Join us as we explore some of history's most baffling disappearances that continue to puzzle investigators to this day. From aspiring musicians to college students, these individuals seemed to vanish into thin air, leaving behind more questions than answers. Some cases remain cold, while others have taken surprising turns decades later.
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00:00Most people felt helpless. What happened to them?
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we'll be looking at the most puzzling cases of individuals who
00:10simply disappeared and have never been seen or heard from since.
00:14A mom and a dad who just want to find their daughter.
00:19Jim Sullivan. This folk singer-songwriter dreamed of becoming a music star
00:24and moved to Los Angeles to chase that dream.
00:26He told me about a hole that was six feet deep.
00:29But despite some Hollywood connections and two albums under his belt,
00:33Jim Sullivan struggled to achieve mainstream success.
00:36His career frustrations began to affect his marriage,
00:39ultimately leading to his separation from his wife Barbara.
00:42In 1975, hoping for a fresh start, Sullivan set out for Nashville to revive his career.
00:49However, he mysteriously vanished while driving in New Mexico.
00:53His car was later discovered with all of his belongings inside, but there was no trace of him.
00:58Some believe he may have taken his own life or been abducted by aliens.
01:02Whatever the case, his disappearance remains one of music's strangest mysteries.
01:07Michael Negrete. Back in 1999, Michael Negrete was studying music at the University of California,
01:14Los Angeles, on a scholarship. On December 10th, he attended a party with friends and later played
01:20an online video game with a dorm mate before calling it a night.
01:23By the next morning, Negrete had vanished. His belongings remained untouched in his room,
01:28but no one had heard from him. Initially, police treated it as a missing person case,
01:33but due to suspicious circumstances, the investigation was later reclassified as a homicide.
01:38They mounted an extensive search of the school campus and combed through over 500 leads,
01:43but came up with nothing. Negrete remains missing,
01:46and a $100,000 reward for information on his whereabouts is still unclaimed.
01:51Tara Calico. On September 20th, 1988, Tara Calico went on her usual bike ride near her home in Bellin,
01:58New Mexico and never returned. This is where it started. Down a quiet highway on the outskirts
02:04of Berlin, 19-year-old Tara Calico was on a routine bike ride not far from her home when
02:11vanished in 1988. When her mother went searching, she found nothing except for fragments of Calico's
02:17Sony Walkman and a cassette tape. For months, there was no lead until June 1989 when a woman
02:23found a picture at a Florida convenience store showing a young woman and a boy being held in
02:28the back of a van. The nationwide frenzy brings a second family into the spotlight.
02:33The mothers of Mike and Tara were strangers only a week ago. Now they're brought together in a
02:38common cause, a national effort to find their missing children. Calico's mother believed this
02:43woman was her daughter, and this was supported by investigators at Scotland Yard, although an
02:48FBI analysis of the picture proved inconclusive. In 2023, authorities announced they had sufficient
02:54evidence pointing to specific persons of interest, but those details have yet to be made public.
02:59Right now, a team is working to go through three decades worth of police files. In order to sign
03:05off on charges, they have to rule out the laundry list of suspects who were named over the years.
03:11There's no hard timeline on when or if charges will be filed. Kiera Coles. The last time 26-year-old
03:18Chicago postal worker Kiera Coles was seen alive was on October 2nd, 2018. I knew there was something
03:24wrong with her phone, kept going to voicemail. That night, just before 11 p.m., Coles, who was three
03:30months pregnant at the time, was caught on surveillance cameras making an ATM withdrawal
03:34before leaving the store, never to be seen again. This is her. She's withdrawing cash from an ATM
03:39inside of Chatham Walgreens. This was the night she disappeared. Authorities believe she was with
03:44a man who then drove her car to her neighborhood, parked it, and left in his own vehicle. This man,
03:49identified as Josh Simmons, Coles' boyfriend and the presumed father of her unborn child,
03:54was named as a person of interest. However, no arrests seem to have been made, and a $25,000
03:59reward remains available for any information that could help solve the case. Postal investigators
04:04tell us they've had 400 leads and say they can't imagine the level of pain, grief, and frustration
04:10felt by Kiera Coles' family. They're offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to her
04:17whereabouts. The Springfield Three. On June 6, 1992, the day of their high school graduation,
04:23Suzanne Streeter and Stacey McCall attended several parties in their hometown of Springfield,
04:28Missouri. After making several stops, the girls returned to Streeter's home that she shared with
04:33her mother, Cheryl Leavitt. In the early hours of the next morning, they retired to the home of
04:38Streeter's mother, Cheryl Leavitt, planning to spend the night and meet friends later that day.
04:42When they failed to show up, their friends went to Leavitt's home, only to find that all three
04:47had disappeared. Janice McCall recalls going to Leavitt's home 25 years ago, finding the purses
04:53of all three women. The house showed no signs of struggle except for a broken porch lamp and
04:58Leavitt's visibly agitated dog. Unfortunately, a proper investigation into the disappearance was
05:03hindered by multiple errors, including the inadvertent erasure of a mysterious voicemail
05:08and contamination of the house by concerned friends and family. He still holds out hope
05:13that one day we might learn the truth about what really happened to Springfield's three
05:18missing women. The Beaumont Children. Any sense of safety residents of Adelaide, South Australia had
05:25was shattered on January 26th, 1966. Nancy Beaumont thought her three children would be home by one
05:32o'clock. Increasingly panicked, she waited as bus after bus returned from the beach without them.
05:39That day, three siblings, Jane, Arna and Grant Beaumont left home, boarded a bus and headed to
05:46the nearby Glenelg Beach for a day of fun. It was the last time their parents ever saw them.
05:52Eyewitnesses later recalled seeing the children playing with a thin, tall man in his mid-thirties
05:57before walking away with him. An elderly couple saw Jane, Arna and Grant playing with a tall man,
06:03whose description they later gave to police. Because they seemed at ease, no one found the
06:08interaction suspicious. After they failed to return home, their parents contacted the authorities who
06:14searched the beach and its surroundings but found no trace of them. The case remains unsolved and
06:20the Beaumont parents passed away without ever knowing what happened to their children. The
06:24family have suffered considerably for a long, long time without any answers. Brian Schaefer, 27-year-old
06:32medical student Brian Schaefer, walked into a bar just after midnight on April 1st, 2006
06:38and simply vanished. The following day, his girlfriend was getting concerned because she was
06:43unable to reach Brian. Schaefer had been partying with friends but got separated from them at some
06:48point. When the bar closed, his friends, still unable to find him, went home, assuming he had
06:53already left. But days passed with no sign of Schaefer and he missed a long-planned flight
06:58to Miami. Saturday passed without a word from Brian. By Sunday morning, Alexis was growing more
07:04and more concerned. She hadn't talked to Brian since that Friday night call and they were due
07:10to leave for Florida the next morning and he still wasn't answering his cell. Concerned, his family
07:15reported him missing. Police reviewed surveillance footage which captured Schaefer chatting with two
07:20women outside the bar but never showed him leaving. Did he fall into a nearby construction site,
07:25become a victim of foul play, or vanish intentionally to start a new life? The answer
07:30to this puzzling mystery remains unknown. The people closest to Brian still hope that one day
07:35they'll learn the truth. Maura Murray, often called the first crime mystery of the social media age,
07:41Maura Murray's disappearance occurred just days after Facebook launched. Her disappearance,
07:45one of the first missing cases to capture national and international attention. On February 9, 2004,
07:52the University of Massachusetts Amherst nursing student made travel plans, packed some belongings
07:57into her car, and left campus. Earlier that day, she had emailed her professors claiming a death
08:03in her family required her to be away for a week. That morning, she emailed her professors saying
08:09there had been a death in the family and she would be gone for a week. Her family says that
08:14wasn't true. I think that it was an excuse to buy us some time. I think she used it as an excuse to
08:20get away from school. According to her family though, no such death had occurred. Murray was
08:25last seen by a motorist after she crashed her car sometime after 7 p.m. that evening. By the time the
08:32police arrived, she was gone. Since then, there's been no trace of her and her family now believes
08:37she is likely dead. We've had people supporting us from the beginning and people joining all along
08:45the whole journey of trying to find out what happened to Maura, and so I want to, on behalf
08:50of my family, I want to thank everyone. Madeline McCann. In April 2007, Madeline McCann and her
08:56family traveled to Praia da Luz, Portugal for a holiday. Three years ago, in a small town on the
09:02Algarve coast in Portugal, an extraordinary chain of events was triggered. On the penultimate night
09:08of their trip, McCann's parents, Kate and Jerry, left her and her younger twin siblings asleep in
09:13their apartment while they dined at a nearby restaurant. They checked on the children periodically,
09:18but around 10 p.m. they discovered that Madeline was missing. A massive search effort followed,
09:23involving both Portuguese and British law enforcement. Please, if you have Madeline,
09:29let her come home to her mummy, daddy, brother and sister. Meanwhile, the McCann's launched a
09:36high-profile media campaign to try to draw attention to the case. Various suspects were
09:41considered, including the McCann's themselves, a British-Portuguese resident named Robert Murat,
09:46and Christian Bruckner, a convicted sex offender. The police got in touch with the man who'd been
09:51named, but they had nothing that could tie him to her disappearance and didn't pursue an investigation.
09:59The suspect named was Christian Bruckner. It was the first time German investigators
10:06had linked his name to the case, but it wouldn't be the last. However, no one was formally charged
10:12and the case remains unsolved. Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the
10:18bell to get notified about our latest videos. You have the option to be notified for occasional
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10:27your notifications. Lauren Spearer. On the night of her disappearance in 2011, Indiana University
10:35student Lauren Spearer went out partying and reportedly became very intoxicated. The 20-year-old
10:41Indiana University student, after a night out with friends, never made it home to her Smallwood
10:46apartment. Around 4 30 a.m on June 3rd, she left a friend's apartment and began walking barefoot
10:52towards her own. That was the last time she was seen. While surveillance footage captured parts
10:57of her night, no cameras recorded her final steps home. Later that morning, her boyfriend reported
11:02her missing, prompting police to conduct a nine-day search of a nearby landfill. Somebody knows
11:08something and I would just beg and plead that that person come, you know, however they want to get
11:19us that information. I don't care. Despite this and other extensive efforts, no trace of Spearer
11:24was ever found. In 2015, investigators noted similarities between her case and the murder of
11:30another Indiana University student, but after further review, the connection was dismissed.
11:35Spearer's whereabouts remain unknown. Since June 3rd, Lauren's parents have led the search effort,
11:41personally meeting with volunteers who scoured the Bloomington area and beyond, but have been
11:45unable to find the missing 20-year-old. Are there any obscure disappearance cases you think deserve
11:50more media attention? Spotlight them in the comments below. I really hope that someday in
11:56our lives we can know what happened to Madeleine McCann. Check out these other clips from WatchMojo
12:03and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos.