STILL VANISHED An encyclopedia of unsolved disappearances, cold cases and unidentified dead

On Whit Monday, 26 May 1828, a boy of about sixteen appears on Unschlittplatz in Nuremberg. He can hardly walk, shies away from light and repeats one sentence: “I want to be a rider like my father was.” He writes his name on a slip of paper: Kaspar Hauser.

He later says he spent his whole life alone in a dark cell. The rumour that he is the abducted hereditary prince of the House of Baden appears early on. On 14 December 1833 he leaves the court garden in Ansbach with a stab wound, saying a stranger attacked him. Three days later he dies. Many historians consider it likely that he inflicted the wound himself.

Appearance

26 May 1828, Nuremberg

Death

17 December 1833, Ansbach (stab wound)

Prince theory

Heir of the House of Baden – not supported by DNA analyses, most recently in 2024

Status: Origin unexplained; the prince theory is considered refuted

Between August and November 1888 at least five women are murdered in the poor district of Whitechapel, the “canonical five”: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. Organs are removed from several victims, which leads police to suspect a doctor or a butcher.

The press names him Jack the Ripper after a letter whose authenticity is disputed to this day. Another letter, the “From Hell” letter, came with half a human kidney. The list of suspects runs to more than a hundred names; nobody was ever charged.

Victims

Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly

Method

Cut throat, mutilation after death

Suspects

More than 100 men named in the literature

Status: Unsolved

On the night of 31 March 1922, six people are killed with a mattock on the isolated Hinterkaifeck farm near Schrobenhausen: the farmer Andreas Gruber and his wife Cäzilia, their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel, her children Cäzilia (7) and Josef (2), and the maid Maria Baumgartner, who had started work that very day.

Shortly before, Andreas Gruber had found footprints in the snow leading to the farm but not away from it, and had heard steps in the attic at night. After the killings the perpetrator apparently stayed on for several days: the cattle were fed, a fire burned in the stove. The bodies were not discovered until 4 April. Despite hundreds of interviews over decades, nobody was ever convicted.

Victims

6 people (the Gruber/Gabriel family and their maid)

Weapon

Mattock

Discovered

4 April 1922

Status: Unsolved – Germany’s best-known unsolved murder case

• Read the full case file on the blog →

On Christmas night 1945 the Sodder family’s wooden house in Fayetteville burns down. George and Jennie Sodder get out with four of their children; five others are missing. The ladder George wanted to use to reach the first floor is not in its place, his trucks will not start, and the telephone line has been cut.

No identifiable human remains are found in the ashes. The parents believed until their deaths that the children had been taken before the fire; George had spoken out publicly against Mussolini and had been threatened. For decades a billboard with the children’s faces stood by the road.

Missing

Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie and Betty Sodder (aged 5–14)

Notable

Missing ladder, cut telephone line, no remains

Parents’ theory

Abduction, the fire set to cover it up

Status: Unsolved

On 1 December 1948 a dead man is found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide. The labels have been cut from his clothing and he carries no papers. In a hidden fob pocket is a scrap of paper with the words “Tamám Shud” (“It is finished”), torn from a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The cause of death stays unclear; doctors suspect poisoning.

For more than seventy years the man has no name. In 2022 the researcher Derek Abbott and the genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick announce that DNA genealogy has identified him as Carl “Charles” Webb, an electrical engineer from Melbourne. Police and the coroner in South Australia have not officially confirmed that result.

Found

Somerton Beach, Adelaide

Key clue

The “Tamám Shud” scrap from a Rubaiyat edition

Identification

2022 by researchers (Carl Webb), not officially confirmed

Status: Identity probably established, cause of death open

On 25 February 1957 the body of a boy aged four to six is found in the Fox Chase district of Philadelphia: naked, malnourished, placed in a box that had originally held a baby’s cot. Despite a nationwide campaign with hundreds of thousands of flyers he stays nameless and is buried as “America’s Unknown Child”.

In December 2022 police identify him through genetic genealogy as Joseph Augustus Zarelli. Who killed him is still open.

Victim

Joseph Augustus Zarelli (aged 4–6)

Found

Fox Chase, Philadelphia

Identification

December 2022 (DNA genealogy)

Status: Identity established, killer unknown

On the night of 2 February 1959 a group of nine ski hikers led by Igor Dyatlov leaves their tent on the slope of Kholat Syakhl. The tent has been cut open from the inside. Many of them are wearing only socks or nothing on their feet. Search parties find the bodies over several months: some froze to death, others have severe internal injuries such as skull and rib fractures without external wounds. One of the dead is missing her tongue, and traces of radioactivity are measured on clothing.

The Soviet authorities spoke of an “irresistible natural force”. In 2020 the Russian prosecutor general declared a slab avalanche to be the cause, and a 2021 study found that scenario physically plausible. Doubts and alternative theories persist all the same.

Victims

9 ski hikers (led by Igor Dyatlov)

Findings

Hypothermia, severe internal injuries

Current explanation

Slab avalanche (prosecutor general, 2020)

Status: Officially classified as an avalanche, still debated

• Read the full case file on the blog →

In the early hours of 5 June 1960 four teenagers are asleep in a tent by Lake Bodom west of Helsinki. An unknown attacker strikes at them through the canvas with a blunt object and a knife. Maila Björklund (15), Anja Mäki (15) and Seppo Boisman (18) die; Nils Gustafsson (18) survives with severe injuries.

Over the decades various suspects are named, among them a local kiosk owner. In 2004 the survivor Gustafsson himself is unexpectedly charged; he is acquitted in 2005.

Victims

3 dead, 1 survivor

Course of events

Attack from outside through the tent wall

Trial

Survivor charged in 2004, acquitted in 2005

Status: Unsolved – Finland’s best-known murder case

• Read the full case file on the blog →

On 22 November 1963 President John F. Kennedy is hit in the neck and head by gunfire while riding in an open limousine across Dealey Plaza in Dallas. In 1964 the Warren Commission concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald fired alone from the sixth floor of the school book depository. Oswald himself is shot by Jack Ruby two days after the assassination; there is never a trial.

In 1979 the House Select Committee called a conspiracy “likely”, based on an acoustic analysis that experts later rejected. The Zapruder film and the “magic bullet” remain the starting point for countless theories.

Victim

John F. Kennedy

Scene

Dealey Plaza, Dallas

Official version

Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman

Status: Officially solved, disputed to this day

Between 1968 and 1969 the Zodiac Killer demonstrably kills five people in northern California; two more survive with serious injuries. In letters to newspapers and police he claims many more victims, taunts the investigators and encloses ciphers.

The first cipher was cracked in 1969 by a married couple from Salinas; the so-called 340 cipher only fell in 2020, to an international team of amateur cryptologists. Neither gave away the killer. The best-known suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen, died in 1992 without ever being charged.

Victims

5 confirmed murders, 2 survivors

Period

1968–1969

Notable

Ciphers and letters claiming responsibility

Status: Unsolved

On 29 November 1970 hikers find the partly burned body of a woman in the Isdalen valley near Bergen. Large quantities of sleeping pills are found in her body and the labels have been removed from her clothing. Two suitcases she had left at the railway station contain wigs, clothes without labels and a notebook with coded entries.

The investigation shows that she had travelled through Europe under at least eight false identities. Police closed the case as suicide at the time. Isotope analyses commissioned by the Norwegian broadcaster NRK in 2017 suggest she was born around 1930 and spent her childhood in the Nuremberg area. Theories range from suicide to Cold War espionage.

Found

Isdalen, Bergen

Evidence

Sleeping pills, accelerant, removed labels

False identities

At least 8

Status: Identity unexplained

On 24 November 1971 a passenger calling himself “Dan Cooper” hijacks a Northwest Orient Airlines aircraft. He became known as D. B. Cooper only through a media transmission error. In Seattle he releases the passengers in exchange for 200,000 dollars and four parachutes, then forces the crew to fly on towards Mexico.

Somewhere over south-west Washington he jumps from the rear stairs into the night. In 1980 a boy finds around 5,800 dollars of the ransom on the bank of the Columbia River. The FBI closed its active investigation in 2016.

Name

“Dan Cooper” (pseudonym)

Crime

Hijacking, extortion of 200,000 dollars

Trace

Ransom notes found on the Columbia River in 1980

Status: Unsolved, FBI investigation closed in 2016

On the night of 13 June 1977 three girls, Lori Lee Farmer (8), Michele Guse (9) and Doris Denise Milner (10), are dragged from their tent at the Camp Scott Girl Scout camp, assaulted and killed. Their bodies are found near the tent the next morning.

Police arrest the escaped prisoner Gene Leroy Hart. A jury acquits him in 1979; a few months later he dies in prison, where he was serving an earlier sentence. In 2022 the county sheriff stated that new DNA testing pointed to Hart; the question can no longer be settled in court.

Victims

Lori Lee Farmer, Michele Guse, Doris Denise Milner

Defendant

Gene Leroy Hart, acquitted in 1979

DNA in 2022

Trace points to Hart, no longer triable

Status: Legally unresolved

On 24 February 1978 five men from Yuba County go to a basketball game in Chico. On the way home they leave their route for reasons unknown and drive up into the snowy mountains of the Plumas National Forest. Their car is later found undamaged; it could probably have been freed from the snow.

In June four of them are found dead. Ted Weiher is lying in a Forest Service trailer that held food and fuel he had barely touched; he had wasted away over weeks. Gary Mathias, who had schizophrenia, was never found.

Found dead

Ted Weiher, Jack Madruga, Bill Sterling, Jackie Huett

Missing

Gary Mathias

The riddle

Why did they leave the car?

Status: Unsolved

On the night of 28 July 1987 Klaus Schelkle (20) and Bettina Taxis (22) from Baden-Württemberg are sleeping in sleeping bags on the helicopter deck of the ferry Viking Sally between Stockholm and Turku. At about 3.45 a.m. they are found badly injured. Klaus Schelkle dies; Bettina Taxis survives with no memory of the attack. The weapon was never found.

They were found by a group of Danish scouts. One of them was charged in 2020 after allegedly confessing years later; a Finnish court acquitted him in 2021. The ship sank in 1994 under the name Estonia.

Victims

Klaus Schelkle (killed), Bettina Taxis (seriously injured)

Scene

Helicopter deck of the MS Viking Sally

Trial

Charged in 2020, acquitted in 2021

Status: Unsolved

On 11 October 1987 a reporter for the magazine “Stern” finds Uwe Barschel, the former minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein, dead and fully dressed in the bathtub of room 317 at the Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva. Nine days earlier Barschel had resigned over the Kiel affair, in which his challenger Björn Engholm was spied on – with the words “I give you my word of honour”.

The cause of death is poisoning with several sleeping pills and sedatives, including cyclobarbital. The Geneva authorities assumed suicide. From 1994 the Lübeck public prosecutor investigated on suspicion of murder, but closed the case in 1998 without settling the question. Theories about arms deals and intelligence services have never been substantiated.

Victim

Uwe Barschel (43)

Findings

Poisoning by medication

Investigation

Lübeck 1994–1998, closed

Status: Suicide or murder unresolved

On the night of 11 April 1995 the 19-year-old Sonja Engelbrecht parts from an acquaintance at Stiglmaierplatz in Munich to make a call from a phone box. After that her trail goes cold.

In the summer of 2020 a forestry worker near Kipfenberg in the Eichstätt district, about 100 kilometres north of Munich, finds a thigh bone in a rock crevice. During a large search in 2022 more bones, wrapped in plastic film, are recovered. Police assume a violent crime committed by someone who knew the area.

Victim

Sonja Engelbrecht (19)

Last seen

Stiglmaierplatz, Munich

Found

Rock crevice near Kipfenberg (2020/2022)

Status: Violent crime, perpetrator unknown

In late May 1995 a woman checks into the Oslo Plaza as “Jennifer Fergate”, giving a Belgian address that does not exist. On 3 June the hotel wants to settle the unpaid bill. As staff knock on the door of room 2805, a shot is fired. The woman is lying dead on the bed with a pistol in her hand; the door was locked from the inside.

Police closed the case as suicide. Critics point to the inconsistencies: the grip on the weapon, the missing papers, the clothing without labels. DNA and isotope analyses commissioned by Norwegian media in 2017 point to an origin in central Europe. Who she was is still unknown.

Alias

Jennifer Fergate / Fairgate

Found

Room 2805, Oslo Plaza

Official classification

Suicide, disputed

Status: Identity unexplained

• Read the full case file on the blog →

Early on 24 March 1998 the 23-year-old Amy Lynn Bradley disappears from the Rhapsody of the Seas, shortly before the ship docks in Curaçao. Her father had seen her asleep on the balcony of the family cabin at about 5.15 a.m.; minutes later she was gone.

A search on board and at sea finds nothing. In the years that follow there are several reported sightings in the Caribbean, among them the account of a US sailor who says he met her in a brothel. None of them has been confirmed.

Missing

Amy Lynn Bradley (23)

Last seen

Rhapsody of the Seas, off Curaçao

Hypotheses

Fall overboard, abduction, human trafficking

Status: Missing

On 7 May 2001 nine-year-old Peggy Knobloch disappears in Lichtenberg on her way home from school. In 2004 Ulvi K., a man with an intellectual disability, is convicted of murder on the basis of a confession he later withdrew; in 2014 a retrial acquits him.

On 2 July 2016 a mushroom picker finds parts of the girl’s skeleton in a forest in Thuringia, about 15 kilometres from Lichtenberg. A DNA trace of the NSU terrorist Uwe Böhnhardt at the site turns out to be contamination from a forensic tool. In 2018 a man admits having taken the body there but denies killing the child; the proceedings were closed in 2020.

Victim

Peggy Knobloch (9)

Found

Woodland in Thuringia (2016)

Miscarriage of justice

Conviction of Ulvi K., acquitted in 2014

Status: Killing unexplained, investigation closed in 2020

On the evening of 9 February 2004 the 21-year-old student Maura Murray runs her car off Route 112 in New Hampshire. A bus driver offers help; she declines and asks him not to call the police. When officers arrive a few minutes later, she is gone.

Before the drive she had emailed her professors about a death in the family that had not happened, and had withdrawn almost all of her money. The hypotheses range from dying of exposure in the woods to a crime to disappearing on purpose.

Missing

Maura Murray (21)

Last seen

Route 112, Haverhill

Hypotheses

Accident in the woods, crime, deliberate disappearance

Status: Missing

On the night of 1 April 2006 the 27-year-old medical student Brian Shaffer is out with friends at the Ugly Tuna Saloona bar in Columbus. Security cameras record him going in and talking outside the entrance at about 1.55 a.m.

There is no recording of him leaving. An exit through building works inside, however, lay outside the cameras’ range. Despite an intensive search he remains missing; the hypotheses range from an accident to a crime to a deliberate disappearance.

Missing

Brian Shaffer (27)

Last seen

Ugly Tuna Saloona, Columbus

The riddle

No camera footage of him leaving

Status: Missing

On the night after a World Cup match in June 2006 the 21-year-old nursing student Frauke Liebs disappears in Paderborn on her way home from a pub.

Over the following days she contacts her flatmate and her sister several times by mobile phone, mostly in the evening and only briefly, saying things like she would be home soon. The cell sites are in and around Paderborn. Investigators believe she was making the calls under duress. On 4 October 2006 a hunter finds her body in woodland near Lichtenau. The killer is still unknown.

Victim

Frauke Liebs (21)

Found

Woodland near Lichtenau (4 October 2006)

Notable

Phone calls over a week after she disappeared

Status: Murder unsolved

• Read the full case file on the blog →

On the evening of 3 May 2007 Madeleine McCann, almost four, disappears from an apartment in the Ocean Club holiday complex in Praia da Luz. Her parents are eating with friends at a tapas bar nearby and take turns checking on the children. At about 10 p.m. Madeleine’s bed is empty.

Portuguese police treated the parents as suspects for a time but closed that line in 2008. Since 2020 German investigators have named as their main suspect a German man convicted of other offences who lived on the Algarve in 2007; he denies any involvement and was released from prison in September 2025. Nobody has been charged.

Missing

Madeleine McCann (3)

Last seen

Ocean Club, Praia da Luz

Status

Main suspect named since 2020, no charges

Status: Missing, investigation ongoing

On the night of 14 May 2008 the 19-year-old Brandon Swanson is driving home from a party when his car slides into a ditch on a field track. At 1.54 a.m. he calls his parents; he thinks he is near Lynd. They cannot find him there.

Brandon walks across country towards some lights, staying on the phone with his father for about 47 minutes. Then he says “Oh shit!” and the line goes dead. His car was in fact near Taunton, far from Lynd. An accident at the Yellow Medicine River is suspected; he was never found.

Missing

Brandon Swanson (19)

Last heard

Phone call with his father, 14 May 2008

Hypothesis

Accident at the Yellow Medicine River

Status: Missing

On 12 June 2009 an older man with a German or Austrian accent travels to Sligo and checks in as “Peter Bergmann”, giving a Vienna address that does not exist. Over the following days he leaves the hotel several times with a purple plastic bag and returns without it; cameras show him getting rid of his things piece by piece.

On 16 June he is found dead on the beach at Rosses Point. The labels have been removed from his clothing. The autopsy finds advanced, untreated cancer; the cause of death is drowning. Who he was is unknown.

Name

Unknown (alias “Peter Bergmann”)

Found

Rosses Point, Sligo

Autopsy

Drowning, advanced cancer

Status: Identity unexplained

On 2 December 2010 the 24-year-old Phoebe Handsjuk is found in the garbage room of an apartment building in Melbourne. She had fallen twelve floors down the narrow rubbish chute and was severely injured in the compactor; she bled to death.

In 2014 the coroner concluded that she had climbed into the chute herself under the influence of alcohol and the sleeping drug zolpidem – an accident. Her family and several experts consider that barely conceivable and are still calling for a fresh investigation.

Victim

Phoebe Handsjuk (24)

Place of death

Rubbish compactor of a high-rise, Melbourne

Coroner’s finding (2014)

Accident under the influence of medication

Status: Officially an accident, doubted by the family

The 21-year-old Canadian student Elisa Lam is travelling alone through California in early 2013 and staying at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. She is last seen on 31 January. Police release a lift video in which she presses all the buttons, peers into the corridor and gestures strangely.

On 19 February, after complaints about the tap water, a caretaker finds her body in one of the water tanks on the roof; the hatch was open. The coroner recorded accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder a significant factor. How she got onto the roof and into the tank still occupies online investigators.

Victim

Elisa Lam (21)

Found

Water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel

Finding

Accidental death by drowning

Status: Officially an accident, frequently doubted

On 1 April 2014 the students Kris Kremers (21) and Lisanne Froon (22) set out from Boquete for a walk on the Pianista Trail. They do not come back. Over the following days their phones try again and again to reach the emergency numbers 112 and 911 – with no reception.

About ten weeks later their backpack is found on a riverbank, holding the phones, money and a camera with some 90 photographs taken during the night of 8 April. Shortly afterwards bones and a foot in a hiking boot are discovered. The Panamanian authorities assume an accident; others consider a crime possible. Annette Nenner and I have set out the evidence and the open questions in the book “Still Lost in Panama” and on the forensics page.

Missing

Kris Kremers (21), Lisanne Froon (22)

Last route

Pianista Trail near Boquete

Evidence

Backpack with phones, camera and emergency call logs

Status: Authorities: an accident – disputed to this day

• Digital traces: the forensic analysis →
• My book: Still Lost in Panama →

On 8 July 2014 the 28-year-old Lars Mittank is due to fly home after a holiday on the Golden Sands near Varna. He has an ear injury from a fight a few days earlier, and an airport doctor advises him not to fly.

When a man enters the treatment room, Lars panics and runs off without his luggage. Security cameras show him crossing the grounds, climbing a fence and disappearing towards a field. He had told his mother on the phone that he felt he was being followed. Whether an acute mental health crisis or a real threat lay behind it is open.

Missing

Lars Mittank (28)

Last seen

Varna Airport

Evidence

Camera footage of his flight

Status: Missing

In April 2017 the 27-year-old Magdalena Żuk flies alone to Marsa Alam; her boyfriend cannot travel because of a passport problem. Within a short time her behaviour changes markedly: she seems frightened and confused, and a video call with her boyfriend shows her in distress.

She is taken to a hospital in Port Ghalib, where she falls from a window and dies shortly afterwards. Egyptian and Polish authorities assume suicide during an acute psychosis. Theories about drugs, abuse or human trafficking have not been substantiated.

Victim

Magdalena Żuk (27)

Place

Marsa Alam / Port Ghalib

Official classification

Suicide during an acute mental health crisis

Status: Officially suicide, disputed

On the morning of 18 February 2019 the 15-year-old Rebecca Reusch disappears from her sister’s house in Berlin-Britz, where she had spent the night. She never arrives at school. Investigators believe she did not leave the house alive.

The focus is on her brother-in-law, who was in the house with her that morning. The family car was recorded by automatic number plate recognition on the A12 motorway towards Frankfurt (Oder) on 18 and 19 February. He was arrested twice and released, and denies any involvement; he has not been charged. In October 2025 police again searched properties in Brandenburg. Rebecca has not been found.

Missing

Rebecca Reusch (15)

Last seen

Her sister’s house, Berlin-Britz

Status

Investigation ongoing, no charges

Status: Missing