The 20 Most Terrifying Missing Persons Cases in History

Amelia Earhart was one of the most famous aviators in U.S. history; that is why, when she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while she was attempting to fly around the world, the entire world was stunned. Despite massive search efforts led by the U.S. Navy and the Coast Guard, no wreckage or remains have ever been formally identified. Theories range from a crash and shipwreck scenario to the possibility that she landed on a remote island and survived for some time before dying there, and researchers continue to actively explore new leads to this day.

Jimmy Hoffa was the powerful president of the Teamsters union, whose ties to organized crime were well documented, making his disappearance in 1975 all the more fraught with sinister implications. He was last seen outside a restaurant in the Detroit suburbs, and despite decades of investigations, searches, and clues, his body has never been found. The case remains technically open and has become a sort of macabre running joke in American culture; everyone seems to have a theory, but no one has the answer.

D.B. Cooper holds the grim distinction of being the only unsolved plane hijacking in the history of American aviation, making it one of the most fascinating disappearances of the 20th century. In November 1971, an unidentified man hijacked a Northwest Orient flight, pocketed $200,000 in ransom, and then parachuted somewhere over the Pacific Northwest, never to be seen again. The FBI officially suspended the investigation in 2016, but a large community of amateur detectives continues to follow every new lead with remarkable dedication.

Three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared from her family’s vacation apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007, triggering one of the most widely publicized investigations into a child’s disappearance in modern history. Her parents had left her sleeping with her twins while they had dinner at a nearby restaurant, and when they returned, Madeleine was gone. German authorities officially named a suspect in her murder in 2022, but no verdict had been reached by 2024, and Madeleine has never been found.

In Columbus, Ohio, medical student Brian Shaffer was caught on surveillance cameras entering a bar during a spring break party in April 2006, but he never appeared in any footage of him leaving—a detail that investigators have never been able to explain. His phone, wallet, and car had all been left behind, and there was no indication that he had exited through any known exit. Years of investigation and numerous leads have yielded nothing, and his case remains one of the most mysterious disappearances of the CCTV era ever recorded.

On February 9, 2004, Maura Murray, a student at the University of Massachusetts, was involved in a car accident on a country road in New Hampshire and then disappeared before emergency responders arrived. A school bus driver claimed to have witnessed the accident and offered to call the police, but Maura told him it wasn’t necessary; by the time law enforcement arrived, she had vanished. Her case has generated enormous interest online over the years, with countless investigators and enthusiasts poring over every detail, but no confirmed trace of her has ever been found.

Amy Bradley, a 23-year-old woman, was traveling with her family on a Royal Caribbean cruise in March 1998 when she disappeared overnight as the ship was docking in Curaçao. Her family had seen her on deck in the early hours of the morning before going to bed, and when they woke up, she had simply vanished, with no signs of a struggle in her cabin. Since then, several witnesses have claimed to have seen Amy alive in various locations throughout the Caribbean, suggesting that she may have been a victim of human trafficking.

On Australia Day in 1966, three children—Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont, aged nine, seven, and four, respectively—disappeared from Glenelg Beach in Adelaide, South Australia, in what has become one of Australia’s most troubling unsolved cases. They were last seen boarding a bus that afternoon, a few hours after their mother had dropped them off at the beach, and they never returned home. Despite numerous investigations conducted over the decades, no bodies have ever been found, and no one has ever been charged in connection with their disappearance.

Natalee Holloway, 18, disappeared on the last night of her high school graduation trip to Aruba in May 2005, after she was last seen leaving a bar with a Dutch tourist named Joran van der Sloot. Despite multiple arrests and intensive searches, her body was never found. In 2023, however, van der Sloot confessed to brutally murdering her on a beach after she rejected his advances.

German tourist Lars Mittank was 28 years old when he was last captured on surveillance cameras at Varna Airport in Bulgaria in July 2014: he is seen running out of the building, clearly in a panic, before disappearing into a forest. A few days earlier, during his trip, he had suffered a ruptured eardrum and had begun sending his mother incoherent and anxious messages, claiming that he was in danger. International media coverage and active searches yielded no results, and the cause of his terror that day has never been determined.

Frederick Valentich was a 20-year-old Australian pilot who went missing on October 21, 1978, while flying a Cessna over Bass Strait, between the state of Victoria and Tasmania. In his final radio message, he reported being followed by an unidentified aircraft that he could not identify; then the transmission abruptly cut off, preceded by a strange metallic screech. No trace of Valentich or his plane has ever been found, and his case remains one of the most intriguing mysteries in aviation history.

Harold Holt was Prime Minister of Australia when he went missing while swimming at Cheviot Beach in the state of Victoria on December 17, 1967. A massive search operation, involving Navy divers, aircraft, and hundreds of volunteers, turned up nothing—which is remarkable given the relatively small area where he went missing. He was declared dead shortly thereafter, but various theories have persisted over the years, ranging from a simple drowning to the far-fetched hypothesis that he was abducted by a Chinese submarine.

Michael Rockefeller, the youngest son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared off the coast of New Guinea in November 1961 while participating in an anthropological expedition to collect indigenous artwork. After his boat capsized, he reportedly told his companion that he was going to try to swim to shore, and that was the last anyone heard from him. The most disturbing theory regarding his fate—explored at length in journalist Carl Hoffman’s 2014 book—is that he was killed and cannibalized by members of the local Asmat people, a claim that has never been definitively confirmed or refuted.

On December 12, 1910, Dorothy Arnold, a wealthy New York socialite, left a bookstore on Fifth Avenue and simply never returned home, vanishing in one of the most mysterious disappearances of the early 20th century. Her family waited several weeks before alerting the police, which significantly hampered the investigation and led many people to strongly suspect her relatives. Dorothy was never found, and despite numerous theories—including one suggesting she died as a result of a botched abortion—the truth has never been established.

Judge Joseph Force Crater, a justice on the New York Supreme Court, hailed a taxi in Manhattan on August 6, 1930, and was never seen again, triggering one of the most high-profile missing-person investigations in U.S. history. His disappearance had such a profound cultural impact that, for decades, the expression “to pull a Crater” entered American slang to describe disappearing without a trace. The investigations uncovered serious financial irregularities and links to political corruption at Tammany Hall, but no body or definitive explanation was ever found.

On Christmas Eve 1945, a fire broke out in the Sodder family’s home in Fayetteville, West Virginia, and once the fire was extinguished, five of the ten Sodder children were missing. Strangely, no remains were found in the ashes, and several witnesses later reported seeing the children alive in the days following the fire, leading the family to believe they had been abducted rather than killed. The Sodders spent decades searching for their missing children, even going so far as to set up a roadside billboard with their photos, but the mystery was never solved before the parents’ deaths.

Johnny Gosch, a 12-year-old newspaper delivery boy, disappeared while delivering newspapers in West Des Moines, Iowa, on September 5, 1982. This case helped raise public awareness in the United States about the issue of missing and exploited children in the early 1980s. His mother, Noreen Gosch, waged a tireless campaign to change the way law enforcement handled missing children cases, helping to bring about reforms such as Iowa’s “Johnny Gosch Bill,” which required a more rapid police response to reports of missing children. Johnny was never found, and although his disappearance has often been linked to theories about broader child exploitation networks, none of these theories has been officially proven, and no one has ever been charged in connection with his specific disappearance.

Ambrose Bierce, a famous American writer and journalist best known for his scathing satirical works, disappeared at the end of 1913 while traveling through war-torn Mexico, at the age of 71. He had written to friends to inform them of his intention to join Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army, and his correspondence simply ceased after December of that year. No remains were ever found, and no definitive account of his fate has ever been established, making his disappearance one of the great literary mysteries of the last century.

Louis Le Prince was a Franco-British inventor widely regarded as one of the earliest pioneers of film technology; he disappeared under very suspicious circumstances in September 1890. He boarded a train in Dijon, France, bound for Paris, but when the train arrived at its destination, he was nowhere to be found: no luggage, no witnesses, and no explanation. Some historians have speculated that rivals linked to Thomas Edison had a clear financial interest in ensuring that Le Prince never arrived in Paris to file his patents, although nothing has ever been proven.

Six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared on May 25, 1979, on the very first morning his parents allowed him to walk alone the short distance to the school bus stop in New York. His photo was one of the first to appear on milk cartons across the country, and his case profoundly transformed the way the United States responds to missing children and covers such cases in the media. Pedro Hernandez was ultimately convicted of kidnapping and murder in 2017, but that conviction was overturned in 2025 after a federal appeals court ruled that the jury had been given erroneous instructions on how to evaluate Hernandez’s confession, in a case where no physical evidence linked him to the crime.