A Murray father went missing 20 years ago. After his vehicle was found in a reservoir, his family now has some answers.

Axel Anderson remembers his father, Steven, through the awards he’s earned.

Axel tends to more than a dozen ribbons and medals, in glass frames, that showcase his father’s athletic accomplishments as a track-and-field star since middle school and a one-time Brigham Young University running back.

The family knew Steven Anderson — who disappeared in 2004, at age 46 — as the ultimate competitor.

“An alpha male, for sure,” said Steven’s daughter, Emily, now 44.

But the question of what happened to Steven Anderson — who on June 3, 2004, left his father’s home in Murray to drive to the family’s cabin in Flaming Gorge and never arrived — has troubled his family for 20 years.

On Sept. 30, investigators recovered a 2001 green Toyota Sequoia from Starvation Reservoir. Officials believe the car is an exact match to the car Steven Anderson last drove.

Investigators have not yet confirmed that the body found in the car was Steven Anderson’s. However, the possibility that the search is over has given the Anderson siblings the sense that the mystery may be ending.

“I fought closure for 20 years,” Axel said. “Now I can be happy knowing that it’s done, it’s over.”

‘The Iron Man’

Every October, Michael Van Leeuwen said he thinks of his 30-year friendship with Steven “quite often.”

The two shared a birth month – Steven, born in Salt Lake City on Oct. 22, 1957, and Van Leeuwen on Oct. 17, 1956; “370 days apart at birth,” Van Leeuwen said.

They met at Cottonwood High in spring 1974, two sprinters on the track and field team. They hit it off instantly, playing together on the football team, and setting a school record in the 4x100 relay.

Van Leeuwen saw his friend as “an Iron Man.”

“He was always a little bit faster than I was,” Van Leeuwen, 66, said, with a laugh. “He could hold his own with anybody.”

Steven, who attended BYU on a football scholarship, went off to set other track records, including some from the Junior Olympics.

Anderson embraced the “Iron Man” nickname. Among the medals his son, Axel, now has in his possession is a poster of Major League Baseball’s “Iron Man,” Cal Ripken, who in 1995 broke the record for consecutive games played. Above Ripken’s picture is the word “perseverance.”

“That was my dad,” Axel said, “just a model of consistency.” Whether in business or coaching school sports, Axel said he couldn’t remember when his father didn’t give his all.

“Everything, he [gave] 110% to,” Axel said. “But that can wear on a person.”

According to Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Det. Ben Pender, who has followed the case since 2014, Steven’s father, Boyd Anderson, told police his son “had been depressed.”

On the trip where he disappeared, Steven Anderson was planning to paint the front porch of the family’s cabin in Daggett County, Pender said. Boyd later found that his son had never arrived.

After several unanswered calls, Boyd drove up to the cabin on June 5. Finding no signs of Steven, Boyd asked a neighbor to check the cabin again on June 7. Boyd also contacted the family’s phone carrier and found that the phone had been set off on June 3.

Boyd filed a missing persons report on June 9, 2004.

The Flaming Gorge cabin, a family heirloom for many years, was a place the Anderson family drove up to any chance they could. They often spent holidays there, and at Christmas would gather around the tree and open presents.

Boyd sold the cabin years ago to cover investigation costs to look for Steven.

The outings with their father were filled with fast cars, snowmobiles and boat trips, the siblings said. But they say their most memorable experiences involved their dad showing his “sensitive” side.

“‘Why aren’t you wearing your coat? Wasn’t that the best coat? Didn’t you like that coat?’’’ Axel, who works as a sales director for Clearlink, said, mimicking his father, who would often subtly prod someone if they liked their gift.

“He did try and play off that persona that he wasn’t [sensitive],” said Emily, a phlebotomist at the Utah Diabetes Center at the University of Utah. “But I think the people who knew him best knew that he was. … It [showed] how much thought and care he put into the little things.”

“Axel’s got a lot of that, too,” she added.

Emily said she sees a lot of her father in Axel – little mannerisms, like Axel’s smile or the way he sits.

“It’s cute,” she said, “Not that it wasn’t cute before … but now I can be more happy about it.”

Steven and his then-wife, Cheryl, adopted Emily and her older brother, Travis Anderson, when she was a year and a half old. Thanks to her father, she said, she had a “good childhood.”

“I always felt safe. I always felt protected,” Emily said. “As a little girl, that’s exactly what you want.”

Emily was 13, and Axel was a baby when their parents divorced. Axel said the divorce brought more of Steven’s sensitive and caring nature.

“‘I don’t get to see my kids every single day,’” Axel imagined his father’s saying. “‘When I do, we’re going to make it the best.’”

Axel would spend every other weekend with his father. Even while it took Axel “six hours” to readjust to the new home environment, he said the pair would immediately “click.”

“Even if it was just going for a drive, it didn’t matter,” Axel said. “We had an amazing time just talking.”

Later, Axel decided to live with Steven and his stepmom in Richfield, in Sevier County. There, Steven managed a health club and coached Axel’s baseball team — even though, Axel said, Steven wasn’t into the sport as much as he was.

Some time later, Steven (who had previously worked as a Colgate-Palmolive sales rep and a mortgage banker) would take on another venture – manufacturing a dog food company.

“He was always doing something,” Axel said. “Always. The motor never stopped with him.”

Steven’s constant presence extended to school registrations and state championships, Axel said.

“I never felt like his priorities were ever something else. It was always ‘me’ and then everything else,” Axel said. “[He] always wanted us to be happy. Didn’t matter what the request was, he tried to make it happen, all the way up until the end.”

Emily said that when she was in her 20s, and setting up her new apartment, Steven brought her hundreds of dollars in groceries.

Steven’s giving attitude extended to family and friends, Emily said. “He would go broke trying to help,” she said.

“That’s probably why this has been so hard,” Axel said. “Not knowing for 20 years … there’s no way he would just leave me. But he did. We just didn’t know how.”

A break in the case

Dave Sparks, who owns a Utah heavy rescue and recovery company, thought the investigation into Steven Anderson’s disappearance had reached a “dead end.”

That was before a morning call on Sept. 29 from Doug Bishop, founder of United Search Corps. Bishop was calling from Starvation Reservoir in Duchesne County, about a 90-mile drive east of Provo, and he called Sparks before contacting the authorities.

Bishop and Sparks have recovered six other vehicles in Utah’s deep waters — from East Canyon Reservoir to Lake Powell — in the last three years. United Search Corps focuses on bringing “answers to families” about murdered and missing people.

Their most recent search at Starvation Reservoir has been the only one connected to a cold case.

The Utah Cold Case Coalition, which tracks lists from the Utah Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, has accounted for 154 reported missing persons cases in Utah — with 47 unidentified bodies and 242 unrelated cold cases also in the state.

Over half a million missing person cases have been reported in the United States from 1990 to 2022, the data platform Statista estimates. Bishop, referencing a U.S. Department of Justice study, called these cases “the nation’s silent mass disaster” and has turned to locating missing persons over the last four years.

But, Karra Porter, the coalition’s co-founder, said there are “many more cold case and missing person cases than are even recorded.”

Of Utah’s dozens of cold cases, Bishop and Sparks became aware of Steven’s case after 2022 coverage on a Salt Lake City TV station.

But before Bishop’s recovery team deployed any equipment, he began by speaking with those involved.

In April, Bishop met with Pender and the Anderson family to learn about Steven and his habits. The family conversation, which lasted more than 3 hours, also included mapping out routes to Flaming Gorge.

The multi-hour session with Bishop became a “safe place,” Kevin Anderson, Steven’s younger brother, said. Before, his brother “had never been a family discussion.”

“It was an amazing gift,” Kevin, 58, said. “A healing process to have all the family together and talk about Steve.”

While speculation remained over Steven’s disappearance, Bishop and the family agreed that his vehicle was underwater.

The recovery team’s search began in Flaming Gorge, cruising the lake at five miles per hour and scouring shorelines near roads.

After searching the reservoir another five times, Bishop took to nearby ponds and reservoirs – any body of water, Sparks attested, where he could dive five feet. But the pair found no trace of Steven.

“[Bishop] always said, ‘It might take some time, but I’m not going to give up until I find him,’” Axel said.“[But] it’s hard to take that seriously when he’s been gone for 20 years.”

It wasn’t until Jessica, Steven’s second wife, gave Bishop the last clue to solve the case.

Instead of a northern path to Flaming Gorge – a Wyoming route the family “always” remembered taking – Jessica shared that she and Steven would travel to Flaming Gorge via U.S. Highway 40, a southern route through Heber City.

Bishop “didn’t even make one lap around the lake,” said Sparks, who looked at the GPS tracking of the event, before he “found his target.”

The next day, just after 6:30 p.m., the Toyota Sequoia, coated in grime, was recovered.

Investigators recovered human remains that were found inside the vehicle. As of Nov. 6, police have not yet confirmed whether the recovered body was Steven Anderson.

‘Brought him back to life’

Curled up against the living room sofa chair in her Holladay home, Alicia Anderson listened to stories about her father-in-law that she had never heard.

Alicia and Axel met in 2020, and they married in 2022. Until investigators found the Toyota Sequoia, conversations about Steven “wouldn’t linger,” she said.

“The story was not about his life. It was about what happened at the end – the mystery,” said Alicia, 37, “It was rare for conversations about [Steven] to come up.”

The stories she’s now heard have “brought him back to life,” Alicia said. “Now we can really talk about him.”

Alicia said that their one-year-old daughter, Andie, asked about the encased trophies. Alicia replied, “it was Grandpa’s.”

Before, Alicia said, “I didn’t want to erase her grandfather from her life, but I was scared to talk to [Andie] about where he was because I didn’t want her to think that people just vanish.”

But now, Alicia said she feels like she can.

“One day, when she says, ‘Where’s Grandpa?,’ I can say, ‘He passed away in a car accident. But let’s talk about when he was alive,’” she said.

Steven’s mother, Joyce, died in 2015, and his father, Boyd, died in 2016. According to Axel, Boyd believed Steven “was still out there.” Boyd continued to pay Steven’s phone bill for “years and years,” Emily said, in case Steven “[needed] to get back.”

“[Boyd] never, ever gave up,” Elizabeth Anderson, Kevin’s wife, said. “He always believed that someday he’d come back … It’s hard enough as a sibling but as a parent, I just can’t imagine what they went through.”

After living in “limbo” for 20 years, the week after the Toyota was recovered was “incredibly hard” Axel said. “There was part of me that didn’t want him to be found. I’ve been living this life for 20 years — let me just keep going.”

Before, the siblings would hope their father would show up at missed milestones, like birthdays, graduations and marriages. They imagined running into him. They would first feel anger, then rush in for a hug.

Knowing Steven didn’t miss those events by choice has given them closure.

“The scar will still be there, but it doesn’t seem like the wound is just constantly bleeding,” said Emily. Now, the siblings said, “our job is to represent him for who he was.”

Pender, the detective, said the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office will confirm if the human remains are those of Steven Anderson by early January after all reports from their medical examiner, an anthropologist and an outside lab have been submitted. At this point, Pender said, nothing points to foul play.

According to Bishop, there is “no shortage of evidence” that they found Steven. The make, model, color, year, license plate and personal items all belonged to him, the outside investigator said.

“We’re not meant to lose someone and not know,” Bishop said. “[The Andersons] now have answers. It’s never closure. It’s answers that they have now in order to move forward.”

After her father’s car was found, Emily Anderson said she “went to Starvation to try and make peace with that place.”

With only her dog as company, they “just kind of sat,” Emily said.

“I don’t want it to be trauma every time I drive over it,” she said. “I want it to be peaceful … We’re moving forward.”

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