Despite countless eyes being fixed on them day in and day out, there are definitely occasions
when famous people go missing.
These celebrities all disappeared and were never heard from again — and some of it
reeks of foul play.
Let the conspiracy theories fly!
In 1998, Manic Street Preachers' This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours was one of the most popular
albums in the U.K.
After a string of hits barely cracking into the top 10, the Welsh band found their single
"If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next" at the top of the charts.
Guitarist Richey Edwards never saw this achievement.
Three years prior, the star made headlines as the subject of one of the most infamous
disappearances in rock and roll history.
According to the Independent, Edwards went missing on February 1, 1995, and his body
was never found.
As the outlet recounts, the guitarist checked out of his hotel in London first thing in
the morning and drove to Wales, only to vanish.
Edwards was widely thought to have taken his own life at the age of 27, joining the unfortunately
grim 27 club along with beloved musicians like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain,
and Amy Winehouse.
As the Independent reports, there has never been any "definitive proof" that Richey died
by suicide — or even died at all.
More recently, a book written with the full cooperation of Richey's sister, Withdrawn
Traces: Searching for the Truth About Richey Manic, alleges that the guitarist staged his
own death.
Per Wales Online, Richey was obsessed with disappearing and may have started a new life
in Israel.
Joe Pichler was best known for his work on films like Varsity Blues and — during that
weird era of the '90s where dog films were ultra-hot — the Beethoven franchise and
Shiloh 2.
He'd been working hard since getting his start in commercials at the age of six, but unfortunately,
the child star disappeared before he could take on any adult roles.
He was just 18 years old when he went missing in his Washington state hometown in 2006.
"But Pickler has missed several birthday celebrations of his own, since he vanished on January 5th,
2006."
According to 10 Tampa Bay, his mother persuaded him to move back to Washington in 2002.
Four years later, according to The Charley Project, he disappeared after a phone call
with a friend.
Suspicions were raised when his apartment was found unlocked and the lights were left
on.
After a weeklong search, 10 Tampa Bay reports that his car, a silver 2005 Toyota Corolla,
was uncovered near a waterway along with a note, quote, "asking for his belongings to
go to his younger brother."
It's presumed that Pichler's disappearance was a suicide.
Jimmy Hoffa was the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, America's largest
union — but this was no straight and narrow worker advocate, even if he was popular among
those he served.
He was wrapped up in a bevvy of criminal activities.
Moreover, as History.com notes:
"Many Teamster leaders partnered with the Mafia in racketeering, extortion and embezzlement."
Basically, when Hoffa disappeared, it wasn't exactly surprising.
Police immediately looked towards the Mafia.
As History.com reports, Hoffa had ties to, quote, "high-ranking mobsters," and he landed
a 13-year prison sentence for a list of crimes that included jury-tampering, mail fraud,
and bribery.
He served just four years before then-president Richard Nixon gave him a pardon in 1971.
Then, he vanished from a restaurant parking lot in Detroit, on the very same day he was
supposed to meet with two Mafia bosses.
Hoffa's remains were never found, but it's widely thought that he was the unfortunate
subject of a mob hit.
There was just never enough evidence to convict anyone of the alleged crime.
Before Bison Dele quit basketball to become a world-traveling poet, the athlete was known
as Brian Williams, an NBA star who — along with Dennis Rodman and Michael Jordan — helped
the Chicago Bulls win the 1997 championship.
Two years later, he retired before vanishing at sea.
According to Sports Illustrated, the former NBA star started his retirement in Beirut,
where he lived for four months with one of his college friends, a Lebanese businessman.
After that, he trekked across numerous countries, eventually learning how to sail and buying
a boat named Hakuna Matata — which he used to explore the waters off the Australian coast.
Unlike the boat's name — Swahili for "No Worries" — the worries were just beginning.
On July 6, 2002, Dele set sail for Hawaii with his girlfriend, Serena Karlan, a ship
captain, and his brother, Miles Dabord.
He had reportedly been feuding with Dabord, who was, quote, "jealous" of his basketball
talent, according to Sports Illustrated.
Dele, Karlan, and the captain were never seen again, but about 10 days later, a man who
witnesses say matched the description of Dabord was spotted in Tahiti with a boat that had
been re-registered under a different name.
Police found blood traces and gunpowder on the ship, and Dabord was later arrested for
forgery after stealing Dele's identity.
Without evidence of the suspected murder, Dabord was never charged.
Rather, he died in Mexico from an insulin overdose, taking the events of Dele's disappearance
with him.
Canadian rock band Loverboy was one of the biggest acts of the '80s, penning the iconic
hit "Working for the Weekend."
That song was so popular that decades later, it still haunts the corridors of shopping
malls across the country, along with the frightening disappearance of bassist Scott Smith.
In 2000, the rock outfit's founding member vanished at sea.
According to Rolling Stone, Smith — joined by two friends and his girlfriend — was
sailing his boat from Vancouver, British Columbia to Mexico.
He made it just off the coast of San Francisco before being swept off his thirty-seven-foot
sailboat by a twenty-five-foot wave.
His girlfriend suffered from hypothermia, but his two friends emerged unscathed.
His friend Bill Ellis told the Ottawa Citizen:
"I went down below to change into my foul weather gear so I could relieve Scott and
then the wave hit and the boat went over on its side.
Within seconds, I went back up and Scott was gone and he took the wheel with him.
We turned back around but couldn't find any of the debris or cushions or the man-overboard
pole."
After a 133-square-mile coastguard search, which was, quote, "hampered by massive waves
and fog," and private search and rescue, Smith was presumed dead.
His body was never found.
Swedish director Daniel Lind Lagerlöf may not be a name widely recognized in the United
States, but in his home country, he worked on various TV series and movies — including
the acclaimed series Beck.
It was ultimately his work that led to his tragic disappearance in 2011.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the director went to Sweden's Tjurpannan nature reserve
with two crew members to scout locations for The Fjallbacka Murders, a film series adaptation
of the popular crime novels by Camilla Läckberg.
When the crew split up amidst high winds and heavy rains, Lagerlöf never returned.
Local authorities searched the area for the filmmaker, but as The Hollywood Reporter notes,
when they were unable to locate him, they determined he must have, quote, "slipped and
fell into the sea."
Lagerlöf's body was never found, and the series went on without him, premiering its
first installment in 2012.
Jim Sullivan isn't a household name, but he did have a cult following.
The folk singer was part of the Hollywood scene in the '60s and '70s, releasing two
albums and teetering on the brink of success as he made celebrity friends like Dennis Hopper,
who he appeared alongside in an uncredited role in Easy Rider.
"You must be some important dude, man, like, you know, the treatment."
"A dude?"
According to The New York Times, Sullivan left L.A. for Nashville, where he planned
to pursue songwriting and migrate his children and wife, Barbara Sullivan, once he was established.
Not long after placing a mysterious phone call to his wife during his journey, he was
reported missing.
The New York Times reported that he had been pulled over on suspicion of driving under
the influence and passed a sobriety test before going to a motel in Santa Rosa, where he vanished.
His car was found abandoned 24 miles away with his guitar in the front seat.
Barbara lived the rest of her life convinced Jim — whose debut album was called U.F.O.
– had been abducted by aliens.
As the conspiracy theory goes, the 1967 disappearance of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt was
not an accident.
Some say he purposely faked his own death to start a new life with a mistress.
Others claim he was kidnapped by foreign adversaries or swept away in a Chinese submarine and interrogated
for political secrets.
All we know is that body was never found.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, on that day in 1967, Holt went swimming at a beach
in Melbourne.
As the outlet reports, the surf was particularly high and there was a, quote, "fairly strong
undercurrent."
Holt swam away from the beach, as his companions stopped where they could stand, fearing that
the water was too dangerous.
Holt never emerged from the surf, and two days later, he was declared drowned.
The extensive search mission failed to uncover his body.
According to the Independent, Holt's friends admitted:
"He was an excellent snorkeller who used to practise holding his breath for up to two
minutes [...] but he was not a particularly powerful swimmer."
Amelia Earhart's disappearance might be the most famous in human history.
In 1932, the aviator rose to fame as the first female pilot to fly solo, non-stop across
the Atlantic.
As TIME reports, the monumental achievement launched her career, and she made money as
both a writer and lecturer.
She designed her own woman's clothing line as well.
Even her publicity stunts were solid gold, with her earning the modern equivalent of
$185,000 to become the first person to fly from Hawaii to the mainland U.S.
It all went awry when she attempted her biggest stunt yet: becoming the first person to fly
around the globe.
Unfortunately, she never returned.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, began the journey on June 1, 1937, and after making
stops in South America, Africa, and Asia, she went missing on July the second, in the
south Pacific.
According to ABC News, the last anyone heard was that she was running low on fuel and couldn't
see her landing strip.
As TIME reports, a, quote, "chaotic search-and-rescue mission" ensued, with the U.S. Navy racking
up $250,000 in costs by the end of the search.
Earhart was never located, and in January 1939, she was declared dead.
To this day, Earhart's disappearance has become host to a number of conspiracy theories, in
a list that includes the belief that she was abducted by aliens.
Theodosia Burr's father, Aaron Burr, is having a moment because of the hit Broadway play
Hamilton.
He served as Thomas Jefferson's vice president, which made his daughter's 1813 disappearance
all the more curious.
As Atlas Obscura reports, Theodosia was a controversial figure.
In fact, rumor has it that she was the reason behind the infamous duel where Burr killed
Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton allegedly made comments alluding to a possible incestuous relationship between
the pair, and so Burr fought him to the death.
She later helped her father flee the country.
This is where things went awry.
Theodosia was presumably battling uterine cancer, according to Atlas Obscura, and when
she wrote a doctor about her symptoms, she shared that she had been experiencing:
"Hysteric fits, various colors and flashes of light before her eyes, figures passing
around her bed, strange noises, low spirits and worse."
Then her son died of malaria, throwing her into a deep depression.
Her husband was elected governor, and she desperately missed her father.
She ended up voyaging on the Patriot, a boat meant to take her from Georgetown to New York
to visit Burr.
She never made it, and the Patriot was never located.
Unsurprisingly, this sparked a flurry of rumors and theories, some of which involve pirates.
As a Library of Congress blog post put it:
"Her disappearance remains one of early America's greatest unsolved mysteries."
It's not every day a genuine Rockefeller goes missing.
Michael Rockefeller's disappearance rocked the world of New York socialites, and likely
would've landed the largest headline in Page Six, had it been a thing in 1961.
As the son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Michael lived a privileged life, where he
did what all rich New York 20-somethings do: he traveled.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, Michael was seven months into a trip across New Guinea
when his boat overturned after being hit by a wave.
He swam to shore, where he disappeared without a trace.
An extensive search that included, quote, "ships, airplanes, helicopters, and thousands
of locals prowling the coast and jungle" turned up nothing.
His death was ruled a drowning, but questions about what did or did not happen lingered.
Conspiracy theories raged to the point that they spawned an off-Broadway play, a novel,
and even a rock song.
Most recently, Netflix produced the documentary The Search for Michael Rockefeller, which
supposedly confirms The New York Post's original 1968 report: Michael was eaten by cannibals.
If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).