens drove down Highway 84. Calfkiller River ran alongside the highway, which at that time, lacked guardrails in many places.

Sometime during the drive, Erin lost control of the car and it went into the Calfkiller River, quickly sinking and disappearing. The river, being constantly muddy and full of algae, was both remote and impossible to see through.

Incredibly, the place in the river where the Grand Am sank was barely deeper than most public pools at only 12 feet.

In the video posted on the Exploring With Nug channel, you can clearly see just how murky the water is. The car is completely obscured, even when Sides’ boat is directly above it.

Coming Home After 21 Years

As soon as Jeremy Sides surfaced, license plate in hand, he called Sheriff Page and gave him the news. The Sheriff rushed out to the site, embracing Sides before calling into dispatch to confirm the license plate belonged to Erin Foster’s car.

Once it was confirmed that the sunken Grand Am belonged to Erin Foster, the families were contacted, Then, the car was raised from the bottom of the river and the remains were removed from the vehicle.

From there, forensic analysis was performed on both sets of remains to prove that, without a doubt, the bodies were those of the two missing teenagers.

Once the tests proved the identities of the remains, they were released to the families and put to rest.

The closing of the cold case was a bittersweet moment for both Sheriff Page and Jeremy Sides.

Page would tell 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. …It’s heart-wrenching to know it was that simple, and it was made that hard because of all the rumors and horror stories through the years.”

Sides remained humble through the experience, happy to give the families closure.

He told the Post, “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.”