It was a chilly evening on September 4, 1978, in Sterling, Alaska. Nestled among thick trees and narrow roads, the Fandel family’s small cabin was unremarkable—just a two-bedroom structure off Scout Lake Road, half a mile from the Sterling Highway. The area was remote, the kind of place where you could feel truly alone, but it wasn’t a place where kids vanished into thin air. That was before Scott, 13, and Amy, 8, Fandel went missing.
The Fandel family was like many in Alaska—rugged, self-reliant, used to the wilderness. Margaret, the children’s mother, was doing her best to keep things together after her husband, Roger, left earlier that year. He moved to Arizona, leaving Margaret to care for their two children. That night, September 4, Margaret and her sister Cathy took the kids to Good Time Charlie’s, a local bar and restaurant. It was the last ordinary thing they would ever do.
After dinner, Margaret and Cathy dropped the kids at the cabin, planning to return later after spending a few more hours out. Scott and Amy, close siblings, were used to fending for themselves for short stints. They wandered over to their neighbors’ house for a while, playing with the Lupton children as they often did, then returned home around 11:45 p.m., or so a passing neighbor noticed when they saw the lights still on at the Fandel cabin.
When Margaret and Cathy returned around 2:00 a.m., everything was quiet. The lights were off. That was strange—Scott and Amy were afraid of the dark. But everything else seemed normal. A pot of water was still boiling on the stove, and an open can of tomatoes sat nearby, next to a package of macaroni. It looked like Scott had been about to make a late-night snack. Margaret assumed the kids had gone next door to sleep, as they sometimes did. She turned in for the night, not knowing that when she woke up, nothing would be normal again.
The Investigation
It wasn’t until the next afternoon that the panic set in. Margaret tried calling the school, expecting to hear that her kids were safely in class. They weren’t. Neither Scott nor Amy had shown up for school that day. Cathy, still at home, hadn’t heard a peep from them all morning. It was then that Margaret realized something was terribly wrong. The children hadn’t spent the night at the neighbors’, and they hadn’t just wandered off into the woods. The police were called, and a search began.
The immediate aftermath of the disappearance was chaotic. Searches were organized quickly, combing through the dense woods that surrounded the Fandel cabin. Dogs were brought in, helicopters flew over the treetops, and neighbors scoured every possible trail. But there were no signs of Scott or Amy. The only strange clue was a handful of spent bullet casings found outside the cabin—though no one was sure if they were related to the disappearance or just remnants from casual target practice, a common hobby in rural Alaska.
As investigators dug deeper, they turned their focus inward—on the family. Roger Fandel, Scott and Amy’s estranged father, was one of the first people questioned. He had left Alaska for Arizona months before, but his absence raised questions. Could he have been involved? Was this a custody dispute gone wrong? Roger flew back to Alaska and cooperated with the investigation. Over time, police ruled him out as a suspect, but for many years, he remained a figure of suspicion in the case.
Friends and neighbors were questioned, and theories abounded. The remote location of the cabin seemed like it could have made the Fandel children easy targets for an outsider. A known predator? A drifter? Someone passing through on the Sterling Highway who took an opportunity? Or could it have been someone closer, someone the children knew and trusted? The investigation couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling that whatever happened that night, it happened fast—and it happened close to home.
The Unresolved Ending
Over four decades have passed since Scott and Amy disappeared, and the case remains unsolved. Despite the extensive search efforts, interviews, and theories, no substantial evidence has ever been found. The forest has long since swallowed any trace of what might have happened to the Fandel children.
In the years following their disappearance, Margaret moved to Illinois, where Roger lived, as if hoping to leave behind the painful void of Alaska. But the mystery followed her, and it followed the rest of the family too. Roger’s own life was tainted by accusations and whispers, despite his attempts to prove his innocence. One bizarre development came years later when Roger’s former girlfriend allegedly offered to reveal what happened to the children—for a price. She demanded $5,000 from Roger’s uncle in exchange for the truth, but nothing ever came of it, and the trail went cold once again.
Many believe the children were abducted by someone they knew. Others think they might have wandered off and met with a fatal accident in the wilderness. There are even theories that Scott was killed shortly after they disappeared and that Amy is still alive, possibly living under an assumed identity in Alaska or somewhere else in the country. Scott’s uncle, Terry, believes this is the case, though no concrete evidence supports the theory.
The lights were out when Margaret returned to the cabin that night in 1978, and it seems like they’ve stayed out ever since. No answers, no closure, just a void where two children used to be. And as with many cold cases, the silence around it all is as haunting as the event itself. Forty years later, people still wonder: what really happened to Scott and Amy Fandel that night in Sterling? The truth is out there somewhere, hidden among the trees or locked inside the mind of someone who knows more than they’re saying.
But until someone speaks, the mystery remains—waiting, unanswered.
Deep Lore 