In the summer of 2023, the Grand Tetons stood tall and indifferent as 24-year-old Amy Turner set out on what was meant to be her dream solo trek through the rugged peaks. Amy was not reckless; she was an artist, a lover of wild places, and someone who meticulously planned every detail of her adventures.
Living in Jackson, she worked part-time at an outdoor gear shop, using her free time to hike, map, and photograph the landscapes she adored. Her goal was a four-day journey along the Paintbrush–Cascade Canyon Loop, and she had prepared with precision: an Osprey backpack, lightweight tent, down sleeping bag, first aid kit, extra batteries, her beloved Nikon D750 camera, and a Garmin InReach beacon. On the morning of August 12, she sent her mother a final message along with a photo—Amy smiling with String Lake glistening behind her, her words simple and optimistic: “Off I go.
The mountains are calling. Weather is perfect. Talk to you Sunday night.” That message was the last anyone would hear from her. When Sunday passed with no check-in, her family’s concern deepened into dread. By Monday night, the National Park Service had mobilized. Amy’s car was located at String Lake, dust gathering on the windshield. Her tent was found near Holly Lake, as she had planned, but her heavy pack and boots were gone.
Only her daypack, sunscreen, and water bottle remained. A search dog traced her scent up a rocky slope before it vanished abruptly, as if she had been plucked from the earth itself. An Ohio couple recalled photographing Amy and noticing a man nearby, hiking alone with a military-style pack and an unsettling stare. A sketch was released, but no one came forward with his name. After ten days of fruitless searching, a storm erased much of the evidence, and the official search was called off.
The world began to move on, but Amy’s father, Mark Turner, could not. For him, the hunt was just beginning. A retired land surveyor, Mark devoted every weekend for the next eleven months to combing the Tetons, mapping the terrain with the precision of a professional and the desperation of a grieving father. He scoured every ridge, thicket, and ravine for the smallest anomaly that might reveal what had become of his daughter, but month after month the mountains gave him nothing but silence. The break came from an unexpected source. In July 2024, Ranger David Chen, an ornithologist, climbed a cliff to inspect a golden eagle’s nest.
Through binoculars, he spotted flashes of turquoise and red woven into the sticks. When he reached the nest, his heart sank—a scrap of nylon consistent with outdoor gear and a pair of women’s underwear, trimmed in red, eerily matched Amy’s belongings. Forensic tests confirmed the items had been hers. The implication was horrifying: a scavenging eagle had collected pieces of her gear and possibly even remains to line its nest. Spurred by this discovery, a specialized search team was dispatched to scour the cliffs below. On the third day, a cadaver dog named Odin alerted near a thicket at the base of a rocky slope.
Beneath layers of earth and brush, searchers uncovered a torn technical shirt and scattered bones. Dental records confirmed the remains belonged to Amy Turner. But the tragedy was only beginning to unfold. Forensic analysis revealed that Amy had not fallen or succumbed to exposure. She had been struck with blunt force trauma to the head and sexually assaulted. It was now clear that her death was not an accident—it was a homicide. With the case reclassified, attention turned to the sketch of the “military hiker.” A motel clerk in Pinedale identified him as Robert Frasier, a 42-year-old drifter with a violent history who had abruptly left town after Amy vanished.
The FBI tracked him to a ranch in Montana, where they found a storage locker containing IDs from missing women, jewelry, locks of hair, and at the bottom, Amy’s Nikon D750 camera. On the memory card were the final photographs she had taken—landscapes and trail scenes—followed by a horrifying series captured by Frasier himself that showed him stalking, overpowering, and ultimately killing her. Confronted with the evidence, Frasier confessed. He admitted to following Amy from the trailhead, attacking her when she went to fetch water, killing her, burying her body, and keeping her camera as a trophy.
He was later linked to disappearances in Colorado and Idaho. Convicted of murder, sexual assault, and kidnapping, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. His confession also led authorities to the remains of other women, finally giving their families some measure of closure. For Amy’s family, justice brought little comfort. At a memorial overlooking the Tetons, the peaks she had loved so deeply, her father Mark spoke to mourners. “I just did what any father would do,” he said.
“I couldn’t let my daughter be forgotten.” Amy’s story is a stark reminder that while nature is often seen as the greatest danger in the wilderness, sometimes the true threat hides in plain sight, wearing a human face. For those who venture into the backcountry, her legacy is both a warning and an inspiration: prepare carefully, cherish the wild, but never forget that the most unpredictable danger may not come from storms or cliffs but from another person.
