Buzz
There are countless ways to describe missing persons cases: heartbreaking, eerie, tragic, confounding. Yet, the term 'controversial' also fits perfectly. When someone vanishes, it often marks the beginning of a much more complicated and strange tale.
10. Felipe Santos and Terrance Williams
On the morning of October 1, 2003, Felipe Santos was driving to work in Naples, Florida when he collided with another car. A sheriff's deputy, Steven Henry Calkins, issued Santos a citation for driving without a license, then placed him in his patrol car and drove off. However, Santos was never booked into the station and has not been seen since. Calkins later claimed he changed his mind about arresting Santos and dropped him off at a nearby convenience store. Just three months later, Calkins would become involved in another perplexing disappearance—this time of Terrance Williams, an African-American man who vanished under similarly suspicious circumstances.
After his car broke down, Williams was stopped by Calkins. Despite Williams driving without a license and insurance, Calkins chose not to issue a citation. Once again, Calkins claimed he put Williams into his patrol car and dropped him off at a nearby Circle K convenience store. However, Calkins was caught in a lie when he claimed to have called the store to ask about Williams, as phone records showed no such call. The families of both missing men lodged complaints against Calkins, leading to his eventual firing for dishonesty. High-profile figures like Tyler Perry and Reverend Al Sharpton have advocated for answers regarding the disappearances of Santos and Williams, but the case remains unsolved.
9. Nicholas Barclay
On June 13, 1994, thirteen-year-old Nicholas Barclay was playing basketball with friends in San Antonio when he called his mother to pick him up. His mother was asleep, and his brother didn’t wake her, so Nicholas never returned home that evening. He would remain missing until October 1997, when his family received shocking news: he had been found in a youth shelter in Linares, Spain. Nicholas claimed he had been abducted, taken to Europe, and forced into a pedophile ring for three years before managing to escape.
Nicholas’s sister traveled to Spain, confirmed his identity, and brought him back to Texas. However, his appearance had drastically changed during his three-year absence, and while his family believed he was their missing relative, others questioned the story. The FBI conducted an investigation, collecting fingerprints and DNA samples, and revealed that 'Nicholas' was actually a 23-year-old French con artist named Frederic Bourdin. While in the shelter, Bourdin had impersonated the shelter's director to contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. After learning about Nicholas Barclay, Bourdin decided to assume his identity. He was convicted of passport fraud and perjury, sentenced to six years in prison, and deported to Europe. Since his release, Bourdin has continued to impersonate missing children. The real Nicholas Barclay remains unaccounted for.
8. Isabella Miller-Jenkins
Parental abductions are always deeply tragic, but one of the most contentious cases involves a lesbian couple, Janet Jenkins and Lisa Ann Miller. In 2002, the couple had a daughter, Isabella, conceived through artificial insemination using Lisa's eggs. After their split a year later, the couple reached an informal agreement where Lisa had full custody while Janet would have regular visits. However, this arrangement soured when Lisa joined the conservative Thomas Road Baptist Church, which led her to renounce her homosexuality and cut off Janet's access to Isabella.
This marked the beginning of an intense legal battle, with Lisa making unsubstantiated claims of Janet abusing Isabella. After accumulating large fines for denying Janet visitation rights, Lisa was found in contempt of court by the state of Vermont, and custody was awarded to Janet. In retaliation, Lisa fled with Isabella, and they have not been seen in over three and a half years. A felony warrant for kidnapping was issued for Lisa, and at least two Mennonite pastors were charged with helping Lisa and Isabella escape to Nicaragua. Janet has since filed a civil lawsuit against Lisa, the two pastors, the Thomas Road Baptist Church, and other groups, accusing them of orchestrating Isabella’s abduction. Despite these efforts, the child remains missing.
7. Brooke Henson
At around 2:00 AM on July 4, 1999, the parents of 20-year-old Brooke Henson came home to their residence in Travelers Rest, South Carolina and found her sitting on the porch during a party. She had just had an argument with her boyfriend and intended to walk to a nearby convenience store to buy cigarettes. She left behind a note for her boyfriend that read, 'Follow me if you care,' but she never returned home. Her boyfriend refused to cooperate with the investigation, and the case went cold until June 2006, when it was discovered that Brooke appeared to be enrolled at Columbia University in New York.
It was revealed that Brooke’s identity had been stolen by a woman named Esther Reed, who had used Brooke’s name and Social Security number to enroll in classes at Columbia. Reed had a long history of stealing identities to attend universities and run up massive debts. Despite using Brooke’s name for two years, her deception went unnoticed until she applied for a job. A simple internet search revealed to her potential employer that the real Brooke was missing. When authorities confronted Reed and asked for a DNA test, she fled and remained on the run until she was captured in February 2008. Reed was sentenced to 51 months in prison for fraud and identity theft, though authorities do not believe she had any involvement in Brooke Henson’s disappearance, which remains unsolved.
6. Walter Collins
On March 10, 1928, Christine Collins of Los Angeles left her 10-year-old son, Walter, alone at home while she went to work. Upon her return, he was gone. The police came under immense public pressure to find him, and five months later, they announced that Walter had been located in DeKalb, Illinois. The LAPD turned his reunion with his mother into a media spectacle. However, when Christine saw the boy they claimed was Walter, she immediately knew he was not her son. Despite her repeated attempts to convince the police that they had made a mistake, they conspired to have her committed to a psychiatric institution.
In truth, the boy claiming to be Walter was actually a 12-year-old runaway named Arthur Hutchins Jr., who resembled Walter and decided to impersonate him in hopes of getting a free trip to California. Once Arthur confessed, Christine was released from the institution and filed a lawsuit against the police. It is widely believed that the real Walter Collins was one of the victims of the notorious 'Wineville Chicken Coop Murders.' In 1930, Gordon Northcott was executed for the abduction, molestation, and murder of at least three boys. His victims were buried near the chicken coop at his Wineville, California ranch, and it’s thought that Walter may have been lured there before being murdered. However, Walter's remains were never found, and Northcott never admitted to killing him. Christine never stopped hoping that her son had survived. These tragic events were dramatized in the movie *Changeling*, with Angelina Jolie portraying Christine.
5. Robin Abrams
On October 4, 1990, 28-year-old Robin Abrams disappeared from her hometown of Beecher, Illinois. Shortly after, her vehicle was found abandoned in a nearby town, with the keys still in the ignition. A witness claimed to have seen two men dropping it off with a tow truck that night. The local sheriff's department initially investigated the case, but it was quickly handed over to the state police due to a possible conflict of interest, as Abrams had been involved in a bitter legal dispute with the department, particularly with a police officer named Anthony Marquez.
In 1987, Robin Abrams began an affair with the married Anthony Marquez. He convinced her to join the sheriff’s department, but their relationship took a turn for the worse after Marquez allegedly collided with her car while she and her mother were inside. Soon after, the department fired Abrams. Over the next two years, Marquez and Abrams filed multiple criminal complaints against each other. Abrams eventually obtained a protection order against Marquez and filed a federal lawsuit against him and seven other sheriff’s department members, accusing them of wrongful termination and sexual harassment. She was due to provide a deposition 18 days after her disappearance, but because she never showed up, the lawsuit was dismissed.
Marquez was later dismissed from the department after a new sheriff was elected. Robin Abrams has never been located, and the details surrounding her disappearance remain unknown.
4. Rilya Wilson
After being removed from her mother’s custody, four-year-old Rilya Wilson and her two siblings were placed in the care of their godmother, Geralyn Graham, in Miami. Social workers from Florida’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) were assigned to check on them regularly. On January 18, 2001, according to Geralyn, an unidentified DCF worker came to her home and took Rilya for an evaluation. This story wasn’t questioned until April 2002, when two DCF employees were investigated for falsifying their home visit records. Since Rilya was never returned to Geralyn, she was reported as missing, though authorities initially doubted Geralyn’s version of events.
The Department of Children and Families (DCF) had no record of Rilya being removed from her home. However, due to the social workers falsifying records and missing their scheduled visits, no one had actually checked in on Rilya for more than a year. The agency faced significant backlash for failing to notice her disappearance. During Rilya’s absence, Geralyn continued to cash over $14,000 in checks sent by the state for childcare. Authorities began to suspect foul play, and eventually, Geralyn was charged with fraud, kidnapping, child abuse, and Rilya’s murder. In January 2013, Geralyn was convicted on most charges and sentenced to 55 years in prison. However, since there was minimal evidence linking her to Rilya’s death, the jury could not reach a verdict on the murder charge. Rilya Wilson remains missing.
3. Sneha Anne Philip
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 2,752 people lost their lives when the World Trade Center was attacked. However, there has been ongoing debate about whether one of those victims truly perished in the attacks. Dr. Sneha Anne Philip, an Indian-American physician living in Lower Manhattan with her husband, was last seen on September 10. Security footage showed her shopping at a department store, where she bought $550 worth of items, which were never found. When Sneha’s husband returned home that night, she was missing, and he presumed she was staying with relatives.
Given that Sneha lived near the World Trade Center, some speculated that she may have died while heading home during the attacks. As a doctor, she might have stopped to assist the injured before the towers collapsed. However, at the time of her disappearance, Sneha was facing numerous personal difficulties, including alleged substance abuse, extramarital affairs, and a pending criminal charge for filing a false report against a co-worker. Some believed she might have used the chaos of the attacks to vanish and start over, while others thought she may have been killed by an unknown party on September 10. Despite the lack of concrete evidence to prove Sneha was near Ground Zero or that she died in the attacks, her family successfully petitioned for her to be declared a 9/11 victim in 2008.
2. Helen Brach
After the death of her wealthy candy mogul 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, marking the last confirmed sighting of her. Her driver, Jack Matlick, claimed he met her at O’Hare International Airport upon her return to Chicago. He said he drove her home and then took her back to the airport a few days later for a Florida trip. However, no one at the airport remembered seeing her. Matlick also alleged that Brach left him $15,000 in signed checks, which were later found to be forged. Additionally, he had her house repainted, her car cleaned, and failed to report her missing for two weeks. Despite his suspicious actions, Matlick was never charged with any crime and passed away in 2011.
Brach’s deceptive boyfriend, Richard Bailey, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 1994 for plotting Brach’s murder after she discovered he was swindling her. Bailey has always denied his involvement in the crime. The case took another twist in 2005 when career criminal Joe Plemmons confessed to being part of a group that killed Brach. Plemmons stated that Bailey was not involved and claimed Brach was murdered for threatening to report business fraud to the police. Plemmons even produced a ruby ring he claimed belonged to Brach as proof, but his account was never verified, leaving the true fate of Brach shrouded in mystery.
1. Michael Rosenblum
On February 14, 1980, 25-year-old Michael Rosenblum left his girlfriend, Lisa Sharer, stranded at a gas station in Pittsburgh and drove off with her car. He promised Lisa he would meet her later at his parents’ house, but he was never seen again. A few hours after his disappearance, Lisa’s abandoned car was discovered on River Road with two flat tires. Despite this, the Baldwin Police Department failed to notify Lisa, and the car sat in their impound for three months. In July, the situation became even stranger when the Baldwin PD issued a warrant for Michael's arrest, mistakenly identifying him as a suspect in a robbery.
Over the years, Michael's father received anonymous tips suggesting that the Baldwin PD was somehow responsible for Michael's disappearance. He later uncovered that, in May 1980, Baldwin Police Chief Aldo Gaburri had ordered his clerk to write a letter informing Lisa about the recovery of her car, but with the date backdated to February 15, 1980, and the officer’s signature forged. Gaburri was initially fired for these actions but was reinstated soon after. In 1988, when the TV show Unsolved Mysteries covered Michael’s case, Gaburri allegedly instructed his officers to refuse to cooperate or appear on the show. In 1992, a partial skull fragment identified as Michael’s was found in a wooded area 3 miles from the location where Lisa’s car had been found, though the exact circumstances surrounding his death remain unclear.
