Chester was last seen leaving his family's residence in Bradenton, Florida during the evening hours of May 26, 1986. He has never been heard from again. James P. Barnes, a death row inmate in Florida, confessed to Chester's murder in the first episode of Werner Herzog's documentary miniseries, On Death Row, in 2012. Six weeks after his first interview with Herzog, Barnes wrote Herzog a letter confessing to killing and burying Chester. He also confessed to the unsolved 1990 murder of Brenda Joyce Fletcher, correctly identifying the place where her body had been found. He has never been charged in either case, however, and is still awaiting execution. Some may classify his case as that of an endangered runaway.