With the intense glare of the media spotlight, it sometimes seems as though celebrities are
being watched 24 hours a day.
We see everything they do and hear everything they say.
So it seems impossible that a celebrity could completely vanish and never be seen or heard
from again.
But that's exactly what happened to these famous people who disappeared — and are
still missing today.
Bison Dele
Before he changed his name, Bison Dele was better known as basketball player Brian Williams,
a 6 foot 11 man-mountain who left a trail of fire and bruised egos through the NBA.
He was also famously eccentric.
When he quit both basketball and the United States at the age of 30, he went on an endless
nomadic voyage through Asia, living as a kind of wealthy hobo, while writing beat poetry.
On July 7, 2002, Dele set sail on his private boat from Tahiti to Hawaii with his girlfriend,
Serena Karlan, his brother, Miles Dabord, and ship's captain Bertran Saldo.
Dele, Karlan, and Saldo were never seen again.
Two months later, Dabord was arrested in Phoenix trying to buy gold with one of his brother's
checks.
Released on bail, he took his own life via insulin overdose just across the Mexican border.
Authorities believe he slew the other three and dumped their bodies in the Pacific...but
only the sea knows for sure.
Oscar Zeta Acosta
Legendary Chicano activist Oscar Zeta Acosta was a big man with even bigger appetites.
Immortalized by Hunter S. Thompson as Doctor Gonzo in the classic novel Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas, Acosta was later portrayed by Benicio Del Toro in the 1998 film adaptation.
By then, however, Acosta had been missing for decades.
In 1974, he visited his ancestral home in Mexico and simply vanished.
Thompson spent years trying to find out what happened to his friend, eventually concluding
that Acosta had been the victim of a drug hit, or possibly even a political assassination.
Others think he might have suffered a nervous breakdown and gone off the grid.
The truth will likely never be known.
Harold Holt
It was one of the most shocking events in Australian history: On December 17, 1967,
the nation's leader went out for a swim in the ocean...and was never seen again.
Prime Minister Harold Holt was two years into his term when he vanished into what friends
called the highest surf they had ever seen.
Holt was presumed drowned, but his body was never found, in part because there was no
official government investigation.
That's because laws at the time made it illegal to conduct an inquest without a body.
That fueled numerous conspiracy theories, with his disappearance attributed to everything
from a CIA assassination to shark attack.
Finally, in 2005, an investigation officially concluded he had, in fact, drowned after all.
Lord Lucan
John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, was a British lord so dashing, he was once considered
for the role of James Bond.
Turns out he would've made a lousy movie hero.
On the night of November 7, 1974, Lord Lucan attempted to slay his wife, Veronica Duncan,
after a bitter separation and custody battle.
She survived, but their nanny wasn't so lucky.
Lord Lucan fled and was never seen again.
His abandoned car was found, filled with incriminating evidence, including the murder weapon, but
no sign of the man himself was ever found.
Some believe he fed himself to a tiger, while others think he fled to Africa or India and
lived out his days in secret exile.
Lucan was officially declared deceased in 1999, but a certificate wasn't issued until
2016, finally allowing his son to inherit the title 8th Earl of Lucan.
Sean Flynn
Errol Flynn was one of the most famous movie stars who ever lived.
His son Sean Flynn struggled to get out of his father's long shadow, and those efforts
may have cost him his life.
Sean appeared in ten movies, but they were mostly bombs, and his acting career never
fully took off.
Hoping to prove he was his own man, Sean became a Time magazine war correspondent and flew
to Vietnam.
"Cameraman Sean Flynn filmed these scenes, later went on patrol outside the camp perimeter."
On April 6, 1970, he and fellow journalist Dana Stone decided to photograph a Viet Cong
checkpoint.
They were captured by communist guerillas and never seen again.
It's widely believed they were held captive for over a year before being executed by the
Khmer Rouge in 1971, but no proof of Sean's final fate has ever been found.
Ambrose Bierce
One of the most acclaimed authors in American history, the true story of Ambrose Bierce's
disappearance really is stranger than fiction.
In 1913, despite not speaking a word of Spanish, Bierce traveled to Mexico to report on the
revolution and joined Pancho Villa's army as an observer.
In December, he reportedly wrote a letter saying he was heading to "an unknown destination."
He couldn't have been more right.
Nobody knows where he went or what happened to him, as he was never heard from again.
Various theories suggest he was executed, or was shot during a battle, or even that
he ended his own life and the rest was a cover story made up by his assistant.
It's a mystery that will likely never be solved.
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