164. Backwoods Horror: The Mysterious Disappearances of Amy Bechtel & Polly Melton

Welcome back to another episode of Heart Starts Pounding. As always, I'm your morbid guide into our dark curiosity, Kayla Moore. I've asked this question before on this show, but what could cause someone to vanish into thin air? Sometimes I hear from our community when I pose that question, your theories and your thoughts on the episode, and the answers I get range from the logical all the way to the supernatural. People fall into crevices all the time. people run away to start new lives more than you would think. Bigfoot is real and he's taking people into the fourth dimension. I do get that explanation more than you guys would think. But what I have for you today has really left me scratching my head and I really am curious to hear what you all think. The first story I have for you is of a woman who goes missing and a note is found in her car in her own handwriting that reads run. And in the second story, a woman was out on a light walk with friends, turned a corner ahead of them, and was never seen again. Two disappearances, two totally different circumstances, and one central question. What could cause someone to vanish into thin air? Let's get into it. It's when your heart starts pounding. The morning of July 24th, 1997 was just an average day for 24-year-old Amy Bechdel. She woke up, she made her to-do list, and she joined her husband Steve for breakfast. At around 9.30 a.m., the couple said their goodbyes and went their separate ways. Steve began his drive to Du Bois in Wyoming, which was just over an hour from his and Amy's home in Lander, Wyoming. He and his friend Sam, both outdoor enthusiasts, were going to scout a new mountain to scale. while Amy headed over to her local fitness center to teach a weight training class. After she finished the class, she ran some errands, and then at 2 p.m. that afternoon, she dropped into a camera shop on Main Street to pick the owner's brain about some picture framing. At around 3.30 p.m. that day, dark storm clouds began to cover Lander and the surrounding areas, including Du Bois, where Steve and his friend Sam were. With the rain now pouring down, the two decided to call it a day and each got in their trucks and began heading back to their respective homes. But when Steve arrived home, Amy wasn't there. That was strange. He picked up his landline and called her parents. If she wasn't at home, that was the second most likely place she would be. But her parents said that they hadn't seen her either. Steve was now starting to get pretty worried. So he dialed a couple of their other friends that might have seen Amy. But when no one had, he called a local hospital. What if she had been in a car accident while she was out and just couldn't get a hold of him? But again, that turned out nothing. No one Steve called had any idea where Amy could be. So finally, just before 11 p.m., Steve reported his wife missing to the Fremont County Sheriff's Office. Within minutes, two sheriff's deputies met with Steve outside of his cottage and got a statement about what he remembered from that day. What was Amy wearing? Did she seem upset? is there any other place she could be? She was wearing a yellow tank top, black running shorts, Adidas running shoes, a Timex Ironman watch, and a gold wedding ring. She didn't seem upset, and no, he couldn't really think of anywhere else she would be. Steve's next-door neighbors volunteered to go out and help look for Amy, and Steve suggested they try the loop road that cuts through Shoshone National Forest and sinks Canyon, as that's where Amy liked to go jogging. two hours later as the neighbors were driving along the 30 mile loop road their headlights hit something there parked on the side of the road near the burnt gulch road turnoff was amy's white toyota tercel but there was no sign of amy the couple pulled their car behind amy's and got out to investigate her car was unlocked and inside on the passenger seat they found amy's keys her sunglasses and a to-do list she had made that morning. Several items on the list had been crossed off, but one of the last items, which had yet to be crossed off, just read, run. It felt really ominous in that moment. The only thing missing, besides Amy herself, was her wallet, which she was known to not take with her when she jogged. So what could have happened to it? They looked around Amy's car, puddles from that afternoon's rainfall surrounded the car like a moat. And yet, they didn't see any footprints in the mud. Not a single one aside from their own. Had Amy been out for a run when the sky opened up on her? Was she stuck somewhere? If that was the case, time was of the essence. So they immediately called Steve and they reported the news. He gathered up some lanterns and a sleeping bag, got into his truck, and he headed out towards Burnt Gulch. Now, I know the saying goes, opposites attract, But few couples have ever been more perfectly suited for each other than Amy Rowe and Steve Bechdel, who at least from the outside seemed destined to live happily ever after. Amy and Steve first started dating back in 1992 when they were both students at the University of Wyoming, both pursuing degrees in exercise nutrition. Amy and Steve both had lives that revolved around being athletic. Steve had a passion for rock climbing and a fearlessness that pushed him to conquer peaks that no one had previously climbed, from huge mountains and nearby national forests to far-flung heights in the Himalayas. Meanwhile, Amy was a champion runner who was already breaking records in high school. And as the star runner of the University of Wyoming's cross-country team, the Cowgirls, Amy was well on her way to competing in the 2000 Olympics. The couple moved to Lander, Wyoming together, a small town by most standards, right after they graduated. And Lander's economic heartbeat is outdoor recreation. And so it made sense that Amy and Steve wanted to live there. They settled into a little cottage on a street called Lucky Lane with a yellow lab named John's. In June of 1996, they finally got married. And of course, their honeymoon was a month-long rock climbing trip in Australia. Now, interestingly enough, Amy and Steve did not embark on their honeymoon alone. Steve actually brought his friend Sam along on their honeymoon, which some people found odd, but I mean, maybe was common for this couple. But that aside, July of 1997 was a very exciting time for Amy and Steve. Amy finally finished paying off her student loans. The couple just closed escrow on a brand new three bedroom house. All the while, Amy was busy organizing a 10K race for September. And somehow, in the midst of all of that, she vanished. By 2 a.m. on the night Amy went missing, sheriff's deputies had converged on the area around Amy's car and began organizing this massive search effort. Volunteers trickled into Sinks Canyon throughout the dark early morning hours. The search continued on into the day. But no matter how loud they screamed her name, They never heard anything back. The sheriff's office deployed search dogs. They sent out helicopters and an army of at least 100, maybe even 200 volunteers. Investigators ended up ordering duplicates of the clothing Amy was believed to be wearing the day she went missing. And they brought them to the search site, hoping that maybe they would find remnants of the clothes or shoe prints in the dirt that matched. And then, before long, their efforts paid off. Just east of Amy's car, down the Canyon Creek drainage, searchers found a shoe print very similar to the soles of the shoes Amy was known to have last been wearing. Volunteers then did an exhaustive search of the surrounding area, and they found Amy's pen that she had used to write her to-do list, three quarters of a mile away from where her car was found. But that was all that turned up. Within days, Amy's disappearance was statewide news and tips began pouring in from all over. The sheriff's office was inundated with over a thousand tips coming in every hour, and none of them seemed promising. Meanwhile, the search was expanded to a 30-mile radius of where Amy's car was found, and the military even got involved. They flew Air Force helicopters with infrared detection devices. The National Guard and the Civil Air Patrol assisted with the search, as did volunteers on horseback, on ATV, you name it. Bad weather, like the weather on the afternoon Amy disappeared, kept impending the search efforts. But the sheriff's office persisted. And yet, after a week of searching every corner of the wilderness, they found absolutely no trace of Amy beyond her abandoned car, her pen, and a single shoe print. A shoe print that unfortunately got trampled on and destroyed by volunteer searchers before it could be preserved. Now, by this point, the FBI had joined the investigation and they were able to obtain satellite images taken the very afternoon Amy disappeared. But this ended up being another dead end because the cloud coverage was so bad on that day, it blocked the satellite's view of the ground. And it was not long after that that the Fremont County Sheriff's Office decided to end the search. Authorities were confident that if Amy had fallen, if she had had a medical emergency, or even if she had been attacked by a wild animal, they almost certainly would have found her or at least found more of a trace of her. So maybe it wasn't that Amy had an accident while she was out on a run. 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I've used therapy before, and I know that when you want support, the last thing you need is to hear that someone is not in your network. Alma really helps make that part easier. A year from today isn't that far away. Get started now at helloalma.com slash heart starts. That's helloalma.com slash h-e-a-r-t-s-t-a-r-t-s. That's h-e-l-l-o-a-l-m-a dot com slash heartstarts. When a married woman disappears, the first person police usually look at is, of course, her husband. And in Amy Bechdel's case, investigators had more than just one reason to turn their attention to Steve. on the surface Amy and Steve may have seemed like an ideal couple in every way extra perfect but when investigators sat down with Amy's brother Nels what he had to say really raised some eyebrows. Nels remembered an evening not so long ago when Amy and Steve came to his house for dinner during that meal Nels happened to notice that Amy had bruises on her so he asked his sister about the bruises and she immediately averted her eyes and laughed it off by saying that Steve could get a little rough sometimes. Her response felt really off to her brother who also felt that Steve often talked down to Amy in a way that was condescending and sometimes just plain belittling and then investigators received even more information that propelled their interest in Steve. A woman who had been camping in the burnt gulch area on the afternoon Amy disappeared, remembered seeing a blue pickup truck speeding through the mountain at around 4 45 p.m. that day, not far from the point where Amy's car was later found. The witness said she saw a man behind the wheel and a woman who fit Amy's description in the passenger seat. And then the woman claimed she later saw that same truck again at the search and rescue site. Deputies asked the woman down to the sheriff's station and showed her some pictures of blue pickup trucks. She identified one of the trucks as looking just like the one she had seen. And it was Steve Bechtel's truck. Investigators had in fact been keeping a close eye on Steve from the very beginning because he had told them something in the initial report that they tried to verify, but couldn't. Steve had claimed that on the night of Amy's disappearance, he had called the local hospital to check if Amy had been admitted. Well, investigators contacted the hospital and asked them to check their call logs to corroborate that Steve had in fact made this call. The hospital did as they were asked. They checked the log from that night. They even checked it twice. But there was no record of Steve having placed that call. And while it's definitely possible that someone slacked off and didn't log it, investigators considered this highly suspicious. They brought Steve back into the station and began grilling him on what they claimed were inconsistencies in his timeline. And they couldn't confirm his alibi. And on top of that, they couldn't confirm his alibi of being in Du Bois, 80 miles away, on the afternoon of the disappearance. Because the only person who could confirm it was Steve's friend, Sam, who was reportedly there with him. And investigators had not been able to get in touch with him. The detectives told Steve they believed he knew more than he was letting on. and they asked him to take a polygraph test, which he declined. And then he cut the interview short and hired an attorney. When Amy's family caught wind of this, they got really suspicious. And that suspicion only continued to grow after hearing the recording of Steve's initial call to authorities to report his wife missing. At the top of the call, Steve says to the dispatcher, quote, I've got a missing person here and wondered if you maybe had an extra. Amy was missing. And yet, here's her husband making a joke? They wondered why he didn't sound more panicked. Tension grew between Steve and Amy's family until they were essentially estranged. And investigators wasted little time obtaining search warrants for Steve's home, his pickup truck, and his phone records. They showed up to his house with cadaver dogs and luminol, which makes cleaned up bloodstains fluorescent or light up as a Christmas tree, as they sometimes say on television. they expected to find some trace that Amy had been harmed inside. However, they couldn't find any evidence of violence inside of the home or any evidence of her blood at least. But what they did find was evidence of violence in Steve's private journal that police confiscated during that search. Now, they've never released the contents of this journal nor have they described exactly what it was they found. But they did say that Steve's writings, quote, showed a desire for power and control that may have led to murder. But according to Steve, he had just written down song lyrics, and the rest of the journal was creative writing that was blown out of proportion by investigators over-eager to pin his wife's disappearance on him. And on top of that, because they've never actually released what they found, we can't corroborate that either way. Eventually, investigators did get in touch with Steve's friend Sam, who did confirm that Steve was with him that day. They were together in Du Bois mid-afternoon, but that didn't necessarily mean that he didn't have time to come back, kill Amy and dispose of her body somewhere. At least that's what the police were saying. However, a major hole in the case authorities were building against Steve opened up when they reviewed his telephone records for the afternoon of Amy's disappearance. It turns out Steve had placed a telephone call from his home at 4.43 p.m. that day, which was around the same time that the camper thought she had seen Steve's blue pickup truck with Steve at the helm and Amy in the passenger seat speeding through Burnt Gulch. Now, Bernd Gulch is 45 minutes from Steve and Amy's house, and he could not have been at those two places at once. Nevertheless, he did remain the prime suspect. Detective Dave King, who was soon elected county sheriff, was not shy about publicly naming Steve as the only person of interest in this case. And Amy's family was nearly as vocal about this. They even went on the Geraldo Rivero show to openly implore Steve to take a polygraph test and cooperate with the investigation. but Steve did not and for him it seems like life went on eventually. He maintained the mortgage on the house that he and Amy had bought because he needed her signature in order to sell it until he was able to have Amy declared legally dead. He then went on to remarry and he built a new life for himself in Lander where the community still talked about the crime but eventually it got quiet. Sheriff Dave King, who for years was the loudest in keeping suspicion on Steve, ended up resigning from his position after he was indicted for stealing cocaine and opiates from the evidence locker, a crime for which he was later convicted. But even as this case grew cold, the department returned their attention to Steve every so often, going so far as to tear up the driveway of the home he and Amy had purchased, because there were rumors circulating that he had buried Amy there. But there was nothing found there. And it was starting to feel like Amy got swallowed up by a beam of light out there and just vanished. With nowhere else to look, her case file eventually got put up high on a shelf where it started to be forgotten. But years later, a cold case investigator named John Zerga, who had a passion for unsolved cases, pulled her file down to go through it once more. And as he started flipping through the pages, he got totally wrapped up in the mystery. Not just because of how strange the whole thing seemed, but because of how many mistakes he could tell the original investigators made. He noticed that one, they failed to treat the area as a crime scene during the original search. Two, Amy's footprint, the only trace of her outside of the car, got trampled by searchers. And three, they allowed Steve's truck to be driven off by his friends before detectives could fully process it. Zerga wondered what else the original investigators may have overlooked. So he began pouring through thousands of tips that the sheriff's office received in the first several months of the investigation. And one of those tips immediately caught his eye. The person who called the tip in was a man named Richard Eaton, who told detectives they needed to look into his brother Dale. an itinerant laborer with mental health issues who had been camping in the Burnt Gulch area around the time that Amy disappeared. And Zerka's heart stopped when he saw this tip because there was no evidence that the tip was ever followed up on, but also because he immediately recognized the name Dale Eaton. In September of 1997, Dale Eaton was driving his van down a desolate stretch of highway in the Wyoming desert when he came across a family stranded outside of a broken down vehicle. Eden offered to give them a ride, which they accepted. But then he pulled off the highway down a lonely dirt road and he pulled a gun on them. Luckily, they were able to overpower him and really beat the daylights out of him. But it was a really close call. Eden was charged with kidnapping and did accept a plea deal. He was sent to a halfway house from which he soon escaped. and he was captured after 44 days on the run while hiding out in the Shoshone National Forest. But after that, Eden's DNA was entered into the National Criminal Database. And in July of 2002, his profile was matched to an unsolved murder. The infamous 1988 killing of an 18-year-old Montana woman named Lisa Kimmel, who disappeared while driving through Wyoming and was later found sexually assaulted, murdered, and dumped in a river. Lisa's car which was a brand new Honda sports car with a distinctive vanity plate was never found but after the DNA from Lisa's rape kit was matched to Dale Eden authorities dug up the property where he was living at the time and there buried beneath six feet of desert sand they found Lisa long 1988 Honda with the personalized plates When Eden was identified as Lisa Kimmel killer Steve Bechdel and his father actually tried to convince the Fremont County Sheriff Office to look into him as a potential suspect in Amy disappearance But investigators completely dismissed this. At that point, they had tunnel vision on Steve, and they insisted that he was their only person of interest. And this was long before Sergeant John Zerga took over the case and found the old tip from Dale's brother, which itself was from 1997, years before Eden would be linked to Lisa's murder. Zerga decided to go visit Eden on death row, where he had been sent following his conviction for Kimmel's murder. But this didn't really yield anything. Eden essentially told the detective to get lost. Authorities now suspect that Dale Wayne Eden might be a serial killer, potentially responsible for a series of killings known as the Great Basin Murders, which date all the way back to the early 1980s. Eden has refused to talk to authorities at all. And Sergeant Zerga's official position now is there's good reason to believe Dale Eden may have been involved in Amy Bechdel's disappearance. In 2014, sheriff's deputies returned to Burnt Gulch with cadaver dogs in a renewed effort to find Amy. And this time, the dogs followed ascent down Burnt Gulch to a depression in the dirt, which had all of the characteristics of a clandestine grave. Authorities sifted through every cubic centimeter of soil within that depression, but all they ever found was a single twisty tie. Now, we may never truly know what happened to Amy Bechtel, who seemingly parked her car on a turnout, went for a run, and then vanished into the landscape. Could she have had an accident? Investigators don't really think so. And while it still seems possible that Amy may have fallen into something that permanently pulled her out of view, the consensus amongst detectives is that someone put her somewhere where she'll never be found. Could it have been her husband, Steve? I mean, sure, but there wasn't really ever much evidence that he had anything to do with it. As for Dale, well, he's still alive. He was the last person on death row in Wyoming when his sentence was overturned 10 years ago. But he's getting older and time might be running out if he does know anything about Amy's whereabouts. Though it might be the last chance we have here for answers. The point is something happened to Amy. She could not have just vanished into thin air, even though at times when I read through this story, that literally feels like what happened. And it's the same exact thing with this next case that I want to tell you about. I want to tell you about another story that's kept me up at night. Another story where it feels like someone truly dematerialized out of this world while they were out in the woods. This episode is brought to you by Factor. Who can relate to this? You love a hearty, home-cooked meal, but you have no time to make it. Or let's be real, you just don't wanna make it. That is usually me. Well, I have good news for people like us. That news comes courtesy of Factor. Factor makes healthy eating easy with fully prepared meals designed by dieticians and crafted by chefs. Let me tell you about the delicious, fresh, never-frozen meals that I got in my recent Factor order. I had filet mignon with shrimp, honey mustard chicken, a bacon, egg, and potato breakfast scramble. 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And the answer is that I've had to very much optimize a couple of things in my life and meals are definitely one of those things. Cachava is a whole body meal shake that helps me keep my nutrition balanced, which is actually one of my wellness goals this year. I can make myself a nutritious meal very fast. Just two scoops provides 25 grams of protein, six grams of fiber, greens, adaptogens, and so much more, all with no artificial colors, flavors, or sweeteners. I just actually went out and bought another bag of their vanilla flavor. I typically blend it with banana, almond milk, yogurt, ice, peanut butter, the works. If you want to try something new though, they have recipes from the Cachava Kitchen on their website now. The next one that I want to try is two scoops of their chocolate with iced coffee and coconut milk. That one looks really good. And when my mom was here, she actually made me a breakfast oatmeal bake that had Cachava baked into it. And I'm definitely going to make that again very soon. If you're looking for help sticking to your wellness goals this year, or you just love great shakes, go to cachava.com and use code HSP for 15% off. That's cachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A.com, code HSP. Our next case takes place on September 25th, 1981, a Friday afternoon in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Now, these mountains are a sub range of the Appalachians and they loom large over the Tennessee, North Carolina border. That day, 58 year old Polly Melton got a call from two of her friends, Trula and Red, asking if she wanted to go on a stroll with them on Deep Creek Trail. Now, Deep Creek Trail is a wide and well-traveled path that is not much of a challenge to complete. The canopy of trees along the trail gives shade from the sun, and it's a short little stroll. So short, in fact, that Polly didn't even think she needed to take the spaghetti sauce she was simmering off of the stove. She turned to her husband, Bob, told him where she was going, and then left her Airstream to go join her friends at around 3.15 p.m. Now, during this walk, Polly lagged behind her friends who joked with her about being a slowpoke. This was kind of typical of Polly. She smoked two packs of Virginia Slims a day. She had high blood pressure, chronic nausea. They did give her credit, though, because despite all this, she still made an effort to go out with them when she could. They eventually reached this turnaround point at the end of the trail, but they stopped for a few minutes. Polly smoked a cigarette. Afterwards, they began the walk back to their trailers. They ambled along. They were making small talk, joking around like old friends. It was just like all the other walks they had gone on across all of the summers that they'd enjoyed together in North Carolina. But then, kind of out of nowhere, Polly picked up her pace. In fact, she began walking so fast, it kind of felt like she was trying to lose Trula and Red. The two looked at each other and grinned with amusement, thinking that Polly was maybe playing a prank on them. Red called out to Polly and joked that she didn't want to compete with her in a foot race. Slow down. But Polly glanced back, gave a little laugh, and then kept booking it down the trail, even picking up more speed the further she went, far outpacing her friends who watched as Polly grew smaller and smaller in the distance until she reached a rise in the trail, passed over its peak to the other side, and then disappeared from view. It took some time for Trula and Red to reach that rise, assuming that they would find Polly just tired out and resting on the bench at the other side of it. But when they got to the other side of that hill, Polly was nowhere in sight. This was a little puzzling, but they weren't too concerned. It was still daylight out. Polly knew the trail very well. And she certainly wouldn't have ventured off it because she had this paralyzing fear of snakes. And she was also really afraid of falling into the creek below. The ladies thought that their friend would slow down eventually and they would probably catch up with her by the time they got back to their trailers. But they were surprised when they made it all the way back to the campground without running into Polly at all. Apparently, she had beaten them there. The two women rushed to Polly's trailer, expecting to find her inside. But when they knocked, they were stunned to find that Polly's husband, Bob, was there by himself. Bob said that he hadn't seen Polly since she left for her hike. Trula and Red explained what had happened, and then they began circling the campground, asking everybody there if they had seen Polly. But no one had. Now where could she have gone? They began calling everyone Polly knew, but no one had any clue where she was. With the evening sky beginning to dim, Trula and Red knew that it was time to find the park rangers and officially report their friend missing. Now park ranger Dennis Burnett knew Polly well from the nearly two decades she had been spending her summers at Deep Creek. And so did the other rangers, who immediately closed the trail and began searching for signs of the missing woman. And along the way, rangers questioned everyone in the area, providing a description of Polly and the clothing she was wearing. But nobody remembered seeing her. The temperature started dropping into the low 50s. The sky turned black. And so rangers were using high-powered flashlights to search the creek. Polly's father and her brothers soon arrived to assist with the search. And meanwhile, Polly's poor husband Bob was so distressed that he started having trouble breathing and was admitted to the hospital. Over the next couple of days, the search efforts increased with up to 350 people getting involved. Friends, families, volunteers, park rangers, and dog handlers. One of the search dogs, actually, a bloodhound, zeroed in on one particular area. A fallen tree beside the trail where hikers would sometimes sit to rest. the bloodhound's handler believed that Polly may have stopped there. However, when the dogs reached the spot where Polly was last seen, just beyond that rise in the trail, the dogs began howling and spinning around in circles. It was as if Polly had simply been whisked up into the sky, just like she had spontaneously evaporated. There was no trail of her beyond that. Now, one handler would go on to say that sometimes trails do disappear when there's excessively dry weather in the area, which that spot had been subject to. Over the next couple of weeks, the trees in the area began shedding their leaves, and that really opened up the ceiling over the trail, which allowed helicopters to join the search with a more clear bird's eye view of the area. But even with that access and that view, they didn't find anything out of the ordinary. The search continued on until by October 2nd, Every corner of the Deep Creek Trail and campgrounds had been searched. Every fork, every side trail, every recess, and not a single trace of Polly Melton was found. No clothing no shoes no jewelry no Virginia Slims nothing Investigators felt like there was a chance that Polly was no longer in the park But if she wasn in the park and she didn go home to her airstream, where did she go? Well, one investigator noticed that near the last spot Polly was seen, there was a parking lot and that trail allowed vehicles up to a certain point. Was there a chance that someone could have been waiting for her there. But who would it have been? It felt like a total stretch. But the more investigators started talking to people who knew Polly about the events leading up to her disappearance, the more plausible it felt. Now, Polly was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, one of four children. And throughout the years, she had multiple careers that included teaching and stenography. Her first husband was a Korean war vet who died in 1967 after an extended illness. Polly remarried shortly after, and not long into that marriage, her second husband died from throat cancer, leaving Polly a widow once again. Then in 1975, Polly remarried, this time to her father's business partner, a man named Bob Melton, who was 22 years Polly's senior. Bob and Polly's father co-owned Campground Space in Deep Creek, and for nearly 20 years, Polly had been spending her summers there, which was a tradition that she continued after she married Bob. The couple eventually settled in Jacksonville, Florida, where they lived in an Airstream trailer, and they would unhitch it every summer and take the trip up to Deep Creek. And during her summers in North Carolina, Polly volunteered at a church nutrition center where she served meals to seniors every day of the week. Polly had been doing this for many years, and the seniors and other volunteers there absolutely loved her. They saw her as being very friendly and reliable, and they described her as whip smart. But in recent years, Polly had been hit with pretty bad depression. Her husband, Bob, had some progressive health problems like heart disease and emphysema, and it rendered him increasingly unable to participate in life. And it pushed Polly into the role of full-time caregiver. And then in 1977, Polly's mother died, which really devastated her. With Polly's own health struggles and her husband's increasing dependence on her, a world without her mom left Polly in need of some relief. And at that point, it's reported that she started taking Valium. And people close to Polly, like the pastor of her church, observed that her spirits had been taking a bit of a dive in the recent weeks. And also, she had been doing things that seemed out of character. So the day before Polly disappeared, her fellow volunteers at the Church Nutrition Center noticed that she had done something she had never done before in the many years she volunteered there. She used the church's phone, not just once, but multiple times. And no one knew who she called or what was discussed. And when investigators later learned of these phone calls, they examined the church's telephone bill, but it didn't tell them anything because the phone bill only listed long distance calls. so whatever number Polly was calling had to have been a local number and that same afternoon Polly had done something that was also unusual for her she failed to sign up to volunteer for the following morning the following morning being the day she disappeared it kind of made investigators wonder if she knew that she wasn't going to be around for that shift and therefore didn't put her name down in all of the many years that she volunteered at the center she had never missed a day but that didn't really gel with some other parts of the investigation like how the afternoon she disappeared Polly had left a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove before she headed out with her friends that two investigators made it seem like she thought she was going to return to the trailer that day Trula and Red were completely puzzled by the situation and they just could not wrap their heads around it they speculated that maybe Polly had met someone she knew along the trail and maybe that person had a car parked nearby so she left with them but again there wasn't really any evidence to say that's what happened and when they were pressed for a name they couldn't come up with who that person would have been. With no ground left to cover the rangers decided to end the search for Polly. Her friends and family were at a complete loss. Each person came up with their own explanation to make sense of the sudden disappearance and try to figure out what could have happened to their loved one. So Trula believed that Polly may have suffered a mini stroke that left her disoriented and maybe after that she walked off the trail and got lost. Others thought that maybe Polly became dazed from her Valium use. In fact, Bob, her husband, had discovered that a small bottle of Valium prescribed to him was missing from their trailer, which he only realized after her disappearance. If either of those theories were true, though, then why did no trace of Polly turn up ever? Every corner of Deep Creek Campground had been searched. It seemed impossible that if she had collapsed or was injured, she wouldn't have been eventually spotted. And all of the side trails in the area led back to civilization. So if Polly was out there wandering on one of the trails, she would have found her way back to safety. Ranger Burnett offered up a theory of his own. Polly was wearing valuable diamond jewelry at the time she went missing. And there was a drug drop site in Deep Creek that was known as the Poke Patch. Burnett wondered if one of the drug dealers who frequented the poke patch might have spotted Polly and her expensive diamond jewelry and then abducted her from the trail. The problem with this theory, though, was that the poke patch was about four miles away from the spot where Polly was last seen, and Polly was heavy set. Dragging her off of the trail would have left drag marks, and the ensuing struggle probably would have attracted some attention. Deep Creek Trail was pretty busy and well-traveled, but no one that day reported seeing or hearing anything unusual. Definitely not any screams. Polly's sister still thought this theory seemed plausible and would maybe explain why Polly's body would never turn up. But her family was adamant that she definitely did not voluntarily disappear. If she was unhappy in her marriage, she would have simply gotten a divorce. Why vanish and not contact her loved ones ever again? That just didn't make any sense to them. But that was the conclusion the park officials ultimately reached. In a press conference that they gave after the search was called off, park officials reported that all the available evidence, which admittedly was not very much, pointed to Polly having left the park of her own free will, and probably in a vehicle. The fact that Polly didn't sign up to volunteer at the nutrition center that day, and those uncharacteristic phone calls she made the day before, was enough for them to think that maybe there was a mystery suitor who swept her away to a new life. Polly's pastor remembered a conversation that he had had with her a few years earlier, where Polly had kind of unprompted begun talking about people who cheat on their spouses and how she would never do such a thing. For some reason, the pastor was left feeling like maybe Polly, in fact, had done such a thing, and this was her way of ironing out her guilt. Investigators also learned that some of Polly's friends from the campground also suspected that she might have been involved with another man. In fact, Trula and Red had been teasing her about this very thing during their final hike. And when they talked to some of the seniors at the nutrition center, one of them remembered an interesting remark that Polly had made shortly before her disappearance. During a conversation in which Polly was asked what she might wish for if she were granted one wish, she thought for a moment and then answered that if fate granted her one wish, she would wish to be light enough to walk without leaving footprints. Polly's family never heard from her again, and no trace of her would ever surface, except for one little discovery that was made seven months after her disappearance. In April of 1982, it was learned that a check made out to Polly Melton was cashed at a bank in Birmingham, Alabama. The check was from the Birmingham Trust National Bank for interest earned. Authorities examined the signature on the check and it appeared consistent with Polly Meltons. So they interviewed the teller who processed the check and the teller had no memory whatsoever of the person who presented it. So the check eventually ended up being a dead end. It's worth noting though that Polly had left behind $2,000 in her savings account. Why take the risk of cashing an interest check while leaving two grand untouched? It's one of the many questions within this case that seems to not have an answer. Now, Bob unfortunately deteriorated pretty quickly after Polly vanished. After his release from the hospital, he returned to Florida in the Airstream trailer, which his sons helped him sell before moving him into a nursing home where he eventually died in October of 1982. Bob's sons did not mention Polly in their father's obituary and have refused to talk about her disappearance with the media. And Polly's family had her declared legally dead in 1988, though the National Park Service still lists her and their database as a missing person. Both of these stories have left me really wondering, what causes a person to just vanish in the backwoods? Well, now I turn to you guys. Truly, what do you think? What do you think happened in either of these cases? You can leave me a comment wherever you listen to the podcast, but I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on cases like these. Is it possible that portals can open in the woods and just swallow us whole? Or is there always someone culpable? Is there always a reason that someone goes missing? I'm so curious to hear from all of you. Again, wherever you listen, send me a comment. But that is all I have for you this week. If you're anything like me, you're going to be up all night tonight just turning these ones over in your head. I cannot stop thinking about either of them. You can join me over on footnotes on the High Council tier on Patreon, where we're going to chat some more theories and some more context and stuff that didn't make it into the episode. That's available to the High Council tier on Patreon. And other than that, I will see you all next week with another story. And until then, stay curious. Hearts Arts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Hearts Arts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Additional research and writing by Paul Haynes. Sound design and mix by Red Rum Creative. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartsartspounding.com.