Going West: True Crime - Jeremy Bright // 79

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

In 1986, a teenage boy attended the Coos County Fair in Myrtle Point, Oregon with his younger sister. But after a few fun days at the fair, the two split up to go off with their friends- and the boy was never seen again. From oddly specific local rumors to troubled young suspects, this case is all over the place. This is the disappearance of Jeremy Bright. BONUS EPISODES: https://www.patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/114325250/jeremy-doland-bright https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/81uvhs/the_disappearance_of_jeremy_bright/ http://charleyproject.org/case/jeremy-doland-bright https://www.lifedaily.com/story/30-years-later-new-evidence-emerges-in-case-of-oregon-sophomores-disappearance/ https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/or-jeremy-bright-14-myrtle-point-14-aug-1986.66017/page-3 https://theworldlink.com/news/local/still-missing-after-21-years/article_2d8d4350-bd7f-5629-adb9-c8f0fed9ad05.html https://kval.com/news/local/youre-grieving-and-it-doesnt-ever-stop-jeremy-bright-missing-in-oregon-since-1986 https://peoplepill.com/people/jeremy-bright/ https://www.kdrv.com/content/news/452811213.html https://victimsheartland.forumotion.com/t1915-breaking-news-jeremy-bright-s-case-has-just-been-picked-up-again-by-coos-county-jeremy-bright-then-14-disappeared-in-1986-from-coos-county-or-his-mom-still-holds-out-hope-thank-you-cory Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Breaking up is hard to do, but when it comes to your wireless carrier, you should have left a while ago. You deserve better. Extinity mobile. Break free from the Big Three. Get unlimited with 5G included for $30 a month when you get four lines on Extinity mobile. Prices may vary in or subject to change, reduce speeds at 20 gigabytes per line. What is going on to crime fans, I'm your host Heath, and I'm your other host, Daphne, and you're listening to Going West. Thank you all for joining us today.

I want to start off by saying that I got the opportunity to talk with Tim and Lance of the Missing Mara Murray podcast about my Aunt Carol Wolsoncroft's disappearance in 1984. They just dropped the episode last week, so go check it out again that's Missing Mara Murray. So please listen and share. My Ants case has not been discussed other than when I talked to Tim and Lance about it, so we really want to get the story out there. Yes, in Daphne's Ants case is still unsolved, so make sure you go check that out. Also,

Tim and Lance have another great podcast called Crawl Space. If you haven't listened to that one, go check that one out as well. It's streaming on all platforms, so make sure you head over and check it out. For those who are all caught up on going west, go ahead and check out our Patreon. That's where we release bonus episodes and bonus content every month. A couple weeks ago, we released a new bonus episode on the murder of Lee Lee in Australia. So that's a good one to check out and then tomorrow we're actually going to release another new bonus episode. So we have a ton there for you guys to binge if you need more content. Yeah, there's about 20 episodes on there right now that you can binge and it just keeps

growing every month. So make sure you go over and check that out patreon.com slash going west podcast. All right guys, we have a wild case for you guys to check out today, based in my home state of Oregon. This is episode 79 of Going West, so let's get into it. In 1986, a teenage boy attended the Kooz County Fair in Murdle Point, Oregon with his younger sister. But after a fun few days at the fair, the two split up to go off with their friends, and the boy was never seen again.

From oddly specific local rumors to troubled young suspects. This case is all over the place. This is the disappearance of Jeremy Bright. Jeremy Bright was born on May 25th, 1972, in Baltimore, Maryland to parents Diane Bland and Joseph Flarety the third, but they didn't end up staying together after Jeremy was born. So Jeremy and his mother Diane moved to Murdole Point, Oregon, where they had a bunch of families since Diane was born and raised there. Murdole Point is a small city, which has a population at this time around being 2700. So I think in this story when they moved there it was around 2000. And Murdole Point is in southern Oregon, and it's just about 20 miles or 32 kilometers east of the coastline. So very close to the ocean. When Jeremy was four years old, his sister, S. born, spelled S apostrophe Te, like the French abbreviation for the word

saint, but pronounced Estee, to Diane and the new man in her life, who I believe's name is John Bright. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the family history here to kind of determine where the last name Bright came from, and it appears that bright came from, and it appears that it came from Estee's dad. Because from my research, it appears Jeremy and Estee had different dads. But anyway, that's not so important here, just a little bit of side info. And Jeremy did take the last name bright as well.

But years later, Jeremy's mother Diane would change relationships again, and Mary a man named Orville Gullseth, who went by Oli, and Oli really took on that father figure role for Jeremy and Estee. Years passed and Jeremy began approaching his high school years, but in the mid-1980s, his mother Diane and stepfather Oli got divorced. Diane had been a bartender for years and she kinda just wanted a life change.

She wanted to move to a place where she could get a new career and then just focus on her kids. So, 13-year-old Jeremy and 9-year-old Estee moved with their mom to Grands Pass, Oregon, which is a much larger city and it's just about 2 hours southeast of Myrtle Point. It has a ton of gorgeous scenery, including big beautiful mountains and the Rowe River, which is honestly such a beautiful river. Once they got there, Diane ended up going back to school while she continued to work, and Jeremy ended his middle school career there, so that was kind of a hard transition for him,

leaving middle school in his last year before high school. And this was a bit hard for the kids since all of their friends were actually still in myrtle point, but Jeremy was excited about starting high school the following year. And it only helped that he was 6' tall and 140 lbs at the age of 14, so he planned to join the upcoming high school's basketball team. And Jeremy was overall just a very popular and well-liked young guy who made friends super easily. So it was easy for him to adjust to this new life in Grand's Pass.

His sister, SD, also played basketball, so she joined the basketball team at the Boys and Girls Club in their new hometown of Grand's Pass, and Jeremy actually helped coach that team. And this just kind of proved how close Jeremy and his sister SD were because they had this huge hobby in common. They both loved basketball and he was so good at it that he was like, I'm going to help coach our team and that only made them closer. Well, not only that, but they are moving to a new town together and they're the only

siblings so they kind of have to stick together, you know? Yeah, totally. So even though Diane and the kid's stepfather Oli were divorced, Oli was definitely still a part of their life. So they saw him on occasion. But the following summer in 1986, when Jeremy was about to enter his freshman year of high school, Oli offered to take Jeremy and his sister, SD, to the Kuz County Fair. And I've actually been to that fair before, back in the early 90s. Do you remember anything?

Can you tell us about what it's like? Oh my gosh, I honestly don't remember anything. I just remember my parents taking us, but I can definitely smell fair food right now, just thinking about it. Who doesn't love the fair as a kid? The Kooz County fair is, like most, an annual summer carnival, and it takes place in their hometown of Myrtle Point.

Since they'd grown up there, Jeremy and SD went together every single summer, and they were not going to miss it that year on a count of living in Grant's Pass. So Ollie told them that they could come stay with him at his house and he would take them that week to the fair. And this was the end of summer. So it's kind of like, let's just do this little trip, go see all our friends, have fun, and then start the school year. Yeah, I mean, what's a what's a couple hours drive to go to a super fun fair? Exactly. And their mom, Diane, she had school and work so she wanted them to go have fun and kind of see their friends and so she let them go or else they would just be sitting

in Grand's Pass, super bored and left out. On Wednesday, August 13th, 1986, Jeremy and Estee got to Myrtle Point and Jeremy called his mom on the phone to tell her their plans. They were head to the fair at around 4.45 pm. They also planned to have Diane pick them up three days later on Saturday August 16th. And by the way, Oli really wasn't planning on taking them to the fair since Jeremy was a teenager and he was now about to go into high school. He was old enough to take care of his 10 year old sister so Oli really didn't feel like he needed to supervise that. And this was the 80s, so it's kind of like let your kids go to the fair. There's no harm in that. They've gone forever. Like that wasn't even a question.

Right, and it's also a small town. I remember in my hometown we have a fair called the Scandinavian Festival, and my parents would let me and my sister just go all the time and and I would usually take my sister she was probably 12 and I was probably around 14 when my parents first started letting us go to that festival by ourselves. Well and that was in the 90s and isn't your hometown about 10,000 people population? Yeah it's around 10,000. Right, so it's even bigger, and that just goes to show you even more that it's a normal thing to just send your kids off to the fair. Exactly. So they went to the fair that Wednesday, and later that evening at around 9.40 pm, Jeremy

actually walked over to his uncle's tavern. His grandma's brother owned a bar that was kind of the family business, which is how Jeremy's mom died in first got into bar tending. Jeremy's grandma actually worked at the bar and she was there when Jeremy came in that night. And Ollie was also there and he had gone there after getting off of work that evening. Jeremy was now inside the bar and he asked Ollie for some more money for the carnival because he had run out of funds for all the fun things going on there.

And Oli happily gave him some more money. And with that, Jeremy was now on his way back to the Kuz County Fair. The following day, Thursday, August 14, 1986, Jeremy and SD went back to the fair. Jeremy's friend Johnny joined them and they all kind of enjoyed their time together at the fair earlier that afternoon and a lot of their old friends were there. So at 2 p.m. Jeremy and SD parted ways to go and play games and ride carnival rides with their own friends. But they agreed to meet back up at 5 p.m. by the Ferris wheel. But Jeremy never showed up. SD kind of figured that, Jeremy was busy

having fun with his friends, so she herself went to stay at her friend's house for the night, and her friend lived just two doors down from her stepdad Ollie's house, so she was really close by. On Friday morning, so the following morning, Ollie woke up to go to work very early before sunrise because he was a logger. Yeah, so he worked in the logging industry. Those guys get up super early. My dad actually works in the logging industry as well. Yeah, so you get up really, really early and then you leave a lot later in the day.

They work super, super, super long shifts. He knew that SD was at a friend's house and he kind of figured that Jeremy was too, so he didn't worry that neither of the kids were home. But just so everyone knows when he did wake up that Friday morning, there were no other kids in the house. But again, he wasn't worried because that's our hometown, they know everyone. Of course, they're not going to be home. When Diane arrived to Ollie's house the following day, which according to an interview with

Diane and with SD was Saturday, August 16th, SD was there waiting, but Jeremy wasn't. His grant pass house keys, along with his wallet and a new watch were in the house, but he wasn't anywhere to be found. Originally, Diane figured that he had to be there somewhere since all of his stuff was still left in the house, and she wasn't initially worried. But Estee hadn't seen him, so they both just kind of figured that he was with a friend or maybe hanging out somewhere.

That day, Diane went to the Myrtle Point Parade to help family and then later to help at the rodeo. And Jeremy knew that she was gonna be doing this because she told him this on the phone days prior. So Jeremy knew that she was going to be doing this because she told him this on the phone days prior. So Jeremy knew that she was going to be busy all day and Diane didn't really think anything about it. She just knew that Jeremy was off having fun. Diane also asked if anyone had seen Jeremy, but no one had seen him since he had came in three nights earlier to get money from Oli. When Diane came across one of Jeremy's friends,

she told them to find out where Jeremy was and let him know that she was now in town, in Myrtle Point. As the day went on, Diane continued to help out around town and she was hoping that Jeremy would just kind of turn up, but he never did. As Diane spoke to more of Jeremy's friends, she found out the last time that anyone had seen Jeremy was on Thursday, August 14, 1986, a whole two days earlier.

Later that evening, when Diane contacted the police to report him missing, they kind of just brushed it off and told her that he was probably just still having fun at the fair and that she should wait another day until the fair was over. So they didn't even like send out a bulletin or have police kind of check out the fair to see if he really was or wasn't there. They were just like, I'm sure he's fine, I'm sure he's at the fair.

Yeah, and that probably goes back to the whole small town situation. There's a big fair going on. They're obviously assuming that he's just out there playing games and doing whatever kids do at fairs. Which in a sense makes sense, but at the same time, you're the police. So if she's saying that no one has seen him for three days, you should probably do something about it. And this was Saturday. So that year, the fair ended on Sunday, August 17th, so the following day. And since everyone knew how much Jeremy

loved the fair, they really weren't sure if something happened or if he was just still at the fair, but Diane was still super worried, of course. SD then remembered that she last saw Jeremy on Thursday as well in the early afternoon, talking to men that she had never seen before. Then she saw him walking away with them as if they were leaving the fair. Being 10 years old, she wasn't worried about this at the time. She just didn't know who they were. But when she told this to police, they didn't believe her. And S.D. is now an adult, and she still remembers what she saw, and she just can't believe that the police didn't take what she saw seriously.

But honestly, how are you going to discount somebody regardless of their 10 years old if she says she doesn't know who these men are that Jeremy's talking to and trust me, she would probably know because in a town with only 2,000 people in it, you're pretty much going to know almost everyone. If she says she doesn't know these men, you need to listen to that as well. That and he hasn't been seen in days he was supposedly last seen going away with random men, and the moms worried, but these police were so incompetent and we'll get more into that, but they just really didn't do shit.

And on top of that, Jeremy had never run away before. He wasn't a troubled kid, and he never did anything maliciously. He was a good kid, and everyone that knew him could vouch for this. Many people, including Jeremy's family, believe that the Myrtle Point Police Department handled this case horribly because they didn't take anything seriously from the get-go. The next day, which was Sunday, when the fare came to a close, Jeremy was still missing. So, police started to feel like it was possible that he had ran away with the circus since he loved it so much.

Which to me is the dumbest thing that I've ever heard. It's such a silly thing to say, and I know you have to look at all the possibilities, but everyone likes the fair. It's not like he had always expressed interest in performing in the shows or being a carny. He just like going and playing with his friends. So, you know, since he was just a kid, I mean, what kid doesn't like carnivals? They were just taking his love for carnivals to the nth degree and thinking,

oh, he ran, like, who runs away with the circus at 14 years old? Like, why would he do that? It's like, mom, I've never showed any interest in wanting to join the circus, but now I kind of want to do the trapeze. Yeah, that doesn never showed any interest in wanting to join the circus, but now I kind of want to do the trapeze. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense.

It's ridiculous that this even crossed their mind, and that in turn, they didn't look for him because of this dumb idea they had. And I totally agree, but police really ran with the divorce that happened the year prior as well. They thought that he was still taking it really hard and that he was afraid to enter But police really ran with the divorce that happened the year prior as well. They thought that he was still taking it really hard and that he was afraid to enter high school, so he ran away with the circus. I mean, I know divorce is hard on kids, and so is moving to a different place. I mean, the same exact thing happened to me in my siblings. I moved 14 times throughout my childhood.

But he was also really excited about going to high school because he wanted to join the basketball team. And he was so close with his sister. He just wouldn't have run away at that time, and we've talked about this before how frustrating it is when police look at a missing person's case and just think of every reason that foul play was not involved. But that just loses so much time. And Jeremy's mom Diane was so frustrated by that too because she knew her son.

She knew he would never run away. Unfortunately, by the time the fair ended, there were countless rumors floating around Mertle Point regarding Jeremy's disappearance. It being the summertime, there was some teenage parties going on in Mertle Point, and one of the first rumors involved Jeremy dying by accident. Someone started talking about how on Thursday, August 14th, the day he was last seen, Jeremy went to a party and drank beer that was spiked with drugs. This drug then caused him to overdose, and his friends helped get rid of the body to avoid getting in trouble for underage drinking and drug using.

I personally have never heard about someone lacing beer with drugs, but the biggest thing with this rumor is that it slightly has weight to it. I mean, we've all seen a movie where someone dies by accident and no one wants to get in trouble, so they dispose of the body. I know you did last summer. Many others we actually just watched the rental on iTunes last night. You guys should all check it out.

Very similar. So not too crazy to think that he could have accidentally died, especially because Jeremy's friends were 14 and 15 years old. So them panicking would make sense. But my question then is, why didn't anyone else die at the party if the beer had drugs in it? Why would just Jeremy die? And I did read that he had a heart murmur, but still, I mean why didn't anyone at the party who wasn't involved come forward and tell more about this theory? Like if you saw him die and you were just a bystander at the party, you would think they would have gone to police.

It's just I have to pass on that one. and you were just a bystander at the party, you would think they would have gone to police. It's just, I have to pass on that one. Well, and how did this rumor start in the first place? If teens are saying that they saw Jeremy at the party, then Jeremy was clearly at the party. But if this is just hearsay from somebody else, I mean, who's to say that that's complete bullshit? Well, that's what's so hard is there's so many different theories and we're gonna go into them guys

But there's so many different ones and so many different rumors It's like how did these even start? How did people start talking about these stories? If they're all completely different stories, how did these begin? Yeah, and we also have to consider, you know, again, this just goes back to the whole small town thing where Everybody's got a rumor everybody's got a theory everybody's talking because it's probably one of the biggest things going on at the time and So there's obviously going to be rumors spread very easily within this small town Well, here's another rumor that went around myrtle point that came from a jail Well, here's another rumor that went around Myrtle Point that came from a jail informant and this is totally different from the one you just told. So in the

early evening of Thursday, August 14th, Jeremy went to hang out with some friends at a swimming pool. And while they were swimming and hanging out, some older boys were harassing them and messing around and one of them shot Jeremy. Then the boys ran off and Jeremy's friends took him to a cabin that was 10 miles or 16 kilometers away and tried to heal him there, but they were unable to properly care for his wound, so he died either from an infection or blood loss, and then his friends buried him near the cabin in a shallow grave. Like, where does this story come from? If this is not true, who created this?

To me, this one seems like a stretch, because I know young people get scared easily, but if Jeremy's friends weren't the ones who shot him, why in the hell would they try to nurse him back to health instead of taking him to a hospital if they didn't do anything wrong? And I could understand if they were scared or threatened by the older teenagers, but hiding all of this just puts Jeremy's blood on their hands. And who's cabin is this and how did they get him there?

Like it's just too odd. Yeah, and this is the problem, though. You know, the fact that there are so many rumors being spread around, it's like police have to investigate every single one of these, and unfortunately, that's just wasting so much more time. But investigators did actually look into this rumor so they would be able to rule it out.

They found out which swimming pool it was and they went there, but didn't find any kind of evidence that Jeremy was there or that someone was injured there. Then, they found a cabin in the vicinity and looked all around it and in it for any potential evidence or proof that this story was true, and they didn't find anything. Does another thing, is a gunshot wound,

produces a lot of blood? So if he was in the pool, how would they have gotten all the blood out of the pool and clean everything up so that there was no sign of anything happening, while also being 14 year old boys and taking care of a gunshot wound in a random cabin somewhere. And remember, Jeremy is insanely tall for his age, he has six feet tall. So that wouldn't have been an easy job to move him. It just, at the same time, seems too oddly specific to be fake.

But how would this be true? It's just, it's so confusing. This, at the same time, seems too oddly specific to be fake. But how would this be true? It's just so confusing. Yeah, it's really confusing to me because a lot of the time when you hear rumors in cases like this, the details are very vague. But for some reason, these rumors that are being spread are so incredibly specific down to the pool, down to this cabin, and everything else, how are there so many different, super-specific rumors in this case?

I have the exact same questions, and here's another rumor for you. Another little story that was buzzing around town was that Jeremy drowned in the Coquille River, which is right outside of the fairgrounds. This rumor didn't have much weight to it, because the police did investigate this as well, but they weren't able to gather enough information during their search to make this a very believable theory. And as police continue to search for Jeremy, they got a few reports of sightings of Jeremy within the area.

So they originally really just felt that Jeremy was alive and probably fine. And Diane was so frustrated by this because she felt like they weren't doing everything that they could, which we've already said, but I mean, obviously they're not really doing anything or following up on anything because they just don't think he's dead. So Jeremy's case was transferred

to the Kuz County County Sheriff's Department three months into the case. And according to Diane, they took it much more seriously and began doing everything they could to find her son. There's a lot of speculation that one or more of Jeremy's friends know exactly what happened to him. And a lot of that information in this case is still under wraps, but we do know that police spoke with a girl named Cecilia regarding Jeremy's disappearance. Cecilia was the sister of Jeremy's friend Johnny, the kid who Jeremy was with at the

fair on Thursday when he disappeared. According to his sister Cecilia, the night after Jeremy was last seen at around midnight, she and her sister were leaving her sister's Myrtle Point apartment when they saw a local troubled teenage boy named David Steinoff with blood all over him. When she and her sister asked what happened, the boy apparently laughed and said, this happened hours ago, and then went inside the complex to another apartment. By the way, this was reported before the case was handed over to the Kuz County, so it had been said that the Myrtle Point police didn't really look into this lead either.

And I did read a report from SD, she's commented on a bunch of different forums regarding her brother's case. And she says that she thinks, or she heard that David had told Cecilia and her sister that he'd gotten into a fight with his girlfriend and that his girlfriend scratched him. But he had blood all over him and you don't have blood all over you and someone scratches you. So apparently they thought that was weird too that he said that. And I mean, the problem here is that since this is just from Cecilia and her sister's account, police can't try to question anyone and either be denied or lied to without any physical proof, especially since there's no body.

So it's very possible that David signinoff was involved in whatever happened in Jeremy, but since they have no evidence, they can't really get information from David if he doesn't just tell them what happened. Which why would he do that? And it sucks that the Myrtle Point Police just kind of set this one aside at first, because by the time the Kuzk County Sheriff's Office got the case, it was three months later. So that's three whole months that passed, making it much harder to pin David Steinhoff to anything. But we'll talk more about David here in a minute.

Yeah, and imagine how much evidence can be destroyed within three months. Exactly. And Diane and SD fully believe that if the police had just done their job from the beginning, they would have found out what happened Jeremy. Right. So let's talk about Johnny for just a minute. Johnny was Jeremy's best friend, but he wasn't known to be the best apple in the bunch. After Jeremy disappeared, it's been said that Johnny had continuous horrible nightmares and developed an addiction to alcohol and drugs as well. Cecilia later said that after Jeremy disappeared, Johnny was a completely

different person. Whenever she tried to ask him about what happened to Jeremy, he just wouldn't talk about it, or he'd say that he couldn't remember. And the night that Jeremy disappeared, Johnny showed up to his sister's apartment shaking and afraid of something. But of course, at the time, his sister didn't know Jeremy was missing, or dead, or anything. So she just thought that he was given some bad drugs. After Johnny got to his sisters, he apparently kept telling them to stay away from the windows, or something would happen to them. This was the same night that Johnny's sister Cecilia saw David covered in blood. Unfortunately, Johnny was found

dead at the age of 40 under a bridge in California. He had been homeless for many years, but that was only a few years ago, so please had their time to question him and just couldn't get anything out of them. Tips and sightings continued to come in regarding Jeremy's case, and one of them was from someone claiming that they had seen Jeremy in the passenger seat of a truck owned by a 22-year-old man named Terry Lee Steinhoff on Thursday, August 14. The last day Jeremy was seen. Terry is the cousin of the kid who Cecilia saw covered in blood outside of her sister's apartment, aka David Steinoff.

So there's one odd coincidence, and another is that Terry, who in 1986 was 22 years old, used to babysit Jeremy and his sister Estee, so they knew each other. Police went to question Terry about this, thinking that it could be a good lead, but Terry was completely uncooperative with police. And since the sighting was only by one person and there was no actual evidence that Terry had done anything to Jeremy, the police couldn't really do anything about it. So they kept tabs on him, but they couldn't get any answers. By the way, there was also another rumor that Terry was at one of the parties that Jeremy

was at, the week that he went missing. But this can't be confirmed for sure, because it's just here, say, pretty much like this whole case. In January of 1989, about two and a half years after Jeremy disappeared, Terry Lee's Steinhoff was arrested for the murder of a 32-year-old mother of two named Patricia Morris. In May of 1988, Patricia was at the Pan American bar in Cous Bay, Oregon, which is about 30 minutes northwest of Myrtle Point.

When Terry Steinhoff approached her and tried to hit on her, she rejected his advances, which enraged Terry. So after she left the bar, Terry followed her home and slashed her throat and stabbed her in the neck 15 times with a pocket knife. She was then left to die, which took nearly 8 hours without anyone discovering her. Terry Steinhalf, who was 24 years old at this point, ended up pleading no contest to this murder in early 1989, and this would give him an automatic life sentence. who was 24 years old at this point, ended up pleading no contest to this murder in early 1989,

and this would give him an automatic life sentence. He chose this instead of going to trial where he could have potentially been found guilty. A guilty plea would have given him eligibility for parole after 25 years, but a no contest plea would give him eligibility for parole after just 10 years. So he probably felt like he was going to be found guilty on trial and wanted to be able

to possibly get out of prison early. Exactly. When Terry was arrested for murder, this really made the Kooz County Sheriff's Office feel like he could have definitely been capable of giving Jeremy Bright the same fate, because we know he is super angry, obviously, if he's gonna stab this poor random woman for rejecting him, and we know he's capable of murder. So they visited him in prison on multiple occasions in hopes of getting answers, but Terry, once again, was incredibly uncooperative.

He wouldn't tell them anything. Police then decided to search near his family's property for Jeremy's potential remains, but their search turned up empty. 10 years later, in 1999, Terry applied for parole and was denied. He then went on to attempt and convince the parole board of his innocence two more times, and he was denied those times as well. According to Jeremy's sister, Estee, the Steinhaufs weren't that popular in Myrtle Point. They were almost feared, so she believes that it's more than possible that Terry and his

cousin David could have been involved in Jeremy's disappearance. But she also feels that people in town know the truth but are afraid to come forward. And just like Terry, David Steinhoff had been in and out of jail. And we're not sure if this stands for today too, but back in the late 1980s, there was drug production and drug use in Mertel Point, so people kept a lot of secrets in that town. The Steinhoff's were so feared that even Terry's sister changed her name and moved out of the state of Oregon to get away from the rest of her family and basically start a new life. As she also feels strongly that Jeremy's best friend

Johnny was present for whatever happened to Jeremy. She doesn't think that he was responsible, but she thinks that he was definitely there. But according to Jeremy's mom Diane, Terry's mother was really nice and an amazing person. She was just, quote, dealt a raw deal by life, unquote. But Diane doesn't have very good things to say about her husband and Terry's father. She said that I forget what quote she said, something about how he was going to hell. He was not a good guy. And Diane also had really good things to say about Terry's

sisters because they also babysat Jeremy and SD growing up. But then it was kind of like the boys, the boy Steinhoff's were the shit heads. Yeah, exactly. So both families did know each other really well and no one knows what Terry's motive would be to have done anything to Jeremy. And unfortunately, if he was actually involved, we may never know. Because in October 2007, Terry Lee Steinhoff died of a heroin overdose in prison. One year later, in December 2008, Jeremy Bright's father Joe died without having any answers regarding his son's disappearance. Here is the ultimate theory that SD had stated she believes is the most plausible

and the one that she had heard from multiple people in Myrtle Point. And it goes like this, Terry Steinhoff, his cousin David Steinhoff and their friend Hoyt Richardson, and another friend took Jeremy and Johnny and possibly a couple other of Jeremy's friends out into the woods surrounding Myrtle Point and assaulted them in more than one way. Then Jeremy threatened to tell his stepdad, Olly, about what they did, so they shot Jeremy to keep him quiet. And that's why Johnny was shaking in fear when he got to his

sister's apartment that night, and why he told them to stay away from the windows, because he was hiding from the older boys. And apparently, the unnamed friend who was also supposedly with Terry, David, and Hoyt that night, Jeremy would have been killed, came home that night through the back door. His girlfriend at the time was home and thought it was odd that he came in through the back door and even stranger that he put his clothes in the washing machine right away and then took a shower immediately. The girlfriend then went to the washing machine to look at the clothes and saw blood on them. This guy also asked someone to hide his gun for him that same night, but the person who was hiding it turned it into the police.

As D also mentioned that many years after Jeremy disappeared, Johnny took a ride from a relative to Roseburg, Oregon. By this time, Johnny was living on the streets and relied heavily on drugs and alcohol, but during the ride, Johnny supposedly said, if they want to find Jeremy, they should look up there, but then didn't say anything else Unfortunately again, this is all technically hearsay, but I think it's pretty credible that it came from SD sources and I just want to say as well that I don't know You know since SD was only 10 I don't know when the last time it was that she saw Terry

So when she says that she saw some men that I don't know when the last time it was that she saw Terry. So when she says that she saw some men that she didn't know, take Jeremy or Jeremy went with these men to a 10-year-old, a 22-year-old guy is a man. Right, so if she was being babysept by Terry when she was five years old, she might not recognize him when she was 10 years old if she hadn't seen him since that point in time. Exactly. So it's definitely possible that the men that she saw was actually David and Terry, because we, I just don't know if she knew what their faces looked like. She has not said that anywhere online, but it's definitely possible that that's who that was. And also, when Heath said that they were assaulted, we don't know exactly what that means.

I would assume that they were sexually assaulted if they weren't physically assaulted, because it's not like they beat them up. So my mind is going to sexually assaulted, but I cannot confirm that. But going hand in hand with that, it's important to remember that Terry is a murderer and he obviously had some anger issues considering he murdered a woman for rejecting him. So that kind of speaks for his personality. And David Steinhoff, his cousin, is a registered sex offender. So he is a sexual predator and not just that, but his offense was that he attempted sawdemy of his girlfriend's eight-year-old daughter in 1993. And at the time of this offense, David was 32 years old.

So when Jeremy disappeared, David was only 15. But I know that Terry was 22 at the time and Hoyt was around Terry's age. Years after David attempted rape in 1993, he provided two underage girls with alcohol on two separate occasions. And according to someone on Web's loaths who did some digging into Hoyt Richards' in, Hoyt left Myrtle Point shortly after Jeremy disappeared and didn't move back until after Terry Steinhoff died in prison. So just all in all, there's a lot of suspicion over these three guys in my opinion.

And this kind of does tie into that theory, the pool and cabin theory. It's possible that what actually happened is what SD thinks, which is that these older boys were messing with and assaulting the younger boys, including Jeremy. And then they killed Jeremy, potentially by accident, and then threatened the rest of the boys. Yeah, I definitely think whatever the circumstances were, whether it was drug deal or whether they were being sexually assaulted by the older boys or whether they were being picked on and Jeremy said he was going to tell someone,

I think whatever happened, I think that these three guys know what happened. And I think probably at this point David and Hoyt probably hold the answers to Jeremy's disappearance. Well that's the whole deal so first off let's talk about Terry's dad really quick. When Terry's Steinhoff's father was on his deathbed police decided to question him in hopes of finally getting the answer to what happened to Jeremy because about Jeremy's case, Terry's father told him that he would never rat out his own son and would take the information regarding Jeremy's disappearance to his grave. And this only made the police feel more confident that he would have been able to find a way to get the information from the police. But when detectives questioned him about Jeremy's case, Terry's father told him that he would never rat out his own son and would take the information regarding Jeremy's disappearance to his grave.

And this only made the police feel more confident that Terry was involved. And this also goes to show you how shitty this dad is too, just like Diane always thought he was. He's like, you're taking these secrets to your grave and you're not going to help give justice to this poor family. What kind of dude are you? So now the only way that they would really ever find out is if David or Hoyt came forward because they're the only ones who were said to have possibly been there and the only ones that are still alive today.

Police really hope that one of them would come forward after Terry died, but they didn't. In 2016, the Kews County Sheriff's Office were tipped off regarding a possible location of Jeremy's remains, but after an extensive search of the area, they didn't find anything. But they're always looking for new tips so they can bring Jeremy home to his family. Every summer, Jeremy's mother Diane, who has since moved to a different area, returns to myrtle point and searches a new spot in hopes of finding her son's remains. She says at this point, she's not even looking for justice for him. She just wants to lay him to rest and know where he is.

She and Estee just want to heal from this. Jeremy Bright has been missing and presumed dead for 34 years. Today, he would be 48 years old. If you have any information on the disappearance of Jeremy Bright, please contact Detective Dan Looney with the Kooz County Sheriff's Office. At 541-396-3121 and the extension for that is 3-7-8. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much everybody for listening, and next week we'll have an all new case for

you guys to dive into. If you guys would kindly share this episode so that we can get this out there so that we can get this case out in the spotlight so maybe it'll get enough attention that police might reinvestigate this and we can find some answers for Diane and Estee. Thank you everybody for listening and thank you everybody who gave us a 5 star review on Apple Podcast this week, it really helps out the show. It helps us kind of get noticed and move up on the charts. So if you dig us, go leave us a five star review.

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