26Disappearance of Lauren Spierer
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.
27. 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.
28. 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.
29. 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.
30. 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.
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31Disappearance of David Louis Sneddon
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.
32. 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.
33. 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.
34. A man named William Morgan was rejected by the Freemasons in the 1800s. In retaliation, he planned to publish a book revealing their secrets. He disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Around the mid-1800s America was seized by a hysterical fear that the Freemasons were out to overthrow the Republic. The unresolved disappearance of William Morgan convinced many that the Freemasons were a murderous bunch responsible for much of the unsolved murders in the country. Dozens of Freemasons were dragged to court on unsubstantiated charges, and any judge or jury which did not convict was accused of being a Freemason. Anti-Freemason exhibits toured the country, showcasing reported Freemason abuses against innocents, and more than 20 anti-Freemason conventions took place in the United States during this time.
35. In 2006, a medical student named Brian Shaffer walked into a bar near The Ohio State University and never walked out. The bar had only one entrance that the patrons and staff used to enter and exit and one emergency exit and both those exits had surveillance cameras. There was a dark construction site underneath the bar that led to the aforementioned emergency exit behind the building. Bloodhounds couldn't place him anywhere and he was also not seen on any CCTV footage around Columbus or Ohio State University. He was supposed to go on vacation with his significant other days after he had disappeared.
36Disappearance of Nicolas Barclay
In 1994, 13-year-old Nicolas Barclay disappeared from his home in San Antonio, Texas. About 3 years later, Nicolas was found huddled next to a phone booth halfway across the world in Spain. Authorities picked him up and reunited him with his family. Certain things however didn’t add up. He had little memory of what happened to him or how he ended up in Spain. His English was terrible, and he spoke it with a heavy accent. Another thing no one could explain was his eye color. It was different than when he originally disappeared. Nicolas tried to resume a normal life, enrolling back into his old school and moving back in with his family.
Four months after reuniting with his family, a private investigator discovered that the kid they found wasn’t Nicolas Barclay, but a con artist named Frederic Bourdin. Bourdin was wanted by Interpol for stealing the identity of missing youths. Bourdin was arrested, but this brought about even more disturbing questions about Nicolas’s disappearance.
It came to light that Nicolas was a very unruly and problematic child. He regularly got into trouble at school, and there were police reports about domestic disturbances and arguments at his house that worsened in the months before he went missing. Nicolas’ mom moved her brother into their house shortly before he disappeared to help give Nicolas some structure. It was rumored that he couldn’t handle Nicolas and instead killed him. This would explain why the family was so willing to accept someone who wasn’t their son. Shortly after Bourdin was arrested and police reopened the case of Nicolas’ disappearance, his uncle promptly killed himself.
37. 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.
38. 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.
39. 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.
40. 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.
41Disappearance of Henry McCabe
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.
42. 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.
A 727 requires a crew of three to fly it, and neither Padilla nor the other mechanic were accomplished pilots, so initial theories speculated that there was a hijacker aboard who forced Padilla to take off with the plane. No airport reported a mystery 727 in a dinged-up American Airlines livery landing on one of their runways. Odder still, no signs of a crash was reported anywhere over the Atlantic Ocean, or anyplace in the dense jungles of southern Africa, although it has been suggested that the FBI investigation into the disappearance turned something up that they aren't letting the public know.43. 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.
44. 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.)
45. 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.
Her family had nothing to worry about until July 5, when park officials found her campsite, which looked abandoned and in total disarray, definitely not like Sandra, who was exceptionally neat and organized. There were some odd sightings of her, bruised and barefoot, but she told the hikers (who didn’t realize she was a missing person) that she didn’t need help. A year later, a 3-year-old boy had a spooky encounter in the area where Sandra disappeared, an encounter that caught the attention of law enforcement. The child told his parents there was a woman lying face down with her legs straight up in the air in a nearby meadow. According to this kid, the woman was unable to speak or move and needed help. Yet still, two years later, Sandra remains missing.
