GUILTY UT - Breezy Otteson, 17, & Riley Powell, 18, found deceased, Tooele, 30 Dec 2017 *Arrest*

[jnblsm]

Interesting that all the windows were down

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[Davia18]

raying: these 2 kids are found alive. Do we know if they took food and water ?

 

[JerseyGirl]

Family members are offering a $5,000 reward that would lead to the location of Otteson and Powell.

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/loc...cle_32f5d040-c179-5c54-954e-6eb866c35f71.html

 

[ElementalLaura]

The Searching for Breezy and Riley Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/SearchingForBreezyandRiley. Breezy's aunt is the admin.

Attached is a missing flier for the couple.

The timeline has changed since the initial media reports. LE has now confirmed that Breezy and Riley's last known location was in Eureka, UT, on Dec. 30, 2017. The teens lived with Riley's father in Eureka.

There's a lot of confusion about the timeline because they were visiting family in various Utah locations over the holidays. According to the FB page admin, there were no plans to go to Spanish Fork on the day they went missing.

There has been no activity on Riley’s bank account and no phone or social media activity since they disappeared.

 

[whereareyou]

I wounder why the families waited three days to report them missing? Was it normal for them to take off for a couple of days and no one would hear from them?

 

[jnblsm]

They both live with her dad?

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[ElementalLaura]

They both live with her dad?

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They both live with his father in Eureka, UT.

 

[ElementalLaura]

I wounder why the families waited three days to report them missing? Was it normal for them to take off for a couple of days and no one would hear from them?

My impression is that is was a combination of factors. I'm not 100% certain where Breezy & Riley are in terms of education, but they seem to have had time off over the holidays, so they were visiting family and friends within driving distance. Breezy was living in Tooele until fairly recently, and they were visiting family there. Riley says he is a plumber on his FB page.

My understanding from the FB group is that Breezy's mother is deceased. I don't know the status of her father, but I haven't seen any media or SM mention of him. They are living with Riley's father. At one point, the timeline included a reported sighting of them at a party his mother was having in a different town well north of Eureka, so his parents are likely separated if not divorced.

The different family and extended family members weren't necessarily communicating frequently with each other and the teens were doing a lot of very loosely scheduled road trips, so it took some time for everyone to notice they were missing.

Note that the FB group is called "Searching for Breezy and Riley" and it is very focused on the search efforts. There's the usual FB flareups over whether the family has provided enough information about them to assist in sleuthing as well as searching.

I had started on my first map for this case, but it was based on the first reports and isn't really relevant without some more work.

Here are two of Breezy's FB accounts:

https://www.facebook.com/Breezyotteson2000 (last post Dec. 20, 2017)

https://www.facebook.com/breezy.otteson.5 (Jr High)

There's a third, but it doesn't have any public posts.

Here's Riley's FB page:

https://www.facebook.com/powell.riley (last post Dec. 19, 2017)

That's all I've had time to track down.

 

[watergirl62]

There is a map in this link.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/01...-in-juab-county-but-no-sign-of-missing-teens/

 

[jnblsm]

I want this thread to move a bit faster.
It doesn't make sense that they are just GONE


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[sunflowerchick]

I hate to say it, but it really doesn't look good for these young people. This is a super remote area with no close towns, little or no cell service and very, very little traffic this time of year.

Eureka, UT is a very small mountain community that once was a mining town. The area where the Jeep was found is to the west of that. In the summer, this is a popular area for camping, off- roaders and 4- wheelers but right now, there would be no one out there.

BTW, this is roughly the same area where Josh Powell supposedly went "camping" with his boys when Susan disappeared and where many think he dumped her body. Simpson Springs is probably an hour or 2 northwest of where the Jeep was found, I think.

 

[ElementalLaura]

There is a map in this link.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/01...-in-juab-county-but-no-sign-of-missing-teens/

That map is based on the former timeline, which indicated they went missing between Tooele and Eureka. The revised timeline has them confirmed in Eureka on Dec. 30. Unless it's changed again, which is possible. Frustrating, and it possibly led to a much larger search area.

There are good comments on the article. The simplest explanation is that they blew out the tires and decided to hike back to civilization and are either holed up somehwere or didn't make it out. I keep coming back to some basic rules of survival in that situation. Riley was said to be an outdoorsperson, and the Jeep was reportedly operational except for the two flat tires.

They were only 1/4 mile off the Cherry Creek Reservoir Rd. It's rural, but there would be occasional traffic on that road. Why wouldn't they wait to flag down someone? They could still start the jeep and use it for shelter if no one stopped or came by (unlikely). Did they flag someone down and then encounter foul play?

Was Riley somehow incapacitated? There's no medical condition that has been reported, and, again, the jeep wasn't smashed up or overturned. Did he feel like they needed to hike out for a scheduling reason (New Year's)? If they decided to hike out, why not hike north up reservoir road? They would have been found by now. (I'm referring mainly to Riley since his outdoor experience has been emphasized. I don't know how much experience Breezy has had.)

Why leave the windows down? Originally the vehicle was said to be an early 1990s Jeep, but it turns out to be a 1999 Jeep Cherokee Sport. I don't know if there was a manual windows option. Was there an electrical problem so they coudn't raise the windows? I can see leaving the vehicle unlocked if you were hiking out, but I don't see leaving the windows down unless they couldn't be raised.

There's a video report that contains this image on the play screen, but the image doesn't appear in the video. Is it where the jeep was found? Does this mean they were stuck as well as having flat tires?

There's a collection of photos in the gallery here to give you an idea of the area:

http://kutv.com/news/local/jeep-of-missing-teens-from-tooele-county-found-kids-not-inside

I guess it could be questionable decisionmaking. They decided to hike cross-country, thinking it would save time, and are somewhere between the Jeep and Eureka. The second simplest is that they were turned around despite mountains in the area and hiked the wrong way. But it requires a series of strange decisions.

Now I've come across this report: http://fox13now.com/2018/01/12/miss...ted-car-adds-to-mystery-behind-what-happened/

“It’s a mystery. This Jeep was in the trees and two flat tires and the windows down and nothing,” Hunt said. “We don’t know anything.”
Hunt and other family members don’t know why the couple would have been in such a remote location, far from a major road.
“It’s not an area that they would frequent,” Hunt said. “It’s not an area they would have gone to. It’s not an area that Riley was known to go to,” she explained.
A search in the immediate area where authorities found the Jeep turned up few clues. Saturday, the search is expected to broaden.
“The next step is, they’re going to continue search and rescue,” Hunt said. “Intensify it as far as getting horseback, things like that through the mountains.”

The entire story has been that Riley likes to go four-wheeling in his truck. If he's been living in Eureka for a while, I would think he would have been in the general area. It's Breezy's aunt, so maybe she isn't as familiar with the Eureka area.

Puzzling.

 

[ElementalLaura]

Official FB update on the search yesterday:

https://www.facebook.com/SearchingForBreezyandRiley/posts/1860952340862188

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Yesterday a group of the Off Road Recovery team and volunteers searched Cherry Creek Road south of the reservoir with no signs of the kids and did not find any signs that there were individuals walking.


After the group search, some of the family visited the site where the Jeep was found as the area’s access was no longer blocked.


Some of the family also visited the area where the "Stranded Walking" note was found during the search on 1/5/18. This note was approximately a mile and half off of the main road the kids would have travelled. It was written in the dirt and located in the opposite direction of the travel path to any areas for resources. This note is in an area just before the train tracks that lead to Eureka.


This visit helped eliminate any question that the writing in the dirt had anything to do with these kids.

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There's also a gallery of 22 photos which are useful to get a sense of the area. Attached are two terrain maps with the location of the jeep and other landmarks. Also attached is a photo of the message found scratched in the dirt. The official page says that LE states that this message was not written by Breezy and Riley. I'm attaching photos because linked images aren't showing up for me right now.

 

[ElementalLaura]

No luck in today's organized search. A 4x4 group is meeting tomorrow to search. The FB organizers have posted that they are discussing what their next steps should be. I'm still hoping for a good outcome.

 

[bleuboy]

I really don't feel good about this after looking at the 3 photos. It looks like they could have been traveling down cherry reservoir rd and got ambushed, then the jeep purposely put off road into the trees.
If the kids did leave the jeep where it was found they may have run out off fuel, and if electric, the windows wouldn't have been able to close.

 

[ElementalLaura]

LE hasn't been forthcoming about the state of the Jeep when it was found, both mechanically and location-wise (which I can understand). They've said they don't suspect foul play. They've also said they're not sure how the Jeep got to the location where it was found, and the sheriff said he couldn't comment on the flat tires. I can suppose they ran out of gas, but it seems again like a long chain of questionable decisions that doesn't sound like the young man that has been described. Then again, I ran out of gas once when I was about 19, so something stuff just happens.

Even though they say the writing in the dirt wasn't from them, I hope they've had searchers walking the train tracks in both directions.

 

[DAnthrplgst]

I hate to even suggest this but seeing how close that reservoir is to where the jeep was located, I wonder if this was a suicide pact. I doubt it but it is a remote possibility.

 

[bwt42]

Official FB update on the search yesterday:

https://www.facebook.com/SearchingForBreezyandRiley/posts/1860952340862188

----

Yesterday a group of the Off Road Recovery team and volunteers searched Cherry Creek Road south of the reservoir with no signs of the kids and did not find any signs that there were individuals walking.


After the group search, some of the family visited the site where the Jeep was found as the area’s access was no longer blocked.


Some of the family also visited the area where the "Stranded Walking" note was found during the search on 1/5/18. This note was approximately a mile and half off of the main road the kids would have travelled. It was written in the dirt and located in the opposite direction of the travel path to any areas for resources. This note is in an area just before the train tracks that lead to Eureka.


This visit helped eliminate any question that the writing in the dirt had anything to do with these kids.

---

There's also a gallery of 22 photos which are useful to get a sense of the area. Attached are two terrain maps with the location of the jeep and other landmarks. Also attached is a photo of the message found scratched in the dirt. The official page says that LE states that this message was not written by Breezy and Riley. I'm attaching photos because linked images aren't showing up for me right now.

Does this mean the note had nothing to do with the couple? That's my assumption.

 

[ElementalLaura]

Does this mean the note had nothing to do with the couple? That's my assumption.

Yes, that's what the family says.

 

[Vail]

http://fox13now.com/2018/01/15/search-continues-for-missing-teens-after-jeep-found-in-juab-county/

Volunteers on horseback and another group of volunteers in four-wheel drive vehicles continued searching a remote area of Juab County Monday for two teenagers who disappeared late last month.

There were no footprints or any other sign that Breezy and Riley had walked through the area previously searched over the weekend.