(eerie music)
- [Briggs] Wanna get away? A lot of people do.
Some people like to disappear, some don't go willingly,
while some just do and nobody knows what happened.
What is going on, everyone?
Welcome back to The World According to Briggs.
Let's take a look at places
that have a lot of missing people.
A couple of years back, we did some videos on this subject,
and every once in a while, I get requests for more.
Today's the day.
According to
the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Database,
which is funded by the US Department of Justice,
more than 600,000 persons of all ages
go missing every single year.
And approximately 4,400 unidentified bodies
are recovered every year.
It seems like an awful lot.
A vast majority of missing persons cases
are resolved relatively quickly.
For example, in 2016,
there were 651,000 missing person cases reported.
More than 649,000 of them were resolved within a year.
In the last decade, there's been a steep drop
in the amount of missing persons reported
thanks to better technology like cellphones and Facebook.
Still, more than 17,000 missing person cases
and about 13,000 unidentified body cases
remain open in the United States.
Today's list is about states
that have the highest per capita of missing persons.
If we did it on just the sheer amount
of missing people every single year,
California would top that list by a large margin
because of the insane amount of people living in that state.
They just have so many people there,
the chances of them having a high number
are pretty easy to accomplish.
All right, let's take a look at what we found.
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Number 10, Montana.
Montana has a hard time keeping tabs on people.
They have a lot of open land
and a lot of places to stash bodies if the need arises.
Montana has a lot of Indigenous people living in the state,
so it should be no surprise that 26%
of all missing person cases in Montana are Native American.
Most states have seen an overall drop in cases,
while in 2020, Montana jumped 22%.
Yeah, they're one of the only states that's still rising.
And it is at like a weird amount, almost epidemic level,
that Native Americans are missing there.
There's some pretty sad cases.
In Montana, there's 6.8 people missing every year
for every 100,000 residents.
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Number 9, New Mexico.
New Mexico has a lot of open desert for bodies,
and a lot of people that wanna get out of the state.
They have a solid history of teenage runaways in New Mexico,
and this has helped push the numbers up over the years.
They also have a lot of alien abduction stories
that come out of the Land of Enchantment.
I really don't believe in that,
but I find myself watching or listening
to Joe Rogan's podcast whenever he gets an alien expert on.
I don't know why.
I don't really believe in it, but I'm just amazed by it.
I don't know if I'm amazed
that the people are so into this, or, I don't know,
maybe I'm missing something, who knows?
6.8 people go missing from the Land of Enchantment
for every 100,000 residents.
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Number 8, Hawaii.
The Aloha State is sort of strange
when it comes to missing persons.
If you look at it one way, they're an island,
so where are you gonna go?
If you wanna leave an island,
chances are there's some sort of paper trail:
plane tickets, ship's manifest, captain's log, whatever.
So if you leave the island,
they should be able to find out you did, at least.
But then you have the fact that it's an island.
It's surrounded by water, which, you know,
that's even better than the desert
if you're trying to stash a body, right?
7.5 people for every 100,000 go missing in Hawaii.
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Number 7, Wyoming.
Wyoming is another state that has a bunch of open space.
Wyoming is another state, also,
that has an elevated teen runaway stat.
I guess when you're in a state
that would be considered very boring
to most 16 to 21-year-olds,
they start bouncing pretty quick.
When I worked at Netflix,
it seemed like every attractive
19 to 20-year-old young lady that worked there
fled Wyoming or Idaho for some reason.
They all seem to have left when they were like 17 or 18.
And they just,
"It was so boring, I had to get out of there."
That's their story every single time.
7.8 people for every 100,000 go missing in Wyoming.
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Number 6, Maine.
I don't know what is going on with the rural roads of Maine,
but about 70% of missing folks
were last seen walking down rural roads,
including Jeremy Alex, missing since 2004.
He was last seen walking down a country road,
reportedly in a delusional state.
If you saw him in a delusional state,
wouldn't you like slow down
and roll down your window a little bit
and ask him if he's okay or something?
These people just saw him and kept going, I guess.
Just, you see someone like that,
you should stop and, you know, ask them if they're okay,
ask them if they need help, something.
I mean, unless they have an ax in their hand
and they're muttering "redrum, redrum"
over and over and over.
8.1 people go missing for every 100,000 people in Maine.
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Number 5, Vermont.
Vermont has this thing called the Bennington Triangle.
This is an area in Southwestern Vermont
where a number of people went missing between 1945 and 1950.
That was the area back then.
People still go missing
in the Green Mountain State on a weekly basis.
But back in the day,
when people were missing from the triangle,
one of them included college student
Paula Jean Welden, 18 years old.
She disappeared while out on a walk.
After finishing her shift
in the Bennington College dining hall,
Welden returned to her room, changed into walking clothes,
and headed out for a trail they called the Long Trail.
What she was wearing was good for the weather
that the area was experiencing then during the day,
but definitely not for the drop in the temperature
that would happen overnight.
So she was only gonna be out for a couple hours.
And she was a local, so she would have been aware of this.
While on her walk, she had come across an older couple
and exchange pleasantries,
and then saw a group of hikers
and asked for some directions, and then off she went.
She may have been seen by some people camping off the trail,
but they weren't sure if it was her or not.
No trace of her was ever found
after possibly passing this camp.
They have no idea what happened to this girl.
Now, there's all kinds of rumors that went over the year,
and back in the day, they used to always assume
that a young girl had run off with some boy.
It's hard to track people back then,
and that's what they assumed.
A lot of people thought she went to Canada.
But whatever the reason,
no one ever heard or saw this girl again.
In the Green Mountain State,
8.7 people go missing for every 100,000.
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Number 4, Washington.
It should be no surprise that Washington
has a lot of missing people.
The Evergreen State seems to pump out serial killers,
preppers, hermits, and people living off the grid.
People have a habit here of just walking into the evergreens
and never being seen or heard from again.
There's a lot of Bigfoot people out there too.
Maybe Bigfoot's abducting them.
They talk about that on Joe Rogan's podcast sometimes, too.
Of the people missing from Washington,
one is Ruthie Fawn Kindness.
She vanished at the age of 21 on February 7th, 2011.
Like so many other Native American girls,
she just disappeared.
The young woman had been released
from police custody in Federal Way, Washington
for an outstanding traffic warrant
just hours before disappearance.
Ruthie, after she got out of jail,
called her mother from a payphone
at the Paradise Bowling Alley in Parkland, Washington.
Ruthie has never been seen or heard from again.
Like Vermont, 8.7 people go missing
for every 100,000 in Washington.
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Number 3, Oregon.
Oregon is very similar to Washington in many respects.
It has a lot of trees, a lot of homeless,
a lot of runaways, and a lot of preppers.
I don't think we're as big into Bigfoot as they are, though.
Gotta watch more Joe Rogan to find out.
Every couple weeks, it seems like they find skeletal remains
in the woods of Oregon.
Just last week, they found the remains of some guy
who was reported missing in 1979, Kenneth Lee Bell.
Bell was born in 1957.
He was 22 when he was reported missing by his mother.
He had been in route from the Bay Area of California
to Washington State when he went missing.
Bell had worked in the timber industry
in Washington, Oregon at the time he vanished.
He used to visit Portland during that time,
and he wasn't found too far from Portland, Oregon,
maybe less than an hour's drive in the woods.
The police are at a dead end
because nobody outside his remaining family remember him.
He's been missing that long that everyone forgot about him.
You know, it's not like
he was murdered or anything like that
that they know of at the time,
so his friends or people that knew him, didn't, you know,
you register that.
When someone you know gets killed,
you kinda carry that the rest of your life.
Well, they just thought maybe he quit showing up for work
and all that stuff.
And no Facebook back in the day,
so people forgot about him.
They had no idea what happened to this dude.
In Oregon, 10.4 people go missing for every 100,000.
It's quite a jump from the 8.7 in Washington
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Number two, Arizona.
And back to the desert we go.
Arizona shares a border, and a lot of problems, with Mexico.
This is another solid jump in the per capita of missing.
I read a few things where they kind of said
that a lot of people that go missing in Arizona
are really missing in Mexico,
so it's incredibly hard to figure out
what happened to these people.
A lot of times they just find
like an abandoned car with blood in it and stuff like that.
That's very common there.
So they of course assume the worst.
There are a lot of drug-related disappearances in Arizona.
Again, especially the closer you get to the border,
the higher that number goes.
They also have a high amount of kids missing
in the Grand Canyon State, including Mikelle Biggs,
the 11-year-old Mesa girl who vanished on January 2nd, 1999
waiting for the ice cream truck.
I remember that being on the news. So sad.
13 people for every 100,000 go missing in Arizona.
All right, before we get to number one, don't forget
we got another channel called On this day,
I'll leave a link for that below,
and some other videos that are similar to this one
you might be interested in.
All right, on to number one.
(film reel clicking)
And number one, Alaska.
This one is a serious jump
in the amount of people missing here.
Alaska has a lot of open space and not many people.
There's a lot of places to get lost.
A lot of roads people may drive off of into cliffs,
into rivers, into lakes, whatever.
That's just some of the things.
People get lost in the woods here all the time.
Some people willingly just disappear
into the wilderness of Alaska.
It's kind of common.
I wouldn't say common, but it isn't surprising
when they figure that's what someone did.
Alaska attracts a certain kind of person,
not just loners and misfits,
but explorers and adventures as well.
Anyone drawn to the wild or wide open spaces
often end up in Alaska.
Kinda like Rick Hills.
On February 24th, 2004,
Rick had been home from his oil rig job for a few days
when he decided to drive to Anchorage
about 150 miles away to get his paycheck.
Rick did pick up his check and then he disappeared.
His truck was found two days later,
plowed into a snowbank in the town of Sterling,
about 15 miles away from his home in Soldotna.
I've been in Sterling. Hardly anyone lives there.
It's near a place called Funny River,
which is one of my favorite places just because of the name.
And I can't imagine how sparsely populated
it was back in 2004.
I was there in 2019. There was hardly anyone there.
Anyway, the keys were in the ignition
and his driver's license was on the front seat
along with $292 in his center console.
Rick's tracks in the snow
showed that his right foot was dragging
like he had some sort of injury,
went straight into the woods.
About a quarter mile from the car,
he'd come to a house and walked up to the back porch,
probably looking for help, find someone, something.
Guess he didn't find anyone,
because he wandered onto an abandoned airstrip,
and there his footprints ended, search dogs lost the scent,
and Rick just kind of disappeared.
Nobody knows what happened after he hit that airstrip.
He was 35 years old.
In Alaska 41.8 people go missing
for every 100,000 residents.
All right, that's today's video.
Hope you guys enjoyed it.
Hope you got some information out of it.
Now go forth, have a great day.
Be nice to each other.