Death in Absentia - Famous Cases

Famous Cases

• Henry Hudson, English explorer, left adrift after a mutiny in 1611.
• Guillaume Le Gentil, French Astronomer, wrongly declared dead in the 1760s after being lost at sea for 11 years. He actually died in 1792.
• Ambrose Bierce, publisher, author, disappeared during the Mexican Revolution in 1913.
• Joseph Force Crater, New York City judge, disappeared on the way to a play in 1930.
• Amelia Earhart, pioneer, aviator, disappeared while flying in 1937.
• Ettore Majorana, Italian Physicist, disappeared at sea in 1938.
• Richard Halliburton, author and voyager, Pacific Ocean, lost at sea in 1939.
• Glenn Miller, jazz musician/bandleader, whose plane disappeared over the English Channel in 1944.
• Subhas Chandra Bose, Indian freedom fighter, disappeared in a possibly staged plane crash in 1945.
• Michael Rockefeller, anthropologist, New Guinea, disappeared while canoeing in 1961.
• Joe Gaetjens, footballer, kidnapped by Papa Doc's secret police in 1964.
• Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia, presumed to have drowned in 1967.
• Hale Boggs, American politician, whose airplane disappeared in Alaska in 1972.
• Richard Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, disappeared in 1974 after his nanny was murdered.
• Jimmy Hoffa, trade union leader, disappeared in 1975.
• John Brisker, basketball player, disappeared in Uganda in 1978.
• Etan Patz, abducted while on his way to a school bus stop in Lower Manhattan in 1979; declared dead in 2001. In May 2012, a man named Pedro Hernandez was charged with Etan Patz's murder based on a confession to police, despite a lack of physical evidence.
• Ian Mackintosh, British novelist (Warship, The Sandbaggers, Wilde Alliance), was presumed dead in July 1979 after the plane he was flying disappeared over the Gulf of Alaska. No wreckage was found and none of the plane’s passengers were heard of again.
• David A. Johnston, volcanologist. His body has never been found since the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980.
• Ronald Jorgensen, convicted killer, disappeared in 1984, likely faked his own death.
• Teddy Wang, entrepreneur, Hong Kong, kidnapped in 1990.
• Richey Edwards, guitarist/lyricist, Manic Street Preachers, disappeared in 1995.
• Ishinosuke Uwano, former soldier of the Japanese Imperial Army, declared dead in 2000 yet presented himself as alive and living in Ukraine to the Japanese government in 2006.
• Scott Smith, bass player for Loverboy, lost at sea in 2000.
• Sneha Anne Philip, a New York City physician last seen on the night before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in which she was later ruled to have died.
• John Darwin, fraudster, faked his own death in 2007.
• Steve Fossett, aviation/sailing adventurer, died in a plane crash in 2007, declared dead before remains were found in 2008.
• Natalee Holloway went missing in Aruba on May 30, 2005, and was legally declared dead on January 12, 2012. No remains were found.
• Roberto Clemente, Puerto Rican baseball player who disappeared after a plane crash off Luis Munoz Marin International Airport on December 31, 1972. His body was never found.
• Bison Dele, American NBA basketball player missing from Tahiti in 2002; believed murdered by his brother at sea.
• Suzy Lamplugh, an estate agent, disappeared whilst showing a house to a Mr Kipper; her body has never been found.