When people go missing without explanation, it wreaks havoc on their families and loved
ones as there is often no closure to their cases.
But in some missing person cases, the truth can be stranger than fiction when unexpected
endings lead to conclusions that were never considered while investigations were underway.
5.
Harold Lovell
In May of 1977, Harold Lovell left his home in Aurora, Illinois after telling his family
that he was heading out to look for a construction job.
But he didn’t return home that day and for the next 34 years, his family would have no
idea what had happened to him or whether he was still alive.
Harold’s younger sister, Theresa Hasselberg and their brother, Tim spent that time convinced
that he was an unidentified victim of the well-known serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Harold had regularly done some yard work for Gacy at the time of his disappearance and
he would later describe how Gacy had invited him into his house on several occasions, but
he always declined the offer.
Theresa and Tim kept a scrapbook of Gacy’s case over the years after realizing that their
brother perfectly fit the profile of his other victims.
When Gacy’s case was reopened in a bid to identify the victims who have not been attributed
to his case, his nephew started an internet search.
He came across a website called mugshots.com and searched for the name Harold Wayne Lovell.
Under a Hillsborough County booking photo, he discovered that a man who looked a lot
like Harold had been arrested for possession of an illegal substance.
Unbeknownst to Harold’s family, he had travelled to Florida on the day of his disappearance
where he worked odd jobs in hotels and restaurants.
He decided to leave Illinois due to tension in the family home and he would later state
that he couldn’t stay around the house any longer.
For the last 34 years, he had no idea that his family presumed him to be a missing person,
nor that they were resigned to the fact that he had passed away.
After a few phone calls, he undertook a 10-hour bus trip to Dothan, Alabama from Tampa where
he had been staying, to be reunited with his remaining family members.
4.
Joan Risch
Joan Risch’s husband, Martin, got up early on the morning of 24 October, 1961 to catch
a flight to New York for a business meeting.
He would stay overnight in Manhattan, but would soon rush back home after learning from
police that his wife had gone missing.
Shortly after Martin left that day, Joan took their son, David, across the street to a neighbor’s
house as she had a dentist appointment.
Their daughter, Lillian went with her, but stayed in their car during Joan’s appointment.
After leaving the dentist’s office, Joan took Lillian on a short shopping trip during
which time, mail and milk were delivered to her house.
Neither the milk- or mail delivery men reported seeing anything out of the ordinary at the
house.
After picking David up from the neighbors, she returned to her house at around 11:15am.
Shortly after, a dry cleaner company’s delivery driver arrived at the house to pick up a few
of Martin’s suits.
He went inside the house while he was there and also didn’t notice anything strange.
After he left, Joan changed into her blue house dress, made lunch for the children and
put David to bed for a nap.
The neighbor then brought her son over to play with Lillian and while she was there,
noticed Joan in the garden where she was pruning plants.
At around 2pm, Joan brought the children back to the neighbor’s house, saying that she
will be back to fetch them shortly.
About 15 minutes later, the neighbor saw Joan carrying something red from her car to the
garage.
That was the last time she was ever seen.
Two witnesses would describe seeing strange cars in the area that afternoon.
One of the cars was described as dirty and two-tone, one of the colors being blue, and
the other was seen backing out of the Risch’s driveway.
At 3:40pm, the neighbor needed to go shopping and took Lillian back to Joan’s house, leaving
her there as she assumed that Joan was home.
When she returned from her shopping trip at 4:15pm, Lillian ran over to her saying: “Mommy
is gone and the kitchen is covered with red paint”.
She immediately called the police.
When police arrived, they found that the kitchen was indeed covered in biological material
and that a table had been overturned.
The wall-mounted telephone had been ripped off the wall and thrown in a wastebasket,
but Joan was nowhere to be found.
Hospitals were told to be on the lookout for any patients matching Joan’s description
that may be admitted and Martin was informed that his wife was a missing person.
When empty beer cans and an empty liquor bottle were found in the wastebasket, Martin explained
that he and Joan had finished the bottle the night before, but that he had no idea where
the beer cans came from.
Joan was never found, but when a reporter went to the town’s library to research similar
cases, she found Joan’s name on one of the checkout cards.
The book was entitled “Into Thin Air” and she discovered that the plot was about
a woman who disappears after leaving her house in the same state that Joan’s was found
in.
3.
Paige Renkoski
Paige Renkoski was last seen on the shoulder of a Livingstone County expressway on the
24th of May, 1990.
At around 11:30 that morning, she drove her mother to the Detroit Metropolitan Airport
after which she went to a friend’s house in Canton, Michigan for a visit.
She was later seen at a store in Canton where she bought a beer between 2:30 and 2:45pm.
The store’s clerk clearly remembers seeing her as she was dressed in a very distinctive
pair of trousers and wore a very unique necklace.
When she was last spotted, she was talking to a man who was standing next to a maroon-colored
minivan on the shoulder of Interstate 96 near Fowlerville, Michigan.
Many other witnesses described seeing her driving on the same road and her vehicle was
found still idling with her shoes and purse still inside.
Police found several fingerprints and palm prints on her vehicle, but they did not match
to anyone in their database and the case went cold.
In 1999, Lansing police were shocked when an anonymous tip containing a letter and a
map detailing the exact location of Paige’s remains was delivered to their office.
The wooded area was thoroughly searched by the FBI, Livingstone County Sheriff’s Department
and forensic experts, but despite the mysterious clue, no trace of Paige has ever been found
and she remains a missing person to this day.
2.
Lisa Theris
Lisa Theris, a 25-year-old radiology student from Louisville, Alabama was reported as a
missing person by her father on the 23rd of July, 2017 – five days after he had last
heard from her.
A local Walmart would later contact police to report that she had been seen in the store,
but since there was no surveillance footage available, it was treated as a false alarm.
Her family and friends were concerned for her safety as she had fallen in with a bad
crowd in recent months, she was legally blind due to a reoccurring eye condition and she
suffered from bipolar disorder.
Two men who were last seen with Lisa were identified as Randall Wade Oswald, 36, and
Manley Green Davis, 31, both from the nearby town of Troy.
Both men were well known to police as they had been arrested on multiple occasions for
petty crimes and illegal substance possession.
Oswald, who worked as an air conditioning engineer, insisted that Davis was the last
to see Lisa alive.
Davis, on the other hand, insisted that Oswald had last seen her and when they were arrested
for the robbery of a hunting lodge 40 miles away, each of the men had very different stories.
Davis insisted that Lisa ran away as they were attempting to break down the lodge’s
gate by ramming it with their vehicle.
Oswald, whose father manages the lodge, claimed that Davis ended her life and disposed of
her in a nearby creek.
Both men were under the influence of an illegal substance at the time and police didn’t
know who to believe.
But 25 days after disappearing, Lisa came stumbling out of the woods roughly a mile
from the spot where she entered the tree line.
She was covered in insect bites and scratches.
She told police that she had gotten lost and survived by eating berries, mushrooms and
drinking water from a small water source.
She used a branch as a walking stick and on occasion, had to squeeze water out of her
hair to quench her thirst.
Police believe that, at the time of her disappearance, she was under the influence of a hallucinogenic
and that she became disoriented when she recovered, causing her to stumble around the woods
for nearly a month before finding her way clear of the woods.
1.
Eric Myers
On the 25th of June, 1991, Eric Myers left his home town in Arizona to travel to San
Diego where he was to attend a real estate seminar.
Eric was married to his high school sweetheart, Anne and the couple had two daughters.
They also had a further three sons who they had adopted from Vietnam.
Eric was working at his father’s real estate business and was seemingly doing very well.
But when Anne decided that she wanted to attend college, he felt that it clashed with his
deeply religious idea of what a housewife should be.
He scoured the Bible to find a reason for her to stay at home, but came up empty handed
and started feeling trapped.
Their marriage had been going through a rough patch in recent times and they discussed divorce,
but Eric wanted to stay married due to his Christian beliefs.
When he didn’t return from the training seminar as scheduled, he was reported as a
missing person and police suspected that foul play was involved in his disappearance, but
they failed to find any proof.
They did discover, however, that he checked out of the hotel that he was staying in on
the first day of the seminar, yet he still attended the meetings.
After he had been a missing person for 5 years and no clues as to his whereabouts were found,
Eric was declared legally deceased in 1996.
His family received $800,000 in life insurance which they invested in a trust for their two
daughters.
16 years after Eric’s disappearance, his family started receiving strange emails asking
whether they would be interested in knowing what happened to him.
It would turn out that Eric was still very much alive and that the emails had been sent
by him.
He would later explain that, prior to his disappearance, he had been struggling with
the fact that he was homosexual.
He told authorities that he was robbed on the last day of the conference and spent the
night in a seedy hotel with just a few hundred dollars in his pocket.
The following morning, he crossed the border to Mexico and travelled to Cabo San Lucas.
He decided to escape from his life for a while by relaxing on the area’s beaches and after
travelling to Palm Springs, California, he met a Canadian tourist called Sean Lung and
the two men fell in love.
They started a life together and Eric would look for odd jobs that didn’t require him
to provide identification.
He has reunited with his mother, brothers and sisters but his wife and children have
stated that they will never forgive him for abandoning them.