List of people who disappeared mysteriously

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

Pre-1800

1021

• Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (36), sixth Fatimid caliph and 16th 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.

1526

• Francisco de Hoces, Spanish sailor, 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 San Lesmes, last seen in the Pacific in late May, may have reached Easter Island or any of the Polynesian archipelagos, or even New Zealand.

1587

• The Roanoke 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.

1800 to 1899

1803

• George Bass (32), English explorer of Australia, set sail from Sydney for South America and was never heard from again.

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.

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.
• 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. His fate after moving inland, although investigated by many, remains a mystery.

1872

• Captain Benjamin Briggs (37), his wife Sarah Elizabeth (31), 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 the core of "...one of the most durable mysteries in nautical history". The 282-ton brigantine had sailed from Staten Island, New York City, bound for Genoa, Italy, on 7 November. The last entry in the ship's log was made on the morning of 25 November. On 5 December she was sighted and eventually boarded by the crew of the British brig Dei Gratia, who found the only lifeboat missing, navigation charts tossed about, three and a half feet of water in the ship's bottom, and one of the ship's two pumps disassembled. The crew's belongings were still in their quarters, the cargo of 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol was largely intact, and food and water from the six-month stockpile of provisions sustained the Dei Gratia crewmen who then sailed the Mary Celeste on to Gibraltar, 800 miles (1,300 km) miles away, arriving on 13 December. Fictionalised variations of the story of the Mary Celeste in popular culture are numerous.

1890

• Louis Le Prince (48), 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.

1900s

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 (65), American sailor and first man to sail single-handed 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.

1910s

1910

• Dorothy Arnold (25), Manhattan socialite and perfume heiress, last seen in New York City.

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, 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 writer best 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, he almost certainly perished in war-torn Mexico, possibly at the Battle of Ojinaga on 10 February, 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.
• F. Lewis Clark (52), businessman from the U.S. state of Idaho, disappeared while visiting Santa Barbara, California.
• František Gellner (33), Czech poet, was recruited to the Austro-Hungarian Army at the beginning of World War I and went to Galicia, where he disappeared.

1918

• Arthur Cravan (31), French proto-dadaist writer and art critic, disappeared near Salina Cruz, Mexico; most likely drowned.

1919

• Ambrose Small (56), Canadian millionaire, disappeared from his office. He was last seen at 5:30 pm at the Grand Opera House.

1920s

1920

• Victor Grayson (39), British socialist politician, received a phone call and told his friends that he had to go to the Queen's Hotel in Leicester Square and would be back shortly. He was last seen entering a house owned by Maundy Gregory. He was probably murdered.

1921

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

1925

• Percy Fawcett (58), 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, Australian politician, set off from Martin Place, Sydney to a meeting with Jack Lang two blocks away but failed to arrive. 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 (45), French aviator, and his navigator, François Coli (45), disappeared while attempting a flight from Paris to New York. They are presumed to have crashed into the Atlantic, or possibly in Newfoundland or Maine, but no wreckage that could be confirmed to be from their biplane, The White Bird, was ever found.

1928

• Walter Collins (10) disappeared from his Los Angeles home.
• Glen and Bessie Hyde (29 & 22), American newlyweds, disappeared while attempting to raft the Colorado River rapids of the Grand Canyon.

1930s

1930

• Joseph Force Crater (41), an Associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court, was last seen entering a New York City taxi cab, and his mistress Sally Lou Ritz (22) disappeared a few weeks later. Neither was ever heard from again, and Crater's disappearance, which prompted one of the most sensational manhunts of the 20th century, 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, and the term "pull a Crater" has become common slang for a person vanishing.

1934

• Wallace Fard Muhammad (43), founder of the Nation of Islam, left Detroit and was never heard from again.

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. 18 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). A filmmaker claimed to have located Lady Southern Cross on the seabed in February 2009.

1937

• Amelia Earhart, famous American aviator, and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the central Pacific in the vicinity of Howland Island, while attempting a circumnavigational flight of the globe.
• Sigizmund Levanevsky (35), famous Soviet aviator, together with his five crew 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 commercially-viable transpolar route between Asia and North America.

1938

• Ettore Majorana (31), Italian physicist, disappeared during a boat trip from Naples to Palermo.
• Andrew Carnegie Whitfield (28), nephew of U.S. steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, disappeared during a solo morning flight in a small light aircraft from Roosevelt Field, New York, on Long Island, to an airfield at Brentwood, approximately 22 miles away. Although the flight should have only taken 15 minutes, the plane had enough fuel for a 150-mile flight; however he never arrived and neither the aircraft nor any wreckage from it was ever recovered. The previous day he had argued with his wife and told her he was "going to disappear", then spent the night prior to the flight in a $4 room in a Long Island hotel using the alias Albert C. White. He left personal belongings, including clothing, jewellery, his passport, two $6,000 life insurance policies listing his wife as beneficiary, and stocks and bonds in his and his wife's names, in the room. Phone records showed he later called home while his family was looking for him, and a telephone operator claimed to have overheard him say "Well, I am going to carry out my plan." He was declared legally dead in 1946.

1939

• Lloyd L. Gaines (28) was the central figure in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), one of the most important court cases of the U.S. civil rights movement. After graduating from Lincoln University (a historically black college) as an honors student with a bachelor's degree in history, he applied for admission to the University of Missouri (MU) law school. Denied solely because of the color of his skin, he ultimately secured a landmark Supreme Court of the United States decision which, in December 1938, ordered the state of Missouri to admit him to the MU law school or provide a faculty of equal stature for blacks within the state border. In 1939, Missouri lawmakers responded by converting a run-down St. Louis beauty college into the Lincoln law school. The NAACP were ready to challenge this as inadequate, however on the evening of 19 March Gaines 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, forcing the NAACP to drop the case. It would be another decade before MU admitted a black student. MU awarded Gaines an honorary posthumous law degree in 2006.

1940s

1944

• Glenn Miller (40), the popular American jazz musician and bandleader, was en route from England to France to play for troops in recently liberated Paris when the single-engined aircraft carrying him disappeared over the English Channel. The remains of the plane and those on board have never been located. As an armed forces officer, Miller's status is missing in action.

1945

• Heinrich Müller (45), Nazi Gestapo chief, last confirmed sighting in the Führerbunker on the evening of May 1, 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 recent as the 1980s. In 2001, after 10 years of research, a Swedish-Russian panel concluded that Wallenberg probably died (most likely was executed) in Soviet custody in 1947, but to date no hard evidence has been found to confirm this.
• Subhas Chandra Bose (48), 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, disappeared while walking on the Long Trail near Glastenbury Mountain, Vermont, USA.

1948

• Sir Arthur Coningham (53), retired RAF Air Marshal, disappeared when Avro Tudor IV G-AHNP Star Tiger went missing over the western Atlantic. He was one of 25 passengers, together with 6 crew, who were lost when the flight from Santa Maria Airport in the Azores failed to reach its destination of Kindley Field, Bermuda. Star Tiger's sister aircraft G-AGRE Star Ariel also disappeared over the western Atlantic, with the loss of all 7 crew and 13 passengers, while flying from Bermuda to Kingston Airport, Jamaica, the following year.

1950s

1950

• Richard Colvin Cox (20), second-year military cadet, disappeared from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.

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 Kinross 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 identified the second aircraft as 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 to Sudbury, Canada. Some ufologists have associated the disappearance with alleged "flying saucer" activity and refer to it as "The Kinross Incident".

1955

• The crew and passengers of the Joyita, which disappeared in the South Pacific; the Joyita was found five weeks later, partially submerged and listing heavily, with no one on board.
• Weldon Kees (41), U.S. poet, disappeared without leaving a note but had talked about packing up and moving to Mexico. His Plymouth Savoy was found on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge with the keys in the ignition.

1956

• Three USAF 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.
• 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 (27), Cuban revolutionary, disappeared when his Cessna 310 went missing over the ocean during a night flight from Camagüey to Havana.

1960s

1961

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

1962

• Frank Morris (35) and brothers Clarence Anglin (31) and John Anglin (32) 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 Nartare (9), Arnna Kathleen (7), and Grant Ellis (4), were three siblings who disappeared from a beach near Adelaide, South Australia.

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. Many have since investigated his disappearance and attempted to explain it, but no trace of him has ever been found.
• 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.
• 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. Following a change to the Coroners Act which meant an inquest could be conducted even when a body is missing, in 2005 the coroner found that Holt had drowned and his disappearance was accidental, saying that Holt took an unnecessary risk and drowned in rough water, and describing conspiracy theories to the contrary as 'fanciful'.

1969

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

1970s

1970

• Donna Lass (26), American nurse, was 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, collected a ransom of US$200,000 then jumped from the rear stairs of the Boeing 727 at a height of 10,000 feet (3,000 m) over the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, somewhere between Seattle and Reno. The FBI believes Cooper did not survive the jump, and had acted alone; originally presuming him to be an experienced parachutist, they later concluded that an expert would not have jumped as Cooper did (at night, in a rainstorm, wearing loafers and a trench coat, with no idea of where he was, and apparently failing to notice that his reserve parachute was sewn shut). In 1980, $5800 of the ransom cash was found on a Columbia River sand bar, about 15 miles (24 km) from the estimated drop zone area, but exactly where he landed, his true identity, and his fate all remain unknown.

1974

• Oscar Zeta Acosta (39), American attorney and Chicano 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 (39), 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, yachting enthusiast from San Diego, California, USA, is believed to have been murdered together with his wife, who disappeared at the same time from Palmyra Atoll and whose remains were found there in 1981.

1975

• Bas Jan Ader (33), Dutch artist, disappeared while attempting to sail a 13 ft (4 m) pocket cruiser across the Atlantic.
• Jimmy Hoffa (62), U.S. trade union leader, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
• The Lyon sisters, Katherine Mary (10) and Sheila Mary (12), disappeared while walking home after visiting a nearby mall in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., USA.
• Juanita Nielsen (38), Australian publisher, heiress, and anti-development campaigner, disappeared from Kings Cross, Sydney.

1976

• Eloise Worledge (8) disappeared from her home in Beaumaris, Victoria, Australia. She is thought to have been abducted from her bedroom, probably through the front door, which had been left wide open overnight. The biggest missing person's search in the history of Victoria failed to find any trace of her, and an AU$10,000 reward for information leading to a conviction, posted in 1976, remains unclaimed. Following a 12-month review of the case by police in 2001, an inquest in 2003 found her disappearance and presumed death suspicious but that there was insufficient evidence to determine who was responsible or when and how she died, and returned an open verdict.
• Renee MacRae (36) and her son Andrew (3) were last seen in Inverness, Scotland. Thought to have been murdered, 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.

1977

• Helen Brach (65), 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.
• Donald Mackay (43), Australian anti-drugs campaigner, assassinated after providing information to police which resulted in what was then the biggest drugs bust in Australian history. Three spent bullet cartridges were found next to his bloodstained car, but his body was never recovered. In 1984 the coroner ruled that his death was due to "wilfully inflicted gunshot wounds", and in 1986 James Frederick Bazley was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiracy to murder Mackay.
• Megumi Yokota (13) was kidnapped from the city of Niigata, Japan. In 2002 North Korea admitted to having abducted her, and claimed she died in 1994. The American documentary Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story was released in 2006.

1978

• John Brisker (31), former American Basketball Association and National Basketball Association player, disappeared after flying to Uganda. He was declared legally dead in 1985.
• Mel Lyman (40), cult leader, is claimed by cult members to have died, but no body, death certificate, or other proof was ever produced, and the exact date of death and burial place are unknown outside the "Lyman Family".
• Frederick Valentich (21) disappeared during a solo flight over the Bass Strait in Australia. Having taken off for King Island at 18:19 from Moorabbin Airport, at 19:06 he reported visual contact with an object he could not identify, then after 6 minutes of continuous radio dialogue during which he became "obviously distressed", he was never heard from again. Various possible explanations have been suggested, including UFO abduction, life insurance fraud, or that he became disoriented as darkness fell and was then further confused by coastal navigation lights. In 1982 a Department of Transport investigation concluded that the incident was presumed to have been fatal for the pilot, but that the reason for the disappearance of the single-engined Cessna 182L could not be determined; a coroner's inquiry returned an open verdict.
• Genette Tate (13) disappeared while delivering newspapers in Aylesbeare, Devon, England.
• Musa al-Sadr (49) and two aides, Mohammed Yaaqoub and Abbas Badreddine, disappeared six days after entering Libya on an official visit from Lebanon at the invitation of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Musa al-Sadr, founder of Lebanon's opposition Amal Movement, philosopher, and prominent Shi'a religious leader, is widely believed in Lebanon to have been kidnapped and killed on the orders of senior Libyan officials, who in turn have always denied any involvement and say the sheikh left Libya safely on a flight to Rome. In August 2008, Gaddafi, who has ignored a previous Lebanese summons for questioning about the case and has not visited Lebanon since the disappearance, was indicted by Lebanon of conspiring to kidnap and false imprisonment. The arrest warrant was issued under a Lebanese law allowing for the indictment of any suspect who fails to respond to a summons for questioning. The charges carry the death penalty, but it is thought unlikely Gaddafi will ever stand trial in Lebanon.
• Ten Japanese nationals are officially recognized by the Japanese government as having been abducted by North Korea from various locations at various times in 1978. Five (Yasushi Chimura, Fukie Hamamoto, Kaoru Hasuike, Yukiko Okudo, Hitomi Soga) have since returned alive; Shuichi Ichikawa, Rumiko Masumoto, and Yaeko Taguchi are alleged to have died in North Korea; the fate of Miyoshi Soga is unknown; and the abduction of Minoru Tanaka is denied by North Korea.

1979

• Etan Patz (6) disappeared while on his way to school in lower Manhattan. In 2004, a judge ruled convicted pedophile Jose A. Ramos to be responsible for the death of Patz, because Ramos did not comply with an order the judge made over a year previously to answer questions under oath about the disappearance. Ramos, for many years the primary suspect and currently incarcerated and due for release in 2012, was an acquaintance of a woman who worked for the Patz family as a baby sitter. He admitted to investigators that he was with Patz on the day he disappeared, and is alleged to have admitted his guilt to a cellmate, but the evidence is considered insufficient for a criminal prosecution.
• 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.

1980s

1980

• Azaria Chamberlain, nine-week-old Australian baby girl, presumed taken by a dingo near Uluru. Some clothing items were later recovered, but her remains have never been found
• Louise and Charmian Faulkner, mother (43) and daughter (2), disappeared from outside their home in St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia.

1982

• Johnny Gosch (12) was reported missing to West Des Moines Police Department by his parents after he disappeared while delivering newspapers. At that time, there was a customary three day waiting period before police responded to missing persons reports. Gosch was never 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.

1983

• Emanuela Orlandi (15), citizen of Vatican City.
• Kirsa Jensen (14) disappeared while riding her horse to a beach near Napier, New Zealand.

1984

• Kevin Andrew Collins (10), disappeared while returning home alone from basketball practice at his school in the Haight district of San Francisco. One of the first of the "Have you seen me?" milk carton photos.

1985

• Boris Weisfeiler (43), U.S. mathematician, disappeared while on a solo hiking trip in Southern Chile. Possibly a case of forced disappearance.
• Vladimir Alexandrov, Russian physicist, disappeared while attending a nuclear winter conference in Madrid.

1986

• Suzy Lamplugh (25), British estate agent, disappeared 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 (11) was abducted 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 10 minutes ride away from his home in St. Joseph, Minnesota.

1990s

1991

• Sarah MacDiarmid (23) disappeared from Kananook railway station, Melbourne, Australia.
• Ben Needham, 21 month old boy, 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 (6) was kidnapped from his school in Choctaw, Oklahoma by Franklin Delano Floyd, who claimed that Hughes was his son.
• Ylenia Carrisi (23), 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 presumed dead in November 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 (19), student at California Polytechnic State University, disappeared after leaving a party.

1997

• Grant Hadwin (48), an anti-logging activist who illegally felled Kiidk'yaas, Canada's landmark Golden Spruce, left Prince Rupert, British Columbia, by kayak to cross the Hecate Strait en route to his trial, but failed to arrive at the Masset courthouse on Graham Island. The wreckage of his kayak was found several month later on uninhabited Mary Island, but Hadwin's fate has never been determined.
• Kristen Modafferi (18) was last seen at the Crocker Galleria Mall coffee shop where she worked in San Francisco. She was living in Oakland, California, while attending summer school at the University of California, Berkeley, following the completion of her freshman year of college in Charlotte, North Carolina.

1998

• Tom and Eileen Lonergan (34 & 29), 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 2004 film Open Water was based on their disappearance.
• Amy Lynn Bradley (23), American passenger on the Royal Caribbean International cruise ship Rhapsody of the Seas, disappeared while the ship was docking in Curaçao, Antilles.
• Florinda Donner (54) and Taisha Abelar, along with several other female followers of Carlos Castaneda, disappeared shortly after his death. The remains of one, Patricia Partin (40), were found in 2003; the whereabouts of the others are unknown.

2000s

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) was last seen when filmed by a CCTV camera near the Baggot Street bridge in Dublin city centre, as he walked home to his apartment in Serpentine Avenue, Sandymount, on a stormy night during a taxi strike. Despite an extensive poster campaign and police searches from the air, with dogs, with divers, and by dredging, his fate remains unknown.

2001

• Peter Falconio (28), British tourist, disappeared in the Australian outback while traveling with girlfriend Joanne Lees. Although Falconio's body has never been found, Bradley John Murdoch was convicted of his murder in 2005.
• 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.
• Cindy Song (21), Pennsylvania State University student born in Seoul, Korea, was last seen dressed as a Playboy bunny as she entered her apartment in the early hours of the morning after a night spent attending several Halloween parties. Ferguson Township Police found no indications of forced entry or a struggle or that she had planned to leave the area. They brought in bloodhound search dogs, and her disappearance was featured on Without a Trace, Psychic Detectives, and Unsolved Mysteries. In 2003 a psychic investigator was consulted, but no leads resulted.

2002

• Bison Dele (33, born Brian Carson Williams), a former NBA player, his girlfriend Serena Karlan (30), and French skipper Bertrand Saldo (32), were last heard from on 6 July when they left the French Polynesian island of Moorea aboard Dele's 55 ft (17 m) catamaran, Hakuna Matata, bound for Honolulu via the Marquesas Islands. Also on board was Dele's only sibling Miles Dabord (35, born Kevin Williams), who police believe murdered the other three while at sea on 7 July, probably near Maiao, a small island between Tahiti and Raiatea. Witnesses identified Dabord as the person who docked the Hakuna Matata and, using an alias, registered it as the Aria Bella, at Taravao, Tahiti, in mid-July. On 6 September Dabord was detained by police after forging Dele's signature and attempting to use Dele's credit card and passport to buy $152,000 of gold in Phoenix, Arizona; he subsequently skipped bail and became the subject of an FBI manhunt in Mexico. In his final days Dabord repeatedly threatened suicide, and on 15 September was found naked and comatose on a Tijuana beach with massive brain damage resulting from overdosing on insulin and not taking his asthma medication. He died two weeks later, without regaining conciousness.

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.
• Daniel Morcombe (13) disappeared from the roadside near his Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, home. Police believe he was abducted and murdered.

2004

• Maura Murray (21), from Hanson, Massachusetts, a nursing student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was last seen at the scene of a minor one-vehicle accident in which her car was immobilised 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, said she would be absent from class for a week, then packed her belongings as if she were moving out.
• Somchai Neelapaijit (52), Thai Muslim lawyer and human rights activist representing South Thailand insurgency terrorism suspects, was last seen in Bangkok. Possibly a case of forced disappearance.

2005

• Natalee Holloway (18), American student, was last seen leaving a nightclub in Aruba with three men. The intense media coverage that followed her disappearance has been cited as an example of missing white woman syndrome.
• 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, USA, was discovered to be missing ten days after his wedding to Jennifer Hagel Smith, while cruising the eastern Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey aboard the Royal Caribbean International cruise ship, Brilliance of the Seas.

2006

• Joe Pichler (18), American child actor, disappeared from his home town of Bremerton, Washington. Four days later his car was found above the Port Madison Narrows; inside, police discovered a message which they characterized as a suicide note. Though it did not explicitly state that he intended to take his own life, the note expressed suicidal thoughts and asked that his belongings go to his younger brother.
• Jorge Julio López (77), retired Argentine bricklayer, was kidnapped during the National Reorganization Process, and disappeared definitely during the democratic government of President Néstor Kirchner after testifying in trial against Dirty War criminal Miguel Etchecolatz.
• Sivasubramaniam Raveendranath (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 (63), database pioneer, Microsoft Research scientist, and Turing Award winner, left San Francisco Bay 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, 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 (56), and brothers Peter Tunstead (69) and James Tunstead (63), departed Shute Harbour for Townsville, Queensland aboard Batten's 9.8 m (32 ft) 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 (3) disappeared 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 then.

2008

• Leonid Rozhetskin (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.

2009

• Claudia Lawrence (35) was last seen nearing her home in Heworth, York, on the afternoon of 18 March, as she returned from her work as a chef at the University of York. That evening she spoke to her parents by 'phone and later sent a text message to a friend; she has not been heard from again since then. The following day she was reported missing after she failed to arrive for work. Police are treating her disappearance as a suspected murder. Crimestoppers has offered a £10k reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

• Brittanee Drexel (17), a student from Rochester, New York, has been a missing person since the evening of 25 April. She was last seen when a surveillance camera captured her leaving the lobby of the Bluewater Resort where she had been visiting a group of five young Rochester-area men after falling out with the friends she'd arrived with for a spring break vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. According to her mother, she had been battling depression and had recently been put on medication, and had been upset by family troubles including foreclosure on their home and her mother's impending divorce from her stepfather, but would never run away. She had been refused permission for the trip because the group of older teenagers and young adults with whom she was to travel were unknown to her mother, who didn't learn that Brittanee had travelled to Myrtle Beach until her boyfriend called to say that she was missing.