#7 - Susan and William Schmierer 65-year old Susan Schmierer and her 64-year
old husband, William, left their home in Williamsburg, Virginia on May the 27th of 2018.
They had plans for a cross-country vacation that would eventually bring them all the way
to Palm Springs, California, a week later.
However, what had started as an exciting summer getaway to the sun-soaked shores of one of
California’s most popular tourist destinations soon turned into an extensive search for the
Schmierers, who had gone missing not long after their arrival in Palm Springs.
The investigation into their whereabouts began on June the 13th after the San Bernardino
sheriff’s department received a tip that a vehicle had been parked near the Amboy Crater
National Landmark, in the Mojave Desert, since June the 2nd.
They soon discovered the car belonged to the Schmierers and an aviation crew was called
in to sweep the area in search of the missing couple.
In the days that followed, the sheriff’s department recruited the help of volunteer
searchers to aid in the rescue efforts.
A few days after the investigation had begun, the remains of an unidentified male were found.
A coroner later confirmed it to be the body of William Schmierer, though his wife remained
missing for nearly a year.
In May of 2019, her body was finally found in the desert, east of the Amboy Crater.
The search for Susan had taken so long because of the extreme daytime temperatures typical
of the Mojave Desert.
The area she was eventually found in occasionally hit highs of 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
The autopsies confirmed the Schmierers had passed away due to heat exposure.
#6 - Erika Lloyd 37-year old Erika Lloyd, a single mother from
California, went missing in a sparsely populated desert region near Joshua Tree National Park.
She’d embarked on what she described as a “pandemic road trip” in the midsummer
months of 2020.
Her final destination was Joshua Tree, located some 500 miles southeast of her home in the
city of Walnut Creek.
The trip came as a surprise to her 12-year-old son and her roommates, whom Lloyd hadn’t
notified of her escapade until she was already walking out the door.
She kept in contact with family members for the first couple of days, but the communication
ceased on June the 16th.
Lloyd had spoken to her mother on the phone that day, but their conversation was extremely
peculiar and the woman had begun to suspect something was wrong.
Later that same day, Lloyd’s car was found by local police abandoned and vandalized near
a highway intersection in Twentynine Palms.
She was never heard from again.
For 8 months, the authorities combed through the vast California desert hoping to find
clues regarding her whereabouts.
Their search yielded no concrete results, but on January the 31st of 2021, hikers in
Wonder Valley came upon what they believed to be human bones, roughly 10 miles east of
Twentynine Palms.
The remains were later identified as belonging to Erika Lloyd.
The police investigation into her death found no evidence of foul play, though two individuals
were arrested on June the 8th of 2021 for stealing her car and moving it to the area
where it was eventually found by the police.
The theft had reportedly thrown off the authorities’ initial search efforts and prolonged the investigation.
The most common theory regarding Erika’s fatal road trip is that she’d suffered some
sort of mental breakdown stemming from the stress of shutting down her business and homeschooling
her son.
What exactly led to her death, however, remains a mystery.
#5 - The Thottapilly Family Sandeep and Soumya Thottapilly, of Santa Clarita,
California, had taken their two children, 12-year-old Siddhant and Saachi, aged 9, on
a family road trip up to Portland, Oregon, in late March of 2018.
After spending a week there, they planned on meeting up with family in San Jose during
the drive back home.
The Thottapillys’ never showed up, however, and their relatives hadn’t heard from them
in 2 days.
They reported the family missing to local police.
Just a day earlier, witnesses had mentioned seeing a car descend into the Eel River, off
of Highway 101.
There had been torrential downpours, and the vehicle slipped off the road, falling down
an embankment and landing in the water.
The authorities soon realized the car belonged to the Thottapillys, after two bodies were
recovered from the scene of the crash.
The victims were positively identified as Sandeep and Saachi, but Soumya and Siddhant
were still missing.
The river’s heavy currents had taken them six miles downstream, where their remains
were eventually found.
The site of the Thottapilly family’s tragic accident was located just 30 miles from the
area of the Eel River where another deadly crash had occurred, just one month prior.
#4 - Joseph Zyvith and Amanda Caldwell The families of 30-year-old Joseph Zyvith
and Amanda Caldwell, aged 29, were thrust into a tailspin of panic when the couple mysteriously
went missing, in January of 2019.
Suspicions arose after Caldwell, a resident of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, had failed to
show up to work on the morning of Thursday the 3rd.
She hadn’t called off of her shift and her cell phone was later found in her apartment.
Her friends and co-workers claimed it was quite unusual for her to cut off communication
and abandon her phone in such a manner.
Caldwell’s family quickly reported her missing.
Zyvith’s whereabouts were also unknown at the time, as he had called out of work early
Thursday morning.
He too was reported missing by his family, and an investigation was then launched by
Greensburg police.
They had very little information to go on, but they were able to track the use of Caldwell’s
credit card to a small town close to Charleston, South Carolina, which was roughly 600 miles
south of her home in Greensburg.
It was speculated that Caldwell had been kidnapped by her boyfriend when Zyvith’s car was found
parked, behind her home, and the police found traces of blood on its steering wheel.
Both families feared for the worst.
Their concerns dissipated, however, when an interstate search for the couple resulted
in them being found on a so-called “spontaneous vacation” in South Carolina.
The blood on Zyvith’s steering wheel had apparently come from a cut on his hand.
While everyone was relieved to find the couple alive and well, some called the Greensburg
police department’s actions into question, saying their search efforts were premature,
especially considering the missing persons were two adults.
#3 - Harry Devert The dismembered body of 32-year old New York
native Harry Devert was found on the side of the road, in a small desert town in Mexico,
in July of 2014.
Just six months prior, Devert had been reported missing by his girlfriend.
The last contact she’d had with him was in the form of a chilling text where Devert
said he was being escorted out of an area that was too dangerous for him to be in.
He was riding his motorcycle from his home in the US all the way down to Brazil for the
2014 World Cup, but had gotten caught up in a section of Mexico fraught with gang violence
and drug cartel activity.
According to a Mexican newspaper called Excelsior, Devert was kidnapped by a gang called “Los
Guerreros'' and was subsequently murdered.
His severed body parts were put into multiple trash bags and he was left next to the road,
alongside his bike and bags filled with marijuana and cocaine.
It’s unclear whether Los Guerreros had tried to sell Devert these drugs, as such illegal
transactions are known to occur between Mexican gangs and American tourists.
Devert had been documenting his journey on a website called “A New Yorker Travels”.
He hoped to chronicle his intercontinental adventure from beginning to end, but the tragic
conclusion to his story came far sooner than he could’ve anticipated.
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#2 - Ryan Boken and Molly Bock Frantic friends and family of a couple from
South Salt Lake, Utah, reported them missing to local police, on April the 17th of 2019.
Ryan Boken and Molly Bock, a pair of recently engaged 27-year-olds, had suddenly disappeared
without a trace.
Their cars were not in the driveway while their dog, a pit bull named Sadie, was gone
as well.
Concerned friends’ attempts to contact the couple proved futile.
Ryan’s phone had been turned off and Molly’s was left behind at their home.
Missing-persons flyers were distributed all throughout the couple’s neighborhood and
other parts of South Salt Lake.
The police eventually located Molly’s car and towed it to the station as evidence.
Just as the investigation was starting to produce results, the couple was found in Arizona.
They had taken an unplanned road trip down south to visit family and hadn’t told anyone
about it.
News of their safety spread through their local community, much to the relief of loved
ones who’d been worried about their whereabouts.
#1 - The Tromp Family In late August of 2016, the Tromp family packed
up their car and headed out into the scenic Australian countryside.
To the outside world it appeared to be a pleasant getaway but, as members of the Tromp family
started randomly appearing, one-by-one, in different locations around the country, the
truth behind their sudden excursion began to reveal itself.
As it turns out, the Tromp parents, 51-year-old Mark and 53-year-old Jacoba, had grown increasingly
unstable in the months and weeks leading up to their road trip.
The couple ran a successful landscaping company, in a little town just outside of Melbourne,
and also operated a profitable redcurrant farm on their property.
They had created a good life for themselves and their three children, Riana, Mitchell,
and Ella, all of whom were in their 20s at the time of the family trip.
The financial security that the Tromps had obtained, through their various business ventures,
became a gateway for them to develop the delusion that someone was after them and their money.
They truly believed that they were in imminent danger, so they fled.
They left behind everything that might be used to track their location, including credit
cards and cell phones.
Their son, Mitchell, thought his parents were being irrational, but he went along with them
to make sure they stayed safe.
He smuggled his phone aboard the car but, once his parents discovered this, they forced
him to toss it out the window.
After traveling with them for roughly 500 miles, Mitchell asked to be dropped off in
a town near Sydney.
Later that same day, the two daughters, Riana and Ella, left their parents behind, stole
a car, and drove to the nearest town.
They reported their parents as missing to local authorities.
Ella returned home shortly thereafter and she became the first member of the Tromp family
to be located since their abrupt disappearance.
Mitchell arrived home a day later.
Riana was ultimately found by a truck driver who had discovered her stowed away in the
back of his vehicle.
She had suffered some sort of psychological trauma, as she had trouble telling the driver
who she was or what had happened to her.
At some point along the way, Mark and Jacoba had gotten separated themselves.
Jacoba was spotted wandering aimlessly through a Victorian town, dazed and confused, while
her husband wasn’t found until a few days later.
By this time, an interstate search for the missing Tromps had been set in motion, and
Mark was eventually found lying on the side of the road, near Wangaratta Airport.
The case of the missing Tromp family had become a national curiosity over the course of the
week-long search.
There were a number of theories and rumors in circulation as to why they had left their
home in the first place.
Some thought chemicals on their farm had severely altered their grasp on reality, prompting
them to flee in a panic.
The police proposed that the family had suffered some sort of shared delusion.
Nobody knows what really happened to cause such mental distress to an entire family.
That’s why it’s been called referred to as one of the most bizarre public meltdowns
of modern times.
But the Tromps themselves have since done their best to move on and returned to their
normal lives as if nothing had ever happened.
Thanks for watching!
Would you rather embark on a cross-country trip entirely on foot or have to do it in
a car with your pesky in-laws?
Let us know in the comments section below!