Mystery Unexplained Missing Persons Cases

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I recently read about a very strange South Australian case I hadn't heard of until now, that of 12-year-old Rhianna Barreau.

On the morning of 7th October 1992, Rhianna (on school holidays at the time) and her mother left the house at the same time, Mrs. Barreau to go to work and Rhianna to go to the local shopping centre to purchase a card for an overseas pen-friend. When Mrs. Barreau returned to the house late in the afternoon, everything appeared in order. The TV was on and the card Rhianna had purchased was on the table, but of her daughter there was no sign and Rhianna has not been seen or heard from in nearly 25 years since then.
 

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I've often thought that contemporary reports of an event are usually underrated.

Take this contemporary report of the Marie Celeste, published in a syndicated article in a NSW newspaper in 12 April 1873.


http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article107170400

Notice the significance of the blood in the story.
 
Harry Hook said:
I've often thought that contemporary reports of an event are usually underrated.

Take this contemporary report of the Marie Celeste, published in a syndicated article in a NSW newspaper in 12 April 1873.


http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article107170400

Notice the significance of the blood in the story.
Click to expand...

Very interesting that. Why in all the paranormal stories is the entirely plausible, even likely, scenario of the crew mutinying and scarpering in the lifeboats never mentioned? I guess such a prosaic solution doesn't fit the narrative.
 
One especially bizarre case a couple of years ago was that of Julie Mott, from San Antonio Texas.

Julie, an exceptionally pretty girl, had struggled with the condition cystic fibrosis all her life, and sadly died shortly before her 26th birthday in 2015. Julie's family, friends and work colleagues had a memorial service for her at the funeral home, with her cremation to take place the next day. But before the cremation could take place, Julie's body mysteriously vanished from her casket. Her remains have never been discovered, and the truth of how this strange situation occurred never explained. Her poor family - not only did their daughter die prematurely, her body vanished after death.

What sort of a sick person would steal a girl's body from a funeral home?
 
emuboy said:
One especially bizarre case a couple of years ago was that of Julie Mott, from San Antonio Texas.

Julie, an exceptionally pretty girl, had struggled with the condition cystic fibrosis all her life, and sadly died shortly before her 26th birthday in 2015. Julie's family, friends and work colleagues had a memorial service for her at the funeral home, with her cremation to take place the next day. But before the cremation could take place, Julie's body mysteriously vanished from her casket. Her remains have never been discovered, and the truth of how this strange situation occurred never explained. Her poor family - not only did their daughter die prematurely, her body vanished after death.

What sort of a sick person would steal a girl's body from a funeral home?
Click to expand...
This didn't seem that interesting to me originally, then I saw a reddit thread and it involves a funeral director called Dick Tips and her ex-boyfriend religiously posting on a forum called mydeathspace.

Damn. I'm in.
 


More than 80 bodies have been pulled from the waters in Manchester since 2004, nearly all of them have been young men, is this simply a coincidence or is there more to it?

Almost all of the cases I have looked at include the victim exhibiting strange behavior before their disappearance, which you’ll see as we progress through the cases. All of the victims had been drinking earlier during the night, and all of them had either become separated from their friends or had left them to go home.

In addition to that and I find this absolutely fascinating, despite the density of CCTV coverage found here in the UK, the victim is never seen entering the water and they are often missing for weeks, or months before being found, despite extensive searches.

In fact, the coroner consistently states something to the effect of: “Despite an extensive investigation we have no idea how, when, or where the victim entered the water. However, the coroner generally offers some sort of basic conclusion such as accidental drowning, but 28 of these cases returned an open verdict, meaning that the coroner had no idea what the cause of death was, nor the circumstances.

Birmingham has a much more extensive network of canals than Manchester does, and despite having a higher population, the fatality rate in Manchester is double that of Birmingham’s. Across the UK, less than 30% of accidental drownings involve people with traces of alcohol in their blood, except this seems to be a common feature in Manchester.

David Paulides speaks about these in some of his interviews. Worth looking up on YouTube if you want to go down a rabbit hole for a bit.
 

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PoppedCorn said:
David Paulides (researcher)

Get lost down that rabbit hole
Click to expand...
We already have that thread, and it's mostly to do with people who've gone missing in US national parks. This thread is for worldwide cases.
 
Werewolf said:
Some fairly recent cases from the high country of Victoria. Beautiful scenery, but you'd hate to get lost there without communications :eek:

www.abc.net.au

Four people have gone missing within a 60km radius in the past year. Their fate remains a mystery

Over the past 12 months, four people have gone missing within a 60-kilometre radius in Victoria's High Country. None have been found, leaving police and locals baffled.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
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Maybe they’ve been taken due to the rapture.
 
Werewolf said:
Some fairly recent cases from the high country of Victoria. Beautiful scenery, but you'd hate to get lost there without communications :eek:

www.abc.net.au

Four people have gone missing within a 60km radius in the past year. Their fate remains a mystery

Over the past 12 months, four people have gone missing within a 60-kilometre radius in Victoria's High Country. None have been found, leaving police and locals baffled.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
Click to expand...
Was hiking up there last year no more than 10km from where Niels was meant to have been, about a month after he went missing. Brutal terrain, my crew had to turn back. Would be very easy to take the wrong track, that section of the trail could only loosely be described as a track. Definitely has en eerie feel about it up there
 
The Maura Murray case from 2004 - often cited as the first high profile missing persons case of the social media age - was a strange one. Maura Murray, then aged 21 and a college student studying nursing definitely seemed to be a young woman with problems in her life, and on the 9th of February 2004 emailed college lecturers and her boss at her part time job that there had been a death in her family and would need to be away for a week. In fact there was no death in either side of her family, and after buying alcohol and withdrawing an amount of cash, Maura set off driving through rural New Hampshire in heavy snow. She was in a single vehicle car accident due to the poor driving conditions, the second car accident she had been involved in within a week, and refused help from witnesses, saying she had called AAA and would wait with the damaged car. One man called the police, but when they arrived Maura was gone and searches of the woods failed to yield any clues.

In this case there was no shortage of plausible theories - suicide, disorientation after the accident and subsequent death by exposure in the freezing forests, voluntary disappearance or abduction followed by homicide - but none could be substantiated despite a huge search and appeals for information. Maura Murray was never seen or heard of again, and more than 16 years later no closer to being solved than the cold day she vanished.
 
Did you hear about the guy who walked into a bar and vanished without a trace never to be seen or heard of again?

No its not a joke from a stand up comedy show, although the man in question Brian Shaffer did vanish on April Fool's Day.

Shaffer, a medical student and some friends went to a bar in Columbus Ohio on 31 March 2006. He was seen and filmed on security footage entering the bar. The last confirmed sighting of him was in the early hours of April 1, but after this he vanished from sight forever. Nobody saw him leaving, and despite cameras on every exit that were working all evening, there was no footage of him leaving either alone or with other people.

Brian Shaffer's mother had died from cancer about six weeks prior to this, and while obviously sad about this friends and family said he was coping with her loss, he didn't appear depressed. And even if he was depressed, hiding it from others and planning to take his own life or stage his own disappearance, how would he commit suicide or vanish from inside a building and never be found?

In a tragic post script to this case showing that sometimes bad things happen in threes, two years after the death of his wife and disappearance of his son, Brian's father Randy Shaffer died when cleaning up his yard in very windy weather when a branch fell from a tree on top of him.
 
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