List of people who disappeared mysteriously

This is a list of people who disappeared mysteriously, and of people whose current whereabouts are unknown or whose deaths are not substantiated, as well as a few cases of people whose disappearances were notable and remained unexplained for a long time, but were eventually explained, or the body found. Many people who disappear are eventually declared dead in absentia.

Before 1800

• 531 BC – Laozi, Chinese sage and founder of Taoism. He is said to have worked in the court of the Zhou dynasty until an old age, when, dismayed at the corruption and hypocrisy widespread in his surroundings, he gave up all he had and knew. He departed from China into the Western wildlands, mounted on a water buffalo, never to be seen or heard of again.^[1] All he left behind was his famous book, the Tao Te Ching, the basic teaching of Taoism, which he wrote at the request of a Chinese border keeper right before disappearing into the mountains ahead.
• 71 BC – Spartacus, one of the leaders of escaped slaves during the Third Servile War, a slave rebellion against the Roman Republic. Although he was presumed killed in battle, his body was never found and his fate remains unknown.^[2]
• 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.10.8), Ambiorix and his men managed to cross the Rhine and disappeared without a trace.
• 30 BC – Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus, sons of Cleopatra and Mark Antony and the younger half-brothers of Caesarion left for Egypt to Rome, after that their fates became unknown.^[3]
• 61 AD – Boudica/Boadicea, queen of the Iceni disappeared after she allegedly took poison after she was defeated by the Romans, although her body was never found.^[4]
• 108–164 – Legio IX Hispana (Ninth Spanish Legion), Roman legion stationed in Roman Britain following the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43. The legion disappears from surviving records without explanation in the second century. There are multiple conjectures regarding what happened to it and why no record of its fate has been found. Many references to the legion have been made in subsequent works of fiction.^[5]
• 378 – Roman Emperor Valens was defeated by the Goths at the Battle of Adrianople (modern Edirne, Turkey). However, his body was never found.
• c. 834 – Muhammad ibn Qasim (al-Alawi), Alawite imam who led a rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate. He was eventually defeated and detained. He was able to flee, but was never heard from again.
• c. 941 – Muhammad al-Mahdi, twelfth Imam in the Theology of Twelvers, the largest branch of Shia Islam, is said to have been "occulted" or hidden by Allah until an unknown time.
• 1021 – Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (36), sixth Fatimid caliph and 16th Ismaili imam. He rode his donkey to the Mokattam 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.^[6]
• 1071 – Hereward the Wake, formerly exiled Anglo-Danish minor noble rebel. He led a huge revolt in the marshy region of Ely in England against the rule of William the Conqueror. He was 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 I, Duke of Brittany, heir to the throne of England. His claim to the throne was supported by French nobility, who did not want John, King of England (Arthur's paternal uncle) as their 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.
• c. 1291 – Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi, Genoese sailors and explorers. They were lost while attempting the first oceanic journey from Europe to Asia.^[7] Their two galleys sailed out of the Mediterranean Sea and into the Atlantic Ocean.
• 1412 – Owain Glyndŵr, last native Welsh person to hold the title Prince of Wales. He 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 no one knows what became of him after that.^[8]
• 1453 – During the final hours of the Siege of Constantinople, the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, disappeared during the fighting. His body was never recovered.
• 1483 – The Princes in the Tower, Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st 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.^[9] Neither was ever seen in public again and their fate remains unknown. The remains of four children have been found which could be the princes, but they have not been subjected to DNA analysis to positively identify them.^[10]
• 1487 – Lord Lovell, a rebel Yorkist knight, was last seen alive fleeing from the Battle of Stoke Field after defeat by the Lancastrians. In 1488 he was granted safe conduct in Scotland by King James IV but there is no evidence he was ever in the country.^[11] (A skeleton found at one of his mansions at Minster Lovell, Oxfordshire in 1708 was believed without evidence to be of him.)
• 1499 – John Cabot, Italian explorer, disappeared along with his five ships during an expedition to find a western route from Europe to Asia.^[12]
• 1501 – Gaspar Corte-Real, Portuguese explorer. He 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.^[13]
• 1502 – Miguel Corte-Real, Portuguese explorer. He 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.^[14]
• 1526 – Francisco de Hoces, Spanish sailor. He 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 the San Lesmes, last seen in the Pacific Ocean in late May, may have reached Easter Island or any of the Polynesian archipelagos, or even New Zealand.^[15]
• 1546 – Francisco de Orellana, Spanish explorer and conquistador. He disappeared while exploring the Amazon River in November. His fate remains a mystery.
• 1578 – Sebastian of Portugal, Portuguese king. His 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. Sebastianism, the belief that Sebastian could return at any moment to help Portugal in its darkest hour, is a recurring theme in Portuguese and Brazilian mythology and culture.
• c. 1590 – The Roanoke colonists disappeared, becoming known as the Lost Colony. On 18 August 1590, their settlement was found abandoned.^[16] The settlement was located in Roanoke Island, currently part of Dare County, North Carolina.
• 1579 – Ikegusuku Antō, a bureaucrat of Ryukyu Kingdom was sent by ship to China to ask for postponement, but his ship was caught in a storm and disappeared in the sea,^[17] and was never seen again.
• 1611 – Henry Hudson, sea explorer and navigator. Whilst searching for the Northwest Passage, at the helm of the ship Discovery, most of his ship's crew mutinied. The crew cast Hudson, his son, and seven others adrift in a small shallop, marooning them in 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. They became 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.
• 1638 – Urasoe Chōri, a member of Sanshikan went on a boat trip to Satsuma, but his ship was caught in a storm and disappeared in the sea.^[18] He is believed to have drowned.
• 1696 – Henry Every (sometimes spelled 'Avery'), 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. In March, Every had led his ship, the Fancy, to the island of New Providence. He and his crew spent months living there and soon lost their ship. By June, Every and his crew were forced to flee the island. The crew then split up, with Every possibly setting sail toward Ireland. A manhunt for Every lasted for at least a decade. There were several unconfirmed sightings of him and contradictory reports of his death during the 18th century. Most of them are considered unreliable, however, and his actual fate is unknown.
• 1769/70 – Henry Vansittart (37), MP and director of the East India Company, Luke Scrafton and Francis Forde, who formed a delegation to investigate corruption and reform the British government in India, were last seen embarking at Cape Town en route to India on 27 December 1769. Their ship disappeared with all hands, apparently in a storm, the captain having decided to sail the Mozambique Channel despite adverse weather.^[19]
• 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 Constantinople as a gift to the Ottoman sultan by the Ottoman governor 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 the last stop off Botany Bay (near what is now Sydney, Australia). The wrecks of the expedition's two ships (the Boussole and Astrolabe)^[20] were subsequently discovered at Vanikoro, an island in the Santa Cruz group (part of the Solomon Islands), where the survivors may have set up a camp.
• 1792 – James Harrod (46), early explorer of the areas west of the Appalachian Mountains prior to their settlement by European-Americans, never returned from a trip to western Kentucky from Harrodsburg. Theories about his fate range from murder at the hands of his companions or Native Americans in the area, to accidental death or a desire to abandon his wife and family.

1800 to 1899

• 1802 – James Derham (44 or 45), the first African American to formally practice medicine in the United States disappeared after 1802, and people debated why he disappeared.^[21]
• 1803 – George Bass (32), British explorer of Australia, set sail from Sydney for South America and was never heard from again.^[22]
• 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.
• 1837 – Joseph Gellibrand (48 or 49), the first Attorney-General of Van Diemen's Land, disappeared whilst attempting to ride from Geelong, Victoria to Wyndham, Western Australia in 1837.^[23]
• 1842 – Charles Christian Dutton and four other men, disappeared without trace while droving cattle from Port Lincoln, South Australia to Adelaide.
• 1843 – Sequoyah (circa 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 129 seamen, made last contact with a whaling ship before entering Victoria Strait in search of the Northwest Passage. Although the remains of some individuals, written messages and the wrecks of the ships HMS Erebus (in 2014) and HMS Terror (in 2016) were later discovered, the majority of the crew, including Franklin himself, were never found, with the crew having probably died from a combination of lead poisoning, starvation, and exposure.
• 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 in Western Australia. Although investigated by many, his fate after leaving the settled areas remains a mystery.
• 1849 – Sándor Petőfi (26), Hungarian poet and liberal revolutionary, was one of the key figures of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Petőfi was last seen in Transylvania during the Battle of Segesvár. Although different theories and rumours abound 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 or 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.
• 1857 – Nana Sahib (33), Indian aristocrat. As a leader of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 he disappeared after the East India Company's forces retook his city of Kanpur. Rumours that he had died of an illness or fled to exile in Nepal or another part of India were never proven.
• 1865 – Captain James William Boyd (43), 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 is the subject of a conspiracy theory that he was killed after being mistaken for John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.^[24]
• 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".^[25]
• 1874 – Charley Ross (4), resident of Philadelphia, was enticed along with his brother Walter into a horse-drawn carriage while playing in their front yard on 1 July. Walter got out at a fireworks shop, and the carriage drove on without him. The family received ransom notes and worked with police, but all to no avail.^[26][27]
• 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.^[28]
• 1880 – Lamont Young (28 or 29), government geologist inspecting new gold fields 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 after leaving Bermagui, New South Wales, Australia, in a small boat.^[29] The nearby location where the abandoned wreck of their boat was discovered was subsequently named Mystery Bay.^[30]
• 1882 – Jesse Evans, American outlaw, gunman of the Old West, leader of the Jesse Evans Gang, and veteran of the Lincoln County War, disappeared from the record shortly after his release from prison. He was never seen or heard from again. Despite an unsubstantiated claimant in 1948 (who also claimed that other Lincoln County veterans, including the renowned Billy the Kid, were still alive), Evans' fate remains unknown.
• 1884 – The merchant ship Resolven, found abandoned off the coast of Labrador on 29 August. A lifeboat was missing; it was assumed that all 11 on board had evacuated in the face of nearby icebergs, but neither they nor the lifeboat were ever found.
• 1888 – Boston Corbett (56), 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 he may have perished in the Great Hinckley Fire of 1 September 1894.^[31][32]
• 1890 – Louis Le Prince (48), motion picture pioneer, disappeared after boarding a Paris-bound train at Dijon, France.
• 1892 – Hermann Fol (46), Swiss zoologist regarded as the father of modern cell biology, disappeared with several crew members of his yacht shortly after leaving Bénodet, France.
• 1896 – Albert Jennings Fountain (57), former Texas state senator and lieutenant governor of that state, disappeared near Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States, along with his son Henry (8) on 1 February 1896. Evidence found along their route strongly suggests they were murdered, but no bodies were ever found.

1900s

• 1902 – Yda Hillis Addis (45), translator of ancient Mexican narratives, escaped from an insane asylum in California, where her husband had her confined during their divorce, and was not seen again.^[33][34]
• 1908 – Eduardo Newbery (30), Argentine aviator, disappeared while attempting to break the night flight record on the aerostat Pampero in Buenos Aires, Argentina.^[35]
• 1908 - Robert Leroy Parker (aka Butch Cassidy) & Alonzo Longabaugh (aka The Sundance Kid), were supposedly killed in a shootout with the Bolivian police around 7–8 November, although the authorities were unable to positively identify the bodies.^[36]
• 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.^[37]

1910s

• 1910 – Dorothy Arnold (24), Manhattan socialite and perfume heiress, vanished after buying a book in New York City. She intended to walk through Central Park, and was never seen again.^[38]
• 1912 – Alexander Kuchin, Russian oceanographer and Arctic explorer disappeared in 1912,^[39] and was never heard from again.
• 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.^[40]
• 1912 – Sebastiano DiGaetano (50), capo di tutti capi of the Bonanno crime family, disappeared from Brooklyn, New York, shortly after being forced out of that position. It is believed he and his wife returned to Italy, but it is not known for certain.^[41]
• 1914 – František Gellner, a Czech poet, short story writer, artist and anarchist, disappeared in September 1914 and on 13 September he was claimed missing and was never found.^[42]
• 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,^[43] he may have perished in war-torn Mexico, possibly at the Battle of Ojinaga on 10 February,^[44] 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.^[45]
• 1914 – F. Lewis Clark (52), businessman from the U.S. state of Idaho, while visiting Santa Barbara, California, and after getting on a train, was never seen again.^[46]
• 1914 – Alejandro Bello Silva (27), a lieutenant in the Chilean Army, disappeared during a qualifying examination flight over central Chile which was to be his final flight. At some point during the flight, Bello became lost in the clouds and he was never seen again. Although search efforts commenced within hours, no trace of him or his aircraft was ever found.^[47]
• 1916 – Béla Kiss (39), Hungarian serial killer and murderer of 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.^[48]
• 1919 – Mansell Richard James (25), Canadian flying ace, was last seen in western Massachusetts on 2 June, just days after a record-setting flight between Atlantic City and Boston.^[49]
• 1919 – Ambrose Small (56), Canadian millionaire, disappeared from his office. He was last seen at 5:30 pm on 2 December 1919, at the Grand Opera House in Toronto, Ontario.^[50]

1920s

• 1920 – Clayton Kratz (21 or 22), a Mennonite relief worker from the U.S. state of Pennsylvania left the U.S. on 1 September to travel to Russia and did not return from the trip, and was never heard from again.^[51]
• 1920 – Victor Grayson (39), British former Member of Parliament, was not seen again after 28 September after telling friends he was going to the Queen's Hotel in Leicester Square, London, and would be back, but did not return.^[52] He was also seen the same day by an artist who knew him entering a house in Thames Ditton belonging to Maundy Gregory, corrupt honours dealer, who is alleged to have murdered Grayson who had been investigating his activities.
• 1921 – The captain and ten crewmen of the Carroll A. Deering, a schooner found run aground off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on 31 January disappeared and were never found. A mutiny is suspected, but without any idea of the crew's later whereabouts nothing can be proven.^[53]
• 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 26 November on a passenger ship bound from New York City to Havana, and is presumed to have committed suicide by jumping overboard.^[54][55]
• 1922 – Edward F. Sands, who was a suspect in the murder of Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor on 1 February 1922,^[56] disappeared shortly after that, and was never seen again.
• 1922 – Alejandro Carrascosa (21), an Argentine poet, writer, and student who disappeared on 22 September, left hints that he was not going be seen again,^[57] and indeed was not.
• 1924 – Andrew Irvine (22), English mountaineer who took part in the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition, was last seen high on the mountain's northeast ridge on 8 June; his body has not been found.^[58]
• 1924 – Artur de Sacadura Cabral (43), a Portuguese aviation pioneer, disappeared flying over the English Channel on 24 November,^[59] and is believed to have died since parts of the plane was found, although he was not.
• 1925 – Percy Fawcett (58), British archaeologist and explorer, together with his eldest son, Jack, and friend Raleigh Rimell, 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.^[60]
• 1925 – Frederick McDonald (53 or 54), 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", that 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.^[61]
• 1926 – Marvin Clark (75), retired American sheriff, disappeared in Portland, Oregon en route to visit his daughter by stagecoach during the Halloween weekend. His disappearance has the distinction of being the oldest active missing person case in the United States.^[62]
• 1927 – Charles Nungesser (35), and François Coli (44), both French aviators, disappeared in their aircraft L'Oiseau Blanc on 8 May, while attempting a transatlantic flight.^[63]
• 1927 – Włodzimierz Zagórski (45), an Austro-Hungary military intelligence soldier, Polish brigadier general, staff officer, and aviator, disappeared 6 August,^[64] and was never seen again.
• 1927 – Paul Redfern (25), American musician and a pilot from Columbia, South Carolina who became known during the summer of 1927 for attempting to fly from Brunswick, Georgia to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, disappeared after 25 August,^[65] and was never seen again.
• 1928 – Roald Amundsen (55), disappeared with five crew members on 18 June 1928 while flying on a rescue mission in the Arctic, the search for Amundsen and team was called off in September 1928 by the Norwegian Government and neither the bodies nor Amundsen were ever found.^[66]
• 1928 - Glen and Bessie Hyde (29 & 22), American newlyweds were last seen 18 November, and disappeared while attempting to raft the Colorado River rapids of the Grand Canyon.^[67]

1930s

• 1930 – Mary Agnes Moroney (2), went missing, after her mother, a struggling 17-year-old mother of two, gave her two-year-old daughter Mary Agnes to a stranger calling herself "Julia Otis" in exchange for $2 on 15 May, on the understanding that the woman would take care of the girl in California for a short time and then return her to the Moroneys' Chicago home when things were better. She never did, and the ensuing investigation attracted national media attention. The girl was never located, and the case remains the oldest unsolved missing-persons case of this nature in the files of the Chicago Missing Persons Bureau.^[68] A California woman's belief that she was Mary Agnes has subsequently been disproven by DNA testing.^[69]
• 1930 – Joseph Force Crater (41), associate justice of the New York Supreme Court, was last seen on 6 August after eating 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.^[70]) Crater's disappearance, which prompted one of the most sensational manhunts of the 20th century,^[71] 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.^[72] To "pull a Crater" became slang for a person vanishing.
• 1932 – Jack Black (c. 61), disappeared during that year is believed to have committed suicide in 1932 by drowning, as he reportedly told his friends that if life got too grim, he would row out into New York Harbor and, with weights tied to his feet, drop overboard.
• 1933 – Julien Torma (30), a French Dadaist writer never returned from a 17 February trip into the Austrian Tyrol.^[73]
• 1933 – C. B. Johnston (c. 38), American college athlete and coach, sent a postcard to his wife from Zanesville, Ohio saying he was on his way to Chicago to publish a book after being fired as head football coach of what is now Appalachian State University. No one heard from him after that.^[74]
• 1934 – Wallace Fard Muhammad (43), founder of the Nation of Islam, left Detroit and was never heard from again.^[75]
• 1934 – Everett Ruess (20), young American artist, disappeared while traveling through the deserts of Utah, and was never seen again.^[76][77]
• 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).^[78] A filmmaker claimed to have located Lady Southern Cross on the seabed in February 2009.^[79]
• 1937 – Juliet Stuart Poyntz (50), an American communist and intelligence agent for the Soviet Union disappeared on 3 June.^[80] A police investigation turned up no clues to her fate, and her belongings, all of her clothing, and hand luggage in her room appeared to be untouched.^[81]
• 1937 – Amelia Earhart (39), famous American aviator; 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, on 2 July.^[82]
• 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.^[83]
• 1938 – Ettore Majorana (32), Italian physicist. Majorana disappeared in unknown circumstances during a boat trip from Palermo to Naples on 25 March. There is some evidence that he was alive in South America in 1959, and that his disappearance was voluntary.^[84]
• 1938 – Willie McLean (34), a Scottish-born American soccer player disappeared without a trace in the summer of 1938,^[85] and was never seen again.
• 1939 – Barbara Newhall Follett (25), American child prodigy novelist. Her first novel, The House Without Windows, was published in 1927 when she was twelve 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.^[86]
• 1939 – Lloyd L. Gaines (28), 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.^[87]
• 1939 – Richard Halliburton (39), vanished on 20 March, while attempting to sail Sea Dragon, a Chinese Junk, across the Pacific Ocean. In 1945, wreckage identified as a rudder and believed to belong to the Sea Dragon, washed ashore in San Diego.
• 1939 – Rita Gorgonowa (38), a governess and who later became a murderer, after leaving a prison on 3 September,^[88] was not seen again.

1940s

• 1941 – Thomas C. Latimore, American naval officer, who was captain of the USS Dobbin, and the 24th (22nd unique) Governor of American Samoa disappeared in Hawaii.^[89]
• 1941 – James Litterick (41), the first member of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) elected to the Manitoba provincial parliament. By the time that the CPC was banned in 1940 and Litterick formally expelled from the legislature, he had already gone into hiding,^[90][91] and become the subject of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police manhunt. Litterick surrendered to the RCMP during 1942 and was held at the Don Jail, in Toronto.^[92] The following year, he was reported to be working at a garment factory in Toronto,^[91] but nothing further appears to be known about him.
• 1941 – Jaan Tõnisson (72), one of the foremost Estonian political leaders, was arrested during the Soviet occupation, and was thought to have been shot, and his exact whereabouts after that remains unknown.^[93]
• 1942 – On 16 August, U.S. Navy blimp L-8 drifted inland from its route doing antisubmarine patrol off the coast of California near San Francisco several hours after its crew, Lt. Ernest Cody and Ens. Charles Adams, radioed in that they were going to take a closer look at an oil slick. When the ship eventually crashed in Daly City, neither man was aboard. A massive search failed to find any trace of them; they were both declared dead a year later.^[94]
• 1943 – Dan Billany (30), English novelist was last heard from in 1943.^[95] He was last seen on 20 November in Capistrello, Italy.
• 1943 – Abraham Gancwajch (41 or 42), a prominent Nazi collaborator in the Warsaw Ghetto during the occupation of Poland in World War II, and a Jewish "kingpin" of the ghetto underworld.^[96] who was last seen in 1943, and is rumored to have been killed.^[97]
• 1944 – Although the U.S. Navy claimed later the submarine USS Robalo was lost with all hands after failing to report while on a July patrol in the Philippines, Lt. Cmdr. Manning Kimmel and three other crewmen are known to have survived. A note recovered by an Army prisoner of war claimed the four had been arrested as spies after reaching Palawan Island following the Robalo's 26 July collision with a Japanese mine just offshore. Another witness account says they were massacred following an air raid later that year, but Japanese records do not indicate they were being held at the camp in question at that time. It is believed that they were killed in captivity at some point or another, but officially their fate is still unknown.^[98]
• 1944 – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (44), French author who disappeared over the Mediterranean on a reconnaissance mission during July 1944, and is believed to have died at that time.^[99] In August, an unidentifiable body, wearing French uniform, was found in the sea near Carqueiranne and was buried there. In 2000, the wreckage of the aircraft flown by Saint-Exupéry was found on the seabed near Marseille.
• 1944 – Sheila Fox (6), disappeared in Farnworth, Bolton, Lancashire, England on 18 August. Witnesses claim they saw Sheila riding on the handlebars of a bike being pedalled by a 25-30-year-old man. In 2001, a witness came forward claiming he saw a local resident digging a hole in the area where Sheila disappeared. He was revealed to have been convicted of rape and child molestation.^[100]
• 1944 – 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.^[101]
• 1944 – Glenn Miller (40), American band leader, disappeared on the night of 15 December in a US Army "Norseman" aircraft that vanished over the English Channel en route from UK to France.^[102][103]
• 1944 – Rocco Perri (56), was last seen alive in Hamilton, Ontario on 23 April. His body has never been found; it is speculated he was murdered by being fitted with cement shoes and thrown into Hamilton Harbour.^[104]
• 1945 – Szilveszter Matuska (52 or 53), a Hungarian mass murderer and mechanical engineer who reportedly escaped from jail in Vác in 1944,^[105] and in 1945 according to some reports, he served as an explosives expert during the latter stages of World War II; he was never recaptured and his fate is unknown.
• 1945 – Heinrich Müller (45), Nazi Gestapo chief, last confirmed sighting in the Führerbunker on the evening of 1 May 1945 where he had stated his intention to avoid being taken into custody by the Soviet forces advancing on Berlin. 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."^[106] Other theories have suggested that he either escaped to South America like many other fugitive Nazis and lived out his life there (the Israelis continued to investigate his whereabouts into the 1960s) or was protected by U.S. or Soviet intelligence under a new identity. He is the most senior Nazi official whose fate is unknown.
• 1945 – 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 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 17 July 1947, but to date no hard evidence has been found to confirm this.^[107] In 2010, evidence from Russian archives surfaced suggesting he was alive after the presumed execution date.^[108]
• 1945 – Constanze Manziarly (25), cook and dietitian to Adolf Hitler, disappeared on 2 May, 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.^[109]
• 1945 – Supriyadi (22), Indonesian national hero. On 6 October, 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.^[110][111]
• 1945 – 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) in August 1945. Several theories exist about his fate, but he is presumed to have died in 1945, killed by either Soviet or Japanese forces.^[112]
• 1945 – Alfred Partikel (57), a German painter, disappeared while picking mushrooms in the woods near Ahrenshoop on 20 October, and was never seen again.^[113]
• 1945 – Five of the nine Sodder children (aged 5 through 14) who lived in their parents' home outside Fayetteville, West Virginia, were presumed to have died in a Christmas Eve fire that destroyed the house. However, no remains were found in the ashes the morning after; some small fragments found on subsequent investigations turned out to have been planted. Later reported sightings of some of the children and suspicions that the fire had been arson rather than an accident led the family to believe that the children were still alive, to the point that they kept a billboard offering a reward for information on their fate up at the house site until the late 1980s.^[114]
• 1946 – Paula Jean Welden (18), Bennington College sophomore, disappeared while walking on the Long Trail near Glastenbury Mountain, Vermont, US.^[115][116]
• 1947 – Daniel S. Voorhees (33 or 34), a transient restaurant porter who confessed to the murder of Elizabeth Short, checked out a hotel in Los Angeles, California on the morning of 16 January, and was never seen after that.^[117]
• 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.^[118][119]
• 1948 – Sir Arthur Coningham (53), retired RAF Air Marshal, disappeared when Avro Tudor IV G-AHNP Star Tiger went missing over the western Atlantic.^[120] 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.^[121] 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.^[122]
• 1949 – Dorothy Forstein (40), American housewife disappeared on 18 October. Reportedly, her two children witnessed an unknown man carrying her downstairs, and was never seen again.^[123][124]
• 1949 – Jean Spangler (26), went missing on 7 October from Los Angeles, California under mysterious circumstances, and her case remains unsolved.^[125]
• 1949 – Francis Hong Yong-ho, a Roman Catholic prelate, who was imprisoned by the communist regime of Kim Il-sung in 1949, and after disappeared,^[126] and was never seen again.

1950s

• 1950 – Richard Colvin Cox (20), second-year military cadet, disappeared from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.^[127][128]
• 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.^[129][130] 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.^[131] 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.^[132]
• 1953 – Rudolf Mildner, an Austrian-German SS-Standartenführer who served as the chief of the Gestapo at Katowice and who was the head of the political department at Auschwitz. After the war, Mildner testified at the Nuremberg Trials and remained in custody until 1949 and is believed to have died in 1953. A man named Adolf Eichmann claimed to have met Mildner in Argentina in 1958, but this claim has not been verified.^[133]
• 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, Manitoba, to Sudbury, Ontario.^[134] The RCAF stated it had no record of such an incident.^[135]
• 1953 – Evelyn Hartley (15), teenager from La Crosse, WI, disappeared on 24 October, while babysitting.^[136][137]
• 1953 – Henry Borynski, a Polish Catholic priest and outspoken anti-Communist, disappeared on 13 July in Bradford, Yorkshire.^[138]
• 1955 – Stanley Mathenge, a Mau Mau leader who disappeared in 1955, and was later reported to be allegedly living in Ethiopia,^[139] but has not been seen since.
• 1955 – Weldon Kees' (41), deserted car was discovered on 19 July on the Marin County side of the Golden Gate Bridge. While Kees had talked about jumping over the railing of the bridge, he stated that he was physically unable to accomplish the task.^[140]
• 1955 – On 10 November, the 69-foot (21 m) merchant vessel Joyita was found abandoned, partially submerged and listing heavily to port, north of the Pacific island of Vanua Levu, part of Fiji, with no sign of the 25 passengers and crew who had been aboard when it was last seen on its departure from Apia, Samoa, five weeks earlier. Extensive investigation has failed to find any trace of them.^[141]
• 1956 – Three United States Air Force 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.^[142]
• 1956 – Lionel "Buster" Crabb (46), retired British Royal Navy frogman, disappeared 29 April 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.^[143]
• 1957 - Maud Crawford (65), was an American attorney in Camden, Arkansas, who disappeared without a trace on a Saturday night in the winter of 1957. Crawford was a partner in a law firm investigating Mafia influence over labor unions.^[144]
• 1958 – The Martin family disappeared on 7 December, in Hood River County, Oregon while on a drive. Six months later, the bodies of the two youngest daughters were recovered on the Columbia River, though the whereabouts of the mother, father, and eldest daughter remains unsolved.^[145]
• 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.^[146]

1960s

• 1960 – Chen Tien, head of the Central Propaganda Department of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), disappeared four years after taking part in talks with government officials to try to reach a mutually agreeable solution in the Malayan Emergency. The talks broke down and Tien continued to take part in the insurrection until the Malayan government suppressed the MCP in 1960 and declared the emergency over.^[147]
• 1960 – James Squillante (41), caporegime in the Gambino crime family, disappeared after being indicted on extortion charges. He is believed to have been murdered and his body disposed of in a car crusher and subsequently melted down in an open hearth furnace,^[148][149] although no physical evidence has ever been found to substantiate this and no one was ever charged for the crime.
• 1961 – David Kenyon Webster (39), journalist for the Los Angeles Daily News and The Saturday Evening Post, and a World War II veteran with "Easy" Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (made famous in the book and miniseries Band of Brothers), went out on a boat near the coast of Santa Monica and disappeared while shark fishing.^[150] He is presumed to have drowned.^[151]
• 1961 – Masanobu Tsuji, Japanese army officer and politician, disappeared on a trip to Laos and was never heard from again.^[152]
• 1961 – Joan Risch (31), Lincoln, Massachusetts homemaker, was last seen in her driveway by a neighbor on the afternoon of 24 October; several unconfirmed sightings were reported on local roads later that day. Evidence in her house at first suggested foul play,^[153][154] but that opinion was reassessed when a local newspaper found that she had checked out two dozen books about mysterious disappearances and unsolved murders from the library over the preceding summer.^[155]
• 1961 – Michael Rockefeller (23), son of Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared during an expedition in the Asmat region of southwestern New Guinea.^[156][157]
• 1962 – Archie E. Mitchell (44), minister with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, was taken captive by the Viet Cong on 30 May.^[158] What became of him after that is unknown.
• 1962 – Sam Sary, Cambodian politician, disappeared in 1962 and may have been put to death.^[159]
• 1962 – Anthony Strollo (62), caporegime in the Genovese crime family, last seen leaving his residence in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He is believed to have been murdered on the orders of Vito Genovese in retaliation for having conspired to have Genovese imprisoned for drug trafficking; no one was ever charged in his disappearance.^[160]
• 1962 – Frank Morris (35), and brothers Clarence (31) and John Anglin (32), escaped from Alcatraz prison in the U.S. state of California and disappeared. Authorities presumed that they drowned, but may have survived.^[161][162]
• 1964 – Charles Clifford Ogle (41), took off from Oakland International Airport, California, in his Cessna 210, a single-engine aircraft, and is believed to have been heading over the Sierra Nevada when he disappeared.^[163][164]
• 1965 – Mehdi Ben Barka (45), Moroccan politician, disappeared while in exile in Paris,^[165] where he is believed to have been killed and buried.^[166]
• 1965 – Charles Rogers (43), reclusive unemployed seismologist in Houston, Texas, has remained at large since the "Icebox Murders" of his parents were discovered on 23 June, leading to a warrant for his detention as a material witness. He was declared legally dead in 1975.^[167][168]
• 1966 – Kim Bong-han (about 50), North Korean medical surgeon, disappeared in 1966^[169] and was never heard from again.
• 1966 – The Beaumont children, Jane Nartare (9), Arnna Kathleen (7), and Grant Ellis (4), disappeared from a beach near Adelaide, South Australia on 26 January.^[170][171]
• 1966 – Wikana, an Indonesian Communist Party leader, disappeared on 9 June^[172] and was never seen again.
• 1966 – Ann Miller (19), Patricia Blough (19), and Renee Bruh (21), three young women from the Chicago suburbs, last seen on 2 July after leaving their blanket and personal effects behind on a crowded beach at Indiana Dunes State Park to get on a boat in Lake Michigan.^[173][174] Theories have ranged from an offshore illegal abortion gone wrong, resulting in the other two women being killed as witnesses,^[175] to a hit ordered by Silas Jayne, a Chicago-area horse breeder implicated after his 1987 death in a number of unsolved murders related to a bitter feud with his brother.^[176]
• 1966 – Chu Anping (56), Chinese scholar and liberal journalist, disappeared in September 1966^[177] and was never seen again.
• 1967 – John Lake (37), sports editor of Newsweek, mysteriously disappeared in December 1967.^[178][179]
• 1967 – Jim Thompson (61), former U.S. military intelligence officer who once worked for the Office of Strategic Services (and later known as the "Thai Silk King" for his revival of the Thai silk industry), failed to return from an afternoon walk in the Cameron Highlands in Pahang, Malaysia, quickly prompting a massive manhunt. No trace of him has ever been found.^[180][181]
• 1967 – James P. Brady (59), Canadian Metis leader, and a Cree friend, Abraham Halkett (40), disappeared while on a prospecting trip in northern Saskatchewan. An extensive land, air, and water search located their camp but failed to find any trace of either man.^[182]
• 1967 – Harold Holt (59), then Prime Minister of Australia, disappeared while swimming in heavy surf at a beach notorious for strong and dangerous rip currents. Despite one of the largest search-and-rescue operations ever mounted in Australia, his body was never found.^[183][184]
• 1968 – Eugene DeBruin, a US Air Force staff sergeant and member of Air America serving in Laos during the Second Indochina War after being captured when his plane was shot down in 1963. After that he was a POW at a Pathet Lao prison camp in Laos until 1968, when he and other prisoners attempted to escape, after which he disappeared, and it is not known if succeeded or what became of him.^[185]
• 1969 – April Fabb (13), last seen near her home in Metton, Norfolk, United Kingdom on 8 April, when her abandoned bicycle was found in a field. No trace of her has been found since then, although some theories have linked her case to known serial killers.^[186][187]
• 1969 – Patricia Spencer (16), and Pamela Hobley (15), last seen leaving a Halloween party in Oscoda, Michigan.^[188][189] Police have continued to investigate and believe the two were murdered; in 2013 they announced they had a person of interest in the case but did not have enough information to continue. Foul play is suspected.^[190][191]

1970s

1970

• Sean Flynn (28), son of Errol Flynn and Lili Damita—and his colleague Dana Stone (30), disappeared in Cambodia on 6 April while working as freelance photojournalists for Time magazine.^[192][193] Neither man's remains were ever found,^[194] and it is generally assumed that they were killed by Khmer Rouge guerillas.^[195] After a decade-long search financed by his mother, Flynn was officially declared dead in 1984.^[196] In 2010, a British team uncovered the remains of a Western hostage in the Cambodian jungle, but DNA comparisons with samples from the Flynn family were negative.^[197][198]
• Robin Graham (18), ran out of gas on the Hollywood Freeway. She was last seen by California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers, who directed her to a callbox and later saw her speaking with a man beside her car. The circumstances of her disappearance resulted in CHP policies being changed to ensure the safety of stranded female motorists.^[199]
• Cheryl Grimmer (3), toddler who went missing from a beach side shower block in New South Wales, Australia, on 12 January 1970. Initially, she had refused to leave the shower block, so one of her brothers went to collect their mum to persuade Cheryl to come out. In the moments between leaving the shower block and returning with his mum, Cheryl had disappeared. Witnesses claim they saw a man in an orange swimsuit carrying a blonde-haired child wrapped up in a towel. In over 45 years, there have been no further clues as to what happened to Cheryl, although abduction is suspected.^[200]
• Leo Burt (22), who allegedly participating in the bombing of Sterling Hall, on the campus of the University of Wisconsin on 24 August, and on 2 September was indicted federally in Madison, Wisconsin disappeared in 1970 and has not been seen since.^[201][202]

1971

• Lynne Schulze (18), student at Middlebury College in Vermont, was last seen by one of her college friends on 10 December when she abruptly turned back on the way to a literature exam, claiming she had left her favorite pen in her dorm room, where her wallet, checkbook and other belongings were later found. A later report said that she was seen a short time later outside a health food store co-owned and operated at that time by Robert Durst and his wife Kathleen, who herself also disappeared, a decade later. She had also been seen buying prunes from the same store earlier in the day. The case was reopened in 1992; in 2015, following Durst's arrest on charges of murdering his friend Susan Berman, Middlebury police confirmed that they wanted to speak to Durst about the case, but his lawyer has declined to let them do so.^[203]
• Dan Cooper, (aka D.B. Cooper) name used by an unidentified man who hijacked a plane on 24 November, and parachuted from the plane during mid-flight. No trace of him has ever been found.^[204]
• Eldor Alfred Pearson (59), was last seen at a bar in Estevan, Saskatchewan in January 1971, after he had caught a taxi to return to either his boarding house, or to his family homestead,^[205][206] but didn't return to either of those places and was never seen again.

1972

• Adrien McNaughton (5), wandered away from his family during a fishing trip in Arnprior, Ontario on 12 June, and has not been seen since.^[207][208]
• Nick Begich (40), and Hale Boggs (58), both Democratic Party members, disappeared in an airplane while traveling over a remote section of Alaska on 16 October. The airplane presumably crashed, but no trace of it has been found.^[209][210]
• Zahir Raihan (36), Bangladeshi novelist, writer, and filmmaker, disappeared on 30 January in Pakistan while looking for his brother who was abducted by Pakistani forces and never returned.^[211]

1973

• Anna Christian Waters (5), American child who disappeared on 16 January, from the yard of her home in Purisima Canyon, a rural area near Half Moon Bay, California. Her kidnapping was highly covered by the press of that time. However, she has never been found.^[212]
• Joanne Ratcliffe (11), and Kirste Gordon (4), two Australian girls who went missing while attending an Australian rules football match at the Adelaide Oval on 25 August 1973.^[213]
• Ray Robinson (40), black civil rights activist, traveled to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to participate in the protests of the Wounded Knee Incident in South Dakota and was never seen again. In 2014 the FBI said it had concluded from witnesses that he was killed in 1973 in an internal conflict and buried there. He has been declared legally dead; his body has never been located.^[214]

1974

• Oscar Zeta Acosta (39), disappeared while traveling in Mazatlán, Mexico in May 1974.^[215] His son, Marco Acosta, believes that he was the last person to talk to his father. Acosta telephoned his son from Mazatlán, telling him that he was "about to board a boat full of white snow." Marco is later quoted in reference to his father's disappearance: "The body was never found, but we surmise that probably, knowing the people he was involved with, he ended up mouthing off, getting into a fight, and getting killed." He was also a close personal friend of American author Hunter S. Thompson. As a travelling companion and ever-present associate of Thompson, Acosta featured heavily in Thompson's 1971 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in which Acosta was referred to as 'Dr. Gonzo' and Thompson's attorney.
• Connie Converse (50), a singer-songwriter active in the New York City folk music scene of the 1950s. In 1974, Converse, having lost her job as Managing Editor of the Journal of Conflict Resolution two years earlier, wrote letters to friends and family expressing her intention to start a new life somewhere else. In August 1974, she loaded her Volkswagen Beetle with her belongings, drove away, and was never heard from again.^[216]
• John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (39), disappeared on 7 November, following the murder of Sandra Rivett, his children's nanny, at the home of his estranged wife, who was herself assaulted and named Bingham as the assailant. An inquest into the death concluded in his absence that Lord Lucan committed the murder. Despite many unconfirmed sightings, his whereabouts remain unknown. He was presumed dead in 1999, with a death certificate issued in 2016.^[217]
• Carmen Bueno (24), and Jorge Müller Silva (27), an actress and cinematographer both Chilean, were interrogated and tortured at Villa Grimaldi, shortly before they disappeared on 29 November,^[218] and have not been seen since.

1975

• Mona Blades (18), New Zealander, disappeared on 31 May, while hitchhiking in the North Island. She is believed to have been murdered, but no remains of hers have ever been discovered.^[219]
• Jimmy Hoffa (62), U.S. trade union leader, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, disappeared on 30 July, from the parking lot of a restaurant, where it is believed he was to meet with two Mafia leaders—Anthony Giacalone and Anthony Provenzano.^[220]
• Juanita Joan Nielsen (38), Australian publisher, activist and heiress, disappeared in Kings Cross, Sydney on 4 July. It is believed she was murdered, although the people responsible for her disappearance have never been identified and no trace of her has ever been found.^[221]
• Jim Sullivan (34), American singer-songwriter, left Los Angeles on 4 March, to drive to Nashville alone. His abandoned car was found at a remote ranch in New Mexico, and he was reportedly last seen walking away from it. The car contained Sullivan's money, papers, guitar, clothes, and a box of his unsold records.^[222][223]
• Bas Jan Ader, a Dutch conceptual artist, performance artist, photographer, and filmmaker, who was lost at sea in 1975, attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean from the US to England in the smallest boat ever. His deserted vessel was found off the coast of Ireland on 18 April 1976, offering few clues as to his fate.^[224]
• Norodom Chantaraingsey, a member of the Cambodian royal family and a Cambodian nationalist and was initially a leader of the guerrilla resistance against the colonial French disappeared in 1975,^[225] and is believed to have been killed.

1976

• Frank Blackhorse (27 or 28), one of several aliases used by a member of the American Indian Movement, is believed to have disappeared in 1976.^[226]
• Eloise Worledge (8), disappeared from her home in Beaumaris, Victoria, Australia, on 12 January, and is thought to have been abducted from her bedroom.^[227]
• Bradford Bishop (39), disappeared 2 March from Bethesda, Maryland, shortly after allegedly murdering his wife, mother, and children.^[228] On 18 March, the Bishop family car was found abandoned at an isolated campground in Elkmont, Tennessee.^[229] On 10 April 2014, the FBI named him the 502nd fugitive to be placed on its List of 10 Most Wanted Fugitives.^[230]
• Sandy Davidson (3), a Scottish boy who disappeared on 23 April, while he was playing in the back garden of his house in the Bourtreehill housing estate in Irvine, North Ayrshire.^[231]
• Andy Puglisi (10), wandered away from a pool area near his home in Lawrence, Massachusetts on 21 August, and has not been seen since.^[232]
• Renee MacRae (36), and son Andrew (3), were last seen in Inverness, Scotland on 12 November.^[233]

1977

• Helen Brach (65), disappeared on 17 February, and was thought to have been murdered. A man named Richard Bailey was charged more than a decade later with killing Brach, but not convicted of, conspiring to murder Brach; he eventually received a long sentence after being convicted of defrauding her.^[234]
• Donald Mackay (43), Australian anti-drugs campaigner who was last seen 15 July, and was possibly murdered after providing information to police which resulted in what was then the biggest drug bust in Australian history.^[235][236]
• Slim Wintermute (60), American collegiate and professional basketball player, disappeared in October 1977, after setting out in his yacht from Portage Bay in Seattle's Lake Union.^[237] His boat was found a few days later with one of his friends asleep on board.
• Megumi Yokota (13), a Japanese girl, who was reportedly abducted by a North Korean agent on 15 November^[238] in Niigata Prefecture, and is thereafter believed to have been taken to a spy train center.^[239]
• Don Taxay, an American numismatist and historian who was last seen in 1977.^[240]

1978

• Peter Winston (20), an American chess player, disappeared in mysterious circumstances in January 1978.^[241]
• Eddie Aikau (31), a well-known Hawaiian lifeguard and surfer, disappeared on 17 March, when he got lost at sea on a boat called the Hōkūleʻa,^[242] and was separated from the boat. He was last seen paddling toward his surfboard and is believed to have drowned.^[243]
• John Brisker (30), American professional basketball player from Detroit, Michigan who disappeared in Uganda in April 1978.^[244]
• Genette Tate (13), a teenage English girl, disappeared on 19 August, while delivering newspapers in Aylesbeare, Devon, England.^[245]
• Musa al-Sadr (50), and two aides, Mohammed Yaaqoub and Abbas Badreddine, disappeared six days after entering Libya on 31 August, during an official visit from Lebanon at the invitation of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.^[246][247]
• Frederick Valentich (21), disappeared on 21 October, during a solo flight over Bass Strait in Australia, after reporting to an air traffic controller that his plane was being circled by an unknown craft.^[248]
• Yaeko Taguchi (22), a Japanese citizen, said to have been kidnapped by North Korea,^[249] in June 1978 in Tokyo, has not been seen since.
• Harry Domela, a Latvian-born impostor who pretended to be a deposed German crown prince disappeared, but later resurfaced as a teacher in Venezuela and contacted Jef Last in 1965.^[250] The last sign of him was in 1978.^[251]

1979

• Jim Robinson (54), former professional boxer notable for his bout with Muhammad Ali in 1961, was last heard from this year, living in the Overtown district of Miami,^[252] but has not been since.
• Ian Mackintosh (39 or 40), creator and writer of The Sandbaggers British television series, was flying with two others over the Gulf of Alaska in a light aircraft in July 1979. The plane sent out a distress signal, which was picked up by the United States Coast Guard. The plane's last-known position was searched, but no wreckage of the plane was ever found, and its passengers have not been heard from since.^[253]
• J. C. P. Williams (47), a New Zealand cardiologist who discovered Williams syndrome, went missing in London, England.^[254] Williams was declared "a missing person presumed to be dead from 1978" by the High Court of New Zealand,^[255] and it is known that Williams renewed his passport in Geneva in September 1979.^[256] He had possibly gone into hiding; reports of contact with him as recently as 2000. His disappearance remains a mystery.^[257]
• Martin Allen (15), a school boy from London, England, who was last positively identified at King's Cross station in at 3:50 pm on 5 November, when he left his friends to go to his brother's house. A witness came forward to say that a 30-year-old male was seen at Gloucester Road tube station later that same afternoon in the company of a boy who looked like Martin. The man was heard to tell the boy not to try and run, and the witness stated that the boy looked scared. There have been theories that Martin fell prey to a pedophile gang operating in London and that he was murdered.^[258][259]

1980s

1980

• Louise Faulkner (43) and Charmian Faulkner (2), a mother and daughter who went missing in April 1980 after Louise told a friend she was visiting her boyfriend in Gippsland. They were last seen getting into a white ute in St Kilda, Victoria, Australia. Both were declared legally dead in 2006 at an inquest. No trace of them has been found.^[260]
• Peng Jiamu (68), Chinese biologist who led an expedition to Lop Nur where he disappeared on 17 June, leaving a note to say he had gone to find water. Presumed dead, there have been a number of attempts to find his remains, but nothing has ever been found.^[261]
• Alan Addis (19), Royal Marine who went missing on East Falkland in August 1980. His small unit was on a patrol to North Arm in Lafonia on East Falkland in August 1980 when Addis went missing. The marines had all attended a local function in the social hall of the remote and small community with Addis last being seen at 1:30 am on 5 August. He was not noticed as being absent until the other members of his team had set sail on a steamer to take them back to their base at Port Stanley. The official report assumes he drowned, however, investigations and rumours have led to a belief that he was killed. No body or trace has been found.^[262]
• Thomas A. Mutch (49), American geologist and planetary scientist disappeared on 6 October during a descent from Mount Nun in the Kashmir Himalayas and is believed to have been killed.^[263]
• Alaíde Foppa (64), disappeared while in Mexico on 9 December,^[264] and is believed to have been murdered.
• Angus Primrose (53), went missing at sea in 1980, and is presumed to have drowned.^[265]

1981

• Carlease Simms (30), was last seen on 1 January, in New Jersey, when someone knocked on the door of her apartment and an argument took place. She then left with the person that she had argued with, and has not been seen since.^[266]
• Katrice Lee (2), disappeared from a NAAFI shopping complex in Schloß Neuhaus, Paderborn, in West Germany on 28 November, the day of her second birthday.^[267][268]

1982

• Kathleen McCormack Durst (29), medical student who disappeared on 31 January, after leaving the Connecticut house of a friend to return to the South Salem, New York residence that she shared with her husband. She has not been seen since and was declared legally dead in 2001. Since her marriage was deteriorating, police strongly suspected that her husband had murdered her due to inconsistencies in statements he gave them.^[269][270]
• Ahmad Motevaselian (29), Iranian military attache and one of the four Iranian diplomats (Seyed Mohsen Mousavi, Kazem Akhavan, and Taghi Rastegar Moghadam) that disappeared in Lebanon in 1982. On 5 July, when the vehicle carrying the diplomats was passing through a checkpoint post on its way to Beirut, it was intercepted by Phalange Party members. Three decades after the incident, the fate of the missing diplomats remains a mystery, and the search for Motevaselian and the other Iranian diplomats continues.^{[271][272][273]}
• Johnny Gosch (12), reported missing to West Des Moines Police Department^[274] by his parents after he disappeared on September 5 while delivering newspapers. At that time, there was a customary three-day waiting period before police responded to missing persons reports. Gosch has not been heard from again, but his case prompted new laws for Iowa and other states, resulting in missing persons reports involving children being given immediate attention.^[275]
• Tony Jones (20), disappeared while backpacking in North Queensland, Australia, on November 3,^[276][277] and is believed to have been murdered.^[278]

1983

• Upali Wijewardene (44), a Sri Lankan business magnate took a plane to Colombo, but never arrived. Extensive search operation by air and naval units failed to locate any evidence of a crash, as his plane disappeared without a trace,^[279] and he is believed to be dead.
• Ludovic Janvier (6), disappeared from Grenoble, France on 17 March and is believed to have been abducted by an unidentified white adult male along with his brothers; while his brothers escaped, Ludovic has not been located.^[280]
• Tammy Lynn Leppert (18), model and actress who disappeared on 6 July without a trace after leaving her Rockledge, Florida, family home.^[281]
• Kirsa Jensen (14), disappeared on 1 September, while riding her horse at a beach near Napier, New Zealand.^[282]
• Ann Gotlib (12), a Russian immigrant who disappeared from the premises of a Louisville, Kentucky mall on 1 June, the police later found her bike, but her abductor has remained a mystery.^[283]
• Mirella Gregori (15), a girl who disappeared from Rome, Italy on 7 May, and has not been seen since.^[284]
• Emanuela Orlandi (15), a girl who was a citizen of Vatican City from Rome, Italy disappeared on 22 June, and has not been seen since.^[285]

1984

• Linne Dominelli (34), disappeared on 22 January, after borrowing her ex-boyfriend's van to drive to Monterey Bay area. The van that she had been driving was found vacant, and in a remote area of Paso Robles. Foul play is suspected in her disappearance.^[286][287]
• Naomi Uemura (43), a Japanese adventurer who was particularly well known for doing alone what had previously been achieved only with large teams, disappeared on 13 February while descending Mount McKinley after a solo climb.^[288]
• Tammy Rothganger (15), was last seen getting into a vehicle in front of her school on 16 May in Eldon, Miller County, Missouri.^{[289][290][291]}
• Marlene Abigosis (26), a woman who was last seen in Vancouver, British Columbia on 1 January.^[292][293] Shortly before she disappeared she was planning to travel to Calgary, Alberta.^{[294][295][296]}
• Ronald Jorgensen, New Zealand criminal, vanished in mysterious circumstances in 1984, after his car was found wrecked at the bottom of a cliff.^[297] Police initially suspected that he faked his death, and later declared him legally dead in 1998,^[298] but since his body was never found, rumors persist that he became a police informant in Australia. His fate remains unknown.^[299]
• Kevin Andrew Collins (10), disappeared on 10 February, while returning home alone from basketball practice at his school in the Haight district of San Francisco, California. The Police consider a man named Dan Therrien to be a suspect in his disappearance.^[300] He was one of the first of the "Have you seen me?" milk carton photos.^[301]
• Edward L. Montoro (52), motion picture producer/distributor, disappeared after taking more than $1 million from his own company, Film Ventures International. It was speculated that he fled to Mexico, but his whereabouts to this day have been undetermined.^[302]

1985

• Boris Weisfeiler (43), U.S. mathematician, disappeared in the Biobío Region of Chile during a solo hiking trip.^[303] Chilean authorities originally concluded that he drowned, but documents released by the United States Department of State in 2000 included a 1986 memo suggesting he may be a captive "somewhere in Chile (probably Colonia Dignidad)", and a 1987 account by a CIA source claiming that Weisfeiler had been interrogated and fatally beaten by a Chilean army patrol.^[304]
• Cherrie Mahan (8), last seen getting off her school bus a short distance from her house in Cabot, Pennsylvania, on 22 February. Police focused on a van seen near the bus when she got off. Her face was the first to be put on mailers sent all around the country, a practice continued with age-progressed photos as time passed; she was declared legally dead in 1998. In 2011 police claimed they had received a promising new lead but would not discuss it.^[305]
• Diane Suzuki (19), last seen on the evening of 6 July, leaving the Honolulu dance studio where she worked as an instructor. Blood evidence found at the scene has not been matched to any suspect, nor can it be matched to Suzuki since her blood type was not known. A photographer she knew was questioned by police and released without charge.^[306]
• Vladimir Alexandrov, Soviet physicist, disappeared while attending a nuclear winter conference in Madrid.^[307]
• Cotah Ramaswami (89), Indian cricketer who played in two Test matches in 1936. He walked out of his home in Chennai, India, on 15 October 1985. No trace of him has been found.^[308]
• Andrew Fluegelman (41), a publisher, photographer, programmer, and attorney who disappeared on 6 July after his car was found vacant, and is believed to have committed suicide.^[309]

1986

• Madame Max Adolphe (60), who was the right hand woman of former Haitian president François Duvalier while being held prisoner in an army barracks next to the national palace in Haiti, left the country in February 1986,^[310] and her current whereabouts are unknown.
• Anthonette Cayedito (9), an American girl who disappeared from her home in Gallup, New Mexico in the early morning hours of 6 April, after her mom went to look for her and she could not be found.^[311]
• Agustín Feced (65), Argentinian police official believed responsible for many tortures and extrajudicial executions during the country's Dirty War, was stated to have died in prison on 21 July, while facing charges related to those activities. However, the records of his death and burial are incomplete and sometimes contradictory. Several sources doubt he was even imprisoned at the time. In 1986, the military hospital announced that Agustín Feced had died, but they did not bring any proof of it.^[312]
• Suzy Lamplugh (25), British estate agent, disappeared from Fulham, west London, on 28 July. In 1994, she was declared dead, presumed murdered. Despite further police investigations in 1998 and 2000, no trace of her has been found.^[313]
• Jeremy Bright (14), disappeared on 14 August, while attending the county fair in Myrtle Point, Oregon with his sister. The following day his mother found his wallet, watch and keys in his stepfather's house nearby, where he had been staying. Foul play has been suspected, and police had a potential suspect who died in prison in 2007. While his family believes he is dead, and held a memorial service for him in 2011, they have not petitioned a court to make that declaration legal.^[314]
• Philip Cairns (13), Irish schoolboy, disappeared in October 1986 on his way back to school in Dublin after going home for lunch. His schoolbag was found abandoned in a previously searched lane near his house a few days later, but there has been no trace of Philip, and no arrests have been made in connection with the case.^[315]
• Simon Parkes (18), Leading seaman in the Royal Navy who went missing when the ship he was serving aboard was docked in Gibraltar. Parkes had gone out to the town and was last seen leaving the Horseshoe Bar on the peninsula. Because he disappeared on 12 December, Allan Grimson (who favoured killing on that date and was serving aboard the same ship at that time) has been named as a suspect in Parkes' possible murder, though no trace of him or a body has been found.^[316]
• Bambi Woods, a pornographic actress and exotic dancer, who was best known for her appearance as the title character in the 1978 film Debbie Does Dallas disappeared in 1986,^[317] and may have overdosed on drugs.

1987

• Federico Caffè (73), Italian economist, left his home in Rome at dawn on 15 April, shortly after quitting university teaching, and disappeared. He was declared dead on 30 October 1998. The mystery of his disappearance has not been solved.^[318]
• Julie Weflen (28), operator for the Bonneville Power Administration in Spokane, Washington who disappeared on 16 September. Weflen was working at the Four Mounds sub-station in Spokane County. She vanished some time after 3:30 pm after going to check on a transformer. Her work truck was found with its door and back hatch open and her personal possessions inside and on the ground. The gravel in the vicinity showed signs of a struggle.^[319]

1988

• Susan Smalley (18), and Stacie Madison (17), disappeared on the morning of 20 March. Police know the girls were at Smalley's house by midnight, but later left. The car in which they rode off was found abandoned in Dallas, Texas.^[320][321]
• Ron Arad (30), Israeli jet-fighter navigator, was under Israeli intelligence sight from 16 October 1986 (the day he was captured by Amal Shi'ite forces in southern Lebanon), and until the early hours of 4 May (coincidentally his 30th birthday), when he abruptly vanished from the house he was held in, at the village of Nebbi Shiit.^[322][323]
• Antonio Bardellino (43), a powerful Neapolitan Camorrista and boss of the Casalesi clan, was said to have been murdered on 26 May, by his right-hand man Mario Iovine, but since his body was not found, he is rumored to still be alive.^[324]
• Lee Boxell (15), disappeared near his home in Cheam, Surrey, on 10 September.^[325] He was on his way to a football match at Selhurst Park and has not been seen since.
• Tara Calico (19), disappeared near her home in Belen, New Mexico, on 20 September.^[326] A Polaroid photo of a boy and girl, bound and gagged, surfaced on 15 June 1989, in Port St. Joe, Florida, but has not been confirmed to be Tara.
• Michaela Garecht (9), abducted by an unidentified white male at a grocery store in Hayward, California, on 19 November.^[327]

1989

• Tiffany Sessions (20), left her apartment in Gainesville, Florida and went out for an evening walk on 9 February, but never returned.^{[328][329][330]}
• Charles Horvath-Allan (20), disappeared in May 1989 from a campsite in Kelowna, British Columbia in Canada. Horvath-Allan, a Canadian born British national, was hiking across Canada and had plans to meet up with his mother and step-father in Hong Kong in August 1989, but never made it.^[331]
• Patricia Meehan (37), disappeared in Circle, Montana after a car accident on 20 April.^[332][333]
• Reino Gikman (59), disappeared in June 1989 in Vienna, Austria,^[334] and has not been seen since.
• Melanie Melanson (14), went missing at a party near a Woburn, Massachusetts industrial park on 27 October, and has not been seen since.^[335][336]

1990s

1990

• Ames Glover, 5-month-old boy, disappeared from the back seat of his father's car in west London, England, United Kingdom, on 5 February.^[337] He has not been found and no charges have been brought.
• Christopher Kerze (17), disappeared on 20 April, from Eagan, Minnesota. Kerze indicated he would return home by 6 pm but he did not; his car was found two days later in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.^[338][339]
• Paige Renkoski (30), disappeared on 24 May near Fowlerville, Michigan; she was last seen on the shoulder of Interstate 96, talking to a man standing next to a maroon-colored minivan. Hours later, the 1986 Oldsmobile she had been driving was found still idling, with her shoes and purse inside.^{[340][341][342][343]}
• Trevaline Evans (52), vanished without a trace on 16 June,^[344] after leaving a note on the front door of her antiques shop in Llangollen, Denbighshire, Wales, United Kingdom, saying she would be "back in two minutes".
• Sarah MacDiarmid (23), last seen late on the night of 11 July,^[345] in the parking lot of Kananook railway station, Melbourne, Australia. Evidence found near her car suggested a struggle. Foul play is suspected; police have interviewed two potential suspects but she officially remains missing.
• Eugene John Hebert (66), American-born Jesuit missionary in Sri Lanka went missing on 15 August on his way to the eastern city of Batticaloa from a nearby town of Valaichchenai, and his disappearance remains a mystery.^[346]
• Mahmoud Mahmoud Atta (36), an alleged militant from the Palestine Liberation Organization, who was sentenced to jail in October 1990, and was later not found guilty^[347] and was released sometime after, later disappeared. He was believed to have participated in the attack on the World Trade Center towers in 2001, but was revealed not to have.^[348]
• Licorice McKechnie (44), Scottish-born member of the Incredible String Band, was last reported to be living in California, but her later whereabouts are unknown.^[349]

1991

• Michael Dunahee (4), disappeared from a school playground in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada on 24 March. His parents were nearby, but no witnesses to his presumed abduction have been identified, and there have been no subsequent confirmed sightings of him.^[350]
• Tanong Po-arn (55), a Thai labor leader disappeared on 19 June, after his car was found abandoned in Bangkok's Rat Burana district, shortly after a military coup; repeated inquiries from his family to the police and other government agencies received no reply, and his fate remains unknown.^[351]
• Ben Needham, 21-month-old boy, disappeared from the island of Kos in Greece on 24 July while his grandparents were renovating a farmhouse. Despite numerous sighting reports over the years, he has not been found. Family members have said they believe that the child was kidnapped, with the intention of selling him for adoption or to child traffickers. Others familiar with the case consider the theory of an accident more likely.^[352][353] In 2016, excavations conducted nearby led investigators to informally conclude that Ben died in an accident that day on a construction site.^[354] This theory has been substantiated by reports of blood being discovered upon a toy car and sandal believed to have belonged to the toddler which have been recently discovered.^[355]
• Jared Negrete (12), disappeared from a Boy Scout expedition to the summit of San Gorgonio Mountain on 19 July, after becoming lost from his group. A search party was immediately launched and rescue teams followed his footprints; they found candy wrappers and his disposable camera. Most pictures on the filmstrip depicted the surrounding landscape. However, only his eyes and nose are visible in the photograph. To this day he is still missing, and no trace of him has been found.^[356]

1992

• Sherrill Levitt (47), her daughter Suzie Streeter (19), and Suzie's friend Stacy McCall (18), known collectively as the Springfield Three, disappeared from Levitt's home in Springfield, Missouri on 7 June. Suzie and Stacy had graduated from Kickapoo High School the day before, and had arrived at Levitt's home at around 2:00 am after a graduation party. It is being investigated as an apparent triple disappearance.^[357]
• Wilda Benoit (14), a girl who was last seen at her family’s home in Cameron Parish, Louisiana on 23 July, and is believed to have run off to Florida.^{[358][359][360]}
• Kelly Wilson (17), disappeared after leaving her work on 5 January in Gilmer, Texas. Her car was left in the parking lot of the video store where she worked, with a flat tire. Bank video appears to show Wilson dropping her paycheck in the bank's deposit box. Foul play is suspected, but no one has been charged, nor has Wilson been found.^[361]
• Virginia Guerrero (15), and Manuela Torres (16), two teenage girls who suddenly vanished under unclear circumstances in northern Spain on 23 April, while hitchhiking from Reinosa to their hometown Aguilar de Campoo after partying in a nightclub.^[362]
• Jarosław Ziętara (23), a Polish journalist, who disappeared on 1 September on his way to work,^[363][364] and is believed to have been kidnapped and murdered.

1993

• Vernon Jones (23), a male actor who went missing on 2 January, while attending a party in a NYC apartment.^[365][366]
• Annie McCarrick (26), Irish-American woman who disappeared on 26 March, after a night out to Johnny Foxes' pub, Glencullen, south County Dublin.^[367]
• Sara Wood (12), a girl who disappeared on a road near her Frankfort, New York home on 18 August, while riding her bike alone. A janitor from Massachusetts confessed to kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and killing Sara, but later recanted.^{[368][369][370]} The case remains unsolved and was reopened in 2005.^[371]

1994

• Ylenia Carrisi (23), Italian TV celebrity, the daughter of singers Albano Carrisi and Romina Power and the granddaughter of the American actor Tyrone Power, disappeared during a vacation on 6 January in New Orleans.^[372]
• Cleashindra Hall (18), disappeared on 9 May, after leaving her school job in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Her disappearance is ruled as suspicious.^{[373][374][375]}
• Sukhwinder Singh Bhatti, a criminal defense attorney in Sangrur district of Punjab, India, who disappeared after 10 June, and no one has been charged twelve years after his disappearance.^[376]
• Ernst Priesner (60), an Austrian biologist, went missing on 19 July,^[377] and has not been seen since.
• Abani Chakraborty (53), an Assamese humanitarian poet of the late twentieth century Assamese literature, went out for an evening walk on 12 November, and did not return.^[378]
• Jacobo Grinberg (47), a Mexican scientist, writer, and psychologist, disappeared on 8 December,^[379] and has not been seen since.

1995

• Dor Bahadur Bista (68), prominent anthropologist from Nepal, disappeared from Jumla District in January 1995.^[380]
• Richey Edwards (27), member of Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers, had a history of self-injury and received treatment for alcoholism, anorexia nervosa, and depression in the years leading up to his disappearance. His car was found abandoned at the Aust service area adjacent to the Severn Bridge, a location notorious for suicides, on 1 February.^[381] He was declared dead in November 2008.^[382]
• Gedhun Choekyi Nyima (6), Tibetan boy recognized by the Dalai Lama himself as being the 11th Panchen Lama (a reincarnation of the 10th panchen lama), has not been seen since 17 May.^[383][384] He is supposedly alive and well in China, but China will not allow this to be confirmed in person, so his whereabouts are considered unknown.^[385][386]
• Larry Hillblom (52), cofounder of the DHL Worldwide shipping company, was on board a plane that went down in the Northern Mariana Islands on 21 May. The bodies of the pilot and other passengers were found, but no trace of Hillblom has ever been found. His house in Saipan was found to have had areas where DNA might be found washed down with acid, and artifacts with DNA traces buried in the backyard, in an apparent effort to prevent any possible claimants to his estate from proving Hillblom had been their father.^[387]
• Morgan Nick (6), abducted by an unknown white male while she was playing at a ballpark in Alma, Arkansas on 9 June 1995.^[388]
• Jodi Huisentruit (27), KIMT news anchor, was abducted from outside her apartment while on her way to work in Mason City, Iowa, on 27 June. She was declared legally dead in 2001.^[389]
• Andrew Shumack (25), American freelance journalist was last seen on 28 July when he left Chechnya, Grozny and is believed to be dead.^[390]
• Bruno Bréguet (45), Swiss-born associate of terrorist Carlos the Jackal, was last seen on a ferry from Italy to Greece 12 November. He is thought to have been murdered as a body that was found in Greece might have been his, but authorities remain uncertain.^[391]

1996

• Kristin Smart (19), student at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo, CA, disappeared after leaving a late-night party on 25 May on Memorial Day weekend. Campus police were unsure whether Smart had left on vacation and initially did not treat her disappearance as a potential crime. The delay resulted in the passing of the Kristin Smart Campus Security Act two years later.^[392]
• Susan Walsh (36), left her apartment on 16 July to go use a payphone and has not been seen since.^[393] Her disappearance was widely publicized into the late 1990s, especially after several newspapers and media outlets published articles concluding that her disappearance was potentially linked to the Russian mafia, as well as New York City's underground vampire community, both subjects that Walsh had investigated while writing for The Village Voice.^[394]
• Damien Nettles (16), disappeared from the Isle of Wight on 2 November. Five men were arrested in 2011, but by 2016 no charges had been laid.^[395]
• Adam, Trevor, and Mitchell O'Brien, missing brothers from Torbay, Newfoundland and Labrador, who were allegedly abducted by their father on 6 November.^[396]
• Patrick Warren (11), and David Spencer (13), two English schoolboys who mysteriously vanished on 26 December (Boxing Day) in the Birmingham town of Solihull. The case remains open and is one of the more notorious cases of missing children in U.K. history.^[397]

1997

• Grant Hadwin (47), anti-logging activist, went missing 14 February while traveling by kayak across the Hecate Strait to Graham Island, near British Columbia. The wreckage of the kayak was discovered in June, but no trace of Hadwin himself has been found.^[398]
• Amy Wroe Bechtel (24), an American woman, disappeared while jogging in the Wind River Mountains near Lander, Wyoming on July 24. No trace of her has been found.^[399]
• Guy Hever (20), Israeli soldier, reported for guard duty at a bunker near his artillery base in the Golan Heights on the morning of 17 August. He was absent when his relief arrived later in the day and has not been seen since; as he was on active duty when he disappeared he is considered missing in action.^[400]
• Sabrina Aisenberg, 4-month-old infant vanished from her crib during the night of 23–24 November in Valrico, Florida. Her mother discovered that she was not in her crib the following morning, and their attached garage had been unlocked. No trace of the Aisenberg baby has ever been found. The parents won a large settlement for malicious prosecution.^{[401][402][403]}

1998

• Tom and Eileen Lonergan, a married couple from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States, who disappeared when they were mistakenly stranded in the Coral Sea on 25 January 1998.^[404] Eileen’s father, John Hains, later said that he suspects the couple ultimately became dehydrated and disoriented and in the end succumbed to drowning or sharks.^[405]
• Widji Thukul (34), an Indonesian poet who has been missing since February 1998,^[406] when he had last made contact with his wife.
• Rui Pedro Teixeira Mendonça (11), went missing while riding his bicycle near his home in Lousada, Portugal on 4 March, and his case remains unsolved.^[407]
• Amy Lynn Bradley (23), American passenger on the Royal Caribbean International cruise ship Rhapsody of the Seas, disappeared on March 24 while the ship was docking in Curaçao, Antilles.^[408]
• Pirouz Davani, Iranian leftist activist and editor of an Iranian newspaper disappeared on 28 August, while leaving his residence in Tehran, Iran. Some have suggested that Davani was murdered.^[409]
• Angelo Cruz, (39 or 40), retired Puerto Rican professional basketball player, who disappeared during a trip to Puerto Rico.^[410]
• John Ruffo (45), New York business executive convicted in a 350 million dollar confidence scam. After failing to turn himself over to federal authorities to begin serving his sentence, his car was found abandoned at JFK Airport. He has not been seen nor heard from since 1998, and is on the US Marshals 15 Most Wanted list.^[411]
• Fidel Urbina, a Mexican national former fugitive, who was last seen in 1998, was added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in June 2012.^[412]

1999

• French physician Yves Godard (43) and his children Camille (6) and Marius (4) were last seen buying waffles from a street vendor in Bréhec, a small port on the western tip of Brittany in France, on 3 September.^[413] Their rented sailboat was found abandoned in Plouézec the next day. On 7–8 September, blood identified as that of Dr Godard's wife was found in their camper van and in the family home. Fragments of the bodies of the three were recovered from the sea bed over the next few years. Godard's wife is still considered missing; the apparent multiple murders are unsolved. The case was officially closed in 2012 with only accidental death eliminated as a possibility.
• Yury Zacharanka (47), Belarusian opposition leader, disappeared on 7 May,^[414] and has not been seen since.
• Viktar Hanchar (42), a Belarusian opposition leader, disappeared along with his friend, businessman Anatoly Krasouski, from a street in Minsk on 16 September.^[415] There were signs of a struggle where they were last seen; it is widely believed the two were abducted and later murdered.
• Julie Surprenant (16), disappeared from Terrebonne, Quebec, Canada, on 15 November.^[415] A neighbour was quickly considered the prime suspect but the authorities had insufficient evidence to charge him. In 2006 this same neighbour made a deathbed confession to her murder; however he was never charged.^[416][417]
• Marat Manafov, Azerbaijani businessman and lawyer, disappeared in Bratislava, Slovakia,^[418] in November 1999. Police have since investigated whether he was abducted or killed.^[419]

2000s

2000

• Zebb Quinn (18), disappeared on 2 January in Asheville, North Carolina, after receiving a page from his aunt's phone number. She denied paging him, but told police that her home was broken into during that time frame. Nothing was stolen from her home, but items were moved around. His car resurfaced two weeks after his disappearance when it was mysteriously parked in front of his mother's workplace with a live puppy inside and a large set of lips drawn on the window. In 2015 Asheville detectives unearthed fabric, leather materials and "unknown hard fragments" that were buried under a layer of concrete on the property of Robert Jason Owens. Owens was the last person known to have seen Quinn and had given several conflicting stories to detectives in his case. The search of his property that uncovered this new evidence was conducted after he was arrested for an unrelated triple murder. On July 10 of 2017, Owens was indicted with Zebbs murder.^[420]
• Asha Degree (9), last seen in the early morning hours of 14 February running into a woodlot off North Carolina Highway 18 near her Shelby home; it was raining heavily and very windy at the time. Some of her personal effects were found three days later in a nearby shed; her backpack was found buried 20 miles (32 km) away in August 2001. There have been no other signs of her since then; theories have ranged from running away to foul play.^[421]
• Leah Roberts (23), abruptly left her home in Durham, North Carolina, on 9 March. Her sister later found a note suggesting she was going on a cross-country road trip to northern Washington; a review of her banking and credit records confirmed this. Her car was found wrecked and abandoned nine days later off the Mount Baker Highway in Whatcom County; evidence found in it suggested she had arrived there several days earlier, and she had last been seen in a restaurant at a local shopping mall on 13 March. Other than one report that she was seen walking disoriented around a gas station in Everett shortly after her car was discovered, she has not been seen or heard from since.^[422]
• Joseph Kibweteere (67 or 68), a leader of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God is believed to have died on 17 March,^[423] but in 2014 it was announced by the Uganda National Police that there were reports that Kibweteere was hiding in Malawi.^[424]
• Dzmitry Zavadski (27), Belarusian journalist and cameraman, disappeared on 7 July at the Minsk National Airport and was presumably murdered.^[425]
• Jerry Michael Williams (31), successful property appraiser from Tallahassee, Florida, was last seen leaving his house to go duck hunting at nearby Lake Seminole early in the morning of 16 December. It was assumed he had drowned accidentally after his car and abandoned boat were found at the lake later in the weekend; however, a lengthy search failed to find his body, the only time a drowning victim's body has never been found in the lake. Investigators initially concluded his remains had been eaten by alligators in the lake; Williams was declared legally dead six months later. In 2004, a reopening of the case prompted by pressure from Williams' mother discredited the alligator theory and found other suspicious aspects of the case suggesting the accident at the lake might have been staged and evidence planted; it was later investigated as a possible insurance fraud. Police have persons of interest but have not named them.^[426]

2001

• Rilya Wilson (4), a foster child of the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) disappeared on 18 January in Miami, Florida. Because she was not discovered missing until 2002, she became the centerpoint of an investigation into neglect and mismanagement in the organization.^[427]
• Robert William Fisher (56), disappeared after 10 April, after his house in Scottsdale, Arizona blew up and caught fire. His family was found dead in the home and he is believed to be the person who murdered them and rigged the natural gas explosion.^[428][429]
• Jason Jolkowski (19), resident of Omaha, Nebraska, disappeared on 13 June, after failing to show up at a local high school where he had arranged to catch a ride to work with a friend. A neighbor reported seeing Jolkowski carrying trash cans into his garage. This, the last confirmed sighting of Jolkowski, took place approximately 30 minutes prior to the arranged meeting at the high school.^[430] His parents subsequently founded Project Jason, a nonprofit organization that assists families of missing persons.
• Sneha Anne Philip (31), Indian-American physician last seen on 10 September, on surveillance camera footage from a store near her Lower Manhattan apartment. Due to the proximity of the World Trade Center and her medical training, her family believes she perished trying to help victims of the next day's terrorist attack. A court has agreed and she is officially considered to have died that way. The ruling was not unanimous, and no proof of her death has ever been found.^[431]
• John Paul Lee (62), American racecar driver, disappeared on his boat in 2001, while being sought for questioning by officials regarding the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, and has not been seen since.^[432]

2002

• Marita Verón (23), an Argentinian woman is believed to have been kidnapped on 3 April, from her home town in the Tucumán province,^[433] and has not been seen since.
• Serena Karlan and Bison Dele (33), American professional basketball player and his girlfriend both disappeared aboard a vessel on 7 July.^[434] Dele is believed to have been murdered at sea by his older brother.^[435]
• Carla Losey (20), was last seen on 31 December on West Broad Street in Columbus, Ohio, in the company of a black male who has not been identified. She has not been heard from since.^[436][437]
• Saeed Zeinali (25 or 26), an Iranian student at Tehran University, who was arrested on 10 July 1999 and was said to be held in jail until 2002,^[438] he disappeared after being released and has not been since.

2003

• Ben Charles Padilla (50), licensed aircraft mechanic, flight engineer, and pilot of small airplanes, was on board Boeing 727-223 designation N844AA when it was stolen from Luanda, Angola, on 25 May and has not been heard from since.^[439]
• Ali Astamirov (34), a Chechen journalist, who was working for Agence France Presse in Ingushetia, Russia, was allegedly kidnapped at gunpoint by a group of three, uniformed, masked men on 4 July, just outside Nazran.^[440] His current whereabouts is unknown.
• Felipe Santos (24), last seen being arrested for driving without a license after a traffic accident early on 1 October outside Naples, Florida, by Collier County sheriff's deputy Steve Calkins. Jail records show he was never booked. Calkins claimed to have changed his mind and left Santos at a nearby Circle K convenience store. Three months later, another man, Terrance Williams, disappeared after being arrested by the same police officer.^[441]
• Kirk von Ackermann (37), disappeared in Iraq on 9 October after calling an Iraqi employee of U.S. defense contractor Ultra Services and telling him he needed help fixing a flat tire on his car. When the employee arrived at the location given, between Kirkuk and Tikrit, 45 minutes later, von Ackermann was gone. There were no signs of a struggle and $40,000 in cash was found in the car along with von Ackermann's laptop and satellite phone, suggesting he was not the victim of a robbery attempt; nor were his employer or family ever contacted with ransom demands. Nevertheless, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command later concluded he had been killed in a botched kidnapping; they still consider the case open and his body has not been found.^[442]
• Zsolt Erőss (45), a Hungarian high-altitude mountaineer who, after successfully climbing Kangchenjunga on 20 May went missing on his descent.^[443] Searches were suspended two days later because, according to the expedition's leader and other experienced mountaineers, his survival would be impossible.
• Reda Helal, an Egyptian journalist who went missing on 11 August in downtown Cairo, and is believed to have been kidnapped, but it is said that there is little evidence to support this.^[444]
• Semion Mogilevich, a Ukrainian-born, alleged Russian organized crime boss, disappeared in 2003^[445] and was added the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List in 2009.^[446]

2004

• Terrance Williams (27), last seen being arrested on 12 January in Naples, Florida, by Collier County sheriff's deputy Steve Calkins. Terrance had also been driving without a license. Williams was never booked and Calkins claims to have changed his mind and left him at a nearby Circle K convenience store. Felipe Santos disappeared three months earlier under similar circumstances after being arrested by the same officer.^[441]
• Maura Murray (21), of Hanson, Massachusetts, nursing student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was last seen 9 February at the scene of a minor one-vehicle accident in which her car was immobilized after having crashed into a roadside snowbank on New Hampshire Route 112. Earlier on the day of her disappearance, she had lied to professors about a death in her family, saying she would be absent from class for a week.^[447][448] A schoolbus driver who happened upon Murray's crash site stopped to ask if she needed help; Murray declined. Upon returning home shortly thereafter, the driver called police anyway, but by the time responders arrived 10 minutes later, Murray had vanished. Her keys, bank and credit cards have never been located, despite extensive searches of her abandoned car and the neighboring wooded areas.^[449]
• Guy-André Kieffer (64), a French Canadian journalist who had long covered West Africa, was kidnapped from an Abidjan shopping mall's parking lot on April 16. Remains found eight years later may be his, but have not been conclusively identified.^[450]
• Somchai Neelapaijit (52), Thai Muslim lawyer and human rights activist representing South Thailand insurgency terrorism suspects, was last seen in Bangkok on 12 March. It may be a case of forced disappearance.^[451][452]
• Brianna Maitland (17), vanished on 19 March after leaving her job as a dishwasher at the Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery, Vermont. Her car was discovered the next day near an abandoned house, about a mile away.^[453] Maitland's belongings were found inside the vehicle, including a recent paycheck and her wallet. Authorities believe foul play to be involved in Maitland's case, and one theory is that she may have been smuggled across the nearby Canada–US border.^[454]
• Iraena Asher (25), New Zealand model, allegedly suffering from bipolar disorder, disappeared in controversial circumstances at Piha, west of Auckland, on 11 October.^[455]
• Mohammed Al Afghani, an Afghan citizen detained by the CIA in Pakistan in May 2004 whose current whereabouts are unknown.^[456]

2005

• Natalee Holloway (18), American student from Alabama, was last seen on 30 May,^[457] before leaving a nightclub in Aruba with three men, including Joran van der Sloot.^[408] She was declared dead in 2012. Joran van der Sloot was convicted of murder in the death of another young woman in Peru in 2010.
• Ray Gricar (59), district attorney of Centre County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. On 15 April, he called his girlfriend, in whose house he resided, from his car, giving his location east of Centre Hall. His car was found the next day but he has not been heard from since. His family had him declared legally dead in 2011.^[458] In September 2013, a reputed former Hell's Angels member told authorities that Gricar was killed by the gang as retaliation. In April 2014, it was reported that the Pennsylvania State police would be assuming lead investigatory role in the case.^[459]
• Rahul Raju (7), a boy from Alappuzha in Kerala, India, who went missing on 18 May, while playing with friends in his neighborhood. The case, which dominated media headlines since he disappeared still remains a mystery.^[460]
• Rahma el-Dennaoui (1), Lebanese Australian girl who went missing on 10 November.^[461] Despite a police search and appeals to the general public, no trace of the little girl has yet been found.^[462]

2006

• Joe Pichler (18), former American child actor. Pichler was last seen on 5 January.^{[463][464][465]}
• Jennifer Kesse (24), American woman, was last seen 23 January in Orlando, Florida, leaving her place of employment. Her last phone call was placed to her boyfriend at 10 p.m. that night. Evidence suggests that she left for work the next morning, but was abducted while walking to her vehicle. It was later found in another nearby apartment complex where security cameras had captured it being parked; however the face of whoever did so was obscured by a fence.^[466]
• Jessie Foster (21), a Canadian woman, disappeared in the Las Vegas Valley in Nevada.^[467]
• Brian Shaffer (27), Ohio State University medical student, was last seen on security camera footage apparently re-entering an off-campus bar shortly before its closing time early on the morning of 1 April. There was no other way open to the public that he could have left the bar.^[468] Columbus police reportedly believed as of 2008 that he was still alive; they continued to investigate at the time.
• Ebrima Manneh, a Gambian journalist believed by human rights organizations to have been arrested in July 2006 and secretly held in custody since then.^[469]
• Brandi Wells (23), was last seen in Longview, Texas on 3 August, while leaving a nightclub called Graham Central Station. Her 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix was found five days later parked westbound on Interstate 20 at Texas Highway 31. Her purse was found in her car that was later tagged.^[470][471] Reportedly, the driver's seat was pushed back, as if a taller person drove it last. Foul play is possible and there has been no signs of Wells.^[472]
• Sherlyn Cadapan (27), and Karen Empeño (20), community organizer and graduate student respectively, were allegedly abducted by gunmen in a remote area of the Philippines on 26 June. They have not been seen since.^[473]
• Thiruchelvam Nihal Jim Brown (34), a minority Sri Lankan Tamil, Roman Catholic parish priest, who disappeared during the Sri Lankan civil war on 26 August,^[474] and is believed to be dead.
• Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, a former senior member of the Ba'ath Party in Iraq. He disappeared in 2006, potentially into hiding, and a large bounty has been placed on him.^[475]

2007

• Jim Gray (63), database pioneer, Microsoft Research scientist, and Turing Award winner, left San Francisco Bay on 28 January in his 12 m (39 ft) sailboat Tenacious to scatter his mother's ashes at the Farallon Islands, a wildlife refuge 43 km (27 mi) away, and was reported missing when he failed to return later the same day. No Mayday call was heard, and his distress radiobeacon was not activated. Despite one of the most ambitious search and rescue missions of all time, no trace of Gray or his yacht has ever been found.^[476] In 2012 he was declared legally dead.^[477]
• Andrew McAuley (38), an Australian adventurer best known for mountaineering and sea kayaking in remote parts of the world, is presumed to have died following his disappearance at sea while attempting to kayak 1,600 kilometres (990 mi) across the Tasman Sea in February 2007. A recovered memory stick on the kayak records him attempting to make a distress call.^[478]
• Oralgaisha Omarshanova (38 or 39), a journalist who was working for a paper based in based in Astana, disappeared on 30 March and hasn't been seen since.^[479]
• Kaz II, 9.8 m (32 ft) catamaran, was found adrift on 20 April near Australia's Great Barrier Reef with its three-man crew, owner Derek Batten (56) and brothers Peter (69) and James Tunstead (63), missing. The yacht's sails were up and its engine running, and the global positioning system showed the yacht had been drifting since around the time of their last known radio contact, about 11 hours after they departed Shute Harbour for Townsville, Queensland, five days earlier.^[480]
• Robert Levinson (58), retired U.S. DEA and FBI agent, was last seen in the custody of what seemed to be Iranian intelligence agents on 9 March on Kish Island in Iran, where he had gone to set up a meeting with Dawud Salahuddin, an American-born convert to Islam, ostensibly about securing the Iranian government's help in controlling the distribution of pirated American cigarettes in Iran. It was later revealed that he was working for the CIA at that time as well. In 2010 a video of him, somewhat emaciated, was released in which he begs for help from the U.S. government to be released. The U.S. government has regularly raised the issue of his release with Iran as part of talks between the countries, but Iran's statements as to whether he still is in their custody or even alive have been contradictory and it has been speculated that Levinson is no longer under their control if he is still alive.^[481]
• Lisa Stebic (37), last seen by her husband at their Plainfield, Illinois, home on 30 April, while she was awaiting a ride to the local track where she worked out; he was working in the back. As the two were going through a divorce at the time, police believe foul play was involved and consider him a suspect.^[482]
• Madeleine McCann (3), disappeared after being left asleep in the unlocked ground-floor bedroom of her family's rented holiday apartment in the Algarve (Portugal) while her parents dined with friends at a local restaurant on 3 May 2007. There have been no confirmed sightings of her since then.^[483] Despite myriad theories about what happened to the toddler, no substantial evidence leading to any one individual has surfaced. In 2014 Scotland Yard was reportedly looking at 38 people of interest, as well as researching the backgrounds of 530 known sex offenders, including 59 regarded as high interest.^[484]
• Andrew Gosden (14), a schoolboy who disappeared from King's Cross station in London on 14 September. He left his home in Doncaster to go to school but never caught the school bus and instead returned home when the rest of the household had departed, changed out of his school uniform and then went to Doncaster railway station, withdrawing £200 from his bank account on the way there. At the station he purchased a one-way ticket to London, despite being told that for an extra £1 he could have a return ticket. He was last seen on CCTV leaving the main concourse at King's Cross.^[485][486]
• Stacy Ann Peterson (23), left her Bolingbrook, Illinois, home at 11 a.m. on 28 October to help a friend paint a house, and has not been seen since. Her husband, Drew, later convicted of murdering his previous wife as a result of evidence gathered during the investigation into Stacy's disappearance, has been suspected of killing her as well.^[487]
• Aeryn Gillern (34), disappeared in Vienna, Austria on the evening of 29 October,^[488] and has not been seen since.

2008

• Yaser Abdel Said, an Egyptian resident of the United States, who is wanted for the murder of his two teenage daughters in Irving, Texas on 1 January last seen in 2008, and was added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted List in 2014.^[489][490]
• Eduardo Ravelo, leader of the Barrio Azteca gang, and also a fugitive wanted on several charges related to drugs and organized crime was last seen in 2008.^[491] On 20 October 2009, he was named by the FBI as the 493rd fugitive to be placed on the Ten Most Wanted list.^[492]
• Jason Derek Brown, American fugitive wanted for first degree murder and armed robbery in Phoenix, Arizona on 29 November 2004, and on 8 December 2007 was named by the FBI as the 489th fugitive to be placed on the Ten Most Wanted list.^[493] last confirmed sighting was in August 2008.^[494]
• The burnt and abandoned wreck of the Tai Ching 21, Taiwanese fishing boat, was found drifting on 9 November near Kiribati. It was assumed that when the fire proved beyond their ability to control, the 29-member crew had evacuated using the lifeboat and three rafts that were missing; however, no distress call was received and an extensive search of the surrounding seas did not locate any of the crew or their boat.^[495]
• Amy Fitzpatrick (15), Irish teenager, was last seen in Mijas Costa in Málaga, Spain. She had been babysitting with a friend on 31 December. Fitzpatrick left at about 10:10pm that night and never arrived home, only a short distance away. She has not been seen or heard from since. Investigators are working on her case, which some evidence suggests was a kidnapping.^[496]

2009

• Jure Šterk (72), regularly communicated with radio amateurs while sailing around the world, but all communications ceased around 1 January, as reported by an Australian ham radio operator.^[497] His sailboat Lunatic was spotted on 26 January by a merchant vessel, the Aida, and it appeared abandoned. On 30 April Lunatic was found adrift with no one aboard by the crew of the science vessel RV Roger Revelle.^[498]
• Claudia Lawrence (35), last seen on 18 March near Heworth in York, England, returning from her job as a chef.^[499] Whilst some evidence suggested that she had fled to Cyprus, police have increasingly come to believe she is dead.^[500]
• Craig Arnold (41), American poet, disappeared after a hike on the Japanese island Kuchinoerabu-jima on 27 April. He is presumed to have died in a fall from a high cliff, but the body has not been found.^[501]
• Paul Tseng, a Taiwanese applied mathematician, went missing on a kayaking trip on 13 August,^[502] and is believed to be dead.
• Susan Powell (28), disappeared from her home in Utah under suspicious circumstances on 6 December. Her husband, Josh, was the main person of interest. In 2012, he killed the couple's two young sons and himself, leading police to close the case of his wife's disappearance.^[503]

2010s

2010

• Russell Bohling (18), disappeared from the Bempton area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England on 2 March 2010. His car was found in the car park for Bempton Cliffs RSPB site which has seen some suicides. The police assume suicide or tragic accident, though no body has been found. His family maintain that a third party was involved as he did not have enough fuel to drive to Bempton from his family home in West Ella, a USB stick detailing the pornographic artwork and graffiti left on the walls of the former bunker of RAF Bempton was missing and the trainers he supposedly wore that day were found in the family's holiday home even further up the coast after he had disappeared.^[504]
• Paolo Renda (76), member of the Rizzuto crime family in Montreal, told his family he would be picking up steaks for dinner on his way back from a 20 May funeral; he never arrived. He was presumed kidnapped after his car was found with the windows down and keys in the ignition along his route. The family believes he was killed in retaliation for his role in a 1970s murder; however, their 2013 attempt to have him declared legally dead was denied on the grounds of insufficient evidence.^[505]
• Kyron Horman (7), American schoolboy, did not return from his school in northwestern Portland, Oregon, on 4 June. Multiple searches since that day have uncovered no evidence of his fate.^[506]
• Ben McDaniel (30), of Collierville, Tennessee, recreational scuba diver, was last seen 58 feet (18 m) underwater while being allowed into a cave he was not certified to enter at Vortex Spring near Ponce de Leon, Florida on the evening of 18 August; his failure to return was not noted for another two days. Extensive searches found only two decompression tanks that were placed incorrectly and filled with the wrong gases; no evidence of a body has been found in the spring. While it is still possible his body is in an unexplored area of the cave, other theories include foul play, possibly related to the suspicious 2011 death of Vortex Spring's owner, and a possible staged disappearance in the wake of McDaniel's recent marital and financial failures.^[507][508]
• Forrest Schab (26), Canadian rapper better known by his stage name "DY", was reported missing in Mexico on 18 November. He had not been seen since leaving Canada in the middle of August.^[509]

2011

• Alessia and Livia Schepp (6), from St. Sulpice, a suburb of Lausanne, Switzerland, twin sisters picked up for the weekend from their mother's home by their father, Mathias Kaspar Schepp, on 28 January. Their father was found dead a few days later, having apparently committed suicide. A suicide note he left suggests he killed them.^[510]
• Bethany Decker (21), student at George Mason University in Virginia, was last heard from on 29 January, when she called the restaurant she worked at to confirm her schedule for the next week. Her husband and a boyfriend both claim to have seen her that day as well. Three weeks later, after Facebook messages from her to friends that seemed to them to have been written by someone else, she was reported missing. Investigators found no evidence of activity on her part other than the suspicious Facebook messages since the day she was last seen. The boyfriend is considered a person of interest in the case; he has since been arrested on an attempted-murder charge in North Carolina after a domestic incident with a later girlfriend who claims he made statements suggesting he had some involvement in Decker's disappearance.^[511]
• Rebecca Coriam (24), crew member aboard the cruise ship Disney Wonder, was last seen on 22 March, when a security camera in the crew lounge recorded her having an upsetting telephone conversation. Some reports suggest she went overboard, but there is other evidence that she may have been alive in the following May.^[512]
• Lauren Spierer (20), student at Indiana University, disappeared in Bloomington, Indiana, on 3 June, after a night of partying at a local bar. Spierer left a gathering at a housing complex alone in the early morning hours while highly intoxicated. Her disappearance generated national press coverage. In 2014, Spierer's parents filed a lawsuit against two individuals with whom Spierer had socialized on the evening before her disappearance. A federal judge dismissed the suit.^[513]
• Cristina Siekavizza (39), disappeared in Guatemala City on 7 July, and is believed to have been murdered by her husband.^[514]
• Lisa Irwin, 10-month-old girl, was reported missing from her home in Kansas City, Missouri, on the morning of 4 October. Police believe she may have been abducted.^[515]
• Daniel Lind Lagerlöf (42), Swedish director and screenwriter, disappeared at Tjurpannans Nature Reserve outside Tanumshede in Sweden on 6 October during preparations for the filming of Camilla Läckberg's Fjällbackamorden – Strandriddaren. The search for him was suspended after two days without result.^[516]
• Sky Metalwala (2), left in a parked car on a Bellevue, Washington, street by his mother on the morning of 6 November after it supposedly ran out of gas on the way to the hospital, where she claimed to have been taking him after he woke up sick. When she returned he was gone. Police found that the car had plenty of fuel left and worked as it should; they publicly expressed doubts about her story as she and the boy's father were getting divorced and she had just withdrawn from a mediated custody agreement that gave him visitation. The case was also noted to be similar to a recently aired episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit;^[517] investigators have even questioned whether Sky was in the car that morning at all. While police have indicated they could charge the mother with child endangerment, they have declined to do so due to those doubts.^[518]
• Ayla Reynolds (1), was not in her bed on the morning of 17 December. She had last been seen the night before in her father's Waterville, Maine, home, by his sister or girlfriend, both of whom were also in residence. The search for the 20-month-old was the largest missing-persons investigation in the state's history. Police have evidence from the house suggesting foul play and believe her to be dead; however, the body has not been found and no arrests have been made.^[519]
• Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès (50), disappeared from Nantes, France. His wife, four children and two dogs had been shot and buried in the back garden of the family home. He was last seen leaving a hotel in south-eastern France a few days after his family was murdered. He is the prime suspect in the killings and the subject of an international arrest warrant, and the police have searched caves to find him.^[520]

2012

• Jonathan Spollen (28), an Irish journalist for the International Herald Tribune newspaper, and formerly Assistant Foreign Editor of The National in Abu Dhabi.^[521][522] was last seen on 3 February in Rishikesh,^[523] and around 11 March some of Spollen's belongings were found by a small waterfall halfway up the road to Phool Chatti.
• Timothy MacColl (28), Leading Seaman in the Royal Navy who went missing on May 27, when the ship he was serving aboard was docked in Dubai. MacColl had gone out to the town and was last properly accounted for when two of his shipmates put him into a taxi to take him back to HMS Westminster. He never re-boarded the ship and witnesses claim they saw him getting into another taxi to go back into Dubai. The Royal Navy declared him dead (presumed drowned according to the death certificate) in 2014.^[524]
• Guma Aguiar (35), Brazilian-born American industrialist and part-owner of Israel's Beitar Jerusalem football club, was last seen leaving his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on 19 June. The next day his fishing boat, the T.T. Zion, was found with lights on and engines running, having gone aground on a local beach. His wallet and cell phone were on board. Two weeks of searches failed to find any trace of him.^[525] He was declared legally dead in 2015.
• Emma Fillipoff (26), disappeared on 28 November from in front of The Empress Hotel, in Victoria, B.C., Canada, after a 45-minute conversation with Victoria Police.^[526]
• Sombath Somphone (60), Laotian community activist, who disappeared on 15 December around 6 pm at a Vientiane police post after having been stopped while driving behind his wife's car. CCTV footage showed a motorcyclist getting off his bike and driving Somphone's car away, and a white truck approaching and subsequently driving off with Somphone.^[527]

2013

• Evi Nemeth (73), American computer engineer often described as the matriarch of system administration, disappeared along with several others aboard the yacht Niña between New Zealand and Australia on 4 June; no trace of them has ever been found.^[528]
• Federico Tobares (37), Argentine chef, disappeared on 5 June while driving from Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, and On 10 June a co-worker and friend of Tobares went to the Mexican police to report his disappearance,^[529] making Tobares the first Argentine to disappear in Mexico.
• Allison (19) and Marie-José Benitez (53), a French mother and her daughter, disappeared from Perpignan on 14 July. Francisco Benitez, the husband of Marie-José and father of Allison, told police that they had traveled to Toulouse and switched their mobile phones off after a family argument, but there is no evidence that they ever left Perpignan. Francisco Benitez committed suicide three weeks later after becoming the prime suspect. It was discovered that he led a double life involving numerous affairs and that a mistress of his disappeared under similarly mysterious circumstances in 2004 and has never been found.^[530]
• Aidin Bozorgi (24), Iranian mountain climber after successfully completing a new route on the Southwest Face of Broad Peak, Pakistan that he and two other climbers had been working on since 2009 disappeared on 20 July and are believed to be dead.^[531][532]
• Robert Hoagland (50), reportedly last seen mowing the lawn of his Newtown, Connecticut home on the morning of 28 July; earlier that day he was seen on video buying a road map and fuel for his wife's car at a local gas station. His disappearance was noted after he failed to pick up his wife when she returned from a trip abroad the next day.^[533]
• Tiffany Daniels (25), a theatre technician at Pensacola State College in Florida, left work early on 12 August, telling her supervisor that she would be taking the rest of the week off as she had "some things to take care of". She returned to her home briefly afterwards, but was not seen by her housemate, who was on the phone at the time, and eight days later her car was found in a Pensacola Beach parking lot; witnesses have since reported that a man in red shorts was seen getting out of the car and opening its tailgate the day it was found. No other trace of her has been found despite extensive searches; based on a description of a woman seen at a New Orleans-area restaurant who resembled her and had some similar behaviors, her family believes she was abducted and trafficked.^[534]

2014

• Avera Mengistu, an Israeli Ethiopian Jew from Ashkelon, Israel, who crossed into Gaza through Zikim beach on 7 September, has been missing since then.^[535]
• William Tyrrell (3), vanished on 12 September, while playing with his sister in the front yard of their grandmother's house in Kendall, New South Wales, Australia. Although police still regard it as an active case, no trace of the boy has been found.^[536]
• Rico Harris (37), former high school basketball star and Harlem Globetrotter, was last heard from when he called his girlfriend at their home in Seattle on the morning of 10 October, to tell her he was going to the mountains to rest. At the time he was north of Sacramento, California, at the midpoint of his drive back to Seattle from a visit to his family outside Los Angeles. Four days later his abandoned car was found at a Yolo County park along Cache Creek; video footage and photos on his cell phone suggested he had arrived there later on the day of his last phone call. Several sightings were reported in the area over the next week, and footprints were found near the location of his car that were large enough to belong to the 6-foot-9-inch (206 cm) Harris.^[537]

2015

• Asha Kreimer (26), an Australian national living with her boyfriend in California, left her family's table at a Flumeville restaurant during breakfast on the morning of 21 September 2015, to go to the bathroom. A friend who went there shortly afterwards did not see her; no one has seen her since. She had just been released from a four-day stay in a local mental hospital.^[538]
• Luis Macedo (27), American fugitive wanted for the 1 May 2009 murder of 15-year-old Alex Arellano in Chicago, Illinois, was last seen on 24 Nov 2015. In 2016, Macedo was added to FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.^[539]

2016

• Charity Aiyedogbon (44), Nigerian businesswoman who disappeared mysteriously on 10 May in Abuja, Nigeria.^[540]
• Corrie McKeague (23), member of the Royal Air Force Regiment, went missing in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England on the morning of 24 September. Despite an extensive search and public appeals, no trace of him has been found.^[541]
• Najeeb Ahmed, a missing first year M.Sc Biotechnology student of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, who disappeared under suspicious circumstances on 15 October from his college campus,^[542][543] and has not been since.

2017

• Yingying Zhang (26), a Chinese visiting scholar conducting research at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, was last seen on 9 June in Urbana, Illinois. Security cameras captured her getting into a car at the corner of West Clark Street and North Goodwin Avenue around 2:04 p.m. that day. Police arrested Brendt Christensen on 30 June 2017 and charged him with kidnapping Zhang, and believe, based on evidence, that she is no longer alive.^[544]

Solved cases

This is a list of people who disappeared mysteriously, but were later found dead or alive, and/or the circumstances of their disappearance became known.

Solved cases before 1900

• Caesarion (17), (Ptolemy XV Philopator Philometor Caesar) the son of Cleopatra by Caesar, and as such the last king of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, ruling alone for eleven days whose death at the orders of Augustus (while still Octavian) is accepted in 30 BC,^[545] and yet the exact circumstances of his death and the location of his body are not documented.
• Apollonius of Tyana (100), Greek philosopher and first century teacher who was known throughout the Roman Empire, vanished mysteriously while walking down the road, but was later seen as he is known to have died in 100 AD.^[546]
• Margaret Hanmer (about 50), wife of the last native Welshman to hold the title Prince of Wales, is known to have died about 1420,^[547] yet her death has not been recorded, and her burial site is unknown.
• Sir Hugh Willoughby, English explorer, who on 10 May 1553 set sail from London to search for a sea route right around the north of Europe and Asia to China. His second-in-command was Richard Chancellor of Bristol. Off the coast of Norway the two men were separated by a storm. Willoughby's ship ended up stuck in ice off Lapland, and he and all of his crew died. Their frozen bodies were found several years later.^[548]
• Laurens de Graaf, is known to have died in 1704, yet the exact location of his death and burial site is unknown.^[549]
• Collet Barker (46), was last seen on 29 April 1831 swimming across the mouth of the Murray River and disappearing over a sand dune on the other side. Several days later the crew of his ship Isabella were informed by local Indigenous people that he had been killed after being mistaken for a whaler or sealer, and was speared to death.^[550]
• Davy Crockett (49), is known to have been killed at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, although his body was never found.^{[551][552][553]}
• Henry Bryan (18), who accompanied explorer Charles Sturt, Governor George Gawler, and others on an expedition from the Murray River to the Burra area of South Australia, disappeared and died in 1839 during a dust storm on the return trip.^[554] Searchers later found his saddle and some tracks which stopped abruptly. His body was never found, however his horse returned to Adelaide after several months.^[555]
• Five Confederate prisoners of war are known to have escaped the Shohola train wreck on 15 July 1864 in Pennsylvania, but they were never recaptured or otherwise accounted for.^[556]
• William J. Sharkey, a minor New York City politician and convicted murderer who earned national notoriety in the late 19th century, is known to have escaped from a New York City prison disguised as a woman on 22 November 1872. He subsequently fled to Cuba,^[557] which had no extradition treaty with the United States.

Solved cases 1900–1949

• George Mallory (37), English mountaineer who took part in the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition, disappeared somewhere high on the mountain's northeast ridge on 8 June 1924, and his body was found on 1 May 1999.^[58]
• Sidney Reilly (47 or 48), British spy, set off for the Soviet Union in an attempt to overthrow the Bolshevik regime. He was captured and shot on 5 November 1925 although no reference as to the location of his body is known.^[558]
• Agatha Christie (36), the British crime writer, famously disappeared in December 1926, shortly after her divorce. She was located 10 days later in a Yorkshire health spa, and always refused to give an explanation.^[559]
• Walter Collins (9), disappeared from his home in Los Angeles, California in 1928.^[560] He was later determined to have been murdered by Gordon Stewart Northcott in what was known as the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. 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.
• Edward O'Hare (29), American naval aviator of the United States Navy, was known to have been shot down on 26 November 1943, and was lost at sea,^[561] yet neither O'Hare or his aircraft were ever found.
• Leonid Khrushchev (25), the son of Nikita Khrushchev, who served as a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Forces, is known to have been shot down and killed in 1943, although his body was never recovered, and the circumstances of his death remain mysterious.^[562]

Solved cases 1950–1979

• Bill Barilko (24), disappeared in August 1951 while returning from a fishing trip with his dentist, Henry Hudson, on a flight aboard Hudson's Fairchild 24 floatplane back from Seal River, Quebec. The Toronto Maple Leaf hockey player remained missing until 11 years later, when the wreckage of the plane was found in the trees north of Cochrane, Ontario, about 56 miles (90 km) off the original course.^[563]
• Curtis Chillingworth (58), a Florida attorney and state judge who disappeared from his Manalapan, Florida home in 1955 and it was later discovered that he had been murdered,^[564] though his body was never recovered.^[565]
• Mary Jane Barker (4), a girl from Bellmawr, New Jersey went missing on 25 February 1957 along with her playmate's dog.^[566] Barker was found dead in the closet of a vacant house near her home on 3 March 1957,^[567] and the dog bounded out of the closet, seemingly unharmed.
• Lawrence Joseph Bader (30), cookware salesman from Akron, Ohio, disappeared on a fishing trip on 15 March 1957 in Lake Erie. Eight years later he was found alive in Omaha, Nebraska as a local TV personality, "Fritz" Johnson. He died from a brain tumor a year later leaving six children from two wives. It's been debated (but never confirmed) as to whether he was an amnesiac, had multiple personalities, or was just an outright hoaxer.^[568][569]
• Lucy Ann Johnson (51), disappeared in 1961 from British Columbia, Canada, but was not reported missing until 1965. She was found alive in Yukon, Canada, with a new family in 2013.^[570]
• Ajjamada B. Devaiah (32 or 33), Indian air officer who was shot down in 1965 in Pakistan, and the Indian Air Force was unaware of what happened and declared him missing. It was revealed much later by Pakistan sources that Devayya’s body was found almost intact by villagers not very far from Sargodha and buried.^[571]
• Jacques Vergès, French-Vietnamese lawyer, left his wife Djamila Bouhired and cut off all ties. He was last seen on 24 February 1970, until he reappeared in 1978, without ever explaining his whereabouts during that period.^[572]
• Harvey and Jeannette Crewe, a New Zealand farming couple, were reported missing from their bloodstained farmhouse at Pukekawa, Lower Waikato on 22 June 1970. Their unharmed 18 month old daughter was found in her cot. Jeannette's body was found, wrapped in a duvet bound with copper wire,^[573] in the Waikato River on 16 August 1970, and her husband's body was retrieved upriver on 16 September 1970. All indications pointed to foul play between 17 and 22 June, but it was not until the bodies were recovered that it was established that both had been shot to death.^[574]
• Ronald Hughes (35), an American attorney who represented Manson family member Leslie Van Houten,^[575] disappeared in November 1970,^[576] and on 29 March 1971, his body was found wedged between two boulders in a gorge.^[577]
• Shelagh McDonald (24), Scottish folksinger vanished in 1971 and resurfaced in 2005, after her two albums were reissued on CD, prompting articles about her work and disappearance. When McDonald read one of these articles,^[578] she contacted the press to explain that following an LSD trip, which had left her with long-term severe flashbacks and disorientation, she had returned to her family, who kept her isolated while she recovered.
• Dolores Della Penna (17), school girl from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, went missing on 11 July 1972. Her limbs and torso were later found in different parts of New Jersey a week later. Her head was never found.^[579]
• Jeannette DePalma (16), a girl who was murdered, which is thought to have occurred sometime on or around 7 August 1972 in Springfield Township, New Jersey,^[580] and her body was discovered on 19 September 1972.^[581]
• The Lyon sisters, Katherine Mary (10) and Sheila Mary (12), disappeared on 25 March 1975 while walking home from a nearby mall in the suburbs of Washington, D.C..^[582][583] In 2014 Lloyd Lee Welch, already serving time in a Delaware prison for molesting a child in that state, became a person of interest after cold-case investigators in Montgomery County, Maryland followed up on an interview he gave to a detective at the time of their disappearance. In that interview he claimed falsely to have witnessed the girls' abduction. He also strongly resembled a police sketch of a man who had been staring at them in the mall; the sketch was based on a description by a friend of the girls, who had confronted the man about his behavior. In 2015 Welch was formally indicted in Bedford County, Virginia, where police said he had taken the girls and burned their bodies.^[584]
• John Dawson Dewhirst (26), is known to have been killed in August 1978, and his body might have been burned and disposed of, but no remains have yet been found.^[585]
• Marilee Bruszer (33), went missing on 22 August 1978 from Long Beach, California and her body was found on 3 September 1978.^[586] She was not identified until August 2015.^[587]
• Tammy Alexander (15), disappeared in the first half of 1979, and was found dead on 10 November 1979, but she was not identified until 2015, over 35 years later.^[588]
• Etan Patz (6), disappeared while on his way to school in lower Manhattan on 25 May 1979. By 2001, he was considered legally dead. He was the first missing child featured on a milk carton.^[589] In May 2012, authorities re-opened the case.^[590] Pedro Hernandez, a former bodega stock clerk, was convicted in February 2017 of kidnapping and murdering the boy, based solely on his own confession. Neither Patz's body, which Hernandez said he put in the trash, nor any other relevant physical evidence was ever identified.^[591]

Solved cases 1980–1989

• Azaria Chamberlain, nine-week-old Australian baby girl, who disappeared on the night of 17 August 1980 on a family camping trip in Uluru, and is known to have been killed by a dingo. Though her remains have never been found, her mother insisted that a dingo had taken her from her camping tent. In a trial sensationalized by the media, her mother was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life. Her sentence was overturned six years later when Azaria's jacket was found in a dingo lair. Azaria's disappearance was the subject of four inquests, the last of which, in 2012, concurred that a dingo had taken and killed her.^[592] Her disappearance and investigation were the basis for the 1988 motion picture Evil Angels (released as A Cry in the Dark outside of Australia and New Zealand).^[593]
• Donald Eugene Webb (50), an American career criminal and fugitive wanted for attempted burglary and the murder of police chief Gregory Adams in the small community of Saxonburg, Pennsylvania on 4 December 1980.^[594] The last confirmed sighting of him was in July 1981, reported by an anonymous tipster.^[595] On 4 May 1981, Webb was named as the 375th fugitive to be placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.^[596] On 14 July 2017, remains found at the Dartmouth home of Webb's wife were identified as belonging to Webb. Investigators stated that Webb had died in 1999.^[597]
• Tina Harmon (12), a girl who was abducted, raped, and murdered on 29 October 1981,^[598] after being dropped off at her father's girlfriends in Lodi, Ohio, and her body was later found next to an oil well site in a nearby town, five days after her abduction.^[599]
• Krista Harrison (11), was murdered on 17 July 1982, in Marshallville, Ohio.^[600] The case remained unsolved for two years, until Robert Anthony Buell was convicted of her murder in 1984.^[601]
• Don Kemp (35), disappeared in a remote area of the Wyoming prairie on 16 November 1982. His car was found abandoned, but with its engine still running. Investigators followed footprints in the snow from the car, which took them six miles into the wilderness to an abandoned barn, where a few of Kemp's belongings were found. A blizzard occurred three days after his disappearance, and the authorities believed that if he was not already dead, he would have died in the blizzard. Kemp's body was found in 1986 by hunters, a few miles from where he disappeared. An autopsy revealed there were no signs of foul play.^[602]
• Mark Tildesley (7), disappeared while visiting a funfair in Wokingham, Berkshire, England on the evening of 1 June 1984. He was lured away from the fair and his bicycle was found chained to railings nearby.^[603] In 1990 it emerged that Mark had been abducted, drugged, tortured, raped and murdered by a London-based homosexual paedophile gang on the night he disappeared.^[603][604]
• Vicki Lynne Hoskinson (8), a girl from Flowing Wells, Arizona, who disappeared on 17 September 1984, while riding her bike to mail a birthday card to her aunt^[605], and on 12 April 1985 her remains were found.^[606]
• Wanda Jean Mays (26), disappeared after midnight on 12 May 1986, while staying with her aunt and uncle's home near Guntersville Lake, Alabama. The following morning, her aunt and uncle discovered her room empty and the window broken from the inside. In 2008, the FBI confirmed remains found at the foot of a cliff 2 miles (3.2 km) from her relatives' home were Mays', and her death was ruled an accident.^[607]
• Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen (23 and 21 respectively) disappeared while tramping on the Coromandel Peninsula of New Zealand in April 1989. Fugitive offender David Wayne Tamihere was convicted of their murders in December 1990. Höglin's body was discovered in October 1991, while Paakkonen's body has not been found.^[608]
• Jacob Wetterling (11), was abducted on 22 October 1989 by a masked gunman while cycling home in the dark with his brother Trevor (10) and friend Aaron (11), after going to rent a video from a convenience store a 10-minute ride away from his home in St. Joseph, Minnesota.^[609] His remains were found on 1 September 2016, when the man believed to have abducted and murdered him, already serving time on other charges, led police to them.^[610]
• Amy Mihaljevic (10), an American elementary school student, who was kidnapped and murdered in Bay Village, Ohio on 27 October 1989,^[611] and her body was found on 8 February 1990 in a field off a rural road in Ashland County.^[612]
• Melissa Brannen (5), disappeared on 3 December 1989 from the Woodside Apartments in Lorton, Virginia while attending a Christmas party held at the complex for its residents.^[613] Caleb Hughes was charged and convicted of kidnapping her.^[614][615]

Solved cases 1990–1999

• Susan Poupart (26), a Native-American woman from Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin, who disappeared on 20 May 1990, and her body was found six months later in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.^[616]
• Jaycee Dugard (11), was abducted on 10 June 1991, and was found alive on 26 August 2009 when she turned up at a Concord, California parole office.^[617]
• Miriam Iborra, Antonia Rodríguez, and Desirée Folch, were three teenage girls from Alcasser, Spain, who disappeared on 13 November 1992,^[618] and were found dead on 27 January 1993, and it was revealed that they had been kidnapped, and raped, beaten, tortured after they were abducted.^[619][620]
• Sheree Beasley (6), an Australian schoolgirl from Rosebud was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a man named Robert Lowe on 29 June 1991,^[621] and her body was found weeks later on 24 September in a stormwater drain.^[622]
• Jayne Furlong (17), sex worker, was a New Zealander who disappeared from a street in Auckland on 26 May 1993. Her remains were found at a beach in 2012 after being exposed by erosion of a sandbank. She had been abducted and murdered.^[623]
• Holly Piirainen (10), American girl from Grafton, Massachusetts, who disappeared on 5 August 1993, after she and her brother had been visiting their grandparents in Sturbridge, Massachusetts when Holly was murdered.^[624] and Piirainen's remains were found by hunters in Brimfield on 23 October 1993.^[625]
• Michael Anthony Hughes (6), was abducted at gunpoint from school on 12 September 1994 by his step father, Franklin Delano Floyd. No trace of the boy has been found.^[626] Floyd is considered a suspect in the hit-and-run death of his wife, whom he had abducted as a child and raised as his daughter. He is currently on death row for the murder of another woman and the abduction of Michael Hughes.
• Revelle Sabine Balmain (22), an Australian model who also worked as an escort, was last heard from on the evening of 5 November 1994, when she called a friend after a two-hour appointment with a client in the Sydney suburb of Kingsford to suggest they meet at a bar for drinks, but she never turned up. Her personal effects were found scattered throughout Kingsford the next day, and she is known to have been murdered (presumably by her last client), although her body has not been found.^[627]
• Melanie Carpenter (23), was abducted on 6 January 1995 from a Fleetwood Town Centre tanning salon in Surrey, BC, and found dead several weeks later.^[628]
• Kiplyn Davis (15), high school student who was reported missing on 2 May 1995 in Spanish Fork, Utah. She is a featured child of the Polly Klaas Foundation. Several people have been arrested in connection with her murder, although her death has not been confirmed by the discovery of a body.^[629] On 11 February 2011, Timmy Brent Olson pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He claimed he saw another individual hit Davis in the head with a rock and helped him move her body, but declined to name the other individual.^[630]
• Jason Callahan (19), disappeared on 1 June 1995, and was found dead on 26 June 1995.^[631] His body remained nameless until 9 December 2015.^{[632][633][634]}
• Barbara Barnes (13), an American schoolgirl who was kidnapped on 7 December 1995, while walking to school, and her body was found on 22 February 1996 in Pennsylvania.^[635] People have speculated that her grandfather may have been responsible for her death, but others believe that the crime was committed by someone local.^[636][637]
• Justina Morales (8), an American girl from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York, who was killed by her mother's boyfriend, Luis Santiago, on 31 December 1995. Her disappearance went unnoticed for 15 months. In 1997, Santiago was convicted for the murder.^[638] Morales' body has not been found.
• Fred Cuny (51), was known to have been kidnapped in 1995,^[639] a search to find him was conducted because he was believed to have been murdered,^[640] yet nothing was found.
• Melanie Hall (25), a British hospital clerical officer from Bradford on Avon, who disappeared on 9 June 1996.^[641][642] On 5 October 2009 her partial remains were discovered, after a plastic bin bag containing human bones was located by a workman on the M5 motorway near Thornbury, South Gloucestershire. The bones, which included a pelvis, thigh bone, and human skull, were analyzed and identified as belonging to Hall.^[643]
• Natascha Kampusch (10), an Austrian girl, who was kidnapped on her way to school in March 1998, was locked in a cellar,^[644] and escaped on 23 August 2006.^[645]
• Natasha Ryan (14), an Australian girl who went missing in 1998, was found hiding in a wardrobe at her boyfriend's home in 2003.^[646]
• Ben Smart (21), and Olivia Hope (17), New Zealand party goers last seen in the early hours of 1 January 1998, who disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the Marlborough Sounds. Scott Watson was arrested for and convicted of their murder, but the verdict remains controversial and no trace of Smart or Hope has ever been discovered.^[647]
• Dimitris Liantinis (55), a Greek philosopher and professor at the University of Athens who disappeared on 1 June 1998. In July 2005 human bones were found in the area of the mountain Taygetos; forensic examinations verified that it was the body of Liantinis.^[648] No lethal substances were found to determine the cause of death.
• Kamiyah Mobley, was abducted on 10 July 1998 shortly after her birth and was recovered 18 years later after having been raised by her alleged abductor.^[649]

Solved cases 2000–2009

• Keith Allan (53 or 54), was an Australian solicitor, who was murdered on 28 May 2000 in a contract killing.^[650] The whereabouts of his body is unknown.^[651] Three men were charged with killing him and three trials took place. The second trial in 2006 resulted in a hung jury. In 2007, all three were again found guilty and were sentenced to terms ranging from twenty three and a half years to nineteen years.^[652]
• Molly Bish (16), a girl who disappeared while working as a lifeguard in her hometown of Warren, Massachusetts on 27 June 2000,^[653] and her remains were found three years later in neighboring Hampden County.^[654]
• Peter Falconio (28), a British tourist from Hepworth, West Yorkshire, who disappeared in the Australian outback in July 2001, while travelling with girlfriend Joanne Lees. A man named Bradley Murdoch was charged with his disappearance, pleaded not guilty, but was convicted of the crime. He has appealed his conviction numerous times.^[655]
• Stuart Adamson (43), Scottish guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter disappeared on 26 November 2001, and was found dead 27 December 2001 in a hotel room through an act of a suicide.^[656]
• Elizabeth Smart (14), was kidnapped from her bedroom on 5 June 2002, and was found to be alive when police officers rescued her nine months later on 12 March 2003 in Sandy, Utah, about 18 miles from her home.^[657]
• Amanda Berry (16), disappeared on 21 April 2003, the day before her 17th birthday.^[658] She was walking home from her job at Burger King. During captivity, Berry gave birth to a daughter. Just over 10 years later, on 6 May 2013, Berry escaped along with Michelle Knight, Gina DeJesus and Berry's daughter.^[659] They were in reasonable health and within 3 miles of the site of their disappearances.
• Daniel Morcombe (13), disappeared from the roadside near his Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, home on 7 December 2003. His remains were found in 2011 as forensic testing confirmed that the bones were Morcombe's.^[660] Brett Peter Cowan was convicted of murder in the case.
• Spalding Rockwell Gray (62), actor and writer, was declared missing on 11 January 2004, and on 7 March 2004, the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York reported that Gray's body was discovered by two men and pulled from the East River.^[661] He is said to have committed suicide by drowning himself.
• Perry Saturn (37), American professional wrestler, was involved in an April 2004 altercation with two men when he came to the aid of a woman that they were in the process of raping. He fought the men and was shot with a .25 caliber handgun in the back of the neck and in the right shoulder, to which he originally thought he had received a punch, as a result of the scuffle.^[662] After being shot, Saturn became addicted to methamphetamine and was homeless for two and a half years.^[663][664] Saturn disappeared from public view and was not seen for several years, with his family and friends unaware of his whereabouts.^[665] He reemerged in 2010, having resolved his addiction.^[664]
• Margie Profet (46), a biologist who had ceased contact with her family in 2002 and had last been seen in 2005. In May 2012 she was told by a friend about her "disappearance" and contacted her family. She had been living in an isolated location, suffering from a physical ailment that caused her severe pain, and had not realized she was considered "missing".^[666][667]
• Naomi Miller (34), a woman from Texas, who disappeared in 2005, and was found buried underneath the old San Angelo speedway,^[668] on 8 March 2017.^[669]
• Patrick McDermott (48), Korean-American cameraman, disappeared from a fishing charter boat off San Pedro, Los Angeles, on 30 June 2005, and was suspected of faking his own death in order to cash in on a $100,000 life insurance policy for his son. However, a United States Coast Guard investigation released in November 2008 concluded that McDermott most likely drowned.^[670] In April 2010 though he was found living in Mexico.^[671]
• Scout Taylor-Compton (16), American actress, went missing on 12 August 2005 in southern California and was found two weeks later. She had run away from home.^[672]
• Barry Cowsill (50), disappeared on 29 August 2005, while trying to contact his sister during a storm. After an extensive search, Cowsill's body was found under a wharf on the Mississippi River on 28 December 2005.^[673] Cowsill's death was attributed to drowning as a result of the flooding following Hurricane Katrina.^[674]
• Tara Faye Grinstead (30), beauty queen and high school history teacher from Ocilla, Georgia who went missing on 22 October 2005. Investigators identified no suspects. In a bizarre twist, 27-year-old Andrew Haley posted anonymous videos wherein he claimed to be a serial killer responsible for the murders of 16 women. One of the victims detailed by Haley in the videos matched the case of Grinstead, but police investigation ultimately revealed the videos to be part of an elaborate hoax by Haley.^[675] A latex glove found outside Grinstead's home revealed DNA, but to date, no match has been found.^[676] In 2017, two suspects were arrested and charged.^[677]
• Cédrika Provencher (9), girl from Trois-Rivières, Quebec, who disappeared on 31 July 2007,^[678] and the Quebec media believed that she was kidnapped.^[679][680] On 12 December 2015, Quebec police announced that her remains had been found in Mauricie, Quebec.^[681][682]
• Shannon Matthews (9), English girl, who was kidnapped in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire on 19 February 2008,^[683] and was found on 14 March 2008.^[684]
• Steve Fossett (63), famous businessman and record breaking aviator, went missing on 3 September 2007 while flying over the Great Basin Desert. Exactly one year later, in September 2008, a hiker found Fossett's identification cards in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, leading shortly after to the discovery of the plane's wreckage. The remains of Fossett were two large bones, that were found half a mile from the crash site, probably scattered by wild animals.^[685][686]
• Caylee Anthony (2), was reported missing on 15 July 2008 in Orlando, Florida, and on 11 December 2008, Caylee's skeletal remains were found with a blanket inside a trash bag in a wooded area near the family home.^[687][688]
• Sandra Cantu (8), an American girl from Tracy, California, who attracted national attention after she went missing on 27 March 2009, and her body was discovered two weeks later inside a suitcase in a nearby irrigation pond.^[689]
• Aisling Symes (2), toddler who disappeared on 5 October 2009 in Auckland, New Zealand. It was strongly suspected that she had been abducted, leading to suspects being accosted in the streets, but her body was found in a storm water drain seven days later.^[690]
• Morgan Dana Harrington (20), American Virginia Tech student, who disappeared from the John Paul Jones Arena on 17 October 2009, while attending a Metallica concert at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville,^[691] and her body was discovered on 26 January 2010.^[692]

Solved cases 2010–present

• The four members of the McStay family, Joseph (40), his wife Summer (43), and their sons Gianni (4), and Joseph Jr. (3), abruptly disappeared from their Fallbrook, California home under suspicious circumstances on 4 February 2010.^[693][694] Their bodies were found by a biker in the desert near Victorville, California on 13 November 2013. One year later, on 7 November 2014, police arrested Charles "Chase" Merritt, Joseph McStay's business partner, and charged him with the murders.^[695]
• Andrew Koenig (41), American actor went missing for two weeks after last being seen in Vancouver BC, and on 25 February 2010, a group of 11 of his friends and family members found his body hanging from a tree in Stanley Park in downtown Vancouver through an act of suicide.^{[696][697][698]}
• Suzanne Pilley (38), a woman who disappeared on 4 May 2010 in Scotland, and on 23 June 2010, David Gilroy, her former boyfriend, was detained by Lothian and Borders Police under section 14 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 in connection with her disappearance. Later that day he was arrested and charged with her murder,^[699] and on 15 March 2012 he was found guilty.^[700]
• Muzafar Bhutto (41), a Sindhi nationalist politician, who went missing on 24 February 2011, was found dead on 22 May 2012 at a roadside near Hatri bypass.^[701]
• Holly Lynn Bobo (20), disappeared from her home in Darden, Tennessee on 13 April 2011. Her remains were found in September 2014 in northern Decatur County, Tennessee, and her death was ruled a homicide.^[702]
• Erica Parsons (13), last seen in North Carolina by persons outside her family in November 2011.^[703] In 2016, her remains were found in a shallow grave near her adoptive grandmother's house in an adjacent portion of South Carolina. It is strongly believed that she was murdered by her own adoptive parents, who allegedly abused her.^[704]
• Gemma McCluskie (29), a British television actress, who disappeared from her home in East London on 1 March 2012. Her dismembered body was discovered on 6 March 2012 in the Regent's Canal. Her brother, Tony McCluskie was charged and found guilty of her murder.^[705]
• Gavin Smith (57), executive with 20th Century Fox, was last seen leaving a friend's house in Oak Park, California, on 1 May 2012.^[706] In 2014 he was declared legally dead from the night of his disappearance.^[707] His body was found in a shallow grave later that year by hikers in a rural area near Angeles National Forest.^[708] In early 2015 police arrested John Lenzie Creech, the husband of one of Smith's extramarital acquaintances, and charged him with Smith's murder.^[709] Creech, who is currently serving an eight-year sentence on an unrelated drug dealing conviction, admitted killing Smith, but claimed he did so in self-defense.^[710]
• Tia Sharp (12), girl from the United Kingdom who went missing on 3 August 2012. Her body was found 7 days later in her grandmother's loft.^[711][712]
• Austin Tice (31), former U.S. Marine Corps officer and freelance journalist who was kidnapped while reporting in Syria on 12 August 2012.^[713] A 47-second video of Tice blindfolded and bound was released in September 2012. What became of him after that is unknown.
• April Jones (6), a girl from Machynlleth, Powys, who disappeared after she was sighted willingly getting into a vehicle near her home on 1 October 2012,^[714] and on 30 May 2013 a man named Mark Bridger, was subsequently arrested and charged with Jones' abduction and murder,^[715] even though her body has never been found.
• Tokbergen Abiyev, a Kazakh journalist, who went missing on 20 December 2012, just hours after he announced to the Kazakh media that he had a sensational news report about to be published.^[716] Abiyev reappeared on 4 January 2013.^[717]
• Jessica Heeringa (25), disappeared from her job at a gas station in Norton Shores, Michigan on 26 April 2013. Although her remains have not been found, in 2016, Jeffrey Willis, a frequent customer of hers, was charged with her kidnapping and murder due to forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony, while his cousin Kevin Bluhm was charged with accessory after the fact after he confessed to helping him bury her body.^[718][719]
• Carlos Ornelas Puga (35), was kidnapped by gunmen on 13 November 2013 in Jiménez, Tamaulipas, and the attack left three officers (two male and one female) wounded by firearm projectiles.^[720] He has not been seen since.^[721]
• David Bird (55), reporter for the Wall Street Journal, left his Millington, New Jersey, home for a short walk on 11 January 2014, and never returned. His body was found in a nearby river 14 months later. A subsequent investigation determined that the cause of death was accidental drowning.^[722]
• Lynn Messer (52), was not in bed next to her husband when he awoke on the morning of 8 July 2014, at their farm in Bloomsdale, Missouri. All her personal effects, including a walking boot she had been wearing to protect her broken toe, were in the house.^[723] In November 2016, remains found near the farm were identified as hers.^[724]
• Hannah Graham (18), was reported missing after last being seen at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, Virginia on 13 September 2014, and her remains were found on 18 October 2014.^[725]
• Atsumi Yoshikubo (45), Japanese psychiatrist, was last seen on the morning of 22 October 2014, walking along the Ingraham Trail (NT 4) in a wooded area on the northern outskirts of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. Her disappearance was not noted until three days later, when she had failed to check out of her hotel and the staff found her luggage, all packed, in her room. An intense search both by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and concerned local residents over the next few days was called off after a week when the RCMP announced that their investigation had led them to conclude that she came to Yellowknife with the intent to disappear into the wilderness (although she had bought a return ticket to Japan and souvenirs).^[726] Ten months later a hunter discovered some of her personal effects along with human remains in the bush off the highway; in April 2016, those remains were positively identified as Yoshikubo's.^[727]
• Charles Bothuell V (12), an American boy from Detroit, Michigan, who disappeared in 2014,^[728] and when a search was conducted to find him, he was found eleven days later locked in his parents basement.^[729]
• DJ Derek (74), pioneering British disc jockey, was last seen leaving a pub in the St Pauls neighbourhood of his native Bristol on 11 July 2015; his body was found in March 2016 near The Mall, Cribbs Causeway.^[730][731] Avon and Somerset Police spokesmen said that investigators were satisfied that there was nothing to suggest that the death was suspicious.^[732]
• Yim Fung (52), a Chinese joint chairman and chief executive of Guotai Junan International Holdings Limited, a subsidiary of Guotai Junan Securities,^[733] who disappeared on 18 November 2015, but returned to work in December 2015.^[734]
• Sian Blake (43), a British actress and her two children were reported missing on 16 December 2015, and three weeks later their bodies were found at Blake's home in Erith, London.^[735] Her partner, Arthur Simpson-Kent, pleaded guilty to the murders and was given a whole life sentence in October 2016.^[736]
• Helen Bailey (51), British writer of children's and teenage fiction, was reported missing after allegedly taking her dog for a walk in Royston, Hertfordshire, England, in April 2016. No trace of her was found initially, but in July 2016 her remains were found and her partner was charged with her murder.^[737]
• Christer Ericsson (74), Swedish businessman and billionaire, disappeared after a fishing trip at Marstrand in June 2016. At first, only his boat was found. His body was also discovered at sea in late August 2016.^[738]
• Akbar Salubiro (25), was a man who went missing on 25 March 2017 in Mamuju, Indonesia and his remains were found two days later inside the body of a Reticulated python.^[739]

See also

• Forced disappearance
• List of kidnappings
• List of murder convictions without a body
• List of unidentified murder victims in the United States
• List of unsolved deaths

References

External links

Media related to Disappeared people at Wikimedia Commons