there are all sorts of reasons why someone might go missing some of the
strangest missing persons cases are ones where the person doesn't even realize they're missing
years after first disappearing police were finally able to close these cold cases
number five years after her family lost contact with her nicole denise jackson was finally
located in germany earlier this year nicole had been missing since around 2018 and her family
weren't even sure if she was still alive but they didn't give up hope and managed to raise the money
to hire an investigator to take on the case nicole was 21 years old when she left her home
in birmingham alabama to travel to germany she was traveling with her boyfriend a man her
family didn't know very well but they assumed that he was someone she went to school with
nicole was a singer and was looking to pursue her new music career in europe after arriving
in germany she told her family she was planning to attend school there to study music as it would be
free but after a few months communication with her petered out the last time her sister heard
her voice was christmas of 2018. after that point nicole would send sporadic text messages
but when her family tried to contact her on any of the numbers she used the calls wouldn't connect
it was clear that this wasn't just someone who had forgotten to get in touch with her loved ones
it seemed whoever was sending the messages didn't want to talk with them
activity on nicole's social media accounts also stopped and her instagram account was deleted
entirely something that her family said was very unlike her her family only grew more concerned
when they realized that nicole's boyfriend wasn't someone she knew from school nicole had met him
online it's not clear if nicole had ever met him in person before traveling to germany with him but
her family believed he was from the munich area the actions or lack of them was very unlike nicole
and her family was concerned for her safety there was a fear she might have fallen foul of something
extremely sinister such as human trafficking and they weren't sure they would ever get answers
the language barriers only made things harder and when the covet 19 pandemic limited travel
the family was practically cut off from getting any answers in germany but once borders reopened
the family was quick to act a private investigator working for nicole's family traveled to germany
they were able to locate nicole's boyfriend's landlord and place of work
finally at the end of july of 2021 nicole herself came forward she contacted the state department in
germany having discovered her family was looking for her she confirmed her identity with an id
card and officials in germany were able to confirm she was safe and in good health why she stopped
contacting her family remains a mystery but they're just relieved to know that she's still
alive and accept that she'll contact them when she's ready number four detectives in australia
managed to close a 50-year-old case after they discovered the missing person was alive and
well living on the other side of the world it was the 1960s when otto hein disappeared from
western australia otto had immigrated to australia from austria with his parents and four brothers
in the late 1960s he picked up work at a farm just outside of town nothing seemed to be out
of the ordinary when in may of 1969 he told his boss he was going into town to pick up cigarettes
but otto would never come back it's not clear when exactly otto was reported missing
or who reported him missing as it doesn't seem to have been his family whatever the case when
police pulled him over in a town eight hours from where he had gone missing the missing person case
wasn't on their mind otto gave them a fake name as he himself didn't have a driver's license
he wasn't held and drove away it was the last time police in australia would see otto for 50 years
the car otto had been driving was found abandoned two weeks after he left the farm it had run out
of gas and now police were concerned foul play may have been involved around the same
time that otto had disappeared a hitchhiker had taken the life of someone who had picked him up
stealing the vehicle and dumping the body in the bush when police caught up with him
they found maps that indicated he'd driven through the area where otto was last seen
and they believed that otto may have been another victim but the suspect denied any knowledge of
otto and had an alibi for the time the missing man disappeared the case went cold police periodically
looked into the case over the years but strangely never seemed to get in contact with otto's family
that were still living in victoria in 2019 someone finally thought to
contact his brothers about the missing person case they were shocked to discover that otto
wasn't considered missing by his family at all after otto had been pulled over he had panicked
he drove the car until it ran out of fuel and then hitchhiked around australia for a few months
the behavior was typical of otto at the time he would often go off without telling anyone
in 1970 he returned to austria completed national service and moved to italy
sometime in the 1980s he and his wife moved to sicily where they settled down and started a
family nobody in the hain family realized otto was considered missing police contacted otto
via skype and confirmed this was the man they had been looking for for 50 years they managed
to close the case and gave hope that other missing person cases might have happy endings
number three there are lots of cases of japanese soldiers from world war ii being found years or
even decades after they last saw their homeland the most famous of those are the soldiers that
never gave up fighting the war but the story of ishinosuke uwano is quite a bit different to the
other tales it took six decades for ishinosuke to return to japan and he didn't spend that time
hiding in the jungles of southeast asia fighting a guerrilla campaign ishinosuke was still a teenager
when he was drafted into the japanese imperial army and deployed in 1942 at the time the southern
half of the island belonged to japan while the northern was part of the soviet union but after
the ussr declared war on japan the soviet army steamrolled the japanese garrison the soldiers
there fought bravely but the soviet forces could not be stopped those that survived the attack were
taken to prisoner of war camps where they spent their time doing hard labor ishinosuke's family
assumed that he was among those captured after the war the prisoners were gradually released
back to japan but ishinosuke was not among them whether he had passed away in one of the
camps during the attack on the island or was simply missing remained a mystery for decades
his parents passed away without ever finding out what happened to their son
up until the year 2000 his family kept ishinosuke's name on the family registry
but eventually they went through the legal process to have him declared as having passed away
but in 2006 officials got a very strange message from the japanese embassy in japan there was a man
there claiming to be ishinosuke what exactly happened in the intervening years isn't clear
like many war veterans ichinosuke hadn't spoken much about it not even to his family members in
japan it's believed that he managed to escape capture during the soviet takeover and spent
years hiding out on the island behind enemy lines there were scattered reports of a man matching
ishinosuke's description on the island for years after he was last confirmed to have been seen
the last coming from the late 1950s at some point after the war he surrendered to the soviets but
for whatever reason they didn't inform japan or ishinosuke's family and he wasn't repatriated
home instead he found his way to ukraine where he made a life for himself he married a local woman
became a naturalized citizen and raised a family in 2006 he contacted the embassy to see if he
could contact his remaining family in japan as he had already been declared deceased in japan he
wasn't a citizen of that country anymore and had to travel into the country on a ukrainian passport
he stayed for a week visiting his surviving relatives and the graves of his parents but
he said he had no interest in living in japan again as ukraine was now his home
number two the disappearance of moro prosperi was not a cold case in any sense of the word
but his discovery was nothing short of miraculous unlike other entries on this list it wasn't
years or decades that maura was missing he went without human contact for just 10 days
but those 10 days had been a battle for survival in the most grueling conditions imaginable in 1994
morrow was a former pent athlete looking for his next challenge when his friend told him
of the marathon of the sands it was a race in the moroccan part of the sahara desert
mara was fascinated by the race and trained hard for it he worked on keeping his water intake low
so he could deal with dehydration that he would face in the desert and would run 25 miles a day
the training worked well when the race got underway morrow was one of the strongest runners
in a race of about 80 participants he was fourth overall by the end of the third day and the first
italian on the fourth day bings took a turn for the worst morrow had lost sight of any pacesetters
when a dust storm hit during the longest stage of the race official advice for anybody who gets
lost is to stay put but the sandstorm was so fierce that if morrow had stayed he would have
been buried alive he kept walking his face almost entirely covered to protect himself from the sand
by the time it stopped it was night time when mauro awoke the following day he had no idea
where he was for the next day morrow kept running figuring he would meet up with someone soon but
the realization that he was lost slowly sank in he prepared to spend time wandering through the
desert though the race organizers were looking for him at one point a helicopter flew overhead and
morrow fired a flare but it was too small to see he stumbled across an abandoned muslim shrine and
stayed there for a few days drinking fluids from bats at one point he considered taking
his own life but it wasn't possible and he found renewed strength to make his way back home again
mauro kept walking following the advice to walk towards the clouds he saw on the
horizon in the morning he came across an oasis and spent hours sipping from the pool he didn't
even have the strength to drink properly on the tenth day he came across a camp of berber women
they gave him goat's milk to drink and food though he couldn't keep it down and called for help
after days spent wandering in the desert he was taken to a military base where he discovered that
he had wandered into algeria he was eventually taken to the hospital and contacted his wife
asking if she already had his funeral his brother and brother-in-law had joined race
organizers to look for him during his 10 days in the desert and had come across some of his
belongings in the shrine but all were amazed when mauro turned up a lie he returned to the marathon
of the sands multiple times in the following years but has so far not recreated his first experience
number one after michelle mcmullen left her son at a friend's house she vanished into thin
air and it became one of the strangest unsolved missing persons cases years later she was finally
found working in a hair and beauty salon on the other side of the country michelle went missing
in september of 2008 in very strange circumstances she was a student from harrisburg pennsylvania but
had been studying in louisiana her course fees bills and looking after her son had left her
in financial trouble she worked for a time in a local church but was fired for poor performance
after she was fired somebody going through the books found that michelle had been taking
money from the church accounts increasing her paychecks the money was all used on her schooling
and it totaled around two thousand dollars with everything reaching a boiling point michelle drove
to mid pennsylvania to give her son to a friend asking her not to say anything for a few days
when a few days passed her friend became worried and contacted michelle's parents who contacted
police her parents feared something terrible must have happened like falling asleep behind
the wheel or meeting foul play police believed she was running from the theft accusations
her car was eventually found abandoned in maryland inside were her purse money cards and all personal
identification either michelle had walked away from her life or someone had dragged her away
police struggled to find any information on michelle until in december of that year a crucial
sighting came in a family friend was in martinsburg west virginia
when he visited the knights inn working behind the bar was someone he thought looked very familiar
the person behind the bar going by the name monique watson recognized him too she excused
herself to her co-workers then fled the hotel michelle had taken on the name of monique
when she arrived in the state she said she had been abused and was a hurricane katrina
victim without any paperwork the owner of the hotel took pity on her and offered her work
according to anyone who knew her in west virginia she was a hard worker who hadn't done
anything wrong the friend contacted michelle's parent who called police
by the time police in martinsburg arrived michelle had already disappeared again the case went cold
again and would remain that way for another year the disappeared show ran a segment on michelle but
no leads came forward that was until a rerun of the episode was watched by a woman in california
in january of 2011. the woman frequently went to the creative african braids and beauty shop
in oakland california she was a client of danielle jones who had moved to the area two years earlier
danielle told people she had been born in liberia but moved to chicago when she was three and ran
away from her adopted parents who didn't care for her the owner of the shop took danielle in
and treated her like her own daughter she taught danielle to trade and danielle quickly took to it
again everyone who knew her thought she was a loving young woman who would do no wrong after the
woman realized danielle was really michelle she contacted police who visited the store michelle's
lies came tumbling down around her she said she had never planned anything and spent much of her
time on the run living homeless it had just been impulsive and she hadn't wanted to hurt anyone
the only reason she didn't call her parents was because she knew they would convince her to come
home michelle was arrested for the theft and was eventually charged with time served in prison and
probation her family was just grateful that this strange missing person's case was finally solved
thank you guys so much for watching if you liked this video be sure to hit that
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with all of our future uploads but i've been ty knotts and i'll catch you guys in the next video