Great Disappearances

[Pcdunn]

Thanks, looks interesting. They have the Hinterkaifeck murders there too. One of my favourite mysteries!

I'm not familiar with it, but thought I'd seen the name mentioned here. Think I'll read up on the summary of the case.

[Mayerling]

There are now more than forty bodies recovered from the crash site, near the island of Borneo in the Java Sea. Debris is widespread. It's an awful tragedy but at least this is no longer a mystery with no answers.

Well now there still is the mystery of what caused the crash. It is awful, but the long delay experienced last March, with it's possible (brief as it was) happier resolution (when they thought the plane landed somewhere solid), is not making this the heartbreaking and anger provoking situation the earlier disaster was. Hopefully, when the weather calms down they will start going to the wreck for evidence of causation.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Can anyone remember the case (I want to say in the 1950s) where a young American girl went off to college. There was a problem with her luggage at the train station, so she had to take a cab to pick it up later. The taxi driver said he dropped her back off at the college and watched her chat to two guys in a car, and that was the last anyone saw of her. As you would suspect, the taxi driver became one of the chief suspects, and I recall that his background was hardly squeaky clean, but there was no evidence against him.

It'll come to me in a minute, I'm sure.

EDIT: Virginia Carpenter. That's the one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappe...inia_Carpenter

I recall there was a young woman attending Bennington College in Vermont in the early 1950s, who went hiking and never was seen again. But there was no taxi driver in that case (the forest she was hiking in had seen a man disappear in it a year or so earlier, so there may have been a local who was committing murders in the forest).

Jeff

[PaulB]

Her name was Paula Welden.

[Harry D]

Jennifer Kesse's disappearance in 2006 has possibly the "luckiest person of interest" in a case. When Jennifer failed to turn up for work that morning, her coworkers were concerned that she had failed to call them, so they informed her parents. Her brother visited her apartment to see what was going on. Meanwhile, in a nearby apartment complex, her car was being parked by an unidentified person who, unbeknownst to them, was caught on a hidden surveillance camera. Luckily for them, in each of the three second snapshots the person's face was obscured by the fence posts:

http://i.imgur.com/prI32rB.jpg

[Harry D]

Here's a freaky one: Diane Louise Augat who disappeared from Odessa, Florida in April of 1998.

• She left a voicemail with her mother three days after her disappearance. Diane was heard shouting for help and there were clear sounds of a struggle. The call was traced to a local business but no one answered when Augat's mother returned the call.
• The severed tip of Augat's middle finger was found near U.S. 19 and New York Avenue in Hudson. This was where witnesses reported last seeing her.
• Two weeks later, a bag of her clothing was found folded up in a convenience store's outdoor freezer in Odessa.
• In 2000, one day after a newspaper published an article on her, her brother's girlfriend found a bag at a Circle K grocery store that was labelled "Diane" in marker. Inside the bag was makeup, perfume, and other toiletries, some of which Diane's mother said she owned. It is still unclear if the items belonged to her.

There are no clear suspects in Diane's case; the manager of the hotel that she stayed at before his disappearance was arrested for murder in 2001, but it is unknown if he had any connection to Augat. Augat did struggle with bipolar disorder starting in the late 1980s, and was hospitalized several times over the years for treatment. She also may have had a drug and alcohol problem.

Despite all the strange happenings around this case, there are seemingly no real leads or suspects in her case that have gone public.

https://www.charleyproject.org/cases/a/augat_diane.html

[Harry D]

Well I thought it was interesting.

What immediately stood out to me is that the call was traced to a business address and theeeeen...what? One would hope that the people who worked there were investigated.

[Harry D]

Barbara Bolick (55) went missing on July 18, 2007 while on a hiking trip in the Bitterroot Mountains. She was with a male friend at the time who said that he turned to marvel at the view for less than a minute and when he looked back Barbara had vanished.

According to him, there was only 20-30 feet between them. How can someone disappear without the other person hearing anything? If she was attacked by a wild animal there would've been noise and some clues left behind. Abduction sounds unlikely for the same reason. And if she had simply fallen, wouldn't there have been a scream? An exhaustive search turned up no trace of her.

I'm suspicious of the guy she was with. Apparently he was fully cooperative with the authorities but that wide-eyed innocence could've been a front. I can picture a scenario where Barbara is up there with this dude, he mistakes her good nature for something more, he makes a move but she rebuffs him. There's a struggle and Barbara slips or is pushed off the edge.

What do you think?

[GUT]

Barbara Bolick (55) went missing on July 18, 2007 while on a hiking trip in the Bitterroot Mountains. She was with a male friend at the time who said that he turned to marvel at the view for less than a minute and when he looked back Barbara had vanished.

According to him, there was only 20-30 feet between them. How can someone disappear without the other person hearing anything? If she was attacked by a wild animal there would've been noise and some clues left behind. Abduction sounds unlikely for the same reason. And if she had simply fallen, wouldn't there have been a scream? An exhaustive search turned up no trace of her.

I'm suspicious of the guy she was with. Apparently he was fully cooperative with the authorities but that wide-eyed innocence could've been a front. I can picture a scenario where Barbara is up there with this dude, he mistakes her good nature for something more, he makes a move but she rebuffs him. There's a struggle and Barbara slips or is pushed off the edge.

What do you think?

That sounds like a logical conclusion, but to be honest it's not a case I know sufficient about.

[Mayerling]

There is an intriguing "cold war" case from West Point in the 1950s, the disappearance of Richard Colvin Cox, a cadet at the point who had spent some time in West Germany, and vanished at the Point. There was the possibility he was the victim of a kidnapping by some man who came calling at the Point for him, who (it was suspected) knew him in Germany. The manhunt (because it involved the U.S. Military Academy) was one of the biggest in our history.

Back about 20 years ago a book was written regarding Cox, and it suggested he purposely disappeared for a combination of factors: he was working as an operative for the CIA and he wanted to continue an homosexual lifestyle under his assumed name - supposedly in Greenwich Village. Somehow I would suspect those two goals would collide.

Jeff

[Harry D]

Steven Kraft, Jr., also known as “Steve or Stevie” by friends and family, was an 11-year-old who attended Hull Elementary School in Benton Township, MI. He vanished days after he completed a 5-day suspension for defending himself in a fight with another student. He was described as a good student and this suspension was his first due to a “bully”.

On the evening of February 15, 2001 Steve left his Benton Township home to walk his two dogs. When he didn’t return home for dinner his parents decided to wait a little bit longer before going out to search for him. It didn’t take too long before one of the two dogs came home by himself. He appeared excited and jumpy and led the parents to a nearby pond but when dive-teams searched the pond they didn’t find anything of significance. The other dog was found shortly after at a Blue Creek which is a local creek a mile a half north from Steven's home.

[Harry D]

Jason Jolkowski's disappearance is mindblowing. Jason was a 19 year old kid who vanished into thin air in June 13, 2001. He was called into work early but because his car was being repaired he arranged for a colleague to pick him up at a nearby school. This was about eight blocks away from Jason's home. Jason never made it to the school and has never been seen since.

The last sighting of Jason was from his younger brother who saw Jason carrying the trash cans in at 10.45 am. This sighting was also confirmed by one of the neighbours. There are no other sightings of Jason past this and there are no other clues. At some point during the short walk to the meeting point he vanished. It's a complete dead-end.

[Graham]

How about this for vanishing into thin air?

Late in 1978 Fred Valentich was flying a small aircraft across the Bass Strait between Tasmania and the Australian mainland. He sent a r/t message to Melbourne ATC asking if they had any image on their screens of a 'large aircraft' with four very bright lights showing. He was told there was no aircraft in the area other than his. Shortly afterwards, he radio'd that the 'large aircraft' was approaching him from due east, and that 'it seems to be playing some sort of game, flying at a speed I can't estimate....it is now flying past me....coming right at me now....it has a long shape....it looks sort of metallic....it is now right on top of me'.

Valentich then radio'd that his engine was faltering, and he informed Melbourne ATC that he would proceed to King Island, and that the unknown aircraft was now 'right on top of me'. Melbourne ATC radio-operator then heard a loud grinding noise on the radio that lasted for 17 seconds, then the radio from Valentich's aircraft went dead. No trace of him or his aircraft was ever found. Valentich's father said that if his son's aircraft had simply had engine trouble and gone down in the sea, then why was his son reporting the sighting of another aircraft hovering over him?

Not the only aircraft that disappeared without trace over the Bass strait.

Graham

[GUT]

How about this for vanishing into thin air?

Late in 1978 Fred Valentich was flying a small aircraft across the Bass Strait between Tasmania and the Australian mainland. He sent a r/t message to Melbourne ATC asking if they had any image on their screens of a 'large aircraft' with four very bright lights showing. He was told there was no aircraft in the area other than his. Shortly afterwards, he radio'd that the 'large aircraft' was approaching him from due east, and that 'it seems to be playing some sort of game, flying at a speed I can't estimate....it is now flying past me....coming right at me now....it has a long shape....it looks sort of metallic....it is now right on top of me'.

Valentich then radio'd that his engine was faltering, and he informed Melbourne ATC that he would proceed to King Island, and that the unknown aircraft was now 'right on top of me'. Melbourne ATC radio-operator then heard a loud grinding noise on the radio that lasted for 17 seconds, then the radio from Valentich's aircraft went dead. No trace of him or his aircraft was ever found. Valentich's father said that if his son's aircraft had simply had engine trouble and gone down in the sea, then why was his son reporting the sighting of another aircraft hovering over him?

Not the only aircraft that disappeared without trace over the Bass strait.

Graham

Plenty of planes gone missing over the straight.

[Graham]

Certainly have, Gut. Fred Valentich was, however, a trained pilot with many hours to his credit. And I believe the Bass Strait is only about 125 miles of open sea.

I believe that a Tiger Moth aircraft went missing a few years before Valentich,
but that this was put down to possible sabotage by proponents of a hydroelectric scheme that the occupants of the Tiger Moth were opposed to. Is that really how Australians go about things they don't agree with???

I've also read that its reputation as a 'death trap' of the Australian-built Bristol Beaufort twin-engined bomber was down to the number of these aircraft that went missing over the Bass Strait during WW2. However, I believe that the Strait was used for very low-level bombing and torpedo-dropping exercises, the most dangerous to the crews of all airborne attacks.

Graham