In missing person cases, sightings are obviously one of the most important things for investigators
trying to locate the individual. Sometimes, these sightings can completely change a missing person
case, whether that’s where the search team is looking or whether anybody is looking at all.
Number 5
It’s now almost exactly 30 years since Adam John Breaux disappeared into thin air
after an AA meeting in Houma, Louisiana.
AJ, as he was known, was 50-years-old at the time of his disappearance.
He was a recovering alcoholic, but had been sober for eight years at this point, and was an active
member of his Alcoholics Anonymous group, working as the local chapter’s secretary.
The day he vanished seemed like any other. It was a Wednesday evening in late August.
AJ spent the day working at the clothing store where he had worked as a salesman for 30 years.
In the evening, he went to the Easy Does It Club for the AA meeting.
He left the meeting at about 8pm. Half an hour later, he stopped at
a local convenience store to buy milk. This was the last confirmed sighting of AJ.
AJ was reported missing the following day. He had previously been married, but had
divorced from his ex-wife seventeen years earlier. Still, he had a good relationship with her
and his three now adult daughters. They were all concerned when he didn’t return home that evening.
On August 30th, two days after the last confirmed sighting, AJ’s car was found,
abandoned opposite the convenience store. The car was locked. Inside they found his wallet,
a personal chequebook, the chequebook for the AA chapter,
and a brown bag containing $165 in AA funds. The only things that seemed to be missing
were the car keys, the milk AJ had purchased, and AJ himself.
Police also noticed that the vehicle was low on fuel, even though AJ had purchased $10 worth of
fuel earlier that day. His known travels that day couldn’t account for the lack of fuel.
AJ was spotted a number of times after this point. The same day his car was found, an acquaintance
claimed to have seen AJ at a different convenience store, using the pay phone there.
He was wearing an ill-fitting, lumberjack-type shirt and appeared dishevelled. This was very
out of character of AJ. The acquaintance also said he saw a red compact car parked nearby, with three
men inside who all appeared to be watching AJ. Another acquaintance also claims to have seen AJ
in the same car with a group of men about eight miles out of town, and another person later came
forward to say they had seen a man being forced into a car around the time AJ had disappeared,
though they couldn’t identify the victim as AJ. Even though there were no signs of foul play,
AJ’s family believe he was taken against his will, presumably as he was making his way to his vehicle
after buying milk. If this is the case, though, it seems odd that there was no sign of a struggle.
Another possibility is that AJ relapsed. Even after so long, relapses can happen, and a fourth
sighting seems to suggest this may have happened. About a month after AJ vanished, a woman named
Kristy Boudreaux was visited by a man matching his description. She lived 30 miles away from where he
was last seen. The man was dishevelled and smelled of alcohol. He tried to sell her frozen fish.
The strangest piece of the puzzle came two weeks after AJ disappeared.
Police received a note saying AJ had gotten drunk and accidentally taken his own life. His
body had been dumped in a lake. But when police searched the lake, there was no sign of AJ.
Number 4
Bridget Pendell has not contacted her family since late 1996.
Bridget’s life had been on a downward spiral for years at this point,
but she always made sure to send a message to her family every month or so.
But by the time her family started looking for her, she had already disappeared
into San Francisco’s homeless population, and where she is now remains a mystery.
Bridget had been a bright, good looking young woman. She briefly studied at a modelling school
before tuition became too expensive. She went to community college and became a registered nurse,
got married and had a daughter. But for some reason, things changed for
Bridget. She began using illegal substances and became addicted to hardcore narcotics.
She divorced from her husband and travelled to San Francisco, where she worked on the streets.
Sometimes she would take her daughter with her, but her family eventually took custody
of her daughter and Bridget was alone. At one point she began following the band
the Grateful Dead, and was sharing a hotel room with another follower of the band.
They paid weekly for the hotel room, but sometime in 1998 or 1999 they went their separate ways.
For years, Bridget’s sister has searched for her,
handing out fliers to those in San Francisco’s homeless population.
Many believe she has already passed away, but some claimed to have seen her relatively recently.
After the San Francisco Chronical published an article about homelessness in the mid-2000s,
Bridget’s sister was given new hope. The article featured an image of a homeless
woman who had been given the nickname The Crier. She wanders the streets of San Francisco weeping,
but nobody knows why. Many believe she bears a striking resemblance to Bridget.
If this is the case, authorities have never been able track her down. Bridget’s sister
sadly passed away at the age of 29, never getting the answers she searched for regarding her sister.
There is a much darker possibility. Around the same time Bridget disappeared into thin air,
a criminal named Jack Bokin was attacking prostitutes. He was arrested in 1997,
and Bridget’s family asked if he had anything to do with her disappearance.
Bokin denied ever knowing her, but police have warned he may know more than he’s let on.
Number 3
In April 1991, Gordon Collins, his girlfriend, and two friends vanished at sea. They had been
vacationing in Baja California and had taken a small boat out to fish when a storm came in.
The following day, the bodies of Gordon’s girlfriend and one of his friends were
recovered, along with the overturned boat. But Gordon and the second friend were missing.
Given the circumstances, it was assumed they both perished at sea, and both were declared
legally deceased, but not long after the incident, some strange reports came in.
Two fishermen reported they had seen a man drag himself out of the sea not far from where
Gordon’s boat was found. He looked badly hurt, but mangedmanaged to limp ashore and was last seen
trying to board a bus. When shown a picture, they confirmed the man they saw was Gordon.
Another man named Jose Peralta reported seeing Gordon on a nearby beach later the same day.
The dishevelled man said he was waiting for some friends he had gone fishing with,
and asked if he could have Jose’s blanket, as he was going to sleep on the beach.
Gordon’s parents continued to search La Paz and Cabo San Lucas for any trace of their son,
now convinced he had somehow survived the boating incident but was suffering from amnesia.
At one point, they met a worker at a taco stall
who said he had seen Gordon an hour earlier and pointed them in the direction he had gone.
A few miles later, another person said they had seen him half an hour ago.
They followed the road to a small village, where everyone said they had seen Gordon
five minutes earlier. When asked where he had gone, they allegedly all “clammed up”.
There were more than 50 sightings of Gordon from the nearby area over the next couple of years.
It’s impossible to know how many of these people genuinely
thought they saw the missing man, though. But there was one somewhat credible sighting.
An American man who had been living from handouts was arrested for stealing food. The translator,
an American living in the area, told investigators in Gordon’s case that the man who had been
arrested was Gordon. When the arrested man was asked, he gave his name as Gordy. The translator
confirmed the person in the missing person flyer was the same man who had been arrested.
But Gordy had been released by the time Gordon’s family arrived, and once again disappeared.
It seems likely Gordon sadly did pass away in the boating accident,
and a string of false leads kept his parents’ hopes alive.
But the US Consulate no longer believes Gordon to have passed away, and the search continues.
Number 2
Sometimes mistaken identities can lead investigations on wild goose chases,
as was sadly the case with Renee LeManna, who remains missing to this day.
Renee was a well-educated, bright young woman who spoke multiple languages fluently and had
travelled with the Peace Corps. She was passionate about her work and was studying nuclear medicine
when her life seemed to fall apart overnight. Renee had been in a long-term relationship with
an Afghan taxi driver who she had been dating for more than a decade. However, in January 1994,
the two had an argument and Renee left their home in New York. She was seen wandering the
streets in sub-zero temperatures wearing a silk Afghan wedding outfit without any shoes.
She was taken to hospital and given a psychiatric evaluation.
Her sister, who lived nearby, collected Renee and took her home. About an hour later, though,
Renee ran outside again for no apparent reason, wearing just pyjamas, a bathrobe, and slippers.
Police would find the bathrobe and a slipper, but Renee had apparently disappeared into thin air.
At some point, Renee was diagnosed with dissociative fugue disorder,
meaning she likely doesn’t know who she is. Sniffer dogs traced Renee’s scent to two nearby
houses, but there was no sign of her there. It did seem like she had stayed in New York, however.
There were a number of sightings of Renee around Manhattan. The last confirmed sighting came
on a subway platform, where she was apparently looking at one of her own missing person fliers.
She didn’t seem to recognise herself. Around the same time, Renee’s case was
featured on the TV show Unsolved Mysteries. What followed was a flurry of sightings,
from Virginia to Tennessee. It’s unknown how many of these sightings were taken seriously,
but Renee’s family did believe she was hitchhiking through the US and searching for her family.
In 2015, Renee’s sister got a phone call from a woman in Virginia
who claimed to have spent four days with Renee. The woman, Ruth, had seen Renee sitting in a park,
talking to two police officers. She looked dishevelled, and Ruth took her in. The woman
believed to be Renee explained that she was hitchhiking down the east coast, and couldn’t
understand why her family couldn’t find her. After four days, Renee disappeared again.
Ruth passed the information on to police, along with photographs she had taken.
The images were almost a perfect match to the age-progressed pictures of Renee,
and police believed they had a match. The photos Ruth had taken were shared
across social media and even plastered on the back of lorries. Unfortunately,
in 2016, police finally caught up with the woman. Fingerprints confirmed this was not Renee.
The false sightings had led police all the way to Florida. It’s now believed Renee is still in
New York, if she is still alive. Her sister hasn’t given up hope on finding her one day, though.
Number 1 When 24-year-old Shonda Stansbury disappeared
in December 2006, police and assumedpolice assumed she had gone of her own accord.
Shonda was known to use illegal substances,
and had the same day been kicked out of the trailer where she was staying with friends.
Her mother filed a missing persons report five days after she was last seen. The same day,
just before midnight, police received a disturbing phone call that made them reassess the case.
Shonda was last seen at about 6:30am on December 9th. She had gone to a Waffle House in Weldon,
North Carolina, where her sister Jackie worked, though her sister wasn’t at work at the time.
Shonda had made a habit of calling her family members every day to check in with them and
let them know she was ok. She knew they worried about her. She last called Jackie the day before,
while her sister was at work. Jackie said Shonda told her she’d call when she got off shift.
That call never came. She also never called her mother that evening, as was her usual routine.
Instead, she showed up at Jackie’s place of work while Jackie wasn’t there,
bruises covering her arms and legs and a lump on her temple.
A regular customer gave Shonda a lift back to the trailer park where she was staying,
dropping her off before 7am. It was the last time anybody is known to have seen her.
For unknown reasons, the friends Shonda had been staying with asked her to leave that same day.
It’s not clear if this was after she returned from the restaurant, or if they had already asked her
to leave when she arrived at the Waffle House that morning. The friends may have been the last
people to have seen Shonda but there’s no reports about what kind of state she was in when she left.
After days with no calls from her daughter, Shonda’s mother
contacted police at 10.15 am on December 14th. As Shonda was an adult, and not considered to
be at risk, there was little movement in the case straight away, and no immediate TV appeals.
So when, at 11:30pm that night, police received a call from a woman saying she’d seen Shonda in
distress running into the woods behind a store, it was unlikely the caller knew she was missing.
The call came in to say someone the caller recognised as Shonda
was being chased into the woods before a convenience store on Highway 158. Shonda wasn’t
wearing any clothes and had a wound on her face, and was being chased by two African American men.
The caller hung up before giving any personal details, but police eventually
managed to track the woman down. The woman, who remains anonymous,
claims she knew Shonda. She saw Shonda running and calling for help, but the woman was too scared to
intervene at the time. She also didn’t have a cell phone with her, so drove home to contact police.
Strangely, considering how late at night it was, she was able to give a relatively accurate
description of the men, including the fact one was of stocky build and wearing a baseball cap,
while the other was of medium build, with dreadlocks and Timberland boots.
Police searched the woods where Shonda had allegedly been running into, but there was
no sign of her or any disturbed earth. Police now consider Shonda to be at risk.
It’s still not clear if she left of her own accord and ran into foul play afterwards,
or if she had been taken against her will. Many have questioned the authenticity of the
caller, but it’s impossible to know exactly what happened that day until Shonda is found.