Southern California — May 1, 2012 Gavin Smith had spent years building a life that seemed to belong to several different worlds. He had been a college basketball player, a film-industry executive, an occasional actor, and a stuntman. He had worked for 20th Century Fox for nearly two decades and was known professionally as someone … Read more
Hickory, North Carolina — September–November 2010 Zahra Clare Baker had already endured more than most children her age. She had survived cancer. She had lost part of one leg. She needed hearing aids. And after moving thousands of miles from Australia to North Carolina with her father and stepmother, she was supposed to be starting … Read more
SHE GOT INTO A STRANGER’S CAR. SHE NEVER CAME BACK. Alberta, Canada — August 18, 2010 Twenty-year-old Amber Alyssa Tuccaro had traveled from Fort McMurray to the Edmonton area for what was supposed to be a short getaway. She had her fourteen-month-old son with her. She was traveling with a female friend. And within a … Read more
Dana Nicole Bradley was a 14-year-old girl who disappeared in St. John’s, Newfoundland on 14 December 1981. Last seen hitchhiking on Topsail Road in St. John’s, her body was discovered four days later in a wooded area south of the city. An intense and highly publicized investigation followed, and in 1986 a man confessed to … Read more
Imagine how difficult it would be to completely disappear. Not just to leave town, delete your social media or choose not to answer your phone, but to actually vanish, to reach a point where no one can definitively prove where you went or if you’re alive or dead. Now imagine doing this with four people … Read more
Podolsk, Russia — March 2000 William August Vasilyevich Pokhlyobkin was a man whose interests seemed to stretch across several worlds. He was a historian, a scholar of Scandinavian affairs, a journalist, a writer, and one of the best-known authorities on the history of Russian cuisine. He wrote dozens of books and hundreds of articles. His … Read more
Utah — 2000 For nearly twelve years, no one knew who the woman was. Her remains had been found in an isolated field near the Great Saltair, close to the shores of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Investigators had a skull, a collection of bones, clothing, and a few personal items—but no name. Locally, she became … Read more
Dallas, Texas — May 1, 2001 For many children, a father is their first example of what safety is supposed to feel like. He is the person they expect to protect them when they are frightened, the person they believe they can trust without question. For nine-year-old Mary Faith “Faith” Battaglia and her six-year-old sister, … Read more
THE UNSOLVED MURDER OF MARISHA CHEONG Queens, New York — December 19, 2012 At 24 years old, Marisha Cheong was working toward a future she had every reason to believe was still ahead of her. She was studying business management at Long Island University and living in Jamaica, Queens, with her boyfriend. Then, on December … Read more
After spending four years in different prisons, Michael Singh was transferred to the Missouri Department of Corrections Honor Center in Kansas City. The facility allowed him limited work-release privileges, including two weekends each month outside the prison. During this period, Singh married 34-year-old Susan Irving. But the relationship soon became violent. On May 13, 1982, … Read more