9.
Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon
In 2014, Dutch students Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon traveled to Panama and stayed with a
host family who lived on the edge of the jungle.
They planned to spend a few weeks backpacking before doing some volunteer work at a local
school.
The pair set out for an afternoon hike on April 1 with their host family’s dog, but
the dog returned to the home alone that evening.
Kris and Lisanne were still missing the next morning when their hosts decided it was time
to contact law enforcement.
Local residents and the authorities embarked on a 10-day ground and aerial search, but
failed to find the women.
Right as the case started to go cold, someone turned in a backpack containing both Kris
and Lisanne’s cell phones, and a camera.
The phones remained on for nearly 10 days after they disappeared, and they had tried
to call police 77 times.
Their first attempts to call began just hours after they started their hike.
The film inside the camera turned up even more disturbing evidence.
A collection of photos taken in the early morning hours a week into the girls’ disappearance
shows their belongings spread out on rocks, mounds of dirt, and a bleeding wound on Kremers’
temple.
Two months after the pair vanished, police found their bones.
The remains were too decomposed to identify a cause of death, and the circumstances surrounding
their deaths remain a mystery.
8.
Brittanee Drexel
Seventeen-year-old Brittanee Drexel didn’t tell her mom before leaving her home in the
Rochester, New York area for a spring break trip with friends in 2009.
Dawn Drexel had already told her daughter that she couldn’t travel to Myrtle Beach,
but Brittanee went anyway.
A few days into the vacation, Brittanee left the hotel the group was staying at to visit
a friend about a mile-and-a-half (2.4 km) away.
Surveillance shows her entering the Blue Water Resort, then leaving a little while later.
Brittanee stopped texting her boyfriend, John Grieco, shortly after that, so he called her
friends to check on her.
When they didn’t know where she was Grieco called Brittanee’s mom, who got the authorities
involved.
Police interviewed a nightclub promoter who was last seen with the teen and couldn’t
rule him in or out.
Brittanee’s cell phone last pinged in the early morning between 50 and 60 miles (80-97
km) south of Myrtle Beach before abruptly going dead.
Dawn moved to the area to be closer to where her daughter had disappeared.
She suspected that Brittannee was trafficked.
Law enforcement claimed that human trafficking wasn’t a major issue in the area, but in
2019, the South Carolina Human Trafficking task force rated Horry County as the top county
in the state for reported victims.
Meanwhile, the FBI concluded that Brittanee was probably murdered and offered a $25,000
reward for information solving the case.
Two jailhouse informants claimed to have seen her being abused inside the home of a man
named Timothy Taylor.
They said that Taylor originally tried to sell Brittanee to traffickers, but decided
to kill her when the case gained widespread attention.
But he was never charged, and his mother told the press earlier this year that she wants
people to stop associating her son with Brittanee’s disappearance, since there’s no compelling
evidence against him in the case.
7.
Robyn Gardner
In 2011, 35-year-old Robyn Gardner told her boyfriend that she was taking a family trip
to Aruba when in reality, she was going there with her secret lover, Gary Giordano.
The clandestine couple went snorkeling on a secluded beach when, according to Giordano,
they got caught in a rip current and started drifting further and further out to sea.
He managed to make it to shore, but had lost sight of Robyn amid the panic.
Giordano went to a nearby restaurant and summoned help.
To many, he seemed oddly calm about the ordeal.
So calm, in fact, that the Aruban authorities suspected him of foul play.
They caught him trying to leave the country and jailed him for four months, but they ultimately
lacked enough evidence to continue holding Giordano and released him.
He remains a suspect in the case and Robyn’s family and friends also think he harmed her.
Speaking with local tv news, Giordano adamantly insisted that Robyn drowned.
Her body has never been found, but he refuses to call the case a disappearance.
Investigators found photos on his camera that they would only describe as “beyond pornographic,”
and they discovered that Giordano had taken out a $1.5 million accidental death insurance
policy shortly before the trip.
Witnesses who had seen the couple dining together shortly before Robyn vanished said that it
was odd she had gone snorkeling.
She just looked too put-together to want to go into the water and ruin her hair and makeup.
Others said that she appeared woozy at the restaurant and had only picked at her salad.
A man who was fishing along the beach the couple supposedly went snorkeling on said
that they never got into the water, but that they had driven off shortly before Robyn disappeared.
Giordano was never charged, and we may not ever know what happened to Robyn.
But it’s unfortunately probably safe to say that she’s not going to return home
alive.
6.
John Halford
John Halford had a good life.
He owned a successful bookstore in England, and he and his wife raised three kids together.
But things took a left turn in 2011, when the marriage became rocky as it approached
its 25th anniversary.
The couple also ran into some money problems.
Out of the blue, Halford decided to take an expensive solo cruise to Egypt.
The 63-year-old was eager to check the trip off his bucket list before arthritis made
it impossible to do so.
Everything seemed to be going fine until the last night of the cruise.
Halford was last seen drinking cocktails at one of the ship’s bars shortly before he
disappeared without a trace.
His belongings, including his wallet, passport, and souvenirs he had bought, were left behind
in his cabin.
Given the nature of his circumstances at the time, authorities believed it was possible
that Halford had jumped to his death.
But his wife insisted that he remained in good spirits despite their struggles.
If he hadn’t jumped, investigators concluded that he must have fallen overboard, although
many have pointed out that this would have been difficult to do on a ship with railings
that were three-and-a-half feet (1.1 meters) high.
In the absence of any suspicious findings, however, there was no reason to think that
foul play was involved.
A judge declared Halford dead in 2018.
His wife has accepted that he’s probably no longer alive, but reported feeling a lingering
lack of closure since nobody truly knows what happened to him.
5.
Natalee Holloway
After finishing high school as a straight-A student in 2005, Natalee Holloway traveled
to Aruba with her classmates for their senior trip.
Several days after arriving, she met a 17-year-old Dutch national named Joran van der Sloot at
her hotel.
Natalee was last seen leaving in a car with van der Sloot and two of his friends in the
early morning hours.
When it came time for the recent graduates to leave the island, the Alabama teen was
nowhere to be found.
Van der Sloot told police that he dropped Natalee back off at her hotel, but was unable
to substantiate his claim.
Meanwhile, volunteers began searching for the missing young woman.
Nobody turned up any trace of Natalee.
Investigators tested hair strands for DNA, drained a pond, and went to other extremes
to try finding her, but it was literally as if she had vanished into thin air.
While Van der Sloot remains at the top of the suspect list to this day, law enforcement
hasn’t found any evidence to allow them to convict.
He even offered to lead Natalee’s family to her body, but all he provided them with
were dead ends in exchange for large sums of money that he demanded.
And video evidence of Van der Sloot admitting to killing Natalee still wasn’t enough to
connect him to her disappearance.
In 2010, he traveled to Peru, where he killed a 21-year-old woman named Stephany Flores
Ramirez.
He pled guilty to that murder and received a 28-year prison sentence.
Natalee was declared dead in absentia in 2012.
All signs point toward Van der Sloot being her killer, but her remains were never found.
If he ends up facing justice for Natalee’s death, it won’t be until after he’s served
his time in Peru and is extradited back to Dutch territory.
4.
DeOrr Kunz
During the summer of 2015, Jessica Mitchell and Vernal DeOrr Kunz took their two-year-old
son, DeOrr Kunz, on a camping trip to the Timber Creek Campground in Idaho.
They were joined by DeOrr’s great-grandfather, Robert Walton, and a family friend named Isaac
Reinwald.
Things took a terrifying turn when Jessica and Vernal mistakenly thought that Robert
Walton was watching their toddler.
In the meantime, he was under the impression that the tyke was under his parents’ watchful
eye.
DeOrr has never been seen since that day, despite an extensive search by law enforcement.
His parents, Walton, and Reinwald all claimed that they had no idea what happened to the
little boy.
But Jessica and Vernal have reportedly failed multiple polygraph exams, and detectives say
that the details of their stories don’t add up.
Two private investigators hired by the family have said that they believe DeOrr’s parents
had something to do with his disappearance.
At the same time, there’s very little evidence to suggest that the couple harmed their son.
Investigators are treating the case as a homicide, and they hope to catch a break that will enable
them to bring the perpetrator to justice.
What do you think happened to DeOrr?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and be sure to subscribe for more mysterious
disappearances!
3.
Leyta Lynn Cordes
Leyta Lynn Cordes and her husband, Frank, had a troubled marriage that was affected
by infidelity and personal losses.
Hoping to escape the problems that had plagued them for quite some time, the couple built
their dream vacation home on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten in 2007.
After leaving a gathering with friends in early 2008, Leyta allegedly decided she wanted
to visit a local casino.
She had drunk quite a bit and wasn’t even walking straight, and Frank wouldn’t let
her take the car, so she walked.
Frank initially stayed behind, but he wanted to make sure Leyta had reached her destination
safely, so he went to go look for her.
He didn’t find his wife, but he assumed she had made it to the casino, so he returned
home.
Leyta never returned home, and she hasn’t been seen since.
It soon came to light that even though she and Frank claimed to be working on their marriage,
they still fought a lot behind closed doors, and a divorce wasn’t off the table.
What’s more, Leyta’s friends had become concerned about her heavy drinking and prescription
pill abuse in recent months.
Frank told police that he and his wife had never had a violent encounter, despite their
problems.
But they still considered him a person of interest, and so did Leyta’s friends, who
believe that for her to disappear without a trace, something bad must have happened.
Frank was arrested, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him in the disappearance,
and he was released after being held for three months.
Unfortunately, Leyta’s friends and family have no choice but to live without answers
for now.
2.
Eileen Christie
As a teacher and a nun in Brentwood, Long Island, Eileen Christie had a wholesome lifestyle.
It simply wasn’t like her to run in bad circles, get caught up in mischief, or land
herself in bad situations by being reckless.
But trouble apparently found her in 2016, when the 72-year-old took a trip to the Austrian
Alps.
Christie certainly wasn’t young, but she was an experienced traveler, and her loved
ones didn’t expect anything to go wrong during the solo vacation.
But the retired nun’s email updates stopped coming several days into the trip, and her
concerned family contacted Austrian authorities to report her missing.
Police found most of Christie’s belongings, including her wallet, passport, and cell phone,
at a hostel she was staying at.
She appeared happy in the images on her camera.
The woman’s bathing suit was missing, leading investigators to wonder if she drowned while
taking a swim.
But she was a good swimmer, and had traveled to Austria several times before, so she was
familiar with the area.
Christie remains missing, and her friends and relatives are no closer to receiving answers
than they were on day one.
Her disappearance serves as a sobering reminder that even the most responsible and experienced
traveler can get caught in harm’s way.
1.
Norman Lee
While snorkeling in the Cayman Islands in 2015, comic book artist Norman Lee somehow
became separated from his wife, Jan, and drifted out of sight.
Jan arrived on shore alone and went for help.
As a former college fencer, Lee was well-built, giving his loved ones hope that he had somehow
survived and would soon turn up alive.
Unfortunately, that never happened.
Royal Caribbean authorities called off their search for Lee just a few days after he went
missing.
They said that a recovery was highly unlikely because of the strong current in the area
and reassured the public that they had put all available resources into trying to find
Lee.
The talented 47-year-old had worked for both Marvel and DC Comics throughout his 20-year
career.
His artwork was featured in popular titles such as X-Men and the Avengers.
He was an “inker,” meaning that he was responsible for filling in the final lines
on the characters.
Lee’s disappearance sparked widespread grief among comic book enthusiasts and fellow artists
throughout the world.
The investigation remained open, and in 2016, the FBI offered a $10,000 reward for information
leading to his recovery or a conviction in the case, although it’s unclear whether
foul play was involved.
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