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2025 marks the six anniversary since 25-year-old cowboy from Wyoming, Chance Englebert seemingly vanished into thin air. The last time he was ever seen was on surveillance video walking down a residential street in Gering, Nebraska, where he & his family were visiting his in-laws over the fourth of July holiday in 2019.
Chance was born on December 2, 1993 & grew up among the great outdoors on his family’s ranch in Burdock, South Dakota with his parents & two brothers. According to his mom Dawn, he’d always been a cowboy at heart; he participated in rodeo competitions during his time at Edgemont High School & he earned a bull riding scholarship to Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
While Chance was in college, he earned a reputation as a champion rider while he worked to obtain a degree in welding & diesel mechanics. His love of welding phased him into a love for demolition derby cars & racing. While he was working on demolition derby cars he met Matt Miller, someone who came to be one of his closest friends. It was demolition derby that aligned him with a girl who would soon become his wife.
Matt & Chance drove to Scottsbluff, Nebraska to pick up two derby cars that they planned to buy & work on together & while they were there, Chance took his opportunity to meet a girl in person he’d been chatting with online, Baylee. It was an instant connection & they basically began dating immediately.
After a year of dating, the two were married in October 2018 & settled in Moorcroft, Wyoming. According to Dawn, she attended the wedding in support of her eldest son, but she didn’t necessarily feel welcome at the event. Sadly, tensions only rose when the couple learned that they were expecting their first child.
Before they saved up enough money to purchase a house, Baylee & Chance lived with Chance’s friend, DJ. According to DJ, the couple often argued & it was his opinion that Baylee seemed to blow things out of proportion.
One week before he vanished, Chance lost his job at a coal mine where he worked as a welder during a time when more than 600 employees were laid off. Being a husband & a father to a new baby, he knew he would need to quickly find a new job & accepted a position with a local propane company in Moorcroft, Blakeman Propane. The job was set to start on the Monday after the fourth of July weekend.
Chance initially planned to go hunting & fishing at his family ranch with Matt over the holiday weekend until he & his mom got into an argument about her meddling in his relationship. According to Dawn, she & her son rarely argued, but Chance wanted a breather & some time to step away so he & Baylee had a change of plans & decided to take Banks & visit with her family in her hometown of Nebraska.
The Englebert family of three made the 220-mile drive to visit Baylee’s grandparents. On Saturday, July 6, 2019, Chance went golfing with Baylee’s dad & his brother-in-law, Baylee’s sister’s husband. Before they headed out, Chance spoke with some of his family members about how excited he was to start his new job on Monday morning when they were back home. While they were out on the course, Baylee talked to her husband on the phone & his spirits sounded good; the guys were drinking & having a great time together.
After golfing, Chance & Baylee planned to meet up with some of her friends for dinner later that evening. However, by the time she came to pick her husband up at the golf course, his mood had taken a 180 degree turn from when she talked to him on the phone. He was extremely angry & the first thing he said to her was Get the f**k back in the car, we’re leaving. He was apparently upset about a comment that either Baylee’s dad or their brother-in-law said about his new job & the fact he’d be making less money.
According to Baylee, as they drove back to her grandparent’s house, she tried to diffuse the situation & convince him to stay, but because he’d had some drinks out on the golf course, reasoning with him was a bit challenging. When they pulled into the driveway right around 7 pm, rather than going inside to pack, Chance got out of the car & walked away.
Baylee took Banks out of his carseat, went inside & handed him over to her grandma, but by the time she came back outside, Chance was nowhere in sight. She wasn’t at all concerned since Chance was the kind of person who often needed time to be alone & cool off after a disagreement & she figured he would be back soon.
Now out of her sightline, Baylee called Chance’s cell phone, but he didn’t answer so she decided to hop back into the car to look for him. She was unable to find him as she drove around, but he finally answered her call at 7:46 pm. During their short conversation, he told her he was walking north toward Kimball & hung up. However, later reports from his friends indicated he told them that he was walking north toward Torrington, Wyoming, a location more than 35 miles away.
When Matt called his best friend at 7:23 pm, he asked him to come pick him up in Gering, but since Matt was back in Moorcroft, Wyoming, it would have taken him nearly four hours to get there. Matt indicated that Chance sounded upset, but not intoxicated during their conversation. He was vague about the argument he’d gotten into with Baylee’s family, but when they ended the call, Matt contacted Chance’s family & spoke with Dawn about what was going on right around 7:45 pm.
Various family members began calling Chance including his mom, dad, aunts & uncles, but none of them were able to get through. Despite the fact that Chance was wanting to take a little break from communicating with his mom, she texted him & told him that she would be there for him however he needed, no questions asked.
Chance’s family eventually got through to Baylee sometime around 9 pm. She explained that a terrible storm was rolling through so they’d taken a break from searching for him, but as soon as the weather cleared, they’d be back out again. At the time, Chance’s family weren’t overly concerned & just assumed it would be a matter of time until they tracked him down.
At 9:08 pm Chance’s Aunt Katy received a cryptic text message from him & shortly after, his phone went dark. He sent two separate messages, both of which came through at 9:08 pm; the first read, I’m with an expressionless face emoji. The second read, ibdesereallyg. According to Dawn, her son never used emojis.
Right around the time he sent this strange text message, Baylee’s family assumed Chance was taking shelter from the storm in a nearby business or building. However, after the storm passed Baylee’s grandpa drove around town, but saw no sign of him & Chance has never been seen nor heard from since.
Chance’s mom Dawn describes her son as a good, hardworking, smart kid & she does not believe that he intentionally disappeared as he would have never willingly left his family. Baylee agrees & describes her husband as such a good father. She said he looked forward to eventually sharing his passion for demolition derby with their son.
When Chance walked away from Baylee’s grandparent’s home in Gering, Nebraska, he was wearing a short-sleeved button up Wrangler shirt, dark blue jeans, a belt with a rodeo buckle, old school Roper boots & a black & white trucker cap. He is 5’9” & weighs about 190# with sun-lightened brown hair, a mustache & a goatee.
Worry didn’t truly set in until the following morning when Chance still hadn’t come back to Baylee’s grandparent’s house or reached out to friends & family. Baylee contacted local law enforcement to report her husband missing at 11 am. After continued calls from concerned family & friends, the Gering police department started a wide-scale search.
On Monday, July 8, the Englebert family drove out to Gering & with the assistance of 18 specialized agencies, multiple ground, air & water searches utilizing drones, divers, helicopters, airplanes, cadaver & scent dogs with over 2,400 acres searched, the central Gering canal was drained, but there was no sign of Chance.
When local surveillance video was reviewed Chance was last seen at 7:51 pm as he walked through Gering. In the video he could be seen looking down at his phone before taking a 90-degree turn to the left as if he were following a map. He was walking northbound at the intersection of Martha Road & 10th Street in the direction that was consistent with where he said he was going when he spoke with Matt on the phone; northwest toward Torrington. This area was in the small town of Terrytown about two miles from Gering. Later footage was recovered from a Ring camera where Chance was walking west on Stable Club Road.
The terrible storm that came through that night played a very large role in this case; it came in at about 9 pm & lasted about 45 minutes. Because of the severity of the rain, the North Platte River that runs through Terrytown where Chance was seen walking, rose 8 inches that night.
Location data from Chance’s phone indicated that it last pinged off a cell phone tower near the Western Travel Terminal truck stop gas station at 10 pm, but the ping could span the area over several miles long. This location is just about four miles away from Baylee’s grandparent’s home where he was last seen three hours earlier.
Matt Miller indicated that he & other volunteers conducted about 25 searches of the area starting at the golf course & along the North Platte River to Torrington, but didn’t find a single trace of his friend.
According to Dawn, when she spoke with Baylee about two days after Chance disappeared, she made mention that she expected him to come home in a body bag. On Tuesday, three days after he disappeared, she asked Gering police for a death certificate which his family felt was very premature as at this point in time as there was no evidence to suggest that a homicide or a death had occurred. Reports indicate that Baylee was concerned for her future since she had an infant son to care for & she did not have a job. A death certificate would allow her to collect on Chance’s life insurance policy so she could get by until she was able to secure a job.
For months after he disappeared, there were multiple reported potential sightings of Chance in Wyoming & Nebraska, including a possible interaction with a woman at a Casper, Wyoming Walmart. After police followed this lead & reviewed six hours of store surveillance, they were unable to confirm the sighting.
Since he vanished, it’s completely unclear as to what happened to Chance or if a crime was committed; it’s an answer that both law enforcement & private detectives have been diligently trying to figure out over the past nearly six years.
In October 2021, a human arm bone was found by a hunter near the North Platte River in Scottsbluff, Nebraska & authorities didn’t believe it belonged to Chance since it didn’t match the description of the clothing he was wearing at the time he vanished. However, it wasn’t until 2023 when it was definitively determined to belong to 72-year-old Walter Eugene Patterson-Black who was last seen in a nearby convenience store in May 2016.
A new volunteer private investigator with RD Investigations has been working with the Englebert family & has recently generated new information that can potentially fill in some of the gaps of Chance’s last steps before his phone went dark. The investigator spoke with a former clerk at a convenience store in Scottsbluff who claimed to have seen Chance in the store sometime between 8:30-9 pm before the cryptic text was sent to his aunt & before the storm swept through. This store was about two miles from where he was depicted on surveillance in Terrytown.
According to the clerk, when Chance was in the store it was lightly raining, something he distinctly remembers since the top of his shirt was wet with rain. He believes that Chance was having a tense conversation in the back of the store before he went on to purchase tobacco & a Monster energy drink. As the clerk scanned these items, he believed that the man he’d seen Chance talking to was checking out at a neighboring register by his co-worker. The clerk recalled asking for Chance’s ID for the tobacco purchase & noticed he was from South Dakota. Chance had grown up on his family ranch in Edgemont, South Dakota & hadn’t yet switched his ID over to Wyoming.
The clerk remembered another specific detail from his interaction with Chance when he joked about crazy people from South Dakota being out in a Nebraska storm. He also mentioned getting into an argument with his wife that he was out to clear his head & cool off. He said he was heading back & the clerk went on to praise him for being level-headed & handling the situation in that way.
The clerk watched as the other man got into a vehicle he couldn’t recall the details of; he also couldn’t say if Chance happened to get into the car with the man or set off on foot since he was preoccupied with the incoming storm. Heavy rain poured down, lightning & thunder flashed & boomed to the point that the town lost power.
The other new lead that the private investigator uncovered was the sight of two women in their mid-20s running alongside the road near Five Rocks & Stable Club roads right around 9 pm within a mile of the vicinity of the store where Chance was allegedly last seen. These two women were frantically calling out for assistance. Bystanders said that the women were so beautiful that they looked like they could be models. These women were seen getting into a white, two-door pickup that was towing a small boat on a white trailer & they seemed to know the driver.
It’s unclear if these women or the driver of the pickup truck had anything to do with Chance’s disappearance or if they were seen calling out because they’d witnessed a crime. The private investigator is asking anyone with information to please come forward. All of this information has been passed along to both Gering & Scottsbluff police. The investigator has visited the area on multiple occasions & spoken with dozens of witnesses as well as followed countless leads.
Because Chance seemingly vanished, there are many theories as to what could have happened to him. During a January 2022 interview with News Nation, Brian Eads, the lead investigator with the Gering PD, indicated that they’re investigating a potential robbery gone wrong. The alleged robbery has been reported to him in several variations with different people & circumstances.
Another theory that cycled around social media is that maybe Chance wandered into or accidentally fell into the surging North Platte River when the storm passed through. However, given his physicality, both Matt Miller & Dawn do not believe that this was possible since Chance was so experienced within the outdoors. Matt believes that Chance’s body is likely hidden, buried underground by someone who did something to him.
Some people online have wondered if Baylee’s family was somehow involved, but to-date, there’s no evidence to suggest that this is a possibility as well as the fact they’ve been fully cooperative with investigators. There was a lot of talk about a rumor that Baylee’s family friends may have poured fresh concrete though reports indicate this has been thoroughly looked into.
Another rumor indicated that Baylee quickly lawyered up after her husband disappeared while investigator Eads said this was to protect herself. While she never invoked her 5th amendment rights or refused to answer questions, Baylee indicated that she didn’t want to be involved in further interviews with news outlets after receiving death threats.
Sadly, the tragedy of losing Chance with no explanation has torn the two families apart & the Englebert family has not seen Banks in years. Dawn indicated that Baylee’s text messages reflect that she hates her & blames her for what happened to Chance.
Moving forward, July 6 marks a bittersweet occasion for the Englebert family though Dawn indicated that she’s been humbled & touched by the outpouring of love & support she’s received since her son vanished without a trace. She asks that people honor her son by spreading word of Chance’s story with the hope that more information & tips will be generated. Dawn describes the passage of each day without answers as a living nightmare.
Despite the new information which seems promising, she wakes each morning with a never ending knot in her stomach wondering if she’ll ever know the truth of her son’s fate. Although nearly six years have gone by, she still feels physically ill & even if he’s found or if they learn what happened to him, there will always be questions of why.
In honor of his 29th birthday in 2018, Chance’s maternal grandmother, Linda Kluender, donated $200,000 to the reward fund bringing the total to $220,000. However, despite these significant rewards, no viable information leading to Chance’s whereabouts have been forthcoming. Various fund raising events that have been held in Chance’s honor have gone toward maintaining the scholarship Chance’s great grandmother started in his name.
There is a Help Find Chance Englebert Facebook page dedicated to finding & honoring Chance. They’re also selling various items in his honor & proceeds will go toward keeping billboards & search efforts up & alive.
Dawn appreciates Chance’s story being shared. Anyone with any information is asked to call RD Investigations at 605-389-3196 or the Gering Police Department at 308-436-5088.
References:
- Cowboy State Daily: New leads in the disappearance of Moorcroft, Wyoming man, missing now for 5 years
- The Wyoming Truth: Arm bone recovered in Nebraska not remains of missing Moorcroft man
- Uncovered: Missing – Chance Englebert
- Cowboy State Daily: Former legislature, private investigators tracking case of missing Moorcroft man
- NewsNation: Missing: Chance Englebert vanishes in a tiny Nebraska town
- Kendall Rae: Chance Englebert walked away & disappeared
- Bring Chance Home
- Facebook: Help find Chance Englebert
