This week’s featured missing person is Reed Taylor Jeppson, who disappeared from Salt Lake City, Utah on October 12, 1964, at the age of fifteen. After church, he went out to walk his dogs and never came back. Neither did the dogs.
Come October, it’ll have been 55 years since anyone saw this young man. I doubt his case can be solved at this late date and I have no idea what happened to him. It is strange and interesting that the dogs disappeared as well.
The Charley Project Blog 
I doubt he ran away, if only for the fact that he wore braces and would need them removed at some point. If you’re going to leave, better to wait until the braces are off.
I wonder if he struggled with his sexuality, which with the era and his background would have been very difficult to deal with. It could be that he harmed himself and decided to take his dogs with him.
Someone on Reddit mentioned that he disappeared from an area heavily populated with Mormon sects… could he have witnessed abuse of power and was “disposed of”? Interesting theory.
Though a completely different era, I think those circumstances might also apply to Steven Koecher. I wonder if he was gay and couldn’t see a way to come out to his Mormon family. I remember watching a show on him (might have been the “Disappeared” episode) and they showed a portrait of his large family…every one of them was in the photo with their significant other (heterosexual of course) and kids, and then there was Steven. He just looked very alone and uncomfortable in that photo, IMO.
Very odd…kid takes dogs for walk and disappears….somebody who knew him?
I have wondered about the possibility of a hit and run accident. If the driver moved young man’s body that would account for him not being seen. Possibly the dogs were hit and either injured or killed and were disposed of as well.
I think this seems like the most plausible.
It makes sense to me. Isn’t that area full of canyons and such?
Meaghan, yeah, an article I read mentioned he lived near Emigration Canyon, which is in the Wasatch Mountain range.
I agree also that this is a plausible theory. I think this is a theory that applies to quite a few entries here. Whenever the person is last seen walking alone in a more rural area, I wonder about this. Especially in some of the so called “Smiley Face Killer” cases…you’ve got an inebriated young man walking in the dead of night when some of the only drivers out at that time are also inebriated.
I did not know Project Jason was related to Jason Anthony Jolkowski’s case, it is such a shame that it was shut down
I think Kelly just burned out.
There are a number of these organizations started by families of missing children. So it could be trying to compete with all these other groups. Also, the stress of helping other families in similar cases, may caused her to give up.
It is kind of curious how FamilySearch places Reed’s date of disappearance as his death date.
Looks like the father, who was a doctor, died one year after his son Reed disappeared but the family tragedies did not stop there.
The parents lost a son in 1940 who lived only one day after birth before dying of persistent thymus. They also had a daughter who lived to be only five months old before dying at the end of 1951. Her tiny body was found in her bed, deceased.
With Reed gone, it’s possible the father could not continue on through life, maybe died of a broken heart. Still, it is a big mystery about Reed’s disappearance, along with his dogs.
If a person disappears and is later declared legally dead, the date of disappearance is often given as the date of death.
Sounds like this family has had terrible luck. I’m not sure what “persistent thymus” is and think it may be called something else now; all the medical articles I could find using that term were old, in some cases over 100 years old. I know people used to think a common cause of sudden death was an “enlarged thymus gland” and that turned out to be untrue.
According to his death certificate, he committed suicide.
Either Garibay Ruiz lied to his wife, or his wife lied to the LE, since he obviously would have to return his rental car first before be “standby” for the next flight home, I guess he sold his rental car and stayed somewhere in the US
I don’t know why he’d want to abandon his life in Hungary for a life as an illegal immigrant in the US. It sounds like he had a great career going, plus family.
I was wondering this too, but we don’t know his personal life and professional life in Hungary, and whatever little information we knew may indicate he decided to stay in US, or could he go to his native country Mexico ?
Hey, Meaghan — on Terry Franklin Lee’s page, the jail is in Pope County, not Pulaski County. Pulaski County is Little Rock.