In August of 1986, as the lights dimmed and the rides were dismantled at the Coos County Fair, a mystery quietly took its place in rural Oregon. A fourteen year old boy who had been seen laughing and moving through the crowds days earlier was suddenly gone.
His name was Jeremy Bright, and nearly forty years later, no one has been able to explain how he vanished so completely.
Jeremy had deep roots in Myrtle Point. Until the year before his disappearance, he lived there with his mother Diane and his younger sister S’te, pronounced Estee. After Diane separated from Jeremy’s stepfather, Ole, the family relocated to Grants Pass. But in mid August, Jeremy and S’te returned to Myrtle Point to stay with Ole while attending the annual Coos County Fair just outside of town.
The first few days were everything a summer fair should be.
Jeremy was popular, athletic, and outgoing. He played basketball, football, and baseball, helped coach his sister’s team, enjoyed drawing, and was an honor roll student looking forward to starting high school that fall. Nothing about him suggested he was unhappy enough to run away.
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On August 13, the day before he disappeared, Jeremy called his mother at 4:45 p.m. from a payphone outside McKay’s Market in Myrtle Point. He told her he was having a great time. About five hours later, he stopped at a local tavern owned by his grandmother, where Ole gave him money to use at the fair the following day. Diane planned to pick up both kids on August 15.
The next day, August 14, Jeremy and S’te went to the fair together. Around 2 p.m., they separated as S’te joined friends and Jeremy met up with his friend Johnny Fish. The siblings agreed to meet back near the Ferris wheel at 5 p.m.
Jeremy never showed.
Johnny later told investigators the two boys had split up earlier in the afternoon. As the hours passed, S’te assumed Jeremy had simply forgotten. But by the next day, there was still no sign of him.
More troubling details soon emerged.
Several fairgoers, including S’te, later reported seeing Jeremy near the Ferris wheel between 1 and 1:30 p.m. appearing to be forcibly taken by a male. This sighting placed him near the exact location and timeframe he was last known to be alive, yet no one intervened and no immediate report was made.
When Diane arrived in Myrtle Point to pick up her children on August 15, Jeremy was missing. His wallet, keys, and new watch had been left behind. He had taken no extra clothes. The fair closed and moved on August 17, and with it went any remaining hope that Jeremy might simply reappear.
Authorities initially considered the possibility that Jeremy had run away with the traveling carnival, a theory bolstered by multiple unconfirmed sightings through August 17. At one point, investigators even tracked down a circus employee in Florida with the same name. He turned out to be a different young man from Colorado.
The runaway theory collapsed.
Jeremy did not fit the profile. He was close with his family, protective of his sister, and had plans for the future. Law enforcement ultimately concluded he had not vanished voluntarily.
As searches of the fairgrounds and surrounding woods turned up nothing, rumors took hold of the town. Several local parties had been held during fair week, and it was said Jeremy attended two or three of them. One theory suggested he drank a beer laced with an illegal drug and overdosed. Jeremy had been diagnosed with a mild heart murmur, and some believed a stimulant could have been fatal. Police were never able to confirm the incident occurred.
A jailhouse informant later offered a darker account.
According to the informant, Jeremy and his friends had been harassed by several older local boys while swimming in the Coquille River. During indiscriminate target shooting near the water, one stray bullet struck Jeremy. Rather than calling for help, the group allegedly took him to an abandoned cabin and attempted to care for him. He reportedly died from blood loss or infection and was buried in a shallow grave nearby.
Searches of the area produced nothing.
Jeremy’s friends confirmed the harassment by older boys but denied witnessing the shooting.
Two of the men named repeatedly were cousins Dennis and Terry Steinhoff.
In the early hours of August 15, roughly twelve hours after Jeremy was last seen, Johnny Fish’s sister Cecelia and a friend encountered Dennis David Steinhoff entering an apartment building in Myrtle Creek. His shirt was visibly stained with blood. When asked what happened, he reportedly laughed it off.
Later that same night, Johnny arrived at the apartment visibly shaken. He warned others to stay away from the windows, saying something bad might happen. Family members believed he had taken drugs, but investigators later questioned whether he knew more than he could say.
Terry Steinhoff, who had babysat Jeremy and his sister years earlier, was identified by the informant as the shooter. Several witnesses claimed they saw Jeremy sitting in Terry’s truck on the day he vanished. Terry refused to cooperate with investigators.
In January 1989, Terry Steinhoff was sentenced to life in prison after pleading no contest to the 1988 stabbing murder of Patricia Lynn Morris in Coos Bay. Investigators attempted to question him again about Jeremy, but he remained silent. He died in prison of a heroin overdose in 2007.
Dennis Steinhoff was arrested ten days after Jeremy disappeared for firearm possession and burglary near the fairgrounds. He later served time for additional crimes, including felony sexual abuse of a young girl. His criminal history continued for decades.
Jeremy’s disappearance gained national attention in 1989 when it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries. Tips poured in from across the country, but none led to answers.
Searches continued for years. In 2016, a tip led investigators to a pond along Oregon Highway 42 roughly twenty five miles from Myrtle Point. No remains were found.
Today, Jeremy Bright would be fifty three years old.
His family believes he died within days of his disappearance and that his remains are somewhere in Coos County. Many of the people closest to the case have since passed away. Johnny Fish was never the same after Jeremy vanished and died years later.
The fair still returns each summer. The Ferris wheel still turns. Most people who attend have no idea what happened there decades ago.
But Jeremy Bright walked into an Oregon county fair in the 1980s surrounded by lights, music, and people who knew his name.
He never walked out.
If you have any information about the disappearance of Jeremy Doland Bright, contact Detective Dan Looney with the Coos County Sheriff’s Office at 541 396 3121 extension 378.
