(paper rustling)
(light, bouncy music)
- You know people have been
vanishing without a trace for centuries,
probably millennia, really.
In most cases, we eventually get some sort of hint
of what became of them,
but every once in a while,
someone disappears and we never
have any idea what became of them.
Here are four of the most famous cases.
You know jimmy Hoffa was the granddaddy
of all disappearances.
He was the president of the Teamsters Union,
and he was also super shady.
He was put in prison for bribery,
jury tampering, mail fraud,
and in 1971, after he got out,
President Richard Nixon pardoned him.
Four years later, Jimmy Hoffa
disappeared without a trace
outside of a Michigan restaurant.
And so did a sizable amount of the
pension fund that he was in charge of.
Over time, theories have abounded
of what became of Jimmy Hoffa.
Most people think that he was bumped off
by some of his mob cronies
and either fed to alligators in the Everglades,
shipped to Japan, or buried on
the 50 yard line in Giants Stadium.
To this day we have no idea what happened.
You know, Alcatraz, the prison in San Francisco Bay
was not an easy place to escape from.
But that didn't stop Frank Morris
and the brothers John and Clarence Anglin
from trying in 1962.
And they were actually successful.
They used spoons to dig their way
out of their cell and to make sure that
the night guards didn't get any wiser
they went to the trouble of making
paper mache dummy heads that they left
in their beds while they dug out.
They climbed their way up a ventilation shaft,
down a drain pipe, and escaped
wearing life jackets and in a boat
made of raincoats that they'd collected.
Pretty neat stuff.
After that, no one heard anything
from them ever again.
Later on, some of their gear was found
a little further down the coast,
which I guess constitutes a trace,
but still, get off our backs, okay?
And after that, a body that was never
fully identified was found in the area.
Still, no one knows what became of Frank Morris
and the Anglin brother to this day.
Helen Voorhees Brach,
no relation to Jason,
was actually a very, very rich
multi-millionairess who was related
to the Brach candy fortune
by way of her dead husband Frank Brach.
In 1977, Mrs. Brach was dropped off
at Chicago O'Hare airport
and never heard from again.
The last person allegedly to see Mrs. Brach alive
was her chauffeur and employee, Jack Matlick.
Jack Matlick said that he dropped her off
at the airport and everything
was fine and dandy.
But things get a little fishy
when you find out that he took
two weeks to report her missing.
Yes, you could kind of explain that away,
but it gets even stranger.
Jack Matlick was found to have cashed
13,000 dollars in checks
with Mrs. Brach's signature that he forged
after her disappearance,
and it turns out that he had a room
in her house recarpeted and repainted
after she disappeared.
Fishy indeed, but still, we have no idea
whatever happened to Helen Brach.
John Brisker was a basketball player
for the Pittsburgh Condors in the now-defunct
American Basketball Association,
and he was pretty good.
When he retired from basketball in 1975,
he tried his hand unsuccessfully
at the restaurant business,
before moving to Africa to start up
an import export/business with his friend.
Six weeks after he moved,
his life partner, Melvis Diane Williamson,
received a call from Brisker,
saying that he planned to move her
and their daughter over to Africa very soon.
That's the last anyone ever heard
of John Brisker.
What became of him?
Who knows, but some theories abound.
Some say that he went off to Uganda
to fight for Idi Amin's army
and died somehow there.
Other people say that he drifted
to Guyana and joined up with
the Jonestown cult and died
in the massacre there in 1978.
Other people think he's alive and well
and just living under an assumed name.
We don't know, and the mystery continues.
You got any cool theories
about what became of these people?
Or do you know of any other disappearances
that we didn't cover?
Let us know in the comment section below.
And for more on this, check out
10 Things that Disappeared Without a Trace
on How Stuff Works.