There are many adjectives that can be used to describe missing person cases: sad, mysterious, tragic, confusing. However, you can also add the word "controversial" to the list. When a person disappears, it can sometimes be just the tip of the iceberg in a complicated and bizarre story.
10 Felipe Santos and Terrance Williams
Felipe Santos was driving on the morning of 1. October 2003 in Naples, Florida, for work when he had a minor accident with another vehicle. A sheriff's deputy named Steven Henry Calkins cited Santos for driving without a license before putting him in his patrol car and driving away. Santos, however, was never booked at the police station and has not been seen since. Calkins claimed he changed his mind about taking Santos to jail and dropped him off at a nearby convenience store. Calkins found itself at the center of another suspicious disappearance just three months later, when an African-American man named Terrance Williams vanished.
After having engine problems with his car, Williams was pulled by Calkins. Although Williams was driving without a license and insurance, Calkins did not cite him. Once again, he noted, he put Williams in his patrol car and parked it at a nearby Circle K convenience store. This time, Calkins got caught in a lie when he claimed to have called the store to check on Williams, as phone records did not support his story. The families of the two missing men sued Calkins and he was eventually fired by the department for lying. Notable figures like Tyler Perry and Reverend Al Sharpton have taken up the cause to find out what happened to Santos and Williams, but there are still no answers.
9 Nicholas Barclay
Thirteen-year-old Nicholas Barclay played on 13. June 1994 in San Antonio playing basketball with his friends when he called his mother to pick him up. Nicholas' mother had been asleep at the time and his brother didn't want to wake her, so Nicholas never came home that day. He was missing until October 1997, when his family received the shocking news that he had been found in a juvenile home in Linares, Spain. Apparently Nicholas contacted police officers and told them he had been kidnapped, taken to Europe and forced into a pedophile ring for three years before escaping.
Nicholas' sister flew to Spain, identified him and brought him back to Texas. However, his appearance had changed a lot during his three-year absence, and although his family seemed to think the young man was him, others were suspicious of his story. After the FBI launched an investigation and took fingerprints and DNA samples, they determined that "Nicholas" was actually a 23-year-old French con artist named Frederic Bourdin. At the youth shelter, Bourdin had impersonated the shelter director to contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. After receiving some information about Nicholas Barclay, Bourdin decided to assume his identity. He was eventually sentenced to six years in prison for passport fraud and perjury. Since his release and deportation to Europe, Bourdin continued to get into legal trouble by assuming the identities of missing children. The real Nicholas Barclay was never found.
8Isabella Miller-Jenkins
Parental kidnappings are always terrible tragedies, but one of the most controversial is the lesbian wife Janet Jenkins and Lisa Ann Miller. In 2002, they both welcomed a baby girl named Isabella, who was conceived after Lisa artificially inseminated her. A year later, the couple had what appeared to be an amicable separation and made an informal arrangement in which Lisa had custody of Isabella while Janet visited regularly. However, this arrangement ended after Lisa joined the extremely conservative Thomas Road Baptist Church. Asked her to renounce her homosexuality and refused to allow her former partner access to Isabella.
This would be the beginning of a very heated legal battle, with Lisa making unfounded allegations of Isabella's abuse of Janet. After Lisa collected thousands of dollars in fines for refusing to let Janet see Isabella, the state of Vermont found Lisa in court and awarded custody of Janet. Lisa responded by disappearing with Isabella, and neither of them has been seen in three and a half years. A warrant for Lisa's arrest was issued for kidnapping, and at least two Mennonite pastors were charged with helping Lisa and Isabella flee the country and escape to Nicaragua. Janet also filed a civil suit against Lisa, the two pastors, Thomas Road Baptist Church and other organizations to orchestrate the abduction of Isabella, but the child still has not been found.
7 Brooke Henson
On 4. July 1999 around 2:00 a.m., the parents of 20-year-old Brooke Henson returned to their home in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, and saw her sitting on a porch while a party was in progress. She had just had a fight with her boyfriend and was going to a nearby supermarket to buy cigarettes. She left a message for her boyfriend that read, "Follow me if you care", However, did not return home. Brooke's boyfriend refused to cooperate with the investigation, and the case went cold until June 2006, when it was discovered that she had apparently enrolled at Columbia University in New York.
As it turned out, Brooke's identity had been stolen by a woman named Esther Reed, who used Brooke's name and social security number to register for classes at Columbia. Reed had a long history of stealing other people's identities to attend universities and rack up large debts.Although she had been attending classes under Brooke's name for two years, no one noticed her ruse until she applied for a job and a simple Internet search informed her potential employer that the real Brooke was missing. When authorities confronted Reed and ordered her to submit to a DNA test, she fled and ran until she was arrested in February 2008. Reed was sentenced to 51 months in prison for fraud and identity theft. Authorities, however, do not believe she had done so which has to do with Brooke Henson's disappearance, which remains unsolved.
6 Walter Collins
On 10. March 1928, Christine Collins of Los Angeles left her 10-year-old son, Walter, home alone to go to work. When she returned, he was gone. Police quickly came under enormous public pressure to find Walter, and five months later they announced that he had been located in DeKalb, Illinois. The LAPD made Walter's reunion with his mother a media event. Unfortunately, Christine didn't think the boy who arrived was actually her son. After repeatedly trying to convince police that they had found a fake child, they conspired to have her transferred to a mental institution.
In reality, "Walter" was a 12-year-old runaway named Arthur Hutchins Jr., Who resembled Walter Collins and decided to impersonate him in order to receive a free trip to California. After Arthur confessed, Christine was released from the institution and filed a lawsuit against police. It is likely that the real Walter Collins was a victim of the "Wineville Chicken Coop Murders.". In 1930, a man named Gordon Northcott was executed for kidnapping, molesting and murdering at least three boys. His victims were buried near the chicken coop on his ranch in Wineville, California, and it is believed that Northcott lured Walter to his ranch before murdering him. Walter's remains were not found, however, and Northcott never confessed to the crime, so Christine always held out hope that her son had survived. These events were dramatized in the film Changelingwith Angelina Jolie as Christine.
5 Robin Abrams
On 4. October 1990, 28-year-old Robin Abrams disappeared from her hometown of Beecher, Ill. Shortly after, her abandoned vehicle was found in a nearby town with the keys still in the ignition. A witness claimed to have seen two men being dropped off in a tow truck that night. The local sheriff's department initially investigated the disappearance, but was soon turned over to the state police. This was due to a possible conflict of interest, as Abrams was involved in a heated legal battle with the department, specifically with a police officer named Anthony Marquez.
Abrams began an affair with the married Marquez in 1987. He eventually persuaded her to take a job with the sheriff's department, but their relationship went bad after Marquez allegedly broke into her car while she and her mother were in the house. Shortly thereafter, the department terminated Abrams' employment, and Marquez and Abrams would face various criminal charges against each other over the next two years. Eventually, Abrams obtained a protective order against Marquez and filed charges against him and seven other members of the sheriff's department. He alleged wrongful termination and sexual harassment. Abrams was to make an official statement 18 days after she disappeared. Since she did not appear, the case was dismissed.
Marquez was later fired from the department after a new sheriff was elected. Robin Abrams was never found and the exact circumstances of her disappearance remain unclear.
4 Rilya Wilson
Four-year-old Rilya Wilson and her two siblings were living with their godmother, Geralyn Graham, in Miami after being removed from their mother's care. Social workers from the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) were assigned to conduct frequent visits to check up on her. According to Geralyn, she appeared on 18. January 2001 an unknown DCF social worker in her apartment and took Rilya away for evaluation. No one questioned this story until April 2002, when two DCF employees were investigated for fraudulently recording their home visits. Since Rilya had never actually been returned to Geralyn, she was reported missing, but authorities initially suspected that Geralyn's story was false.
DCF had no record of anyone removing Rilya from her home, but because social workers falsified records and did not make their scheduled visits, no one from the agency had actually checked in on Rilya for over a year. The agency faced heavy criticism for allowing the disappearance to go unnoticed. During Rilya's absence, Geralyn was able to continue to talk about 14.Cashing in thousands of dollars in checks sent by the state for child care services. Authorities suspected wrongdoing in the case, and Geralyn was eventually charged with fraud, kidnapping, child abuse, and Rilya's murder. In January 2013, Geralyn was sentenced to 55 years in prison on most of these charges. However, because there was very little evidence that she killed her granddaughter, the jury got nowhere on the murder charge. Rilya Wilson was never found.
3Michael Rosenblum
On 14. February 1980, 25-year-old Michael Rosenblum stranded his girlfriend, Lisa Sharer, at a Pittsburgh gas station and drove away in her car. Michael told Lisa he would meet her later that evening at his parents' house, but he was never seen again. A few hours later, Lisa's abandoned vehicle was found with two flat tires on River Road, but the Baldwin Police Department didn't notify her, and the car sat in their impound for three months.Things got even more bizarre in July when the Baldwin PD issued a warrant for Michael's arrest after mistaking him for another suspect who had committed a robbery.
Over the years, Michael's father received anonymous tips that the Baldwin PD had caused Michael's disappearance. He eventually learned that Aldo Gaburri, Baldwin's police chief, had ordered a letter to be sent in May 1980 informing Lisa that her vehicle had been found and was in her impoundment. Gaburri, however, also left his letter until 15. February 1980 deposit and forged the signature of the officer who found the car. Gaburri would be fired over these allegations, but was reinstated soon thereafter. When the 1988 TV show Unsolved Mysteries filmed a segment on Michael's disappearance, Gaburri ordered his officers not to participate in the show. In 1992, a partial skull fragment of Michael was found in a wooded area 4.8 kilometers from where Lisa's car was discovered. However, the circumstances behind his death are not yet known.
2 Helen Brach
After the death of her candy magnate husband in 1970, Helen Brach inherited his $20 million fortune. Seven years later, the 65-year-old Brach left an appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, which turned out to be the last confirmed sighting of her. Brach's driver Jack Matlick claimed he met her at O'Hare International Airport when she arrived in Chicago. After driving her home, he allegedly took her to the airport a few days later on a trip to Florida. However, the authorities could not find anyone from the airport who remembered Brach. Matlick claimed that Brach 15.000 dollars signed checks left for him, but it turned out they were forged. He also had Brach's house repainted, had her car thoroughly cleaned and did not report her missing for two weeks. Despite his suspicious actions, Matlick was never charged with crimes and died in 2011.
Richard Bailey, an artist friend of Brach's, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 1994 for conspiring to commit Brach's murder after she realized he had deceived her. Bailey has always maintained his innocence, and things became more controversial in 2005 when a career criminal named Joe Plemmons announced that he and several accomplices were responsible for Brach's murder. Plemmons claimed Bailey was not involved and Brach was killed because he threatened to go to the police after being cheated in some business dealings. As evidence, Plemmons produced a ruby ring that supposedly belonged to Brach, but his story was never confirmed, and the real truth about what happened to her remains murky.
1 Anne Philip
When the World Trade Center was destroyed on the morning of 11. September 2001 was attacked, came 2.752 People killed. However, there has always been controversy over whether any of these victims actually died in the attacks. Dr. Sneha Anne Philip was an Indian-American doctor who lived with her husband in lower Manhattan. Am 10. September, security cameras captured her shopping at a department store, where she bought about $550 worth of items that have never been recovered. When Sneha's husband returned to their apartment later that night, she was not there and he suspected that she spent the night with relatives.
Because Sneha lived near the World Trade Center, it was suspected that she might have been killed on her way home the morning of the attacks. As a doctor, she might even have stopped offering medical help just before the towers collapsed. At the time of her disappearance, however, Sneha had numerous personal problems, including alleged substance abuse issues, extramarital affairs, and a pending felony false complaint against a colleague. Authorities speculate that Sneha may have used the attacks as an opportunity to start a new life somewhere or to start a new life, or that she actually died on 10. September was murdered by an unknown party That morning, she was even near Ground Zero. In 2008, her family successfully applied for a declaration of 11. September provided.