With the intense glare of the media spotlight, it sometimes seems as though celebrities are being watched 24 hours a day. We see everything they do and hear everything they say. So it seems impossible that a celebrity could completely vanish and never be seen or heard from again. But that's exactly what happened to these famous people who disappeared — and are still missing today...
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00:00With the intense glare of the media spotlight, it sometimes seems as though celebrities are
00:05being watched 24 hours a day.
00:07We see everything they do and hear everything they say.
00:10So it seems impossible that a celebrity could completely vanish and never be seen or heard
00:14from again.
00:15But that's exactly what happened to these famous people who disappeared and are still
00:19missing today.
00:20Bison Daly
00:21Before he changed his name, Bison Daly was better known as basketball player Brian Williams,
00:26a 6-foot-11 man-mountain who left a trail of fire and bruised egos through the NBA.
00:31He was also famously eccentric.
00:33When he quit both basketball and the United States at the age of 30, he went on an endless
00:37nomadic voyage through Asia, living as a kind of wealthy hobo while writing beat poetry.
00:43On July 7, 2002, Daly set sail on his private boat from Tahiti to Hawaii with his girlfriend
00:48Serena Carlin, his brother Miles DeBoard, and ship captain Bertrand Saldo.
00:53Daly, Carlin, and Saldo were never seen again.
00:55Two months later, DeBoard was arrested in Phoenix trying to buy gold with one of his
00:59brother's checks.
01:00Released on bail, he took his own life via insulin overdose just across the Mexican border.
01:05Authorities believe he slew the other three and dumped their bodies in the Pacific, but
01:09only the sea knows for sure.
01:12Oscar Zeta Acosta
01:13Legendary Chicano activist Oscar Zeta Acosta was a big man with even bigger appetites.
01:18Immortalized by Hunter S. Thompson as Dr. Gonzo in the classic novel Fear and Loathing
01:23in Las Vegas, Acosta was later portrayed by Benicio Del Toro in the 1998 film adaptation.
01:29By then, however, Acosta had been missing for decades.
01:31In 1974, he visited his ancestral home in Mexico and simply vanished.
01:37Thompson spent years trying to find out what happened to his friend, eventually concluding
01:40that Acosta had been the victim of a drug hit, or possibly even a political assassination.
01:45Others think he might have suffered a nervous breakdown and gone off the grid.
01:49The truth will likely never be known.
01:51It was one of the most shocking events in Australian history.
01:54On December 17, 1967, the nation's leader went out for a swim in the ocean and was never
01:59seen again.
02:00Harold Holt
02:01Prime Minister Harold Holt was two years into his term when he vanished into what friends
02:04called the highest surf they had ever seen.
02:07Holt was presumed drowned, but his body was never found, in part because there was no
02:11official government investigation.
02:13That's because laws at the time made it illegal to conduct an inquest without a body.
02:17That fueled numerous conspiracy theories, with his disappearance attributed to everything
02:21from a CIA assassination to shark attack.
02:24Finally, in 2005, an investigation officially concluded he had, in fact, drowned after all.
02:30John Bingham
02:31The 7th Earl of Lucan was a British lord so dashing, he was once considered for the role
02:36of James Bond.
02:37Turns out, he would have made a lousy movie hero.
02:40On the night of November 7, 1974, Lord Lucan attempted to slay his wife, Veronica Duncan,
02:46after a bitter separation and custody battle.
02:48She survived, but their nanny wasn't so lucky.
02:51Lord Lucan fled and was never seen again.
02:53His abandoned car was found, filled with incriminating evidence including the murder weapon, but
02:57no sign of the man himself was ever found.
03:00Some believe he fed himself to a tiger, while others think he fled to Africa or India and
03:04lived out his days in secret exile.
03:06Lucan was officially declared deceased in 1999, but a certificate wasn't issued until
03:112016, finally allowing his son to inherit the title, 8th Earl of Lucan.
03:16Errol Flynn
03:17Errol Flynn was one of the most famous movie stars who ever lived.
03:20His son, Sean Flynn, struggled to get out of his father's long shadow, and those efforts
03:24may have cost him his life.
03:26Sean appeared in ten movies, but they were mostly bombs, and his acting career never
03:30fully took off.
03:32Hoping to prove he was his own man, Sean became a Time magazine war correspondent and flew
03:36to Vietnam.
03:37"...cameraman Sean Flynn, who filmed these scenes, later went on patrol outside the camp
03:43perimeter."
03:44On April 6, 1970, he and fellow journalist Dana Stone decided to photograph a Viet Cong
03:49checkpoint.
03:50They were captured by communist guerrillas and never seen again.
03:53It's widely believed they were held captive for over a year before being executed by the
03:57Khmer Rouge in 1971, but no proof of Sean's final fate has ever been found.
04:02One of the most acclaimed authors in American history, the true story of Ambrose Bierce's
04:06disappearance really is stranger than fiction.
04:09In 1913, despite not speaking a word of Spanish, Bierce traveled to Mexico to report on the
04:14revolution and joined Pancho Villa's army as an observer.
04:17In December, he reportedly wrote a letter saying he was heading to an unknown destination.
04:22He couldn't have been more right.
04:23Nobody knows where he went or what happened to him, as he was never heard from again.
04:27Various theories suggest he was executed, or was shot during a battle, or even that
04:32he ended his own life and the rest was a cover story made up by his assistant.
04:36It's a mystery that will likely never be solved.