11 Unsolved Disappearances

There are roughly 90,000 missing persons in the United States at any given time. While we have had significant scientific advancements such as genealogy testing that have solved many of these disappearances, many of them remain unsolved and will likely remain so.

The lack of evidence leaves plenty of room for speculation and conspiracy. The most chilling of these disappearances have a range of speculations, ranging from the Italian mafia to secretive Satanic worshippers, and they have also implicated some of the world's most powerful people.

Emanuela Orlandi

On a hot summer evening in June 1983, Emanuela Orlandi, 15-years-old, disappeared from Vatican City in Rome after she attended a music lesson, as she regularly did.

She was the daughter of a prominent Vatican employee, she enjoyed the religious center's gardens and often ran into Pope John Paul II. Her brother, Pietro, described their city being more like a village, it was inhabited by six close families.

But, Emanuela's disappearance on June 22nd launched decades of conspiracy theories, some even included the Italian mafia, Vatican Satanists, sex trafficking, and sacrifice.

Emanuela's sister called her sister after her music class to tell her that a representative from Avon Cosmetics offered her a job on the last day she was seen. When the girl didn't return home the next day, her parents called her music teacher and the police, her mysterious disappearance was declared a missing persons case that same day.

A witness reported that they saw a girl that matched Emanuela's description getting into a green BMW near her music school on the night she went missing, but this information wouldn't lead anywhere.

After this detail surfaced, however, the Orlandis received a phone call that promised the return of the girl if the Vatican released Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish national, who was in prison for attempting to assassinate the pope just two years earlier. But, this phone call would prove fruitless as well.

It is suggested that the Rome-based crime syndicate Banda della Magliana had kidnapped Emanuela to force the Vatican to pay back an outstanding loan. Enrico De Pedis, the girlfriend of the leader, claimed that De Pedis told her that Emanuela was kidnapped and murdered.

But, the most chilling of the theories is that the Vatican, local police, and high-profile lawmakers kidnapped Emanuela and then forced her into sexual servitude. Well, that is what the Vatican's chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth believes. Gabriele was appointed by the Pope himself.

"This was a crime with a sexual motive," Gabriele said, "Parties were organized, with a Vatican gendarme acting as the 'recruiter' of the girls. The network involved diplomatic personnel from a foreign embassy to the Holy See. I believe Emanuela ended up as a victim of this circle."

In 2019, a tip suggested that Emanuela was buried in a Vatican tomb. This information had no results, however. Her family organized demonstration in recent years, hoping that the investigation would be revivied, but there was no results.

Madeleine McCann

The case of missing Madeleine McCann in 2007 continues to leave investigators scratching their heads. The three-year-old vanished while on vacation with her family in Portugal and she is now considered "the most heavily reported missing person case in modern history" and this is for a good reason.

The story of Madeleine's disappearance started on the night of May 3rd, 2007, at a resort in Praia da Luz in Portugal. Kate and Gerry McCann had left the girl and her two twin siblings asleep in their rental apartment while they went to have dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant. The pair returned two hours later at 10 PM, this was when they discovered their eldest child was missing.

The McCanns recalled how their daughter asked them over breakfast that morning, "Why didn't you come when my brother and I cried last night?" The parents were then led to believe that someone was in their apartment and maybe even more than once without their knowledge.

The first suspects in the case was 33-year-old Robert Murat, he was a British-Portuguese real estate consultant who lived nearby, a man that matched his description was seen around 9:15PM on the night of Madeleine's disappearance walking towards his home carrying a child. But the police cleared him when they discovered no evidence of his involvement with the children.

The McCanns themselves were on the list of suspects. Some investigators suggested that Madeleine McCann died in the apartment and her parents made up a story of child abduction in order to cover it up. This theory seemed somewhat plausible, considering that dogs were brought onto the scene and curiously alert inside the apartment and around the family car. But, no body was ever found.

The parents were removed as suspects in 2008, and the case was a media phenomenon in the UK.

A 2009 report found that the region of Portugal that Madeleine went missing in was "awash with pedophiles." And many assumed that the girl was kidnapped by local sex traffickers. "There are 38 known sex offenders in the Algarve," The report stated, "The area is a magnet for pedophiles."

Former M.P. Sir Clement Freud, who lived nearby and knew the McCanns was outed as a pedophile.

There have also been other claims that Hillary Clinton's campaign adviser, John Podesta, and his brother, snatched the girl from the home and other theories state that the girl simply walked out of the home. The disappearance has never been solved, whether the death was accidental, sex trafficking, or abduction, the Madeleine case remains one of the strangest cases in modern history.

Jennifer Kesse

Jennifer had a loving family, a loyal boyfriend, and a great job. She went missing on January 23rd, 2006, her family immediately knew that something horrible must have happened to her. Even with the grainy security footage of a person of interest and Jennifer's abandoned car that was later found, her disappearance is still a mystery.

The evening before she went missing, the 24-year-old returned home after work and called her family to talk. Before she went to bed she called her boyfriend, Robert Allen, around 10 PM.

Texts and calls to Jennifer went unreturned the next day, coworkers were surprised to see she didn't show up to work. By 11 AM, her parents drove from Tampa to Orlando to see if she was home. They discovered her car missing, but everything else seemed normal.

Footage was soon retrieved from the apartment complex surveillance system, this showed an unidentified person dropping Jennifer's car off at noon on the day she disappeared. The person's defining characteristics were obscured by the apartment's gate.

In the following years, police found her abandoned Chevy Malibu but nothing more. The car had a latent print, which was too minuscule to reveal any helpful information. None of Jennifer's valuable items were missing from her car, this suggested that her disappearance wasn't instigated by a robbery.

Both Jennifer's brother and boyfriend investigated one of her ex-boyfriends on their own, but it was ruled out very quickly. A work colleague interested in Jennifer was also cleared as a suspect.

Investigators had no other clues to follow, her credit cards were unused and her cell phone was turned off. It seemed that she just disappeared into thin air.

Maura Murray

It was February 9th, 2004, just after 7PM, the Grafton County Sheriff's Department in New Hampshire received reports of a car accident. The first report stated that a black Satun was wedged against a snowbank in Woodsville, New Hampshire.

The second report came from a school bus driver named Butch Atwood, he said that a young woman was inside the car but she seemed unharmed, but she was cold to the touch. Butch also said that the woman begged him not to call the police, he first obliged her pleas, but then reported the incident once he was home.

Police arrived to the scene and discovered the woman was no longer on the scene. They believed it was Maura Murray, a 21-year-old University student who had recently gone missing, and they were able to confirm this by matching the car to her.

Maura's disappearance seemed clear-cut, she had likely gotten into a drunk driving accident that could have lead to her death in the woods nearby the accident. But, this case started to grow more and more sinister as police continued to investigate.

The last person to see Maura alive before Butch was her father, Fred. The two had dinner together the night before the car was discovered in the snow. Fred recalled that the two of them had a normal meal. He then lent Maura his car so she could go back to campus in time for a party.

Maura crashed the car on the way home from that party around 2:30 AM, then called her father to explain the incident, he assured her that she would need to report it to the DMV the next day, that there was nothing to worry about.

When she finally returned home that night, Fred recalled that she looked perfectly fine, the next day, Maura disappeared.

On February 9th, Maura called her professors to let them know she was going to miss class for a week due to a death in the family. She packed her stuff up in her dorm and drove to an ATM in her own car where she withdrew $280 dollars, then went to the DMV, and bought a large amount of alcohol. She also made a call to her own voicemail at 4:37 PM.

This is the last string of evidence that investigators had of Maura's whereabouts and activities. Police found her car later that night, they also found directions to a condo in Burlington, Vermont and phone records showed she called one of the owners.

She left a note to her boyfriend that detailed their relationship issues in her cleared out dorm room. There have been sightings of her in years since, but she has remained a missing person.

Tara Calico

Tara Calico left her home in Valencia County, New Mexico on September 20th, 1988 for her daily bike ride. The 19-year-old was never seen again, but her mother believed that she surfaced in a photo the following year. The photo showed her tied up. Investigators have been left clueless ever since.

As the girl left the home on the day of her disappearance, she joked with her mother, Patty Doel, that she better search for her if she wasn't home by noon. The girl had a tennis date with her boyfriend at 12:30PM and she told her mother she was goin to be back by then.

When noon rolled around, her mother drove up and down the girl's usual bike route to search for her, but there was no luck. That was when her mother contacted the police, a search party was sent out, but they found little clues.

Pieces of Tara's Walkman and cassette tape were found on her route, but the police were convinced that it was broken on purpose by Tara to lead police to her. The case went cold for the next nine months.

Police started to question Tara's parents and her home life. They attempted to find if there were any reasons she would mysteriously disappear, such as abuse. Police found nothing but two distressed parents who loved the girl and wanted her home.

"There was just so much she wanted to fit into a day," Her father, John, recalled, "She was like a little machine, it was amazing."

On June 15th, 1989, investigators found a polaroid in a parking lot, 1,500 miles away. It showed a girl who resembled Tara and a young boy, they were lying on sheets and a pillow, they were tied up with duct tape over their mouths.

Tara's mother was certain that the girl in the photo was her daughter. The girl in the photo has the same scar on her thigh that Tara had. The FBI was skeptical, but experts at Scotland Yard in the UK agreed with the mother's assessment.

Tara's disappearance took another turn when the Henley family came forward and claimed the young boy in the photo was their son. Michael Henley's remains were found in the Zuni Mountains in 1990, it is likely that the boy died of hypothermia after he wandered away from the family's campsite.

Sheriff Rene Rivera suggested an explanation for the case in 2008, he said that he received information that Tara was killed in a car accident while she rode her bike, after she was hit, a teenage driver disposed of the body in fear.

No arrests were made following this claim and Tara's parents moved to Florida in an attempt to start anew. Their daughter was never found.

Frederick Valentich

Frefive derick Valentich conducted a routine training flight over the Bass Strait between the Australian mainland and Tasmania on October 21st, 1978 before he went missing. He was 20-years-old and an experienced pilot that had around 150 hours of flying time. He was operating a light Cessna 182L the day he vanished.

Frederick radioed the Melbourne Flight Service shortly after he departed from Moorabbin and was in route to King Island. He stated there was an unidentified aircraft that was tailing him at 4,500 feet. He described the planes high speed and that it had its four bright landing lights on, he also said that it had passed about 1,000 feet above him.

He even went on to described the craft's movements for five minutes, positing that whoever was operating the craft was toying with him, he said the plane was a shiny, metallic vessel that had a green light on it.

Frederick experienced some engine trouble, when the Melbourne Flight Service asked him one last time to describe the mysterious plane that was above him, he responded with the most ominous last words to ever be recorded, "It isn't an aircraft."

This was when the transmission went dead, the last thing that was heard was a "metallic, scraping sound."

It was assumed that the pilot crashed, however, when a sea and air search was sent out, there was no sign of the plane. The case was closed quickly, but five years later an engine cowl flap that matched Valentich's plane washed up on Flinders Island in Australia.

The case started to get stranger when the father of the pilot revealed that his son had been an "ardent believer" in UFOs and was worried about encountering one. It is claimed that a farmer spotted a 90-foot craft hovering over his farm the morning Valentich went missing.

The farmer even said that the plane was stuck to the side of the UFO. However, the farmer's identity has yet to be revealed and there is no further evidence regarding the pilot's mysterious disappearance.

Suzi Streeter, Sherill Levitt, and Stacy McCall

On June 7th, 1992 three women went missing from their Springfield, Missouri home, 19-year-old Suzi Streeter, her mother, 47-year-old Sherill Levitt, and her 18-year-old friend, Stacy McCall.

The day before their disappearance, Suzi and Stacy celebrated their high school graduation, this was the last time the two girls and Sherill were seen anywhere in Webster County.

"I expected her home that night, the next day, maybe a couple of days afterward," Stacy's mother, Janis McCall, recalled in 2017, "Never in my wildest imagination did I ever thing that it would be 25 years later and I would be saying Stacy is still missing."

A number of law enforcement agencies ranging from the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Springfield Police Department, and the FBI all conducted their own investigations, but there were no leads into the case. A 40-acre search across the county in 1993 turned up with nothing.

An interview in 1996 with murderer Robert Craig Sox garnered some hope, he claimed to have been in Springfield the day the women went disappeared, but there were never any charges against him.

Then in 2002, two women called police to say that there were men at the Webster County concrete company who appeared suspicious. They searched the site and found human remains, the bones were too old to belong to any of the three missing women.

Then the following year, police found blood at a farm in Cassville, but lab testing garnished any hope of providing answers.

Stacy McCall's mother remains determined to find her daughter, but the Springfield Police Department has abandoned the case.

"Until I know a hundred percent that Stacy is deceased, I will never declare her dead," Janis McCall said, "They're going to have to find some remains somewhere before I call her legally dead. It's not for any reason other than if I do and she's not dead, think of how mad she'd be when she gets back."

Branson Perry

On April 11th, 2001, Branson Perry disappeared from his father's home in Skidmore, Missouri. The 20-year-old wasn't alone when he went missing. his friend, Jena Crawford, was visiting to help him clean up the home before Branson's father came home from the hospital.

Jena claimed that Branson walked outside and shouted to her through the window that he was going to return some jumper cables to the shed near the home. There were two men who were within eyesight that were working on fixing his father's car. And despite all the witnesses, Branson still vanished moments later.

There have been mundane leads that led to dead-ends and some bizarre developments. His case remains one of the most maddening in recent history.

Branson worked with a traveling petting zoo at the time of his disappearance and he suffered from tachycardia, a condition that caused his heart to race. He was living at home with his father.

On April 7th, a few days before he went missing, Branson paid a visit to his neighbor, Jason Biermann, who supposedly dosed him with an unidentified drug. And according to Diane Fanning, true-crime expert, Branson then got naked and danced before he shaved off his pubic hair and engaged in "sexual activity" with Jason Biermann.

Once Branson was sober, he was humiliated and told his father everything. His father was enraged with Biermann, but there was no confrontation and Biermann was never named a suspect in Branson's disappearance.

The day he went missing, Jena Crawford assumed that Branson went elsewhere and she went home without another thought. His grandmother stopped by the house the next day and found an empty home. She assumed that Branson had stepped out, but when she returned the next day, the home was still empty.

On April 16th, 2001, his grandmother and his parents filed a missing person's report. All of his belongings had been left behind and foul play was suspected.

Branson's case took a turn in 2003 when a Presbyterian minister and Boy Scouts leader named Jack Wayne Rogers was arrested for unrelated charges. He attempted to perform sex reassignment surgery on a transgender woman and failed to stop the bleeding. Jack was charged with first-degree assault and practicing medicine without a license.

When authorities searched his belongings, they found evidence of even more disturbing crimes on his computer, this included child pornography and distressing online posts that described the rape, torture, and murder of multiple men. He even described cannibalizing the severed genitals of some of the men.

In one of his posts, he described killing a blonde hitchhiker and burying him in the Ozarks. The description of this person matched Branson's, but Jack said that these posts were fictional writing exercises. And with lack of direct evidence, he was cleared as a suspect in the missing persons case.

"In my heart, I don't believe this suspect is responsible," Rebecca Klino, Branson's mother, said.

Investigators are convinced that Branson was murdered, whether it was by local drug gangs or a cannibalistic Boy Scouts leader, it is unclear what happened to Branson and he is considered a missing person to this day.

The Jamison Family

Shortly before his family vanished, Bobby Jamison visited his pastor and claimed that their home was haunted. Six days after this, Bobby, his wife Sherilynn, and their six-year-old daughter Madyson vanished from their home in Eufaula, Oklahoma.

The family was reported missing on October 8th, 2009, police found the family's pickup truck a few days later and this only added to the mystery. The truck was found an hour away and contained the family's IDs, wallets, phones, their pet dog, and $32,000 in cash.

Both Bobby and Sherilynn were collecting disability checks at the time and this led police to believe that they could only have managed to get this much cash by buying or selling drugs.

It is thought that the Jamisons were killed in a drug deal gone wrong, but why would they bring their daughter and dog along with them? Everything that was found in the vehicle suggested that they didn't think they would be away from the truck that long. The case went cold for years until November 16th, 2013.

Three miles away from where their truck was discovered, hunters found skeletal remains of two adults and one child. Forensic experts were confident that these remains belonged to the family, but there was no cause of death that could be determined. Police renewed their quest to finally solve the case.

Police recalled that Bobby told his pastor that "two to four ghosts" were living on his roof and they were haunting his family's home. They then found some disturbing security footage of the home the night that the family went missing.

The video showed the two adults packing their belongings and dumping them into the back of the truck, meanwhile, Sherilynn's mother claimed that her daughter and son-in-law were involved with a cult. Police also uncovered that Sherilynn purchased a Satanic bible.

Some suspected that Bobby's father had murdered the family. Bobby recently filed a protective order against his father, this report painted him as a "very dangerous man who thinks he is above the law."

Once of the most convincing theories is that Bobby first killed his family before he committed suicide. This theory was brought to light when an angry 11-page letter Sherilynn wrote to her husband prior to the disappearance was found. But, the family's disappearance remains an open case.

Jimmy Hoffa

Jimmy Hoffa was the former head of the powerful and corrupt Teamsters Union, he was a household name before he vanished in 1975. His social status made his mysterious disappearance the most famous in America. And there are a number of theories to what happened to the man.

The most convincing theory is that Jimmy was murdered after he ran afoul from the mob.

Jimmy was hired as an organizer by the Teamsters in 1932, he thrived while in the position and he was able to form some shadowy relationships.

On July 30th, 1975, Jimmy disappeared. He was last spotted in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, he was meeting with numerous mobsters there after the growing dispute between the Teamsters and the mob.

It was arranged as a discussion, but the meeting was likely just a set-up to have the powerful labor leader murdered. Jimmy was declared dead in 1982, but the case remains open and his body has not been found.

There are other theories that suggest that Jimmy was killed by John Sullivan, New York Mafia hitman, who then dismembered the man and stored his body in a freezer. It is then speculated that John then dumped the remains into the concrete foundations of the Giants Stadium that was under construction in New Jersey.

However, the most convincing theory claims that the man didn't suffer. Frank Sheeran confessed before he died that he murdered Jimmy at the behest of Philadelphia mob boss Russel Bufalino.

Amy Lynn Bradley

Amy Lynn Bradley was seen resting on the balcony of a cruise ship cabin on March 24th, 1998 by her father. It was around 5:30 AM and the woman spent most of the evening at the ship's nightclub. Her father decided to let her sleep, but when he came back at 6 AM, she was missing.

The Bradley family had boarded the Caribbean Rhapsody of the Seas cruise ship four days earlier. They were bound for The Antilles, the first leg of the cruise was uneventful, everyone on board was awaited docking in Curacao. Bradley and her brother Brad partied at the ship's club the evening before.

Brad Bradley claimed that his sister stayed behind at the club to mingle with one of the band members that was entertaining the crowd. Brad left at 1 AM and never saw his sister again. After onboard authorities were alerted, the family finally received help to search the ship once it docked in Curacao.

The family suspected that the crew was involved. The ship officials refused to keep the ship at sea, this would prevent the woman's potential kidnappers from escaping, but they also refused to page Bradley over the P.A. system.

Bradley was a trained lifeguard, which made an accidental fall into the ocean unlikely. Brad also said that the crew in the nightclub gave his sister "special attention," this led the family to fear that she had been trafficked into sexual slavery.

There have been reports of Amy being spotted in Curacao. In August 1998, someone claimed that they spotted a woman that had the same exact tattoos as Amy. The following year, a Navy member that visited a local brothel claimed that one of the prostitutes identified herself as Amy Lynn Bradley, and she said that she wasn't allowed to leave the brothel.

The family received an email in 2005, it depicted a woman that resembled their daughter lying on a bed in her underwear. The investigation is ongoing, but there have been no leads since.