When a loved one goes missing, the biggest fear is that they won’t be found alive.
And with the biggest mysteries surrounding people who disappeared or passed away in unexplained
circumstances, it’s easy to see why.
But many missing people are eventually found alive, even after the most difficult of circumstances.
Number 5
Angela Hernandez was missing for just seven days before she was finally reunited with
her family, but the terrifying ordeal she had gone through in that week was enough to
make her rescue miraculous.
AngelaAngela Hernandez lived in Oregon but was travelling down to southern California
to see her family.
Once there, she and her sister planned to reveal Angela would be moving back to California.
The two sisters text one another several times a day during the trip as Angela kept her sister,
Isabel informed about where she was and when she expected to arrive at certain stop points.
On July 5th, 2018, Angela texttexted Isabel to say she had arrived at Half Moon Bay and
she was going to sleep in her car.
The following morning, she let Isabel know she was about to hit the road again, and let
her sister know when she expected to be in Lancaster that evening.
But Angela would never make it to Lancaster.
By the time Angela’s expected arrival time came, Isabel was already worried.
She hadn’t been getting any responses from her sister since that morning, which wasn’t
like her.
When Angela didn’t arrive in Lancaster, Isabel contacted police.
Cameras and cell phone pings indicated Angela had been driving south on Highway 1 and had
made it into Monterey Country before she vanished.
Police sent search and rescue teams along the stretch of road where Angela was last
seen.
It ran along some steep cliffs in some areas and there was a fear she may have gone over
the edge, seeing as her car was also missing.
But volunteers found no signs of any broken railings that would have indicated someone
had crashed through them.
Helicopters were sent to search the coast from the air but they also found no signs
of a crash.
It was as if Angela had vanished into thin air.
Seven days after the crash, a couple came across an unusual site at Big Sur.
Chelsea and Chad Moore were surfers, but as the waves weren’t great that day they decided
to go fishing instead.
They climbed down a treacherous path to the isolated beach at the bottom of Big Sur cliff.
There, they found a completely wrecked Jeep.
The Jeep had obviously rolled several times as it plummeted down the cliff.
Its roof had been torn off and the driver was nowhere to be found.
The Moores weren’t aware of any missing person cases at the time, but they took the
license plate from the vehicle so they could report it to police.
They continued down the beach to find a safer path back up to the road.
It was as they rounded the corner that they came across Angela.
Angela had been travelling without issue along the highway when a small animal darted in
front of her car and she swerved to avoid it.
Miraculously, she had survived the crash, though she had suffered seriously and hadn’t
been able to get back to the road.
She had tried to call for help but the cliff had been too steep for anybody to see her.
She’d used the hose from her radiator to collect water from moss which she’d used
to keep hydrated.
Chelsea Moore went to get help and Angela was finally reunited with her family.
Number 4
Even when a missing person is found safe and well, that doesn’t answer all the questions,
as the family and friends of Timothy Carney discovered when he was located seven years
after he vanished.
TimothyTimothy Carney was 25-years-old when he went missing in September 2004.
For years before his disappearance, he had been part of a religious organisation which
had been described by his family as cult-like.
They feared his disappearance was due to the church.
It was a high-profile case, and Timothy’s information was posted on billboards in the
hopes someone would recognise him.
He was even featured on the TV show Disappeared, but nothing seemed to help.
Timothy was living in a flat owned by the church at the time of his disappearance.
His flatmate, who was also a member of the church, said he last saw Timothy at about
5am, when he left the house as usual.
Timothy’s usual routine would have been a prayer meeting held a few hours later then
the short drive to the New Jersey Department of Labour, where he worked.
However, for some reason Timothy missed the prayer meeting that day, and at about 8.20am
he called his boss to say he would be late to work due to the weather.
He never showed up for work, and the mystery began.
Timothy was reported missing when he didn’t return home later that day.
A few days later, his car was found abandoned at a Newark construction site.
Four days after he was last seen, CCTV outside a bank spotted Timothy withdrawing money from
his account.
It would turn out $1000 was withdrawn, leaving only $100 untouched in his account.
It was the last time anybody saw him.
In the years that followed, the possible involvement of a cult caught the public’s attention.
According to one former member of the Gospel Outreach Church, Timothy had wanted to leave
some years before his disappearance but was convinced to stay.
He was considered a weak brother because he was quiet and he missed his family.
Visiting family outside the church was discouraged, but Timothy would sneak away to visit his
parents and sister.
His family couldn’t believe Timothy would willingly disappear without contacting them,
but police found no signs of foul play.
For its part, the Gospel Outreach Church claimed its detractors knew where Timothy was, and
they were hiding him.
The real reason behind Timothy’s disappearance remains a mystery but almost exactly seven
years later police announced they had located him.
Timothy did not want to contact his family and his right to privacy means we have no
idea where he is, only that he’s safe and in good health.
Timothy himself hasn’t come forward to give any explanation, but some sources have claimed
he’s said his disappearance was nothing to do with the church and he just wanted to
get away from his family.
While we’ll probably never have all the answers, Timothy’s family is just happy
he’s alive and safe, even if he doesn’t want to speak with them.
Number 3
When Arthur Jones disappeared in May 1979, his wife feared the worst.
It had been a troubling year for the Chicago broker.
He’d recently lost his job at the board of trade as a commodities trader after a trading
mistake.
He was also in significant gambling debt, and had forged his wife’s signature to get
a second mortgage to try to pay off the debt.
His wife and authorities suspected his disappearance was mob related.
Either he had met foul play due to the money he owed or he had run to try to escape them.
With little evidence to say otherwise, Jones was declared legally deceased later that same
year, and his wife and three children tried to move on with their lives.
It wasn’t for three decades that the truth would be revealed.
It was in Arizona in the mid-1990s when a 34-year-old man named Clifton Goodenough ran
into problems with the IRS.
He was an army veteran who now worked as a nurse with the Phoenix Veteran Affairs healthcare
system, but the government believed he was earning money in Las Vegas.
It wouldn’t be a one-off mistake, and year after year, Clifton was asked to pay taxes
on thousands of dollars earned in Nevada by someone using his social security number.
Clifton tried numerous channels to try to get the issue resolved and was eventually
given a new temporary social security number.
In 2009, Clifton learned that his social security number was being used by a man in his 70s
that called himself Joseph Sandelli.
His wife found a man by the same name living in Nevada in the phone book.
Clifton expected Sandelli to be angry at being accused of stealing someone’s identity,
but the man on the phone just said there had been a mistake and he would change his own
number.
Clifton found this strange, given Sandelli was supposedly only a few years away from
retirement.
He eventually got his state senator involved, and finally authorities in Nevada closed in
on Sandelli.
After he was arrested, Sandelli admitted to being the missing Arthur Jones.
He had gone to Florida after disappearing, living there for a year before moving to California
and eventually Nevada.
For the past two decades he had worked as a bookie and had a good life for himself in
Las Vegas.
He hadn’t been in contact with any of his friends and family from his old life, and
had a new long-term partner in Nevada.
He was found guilty of identity theft, and ordered to pay back money to Clifton and the
IRS.
Number 2
Tammy Miller had always been told her mother hadn’t been able to cope with the stress
of motherhood and, after giving Tammy and her sisters to her mother-in-law, disappeared
without a trace.
It was a story Tammy, who had been just two at the time, had accepted.
As an adult, she had little hope of her mother, Lula Ann Gillespie-Miller, ever being found
alive, though her grandmother had always kept the porch light on in case Lula ever came
home.
But when Tammy was 41, she decided to do an internet search of her mother’s name, and
discovered Lula’s life had been much more complicated.
In 1969, two years before Tammy was born, Lula’s husband passed away in a car accident.
Lula had a brief affair with a married man, Tammy’s biological father, but it wasn’t
a stable relationship.
After her youngest child was born, Lula gave custody of her four children to her husband’s
mother.
She thought she was too young to be a single parent and couldn’t cope, but she remained
in contact with them.
That was until 1974.
Lula was attacked by four men and thrown over a bridge into a river.
She survived the attack, and managed to make it back home.
A police statement was made, but never filed.
The next day, Lula had vanished.
The only contact she had with her family from this point onwards was a postcard from Richmond,
Indiana.
On discovering this, Tammy searched through the Doe Network, a database of unidentified
individuals, hoping to find closure.
There was one Doe whose body had been found in a sewer in Richmond around the same time
the postcard was sent.
She had been buried since, but police called for the body to be exhumed and DNA tested.
Before the police could even get the results, they had another lead: a woman matching Lula’s
description had been living in Tennessee in the 1980s.
She had since moved to Texas, but she could be tracked down.
In 2014, Texas officers knocked on her door.
The woman couldn’t believe anyone was looking for her, but she eventually admitted to being
Lula Gillespie-Miller.
Lula had been living under an assumed name.
What she’d been doing for the past 40 years is a mystery.
She hadn’t committed any crimes and has remained private.
She gave a phone number for her daughter to contact her with, but after a brief phone
call Tammy Miller said she wouldn’t be contacting her mother again.
Number 1
Matthew Greene was 24-years-old when he disappeared from Kent, England, in 2010.
Matthew Matthew Greene had been a happy, outgoing teenager, but thingthings took a turn when
he was 17, in part due to a run in with police when he was falsely accused of a crime.
He became reserved, would keep away from family members, and fell into the wrong crowds.
Despite this, when he had a psychotic break at age 24, his parents said it was completely
out of the blue.
He had a stay in hospital and seemed to have recovered.
He got a job as a roofer and seemed much happier.
Things were normal for about two years.
Then, one Friday night in April 2010, he told his parents he was going to London to go for
some drinks with a friend.
They expected him home Sunday night but when there was still no sign of him then they weren’t
too concerned.
It seemed likely he had just had one too many drinks and would be making his way back in
the morning.
It was only when he didn’t show up for work that they thought something might be wrong,
and two days later they contacted police.
There was little progress made in the investigation.
At one point, a body was found near where Matthew’s parents lived, and police judged
the person had probably passed away around the same time Matthew went missing.
However, it was confirmed this wasn’t him, and Matthew’s parents continued their search,
convinced he was still alive.
In May 2016, police officers knocked on their door to say they had news about Matthew.
Matthew had been arrested in Spain.
He had been wanted for some petty thefts and was found behaving erratically.
But Matthew’s parents were disappointed and angry to find out he didn’t want to
speak with them.
Despite this, they continued to push for information, even attempting to hire a private investigator.
They then discovered Matthew had been admitted to a secure health facility and was suffering
with mental health problems.
His parents flew to Spain, but he still didn’t want to see him.
They eventually managed to get him transferred to an English hospital, where he was diagnosed
with schizophrenia.
As Matthew received the mental health support he needed, he allowed his parents to visit
and, in 2017, joined them for Christmas, giving a happy ending that, at one point, his parents
thought wouldn’t come.