List of people who disappeared mysteriously

[Vigilante]

    The 5 Creepiest Disappearances That Nobody Can Explain

The 5 Creepiest Disappearances That Nobody Can Explain
By Evan V. Symon April 13, 2012 3,489,964 views




Back in the Dark Ages, people disappeared all the time. Crusades, disease and nearly nonexistent bookkeeping made it easy to slip through the cracks without so much as a footprint left behind. Luckily, the modern world makes such disappearances damn near impossible -- when people vanish, it usually turns out they were killed or kidnapped, or at least they were very likely to have been. The point is, usually we have some kind of an answer.

Which makes it all the more mind-boggling when people actually do vanish into thin air, under very weird circumstances. Like ...
#5. Ray Gricar


pennlive

For 20 years, Ray Gricar was the district attorney of Centre County, Pennsylvania. He was a solid man with a tough reputation. On April 15, 2005, Gricar phoned his girlfriend and told her he was driving in the countryside and would be back soon.

He never returned.

But hey, mystery schmystery, right? Dude was a hardass DA, he was bound to make enemies. He was probably making that call under duress from some gang member or something.

Getty
"Tell her I send my love. No, I couldn't do it myself, it's embarrassing."

That's pretty much what the cops must have figured when Gricar's car was found outside an antiques store. Pretty much everything but his cellphone was missing. There were no signs of a struggle, but it must be noted that DAs seldom put up a fight at gunpoint unless they're played by Aaron Eckhart.

A search ensued. Gricar's credit cards and accounts were monitored, with no signs of activity. His laptop was retrieved from a nearby river, too damaged to recover any files.

cnettv
Although thankfully not too damaged to run Windows ME.

So what makes Gricar's disappearance any different from those of countless other guys who could have been killed, or killed themselves? Well ...

It Gets Weirder:

Want to guess what case he was working at the time he disappeared? Here's a hint: It's Pennsylvania, home of Penn State University.

Getty
Hey, what a coincidence! Something big happened there just the other ... year ... oh.

Yep. Investigators found that at the time of his disappearance in 2005, Gricar was working on what would be known as the Penn State sex abuse scandal, which may or may not end up revealing an assistant football coach as a horrible dickbag who deserves all the prison. You know, that scandal that just broke last year. Gricar was working on it six years earlier.

Then he vanished.

Furthermore, investigators found out Gricar had in 1998 mysteriously refused to press charges against the coach despite having more than enough evidence. In 2005, same thing. It was almost like he was stacking evidence for the mother of all judicial beatdowns.

abc27
"You're about to be as screwed as those k-- oh, ****. I probably shouldn't say that."

Many officials have since said that Gricar's disappearance must have something to do with the Penn State scandal, goddamnit. And true enough, even without the whole case-building thing, Gricar had a history of animosity with the university. But here's yet another curve:

Remember that laptop we mentioned, the one that was found in the river? You know, implying that the killer dumped it there? In 2009, someone got around to searching Gricar's home computer. Its search history showed that Gricar had made a whole lot of Web searches for things such as "how to wreck a hard drive," "how to fry a hard drive" and "water damage to a notebook computer." It's as if he was planning to destroy the computer himself, in a way that would make its contents unrecoverable.

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"Haha! Now no one will discover all that incriminating evidence! Wait, ****."

So that would mean he dumped the computer, and then vanished. Why?

It's looking like we'll never know.
#4. Louis Le Prince



mediacultureone

Louis Le Prince was a 19th century inventor who specialized in cameras and was so far ahead of his time that he actually created the world's first true moving picture. With such pioneering technology at his disposal and loads more up his sleeve, Le Prince was well on his way to becoming the most influential Frenchman since Napoleon. So ... why haven't we ever heard of him before?

Because he vanished. From a train.

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"That's odd. Coal almost never screams when you burn it."

In 1890, Le Prince was traveling to America to get new patents and show off his newest wonderful toys. In Dijon, France, he checked his baggage, boarded a train bound for Paris, retired to his cabin and ... that was the last time anyone saw him.

It Gets Weirder:

No passengers saw anything suspicious. There were no noises from Le Prince's cabin. All windows were tightly closed. Yet when the train pulled into Paris, not only was Le Prince not on the train, but his baggage -- kept in a separate compartment -- was missing as well. Both the train and the railroad were searched in their entirety, but neither the man nor the luggage was ever found.

Wikipedia
Which is a shame, as his luggage held the upgrade for this ... trouser press?

Some were certain that Le Prince had performed an elaborate suicide by essentially vanishing into thin air, despite being in the middle of a trip to go show off the work he was so proud of. Others claimed his family had ordered him to disappear due to financial problems, and he took it a bit literally. Others still stretched the family theory even further, claiming his brother had murdered him and somehow managed to magic the corpse-luggage combo away because screw you, logic, we're conspiracy theorizin' here.

Getty
Occam's razor clearly points toward weaponized spontaneous human combustion.

Of course, there is also that other theory.

Le Prince was in heavy competition with an American film pioneer. Said American actively blocked the Frenchman's U.S. patents, while Le Prince returned the favor by having the American's camera designs bleed out to French cameramen before he could get European patents for them.

So, a slightly dickish, insanely competitive American inventor who was keen on cinematography? Hi, Thomas Edison! We've been missing you.

operationmotivation
What's that, Edison? A "murdering train-bound Frenchmen" potion? You scamp!

In a sweet (for Edison) twist of fate, Le Prince's disappearance meant there was no one to hold Tommy back from hogging all the credit for discovering motion pictures. Many investigators noticed this, but there was absolutely no way to connect Edison to the case. And even if he was behind Le Prince's disappearance somehow, that would take us no closer to the grand question: How?

Wikipedia
We actually have film footage, but people are waiting for the 3-D rerelease.

Still, we can't help thinking that if you wanted to come up with someone who could make a dude just flat out disappear, the guy whose actual nickname had the word "Wizard" in it might warrant more than a passing glance.
#3. Jean Spangler




junglekey

Jean Spangler was one of the many denizens of the shadowy underbelly of Los Angeles -- a gorgeous actress who didn't let her limited success stop her from leading as sparkling a life as she could manage. She had just finished filming a bit part in the movie Young Man With a Horn (tee hee!), among numerous other small roles, and it might just have been a matter of time before she'd make it big. Or not. We'll never know, as fate had other plans for her. One October day in 1949, she set off to meet her ex-husband about child support and was never seen again.

latimes
And the creepy headline floodgates opened.

Her purse appeared two days later, untouched and exactly as cashless as it had been (she didn't carry money -- the investigation ruled out robbery). The only thing inside was a cryptic note:

"Kirk, Can't wait any longer. Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work best this way while mother is away."

lucywho
"Cont. in next tweet."

Nobody knew who "Kirk" was. But there was one Kirk she knew that made the case all the more curious ...

It Gets Weirder:

And when we say curious, we mean the case was intriguing enough to become a nationwide sensation. Publicity brought plenty of new tips and leads, each turning out to be completely useless. All clues pointed in different directions, and each path was a dead end. Yes, even the ex-husband she was on her way to see.

And then we have that "Kirk" she had worked with. Specifically, actor Kirk Douglas of Spartacus and Being Michael Douglas' Dad fame.


Winner of Cracked's "Holy Crap Is That Dude Still Alive?" award 2012.

Douglas managed to become entangled in the case by going out of his way to tell everyone that the "Kirk" in the note totally wasn't him, honestly, guys, he barely knew her. Curiously, up until then the police hadn't even really thought of him as a suspect, despite at the time checking out pretty much every Kirk and Scott within their jurisdiction, just in case.

psychotherapyblog
"To prove it, here's a creepy photo of me in my new film The Champion, out this year."

Douglas could, of course, just have been covering his back, as he'd recently starred in a film Spangler also had a role in. And his involvement was just one of many odd little facts that kept popping up. For instance, three weeks before Spangler's disappearance, a shady abortion doctor named, yes, Dr. Kirk had been threatening all his former patients over the phone, and a close associate of his actually disappeared without a trace. But no evidence ever turned up connecting him with Spangler's disappearance.

In yet another lead, two mobsters who had been partying with Spangler had also vanished at around the same time. Any evidence they were involved with her disappearance? Of course not!

lucywho
We suspect this child. Because just look at that ghoulish little face.

In fact, no definitive theory or suspect was ever named, as every day it seemed more like Spangler had just flat out walked right off the earth. Lacking gruesome details, the case slipped through the cracks of public consciousness within months. Soon, it was little more than a shrug and a bucketload of half-assed assumptions of botched abortions and various fatal encounters. Thus faded the memory of Jean Spangler.

You know, except for that one time when a mysterious woman who looked exactly like her was spotted in Texas the following year. However, police never pursued the lead.

lucywho
"Oh yeah, faces like hers are 10 a penny."

    http://www.cracked.com/article_19765_the-5-creepiest-disappearances-that-nobody-can-explain.html

[Vigilante]

15 famous people who mysteriously disappeared
Though many of them are presumed dead, exactly what happened to these high-profile personalities still remains unknown.
By: Matt Hickman

 Fri, Feb 08, 2013 at 04:22 PM
3.2kFacebook 403Twitter 137Pinterest 71Google+
famous missing people
 
The Lost Roanoke Colony. The Dyatlov Pass Incident. The death of Natalie Wood. The Black Dahlia. The Bermuda Triangle. Bigfoot. Did Tony Soprano die at the end of "The Sopranos"?
 
We love a good unsolved mystery, and unexplained disappearances that have managed to baffle historians have also intrigued the general public. Unlike the FBI's decades-old search for the remains of a certain convict/labor organizer from Detroit, we've successfully managed to track down 15 missing people of note, including six particularly intriguing head-scratchers followed by a few more names that you may recognize.
 
In a majority of these cases, the unaccounted-for person was legally declared dead at some point, although their body has never been recovered and their whereabouts are still unknown. Some of these vanishings have been subject to massive search parties, wild speculation, media sensationalism, false accusations, dead ends, wrong turns and the occasional TV miniseries. Some are rather tragic. And in one famous instance, the identity of the AWOL individual was unknown even before he vanished into thin air (by jumping from a plane no less).
 
So cue up the appropriate music and join us as we delve into the realm of the mostly unknown.
 
Henry HudsonWho: Henry Hudson
Missing since: 1611
Where: James Bay, Canada
 
Henry Hudson (a.k.a. the famed British navigator who has a river, bay, straight, town, bridge, etc. named after him) must have been a rather pushy fellow to work for. His own crew — homesick, starving, half-frozen and unwilling to keep exploring after becoming trapped in ice for several months — set a determined Hudson, his teenage son and seven infirm and/or loyal-to-Hudson sailors adrift on a small, open boat in the middle of present-day Hudson Bay. Hudson and the other cast-offs were never seen or heard from again. (So much for talking things out with the HR department, eh?)
 
Not a whole lot of particulars are known about the mutiny that ended Hudson's fourth expedition as only a handful of the Discovery's crew survived the voyage back to England to stand trial. Arrested and charged with the murder of their captain, the mutinous crewmembers ended up escaping any kind of punishment and, to this day, it's generally believed that a marooned Hudson met his maker while aboard the tiny lifeboat. This scenario has been immortalized in a famous John Collier painting (pictured). (A fur-clad, ZZ Top-ish Hudson doesn't appear too thrilled in it.)
 
In his book, "Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson," esteemed history professor Peter Mancall highlights evidence that suggests Hudson could have been violently murdered by his crew and not forced into a small boat with a few others and left to die. The possibility that Hudson managed to survive the mutiny, changed his hair color and relocated to Rio de Janeiro where he lived out the rest of his life as a popular yet enigmatic lounge singer named "Bob Simpson" has been ruled out. And as for Hudson's doomed crew, you never know, they could have very well reemerged nearly 200 years later alongside a few other former disgruntled Hudson sailors – the crew of the Half Moon – as hirsute bowling enthusiasts living in New York's Catskill Mountains

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/15-famous-people-who-mysteriously-disappeared#ixzz3KibmSHcF

[Vigilante]

Who: Amelia Earhart
Missing since: 1937
Where: The Pacific Ocean
 
Pioneering aviatrix, author, teacher, magazine editor, celebrity fashion designer, cigarette spokesperson. In her short 39 years on this planet, Amelia Earhart managed to amass an impressive CV, but it was her mysterious disappearance while attempting a round-the-world flight that continues to intrigue to this day.
 
Although there are numerous theories, no one can be certain what really happened when Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanished over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, while en route to Howland Island in a Lockheed Electra 10E, a disappearance that resulted in the most intensive — and expensive — search effort in American history up to that time. It's commonly believed that the Electra ran out of fuel and Earhart, who was declared dead in absentia in 1939, ditched the plane into the Pacific near Howland Island – the "crash and sink theory" — although there's been no shortage of wild myths and legends surrounding Earhart's disappearance. Most recently, researchers embarked on a $2.2 million expedition to prove that Earhart crashed her plane on the tiny island of Nikumaoro.
 
Our favorite Earhart disappearance legend, other than the one where she's employed to spy on the Japanese by F.D.R., has to be the one involving the iconic pilot pulling an Abbie Hoffman — a ludicrous scenario in which Earhart secretly completed the round-the-world flight but, tired of all the fame and fortune, decided to move to Monroe Township, N.J., and change her name to Irene Craigmile Bolam. Author Joe Klaas ran with this theory in his 1970 book, "Amelia Earhart Lives," and, as a result, the real Irene Craigmile Bolam was none too pleased. Bolam, a banker and amateur pilot, filed a $1.5 lawsuit and publisher McGraw-Hill quickly pulled Klaas' book after it was published.

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/15-famous-people-who-mysteriously-disappeared#ixzz3Kic36hBH

[Vigilante]

Who: Harold Holt
Missing since: 1967
Where: Point Nepean, Victoria, Australia
 
It's not every day that a prime minister vanishes into the sea. However, just that happened on Dec. 17, 1967, when the 17th prime minister of Australia, Harold Holt, decided to go for a swim at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria. Following two days of exhaustive search efforts, the authorities declared that 59-year-old Holt, a skilled swimmer and longtime member of Parliament who had served as prime minister for less than two years, was presumed dead. His body was never recovered and it wasn't until 2005 that a coroner ruled the cause of death to be accidental drowning — he was either swept out to sea or eaten by shark — in a risky location known for strong rip currents. At the time of his disappearance, Holt was taking pain meds for a shoulder injury.
 
Not long after Holt went missing, the rumor mill started working overtime and speculation as to what exactly happened that fateful morning at Cheviot Beach continues to this day. Among the more wild myths, many fueled by the fact that Holt's disappearance was not followed by a formal inquiry and that has body was not found: he was abducted by a UFO; he faked his own death so that he could decamp with his mistress, Marjorie Gillespie; and, most famously, he deliberately swam out to sea where he was plucked from the water by a waiting Chinese submarine and whisked off to China. This ridiculous theory, in which Holt was revealed to be a communist and longtime secret agent for the People's Republic of China, surfaced in British journalist Anthony Grey's controversial 1983 book, "The Prime Minister Was a Spy." To this, Holt's wife Zara responded: "Harry? Chinese submarine? He didn't even like Chinese cooking."
 
Suicide is another theory tied to Holt's disappearance and was suggested in the 2007 documentary "Who Killed Harold Holt?" Several sources close to the late prime minister have adamantly denied that he suffered from bouts of depression or a mental illness.
 
Whatever the case, Holt will forever be remembered by a wickedly ironic recreation complex in the suburbs of Melbourne, the Harold Holt Swim Centre, and by the rhyming slang expression "do a Harry Holt." Translation: to bolt — to disappear abruptly.

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/15-famous-people-who-mysteriously-disappeared#ixzz3KicDlIZw

[Vigilante]

Who: Jimmy Hoffa
Missing since: 1975
Where: Bloomfield Township, Mich.
 
By now, it's been well established that Teamsters kingpin Jimmy Hoffa was offed by the mob after vanishing from the parking lot of a restaurant in suburban Detroit on July 30, 1975. But for decades, even after the super-corrupt union leader was declared dead in absentia a full eight years later, the question remains: what in the hell did they do with his body?
 
Hoffa's disappearance has yielded a delightfully sordid assortment of lore, lies and potential leads. Some have been pursed by the FBI, some have not, while most pertain to the whereabouts of his remains. Just a taste: entombed under Section 107 at the now-demolished Giants Stadium in New Jersey; hidden in the concrete foundation of Detroit's Renaissance Center; stashed under a horse barn; interred beneath the driveway of a suburban home; tossed into a swamp in Florida; buried under a backyard swimming pool in Bloomfield Hills. Other scenarios have seen Hoffa's body sent through a meat grinder, weighted down in a river, disintegrated at a fat-rendering plant, crushed in a car compactor, buried in a gravel pit, and, last but not least, stuffed into an oil drum and deposited at a toxic waste dump in New Jersey.
 
The latest entrant in the always-riveting game of Where in the World Is Jimmy Hoffa's Body? According to one source, he's interred in a shallow grave on a vacant lot in Oakland County, Mich., about 20 miles north of the restaurant where he was last seen alive. Apparently, this location was intended as a temporary dumping ground before Hoffa's body was transferred to a more relocation. That plan, however, fell through.
 
This revelation comes from Tony Zerilli, a reputed Detroit mob boss who was incarcerated at the time of Hoffa's disappearance. Zerilli told New York's NBC 4 News during a January 2013 interview: "I'm as certain as I could possibly be. If I had money, I'd like to bet a big sum of money that he's buried (there)." He adds: "I'd like to just prove to everybody that I'm not crazy." And on the topic of money and crazy, Zerilli is promoting his new, self-published book titled "Hoffa Found." As of publication, Hoffa's remains remain at large.
 

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/15-famous-people-who-mysteriously-disappeared#ixzz3KicOJyZI

[Vigilante]

Who: D.B. Cooper
Missing since: 1971
Where: Southwestern Washington state
 
D.B. who? Exactly.
 
Although the saga of a brazen air pirate known to the media as D.B. Cooper (he purchased his ticket under the alias of "Dan Cooper") may not be familiar to most young'ns, the aviation industry, the residents of Ariel, Wash. and — last but not least — the FBI, will never forget Thanksgiving Eve 1971 when a nattily attired gentleman skyjacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 bound for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Shortly after the 30-minute flight departed from Portland, Ore., Cooper disclosed to a flight attendant that he was in possession of explosives and demanded $200,000, four parachutes and a refueling truck upon landing at Sea-Tac.
 
Once the plane landed at Sea-Tac after circling for two hours while authorities made preparations, the ransom payout and parachutes were handed over and Cooper released Flight 305's passengers. The refueling process began, at which point Cooper revealed to the plane's pilot and a handful of other crew members his desired destination: Mexico City. About 30 minutes after the flight departed at 7:40 p.m., Cooper, wearing a parachute and in possession of the ransom money, leapt from the plane's aft airstair at 10,000 feet and into the night over southwestern Washington, near Mount St. Helens.
 
To this day, the identity of D.B. Cooper remains a mystery, and it's unclear if he even survived the jump. Still, in an ongoing effort to retire the nation's only unsolved skyjacking, the FBI has processed thousands of possible suspects including copycat hijacker Richard McCoy Jr., Seattle-based flight attendant Kenneth Christiansen and, most recently, a deceased engineering surveyor from Oregon named Lynn Doyle Cooper.
 
Numerous books, films, songs and TV show plotlines have been inspired by the legend of D.B. Cooper. Heck, he's been name-checked on everything from "30 Rock" to "Breaking Bad." And as you may have guessed, David Lynch named cherry pie-loving, black coffee-swilling FBI agent Dale Bartholomew Cooper from "Twin Peaks" after him. In August 2013, the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma plans to open an exhibit dedicated to the 1971 skyjacking. It's unclear if the man of the hour has any plans to attend.

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/15-famous-people-who-mysteriously-disappeared#ixzz3KicWaqSj

[Vigilante]

Who: Azaria Chamberlain
Missing since: 1980
Where: Northern Territory, Australia
 
"G'day Mate."
"Let's throw another a shrimp on the barbie."
"That's not a knife. This is a knife."
"A dingo ate my baby!"
 
This is just a small sampling of (mostly unfortunate) phrases associated with the great country of Australia that have been embedded into the pop culture lexicon. And as for that last one, it really did happen — and Paul Hogan had nothing to do with it.
 
The 1980 disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain remains one of the most infamous, if not the most infamous, murder cases in Aussie history. And it wasn't until 2012 — 32 years, a super-sensational trial, several dramatic coronial inquests, demoralizing public scrutiny and a "Seinfeld" punchline later — that Azaria's beleaguered parents found closure when a coroner ruled that their 9-week-old daughter had indeed been snatched from an outback campsite near Uluru by a marauding wild dog.
 
Following Azaria's disappearance, her mother, Lindy Chamberlain, was tried and convicted for the murder of her infant daughter and sentenced to life in prison. She served three years before being released after a piece of Azaria's clothing was found, totally by chance, in a dingo's lair near the campsite. Two years later, the convictions against Lindy and her husband Michael were overturned and all charges were dropped. However, it wasn't until a fourth inquest in 2012 that an amended death certificate — a death certificate that legally backed the Chamberlains' initial claim that their daughter was taken from her tent by a dingo during the night and carried off into the wilderness and killed — for Azaria was finally issued.
 
And as for that famous phrase, it's actually a misquote from the 1988 Meryl Streep film, "A Cry in the Dark" in which Streep, playing Lindy Chamberlain, cries: "The dingo took my baby!"
 
Other notable people who disappeared:
 
Dorothy Arnold: Manhattan socialite and heiress. Disappeared December 1910 in New York City at the age of 25.

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/15-famous-people-who-mysteriously-disappeared#ixzz3KiciqFuQ

[Vigilante]

Jean Spangler: Actress and dancer. Disappeared October 1949, in Los Angeles at the age of 26.
 
Frank Morris
Frank Morris (pictured): Criminal. Disappeared June 1962, from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary along with John and Clarence Anglin at the age of 36.
 
Jim Thompson: American businessman. Disappeared March 1967 from the Cameron Highlands, Malaysia, at the age of 61.
 
Sean Flynn: Freelance photojournalist and son of actor Errol Flynn. Disappeared April 1970 in Cambodia at the age of 28.
 
Oscar Zeta Acosta: Attorney, activist and traveling companion of Hunter S. Thompson. Disappeared 1974 in Mexico at the age of 39.
 
Richey Edwards: Guitarist, Manic Street Preachers. Disappeared February 1995 in London at the age of 27.
 
Bison Dele: Retired professional basketball player for the Detroit Pistons. Disappeared July 2002 in Tahiti at the age of 32.

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/15-famous-people-who-mysteriously-disappeared#ixzz3KicrUgVl

[Vigilante]

List of people who disappeared mysteriously


This is a list of people who disappeared mysteriously, and whose current whereabouts are unknown or whose deaths are not substantiated, as well as a few cases of people whose disappearance was notable and remained mysterious for a long time, but was eventually explained.


Before 1800

    71 BC – Although he was presumed killed in battle during the Third Servile War, the body of the rebel slave Spartacus was never found and his fate remains unknown.[1]
    53 BC – Ambiorix was, together with Catuvolcus, prince of the Eburones, leader of a Belgic tribe of northeastern Gaul (Gallia Belgica), where modern Belgium is located. According to the writer Florus (iii.10., Ambiorix and his men managed to cross the Rhine and disappeared without a trace.
    108-164 – Legio IX Hispana (Ninth Spanish Legion) was a legion said to have disappeared in Britain during the Roman conquest of Britain, although archaeology has shown the legion was subsequently transferred to mainland Europe.[2] Many references to the legion have been made in subsequent works of fiction.[3]
    378 – Roman Emperor Valens was defeated by the Goths at the Battle of Adrianople (modern Edirne, Turkey). The body of Valens was never found.
    834 (circa) – Muhammad ibn Qasim (al-Alawi) led a rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate but was defeated and detained. He was able to flee but was never heard from again.
    1021 – Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (36), sixth Fatimid caliph and 16th Ismaili imam, rode his donkey to the Muqattam hills outside Cairo for one of his regular nocturnal meditation outings and failed to return. A search found only the donkey and his bloodstained garments.[4]
    1071 – Hereward the Wake was a formerly exiled Anglo-Danish minor noble rebel who led a huge revolt in the marshy region of Ely in England against the rule of William the Conqueror. Eventually betrayed by fearful local monks who led the Norman troops through secret trackways, many rebels were mutilated or executed, but Hereward escaped, never to be heard of again.
    1203 – Arthur, Duke of Brittany, an heir to the throne of England. He was supported by French nobility who did not want John of England as overlord. On 31 July 1202, while besieging his grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine, Arthur was surprised and captured by John's barons and imprisoned at Falaise in Normandy. The following year, Arthur was transferred to Rouen and then vanished mysteriously in April 1203.
    1291 (circa) – Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi, Genoese sailors and explorers lost while attempting the first oceanic journey from Europe to Asia.[5]
    1412 – Owain Glyndŵr, the last native Welsh person to hold the title Prince of Wales, instigated the Welsh Revolt against the rule of Henry IV of England in 1400. Although initially successful, the uprising was eventually put down, but Glyndŵr disappeared and was never captured, betrayed, or tempted by royal pardons.[6]
    1483 – The Princes in the Tower, Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, first duke of York (9), sons of King Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville, were placed in the Tower of London (which at that time served as a fortress and a royal palace as well as a prison) by their uncle Richard III of England.[7] Neither was ever seen in public again and their fate remains unknown.
    1499 – John Cabot, Italian explorer, disappeared along with his five ships during an expedition to find a western route from Europe to Asia.[8]
    1501 – Gaspar Corte-Real, Portuguese explorer, disappeared on an expedition to discover the Northwest Passage from Europe to Asia. Two of his ships returned to Lisbon, but the third, with Gaspar on board, was lost and never heard from again.[9]
    1502 – Miguel Corte-Real, Portuguese explorer, disappeared while searching for his brother Gaspar. Like his brother, he took three ships, and as with his brother, the ship with Miguel on board was lost and never heard from again.[10]
    1526 – Francisco de Hoces, Spanish sailor, was commander of the San Lesmes, one of the seven ships of the Loaísa Expedition under García Jofre de Loaísa. It has been speculated that San Lesmes, last seen in the Pacific in late May, may have reached Easter Island or any of the Polynesian archipelagos, or even New Zealand.[11][12]
    1546 – Francisco de Orellana, Spanish explorer and conquistador, disappeared while exploring the Amazon in November. His fate remains a mystery.
    1578 – Sebastian of Portugal, Portuguese King, whose body was never found after the Battle of Alcácer Quibir; many Portuguese came to believe that Sebastian had survived the battle and would return to claim his throne. The belief arose that Sebastian could return at any moment to help Portugal in its darkest hour.
    1590 – The Roanoke colonists disappeared, becoming known as The Lost Colony, in 18 August 1590, when their settlement was found abandoned.[13]
    1611 – Henry Hudson was an English explorer and seafarer. He discovered New York Harbor for the Dutch East India Company. In 1611, mutineers set him, his son, and six others adrift in a small boat in what is now Hudson Bay. They were never seen again.
    1628 - David Thompson, Founder of New Hampshire in 1623. He moved his family to an island in Boston Harbor (today called Thompson Island in his honor) in 1626, becoming the first European settlers of Boston, Massachusetts. He disappeared in 1628 and was never heard from again. Some historians theorize he was the victim of foul play. Others suggest he accidentally drowned in Boston Harbor.
    1652 – Maurice von der Pfalz (31), brother of Prince Rupert of the Rhine. During the English Civil War, Rupert's fleet was destroyed in a terrible storm south of Puerto Rico. All ships except two were lost, among them Prince Maurice's ship Defiance. Neither he nor the ship was ever found.
    1696 – Henry Every was an English pirate who vanished after perpetrating one of the most profitable pirate raids in history; despite a worldwide manhunt and an enormous bounty on his head, Every was never heard from again.
    1788 – Aimée du Buc de Rivéry, daughter of a wealthy plantation owner on the French island of Martinique. After being sent to a convent school in France, she was returning home in July or August 1788 when the ship she was on vanished at sea. It is thought that the ship was attacked and taken by Barbary pirates. It has been suggested that she was enslaved and eventually sent to Istanbul as a gift to the Ottoman sultan by the Bey of Algiers. It is unconfirmed if she was the same person as Naksh-i-Dil Haseki, consort of the sultan.
    1788 – The French expedition of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse disappeared after a last stop off Botany Bay (near what is now Sydney, Australia). The wrecks of the expedition's two ships were subsequently discovered near Vanikoro, where the survivors may have set up a camp.

[Vigilante]

1800 to 1899

    1803 – George Bass (32), British explorer of Australia, set sail from Sydney for South America and was never heard from again.[14]
    1809 – Benjamin Bathurst (25), British diplomat, disappeared from an inn in Perleberg.
    1812 – Theodosia Burr Alston (29), daughter of U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr and sometimes called the most educated American woman of her day, sailed from Georgetown, South Carolina, aboard the Patriot, which was never seen again.
    1826 – William Morgan (52), resident of Batavia, New York, disappeared just before his book critical of Freemasonry was published.
    1829 – John Lansing, Jr. (75), American politician, left his Manhattan hotel to mail a letter at a New York City dock and was never seen again.
    1843 – Sequoyah (ca. 73), creator of Cherokee syllabary, disappeared during a trip to Mexico to locate isolated tribes of Cherokees who had moved there during the time of Indian Removal in the U.S. His body has never been found, although at least three different burial sites have been reported.
    1845 – Franklin's lost expedition, with more than 100 seamen, made last contact with a whaling ship before entering Victoria Strait in search of the Northwest Passage. Although the remains of some individuals were later discovered, the majority of corpses were never found, and the exact reason for their demise remains a mystery.
    1848 – Khachatur Abovian (38), Armenian writer and national public figure of the early 19th century, credited as creator of modern Armenian literature, left his house early one morning and was never heard from again.
    1848 – Ludwig Leichhardt (34), Prussian explorer and naturalist, disappeared during his third major expedition to explore parts of northern and central Australia. He was last seen on 3 April at McPherson's Station on the Darling Downs, en route from the Condamine River to the Swan River. His fate after moving inland, although investigated by many, remains a mystery.
    1849 – Sándor Petőfi (26), Hungarian poet and liberal revolutionary, one of the key figures of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Petőfi was last seen in Transylvania during the Battle of Segesvár. Although there are many different theories and rumours about his supposed death or deportation to Siberia, neither his body nor genuine records to support the theories were ever found.
    1857 - Solomon Northup (48-49?), American author most notable for his book Twelve Years a Slave, in which he details his kidnapping and subsequent sale into slavery. Northup did not return to his family from his book-promoting tour. No contemporary evidence documents Northup after 1857. Historians are divided on whether Northup was kidnapped once again and sold back into slavery or simply died of natural causes.
    1865 – Captain James William Boyd (43), a Confederate States of America military officer, vanished after his release as a prisoner of war in February 1865, as he failed to show up for a rendezvous with his son to go to Mexico at the end of the American Civil War. Boyd’s disappearance was at the center of a conspiracy theory that he was killed in the place of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.[15]
    1872 – Captain Benjamin Briggs (37), his wife Sarah Elizabeth (31), their daughter Sophia Matilda (2), and all seven crew members were missing when the Mary Celeste was found adrift in choppy seas some 400 miles (640 km) east of the Azores. Their unexplained disappearances are at the core of "one of the most durable mysteries in nautical history".[16]
    1880s – William Cantelo, inventor of an early machine gun, never returned to his Southampton home after one of his frequent and lengthy sales trips. His sons speculated years later that he may have re-emerged as Hiram Maxim, another machine-gun pioneer, whom he strongly resembled.[17]
    1880 – Lamont Young, a government geologist inspecting new goldfields on behalf of the New South Wales Mines Department, together with his assistant, Max Schneider, boat owner Thomas Towers, and two other men all disappeared near Bermagui, New South Wales, Australia.[18] The location where the abandoned wreck of their boat was discovered was subsequently named Mystery Bay.[19]
    1888 – Boston Corbett (56), the Union Army soldier who fatally shot John Wilkes Booth, later went insane and was incarcerated in a mental asylum in 1887. He escaped from the facility a year later and was never seen again, though some historians suspect that he may have perished in the Great Hinckley Fire of September 1, 1894.[20][21]
    1890 – Louis Le Prince (48), motion picture pioneer, disappeared after boarding a Paris-bound train at Dijon, France.
    1896 – Albert Jennings Fountain (57) and his son Henry ( disappeared near Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States.

[Vigilante]

1900s

    1900 – Three lighthouse keepers working on the Flannan Isles (off the northwestern coast of Scotland) disappeared in a mystery commemorated in the ballad Flannan Isle and the opera The Lighthouse.
    1909 – Joshua Slocum (65), Canadian-American sailor and first man to sail single-handedly around the world (1895–1898), disappeared after setting sail from Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard alone, bound for South America, aboard the same 36 ft 9 in (11.20 m) sloop Spray he had used for his circumnavigation.[22]

1910s

    1910 – Dorothy Arnold (25), Manhattan socialite and perfume heiress, vanished after buying a book in New York City. She intended to walk through Central Park but was never seen again.[23]
    1912 – Bobby Dunbar (4) disappeared during a fishing trip in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana. A child found in the custody of William Cantwell Walters of Mississippi some eight months later was ruled to be Bobby Dunbar by a court-appointed arbiter, and Walters was found guilty of kidnapping. The child grew up as Bobby Dunbar, had four children of his own, and died in 1966. In 2004, DNA tests proved that the child found was not related to Bobby Dunbar's brother, Alonzo.[24]
    1914 – Ambrose Bierce (71), American writer known for "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and The Devil's Dictionary, was last heard from in a letter of December 1913 bearing a Chihuahua postmark to his secretary and companion, Carrie Christiansen. Although alternative theories are plentiful,[25] he almost certainly perished in war-torn Mexico, possibly at the Battle of Ojinaga on 10 February,[26] or perhaps was executed as a spy in the municipal cemetery of Sierra Mojada, Coahuila, where a gravestone bearing his name was erected in 2004.[27]
    1914 – F. Lewis Clark (52), businessman from the U.S. state of Idaho, disappeared while visiting Santa Barbara, California.
    1914 – František Gellner (33), Czech poet, was recruited to the Austro-Hungarian Army at the beginning of World War I and went to Galicia, where he disappeared.[28][29]
    1914 – Alejandro Bello Silva (27), a lieutenant in the Chilean Army, disappeared during a qualifying exam flight over central Chile. Although search efforts commenced within hours, no trace was ever found. His disappearance is reflected in a Chilean set phrase, "more lost than Lieutenant Bello", applied to people who stray off course or disappear en route.
    1916 – Béla Kiss (39), Hungarian serial killer who murdered 24 young women prior to his enrollment in the Austro-Hungarian Army in the First World War. Upon the discovery of his crimes, he was traced to a Serbian military hospital but escaped a few days before investigators arrived. Although there were several reported sightings of the killer (notably in New York in 1932), his true fate remains a mystery.
    1917 - The crew of the Zebrina disappeared during a short trip across the English Channel to France.[30]
    1918 – USS Cyclops, a collier, left Barbados on March 4 and was lost with 309 crew and passengers en route to Baltimore, Maryland.
    1918 – Arthur Cravan (31), French proto-dadaist writer and art critic, disappeared near Salina Cruz, Mexico; he most likely drowned.[citation needed]
    1919 – Mansell Richard James (25), a Canadian flying ace, was last seen in western Massachusetts on 2 June, just days after a record-setting flight between Atlantic City and Boston.[31]
    1919 – Ambrose Small (56), Canadian millionaire, disappeared from his office. He was last seen at 5:30 pm on December 2, 1919, at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario.[32]

[Vigilante]

1920s

    1920 – Victor Grayson (39), British socialist politician, received a phone call and told his friends that he had to go to the Queen's Hotel in Leicester Square and would be back shortly. He was last seen entering a house owned by Maundy Gregory.
    1921 – The captain and crew of the Carroll A. Deering, which was found beached near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
    1921 – Charles Whittlesey (37), American soldier and Medal of Honor recipient who led the "Lost Battalion" in World War I. He was last seen on the evening of November 26, 1921, on a passenger ship bound from New York City to Havana, and is presumed to have committed suicide by jumping overboard.
    1924 – Andrew Irvine (22), English mountaineer who took part in British Mount Everest Expedition 1924. He and his climbing partner George Mallory disappeared somewhere high on the mountain's northeast ridge. Though Mallory's body was found in 1999, the search for Irvine's continues to this day.
    1925 – Percy Fawcett (58), British archaeologist and explorer, together with his eldest son, Jack, and friend Raleigh Rimmell, was last seen travelling into the jungle of Mato Grosso in Brazil to search for a hidden city called the Lost City of Z. Several unconfirmed sightings and many conflicting reports and theories explaining their disappearance followed, but despite the loss of over 100 lives in more than a dozen follow-up expeditions and the recovery of some of Fawcett's belongings, their fate remains a mystery.[33]
    1925 – Frederick McDonald, Australian politician, set off from Martin Place, Sydney, for a meeting with Jack Lang two blocks away but failed to arrive. He was possibly murdered by his political rival Thomas Ley. In 1947, Ley was convicted at the Old Bailey of "the chalkpit murder" of a barman in England and sentenced to hang but was then declared insane and sent to Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital, where he died of a cerebral hemorrhage two months later.[34]
    1926 – Agatha Christie, the British crime writer, famously disappeared, and although she was located 10 days later in a Yorkshire health spa, the actual reason for her disappearance remains a mystery.[35]
    1927 – Charles Nungesser (45), French aviator, and his navigator, François Coli (45), disappeared while attempting a flight from Paris to New York. They are presumed to have crashed into the Atlantic, or possibly in Newfoundland or Maine, but no wreckage that could be confirmed to be from their biplane, The White Bird, was ever found.
    1928 – Walter Collins (9) disappeared from his Los Angeles home.[36] His disappearance and the attempt by the Los Angeles police department to convince his mother that a different boy was her son formed the basis of the 2008 film Changeling.
    1928 – Glen and Bessie Hyde (29 & 22), American newlyweds, disappeared while attempting to raft the Colorado River rapids of the Grand Canyon.
    1928 – Roald Amundsen, Norwegian Arctic explorer and the first man to reach the South Pole, disappeared on a search-and-rescue mission in the Arctic.
    1928 – The Danish sailtraining vessel København ("Copenhagen") vanished en route from Buenos Aires to Australia sometime between December 1928 and January 1929 with the loss of 14 crew and 45 cadets, some of whom were as young as 16 years old.

[Vigilante]

1930s

    1930 – Joseph Force Crater (41), an associate justice of the New York Supreme Court, was last seen on August 6 after a meal at a restaurant. Judge Crater was never seen or heard from again. (His mistress, Sally Lou Ritz (22), was falsely said to have disappeared a few weeks later, but was interviewed by police as late as July 1937.[37]) Crater's disappearance, which prompted one of the most sensational manhunts of the 20th century,[38] was the subject of widespread media attention and a grand jury investigation. Crater was declared legally dead in 1939 and his missing persons file was officially closed in 1979; however, cold case squad detectives have investigated new leads as recently as 2005.[39] To "pull a Crater" became slang for a person vanishing.[40]
    1933 - C. B. Johnston (c. 38), American college athlete and coach.[41]
    1934 – Wallace Fard Muhammad (43), founder of the Nation of Islam, left Detroit and was never heard from again.[42]
    1934 – Everett Ruess (20), a young American artist, disappeared while travelling through the deserts of Utah.
    1935 – Charles Kingsford Smith (38), Australian pioneer aviator, and co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge disappeared during an overnight flight from Allahabad, India, to Singapore while attempting to break the England-Australia speed record. Eighteen months later, Burmese fishermen found an undercarriage leg and wheel (with its tire still inflated) on the shoreline of Aye Island in the Andaman Sea, 3 km (2 mi) off the southeast coastline of Burma, which Lockheed confirmed to be from their Lockheed Altair, the Lady Southern Cross. Botanists who examined the weeds clinging to it estimated that the aircraft itself lies not far from the island at a depth of approximately 15 fathoms (90 ft; 27 m).[43] A filmmaker claimed to have located Lady Southern Cross on the seabed in February 2009.[44]
    1937 – Amelia Earhart (39), famous American aviatrix; she was the first woman to try a circumnavigational flight of the globe. During the attempt she and her navigator, Fred Noonan (44), disappeared over the central Pacific in the vicinity of Howland Island, July 2.
    1937 – Sigizmund Levanevsky (35), famous Soviet aviator, together with his crew of five and their Bolkhovitinov DB-A aircraft, disappeared in the vicinity of the North Pole after reporting loss of power from one of their four Mikulin AM-34 engines while attempting to prove a transpolar route between Asia and North America commercially viable.[45]
    1937 – Juliet Stuart Poyntz (50), was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), and a founding member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). After resigning from active work with the Party, she disappeared in 1937, never to be seen again. She is believed by several sources to have been abducted and murdered by a Soviet NKVD assassination squad.
    1937 – Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe (24 & 28) escaped from Alcatraz prison in the U.S. state of California and disappeared. Authorities presumed that they drowned, but no bodies were ever recovered.
    1938 – Ettore Majorana (31), Italian physicist, disappeared during a boat trip from Naples to Palermo.
    1938 – Andrew Carnegie Whitfield (28), nephew of U.S. steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, disappeared during a solo morning flight in a small light aircraft from Roosevelt Field, New York, on Long Island to an airfield at Brentwood, approximately 22 miles away.
    1938 – Willie McLean (34), an American soccer player who played in the 1934 World Cup. His family received occasional Mother's Day cards for several years afterwards, purportedly from McLean.
    1939 – Barbara Newhall Follett (25) was an American child prodigy novelist. Her first novel, The House Without Windows, was published in 1927 when she was thirteen years old. Her next novel, The Voyage of the Norman D., received critical acclaim when she was fourteen. In 1939, aged 25, she became depressed with her marriage and walked out of her apartment with just thirty dollars. She was never seen again.[46]
    1939 – Lloyd L. Gaines (28) was the central figure in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada an early success for the U.S. civil rights movement. One evening, he left his Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity house in Chicago, having told the housekeeper he was going to buy some stamps, and was never seen or heard from again. Some accounts suggest he was living in New York or Mexico City in the late 1940s.[47]
    1939 – Richard Halliburton, missing at sea since March 1939 after trying to sail Sea Dragon (a gaudily decorated, 75-foot Chinese junk) across the Pacific Ocean. In 1945, some wreckage identified as a rudder and believed to belong to the Sea Dragon washed ashore in California.

[Vigilante]

1940s
1941

    Thomas C. Latimore, U.S. Navy captain and former Governor of American Samoa, never returned from a hike in the Aiea Mountains of Hawaii during July 1941. No body has ever been found.

1944

    Glenn Miller (40), the popular American jazz musician and bandleader, was en route from England to France on December 15, 1944, to play for troops in recently liberated Paris when the single–engined Noorduyn Norseman aircraft in which he was a passenger disappeared over the English Channel. The plane and those on board have never been located. As a U.S. military officer who vanished in wartime, Miller continues to be listed officially as missing in action.
    Rocco Perri (born 30 December 1887, date of death unknown, last seen alive 23 April 1944) was an organized crime figure in Ontario, Canada, in the early 20th century.
    Szilveszter Matuska, Hungarian mass-murderer known as "The Train Killer", escaped from jail in 1944 and was never recaptured.
    Herschel Grynszpan (22), Jewish exile from Germany whose 1938 assassination of diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris was the trigger for Kristallnacht. For various reasons, largely legal delays, a planned trial was never held in either France or (after 1940) Germany, while Grynszpan was held in various prisons and concentration camps. Adolf Eichmann testified at his 1961 trial in Jerusalem that he had interrogated Grynszpan in Magdeburg in either late 1943 or early 1944; after that there is no record of his whereabouts or ultimate fate. The West German government had him declared legally dead in 1960.[48]
    Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (44), French author and aviator, last seen when flying a reconnaissance mission out of Corsica in preparation for the Allied invasion of Southern France. The remains of his aircraft, found at sea off Marseille, would be identified in 2004.

1945

    Heinrich Müller (45), Nazi Gestapo chief, last confirmed sighting in the Führerbunker on the evening of May 1, 1945. His CIA file and related documents state that while the record is "...inconclusive on Müller's ultimate fate... [he] most likely died in Berlin in early May 1945."[49]
    Raoul Wallenberg (32), Swedish diplomat credited with saving the lives of at least 20,000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, was arrested on espionage charges in Budapest following the arrival of the Soviet army. His subsequent fate remains a mystery despite hundreds of purported sightings in Soviet prisons, some as recent as the 1980s. In 2001, after 10 years of research, a Swedish-Russian panel concluded that Wallenberg probably died or was executed in Soviet custody on July 17, 1947, but to date no hard evidence has been found to confirm this.[50] In 2010, evidence from Russian archives surfaced suggesting he was alive after the presumed execution date.[51]
    Constanze Manziarly (25), cook and dietitian to Adolf Hitler, disappeared while escaping Berlin following the Soviet invasion and fall of Nazi Germany. She was believed to have been shot by Soviet soldiers in an U-Bahn subway tunnel.[52]
    Alfred Partikel (57), German painter of East Prussian origin, vanished while picking mushrooms in the woods near the artist's colony of Ahrenshoop, Darß, Western Pomerania. His remains have never been found.
    Supriyadi (22) was an Indonesian national hero. On 6 October 1945, in a government decree issued by the newly independent Indonesia, Supriyadi was named Minister for Public Security in the first cabinet. However, he failed to appear and was replaced on 20 October by ad interim minister Muhammad Soeljoadikusuma. To this day his fate remains unknown.[53][54]
    Genrikh Lyushkov (45), high-level Soviet defector and former Far East NKVD chief. A participant in the Great Purge, he fled to avoid what he believed would be arrest and execution into the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. After his defection, he became a military consultant and analyst for the Imperial Japanese Army. He disappeared during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and was reported as being last seen in a crowded train station in Dairen (Dalian). Several theories exist about his fate, but he is presumed to have died in 1945, killed either by Soviet or Japanese forces.[55]

1946

    Paula Jean Welden (18), Bennington College sophomore, disappeared while walking on the Long Trail near Glastenbury Mountain, Vermont, USA.[56][57]

1947

    In the aftermath of the 1947 Glazier–Higgins–Woodward tornadoes, 4-year-old Joan Gay Croft and her sister Jerri were among refugees taking shelter in a basement hallway of the Woodward hospital. As officials sent the injured to different hospitals in the area, two men took Joan away, saying they were taking her to Oklahoma City. She was never seen again. Over the years, several women have come forth saying they suspect they might be Joan. None of their claims have been verified.[58][59]

1948

    Sir Arthur Coningham (53), retired RAF Air Marshal, disappeared when Avro Tudor IV G-AHNP Star Tiger went missing over the western Atlantic.[60] He was one of 25 passengers, together with six crewmen, who were lost when the flight from Santa Maria Airport in the Azores failed to reach its destination of Kindley Field, Bermuda.[61] Star Tiger's sister aircraft G-AGRE Star Ariel also disappeared over the western Atlantic, with the loss of all seven crewmen and 13 passengers, while flying from Bermuda to Kingston Airport, Jamaica, the following year.[62]

1949

    Jean Spangler (26), American dancer, model and bit-part actress, disappeared in October 1949 from Los Angeles, California. Last seen by her sister-in-law before going to meet her ex-husband. Two days later her purse was found near the entrance gate to Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

[Vigilante]

1950s

    1950 – Richard Colvin Cox (20), second-year military cadet, disappeared from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
    1951 - Vincent Mangano (63), crime boss of the future Gambino crime family, disappeared on the same day that his brother, Philip Mangano, was found murdered. He is believed to have been killed on the orders of Albert Anastasia as part of a coup.
    1951 - Beverly Potts (10), American schoolgirl from Cleveland, Ohio, disappeared while walking home from an entertainment event at Halloran Park. She is believed by police to have been abducted and murdered, possibly by someone she knew and trusted as she was shy and fearful of strangers.
    1953 – First Lieutenant Felix Moncla (27), pilot, and Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson (22), radar operator, disappeared when their United States Air Force F-89 Scorpion was scrambled from Kincheloe Air Force Base and subsequently went missing over Lake Superior while intercepting an unknown aircraft in Canadian airspace close to the Canada–United States border. The USAF claimed the second aircraft was Royal Canadian Air Force C-47 Dakota VC-912, crossing Northern Lake Superior from west to east at 7,000 feet en route from Winnipeg to Sudbury, Canada.[63] The RCAF stated it had no record of such an incident [64] Some ufologists have associated the disappearance with alleged "UFO" activity and refer to it as the "Kinross Incident".[65]
    1953 – Henry Borynski, a Polish Catholic priest and outspoken Anti-Communist disappeared in Bradford, Yorkshire.[66]
    1955 – The crew and passengers of the 69-foot merchant vessel Joyita, which disappeared in the South Pacific; the Joyita was found five weeks later, partially submerged and listing heavily, with no one on board.
    1955 – Weldon Kees (41), U.S. poet, disappeared without leaving a note but had talked about packing up and moving to Mexico. His Plymouth Savoy was found on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge with the keys in the ignition.
    1955 – Curtis Chillingworth (58), was a Florida attorney and state judge who disappeared from his Manalapan, Florida home, and was later murdered along with his wife, Marjorie Chillingworth (56).
    1956 – Three USAF airmen, commander Captain Robert H. Hodgin (31), observer Captain Gordon M. Insley (32), and pilot 2nd Lt. Ronald L. Kurtz (22), disappeared when their B-47 Stratojet was lost after failing to make contact with an aerial refueling tanker at 14,000 ft over the Mediterranean.[67]
    1956 – Lionel "Buster" Crabb (46), retired British Royal Navy frogman, disappeared during an MI6 mission to spy on the Soviet Sverdlov class cruiser Ordzhonikidze in Portsmouth Harbour. The coroner concluded that a body (missing its head and hands) in a frogman suit found floating in Chichester Harbour the following year was Crabb's, but no positive identification was ever made nor cause of death determined.[68]
    1956 – Gunnel Gummeson (26), Swedish teacher, disappeared with her American boyfriend, Peter Winant, travelling in Afghanistan.
    1957 – Moira McCall Anderson (11) disappeared while on an errand for her grandmother in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland. The Moira Anderson Foundation was established in memory of her.
    1957 – Maud Crawford (63), was the first woman attorney in Camden, Arkansas; her disappearance and presumed death sparked attention for more than three decades. The case remains officially unsolved.
    1959 – Camilo Cienfuegos (27), Cuban revolutionary and friend of Fidel Castro, disappeared when his Cessna 310 went missing over the ocean during a night flight from Camagüey to Havana.