On July 24th, 1997, Amy Wroe Bechtel disappeared from the Shoshone National Forest, where she went to check out the trails that her gym would be taking. That was the last time anyone heard anything from her. Police found her white Toyota station wagon off of the trail, parked on a dirt road in the Shoshone National Forest.
Police turned their attention to 27 year old, Steve Bechtel, Amy’s husband. In his journals, he expressed his need to be in control. Poems were found, undated, about killing somebody and hiding their body so well that nobody would ever be able to find it.
A camper said that they seen a truck similar to Bechtel's racing through the forest with a blonde passenger. So that led police to search Bechtel's truck and house. No evidence was found. After that Bechtel's attorney advised him not to talk to anyone about his wife.
Many people thought they might have seen her in Florida and in other parts of Wyoming. A businessman and his secretary think that they seen her, homeless, in Lander, Wyoming. King, Fremont County Investigator wanted to take these two people to a homeless shelter and have them pick out her out of the crowd, but his request was denied. Instead they were asked to go out on their own. But they had no clue where to look. If the two agreed that the women that they had seen in February was the homeless women, then the investigation could have been Amy. King thinks that a trip to Florida would make some headway for the case, but Sheriff Larry Matthews thinks that the trip would be unnecessary.
Hair samples are being taken from a car owned by Ali Gray of Sarasota, Florida, after she gave .00 to a woman on a street corner. Ms. Gray, who is blonde herself, is collecting it out of her car because the woman who may have been Bechtel, leaned into her car to take the money.
One person reported seeing Bechtel in a Bingo parlor, about six miles north of the original sighting. She was reported wearing a gray shirt with the word "Fremont" printed on the front of it. King said that it is optimistic about the sighting, because the woman was reported taller than Bechtel.
In Tampa, a woman reported seeing a woman who looked like Bechtel at a water park. King is still investigating that lead.