Scott Fandel, 13, and Amy Fandel, 8, were dropped off at home by their mother Margaret on the evening of September 4th, 1978. As far as she knew, her children were safe and everything appeared to be normal.
Yet when Margaret and her sister Cathy returned to the cabin hours later, they were met by an odd scene: a pot of boiling water on the stove, an open can of tomatoes and a box of macaroni left on the counter, but no sign of Scott and Amy anywhere.
It seemed that Scott had been interrupted in the middle of making one of his favorite snacks. But by what? Or whom? No one could say for sure. Over the course of the investigation, family members would begin implicating one another and making disturbing accusations, but solid evidence of any kind remained elusive.
What really happened to Scott and Amy Fandel?
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Scott Fandel and Amy Fandel
Scott Curtis Fandel was born on January 23rd, 1965. Five and a half years later, his younger sister Amy Lee was born on August 25th, 1970. They share a mother, Margaret, but have two different fathers.
Little is known about Scott’s biological father, but Margaret married Roger Fandel (Amy’s father) when Scott was very young.
Those who knew him would remember Scott as a prankster, but also very intelligent and mature for his age. He was a kind boy, yet fiercely protective of his younger sister. Additionally, he loved motorcycles and the outdoors—he had even passed a wilderness survival course.
Margaret described Amy as a sweet girl who was “kind to animals, kind to people.” She loved dolls, “pretty clothes and pretty shoes.”
The family lived together in a small cabin on Scout Lake Loop Road, just south of Sterling, Alaska. Much of the home wasn’t visible from the road, as it was located in a heavily wooded area. However, a streetlight out front illuminated a portion of the front of the cabin.
Months before the children went missing, Margaret—who had developed a drinking problem—and the unfaithful Roger went through a bitter divorce and he moved to Arizona alone. Scott and Amy were frequently unsupervised after Roger’s departure, but Scott, now a teenager, was said to be a responsible babysitter for Amy.
The Lupton family—Nancy, Bill, and their five children—was the Fandels’ nearest neighbors, living roughly 200 yards away in a Quonset hut. Scott and Amy were close friends with the Lupton children and often spent time with them, even walking to school with them every day.
Interrupted Meal Preparation
Margaret’s sister Cathy came to live with the Fandels in September 1978. Scott and Amy were excited to have their aunt there.
On the evening of Monday, September 5th, 1978, Margaret, Cathy, Scott and Amy were at Good Time Charlie’s, a local bar and restaurant. The children played arcade games while the women drank beer. Since it was getting late, Margaret decided to drop off Scott and Amy at the cabin at approximately 10 p.m. Afterwards, she returned to the bar.
It’s also worth noting that the cabin didn’t have a working lock.
Scott and Amy went over to the Lupton house and played with their friends. However, Nancy and Bill felt that the kids were being too loud and sent the Fandels home.
A neighbor passing by noticed that the lights were on in the Fandel cabin at around 11:45 p.m.
It was after 2 a.m. when Margaret and Cathy arrived home and found the lights off. This was odd because the kids were afraid of the dark and typically left them on. The strangeness didn’t end there. The two women also saw a pot of boiling water on the stove, as well as an open can of tomatoes and a package of macaroni on the kitchen counter.
Scott loved to have macaroni as a snack before bed, but why had he abruptly stopped cooking? It’s unclear if Margaret and Cathy looked for the children, but they ultimately assumed that Scott and Amy had simply decided to spend the night at the Lupton home.
Later that morning, 31-year-old Margaret, a waitress, woke up and went to work. Cathy slept in until noon. While at work, Margaret called the school, intending to scold Amy for not stopping by the cabin before leaving to attend class.
But to her surprise, she learned that neither Amy nor Scott had shown up that day. Panicked, Margaret wanted to leave work and search for them, but her boss wouldn’t allow her to go before her shift was over.
After school, the Lupton children stopped by and asked Cathy where Scott and Amy were. They also revealed that the Fandel children hadn’t spent the night over at their house. So where were they?
The Luptons hadn’t heard or seen anything suspicious, and nothing else appeared to be missing from the home.
Margaret called the Alaska State Troopers and reported Scott and Amy missing at 5:14 p.m. on September 5th.
Within a day or two, Margaret attempted to contact her ex-husband Roger, to see if he had the children, but couldn’t reach him. Instead, she spoke to his family, who said that Roger didn’t have the kids and that none of them had any idea where Scott and Amy might be.
Investigation Yields Few Clues
Police brought in search dogs from Anchorage and conducted an intensive search of the nearby wooded areas, but found nothing of note. They searched ferries, and also alerted Canadian Mounties to be on the lookout for anyone attempting to cross the border with Scott and Amy.
Age progression pictures of the missing siblings: Scott and Amy Fandel: Alaska Siblings Vanish From Cabin
Investigation Yields Few Clues
Police brought in search dogs from Anchorage and conducted an intensive search of the nearby wooded areas, but found nothing of note. They searched ferries, and also alerted Canadian Mounties to be on the lookout for anyone attempting to cross the border with Scott and Amy.
Roger flew out from Arizona that weekend and aided in the search.
According to Trooper Sergeant Tom Sumey, investigators discovered that a black sedan belonging to two carnival workers had been spotted in the area that night, speeding away from the cabin. This was considered particularly significant as the carnival workers were casual acquaintances of the Fandels, whom Margaret had allowed to spend the night once in late August.
However, they claimed to have been near the cabin the night after the kids went missing and that they’d considered stopping by to visit, but had decided against it and left. The men, who worked for the Alaska State Fair, stated that they’d merely come back to Sterling to pick up their paychecks. The witness also admitted that they may have been mistaken about which night the sighting took place.
It was also speculated that someone at Good Time Charlie’s might have overheard that the kids were going to be alone and took the opportunity to abduct them, but this has never been proven either.
Investigators pursued hundreds of leads, none of which ended up being helpful.
Bullet casings were found outside of the Fandel cabin, but it was unclear if they were old or new or if they were related in any way to the disappearance of Scott and Amy.
Further Developments
Margaret’s phone was tapped by law enforcement, to see if she’d say anything incriminating, but this apparently went nowhere. However, she now felt unwelcome in the area as some residents clearly thought that she was responsible for what happened and made no secret of that belief. Additionally, she was harassed by psychics claiming to know where her son and daughter were.
She became depressed and increasingly more dependent on alcohol.
All of this led to her decision to move back to Illinois in 1980. Margaret quit drinking and went on to remarry. In a 1988 interview, Margaret indicated that she was still hopeful that Scott and Amy were alive and would return to her one day.
Conversely, Roger was less hopeful, asserting that Scott would have gotten in touch with him if he’d been able to.
For reasons that are unclear—aside from the fact that the two men strongly disliked each other—Roger suspected that his brother Herman had harmed Scott and Amy. Herman denied this, in turn casting suspicion on Roger himself.
Law enforcement dug up Herman’s yard, but turned up nothing.
The authorities also considered Roger a person of interest for many years, but they eventually came to the conclusion that he wasn’t involved in the disappearance of the Fandel children.
Investigators had only rumors, and little else, to go on in this case.
However, Margaret’s brother Terry, as well as Herman, continued to think that Roger was behind it, despite the fact that there was no evidence to support that theory. Roger had a verifiable alibi for the night in question, yet it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he’d had someone else abduct the children, they argued.
Years later, a woman who’d been dating Roger when Scott and Amy vanished allegedly asked Roger’s uncle for $5,000 in exchange for telling him what really happened to the kids.
Terry, for his part, believes that Amy is alive and living in either Alaska, Montana, or California, but how he arrived at this conclusion remains a mystery. Sadly, he thinks that Scott was killed shortly after his abduction.
The Fandel cabin burned to the ground in 1980, but no other details about this are publicly available.
To this day, no solid evidence in support of any theory has been discovered, and no one has ever been charged in connection with the bizarre disappearance of Scott and Amy Fandel, whose fate is still unknown.
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