List of people who disappeared mysteriously

This is a list of people who mysteriously disappeared, and whose current whereabouts are unknown or whose deaths are not substantiated, as well as a few cases of people whose disappearance was notable and remained mysterious for a long time, but was eventually explained.

Before 1800

• 53 BC - Ambiorix was, together with Catuvolcus, prince of the Eburones, leader of a Belgic tribe of north-eastern 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 disappear without a trace.
• 834 (circa) – Muhammad ibn Qasim (al-Alawi) led a rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate but was defeated and detained. He was able to flee but was never heard from again.
• 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.
• 1203 - Arthur I, Duke of Brittany, designated heir of the throne of England. He was supported by French nobility who didn't want John of England as overlord. On 31 July 1202, 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.
• 1291 (circa) – Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi, Genoese sailors and explorers lost while attempting the first oceanic journey from Europe to Asia.
• 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.
• 1483 – Edward V of England (12) and Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York (9), sons of King Edward IV of England, 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. Neither was ever seen in public again and their fate remains unknown.
• 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 as with 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.
• 1546 – Francisco de Orellana, Spanish explorer and conquistador disappeared while exploring the Amazon in November, and his grave remains a mystery.
• 1590 – The Roanoke colonists disappeared, becoming known as The Lost Colony, in 18 August 1590, when their settlement was found abandoned.
• 1779 – Thomas Lynch, Jr. (30), signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence, boarded a ship bound for the West Indies with his wife and was never seen again.
• 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 Istanbul as a gift to the Ottoman sultan by the Bey of Algiers. It is unconfirmed if she was the same person as Nakshedil Sultan, consort of the sultan.

1800 to 1899

• 1803 – George Bass (32), British 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.
• 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.
• 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. 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"
• 1880 – Lamont Young, a government geologist inspecting new goldfields on behalf of the New South Wales Mines Department, together with his assistant, Max Schneider, and boat owner Thomas Towers and two other men all disappeared near Bermagui, New South Wales, Australia. The location where the abandoned wreck of their boat was discovered was subsequently named Mystery Bay.
• 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 and the opera The Lighthouse.
• 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.

1910s

• 1910 – Dorothy Arnold (25), Manhattan socialite and perfume heiress, was 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. 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.
• 1913 – Rudolf Diesel was lost overboard. The mainstream consensus, based on the work of his biographers, is that he committed suicide, but homicide theories abound, and no one can know for sure.
• 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.
• 1914 – F. Lewis Clark (52), businessman from the U.S. state of Idaho, disappeared while visiting Santa Barbara, California.
• 1914 – 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.
• 1914 – Alejandro Bello Silva (27), a lieutenant in the Chilean Army, disappeared during a qualifying exam flight over central Chile. Although search efforts commenced within hours, no trace was ever found. His disappearance is reflected in a Chilean set phrase, "more lost than Lieutenant Bello", applied to people who stray off course or disappear en route.
• 1918 - USS Cyclops, collier, left Barbados on March 4, lost with 309 crew and passengers en route to Baltimore, Maryland.
• 1918 – Arthur Cravan (31), French proto-dadaist writer and art critic, disappeared near Salina Cruz, Mexico; he most likely drowned.
• 1919 – Ambrose Small (56), Canadian millionaire, disappeared from his office. He was last seen at 5:30 pm on December 2, 1919, at the Grand Opera House in Toronto.

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.
• 1921 – The captain and crew of the Carroll A. Deering, which was found beached near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
• 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 November 26, 1921, on a passenger ship bound from New York City to Havana.
• 1925 – Percy Fawcett (58), British archaeologist and explorer, together with his eldest son, Jack, and friend Raleigh Rimmell, was 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.
• 1925 – Frederick McDonald, 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 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 was 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.
• 1928 – 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 taxicab, 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 "pull a Crater" became 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. 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). A filmmaker claimed to have located Lady Southern Cross on the seabed in February 2009.
• 1937 – Amelia Earhart (39), famous American aviator, and her navigator, Fred Noonan (44), disappeared over the central Pacific in the vicinity of Howland Island while attempting a circumnavigational flight of the globe.
• 1937 – 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 transpolar route between Asia and North America commercially viable .
• 1937 – Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe (24 & 28) escaped from Alcatraz prison in the U.S. state of California and disappeared. Authorities presumed that they drowned, but no bodies were ever recovered.
• 1938 – Ettore Majorana (31), Italian physicist, disappeared during a boat trip from Naples to Palermo.
• 1938 – 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.
• 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. 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 was another decade before MU admitted a black student. MU awarded Gaines an honorary posthumous law degree in 2006.
• 1939 - Richard Halliburton Missing at sea since March, 1939 after trying to sail a Chinese junk across the Pacific Ocean. The Sea Dragon was a gaudily decorated 75-foot junk. In 1945 some wreckage identified as a rudder and believed to belong to the Sea Dragon washed ashore in California.

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-engine aircraft in which he was a passenger disappeared over the English Channel some 10 days before Christmas. The plane and those on board have never been located. As a U.S. military officer who vanished in wartime, Miller continues to be listed officially as missing in action.
• 1944 - Rocco Perri (born 30 December 1887, date of death unknown, last seen alive 23 April 1944) was an organized crime figure in Ontario, Canada in the early 20th century.
• 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."
• 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 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 (most likely was executed) in Soviet custody on July 17, 1947, but to date no hard evidence has been found to confirm this. In fact, in 2010 evidence from Russian archives surfaced suggesting he was alive after the presumed execution date.
• 1945 – Constanze Manziarly (25), cook and dietitian to Adolf Hitler, disappeared while escaping Berlin following the Soviet invasion and fall of Nazi Germany. She was believed to be raped and killed by Soviet soldiers in a U-Bahn subway tunnel.
• 1945 – 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.
• 1945 - Flight 19: Five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers disappeared on 5 December while on a training flight in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle. During the subsequent search, a PBM-5 Mariner flying boat participating in the search disappeared, apparently the result of a mid-air explosion. No remains of the six planes and 21 crewmen involved have ever been positively identified.
• 1945 – Supriyadi (22) was an Indonesian national hero. On 6 October 1945 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.
• 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.
• 1949 - Jean Spangler (26), American dancer, model and bit-part actress, disappeared in October 1949 from Los Angeles, California. Last seen by her sister-in-law before going to meet her ex-husband. Two days later her purse was found near the entrance gate to Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

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 69-foot merchant vessel Joyita, which disappeared in the South Pacific; the Joyita was found five weeks later, partially submerged and listing heavily, with no one on board.
• 1955 – 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.
• 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.
• 1956 - Gunnel Gummeson (26), Swedish teacher, disappeared with her American boyfriend Peter Winant travelling in Afghanistan.
• 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.
• 1964 – Charles Clifford Ogle (41) took off from Oakland International Airport, California, in his Cessna 210 A single-engine aircraft and was never seen again.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 1969 - April Fabb (13) Went missing in mysterious circumstances from Metton, Norfolk, UK

1970s

1970

• Sean Flynn (28), son of Errol Flynn and Lili Damita, and Dana Stone (32), American photojournalists on assignment for Time Magazine and CBS News, respectively, were captured by Communist guerrillas while travelling by motorcycle in Cambodia.
• Donna Lass (26), American nurse, was last seen in Stateline, Nevada. Some have attempted to connect her disappearance to the Zodiac Killer, but these possible connections remain somewhat controversial.
• 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's being changed to ensure the safety of stranded female motorists.

1971

• D. B. Cooper, skyjacker, collected a ransom of US$200,000 and then parachuted from the rear stairs of a 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 Portland, Oregon.

1972

• Hale Boggs (58), US House Majority Leader (D-LA) and Nick Begich (40), U.S. Representative from Alaska disappeared with their Cessna 310 in Alaska, along with Begich's aide Russell Brown and pilot Don Jonz.

1973

• Joanne Ratcliffe (11) and Kirsty Gordon (4), attended a football match at Adelaide Oval in South Australia, and then disappeared.

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 indicted for murder 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.

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 antidevelopment campaigner, disappeared from Kings Cross, Sydney.

1976

• Eloise Worledge (8) disappeared from her home in Beaumaris, Victoria, Australia, thought to have been abducted from her bedroom.
• Renee MacRae (36) and son Andrew (3) were last seen in Inverness, Scotland.

1977

• Donald Mackay (43), Australian anti-drugs campaigner, was possibly murdered after providing information to police which resulted in what was then the biggest drugs bust in Australian history.
• Megumi Yokota (13) was kidnapped from the city of Niigata, Japan. She was later believed to have been abducted by North Korean intelligence forces. 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.
• Frederick Valentich (21) disappeared during a solo flight over the Bass Strait in Australia, with the media suggesting a UFO abduction as a possibility.
• 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.
• Peter Winston (19), American chess player, disappeared in New York City.

1979

• Etan Patz (6) disappeared while on his way to school in lower Manhattan. He is considered legally dead as of 2001. He was the first missing child featured on a milk carton. In May 2010, nearly 31 years to the day after Patz disappeared, authorities re-opened the case.
• 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.
• Nasser Al-Saeed, Saudi dissident believed to be kidnapped in Beirut.

1980s

1980

• Azaria Chamberlain, nine-week-old Australian baby girl, presumed to be taken by a dingo near Uluru. Some clothing items were later recovered, but her remains have never been found. Azaria's disappearance and the subsequent police investigation were the basis for the 1988 motion picture A Cry in the Dark.
• 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.
• Tammy Lynn Leppert (18) a model and actress who disappeared without a trace after leaving her Rockledge, Florida, family home.

1984

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

1985

• Boris Weisfeiler (43), U.S. mathematician, disappeared in the Biobío Region of Chile during a solo hiking trip. 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.
• Vladimir Alexandrov, Russian physicist, disappeared while attending a nuclear winter conference in Madrid.
• Christopher Dale Flannery, a famous figure of the Australian underworld and an alleged hitman who was responsible for numerous murders, exited his apartment in May, 1985 to meet with his employer and was never seen again.

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.

1987

• David Guerrero Guevara (13), an Spanish boy called "Malaga's Child Painter" for his extraordinary artistic ability who disappeared from Malaga, Andalusia on April 6, 1987. He went missing while on his way to the opening of an exhibition about the Semana Santa where one of his paintings was shown. Despite numerous supposed sightings, no trace of his fate has 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 a 10-minute ride away from his home in St. Joseph, Minnesota.

1990s

1990

• Sarah MacDiarmid (23) disappeared from Kananook railway station, Melbourne, Australia.

1991

• Ben Needham, a 21-month-old boy, disappeared from the island of Kos in Greece on 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, but 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 disappearance.

1994

• Michael Anthony Hughes (6) was kidnapped from his school in Choctaw, Oklahoma, by Franklin Delano Floyd, who claimed that Hughes was his son. Authorities have received conflicting reports from Floyd as to whether Hughes was murdered or is still alive and safe in the custody of an undisclosed caregiver.
• Ylenia Carrisi (23), Italian TV celebrity and daughter of singers Albano Carrisi and Romina Power, disappeared during a vacation in New Orleans.

1995

• Morgan Nick (6), was at a little league baseball game with her mother in Alma, Arkansas, when she was believed to have been abducted by a man she was seen with earlier. Her mother started the "Morgan Nick Foundation" for missing children. However, she has yet to be found.
• Richey 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, went missing while traveling by kayak across the Hecate Strait to Graham Island in Canada.
• 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 Raleigh, North Carolina.

1998

• Tom and Eileen Lonergan (33 and 28), an American couple left stranded in the ocean, owing to a faulty head count while scuba diving in shark-infested waters off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. They 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.

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.

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.
• Daniel Morcombe (13) disappeared from the roadside near his Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, home. Police believe he was abducted and murdered.
• Fryderyk Frontier (28) disappeared near Taroko Gorge in Taiwan some time between May 22 and May 26, 2003.

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, saying she would be absent from class for a week, and 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 from Alabama, was last seen leaving a nightclub in Aruba with three men.
• Ray Gricar (59), district attorney in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.
• 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 Argentina's National Reorganization Process in the 1970s. In September 2006, López disappeared after testifying in a 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.
• Jennifer Kesse (28), went missing in January 2006 near a local shopping mall in Orlando, Florida.

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 has ever been found.
• Kaz II, a 9.8 m (32 ft) catamaran, was found adrift with its three-man crew, owner Derek Batten (56) and brothers Peter Tunstead (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.
• 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) while her parents dined with friends at a local restaurant; there have been no confirmed sightings of her since then.
• Kara Kopetsky (born 1990) went missing in May of 2007 from Belton, Missouri in the Kansas City area. No evidence of her whereabouts have turned out and it is unknown if she is alive or not.

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"; he 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. Police are treating her disappearance as a suspected murder.
• Brittanee Drexel (17), a student from Rochester, New York, has been a missing person since the evening of April 25, 2009.
• Susan Powell (28), a Utah woman from West Valley City, was last seen on December 6, 2009. Police and neighbors have since labeled her disappearance "suspicious".