Byline: Jaclyn Peiser

Ronnie Bechtel heard his son's voice for the last time around 9 p.m. on April 3, 2000. Jeremy called to ask his father for a ride the next day, but when Ronnie arrived, Jeremy was nowhere to be found.

Jeremy's friend, Erin Foster, was also missing. Her brother, Will, was likely one of the last people to see her. Erin, 18, and Jeremy, 17, picked up Will from an arcade that night and dropped him off at home before they headed back to a party. Erin never returned.

For the next two decades, the Bechtel and Foster families relived those final days on a loop - trying to piece together what could have happened that night and holding out hope that the two friends would one day return home. As they attempted to cope with the lingering mystery, their neighbors in Sparta, a small town in central Tennessee, whispered rumors and steered investigators in wrong directions.

"They were murdered," some said.

"No, they ran away to Florida."

"I heard they were involved in a drug operation gone awry."

The theories were finally silenced earlier this month when Jeremy Sides, a scuba-diving YouTuber who solves cold cases, called White County Sheriff Steve Page to report that, after diving in a local river, he had found Erin's car with human remains inside.

"I was in doubt until I got there and ran the tags," Page, who took office in 2018, said in an interview with The Washington Post. "I made a promise to the [Foster] family that as long as I was sheriff I'd be looking for these two kids. I did. I have."

Now, the two families are grappling with grief and closure - how do they reframe the narratives that ran through their minds for so many years? Jeremy and Erin were not brutally murdered. They did not run away. It was probably a freak accident.

"It's like losing him all over again," Ronnie, Jeremy's father, told The Post. "It just shattered my heart again. We always kind of thought through the years that something happened, but I just didn't know what."

A resident of Acworth Ga., a northwestern suburb of Atlanta, Sides never intended he'd be making videos...