Tag: mysterious disappearances

Joran Van Der Sloot Admits He Crushed Natalee Holloway’s Head With A Cinderblock Before Pushing Her Out To Sea

In a revelation that finally unraveled a nearly two-decade-old mystery, court records revealed that Joran van der Sloot brutally attacked Natalee Holloway on an Aruban beach, leading to her brutal death. Van der Sloot had been long suspected in connection with Holloway’s 2005 disappearance, and he appeared in federal court to admit his guilt for extortion and wire fraud related to the case.

Initially pleading not guilty to all charges, Van der Sloot had an abrupt change of heart on Wednesday, confessing to his involvement in the extortion and the brutal murder of Natalee Holloway. U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco acknowledged the confession before sentencing him to 10 years in prison.

According to his plea agreement, Van der Sloot said that he was on an Aruban beach when Holloway rejected his advances. In response, he kicked her in the face after she kneed him in the groin, he said. After that, he used a nearby cinderblock to “smash her head in with it completely,” Van der Sloot added. Van der Sloot says he then disposed of her body in the ocean by wading in knee-deep and pushing her body out to sea.

Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway, said after the killing, Van der Sloot went home and watched porn.

Holloway expressed her satisfaction with this confession, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s over. Joran van der Sloot is no longer a suspect in my daughter’s murder; he is the killer.”

Keep reading

California just created the ‘Ebony Alert’ to find missing Black children

California’s newly enacted “Ebony Alert” law is the first of its kind in the nation to prioritize the search for Black youth gone missing. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 673 into law on Sunday, making California the first state to create an alert notification system — similar to an Amber Alert — to address the crisis of missing Black children and young women.  

The law, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, will allow the California Highway Patrol to activate the alert upon request from local law enforcement when a Black youth goes missing in the area. The Ebony Alert will utilize electronic highway signs and encourage use of radio, TV, social media and other systems to spread information about the missing persons’ alert. The Ebony Alert will be used for missing Black people aged 12 to 25. 

“Data shows that Black and brown, our indigenous brothers and sisters, when they go missing there’s very rarely the type of media attention, let alone AMBER alerts and police resources that we see with our white counterparts,” state Sen. Steven Bradford, also a Democrat and creator of the legislation, told NBC News earlier this year. 

He added: “We feel it’s well beyond time that we dedicate something specifically to help bring these young women and girls back home because they’re missed and loved just as much as their counterparts are.”  

About 141,000 Black children under the age of 18 went missing in 2022, and Black women over 21 accounted for nearly 16,500 missing persons cases that year, according to the most recent data from the National Crime Information Center. More than 30,000 Black people in the U.S. remained missing at the end of 2022, according to the center. Although about 38% of the people who went missing i in 2022 were Black, according to the Black and Missing Foundation, missing Black people are less likely than white people to have their stories highlighted in the media. Also, missing persons cases for Black people remain open longer than those for white people. Derrica Wilson, co-founder of the foundation, told CNN that a majority of the 6,000 cases of missing Black people in her database remain unsolved. 

Keep reading

Navy sailor vanishes in San Diego, prompting investigation: ‘Very uncharacteristic’

A US Navy sailor failed to return to his ship in San Diego as his family and lieutenant claim it’s “very uncharacteristic” for him not to report back to duty.

Nija Townsend Jr., 20, was reported missing on Monday when he didn’t report for work on his ship, the USS Germantown, following his weekend leave, the sailor’s mother, Courtney Frazier, told NBC 7.

“The health and welfare of our Sailors is a top priority and we will continue to work with local authorities to help locate this service member,” Cdr. Arlo Abrahamson, Public Affairs Officer for Naval Surface Force, US Pacific Fleet, told the outlet.

The Lake Jackson, Texas native was last seen by ship personnel at around 1 p.m. on Saturday, Navy officials tell the outlet — saying they are now working closely with the San Diego Police Department and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) to locate the vanished seaman.

Keep reading

In 1971, a mysterious hijacker parachuted out of a plane with $200,000 and vanished. This man is suing the FBI to get potential new clues

Eric Ulis was only 5 when a dapper man in a suit and sunglasses boarded a commercial flight in Portland, Oregon, ordered a bourbon and soda from his seat in 18E and then handed a flight attendant a handwritten note saying he had a bomb.

It was November 24, 1971, and the unidentified man, who later became known as D.B. Cooper, had a one-way ticket on the flight to Seattle.

Cooper opened his carry-on bag to reveal a jumble of wires and red sticks and demanded four parachutes and $200,000 in cash. After the plane landed in Seattle he swapped three dozen passengers for the cash and parachutes, then ordered the pilot to fly to a new destination: Mexico City.

But soon after takeoff, Cooper did something incredible: With the money strapped to his waist, he parachuted out of the rear of the plane and into the night, vanishing over the vast wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.

Cooper has not been seen or heard from since. His audacious stunt made him a folk hero, triggered an FBI investigation, led to tightened security at airports and inspired dozens of books and TV documentaries. It remains the only unsolved hijacking in US aviation history.

Keep reading

The Empty Cockpit Mystery

In September 1970 Captain William Schaffner, a young USAF pilot serving with the RAF, took off in a Lightning fighter aircraft from RAF Binbrook in North Lincolnshire to intercept an unknown radar contact. He was never seen again. One month later his aircraft was recovered from the North Sea, but although the cockpit was closed and the ejector seat was in place, there was no sign of Captain Schaffner.

The RAF enquiry into the disappearance of Captain Schaffner was conducted in secret, leading some people to suppose that this was part of an attempt to cover up the fact that the radar contact he had been sent to intercept was a UFO and that this had somehow spirited him out of the cockpit. This speculation was given further impetus when in 1992 newspapers published articles which included a transcript of radio calls from Schaffner which seemed to confirm that he had approached a UFO before his disappearance.

Almost fifty years later, it’s much easier to separate fact from conjecture and downright hoax. Something certainly happened to Captain William Schaffner out in the darkness over the North Sea in 1970, but is it possible to deduce precisely what? Let’s have a try.

Keep reading

Mystery as nearly FIFTY schoolchildren go missing in Cleveland in September alone while over ONE THOUSAND have vanished so far this year in ‘alarming’ trend that’s left Ohio cops baffled

The number of missing and runaway children in Ohio for 2023 is nearly double that of states with similar populations, sparking panic among parents and police who in some towns can’t keep up with the number of teenagers running away. 

In this month alone, 45 children have been reported missing in the Cleveland area. 

They join the total number of 1,072 who have been reported missing since the start of the year. 

While the majority have since returned home or been accounted for, cops say many are regular runaways who will likely vanish again. 

They say the rate of children going missing and running away in 2023 is unusually high.  

In 2022, Ohio had nearly double the number of runaways than states like Georgia, North Carolina and Illinois, all of which have populations of between 10million and 12million. 

Keep reading

Mystery of ‘Alaska Triangle’ where 20,000 people have vanished and UFOs appear

A mysterious triangle of land in sparsely-populated Alaska offers more sightings of paranormal phenomena than almost any similarly-sized area on Earth.

As well as supposed sightings of triangle UFOs, ghosts and “aggressive” Bigfoot-type creatures, the “Alaska Triangle” is also known for a remarkable number of unexplained disappearances.

In fact, the History Channel says there are more unsolved missing persons cases in the region than anywhere else on Earth. A new Discovery Channel documentary interviews eyewitnesses of some of the most mysterious and compelling UFO sightings. One, Wes Smith, says the “very strange” triangular objects he saw didn’t move like any known aircraft.

The low-flying mystery craft were totally silent and did not even emitting the tell-tale hum of a drone. “It’s like everything you’ve ever been taught has gone out of the window, because how is that possible?” he asked.

Just over 11 miles from where Wes made his amazing sighting, another Alaska resident, Michael Dillon, caught his own mystery aircraft on camera. A light suddenly popped into existence in the night sky, moving from west to east, before shooting straight up – like the so called Nimitz UFOs – at incredible speed.

“It was very obvious to me that we were not witnessing a natural phenomenon,” Michael added. “For something to change direction at that speed… a human body would be liquified.”

But the mysteries of the Alaska Triangle are not confined to the skies. Since 1970, over 20,000 unexplained disappearances have been recorded in the sparsely-populated patch of land between Anchorage and Juneau in the south to Utqiagvik on the northern coast.

Keep reading

The Baffling Disappearance Of Joe Pichler, The Child Actor Who Has Been Missing Since 2006

As a child, Joe Pichler starred in films like Varsity Blues and two installments of the Beethoven franchise about a beloved but mischievous Saint Bernard. But as an adult, he became the center of a baffling disappearance case, one that has frustrated authorities for almost two decades.

Pichler, who’d returned to his hometown of Bremerton, Washington, to finish high school, disappeared without a trace in 2006. According to his family, the promising young actor had plans to return to Los Angeles and revive his acting career.

Instead, he simply vanished. But though police suspected at the time that Joe Pichler had died by suicide, his family believes that foul play may have been involved.

Keep reading

Mystery and History: the Strange Music and Stranger Tale of Jim Sullivan

By all rights, this is a story Vince Gilligan—co-creator and writer behind epic, Southwest-based mysteries like The X Files and Breaking Bad—could sink his teeth into, rich as it is with the narrative of odd-yet-believable U.F.O. references, craggy, windswept deserts, and lost souls. But the tale of Jim Sullivan, a Malibu-based singer-songwriter and guitarist who released two opulently arranged albums with little fanfare (at the time) before disappearing without a trace in New Mexico in 1975 is altogether too real.

On his way to Nashville, alone in a Volkswagen Beetle, Sullivan checked into a motel in Santa Rosa, bought a bottle of vodka, abandoned his vehicle, and was reportedly last seen walking away from his Bug. Sullivan’s guitar, cash, clothing, and a crate of his albums—1969’s U.F.O. and his self-titled 1972 effort, both reminiscent of the Tims, Hardin and Buckley—were found at the scene of his last known whereabouts.

“After the facts, no, we heard absolutely nothing about what happened to my dad,” says Chris Sullivan, the songwriter’s son and a professor at San Diego’s Mesa College, of what happened to his father forty-five years ago. “Our families were out there for a time—they were bulldogs—even tried to get people to fess up, but nothing ever came of it… I’ve had a long time to think about all this.”

Keep reading

Chilling never-before-seen sketches by BTK serial killer showing girls bound and gagged with nooses around their necks are released by cops as they hunt for clues in case of missing girl

Chilling never-before-scene sketches by the BTK serial killer have shown girls gagged with nooses around their neck.

Cops released the images as they step up the investigation into a slew of unsolved murders which they suspect Dennis Rader may have been involved in.

Rader, known as the BTK killer, ‘Bind, Torture, Kill’ went on a murderous two decade killing spree during 1970s to the 1990s, including two children in Kansas. He pleaded guilty to ten murders and is currently serving ten consecutive life sentences.

The images released by the Osage County Sheriff’s Office this week were first recovered after Rader’s arrest in February 2005, but in January, an investigation was opened into other evidence that was discovered by Wichita Police, including, writings and sketches that officials believe may be a possible link to several unsolved cases in the area.

Though there were hundreds of sketches recovered, Osage County Sheriff Eddie Virden told CNN that a ‘few rare color images’ may depict more crimes committed by Rader.

The digital images obtained exclusively by the news outlet show eerie pictures of three different female victims gagged – some have a noose around their neck with their arms and legs bound. Each are wearing a short garment and have a terrifying expression on their faces. 

Investigators believe all three victims are being held captive in a barn.

Keep reading