Reed Jeppson: Teenager Vanishes With Dogs
A teenage boy goes out to feed his dogs and is never seen again
Teenager Vanishes
On October 11th, 1964, 15-year-old Reed Jeppson told his sister that he was going outside to feed his two dogs, but that he’d be back in time for dinner. He would never return.
The investigation into his disappearance would uncover clues ranging from strange eyewitness sightings to a suspicious neighbor, but would ultimately lead nowhere.
What happened to Reed Jeppson?
Reed Taylor Jeppson
Reed Taylor Jeppson was born on May 28th, 1949, to parents Elizabeth and Edward. Reed was one of 11 children in a large Mormon family who resided in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Eagle Scout was a good student, well-liked by his peers, and had a part-time job as a paperboy.
Reed also had two German Shorthaired Pointers—a full-grown dog and a puppy—whom he enjoyed training to hunt birds.
Additionally, he played for his school’s football team and had recently scored his first touchdown.
At the time he went missing, 15-year-old Reed Jeppson was a sophomore at East High School in Salt Lake City.
Reed’s Mysterious Disappearance
On the morning of Sunday, October 11th, 1964, the Jeppson family attended church as per usual. When they returned home early that afternoon, Reed opened a can of dog food and told his sister Suzanne that he was heading out to feed his dogs.
She said, “Hurry back because we’re going to have dinner in 30 minutes.”
Reed replied, “Oh I’ll be back.”
Wearing a reversible black parka with blue lining and Levi’s jeans, Reed left the Jeppson home and walked the 200 yards to the family’s dog kennel.
The Jeppson family would never see or hear from him again.
One of Reed’s friends reportedly spotted him walking the dogs near the College of Saint Mary-of-the-Wasatch (approximately 50 minutes away from his home) around 1 p.m. After this, his movements are a mystery.
Later that night, when Reed had been gone for almost 12 hours, his family filed a missing persons report with the Salt Lake City Police Department.
The search for Reed Jeppson began.
Search for Reed
Accompanied by the Jeppson family, law enforcement conducted an extensive search in and around Salt Lake City, including the foothills, but neither Reed nor his dogs, nor any clue as to what had happened to them, were discovered.
Sources were inconsistent about whether Reed was carrying any money with him that day, but according to the Deseret News, on October 16th, 1964, he had $60 (money he saved from his paperboy job) when he left his home, roughly equivalent to $582 today.
If true, it’s unclear what would have compelled him to carry such a large sum of money if he only intended to take a short walk with his pets.
Unconfirmed Sightings
There were a number of unconfirmed sightings of the dogs in the days following their disappearance, but law enforcement believed that these accounts were inaccurate and referred to different dogs.
[Although it may not be relevant to this case, one of the dogs had reportedly gone missing at an earlier date, returning after two weeks.]
There were witnesses who claimed to see Reed as well, but none of these sightings were corroborated.
The authorities in three states were notified of Reed Jeppson’s disappearance. At one point, law enforcement believed that Reed may have traveled to Missouri to visit a girl he’d met while working on a ranch one summer. However, this lead went nowhere.
Brother’s Interrogation
According to Jon Jeppson, Reed’s older brother, a detective arrived at the family’s home one day and requested to speak with the 16-year-old. Jon complied and the two went for a drive. This is a partial account of Jon’s conversation with the detective:
Detective: “Okay, Jon, where is he?”
Jon: “I don’t know.”
Detective: “You do know and you have caused incredible heartache to your parents. You’re hiding him, you’re doing something in connection with his disappearance. Now it’s time to stop playing games and tell us where he is.”
Apparently, one of Reed’s friends, who lived in their neighborhood, had implicated Jon in Reed’s disappearance. Unfortunately, the reasons for this are unknown. For his part, Jon maintained that he had “no idea” where his brother was and that he had “no knowledge” of what had happened to him.
It would appear that the detective was satisfied with Jon’s answers during this interrogation since he was never questioned again.
Local Suspect
The Jeppson family strongly believed that Reed was abducted. They were certain that he would never have left them voluntarily. However, no evidence of foul play was ever found.
There was supposedly a known pedophile living in the area at the time of Reed’s disappearance—a doctor who owned the land that connected to the Jeppson’s backyard. Allegedly, he had a history of sexually abusing his patients, specifically teenaged boys.
He was eventually questioned by police. The behavior of the man—whose name was never released to the public—during the interrogation was reportedly troubling.
An excerpt from this unsettling exchange:
Man: “I’ll tell you one thing, I would appreciate your finding out who killed him.”
Officer: “How do you know Reed was killed instead of running away? Most of the gossip said Reed was a runaway.”
Man: “Well, I know that this length of time, they’re never gonna find out.”
In the police report, it was noted that the man chuckled after speaking. However, investigators said he wasn’t known to be violent (even though sexual abuse is a violent act in itself) and cleared him of suspicion.
No trace of Reed or his dogs was ever found and in the absence of any evidence, the case was closed in 1966.
Impact of Reed’s Disappearance
The Jeppsons were said to be a tight-knit family that was deeply affected by Reed’s disappearance.
Sadly, tragedy struck the Jeppson family once again when Edward Jeppson, Reed’s father, ended his own life on December 18th, 1965, just over a year after his son had vanished.
Reed’s mother, Elizabeth, as well as several of his siblings, passed away in the years that followed, tragically never getting the closure of a definitive answer about what happened to Reed.
Reed’s sister, Suzanne Tate, spent 57 years of her life thinking about what happened to her brother. She described the effect that Reed’s loss had on their family:
“When you have someone missing, the victim, the missing person isn’t the only victim. The whole family starts to suffer. First, there’s worrying. Then that turns into frustration and after years and years, despair sets in.”
In 2021, Tate said she was still haunted by the thoughts of Reed. “You just keep thinking what happened to my little brother,” Tate said. “What did he go through?”
Cold Case Reopened
Police reopened Reed Jeppson’s case in 2010 to remind the public his case was still unsolved.
“Somebody out there in the community knows something about this case,” Detective Cody Loughy told reporters.
Investigators took DNA samples from living members of the family and checked them against a database of unidentified deceased persons.
The authorities also released an age-progressed image that approximates what Jeppson might look like today.
Reed’s Dogs: Remains Found?
In 2012, the police received a tip from a couple who found animal bones on their property (which had previously belonged to the doctor), dismembered and wrapped in plastic bags. They could only provide pictures of the bones since they’d already discarded them.
“(He said) it looked like two dogs, a large one and a small one,” Tate said. “We believe they were Reed’s two dogs.”
Police searched a gully in Salt Lake City with shovels and a backhoe, looking for Reed’s remains, but nothing was found.
Officer Josh Ashdown had this to say about the tip:
“Because of the nature of the case I can’t get into that specifically, but enough of a tip that it was worth coming out here with some cadaver dogs and digging.”
Reed Jeppson’s unexplained disappearance is the oldest unsolved missing person’s case on file at the Salt Lake City Police Department.
What Happened to Reed Jeppson?
According to Suzanne Tate, the Jeppson family considered many possibilities to explain Reed’s disappearance.
An animal attack was proposed as a theory, though they wondered how such an incident could have left no trace of Reed or the two dogs. Some members also reportedly believed the boy experienced some kind of freak accident, such as falling into a cave in the foothills or mountain.
Tate presented her own theory, which was considerably more sinister:
“I had told my mother ‘I believe a pedophile got a hold of him,’” she said. “It had to have been a pedophile.”
Though a local pedophile was cleared of any involvement back in 1964, Tate thinks her brother’s killer got away.
The strange disappearance of Reed Jeppson remains unsolved, though Cordon Parks, a cold case investigator for the department, hasn’t given up and said he would still like to interview Reed’s classmates. Authorities in Salt Lake City encourage anyone with information on the case to submit a tip.
Meanwhile, there is still a headstone for Reed at the SLC cemetery that is engraved with his name, birth date, and the day he went missing: October 11, 1964.
“We just feel like our family has been robbed of a wonderful addition to the family,” Tate said. “His chance for life was stolen from him.”
Additional Sources
The Jon Jeppson Story - YouTube
(This article was originally published on HubPages)