50 Creepy & Unsolved Disappearances – Part 2

Terrance Williams and Felipe Santos went missing in 2004 and 2003, respectively, under similar circumstances in Naples, Florida. Both men were last seen being arrested by former Collier County Sheriff's deputy Corporal Steve Calkins for driving without a license. Steve claims he changed his mind about both arrests and last saw the men after he dropped them off at Circle K convenience stores. Actor Tyler Perry offered a $100,000 reward for any information leading to the location of the men or leading to an arrest in the case. Al Sharpton, of the National Action Network, and Ben Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, also joined Perry in raising awareness of the cause.

In 1660, a 70-year-old Englishman named William Harrison was walking a few miles to the next village when he disappeared. Later, they found his clothes covered in blood, including his hat which looked like it had been slashed open. Harrison's servant, John Perry plead guilty to his murder and was executed along with his brother and their mother. Two years later, William Harrison returned to his village alive, having found his way back to England on a ship from Portugal. He claimed to have been sold into slavery in Turkey. To this day, nobody has any idea why the servant confessed to the murder he didn't commit, or what really happened to Harrison.

In 2007, 14-year-old Andrew Gosden appeared to be a happy, quiet, studious boy destined for great academic success. He was described as absent-minded, shy, and happy with his own company but with a small group of friends. Then, on the 14th of September, just a week after school began, he disappeared. He had a perfect attendance record but skipped school on that day to go to a train station to buy a one-way ticket to King’s Cross in London on his own. As soon as he left the station, he seemingly vanished in an area crawling with CCTV cameras. None of the CCTV cameras in the entirety of London had saved footage of him as the police waited 2 weeks before asking local businesses if there was any footage of him saved, and there’s no evidence of him ever leaving the city. He had a PSP on him when he disappeared but Sony confirmed no PSN account had ever been made on his device, he had no access to the internet at home, and didn’t even have a mobile phone. Strangely, he left the charger for the PSP at home, suggesting he possibly intended to come back.

In 1982, a 12-year-old boy named Johnny Gosch was kidnapped while he was on his morning paper round. This case involved a lot of bad police work, mostly due to the policy they had at the time which was to wait 72 hours before investigating a missing child. The police were convinced that he ran away, even when all the evidence said otherwise. His grieving mother went to hell and back to get justice for her son and other missing children. She helped to get the "72-hour" policy lifted. She also claims that, in 1997, she was visited by Johnny who had grown up, and said that he was abducted by a pedophile ring. He told her that he can't return because if he did, he would be killed. He talked with her for an hour while another man watched, and they both then vanished again.

In 2015, 32-year-old Henry McCabe, a Liberian immigrant who worked as an auditor for the Minnesota Department of Revenue, lived in Mounds View with his wife, Kareen, and their two daughters. While his family was away in California, on September 7, at 2:28 AM, his wife Kareen McCabe received a call from Henry’s cell phone and heard her husband screaming in distress and saying someone shot him. The voicemail had all sorts of noises which people speculate could have been the sound of waterboarding or getting tased. His family also apparently misled the police a few times and his friends, who were last seen with him, made a series of poor decisions which led to his disappearance.

In 2003 a man named Ben Padilla and a mechanic climbed into a Boeing 727 that was collecting dust at an Angolan airport, taxied silently to the runway, and took off. No trace of the plane or the men has ever been found. The plane, formerly owned by American Airlines, had been converted into a diesel fuel transport to sell fuel to mining companies, but the whole business deal sounds rather shady, and most of the mechanics who came over from the U.S. to work on the job went home without being paid, except for Ben Charles Padilla.

On the morning of August 27, 1992, Leigh Occhi, then aged 13, was left at her home in Tupelo, Mississippi. Her mother, Vicki Yarbrough, departed for her job at approximately 8:00 a.m. She tried to call Leigh once she arrived, but Leigh didn’t answer the phone. Her mom got worried and left work to make sure she was okay. When she returned, Leigh was missing and there was evidence of foul play, including a bloody nightgown, as well as a few missing personal items belonging to Leigh. She remains missing. She immediately called the police. Leigh has never been found, but her glasses were mailed to her ex-stepdad a few weeks after she disappeared.

Dupont de Ligonnès was a French aristocrat, who had 4 kids, good life on the outside (but had amassed a lot of debt). In 2011, letters were delivered to his immediate family stating that Xavier and his family would have to “leave urgently for the US” because he had become a key witness for the Drug Enforcement Agency and now they all had to enter into the Witness Protection Program. After a couple of weeks, the concerned family members got the police involved. Investigation into Xavier’s recent purchases (bullets, cement, lime, a shovel) led the police to search his home. They found bodies buried under the patio in the back garden of the house. The investigators claimed to have found the remains of all four children and Xavier’s wife. They had been drugged and shot in their sleep.

The night after he murdered his family there is footage of him at a restaurant smiling and chatting with the waiter. There are some other oddities related to the case. Up to 9 people saw Xavier’s wife alive after the date the police say she was killed. She was seen walking the dog with the two youngest kids. Xavier left detailed letters to his family about what to do with the house, their belongings, the contracts, etc. He left the key to the basement, which you could only access through a door in the garden right next to where the bodies were. The autopsy was kind of botched. The individual death certificates were made on site without DNA testing or anyone to attest to their identity and the police released details to the family that was not consistent with the victims (eg. they mixed up the two sons, gave heights and weights that weren’t accurate, etc.)

Sandra Lyn Johnson Hughes loved the outdoors. She is what people would call a ‘survivalist’. Camping, hiking, and exploring were Sandra’s favorite hobbies. It would stand to reason then, that Hawaii was a great place for Sandra to live. But after the pandemic hit in 2020, Sandra decided to move to the mainland, so in June 2020, California would become her home. On June 26, she spoke to her family on the phone. Sandra was planning a solo camping trip and hiking, possibly up to Yosemite. She wanted to get away from the craziness of the world in its current state. Sandra, at the age of 53, was experienced in the outdoors, so no one was particularly worried about her.

Brandon Swanson was a 19-year-old from Minnesota who while on his way home from a party crashed his car into a ditch and called his parents for help. When they arrived there was no car or sign of Brandon. They called Brandon again to see if he could see headlights or hear the car horn, but Brandon couldn’t see or hear anything. Brandon was confident that he was giving his parents the correct directions, which led to frustration but he stayed on the phone with his mother. He remained on the phone with his parents for 47 minutes.