A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as their location and condition are unknown. A person may go missing through a voluntary disappearance, or else due to an accident, crime, or death in a location where they cannot be found, or many other reasons. In most parts of the world, a missing person will usually be found quickly. Criminal abductions are some of the most widely reported missing person cases.
Susannah Jane Lamplugh was a British estate agent reported missing on 28 July 1986 in Fulham, London, England, United Kingdom. She was officially declared dead, presumed murdered, in 1993. The last clue to Lamplugh's whereabouts was an appointment to show a house in Shorrolds Road to someone she called Mr. Kipper. The case remains unsolved with Lamplugh still missing, and is considered the world's biggest-ever missing person’s inquiry.
The killing of Molly Anne Bish is a currently unsolved child murder which occurred in Warren, Massachusetts, on June 27, 2000, when 16-year-old high school student Molly Anne Bish disappeared while working as a lifeguard.
On 21 April 2001, Hannah Williams, a 14-year-old English schoolgirl was murdered after going missing during a shopping trip in Dartford, Kent. Williams's body was discovered on 15 March 2002 at a cement works in an industrial area of Northfleet.
Maura Murray is an American woman who disappeared on the evening of February 9, 2004, after a car crash on Route 112 near Woodsville, New Hampshire, a village in the town of Haverhill. Her whereabouts remain unknown. Murray was a 21-year-old nursing student completing her junior year at the University of Massachusetts Amherst at the time of her disappearance.
Madeleine Beth McCann is a British missing person, who at the age of 3, disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Lagos, Portugal, on the evening of 3 May 2007. The Daily Telegraph described her disappearance as "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history". Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown, although German prosecutors believe she is dead.
On 19 February 2008, nine-year-old Shannon Louise Matthews was reported missing in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, England. The search for her became a major missing person police operation which was compared to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Shannon was found alive and well on 14 March 2008 at a Batley Carr house belonging to 39-year-old Michael Donovan. Donovan was the uncle of Craig Meehan, the boyfriend of the kidnapped girl's mother, Karen Matthews.
Misty Anne Upham was a Blackfeet actress. She attracted critical acclaim for her performance in the 2008 film Frozen River, for which she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female. She also appeared in Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian and August: Osage County.
Melanie Hall was a British hospital clerical officer from Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, who disappeared following a night out at Cadillacs nightclub in Bath. She was declared dead in absentia in 2004.
The Soham murders were a double child murder committed in Soham, Cambridgeshire, England, on 4 August 2002. The victims were two 10-year-old girls, Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Amiee Chapman, who were lured into the home of a local resident and school caretaker, Ian Kevin Huntley, who subsequently murdered them – likely via asphyxiation – and disposed of their bodies in an irrigation ditch close to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. The bodies were discovered on 17 August 2002.
Peter Britton Tobin was a Scottish convicted serial killer and sex offender who served a whole life order at HM Prison Edinburgh for three murders committed between 1991 and 2006. Police also investigated Tobin over the deaths and disappearances of other young women and girls.
Lauren Elizabeth Spierer is an American woman who disappeared on June 3, 2011, following an evening at Kilroy's Sports Bar in Bloomington, Indiana. At the time, Spierer was a 20-year-old student at Indiana University. Though her disappearance generated national press coverage, Spierer is presumed dead and her case remains unsolved.
Late on the afternoon of October 24, 1961, police visited an address in Lincoln, Massachusetts, United States, outside Boston, after a neighbor reported seeing a trail of blood leading from the house to the driveway. She had made the discovery after a young girl living in the house had returned from a playdate to find her mother, Joan Carolyn Risch, absent. Several unconfirmed sightings of a disoriented Risch walking on nearby roads later that day were reported.
The Martin family of Portland, Oregon, United States, disappeared on December 7, 1958, in the Columbia River Gorge during a day trip to gather greenery for Christmas decorations. The missing included the husband, Kenneth Martin ; his wife, Barbara Martin (48); and the couple's three daughters, Barbara ("Barbie"), Virginia, and Susan. The family's eldest child, Donald, was in the United States Navy and stationed in New York at the time of the disappearance. Several months after the family vanished, the bodies of Susan and Virginia were discovered downstream on the shores of the Columbia River, roughly 30 miles (48 km) apart from each other.
Melanie Jo Melanson is a missing teenager from Woburn, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. She vanished while at a party on October 27, 1989; at first, investigators believed she fled to Florida. However, subsequent investigations by both authorities and a private investigator have turned up no leads.
Etta H. Riel was an American woman who disappeared from Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1934. Her missing person case remains unsolved.
Alice M. Corbett was an American woman who went missing in 1925 from her residence hall at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her case remains unsolved.
Tammy Lynn Belanger is an American child who disappeared while walking to school in Exeter, New Hampshire, in November 1984. Police believe she was abducted.
Melanie Nadia "Mel" Ethier is a Canadian teenager who disappeared in New Liskeard, Ontario, in 1996. As of 2024, Ethier's whereabouts and the circumstances of her disappearance remain unknown.
Tammy Lynn Lamondin-Gagnon was an Ojibwe woman who disappeared in Newmarket, Ontario in 1999. As of 2024, Lamondin-Gagnon's whereabouts and the circumstances of her disappearance remain unknown.
