By Tim Binnall
A decades-old missing person case in Utah was recently solved thanks to a series of strange events that included an unfathomable coincidence and an eerily accurate prediction from a psychic. According to a press release from the University of Utah, Douglas Brick vanished from the school's campus in October 1973. Following a futile search for the young man and a similarly fruitless investigation into the matter, the case went cold until 2022 when authorities rediscovered the mysterious disappearance and set about trying to solve it.
The effort proved particularly difficult as records from the incident had been lost in the interim, leaving authorities to start from scratch with very little insight into the circumstances surrounding Brick's disappearance. They soon discovered that his sister had inquired about the case a few years earlier, which allowed investigators to acquire familial DNA and learn more about the missing young man. However, the true breakthrough in the case came when Major Heather Sturzenegger, the lead investigator at the time, accompanied her daughter on a rather serendipitous doctor's visit.
While chatting with Dr. Steven Warren about her work, Sturzenegger was astounded when he replied "that’s strange, when I was a student at the U in 1973, my roommate went missing." To her profound amazement, the doctor was talking about Douglas Brick. Warren subsequently provided a wealth of insights about the case, including the critical details of where authorities had searched for the missing young man. Around a year later, some hunters stumbled upon weathered skull fragments in that very area. When authorities tested the bones, it was determined that they were Brick's remains, which finally closed the case that had gone cold so long ago.
An additional uncanny element to the story came by way of a diary kept by the young man's late mother Donna. In a 1990 entry, she recalled encountering a self-proclaimed psychic working at a department store. The curious conversation convinced her of the woman's gift, which led her to ask what happened to her son. The psychic indicated that the young man had died after a fall on some particularly treacherous terrain in the foothills outside campus. Chillingly, the location was ultimately where Brick's bones were discovered decades later. A message also imparted by the psychic at the time was that the young man "really wants you to find him," leaving one to wonder if he had a hand in the strange series of events that ultimately brought his case to a close.