19 Wikipedia Pages About Missing People That Are Both Terrifying And Heartbreaking
We asked the BuzzFeed Community for the scariest Wikipedia page about a missing person they'd ever read. They came back with some truly sad and awful responses and even more in that comments section. Here are the results:
Warning: the following contains disturbing content. Continue at your own discretion.
1.The Disappearance of Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone Jr.
"The craziest one I know of is from Philly. Richard Petrone and Danielle Imbo were seen leaving the Abilene bar on South Street, and driving in Petrone's Dodge Dakota heading back to Imbo’s house, and then not them or the truck were ever seen again. The rumor was a drug debt had something to do with it, and the lone person of interest killed himself in prison."
2.The Disappearance of Cherrie Mahan
"In 1985, she got off the school bus and was never seen again. She was the first child listed on the 'Have you seen me?' search cards but was never found and declared legally dead in 1998. It's sad because I went to the same school she went to, and some of the teachers there were friends with her and remember her, but it's just a mystery what happened to her."
3.The Disappearance of Amy Fitzpatrick
"Amy Fitzpatrick was 15 years old. Her mother and stepfather moved her to Spain from Ireland, but she was deeply unhappy and wanted to return home. On New years Eve 2008, she was walking home from a friend's house in Spain and disappeared. Her stepdad later went on to fatally stab her brother...very fishy stuff."
4.The Disappearance of Kyron Horman
"If y’all want something sad, just look up Kyron Horman from Portland, Oregon. He’s been missing for nine years, and there have been very little leads." On June 4, 2010, 7-year-old Kyron was taken to school by his stepmother, Terri. When he didn't arrive home from school later that day, Terri called the school. The secretary said he'd not been in school and had been marked absent. The secretary, realizing he was missing, called 9-1-1. A large-scale search effort was launched and rewards posted up to $50,000 by July. A number of legal proceedings have taken place in the time since — including one by Kyron's mother against Terri. However, Kyron has still never been found.
5.The Jamison Family Deaths
"The Jamison family has always been interesting to me. There are theories that range from meth use to witchcraft, and their case is still unsolved." In October 2009, the Jamison family — Bobby, Sherilynn, and their daughter, Madyson — mysteriously disappeared. The family's pickup truck had been found only a few days after their disappearance, with their dog (barely still alive) inside. However, the family's bodies were never found — only ID cards, wallets, phones, a GPS system, and $32,000 stuffed in a bank bag under the driver's seat.
6.The Disappearance of Susan Powell
"There is a podcast titled Cold that goes into further detail about her story, but man, this one tore me up. She goes missing, husband acts like he doesn’t really care, her father-in-law had admitted to being in love with her (although she wasn’t), cops finally start gaining some evidence to prove husband did it, and he kills himself and their two boys a few days before a polygraph test. Been missing 10-plus years and her body has never been found because they think he dumped her in a Utah mine. Broke my heart."
7.The Disappearance of Lars Mittank
"Lars Mittank was a German backpacker who went missing in Bulgaria. He was acting increasingly erratic in the days leading up to his disappearance. Then on the day he was due to fly home, he was caught on airport security cameras running from the airport, climbing a fence, and fleeing into the woods. The video alone is terrifying."
8.The Disappearance of Jennifer Kesse
"She's been missing since 2006, and not long after she disappeared, her car was discovered about a mile from her home. This one always haunts me, especially how the surveillance video picture captured the face of the person who mysteriously parked her car at just the right moment so he would still be hidden."
9.The Disappearance of Asha Degree
"She went missing almost 20 years ago. She was only 9 years old and allegedly left her family’s home all alone in the very early hours of the morning with a backpack she’d packed herself the night before. It was raining really heavily, and a driver saw her walking down a road and tried to talk to her when they realized it was a little girl all alone. They were going to help, but she ran into the woods. Police found candy wrappers in a shed and also found her backpack a year later, still packed, near a construction site, but no trace of Asha. To this day no one really has a clue what happened to her. Police looked in to whether or not she was being abused at home, but there was no evidence whatsoever of that."
10.The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi
"She was a citizen of the Vatican with close ties to the Pope when she disappeared at the age of 15 after a music lesson. It involves Avon, the man who tried to assassinate the Pope, and sex scandal theories. Her parents received a mysterious tip hinting that she may have been buried by the tombs of two German princesses inside Vatican City, but neither her nor the princesses were found when they dug up the graves. Now they may have found the princesses, but Emanuela is still missing. Another girl around the same age named Mirella Gregori also went missing about 40 days prior."
11.Andrew Irvine
"One missing persons case that kept me disturbed for days is the Andrew Irvine case. He was a British mountaineer who climbed Mount Everest in 1924 with a fellow Brit, George Mallory, but they never made it back down. Mallory's body was found 70 years later, but Irvine's body was never found. 'Andrew Irvine' is the most heart-wrenching Wikipedia rabbit hole I've ever fallen into."
12.The Disappearance of Maura Murray
"Maura Murray's disappearance still bothers me after watching a multi-part Oxygen series about it a couple years ago. I think what gets me is how little information there is to go on — how can a person get into a car crash, then just disappear off the face of the Earth and leave barely any clues behind? I still wonder whether she was murdered or maybe ran off and is living a different life somewhere." Murray was a 21-year-old nursing student who got into a car accident in upstate New Hampshire. The strange thing was, prior to disappearing, she'd told professors that she would be taking a week off due to a death in the family. However, her family later told authorities that there had been no death.
13.The Disappearance of Brian Shaffer
"He was seen entering a bar, but there was no security footage of him leaving when the night was over... Like, HOW CAN THAT HAPPEN?!" Brian was a medical student in Ohio last seen going up an escalator to a popular campus bar, but the video never showed him leaving. Foul play has still not been ruled out.
14.The Disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley
"My first ever missing person’s case that triggered my love for true crime was the story of Amy Bradley. She went missing from her cruise ship in the '90s, and there were multiple sightings of her years afterward in different countries, but nobody ever helped her. There was even a situation in 1999 where a US Navy man visited a brothel overseas and had a woman approach him, begging for help and telling him that her name was Amy Bradley and that she was being held hostage, but he didn’t do anything about it for fear of anyone finding out where he was at the time."
15.The Disappearance of Heather Elvis
Heather Elvis, who was a cosmetology student, mysteriously vanished after she'd arrived home from a date. "No one ever talks about her or her disappearance. She went missing in 2013 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and a couple was recently charged with her kidnapping, but she's still never been found. That poor family will never get closure."
16.The Disappearance of Emma Fillipoff
"Emma Fillipoff’s disappearance sent me down a rabbit hole for months. Lots of drama and red flags surrounding her story — she disappeared outside of the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, after being seen talking to the police. Her Wiki page will give you the chills, and if you’re into documentaries, there’s an episode about her disappearance on the Fifth Estate’s YouTube channel. If podcasts are more your thing, almost every true crime channel has covered her. I feel so bad for her family — they’re still actively looking for her."
17.The McStay Family Murder
"The McStay family’s disappearance freaked me out. How they could vanish without a trace? I am glad (but in a very melancholy way) it was solved and their extended family got closure, though." Joseph, his wife, Summer, and their sons, Gianni and Joseph Jr., disappeared from their home in Southern California in February 2010. Their bodies were found three years later in November 2013, over 100 miles north in Victorville, California. A year later, a man named Charles "Chase" Merritt — the father's business partner — was arrested, tried, and found guilty of brutally murdering the family. He was sentenced to death in January 2020.
18.The Disappearance of Brittanee Drexel
"This one always stuck with me as someone who used to walk around Myrtle Beach as a teenager, alone, and we were the same age. She was just leaving her hotel and disappeared. Years later, a prison inmate had told authorities that Drexel had been abducted and killed, but it still hasn't been solved."
19.Finally, the Disappearance of Natalee Holloway
"The disappearance of Natalee Holloway always gets me. She was a few years older than me when she disappeared, so it felt like something like that can happen to me or someone I know. Even when I went to Aruba on vacation as an adult (26 years old) with my boyfriend, my parents worried the whole time."
If you're unfamiliar with the high-profile case, Holloway was just 18 years old when she was last seen on May 30, 2005 leaving a club in Aruba with a man named Joran van der Sloot and two other men. Although van der Sloot was detained twice in connection with her disappearance, he (nor anyone else) was ever charged. However, van der Sloot confessed to murdering a 21-year-old woman in Peru, Stephany Flores Ramírez, in 2010.
Although her body has still never been found, Natalee Holloway was declared legally dead on January 12, 2012. The petition to have her declared dead was led by her father, Dave Holloway; however, her mother, Beth Holloway, had been opposed to the move due to lack of evidence.
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
