LINCOLN, Neb.—The phone never rang.
After Chadron State College math professor Steve Haataja mysteriously disappeared in early December, Dawes County Sheriff Karl Dailey thought he might get a call from the local police department, asking his office to help search.
Haataja’s disappearance, after all, was unusual: Nothing suggested that the professor planned to leave town.
“What was my role in searching for Steve?” said Dailey, a former police officer who has been sheriff for 20 years. “I had none. I was not asked.
“In my opinion, with the uniqueness of the disappearance, if I was in charge, I would’ve been asking for all kinds of help.”
The State Patrol also did not get a search request from the police department.
On March 9, more than three months after Haataja was reported missing, two ranchers found his body in a ravine southeast of the college near the outskirts of town.
While declining to speak about the case, Dawes County Attorney Vance Haug has said the condition of the body is one reason they are investigating his death as a possible homicide.
Some people in the town of 5,600 wonder why it took so long to find Haataja. His body was found close to Chadron and the college in an area that, while rugged, is navigable. Rumors are circulating that his body was found bound and burned.
The three-month delay could also impede the investigation because valuable evidence—namely, Haataja’s body—could have been at least partially decomposed when discovered.
“Clearly, if a person is dead, every day that person is not found you lose information,” said Lawrence Kobilinsky, chairman of the forensics science department at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “Once the body starts decomposing, you’re constantly losing information.”
Kobilinsky said advanced decomposition is possible after three months.
Investigators have refused to comment, including about whether his body was decomposed or if it may have been moved to where it was discovered. The state patrol is now in charge of the homicide investigation.
County attorney Haug said progress on the investigation is being made daily.
“These types of investigations take time and are looked at by investigators using a very meticulous process,” he said.
He would not comment when asked whether he was worried that the months it took to find Haataja’s body might impede the investigation.
By its own admission, the Chadron Police Department didn’t conduct any organized searches for Haataja and, “the searches we did were to put the word out,” said police Sgt. Chuck James. A couple Chadron residents conducted about five searches, including two men on horseback who searched, and a man and his son who poked around the college campus.
The acting police chief said the department didn’t search because officials didn’t know where to start.
“We could’ve searched these remote areas for days and days and days, but where do you start?” said acting Chadron Police Chief Margaret Keiper.
Two weeks after Haataja was found, Keiper now says looking back, “we’d do things different.”
“Surprised isn’t the right word,” James, the police sergeant, said of Haataja being found so close to Chadron. “We were disappointed we hadn’t searched that area, but didn’t know where to go. It was frustrating as can be.”
Both the state patrol and Dawes County Sheriff’s office said normal protocol is to not aid in such searches unless a request is made by the lead investigating agency. James said he kept in contact with officials from both.
But a specific request for search help was never made.
“It’s very informal how we work up here,” James said.
One man with extensive law enforcement experience, however, did get a phone call from the Chadron Police Department after Haataja vanished.
Loren Zimmerman, a Nebraska native and former homicide detective for the Los Angeles Police Department for 20 years, had taken a special interest in the case. He was teaching a criminal justice class at Chadron State when Haataja disappeared.
A few days after Haataja disappeared, Zimmerman organized a search team of about 25 people who looked on the outskirts of Chadron. The next day, he organized a group of about 20 people who searched through alleys in town.
Two weeks after Haataja went missing, comments Zimmerman made about the Haataja case—including where he had searched information about Haataja gleaned from family and friends—made it into a Chadron State College publication. Zimmerman had said he was baffled by the case, “but he’s a human being, and we have to keep searching for him.”
That night, he got a call from James.
“He told me he didn’t want me involved in this anymore,” Zimmerman said. James said he only told him to stop talking about Haataja.
Zimmerman stopped searching for Haataja in mid-December.
