The Disappearance of Jeremy

 Another sad story of another promising young missing boy, but hey, this is why we’re here. To write and report about all the missing report cases we can and see if we can do our part in helping the course of their cases.

In this piece, we’ll discuss Jeremy Bright, a 14-year-old boy living in Grants Pass, Oregon, with his younger sister and mother, Diane Bright. This was as of August 1986. However, even though the young lad had been raised by his mother in Oregon all his life, Jeremy was born in Baltimore, Maryland.

On August 13, 1986, Jeremy and his friend Johnny Fish went to the Coos County Fair to have fun. That same day, he used a payphone to call his mom, Diane and asked if she could come to get him and his younger sister from home at Myrtle Point two days later, on August 15. Later that same day, Jeremy also went to meet his stepfather at his grandmother’s tavern, where he got some more money to revisit the fair the next day.

Unfortunately, he was never to be seen again by both his grandmother and stepfather.

However, on August 14, it was believed that Jeremy had visited the Coos Fair for the second time with his sister. But the two split up at roughly 2 p.m., with Jeremy telling his sister that they’d meet again at 5 p.m. next to the Ferris wheel. He never showed up, though. The last time he was spotted, he was wearing blue nylon shorts, a red tank top, black Nike shoes with red laces, and a black windbreaker jacket.

The following day, his mother Diane reached Myrtle Point, Jeremy’s stepfather’s house, to pick him and his sister up as they had planned earlier. She didn’t find him, though, of course, and after Jeremy failed to be seen by any of his other family members, Diane decided to contact the police and report her child as missing.

Details of the Case

The Coos County Fair rolls into Myrtle Point every August. For many folks, it is a week-long celebration for the whole family. To Jeremy Bright and his friend Johnny, it’s one of the highest points of their year. Usually, Bright lived where his biological mother Diane lived, in Grants Pass, over a hundred miles away. But when the fair came to town, he and his sister always went to stay with their stepdad down in Myrtle Point.

At about 4.45 p.m. on Thursday, Bright called his mother and told her he was having a blast at the fair. She then told her son that she’d come to pick him and his sister up after two days. Five hours later that very same day, at around 9.40 p.m., he went to his grandmother’s tavern to meet his stepdad and asked for some more money so he could attend the fair again the next day, and he succeeded.

This was the last time he was seen by any parent or guardian.

Diane went to pick up her kids as planned, but her son, Bright, was nowhere to be seen. She said, “I went in, and on the TV set were his house keys from our Grants Pass apartment, his wallet, and his new watch that he told me he’d bought. When I found those things, I knew he was around somewhere because he wouldn’t leave without them.”

The next night, on Saturday, Diane felt she needed to contact the police, which she eventually did. However, Coos County Sheriff’s Department’s Sergeant Steve Dalton initially believed the young boy had run away and would be back in no time.

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the next day, Diane still hadn’t heard anything from Jeremy or the police department. She called the police again and reported her son missing.

They began asking people around the fair if they had seen the boy, but no one could remember having seen him. It was as if he had vanished into thin air. Dalton continued to believe the boy was just playing a mean trick on his mom. But as days and then weeks passed without any word from Jeremy, the sheriff’s department had to accept that he might not have run away. They began to suspect foul play.

By now, the FBI was also involved. They were convinced the boy hadn’t run away, and that’s because they had no reports of anyone seeing him run away from the fair or even board a bus. Additionally, they said that if he had simply run away, it’d be very unusual that he hadn’t tried to call home, since he was so close to his family.

The case gained nationwide attention. The boy’s picture was shown on local news and then even on national TV shows like America’s Most Wanted. The FBI eventually brought in a special team of investigators with expertise in missing children. They interviewed all the people who were at the fair the day Bright disappeared. But still, no one had any useful information to provide. The FBI interviewed the boy’s family members as well, but they, too, were stumped.

At the time of Bright’s disappearance, his father, who lived in Baltimore, was facing charges of child abuse, and he was considered a potential suspect in his son’s disappearance. The FBI investigated the father, but eventually ruled him out as a suspect. The boy’s mother also came under scrutiny, as did her boyfriend But no charges were ever brought against any of the boy’s relatives. The FBI continued to chase down hundreds of leads, but all of them eventually led to dead ends. But they never gave up hope. In the months following the boy’s disappearance, they brought in a psychic, investigators who worked with the paranormal, and even animal trackers.

However, none of these efforts led to a break in the case. No one has ever seen or heard from the boy again, and there has never been any evidence to suggest he was still alive. The case remains unsolved, and the boy’s family is still looking for answers. The boy’s mother remains hopeful that he will one day return home. She has said, “I will always feel in my heart that he is alive and that he will come home someday. I don’t have any logical reasoning for it. I just have a mother’s intuition.”

To this day, the FBI’s website features a poster of the boy and asks the public for help in finding him. A reward of up to $10,000 is offered for information leading to the boy’s location. Do you think he is still alive?