On a bright, late-summer day, the family of Douglas Brick gathers at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Pocatello, Idaho, to mourn and to celebrate. They celebrate seeing each other again; they celebrate memories and miracles. They mourn decades of heartache and a death that went without answers for far too long.
When their brother left his University of Utah dormitory on October 12, 1973, he never returned. Records of his disappearance were lost, and he became the U’s only cold case, shrouded in mystery until University of Utah Police Department (UUPD) detectives started investigating again. Their discoveries in 2025 followed a series of improbable events: a remarkable encounter, a news story noticed, a fragment of bone spotted on the mountainside. Now, his story is a reminder of the untold influence one person can have across generations, even on strangers.
On the day Doug should have turned 75, his family traveled from opposite sides of the country for a bittersweet celebration of his life. There are a few significant places that have impacted the Brick family over the years, and Trinity Church is one of them. So many times, they have sat on the beautiful hardwood benches under the glint of centuries-old stained glass. So many times, in funeral services marking losses that changed their lives forever, they have recited the words “Hear us, Lord.”
First, they honored their father, Francis Harold Brick, who died in 1964 when Doug was 14. Then, after waiting nearly 20 years for news of their younger brother, they held a memorial service in Doug’s honor in 1990. In 2010, they mourned their mother, who passed away at the age of 90, with Doug still missing. It all happened in the same chapel that’s been standing since 1897. So much has changed, but Trinity Church is the same.
“Welcome,” the Rev. Haydie LeCorbeiller says as she begins the service. “Today, we celebrate knowing that our brother Douglas Halliwell Brick is finally home.”
➣ Hebgen Lake, West Yellowstone
It might have been the sight of the mountains reflecting off the surface of Hebgen Lake or the smell of lodgepole pines that made Doug fall in love with nature. He spent countless hours outside growing up in Pocatello, but his grandparents’ lake cabin just outside of Yellowstone National Park was special. The Brick family came here often, forming the memories they shared from the pulpit at Doug’s funeral.
“On summer nights, my brothers and I would sleep outside in the backyard and watch the shooting stars,” says his sister, Sue. “We enjoyed the summer days.”
Smart, shy, and sensitive, Doug took a job working for the Forest Service during the summer. Family members say Doug’s connection to the land was so strong he considered fighting wildfires for a living, but when he went to the U, he embarked on a different path.
His family valued education. His father had degrees in chemical engineering and pharmacy, and his brother David was on his way to earning a doctorate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Doug followed suit, enrolling in advanced math, economics, and physics classes.
Now his family wonders if he felt pressure to conform. They think about how hard it was to lose his father so young. His brother and sister wonder if there was more they could have done.
“For many years, I’ve done the guilt trip: ‘I should have done this or should have done that,’ ” Sue says. “But when you’re young, you don’t know how to deal with somebody who’s depressed, and you don’t have that kind of wisdom. And so, I decided not to go on that path. Rivers don’t run uphill. I had to let that flow.”
It’s hard to pinpoint what shifted in Doug, and impossible to know why. He graduated high school fourth in his class, and he carried his meticulously organized habits with him into college. At first, he did well at the U, then, after about a year, things changed. What started as two incompletes turned to four, and on and on until his GPA plummeted. He took the classes again, trying to regain ground, but from 1971 until 1973, every class he took was marked incomplete, no credit, or withdrawal. The chasm seemed insurmountable. His mother tried to get him help when she noticed he was struggling—not eating and running himself ragged—but Doug refused.
Doug continued to return home to Pocatello during the summer to work and visit his high school sweetheart, until she moved to Texas. In the summer of 1973, Doug came home to visit his mother. He asked her about proposing to his girlfriend, and what should he do if he couldn’t afford a ring? His mom recommended buying something special, like a jewelry box. As he packed up his car to drive back to school, she said goodbye. It was the last time she saw him alive.
A few weeks later, Doug flew to Texas to propose, but he was turned down. His girlfriend said, “Not until you get your degree,” according to a journal entry written by his mother. Doug gave his girlfriend the jewelry box he purchased anyway, and he returned to the U. In October, he disappeared.
Police searched for him but didn’t find anything. Rumors spread that Doug might have fled the country or hitched a ride to start a new life. His family didn’t know what to believe. As the case grew colder, his files were lost. It seemed Doug would never be found again.
Doug’s disappearance was especially hard on his mother. She felt she was somehow responsible. On the day she died, she told David and his wife she thought Doug went missing because of her actions, and she began to cry.
➣ Black Mountain, Salt Lake City
The foothills behind the U are deceptively difficult to traverse. On trail, the terrain is steep, with ridgelines that appear darker, sharper, and more treacherous at night. Off trail, the underbrush can be so thick you can’t see your own shoes.
On their way to his funeral, Doug’s family drove to the base of the hillside to look up. For them, this is hallowed ground. When they see the velvety green flanks of Black Mountain, they see miracles.
A fortuitous sequence of events led them here. In September 2022, changes were happening in the UUPD. Major Heather Sturzenegger had just been promoted from lieutenant over investigations to executive officer; a new detective named Jon Dial had joined the team; and the department had just hired its first crime data analyst, Nikol Mitchell BA’07. She discovered the nearly 50-year-old cold case.
The UUPD had little to go on—no police records, no witnesses, not even the name of Doug’s roommate, if he was even still alive. Still, Sturzenegger had a feeling that they could solve this case. She asked for a volunteer to take it on, and Dial raised his hand. For the first time in decades, Doug’s file was back on someone’s desk.
Little by little, the case grew. Dial discovered that Sue, with the encouragement of her daughter, had called the U’s dispatch center several times over the years, looking for her brother. In November 2022, Dial flew to her home to take a DNA sample and see if it matched any John Does in the national system. It didn’t—but it was progress. They had a family member. Now they needed a witness, someone who talked to the police, who could confirm where the search for Doug took place.
That witness appeared unexpectedly. In December 2022, Sturzenegger accompanied her daughter to a doctor’s appointment in the office of Steve Warren. She was off duty, making small talk about her job as an investigations lieutenant when Warren casually mentioned, “That’s interesting. When I was a student at the U in 1973, my roommate went missing.”
Sturzenegger was stunned. “What was your roommate’s name?” she asked. He couldn’t recall right away; they had lived together only a month. Even so, Warren never forgot his roommate’s glasses, or his face, or how neatly his car was packed when he found it deserted in the parking lot. In the back seat was a receipt from a gun store and a box of shells, with one cartridge missing. Still, police didn’t believe that Doug had killed himself, because he was “a law-and-order man,” and there was no note.
After Warren reported his roommate missing, he joined a search party in the hills behind the U to look for him.
“Was it Douglas Brick?” Sturzenegger asked. Warren replied, “Yes, it was.”
It was a huge breakthrough, with uncanny timing. From that point on, Dial felt a closeness to Doug that he couldn’t explain. He felt a push to be persistent, even when the case stalled for more than a year. He thought about a journal entry Doug’s mother wrote about a chance encounter with a psychic who claimed Doug slipped and fell. “He really wants you to find him,” the psychic had said.
Then, in October 2024, almost 51 years to the day Doug went missing, Sturzenegger saw a news story about hunters who found two fragments of a human skull in the same area where the search for Doug took place. She reached out to the county’s Office of the Medical Examiner and asked for DNA testing. In May 2025, the results came back: a 99.99 percent match to Sue.
“When I got the report, I lost my breath,” Sturzenegger said. “My heart was pounding. I was thinking, am I reading this right? Is this him?”
Dial couldn’t sleep until he delivered the news in person three days later. Doug had been found.
“There were various incidents that seemed coincidental in nature,” Dial later said at Doug’s funeral. “I personally don’t lean too heavily on coincidence. It’s nothing short of a miracle.”
➣ Pocatello, Idaho
On the day of his funeral, Doug’s family gathers in a hotel lobby to catch up with Dial and Sturzenegger and marvel at the improbable chain of events that brought their brother home.
They talk about returning to Pocatello, the family cabin, and the mountain where Doug was found. They’d like to hike up that trail, to be where he was in his last moments. Finding Doug’s remains in the wild was like finding a needle in a haystack. How did it happen at all, they wonder. But also, why did it take so long?
Comments
Comments are moderated, so there may be a slight delay. Those that are off-topic or deemed inappropriate may not be posted. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with an asterisk (*).