Clemson University // Courtesy
Jason Knapp was a sophomore mechanical engineering major when he disappeared from Clemson in April 1998.
On April 11, 1998, Jason Knapp rented a movie with his roommate at their apartment on the Calhoun Street 100 block. At 10:30 p.m., his roommate went to bed, leaving him alone to finish the movie. This was the last time Jason was seen alive.
When Knapp, a sophomore mechanical engineering major at Clemson, didn’t return to his apartment, concern grew. His roommates notified his mother of his absence, who reported him missing to the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office.
After several days of searching by the Holly Springs and Pumpkintown fire departments, Pickens Rescue 7, staff from Greenville Water and state park rangers, the search was called off, and the case effectively went cold.
One of the men leading the search was Dennis Chastain, a volunteer firefighter at the time, who had handled a multitude of cases and calls involving missing people at this point in his career.
In his own words, he is “still baffled by this case.”
On April 21, 10 days later, Knapp’s white 1990 Chevrolet Beretta was found at Table Rock State Park by law enforcement.
Chastain recalls seeing very few cars in the parking lot when he arrived, but the white Beretta immediately stood out from the sand that was underneath it, which indicated to him that it had been sitting for a substantial amount of time.
As the team began planning the search, Knapp’s parents arrived from his hometown of York, Pennsylvania. Upon interviewing them, the rescue team was given an important piece of information: Knapp was not an experienced hiker.
Chastain explained that according to Knapp’s parents, he had never been known to hike or camp solo, and, to their knowledge, did not own the necessary equipment for a hike of this size.
This discovery was a major red flag to Chastain, as the trail to Table Rock’s summit is an almost 15-mile round trip and considered to be a relatively difficult uphill hike. With the knowledge that Knapp was an inexperienced hiker, Chastain and the rescue team knew the search had become a race against time.
After six days of intensive grid searches with no results, Chastain led three specially trained cadaver dogs through the search area on separate trails, searching for any sign of Knapp.
Following the flow of the water, he brought the cadaver dogs to an area where scent would most likely collect. Despite their training and hours of searching, the dogs didn’t catch even the faintest trace.
The search ended as it had begun — with more questions than answers. For Chastain, the question that still lingers is why. Why was there never a single piece of physical evidence placing Knapp at Table Rock that day? No discarded wrappers, no footprints and no sign that he had ever set foot on the trail. And why, on a busy spring Sunday filled with hikers, does no one remember seeing him?
Chastain reasoned that Knapp, who was probably dressed in street clothes and sneakers, would have stood out and almost certainly would have needed to stop and rest along the way.
“If he died on Table Rock, I think we would’ve found him,” Chastain said in an interview with The Tiger.
Nearly 30 years have passed since Knapp’s disappearance.
“Despite our best efforts, some things are unknowable,” Chastain answered when asked about the current state of the case. “But then again, who knows.”
Decades later, the memory of that search still clings to the mountain, and the question of what happened endures.
If you or anyone you know has information about Jason Knapp, contact 911, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 800-843-5678 or the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office at 864-898-5500.