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Crime & Courts

Law Enforcement

A woman who owns property where convicted murderer and suspected serial killer Dale Wayne Eaton was staying at the time 24-year-old Olympic hopeful 

 from Fremont County in 1997 believes that her property could hold the key to solving the 28-year-old cold case.

Tracey Sve grew up in Waltman, Wyoming, which is 40-45 miles west of Casper. She knew Eaton well, as he was a friend of her father’s and played cards with the family.

 in 1996, situating it between two old 1800s cabins. That was one year before Bechtel went jogging in the Shoshone National Forest on July 24, 1997, and disappeared without a trace. 

Hundreds of searchers looked for Bechtel for months, to no avail. Her white Toyota Tercel was found near the turnoff to Burnt Gulch, but no Amy. There was not even a footprint to suggest which way she, or whoever had driven the car, might have gone.

While the initial investigation into Bechtel’s disappearance focused on her husband Steve, investigators eventually came to believe Eaton might have been involved, particularly after Eaton was found guilty in 2004 of murdering Lisa Marie Kimmel, a woman who disappeared while traveling from Denver to her family's home in Billings, Montana, in 1988.

Vehicles owned by Eaton kept on the Waltman property were searched by investigators looking into Bechtel’s disappearance, according to an investigator familiar with the case. But nothing notable never came to light, and questions over Eaton’s whereabouts at the time of Bechtel’s disappearance became a dead end. 

Sve said dreams she cannot explain led her to do another search of the van and other vehicles investigators had combed through in 2012. Hidden inside, Sve said she believes she has found records that might help investigators better know where Eaton was when Bechtel vanished.

While a Fremont County Sheriff’s lieutenant doesn’t necessarily believe in dreams and visions, he told Cowboy State Daily it isn’t uncommon for people to communicate things their subconscious knows in that way, and that what Sve found is nonetheless worth checking out.

Sve bought out her father in 2015 and now owns the property. 

Before that in 2012, she had a vision that compelled her to take a second look at some of Eaton’s vehicles, which were stored on her father’s property after law enforcement had finished with them. 

“I literally dreamed about wheat,” Sve said. “And so, I went to Eaton’s trailer and I picked up this boot. I heard the wheat inside of it. So, I dumped it out, and these three pieces of paper were inside the boot.”

One was a gas receipt from a credit card, Sve said, and the date on it corresponded to the timeframe of Bechtel’s disappearance.

Still following the images from her dream, Sve looked next in Eaton’s van. 

“I pulled the entire roof off the van,” Sve said. “It was a very old van. In those old vehicles, the liners are not firm, so you can actually pull that whole headliner out of a vehicle. You just pull it down and it comes apart.”

There she said she found pieces of paper with dates on them, as well as a newspaper article, which Sve said was also dated in the same timeframe as Bechtel’s disappearance.

Sve took all of that material to the FBI, believing that the case now belonged to them, and explained how her visions had led her to these items that had been left behind in Eaton’s van. 

“I have visions, and I can’t explain these visions,” she said. “I don’t even try to explain them. I just know they’re powerful and they’re strong and they’re real.”

But the wheat and the receipts in the cowboy boot weren’t the only visions Sve has had. 

She also saw in that same timeframe a dream in which Eaton was burying a body in one of the cabins on her father’s property. The cabins do not have proper floors, Sve said. They are actually just dirt floors. 

Sve tried to interest the FBI in bringing cadaver dogs out to the property to search, but they weren’t interested in her visions. She also encouraged a Colorado team that was looking for places to train their cadaver dogs to come out and take a look. 

When neither of those efforts gained any traction, she had friends, who are paranormal investigators, come out to investigate, just to see what they would find. 

She didn’t tell them about her visions or what she suspected they might find, but one of them also had a vision of a body being buried, Sve said. 

After that, Sve and the paranormal team decided to do a little digging in the area of the large cabin where they had decided it felt like there might be something buried. 

“We dug down about a foot and a half and came across a Wonder Bread bag,” Sve said. “And my dad used to take Wonder Bread bags and put them over his plants to make a hot house. (My dad) had this ingenuity for everything.”

But there was no reason for a Wonder Bread bag to be buried in the cabin, Sve added. The cabins were built in the late 1800s, and her dad wasn’t burying trash there, so there shouldn’t have been anything modern buried so far down in the earth inside of the cabin.

“The only way that could have happened is if something had been dug there, and then (the earth) put back in the shed,” she said.

At that point, Sve and the group stopped digging. 

If there really was a body there, or any potential evidence, they didn’t want to do anything that might ruin or disturb it.

Eaton buried key evidence on a property where he was staying in another case years before. 

Lisa Marie Kimmel disappeared in March 1988, and her murdered body was found a month later near a location known as Government Bridge. 

Police would not solve Kimmel’s case until 15 years later after Eaton had been arrested — and subsequently convicted — of assaulting a California couple named Shannon and Scott Breeden in 1997. 

DNA was collected from Eaton as a result of the assault case, and it matched up with semen that had been found on Kimmel’s underwear. 

According to newspaper accounts at the time of the assault on the Breedens, the couple were returning to their home state of Washington from Michigan when they broke down on Interstate 80 just outside of Rock Springs with their 5-month-old baby, Cody, as well as their pets, a dog and a cat.

When Eaton pulled up, the couple had already been waiting more than 12 hours for a ride. So, they all piled into his van thankful someone was offering to help and thinking he was a godsend.

But things took a terrifying turn for the couple. 

Not long into their journey, Eaton suggested Shannon take the wheel, which would allow him to rest. The moment she did, Eaton pulled out a rifle. He told Shannon to drive south of the highway into the Red Desert, or he would shoot and kill her then 5-month-old baby.

When Breeden stopped the van in the Red Desert, she did so as abruptly as she could, jolting Eaton. There was a tussle over the weapon, with the couple successfully taking it away from him, who grabbed his knife instead.

Ultimately, Scott Breeden was able to overpower Eaton, beating him with his own rifle.

After Eaton’s DNA linked him to Kimmel’s death, police found car parts from Kimmel’s car on Eaton’s Moneta property, where he had also once lived. They also eventually found her car buried beneath his trailer. 

Because Eaton has buried key evidence before, Fremont County Sheriff’s Office Lt. John Zerga told Cowboy State Daily he does consider Sve’s tip worth checking out, even though the insight initially came from a dream.

“I don’t necessarily believe that people are psychic,” he said. “But some people may have knowledge of stuff, and that’s the way they want to portray the information, or that’s how they’re going to get it out. And I get it, you know, some people have dreams or whatever.”

Zerga believes it’s entirely possible someone’s subconscious mind can pick up on clues without consciously knowing it. Those might then come out as visions. 

“We definitely can get cadaver dogs to the area,” he said. “There are some (teams) out of Cody that will do that, too, for training exercises. So, it’s not a bad idea to have something like that done.”

Zerga said he and the FBI did go to the Waltman property at the time to process Eaton’s vehicles as part of their investigation into Bechtel’s disappearance. 

“We didn’t run any cadavers then, because it was kind of an old junkyard out there where they were storing all the vehicles," he said.

Zerga considers Eaton a prime suspect in Bechtel’s disappearance. 

“I have talked to Eaton’s brother, and he swore up and down that Eaton was camped up there when Amy disappeared,” Zerga said. “And he has specific knowledge of the area that they would be camping in, because that was their elk camp, so he knew specific details of that area.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Tips Still Coming In"}]

Documentation for Eaton’s whereabouts on certain timelines and timeframes that could link him to Bechtel’s disappearance is something Zerga has so far lacked. Any receipts with dates on them that Sve found could be of great interest.

“The FBI kind of ruled it out, (saying) that he wasn’t (in the area),” Zerga said. “But I still think that’s wrong, because of what he did for a living. And he was definitely familiar with that area.”

Zerga said Fremont County has two investigators who follow up on leads related to the Bechtel case whenever they come in. He hasn’t given up on finding out what happened to Bechtel. 

“There are so many different directions that we’re kind of following up on right now of people possibly still involved,” he said. “We’re still getting information today.”

Some tips have prompted trips to the Wind River Reservation to check out stories and rumors that Bechtel might have been buried there. There are also frequent tips and stories about the location near Lander where Bechtel, an Olympic marathon hopeful, had gone running. 

Zerga, meanwhile, said he has frequently tried to get Eaton to talk to him, to no avail.

“We know that Little Miss (Kimmel) was not his first, or probably his last, (victim),” Zerga said. “I mean, what he did to her, he’s done before.”

Nels Wroe, Bechtel’s brother, has also tried to get an interview with Eaton, while he’s still alive. Eaton is serving life without the possibility of parole for the murder of Kimmel. 

“His lawyers have refused to allow that to happen,” Bechtel said. “So, it’s been frustrating.”

The information about Eaton’s living arrangements on the Waltman property near Casper are of definite interest, Wroe added.

“I’ve been on several phone calls,” he told Cowboy State Daily in a text message. “And we are definitely following up on (this) information. The family is working closely with the investigation (local and FBI) — particularly on the Dale Eaton topic.”

Understanding Eaton’s whereabouts in the timeframe when Bechtel disappeared has long been of particular interest, Wroe added, making the receipts Sve found and took to the FBI of particular interest to him and to investigators. 

Wroe said the family will continue to search for answers about what happened to their beloved Bechtel and appreciates any and all leads they get in the case.

“It’s important for all of us,” he said. “It’s important to Wyoming. Our state is one big family, and I’m grateful that the entire Wyoming community continues to support us in our efforts to find Amy.”

He Was A Weirdo, But Not A Weirdo Like That

Sve said that while Eaton lived on the Waltman property with her family, he was treated as another member of their family. He was a loner and a misfit, but they never suspected the secrets he was hiding were so dark.

“The things (Eaton) said, he was just really not a nice person,” Sve said. “But I mean, I knew a lot about Dale. I mean, my kids had dinner with Dale. We played cards with Dale. He was part of our family.”

Her parents couldn’t believe the accusations against Eaton until revelations about the Kimmel murder came out.

“They believed that he was set up — until her car was found under his trailer,” Sve said. 

The idea that they’d been living with a killer all this time is still hard for Sve to reconcile.

“He was a weirdo, but not a weirdo like that," she said. "I would have never suspected something like that. He was definitely odd. You might think he would steal anything in the world from you. 

"But kill somebody? No, I wouldn’t have thought that, or I wouldn’t, obviously, have had my children around him, had dinner with him.”

Sve said the only thing she’s hoping for at this point after 10 years of trying to convince someone that it would be worthwhile to have cadaver dogs search her family’s property is some closure for Bechtel's family. 

“No matter what, who cares if you think I’m crazy,” she said. “I think it’s worth trying. I do believe in putting dead people to rest.

“But you can only do what you can do,” she added. “And I’ve done my best to be of service to her and her memory.”

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Dale Wayne Eaton mug and land 20250721 194207 10 22 25

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>🚧 Police Believe Tip In Amy Wroe Bechtel’s Disappearance Worth Looking Into | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Wyoming woman who once housed killer Dale Wayne Eaton believes her family’s Natrona County property may hold clues to the 28-year-old case of missing runner Amy Wroe Bechtel. She hopes police will bring cadaver dogs to search an old cabin there.

Police Believe Tip In Amy Wroe Bechtel’s Disappearance Worth Looking Into

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