1Disappearance of Richard Colvin Cox
Richard Colvin Cox volunteered for service in the United States Army and two years later he was assigned to the West Point Military Academy in New York, arriving in January 1948. Two years later he signed out to have dinner with an acquaintance on January 14, 1950 and was never seen again. He remains the only West Point Cadet to have disappeared without a trace. Police, FBI, and CID got involved in the search efforts and used both air and ground searches to check the reservoir, river, and pond. After two months of an extensive manhunt, no body was ever found.
2. In 1987, a 16-year-old girl named Theresa Ann Bier went missing on a camping trip. She was last seen with 43-year-old Russell Welch in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. They were reportedly searching for the legendary creature known as Sasquatch or Bigfoot. Welch considered himself to be a "student" of the legend. Authorities questioned Welch when he returned days later. He initially claimed that Theresa ran away from him on June 1, but then changed his story stating that Theresa had been forcibly taken by Bigfoot. He managed to avoid trial due to the lack of a body.
3. In 2004, an American college student named David Louis Sneddon went missing during a hiking trip to China. After he failed to arrive in Seoul to meet his brother, his family contacted the Chinese police. They completed a quick sweep of the Tiger Leaping Gorge where he was last seen and concluded that he had died during his hike of the gorge.
In May 2012, a Japanese government delegation during their trip to Washington came with an explosive report that said an American man in his early 20s was arrested in August 2004 for helping an illegal North Korean alien. He was released by the Chinese in September, but then picked up by five North Korean state security officers. The following month, the Sneddon family received another lead from a South Korean man with close ties to the North Korean defector community. He said that an American in his early 30s who matched David’s description had been spotted teaching English outside Pyongyang in North Korea.
David knew the Korean language, so he could have been a coveted asset in training North Korean agents. By midsummer 2004, North Korea had lost one of its few remaining American English teachers, Charles Jenkins, who was released on July 9, one month before David had disappeared.
4. Masanobu Tsuji was an enigmatic Japanese officer during World War 2 and he was the real mastermind behind the Sook Ching massacre and Bataan Death March. He was adept at manipulating the Japanese high command, including attempting to order Japanese officers to massacre POWs under their watch in the Philippines. After the war, however, he evaded prosecution for war crimes by disguising himself as a Buddhist monk and hiding in Thailand. He returned to Japan in 1949 and was elected as an advocate of renewed militarism. In 1961, however, he again disappeared on a trip to Laos. He may have been killed in the Laotian Civil War, but there were also rumors that he became an adviser to the North Vietnamese government.
5. Austin Tice was a freelance journalist and U.S. Marine Corps veteran who was abducted on August 14, 2012, while reporting on the civil war in Syria. He had arrived at the wrong time, amid a crackdown on civilians and potential opposition members in Darayya. 500 people were found executed, many lined in open-air mass graves after other journalists arrived in the town in late August. His body however was not found among those in the mass graves in Darayya, and no rebel or Islamist groups had claimed credit for his kidnapping.
A few months later, an anonymous video was uploaded to YouTube by a cryptic account named 'khalidfree75'. The video showed unidentified men slowly leading Austin who was blindfolded up a hill. Austin is then seen on his knees, resting his head on the arm of one of his assailants. He chants a prayer in Arabic, begging for respite, before switching to English and gasping. "Oh, Jesus. Oh Jesus." The video then abruptly ends. Austin Tice has not been seen since. No further videos have been uploaded to that Youtube account. No group has claimed credit for his disappearance and his whereabouts are still unknown.
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6Disappearance of Natalee Holloway
Natalee Holloway disappeared on her senior spring break trip from Alabama to Aruba in 2005. Natalee and her friends met Joran Van Der Sloot at a nightclub. She left with him and was never seen again. Van Der Sloot first said he dropped her off at the hotel she was staying, then changed his story saying he took her to a cliff to look at the sharks where he left her, then changed it again to say he sold her into a slave trade. He was also filmed confessing to killing her the night he met her. Van Der Sloot has since been arrested for killing another girl 5 years later in Peru on the anniversary of Natalee’s disappearance. He however has still not been charged with Natalee's murder.
7. Actress Tammy Lynn Leppert starred in Scarface, Spring Break, and Little Darlings. Critics were predicting that she would become one of the big stars of the 80s. In 1982, she went to a weekend party unchaperoned and came home a different person. She became paranoid. She wouldn’t leave her room or answer the door. She refused to eat from open containers and even had her friend test for poison in her food.
After filming a particularly gruesome gun battle scene for Scarface, she had a breakdown and had to be escorted off the set. She confided to her mother that someone had bragged to her about a large money laundering and drug trading operation involving high-profile citizens in Florida, ranging from police officers to bankers and prominent locals. She also said she had seen something “horrible” that she wasn’t supposed to see, but refused to elaborate. Her mother took Tammy to the County Sheriff’s Office to report the alleged scheme, but when interviewed seven years later, Officer Mike Wong could not recall many specific details about the meeting.
Over months, she became paranoid and became convinced that somebody was out to kill her. In July 1983, she got off from her friend’s car at North Orlando as he had refused to drive her 170-mile to Fort Lauderdale and suggested dropping her off back home instead. Shortly after, she made three urgent calls to her aunt and her friend, both of whom weren’t able to pick up her calls. This is the last known contact from Tammy. Police quickly dismissed her as a runaway case and a private investigator and even Unsolved Mysteries producer Matt Klineman found that the police department did little to help with her case and did not want to share any information or leads with her mother, a request that he said was outside the norm.
8. In 2011, Lauren Spierer was a 20-year-old affluent, Jewish, East Coast girl who was studying at University in Bloomington, Indiana. On the night of June 2nd, 2011, she was out with her friends drinking and partying, and never came back home. Her boyfriend reported her missing the next morning. The last guys she was known to be with all lawyered up almost immediately. Her boyfriend packed up and moved home shortly after her disappearance. Several theories have arisen and been investigated but none have shown strong enough links to proceed.
9. On Christmas Eve, 1945, the Sodder family were at their home in Fayetteville, West Virginia. George Sodder and his wife, Jennie, allowed their nine children to stay up later than the usual bedtime. At 12.30 am, the phone rang and when Jennie answered she heard a voice she didn’t recognize, asking for a name she was not familiar with. She told the caller they had the wrong number and she remembered hearing a “weird laugh” before she hung up.
At 1 am, Jennie woke again to the sound of a large object hitting the top of the roof with a bang. She went back to sleep and thought nothing more of it. Half an hour later, she woke again smelling smoke and found the house was on fire. She woke her husband, and they managed to escape with only four of their children. They could not rescue the other children who were upstairs as the house was now fully in flames. The father tried to get up to them on a ladder, but the ladder was missing. He tried to drive his truck under the window to climb on top, but his car wouldn't start.
The fire station was just 3 miles away, but they did not arrive until 8 hours later. When they sifted through the rubble they found no bones or remains of the children. The children were assumed missing and were never found.
10. On June 27, 1995, Jodi Huisentruit, a news anchor at KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, failed to arrive at work. Her car was found abandoned in the parking lot of her apartment, and she was never seen again. Investigators found Jodi's personal belongings strewn in her apartment's parking lot. The ground showed signs of drag marks suggesting she had been forcibly taken away while she was entering her car. The investigation into Jodi Huisentruit’s disappearance has been ongoing for over two decades, but no arrests have been made and no suspects have been identified.
11Disappearance of Heather Teague
In 1995, a girl named Heather Teague was sunbathing on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River near Evansville, Indiana. A witness was watching from across the river through his telescope (probably creeping on her) when, out of the woods behind her, a man walked up, grabbed her by the hair, and dragged her back into the woods. The Peeping Tom waited 45 minutes before calling the police, but after that he was completely involved with the investigation, visiting with cops at the beach, providing a complete statement, and collaborating with a sketch artist. When authorities investigated the beach and woods, they discovered only fragments of Heather's red plaid bathing suit. Nobody knows what happened to her or who kidnapped her to this day.
12. In 2004, Garrett Bardsley was fishing with his dad in the Uinta Mountains in Utah. Garrett was there camping with a group of Boy Scouts. He and his dad went fishing together and his socks got wet. His dad told him to go back to camp and get a new pair. The camp was 150 yards from the creek. As Garrett started to head up to camp, his dad pointed out he was going the wrong way. Garrett then went in the correct direction to camp. Moments later he thought he heard someone yell "DAD". The dad returned to camp 15 minutes later to check on Garrett. He found out Garrett never made it to the camp.
13. Asha Degree was 9 years old when she vanished from Shelby, North Carolina in the early morning hours of February 14, 2000. For reasons unknown, she packed her book bag with multiple sets of clothes, snuck out of her home before 4 am, and began walking south on Highway 18, where she was spotted by at least two motorists. She was last seen running into a wooded area by one of them. Some of her belongings were later discovered in a shed about 600 feet from where she was last sighted. About 1.5 years later, her book bag was found double wrapped in trash bags in a remote area of Burke County, about 26 miles north of her home. She has never been seen again.
14. In 1994, a 27-year-old housewife named Mayumi Arashi vanished after leaving her family home in Tokyo, leaving behind her 1-year-old daughter. She said she was going to meet her schoolmate. Her older sister, Yoko, later checked with this classmate, who said no such meeting was planned. Her whole family started searching for her but to no avail. Later that day, a memo is found inside Yoko's wardrobe, which reads "I was going out with A, but was betrayed" and "I'm sorry". At the bottom of the memo is A's phone number. Yoko contacts A, who tells her that "I met with Mayumi earlier that day" and "want to be in jail if Mayumi ever turns up dead".
A day later when police tailed "A", they found him entering forest holding two drinks. The police then lost track of him and found no trace of Mayumi. Fast forward to 2011, during an interview about Mayumi’s disappearance, Yoko is interviewed and she tearfully recounted the events above. Her father was then interviewed at a different location and stated that they knew nothing about Mayumi's alleged affair until they found that memo, and on the day she disappeared, it seemed like something was bothering her. But what caught the attention of viewers at home, and ignited speculation across the Japanese internet boards was a piece of paper stuck to a shelf behind the father, which went completely unremarked. On the piece of paper were the words "Don't believe what Yoko says".
15. Jennifer Kesse disappeared from her apartment complex on January 24, 2006. No major leads have been discovered since. She was last seen leaving for work one evening. She talked to her boyfriend on the phone that night around 10. Initial investigation theorized that she was abducted either from her apartment or its parking lot shortly before work. They found her car in a nearby parking lot later. There wasn’t much to go on until a security camera caught somebody dropping off her car, and the footage of this person of interest is what makes the case the most chilling. He/she has been called “the luckiest person of interest in history.” They were caught on camera walking past a gate, and despite the camera being pretty close, the camera only took one picture every 3 seconds and his/her face is perfectly obscured in every shot. Even though it’s so close, police still say they can’t confidently say if the suspect is male or female.
16Disappearance of Bobby Dunbar
In 1912, Bobby Dunbar’s parents took him fishing on a lake in Louisiana and he went missing. Police searched for him for 8 months and finally found a man named William Cantwell Walters who was traveling with a boy that resembled Bobby Dunbar. Walters claimed the boy was the son of a friend who had given him custody, and that the child's name was Bruce Anderson, not Bobby Dunbar. Investigators and positive ID from the parents determined this was Dunbar's child and gave custody over to them. The town had a parade for Bobby Dunbar's return. During the trial with the Dunbar and Walters, a woman named Julia Anderson came to defend Walters, asserting this was her son Bruce and she had given Walters custody. The courts dismissed her because she had three children out of wedlock and two were already deceased. The trial was being held in Mississippi, and her being a very poor woman from North Carolina, she gave up on fighting the case. In 2008 one of "Bobby Dunbar's" granddaughters had a DNA test done. She compared her grandfather’s DNA to his brothers. They were not related.
17. Rico Harris was a massive 6'9" former Harlem Globetrotter basketball player who had drug issues earlier in his life, but had made a full recovery and was getting his life back on track. He was driving along California's Interstate I-5, from his home in Southern California to Seattle, to live with his girlfriend. He was somewhere just north of Sacramento, exhausted, and told his girlfriend over the phone that he wanted to check out the mountains. All calls stopped since then. His car was found a couple of days later by a patrolman near a rest stop in the mountains. A massive search was launched and there was no sign of him. A week later, a driver later reported seeing a massive 6'9" individual wandering down the highway, just a mile from where the car was found. A search was re-launched and massive size 17 footprints were found on the grounds which were not there before. They were getting very close, and then they found nothing.
18. In March 1998, 23-year-old Amy Bradley was on a cruise with her family. She was last seen asleep on the balcony of her cabin and was seen earlier in the night with a band member of the cruise. She was reported missing shortly after the cruise docked. There were no further signs of her on the ship or in the ocean. There were possible sightings of Bradley in Curaçao in 1998 and 1999. Two Canadian tourists reported seeing a woman resembling Amy on a beach in Curaçao in August 1998. The woman's tattoos were reportedly identical to Bradley's. Bradley's tattoos included a Tasmanian Devil spinning a basketball located on her shoulder, the sun placed on her lower back, a Chinese symbol located on her right ankle, and a gecko lizard on her navel. She also had a navel ring.
A member of the Navy stated that he saw Bradley in a brothel in 1999. He claimed she told him that "her name was Amy Bradley and [she] begged him for help," explaining that she was not allowed to leave. Since the brothel was off-limits to Navy personnel, the officer waited until he was out of the Navy before reporting the sighting by which time the brothel had gone and there was no trail to follow.
19. In 1991, 20-year-old Angela Hammond, who was then four months pregnant, stopped at a phone booth while driving home, to call her fiancé Rob. She described to him a creepy-looking man in a pickup truck in the parking lot. Her fiancé suddenly heard Angela scream. He bolted for his car and raced down the road to the payphone booth, which was only a few minutes away. As he barreled down the road, Rob spotted a pickup truck matching Angela’s description going in the opposite direction. He noticed a man driving and saw what appeared to be Angela in the passenger’s seat crying out his name. After attempting a pursuit, the transmission on his truck gave out and this is the last anyone ever saw of Angela. She still hasn't been found.
20. Dorothy Jane Scott was a young divorced mom working at a head shop that sold hippie items. In 1980, she disappeared from a hospital parking lot after taking one of her coworkers to the hospital due to a spider bite. When her co-workers came out of the hospital, they saw Dorothy's car speeding toward them. She didn’t stop and that was the last time anyone saw her. The next day her car is found torched but she is nowhere to be found. Over the next few years, her parents started receiving taunting phone calls. The caller asked if Dorothy was home and claimed to know where she was. 4 years later her charred remains were found next to a highway buried underneath a dog, possibly because the killer thought that it would fool cadaver dogs that happened to hit on that spot.
21Disappearance of Susan Powell
Josh Powell and Susan Powell had 2 young sons and were going through a bad marriage. Josh was abusive and controlling, and at one point they had to move because Josh’s father Steve developed an obsessive infatuation with Susan. Things got so bad she started fearing for her life. Then one night in 2009 the whole family disappeared, only to have the husband come back a few days later saying that he and the boys went camping and he had no idea where his wife was.
As the investigation into what happened to the wife went on, Josh started acting more and more suspiciously, eventually moving back in with his father. He then lost custody of his kids after his father Steve was caught with child porn along with hundreds of creep shots of Susan. Finally, during a supervised visit, Josh grabbed his son from the social worker, holed himself up inside his house, and then blew it up, killing himself and both his kids. All the while, Susan’s whereabouts remain unsolved and she is still listed as missing (although presumed to be murdered and dumped somewhere by her husband).
22. The Jamison family (2 adults, and 1 young daughter) was interested in purchasing a plot of land in Oklahoma. In 2009, they drove out to the plot in their pickup truck to check it out. Their truck was later found abandoned with $32,000 cash found in the truck, along with their IDs, wallets, mobile phones, and a GPS. The family dog was also left in the truck, and was extremely malnourished. A camera was also discovered and the final picture it photographed was of their 6-year-old daughter Madyson, who looked somewhat distressed in the picture. Years later, in 2013, the skeletal remains of two adults and a child were discovered not far from where their pickup truck was abandoned. They were later identified to be the Jamisons. They were found lying side by side in the woods with no signs of any struggle.
23. In August 2013, a man named Brandon Lawson ran out of gas on a Texas highway in the middle of the night and called his brother to come help him. Shortly after he called 911 and reported that someone was chasing him into the woods and that he needed the police. Eventually, his brother and one police officer arrived at the scene to find his truck abandoned but no sign of Brandon. Brandon called his brother one last time to say he was bleeding and is 10 minutes away from his truck. That was the last anyone ever heard from him and searches of the area turned up empty. In February 2022, a search party successfully located Lawson's clothing near his last known location and the Texas Rangers also found human remains on further search. DNA tests were not complete as of October 2022, but the remains are expected to belong to Lawson.
24. Charles Rogers was an American seismologist, US Navy pilot, and murder suspect who went missing in June 1965 after police discovered his elderly parents' mutilated remains in the refrigerator of the Houston house the three shared. On all the shelves and in the freezer compartment were the dismembered bodies of his parents, cut in unwrapped, washed-off pieces smaller than individual joints. There was little food in the house. The house had been carefully cleaned and the only blood discovered was on the keyhole of a bedroom door. The bedroom belonged to the couple's 43-year-old son Charles Rogers. 9 years before these events, Charles inexplicably quit his job as a seismologist with Shell without explanation and moved in with his parents. He turned into a loner and recluse living in the attic bedroom. He only communicated with his parents via notes slipped under his bedroom door and was rarely seen by neighbors. Despite a nationwide manhunt, he was never seen or heard from again.
25. In 1900, three lighthouse keepers mysteriously disappeared from the lighthouse on Eilean Mor, an island north of Scotland. The door of the lighthouse was unlocked, coats were missing and half-eaten food was left behind. The last entries on the log described a storm on December 12th with severe winds, but all other reports in the area stated the weather was clear that day. A prevailing hypothesis is that there was very rough weather and they were swept to sea while trying to secure some equipment.
