For nearly three decades, the blue 1981 Subaru and the man who disappeared with it, a 23-year-old named Tracy Jensen, have remained a mystery.
Jensen walked out of his sister’s house in Big Piney in February 1999 and vanished.
Despite a thorough investigation and yearly checks by the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office for traces of activity on his Social Security number, financial records and information about his vehicle, neither Jensen nor the car has been seen since that day.
Some believe he might have crashed somewhere remote and has yet to be found, that he ended his life, or that he shed his name and started over. But these are only guesses.
For the family left behind, the uncertainty has been its own kind of grief. Even after the court declared him legally dead, the absence remains, sharp and unanswered.
“Part of me believes that he is still alive and then there is part of me that believes he is not,” said his older sister, Davey Jensen.
The search remains active, authorities confirmed to Cowboy State Daily, despite the years of no answers.
“It’s almost like he disappeared off the face of the earth,” said Sublette County Sheriff K.C. Lehr. “It would be nice to have some closure for the family.”
Jensen’s ex-wife, Aimee White, agreed. Even though so much time has passed, technology has advanced and social media now offers new ways to share Jensen’s story and the fact that he is still missing.
More than anything, White doesn’t want his life to fade from memory. He was loved, she said — by her, their daughter, his family and countless others.
“His life matters,” she said. “He matters.”
Quirky, Fun Guy
At the time of his disappearance, Jensen was staying with his older sister Brenda Dellinger in Big Piney, trying to piece his life back together after his second divorce. He took a job working at Gordon’s Corner in Marbleton and was facing some outstanding debts.
According to White, who by then lived in Rock Springs with their 5-year-old daughter, Raquel, Jensen was admittedly going through a difficult period. She said he’d been struggling with his mental health and was seeing a counselor after a traumatic event in his late teens that, by all accounts, had veered his life off course.
White and Jensen knew each other in high school back in Mountain View, though he was two years ahead of her. They didn’t start seeing each other until he’d graduated.
He was dealing with a lot back then, including the recent divorce of his parents, and the two had become close, White said.
She described him as a quirky, fun guy quick with a laugh and an avid outdoorsman who liked to fish, scuba dive and go logging with his father. He also loved British humor such as Monty Python. One of his favorite bands was Judas Priest.
Once married and with a newborn daughter, Jensen worked a variety of jobs – including on a seismograph crew that took them to Rock Springs and Utah and elsewhere as he worked to keep their small family afloat.
“He was a good provider,” White said.
They were divorced after a few years, but White remained close with Jensen’s family, especially after he disappeared.
Last Sighting
Not much is known about the day he disappeared. According to the 28-page case file shared with Cowboy State Daily, Dellinger told police that on Feb. 11 — their final day together — Jensen spoke again of ending his life, though he also mentioned plans to visit family in Ashton, Idaho.
This tracks with White, who said Jensen had an uncle in Idaho to whom he was close and the couple had visited.
His last steps that day seem to indicate he had planned to travel. After he left his sister’s house, he stopped by work at Gordon’s Corner in Marbleton about 6:30 p.m. to ask his boss for some travel money and was given $300 in cash. He left everything behind at Dellinger’s, including his dog.
In the past, Dellinger told authorities that Jensen had taken off to Flaming Gorge, about 177 miles south of Big Piney.
Dellinger contacted all their relatives and asked them to report back if Jensen showed up, the case file states. She also continued to check in with Jensen’s former boss at Gordon’s Corner for any word of her brother.
She told investigators she didn’t think her younger brother would go to a city because he didn’t like to drive in them.
Despite her searching, that was the last anyone ever saw of Jensen — and his 1981 blue Subaru.
Three days later, on Valentine’s Day, Dellinger reported him missing to the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office.
False Sightings, Rumors
The following weeks were a litany of dead ends and crossed wires.
On March 22, a teletype arrived at the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office from Mountain View PD — 114 miles south of Marbleton, where Jensen’s father resided — stating Jensen had been found. The report was never substantiated.
When Dellinger phoned the father, he denied his son had been there.
When the sheriff’s investigator sat down with the Mountain View Police Chief Wallace S. Hale, he said he had spoken with Earl Jensen not long after the son vanished.
According to Hale, Earl stated that his son was staying in the Melbourne area just outside Mountain View and wished to be left alone. Earl Jensen later disputed this account, insisting he had never made such a statement to the chief. He added that he had canvassed the town and found no one — himself included — who had seen his son since the day he vanished.
Separately, a rumor surfaced regarding a small blue car that had reportedly followed one of Earl’s nephews the previous year. The nephew suspected the vehicle might have belonged to Jensen, though this was never confirmed, and no contact was made with the driver.
In another instance, a family member of Jensen’s second wife claimed to have seen someone at a fair in Rock Springs resembling Jensen, but it was never confirmed. Earl also told investigators he had gone to look at an abandoned residence in Rock Springs that had formerly been occupied by Jensen’s friends, but again there was no trace of him.
By April, with no further sign of Jensen, his details were entered into NCIC — the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database — to help law enforcement identify possible matches. Investigators also checked for activity associated with his Social Security number and any change of address. There was none.
Under Water
In the absence of answers, theories emerged.
One revolved around Jensen’s mental health and statements to his sister about wanting to harm himself.
Earl Jensen said that if his son had taken his own life, perhaps he had driven his car through the ice at nearby Fontenelle Lake or at Flaming Gorge Reservoir. He posited this theory based on something he said his son had once stated about wanting to be buried at sea.
Dellinger, however, told authorities she didn’t believe her brother would have deliberately driven his car into a body of water.
Jensen’s counselor at the time disputed the theory that he would have taken his life, offering investigators a different professional opinion. A more plausible explanation, she suggested, was that he had chosen to disappear. In her experience, someone like Jensen — feeling cornered by life — might simply run.
Earl and Davey Jensen, Tracy’s older sister by two years, thought that might be a possibility given his circumstances. They pointed to the weight of his unpaid debts and mounting financial strain as reason enough to vanish and begin again somewhere new.
Still, Davey admitted she wavers, and she’s not sure what to think.
She allows herself, at times, to imagine him out there somewhere — living fully, unburdened and happy.
Likely Not Alive
White said she would prefer to believe he is still alive but finds it unlikely given his devotion to his family and his daughter.
“Tracy lived for his family,” she noted. “I can’t imagine him abandoning them, or his child, for so many years.”
She described him as a loving father in those early years and emphasized how deeply Jensen cared for them. His absence has been especially hard for their daughter, White noted, who has her own questions about what might have happened to him.
Finally, for legal and practical reasons — primarily so their daughter could qualify for Social Security — the family made the hard decision to declare him dead around 2010, White said.
Afterward, they held a memorial at Earl’s house to honor his life.
Sheriff Lehr agrees it is improbable Jensen has remained undetected this long without accessing his bank account, using his Social Security number, or triggering some digital trace in the internet era.
Calling All Tracy Jensens
Nonetheless, the sheriff’s office pursued every lead, as documented by the case file notes. This included tracking down at least 20 Tracy Jensens across multiple states, several in Utah. A promising match emerged when one shared Jensen’s middle initial “N,” but hope faded as the birthdates and issuing states of their Social Security numbers failed to align.
In November 2001, a hit on Jensen’s Social Security number briefly reignited the search. It traced to a Washington driver’s license under the name Miltenberger — a false lead, the number off by a single digit.
Two years later, in August 2003, a tip from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation suggested another possibility: A Tracy Jensen recorded as living in Colorado in 2000. Sheriff’s deputies tracked him to Grinnell, Iowa, where he had since moved.
A call to this Tracy Jensen’s wife confirmed he had once lived in Wyoming — but he was 42, far older than Jensen, who would have been in his late 20s.
Another dead end.
Since then, the sheriff’s office has continued its annual reviews of state and federal databases for any trace of Jensen or his vehicle, with no further matches.
At one point, Lehr said, they even searched for him in Mexico — a difficult task — and turned up nothing. Canadian authorities, he noted, would likewise share any hits on Jensen’s information.
No Trace of Subaru
Another theory involving Jensen’s disappearance is that he might have had an accident en route to Idaho or Utah to visit family, and that he and/or his vehicle have not been found off a cliff or ravine or in a body of water along the way.
This would explain the lack of both Jensen and his vehicle.
Lehr said that particular theory is a hypothetical they’ve pondered for years, noting how easy it would be to drive off a cliff into Fontenelle Reservoir, an 8,000-acre lake on the Green River in southwest Wyoming. But to date, no vehicle matching Jensen’s has been reported found.
“It’s all hypothetical, but we thought the same thing for years, but still, nothing’s come up,” he said, noting that underwater search technology, including side-scan sonar and other equipment, could help locate a vehicle.
Still, it’s not out of the question, he said.
Possible Remains in Washington
The Sublette County Sheriff’s Office also called in the FBI to collect DNA from Dellinger and Jensen’s mother should his remains be found.
Over the years, they’ve had a couple of tips leading to remains found in other states.
A tip arrived in the spring of 2022 from Heather Hawkins, formerly of Pinedale, now living in Texas, proposing a possible match between unidentified remains discovered in Washington and Jensen.
Hawkins said she feels a personal connection to Jensen’s case because she believes her grandmother sold Jensen his vehicle, which she also once owned.
A sheriff’s detective reached out to the Pend Oreille County Sheriff’s Office in Newport. The details failed to correspond: The remains were those of a man in his 50s, decades older than Jensen. As the Sublette County sheriff’s investigator also noted, the DNA also didn’t match.
The body was found on private woodland property, zipped inside a sleeping bag stashed beneath a fir. Nearby lay a pair of eyeglasses, a stick of Old Spice deodorant, and one loose 9 mm cartridge — though the bones bore no evidence of gunshot injury.
The recovered clothing was sized XXL or larger; Jensen was much thinner at about 6-foot-3 and weighing 160 pounds.
In 2023, the remains were identified through forensic genetic genealogy by DNA Solves and Othram as Randall Reed Priborsky.
Another dead end.
Devastating Every Time
The last tip came in May 2026, when the sheriff’s office took a call from the San Francisco medical examiner. A man had been found floating face down in the bay near Pier 1, wearing black shorts and bearing a tattoo “IO” on his right arm. There were no obvious injuries or indications of how he died.
The file doesn’t say why California thought it could be Jensen, but the dental records didn’t align, and again, a match was ruled out.
Any time Davey Jensen learns that remains have been found, she takes it to heart.
“This is a hard thing,” she said, noting that each time she can’t help but wonder if it’s her brother.
“I think about him every day,” she said. “His birthday month is really hard and the holidays are even harder. I will never hear his voice again, his laughter. I will never see his smile again. There will never be any closure or any answers to why this happened.”
When someone dies of old age or cancer, you have an answer, she noted.
“But when someone goes missing, you have more questions and no answers,” she said.
Good Brother
Davey holds onto her memories of her brother. He was the youngest, the only boy among them. As kids, they were close — he teased her, pushed her buttons, but she remembers him as kind and loving.
They grew up in the mountains of Mountain View, where they played outside for hours, exploring the woods. One of her favorite memories of him is making stick horses out of fallen branches while their dad cut timber nearby.
One Christmas, he stayed up all night to be the first to open gifts; he’d gotten a racetrack with two cars and wore it out before New Year’s.
He’s always on her mind — she even named her youngest son after him.
But guilt lingers, too — what could she have done differently to prevent his disappearance?
“I feel guilt that I was not there for him,” she said.
If he’s out there, she wants him to know his family loves him and wants him home.
“We have never stopped loving you,” she said.
White agreed, her voice still rife with emotion even after all these years. She explained that finding him, learning his fate, would offer the Jensens — people she still considers family — the closure that has eluded them for years.
“If we could just know what happened, find where he is, bring him home, it would give them the opportunity to fully, truly grieve,” she said.
Public Can Help, Sheriff Says
Lehr expressed his ongoing hope to provide the Jensen family with closure, emphasizing that public vigilance in remote areas remains crucial to the search.
“Keep your eyes open and be vigilant,” he urged, citing instances where outdoor enthusiasts aided recovery efforts, including a hiker’s discovery of remains in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in 1989. The department continues seeking Jensen along with Sublette County’s other missing persons.
Along with Jensen, this includes Vanessa Sue Orren, David Crouch and Lynn Dianne Olson, who disappeared on her grandparents’ ranch in 1963 and remains one of the oldest missing-person cases in the state.
Anyone with tips or information about Jensen’s disappearance is asked to call the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office at 307-367-4378. Tips can also be submitted anonymously online at DCI’s website.
Jensen’s vehicle is also still missing. It’s a 1981 blue Subaru DL coupe with Wyoming license plate 19199AK.
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
