Steven Koecher pt. Three

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:28):
Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for our conclusion
of our three part series about the disappearance of Stephen Kosher, Robin,
do you want to catch everyone up? And what we
talked about in our previous episode, well.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
In our last two episodes we talked about the known
facts of the case that have been shared for over
a decade. Stephen Kosher was thirty years old, came from
a tight knit Mormon family in Salt Lake City, Utah,
and he reached the age of thirty and surprisingly was
not married yet and did not have children, even though
all of his siblings did. But he still seemed to
be very close to his family. He was not a

(00:59):
strange for them or anything, but he was going through
a number of personal struggles because he had relocated to
the town of Saint George, Utah, which was three hundred
miles away. But the Great Recession of two thousand and
eight hit and he left himself very underemployed, couldn't hold
down a full time job, he was broken behind in
his rent, and he seemed unwilling to accept any assistance

(01:21):
from his family. And then in December of two thousand
and nine, Stephen would go missing under very strange circumstances.
In the days prior to his disappearance, he made two
unexplained road trips through various locations throughout Utah and Nevada,
where one day he drove around eleven hundred miles, but
nobody really knows why, particularly since traveling that distance and

(01:41):
spending money on gas is not something you would or
nearly do when you're struggling financially. And then, finally, on
December the thirteenth, he decided to make an unexplained trip
to Henderson, Nevada, just outside Las Vegas. He went to
an affluent neighborhood where all the residents were seniors over
the age of fifty five, and one of the neighbors
had a camera outside his residence which showed Stephen parking

(02:04):
his car, climbing out while caring what appeared to be
a folder in his hand, and after he walked out
a frame in the camera. He vanished without a trace.
They picked up some pings on his cell phone in
the days after his disappearance, and somebody even checked his voicemail,
but we don't exactly know who did it, and Stephen
has sadly not been seen since. There's been a lot
of speculation that maybe because he was falling on hard times,

(02:26):
that maybe his disappearance was a suicide, or he walked
out into the Nevada desert and died of exposure. But
on this episode, we're finally going to talk about a
theory which suggests that Stephen may have been the victim
of foul play and did not leave that neighborhood in
Henderson alive. Well, now we're finally going to discuss the
new information about this case which has been unearthed in

(02:47):
recent years, and will start off by discussing Stephen's landlord,
Brett Bishop. Even though Stephen was renting a house in
Saint George, Brett Bishop and his wife Tina lived in Aura, Utah,
which is located about two hundred and sixty five miles northwest.
Brett is actually quite a sketchy character, as he had
an extensive arrest record, and in August of two thousand
and nine, the authorities performed a raid of his residence

(03:10):
in Orum, where they turned up a cache of guns,
some marijuana, a number of prescription pills and prescription bottles
with other people's names on them, and a Porsche which
had been stolen from a dealership in Arizona. Years earlier,
Brett had previously been employed by a closed door pharmacy business,
which would deliver prescription medications to exclusive clients such as

(03:30):
rest homes and troubled youth centers. The reason the pharmacy
let Brett go was because they received an anonymous email
alleging that he might have been ripping them off in
order to sell these pills on the side. I mentioned
in our first episode that a YouTuber named Aaron Stoner
ironic name given what we're talking about right now, has
produced a thorough multi episode series about this case, and

(03:51):
one of the episodes focused on online posts that Tina
Bishop has made at sites like the web Slues Forum
in the year's following Stephen's disappearance. During her posts, Tina
has cast a lot of suspicion on Jordan's circle, Steven's
former roommate at the house in Saint George. We mentioned
in our first episode that Stephen and Jordan had polar
opposite personalities, as Stephen was a straight laced religious person

(04:15):
who was very devoted to his faith, while Jordan seemed
to be more of a partier who had a prior
drug possession. Conviction on his record. In spite of this,
it sounds like the two roommates got along well enough
and did not have any serious conflict, even though I'm
not sure if Tina ever met Jordan. It almost seems
like she's trying to betray him as this major drug
dealer who could have gotten Stephen involved in something illegal.

(04:38):
But the problem is that Jordan moved out of the
house a month before Stephen went missing, and there's nothing
to indicate that the two former roommates were still keeping
in touch. Jordan even agreed to do a phone interview
on one of Aaron Stoner's YouTube episodes, and he honestly
sounds like he has nothing to hide. Jordan was very
cooperative when he was interviewed by law enforcement during the

(04:59):
original in investigation, and it does not sound like they
ever considered him to be a possible suspect.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
And if he was some major drug dealer, there definitely
would have been bigger implications and complications here. It sounds
like a person who's a kid who's a little lost
and doing whatever feels good at the time. And what's
interesting and what I think is quite charming, is that
Stephen lived alongside this kid, and he had his own life.
Jordan had his own life, and the two boys seem

(05:26):
to kind of coexist seamlessly. One of the cool things
is that, I guarantee you one of Steven's ideas was
that I can model my faith and share my faith
with a roommate who doesn't have the same lifestyle, and
who knows, maybe I actually influenced him in a good way.
So I can see that being a very you know,
I don't know, healthy might be the wrong word, but
kind of charming dynamic that you have these two roommates

(05:50):
at polar opposite ends. And was Jordan really that far
out polar opposite ends or is it a young kid
who uses drugs and is a party right, I don't
think he was a major drug dealer, or you would
have seen the police look a lot deeper into that.
And it sounds more like the wife is trying to
throw the scent off of she and her husband.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, exactly. The whole scenario sounds like a wacky sitcom
where you have a devout Mormon and a stoner being roommates,
but in spite of their differences, they get along very well.
And that's exactly what it sounded like that even though
they probably would not be close friends if they were
not living in the same house together, it does not
sound like they add any conflicts. And even though Jordan
liked smoke his marijuana every now and then, he was

(06:33):
not someone who dealt drugs. And I do agree that
it sounds like Tina Bishop is using a lot of
projection considering that Jordan all he had in his record
was a drug possession charge, whereas her husband, Brett, he
got busted turning up a cash of guns and a
stolen car and a whole bunch of different drugs in
his house. So it's like she shouldn't be the one
casting stones.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
So as Ashley just said, Ed Robin just reiterated, it's
been theorized that Tina and may have been pointing the
finger at Jordan in order to deflect suspicion away from
her husband Brett. One interesting detail Jordan's chered during his
interview is that whenever Brett visited the residence in Saint George,
he was always carrying a toiletry bag which made noises

(07:14):
whenever it moved, to indicate that it likely contained pill bottles.
Now here's where things get weird. At the time he
went missing, Stephen was three months and fifteen hundred dollars
behind in his rent, but when Brett was interviewed by
police following his disappearance, he said that he had no
plans to evict Stephen from the house since he was
confident that the money would eventually be paid. During her

(07:37):
online post, Tina stated that a few days before Stephen
went missing, Brett spoke to him and they quote worked
something out which would ensure that the rent would be
all paid up by January. But the problem is that
Stephen's phone records were checked and while it shows that
Brett texted him a few times on December seventh and eighth,
there's no record of any communication between them until December thirteenth,

(08:01):
as Brett called Stephen's phone at four thirty six pm
that afternoon. This was four and a half hours after
Stephen was last seen in sun City, Anthem, and would
explain why his phone pinged off a tower located ten
miles away. Let's also not forget that Brett made a
phone call to Ralph Klosher on December ninth to inform
him about the rent situation, as Stephen had listed him

(08:24):
as a contact in the rental agreement. Brett told Ralph
that he was calling him because he was unable to
reach Stephen. But it still strikes me as odd that
he would phone the father of a thirty year old
man about the situation, as this feels similar to a
teacher calling the parents of his student who's having trouble
in school. If Stephen and Brett had already quote worked

(08:45):
something out, why would he feel the need to call
Ralph to begin with. So according to Rolf, Stephen acted
pretty hostile when he called him to inquire about the situation,
So it sounds like Stephen was none too please that
Brett got in touch with his father.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, and also think about this. If he's actually communicating
with him December seventh and eighth, and I'm assuming he
gets a response from Stephen, why does he feel this
need to have a concern one day later and call
the dad. You had been in communication with him, right,
he had been texting him?

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Uh? Yeah, like on the seventh and the eighth. And
when you look at the whole thing about how Brett
and Steven had supposedly worked something out, you would have
to assume that they work something out on the seventh
or the eighth, because the next time that Brett called
Stephen was on the thirteenth, after Steven went missing. So
it just seems weird that if they had quote unquote
work something out, that Brett would suddenly decide to call

(09:40):
Stephen's father unsolicited on his phone to inform him about
his problems with their late rent. And what day does
he actually go missing the thirteenth? The thirteenth.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah, so this doesn't make any sense. Either he didn't
say they were going to work something out, or there
was some kind of deal made and Stephen wasn't following.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Through with it.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
But I just have to step back and think, Okay,
I owe my landlord. I have never I've been like,
I've had a person who's kind to me. But if
it came down to I did or did not pay
you that check, you don't care about me. You care
about your money. And so I find it interesting that
this guy's kind of flippant about his rent and that

(10:21):
I will just figure it out later. I never met
a landlord like that, and then to have him so
concerned about this money that he has to reach out
to the data day after talking to Steven. It seems
like he has some kind of erratic issue going on,
not Steven.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Well, it's pretty incongruous. His actions and his words aren't
matching up.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
I mean, I can understand it if Brett and Steve
Ben had already been close friends and they known each
other for a long time, and he's thinking, oh, it's okay, bro,
you can pay me whenever you want. I trust you.
But like we mentioned, Brett lived one hundred miles away.
These were not close friends, so it seems weird that
he would be willing to cut Steven, a guy he'd
know all that well, all this slack.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
It's just so weird that he said, oh, yeah, like
we had something worked out, but then you felt the
need to call his father, So it feels like you
really didn't have something worked out, or why would you
feel the need to call the father of a thirty
year old match exactly.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
But here's the interesting part. During his lengthy road trip
on December tenth, Stephen stopped to get gas in Springville, Utah,
at five twenty five pm Mountain time, which would have
been on his route between Salt Lake City and Saint George. Well,
we previously revealed that Brett and Tina Bishop lived in
Orum and it just happens to be located fourteen miles

(11:37):
outside Springville. So could Steven have paid a visit to
the bishops that day? And this is where they quote
unquote worked something out. If Brett was involved in drug trafficking,
could he of course Stephen into making some deliveries for
him in exchange for wiping out the debt of Stephen's
back rent. Give it Stephen's high moral character, I don't
want to accuse him of getting involved in something illegal

(11:59):
without evidence, But it's also possible that Brett asked Stephen
to do some favors for him without revealing the full
extent of what it was. We mentioned earlier that it
made no sense for Stephen to drive northeast through Utah
towards Salt Lake City before he went to visit the
Nefts and Ruby Valley, since it would have been a
much quicker route for him to drive northwest through Nevada. However,

(12:21):
if Stephen needed to pay a visit to the bishops
in Orum, that would explain his detour, and for all
we know, they could have given him some cash to
help cover his expenses, such as his stops to pay
for gas. This may also account for Stephen's road trip
through Nevada on December the twelfth, where he passed through
over Tin and Mesquite, as he may have been asked
to make deliveries there. If Brett wrote Stephen into doing

(12:43):
something for him, I have to wonder if his call
to Rolf was a psychological ploy of some sort, because
now that Stephen knew his parents were aware of his
serious financial problems, he might have felt desperate enough to
help Brett out in order to make his unpaid rent
issues go away.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
Yeah, it's very possible. It's possible that he's saying, Okay,
I don't want to take help from my parents. Brett
has this favor I can do for him, or says
that if I'll just, you know, quickly do these things
for him, he'll give me the cash or he'll cover
my rent for me. I could see him getting tied
up in something, especially when you talk about Jordan's a
drug user. So what does he have to risk or

(13:21):
why would he make up that this other guy comes
into his house and has pills and things like that
that make him a little suspicious or make his ears perk, thinking, Hey,
this guy might be doing something drug related. That information
comes from a kid who could have gotten himself in
trouble by talking to the police, and instead he still
disclosed those kinds of details. And so I'm quite suspicious

(13:45):
of Brett right this second.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
And don't you guys think it's a little bit odd
to point out the fact that there's a toiletry bag
and it made it sound like there's pills. I take
a bazillion supplements and those make this exact same sound
as prescription drugs. I don't take a single prescription drug.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Well. Also, though, you got to think, why would you
need to carry those into the house while you're meeting
with two of your tenants, even if you're on the
road traveling. Why does your twiletry bag need to be
in your hand unless you're considering making an offer to
them to buy the drugs from you, or you're dropping
some off or something. Why would you have your supplements
in your hand? Illegal pills, prescription pills? Why would those

(14:25):
be on your persons while you're meeting with two of
your tenants.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
And it's all the more significant since we just revealed
that Brett used to be involved in a closed door
pharmacy business, which involved making deliveries of pills, so that
could be another reason why he's bringing them into his
rental house. Like maybe he's delivering these pills to someone
else who lives in the area and it's just something
he carries around all the time.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
So you think he just doesn't want to leave it
in his car because it just seems like such an
odd thing to bring into your rental property unless you
have tenants who are buying those pills from you.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
That's what I'm thinking, was he offer the boys' pills?

Speaker 2 (15:02):
I mean, we haven't heard any confirmation from Jordan that
specifically sold him any pills. He just talked about hearing
like the sound of him the pills jaggling around when
he was carrying them. But it makes me wonder though,
maybe if Jordan, even if he had nothing to do
with Stephen's disappearance, if he bought drugs from Brett, that
might be one of those things he's reluctant to talk
about openly.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
And that could be exactly why he's inferring that Jordan
has some kind of pills or he's got something illegal,
because he doesn't want to outright say, yeah, I bought
them from him, So he's just going to infer the
Jordan has them now. Tina says that on December thirteenth,
she and Brett traveled to the house in Saint George
and discovered Stephen wasn't there, who had noticed his personal

(15:44):
possessions were still inside the residence, But in separate online
posts made years apart, she told two completely different stories.
At first, Tina wrote that she and Brett took a
routine trip to Saint George and decided to stay at
the house in order to money for a hotel since
there was an unused bedroom which was always kept locked
when they weren't there. However, in her second post, Tina

(16:07):
claimed that Brett was worried that Stephen might have decided
to skip out without paying his rent, so they traveled
to the house, but since Stephen's personal belongings were still there,
this quelled their concern that he had taken off. But
once again, phone records show that Brett made no attempt
to call or text Stephen's cell phone between eight twenty
three am on December eighth and four thirty six pm

(16:29):
on December thirteen. If you were so concerned that Stephen
was going to take off without paying his rent. Why
wouldn't you try calling him rather than drive three and
a half hours from Oran to Saint George. And when
Brett was interviewed by police, he said he was confident
that Stephen would pay him everything he owed rather than
taking off. It just strikes me as an odd coincidence

(16:51):
that Brett and Tina would decide to make this impromptu
trip to Stephen's house on the same afternoon he went missing.
In addition, the last Brett called Stephen Celthoam was on
December fourteenth at six oh four am, which is right
around the same time the phone was used to check
his voicemail, which seems like another odd coincidence. All that

(17:12):
being said, these suspicions about the Bishop are based entirely
on Tiffany's online posts. At no point have law enforcement
ever named Brett as a suspect or person of interest.
These suspicions about the Bishop are based entirely on Tina's
online posts, and at no point have law enforcement ever
named Brett as a suspect or person of interest.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
He again, though his words aren't matching his actions. You
are concerned that he's not going to pay you. You
had to travel to the house or the apartment to
look and see if he was there, and when his
belongings are there, then you're not so worried. You don't
just think he could have taken off and left his belongings.
And you were concerned when you called his dad and

(17:53):
said he wasn't going to pay. So it's really interesting
because you have these messages to so many different people
that don't line up. Hey, I talked to him. We
work something out. Hey, Dad, I'm concerned Stephen is not
going to pay his rent. Oh, don't worry, police, I
have no worries that he wasn't going to pay his rent.

Speaker 4 (18:10):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Hey, by the way, we actually traveled and went there
to make sure that he was still residing in this dwelling.
But don't worry. We aren't worried about him paying his rent.
None of that lines.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Up, and we're not going to try to call him
either to like see where he is, even though we're
worried that he's going to take off without paying any rent.
But let's operate under the assumption that Brett asked Stephen
to drive to Henderson and make a delivery in the
sun City Anthem neighborhood. If that is what happened. It
would not surprise me if Brett provided Steven with a
burner phone, which would explain how the two men communicated

(18:45):
with each other without a bunch of calls and texts
showing up on Steven's cell phone. For what I can tell,
parking on the side of the street in that neighborhood
was not permitted for outside residence, so I can see
Stephen being given instructions to park in the cul de
sac at the end of the road in order to
avoid attracting attention. When he walked past the security camera,

(19:05):
Stephen appeared to be carrying something like a file folder
or portfolio, so this very well could have been an
item that he was attempting to deliver. We just shared
a story from Jordan's Zirkle about how Bread liked to
carry around a toilet tree bag which likely contained bottles
of pills. And since Brett had previously worked for a
closed door pharmacy and had a lot of prescription medication

(19:26):
at his residence when police raided it, I think it's
reasonable to assume that Brett may have been stealing pills
and selling them on the side. I know that police
had a sniffer dog go over Stephen's car and have
found no sign that any drugs had ever been inside
the vehicle. But even though sniffer dogs are trained to
detect hard drugs like cocaine and heroin, would they really

(19:46):
give off much of a reaction if a small bag
of prescription medication had been there. It's possible that since
Brett had worked for a pharmacy, Stephen may have believed
that the deliveries he was making were legit and had
no idea he was doing anything legal. Of course, Sun City,
Anthem would not seem like the most likely location to
make a dangerous drug drop, as it's an affluent retirement

(20:07):
community where you have to be a minimum age of
fifty five in order to live there. I know that
Brett's closed door pharmacy delivered medication to rest homes, but
how did things escalate to the point that Stephen made
a delivery in Sun City Anthem which put his life
at risk.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Ooh, this is a much more probable story than what
we've been hearing. You have a man who presents himself
as someone who works for a pharmaceutical company, and so
if he is a pharmaceutical rep or he's working for
a pharmacy and delivering quote prescriptions. If he did say, Hey,
Brett or hey Stephen, if you could make this run

(20:45):
for me, I'll knock five hundred bucks off your rent.
Hey buddy, you know, hey, my company needs me to
make these runs, but my wife and I have plans.
You think you could do these couple drop offs for me?
He might truly believe, like you said earlier in the podcast,
that he is doing something noble or legal and he's
just helping a friend. Maybe he doesn't know that Brett

(21:06):
had gotten in trouble for for his you know, maybe
stealing medication and things like that. Now you ask can
drug dogs smell prescription pills? They can, they'd have to
be particularly trained, and not just be a dog trained
for those heavier drugs, but opioids and opiates those are
things that a drug dog can be trained to smell. Again,

(21:28):
there's a ton of factors that go into that. You know,
were they what were they housed in, and how many
were there and that kind of things. But I mean,
it's it's possible that the drug dogs that they put
on that car were trained on a host of different
types of medications and drugs, Well.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
How much would the quantity have to be, Like, if
there was just like a bottle or two, would that
be large enough for the dogs to detect its scent
after the pills were already removed. Do you have much
idea about that.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
I don't know about that, And I know too, you
got to think about what they were, what they were
contained in, and so someone who's into diligent obviously could
come up with things that would minimize smell. Even dispensary
bags and things like that have the ability to kind
of minimize the kind of transfer smells, but they're not
full proof, right, There's still smells that are detectable, So

(22:16):
I don't know. I think obviously the larger the dosage,
the easier they'd be to smell, And depending on what
they were housed in, would also make a big difference
as well.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yeah, like if they're vacupatd plastic, right, it's a lot harder.
But I also think that sniffer dogs, if they're trained,
if there's even just one or two bottles, they should
be able to detect that. But it does there's a
lot of variable to go into that, like the dog
and the handler and what type of training that they had.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
How long since the drugs had been there.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
They don't know how much stronger dogs noses are than humans,
but they know they're at least five thousand times better
and possibly millions of times better than ours. So I'm
sure that even if there was one pill, if you
have a dog that's trained properly, they could smell it.
It turned out that back in two thousand and nine,
there was one slightly younger resident living in Sun City,

(23:06):
Anthem who was crashing at his parents' property. Going back
to the Aaron Stoner YouTube series, he was able to
get a hold of the original police reports for this
case and posted them on his channel, and they provided
some insight into the early stages of the investigation. The
police did a door to door canvas of all the
residents of Sun City, Anthem, and one of these residents

(23:28):
said that someone appeared to be moving out of the
house on the Evening Light Street on the same afternoon
Stephen went missing. If that wasn't enough, Stephen just happened
to be heading in that direction when he was last
seen well. An elderly couple named Severio and Maria DiMaggio
had been living in the house but moved to another
residence in Henderson in November of two thousand and nine.

(23:51):
That would explain why the house on Evening Light Street
seemed to be empty and devoid of furniture whenever the
police attempted to check it out, but it does an
account for why someone would have been moving out there.
On December thirteenth, however, Severio and Maria's son, Mark Demaggio,
who was forty one years old at the time, had
been living in a separate guest house on the property,

(24:13):
and as far as anyone knew, he was still residing
there in December. The police paid multiple visits to the
residents and left their business cards, but no one was
ever home, and they did not actually track down Mark
Demaggio and interview him until February twenty ten. You might
recall that we made reference to this back in our
first episode, and yes, Demaggio was the individual we mentioned

(24:36):
who appeared to be nervous when he was questioned about
the case and claimed not to recognize Stephen in any
of the photos the police showed him. Demaggio did acknowledge
that he moved out of the residence in sun City,
Anthem on December thirteenth, but for whatever reason, he became
very evasive when asked where he was currently living and

(24:56):
made remarks about how he didn't like to give out
his address because he had no friends in town end quote,
did not trust anyone due to the drug lifestyle that
people tend to have end quote. All he did was
provide a PO box number in the town of Perump,
located over sixty miles west, and investigators later learned that
DiMaggio owned four properties out there, two of which were

(25:19):
vacant lots. Not surprisingly, this has led to speculation from
online salutes that Stevens remains might be buried on one
of those properties.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
Do you guys think that he had mental health issues
going on that made him seem evasive and nervous and jumpy.
I mean, he's living in a guest house behind his parents,
but supposedly does have his own properties and owns other properties.
He sounds like he could be someone of suspicion and
or he could be someone who seems a little bit
unstable as well.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Well, we're going to talk about this later on, but
he has always said that he had a serious injury
in like a car accident, like at some point and
was on a lot of medication at that times, which
he is tried to use as a justification for why
he was acting so evasive when he was speaking to police.
But there's been a lot of uncorroborated gossip about Mark
demagu online, and it sounds like he is kind of

(26:11):
a troubled individual who has probably had drug issues at
various points in his life, though I'm not entirely sure
what kind of situation he was in back in late
two thousand and nine early twenty ten. Another odd detail
is that in the months following Steven's disappearance, the police
got a number of tips from a woman calling herself Angela,

(26:32):
who said there was a guy hanging around Las Vegas
Boulevard who resembled Stephen Kosher and was claiming that he
was the missing man whose face was being plastered on
milk carts at that time. Investigators looked into this lead,
but they never found this man or confirmed that he
actually existed. And if that wasn't strange enough, one of
the original police reports also mentions a tip from an

(26:53):
Angela Demagio, even though there was no one from the
Demagio family named Angela. This particular tip advised the police
to search a particular area of the desert, but nothing
was found. I don't believe they ever uncovered Angela's true identity,
but it's been suspected that she may have attempted to
mislead the investigation and send the police on a wild

(27:14):
goose chase in order to give off the false impression
that Stephen was still alive somewhere. It's also worth mentioning
that Demago agreed to speak with the producers of the
aforementioned Eyes on Justice podcast, and he told them that
sometime before Stephen went missing, he had suffered a serious
back injury in a car accident and was taking a
lot of pain pills, so for this reason, he couldn't

(27:35):
remember much about what happened during that time period. Well,
if true, a person in that condition sounds like someone
who might have been inclined to buy prescription medication on
the black market, but Demaggio denied ever knowing Stephen Kosher
or Brett Bishop.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Super interesting. Yeah, it would make sense that he might
be one of the people that they'd be dropping off
pain pills to. But this Angela Demaggio, is that supposedly
or was she presenting as if she was part of
the elderly family, and is she presenting as if she's
the daughter or niece or something of the elderly couple

(28:11):
in Mark Demaggio as well.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
That part is confusing because this information about Angela Demaggio
is only from the police reports that the private investigators
hired by the Kosher family managed to obtain. But the
Henderson police have never publicly commented on this lead, so
they have not revealed where they got the name Angela Demaggio.
But all the private investigators have confirmed is that there

(28:34):
is no one from the immediate family named Angela, that
Mark does not have a sister named Angela, that he
doesn't have a niece or anything like that. So we
don't know like if maybe he had a girlfriend or
someone who was phoning in all these false tips about
Stephen possibly being alive and wandering around Las Vegas Boulevard
because she was trying to protect Mark and give off

(28:55):
the false impression that Stephen was still alive somewhere.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
We should reiterate that law enforcement has never publicly commented
on Demaggio or named him as a suspect or person
of interest, and no conclusive link has ever been established
to prove that Demashio and Bishop even knew each other,
and if Demaggio really had a debilitating back injury at
that time and was constantly hopped up on paign meds,

(29:20):
I question if he would have had the wherewithal to
commit a murder and effectively dispose of Stephen's body without
leaving any evidence behind. But we have to harke him
back to this segment produced by eight News Now in
November of twenty twenty two, which we referenced in Part
one of our series. As you might recall, it features
interviews with the Eyes On Private Investigations team, who seemed

(29:42):
pretty certain that Stephen was the victim of foul play
and something happened to him shortly after he walked past
the security camera. It sounds like it's been established that
Stephen went to the house and briefly spoke to one
of the neighborhood's residents about money before he realized that
he was at the wrong address. So the primary theory
is that when Stephen finally went to the right address,

(30:04):
he joked about how he'd gone to the wrong place
and spoken to the wrong person, and for whatever reason,
this seemed to sign his debt warrant, possibly because the
perpetrator was paranoid that Stephen had revealed too much. This
person may have concluded that Stephen was a liability and
they had to make him disappear in order to ensure
that there was no connections between them. There are photographs

(30:26):
of extensive damage to walls and doors inside the Demagio residence,
and this might indicate that Stephen was the victim of
a violent struggle in there. But even though the Eyes
On Private Investigations team have always been quite open about
expressing their personal opinion about what they believe happened to Stephen,
the Henderson Police Department have never commented on the situation,

(30:48):
and in the aforementioned segment by eight News Now, they
simply stated that there was no new updates to provide.
So are they remaining silent in order to protect the
integrity of the investigation or do they just not put
much credence into the private investigator's theory.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
Well, one of the things I wonder is that there's
evidence that's been shared in the file about this Angela
DiMaggio where the parents ever questioned about why there might
have been damage to the house, or like what if
Mark had outburst and was violent anyway, or what if
there had been a break in in the house at

(31:25):
some other point and someone had vandalized the home. Is
there information from the parents of the condition of that house.
Is there anything where the police say that they even
explored the house for DNA or kind of evidence in
the violent struggle that seems to be presented there.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Unfortunately, just don't have that information just because the police
are acting so secretive. I know it's been established that
Mark's parents were no longer living at the residence. They
had moved into a new place a couple of weeks
before Stephen went missing, and it sounds like Mark was
the sole resident living in the guest house. So it's
unclear how if law enforcement went to the trouble of

(32:02):
interviewing the parents, because it took them a couple months
just to even track down Mark and interview him, And
even if he raised red legs with his behavior, it
does not sound like they have ever really named them
as a suspector person of interest, And it's unclear to
me if they actually performed a full forensic search of
that house to see if there was any evidence of
foul play or that Steven had been there. It's possible

(32:24):
they have already done that stuff, but in order to
protect the integrity of the investigation, they're just staying silent
about it. So this begs the question, did Brett Beship
convince Stephen to travel to Henderson to make some sort
of delivery to Mark Demaggio which led to him being killed. Well,
it's an intriguing theory, but I have to hammer on
the point that law enforcement has never publicly commented on

(32:47):
Bishop or Demaggio, and no link has ever been established
between the two men. And even if you believe this theory,
there are still a ton of unanswered questions. If the
purpose of Stephen's road trip on December the tenth was
to visit the bishops in Orum, why did he travel
hundreds of more miles to visit the Nefts in Ruby Valley?
Why did he tell the Nefts he was planning to

(33:08):
visit people in Sacramento. If Stephen had something important planned
in Henderson, why did he tell Greg Webb that he
was willing to drive back to Saint George to perform
the morning service. If he was making a delivery to
someone in Henderson, how did they communicate with each other.
If Stephen was killed on the same day he went missing,
why was someone checking his voicemail two days later? I

(33:30):
get the sense that a number of people associated with
this case now have a pretty good idea of what
happened to Stephen, but without a body or any hard
evidence that a crime even took place, law enforcement is
powerless to file any charges or make any arrests.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
And it's really hard because there's multiple players here. If
this is really what happened, if Brett set him up
to go deliver these pills and Mark killed him, you
have multiple people who are involved here. You have Brett,
who needs to be deeply investigated, you have Mark, and
then again, like you said, where is the evidence of
communication between the two. So you can have a theory

(34:06):
and an idea that's pretty airtight, but without any kind
of supporting evidence and without any ability to prove that theory,
the police could be at a standstill.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
So if Stephen was murdered because he was roped into
doing something illegal, either knowingly or unknowingly, then you have
to feel immense sympathy for him because it sounds like
he was a good man from a fine family who
found himself in a desperate financial situation because of a
lot of different factors, and he seemed to have so
much pride that he felt that he should get out

(34:38):
of it on his own. It's possible that there are
people out there who might have important information about what
happened to Stephen, and the big break in this case,
and the big break this case means is for the
right person to come forward.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
So if you happen to have any information about the
unsolved disappearance of Stephen Kosher, you can contact the Saint
George Police Department, the Las Vegas met for Politan Police Department,
or the Henderson Police Department, as they have all worked
on this investigation. Jules Ashley, any final thoughts in this case?

Speaker 3 (35:10):
This one is one where I actually think there's a
potential for it to be solved and for someone to
be held accountable. You do have multiple players in this scenario,
though we've presented recently where you have maybe Brett set
him up for something. Perhaps Mark is the one who
intercepts him and injures him or kills him. And so

(35:31):
it's this idea that as time goes on and they
feel more and more confident that they got away with it,
as relationships change, as people's lifestyles changed, there's an ability
that maybe someone says something, maybe someone no longer has
loyalties to protect the people involved, and maybe it's not
Breton Mark, but same situation that over time, because this

(35:55):
is a more recent case, there's potential that circumstances may
change in a way that people feel the freedom to
now come forward and not be scared of the retribution
that would come. I'm praying so deeply for that, because
you already have a beautiful family who's been ripped apart
by the disappearance of their son and brother, and then

(36:16):
you have a you know, the father passed away, but
you have this beautiful element of faith and struggle that
so many of us can relate to. He was a
young man with his whole life in front of him.
It wasn't going easy. He was in the recession and
in this kind of financial crash that so many of

(36:37):
us suffered with, and he just wanted goodness for his life.
And so whether he knew or didn't know what he
was getting involved in, it breaks my heart that something
that seemed so innocent to him or short term for him,
could have ended up costing him his life. I'm praying
that someone has the ability to come forward because it
would be incredible to see someone held accountable for this crime.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
This case is so sad. I think it's just so
many people who loved Steven. There's all of the people
at the LDS church, there's all of his family members,
and they're left with so many questions wondering what happened
to their son. Did he meet with foul play? Like
the private investigator's thought, was it something where Stephen wandered off,

(37:23):
which I don't believe. I think the fact that you know,
as she had brought up that he had bought these
gifts for his nephew that had been born and isn't newborn,
and although it wasn't expensive gifts, it showed the intention
that he wanted to be there at Christmas with his family.
And I do think that was and intention that he
was going to try to follow through with. And it

(37:44):
does sound like he may have got embroiled in something
potentially illegal, and that running into DiMaggio might have been
the worst thing that could have ever happened to him,
because it sounds like if Demaggio was indeed on pain pills,
the way he spoke to police about not wanting to
give out his address because of the drug lifestyle that

(38:05):
most people lead, which seems like a really odd thing
to say if you're assuming that everybody is living this
drug lifestyle, and or the police, I'm not sure, but
either way, this man had multiple properties. He seemed like
he was potentially on drugs, and if Steven did indeed
knock on a neighbor's door and then went and told
DiMaggio that he did that, it seems like he could

(38:26):
have been paranoid and may have taken an extreme step.
And that's why we've never found out what happened to Steven,
because he had access to multiple different properties, and the
police obviously don't have enough information in order to get
a search warrant, and like, even if they did, which
property would you start with if he owns four Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
I got introduced to this case when I saw it
on Disappeared several years ago, and obviously it's one of
the saddest episodes they produced because it contained an interview
with Steven's father, Rolf, who passed way just a few
weeks after his interview was filmed without him getting to
have any answers about what happened to his son, And
for the longest time, I was pretty baffle what happened here.

(39:09):
I cannot think of any snare that made sense. Even
though I didn't really believe it was a suicide or
an intentional walkaway, I wasn't willing to completely discount it
because it amazed me that the investigation had not turned
up any evidence that shed any light on why Stephen
would have driven to such a faraway location and why
he was spending those two days just making these lengthy

(39:30):
road trips through Utah and Nevada. So it was a
major head scratcher, and I remember when I covered this
on the Trail went Cold. At the end of twenty
twenty two, I started researching it and figured I was
just going to cover the same ground which has been
shared for the past decade about this case. But then
I saw Aaron Stoner's YouTube channel. I saw a lot
of this information shared on the Crime Weekly YouTube series,

(39:52):
and I heard all this new information about Brett Bishop
and Mark Demaggio, and a light bulb went off over
my head, thinking, wow, wow, this scenario actually makes a
lot of sense. It would account for why Stephen made
these long road trips, possibly to visit Brett and his
wife in orum would also explain why Brett was acting
so suspiciously and why Stephen would be desperate enough to

(40:14):
make possible deliveries of drugs just because he was many
months behind in his rent. And it's possible that Brett
was going to give him a break on this if
he did this favor. But unfortunately, it sounds like Stephen
cross passed with the wrong guy. And if this theory
is true, that Stephen just went to the wrong house
my mistake and then joked about it with Devaggio and
he was so paranoid that he killed Stephen over it.

(40:37):
It is such a senseless strategy. But once again I
should reiterate that law enforcement has not commented on this angle,
so it may not be one hundred percent true, But
I happen to think that there sounds like there is
some validity to it and that Stephen sadly probably was
the victim of foul play, and that there are some
people out there who knew the truth about what happened,
but the beliefs just lacked the evidence to make an arrest.

(40:59):
So that this information is being made public, hopefully one
of these days, they can find now one piece of
evidence that breaks this case wide open and Steven's family
can finally get answers.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?

Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
which I talk about cases which are not featured on

(41:36):
the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is
a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries,
where you can download an audio file and then boot
up the original Unsoalved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary play in

(42:00):
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Tier three.

Speaker 4 (42:19):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the jewels and nashty patreons. So there's early ad
free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so
they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
so we hope you'll check out those patreons.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
We'll link them in the show notes.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
So I want to thank you all for listening, and
any chance you have to share us on social media
with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciated.
You can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com.
You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin. So
until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold
trails and Chili pass call for warm clothing.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Colors Comedy

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Steven Koecher pt. Three