1Disappearance of the Beaumont Children
In 1966, three Beaumont siblings disappeared from a beach in Australia. There were kidnapped at the same time, in a busy public place, with very little conclusive evidence about what had happened. As the case started picking up heat in the media, there were a lot of weird complications (possible sightings, hoax ransom notes/calls, etc.) and potential connections to other kidnappings and murders. They were never found. Interestingly, it's widely considered to be a big turning point for attitudes toward children in Australia. After the Beaumont children disappeared, people were much less willing to let their children out unsupervised, though, of course, it wasn't the first time a child had been kidnapped by a (presumed) stranger.
2. David Glenn Lewis disappeared on Super Bowl Sunday in Amarillo, Texas in 1993, with a freshly made sandwich in the fridge and the VCR set up to record the game. His wife and daughter returned home from a trip a few days later to find him gone but his watch and wedding ring were in the house. He was a lawyer and had previously expressed fear to his wife that his life was in danger. His car was found at the courthouse in Amarillo. Four days later he was the victim of a hit-and-run as he was walking on the side of the highway in Moxee, Washington. It took over 10 years to identify his body and no one knows how he got there or why he was in Washington.
3. In April 1988, 9-year-old Michael Henley vanished while on a camping trip with his father in the Zuni Mountains of New Mexico. In September of the same year, 19-year-old Tara Calico disappeared from her hometown of Belen, New Mexico while out on her bike. On June 1989, a woman goes into a convenience store and notices a white van in the parking lot. When she exits, she sees a Polaroid photo, face down on the ground where the van had been. It showed a teenage girl and a young boy, bound and gagged. They were initially identified to be Michael Henley and Tara Calico. Henley's remains were eventually found. Tara Calico's case however remains unsolved to this day. Forensics later determined that the boy in the photo wasn't him after all and that Henley died of hypothermia after getting lost in the woods. The boy in the photo with Tara remains unidentified.
4. Jason Jolkowski was a 19-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska who disappeared without a trace in June 2001 on his way to work. What baffled the investigators was how quickly it happened. He was called into work at a fast food restaurant for an unplanned shift, took a shower, started walking to a high school a few blocks away to meet a co-worker who offered him a ride and just vanished somewhere on that walk. His family said he is too responsible to have left without warning, and he was not having any problems at the time of his disappearance. He is described as a shy person who was not involved with drugs or alcohol and was close to his family at the time of his disappearance.
5. In 2016, a prominent Busan couple, Choi Sung Hee and Kim Yoon Suk disappeared in thin air, just 6 months into their marriage. There were last seen in CCTV entering their apartment, but none of them were ever seen leaving their apartment. Their grocery was untouched and they left behind a dog. There was no sign of them on CCTV even though there were so many of them.
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6Disappearance of Lars Mittank
In 2014, a German man named Lars Mittank went on vacation to Bulgaria with friends. There he was injured in a fight he got into and therefore wasn’t able to fly back home with his friends for health reasons. He later called his mother once they had all left saying he thought he was being followed and he was going to book a plane the next day. He was last seen on CCTV footage heading into the airport carrying his suitcase and later he was seen running out of the airport at full speed without his bags. He scaled a fence, ran into the woods, and was never seen again.
7. A 10-year-old boy named Juan Pedro Martinez disappeared in Spain in 1986, while on "vacation" with his mother and father. His dad, who was a truck driver, was delivering a load of 20,000 liters of pure sulfuric acid. Everything seemed normal until the family reached the Somosierra mountain pass when his father started driving erratically, crashing into several cars and then overturned his truck. Sulfuric acid began pouring out of the tanker, causing a cloud of noxious gas to rise near the crash site. Both his parents were killed. Juan however, was never found at the accident site. Some believed that Juan was completely dissolved by the sulfuric acid. However, chemists maintain that there is no way that this happened. The acid could not have dissolved his body that quickly and leave no trace.
8. Sneha Anne Philip was an Indian-American physician who was last seen a day before the 9/11 attacks, by a department store surveillance camera near her Lower Manhattan apartment. There have been a lot of theories behind her disappearance over the years as no promising leads or evidence on her fate ever developed. Foul play or leaving her family were possibilities over the years, but it was assumed by her family that she died trying to help the victims of 9/11 as she was a doctor and lived just 2 blocks from the World Trade Center.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11Disappearance of Brandon Lawson
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.
12. 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.
13. 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).
14. 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.
15. 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.
16Disappearance of Amy Bradley
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.
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 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.
19. 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.
20. 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".
21Disappearance of Asha Degree
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.
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. 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.
