List of people who disappeared mysteriously

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This is a list of notable, historically testified people who mysteriously disappeared, and whose current whereabouts are unknown or whose deaths are not substantiated.

1021

• Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, sixth Fatimid caliph and 16^th Ismaili imam, rode his donkey to the Muqattam 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.

1412

• Owain Glyndŵr, the last native Welsh person to hold the title Prince of Wales, 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 was never captured, betrayed, or tempted by Royal Pardons. Nothing certain is now known of him after 1412, but efforts to identify his grave continue.

1499

• John Cabot, Italian explorer, disappeared along with his five ships during an expedition to find a western route from Europe to Asia.

1501

• Gaspar Corte-Real, Portuguese explorer, 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.

1502

• Miguel Corte-Real, Portuguese explorer, disappeared while searching for his brother Gaspar. Like his brother, he took three ships; and like his brother, the ship with Miguel on board was lost and never heard from again.

1587

• The Roanoake Colonists, comprising 117 men, women, and children, were recruited by Walter Raleigh to establish the first permanent English colony in the New World. Soon after arriving at Roanoke Island on 22 July 1587 they petitioned their governor, John White, to return to England for supplies. White left on 28 August of that same year, expecting to be gone for less than three months, but was unable to return to the Roanoke Colony (later also known as The Lost Colony) until 18 August 1590, when he found the settlement abandoned. The fate of the colonists (including White's granddaughter Virginia Dare, the first child of English parents to be born in the Americas) has never been determined; the Lost Colony DNA Project and others continue to investigate "...the biggest unsolved mystery in the history of America" to this day.

1694

• Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, Swedish count, lover of Sophia, Princess of Zelle (who was the wife of George I of Great Britain).

1803

• George Bass, English explorer of Australia, set sail from Sydney for South America and was never heard from again.

1809

• Benjamin Bathurst, British diplomat, vanished from an inn in Perleberg.

1812

• Theodosia Burr Alston, 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, resident of Batavia, New York, disappeared just before his book critical of Freemasonry was published.

1848

• Khachatur Abovian (b.1809), 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.
• Ludwig Leichhardt (b.1813), Prussian explorer and naturalist. In March 1848 he set out from the Condamine River to reach the Swan River. He was last seen on April 3 1848 at McPherson's Station, Coogoon on the Darling Downs. His disappearance after moving inland, although investigated by many, remains a mystery.

1872

• Captain Benjamin Briggs and nine other passengers and crew of the brigantine Mary Celeste disappeared. Their ship was found adrift with no one on board.

1888

• Charles Bolles (a.k.a. "Black Bart"), U.S. outlaw of the "Old West", disappeared shortly after his release from San Quentin State Prison.

1890

• Louis Le Prince, motion picture pioneer, disappeared after boarding a Paris-bound train at Dijon, France.

1896

• Albert Jennings Fountain (57) and his son Henry (8) disappeared near Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States.

1900

• Three lighthouse keepers working on the Flannan Isles (off the northwestern coast of Scotland) disappeared in a mystery commemorated in the ballad Flannan Isle.

1909

• Joshua Slocum, American seaman and adventurer (the first man to sail single-handedly around the world), disappeared along with his sloop-rigged fishing boat Spray.

1910

• Dorothy Arnold, Manhattan socialite and perfume heiress, last seen in New York City.

1912

• Bobby Dunbar, age 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, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. 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.

1914

• Ambrose Bierce (71), American author and journalist, disappeared without a trace during travels in Mexico. Last confirmed alive December 26, 1913 in Chihuahua.
• F. Lewis Clark (52), businessman from the U.S. state of Idaho, disappeared while visiting Santa Barbara, California.
• František Gellner (33), Czech poet, recruited to the Austro-Hungarian Army at the beginning of World War I and went to Galicia, where he disappeared.

1918

• Arthur Cravan, French proto-dadaist writer and art critic, disappeared near Salina Cruz, Mexico, in November 1918, most likely drowning during a sailing trip in the Pacific Ocean.

1919

• Ambrose Small, Canadian millionaire.

1920

• Victor Grayson, British socialist politician, probably murdered.

1921

• The captain and crew of the Carroll A. Deering, found beached near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

1925

• Percy Fawcett (b. 1867), British archaeologist and explorer, together with his eldest son Jack and friend Raleigh Rimmell, were last seen travelling into the jungle of Mato Grosso in Brazil to search for a hidden "city of gold". 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.
• Frederick McDonald (b. c. 1872), Australian politician, set off from Martin Place, Sydney to a meeting two blocks away with Jack Lang but failed to arrive and was never heard from again. He was possibly murdered by his political rival Thomas John Ley. In 1947, Ley was convicted at the Old Bailey of "the chalkpit murder" of a barman in England and sentenced to hang, but then declared insane and sent to Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital where he died of a cerebral hemorrhage two months later.

1927

• Charles Nungesser, French aviator, and his navigator, François Coli, disappeared while attempting a flight from Paris to New York. They are presumed to have crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, or possibly in Newfoundland or Maine, but no wreckage that could be confirmed to be from their biplane, The White Bird, has ever been found.

1928

• Glen and Bessie Hyde, American newlyweds, disappeared while attempting to raft the Colorado River rapids of the Grand Canyon.

1930

• Joseph Force Crater, Associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court, was last seen entering a New York City taxi cab, and his mistress Sally Lou Ritz went missing a few weeks later;neither was ever heard from again. Crater's disappearance prompted one of the most sensational manhunts of the 20th century, was the subject of widespread media attention and a grand jury investigation, and the term "pull a Crater" became common slang for a person vanishing. He was declared legally dead in 1939 and his missing persons file was officially closed in 1979, but Cold Case Squad detectives have investigated new leads as recently as 2005.

1934

• Wallace Fard Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam.
• Everett Ruess, American writer and artist known for his vagrant lifestyle and his statements on life and adventure. At the age of 20 he went into the Utah desert with two burros and never returned. His remains have never been found.

1935

• Charles Kingsford Smith, Australian pioneer aviator, and co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge, went missing while attempting to break the England-Australia speed record in their Lockheed Altair, the Lady Southern Cross. 18 months after they disappeared during an overnight flight from Allahabad, India, to Singapore, Burmese fishermen found an undercarriage leg and wheel (with its tyre still inflated) on the shoreline of Aye Island in the Andaman Sea, 3 km off the south-east coastline of Burma. Lockheed confirmed the wreckage to be from the Lady Southern Cross, and botanists who examined the weeds clinging to it estimated that the aircraft lies not far from the island at a depth of approximately 15 fathoms (27 m).

1936

• Joseph Rodriguez, four-year-old child and resident of Spanish Harlem, New York City, disappeared while playing with friends. Although Rodriguez' aunt received a telegram informing her that her nephew had been injured and would return home shortly, Joseph never appeared. There was no further communication from the writer and no trace of Joseph's body was ever found.

1937

• Amelia Earhart, famous American aviator, and her navigator, Fred Noonan, went missing over the central Pacific Ocean in the vicinity of Howland Island, while attempting a circumnavigational flight of the globe.
• Sigizmund Levanevsky, famous Soviet aviator, missing since he and a six-man crew attempted to make a historic flight from Moscow to the United States by way of the North Pole. They did not reach their destination, and their last radio message mentioned weather problems.

1938

• Ettore Majorana, Italian physicist. Disappeared during a boat trip from Naples to Palermo.
• Andrew Carnegie Whitfield, nephew of U.S. steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, disappeared while piloting a small airplane over Long Island, New York.

1939

• Lloyd L. Gaines, figure in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. He successfully sued for admission to the Law School at the University of Missouri in 1938. He left his fraternity house to buy stamps and disappeared.

1944

• Glenn Miller, the popular American jazz musician and bandleader, went missing over the English Channel, en route from England to France to play for troops in recently liberated Paris. The remains of the aircraft and those on board were never recovered.

1945

• Heinrich Müller, Nazi Gestapo chief, last confirmed sighting in the Führerbunker on the evening of May 1st, the day after Hitler's suicide. The NARA review of his CIA file and related documents states that while the record is "...inconclusive on Müller's ultimate fate ... [he] most likely died in Berlin in early May 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 subsequent fate remains a mystery, despite hundreds of purported sightings, some as recently as the 1980s. In 2001, after 10 years of research, a Swedish-Russian panel concluded that Wallenberg probably died - most likely executed - in Soviet custody in 1947, but to date no hard evidence has been found to confirm this.
• Subhas Chandra Bose, one of the most prominent leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, disappeared after a plane crash in Taiwan. His body was never recovered and his death has long been the subject of dispute.

1946

• Paula Jean Welden (18), Bennington College sophomore, vanished while on a day-hike on Vermont's Long Trail hiking route, somewhere between Vermont State Route 9 at Woodford Hollow, east of Bennington, and Glastenbury Mountain further north.

1948

• Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, prominent passenger aboard the Avro Tudor IV aircraft the Star Tiger which disappeared on January 30, 1948 enroute from the Azores to Bermuda in an area of the Atlantic Ocean referred to as the Bermuda Triangle. Star Tiger's sister aircraft, Star Ariel, disappeared the following year on a flight from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica.

1950

• Richard Colvin Cox, second-year military cadet, disappeared from the United States Military Academy at West Point.

1953

• First Lieutenant Felix Moncla, pilot, and Second Lieutenant Robert L. Wilson, radar operator, disappeared while hunting an unidentified flying object over the U.S.-Canadian border near Lake Superior.

1955

• The crew and passengers of the Joyita, which disappeared in the South Pacific ocean; five weeks later, the Joyita re-appeared with no one on board.
• Weldon Kees, U.S. poet. On July 19, 1955, Kees's Plymouth Savoy was found on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge with the keys in the ignition. He left no note and his body was never found, but he was known to have talked about packing up and moving to Mexico.

1956

• Lionel Crabb (46), retired British Royal Navy frogman, disappeared 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.

1957

• Moira McCall Anderson (11) disappeared while on an errand for her grandmother in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland. The Moira Anderson Foundation was established in memory of her.

1959

• Camilo Cienfuegos was a Cuban revolutionary. He disappeared and presumably died on October 28, 1959, in a Cessna accident due to bad weather while flying over the sea. However, neither his plane nor his body was ever recovered despite Cuban government efforts.

1961

• Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared during an expedition in the Asmat region of southwestern New Guinea.

1962

• Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin escaped from Alcatraz prison in the U.S. state of California and disappeared. Authorities presumed that they drowned but no bodies were ever recovered.

1966

• The Beaumont children, Jane (9), Arnna (7), and Grant (4), disappeared from a beach in Adelaide, Australia.

1967

• Harold Holt, Australian Prime Minister, disappeared while at the beach out on a swim. A Victorian Coroners ruling in 2005 officially removed Harold Holt from the Missing Persons List.
• James P. Brady, Canadian Metis leader, disappeared in northern Saskatchewan while on a prospecting trip with a Cree companion (who also disappeared).
• Jim Thompson, former U.S. military intelligence officer who once worked for the Office of Strategic Services and an entrepreneur often credited for bringing Thai silks to the Western world, disappeared while on a walk at a rural Malaysian hill-station.

1969

• Donald Crowhurst, English businessman and amateur sailor, disappeared while competing in a single-handed round-the-world yacht race.

1970

• Sean Flynn, American photojournalist and son of Errol Flynn and Lili Damita, believed captured by factions of Viet Cong and/or Khmer Rouge in 1970, and believed killed in 1971, at Bei Met, Cambodia.
• Donna Lass, American nurse, last seen in Stateline, Nevada.
• Robin Graham (18) ran out of gas on the Hollywood Freeway. She was last seen by California Highway Patrol officers who directed her to a call box, and later saw her speaking with a man beside her car. The circumstances of her disappearance resulted in CHP policy being changed to ensure the safety of stranded female motorists.

1971

• D. B. Cooper, skyjacker, true identity unknown, jumped from a hijacked Boeing 727 over the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.

1972

• Nicholas Begich and Hale Boggs, both American Congressmen, disappeared when their Cessna 310 went missing en route to Juneau, Alaska, from Anchorage.

1974

• Oscar Zeta Acosta, American attorney and Chicago activist, most famous for portrayal as "Dr. Gonzo" in Hunter S. Thompson's book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
• Richard Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, and the last person ever to be deemed a murderer by a coroner's jury. His whereabouts have been unknown since his children's nanny, Sandra Rivett, was beaten to death with a lead pipe in the basement of his estranged wife's home. He was officially declared dead in 1999.
• Malcolm ("Mac") Graham, avid U.S. yachting enthusiast from San Diego, California, disappeared along with his wife from Palmyra Atoll sometime between August 28 and August 30, 1974. Although he is believed to have been murdered, and his wife's remains were found in 1981, his own remains have never been located.

1975

• Bas Jan Ader, Dutch artist, disappeared while attempting to sail across the Atlantic Ocean.
• Jimmy Hoffa, U.S. trade union leader, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
• Lyon Sisters, two U.S. pre-teen girls, disappeared on their way home from a neighborhood mall.
• Juanita Nielsen (38), Australian publisher, heiress, and anti-development campaigner, disappeared from Kings Cross, Sydney.

1976

• Renee MacRae (36) and her son Andrew (3) were last seen in Inverness, Scotland. They are thought to have been murdered and their remains have never been found. Their disappearance is Britain's longest running missing person's case. Northern Constabulary renewed their search for evidence in 2004 and named a suspect in a report to the procurator fiscal in October 2006, however the Crown Office declared there was insufficient evidence to go to court.

• Eduardo Moreno Bergaretxe aka "Pertur" was a leading figure of Basque terrorist organization ETA. He disappeared in July 1976 in southern France after meeting two other members of the this organization known as "Pakito" and "Apala". They were both accused of the murder of Pertur, but no evidence could be found. The terrorist organization in turn accused a Spanish paramilitary organization of being responsible of the disappearance. The body was never found.

1977

• Donald Mackay, Australian anti-drugs campaigner, believed murdered.
• Helen Brach, American heiress, was murdered. In May 1984, she was declared legally dead as of Feb. 17, 1977, the day she was last seen alive. In 1995, Richard Bailey was charged with conspiring to murder, soliciting the murder, and causing the murder of, Helen Brach. According to affidavits presented at the trial, her body was disposed of in a blast furnace near Gary, Indiana. Bailey was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment; his 1996 appeal was rejected.

1978

• John Brisker, former American Basketball Association and National Basketball Association player, disappeared after flying to Uganda.
• Mel Lyman, cult leader, is claimed by cult members to have died, but no body, death certificate, or other proof were ever produced. The date of death and burial place are unknown outside the "Lyman Family".
• Frederick Valentich (20), Australian pilot, disappeared while flying across Bass Strait, in what has been claimed by some people as a UFO encounter.
• Genette Tate (13) disappeared while delivering newspapers in Aylesbeare, Devon, England. Her case is the longest missing person's inquiry in British history.
• Sayyid Mousa al-Sadr, Lebanese philosopher and a prominent Shi'a religious leader, disappeared on a tour to Libya and was never found.

1979

• Etan Patz, schoolboy, disappeared while walking to New York City bus stop.
• Louis Cafora, a Colombo crime family loan shark and drug trafficker for the Lucchese crime family who allegedly participated in the infamous 1978 Lufthansa heist at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.

1980

• Azaria Chamberlain, Australian baby girl, presumed to have been taken by a dingo near Uluru. Some clothing items were later recovered, but her remains have never been found
• Louise and Charmian Faulkner, mother and toddler daughter, disappeared from outside their residence in St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia.

1982

• Johnny Gosch, paperboy in Des Moines, Iowa, United States, abducted while delivering papers. His image was one of the first national missing children notices to appear on milk cartons, and later the cover of Newsweek.

1983

• Emanuela Orlandi, citizen of Vatican City.
• Kirsa Jensen, disappeared while riding her horse to the beach at Awatoto, Napier, New Zealand on Sept 1 1983. Her disappearance is still one of New Zealand's biggest unsolved cases.

1984

• Kevin Andrew Collins, U.S. youth from San Francisco.
• Boris Weisfeiler, U.S. mathematician who went missing in Chile.

1985

• Vladimir Alexandrov, Russian physicist, disappeared while attending a nuclear winter conference in Madrid.

1986

• Suzy Lamplugh, British estate agent, went missing from Fulham, West London. In 1994 she was declared dead, presumed murdered. Despite further police investigations in 1998 and 2000, no trace of her has ever been found.

1989

• Jacob Wetterling, kidnapped on October 22 in St Joseph, Minnesota, USA, and was never found.

1991

• Sarah MacDiarmid, young female, disappeared from Kananook station in Melbourne, Australia.
• Ben Needham, 21 month old male, disappeared from the island of Kos in Greece, July 24. He has never been found. It was believed Ben was abducted and several suspects in Kos and Veria were suggested as being responsible, no one was ever charged with abduction.
• Michael Dunahee (4) disappeared from a school playground in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. His parents were nearby, but no witnesses to his presumed abduction have ever been identified, and there have been no subsequent confirmed sightings of him.

1992

• The Springfield Three - Sherrill Levitt (47), her daughter Suzie Streeter (19), and Suzie's friend Stacy McCall (18) - disappeared from Levitt's home in Springfield, Missouri, in an apparent triple kidnapping and murder.

1994

• Michael Anthony Hughes has been missing since his abduction from Indian Meridian Elementary School in Choctaw, Oklahoma, United States, by Franklin Delano Floyd (who claimed to be his father) on September 12 of that year. Floyd has claimed that Hughes is still alive somewhere in the U.S., but has not disclosed his location.
• Ylenia Carrisi, Italian TV celebrity and daughter of singers Albano Carrisi and Romina Power. Disappeared during a vacation in New Orleans.

1995

• Richey James Edwards (27), member of Welsh rock band the 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 adjacent to the Severn Bridge, a location notorious for suicides. He was declared legally dead in 2008.
• Jodi Huisentruit (27), KIMT news anchor, was abducted from outside her apartment while on her way to work in Mason City, Iowa. She was declared legally dead in 2001.

1996

• Kristin Smart, student at California Polytechnic State University, disappeared after leaving a party.

1997

• Grant Hadwin, unemployed logger who cut down Canada's landmark Golden Spruce as a protest against the logging industry, disappeared while kayaking across British Columbia's Hecate Strait en route to his trial.
• Kristen Modafferi, former college student from Charlotte, North Carolina, vanished without trace while on a summer-away study program in the San Francisco Bay Area.

1998

• Tom and Eileen Lonergan, an American couple left stranded due to a faulty head count while scuba diving in shark-infested waters off Australia's Great Barrier Reef, were not reported missing until their belongings were found on the dive boat two days later. Double suicide and murder/suicide theories were ruled out by police and the coroner, who charged skipper Jack Nairn with manslaughter; he was acquitted in November 1999. The 2003 film Open Water was loosely based on the Lonergans' story.
• Amy Lynn Bradley (23), American passenger on the Royal Caribbean International cruise ship MS Rhapsody of the Seas, disappeared while the ship was docking in Curaçao, Antilles.
• Florinda Donner and Taisha Abelar, along with several other female followers of Carlos Castaneda, disappeared shortly after his death. The remains of one, Patricia Partin, were found in 2003; the whereabouts of the others are unknown.

2000

• Bruno Manser (45), Swiss born activist who fervently campaigned for the preservation of rainforests in Sarawak, was last seen in May 2000 in the isolated village of Bareo in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, close to the border with Indonesia. He was declared legally dead in March 2005.
• Trevor Deely (22) disappeared after attending a Christmas office party in Dublin. He was last seen in the early hours of December 8.

2001

• Peter Falconio (28), British tourist, was murdered by Bradley John Murdoch in the Australian outback. His body has never been found.
• Jason Jolkowski (19), resident of Omaha, Nebraska, disappeared on June 13. His parents subsequently founded Project Jason, a nonprofit organization that assists families of missing persons.

2002

• Bison Dele (33), aka Brian Williams, former National Basketball Association player, thought to have been murdered in the Pacific Ocean by his brother. His body has never been found.

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. On 28 June an aircraft closely resembling N844AA was seen at Conakry, Guinea, but there have been no subsequent sightings, and Padilla's fate is unknown.
• Daniel Morcombe (13) disappeared from the roadside near his Sunshine Coast, Australia, home. Police believe he was abducted and murdered, but his body has never been found.

2004

• Maura Murray (21), an American college student from Massachusetts, disappeared after a one-car accident in New Hampshire.

2005

• Natalee Holloway (18), American student, was last seen leaving a nightclub in Aruba with three men.
• Ray Gricar (59), District Attorney in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania
• Charles Rutherford Jr. (35), attorney, disappeared with his girlfriend in Lake Huron. Her body was later found. He was declared legally dead in August 2006.
• Patrick McDermott (48), partner of Olivia Newton-John, disappeared on return from a fishing cruise off San Pedro, California.
• George Allen Smith (26), from Greenwich, Connecticut, United States, was discovered to be missing ten days after his wedding to Jennifer Hagel Smith, while cruising the eastern Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Turkey aboard the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Brilliance of the Seas.

2006

• Joe Pichler (age 18), American child actor, vanished from his home town of Bremerton, Washington. Four days later his car was found above the Port Madison Narrows; inside, police discovered a note which they characterized as a suicide note. The message expressed suicidal thoughts and asked that his belongings go to his younger brother, but did not explicitly state that he intended to take his own life.
• Jorge Julio López (age 77), retired Argentine bricklayer, was kidnapped during the National Reorganization Process, and disappeared again during the democratic government of President Néstor Kirchner after testifying in trial against Dirty War criminal Miguel Etchecolatz.
• Sivasubramaniam Raveendranath (age 55), Sri Lankan Tamil academic and Vice Chancellor of the Eastern University of Sri Lanka, disappeared while attending a conference in Colombo.

2007

• Jim Gray (age 63), database pioneer, Microsoft Research scientist, and Turing Award winner, left San Francisco Bay in his 12 meter sailboat to scatter his mother's ashes at the Farallon Islands, a wildlife refuge 43 km away, and was reported missing when he failed to return later the same day. No Mayday call was heard, his distress radiobeacon was not activated, and despite one of the most ambitious search and rescue missions of all time, no trace of Gray or his yacht was ever found.
• Derek Batten (age 56), and brothers Peter Tunstead (69) and James Tunstead (63), departed Shute Harbour for Townsville, Queensland aboard Batten's 9.8 meter catamaran Kaz II. Five days later when the yacht was found adrift with its sails up and engine running, all three crew were missing and the Global Positioning System showed it had been drifting since around the time of their last known radio contact, about 11 hours after leaving Shute Harbour.
• Madeleine McCann (age 3) went missing after being left unsupervised in the unlocked ground floor bedroom of her family's rented holiday apartment in the Algarve (Portugal). There have been no confirmed sightings of her since she disappeared.
• Kyle Fleishman, college student who mysteriously dissapeared in November from Charlotte, North Carolina

2008

• Leonid Rozhetskin (age 41), Russian-born British media magnate, disappeared from his house in Jūrmala, Latvia, in what Latvian police described as "extremely worrying circumstances", and may have been the victim of a political murder plot.
• Gerry Rafferty (age 61), British musician, was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in Lambeth, London, for treatment for liver problems, but then on August 1st disappeared, leaving his clothes and belongings behind.

2009

• Safiullah Latif (age 17), Pakistan national residing in Saudi Arabia, vanished during his annual school field trip to an amusement park, in what is known as "The Redrum Case". His friends became suspicious when he did not show up for 3 hours after a visit to the washroom. A search was carried out during which the park authorities reported of an evidence found in the washrooms, reportedly a large handwritten message which read "redrum" in red ink. The handwriting does not match Safiullah's writing font. Interestingly, "redrum" is murder spelled backwards, an idea taken from Stephen King's horror novel "The Shining". Saudi detective agencies have been trying to locate his position with the help of foreign detectives. Until recently, no solid evidence have been found indicating whether he was murdered or kidnapped. One of the many theroies put forward is that Safiullah was kidnapped, though the motive for the kidnapping is still unclear. Meanwhile the parents have received no phone call from any kidnapper. The investigation is still in process.
• Jure Sterk (age 72), Slovenian sailor went missing near Australia after trying to make a new world record as the oldest person to sail around the world and in the smallest yacht yet. He was in regular contact with some of his friends and radio-amateurs around the world. He also made some of the calls for the Slovenian news which were then shown on the Slovenian TV news. In the end of January 2009 it was reported that no one has been able to call him for 12 days and that the radio-amateurs cannot establish contact with him. A merchant ship noticed his yacht around 1100km away from Australian shore but without any life signs on board. Australian coast guard made a pass with an airplane over the yacht but no sign of Jure has been found. Due to bad weather no one was able to land on the yacht. It is now reported that his yacht is probably sailing without control and has already left the Australian territorial waters entering open ocean. He is still being searched but for now his fate remains unknown.

See also

• AMBER Alert
• Code Adam
• Cold case (an unsolved criminal case)
• Death in absentia (sometimes known as "legally dead")
• Forced disappearance
• Fugitive
• List of missing ships
• Missing person
• Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
• Unexplained disappearances