Disappearance Of Stephanie Crane

Stephanie Crane was born in September 1984, the oldest of four girls born to Ben and Sandi Crane. She was a tomboy who liked sports and got on super well with her dad, she liked going hunting and fishing with him. She lived in Challis, Idaho; a sleepy mount town which in 1993 had a population of under 1000.

On October 11th, 1993, Stephanie went to the bowling hallway with her friends and was chaperoned by one of her friend's moms. The bowling alley was off highway 93 but it was a short walk away from Stephanie’s home. 

At 4:45 the group agreed to call it a day and head home. The friend's mom inquired Stephanie if she would like a ride home, but Stephanie told her she had left her bag at school (this school was close by apparently) and had to go get it. She was last noticed walking down highway 93 into town. She was wearing a maroon tracksuit and trainers, with “gimme” printed on the shirt.

At 8:15 pm, Sandi Crane wondered why Stephanie hadn’t come home after calling many friends and relatives who hadn’t seen her, she went to the sheriff's department to report her missing.

At 9 pm search and rescue teams in several parts of Idaho began to search for Stephanie until 12:30 pm, covering 7000 miles worth of space. Volunteers, the FBI, cadaver dogs, diving teams were searching but all of it turned up nothing.

Although it’s uncommon if Stephanie ever did go to her school to pick up her bag, there were reports of a yellow pickup truck with red strips parked outside the school and people wondered if it was involved. They weren’t eligible to track the truck down because it didn’t match anyone in the little town of Challis so probably it related to someone out of town.

Soccer practice was going on at the school that night and the friends at the bowling alley said Stephanie might have wanted to watch it. Some people playing that night, even though they hadn’t seen Stephanie there said a strange man was watching the practice.

Ben and Sandi divorced in July 1994. Sandi moved to Reno and Ben had full imprisonment of the remaining girls. Sandi passed away from the disease in 1996.

In 1997, a suspicious named Keith Hescock was charged for some sort of hunting offense. He became somebody of interest because he was in Challis that night and owned a yellow truck but his wealth was searched but nothing turned up (neither was a yellow truck found)

In 2000, the trail heated up. An inmate said to police a story his girlfriend told him. The girlfriend had rented a room in a man's building in Nampa, Idaho, and continually heard a girl crying from the basement. She asked the landlord who told her it was his daughter and he put her in the basement when she misbehaved. He never authorized anyone to enter the basement, kept it locked, and as far as she knew, he didn’t have a daughter.

The woman finally left the property when she doubted the landlord was stealing her underwear. The police interrogated the landlord and found he had a history of sexually abusing girls.

The owner was taken in for questioning and police asked if he had anything to do with Stephanie Crane, and he failed a polygraph then flipped out at the cops. Some witnesses from the night Stephanie went missing picked him out of a police lineup. They searched the basement, didn’t find a girl but found blood and human hair. They were doubtful if the blood was human or animal, the hair was human but could not be DNA sampled because there was no follicle.

He couldn’t be imprisoned for lack of proof but police heavily believe he was involved. His name has never been made public.

In 2002, the other suspect Keith Hescock was found to have abducted and raped a girl which brought him back up in interest. This ended in a high-speed chase with Keith shooting a police dog (died), a police detective (survived), and himself (died)

After a few more untrue confessions and stupidity, as of 2016, the police were reinvestigating the owner as a suspect + retesting DNA about Stephanie. That investigation is being kept largely under wraps to the public.

Ben Crane died in 2012.

This case is far from obscure and has been captioned on three different TV shows (this is where I got most of my information) Idaho police do a press release on Stephanie updates every year and continually reinvestigate but the case officially stays unsolved.

Stephanie was 9 when she went missing and if she‘s still alive, she would be 36.

Sadly, the police seem to have the information she’s dead as LE has simply said “anyone with information leading to the conviction of the person responsible” rather than recovering her. From my heart, I wish Stephanie is at peace.

So my question is did the landlord do it, and if it wasn’t Stephanie in that basement, who was it?