Your kid comes up missing, you're scared, you're worried.
Without any information
as to where Riley and Breezy went,
it really was a needle in a haystack.
[Jeff] This case took a toll.
I mean, it, it consumed our lives.
Whoever did this believed that he had done such a good job,
that the police would never, ever discover him.
This person had a plan to get rid of the bodies.
I mean, it was very heinous and very evil.
And that was incredibly frustrating to us.
Why would someone do that to two teenagers?
It was a whirlwind of fear,
and it unleashed something we never even fathomed.
[Steven] Riley Powell and Breezy Otteson
were reported missing on January 3rd of 2018.
And they were reported missing
by Breezy's and Riley's families.
The information that the family relayed to, uh, law enforcement
was that Riley and Breezy were in a relationship.
And that on December 29th of 2017,
Riley and Breezy were at, uh, Breezy's family house in Tooele County,
and they had left later that night.
They'd take about a 45-minute drive from Eureka
on a very desolate highway in Riley's Jeep
to return home to Eureka, uh, later that night.
But from what their families had indicated,
they never returned home.
[Amanda] Breezy and Riley went to school together.
And it was through that summer
that Breezy and Riley had started to date.
Riley had purchased a ring for Breezy
with the intent to propose to Breezy.
I knew that they were very young,
but I supported them in, in whatever they needed
to feel that completeness
and have some stability in their life.
[Bill] Breezy kinda mellowed Riley out
and brought him around to being a better person.
And we haven't heard from 'em.
And, uh, it's just...
It wasn't, wasn't them.
So, we automatically knew something was wrong.
[Jeff] We're thinking, "You've got two young kids
that are traveling along this long desolate highway,
trying to get back home in the middle of winter."
It's cold, it's icy,
and we're wondering if there's a possibility
that they may have slidden off the road,
they may have had car troubles.
[Talia] Eureka is a really small town.
The population is less than 1000 people,
and it's about an hour outside of Salt Lake City.
It is kind of a ghost town.
[Steven] Eureka is kinda nestled in in between these mountains.
Uh, it's kind of in a canyon there.
It was an old mining town.
There are hills, there are trees,
There are several offshoots,
uh, roads that go in all different directions.
And without any information
as to where Riley and Breezy went,
it really was a needle in a haystack for us.
[Jeff] We don't know if they're gonna be able to survive.
You know, a night or two, do they have rations?
Do they have food? Do they have water?
So, our sense of urgency was high.
[Steven] Time was against us.
So, we really felt the pressure on this one.
We conducted searches throughout, uh, these different trails
and in the mountains,
utilized search and rescue to look for these kids.
We were just kinda taken aback
by the vastness of how big this was gonna be.
And it ultimately, uh, didn't turn up anything.
So, Riley and Breezy's, um, photos
and photos of the Jeep, uh, were put out to the media.
Breezy's family made a social media account
for the missing kids so that people could be aware.
[Talia] Both Riley and Breezy were active on Facebook.
So, cops subpoenaed the records
for all of their social media accounts
wondering if just maybe,
it might help find where they were.
[Steven] But the process of obtaining information from Facebook
is not something that occurs overnight.
It actually takes several months.
And so, we have to press forward and we have to move on.
[Amanda] There are no words to describe the,
the despair, the, the helplessness,
in not knowing if the teens had gone off the road
and they were stranded somewhere,
and it is the middle of winter.
The, the helplessness
in not being able to just find them,
help them, bring them home.
All kinds of things were going through our mind at the, at the time.
We, we just, we weren't sure.
[Amanda] Breezy and Riley's relationship had its ups and downs.
Breezy had recently broke up with a long term boyfriend
And although the relationship was over,
there was a lot of insecurity between both Breezy and Riley.
[Jeff] We were scared that, you know,
there may have been some kind of a, a fight
or a, you know, altercation between Riley and Breezy,
where they could've, you know,
just gotten off the side of the road.
One of 'em could've walked off or they split up
or something.
Then on January 9th,
uh, we were able to locate the Jeep
in an area called Cherry Creek.
It's approximately 15 miles from Eureka,
out in this vast desert off the side of the road.
A search and rescue member went up in a helicopter
searching the area,
and they spotted the, the Jeep.
But when they found the Jeep
and there was no Breezy or Riley,
everybody was confused.
Our hope was that in finding the Jeep,
we would find the kids.
The Jeep was the key.
So, when the Jeep was found
and there was no Breezy and Riley,
it threw us for a whole new loop.
Who's to say if we would find 'em or not?
It, it was a whirlwind of...
unknown
and fear
and it unlocked
and unleashed something we never even fathomed.
[Talia] Seventeen-year-old Breezy Otteson
and 18-year-old Riley Powell
had been missing for 10 days
before Riley's Jeep was found abandoned
at the Cherry Creek Reservoir.
But there was no sign of Breezy and Riley.
It made no sense
that either one of them would just abandon this vehicle.
Investigators wondered what could've happened.
Why did they disappear?
[Steven] When we looked inside the Jeep,
we noticed that all of the belongings, uh,
their clothing, the blankets, uh, Breezy's overnight bag,
they were all thrown in the back in the cargo area,
which struck us as odd.
[Jeff] The obvious question is raised,
is why would you not take these with you
if you're stuck and you're trying to walk somewhere
in this cold weather for help?
[Steven] Walking around to the back of the Jeep,
we then noticed that there was a ratchet tie down strap
that was camo colored.
Uh, it was hanging in the back left leaf spring
and was broken off.
[Talia] This led to a lot more questions.
Were they used to tow the truck by Riley?
Were they used to tow the truck by someone else?
Who used those straps?
[Jeff] The windows were down
and both tires on the passenger side were flat.
We observed slashes on the tire.
They appeared to be from either a screwdriver or a knife.
They appeared to be intentional.
So, when we put all this stuff together
with the tires, the windows down
and the cold weather,
all the clothing, identification in the back,
and we're thinking that there could be foul play involved here.
[Talia] After reviewing the Jeep and the surrounding area,
it was clear to investigators
that whatever happened to Riley and Breezy,
whoever did it believed that they had done such a good job
to hide the vehicle,
that they left things behind
believing the police would never, ever discover it.
[Bill] When we found the Jeep and they weren't there, and...
We had put a reward out for 'em,
you know, $5000 reward.
And, uh, we posted the posters all around town.
[Amanda] I was numb,
but I didn't wanna break down.
I knew they...
We just needed to bring them home.
[Steven] Then, within a few days,
one of the neighbors in the community came forward.
She stated that she saw a man named Lee Shepherd
towing Riley's blue Jeep
right around the time of New Year's.
Right in the middle
when Riley and Breezy were reported missing.
Interestingly, Lee Shepherd was the boyfriend
of Riley's biological mother, Mistie.
And he lived on the property that Mistie owned.
[Bill] When Riley wasn't quite one,
he was taken away by the state
because his biological, you know,
mother and father were druggies.
And so they were gonna be adopted out,
so, I more or less took him over.
And he had lived with us.
[Talia] Riley and his mom, Mistie,
they had a complicated relationship.
Riley had been taken from her.
But being that they were in a small town
and it's his mom,
they did have a relationship,
which really didn't make the rest of his family very happy.
They felt that perhaps she was a bad influence on Riley.
[Bill] I'd definitely have her out of his life.
She definitely wasn't a role model.
[Talia] So, there were a lot of questions.
Was there a family dispute we didn't know about?
Was there some sort of argument that took place?
Why would Lee Shepherd be seen towing his vehicle?
[Jeff] We asked Lee and Mistie
to come down to the Tooele County Sheriff's office and,
and speak with us,
and if they could help us get any information
on finding Riley and Breezy.
Mistie said that she last saw Riley on the day he went missing.
[Jeff] Mistie said there had been some sort of an argument with, uh,
Lee and Riley.
There had been some words exchanged that got kinda heated.
Mistie's claiming that Riley owes Lee some money.
That tells us, you know, there is a possibility of motive here.
[Talia] So, law enforcement had the search warrant issued.
And that search warrant was executed
on the property where Mistie and Lee lived.
[Steven] When we were on Lee's and Mistie's property,
we found a ratchet tie down strap
that was camo colored,
that was similar to the one that was found on Riley's Jeep.
[Talia] After finding those straps, police wondered...
would this be the evidence they needed
to solve the case and find Breezy And Riley?
Did Lee and Mistie murder Breezy and Riley?
If so, where are the bodies?
[door unlocks]
[door creaks open]
[Jeff] Riley and Breezy were still missing.
And on January 16th, 2018,
we executed a search warrant
on Riley's biological mother's house
and her boyfriend, Lee Shepherd.
We found tie down straps
matching those found attached to Riley's Jeep.
That, along with the reports of a possible argument or debt,
and we're thinking we need to dig into Lee further
to see if maybe there was some involvement.
Lee did state that he towed a vehicle
on the day that Riley went missing.
However, it was a Nissan, and it had a shell on it.
It was his girlfriend, Mistie's sister's vehicle.
And it did resemble the vehicle that Riley drove.
However, it wasn't Riley's vehicle that he was towing.
And he says he got a ratchet tie down strap
that was camo colored
In the same store 'cause Riley.
And that's why they were similar
to the ones that were found on Riley's Jeep.
[Talia] In addition, Lee said he knew nothing
about Breezy and Riley's disappearance.
He said, in no way, shape or form was he involved
in anything that had to do with the missing teens.
[Steven] So, after the search warrant
and speaking with Lee and Mistie,
we determined that, um,
there just wasn't enough evidence to prove
that Lee and Mistie were involved
in the disappearance of these kids.
So, we had to move on and, um, look for more, more clues.
[Talia] At this point, the police are basically at zero.
They have no body, no suspect,
no real solid evidence of a crime that happened.
They are literally starting over.
[Jeff] This case definitely took a toll, I think, on all of us.
I mean, it, it consumed our lives
to where that's all we thought about 24 hours a day.
[Steven] I have spent thousands of hours on this case.
It really made me question, you know,
whether I wanted to...
continue a career in investigations,
because it took so much out of me.
[Jeff] Because it's been a couple of weeks,
and we're thinking, "Okay, that's a long time.
Maybe they aren't alive."
And we thought,
whoever did this really, really went to great lengths
to hide the bodies and not get caught.
[Talia] Eventually, after a few weeks,
investigators got the results of the subpoena
for the social media information for Riley and Breezy.
And when they reviewed it,
it showed that the last message Riley had sent
was to a 34-year-old woman named Morgan Henderson.
We learned that on December 29th,
Morgan reached out to Riley.
She said, "Hey, I'm here alone at my house in Mammoth.
Uh, you can come by if you want."
This was the last conversation that Riley had with anyone
as far as we knew.
I never knew who Morgan was at all.
No idea.
You can have older friends, I guess,
but that was the last person that they had talked to,
so that raises some flags there
that, you know, something wasn't quite right.
We were familiar with Morgan
and her boyfriend, Jerrod Baum,
who she lived with.
[Steven] Morgan had a checker past.
She had been in and out of jail a couple times,
and she was a known drug user.
We also knew Jerrod Baum.
He had been in jail longer than he had been free,
uh, in his lifetime.
He is a drug user.
We know that he likes weapons.
But we didn't really know what the relationship was
between Morgan and Riley,
and so we felt that we needed to go to Morgan's house
and ask her more questions as to what happened.
You know, did Riley show up?
[Jeff] So I remember going to the house.
Jerrod and Morgan are outside.
We're talking back and forth.
Both of them stated, "No, we've never talked
to Riley and Breezy, never met 'em."
But Morgan was always looking to Jerrod before she answered.
She would look up at him, then look back at us,
and then look back at Jerrod,
almost as if she was, "Is that the right answer
you want me to give?"
But when we confronted them with a Facebook conversation,
she begins to say, "Yeah, I spoke to him,
but he never arrived. He never got here,
um, and I don't know where he went since."
That was a big red flag for the police.
They didn't know what was true.
We ultimately decided that we didn't have enough evidence
to arrest them or to even bring them
into the police department,
and so we let them go.
The police were running out of theories,
and they were desperate for some sort of lead
that could be a break in the case.
So they also looked into
Breezy and Riley's financial background,
reviewing bank statements,
basically looking to find any clues
to turn their focus a different direction.
Several months into this investigation,
we found that the last transaction
that Riley had on his account
was purchasing fuel from a gas station in Tooele.
We went to that gas station,
and we found surveillance video.
[Talia] The footage showed Riley pumping gas,
going in, paying for it.
What was interesting was that there was no Breezy.
And when Riley left the gas station,
instead of heading towards Eureka,
which is where Breezy and Riley
had said they were going to go,
he headed the opposite direction.
[Jeff] Where's Breezy?
We thought, was there some kind of a fight
or an altercation between Riley and Breezy?
Could Riley be involved in hurting Breezy?
In reviewing the CCTV,
detectives saw that Riley left the gas station.
Instead of heading towards Eureka,
he headed towards Mammoth, where Morgan Henderson lived.
The last person Riley ever sent messages to in social media
before the teens disappeared.
And there was no Breezy in the CCTV footage.
Where could she be?
[Jeff] The good thing about getting that surveillance
was it gave us somewhat of a time frame
of when they were last seen
the night Riley and Breezy went missing.
But we weren't able to prove exactly where Riley was going.
Investigators wondered, what does this mean?
Did Riley actually go to Morgan's?
Were police maybe on the right track
with their suspicions of Morgan?
And at this point, everybody really wanted to understand
what the relationship was between Morgan and Riley.
We had learned that Riley had met Morgan that summer
before Breezy and Riley had started to date.
And Riley and Morgan started hanging out
and had a relationship.
The dynamic of their relationship was really odd.
Considering if she was in her 30s, he was a teenager.
At this point, does that mean Morgan has
something to do with their disappearance?
Did Morgan and Riley do something to Breezy?
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Jeff] Then on March 25th, 2018,
a traffic stop was conducted on Morgan.
Police found some weapons in the car she was driving
that included some knives.
And so they were able to take Morrigan into custody.
We felt like this was our opportunity to be able
to get more information out of Morgan.
So when Morgan was being interviewed again
by investigators,
uh, she sticks to the same story initially.
But she eventually starts to break down a little bit.
Morgan revealed a lot of information to us about
her relationship with her boyfriend, Jerrod Baum.
She said Jerrod pretty much
controlled everything in her life.
He controlled her time, uh, all her money.
She wasn't allowed to have friends,
uh, that he didn't approve of.
Nobody was allowed to come to the house
under any circumstance.
We also learned that during the time that
Jerrod was in jail,
Jerrod found out Morgan had a relationship with Riley.
That did not sit well with Jerrod.
[Talia] As Morgan's rapport developed with the police,
she began opening up more and more.
And she admitted that she had lied to the police
when she said that Breezy and Riley hadn't come to her house.
They did go to her house.
And while they were there,
Morgan said that Jerrod came home
and he flew into a fit of rage.
He tied up Breezy and Riley's hands,
and he put them in a vehicle, and he drove away.
And Morgan says that's the last time
she saw Breezy and Riley.
According to Morgan, that's all she knows.
She doesn't know if they're alive, if they're dead.
But we knew that we were really close
to finding these kids,
and we knew that Morgan was the key to find them.
So we had Morgan in my patrol vehicle,
and as we're going through, we're talking to her about,
you know, what do you know,
where, you know, do you know where they are?
You say Riley was a friend of yours.
Let's try and get him home.
So I noticed as we got near
what's called the Tintic Standard Number Two Mine,
and as we drove past there,
Morgan's demeanor changed greatly.
She became very, very emotional.
She instantly started crying, um, visibly shaking.
And to me, I'm kind of keying up on that,
like, this is where something might have happened.
This is something that she's telling me
without telling me that, you know, something's here.
This change in her behavior
was a big red flag for the police.
They had to find out what it was about that area
that was getting Morgan so worked up.
On March 27th, 2018, we conducted a search
of the area around the Tintic Standard Mine Number Two.
That whole area is just full of different mine shafts,
but the Tintic Standard Number Two Mine
is not your typical, you know, hole in the ground.
It's a massive hole. It's about 30 feet across,
about 112 feet deep.
The whole mining system is about 1,800 feet deep.
We brought in a truck that had a remote camera on it
that was able to, uh, be dropped down into the mine.
And it goes down about 110 feet.
So as we're trying to see anything we can
in the bottom of this, and we're just like, okay, nothing's here, now what?
And we're looking, and we're just kind of deflated,
you know, and we're just looking as hard as we can.
And then...
We just freeze.
It's a shock. We're like, "Oh, my gosh,
what do we do from here?
[Steven] We are searching the Tintic Standard Number Two Mine.
And we maneuvered the camera around
the bottom of the mine shaft
based upon Morgan's odd behavior in the car.
I was getting ready to leave
when one of the guys go, "I got a body."
It's just, like, plain as day. It appears to be a male.
You could definitely see the clothing matched
what Riley was reported to be last seen wearing.
And so it was an emotional moment
to be able to finally have that much closure.
But then at the same time, we're like,
"We still got to find Breezy. Where's Breezy?"
So then we decide to try and swing that camera
back and forth on this line
to look down into these other shafts,
and we can see another body.
And it appears to be female
wearing this outfit
that was reported to be what Breezy was last wearing.
And so I don't know quite how to describe that emotion
or what that felt like, but it was...
It was amazing.
The whole time we were thinking...
[man] I'm moving again.
[Steven] ...this is definitely murder.
[Amanda] We were fortunate enough to be able to watch them
bring the bodies up as we stood there.
I was sick to my stomach.
I was heartbroken. I was empty.
There aren't words that can describe that feeling.
After you find out what actually happened,
the sadness and everything like that,
it's just wondering
why someone would do that to two teenagers.
[Steven] Now that we found them,
we need to know who did this and why this happened.
So we had two investigators that were with Morgan.
The investigators let her know that,
"Hey, we found them.
It's time to come clean.
We know you know what happened.
It's time for you to tell us the truth."
[Jeff] Finally, she had agreed to tell us what had happened,
basically reenact a scene.
She describes the night that Riley and Breezy were there.
They came to the house.
Um, they left,
she believed, before Jerrod had came home.
And then the next thing she knows,
Jerrod's barging in the door, saying,
"I told you not to have people here.
How come you lied to me?"
We know that Jerrod was very controlling
and did not allow Morgan to have outside friends.
So for Jerrod to find out that Riley and Breezy were there
did not sit well with Jerrod.
He says, "Get ready. You're coming with me."
So she walks out, finds Riley and Breezy
duct taped on their mouths,
duct taped around their wrists,
duct taped around their feet.
And they're in the very back of the jeep.
And Jerrod instructs her, you know, "Get in."
Morgan says they went to the Tintic Mining Shaft.
There the teens were forced out of the vehicle.
[Steven] Jerrod begins to hit Riley.
And he stabs Riley in the chest three times.
And at that point,
Riley is silent.
And Morgan knew at that point he was dead.
Then he threw him in the mine shaft.
Morgan says Breezy's just sitting there terrified.
But Jerrod's behind Breezy
and kind of puts his arm around her
and he says, "It's okay, darling."
And then he just slits her throat and...
lets her die right there.
After he did that, he threw her into the pit too.
We strongly believed Morgan's story,
so we wanted to speak to Jerrod.
During that time, Jerrod was in jail on different charges.
So we put him in this room.
Jerrod denies any involvement, uh, in the murders.
But based upon everything that Morgan had told us,
we felt that there was enough probable cause
to charge Jerrod with these murders.
On August 15th, 2022,
Jerrod was sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
Morgan was charged with obstruction of justice.
She struck a plea deal with prosecutors
and spent three years in jail.
And as much as I don't like to admit it, Jerrod was clever.
What's really interesting about this
is the bodies were found on a ledge.
Had they not been on this ledge
and landed at the bottom of the mine shaft,
they might not have ever been discovered.
I also do feel that because of Morgan
and her willingness to assist in the investigation,
that brought justice to these families.
[Bill] In my mind, there's no such thing as a closure.
Jerrod's still living, still breathing.
There'll never be closure as long as he's alive.
And I'm pretty sure he'll make it longer than I do, so.
Maybe there'll be closure when I run into Riley.
I miss him.
And I talk to him about every day.
[Amanda] I miss Breezy. I miss her personality.
And I wouldn't give anything to be able to just
tell her that she's loved
and that she's touched so many lives,
more than she can ever imagine.