This is a list of solved missing person cases of people who went missing in unknown locations or unknown circumstances that were eventually explained by their reappearance or the recovery of their bodies, the conviction of the perpetrator(s) responsible for their disappearances, or a confession to their killings. This list includes disappearances before 1950. There are separate lists covering disappearances between 1950 and 1999, and then since 2000.
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1249 | Elisabeth of Wrocław | 17 | Duchy of Greater Poland | Daughter of Henry II the Pious who was kidnapped by her brother Bolesław II the Horned from the Sanctuary of St. Jadwiga to be forcefully married to Przemysł I of Greater Poland. The couple went on to have five children, but little is known about her activities as a consort. She died at the family estate in 1265. [1] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1509 | India Catalina | 14 | Modern-day Colombia | Indigenous Colombian girl who was kidnapped by Spanish conquistador Diego de Nicuesa and sent to Santo Domingo to learn the Spanish language. There, she was ordered to serve as an interpreter and intermediary for Pedro de Heredia, working for him until her death in 1538. [2] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1578 | Andronikos Kantakouzenos | 25 | Ottoman Empire (modern-day Turkey) | Andronikos Kantakouzenos was an Ottoman Greek entrepreneur and political figure who was persecuted by the Ottoman Empire for anti-Ottoman rhetoric. He fled to Istanbul, where he was briefly detained as a galley slave before he was released. He then went on to rebuild his business and involve himself in Wallachian and Moldavian politics before his disappearance and likely execution in 1601. [3] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1606 | John Knight | 21 | Unknown | John Knight was a British explorer who disappeared after his ship needed repairs. Knight had gone over a hill most likely near Nain, Labrador, on June 23 or 24, 1606. Some time after that it was confirmed that he had been killed by local residents, but these people were never identified and no one was charged with his murder. [4] Knight's body was never located after that. | Murdered | Never found |
| 1630s | Turhan Sultan | Unknown | Unknown | Russian, Ukrainian or Circassian girl kidnapped and later sold as a slave by the Tatars to the Ottoman Imperial Harem, later becoming a wife of Sultan Ibrahim. [5] . As a result, she became a prominent figure during the Sultanate of Women. | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1658 | Udriște Năsturel | 59–63 | Wallachia (modern-day Romania) | Wallachian scholar, poet and statesman known for bringing on a cultural revival in the nation. He and several other consorts were later kidnapped and murdered, allegedly because they disagreed with a fellow boyar's plans for an anti-Ottoman uprising. [6] | Murdered | Unknown |
| 1660 | William Harrison | 70 | England | William Harrison disappeared on 16 August 1660 from the town of Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, and was thought to have been murdered. He resurfaced two years later and said that he had been kidnapped. [7] | Found alive | 2 years |
| 1700s | Adriaan de Bruin | Unknown | Unknown | African boy enslaved to be servant to Dutch politician Adriaan van Bredehoff, [8] [9] [10] best known for posing together with his master for a portrait by Nikolaas Verkolje, which today is on exhibit in the Westfries Museum. | Found alive | 30 years |
| 1703 | Abram Petrovich Gannibal | 7–8 | Unknown | Ethiopian son of a prince who was captured by Ottomans and later sold as a slave to the Russian Empire. However, Tsar Peter the Great took a liking to him for his intelligence and military potential, and thus, Abram was made his godson. Gannibal went on to have an illustrious career as a nobleman and military engineer until his death in 1781. [11] | Found alive | 1 year |
| 1704 | Stephen Williams | 9 | Thirteen Colonies (modern-day United States) | American boy who was kidnapped during a raid by French soldier and their Native American accomplices on February 29, 1704. He was held captive in Canada, where Jesuits attempted to convert him to Catholicism. He was released following a prisoner exchange and returned to Massachusetts, where he later became a Congregational minister. [12] | Found alive | 1 year |
| 1723 | Philip Ashton | 21 | Thirteen Colonies (modern-day United States) | American castaway who lived on the uninhabited Roatán island for 16 months, [13] where he went into hiding to avoid trouble with pirates. | Found alive | More than 1 year |
| 1725 | Jacobus Capitein | 8 | Dutch Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) | Ghanaian boy who was enslaved and later brought to the Netherlands, where he ostensibly was to live as a servant to a Jacobus van Goch, a trader with the Dutch West India Company. Instead, Van Goch allowed Capitein to study theology and became a Christian minister and the first African to be ordained by the Dutch Reformed Church, who later spread the written word to his native Ghana. [14] | Found alive | 3 years |
| 1732 | Rachel Chiesley, Lady Grange | 53 | Scotland | The wife of Jacobite lawyer James Erskine, Lord Grange, Chiesley was kidnapped by her husband for allegedly writing anti-Hanoverian letters. She was detained in multiple locations [15] across Scotland, and despite a rescue attempt by her lawyer Thomas Hope, she died in captivity. | Died in captivity | 13 years |
| 1753 | Elizabeth Canning | 19 | England | English maidservant who claimed to have been kidnapped and held hostage in a hayloft. Three people were later convicted of the alleged kidnapping, but later pardoned following an investigation by the Lord Mayor of London, Crisp Gascoyne. [16] Canning was sentenced to one month imprisonment for perjury, but whether she was truly abducted remains a mystery to this day. | Found alive | 1 month |
| 1767 | Little Ephraim Robin John | unknown | Modern-day Nigeria | Nigerian Efiks from Calabar who were sold as slaves to British traders, who were sold to various buyers around the world as their intelligence, literacy and knowledge of the slave trade were considered valuable assets. In the 1790s, they successfully petitioned the British courts to be released and returned to Calabar, where they spread Christianity. [17] | Found alive | More than 30 years |
| Ancona Robin John | Modern-day Nigeria |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1823 | Quamina | 45 | Dutch Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) | Ghanaian Akan man, who as a child was enslaved on Guinea with his mother and later, together with his son Jack Gladstone, were main participants in the Demerara rebellion of 1823, one of the largest slave revolts in the British colonies' history. He was apprehended by colonial authorities on September 16, 1823, and subsequently executed. [18] | Executed | 1 month |
| 1824 | Aimée Debully | 12 | France | A schoolgirl murdered and cannibalized by Antoine Léger on August 10, 1824, Léger—a hermit—buried the child's body in his cave. Debully's body was discovered on August 16. Léger was subsequently executed by guillotine on November 30. [19] | Murdered | Six days |
| 1831 | Collet Barker | 46 | Australia | An officer serving in the British military, Collet Barker was also noted as an early explorer of the Australian territories, recording his encounters with the natives in the process. On April 29, 1831, he and his party were sent out to explore whether the Murray River had other channels connecting to the sea, and that day Barker swam across the channel, but never returned. His party members later learned that he had been killed by a local indigenous tribe who had mistaken him for a whaler. [20] | Murdered | Never found |
| 1836 | Cynthia Ann Parker | 10 | Republic of Texas (now part of the United States of America) | Parker was abducted at age 10 by a Comanche war band that had attacked her family's settlement in the Fort Parker massacre. She remained with this tribe for 24 years, becoming integrated and later marrying a tribe member. She was recovered by Texas Rangers in December 1860. [21] | Found alive | 24 years |
| 1841 | Solomon Northup | 32-33 | United States of America | Northup was a free-born African American man from New York. In 1841 he was offered a traveling musician job in Washington D.C. (where slavery was legal). He was drugged and kidnapped into slavery for 12 years until he met Samuel Bass, a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His family and friends enlisted the aid of the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, and Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853. [22] | Found alive | 12 years |
| 1851 | Olive Oatman | 14 | United States of America | Oatman and her younger sister, Mary Ann, were both taken as slaves in 1851 by a Native American tribe following the massacre of their family close to Yuma, Arizona. Held captive for a year by this tribe, they were later traded to Mohaves, where they were treated less harshly, although in approximately 1855 Mary Ann died of starvation at the approximate age of 11. With a measure of threats, Olive was released by this tribe after five years of captivity in 1856, at the age of 19. [23] | Found alive | 5 years |
| 1851 | Francis Jackson | 36–41 | United States of America | African-American freedman who was kidnapped and sold as a slave in Virginia. During his repeated attempts to escape from slaveholders in Virginia and North Carolina, Jackson was eventually legally declared free and released in August 1858, later moving to Pennsylvania. [24] | Found alive | 7 years |
| 1856 | George Cox | 7 | United States of America | The two young brothers disappeared from their Pavia Township, Pennsylvania, home on April 24, 1856, after straying off the beaten path. Their bodies were found several days later with the help of a local farmer, who claimed to have seen the location in his dreams. [25] | Died (undetermined cause) | 8 days |
| Joseph Cox | 5 | United States of America | 8 days | |||
| 1857 | Abbie Gardner-Sharp | 14 | United States of America | Abducted in the aftermath of the Spirit Lake Massacre on March 8, 1857, and kept as a hostage by her Santee Sioux abductors until her ransom was paid off in May of that year. [26] | Found alive | 2 months |
| 1860 | Redoshi | 12 | Modern-day Benin | West African woman who was illegally brought as a slave to Alabama, sold to the Washington Smith family. She was one of the last known living victims of the Transatlantic slave trade. [27] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1863 | Harrison Carroll Hobart | 48 | United States of America | Union Army officer who was captured during the Battle of Chickamauga, but escaped captivity in Virginia together with his regiment only a year later. He later returned to serving the Union, later serving as a politician in Wisconsin until his death. [28] | Found alive | 7 months |
| 1864 | Samuel J. Reader | 28 | United States of America | Diarist who served in the army during the Bleeding Kansas, recording events on the battlefields. In October 1864, during the Battle of Little Blue River, he was captured by enemy forces for three days, but later escaped. [29] | Found alive | 3 days |
| 1865 | William John Charles Möens | 32 | Kingdom of Italy | English writer and antiquarian who was kidnapped by brigands on May 15, 1865, while on vacation near Battipaglia, Italy. He was released on August 26, after paying his kidnappers £5100 ransom. [30] | Found alive | 4 months |
| 1869 | Onesimos Nesib | 13–14 | Ethiopian Empire | Ethiopian Oromo boy who was kidnapped by slavers to be sold in the Arabian Peninsula, but later rescued by Werner Munzinger, who brought him to the Johannelunds Teologiska Högskola to study theology. He later converted to Christianity and went on to translate the Bible into Oromo, and to publish numerous other works in the language. [31] | Found alive | 3 years |
| 1870 | Truman C. Everts | 54 | United States of America | Tax assessor for the Montana Territory who got lost during an expedition on September 9, 1870. He was found by two mountain men on October 16, suffering from frostbite and other ailments. He later published an account of his experience, titled "Thirty-Seven Days of Peril". [32] | Found alive | 37 days |
| 1871 | Mary Winchester | 6 | British Raj (modern-day India) | Scottish girl who was kidnapped and held hostage by Mizo tribesman in Mizoram, India, on January 23, 1871. She was held for over a year before being rescued by the British army during the Lushai Expedition. [33] | Found alive | 1 year |
| 1874 | Katie Mary Curran | 10 | United States of America | The first known murder victim of Jesse Pomeroy. Curran disappeared while an errand to purchase a notebook; her body was later discovered concealed in an ash heap within the basement of Pomeroy's mother's dressmaking shop. [34] | Murdered | 3 months |
| 1877 | Josephine Bakhita | 7–8 | Egypt Eyalet (modern-day Sudan) | Sudanese Daju girl who was kidnapped and repeatedly sold to Arab traders until slavery was outlawed by the British (who then controlled the country). Later on, she converted to Catholicism and served as a Canossian religious sister for 45 years. [35] | Found alive | 12 years |
| 1886 | Aster Ganno | 14 | Ethiopian Empire | Ganno was an Ethiopian girl enslaved by the Limmu-Ennarea and later rescued by Italian missionaries while en route to be sold in the Arabian Peninsula. She was later taken to a Swedish Evangelical Mission, and later assigned to translate the Bible in Oromo. [36] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1887 | Mary Tuplin | 17 | Canada | Tuplin was a murder victim from Margate, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Her body was discovered weighted to a river bed six days after her disappearance. She had been shot twice in the head. Tuplin's alleged lover, 19-year-old William Millman, was arrested. He was convicted of her murder the following year and subsequently hanged. Millman's execution was the final to occur on Prince Edward Island in the 19th century. [37] | Murdered | 6 days |
| 1892 | Gottlieb Fluhmann | c. 55 | United States of America | The Colorado rancher known as Gottlieb Fluhmann was last seen in 1892 before he disappeared under strange and largely unknown circumstances. His body was found in 1944 in a Park County cave, but the cause of death could not be determined. [38] | Died (unknown cause) | 52 years |
| 1895 | Bridget Cleary | 25–26 | United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | Irishwoman who vanished from her home in Ballyvadlea on March 16, 1895, with her husband claiming that she had been abducted by fairies. Cleary's body was found several days later, and her husband, among four others, was later convicted of her death. [39] | Murdered | 6 days |
| 1896 | Pearl Bryan | 22 | United States of America | Pregnant woman who went missing on January 28, 1896, ostensibly to visit a friend in Indianapolis, but her decapitated corpse was later found in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. Her lover, dental student Scott Jackson, and his roommate, Alonzo Walling, were later arrested, convicted and executed for the murder. [40] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 1898 | Adolf Böcking | 47 | United States of America | Adolf Böcking was a German man who after moving to the U.S. disappeared from San Antonio, Texas on 18 April 1898. He was later found dead after he had committed suicide with a gun. [41] | Suicide | Unknown |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of Disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 | Ernst Winter | 19 | Germany | Ernst Winter was a German man who went missing from Konitz on 11 March 1900 after he had left the house where he was boarding and parts of body were found on March 15, 1900 [42] and April 15, 1900 [43] after being killed and dismembered. | Murdered | 4 days to 1 month |
| 1901 | Hermann Stubbe | 8 | German Empire | Hermann and Peter Stubbe disappeared while playing close to their home in the Baltic resort of Göhren on 1 July 1901; their mutilated bodies were discovered the following day. Both had been extensively bludgeoned with a large stone prior to their mutilation. A local carpenter, Ludwig Tessnow, was arrested the same day. He was later sentenced to death for the murders, and is alleged to have died via guillotine in the courtyard of Greifswald prison in 1904. [44] | Murdered | 1 day |
| Peter Stubbe | 6 | |||||
| 1905 | Unnamed Japanese teenage girl | 16 | Japan | An unnamed Japanese teenage girl was abducted on September 1, 1905 from a festival that was held in Asahi at a shrine by male serial killer Katsutaro Baba [45] and found dead nine days later after she had been murdered by him. | Murdered | 9 days |
| 1907 | Shirley Davidson | 32 | Canada | Davidson, a Canadian ice hockey player for the Montreal Victorias, disappeared while sailing near Varennes, Quebec on August 5, 1907. His body, along with that of his fiancée, was found five days later, with the most prominent theory suggesting that the pair died in a suicide pact. [46] | Died by suspected suicide | 5 days |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1910 | José María Grimaldos López | 28 | Spain | José María Grimaldos López, a shepherd from Tresjuncos, Spain, went missing on 20 August 1910. Two men were convicted of his killing after confessing under torture. Grimaldos resurfaced in 1926. [47] | Found alive | 16 years |
| 1911 | Elsie Paroubek | 5 | United States of America | Elsie Paroubek was a Czech American girl who disappeared in Chicago, Illinois, on 8 April 1911. On 9 May 1911, employees of the Lockport power plant near Joliet, thirty-five miles outside of Chicago, saw a body floating in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that was identified as hers. [48] | Died from suffocation | 31 days |
| 1912 | Teresita Guitart Congost | Unknown | Spain | Teresita Guitart Congost was kidnapped by Enriqueta Martí [49] from Carrer de Joaquín Costa, Barcelona and was located seventeen days later. | Found alive | 17 Days |
| 1913 | Captain Robert Falcon Scott | 43 | Antarctica | The bodies of Scott's group, except Oates, were found 13 months after separating from the support party to make the final part of the journey to the South Pole. The search party had been postponed by the Antarctic winter. [50] | Died from hypothermia and starvation | 13 months |
| Edward Wilson | 39 | Antarctica | ||||
| Henry Bowers | 28 | Antarctica | ||||
| Edgar Evans | 35 | Antarctica | ||||
| Lawrence Oates | 32 | Antarctica | Never found | |||
| 1913 | Charles B. Stover | 52 | United States of America | The New York City Parks Commissioner from 1910 to 1913, Stover disappeared one day in October 1913 after going out for lunch. Over the next few months, nation-wide searches were organized to locate him, only for him to mail a letter of resignation and eventually return safely from an apparent vacation on January 28, 1914. [51] | Found alive | 3 months |
| 1914–1918 | Jack Cock | 22–25 | Unknown | Cock was reported as "missing, presumed dead" at an uncertain point during World War I, but later turned up alive. After his service, he went on to have an illustrious career as a professional footballer, small-time actor and a pub owner until his death in 1966. [52] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1914 | Larrett Roebuck | 25 | France | Roebuck was the first English Football League player to be killed in the First World War. He was recorded as "presumed dead" after an attack near Beaucamps-Ligny during the Race to the Sea. [53] His death was confirmed by two comrades in January 1915. [54] | Killed in action | Body never found |
| 1914 | Charles Pelham, Lord Worsley | 27 | Belgium | Charles Pelham, Lord Worsley was a British soldier whose parents were Charles Pelham, 4th Earl of Yarborough and Marcia Pelham, Countess of Yarborough. He served as a lieutenant in C Squadron of the Royal Horse Guards during hostilities in Flanders, commanding a machine gun section. On 30 October 1914, Worsley's section was cut off at Zandvoorde, Belgium, by a German attack and he was listed as missing in action, and then as dead early in 1915. His body was buried by German soldiers, and with the help of a map, his grave was located in December 1918. | Killed in action | 4 years |
| 1915 | Alan Cordner | 24 | Ottoman Empire | Cordner, an Australian rules footballer and a private in the B Company of the 6th Battalion of the First AIF, was killed at Cape Helles in Ottoman Turkey during the initial invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula. He was initially posted as "wounded", then "wounded and missing". Some twelve months after the Red Cross conducted an investigation into his fate, he was declared "killed in action". His body was never recovered. | Killed in action | Body never found |
| 1915 | John Isaac | 35 | France | Isaac, an English first class cricketer and a captain in the 2nd battalion, Rifle Brigade, was posted as missing at Fromelles, France during the northern attack of the Battle of Aubers Ridge on 9 May 1915. His body was recovered in April 1921 [55] and identified by the medal ribbons. He was subsequently reburied at New Irish Farm Cemetery, Ypres, West, Belgium. | Killed in action | Almost 6 years |
| 1915 | John Kipling | 18 | France | John Kipling was the only son of British author Rudyard Kipling. He was reported injured and missing in action on 27 September 1915 during the Battle of Loos. His grave was identified by military historian Norm Christie, but in 2002 research by military historians Tonie and Valmai Holt suggested that this grave was not that of Kipling but of another officer. In January 2016, however, further research by Graham Parker and Joanna Legg demonstrated that the original identification of the grave was correct. [56] John Kipling's death inspired his father Rudyard to become involved with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and write a wartime history of the Irish Guards. | Killed in action | 101 years |
| 1916 | Willie Wiseman | 20 | France | Wiseman, a member of the Gordon Highlanders, was wounded during service on the Western Front, remaining missing for a week. He later returned and continued his service, and after leaving the army, became an amateur footballer playing for Queen's Park F.C. [57] | Found alive | 1 week |
| 1916 | Will Streets | 30 | France | Streets, an English World War I soldier and poet, went missing after being wounded on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. [58] His body was recovered exactly ten months later and buried at Euston Road Cemetery, Colincamps, France. | Killed in action | 10 months |
| 1916 | Thornton Clarke | 24 | France | Clarke, an Australian rules footballer who served with the 60th Infantry Battalion in the First AIF, was killed in action on 19 July 1916, soon after arriving on the Western Front, during the Battle of Fromelles. Initially listed as missing, he was declared killed by a Court of Enquiry held in France on 4 August 1917. It is now known that Clarke was buried in a mass grave. | Killed in action | Body never found |
| 1916 | Sidney Cowan | 19 | France | Cowan, an Irish World War I flying ace, collided with another British aircraft while attempting to attack a German machine on 17 November 1916. Originally listed as missing, his grave was discovered in April 1917. The Germans had buried him at the cemetery at Ablainzevelle. He was later re-interred at the British War Cemetery at Cagnicourt. [59] | Killed in air collision | 5 months |
| 1917 | Alf Williamson | 23 | France | An Australian rules footballer, Williamson was reported wounded and missing in action in France on 11 April 1917. It was later determined in late November 1917 that he had died in action at Bullecourt in France fighting with the 14th Battalion. [60] | Killed in action | Body never found |
| 1917 | Bill Madden | 35 | France | An Australian rules footballer who enlisted in the First AIF in 1916, Madden was last seen in a newly dug trench with a wound to his right arm or shoulder. He was declared missing in action in May 1917, and following an investigation conducted by a Court of Inquiry into his case, he was declared killed in action on 26 November 1917. | Killed in action | Body never found |
| 1917 | Norman Callaway | 21 | France | Callaway, an Australian first class cricketer and First Australian Imperial Force soldier, was reported missing in action in the Second Battle of Bullecourt on 3 May 1917. By September 1917, it was confirmed that Callaway had died on the same day. [61] | Killed in action | Body never found |
| 1917 | Roger Hay | 21–22 | Belgium | Hay, a British World War I flying ace credited with five aerial victories, was reported missing in action on 17 July 1917, and it was later reported that he died as a result of wounds while a prisoner of the Germans the same day. [62] | Killed in action | Unknown |
| 1917 | William Meggitt | 23 | Unknown | British flying ace Meggitt was shot down and listed as missing in action on 8 November 1917, but was eventually reported as being a prisoner of the Germans in early 1918. [63] He was repatriated after the Armistice of 11 November 1918. | Found alive | 1 year |
| 1918 | Kenneth Barbour Montgomery | 20 | Kingdom of Italy | An English World War I flying ace officially credited with 12 aerial victories, Montgomery was shot down and listed as missing in action on 22 February 1918. [64] His aircraft had been hit by Austro-Hungarian anti-aircraft fire and he had crash-landed in a vineyard in the village of Rustignè, Oderzo, Italy and had been captured, badly wounded. After recovering from his injuries at a military hospital, he was held as a prisoner of war in Vienna until after the armistice that ended the war. | Found alive | 9 months |
| 1918 | Dudley Gilman Tucker | 31 | France | Tucker was a military aviator [65] who flew in the Lafayette Flying Corps, and on 8 July 1918, failed to return to base after a routine patrol with four other Spads, during which they encountered 15 German Fokkers in the Soissons and Chateau-Thierry area. He was found with the wreckage of his plane in a field along the Longpont-Chaudun road or on a battlefield at Vierzy - the German records are incomplete. He died of his wounds and after the war his body was identified and buried in an American war cemetery at Seringes-et-Nesle. | Killed in action | Unknown |
| 1918 | Francis Lupo | 23 | France | Lupo was a private in the United States Army who was killed in action near Soissons, France on 21 July 1918. His remains were discovered by French archaeologists in 2003 and buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery in September 2006. [66] The location of the grave is section 66, grave number 7489. | Killed in action | 85 years |
| 1918 | William Otway Boger | 23 | France | Boger, a Canadian World War I flying ace credited with five aerial victories, was shot down on 10 August 1918 while leading a patrol of three aircraft near Montdidier, France. Initially listed as missing, he was later confirmed to have been killed in action. [67] German ace Josef Veltjens is usually considered the victor over Boger. | Killed in action | Body never found |
| 1918 | Friedel Rothe | 17 | German Empire | Rothe was the first known victim of German murderer Fritz Haarmann. Rothe encountered Haarmann in a café, having run away from home, and Haarmann had claimed he buried Rothe in a cemetery in Stöckener. [68] | Murdered | Body never found |
| 1918 | Cedric Edwards | 19 | France | British World War I flying ace Edwards was shot down by anti-aircraft fire near Jigsaw Wood, France. Initially reported as "missing", his death was later confirmed, [69] although his body was never recovered. | Killed in action | Body never found |
| 1918 | Harold Goodman Shoemaker | 26 | German Empire | Shoemaker, an American pursuit pilot and World War I flying ace, collided in mid-air with another pilot over enemy territory on 5 October 1918, and was reported missing in action. The International Red Cross later reported that Shoemaker died in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. He was buried in the Somme American Cemetery and Memorial in the village of Bony, France. [70] | No | Unknown |
| 1919 | Mamie Stuart | 26 | United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | English woman who vanished mysteriously in Caswell Bay, Wales sometime between November and December 1919, only for her body to be found more than four decades later by potholers in the Gower Peninsula. Her bigamist husband, George Everard Shotton, was posthumously convicted of her murder, as he had died in 1958. [71] | Murdered | 42 years |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1920–1929? | Amantul Milorad | Unknown | Yugoslavia | Amantul Milorad, A Serbian banker disappeared in Zrenjanin, Yugoslavia after being poisoned to death by a female Romanian serial killer Vera Renczi. His body was later found in an round cellar that had been locked in a zinc filled coffin. [72] | Murdered | Unknown |
| 1920 | Severin Dobrovolsky | 39 | Finland | Dobrovolsky was a White Russian political refugee who fled to Vyborg, which was then part of Finland. While living there, he became a prominent figure in anti-Bolshevik, pro-Fascist movements, publishing and writing anti-Soviet propaganda for various magazines in his native Russian. In 1945, he was turned over to the Soviet Union, and subsequently executed the following year. [73] [74] | Found alive | 25 years |
| 1921 | James Bernard, 4th Earl of Bandon | 71 | United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | The British representative peer of Ireland during the Irish War of Independence, Lord Bandon was kidnapped by the IRA [75] in retaliation against the British government's policy of torching homes of suspected Irish republicans. During his captivity, Lord Bandon was reportedly treated well, and later released without incident. | Found alive | 3 weeks |
| 1922 | Hans Keimes | 17 | Weimar Republic | Hans Keimes was a 17-year-old youth last seen alive alive in south Hanover on 17 March 1922. [76] His nude, bound body was found in a canal outside the city on 6 May. Keimes is strongly believed to have been murdered by serial killer Fritz Haarmann, though Keimes' murder remains officially unsolved. | Killed by strangulation | 7 weeks |
| 1924 | Ionel Gherea | 38–39 | Kingdom of Romania | Ionel Gherea was a Romanian, essayist, concert pianist, philosopher who had disappeared for a time from the Kingdom of Roma in 1924. During his disappearance it was thought that he had committed suicide before he had showed up again. [77] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1924 | George Mallory | 37 | Tibet (modern-day China) | George Mallory and Andrew Irvine were English mountaineers who after taking part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest disappeared during the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition on either June 8 or 9, 1924. [78] On May 1, 1999, Mallory's mummified body was found, [79] 75 years after he had disappeared. In October 2024, Irvine's remains were also found. [80] | Undetermined cause | 75 years |
| Andrew Irvine | 22 | 100 years | ||||
| 1925 | Wong Foon Sing | 27 | United States of America | Wong Foon Sing was abducted a year after the murder of Scottish nursemaid Janet Smith, who allegedly committed suicide via an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to her left temple. Physical evidence (and the lack thereof) has led to suspicions Foon Sing may have committed her murder. He was abducted and subjected to prolonged torture by (allegedly) Ku Klux Klan members on March 20, 1925, but was released after six weeks. [81] | Found alive / Released | 6 weeks |
| 1926 | Aimee Semple McPherson | 36 | United States of America | McPherson was a Canadian Pentecostal evangelist known for pioneering the use of media during church services. In May 1926, she disappeared from Santa Monica, California, causing a media frenzy surrounding her vanishing. Five weeks later, she resurfaced in Mexico, claiming that she had been abducted, a claim never substantiated. [82] | Found alive | 5 weeks |
| 1926 | Agapit Leblanc | 39 | Canada | A Canadian Fishery officer from Bouctouche, New Brunswick, who disappeared while investigating illegal fishing activities. He was murdered while on duty on 20 October 1926; his body was discovered four days later. [83] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 1926 | Mabel Fluke | Unknown | United States of America | Mabel Fluke disappeared from her home in Portland on 21 October 1926 after being murdered by Earle Nelson and her body was discovered several days later in the attic where she was found she had been strangled with a scarf. [84] [85] | Murdered by strangulation | Several days later |
| 1926 | Agatha Christie | 36 | United Kingdom | Agatha Christie, the British detective-story author, famously disappeared in December 1926, after her husband asked for a divorce. She was located alive 10 days later in a Yorkshire health spa but never proffered a full explanation. [86] | Found alive | 10 days |
| 1928 | Frances Smith | 18 | United States of America | Frances Smith was an American female teenage college student who disappeared on January 13, 1928 from Smith College in Massachusetts [87] and was found dead on March 29, 1929. | undetermined | 1 year and 3 months |
| 1928 | Walter Collins | 9 | United States of America | Collins disappeared from his home in Los Angeles, California on March 10, 1928. He was later determined to have been murdered by Gordon Stewart Northcott in what was known as the Wineville Chicken Coop murders. His disappearance and the attempt by the Los Angeles police department to convince his mother that a different boy was her son formed the basis of the 2008 film Changeling . [88] [89] [90] | Murdered | 2 years |
| 1929 | Viljo Rosvall | Unknown | Canada | Viljo Rosvall and Janne Voutilainen were two Finnish-Canadian trade unionists from Ontario and members of the Lumber Workers Industrial Union of Canada who on 18 November 1929 disappeared mysteriously and were found dead in April 1930. [91] | Murdered | 3–4 months |
| Janne Voutilainen | Canada | |||||
| 1929 | Maria Hahn | 20 | Weimar Republic | A victim of serial killer Peter Kürten. Hahn's body was discovered buried in a cornfield three months after her murder, shortly after he had posted an anonymous letter to authorities divulging the location of her body. [92] | Murdered | Three months |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of Disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1930 | Lauri Koskela | 23 | Finland | Greco-Roman wrestler kidnapped by the fascist Lapua Movement due to his political leanings, but was later released. [93] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1930 | Louis J. Carron | 27 | Australia | Born Leslie John Brown, Carron—a New Zealand native—was a victim of the Murchison Murders. He is believed to have died on or about May 18, 1930; his remains were discovered in Murchison the following year. [94] | Murdered | 1 year |
| 1930 | Onni Happonen | 32 | Finland | Happonen was a Finnish politician who was kidnapped and murdered by the fascist Lapua Movement on September 1, 1930. [95] Happonen was later found dead. He had been buried in an anthill on side of the Varkaus in July 1932. | Murdered | Less than 2 years |
| 1930 | Robert Elliott Burns | 38 | United States of America | WWI veteran who escaped from a chain gang in Georgia on several occasions, where he was serving a prison sentence for robbery. He moved to New Jersey, where he survived on odd jobs while writing his memoir, I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! , which criticized the harshness of the system. His sentence was commuted in 1945, and he was declared a free man. [96] | Found alive | 15 years |
| 1930 | Adolphus Busch Orthwein | 13 | United States of America | Orthwein, the son of American business executive Percy Orthwein and heir to the family business, was kidnapped on New Year's Eve in 1930 by realtor Charles Abernathy, who planned to demand a ransom from his family. The next day, on New Year's Day, Abernathy's father, Pearl, managed to return Adolphus back to his family. [97] | Found alive | 1 day |
| 1931 | Avro Ten Southern Cloud crew | Various | Australia | The aircraft, which flew daily between Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, disappeared under initially unclear circumstances on March 21, 1931. The passengers and crew's fates remained a mystery until October 26, 1958, when an employee of an irrigation complex accidentally discovered the wreckage in the Snowy Mountains. [98] | Died in plane crash | 27 years |
| 1931 | John Cuffe | 50 | United Kingdom | Australian-born English first-class cricketer mostly known for his long tenure for the Worcestershire County Cricket Club, for which he played more than 200 times between 1903 and 1914. On May 9, 1931, he was reported missing, but more than a week later, his body was found floating in Burton upon Trent. [99] | Suicide by drowning | 9 days |
| 1931 | Vera Page | 10 | United Kingdom | On December 14, 1931, the 10-year-old student was reported missing after failing to return to her home in Notting Hill, London. Two days later, her body was found on Addison Road, showing signs that she had been raped and manually strangled. While a suspect was arrested in her murder, he was released due to insufficient evidence, and Page's murder remains unsolved. [100] | Murdered | 2 days |
| 1932 | Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. | 1 | United States of America | On 1 March 1932, Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was abducted from the crib in the upper floor of his home in Highfields in East Amwell, New Jersey, United States. [101] On May 12, the child's corpse was discovered by a truck driver by the side of a nearby road. [102] [103] | Murdered | 72 days |
| 1933 | Charles F. Urschel | 43 | United States of America | Urschel, a business tycoon, was kidnapped along with fellow oilman Walter R. Jarrett on 22 July 1933, from Oklahoma City by gangsters George "Machine Gun" Kelly and Albert L. Bates. While Jarrett was quickly released, Urschel was held for over a week while his kidnappers demanded a ransom. After his release, the information Urschel managed to provide about his kidnappers' hideout eventually led to their arrests and convictions, despite his having been blindfolded the entire time. [104] | Found alive | 1 week |
| 1934 | Linda Agostini | 28 | Australia | Linda Agostini, a woman who emigrated from South East London to Australia, disappeared from Melbourne on 27 August 1934. A body, not identified as hers until 1944, was found in a culvert beside a rural road in Albury, New South Wales, Australia, in September 1934. [105] | Manslaughter | 10 years |
| 1934 | Norma Sedgwick | 12 | United States of America | The bodies of 12-year-old Norma Sedgwick, 10-year-old Dewilla Noakes, and 8-year-old Cordelia Noakes were found under a blanket in the woods along Pennsylvania Route 233, Centerville Road on 24 November 1934. All three are believed to have been suffocated to death earlier that month by Elmo Noakes, the father of Dewilla and Cordelia and the stepfather of Norma. Noakes also shot and killed his 18-year-old niece, Winifred Peirce, the day after the girls' bodies were discovered. [106] | Murdered | Less than a month |
| Dewilla Noakes | 10 | United States of America | ||||
| Cordelia Noakes | 8 | United States of America | ||||
| 1935 | Isabella Ruxton | 34 | United Kingdom | A Lancaster housewife murdered by her husband in an attack sparked by unproven accusations of her infidelity. Ruxton and the family maid, Mary Rogerson, were extensively mutilated on 15 September 1935; their bodies were discovered in Dumfriesshire town of Moffat on 29 September. Their murderer was executed in 1936. [107] | Murdered | 14 days |
| Mary Jane Rogerson | 20 | United Kingdom | ||||
| 1936 | Katherine E. Hull | 22 | United States of America | Hull was a 22-year-old stenographer from Syracuse, New York who went for a walk while visiting her grandmother in New Lebanon, New York on April 2, 1936 and never returned. She was last seen hitchhiking. Her remains were found by a hunting party on December 8, 1943 near a wooded area near Hancock, Massachusetts. The cause of death was undetermined, though one author speculates it was a homicide. [108] | Found dead | 7 years, 8 months |
| 1937 | Mona Tinsley | 10 | United Kingdom | A schoolgirl who vanished mysteriously while on her way home from school in Newark-on-Trent, England. Her fate remained unclear until six months later, when her body, showing signs of strangulation, was found in the River Idle. A lodger at her parents' house, Frederick Nodder, was later found guilty and hanged for her murder. [109] | Murdered | 6 months |
| 1938 | James Bailey Cash Jr. | 5 | United States of America | Five-year-old James Bailey Cash was kidnapped from his Princeton, Florida, home by Franklin Pierce McCall, a former tenant at his family home. He was killed early on by McCall, who over the next week sent ransom letters to the family, demanding money in exchange for the boy's life. On 5 June McCall was brought in for questioning over the case and two days later confessed, indicating where he had buried the boy's body. He was later convicted, sentenced to death, and subsequently executed for the crime. [110] | Murdered | One week |
| 1938 | Willie McLean | 34 | United States of America | A Scottish-born American soccer player, Willie McLean disappeared without a trace in the summer of 1938. His fate was unknown until June 2022, when The Athletic's Pablo Maurer and Matt Pentz uncovered the details behind that disappearance: McLean had suffered a nervous breakdown after multiple head injuries, and he lived out the last 40 years of his life in a series of public mental health facilities. [111] [112] | Died from natural causes | 86 years |
| 1938 | Margaret Martin | 19 | United States of America | Margaret Martin was a woman from Kingston, Pennsylvania, who went missing on 17 December 1938 and was found dead in Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, several days later. [113] | Murdered | Several days |
| 1939 | Dudley Wolfe | 43 | British Raj (modern-day Pakistan) | Wolfe was an American socialite who took part in the controversial 1939 American Karakoram expedition to K2, attempting to climb the mountain to impress his ex-wife. He became too weak to carry on climbing at 7,000 ft, and his professional climber associates controversially left him behind in a tent in a failed attempt to reach the summit. A team of Sherpas were sent to rescue him but neither he nor the Sherpas were seen alive again. In 2002, melting snow on the mountain revealed his skeletonised body and indicated that he had died alone either in or near the tent. [114] | Died | 63 years |
| 1939 | Gerd Johansson | 10 | Sweden | Swedish schoolgirl who went missing from her home in Stockholm on December 1, 1939. Her body was discovered in Lötsjön showing signs of rape and strangulation. American-Swedish long-distance runner Olle Möller was later convicted of her murder, but the conviction is considered controversial. [115] | Murdered | 8 days |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of Disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1940 | Les Clisby | 25 | Glasgow | Clisby, an Australian World War II fighter ace who served with the Royal Air Force and was credited with sixteen aerial victories, went into action with his flight against more than thirty Bf 110s over Reims on 15 May 1940. Having destroyed two of the German heavy fighters, Clisby's aircraft was seen going down with its cockpit trailing smoke and flames, evidently hit by cannon fire. He and another officer were posted as missing, until both of their aircraft were recovered in the vicinity of Rethel. Clisby was buried in the military cemetery at Choloy in north-eastern France. [116] | Killed in action | Unknown |
| 1940 | Hans Ehlers | 26 | France | German Luftwaffe military aviator Ehlers was shot down by RAF fighters on 18 May 1940, the same day he claimed his first aerial victories. He was listed as missing, but rejoined his unit shortly afterward. [117] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1940 | Ronald Cartland | 33 | Belgium | Cartland, a British Conservative Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for King's Norton in Birmingham from 1935 to 1940, was shot and killed on 30 May 1940 near Watou, Belgium while serving in the Battle of Dunkirk. [118] Initially listed as missing, his family learned of his fate in January 1941, when his mother received a letter from one of Cartland's men, describing Cartland's death in detail. He is now buried at Hotton War Cemetery, in Hotton, Belgium. | Killed in action | 8 months |
| 1940 | Franciszek Gruszka | 30 | United Kingdom | Polish soldier and flying officer for the RAF who mysteriously vanished during the Battle of Britain. Initially listed as missing in action, his remains were located in 1975, when a team of scientists examining marshes in the English countryside stumbled upon the plane's wreckage and his remains. [119] | Killed in action | 35 years |
| 1940 | Eric Charles Twelves Wilson | 28 | Somaliland Protectorate (modern-day Somaliland) | British Army officer and colonial administrator who was captured by Italian forces during the Invasion of British Somaliland. Presumed killed in action, he was released after the Italians surrendered the following year. [120] | Found alive | Several months |
| 1940 | Nicolae Iorga | 69 | Kingdom of Romania | Romanian politician kidnapped on 27 November 1940 and later murdered by a squadron of the Iron Guard, a radical fascist organization operating in the country. [121] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 1941 | Vladimir Chebotaryov | 20 | Soviet Union (modern-day Ukraine) | Soviet commanding officer stationed in Kiev, who was declared missing in action after the territory was occupied by Nazi forces. Chebotaryov made multiple successful escapes from various prison camps, with his final one resulting in him being picked up by Soviet intelligence officers who dispatched him to a SMERSH unit. After the war, he started a successful career as a film director and writer. [122] | Found alive | 4 years |
| 1941 | Raymond Donoghue | 21 | Unknown | An Australian infantryman, Donoghue was captured by the Germans on April 28, 1941, and reported as a POW in August. After his release in 1945, he recounted his experiences to the media, and was later awarded the George Cross for his conduct during the war. [123] | Found alive | 2–3 months |
| 1941 | Fyodor Truhin | 45 | Soviet Union (modern-day Latvia) | Soviet major general who was declared missing in action after being arrested by German forces on June 30, 1941. His fate was uncovered years later, when it was revealed that he had defected to Nazi Germany. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested, convicted of treason and executed. [124] | Found alive | 4 years |
| 1941 | Clive Barry | 16 | Unknown | At the time of his disappearance, Clive Barry was an underage youth who had falsified his date of birth so he could enlist in the Australian army. [125] While serving in the European front, he went missing, but it was later revealed that he had been held as a POW in Italy. Two years after his capture, he managed to escape into Switzerland, and then returned to Australia, where he became a famous novelist. [126] | Found alive | 2 years |
| 1941 | Jim McCairns | 21 | France | McCairns, an English RAF pilot, was posted as missing in action after failing to return from a fast combat with Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters over the French coast on 6 July 1941. His aircraft was positively identified by its squadron code letters painted on the fuselage when sighted by another member of the squadron on 8 July 1941, crash-landed near the beach at Gravelines-Dunkirk. He had been captured by German soldiers, [127] and his status was "prisoner of war, slightly wounded". | Found alive | 2 days |
| 1941 | Konstantin Rakutin | 39 | Soviet Union | A major general of the Red Army, Rakutin led the Yelnya offensive during Operation Barbarossa. On 7 October 1941, he never returned from the frontlines, and was declared dead in 1946. His place of death was discovered by members of the Search Movement and in 1996 his remains were reburied at the military cemetery in Snegiri. He was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union in 1990. [128] | Killed in action | 55 years |
| 1942 | Bill Aldag | 37 | Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia) | Aldag, an Australian rules footballer who enlisted in the 2nd AIF in 1940, was declared missing in 1942, but later found in a POW camp in Thailand, where he worked on the infamous Burma Railway in appalling conditions. In 1945 Aldag returned home. [129] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1942 | Ern Parker | 19–20 | British Malaya (modern-day Singapore) | Parker, an Australian rules footballer who enlisted in the Australian Army in July 1941, was declared missing after the fall of Singapore. During his incarceration Parker worked on the Burma Railway and he survived to return to Australia in late 1945. [130] | Found alive | 3 years |
| 1942 | Hamilton Lamb | 42 | Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia) | Lamb was an Australian politician who was a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly from 1935 to 1943, representing the electorate of Lowan for the Country Party. While serving in the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion of the Second Australian Imperial Force, he was captured as a prisoner of war and sent to work on the Burma Railway in Thailand. He died on 7 December 1943 at the Japanese work camp 131 Kilo in Thailand, suffering from malaria, dysentery and malnutrition. Official notification of his death was not received in Australia until nearly nine months later on 1 September 1944. [131] | Died as a prisoner of war | About 2 years and 9 months |
| 1942 | Harold Ball | 21 | British Malaya (modern-day Singapore) | Harold Ball was an Australian rules football player who on 9 February 1942 [132] was captured by Japanese soldiers near Tengah Air Base, Tengah, British Malaya. He was found dead on 9 May 1942 after being murdered. | Murdered | 3 months |
| 1942 | Peter Chitty | 30 | British Malaya (modern-day Singapore) | Chitty, an Australian rules footballer, was captured during the Fall of Singapore in March 1942 and reported missing on 26 March 1942. While in captivity in the Changi Prison, he won the only "Changi Brownlow" awarded in the Prisoner of War Changi Football League. In 1943, he was transferred to Burma where he spent eighteen months working on the Burma Railway. He was released at the end of World War II. [133] | Found alive | 3 years |
| 1942 | Fyodor Kostenko | 46 | Soviet Union (modern-day Ukraine) | A commander of the Southwestern Front during World War II. Kostenko is believed to have died in the Second Battle of Kharkov on 26 May 1942. His body was recovered in the spring of 2016 and later repatriated to Russia. [134] | Killed in action | 74 years |
| 1942 | Maurice Fitzgerald | 25 | Belgium | Fitzgerald was an Australian rugby league footballer who died while serving in the Royal Australian Air Force in World War II. On 1 June 1942, he was on board a Vickers Wellington which was shot down over Hainaut, German-occupied Belgium, and crashed near Binche. Fitzgerald was originally cited as missing in action, but was declared presumed dead on 26 December 1942. The crew's remains were eventually found, and all were buried at Charleroi Communal Cemetery. [135] | Killed in action | Unknown |
| 1942 | Peter Turnbull | 25 | Territory of New Guinea, Australia (modern-day Papua New Guinea) | Turnbull was an Australian fighter ace of World War II credited with twelve aerial victories. On 27 August 1942, he was patrolling for Japanese tanks with another member of his squadron when his plane was seen flipping onto its back and crashing into the jungle while diving on an enemy target. The cause of the incident was never fully established. Initially posted as missing, Turnbull was confirmed dead on 4 September when troops from the 2/12th Battalion found the wreckage of his plane and his body inside. He is buried in the Bomana War Cemetery, Port Moresby. [136] | Killed in action | 8 days |
| 1942 | Joan Pearl Wolfe | 19 | United Kingdom | 19-year-old Joan Pearl Wolfe disappeared in Surrey, England on 14 September 1942. Her remains were unearthed by two Royal Marines on 7 October 1942; an autopsy conducted on 8 October 1942 concluded that Wolfe died of a single blow to the back of the head. August Sangret, a 28-year-old French-Canadian soldier with whom Wolfe was romantically involved, was arrested and charged with her murder. Sangret was found guilty and sentenced to execution by hanging; he was hanged on 29 April 1943 at the age of 29. The recovered fragments of Wolfe's skull were introduced as evidence at Sangret's trial. [137] | Murdered | 23 days |
| 1942 | Dermot Chichester, 7th Marquess of Donegall | 26 | Italian Libya (modern-day Libya) | Dermot Chichester was a British soldier, landowner and member of the House of Lords whose father was Arthur Chichester, 4th Baron Templemore. He served in the Second World War as a captain with the 7th Queen's Own Hussars in Egypt. [138] He was reported missing in action and believed to have been killed, but had been captured in Libya in November 1942 during the North African campaign. He remained a prisoner of war in Italy until escaping in June 1944. | Found alive | 1 year and 7 months |
| 1942 | Boyd Wagner | 26 | United States of America | American USAAF aviator and fighter ace who disappeared in Florida under unclear circumstances. Partial remains and his plane's wreckage were found in January 1943, and he was reburied in Johnstown. [139] | No | 2 months |
| 1943 | Juran Hisao | 40-41 | South Pacific | Hisao was an author who was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1943. He was reported missing in action over the South Pacific in 1943, but returned safely to Chōshi, Chiba, the following year. [140] | Found alive | Approx. 1 year |
| 1943 | Hans Eller | 32 | Soviet Union | Hans Eller was a German Olympic rower who was active in World War II. After being sent to Russia he disappeared on 23 January 1943 and it was later discovered that he had died on 4 April 1943 near Starobelsk in a camp. [141] | No | Body never found |
| 1943 | Gerry Chalk | 32 | France | Chalk, an English amateur cricketer, was shot down over Louches in northern France on 17 February 1943 whilst serving as a Spitfire pilot in the Royal Air Force. He was listed as missing in action and was presumed dead in January 1944. His body was identified in the 1980s and his remains transferred to the Terlincthun British Cemetery near Wimille in 1989, having originally been listed on the Runnymede Memorial. [142] | Killed in action | At least 38 years |
| 1943 | Robert S. Johnson | 23 | Belgium | Johnson, a USAAF fighter pilot, encountered Luftwaffe aircraft for the first time on a May 14, 1943 mission to escort Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses to bomb Antwerp, damaging two Focke-Wulf Fw 190s that had broken up his squadron's formation. He became separated from the group and, finding himself alone, broke off the engagement. He returned to base to find that he had been erroneously reported as missing in action. | Found alive | Less than a day |
| 1943 | Art Grant | 24 | Nazi Germany | Art Grant was a Canadian professional ice hockey player and a pilot officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force, who was listed as presumed dead with two other crew when their aircraft, containing seven crew in total, was shot down south of Rheinberg, Nazi Germany. The remaining 4 crew members became prisoners of war, and the 3 dead crew, including Grant, had been buried at Monchengladbach after the crash, but were disinterred in 1949 and reburied at Rheinberg War Cemetery. [143] | Killed in action | 6 years |
| 1943 | John L. Jerstad | 25 | Kingdom of Romania | Jerstad was a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor for his actions during Operation Tidal Wave on 1 August 1943, during which he volunteered to lead a formation. Three miles from the target, the largest of the oil refineries at Ploieşti, Jerstad's bomber was badly damaged and set aflame by enemy ground fire. It crashed into the target area after bombs were released on the target, and Jerstad was listed as missing in action. His remains were located seven years later, and buried at the Ardennes American Cemetery near Neupré, Belgium. [144] | Killed in action | 7 years |
| 1943 | Charles Peter O'Sullivan | 28 | Territory of New Guinea, Australia (modern-day Papua New Guinea) | O'Sullivan, a veteran fighter pilot during World War II, was shot down south of Wewak on 20 September 1943. He managed to avoid being captured by the enemy and returned after being missing for one month. [145] | Found alive | 30 days |
| 1944 | John Verdun Newton | 27 | Nazi Germany | Newton was an Australian politician and Royal Australian Air Force officer who was killed in action 55 days after being elected to the Parliament of Western Australia for the seat of Greenough at the 1943 state election. He went missing with seven other crew during an air raid on 14 January 1944, and it was later established by RAF investigations that their plane had crashed into another, and afterward the wreckage of both bombers had been subjected to massive explosions and/or intense fires. The crew were initially buried in the crater caused by the explosion, but late reinterred in the Hanover War Cemetery. [146] | Killed in action | Unknown |
| 1944 | Floyd K. Lindstrom | 31 | Kingdom of Italy | Lindstrom, a United States Army soldier who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on November 11, 1943, landed at an Anzio beachhead with his unit on January 22, 1944, and on February 3, killed in a German counterattack. Initially listed as missing in action, his status was changed to killed in action on June 6. First buried at Nettuno, Italy, he was returned to his family in Colorado Springs in July 1948, where he is buried next to his mother in Evergreen Cemetery. [147] | Killed in action | Unknown |
| 1944 | Percy Charles Pickard | 28 | France | Pickard, an RAF officer during World War II, led a group of Mosquitos on the Amiens prison raid to destroy the walls of a Gestapo prison and free the prisoners inside, during which he and Flight Lieutenant Alan Broadley were killed. Both initially reported missing, in September 1944 it was announced they had been killed in action. Both men were buried at the St Pierre Cemetery near Amiens, France. Pickard is buried in plot 3, row B, grave 13 while Broadley is buried in plot 3, row A, grave 11. [148] | Killed in action | 7 years |
| 1944 | Elmer Gedeon | 27 | France | Gedeon was an American professional baseball player who was one of the only two Major League Baseball players killed in World War II, the other being Harry O'Neill. On April 20, 1944, he was shot down while piloting a B-26 bomber on a mission led by Darrell R. Lindsey. He was listed as missing in action until May 1945, when his grave was located in a small British Army cemetery in France. His remains were later returned to the United States and interred in Arlington National Cemetery. [149] | Killed in action | 1 year |
| 1944 | John Balmer | 33 | Belgium | Balmer, a senior officer and bomber pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in April 1944, failed to return from a mission over Belgium on the night of 11/12 May. Initially posted as missing, his plane was later confirmed to have been shot down, and all of the crew killed. Balmer was buried outside Brussels. [150] | Killed in action | Unknown |
| 1944 | Ray Watts | 26 | Belgium | Watts, an Australian rules footballer who served as a warrant officer and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1943, was shot down by enemy fire on 31 May 1944. He managed to hide in a Belgian pine forest for six weeks until he was captured. He spent more than a year as a German prisoner of war at Stalag Luft III. [151] | Found alive | About 1 year |
| 1944 | Păstorel Teodoreanu | 49–50 | Romania | A notable Romanian humorist, poet, gastronome and World War II propagandist. Teodoreanu disappeared for a period of time during the Allied bombing raids of Bucharest, but later resurfaced, having taken refuge in Budești throughout the campaign. He later returned to regular journalism. [152] | Found alive | c. 2 months |
| 1944 | Shoichi Yokoi | 29 | Guam | Shoichi Yokoi was a sergeant in the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War who was one of the last three Japanese holdouts to be found after the end of hostilities in 1945. He disappeared in July 1944 during the Second Battle of Guam, [153] and on the evening of January 24, 1972, he was discovered alive in the jungle. [154] | Found alive | 28 years |
| 1944 | Hiroo Onoda | 22 | Second Philippine Republic | Hiroo Onoda was an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who fought in World War II and was a Japanese holdout. He entered a jungle on Lubang Island in Occidental Mindoro, Philippines to continue fighting after the US invaded the island. He surrendered on March 11, 1974, after 29 years of guerrilla warfare. [155] [156] | Found alive | 29 years |
| 1944 | Miklós Horthy Jr. | 37 | Kingdom of Hungary | Politician and son of Miklós Horthy, who was abducted by German agents on the orders of Otto Skorzeny. He was held under house arrest and then in concentration camps until he was rescued by the United States Army North on May 5, 1945. [157] | Found alive | 7 months |
| 1944 | Bernard Gavrin | 29 | South Seas Mandate, Japan (modern-day Saipan) | American army private who went missing during the Battle of Saipan sometime between June 15 and July 9, 1944. His fate remained unclear until his remains were recovered by a Japanese non-profit group searching for remains of Japanese soldiers. He was positively identified via DNA testing, but his exact cause of death was not determined. [158] | Presumed killed in action | 70 years |
| 1944 | William T. Carneal | 24 | South Seas Mandate, Japan (modern-day Saipan) | An American serviceman killed fighting the Japanese on the island of Saipan. Initially declared missing in action, his remains were discovered by a Japanese nonprofit organization searching for the remains of fallen Japanese soldiers in 2013. His remains were identified via DNA testing in December 2013. [159] | Killed in action | 69 years |
| 1944 | Rulon Jay Borgstrom | 19 | France | Rulon Jay Borgstrom was the brother of LeRoy, Clyde, and Rolon Day Borgstrom, all of whom served and died in World War II. Rulon Jay served with the 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, when he was reported missing in an attack on Le Dreff, near Brest, France, in August 1944. He was found and died 18 days later on August 25, 1944, from wounds received in action. [160] | Killed in action | 18 days |
| 1944 | Helmut Bergmann | 24 | France | Bergmann, a German Luftwaffe military aviator, night fighter ace, and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, was shot down and killed together with two crew members at Mortain on the Cotentin Peninsula on 6 August 1944. His remains were later found and temporarily buried, and later re-interred at the Marigny German war cemetery. [161] | Killed in action | Unknown |
| 1944 | Eugeniusz Horbaczewski | 26 | France | Polish fighter pilot and flying ace Horbaczewski led his 12-aircraft squadron over France on a 'Rodeo' mission. They attacked a group of 60 Fw 190s of Jagdgeschwaders 2 and 26 over an airfield near Beauvais. Horbaczewski quickly shot down three Focke-Wulfs, but went missing during the dogfight. In 1947, his plane's wreckage and body was found crashed near Velennes. [162] | Killed in action | 3 years |
| 1944 | Pyotr Z. Bazhbeuk-Melikov | 72 | Soviet Union | An ethnic Armenian politician who later joined the Odessa-based Committee for the Salvation of Bessarabia. Bazhbeuk-Melikov later fled the region during the later stages of the Russian Civil War and returned to Bessarabia; he fled the region following the Soviet occupation of 1940 and settled in Ploiești, where he died in 1944. | Died from natural causes | 4 years |
| 1944 | George Varoff | 30 | Republic of China | Varoff, an American pole vaulter, was shot down on December 7, 1944, while doing his military service in China. He and his crew managed to safely bail out, and eventually managed to safely reach their base. [163] | Found alive | 6 weeks |
| 1944 | Lawrence Dickson | 24 | Nazi Germany (modern-day Austria) | Dickson, an American pilot and member of the Tuskegee Airmen who flew in 68 missions during World War II, went missing while flying over Austria. His remains were identified by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in 2018. [164] | Killed in action | 74 years |
| 1944 | Heinrich Bartels | 26 | Nazi Germany | Heinrich Bartels was an Austrian-born German fighter pilot during World War II who was posted as missing in action on 23 December 1944 after being shot down. [165] 23 years later, Bartels' fighter and his remains were found near Bad Godesberg, Germany, on 26 January 1968. | No | 23 years |
| 1945 | Carl Shaeffer | 20 | Belgium | Shaeffer was taken prisoner of war by German forces in Belgium on January 18, 1945. Initially reported missing in action, he was later found to be a prisoner and was released at the end of the war. After he returned home, he began playing basketball at the University of Alabama and later became Alabama's first-ever professional basketball player. [166] | Found alive | 7 months |
| 1945 | Al Blozis | 26 | France | Blozis was an American football offensive tackle and track and field athlete who persuaded the United States Army to waive its size limit and accept him in. On January 31, 1945, his platoon was in the Vosges Mountains of France scouting enemy lines. When two of his men, a sergeant and a private, failed to return from a patrol, he went in search of them alone, [167] but never returned. His death was confirmed in April 1945, and his remains buried at the Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial in Saint-Avold, Moselle. | Killed in action | 3 months |
| 1945 | Keith Thiele | 23 | Nazi Germany | Thiele was a Royal New Zealand Air Force officer who was one of only four New Zealand born airmen to receive two medal Bars to his Distinguished Flying Cross. While leading a formation of eight Tempests to attack locomotives in the Paderborn-Rheine area on 10 February 1945, Thiele and another pilot were shot down by enemy anti-aircraft fire, with Thiele bailing out and being reported as missing in action. Slightly wounded, Thiele was taken captive by the flak crew that had shot him down and was sent to a prisoner of war camp at Dulag Luft near Wetzlar. The camp was liberated on 31 March 1945 before any transport or Allied forces arrived, so Thiele and a Canadian airman stole bicycles and then a motorcycle. Thiele got back to his base five weeks before the war ended in Europe. [168] | Found alive | About 1 month |
| 1945 | Spencer Walklate | 27 | Territory of New Guinea, Australia (modern-day Papua New Guinea) | Australian rugby footballer who later enlisted as a special operations serviceman in the Australian Army. After being sent to Japanese-occupied Papua New Guinea, Walklate was likely captured in mid-April, tortured and executed. His remains were recovered on Kairiru Island in 2013, and promptly reburied at a local war cemetery. [169] | Killed in action | 68 years |
| 1945 | Walter Botsch | 48 | Nazi Germany | Botsch, a German general who commanded the 19th Army and received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 9 May 1945, was considered missing in action on 16 April 1945, but later turned up alive. [170] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 1945 | Gerhart Drabsch | 42 | Nazi Germany | Drabsch, a German writer whose work was part of the literature event in the art competition at the 1928 Summer Olympics, was listed at missing in action on 9 April 1945 while serving in the Volkssturm during the final days of World War II. His remains were later found and interred at Luckenwalde war cemetery. [171] | Killed in action | Unknown |
| 1945 | Simon Eden | 20–21 | Burma | Simon Eden, son of Anthony Eden and Beatrice Beckett, was killed in action with the Royal Air Force in Burma in 1945. His plane was reported "missing in action" on 23 June and found on 16 July; Anthony Eden did not want the news to be public until after the election result on 26 July, to avoid claims of "making political capital" from it. [172] | Killed in action | 3 weeks |
| 1945 | Genrikh Lyushkov | 45 | Manchukuo (modern-day China) | Lyushkov was a high-level Soviet defector and former Far East NKVD chief. A participant in the Great Purge, he fled to avoid what he believed would be arrest and execution into the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. After his defection, he became a military consultant and analyst for the Imperial Japanese Army. He disappeared during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and was reported as being last seen in a crowded train station in Dairen (Dalian) in August 1945. His fate remained unknown for 34 years until 1979, when Yutaka Takeoka, an intelligence officer and Lyushkov's handler, publicly admitted that he executed Lyushkov on the evening of 19 August 1945 in order to prevent him from falling back into Soviet hands. [173] | Executed | Body never found |
| 1945 | Teruo Nakamura | 26 | Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia) | Nakamura was a Taiwanese-Japanese soldier of the Imperial Japanese Army. He was stationed in Morotai Island in Indonesia shortly before the island was overrun by the Allies in September 1944. Declared legally dead in September 1945, [174] he was discovered alive in 1974, and formally surrendered that year. Nakamura was the last known Japanese holdout to surrender after the end of hostilities. | Found alive | 29 years |
| 1945 | Thora Chamberlain | 14 | United States of America | Chamberlain was a teenage female high school student from California who had disappeared and was later reported missing on 2 November 1945. It was later revealed that she had been murdered [ clarification needed ] although her body was never recovered. [175] [176] | Murdered | Body never found |
| 1947 | David and Derek Bousquet | Unknown | Canada | The bodies of two brothers, David and Derek Bousquet, were found concealed in woodland at Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on January 14, 1953. The Bousquets are believed to have been murdered with a hatchet around the year 1947. A DNA test conducted in 1998 confirmed that the victims were brothers between the ages of six and ten. With the help of forensic genealogy, the Vancouver Police Department publicly identified the Bousquets on November 15, 2022. [177] | Murdered | 69 years |
| 1947 | Lai Teck | 45–46 | Thailand | Lai Teck, a leader of the Communist Party of Malaya and Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army, disappeared in 1947. According to the newly elected party leader Chin Peng, he personally went to Bangkok and Hong Kong and contacted the communist party organizations there, asking them to help track down and kill Lai Teck; both the Vietnamese and Thai communists assisted Chin Peng in the manhunt. Eventually, Chin Peng was told by the Thai Communist leader that Lai Teck was accidentally suffocated while three Thai Communists tried to capture him. His body was then put into a gunny sack and tossed into the Menam River. [178] | Killed in struggle | Body never found |
| 1948 | Riva Kwas | 32 | France | Riva Kwas, a 32-year-old Polish woman working as a chemist in Paris, was murdered in her studio-apartment in the Auteuil district on the night of 22 February 1948. Although Kwas' body was discovered five days later, her murder remained unsolved for more than five years, until serial killer John Balaban confessed to Kwas' murder after being detained and charged for murders committed in Australia. [179] | Murdered | 5 days |
| 1948 | Placido Rizzotto | 34 | Italy | Rizzotto was a partisan, [180] socialist peasant and trade union leader from Corleone, who was assassinated by Sicilian Mafia boss Luciano Leggio on March 10, 1948. Over 60 years after his death, remains were found on July 7, 2009, on a cliff in Rocca Busambra near Corleone, and on March 9, 2012, a DNA test, compared with one extracted from his father Carmelo Rizzotto, long dead and exhumed for this purpose, confirmed the identity of remains as being that of Placido Rizzotto following a long and difficult investigation conducted by the State Police at the service of the PS Commissariat of Corleone. [181] [182] | Murdered | 61 years |
| 1948 | Irwin Foster Hilliard | 85 | Canada | Irwin Foster Hilliard was an Ontario lawyer and political figure. He went missing after leaving his home on a shopping trip on 23 November 1948, and while initially believed to have drowned, his body was found near Lambton on 22 December. [183] | Died (undetermined cause) | 29 days |
| 1949 | Olive Durand-Deacon | 69 | United Kingdom | 69-year-old Olive Durand-Deacon, the wealthy widow of solicitor John Durand-Deacon and a resident at the Onslow Court Hotel, was invited to a workshop on Leopold Road by English serial killer John Haigh – who introduced himself to Durand-Deacon as an engineer – on 18 February 1949. Once Durand-Deacon was inside, she was shot in the back of the neck, stripped of her valuables, and placed into a vat of sulphuric acid. Two days later, Durand-Deacon was reported missing by a friend. Police searched the workshop and found items belonging to Durand-Deacon as well as previous victims of Haigh. Some of Durand-Deacon's remains were discovered behind the workshop. Haigh was arrested and charged with Durand-Deacon's murder, as well as the murders of five others. Haigh pled insanity, though was convicted and sentenced to death; he was hanged on 10 August 1949. [184] | Murdered | At least 2 days |
| 1949 | Eva Neander | 28 | Sweden | Neander was a female Swedish journalist and author from the 1940s, [185] who disappeared on February 22, 1949, and was found dead, frozen in ice in Lake Unden in Tiveden [186] exactly one year later. | Died from drowning | 1 year |
| 1949 | Sadanori Shimoyama | 47 | Japan | Shimoyama was the first president of the newly formed Japanese National Railways who was last seen at the Mitsukoshi department store in Nihonbashi, Tokyo on July 5, 1949. While his dismembered body was found on the Jōban Line the following day after having been run over by an outbound freight train, the circumstances of his disappearance and death still remains a mystery. [187] [188] [189] | Died in train accident | 1 day |
| 1949 | Thelma Taylor | 15 | United States | Thelma Taylor was an American teenage female who disappeared on August 6, 1949 in Portland, Oregon and was found dead five days later after being murdered. [190] | Murdered | 5 days |
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was a British author known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime"—a moniker which is now trademarked by her estate—or the "Queen of Mystery". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
Anne Perry was a British writer and murderer. She was the author of the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt and William Monk series of historical detective fiction.
A condemned prisoner's last meal is a customary ritual preceding execution. In many countries, the prisoner may, within reason, select what the last meal will be.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). "Möens, William John Charles". Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co.So while the world's attention was focused on Hopewell, from which the first press dispatches emanated about the kidnapping, the Democrat made sure its readers knew that the new home of Col. Charles A. Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was in East Amwell Township, Hunterdon County.
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