 13-year-old Bradley Hansen left his home on November 10, 1995, without telling his mother that school had been cancelled. Instead, he snuck over to a friend's home and never returned. When trash collectors visited the area later on to empty the bins, workers noticed some concerning evidence inside one of the neighborhood trash cans. But unfortunately, this small amount of evidence wasn't enough to lead to a conviction, at least not yet. But when investigators finally revealed their primary suspect, Bradley's family was shocked because the crime hit much closer to home than any of them could have expected. Bradley Hansen was your average teenage boy growing up in the mid-90s. Being 13, he had just reached the age where he was starting to become interested in finding a girlfriend, and there were plenty of girls his age at his school in Phoenix, Arizona. Bradley was enrolled at Centennial Middle School in Phoenix, where he'd established a core group of friends that he felt he could depend on. One of his closest friends was a kid named Jeremy Bach, and Jeremy and Bradley were pretty much inseparable. The two had often hang out before school started, and they were the first two kids to meet up after school had ended, too. It was November of 1995. Brad and Jeremy were speaking sometime earlier that month about Veterans Day, a popular holiday here in the United States. Knowing that the two would be off of school for the holiday, they'd been excitedly planning on what they could do with all their free time. But the crazy thing is, Brad's mother didn't even realize that the children would be out of school for the holiday, and Brad had no plans of telling her. We don't know if he kept this information a secret from his mother because he feared that she may interfere with his plans, or if he simply didn't realize that his mother was unaware of the holiday. But whatever the case was, Brad and Jeremy had quite a day ahead of them. When Veterans Day finally rolled around, it was November 10th, and Brad woke up that morning, got dressed and prepared for the day as it were any other. He then hopped on a bike that he had borrowed from his neighbor, and headed off in the direction of the school. His mother watched him leave and, obviously, believing it was a school day, didn't think much else about the situation. But as we know, Brad had no plans of going to school that day. Somewhere along the way, Brad changed course and began heading toward his friend Jeremy's house. We all just believe that one of the reasons why Brad was so excited about his plans that day was because a girl named Taylor was expected to show up at Jeremy's house later on that afternoon. Taylor was a friend from school, and if I had to guess, one or both of these boys likely had a bit of a crush on the girl. And considering everyone's parents were at work for the day, you can only imagine what must have been going through these teenagers' minds when Taylor agreed to stop by for a visit. Now we don't know for sure what the boys had planned on getting up to while they had the entire day to themselves, but the fact that they kept their plans a secret from their parents seems to allude to the idea that they may have been getting up to no good. Now, I can't say this with any certainty, but considering what would take place just a few short hours later, well, this theory may not be as far-fetched as it seems. No sooner than Brad arrived at Jeremy's house, the two ran into Jeremy's stepdad, Daniel, in the kitchen. It seems that Jeremy's dad also didn't realize the boys were off from school for the day, as he claims he was under the impression that the boys would be heading off soon after he left at around 7am that morning. Needless to say, the boys were over the moon that they had managed to fend off their parents and claim the entire day to themselves, meaning they could do pretty much anything they wanted with no supervision, a scary thing for two teenage boys. But their plans were nearly foiled, because at around 8am, Brad's mom, Rhonda, had a sudden realization that it was Veterans Day. She began paging Brad repeatedly, mind you this is 1995, but Brad never responded. She sent him several pages all throughout the day, but Brad simply refused to answer. Rhonda didn't get off of work until 2pm that afternoon, but once she got back home, she still couldn't locate Brad. This was very much unlike him to not respond to his mother's pages and calls. While Brad was your average, reckless teenage boy, he always made sure to stay in touch with his mother, so the fact that he'd suddenly dropped off the map sent every alarm in Rhonda's head ringing. Rhonda reached out to several of her neighbors and friends and tried to determine if anyone had seen Brad that day, but no one had any idea where he may have gone. She even called several of Brad's friends and classmates, but no one reported anything. Rhonda eventually decided to call Jeremy, and that's when things got interesting. He opened up to Rhonda about what the boys had been up to that morning, but the problem was Jeremy claimed that Brad had left sometime early that morning, but he had no idea where he may have gone. As far as Jeremy knew, he simply hopped on his bike and left, pedaling off into the distance. Rhonda asked Jeremy that if he sees Brad to let him know that if he's not home by 5pm, she'll be calling the police to file a missing person report. Jeremy agreed, and the two hung up the phone. Now, there's some unusual information about what took place immediately after this call with Jeremy. It's been reported that Rhonda decided to call Jeremy's stepfather, Daniel, who explained that he'd last seen both of the boys at 7am that morning. Daniel explained that he'd speak with Jeremy as soon as he got home and that he would report back with any information he managed to find. But immediately after the call, Rhonda decided that she just couldn't sit around and wait for Brad to show up. She had to do something. Thus, she hopped in her car and started traveling to all of the nearby hangout spots, desperately hoping to find some trace of Brad. But she never did. And later that evening, things took a turn for the worse. Once Jeremy's stepfather, Daniel, got off of work later that evening. He spoke with Jeremy just as he said he would. But after the two spoke, for reasons that remain unclear, Daniel never bothered calling Rhonda back. He knew that Rhonda was still actively searching for her missing son, yet never bothered to pick up the phone. When police arrived to take statements from Rhonda, it seems as though they initially classified Brad's disappearance as a runaway case. They didn't know why, but they believed Brad had likely run away from home. But Rhonda didn't believe this to be true. She felt that something terrible had happened to her son and believed there was no chance he would run away like this. But it seems as though detectives were largely undeterred by her claims and pushed forward in their own way. When Brad still never returned home that night, Rhonda's fears and concerns began to grow to epic proportions. Police seem to have requested that Rhonda not go around and investigate her son's disappearance on her own, seemingly for fear of hindering their own investigation. But Rhonda didn't obey their wishes, and she went to the ends of the earth to try to find her boy. She spent the entire weekend speaking to everyone she knew that had ever met Brad, hoping someone had some sort of information, but no one did. That is, except for a couple of Brad's classmates. After Brad had disappeared, there were rumors circulating around the school that something terrible had happened to him. The rumors would suggest that a gunshot had been heard ringing out in the mid-afternoon on the day that Brad went missing. These rumors suggested that Jeremy and Brad had found a weapon inside the home that day, and Jeremy had accidentally fired a single round, which narrowly missed Brad and got lodged into the wall. But these rumors grew far more concerning when it was suggested that Brad was now in possession of the weapon, and he may have planned on using it to end his own life. Now, this may sound like a sudden and unexpected jump in the story, and it certainly is. Rather obviously, up until this point, there had been no reason for anyone to suspect that Brad would have been capable of such a thing, nor was he ever described as being depressed. This only made Rhonda and the police all the more suspicious about these rumors. But the thing is, a rumor has to start somewhere. So it's possible there may have been more truth to this story than anyone else cared to admit. Daniel, Jeremy's stepfather, would call Rhonda sometime around November 13th, about three days after Brad had gone missing. During our call, Rhonda opened up about the rumors that she had heard regarding Brad's intentions. Daniel assured Rhonda that these were nothing more than rumors, and even when as far as calling home to his girlfriend, asking her to check to make sure that all of the family's weapons were safely stored away and accounted for. When Daniel's girlfriend Debbie checked the safe, she confirmed everything was in order and nothing was missing. This did a lot to calm the nerves of Rhonda, but in a sense, it also made things worse, because this meant that she was back to square one. This is when Jeremy decided that it was time to speak with Brad's mother personally. Jeremy called Rhonda shortly thereafter and explained everything that had transpired that day. Now, we don't know all the specifics of their call, but Jeremy said that he'd last seen Brad when he left and rode off on the bike that he borrowed from his neighbor. He added that Brad wasn't in the best of moods when he left that day. Jeremy was able to confirm that as far as he knew, he had been the last person to have seen Brad, but he also added that in the last conversation that he had with Brad, Brad had allegedly claimed that his life, quote, sucked shortly before pedaling off on his bike. By the following Monday, when Brad still had not been located and rumors were beginning to grow far more frequent and far more concerning, the school decided that it was time to get involved. This is when Ann Shelling stepped in. Ann was one of the school's lead administrators and she spoke with Jeremy twice that day, as well as dozens of other students who had some sort of relation to Brad. Now, according to Ann, she was able to determine that Jeremy, Brad and Taylor, the female friend who had stopped by, had all been hanging out that day. Now, prior to this, it doesn't seem as though Jeremy had ever mentioned that Taylor had been at the house that day. It seems that this information was first brought up when Ann had spoken with Taylor privately. For whatever reason, Jeremy was doing his best to keep Taylor out of the situation, but now things had escalated. Ann decided to bring both Taylor and Jeremy into the room at the same time and that's when Jeremy adapted his story slightly, saying that the two had last seen Brad heading off on his bike with Brad claiming that he would return in about 10 minutes, but he never came back. This is where things get incredibly interesting and the story that Jeremy shared with his parents and investigators, well, they began to fall apart. Jeremy knew something about where Brad had gone, but he wasn't willing to let this information slip. Realizing that Taylor and Jeremy had each been telling completely different versions of the story, Ann decided to pull Taylor aside and ask her what had really happened that day. Taylor was incredibly honest, even when she realized that her confession made it Jeremy in a lot of trouble. Taylor admitted that she had made plans with the boys to meet up at Jeremy's house that day. She added that when she arrived, she noticed Brad's bike in the driveway, a fact that didn't align with the story that Jeremy had shared, claiming Brad had already driven off on his bike. But strangely, when she entered the home, Brad was nowhere to be found. She noticed Brad's backpack sitting on the kitchen table alongside his pager, yet Brad wasn't inside the house. When Taylor asked Jeremy where Brad was, Jeremy explained that Brad had left. Taylor obviously didn't believe him. All of his things had been left behind, so where had Brad gone and why would he leave all of his stuff? Taylor felt that Jeremy was playing some sort of a joke and believed Brad must have been hiding somewhere in the house. But after wandering all throughout the house and calling Brad's name and getting no response, Taylor finally began to believe that Jeremy was telling the truth. But no sooner than she believed him, she began to doubt him once more. That's because as she wandered into the laundry room, she found Brad's shoes covered in red stains. After finding Brad's shoes, Taylor continued looking around the room and noticed that Brad's t-shirt was in the washing machine. It too had been stained red. But the most concerning detail was that there was a small hole in the front of the shirt. Immediately after, Taylor found a few red drips in the kitchen. When she asked Jeremy what had happened, he explained that he and Brad had gotten into an argument about her. One of the boys had called her a name and the other boy took issue with that. A fight ensued and Brad eventually hit Jeremy with a bar stool, causing the hole in his shirt, the red stains and the spots on the floor. But Jeremy clearly didn't have any wounds on his body. But then Taylor noticed a small hole in the kitchen wall. Jeremy claimed that Brad had grabbed one of the weapons from Jeremy's stepfather's cabinet and fired a single shot. Thankfully, it missed Jeremy, but it left a hole in the wall. Shortly after this is when Brad ran out of the home claiming that he would be back soon. After Taylor revealed all of this and decided to bring Jeremy back into the room, she asked him about various aspects of Taylor's story and he finally admitted to nearly all of them. But when she asked about the hole in the kitchen wall as well as the weapon being fired that day, he denied all of it. Jeremy claimed it was nothing more than a rumor. When Anne reached out to Daniel, Jeremy's stepfather, he stood by his son's claims and insisted that no weapons were used that day, nor was there a hole in the kitchen wall. Police would speak with Jeremy a few weeks later at his school and Jeremy would alter his story once again, this time claiming that Brad had attacked him with a butter knife before leaving the home and never coming back. Jeremy also added that he believed Brad had run away to Arizona with a man named Poppy or that he had run away to California to find his dad. He wasn't entirely sure. But the following month, December 15th, Daniel reached out to two detectives who were working Brad's case and asked to speak with them. He explained that Jeremy had finally admitted that he and Brad were playing with the weapon on the day that Brad went missing. He claims that Jeremy came clean and admitted that a single shot had been fired that day. Jeremy even dug the slug out of the kitchen wall and held onto it all this time, with Daniel turning the slug over to investigators for further research. But my question is, if all of this is true, how would Daniel not notice the hole in the wall until now? When detectives later showed up at the family's home, they asked Jeremy to reenact what had transpired the day that Brad vanished. And he claimed that the two got into an argument and Brad grabbed a weapon, firing a single round at him which narrowly missed his shoulder. But when detectives took note of the location where Jeremy claimed all of this transpired, they realized how low the hole in the wall was. And there was no way that the slug could have narrowly missed Jeremy's shoulder. It would have gone right through him. When Jeremy was confronted with his evidence, it's reported that he slumped down a bit lower so that the hole in the wall would align more closely with his shoulder. Detectives then realized that there was something fishy going on here. About three weeks went by and this now brings us to January of 1996. The detectives who were working the case had thought long and hard about the situation and they no longer believed that Brad had run away. They felt that there was much more to the story than Jeremy was willing to admit. They didn't know if Jeremy was guilty of something or if he was just covering up for his best friend, but they knew something was off. Based purely on a gut feeling, they decided to seize the family's trash can, bringing it in for forensic testing. Now, I've heard one version of the story that claims that the detectives were tipped off by local trash collectors, but other resources claim that the detectives seized the can purely off a gut feeling. I'm not sure which version of events is true, but admittedly it's largely irrelevant to the case. When detectives gained possession of the can though, they noticed a brown pool in the bottom, as well as some brown trippage on the outside. According to detectives, they believed there was a small chance that this dried liquid may have belonged to Brad. Unfortunately, when samples were taken and compared with Brad's mother, there was a direct link between the two, meaning that whoever the evidence belonged to, they were a direct relative of Rhonda. Around the same time, Jeremy and his mother decided to uproot and move to Las Vegas. The two never explained why they had decided to do this, especially in the middle of an active investigation, but thankfully police were able to make the proper connections with Arizona police, and they maintained contact with Jeremy, and thankfully so, because in February of 1996, about four months after the disappearance of Brad, Jeremy decided that enough was enough. He finally opened up with detectives and confessed what had really taken place that November day. When Jeremy arrived at the police station, he quickly confessed that he and Brad had in fact been playing with weapons on the day that Brad was last seen. He says that they'd been playing with multiple weapons when he aimed one at Brad. When he did, he bumped his hand on something, causing him to flinch and the weapon went off without him ever having his finger on the trigger. The slug struck Brad, but he was still alive. But what's crazy is that Jeremy had begun to panic and clean up the crime scene, leaving Brad there, desperate for help. Jeremy dug the slug out of the wall and tossed it into the trash, along with several cigarette butts that the two had been smoking earlier that day. Now, Jeremy's version of events is incredibly graphic, but based on what he told detectives, Jeremy insists that the whole situation was an accident. He claims the weapon wasn't even cocked when it went off, but this is completely impossible. According to experts, there's a distinct possibility that Brad was alive for an entire hour after the shot had rung out, meaning there was more than enough time for him to have been saved. Yet because Jeremy panicked, Brad lost his life due to sheer negligence. We don't know if Jeremy was afraid that his parents would find out that they'd been playing with weapons, or if he was afraid that he may go to prison. This has never been fully explained. But regardless, Jeremy was too busy cleaning up the scene of the crime and covering up his own mistakes to have taken the time to actually help his best friend survive what was apparently an honest mistake. In the end, Jeremy claims that he hauled Bradley out to the family trash bin and tossed him inside. Bradley would remain in the trash bin for an entire week before trash collectors even dumped the bin. Now, we don't know how they didn't discover Brad's remains inside, but somehow they didn't. In the end, Jeremy was arrested and charged in the second degree. Investigators believe there is zero chance that the weapon went off that day accidentally. After inspecting the weapon, detectives say that there's no possibility a simple bump could have caused the weapon to have been discharged. They believe that the trigger was pulled with intent, even if the demise of Bradley was truly just a mistake. Though many people, including investigators, refuse to believe that this was a mistake at all. The sheer fact that Jeremy went to such great lengths to conceal his wrongdoing suggests there may have been far more to this case than Jeremy is willing to admit. After all was said and done, Jeremy was convicted and sent to prison for 22 years after being tried as an adult, despite only being 13 when the crime was committed. He entered prison in January of 1998 and was set to be released back in December of 2021, meaning he's now a free man. But the main thing about this case that I just can't wrap my head around is what about Jeremy's parents? Now, I'm not accusing them of anything that's certainly not my intention, but how could all of this have unfolded without them realizing anything? After all, Jeremy's stepfather, Daniel, claims to have inspected the weapon and even smelled it, yet claimed it had never been fired. He also claimed that all of his ammunition was accounted for, but it couldn't have been because one round had clearly been fired. He also claims that all of his weapons were locked away in the family safe. So does that mean Jeremy had a key or a code to the safe? It's certainly possible that he stole the key from his father without him knowing, but that still doesn't explain how his father claimed there was no hole in the kitchen wall when there certainly was. It also doesn't explain how when Daniel reached out to investigators shortly after the crime, he opened up to them and explained that Jeremy had admitted a weapon had been discharged that day. He even handed in the slug that had allegedly come out of the wall. But this couldn't have been the one that ended Brad's life because we know that Jeremy had already thrown that one away. So this would mean that a total of two rounds had been fired from this weapon, yet Daniel didn't notice the missing ammunition. But if all of this weren't enough, what about the trash bin? Did no one ever take the trash out in the four months since Brad had vanished? Surely one of Jeremy's parents would have noticed all the liquid that was in the bottom of the can and dripping down the sides on the outside of the can. Surely someone would have noticed a boy in the bottom of the bin for that first week. Worse yet, surely someone would have smelled something. Now, like I said, I can't with a clear conscience accuse Jeremy's parents of anything. But the whole situation just feels suspicious to me. I hate this so much for Ronda and the rest of Brad's family. So much more could have been done to save this boy. I even hate it for Jeremy, too, because if this was some sort of simple accident or mistake, Jeremy's own panic caused him to lose his best friend and be sent to prison for 22 years when all of this could have been avoided with a simple phone call for an ambulance. This whole case is just tragic from beginning to end. I just hope that Ronda was able to make peace with things, even though there's nothing in the world that could bring back her little boy. Thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of True Crime Stories. If you enjoyed this video, check out this other interesting case I covered and don't forget to subscribe. It's totally free and keeps you up to date with all of my future videos. You can also click that join button below to support the channel and see new videos long before everyone else does. But my name is Ty Nottz and I'll catch you guys in the next one.