Some of the scariest disappearances happened on seemingly normal days, when someone was going for a walk or a quick drive, only for them to completely disappear without a trace.
The walk to work
Everything was supposed to be normal for Jason Jolkowski on June 13, 2001. The 19-year-old Omaha resident was supposed to meet a coworker near Benson High School, then he was going to catch a ride to his shift at Fazoli’s. But he never got there.
Jason left home on foot, yet for whatever reason, he never made it to the meeting point. His loved ones have said he didn’t have any kind of trips planned, and that he had no reason to disappear. He was just walking through his own neighborhood in broad daylight. Then he vanished.
Minutes from his family
A playground packed with people sounds like a difficult place to disappear. But that’s exactly what happened to four-year-old Michael Dunahee on March 24, 1991. His family was with him at Blanshard School in Victoria, British Columbia, for a touch football game. Michael was playing nearby.Â
He completely disappeared at around 12:30 p.m. Police and search teams, along with volunteers, combed the area, but never managed to find a clue. Dunahee’s disappearance did lead to the province creating its own AMBER alert system, especially since his mother believes he would’ve been found if it existed. His case remains active to this day.
Gone before the ship docked
The weirdest part of Amy Lynn Bradley’s disappearance was the setting. Bradley was 23 years old when she disappeared, and she was traveling with her family aboard Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas in March 1998. Yes, she disappeared from a cruise ship.
The ship was approaching Curaçao in the Caribbean on March 24 when, during the early hours, Amy vanished. It’s not like she could’ve taken a flight or driven off somewhere. She was literally on a cruise in the ocean. Search teams did check the water and the cruise ship, but never found her.
A phone call that suddenly stopped
Brandon Swanson’s parents heard him on the phone as the mystery began unfolding. He phoned his parents on May 14, 2008, after getting his car stuck in a ditch. He had been driving home from visiting friends and hadn’t been hurt in the incident. His parents drove their car out to him while he stayed on the phone.
Then, out of the blue, Brandon swore loudly, and the call ended. The mystery only deepened from there, as the police found his car in a ditch 25 miles from where Brandon said he was. Nobody knows what happened to him, or what caused him to drop the call.Â
An abandoned car in the snow
Maura Murray was a 21-year-old nursing student who, on February 9, 2004, left the University of Massachusetts Amherst to head into New Hampshire. Her car, a Saturn, slid off Route 112 in Haverhill during the journey. It became stuck in the snow. Another motorist spotted the incident and tried to help Murray, but she told him not to call the police.Â
He traveled home and did so anyway. Police arrived at the scene within minutes, but Maura was no longer by the car, although her vehicle was left behind. The only things that weren’t in her car were her cell phone, credit cards, and debit card, but they’ve never been used since. Maura herself has been missing ever since.
Missing during the school day
Kyron Horman’s morning on June 4, 2010, started off relatively normal. The seven-year-old had a school science fair at Skyline Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. His stepmother said she last saw him around 8:45 a.m., walking toward his classroom.Â
But Kyron failed to get off the school bus late that afternoon, which is when everyone realized something was wrong. Officials conducted a search, one that became the state’s largest single search operation, yet they never found anything. Kyron seemed to vanish into thin air when he was supposed to be attending the science fair.
A seven-year-old in Las Vegas
One of the reasons Karla Rodriguez’s case is so unsettling is that there isn’t much to go off. She was seven years old when she disappeared in Las Vegas on October 20, 1999. What little we know is that she was in the city. There have been no confirmed accounts about where she went afterward.Â
The FBI has continued to circulate her information and released age-progressed images showing how she might look as an adult. Investigators have almost no leads, although they have said they think she was taken by someone outside of her family. But that’s all we know.
Two people and a truck
Danielle Imbo was out in Philadelphia on February 19, 2005, with Richard Petrone and friends. The pair left a bar on South Street around midnight and headed toward Richard’s black-and-silver 2001 Dodge Dakota. Then both of them vanished.
There have been no traces of Danielle or Richard, nor of the truck. Investigators generally believed that their disappearance wasn’t intentional, as they both had good relationships with their families and had no reason to disappear. We have no idea what happened to them.
A two-block walk home
Lauren Spierer only had a short distance left to go when she disappeared. She was a 20-year-old Indiana University student who had been out in Bloomington on June 3, 2011, and she had spent time at an acquaintance’s apartment on West 11th Street after visiting a bar. She left the apartment at around 4:30 a.m. and was believed to be heading back home.
It wasn’t a far walk back to her apartment, but somehow, she disappeared. Witnesses claim that she was very drunk when she left the bar, and Spierer’s family has said they think she was drugged. But either way, there has never been a confirmed sighting of Spierer, and never any answers as to where she went.
The Jeep on a logging road
Leah Roberts left Durham, North Carolina, on March 9, 2000, and drove across the country. She didn’t tell her friends or family exactly where she was headed. Her white Jeep Cherokee then appeared abandoned on a logging road in Whatcom County, Washington. Bizarrely enough, investigators said there was no evidence anyone was in the car when it crashed. They think it was staged.Â
They used receipts to trace parts of her trip, figuring out that she stopped in Oregon and Bellingham on the way. Her belongings were still in the car, however, and so was food for her cat. Leah wasn’t there, though, and is officially still a missing person.Â
A car left one mile away
Jennifer Kesse was expected to be at work on January 24, 2006. She never showed up. The 24-year-old lived in an Orlando condo, and her family immediately knew something was wrong when they couldn’t contact her. The police later found her Chevrolet Malibu at another apartment complex about a mile away.Â
But then things got stranger. Surveillance video captured an unidentified person walking away after parking the car, but their face was hidden in every shot. Jennifer’s purse, keys, phones, driver’s license, and iPod were missing from her car. The investigation is still ongoing.
The SUV was still running
Phoenix Coldon left her family’s home in Spanish Lake, Missouri, on December 18, 2011. She was driving a black 1998 Chevrolet Blazer. That same vehicle then turned up across state lines in East St. Louis, Illinois, the very same day. The engine was still running, and the driver’s door was open when it was found.
But Phoenix, 23, was nowhere around it, and investigators haven’t been able to create a clear timeline of events. There was no DNA evidence of anyone else in the car, and most of her belongings were still inside.
She never reached the bus stop
Neighbors saw Tabitha Tuders around 7 a.m. near South 14th Street and Lillian Street in Nashville on April 29, 2003. She was heading for her usual school bus stop. She never made it on board and never showed up to school.
There were reports of a red car that had apparently stopped nearby around the time she vanished, and one witness claimed they saw Tabitha getting inside. Yet neither the vehicle nor 13-year-old Tabitha has ever been found.
Dropped off in Cocoa Beach
Tammy Lynn Leppert was an up-and-coming actress when she disappeared. She was 18 years old and had already appeared in movies like Spring Break and Scarface. She was dropped off on July 6, 1983, in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Then the trail vanished.
Investigators looked into various suspects, including Christopher Wilder, a convicted serial killer, but have never been able to find Leppert. She was there one minute, and then the next, she was gone.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
