For most of us, the struggles of the ultra-rich are something we're never going to have to
deal with.
Is that a good thing?
Maybe, if those struggles include kidnapping, a $1 million ransom, and the threat of being
sealed up in a cellar with only a few jugs of water.
Guma Aguiar made his fortune after his uncle set up Leor Energy and made him CEO.
The company went on to drill $2.55 billion worth of natural gas out of their Texas land,
but unfortunately for everyone involved, the family didn't do well when it came time to
share the wealth.
Aguiar, his uncle, mother, and wife were all involved in a slew of lawsuits filed against
each other, and those lawsuits got bizarre: In one, his uncle was trying to get back $25
million from a charity that he claimed Aguiar was using unlawfully — specifically, to
promote himself as the new Messiah.
Aguiar's behavior reportedly became increasingly erratic, then he disappeared in 2012.
He was last seen on June 19th, and on the 20th, his fishing boat was found: His cell
phone and wallet were there, but he was gone — and he hasn't been seen since.
ABC News reported that there had been rumor Aguiar believed his uncle was going to try
to kill him.
Within a few months, the rumor mill was going again with the suggestion that he may have
gone into hiding in the Netherlands.
As the years went by, though, it looked less and less like Aguiar was going to return.
He was legally declared dead in 2015, and according to CBS News, his family suspected
that he had accidentally fallen off the boat and drowned.
Before and after the declaration of death, they continued to fight over his multi-million-dollar
estate.
When Anne-Elisabeth Falkevik Hagen disappeared in October 2018, it seemed like a straightforward
kidnapping.
She was married to one of the richest men in Norway — Tom Hagen, owner and founder
of a company called Elkraft — and according to The New York Times, the discovery of her
disappearance came with a ransom note for $9.5 million.
Also at the scene were some blood stains, suggesting there had been a struggle.
The whole thing was kept hush-hush until January 2019, when police went public with the information
surrounding her disappearance in the hopes someone out there would know something they
hadn't discovered yet.
More ransom demands were made, huge sums of money — in the millions — were paid, but
Anne-Elisabeth didn't return.
Then, in 2020, the case took a massive turn: Tom Hagen was arrested for the murder of his
wife.
Police stated that they believed the entire saga of ransom notes and payments was an attempt
to cover up a crime, and he was held for 11 days.
He was released but, a year later, the murder charges hadn't been dropped.
Hagen denied any and all wrongdoing, and his wife remains missing.
In 1995, the media was reporting on a disappearance that had shocked the town of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Jacqueline Levitz was the kind of millionaire who favored diamonds, furs, and Jaguar convertibles,
but she also prided herself on being a present part of her company and her neighborhood.
The heiress to the Levitz furniture company, Levitz was described by her neighbor, John
Gradick:
"She seemed to be a person who cared for everybody — more than anybody I ever seen.
[...] [She was] just a good person, inside and out."
Neighbors loved her, friends and family surrounded her, and then, her brother-in-law stopped
by her home to find her missing, and blood on the carpet.
Further investigation found a pool of blood in the bedroom.
A drink she'd poured was still sitting out, and valuables were still in their place.
She would never be seen again, although the case would be regularly revisited.
In 2008, NBC reported that monthly meetings were still being held in case new evidence
came to light, and that they hoped recent advances in DNA technology could help law
enforcement discover what had happened to her.
But in 2015, The Vicksburg Post published a piece on the 20th anniversary of her disappearance,
rehashing all the evidence of the case that had all but ended when she was declared dead
in 2001.
Still, experts working with the Warren County Sheriff testified the evidence — and blood
— discovered at the house left open the possibility that she was still very much alive.
John Bingham was the 7th Earl of Lucan, and according to The New York Times, he was the
sort of noble who liked things like Aston Martins and vodka martinis.
But 1974 was the year when his wife, Veronica Duncan, ran from the home they'd once shared,
bleeding badly.
She made it to a nearby pub, telling anyone she could:
"He's in the house!
He's murdered the nanny!"
The couple were estranged at the time, and when law enforcement got to the home that
was occupied by Veronica, her children, and nanny Sandra Rivett, they discovered Rivett's
body in the basement.
Lord Lucan vanished, leaving behind the now-bloodstained car that he'd borrowed from a friend.
Lord Lucan was reportedly seen loads of times, with people from Australia and the U.S. to
India, New Zealand, and across South America claiming that they'd seen him.
No sightings were ever verified, and in 2016 his son was officially made the 8th earl of
Lucan.
"It's a mystery, and it may well remain that way forever."
Sightings continue into the 21st century.
In 2020, Harper's Bazaar reported that Rivett's son claimed to have found Lucan, living in
Australia.
This — like the dozens of other sightings — was not confirmed.
Meanwhile, his wife, Veronica, died in 2018, after withdrawing from society and becoming
estranged even from her children in the 1980s.
Arthur Kingsley Porter had been born into an upper-class American family, became a Harvard
professor, and traveled the world with his wife Lucy.
They were both internationally-renowned art experts, and each worth millions.
They had the kind of money that allowed them to buy Glenveagh Castle in Ireland's County
Donegal.
And then, in 1933, he disappeared from the nearby Inishbofin Island.
The strange thing is that he was seen again... but that comes with a pretty big "maybe."
For decades, people reported seeing him as far away from his homes as Paris and even
India, but others suggest that was just hearsay to cover the real story.
It came out much later that Arthur was gay, and Lucy had agreed to open their marriage
to another man.
The problem was Harvard: At the time, they were holding a witch hunt to expel anyone
— student or faculty — who was found to be gay, and it had already led to several
suicides.
It was amid this that the couple headed to Ireland, and he vanished.
The official inquest decreed that he had accidentally fallen to his death on the island's cliffs,
but reports of a mysterious boat in the area — and subsequent sightings — have led
others to suspect that he faked his own death and headed to somewhere he could live free
of persecution.
There were never any official, confirmed sightings of him again, and what really happened is
still unknown.
You can't get much closer to American royalty than the Rockefellers.
Michael was the son of Nelson, a New York governor and future vice president, at the
time of Michael's disappearance.
The Rockefeller fortune was estimated to be somewhere around $900 million, and Michael
was the heir.
He was described with words like quiet, modest, artistic, and brilliant, and after graduating
Harvard and traveling the world, he decided that he wanted to go right to the source of
"primitive art," and bring it back to the world he'd grown up in.
He started in Asmat and wrote,
"Now this is wild and somehow more remote country than what I have ever seen before."
And he'd seen a lot.
Even in 1961, he was no stranger to international travel.
After visiting 13 villages in three weeks, he and his expedition took a break to resupply,
then set off again down the river.
The boat with Rockefeller and anthropologist Rene Wassing capsized, and after spending
the night clinging to the boat, Rockefeller decided to swim for shore.
Wassing was rescued the next day, but Rockefeller was never seen again.
The oft-repeated story is that he was killed by the very people he was there to visit,
but according to the Smithsonian, no concrete evidence of what happened to him was ever
recovered.
When Ambrose Small seemingly vanished into thin air in 1919, he left behind a fortune
of about $2 million.
Adjusted for inflation, that's the equivalent of around $30.5 million in today's money.
Small had been born poor, and rose to the top of the theater world thanks to his own
sweet-talking business skills.
Even years later, he had no shortage of enemies, many of whom described him using words like
"swindler," "blackmailer," and "cold-blooded slanderer."
It's not entirely surprising, then, that he met a mysterious end.
It was December 2nd when he dropped his wife off at the orphanage she volunteered at, then
headed to his office.
No one ever saw him again, but it wasn't until December 16th that his disappearance was reported
to police.
His wife — convinced he was just off with some other woman — had kept the whole thing
quiet long enough that any obvious clues were long gone.
An offer of a cash reward led to numerous sightings of Small, anywhere from playing
roulette in a Mexican casino to being held as a prisoner of the mob.
Newspaper headlines claimed his spirit had reached out from beyond the grave, that he'd
been burned alive in a ship's furnace, or that he'd been in an accident that robbed
him of his memory.
The investigation dragged on for years, but no trace of him was ever discovered.
Robert and Annie Laurie Hearin met at the University of Alabama and married in 1940.
They would go on to be wildly successful: Robert was at the head of Mississippi Valley
Gas Company, Trustmark National Bank, and Lamar Life Corporation.
His net worth was estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million, and unfortunately,
that made them a target.
Annie Laurie went missing on July 26, 1988, and given that she was suffering from an intestinal
condition that was potentially deadly without medical care, it's likely that she's passed
away since she vanished.
Still, Robert held out hope: According to the Los Angeles Times, he paid the $1 million
ransom that kidnappers demanded, after — based on the information at the crime scene — breaking
into their home, and grabbing Annie Laurie.
In September, he was sent a note determined to be written in Annie Laurie's hand, reading:
"Bob, If you don't do what these people want you to do, they are going to seal me up in
the cellar of this house with only a few jugs of water.
Please save me, Annie Laurie."
In spite of paying, Robert never saw her again.
He died of heart failure two years after the kidnapping, and she was never seen or heard
from again.
She was declared dead in 1991, but her remains have never been found.
"I think about my Mom all the time, and I'm sure my Daddy does, too.
There's no real way to quantify it."
When Dorothy Arnold disappeared on December 12, 1910, it was a huge deal.
She was from an ultra-wealthy family that proudly went all the way back to the nation's
founding, included members of the U.S. Supreme Court, and was on the who's-who list of New
York City's elite.
All that made the daytime, downtown disappearance of the studious 25-year-old heiress that much
weirder.
Arnold left her house at 11 am, heading out into the streets of New York City.
She went to Brentano's bookstore, then met up with a friend named Gladys King.
They chatted, and then, Arnold seemingly disappeared after last being seen at this intersection.
Strangely, the finality of her disappearance may have had something to do with the reaction
of her family, which was to cover the whole thing up.
Instead of calling law enforcement, they called a lawyer, who visited hospitals, morgues,
and jails looking for her.
He had no luck, and after six weeks, the family finally called in the Pinkertons.
Tantalizing clues were uncovered: Dorothy Arnold, it seemed, had led something of a
life that her parents had been unaware of.
They found she had been spending time in Boston with a 42-year-old man named George C. Griscom
Jr., but ultimately, her disappearance wasn't linked to him at all.
It wasn't linked to anyone, in fact, and she had completely and thoroughly vanished.
Reports of sightings of her were given to law enforcement pretty regularly for decades,
but exactly what happened to her remains a mystery.
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