Was one of Michael Jordan's teammates killed by his own brother?
And how did an Olympic sailor disappear in his own backyard?
These two and more are athletes who went missing and were never found.
For athletes that come from countries with high levels of poverty or physical danger,
international sporting events can offer something even more important than the chance to show
off their athletic abilities: it can be a chance to claim asylum.
This happens relatively often, with British tabloid The Mirror compiling examples from
Olympic Games from 1948 to the delayed 2020 Olympics in Japan.
In many cases, these athletes only disappear temporarily, and then turn up again once they
officially apply for asylum.
One such example occurred during the Tokyo Games.
"An Olympic sprinter from Belarus defects and gets a humanitarian Visa from Poland where
she plans to seek asylum."
But this doesn't always happen.
At the 2012 Summer Games in London, seven athletes from Cameroon absconded over the
course of the event, per The Guardian.
A tour guide in the African country told the paper,
"The conditions in Cameroon are very difficult – there are no opportunities here and if
you have the chance to go the U.K., it's understandable that you would want to stay there."
Five of those who disappeared were boxers, and they all resurfaced a week later at a
gym in the British capital, and were later granted asylum.
But the remaining two athletes, women's soccer team reserve goalie Drusille Ngako and swimmer
Paul Edingue, never turned up again.
While they had valid visas to be in the country until November 2012, after that they would
have needed to apply for asylum, and it appears they never did.
Born Brian Williams before asking people to call him Bison Dele, the NBA player spent
the 1990s hopping between teams, winning a championship with the Chicago Bulls in 1997.
"Bison, you've played on some pretty darn good teams, you won a championship when you
were here in Chicago, you guys are really starting to play some really good basketball.
Detroit, now, you won six in a row."
But in 1999, still only 30 years old, he turned down a new $35 million contract from the Detroit
Pistons and gave up the game entirely to travel and enjoy life.
Three years later, he disappeared.
Dele was on a sailing trip in the South Pacific with his girlfriend Serena Karlan and his
older brother Miles Dabord, as well as the captain Dele had hired.
Then, Sports Illustrated reports, everyone stopped hearing from them.
Eventually, Dabord and the boat turned up, but the other three were never seen again.
The seemingly obvious answer is that Dabord killed the three other people on the boat,
but despite an FBI investigation and many investigative reporters looking into it, this
has never been proven, and no hint of the three has ever turned up.
The brothers had a reportedly complicated relationship, and the trip was supposed to
help mend their estrangement.
No witnesses reported anything more than brotherly squabbles between the two on the trip, so
it's unclear what could have happened.
If Dabord was responsible, he didn't have long to admit to it, since he died of an insulin
overdose less than three months after Dele disappeared.
The Seattle Times calls John Brisker a "talented but volatile forward" for the city's NBA team
in the 1970s.
After years of fighting – literally, his nickname was the Heavyweight champion of the
ABA – Brisker eventually left pro hoops in 1975.
Three years later, he had become a father and decided to start a new business: an import-export
venture that required travel to Africa, specifically Uganda.
About a month after Brisker arrived on the continent, his girlfriend got a final phone
call from him.
He was in Uganda's capital, Kampala.
That was the last time anyone ever heard from John Brisker.
In the late 1970s, Uganda was in the grips of the psychopathic dictator Idi Amin.
This, combined with the mysterious disappearance, has led to many conspiracy theories about
what happened to Brisker.
Even the Associated Press jumped to conclusions, reporting in 1980 that Brisker had been shot,
even though there was no evidence for this.
And even Brisker's family didn't seem to know exactly where he was, with one brother thinking
he'd gone to Nigeria, not Uganda.
One of the craziest theories is he died at Jonestown, despite the cult being located
in South America, not Africa.
With no evidence for any of these theories, Brisker was finally declared legally dead
in 1985.
Canadian Bob Lymburne was born in 1909 and despite living in a very cold and snowy country,
"Powder Pioneers: Ski Stories from the Canadian Rockies and Columbia Mountains" says that
he isn't believed to have ever put on skis until he was already a teenager.
Once he did, though, Lymburne fell in love with it, even building his own ski jump in
rural Western Canada.
Within just a few years he was competing, and after a bit of a rocky start, he began
breaking records.
Lymburne made it to the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, although he only placed 18th.
This showing seemed to spur him on even more, and he dedicated himself to training for 1936.
There would be no second Olympics for Lymburne, though.
In 1935, while practicing, he fell and hit his head.
Olympedia says the resulting concussion was so bad it ended his athletic career.
Over 20 years after his accident, sometime around 1957, Lymburne went for a walk and
never came back.
Questions about his mental state at the time make it unclear if this was deliberate.
While it is likely he died in the Canadian wilderness, there is no proof of what happened
to him after he disappeared.
Soccer in the 1980s and '90s was arguably rougher on and off the field than it is today.
Pierre Bianconi, a defender for various European teams who was originally from Corsica, often
went a bit too far.
Bianconi was famous for his vicious tackles, and once, when given a red card for slapping
a player, he ripped the card up in the referee's face before headbutting him.
But he was also remembered as extremely caring.
When fans invaded the pitch after a match, one was beaten by a security guard, so Bianconi
ran over and fought off the guard.
When a stand collapsed during another match, Bianconi ran straight into the rubble to rescue
spectators.
And he was devoted to his family, allegedly even planning to get sent off during matches
occasionally so he would have a few days to return to Corsica to see them.
Bianconi was devoted to his island home, which was legally considered to be a part of France.
There were strong rumors Bianconi was part of the nationalist movement there, which wanted
Corsica to secede from France and become its own country.
So when Bianconi disappeared on December 29, 1993, rumors swirled that this affiliation
had something to do with it.
Just what it could have been is unclear, however.
According to the French-language site Corse Matin, Bianconi's sister remembers him being
a bit more withdrawn than normal that holiday, but simply said he'd see her later before
disappearing forever.
As a member of The University of Oregon basketball team, Urgel "Slim" Wintermute was exceptional,
leading the school to victory in the first-ever NCAA Basketball Tournament in 1939.
His coach, Howard Hobson, later said,
"He was in his day the best center in the country.
I've always said that he was the best defensive center I've ever coached.
In fact, he's the best collegiate defensive center I've ever seen."
The Oregon Sports Hall of Fame says that after the two-time All-American graduated, Wintermute
played professionally for Detroit in the National Basketball League.
He later played for and coached the Portland Indians of the Pacific Coast Basketball League.
After his sports career ended, Wintermute went to work for Boeing.
"Working together, they connected continents, building the future of flight."
In 1977, The Eugene Register-Guard reported that Slim Wintermute was missing.
He'd been out on a 37-foot boat with a friend on Lake Washington when he vanished.
The friend said he'd been napping, but that Wintermute had definitely been there when
he fell asleep.
Wintermute had called his work that morning to say he wasn't coming in, which was the
last time anyone on the mainland heard from him.
However, the police and Wintermute's family didn't think the friend had harmed him or
anything like that.
The former player had already had one heart attack in 1970, so it was theorized he might
have had another one and fallen overboard.
However, his body was never found and it's not clear what really happened.
A few of the athletes on this list disappeared while on the water, and while they are officially
classified as missing, you'd assume in most cases it involved their bodies ending up in
the water.
But when one of those athletes is an Olympic-level sailor?
Then it makes a lot less sense why the water would be a possible danger for him.
Trevor Moore knew what he was doing on a boat, and was on the 2012 U.S. Olympic sailing team,
where he placed 15th in the skiff event.
He expected to return to the Olympics again, and spent his free time teaching others to
sail.
His father told The Washington Post that Moore had always had a natural talent for sailing
and had been sailing in Biscayne Bay since he was just 7 years old.
"Obviously we know of his background his experience as a sailor as an experienced sailor."
So it was unthinkable that something could have happened to Moore on a calm day on that
same bay in 2015.
But after going out for a quick sail, Moore never returned.
His boat did, however, which is when his disappearance was discovered.
Only 30 years old at the time, it's unlikely Moore suffered a heart attack or stroke.
His college sailing coach said that sometimes things just happen out there:
"The more time you spend around the water, you learn to love and respect the powers of
the ocean.
I think for all of us, something happened, and we'll never know what."
The 21-year-old Hannes Kärkkäinen represented Finland in men's platform diving at the 1924
Summer Olympics in Paris.
While he beat out 11 divers and made the final, he then placed last of the remaining nine
competitors.
Just two years after his Olympics showing, Kärkkäinen left Finland.
And then – no one knows.
At the time it was not that unusual to lose track of people from that country who immigrated
somewhere else, often the United States.
At least three other Finish Olympians from the early years of the Games also fell off
the map eventually, although there is at least some evidence of where they went and what
they did, at least for a period of time.
Hannes Kärkkäinen, on the other hand, is a complete enigma, with OlympStats calling
his disappearance "the most mysterious of all."
The two most common theories about what happened to him could not be more different.
The first is that he headed for the U.S., eventually settling in Connecticut.
The second theory is that in 1938, Kärkkäinen became a victim of the Soviet Union's Great
Purge.
Either way, he is certainly not alive now, and officially he died on January 1, 1993,
the date given by the Finnish courts when declaring him dead in absentia.
Angelo Cruz grew up playing basketball on the street courts of New York City, per The
New York Daily News.
Despite being extremely short for a basketball player, he made up for it with his abilities,
which included incorporating acrobatics into his game.
After playing for high school and college teams for a short time, Cruz moved to Puerto
Rico where he joined the island's professional league and won two championships with his
team.
He also played for Puerto Rico at the 1988 Olympics.
While his celebrity was relatively localized, he was a huge star in Puerto Rico.
After Cruz's playing career ended in 1994, he moved back to New York City but had a hard
time adjusting to life out of the spotlight.
He started using drugs and would disappear for periods of time.
His son said Cruz would always turn up eventually.
But then one time he didn't turn up.
After 1998, none of his family or friends saw Cruz again.
They have no idea what happened to him.
While it's possible he overdosed and died anonymously, or came to harm in some other
way, it's also just as likely he is still alive.
That's what his family hopes, and as of 2011, they were holding charity basketball games
in his honor and to raise awareness of his disappearance.
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