She Was Wrapped, Bound, and Nobody Looked - Episode 98

The Dog Bones Buried Six Feet Deep: The Disappearance of Reed Jepson

A fifteen-year-old boy stepped into his backyard to feed his dogs on a Sunday afternoon in 1964 and was never seen again. Forty-five years later, a backhoe in the neighboring yard hit something five feet down — two dogs, surgically dismembered, sealed in plastic bags. The man who owned that property in 1964 was a bone surgeon. When police finally questioned him, he didn't say Reed had run away. He said he hoped they'd find out who killed him.

In this episode, we explore why the $60 Reed supposedly took to run away was found untouched in a jar in his closet, how a bone surgeon with an open-secret history of abusing teenage boys lived forty years next door to the family he may have destroyed, and why voice stress tests administered to the primary person of interest produced results investigators called deliberately sabotaged. Was this a crime of opportunity against a boy with two minutes to spare before Sunday lunch, or something far more calculated? The forensic science and a single unguarded sentence point in the same direction.

Case Details

Victim: Reed Jepson, 15, Eagle Scout and high school student.

Date: October 11, 1964.

Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

Case Status: Unsolved and active. Salt Lake City Police Department reopened the case on May 25, 2010. No charges have ever been filed. The primary person of interest died in 2016.

Episode Key Points

- The $60 Reed allegedly took to fund a runaway was found intact in a jar inside his closet — every belonging he owned remained at home.

- Dog remains discovered in 2009 had been surgically dismembered and buried five to six feet underground in sealed plastic bags — on a property owned in 1964 by an orthopedic surgeon.

- When detectives questioned the property's 1964 owner, he volunteered that he hoped police would find out who "killed" Reed — at a time when the public narrative described Reed as a runaway, not a homicide victim.

- During a voice stress test, the same man deliberately gave false answers to basic control questions, rendering the results inconclusive — then requested and passed a second test.

Reed Jepson, Salt Lake City Utah missing person, cold case homicide 1964, Mill Creek Canyon remains, orthopedic surgeon person of interest, true crime, murder, investigation, forensic science, homicide, criminal minds, unsolved mysteries, true crime English.