The Unsolved Murder of Ebby Jane Steppach

Eighteen-year-old Ebby Jane Steppach went missing on October 5, 2015, in Little Rock Arkansas. Only days before her disappearance she had accused four men of gang-raping her at a party. The last known contact with Ebby was a disturbing phone call she made to her brother, Trevor.

Ebby's car was later discovered in Chalamont Park in the western portion of Little Rock. Though the woods surrounding the car park were searched, no sign of Ebby was found. She would remain a missing person for almost three years. Her body was finally discovered in a drainage pipe on May 24, 2018, in the same park that had been previously searched extremely near where her car had originally been found. It was determined that she had been dead since at least the time when her car was abandoned.

At the time of her disappearance, Ebby had been completing her senior year at Little Rock Central High School after having transferred from a private school earlier in the year. During this time she had moved out of her parents’ home and was staying with her grandparents, her brother, and friends.

For some reason, Ebby missed school on October 21, 2015, but was known to have attended an evening party on the following Friday, October 23. The next day, she visited her mother at her home and told her stepfather that she had been gang-raped by four men at the party. She told them that she wanted to report it to the authorities. She further indicated that there was a video of her attack taken on a cell phone.

Later that evening, her mother and stepfather attempted to call her but got no answer. It is her stepfather’s belief that she may have gone to attempt the retrieval of the video proving her rape allegations. That same evening, two calls of about one minute each were placed from her phone to the Little Rock Police Department, though the police department denies having any record of a report from her. Her cell phone records also show that she texted several of the men she alleged had raped her and threatened to report them to the police.

When Ebby called her older brother, Trevor, around 2 p.m. on October 25, 2015, she seemed “disoriented,” according to him. She first told him that she was parked outside his home but there were no signs of her there when he hung up and went to look for her car. He called her back and she answered but told him that she was in her car. She just wasn’t sure where she was parked. She then told him that she was “fucked up” and the call ended. This was the last time anyone would hear from Ebby. Though the family attempted to report Ebby as missing, they were told they would need to wait at least 12 hours before they could do so.

On October 27, Ebby’s 2015 VW Passat was found abandoned in a parking lot near Chalamont Park, a neighborhood park that borders on a wooded area. He immediately notified the police, but after waiting for two hours, no one had arrived to investigate. The following day, he noted that the car was still there and called again. This time officers arrived after nearly an hour had passed. The car was out of gas, the battery was dead and the key was still in the ignition. Ebby’s phone, wallet, and contact lenses were all lying undisturbed on the front seat.

Upon determining that this was Ebby’s car and that she was missing, the police began conducting a search of the surrounding woods. Despite several sweeps, nothing was found. Even with the abandoned car and an obviously missing person, it would be another eight months before local police would stop viewing Ebby as a runaway and turn it over to another department to investigate as a missing persons/possible homicide.

A later report, made in 2017, indicates that each of the men accused of her rape were questioned by the police, but no formal searches of their cell phones were done for possible videos related to the alleged crime. To date, no charges have been brought against any of them either for the alleged rape or possible murder of Ebby.

Many other possible witnesses were not questioned at all. Neither were a number of family, friends, or other acquaintances of Ebby. A video from the car driven by the security guard that had found Ebby’s car was subsequently lost, but he claimed it to have shown footage of Ebby meeting a man several times in the parking lot.

Also in 2017, Ebby’s mother and brother appeared on Dr. Phil. The family offered a $50,000 reward for any information leading to Ebby’s discovery but were unsuccessful in gathering any information that would lead to their daughter’s whereabouts at that time. It is quite clear from the reports that the police involved in this case seemed disinterested in finding the truth behind who murdered this young girl, which resulted in the family hiring multiple private investigators and the FBI voluntarily joining the investigation. Unfortunately, their efforts were far too late to gather any real-time evidence that might have been of assistance in this crime.

On May 24, 2018, during another search of Chalamont Park, police discovered skeletal remains in a drainage pipe near where Ebby’s car had been discovered. It was later confirmed that the remains were those of Ebby. It is unknown why these remains weren't found either during the original searches or when Margie Foley, a family friend and the mother of one of Ebby’s friends, had done a private search with her daughter and reported that she had smelled decomposition in the area. She claims that when the police arrived to investigate her claims, they were dismissive and told her the park had been searched with canines previously and would have picked up such a scent. Instead, they assured her that it was more likely an animal or sewage.

In a subsequent Facebook post, Ebby’s mother wrote that she has “wondered a long time what it will be like, a phone call, the middle of the night, a knock on the door? The screams, I couldn’t get them out hard or long enough, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t stand up, I’m hitting and hitting someone, just keep screaming Laurie, eventually it will all come out of you….I want to go home and cover my ears and my heart. I don’t want to hurt anymore. That’s what it looks like when you’re told your deceased daughter’s been found.”

In April 2019, less than a year after the discovery of Ebby’s remains, her brother Trevor died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 35. We can only imagine a mother’s pain at losing both of her children so unexpectedly young.

Ebby may be gone, but her killer remains. Due to the active nature of this investigation, few of the details regarding the investigation are available to the public, but the fact remains that the person or persons responsible for the murder of this young woman have not been brought to justice. Any information known, no matter how small it seems, could be helpful in solving this crime and bringing much-needed justice to Ebby’s family.