Where Is Jeremy Bright? Inside the Mysterious 1986 Disappearance of the 14-Year-Old Oregon Boy

Jeremy was last seen in a car with a man who would later be convicted of an unrelated murder

Jeremy Bright was visiting a beloved county fair in Oregon with his younger sister when he vanished in the summer of 1986. He has not been seen since.

Jeremy, 14, who lived in Grants Pass, Ore., with his mother and sister, was staying with his stepfather in Myrtle Point, where he had grown up, according to a 2007 article from The Oregonian. 

Myrtle Point is about a two-hour drive from Grants Pass, where Jeremy’s mother, Diane Beatty, worked, but the teen had several family members still living in the area, according to the paper.

Jeremy and his sister, S’te, who was 10 at the time, were at the annual Coos County Fair when he was last seen on Aug. 14, 1986, according to the Oregon State Police Missing Children/Adults Clearinghouse.

"Instead of them veggin' in Grants Pass for a week, while I worked and went to school, I thought that would be a great little trip for them," Beatty told The Oregonian. "I have regretted it ever since."

Jeremy’s fate is a mystery that still remains unsolved as the 38th anniversary of his disappearance approaches.

"My brother and I never missed the fair," S’te told local newspaper The World years later.

Jeremy and his sister had been separated at a Ferris wheel, The World reported, citing police. Jeremy was wearing a red tank top and blue nylon shorts when he went missing.

A 2018 article in The World reported that when S’te first tried to tell police that her brother had gone missing, she was told he probably left willingly with his friends, but a day later, he still hadn’t returned home.

It was eventually determined that Jeremy was not a runaway, and more agencies joined the search, according to the paper. But even after nearly 40 years, very few leads have emerged.

Only one person of interest has ever been named in the case, but he has been dead for over a decade.

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The World reported that Jeremy was last seen in a car with a man named Terry Lee Steinhoff.

Steinhoff died in prison in 2007. He was serving a life sentence for the murder of a Coos County woman, according to KVAL and The World.

“We tried multiple times to talk to him [about Jeremy’s disappearance]," former Coos County Sheriff Zanni told KVAL. "He was never forthcoming.”

Zanni told the outlet that authorities had conducted several searches of Steinhoff’s property and other sites, including a pond in 2016 where police believed Jeremy’s body could have been dumped. None have been successful.

In 2011, 25 years after Jeremy went missing, Beatty and other family and friends released 1,000 balloons in his memory in Myrtle Point, the Statesman Journal reported.

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