 | It has been suggested that this article besplit into articles titledList of solved missing person cases: 2000s,List of solved missing person cases: 2010s andList of solved missing person cases: 2020s. (Discuss)(July 2025) |
This is alist of solved missing person cases of people who went missing in unknown locations or unknown circumstances that were eventually explained by their reappearance or the recovery of their bodies, or by either the conviction of the perpetrator(s) responsible for their disappearances, or they confessed to their killings. There are separate lists for disappearancesbefore 1950 andfrom 1950 to 1999.
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Zebb Quinn | 18 | United States | Zebb Quinn was an 18-year-old American male who went missing on January 2, 2000, inAsheville, North Carolina. On July 25, 2022, Quinn's friend, Robert Jason Owens, entered aplea bargain and confessed from prison that his abusive uncle, Walter "Gene" Owens, had killed Quinn after making Owens lure Quinn to the forest. Owens and his uncle dismembered and burned Quinn's body in Bent Creek Experimental Forest. The defense claimed that the boyfriend of a girl Quinn liked hired Gene to kill Quinn.[1][2][3] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2000 | Nikole Bakoles | 20 | United States | Bakoles went missing in March 2000, and her skeletal remains were found in October of that same year; the identity of Bakoles was only confirmed in 2012. The cause of her death was unknown.[4] | Unknown | 7 months |
| 2000 | Lucie Blackman | 21 | Japan | Lucie Blackman was a British woman working in Japan as a hostess who went missing after going on a paid date with a client on July 1, 2000. Her mutilated body was found buried in a shallow grave inMiura, Kanagawa, on February 9, 2001. Several months later,Joji Obara was arrested for her rape and murder.[5][6][7] | Murdered | 7 months |
| 2000 | Sarah Payne | 8 | United Kingdom | Sarah Payne was an eight-year-old schoolgirl abducted and murdered inWest Sussex, England, by known child sex offenderRoy Whiting on July 1, 2000. Her body was discovered in the village ofPulborough on July 17.[8] | Murdered | 16 days |
| 2000 | Iriana DeJesus | 5 | United States | DeJesus was a five-year-old American child who was kidnapped, raped and murdered inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, by a Honduran national namedAlexis Flores in July 2000. Her body was discovered on August 3 in the basement of a deserted apartment building where Flores is known to have resided. Later linked to the murder viaDNA profiling, Flores was added to theFBI'sTop Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.[9] | Murdered | 5 days |
| 2000 | Molly Bish | 16 | United States | Molly Bish was an American teenage girl who disappeared fromWarren, Massachusetts on 27 June 2000 and was found dead on 9 June 2003 after being killed.[10][11] | Murdered | Less than 3 years |
| 2000 | Ivan Stambolić | 63 | Yugoslavia | Ivan Stambolić was a high ranking Serbian politician who was once both the president and prime minister of Serbia. Stambolić was abducted inFruška Gora,Serbia,Yugoslavia on 25 August 2000. It was later discovered that he had been killed.[12][13] | Murdered | 3 years |
| 2000 | Leanne Tiernan | 16 | United Kingdom | Tiernan was a 16-year-oldLeeds schoolgirl abducted on 16 November 2000. Her body was discovered inLindley Woods, North Yorkshire, in August 2001.[2] Tiernan's murderer, John Taylor, pleaded guilty to her murder the following year.[14] | Murdered | 9 months |
| 2000 | Mike Williams | 31 | United States | Mike Williams was an American man who disappeared on December 16, 2000, during a hunting trip toLake Seminole. He remained missing until October 2017, when law enforcement received information on the whereabouts of his body, close toTallahassee.[15] Florida officials confirmed that Williams was a victim of homicide.[16][17] Williams' best friend, Brian Winchester, fully confessed to shooting Williams on the hunting trip and gave up the location of the body.[18] The motive was Winchester's ongoing affair with Williams' wife, Denise, who was sentenced to life in prison for the murder in January 2019 (later reduced to 30 years forconspiracy to commit first-degree murder).[19][18][20][21] | Murdered | 17 years |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Bridget Townsend | 18 | United States | On the night of January 15, 2001, 18-year-old Bridget Townsend was abducted from her drug dealer boyfriend's house by a customer of her boyfriend. The abductor, 18-year-old Ramiro Felix Gonzales, forcibly took her to his grandfather's ranch and raped her before he used a rifle to fatally shoot her. Gonzales, who was later caught and sentenced to life in prison for another case of rape and kidnapping, confessed to the murder and led the police to a field where he disposed of Townsend's body in October 2002. Gonzales was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, and later executed on June 26, 2024.[22] | Murdered | 1 year and 10 months |
| 2001 | Yara Perez Grossl | 27 | Colombia | Wife of the then-Governor of Colombia'sHuila Department, Jaime Lozada Perdomo, who was kidnapped along with her sons byFARC guerillas in 2001. She was kept as a political hostage, possibly due to the fact that her husband owed FARC money, but was later released as part of a prisoner exchange.[23] | Found alive | 7 years |
| 2001 | Lucas Vargas Terra | 14 | Brazil | Lucas Terra was aBrazilian teenage boy who disappeared fromSalvador on March 21, 2001[24] and was found dead two days later after being killed and raped. Silvio Galiza, a pastor of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, was convicted and is currently in prison for the crime. | Murdered | 2 days |
| 2001 | Hannah Williams | 14 | England | Williams was an English schoolgirl who vanished while going window shopping inDeptford on April 21, 2001. She was presumed to be a runaway until her body was found on March 15, 2002. Irish sex offender Robert Howard, who is suspected of other murders, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.[25] | Murdered | 11 months |
| 2001 | Erica Green | 3 | United States | Three-year-old Erica Green was a murder victim whosedecapitated body was discovered on April 28, 2001, inKansas City, Missouri, 12 to 48 hours after death. Her head was found in a trash bag nearby on May 1, 2001.[26] The victim remained unidentified until May 5, 2005. Her mother and stepfather were convicted of her murder in 2008 and sentenced to 25 years and life in prison, respectively. | Murdered | 1–2 days |
| 2001 | Chandra Levy | 24 | United States | Chandra Levy was an Americanintern at theFederal Bureau of Prisons inWashington, D.C., who was last seen alive on April 30, 2001. Her skeletal remains were found inRock Creek Park on May 22, 2002.[27] | Murdered | 1 year |
| 2001 | Don Banfield | 63 | England | A 63-year-old father who disappeared from hisHarrow home in May 2001. Although his body has never been found, Banfield's wife and daughter were found guilty of his murder in 2012,[28] though their convictions were overturned on appeal in 2013.[29] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2001 | Mananya Thumpong | 13 | France | 13-year-old Mananya Thumpong failed to return home from her local library inSedan on May 5, 2001. On March 1, 2002, her skeletal remains were found in a forest inPaliseul. In 2004,Michel Fourniret confessed to kidnapping and killing her.[30] | Murdered | 10 months |
| 2001 | Koby Mandell | 13 | Israel | Two Jewish teenagers murdered on the outskirts of theIsraeli settlement ofTekoa in theWest Bank. The teenagers' bodies were discovered in a cave the following morning. Both had been bound, stabbed and bludgeoned to death with rocks. The identity of the perpetrators has never been determined, though Israel and a number of sources believe unidentified Palestinian terrorists were responsible.[31][32] | Murdered | 1 day |
| Yosef Ishran | 14 | |||||
| 2001 | Unnamed American 26-year-old woman | 26 | United States | On May 11, 2001, serial rapist-kidnapperJohn Jamelske offered a ride home to a 26-year-old white woman walking in downtownSyracuse while under the influence ofLSD, which the woman accepted due to the poor weather. Jamelske took her back to his bunker, where he raped her daily. When she resisted, Jamelske inflictedcigar burns on her, from which she developed anabscess on her lower back. Jamelske also manipulated her with claims that he was actually part of an undergroundslavery syndicate, of which the police were a part. Jamelske held the woman captive for about two months before releasing her. He later pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degreekidnapping and was sentenced to 18 years to life in prison.[33] | Released | 2 months |
| 2001 | Danielle Jones | 15 | England | Last seen at a bus stop near her home inEast Tilbury,Essex, Jones' uncle Stuart Campbell was found guilty of her murder in December 2002 (despite her body not being found) after he was found to have used her phone in the period after her disappearance.[34] | Murdered | 1 year and 4 months |
| 2001 | Peter Falconio | 28 | Australia | A British tourist fromHepworth, West Yorkshire, who disappeared in theAustralian outback in July 2001 while traveling with girlfriendJoanne Lees. Bradley Murdoch was convicted of Falconio's murder and sentenced to life in prison.[35] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2001 | Partha Pratim Roy Burman | Unknown | India | Managing director of a shoe store who was kidnapped from a rural road inTiljala, India, on July 25, 2001, but was released a little over a week later after the ransom was paid. Some of the ransom was allegedly used to fund theSeptember 11 attacks and the2001 Indian Parliament attack.[36] | Found alive | 8 days |
| 2001 | Jason Martin-Smith | 28 | England | Martin-Smith was murdered and his bodydismembered by four acquaintances (who were involved in the drug trade) because they believed him to be a police informant. His case went unsolved until 2015, when two of his original killers, Mark Searle and Steve McNicol, were charged, convicted and imprisoned. The remaining two, Jimmy Millen and Frank Torpey, were unable to be charged, as Millen had been killed by the others and Torpey died before he could be arrested.[37] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2001 | Bill Biggart | 54 | United States | American freelance journalist who was struck by falling debris while shooting photos of the collapsing towers of theSeptember 11 attacks. His body and camera were recovered four days later.[38] | Killed by debris | 4 days |
| 2001 | Consuelo Araújo | 61 | Colombia | Colombian politician, writer and self-taught journalist best known for creating theVallenato Legend Festival. On September 24, 2001, she was kidnapped and later killed byFARC guerillas, in an effort to prevent her rescue by theColombian Army.[39] | Murdered | 6 days |
| 2001 | Don Craig Wiley | 57 | United States | An Americanstructural biologist who disappeared on November 15, 2001. His body was found in theMississippi River a month later, and his death was ruled to be an accident.[40][41][42] | Accident | 1 month |
| 2001 | Stuart Adamson | 43 | United States | Scottish musician best known as the frontman for the rock groupBig Country. Adamson disappeared on November 26, 2001, and was found dead in a hotel room on December 16, 2001. His cause of death was determined to be suicide.[43] | Suicide | 20 days |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Alicia Kozakiewicz | 13 | United States | Abducted fromPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on January 1, 2002, by 38-year-old Scott Tyree; the two had met online, and Kozakiewicz believed they were the same age. She was rescued four days later.[44] Afterwards, she went on to become a television personality and anadvocate forinternet safety andmissing persons, as well as founding the Alicia Project.[45] | Found alive | 4 days |
| 2002 | Daniel Nolan | 14 | England | English schoolboy who disappeared from theHampshire harbour town ofHamble-le-Rice after a fishing expedition on January 1, 2002. Sections of Nolan's body were discovered inside two socks inSwanage,Dorset, on May 15, 2003.[46] | Undetermined | 16 months |
| 2002 | Danielle van Dam | 7 | United States | A seven-year-old child fromSabre Springs, San Diego, California, who was abducted from her bedroom during the night of February 1–2, 2002. Her body was found on February 27 in a remote area. Her murderer, David Alan Westerfield, was arrested on February 22—five days before van Dam's body was discovered. He was later convicted of the child'skidnap andfirst-degree murder.[47] | Murdered | 25 days |
| 2002 | Daniel Pearl | 38 | Pakistan | An American journalist who was kidnapped and murdered[48][49] on February 1, 2002, inKarachi,Sindh, and was found dead on May 16, 2002. Pearl's murder remains unsolved. | Murdered | Less than four months |
| 2002 | Clara Rojas | 38 | Colombia | Colombian presidential candidate and her campaign manager who were kidnapped by FARC guerillas on February 23, 2002. Both of them were freed during separate actions ofOperation Emmanuel.[50] | Found alive | 6 years |
| Íngrid Betancourt | 41 | Colombia | ||||
| 2002 | Regina de Jesús Betancourt Ramírez | 65 | Colombia | Ramírez—also known asRegina 11—is a renownedmentalist,psychic,mystic andfaith healer. She was kidnapped on February 23, 2002, and held hostage for five months in the mountains of Colombia before being released.[51] | Found alive | 5 months |
| 2002 | Hocine Soltani | 29 | France | Algerian boxer who mysteriously disappeared after meeting a man with whom he wanted to export two cars fromMarseille, France. His fate remained unclear until DNA tests conducted two years later confirmed that a body found in the country was his. The man was later arrested, convicted and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment for the crime.[52] | Murdered | 2 years |
| 2002 | Milly Dowler | 13 | England | 13-year-old Milly Dowler disappeared inWalton-on-Thames while on her way home from school on March 21, 2002. In September of that year, mushroom pickers found her remains in aHampshire forest. British serial killer Levi Bellfield was later convicted of her abduction and murder.[53] | Murdered | 6 months |
| 2002 | John Darwin | 51 | England | John Darwin was a former British teacher andprison officer who faked his own death in March 2002 so that his wife could collect a £250,000 life insurance sum. For five years, Darwin lived secretly in the family home and a home immediately adjacent, living under an alias. He was arrested in London on December 1, 2007.[54] His wife, Anne, was also arrested and charged with helping Darwin to collect this policy sum and concealing the truth about his disappearance.[55] | Found alive | 5 years |
| 2002 | Ancízar López López | 76 | Colombia | Colombian politician who helped create theQuindío Department, of which he later became the first governor. On April 11, 2002, he was kidnapped by members of theNational Liberation Army, and is said to have died from kidney failure while in detention.[56] | Unknown | Unknown |
| 2002 | Gilberto Echeverri Mejía | 65 | Colombia | Colombian businessmen andLiberal Party politicians who were kidnapped byFARC guerillas on April 22, 2002. They were held in captivity in the country's mountainous regions until they and eight other hostages were killed by their kidnappers in a botched rescue operation.[57] | Murdered | 1 year |
| Guillermo Gaviria Correa | 41 | Colombia | ||||
| 2002 | Eunsoon Jun | 40s | United States | Eunsoon Jun was a chemist who went missing fromRichmond, California. Her murdered body was found 5 months later buried incat litter in the home that she shared with her boyfriend, who went by the alias "Larry Vanner." "Larry", whose real name wasTerry Peder Rasmussen, was found guilty for her murder and died while in prison.[58][59][60] | Murdered | 5 months |
| 2002 | Elizabeth Smart | 14 | United States | Smart was kidnapped from her bedroom on June 5, 2002, and was found to be alive when police officers rescued her nine months later on March 12, 2003, inSandy, Utah, about 18 miles from her home.[61] | Found alive | 9 months |
| 2002 | Logan Tucker | 6 | United States | Tucker was a 6-year-old American boy[62] who disappeared on June 23, 2002, and became the victim of a murder whereno body was found.[63] His mother, Katherine Rutan, was convicted offirst-degree murder in September 2007, and the jury recommended a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.[64] Rutan was formally sentenced to life without parole in October 2007.[65] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2002 | Andreas Hinz | 37 | England | Hinz was a 37-year-old traineerabbi who was last seen in the early hours of July 3 leavingThe Black Cap gay bar inCamden, London, after being seen chatting to another man. A few days later, dismembered body parts were found in bin bags nearSt Pancras Way, and on July 12 the remains were identified as belonging to Hinz. He had been murdered byThomas McDowell.[66] | Murdered | 9 days |
| 2002 | Tina Baker | 41 | England | British woman Tina Baker was last seen on July 8, 2002, after saying she was going to feed the animals on her and her husband's farm inChobham. Her pet dog was later found abandoned nearby. Police soon became suspicious of her husband and he was convicted of her murder in 2006. His first wife testified at his trial that he had previously threatened to kill her and feed her to the pigs when they were getting divorced, and evidence put him close to the farm on the day. The motive for the murder appeared to be that he feared he was going to lose the £100,000, 14-acre farm.[67] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2002 | Sara Ann Lewis Trusty | 23 | United States | Last seen during the evening hours riding her bicycle near her church inAlgoa, Texas, on July 12, 2002. Her body was discovered in aTexas City reservoir on July 28.[68] | Murdered | 16 days |
| 2002 | Jessica Chapman | 10 | England | On August 4, 2002, two 10-year-old girls, Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, disappeared after they left Wells' home to buy sweets. Both of the girls' bodies were found in a ditch byRAF Lakenheath airbase on August 17.[69] Local manIan Huntley was found to have lured the girls into his house and murdered the girls—likely viaasphyxiation—and was sentenced to a minimum of 40 years' imprisonment on December 17, 2003, while his girlfriend Maxine Carr was given a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence forperverting the course of justice (she had provided Huntley a falsealibi).[69][70] The 13-day search for the two girls has been described as one of the most intense and extensive in British criminal history.[71][72] | Murdered | 13 days |
| Holly Wells | England | |||||
| 2002 | Jon-Niece Jones | 9 | United States | An American girl who disappeared on August 15, 2002, and whoseskeletal remains were found by a deerhunter on March 18, 2005, near the gated forest ofNew Jersey'sSix Flags Great Adventuretheme park.[73][74] | Murdered | 2+1⁄2 years |
| 2002 | Sydney Collins | Unknown | Australia | A member of a motorcycle gang with known links to underworld figures. Collins was last seen alive leaving hisTabulam farm address on August 25, 2002. Notorious Australian criminalMark "Chopper" Read confessed to Collins' murder shortly before his death in 2013.[75] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2002 | Laura Zapata | 46 | Mexico | Mexicantelenovela actress who was kidnapped along with her sister in September 2002, allegedly to elicit a large ransom from her half-sister's husband, multi-millionaireTommy Mottola. Both were eventually released without incident.[76] | Found alive | 18 days |
| 2002 | Unnamed African American girl | 16 | United States | The final victim ofserial rapist andkidnapperJohn Jamelske, and the individual whose abduction led to his downfall. Jamelske abducted this 16-year-old runaway in October 2002; she escaped from captivity by discreetly phoning her sister from a bar on April 8, 2003. The sister in turn returned the call and persuaded the employee who answered the call to notify authorities.[77] | Found alive | 6 months |
| 2002 | Amanda Zhao | 21 | Canada | An international student inVancouver, British Columbia, who disappeared on October 9, 2002. Zhao's body was found in a suitcase by hikers nearStave Lake on October 20, 2002.[78] | Murdered | 11 days |
| 2002 | Laci Peterson | 27 | United States | Laci Peterson disappeared fromCalifornia while eight months pregnant with her first child on December 24, 2002. On April 13, 2003, a couple walking their dog discovered her body. Peterson's husband was found guilty of murdering her. | Murdered | 5 months |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Becky Godden-Edwards | 20 | England | Twenty-year-old Becky Godden-Edwards was last seen alive on January 1, 2003, getting into a taxi outside a nightclub inSwindon, England, after a night out with friends.[79] She was only formally reported missing in 2007.[80] Her body was discovered in March 2011 after a suspect who was arrested for the murder ofSian O'Callaghan in Swindon led police to both O'Callaghan's and Godden-Edwards's bodies.[81] Although the suspect, local taxi driver Christopher Haliwell, confessed to the murder, he was not charged and convicted for it until 2016.[81] | Murdered | 8 years |
| 2003 | Estelle Mouzin | 9 | France | Estelle Mouzin was a nine-year-old girl who disappeared from the city ofGuermantes in France on January 9, 2003. Serial killer and pedophileMichel Fourniret confessed to her murder in 2020, although her body has never been found.[82] | Murdered | 14 years |
| 2003 | Jeff Wright | 34 | United States | Jeff Wright was stabbed to death on January 13, 2003, by his wife Susan Wright, who buried his body in their Houston backyard before reporting him for domestic abuse. Susan eventually surrendered on January 18 and charged with killing her husband. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison and was eventually paroled in 2020.[83] | Murdered | 5 days |
| 2003 | LeAnn Emry | 24 | United States | On January 30, 2003, 24-year-old Leann Emry disappeared fromMoab, Utah. Her remains were discovered in March 2009 in a remote part of the Colorado and Utah border. In October 2009,Scott Lee Kimball, a serial killer, pleaded guilty to murdering Emry.[84][85] | Murdered | 6 years |
| 2003 | Marc Gonsalves | 31 | Colombia | American employees ofNorthrop Grumman who were abducted byFARC guerillas in the Colombian jungles on February 13, 2003. They and one other man were kept in detention until their release on July 2, 2008.[86] | Found alive | 5 years |
| Keith Stansell | Unknown | Colombia | ||||
| 2003 | Craig Sorger | 13 | United States | Autistic teenager who was killed by two friends in a park inEphrata, Washington, on February 15, 2003. He was initially reported missing, but the two boys later revealed the body location, were convicted of his death and given long sentences.[87] | Murdered | Same day |
| 2003 | Jennifer Marcum | 25 | United States | A victim of serial killerScott Lee Kimball. Marcum was 25 and resided inColorado Springs, Colorado. Her vehicle was discovered parked atDenver International Airport on February 18, 2003 (the day after her presumed murder), although her body has never been found.[88] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2003 | Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr | 40 | Italy | Egyptian Islamic cleric who was kidnapped in Italy byCIA agents, then brought back to Egypt, where he was kept in detention and tortured for four years. His abduction caused the spark of theAbu Omar case.[89] | Found alive | 4 years |
| 2003 | Ahmed Siddiqui | 5 | Pakistan | Siddiqui was kidnapped along with his two younger siblings by their mother,Aafia Siddiqui, in March 2003, when they were on vacation inKarachi, Pakistan. Since Ahmed was an American citizen, his case was investigated by the FBI, which had also suspected his mother of being related to extremist groups likeal-Qaeda. In the summer of 2008, both Aafia and Ahmed were detained by police in Afghanistan, with Ahmed later returned safely to New York, but the whereabouts of his other siblings remain unknown.[90] | Found alive | 5 years |
| 2003 | Hannah Foster | 17 | England | Foster disappeared while walking home from a night out inSouthampton on March 14, 2003.[91] Two days later her body was found in Allington Lane in the city.[91] Foster had made a999 call but could not be heard on the call.[91] She had been abducted and murdered by Maninder Pal Singh Kohli, who was arrested after 16 months on the run in India and finally extradited and convicted in 2008.[91] | Murdered | 2 days |
| 2003 | Xavier Flactif | 41 | France | David Hotyat shot and killed his landlord and the landlord's wife and three children at their ski chalet inLe Grand-Bornand. The family remained missing for months.[92] He burned their bodies in the forest and was arrested in September after DNA analysis linked him to the bodies.[93] | Murdered | 4 months |
| Graziella Ortolano | 36 | |||||
| Sarah | 10 | |||||
| Lætitia | 9 | |||||
| Grégory | 7 | |||||
| 2003 | Amanda Berry | 16 | United States | Berry disappeared on April 21, 2003, the day before her 17th birthday.[94] She was walking home from her job atBurger King. During captivity, Berry gave birth to a daughter. Just over 10 years later, on May 6, 2013, Berry escaped along with Michelle Knight, Gina DeJesus and Berry's daughter.[95] They were in reasonable health and within 3 miles of the site of their disappearances. They were kidnapped, and held in captivity by Ariel Castro, who was convicted to life imprisonment, and committed suicide in prison. | Found alive | 10 years |
| 2003 | Romona Moore | 21 | United States | Moore was a Guyanese immigrant who was kidnapped from her apartment in Brooklyn on April 24, 2003. Her abductors, Troy Hendrix and Kayson Pearson, later tortured, raped and murdered her at an abandoned house, with her body found only two months later. Both men were arrested and convicted on all charges in 2006, both receiving life imprisonment without parole for the crime.[96] | Murdered | 2 months |
| 2003 | Shelby Tracy Tom | 39–40 | Canada | Atransgender woman strangled to death by 29-year-old Jatin Patel inNorth Vancouver,British Columbia, on May 27, 2003. Patel murdered Tom upon discovering that Tom was transgender during a sexual encounter. Her body was discovered behind a dry cleaning establishment four days later.[97] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2003 | Canny Ong | 28 | Malaysia | AMalaysian and IT analyst who was married and employed in the United States. She returned toMalaysia on June 1, 2003, due to worry over her ailing father's cancer. After he slowly recovered, Ong was set to return to the USA on June 14, 2003. However, the night before the date of her flight, at the shopping centre, she went missing and was abducted by 27-year-old MAS airplane cleanerAhmad Najib bin Aris. Ahmad Najib later raped and murdered Ong, whose body was found four days after her reported disappearance. The killer was eventually caught on June 20, 2003, and he was found guilty of murder and rape in a highly reported trial in February 2005. Ahmad Najib was sentenced to death for murder, and was also sentenced to 20 years in jail and 10strokes of the cane for rape.[98] More than 11 years after his trial, and after the loss of his appeals and after theSultan of Selangor's rejection of his plea for pardon, 40-year-old Ahmad Najib bin Aris was hanged atKajang Prison on the morning of September 23, 2016. | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2003 | Kaysi McLeod | 19 | United States | On August 23, 2003, 19-year-old Kaysi McLeod disappeared on her way to work.Scott Lee Kimball, a serial killer who was dating McLeod's mother at the time, was meant to drive her that day but claimed that he went hunting instead. McLeod's remains were found by a hunter in Jackson County in 2007. In 2009, Kimball pleaded guilty to murdering Kaysi.[99][100] | Murdered | 4 years |
| 2003 | Jean Rock | 32 | Canada | Serial killerCamille Cléroux murdered his second wife in fall 2003.[101] | Murdered | 3 years |
| 2003 | Shafilea Ahmed | 17 | England | British schoolgirl Shafilea Ahmed disappeared from her house inWarrington, Cheshire, on September 11, 2003, and a week later one of her teachers contacted the police.[102] After several police appeals, her body was found in theRiver Kent inCumbria in February 2004.[102] She had been suffocated with a plastic bag by her parents in a suspected "honour killing", due to their belief that she had become tooWesternised, and they were convicted of her murder in 2012.[102] | Murdered | 5 months |
| 2003 | Cecilia Zhang | 9 | Canada | Canadian schoolgirl who was kidnapped for ransom by Chinese international student Min Chen inToronto on October 20, 2003. She accidentally died during her detention, and her body was discovered on March 27, 2004. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment.[103] | Murdered | 6 months |
| 2003 | Dru Sjodin | 22 | United States | Sjodin was an American woman who was abducted from theColumbia Mall on November 22, 2003, inGrand Forks, North Dakota. Her body was recovered on April 17, 2004, nearCrookston, Minnesota.[104] | Murdered | 5 months |
| 2003 | Daniel Morcombe | 13 | Australia | Morcombe disappeared from the roadside near hisSunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, home on December 7, 2003. His remains were found in 2011 as forensic testing confirmed that the bones were Morcombe's.[105]Brett Peter Cowan was convicted of murder in the case. | Murdered | 8 years |
| 2003 | Joyce Vincent | 38 | England | British woman who was last heard from around late 2003. She had cut off contact with most people who she knew. Her corpse was discovered on January 25, 2006, in her flat, Her date of death given to be around December 2003. The cause of which is unknown, but believed to have been a medical condition. Various things (such as partial rent and energy bills being paid or forgiven by social programs, and the foul odour being attributed to outside waste bins) led to her body being left undiscovered for over two years.[106] | Unknown | 2 years |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Terry Kimball | 60 | United States | Sometime in 2004, 60-year-old Terry Kimball disappeared fromWestminster, Colorado. He was living with his nephew,Scott Lee Kimball, at the time, who was later found to be a serial killer. In July 2009, Scott revealed to the authorities where he had mummified Terry's body in a remote mountain pass nearVail, Colorado. He was told that in exchange for the information he would not face charges for Terry's death. Scott was already serving time for other murders.[107] | Murdered | 5 years |
| 2004 | Lamduan Armitage | 36 | England | Armitage was a Thai-born Englishwoman who vanished without a trace sometime in 2004, only for her body to be discovered on thePen-y-ghent mountain on September 20 of that year. She was initially unidentified until 2019, when DNA testing confirmed her identity. A man has been arrested in connection with her death.[108] | Unknown | 14 years |
| 2004 | Spalding Gray | 62 | United States | Gray, an American actor, writer and monologist, was declared missing on January 11, 2004. On March 7, 2004, theOffice of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York reported that Gray's body had been discovered by two men and pulled from theEast River.[109] He is said to have committed suicide by drowning himself. | Suicide | 2 months |
| 2004 | See Sheau Fang | 18 | Malaysia | See was abducted by Kher Tian Hock, after she was last seen boarding his car and wanting to go out for tea with Kher. Kher raped and killed See before he buried her body in cement at the front yard of his friend's house. Kher was arrested a month after the crime, but he escaped from the police station and went into hiding for seven years before he was arrested again in October 2011. Kher was sentenced to death in 2015, and remains on death row since 2024 after losing his final appeal.[110][111] | Murdered | 2 weeks |
| 2004 | Frédéric Chamard-Boudet | Unknown | Siberia | A Frenchman who disappeared on March 5, 2004, on an expedition to reach the North Pole. Chamard-Boudet was rescued on March 9 after transmitting a distress call.[112] | Found alive | 4 days |
| 2004 | Perry Saturn | 37 | United States | Americanprofessional wrestler who was involved in an April 2004 altercation with two men when he came to the aid of a woman who they were in the process of raping. He fought the men and was shot with a .25-caliber handgun in the back of the neck and in the right shoulder, to which he originally thought he had received a punch, as a result of the scuffle.[113] After being shot, Saturn became addicted tomethamphetamine and washomeless for two and a half years.[114][115] Saturn disappeared from public view and was not seen for several years, with his family and friends unaware of his whereabouts.[116] He reemerged in 2010, having resolved his addiction.[115] | Found alive | Unclear |
| 2004 | Nick Berg | 26 | Iraq | Berg was an American freelance radiotower repairman who owned a company based inMosul, Iraq. In April 2004, during one of his frequent visits to Baghdad, he disappeared mysteriously. About a month later, his decapitated body was found by an overpass, and three days after a discovery, a video surfaced showing an Islamist jihadist group,Muntada al-Ansar, had kidnapped Berg. After forcing him to read a lengthy statement, one of his captors proceeded to decapitate him with a knife.[117] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2004 | Stephen Farrell | 42 | Iraq | Farrell was a British-Irish journalist who was kidnapped by Sunni extremists in April 2004, while on a work assignment forThe Times inFallujah,Iraq. He was later released without incident.[118] | Found alive | 8 hours |
| 2004 | Jonathan Coulom | 9–10 | France | French schoolboy who was abducted from a school summer camp inSaint-Brevin-les-Pins on April 6, 2004. His naked body, which was bound to a cinderblock, was found in a pond inGuérande on May 19. German serial killer and prolific child rapistMartin Ney has been charged in his murder.[119] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2004 | Paiche Onyemaechi | 25 | Ireland | Onyemaechi was the daughter of aMalawian judge who had sought asylum in Ireland with her first husband. Her decapitated remains were discovered inPiltown,County Kilkenny, Ireland, on 23 July 2004. She had been reported missing on 10 July.[120] | Murdered | 2 weeks |
| 2004 | Dekendra Thapa | 33 | Nepal | Dekendra Thapa was aNepali journalist who disappeared on August 11, 2004, fromDailekh District of western Nepal. His deceased body was found four years later buried inside a local forest after he was murdered.[121] | Murdered | 4 years |
| 2004 | Brooke Wilberger | 19 | United States | Wilberger was abducted fromCorvallis, Oregon, on the morning of May 24, 2004.[122] Her remains were found on September 21, 2009. | Murdered | 5 years 4 months |
| 2004 | Kim Sun-il | 33 | Iraq | Kim Sun-il was a South Korean Christian missionary and interpreter working for a company contracted by the American government to work in Iraq. On May 30, 2004, he was kidnapped nearFallujah by the Islamist militant groupJama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad and held as a hostage. About a month after his abduction, the group sent a tape toAl Jazeera, which depicted Sun-il being decapitated by one of his captors.[123] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2004 | Zhang Hongjie | 25 | Australia | ChineseUniversity of Canberra communications student said to have disappeared in June 2004, she was found murdered in her flat inBelconnen in January 2005.[124] | Murdered | 7 months |
| 2004 | Paul Marshall Johnson Jr. | 49 | Saudi Arabia | Johnson, an American helicopter engineer stationed at aLockheed Martin factory inRiyadh,Saudi Arabia, was kidnapped by members ofAl-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on June 12, 2004, at a fake checkpoint near Riyadh. Despite calls from both the Saudi and American governments for his release, his kidnappers beheaded him in a recorded video, with his head later recovered from a refrigerator in a villa near Riyadh.[125] | Murdered | 6 days |
| 2004 | William Burgess Powell | 56 | United States | Discovered naked and beaten and with severe amnesia on August 31, 2004, at aBurger King inRichmond Hill, Georgia;[126] after efforts from genetic genealogists, his true identity was finally discovered on September 16, 2015.[127] Powell had forgotten his identity and had been living under the name "Benjaman Kyle". | Found alive | Unclear |
| 2004 | Jin Gyeong-suk | 23 | China | North Korean defector who was abducted inJilin, China while filming a documentary about the regime's involvement in the drug trade. She was deported back to North Korea, where she was tortured and later killed at theChongjin concentration camp.[128] | Murdered | 5 months |
| 2004 | Cecilia Cubas | 30 | Paraguay | Daughter of former Paraguayan presidentRaúl Cubas Grau who was kidnapped by armed gunmen from her home inAsunción on September 21, 2004. Her naked body was later found in an underground chamber, having been buried alive by her captors, who were trained by Colombian terrorist groupFARC.[129] | Murdered | 5 months |
| 2004 | Kenneth Bigley | 62 | Iraq | Kenneth Bigley was a British civil engineer, who together with his American colleagues Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, was kidnapped by Islamist militants fromJama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in Baghdad, Iraq. Two days after his kidnapping, a video surfaced showcasing the masked militants threatening to execute their captives unless their demands for Iraqi women prisoners were not met. Despite intervention from the British government and theMuslim Council of Britain, Bigley was killed two weeks later, with his decapitation being recorded and posted on the internet. His body was not recovered.[130] | Murdered | 2 days |
| 2004 | Huang Na | 8 | Singapore | On October 10, 2004, 8-year-old Huang Na, who came from China to Singapore to study as an international student, went missing fromPasir Panjang. There was a three-week-long search for the girl, which extended from Singapore to Malaysia, with many news reports covering the search and flyers distributed. There were also some monetary rewards offered for any information on the girl's whereabouts. On October 30, 2004, 23-year-old Malaysian ChineseTook Leng How confessed that he killed Huang Na in a storeroom during a game of hide-and-seek. The body was found stuffed in an abandoned box atTelok Blangah the next day, and Took, who was a close acquaintance of Huang Na and her family, was charged with murder. An autopsy result showed that there was possibly some form of sexual assault on the girl, but it was not conclusively proven due to the corpse's high state of decomposition. There were some suggestions that Took was mentally ill, and that the girl could have died of other causes instead of murder, but nevertheless, Took was found guilty andsentenced to death. Took's appeal was later dismissed by the three-judge Court of Appeal on a rare split decision of 2 to 1 (two judges upheld the murder conviction and one disagreed with the verdict). Took's clemency appeal was also turned down, and, subsequently, he was executed on November 3, 2006, by hanging inChangi Prison.[131] | Murdered | 21 days |
| 2004 | Margaret Hassan | 59 | Iraq | Hassan was an Irish-Iraqi aid worker associated withCare International, providing many locals with medicine and food. On October 19, 2004, she was kidnapped by an unidentified Islamist militant group in Baghdad, who recorded her execution in a hostage video two weeks after her kidnapping. Her remains have never been recovered, and her killer, architect Ali Lutfi Jassar al-Rawi, escaped from prison in 2010, with his whereabouts still unknown.[132] | Murdered | 2 weeks |
| 2004 | Roy Hallums | 56 | Iraq | American contractor who, together with several other men, was kidnapped by 20 masked gunmen from his home in Baghdad, Iraq on November 1, 2004. He and an Iraqi captive were liberated byDelta Force on September 7, 2005.[133] | Found alive | 1 year |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Margie Profet | 46 | United States | Anevolutionary biologist who had ceased contact with her family in 2002 and had last been seen inCambridge, Massachusetts, in 2005. In May 2012 she was told by a friend about her "disappearance" and contacted her family. She had been living in an isolated location, suffering from a physical ailment that caused her severe pain, and had not realized she was considered "missing".[134][135] | Found alive | 7 years out of contact |
| 2005 | Reet Kahlon | 0 months | Canada | The eldest daughter of serial killerSimmi Kahlon who disappeared shortly after her birth in 2005, and she was found four years later, murdered by her mother.[136] | Murdered | 4 years |
| 2005 | Giuliana Sgrena | 57 | Iraq | Italian journalist who was kidnapped by insurgents while working in Baghdad, Iraq on February 4, 2005. She was later safely released, but the subsequentincident involving her caused turmoil between the American and Italian governments.[137] | Found alive | 1 month |
| 2005 | Jessica Lunsford | 9 | United States | Lunsford was an American girl who was abducted from her home inHomosassa, Florida, in the early morning of February 24, 2005, by John Couey; her body was found three weeks later, buried at the home of Couey's half-sister, who lived within sight of the Lunsford home.[138] | Murdered | 3 weeks |
| 2005 | Anne-Sophie Girollet | 20 | France | Girollet was a 20-year-old medical student who disappeared following a dance party inMâcon on March 19. Her body was found in theSaône River inMâcon on April 2. She had been sexually assaulted, stabbed in the chest, and strangled.[139] | Murdered | 2 weeks |
| 2005 | Douglas Wood | 64 | Iraq | Australian construction engineer who was held hostage while working for an American company in Baghdad, Iraq in May 2005. He was eventually rescued on June 20 by Iraqi security forces.[140] | Found alive | 6 weeks |
| 2005 | Jenny Nicholl | 19 | England | Nicholl disappeared fromNorth Yorkshire at the end of June 2005. David Hodgson, a 45-year-old married father of two, who had been having an affair with her for five years, was convicted of her murder. She was also seeing Hodgson's older brother, which police say, was the reason for her murder as David Hodgson became obsessively jealous about her relationship with his brother. He was convicted in February 2008 and sentenced to life with a minimum of 18 years, yet Nicholl's body has never been found.[141] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2005 | Phoenix Sinclair | 5 | Canada | Phoenix Sinclair was a Canadian female child who disappeared on 11 June 2005 fromFisher River Cree Nation, Manitoba and remains were found on March 18, 2006, found in a landfill[142] at Fisher River after she had been murdered by her mother and stepdad. | Murdered | Less than a year |
| 2005 | Ashley Marie Parlier | 21 | United States | A 21-year-old woman murdered inBattle Creek, Michigan by serial killerHarold Haulman on June 12, 2005. Haulman confessed to Parlier's murder in 2021. Although he claimed to have discarded Parlier's body in woodland inNewton Township, her remains were never found.[143] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2005 | Jacques Roche | 44 | Haiti | Haitian journalist andGroup of 184 affiliate who was kidnapped and murdered inPort-au-Prince, allegedly by members of theFanmi Lavalas party, which he opposed.[144] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2005 | Ihab el-Sherif | 51 | Iraq | Egyptian ambassador toIraq who was abducted by Islamist militants on July 3, 2005, while he was buying a newspaper in Baghdad. Four days later, a video was posted on the internet in which el-Sherif's captors claimed that he had been killed for having ties with Israel, and his death was later confirmed by the Egyptian government.[145] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2005 | Rubén Omar Romano | 47 | Mexico | Argentinian–Mexican football player who was kidnapped and held hostage nearXochimilco on July 19, 2005. He was rescued on September 21, 2005, by federal agents, and his kidnapper Omar Sandoval Orihuela was sentenced to 26 years' imprisonment.[146] | Found alive | 65 days |
| 2005 | Aldo Donegani | 77 | Italy | On August 1, 2005, the married couple was reported missing from their home inBrescia,Italy.[147] Their dismembered bodies were discovered later the same month and their heads were found in 2006.[148] Their nephew Guglielmo Gatti was found guilty of the crime.[149] | Murdered | 1 month |
| Luisa De Leo | 61 | |||||
| 2005 | Scout Taylor-Compton | 16 | United States | American actress who went missing on August 12, 2005, in southernCalifornia and was found two weeks later. She had run away from home.[150] | Found alive | 2 weeks |
| 2005 | Alicia Ross | 25 | Canada | Canadian woman who mysteriously disappeared from her home inMarkham, Ontario, on August 17, 2005. Her body was found on September 21 in a wooded area nearCresswell. Her neighbor, Daniel Sylvester, was later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder.[151] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2005 | Peter Tobin | 59 | England | Peter Tobin, a man who had previously been jailed in 1994 for a sex attack on two girls inPortsmouth, was declared to have breached the terms of hislicensed release in November 2005 when police found they could not trace his location.[152] Awarrant was issued for his arrest, and he was on the run for almost a year.[152] He was not discovered until hemurdered Angelika Kluk in Glasgow in September 2006.[152] | Found alive | 10 months |
| 2005 | Taylor Behl | 17 | United States | VCU student who disappeared on September 5, 2006, while going on a meet-up with a man she had previously dated. That same man, Benjamin Fawley, would later be convicted of her murder and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment, after her body was found dumped in a ravine a month after she disappeared.[153] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2005 | Tara Grinstead | 31 | United States | Grinstead, a beauty queen and high-school history teacher, vanished after attending a beauty pageant the night before. Suspicion fell on 27-year-old Andrew Haley due to videos he posted, but police revealed them to be elaborate hoaxes. A latex glove found outside Grinstead's home revealed DNA, matching Ryan Duke's DNA. In 2017, Bo Dukes and Ryan Duke (no relation) were arrested and charged in the case with (among other things) murder. Dukes told investigators in 2017 he helped Duke burn the body of a woman Duke had allegedly killed by accident on a pecan orchard. However, he recanted the confession. In 2019, Bo Dukes was convicted of concealing the death of another, hindering apprehension of a criminal, tampering with evidence, and two counts of making false statements. He was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 2022, Ryan Duke was found Not Guilty of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and burglary. He was found guilty for concealing her death and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.[154] | Murdered | 14 years |
| 2005 | Jennifer Teague | 18 | Canada | Teenager who disappeared while returning home from a late-night shift at her workplace inBarrhaven, Canada on September 8, 2005. Her body was found ten days later, and a pizza worker named Kevin Davis was later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder.[155] | Murdered | 10 days |
| 2005 | Harmeet Singh Sooden | 32 | Iraq | Members of theChristian Peacemaker Teams who were abducted along with two others on November 26, 2005, by theSwords of Righteousness Brigade while inBaghdad,Iraq. While Fox was executed and his body found in a garbage dump on March 10, 2006, Sooden and the two others were rescued in a military operation on March 23.[156] | Found alive | 4 months |
| Tom Fox | 54 | Iraq | Executed | |||
| Norman Kember | 74 | Iraq | Found alive | |||
| James Loney | 41 | Iraq | Found alive | |||
| 2005 | Susanne Osthoff | 43 | Iraq | German archaeologist who was kidnapped, together with her driver, while en route toBaghdad on November 25, 2005. She was eventually freed on December 18, but her kidnappers have never been positively identified.[157] | Found alive | Less than 1 month |
| 2005 | Naomi Miller | 34 | United States | A woman fromTexas, who was reported missing in December 2005, and was found buried underneath the old San Angelo speedway[158] on March 8, 2017.[159] Her ex-husband Robert had faced charges in her death,[160] and both he and his current wife pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 38 years in prison.[161] | Murdered | 12 years |
| 2005 | Adre-Anna Jackson | 10 | United States | Jackson disappeared while walking to her school inLakewood, Washington, in an area reportedly populated by registered sex offenders. Her skeletonized body was later found in a thicket. While the exact cause of death has not been determined, it was deemed suspicious, and the unsolved killing is currently under investigation by theFBI.[162] | Murdered | 4 months |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Philip Morris | Unknown | Nigeria | English oil rig worker who was kidnapped by Nigerian kidnappers while working on theAban Pearl. He and several others were held in the jungle for days, before the Nigerian government managed to negotiate their release for $200,000 ransom.[163] | Found alive | 4 days |
| 2006 | Jill Carroll | 29 | Iraq | American journalist forThe Wall Street Journal who was kidnapped by Iraqi militants on January 7, 2006. She was held hostage by her captors for two months, but was freed without harm. She later retired from journalism and became a firefighter.[164] | Found alive | 2 months |
| 2006 | Chee Gaik Yap | 24 | Malaysia | Chee and her sister were last seen jogging together atSungai Petani,Kedah,Malaysia on the evening of 14 January 2006, and while Chee's younger sister was still far behind, Chee was abducted by an unknown person and one of her shoes was left behind on the scene. Her sister, who realized she was missing and had not returned home, informed her family and a police report was lodged, leading to a massive search conducted by the police and Chee's family and friends. Nine hours after she went missing, Chee was found dead with multiple stab wounds all over her body, and she had been raped and sodomized prior to her death. The case remained unsolved for six years before her killer, Shahril Jaafar, who was the son of aDatuk businessman, was arrested in January 2012 at theKuala Lumpur International Airport after arriving fromPerth,Australia. Shahril was originally acquitted of the crime but following a re-trial, Shahril was found guilty of murdering Chee andsentenced to death by theAlor Setar High Court in August 2015. Shahril's appeals between 2016 and 2024 were all dismissed, and he remains ondeath row since.[165][166] | Murdered | Nine hours |
| 2006 | Bobby Äikiä | 10 | Sweden | Äikiä, a Swedish boy withFragile X syndrome fromNässjö,Jönköping County, who on January 14, 2006, was tortured and killed by his mother and stepfather.[167] and his body was then hidden by them. In February 2006 Äikiä's body was found and mother and stepfather were charged with the crime.[168] | Murdered | Over 2 weeks |
| 2006 | Banaz Mahmod | 20 | England | Mahmod, an Iraqi-Kurdish immigrant living inLondon, was killed by her family members when she refused to engage with a man in a forced marriage. After being raped and tortured for hours, she was strangled and her body stuffed in a suitcase, which the perpetrators buried in a garden inHandsworth, West Midlands. The killers were arrested a month after her murder, and police used phone and vehicle tracking to locate Mahmod's remains.[169] | Murdered | Over 3 months |
| 2006 | Ilan Halimi | 23 | France | Halimi, a French mobile phone salesman working in Paris, was kidnapped by a gang of criminals who believed that all Jewish people were rich. The "Gang of Barbarians", led by Youssouf Fofana, sent threatening messages and ransom letters to the family members, demanding that they be paid in exchange for his release. Halimi, who had been tortured during the process, died as a result of his injuries. His captors would later be arrested and sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment.[170] | Murdered | Over 2 weeks |
| 2006 | Nurasyura binte Mohamed Fauzi | 2 | Singapore | Nurasyra binte Mohamed Fauzi, affectionately known by her nickname "Nonoi" went missing in Singapore on March 1, 2006. She was said to be last seen in her step-grandparents' ground floor flat in Circuit Road, Singapore. Over the next three days, there was a highly publicised search for the girl, with all her family members, friends, and strangers (including the police) participated in the search and distributing flyers. Then, on the third day after her disappearance, Nonoi's stepfatherMohammed Ali bin Johari, aged 29, confessed to his wife and mother-in-law that he had accidentally drowned her in water, and led the police to where he disposed the little girl's body. Mohammed Ali was then charged with murder. Autopsy results showed that the girl was sexually assaulted before her death, to which Mohammed Ali repeatedly denied raping the girl. In August 2007, in a widely reported trial, theHigh Court of Singapore found 31-year-old Mohammed Ali guilty of murder andsentenced him to death. Mohammed Ali later lost his appeal, and he was eventually hanged on December 19, 2008.[171] | Murdered | 3 days |
| 2006 | Dana Lowrey | 23 | United States | Dana Lowrey last contacted her estranged husband inMinden, Louisiana, in May 2006. She had traveled the United States selling magazines and at the time she last spoke to him, she was in Ohio. Lowrey is believed to be the first victim of serial killerShawn Grate, who confessed to murdering the victim in 2016. Her remains were found in March 2007 but not identified. Lowrey was identified by theDNA Doe Project in June 2019.[172] | Murdered | 10 months |
| 2006 | David Sharp | 34 | China | David Sharp was an Englishmountaineer who disappeared on May 15, 2006, while climbingMount Everest in Tibet and his body was recovered a year later.[173] | Hypothermia | 1 year |
| 2006 | Gilad Shalit | 20 | Gaza Strip–Israel border | IDF soldier who was captured byHamas militants during the2006 Gaza cross-border raid. He was later released as part of aprisoner exchange.[174] | Found alive | 5 years |
| 2006 | Nathalie Mahy | 11 | Belgium | Nathalie Mahy and Stacy Lemmens were twoBelgian stepsisters who disappeared in the city ofLiège on June 10, 2006, and were found murdered on June 28.[175] On June 10, 2008, Abdallah Ait Oud was found guilty by a jury of kidnapping, rape and murder of the children, and sentenced to life imprisonment (which, under the Belgian law, is most of the time not fully served in prison, but later on changed into asuspended sentence).[176][177][178] | Murdered | 18 days |
| Stacy Lemmens | 7 | Belgium | ||||
| 2006 | Chanel Petro-Nixon | 16 or 17 | United States | Petro-Nixon was an American teenager fromBrooklyn, New York, who went missing on June 18, 2006. Her body was discovered on June 22, 2006, in atrash bag in front of 212 Kingston Avenue. It was determined that Petro-Nixon had beenstrangled.[179] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2006 | Frauke Liebs | 21 | Germany | Liebs was astudent nurse who disappeared on June 20, 2006, after last being seen at a pub inPaderborn's city center.[180] Her skeletonized body was found by a hunter on October 4, 2006, in a forested area next to aLandesstraße ("state road") nearLichtenau.[181] | Murdered | 14 weeks |
| 2006 | Eliyahu Asheri | 18 | Israel | Asheri was an Israeli student who was kidnapped and later killed byPRC militants on June 25, 2006, while on his way toNeveh Tzuf. His body, buried in an open field near a village, was recovered by IDF forces.[182] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2006 | Eldad Regev | 25 | Israeli–Lebanese border | Israeli soldiers abducted byHezbollah militants near the Lebanese border, sparking the2006 Lebanon War. Their bodies were repatriated to Israel in 2008, as part of a prisoner exchange. The Lebanese government claimed that they were killed by Israeli bombing. Israel claims that they were killed by Hezbollah.[183] | Murdered | 2 years |
| Ehud Goldwasser | 31 | Israeli–Lebanese border | ||||
| 2006 | Destiny Norton | 5 | United States | Norton had disappeared on July 16, 2006, fromSalt Lake City, Utah. Her body was found on July 24, 2006, less than 100 feet from her home in the basement of her neighbor, Craig Roger Gregerson.[184] | Murdered | 8 days |
| 2006 | Marcus Fiesel | 3 | United States | Inadvertently killed by his foster parents on August 4–6, 2006, who had kept him locked in the closet. His incinerated remains were found 24 days later inBrown County, Ohio.[185] | Murdered | 24 days |
| 2006 | Steven Centanni | 60 | Gaza Strip | A reporter forFox News kidnapped alongside colleague Olaf Wiig in theGaza Strip byPalestinian militants. Their kidnappers demanded that all Muslim prisoners in the United States be freed from custody. Although this demand was not met, both were freed after 13 days of captivity after claiming to have converted to Islam. (Both later stated they had falsely claimed to have converted at gunpoint.)[186] | Found alive | 13 days |
| 2006 | Jamshid Karimov | 39 | Uzbekistan | Uzbekistani investigative journalist who was forcefully interned in a psychiatric hospital on September 12, 2006, for "psychiatric treatment", but the true reason for his detainment is believed to be criticism of the administration of then-PresidentIslam Karimov. He was released in October 2011, but has since been detained again and is currently imprisoned in another psychiatric facility.[187] | Found alive | 5 years |
| 2006 | Angelika Kluk | 23 | United Kingdom | Twenty-three-year-old Angelika Kluk, a student fromPoland, was last seen alive in the company of a church handyman at St. Patrick's Church inGlasgow.[188] Kluk's body was discovered hidden under the floorboards of the church on September 29.[189] After a nationwide search, the church's handyman, who turned out to be the missing sex offenderPeter Tobin, was found and convicted of Kluk's murder.[188] During investigations Tobin was found to have also murderedVicky Hamilton andDinah McNicol, two girls who had disappeared in 1991.[188] | Murdered | 5 days |
| 2006 | Chelvy Thiyagarajah | Unknown | Sri Lanka | Sri Lankan feminist poet and activist abducted by theLiberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a militant rebel group. Six years after her abduction, LTTE sources confirmed that Thiyagarajah and another activist had been executed at one of their camps. | Murdered | Never found |
| 2006 | Michelle Gardner-Quinn | 21 | United States | Gardner-Quinn was an undergraduate at theUniversity of Vermont, who was kidnapped on October 7, 2006. Her body was found along a road in the neighboring town ofRichmond on October 13, 2006.[190] | Murdered | 6 days |
| 2006 | Ahmed Kousay al-Taie | 40 | Iraq | Al-Taie, an Iraqi-born American soldier serving inBaghdad during theIraq War, was captured by a group of armed militants who held him as a hostage. His fate remained unclear until 2012, when the Iraqi government confirmed that he had been killed in 2008.[191] | Murdered | 6 years |
| 2006 | Tania Nicol | 19 | England | 19-year-old Tania Nicol, who discreetly worked as a prostitute to fund a drug addiction, disappeared fromIpswich on the night of October 30, 2006.[192] Her body was found in a river on the outskirts of Ipswich on December 8; she had been killed by the serial killerSteve Wright.[192] | Murdered | 38 days |
| 2006 | Douglas Al-Bazi | 34 | Iraq | IraqiChaldean Catholic Church priest who was kidnapped by an Islamist militant group while serving in Baghdad. He was viciously tortured, but eventually released after a ransom of $170,000 was paid to the kidnappers. Since then, Al-Bazi has moved to New Zealand and has become the parish priest of the St. Addai Chaldean Catholic Church inPapatoetoe, doing political activism on behalf of Christians in the Middle East.[193] | Found alive | 9 days |
| 2006 | Gemma Adams | 25 | England | 25-year-old Gemma Adams, who had turned to prostitution to fund a drug addiction, disappeared fromIpswich on the night of November 15, 2006.[192] Her body was found in a river on the outskirts of Ipswich on December 2, six days before the body of fellow missing Ipswich woman Tania Nichol was found in the same river.[192] Both had been killed by the serial killerSteve Wright.[192] | Murdered | 17 days |
| 2006 | Anneli Alderton | 24 | England | Three-months-pregnant Anneli Alderton, who worked as a prostitute, disappeared fromIpswich on the evening of December 3, 2006.[192] She was found in woodland on the outskirts of Ipswich on December 10 when a passing motorist reported seeing her body, three days after another motorist mistook it for a manequin and failed to report it.[192] She had been killed by the serial killerSteve Wright.[192] | Murdered | 7 days |
| 2006 | James Kim | 35 | United States | The American TV personality and his family were travelling back to their home in San Francisco, California, but encountered heavy snow while passing through Oregon, forcing them to change their route. Their vehicle was eventually immobilized, and James later attempted to get help by reaching the nearest town. While his family were later rescued, he died from hypothermia at Big Windy Creek, where his body was found two days later.[194] | Hypothermia | 2 days |
| 2006 | Annette Nicholls | 29 | England | 29-year-old Annette Nicholls, who worked as a prostitute, disappeared fromIpswich on December 8, 2006.[192] Her body was found alongside fellow missing Ipswich prostitute Paula Clennell in woodland by a road on December 12; both had been killed by the serial killerSteve Wright.[192] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2006 | Paula Clennell | 24 | England | 24-year-old Paula Clennell, who discreetly worked as a prostitute, disappeared fromIpswich on the morning of December 10, 2006.[192] Her body was found in woodland by a road on the outskirts of Ipswich on December 12, after a police helicopter spotted her and the body of the missing Ipswich woman Annette Nicholls.[192] Both had been killed by the serial killerSteve Wright.[192] | Murdered | 2 days |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | Anne Hendricks Bass | 66 | United States | Bass was an American investor, art collector and documentary filmmaker who was held hostage at her estate by her butler. She was later rescued, and after a five-year-long trial, he was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for the crime.[195] | Found alive | Unknown |
| 2007 | Tara Lynn Grant | 34 | United States | Grant was fromWashington Township, Macomb County, Michigan, and was a business consultant, wife, and mother. On February 14, 2007, Grant's husband Stephen had reported that she had been missing for five days after being picked up in their driveway. On March 2, police discovered Tara's dismembered torso stored in plastic bags in the garage. Stephen had fled to Michigan'sWilderness State Park, apparently intent on committing suicide. He was arrested, and confessed to the murder while in custody, citing an argument with Tara that led to him strangling, then dismembering her. He received a sentence of 50–80 years in prison, with no less than 50 years to be served.[196][197] | Murdered | 21 days |
| 2007 | Erika Hill | 15 | United States | Erika was an American 15-year-old girl who was murdered inFitchburg, Wisconsin, in February 2007. Hill's damaged body was found inGary, Indiana, on February 26, and her identity was not discovered until 2015. Taylin Hill, her adoptive mother, was charged withreckless homicide after Hill's identification, and later pleaded guilty to reduced charges for which she was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. Her body was first taken to Chicago and burned, then five days later it was moved toGary, Indiana.[198] Her identity was not revealed until 2015.[199] | Murdered | 5 days |
| 2007 | Alan Johnston | Unknown | Gaza Strip | A British journalist for theBBC stationed inGaza City, Johnston was kidnapped byArmy of Islam militants and held in captivity. Despite several false reports of him being executed, he was eventually freed on July 4 and returned to the UK a few days later.[200] | Found alive | More than 3 months |
| 2007 | Edward Chikombo | 65–66 | Zimbabwe | Zimbabwean journalist for theZimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation who was killed after sending footage depicting police brutality towardsMovement for Democratic Change members to foreign media. Despite the outrage over his death, his killers were never caught.[201] | Murdered | Several days |
| 2007 | Daniele Mastrogiacomo | 53 | Afghanistan | Italian–Swiss journalist and war correspondent forla Repubblica who was kidnapped while working in Afghanistan on March 7, 2007, byTaliban militants led byDadullah. He was held as a hostage, with his abductors demanding that Italy withdraw its troops, and was eventually released in exchange for five Taliban prisoners.[202] | Found alive | 15 days |
| 2007 | Christopher Barrios Jr. | 6 | United States | Schoolboy who was abducted from his home inBrunswick, Georgia, by a group of four kidnappers on March 8, 2007, who then raped and killed him. His body was found on March 15. The main killer, David Edenfield, was sentenced to death.[203] | Murdered | 17 days |
| 2007 | Ruby Rose Barrameda-Jimenez | 26 | Philippines | Barrameda-Jimenez was the sister ofFilipino actress and beauty queen Rochelle Barrameda. She disappeared on March 14, 2007, after visiting her children at the house of her estranged husband, Manuel Jimenez III's family inNavotas,Metro Manila. Her body was found more than two years later on June 10, 2009, inside a cemented metal drum on the bottom ofManila Bay near the Navotas Fish Port based on a tip from Manuel Montero, one of the alleged suspects in her murder. Montero confessed that she murdered Barrameda-Jimenez upon the orders of Manuel Jimenez III, his father Manuel Jimenez Jr. and his uncle Lope Jimenez. A driver named Eric Fernandez and a security officer named Lennard Descalso were also named as accomplices. On September 30, 2019, the Malabon Regional Trial Court dismissed the parricide case against Jimenez III and the murder case against his father, his uncle and several other accomplices after Montero recanted his testimony and went missing in 2013.[204][205][206][207] | Murdered | 2 years, 2 months, 28 days |
| 2007 | Lindsay Ann Hawker | 22 | Japan | Hawker, a 22-year-old English teacher working forNova in Japan, was reported missing on March 26, 2007, after she failed to show up to her classes on that day and the day before. Police went to the apartment of a person of interest inIchikawa, Chiba, that same day. There, they found Hawker's body buried in a bath of sand. The person of interest, Tatsuya Ichihashi, managed to evade the police for over two years after the police failed to catch him when they went up to his apartment, before being arrested in 2009.[208][209][210] | Murdered | Same day |
| 2007 | Oralgaisha Omarshanova | 39 | Kazakhstan | Oralgaisha Omarshanova was a female Kazakhjournalist who disappeared March 30, 2007 inAlmaty Province, Kazatkom and her remains were discovered in 2021 after she had been killed.[211] | Murdered | 14 years |
| 2007 | Kelsey Smith | 18 | United States | Smith, anOverland Park, Kansas, teenager, disappeared on June 2, 2007, and was murdered that evening. Smith's body was found inLongview Lake, Missouri, on June 6, 2007.[212] The Kelsey Smith Act was later created in her name. | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2007 | Paige Birgfeld | 34 | United States | Paige Birgfeld, a 34-year-old woman fromGrand Junction,Colorado, went missing on June 28, 2007. It was discovered that Birgfeld was leading a double life as an escort under the name "Carrie". Birgfeld's body was found on March 6, 2012. In 2014, Lester Ralph Jones was charged with Birgfeld's kidnapping and murder.[213][214] | Murdered | 4 years, 8 months, 7 days |
| 2007 | Felicia Teo Wei Ling | 19 | Singapore | Felicia Teo, a 19-year-old Singaporean and student ofLASALLE College of the Arts, went missing on June 30, 2007, after she was last seen leaving her friends' flat. Teo was reported missing four days after she disappeared, and there were highly publicized search efforts and police investigations made to trace her whereabouts. The police investigations lasted for 13 years before finally in July 2020, the police made a breakthrough and re-classified the case as murder. The two tenants of the flat, where Teo last visited, were classified as suspects, but only one of them, 35-year-old Singaporean Ahmad Danial Mohamed Rafa'ee was arrested and charged with murder. The other suspect, 32-year-old Indonesian Ragil Putra Setia Sukmarahjana, went on the run and was never caught. Ahmad Danial's murder charge was later temporarily stood down and he served 26 months in jail for illegally disposing of Teo's corpse and stealing her belongings.[215][216][217] | Murdered | 13 years |
| 2007 | Riley Ann Sawyers | 2 | United States | Sawyers had disappeared fromSpring, Texas, on July 24, 2007. Her body was found inGalveston Bay, Texas, on October 29, 2007.[218] | Murdered | 3 months |
| 2007 | Cédrika Provencher | 9 | Canada | Provencher was a girl fromTrois-Rivières, Quebec, who disappeared on July 31, 2007.[219] The Quebec media believed that she was kidnapped.[220][221] On December 12, 2015, Quebec police announced that her remains had been found inMauricie, Quebec.[222][223] | Undetermined | 8 years 5 months |
| 2007 | Ylenia Lenhard | 5 | Switzerland | A five-year-old girl fromAppenzell, Switzerland, abducted and murdered while bicycling home from a local swimming pool on July 31, 2007. Her body was discovered in woodland close toOberbüren on September 15. Her murderer, Urs Hans von Aesch, committed suicide on the date of her abduction.[224] | Murdered | 7 weeks |
| 2007 | Peter Connelly | 17 months | United Kingdom | Connelly was a 17-month-old British toddler initially known as "Baby P" in the press who died following a culmination of eight months of physical and mental child abuse during which he had been seen by theLondon Borough of Haringey Children's Services andNational Health Service health professionals but his evident trauma had been ignored or overlooked.[225] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2007 | Corryn Rayney | 43 or 44 | Australia | Rayney disappeared from Australia about August 7, 2007; her body was found a week later in a clandestine grave inKings Park,Perth, with no clear cause of death.[226] | Undetermined | 1 week |
| 2007 | Nurin Jazlin | 8 | Malaysia | Jazlin was a Malaysian girl who disappeared inWangsa Maju, Kuala Lumpur, on the night of August 20, 2007. She was found brutally tortured in front of a shop on September 17, 2007, her body stuffed inside a gym bag.[227] Her killer(s) was never caught and thus her murder remains unsolved until today. | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2007 | Birendra Shah | 55 | Nepal | A print and broadcast journalist for the Nepal FM,Dristi Weekly, andAvenues TV inBara. Shah was kidnapped October 4 or 5, 2007, byCommunist Party of NepalMaoists from Pipara Bazaar,Kalaiya. His body was discovered in a forest on November 8.[228] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2007 | Steve Fossett | 63 | United States | Fossett was a famous businessman and record breaking aviator who went missing on September 3, 2007, while flying over theGreat Basin Desert. Exactly one year later, in September 2008, a hiker found Fossett's identification cards in theSierra Nevada Mountains, California, leading shortly after to the discovery of the plane's wreckage. The remains of Fossett were two large bones, that were found half a mile from the crash site, probably scattered by wild animals.[229][230] | Plane crash | 1 year |
| 2007 | Rowan Ford | 9 | United States | Six-year-old Rowan Ford disappeared from her home inStella, Missouri, and was found deceased six days later in a cave inMcDonald County, Missouri, with forensic reports showing that she had been raped and strangled to death. Christopher Leroy Collings (a family friend of Ford) and David Wesley Spears (Ford's stepfather) were arrested and charged with raping and murdering Ford. Collings was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in 2012, while Spears was sentenced to 11 years in prison for endangering the welfare of a child and covering up the crime.[231][232] | Murdered | 6 days |
| 2007 | Tony Harris | 36 | Brazil | An Americanbasketball player fromSeattle, Washington, who played professionally in Europe, Asia, and Brazil. Harris was last seen alive on November 4. His body was discovered 50 miles east ofBrasília on November 18. He is believed to have died on or about November 9. One of several conflicting reports into Harris's death indicates his body was discovered hanging from a tree.[233] | Undetermined | 14 days |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Meredith Emerson | 24 | United States | Hiker who went missing inChattahoochee–Oconee National Forest while walking her dog. Her headless body was found days later inCumming, Georgia, and investigations later determined that she had been killed byGary Hilton, aserial killer with at least three previous murders. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for Emerson's murder.[234] | Murdered | 3 days |
| 2008 | Brianna Denison | 19 | United States | Denison was a college student fromSanta Barbara, California, who was abducted on January 20, 2008, from a friend's house inReno, Nevada. Her body was discovered on February 15, 2008, in a field near a Reno business park after being raped and murdered.[235] | Murdered | 26 days |
| 2008 | Karissa Boudreau | 12 | Canada | A twelve-year-old girl murdered by her mother, Penny, inBridgewater, Nova Scotia. Her body was found on 9 February. Penny Bourdreau would later claim she had committed the strangulation murder of her daughter in an effort to conserve her relationship with her boyfriend, Vernon Macumber. She was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment with a recommendation she serve a minimum of 20 years' imprisonment in January 2009.[236] | Murdered | 13 days |
| 2008 | Diane Chenery-Wickens | 48 | England | British award-winning make-up artist who was reported missing from her home inDuddleswell,East Sussex on January 24, 2008. A woman walking her dog found her body inLittle Horsted,Uckfield, on May 15, 2008. Diane's husband had murdered her after she had found a phone bill that showed calls to a mistress and a gay chatline.[237] | Murdered | 4 months |
| 2008 | Tariq Azizuddin | Unknown | Afghanistan | Pakistani ambassador toTurkey andAfghanistan who was abducted byTehrik-i-Taliban terrorists while en route to Kabul on February 11, 2008. He and another hostage were released a few months later, after the government and the terrorists negotiated a deal.[238] | Found alive | 3 months |
| 2008 | Shannon Matthews | 9 | England | Matthews is an English girl who was kidnapped inDewsbury, West Yorkshire, on February 19, 2008.[239] She was found alive and well on March 14, 2008, and it turned out that the "kidnapping" had been a scam by her mother and an uncle of the mother's boyfriend to fraudulently claim a reward for her return.[240] Adrama was made about the case showing the extent of the community involvement in trying to locate Shannon. | Found alive | 23 days |
| 2008 | Leonid Rozhetskin | 41 | Latvia | Rozhetskin was a Russianfinancier and lawyer, who went missing from his village inJūrmala, Latvia, on March 16, 2008, under suspicious circumstances, and his body was found in 2013.[241] | Unknown | 5 years |
| 2008 | Pippa Bacca | 33 | Turkey | An Italian performance and feminist artist who disappeared inGebze,Turkey on March 31, 2008, during an internationalhitchhiking trip to promote world peace. Her body was discovered in the same city on April 11, 2008.[242] | Murdered | 11 days |
| 2008 | Wong Ka-mui | 16 | Hong Kong | 16-year-old school dropout Wong Ka-mui, who became a sex worker through acompensated dating network, was reported missing on 29 April 2008, and her last sighting was two days before. Nine days after her disappearance, following a tip-off, a 24-year-old transport worker Ting Kai-tai was arrested on suspicion of murdering Wong. Ting confessed during investigations that he had strangled Wong after they had sex inside his rented flat, before he butchered up her body into bits and pieces, flushing most of the flesh down the toilet while disposing of the severed head and organs into the ocean. Although Wong's head was never recovered despite extensive search efforts, Ting was nonetheless found guilty of first-degree murder and preventing the lawful burial of a body, and sentenced tolife imprisonment.[243][244][245] | Murdered | 9 days |
| 2008 | Mark Speight | 42 | England | English television presenter who was arrested on suspicion of murder relating to the death of his fiancée, modelNatasha Collins. While her death was later determined to be a drug overdose, Speight disappeared on April 7, 2008, and was later found hanged nearPaddington station. Two suicide notes indicated that he had killed himself as he couldn't bear living without his fiancée.[246] | Suicide | 6 days |
| 2008 | Tonderai Ndira | 33–34 | Zimbabwe | ZimbabweanMDC–T activist who was abducted by a group of armed men on May 13, 2008, while campaigning for the2008 general election. His body was found later that same month, and it has been proposed that he had been killed by adeath squad.[247] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2008 | Fernando Martí | 14 | Mexico | Fernando Martí was kidnapped on July 12, 2008, and was found dead inside the trunk of an abandoned car inMexico City on August 1, 2008.[248] | Murdered | Less than one month |
| 2008 | Amanda Lindhout | 27 | Somalia | Lindhout, a Canadian freelance journalist, and Brennan, an Australian author and photojournalist, were sent to report on events inMogadishu, Somalia. On August 23, 2008, two days after their arrival, the pair, along with their translator Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi and driver Mahad Isse, were all kidnapped by Islamist militants and held hostage. After 15 months, during which they were repeatedly tortured and Lindhout raped, all captives were released.[249] | Found alive | 15 months |
| Nigel Brennan | 36 | Somalia | ||||
| 2008 | Amy Yeary | 18 | United States | A former victim of human trafficking, Yeary disappeared sometime in the summer of 2008, after her mother was unable to drive her back home. On November 23, 2008, Yeary's body was found inCampbellsport, Wisconsin, but went unidentified until 2021. Her killer(s) have not been located thus far.[250] | Murdered | 13 years |
| 2008 | Sean Langan | 43 | Afghanistan–Pakistan border | British journalist and documentary filmmaker. Langan was kidnapped along with his translator while filming in the Afghanistan–Pakistan border region. Both were held captive by theTaliban for 12 weeks before their release on June 21, 2008.[251] | Found alive | ~84 days |
| 2008 | Caylee Anthony | 2 | United States | Caylee was reported missing on July 15, 2008, inOrlando, Florida. On December 11, 2008, her skeletal remains were found with a blanket inside a trash bag in a wooded area near the family home.[73][252] Her mother was accused but acquitted of her murder. | Unknown | 5 months |
| 2008 | Karlie Pearce-Stevenson | 20 | Australia | Mother and daughter whose remains were found in theBelanglo State Forest, Australia five years apart, and were initially treated as unrelated. Daniel Holdom was later charged and convicted for both of their deaths, and sentenced to two life terms.[253] | Murdered | 2 years |
| Khandalyce Pearce | 2 | Australia | 7 years | |||
| 2008 | Lai Ying Xin | 16 | Malaysia | Xin was a 16-year-old schoolgirl abducted by a group of four youths, who subsequently murdered her by strangulation before burning her body to destroy the evidence and even extorted a ransom from her family. Lai's abductors were arrested four days later and charged with her kidnapping and murder. In 2011, the ringleader and only adult of the four, Teh Kim Hong, was found guilty of kidnapping and murder and wassentenced to death; two of his accomplices were detained indefinitely while a third individual was acquitted of all charges. The ringleader remained ondeath row for 13 years before Malaysia repealed the mandatory death penalty. His death sentence was reduced to 40 years' imprisonment and 17 strokes of the cane in May 2024.[254][255][256] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2008 | David S. Rohde | 41 | Afghanistan | Journalist forThe New York Times who, together with two associates, waskidnapped byTaliban militants on November 10, 2008, while doing research for a book in Afghanistan. His colleagues urged other newspapers not to write anything on the kidnapping in order to maximize his chances of survival, and months later, Rohde and one of the men managed to successfully escape.[257] | Found alive | 8 months |
| 2008 | Robert Fowler | 64 | Niger | Fowler was a Canadian diplomat and special envoy of the UN who was kidnapped while on a peace mission in Niger. After extensive negotiations, he and several other Western hostages were released.[258] | Found alive | 4 months |
| 2008 | Ophélie Bretnacher | 22 | Hungary | Bretnacher, a French exchange student, was last seen alive on security camera footage walking through the streets after leaving a Budapest nightclub early on December 2, 2008. Her handbag, with her phone and personal effects, was found on a bridge over theDanube the following day that she is seen crossing in the video footage. Two months later her body was found onCsepel, an island in the river within the city, upstream from the bridge. Despite being unable to identify the cause of death, Hungarian authorities closed the case in 2014.[259] Bretnacher's parents believe she may have been killed, and the French government has opened its own investigation.[260] | Unknown | 2 months |
| 2008 | Ronald Eugene Woodham IV | c. 1 day | United States | An American baby and homicide victim whose body was found off ofSouth Carolina Highway 544, on the outskirts ofConway inHorry County, South Carolina on December 4, 2008. He had been abandoned by his own mother, and died ofhypothermia. Woodham remained unidentified for over eleven years, but was identified in March 2020. His mother, Jennifer Sahr, was arrested the same month, and pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2022; she was later sentenced to four years' imprisonment.[261] | Hypothermia | 11 years |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Pericles Panagopoulos | 73 | Greece | Panagopoulos, a successful Greek shipping magnate who owned multiple companies engaged in the trade, was kidnapped by a group of armed men inAthens in 2009. Orchestrated by crime boss Panagiotis Vlastos, the group demanded €30 million in ransom, and after a week, they released Panagopoulos after the sum was paid. It is reportedly the highest ransom ever paid.[262] | Found alive | More than 1 week |
| 2009 | Two younger daughters of Simmi Kahlon | 0 months | Canada | The girls were born in the summer of 2009, and their motherSimmi Kahlon murdered them months after their birth.[136] | Murdered | 1 to 3 months |
| 2009 | Michael Gilbert | 26 | United Kingdom | After getting acquainted with James Watt in a children's home, Gilbert was invited to live with him at his parents' house, where all family members, including Watt, abused, extorted and made him work in slavish conditions. Gilbert was eventually killed, his body dismembered and the remains thrown into a lagoon, with the various parts found between May 2009 and February 2010. All six Watt family members were eventually convicted of the killing and received various sentences.[263] | Murdered | 1 year |
| 2009 | John Solecki | Unknown | Pakistan | Head of theUNHCR, based inQuetta, Pakistan, who was tasked with aiding Afghan refugees in Balochistan. On February 2, 2009, he was kidnapped byBLUF militants and held for two months, before being released.[264] | Found alive | 2 months |
| 2009 | Gerry Rafferty | 61 | England | Scottish singer-songwriter, who was reported as having been missing for seven months in February 2009, having disappeared fromSt Thomas' Hospital in London, where he was being treated for liver failure.[265] Later that month,The Guardian reported that Rafferty had been found, and was described as living "in hiding" in the south of England.[266] | Found alive | 7 months |
| 2009 | Ruinerwold family | Several ages | Netherlands | A family who disappeared after March 2009 was discovered living a seclusional lifestyle within a farm house in a village in the Dutch province ofDrenthe in October 2019.[267] | Found alive | 10 years |
| 2009 | Jeffrey Howe | 49 | England | British businessman Jeffrey Howe was last seen on March 8, 2009, inSouthgate, London. Between March and April 2009 various body parts were found scattered aroundHertfordshire andLeicestershire by members of the public, which were later identified as belonging to Howe, leading to him being referred to in the press as the "Jigsaw man". Howe had been killed by his friend Stephen Marshall, who intended to steal his identity and steal from him. At trial he claimed to have dismembered four other bodies between 1995 and 1998 in gangland killings.[268] | Murdered | 46 days |
| 2009 | Sandra Cantu | 8 | United States | Cantu was an American girl fromTracy, California, who attracted national attention after she went missing on March 27, 2009. Her body was discovered two weeks later inside a suitcase in a nearbyirrigation pond.[269] | Murdered | 2 weeks |
| 2009 | Tori Stafford | 8 | Canada | Tori Stafford was a Canadian girl fromWoodstock, Ontario, who on April 8, 2009, was kidnapped, raped and killed. On July 21, 2009, Stafford's body was found inMount Forest, Ontario.[270] | Murdered | Less than two months |
| 2009 | Brittanee Drexel | 17 | United States | Brittanee Drexel was an American girl fromChili, New York, who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered between April 25–26, 2009, inMyrtle Beach, South Carolina. On May 11, 2022, remains were located inGeorgetown, South Carolina, and were positively identified as Brittanee's on May 15. A registered sex offender seen as a person of interest in the case was arrested and charged with the crime.[271] | Murdered | 13 years, 16 days |
| 2009 | Minna Nurminen | 26 | Finland | Nurminen, a 26-year-old member of the wealthy Herlin family, disappeared from her home inEtu-Töölö,Helsinki, on 27 May 2009. She was reported missing on 30 May and found alive in a forest inRusko on 13 June. The kidnapper was identified as Juha Turunen, a formerSDP city council candidate living inTurku, who is believed to have abducted Nurminen solely forransom of eight millioneuro.[272] | Found alive | 2 weeks |
| 2009 | Mark Sanford | 49 | United States | TheRepublicanSouth Carolina Governor disappeared on June 18, 2009, and reappeared on June 24 six days later.[273][274] | Found alive | 6 days |
| 2009 | Typhaine Taton | 5 | France | French child who was repeatedly abused by her stepfather and mother, Nicolas Willot and Anne-Sophie Faucheur, at their home inMaubeuge. Taton was reported missing on June 18, 2009, by Faucheur, who later confessed that she and Willot killed her and dumped her body inLoverval, Belgium. The body was discovered on December 9, with Willot and Faucheur being convicted and sentenced to 30 years each for the murder.[275] | Murdered | 6 months |
| 2009 | Susan Rushworth | 43 | England | Bradford sex worker Rushworth was last seen near her flat in the city on June 22, 2009. Her family made repeated public appeals for her return. In 2010, it was discovered that she had become a victim of serial killerStephen Griffiths, who had gone on to kill two other sex workers in 2010. Griffiths told police he had killed Rushworth and her blood was later found in his flat, but her body was never found. On December 21, 2010, Griffiths was convicted of Rushworth's murder, along with the murders of the two other women.[276][277] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2009 | Zainab Shafia | 19 | Canada | Four members of an Afghan-Canadian family were murdered inKingston, Ontario on June 30, 2009. Sometime after they were reported missing, the Shafia sisters and their father's first wife Rona Muhammad Omar were found dead inside a car that submerged underwater. Their father Mohammad Shafia, his second wife and son were all arrested on suspicion for causing their death. All three accused in this case were found guilty of first-degree murder and jailed for life.[278] | Murdered | 1 day |
| Sahar Shafia | 17 | |||||
| Geeti Shafia | 13 | |||||
| Rona Muhammad Omar | 52 | |||||
| 2009 | Paula Hounslea | 37 | England | Hounslea was a 37-year-old British woman who disappeared from her home inWest Derby on 22 August 2009. On 5 May 2012, her burnt remains were found on a disused railway line inLiverpool. Her murder remains unsolved.[279] | Murdered | 3 years |
| 2009 | Annie Le | 24 | United States | Americandoctoral student at theYale School of Medicine's Department ofPharmacology, who disappeared on September 8, 2009, and was found dead on September 13, 2009, in the building where she worked.[280][281] | Murdered | 5 days |
| 2009 | Mitrice Richardson | 24 | United States | Richardson was an American woman fromCalabasas, California, who disappeared on September 17, 2009, after being released from police custody; her body was found on August 9, 2010.[282] | Unknown | 11 months |
| 2009 | Bobby Jamison | 44 | United States | The Jamison family ofEufaula, Oklahoma were last seen alive on their home surveillance system packing their vehicle and leaving their home on October 8, 2009, appearing to be in a "trancelike" state. Theirpickup truck was found abandoned inLatimer County, Oklahoma, a few days later. Their heavily decomposed skeletal remains were discovered by hunters in November 2013, and were confirmed to belong to the Jamisons on July 3, 2014. | Unknown | 4 years and 1 month |
| Sherilynn Jamison | 40 | United States | ||||
| Madyson Jamison | 6 | United States | ||||
| 2009 | Morgan Dana Harrington | 20 | United States | AmericanVirginia Tech student, who disappeared from theJohn Paul Jones Arena on October 17, 2009, while attending aMetallica concert at theUniversity of Virginia (UVA) inCharlottesville.[283] Her body was discovered on January 26, 2010.[284] | Murdered | 3 months |
| 2009 | Jill Stuchenko | 35 | Canada | The first victim of serial killerCody Legebokoff. Stuchenko was a 35-year-old mother of six reported missing by her family on October 22, 2009. Her body was found close toPrince George, British Columbia, six days later.[285] | Murdered | 6 days |
| 2009 | Elizabeth Olten | 9 | United States | Nine-year-old Elizabeth Olten was murdered by her 15-year-old neighbor Alyssa Bustamante, who lured Olten into the woods before strangling and stabbing her to death. Bustamante subsequently pleaded guilty tosecond-degree murder and armed criminal action and was sentenced tolife in prison plus 30 years.[286] | Murdered | 2 days |
| 2009 | Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada | 25 | United States | Disappeared after leaving his family home inCouncil Bluffs, Iowa on November 28, 2009, while suffering from hallucinations. His body was discovered behind a supermarket freezer unit almost 10 years later on January 24, 2019. His death was ruled an accident. | Accident | 10 years |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Isabella Ruth Miller-Jenkins | 7 | United States / Nicaragua | Isabella's non-custodial mother, Lisa Miller, abducted her and took her to Nicaragua in 2010. Lisa returned to the United States in early 2021 and turned herself in. Eighteen-year-old Isabella filed an affidavit in Nicaragua, stating that she was happy and wished to stay there until she was ready to return to the United States.[287] | Found alive | 11 years |
| 2010 | Joseph McStay | 40 | United States | The McStay family abruptly disappeared from theirFallbrook, California, home under suspicious circumstances on February 4, 2010.[288][289] Their bodies were found by a biker in the desert nearVictorville, California, on November 13, 2013. Almost a year later, on November 7, 2014, police arrested Charles "Chase" Merritt, Joseph McStay's business partner, and charged him with the murders.[290] | Murdered | 3 years 9 months |
| Summer McStay | 43 | |||||
| Gianni McStay | 4 | |||||
| Joseph McStay Jr. | 3 | |||||
| 2010 | Faiza Ashraf | 26 | Norway | Faiza Ashraf was aPakistani-Norwegian woman who disappeared in atHaslum inBærum on February 3, 2010, after being kidnapped. After February 10, 2010, Ashraf's body was found inAsker after the police were told the location of it.[291] | Murdered | 7 days |
| 2010 | Mackenzie Cowell | 17 | United States | Mackenzie Cowell was a high school student who went missing after last being seen leaving the beauty school she attended inWenatchee, Washington, on February 9, 2010. She had told classmates she would be back in 15 minutes. Her body was found four days later on a river bank. A beauty school classmate was charged in her death and pleaded guilty to manslaughter.[292] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2010 | Andrew Koenig | 41 | Canada | Andrew Koenig was an American actor who went missing after last being seen inVancouver, British Columbia on February 14, 2010, and using his cellphone on February 16. On February 25, 2010, a group of 11 of his friends and family members found his body hanging from a tree inStanley Park in downtown Vancouver through an act of suicide.[293][294][295] | Suicide | 11 days |
| 2010 | Ilenia Vecchiato | 28 | Italy | 28-year-old Ilenia Vecchiato, a part-time beautician based inBologna who offered sexual services, was reported missing by her parents on March 10, 2010. Upon his arrest,Ramon Berloso confessed to murdering Vecchiato. After picking up Vecchiato, Berloso drove her to a villa owned by an elderly couple he had worked for, offering to have sex there. However, upon reaching the villa, Berloso instead hit Vecchiato on the head with an iron bar before shooting her in the head with acrossbow dart. Berloso then stole €10,000 from Vecchiato, as well as her mobile phone and credit card, before burying her body on a riverbank nearTapogliano. Berloso also killed 24-year-old Diana Alexiu with the same weapon before placing her body in the same location. While incarcerated, Berloso fatally wounded himself on August 5, 2010; he died 15 days later.[296] | Murdered | 4 months |
| 2010 | Khalid Khawaja | 58–59 | Pakistan | Pakistan Air Force andInter-Services Intelligence officer who was kidnapped by theAsian Tigers militant group on March 30, 2010, while making a documentary onColonel Imam. His body was later found inMir Ali.[297] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2010 | Shelley Armitage | 31 | United Kingdom | Bradford sex worker Shelley Armitage was last seen in Rebecca Street in the city centre on April 26, 2010. Two days later she was reported missing to police. On June 2, police announced that some of her remains had been found in theRiver Aire. She had been murdered by serial killer Stephen Griffiths.[276][277][298] | Murdered | 37 days |
| 2010 | Zoe Nelson | 17 | United Kingdom | Nelson was a Scottish college student who disappeared while in the company of her boyfriend, Robert Bayne, on May 22, 2010. The next day, her burned remains were found in a wooded area outsideWishaw. Bayne was later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.[299] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2010 | Suzanne Pilley | 38 | United Kingdom | Suzanne Pilley was a woman who disappeared on May 4, 2010, inScotland. On June 23, 2010, David Gilroy, her former boyfriend, was detained byLothian and Borders Police under Section 14 of theCriminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 in connection with her disappearance. Later that day, he was arrested and charged with her murder,[300] and on March 15, 2012, he was found guilty, revealing that she had been murdered.[301] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2010 | Paula Leclair | 64 | Canada | Ottawa woman Paula Leclair went missing on May 20, 2010. She was murdered by serial killerCamille Cléroux.[302] Her buried body was found in June 2011.[303] | Murdered | 1 year |
| 2010 | Suzanne Blamires | 36 | United Kingdom | Bradford sex worker Suzanne Blamires disappeared on May 21, 2010. Three days later, the police arrested a man afterCCTV footage showing him murdering Blamires in his block of flats was seen by the caretaker. The following day, human remains were found by a member of the public in theRiver Aire inShipley, West Yorkshire, and they were confirmed as being Blamires's on May 28. She had been murdered by serial killer Stephen Griffiths.[276][277] | Murdered | 1 week |
| 2010 | Diego Fernández de Cevallos | 69 | Mexico | Mexican politician and member of theNational Action Party who was abducted on his property inPedro Escobedo on May 14, 2010. His kidnappers demanded $100 million for his release, but later decreased the amount, and De Cevallos was released on December 25, 2010.[304] | Found alive | 7 months |
| 2010 | Cherry Walker | 39 | United States | Cherry Walker, the 39-year-old mentally challenged babysitter of Kimberly Cargill's son, was murdered by Cargill on June 18, 2010. Earlier that day, Walker had been served with asubpoena to testify at acustody hearing for Cargill's son, and Cargill feared that she would lose custody if Walker showed up to testify. Walker's body was discovered the day after her murder and was identified four days later. Cargill was later convicted ofcapital murder and sentenced to death bylethal injection.[305] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2010 | Lyle McCann | 78 | Canada | The McCann couple, fromSt. Albert, Alberta, Canada, went missing after going on a road trip on July 3, 2010. Their bodies were never found. In January 2017, Travis Vader was sentenced to life imprisonment for their manslaughter.[306] | Murdered | Not found |
| Marie McCann | 77 | |||||
| 2010 | Eliza Samudio | 25 | Brazil | A Brazilian model and actress murdered by goalkeeperBruno Fernandes. She is believed to have been murdered by strangulation on or about 10 June and subsequently dismembered and buried beneath a layer of concrete.[307] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2010 | Lorenzen Wright | 34 | United States | An American professionalbasketball player, who disappeared on July 19, 2010, and was found dead on July 28 inMemphis, Tennessee, in a wooded area. The case was ruled a homicide.[308] On November 9, 2017, Lorenzen Wright's ex-wife, Sherra Wright Robinson, was arrested in connection with the Lorenzen Wright murder, days after Billy R. Turner, a landscaper, was indicted on first-degree murder charges.[citation needed] | Murdered | 9 days |
| 2010 | Sarah Scazzi | 15 | Italy | On 26 August 2010, a teenage girl went missing inAvetrana, Italy.[309] Her cousin, aunt and uncle were convicted of killing her.[310] | Murdered | 2 months |
| 2010 | Amber Tuccaro | 20 | Canada | Tuccaro was a CanadianFirst Nations woman who vanished fromFort McMurray while travelling towardsEdmonton for a vacation. Her remains were found on September 1, 2012, but her killer has not been apprehended.[311] | Murdered | 2 years |
| 2010 | Natasha Lynn Montgomery | 23 | United States | A victim of serial killerCody Legebokoff. Montgomery was a 23-year-old mother of two who disappeared on or about September 1, 2010. Although her body has never been found,DNA evidence conclusively links Legebokoff to her disappearance.[312] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2010 | Cynthia Frances Maas | 35 | Canada | 35-year-old Cynthia Frances Maas was last seen alive on September 10, 2010. Her body was found in aPrince George park the following month. Maas died ofblunt force trauma to the head and penetrating wounds. She had a hole in her shoulder blade, a broken jaw and cheekbone, and injuries to her neck consistent with someone stomping on it. In September 2014, serial killerCody Legebokoff was convicted of Maas's murder, as well as those of two other women and a teenage girl.[313] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2010 | Zahra Baker | 10 | United States | Baker was an Australian schoolgirl who was killed by her American stepmother inHickory, North Carolina, on September 24, 2010. Her body was later dismembered and the remains scattered, with Baker's skull found in April 2012, and identified in February 2013.[314] | Murdered | 2 years |
| 2010 | Linda Norgrove | 35–36 | Afghanistan | Norgrove was a Scottish aid worker who was kidnapped byTaliban militants in Afghanistan'sKunar Province on September 26, 2010. She was moved to a mountain hideout, where she remained for a little over a week before being located. However, she died from injuries sustained during the rescue attempt.[315] | Died from injuries from rescue attempt | 10 days |
| 2010 | Yara Gambirasio | 13 | Italy | Gambirasio disappeared after visiting the sports centre inBrembate di Sopra on November 24, 2010. Her body, showing a wound to the head and many small cuts, was found on February 26, 2011. DNA found on her body led to the arrest and conviction of bricklayer Massimo Bossetti, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder.[316] | Murdered | 4 months |
| 2010 | James Nolan | 46 | Republic of Ireland | Irish criminal who was convicted of rape and false imprisonment. He was last seen at the Wellmount Clinic inFinglas, on November 30, 2010, where he collectedmethadone; sections of his body were found atDollymount Strand in February 2011. Nolan's brother, Thomas, later confessed in hissuicide note that he had killed his brother.[317] | Murdered | 70 days |
| 2010 | Joanna Yeates | 25 | United Kingdom | Alandscape architect fromHampshire, England, who disappeared on December 17, 2010, inBristol.[318] Her body was discovered on December 25, 2010, inFailand,North Somerset.[319] | Murdered | 8 days |
| 2010 | Hailey Dunn | 13 | United States | Hailey Dunn was an American teenage girl who missing from her hometown ofColorado City, Texas on December 27, 2010.[320][321] Her remains were found in March 2013. | Murdered | 3 years 3 months |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Bethany Decker | 21 | United States | Decker, a student atGeorge Mason University, who lived in the nearby Washington, D.C., suburb ofAshburn, Virginia, who was several months pregnant, was last accounted for on January 29 when she called the restaurant where she worked to confirm her schedule for the next week. Her husband and a boyfriend, Ronald Roldan, both claimed to have seen her that day, as well. Three weeks later, after Facebook messages from her to friends that seemed to them to have been written by someone else, she was reported missing.[322] Roldan was considered a person of interest in the case, and after serving time for an assault in North Carolina was arrested and charged in Decker's abduction in 2020. In November 2022 he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder; Decker's body has never been found.[323] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2011 | Laila Khan | 33 | India | Khan was aBollywood actress best known for her role inWafa: A Deadly Love Story, and being allegedly married to a member of the banned Islamist organizationHarkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami. She disappeared together with several family members on January 30, 2011. A year later, they were all found shot to death at a bungalow inMaharashtra.[324] | Murdered | More than 1 year |
| 2011 | Nubia Barahona | 10 | United States | Barahona was an American girl who, along with her twin brother Victor, was physically abused by her adoptive father and birth mother inWest Palm Beach, Florida, leading to her death on February 11, 2011. Her body was later found in her adoptive father's truck, with both him and her mother being put on trial for the murder.[325] | Murdered | 3 days |
| 2011 | Muzafar Bhutto | 41 | Pakistan | ASindhi nationalist politician, who went missing on February 24, 2011, and was found dead on May 22, 2012, at a roadside near Hatri bypass.[326] | Murdered | 1 Year 3 months |
| 2011 | Maddy Scott | 20 | Vanderhoof, Canada | Scott went missing after a birthday party at Hogsback Lake 25 miles (40 km) southeast ofVanderhoof, British Columbia on May 28, 2011. Scott's remains were found on May 29, 2023, at a rural property on the east side of Vanderhoof, around 80 kilometres west ofPrince George.[327] | Unknown | 12 years |
| 2011 | Sian O'Callaghan | 22 | United Kingdom | O'Callaghan was last seen onCCTV leaving the Sujunightclub inSwindon alone at 2:52 am on March 19, 2011, intending to walk the half-mile distance to her home.[328] Her boyfriend sent a text message to her at 3:24, at which time, it was later discovered, O'Callaghan's phone was in theSavernake Forest 12 miles away.[328] On March 24, an arrested suspect led police to her body in a shallow grave nearUffington, Oxfordshire, and the suspect,Christopher Halliwell, was later convicted for her murder.[328] | Murdered | 5 days |
| 2011 | Holly Bobo | 20 | United States | Bobo disappeared from her home inDarden, Tennessee, on April 13, 2011. Her remains were found in September 2014 in northernDecatur County, Tennessee, and her death was ruled a homicide.[329] | Murdered | 3 years 5 months |
| 2011 | Michelle Le | 26 | United States | Michelle Le was a 26-year-old nursing student who disappeared inHayward, California, on May 27, 2011. Her remains were discovered in a remote canyon area on September 17, 2011, and were identified as hers two days later. Giselle Diwag Esteban, a former friend of Le's, was arrested and charged with her murder. Esteban pled not guilty, though was convicted offirst-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.[330] | Murdered | 3 months |
| 2011 | Olivier David Och | 31 | Pakistan | Swiss tourist couple who were kidnapped byTehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan gunmen inPakistan'sLoralai District, while travelling by car toIran. The pair escaped captivity in March 2012, safely returning to their native country afterwards.[331] | Found alive | 8 months |
| Daniela Widmer | 28 | |||||
| 2011 | Celine Ng Swee Peng | 36 | Singapore | A Singaporean property agent who disappeared on the date of her 36th birthday. Ng's 36-year-old flatmate Ang Soo Hoon reported her missing two days after Ng's disappearance, stating that Ng wanted to go overseas during a drinks session at her West Coast condominium on the early morning itself, and Ang last saw Ng at 4am before she went to bed, and Ng was missing from her home by the time Ang woke up at 10am. The police questioned Ng's family and friends, who all publicized her case to seek information of her whereabouts, which remained a mystery for more than a month. 41 days after Ng's disappearance, the police found a skeleton left in the forest alongClementi Road, and the skeletal remains were confirmed to be Ng's after some DNA tests. Being the last person to see Ng alive, Ang was arrested as a suspect and charged with murder after Ang confessed that she strangled Ng after she was hurled a derogative remark by Ng over Ang's failed attempt to help Ng commit suicide. Originally charged with murder, Ang later pleaded guilty to one charge of manslaughter, one charge of misappropriating Ng's money and one charge of providing false information to the police. She was sentenced to 12.5 years' imprisonment in July 2015.[332] | Murdered | 41 days |
| 2011 | Jenna Lepomäki | 18 | Spain | Finnish woman who was killed inFuengirola, Spain in June 2011, by two men who had approached her to become a drug courier. Her mummified body was found on October 6, and the two men were later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.[333] | Murdered | 5 months |
| 2011 | Moussa Ibrahim | 36 | Libya | ALibyan political figure who disappeared in August 2011.[334] In October 2014, he was discovered in Egypt, and later deported back to Libya.[335] | Found alive | 3 years 2 months |
| 2011 | Warren Weinstein | 70 | Pakistan | American contractor who was kidnapped byal-Qaeda militants in Pakistan on August 13, 2011. He was kept in detention for four years, until he was accidentally killed by a drone strike on January 15, 2015, inWaziristan.[336] | Drone strike | 4 years |
| 2011 | Jessica Buchanan | 32 | Somalia | Aid workers, of American and Danish nationality, respectively, who were kidnapped by pirates inGalkayo,Somalia in October 2011. Both hostages were rescued in an operation a few months later, and safely returned to their home countries.[337] | Found alive | 3 months |
| Poul Hagen Thisted | 60 | |||||
| 2011 | José Bretón Ortiz | 2 | Spain | The Ortizes were Spanish siblings who were drugged and murdered by their father, José Bretón Gómez, and whose bodies he burned in apyre on October 8, 2011. After the remaining bones were identified as human, Bretón Gómez was arrested, convicted and sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment for their murders, later reduced to 25 on appeal.[338] | Murdered | 1 day |
| Ruth Bretón Ortiz | 6 | |||||
| 2011 | Nauman Habib | 32 | Pakistan | Habib was aPakistani cricketer who was found murdered in thePeshawar suburb ofHayatabad on October 11, 2011, two days after his disappearance.[339] | Murdered | 2 days |
| 2011 | Beatrice Weston | 19 | United States | The 19-year-old niece of one of the perpetrators of thePhiladelphia basement kidnappings. Weston had been reported missing in 2009; she was discovered— malnourished and suffering from multiple wounds—on October 17, 2011.[340] | Found alive | 2 years |
| 2011 | Erica Parsons | 13 | United States | Parsons was last seen inNorth Carolina by persons outside her family on November 17, 2011. In 2016, her remains were found in a shallow grave near her adoptive grandmother's house in an adjacent portion ofSouth Carolina. Her own adoptive parents, who allegedly abused her, were later convicted for her murder.[341] | Murdered | 4 years 10 months |
| 2011 | Wilson Ramos | 24 | Venezuela | Known as "The Buffalo", Ramos is aVenezuelanprofessional baseballcatcher who has played in several prominent American teams. While visiting his mother's home inValencia on November 9, 2011, Ramos was abducted by several gunmen who held him captive in the mountain regions nearMontalbán. He later rescued in a police operation, and eight men were arrested for the kidnapping.[342] | Found alive | More than 2 days |
| 2011 | Stephen Corrigan | 48 | Ireland | An Irish man who disappeared on November 22, 2011.[343] On April 9, 2020, partial remains of his skeleton were found inRathmines, Dublin.[344][345] | Unknown | 9 years |
| 2011 | Stephen McGown | Unknown | Mali | Tourists who were kidnapped byAQIM militants from a restaurant inTimbuktu,Mali. Rijke, a Dutch national, was rescued by French special forces in 2015, while McGown and Gustafsson were released as part of undisclosed negotiations between their respective countries.[346] | Found alive | 5 years |
| Johan Gustafsson | ||||||
| Sjaak Rijke | 3 years |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Trayvon Martin | 17 | United States | High school student who was shot and killed in an altercation withneighborhood watch coordinatorGeorge Zimmerman on February 26, 2012. As his body was not identified until two days after his death, his mother filed a missing persons report, after which police brought photographs of her son to conclusively identify him. Zimmerman was acquitted at trial on murder charges after pleading self-defense.[347] | Killed | 2 days |
| 2012 | Gemma McCluskie | 29 | United Kingdom | A British television actress who disappeared from her home inEast London on March 1, 2012. Her dismembered body was discovered on March 6, 2012, in theRegent's Canal. Her brother, Tony McCluskie, was charged and found guilty of her murder.[348] | Murdered | 5 days |
| 2012 | Nurul Nadirah Abdullah | 4 | Malaysia | A four-year-old Malaysian child abducted while walking to a grocery shop inBandar Seri Alam,Masai. Abdullah - known as "Dirang" - was raped and murdered by at least one individual, Muidin Maidin. Her charred body was found one week after her abduction. Her murderer remains on death row.[349] | Murdered | 1 week |
| 2012 | Allison Baden-Clay | 43 | Australia | Baden-Clay was an Australian woman who disappeared on April 20, 2012; her body was discovered on April 30, 2012, after she was reported missing by her husband, who was found guilty of murdering her.[350] | Murdered | 10 days |
| 2012 | Gavin Smith | 57 | United States | An executive with20th Century Fox who was last seen leaving a friend's house inOak Park, California, on May 1, 2012.[351] In 2014, he was declared legally dead from the night of his disappearance.[352] His body was found in a shallow grave later that year by hikers in a rural area nearAngeles National Forest.[353] In early 2015, police arrested John Lenzie Creech, the husband of one of Smith's extramarital acquaintances, and charged him with Smith's murder.[354] Creech, who is currently serving an eight-year sentence on an unrelated drug dealing conviction, admitted killing Smith, but claimed he did so in self-defense. | Murdered | 2 years |
| 2012 | Jun Lin | 33 | Canada | A university student tortured, murdered and dismembered inMontreal by Luka Magnotta, who subsequently mailed sections of Lin's appendages to Canadian political parties and two elementary schools. Magnotta ultimately fled Canada after also uploading a video of Lin's murder and dismemberment to a Canadianshock site. He was arrested in aBerlininternet café in June 2012.[355] | Murdered | 20 days |
| 2012 | Claire Holland | 32 | United Kingdom | On June 6, 2012, 32-year-old Holland disappeared after leaving the Seamus O'Donnell's pub inBristol, England. It was later discovered that she was murdered by her former partner, Darren Osment. Osment was convicted of Holland's murder in December 2023 after he had made numerous confessions to the murder to multiple people including an undercover police officer. Holland's body was never found.[356] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2012 | Arkadiusz Sojka | 32 | Poland | Arkadiusz Sojka was a football playerstriker from Poland who went missing in June 2012 fromPrzesieka,[357] and was found dead in October 2012. | Undetermined | 3 months |
| 2012 | Jeroen Oerlemans | 42 | Syria | Oerlemans was a Dutch photographer andwar correspondent who was kidnapped in Syria in July 2012, together with British journalist John Cantlie. Both were freed a week later by theFree Syrian Army. Oerlemans continued to work in the Near East and Afghanistan until his death in 2016, when he was killed by anISIL sniper inSirte, Libya.[358] | Found alive | 1 week |
| 2012 | Laura Babcock | 23 | Canada | A 23-year-oldToronto woman murdered in early July 2012 byDellen Millard and Mark Smich. Her remains were incinerated, and have never been recovered. Babcock's murderers were sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017.[359] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2012 | Skylar Neese | 16 | United States | Neese was an American girl who disappeared from her home inStar City, West Virginia, around midnight on July 6, 2012. Her remains were found on January 16, 2013, inGreene County, Pennsylvania.[360] She was murdered by her two best friends. | Murdered | 6 months |
| 2012 | Ramona Moore | 35 | United States | Moore disappeared from her apartment inthe Bronx, and her body was found three years later inSouth Blooming Grove. Her building superintendent, Nasean Bonie, a long-time suspect in the case, was later convicted of manslaughter in the case and sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment.[361] | Murdered | 3 years |
| 2012 | Tia Sharp | 12 | United Kingdom | Sharp was a British girl who went missing on August 3, 2012. Her body was found seven days later in her grandmother's loft.[362][363] Her grandmother's partner, who Tia regarded as her grandfather, was convicted of Tia's murder. | Murdered | 7 days |
| 2012 | Hüseyin Aygün | 42 | Turkey | Turkish lawyer and politician who was kidnapped byPKK militants on August 12, 2012, together with a reporter and his aide. Aygün was released unharmed two days later, and his comments on the amiable treatment from his kidnappers caused controversy within his party.[364] | Found alive | 2 days |
| 2012 | Elaine O'Hara | 36 | Ireland | O'Hara was an Irish childcare worker who was last seen on August 22, 2012, inShanganagh, Dublin by a jogger.[365] Her body was found on August 21, 2013. On March 27, 2015, Graham Dwyer, with whom she had participated inBDSM sessions, was convicted and sentenced to a term of life imprisonment.[366] | Murdered | 1 year |
| 2012 | Gillian Meagher | 29 | Australia | A 29-year-old Irish native who was raped and murdered while walking home from a pub inBrunswick, an inner suburb ofMelbourne,Victoria. Meagher's body was discovered nearGisborne South six days after her disappearance.[367] | Murdered | 6 days |
| 2012 | April Jones | 5 | United Kingdom | Jones was a five-year-old Welsh girl fromMachynlleth, Powys, who disappeared after she was sighted willingly getting into a vehicle near her home on October 1, 2012.[368] On May 30, 2013, Mark Bridger was convicted of Jones's abduction and murder,[369] after forensic evidence was found in his car and home. Her body has never been found. | Murdered | 7 months |
| 2012 | Janusz Wojcieszak | 58–59 | Poland | Janusz Wojcieszak was a Polish philosopher and philologist and history specialist who disappeared fromWarsaw, Poland on October 8, 2012,[370] and was found dead nine days later. | Suicide | 9 days |
| 2012 | James Foley | 38 | Syria | Foley was an American journalist and video reporter, known for predominantly writing in military newspapers centering around events related to the Middle East. While working as a freelance correspondent in northwestern Syria, he was abducted by ISIL militants on November 22, 2012. He was kept as a hostage until August 2014, when he was beheaded on video by militants in response to theintervention in Iraq.[371] | Murdered | 2 years |
| 2012 | Joshua Boyle | Unknown | Afghanistan | Boyle and Coleman are a Canadian-American couple who were kidnapped on October 8, 2012, in Afghanistan, while on a trip through Central and South Asia. They were held in captivity by militants until 2017, when they were rescued by security forces in Pakistan.[372] | Found alive | 5 years |
| Caitlan Coleman | ||||||
| 2012 | Tokbergen Abiyev | Unknown | Kazakhstan | AKazakh journalist who went missing on December 20, 2012, just hours after he announced to the Kazakh media that he had a sensational news report about to be published.[373] Abiyev reappeared on January 4, 2013.[374] | Found alive | 2 weeks |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | In Amenas crisis hostages | Various | Algeria | TheIn Amenas hostage crisis, lasting from January 16 to 19, 2013, was an attack byAl-Mourabitoun jihadists directed at the Tigantourine gas facility inIn Amenas,Algeria. During the process, the militants killed at least 37 foreign tourists and one security guard, and kept hundreds of others in captivity until the eventually rescue operation by Algerian security forces.[375] | Various | 3 days |
| 2013 | Ethan Gilman | 5 | United States | Gilman was kidnapped by Jimmy Lee Dykes, a retiredVietnam veteran, from his schoolbus, after killing the vehicle's driver. He then kept Gilman as his hostage in his bunker inMidland City, Alabama, until a week later, when police raided the facility, killing Dykes and rescuing Gilman.[376] | Found alive | 1 week |
| 2013 | Elisa Lam | 21 | United States | Lam was a Canadian university student who disappeared from theCecil Hotel in Los Angeles on January 31, 2013. Hotel elevator surveillance video taken on the day of her disappearance showed Lam repeatedly entering and exiting the (apparently malfunctioning) elevator while intermittently talking outside the elevator and appearing to hide within the elevator.[377] Maintenance workers found her body in a water tank atop the hotel on February 19, 2013, while responding to guest complaints about low water pressure. Her death was ruled accidental but questions still remained concerning why and how she entered the water tank.[378][379] | Drowned | 3 weeks |
| 2013 | David Haines | 43 | Syria | Haines was a British-Canadian aid worker providing humanitarian aid in various conflicts, most notably for people from former Yugoslavia, the African countries and the Middle East. In March 2013, he was kidnapped by an unidentified armed group inAtme, Syria, along with Italian aid worker Federico Motka. His status as a hostage was confirmed when he surfaced in the video showing the beheading ofSteven Sotloff, prompting an attempted rescue. The attempt was unsuccessful, and Haines was executed a few months later.[380] | Murdered | 19 months |
| 2013 | Kevin Lee | 48 | United Kingdom | Peterborough man Kevin Lee was reported missing after his car was found burned out near a farm inYaxley, Cambridgeshire. Two days later his body was found in a ditch inNewborough, Cambridgeshire. He had been stabbed in the chest. He had been murdered by female serial killerJoanna Dennehy, whom he was infatuated with.[381] | Murdered | 2 days |
| 2013 | Glory Chau Wing-ki | 63 | Hong Kong | Glory Chau Wing-ki and Moon Siu Yuet-yee were an elderly couple murdered in Hong Kong, presumably on March 1, 2013. Their youngest son, Henry Chau Hoi-leung, and his friend, Angus Tse Chun-kei, were indicted for the murder, which they initially denied being involved in.[382] During Chau and Tse's interviews with the police, they admitted that after the murder, they chopped up the parents' dead bodies and cooked the remains with salt to make them look "like barbecue pork."[383] They kept part of the remains in lunch boxes, which they stored in the refrigerator. The gruesome details of the murder sparked a huge amount of media coverage in Hong Kong. On March 20, 2015, High Court deputy judge Michael Stuart-Moore found Chau guilty of double murder while finding his accomplice Tse not guilty on both counts of murder.[384] | Murdered | Unclear |
| Moon Siu Yuet-yee | 65 | |||||
| 2013 | Sunil Tripathi | 22 | United States | Sunil Tripathi was an American student who disappeared fromProvidence, Rhode Island, on March 16, 2013. Tripathi was later found dead on April 23, 2013[385] after having died by suicide by drowning. | Suicide by drowning | Over 1 month |
| 2013 | Jessica Heeringa | 25 | United States | Heeringa disappeared from her job at a gas station inNorton Shores, Michigan, on April 26, 2013. Although her remains have not been found, in 2016, Jeffrey Willis, a frequent customer of hers, was charged with her kidnapping and murder due to forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony, while his cousin Kevin Bluhm was charged with accessory after he confessed to helping him bury her body.[386][387] Willis was found guilty of Heeringa's kidnapping and murder on May 16, 2018.[388] He received a life sentence without parole a month later.[389] On November 27, 2017, Bluhm pleaded no contest to being an accessory for helping Willis dispose of Heeringa's body and was sentenced on January 9, 2018, to time served, plus five years' probation and to wear a GPS tether for at least a year.[390] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2013 | Timothy Bosma | 32 | Canada | A resident ofAncaster, Ontario, murdered byDellen Millard and Mark Smich. Bosma was lured from his house on the pretext of allowing Millard and Smich to take aDodge Ram pickup truck he had for sale for a test drive. He was shot in the head and his body incinerated at a location inWaterloo, although his body was never found.[391] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2013 | Ingrid Visser | 35 | Spain | Visser, a Dutch retired volleyball player, and her boyfriend, Lodewijk Severein, disappeared on May 13, 2013, shortly after checking into a hotel in the city of Murcia, Spain. Visser was a member of theNetherlands women's national volleyball team. Their bodies were found in a shallow grave in a lemon grove on May 27. The pair had been abducted, tortured and killed.[392] In November 2016 three men known to the couple were sentenced to 35 years in prison for the murders.[393] | Murdered | 2 weeks |
| Lodewijk Severein | 35 | |||||
| 2013 | Zsolt Erőss | 45 | Nepal | Hungarian high-altitude mountaineer Zsolt Erőss, who after successfully climbingKangchenjunga on May 20, 2013, went missing during his descent the following day. Searches were suspended two days later because, according to the expedition's leader and other experienced mountaineers, his survival was impossible.[394] In 2014, his body was seen on the ramp at 8,100 m, and its identity was confirmed as Erőss's.[395] | Accident | 1 year |
| 2013 | Cullen Finnerty | 30 | United States | Cullen Finnerty was anAmerican footballquarterback who disappeared on May 26, 2013, after going fishing on theBaldwin River inMichigan.[396] Finnerty was found dead two days later in the woods.[397] | Pneumonia | 2 days |
| 2013 | Rania Alayed | 25 | United Kingdom | British mother Alayed was never seen again after June 17, 2013, the same day that she had gone to her brother-in-law's house at the instigation of her husband. The husband, Ahmed Al-Khatib, was convicted of her murder a year later in what was a suspected "honour killing", carried out as Al-Khatib believed she had become tooWesternized. Al-Khatib said at his trial that he had become unhappy when his wife started college and started wearing make-up. He confessed to killing her, although her body was not found.[398] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2013 | Fariba Ahmadi Kakar | 48 | Afghanistan | Acting representative of the Communications Committee in Afghanistan'sHouse of the People who was kidnapped byTaliban militants in August 2013, while she was travelling with her children inGazni. She and her children were later released without harm as part of a prison exchange between the Afghan government and the Taliban.[399] | Found alive | 1 month |
| 2013 | Robert Hoagland | 50 | United States | Hoagland was reportedly last seen mowing the lawn of his home on the morning of July 28, 2013. Earlier that day, he was seen on video buying a road map and fuel for his wife's car at a local gas station. His disappearance was discovered after he failed to pick up his wife when she returned from a trip abroad the following day.[400] He apparently relocated toRock Hill, New York, and lived under the name Richard King, until his death December 5, 2022. Police found documents on him with his real name and confirmed his identity with Newtown police.[401] | Unknown | 9 years, 4 months and 1 week |
| 2013 | Hannah Anderson | 16 | United States | Hannah Marie Anderson, a 16-year-old high school student fromLakeside, California, was abducted on the afternoon of August 3, 2013. Her abductor, 40-year-old James DiMaggio, had murdered Anderson's mother, Christina, and younger brother, Ethan, whose bodies were found in his incinerated home the following day. AnAMBER alert was issued for Anderson, who was found alive at a campsite inCascade, Idaho, on August 10 immediately after her abductor—who had fled to this location with her—was killed by police after firing upon officers.[402] | Found alive | 7 days |
| 2013 | Alexis Murphy | 17 | United States | Alexis Murphy was a female teenager who went missing on August 3, 2013[403][404] inNelson County, Virginia. The remains of Murphy were found inLovingston on December 3, 2020. | Murdered | More than 6 years |
| 2013 | Steven Sotloff | 30 | Syria | Sotloff was an American-Israeli journalist, known for covering current events in Egypt, Turkey, Libya, Bahrain and, most notably, Syria. On August 4, 2013, he was kidnapped inAleppo, Syria with several other people while crossing the border with Turkey. His kidnappers remained unknown until September 2, 2014, whenISIL released a video beheading him.[405] | Murdered | 13 months |
| 2013 | Brandon Lawson | 26 | United States | Lawson disappeared in the early hours of August 9, 2013 after he ran out of gas onHighway 277, a few miles south ofBronte, Texas.[406] Lawson's remains were found in February 2022 but were not identified until December 2024.[407] | Unknown | 11 years |
| 2013 | Asunta Basterra | 12 | Spain | Chinese-born Spanish girl who was repeatedly drugged and ultimately murdered by her adoptive parents, Alfonso Basterra and Rosario Porto, in her hometown ofTeo, Spain on September 21, 2013. Her body was found a day later near a country house. Both Basterra and Porto were later convicted and sentenced to 18 years each for the murder.[408] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2013 | Ng Yuk Tim | 15 | Malaysia | Ng was a Malaysian schoolgirl murdered by a 23-year-old acquaintance, Poon Wai Hong, on 21 October 2013. She was reportedly murdered after refusing to engage in sex with Poon, who later concealed her body inside a suitcase. Ng's body was discovered the following day.[409] Poon was originally charged and sentenced to death for murder, before he appealed and had his death sentence reduced to 22 years' jail for a lesser offence of manslaughter.[410] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2014 | David Bird | 55 | United States | Bird, a reporter forThe Wall Street Journal, left hisMillington, New Jersey, home for a short walk on January 11, 2014, and never returned. His body was found in a nearby river 14 months later. A subsequent investigation determined that thecause of death was accidental drowning.[411] | Drowned | 14 months |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Fawzia Amin Sido | 10 | Iraq | Sido was abducted at the age of ten by agents of theIslamic State (ISIS) in 2014 and was confined for a decade and subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Sido was eventually rescued in 2024 and returned to her homeland.[412] | Found alive | 10 years |
| 2014 | Dmytro Bulatov | 36 | Ukraine | Civic activist and leader ofAutoMaidan, an anti-government political movement. On January 22, 2014, he was kidnapped by a group of armed men, but when it was learned that he had gotten in contact with his friends, he was released eight days later. During his detention, Bulatov alleged that his kidnappers spoke Russian accents. He had to undergo treatment for his injuries as well, as he had been tortured.[413] | Found alive | 8 days |
| 2014 | Loretta Saunders | 26 | Canada | Canadian Inuk student atSaint Mary's University who went missing fromHalifax on February 13, 2014. Originally thought to be a missing person, it was determined that she had been killed after her body was found 13 days later. Her roommates were later convicted of her murder.[414] | Murdered | 13 days |
| 2014 | Dave Walker | 59 | Cambodia | Walker was aCanadian filmmaker and photojournalist who vanished from his guest house in Cambodia on February 14, 2014. His body was later located near the Gates of Death, but an autopsy determined that he had died months prior from an undetermined cause.[415] | Unknown | 3 months |
| 2014 | Chin Swee Road child death | 2 | Singapore | A 30-month-old girl, believed to be named Umaisyah, whose charred remains were discovered concealed inside a flat in Chin Swee Road,Tiong Bahru, Singapore, in September 2019. Her parents were later charged with her murder, which is believed to have been caused due to a form of brain trauma.[416] | Murdered | 7 years |
| 2014 | Kris Kremers | 21 | Panama | TwoDutch students who disappeared on April 1, 2014, while hiking inPanama. Believing they were on the proper trail, the two women became lost in the backcountry rainforest without supplies. Their remains were found on June 22, 2014.[417] | Misadventure | 9 weeks |
| Lisanne Froon | 22 | |||||
| 2014 | Amina Ali | Unknown | Nigeria | One of theschoolgirls kidnappings in Chibok byBoko Haram on April 14–15, 2014. Ali was the first to escape captivity, and was found by Nigerian security forces on May 17, 2016.[418] | Found alive | 2 years |
| 2014 | Russell Dermond | 88 | United States | A retired couple murdered in early May 2014 inPutnam County, Georgia. Thedecapitated body of Russell Dermond was found on May 6, 2014, in the garage of his house inLake Oconee. Ten days later, Shirley's body was discovered floating in Lake Oconee, her body having been weighted down with concrete blocks.[419] | Murdered | 10 days |
| Shirley Dermond | 87 | |||||
| 2014 | Charles Bothuell V | 12 | United States | An American boy from Detroit, Michigan, reported missing by his father in June 2014.[420] When a search was conducted to find him, he was found alive eleven days later locked in his parents' basement.[421] | Found alive | 11 days |
| 2014 | Nadiya Savchenko | 33 | Ukraine | Afirst lieutenant in theUkrainian Ground Forces, Savchenko was captured by pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine during theRusso-Ukrainian War. She was later exchanged in a prisoner swap for two RussianGRU officers captured by Ukraine.[422] | Found alive | 23 months |
| 2014 | Naftali Fraenkel | 16 | West Bank | The threeIsraeli teenagers were kidnapped while hitchhiking home by two members ofHamas on June 12, 2014, and their bodies found 18 days later. The two principal suspects in the case, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amar Abu-Isa Aysha, were later killed by security forces during "Operation Brother's Keeper".[423] | Murdered | 18 days |
| Gilad Shaar | 16 | |||||
| Eyal Yifrach | 19 | |||||
| 2014 | Mohammed Abu Khdeir | 16 | Israel | The Palestinian teenager was kidnapped from anEast Jerusalem street by three Israeli nationals, who subsequently murdered him and dumped his body in theJerusalem Forest. His body was found hours later, with the three perpetrators being captured and sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime.[424] | Murdered | Same day |
| 2014 | Lynn Messer | 52 | United States | Messer was not in bed next to her husband when he awoke on the morning of July 8, 2014, at their farm inBloomsdale, Missouri. All her personal effects, including a walking boot she had been wearing to protect her broken toe, were in the house.[425] In November 2016, remains found near the farm were identified as hers.[426] | Unknown | 2 years 4 months |
| 2014 | James Argent | 27 | United Kingdom | Argent is an English television personality best known for being a regular cast member ofThe Only Way Is Essex, who is known to have a history of substance abuse. In August 2014, he was reported missing from his home after failing to attend a scheduled flight, but was found only a day later. He was later assigned to rehab, and returned to the show in 2015.[427] | Found alive | 1 day |
| 2014 | Tina Fontaine | 15 | Canada | Fontaine was a teenageFirst Nations girl who went missing fromWinnipeg,Manitoba, on August 8, 2014. She was found dead on August 17, 2014, after being found wrapped in plastic and covered with rocks in theRed River.[428] | Murdered | 9 days |
| 2014 | Nadia Murad | 19 | Iraq | Murad, aYazidi student who lived inKocho, was kidnapped from her native village by ISIL on August 15, 2014. Along with numerous other girls and women, she became a sex slave and was repeatedly tortured by her captors inMosul. She managed to escape her confinement and convinced a neighboring family to smuggle her out to a refugee camp out of the militant-controlled territories in either September or November 2014. Since her escape, she moved to Germany, and has become a human rights activist and founder ofNadia's Initiative, an organization dedicated to combating genocide, human trafficking and recovering communities affected by mass atrocities.[429] | Found alive | One to three months |
| 2014 | Alice Gross | 14 | United Kingdom | Gross went missing after leaving her home in Hanwell on August 28, 2014.[430] The search for her was the largest deployment ofMetropolitan Police officers in a search operation since the7 July 2005 London bombings.[431] It involved 600 officers from eight forces.[432] Gross's body was found in theRiver Brent five weeks later, on September 30. | Murdered | 5 weeks |
| 2014 | Sharmeena Begum | 15 | United Kingdom | ABethnal Green schoolgirl who disappeared in December 2014 to become ajihadi bride; she was discovered alive inSyria in March 2023 living under an alias and actively recruiting funds online forIslamic State.[433] | Found alive | More than 8 years |
| 2014 | Hanna Lalango | 16 | Ethiopia | Ethiopian schoolgirl who was abducted by a group of men in ashare taxi on October 1, 2014. She was found lying unconscious by a road near Qeranyo ten days later, and succumbed to her injuries a month later.[434] | Murdered | 10 days |
| 2014 | Hannah Graham | 18 | United States | Graham was reported missing after last being seen at theDowntown Mall inCharlottesville, Virginia, on September 13, 2014, and her remains were found on October 18, 2014.[435] | Murdered | 5 weeks |
| 2014 | Shao Tong | 20 | United States | Shao was a Chinese undergraduate atIowa State University who disappeared inNevada, Iowa, and her body later found inIowa City. Her boyfriend, Li Xiangnan, was arrested, charged and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder under Chinese law, which allows prosecution of killings that have occurred abroad.[436] | Murdered | 20 days |
| 2014 | Atsumi Yoshikubo | 45 | Canada | Yoshikubo, a Japanese psychiatrist, was last seen on the morning of October 22, 2014, walking along theIngraham Trail (NT 4) in a wooded area on the northern outskirts ofYellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. Her disappearance was not noted until three days later, when she had failed to check out of her hotel and the staff found her luggage, all packed, in her room. An intense search both by theRoyal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and concerned local residents over the next few days was called off after a week when the RCMP announced that their investigation had led them to conclude that she came to Yellowknife with the intent to disappear into the wilderness (although she had bought a return ticket to Japan and souvenirs).[437] Ten months later a hunter discovered some of her personal effects along with human remains inthe bush off the highway; on April 14, 2016, those remains were positively identified as Yoshikubo's.[438] | Unknown | 10 months |
| 2014 | Lorys Stival | 8 | Italy | The six-year-old boy was reported missing from his home by his mother Veronica Panarello.[439] His body was found within hours and she was sentenced to 30 years inprison for the murder of her son.[440] | Murdered | 6 hours |
| 2014 | 13 AQAP hostages | Various | Yemen | People of various nationalities held as hostages byAQAP militants, whose rescue was the target of a joint American–Yemeni operation between November 26 and December 6, 2014. While most were rescued, two men, English–American journalistLuke Somers and South African teacher Pierre Korkie, were killed before they could be rescued.[441] | Various | 10 days |
| 2014 | 172 to 185 villagers in Gumsuri | Various | Nigeria | On December 3, 2014, theNigerian village of Gumsuri was stormed by suspectedBoko Haram militants who proceeded to either kill or kidnap any person they came across, predominantly women and children. Between 32 and 35 were killed in the process, and the rest were taken hostage. The Nigerian military was dispatched to rescue them, succeeding in the recovery of an indeterminate amount of hostages; according to survivors, others were either killed during the offensive or had died previously from starvation.[442] | Various | 4 months |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Ambrose Ball | 30 | United Kingdom | Ambrose "Jay" Ball, a 30-year-old father from London, disappeared on January 24, 2015, after he was involved in a car accident. Despite police conducting an extensive search, no trace of him was found at the time. A body found in the River Lea inTottenham, London was identified as being his.[443] | Drowned | More than 2 months |
| 2015 | Özgecan Aslan | 19 | Turkey | Turkish university student who was killed while resisting an attempted rape inMersin on February 11, 2015. Her killer, minibus driver Ahmet Suphi Altındöken, together with his two accomplices, burned her body, which was discovered two days later. All were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, and the case sparked protests to combat violence against women in the country.[444] | Murdered | 2 days |
| 2015 | Becky Watts | 16 | United Kingdom | Watts, from Crown Hill in theSt George area ofBristol, England, went missing on February 19, 2015. Herdismembered body was found on March 3, 2015, in Barton Court, Bristol.[445] Her 33-year-old stepbrother, Nathan Matthews, was convicted of murdering her in November that year. | Murdered | 12 days |
| 2015 | Lucas Tronche | 15 | France | French teenager Tronche disappeared from his hometown ofBagnols-sur-Cèze in theGarddépartement ofsouthern France. His skeletal remains were found in June 2021 near his home, in an area where he often went to collect rocks for his hobby in geology. The cause of death remains unknown.[446] | Unknown | 6 years |
| 2015 | Junpei Yasuda | 41 | Syria | Japanese freelance journalist who was kidnapped byTahrir al-Sham militants on June 20–23, 2015, while reporting on events in Syria. He was kept in detention for the next three years, sporadically appearing in hostage videos, until he was released inAntakya, Turkey on October 23, 2018.[447] | Found alive | 3 years |
| 2015 | Bella Bond | 2 | United States | A child who was found dead in a plastic bag on the shore ofDeer Island inWinthrop, Massachusetts, on June 25, 2015.[448] Authorities pursued investigation into discovering who the child was until her identification in September 2015.[449][450] | Murdered | Unclear |
| 2015 | Karen Buckley | 24 | United Kingdom | Karen, a nurse fromNorthern Ireland disappeared on April 12, 2015, after a night out with her friends.[451] | Murdered | 3 days |
| 2015 | Amanda Peterson | 43 | United States | Drug overdose | 2 days | |
| 2015 | Tomislav Salopek | 31 | Egypt | Croatian topographer who was kidnapped while working in Egypt on July 22, 2015, by theISIL-affiliated militant groupSinai Province. He was held in hostage until August 12, when his kidnappers killed him and showcased his decapitated corpse in a video.[452] | Murdered | Less than 1 month |
| 2015 | DJ Derek | 74 | United Kingdom | Pioneering British disc jockey, last seen leaving a pub in theSt Pauls neighbourhood of his nativeBristol on July 11, 2015; his body was found in March 2016 nearThe Mall, Cribbs Causeway.[453][454] Avon and Somerset Police spokesmen said that investigators were satisfied that there was nothing to suggest that the death was suspicious.[455] | Unknown | 8 months |
| 2015 | Ese Oruru | 13 | Nigeria | Oruru was a Nigerian youth who was kidnapped from her home village inBayelsa State, whereupon she was repeatedly raped, forcibly Islamized and married to her kidnapper. She was rescued by State Police on February 29, 2016, and her kidnapper, Yunusa Dahiru, was eventually sentenced to 26 years' imprisonment.[456] | Found alive | 6 months |
| 2015 | Atika Dolkifli | 23 | Singapore | On 1 September 2015, 23-year-old part-time waitress Atika Dolkifli was reported missing by her father, after she failed to return home the previous night from work. Her body was discovered two days later at a carpark inToa Payoh,Singapore. Following investigations, a 24-year-old man named Syed Maffi Hasan, who was a male friend of the victim, was arrested and charged with murder. Investigations revealed that Atika was murdered by Syed Maffi, after the both of them argued over the repair costs of a mobile phone which Atika given to Syed Maffi on the top deck of the carpark, and Syed Maffi had assaulted Atika by pushing her down a flight of stairs in a fit of rage before he threw her off the fifth floor of the carpark. In May 2019, Syed Maffi was found guilty of murdering Atika and two months later, he was sentenced tolife imprisonment and12 strokes of the cane.[457] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2015 | Ebby Steppach | 18 | United States | Steppach was an American woman who disappeared on October 25, 2015[458] fromLittle Rock, Arkansas.[459] Steppach's body was discovered in a drainage pipe in Chalamont Park on May 14, 2018.[460] | Murdered | Less than 3 years |
| 2015 | Yuliya Balykina | 31 | Belarus | Belarusian sprinter who competed at theWomen's 100 metres at the2012 Summer Olympics. She was reported missing on October 28, 2015, and her body found inMinsk on November 16. Her boyfriend later confessed to her murder.[461] | Murdered | 19 days |
| 2015 | Tiahleigh Palmer | 12 | Australia | An Australian girl fromLogan City, Queensland, who disappeared on October 30, 2015. Her remains were found on November 5, 2015, on the banks of thePimpama River.[462] In 2016 her foster father was charged with murdering her;[463] several other members of the family pleaded guilty to charges related to their attempts to cover up in the case.[464] | Murdered | 6 days |
| 2015 | Yim Fung | 52 | China | A Chinese joint chairman and chief executive of Guotai Junan International Holdings Limited, a subsidiary ofGuotai Junan Securities,[465] who disappeared on November 18, 2015, but returned to work on December 22, 2015.[466] | Found alive | 5 weeks |
| 2015 | David Lytton | 67 | United Kingdom | An unidentified body was found close toDovestone Reservoir onSaddleworth Moor, in theSouth Pennines ofNorthern England on December 12, 2015. He had died via a lethal dosage ofstrychnine in an act of suicide. His remains were identified in 2017.[467] | Suicide | 13 months |
| 2015 | Sian Blake | 43 | United Kingdom | Blake, a British actress, and her two children were reported missing on December 16, 2015. Three weeks later their bodies were found at Blake's home inErith, London.[468] Her partner, Arthur Simpson-Kent, pleaded guilty to the murders and was given awhole life sentence in October 2016.[469] | Murdered | 3 weeks |
| 2015 | Gui Minhai | 51 | Thailand | The Chinese-born Swedish scholar and book publisher went missing inThailand on October 17, 2015. He was the second of five book publishers to go missing around the same time. He had been abducted by Chinese authorities and taken to China, ostensibly in relation to a fatal hit and run car accident in 2003 when authorities claimed he had been driving while intoxicated. He later appeared on Chinese television and made an apparent confession a few months after disappearing, which observers believed to have been forced. Complaints about alleged Chinese abduction reached high political levels in Britain and the United States.[470] Later, Gui was charged in China with "illegal business operations", without reference to the earlier allegations. | Found alive | Several months |
| 2015 | Kayleigh Haywood | 15 | United Kingdom | Haywood was an English schoolgirl who was lured into the house of an older man, Luke Harlow, inIbstock on November 13, 2015. Harlow later invited his neighbor, Stephen Beadman, who proceeded to rape and eventually kill her before dumping her body in the lakeside. Both men were later arrested and convicted in relation to her murder.[471] | Murdered | 5 days |
| 2015 | Jihadi John | 27 | Syria | Mohammed Emwazi, better known by his moniker "Jihadi John", was a Kuwaiti-British man of Iraqi descent who was a member of the terrorist group,The Beatles, an ISIL terrorist cell named after the famous English band due to the members' distinct accents. He was responsible or took part in numerous beheadings, among them being American-Israeli journalistSteven Sotloff, Japanese journalistKenji Goto, several Syrian soldiers and numerous others. On November 12, 2015, American officials reported that he had been killed in a drone strike inRaqqa, Syria, with his death officially confirmed three months later by ISIL representatives.[472] | Drone strike | 3 months |
| 2015 | Steve Gohouri | 34 | Krefeld, Germany | Steve Gohouri was an Ivorian professionalassociation football player who disappeared on December 12, 2015, and was found dead almost three weeks later in theRhine river.[473] | Unknown | More than two weeks |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Béatrice Stöckli | Unknown | Mali | Swiss Christian missionary who was captured byJNIM militants in Mali. She was kept as a hostage for the next four years, until she was executed in October 2020. Her remains were recovered in March 2021.[474] | Murdered | 5 years |
| 2016 | 28 miners working at theAtenas mine | Various | Venezuela | The miners were allegedly attacked by an armed group namedBanda del Topo on March 8, 2016, and all of them were abducted at gunpoint. By the end of the next week, most of the miners' bodies were found in a mass grave, but a few of them remain missing.[475] | Murdered | 1 week |
| 2016 | Paige Doherty | 15 | Scotland | Doherty was a Scottish schoolgirl who was last seen entering a delicatessen inClydebank on March 19, 2016. Two days later her body was found on a roadside nearby. She had been stabbed 61 times by the owner of the deli, who claimed that Doherty threatened to tell people that he had "touched her" inappropriately if he refused to give her a job.[476] | Murdered | 2 days |
| 2016 | Gordon Semple | 59 | United Kingdom | A BritishMetropolitan Police officer murdered by an individual whom he had met online viaGrindr. Semple was strangled to death and his body extensively dismembered. Semple's killer, Stefano Brizzi, was arrested on 7 April.[477] | Murdered | 6 days |
| 2016 | Ingrid Lyne | 40 | United States | 40-year-old Ingrid Maree Lyne was last seen alive by friends on April 8, 2016, and was reported missing the following day. Later that day, police responding to a call from a homeowner found several of Lyne's dismembered body parts—including a severed head, foot, arm, and leg—in aSeattle recycling bin. John Charlton, a homeless day laborer with acriminal record in six states, pleaded guilty to Lyne's murder in October 2017. In January 2018, Charlton was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison.[478] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2016 | Helen Bailey | 51 | United Kingdom | The British writer of children's and teenage fiction was reported missing after allegedly taking her dog for a walk inRoyston, Hertfordshire, England, in April 2016. No trace of her was found initially, but in July 2016 her remains (and the dog's) were found in a cesspit under the garage of her home and her partner was charged with her murder.[479] | Murdered | 3 months |
| 2016 | Charity Aiyedogbon | Unknown | Nigeria | A Nigerian businesswoman who disappeared without a trace on May 9, 2016. It was later learned that her boyfriend Paul Ezeugo and his friend, Emmanuel Adogah, murdered her and stole her car. The police had been on a manhunt for the two suspects since May 2016 when Charity's mutilated body was found packaged in two sacks at a river bank in Ushafa, a satellite community inBwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory,Abuja.[480] | Murdered | Unclear |
| 2016 | Claude Callegari | 53 | United Kingdom | English football fan and contributor to theAFTV YouTube channel who went missing from his home inEssex on July 1, 2016, but returned home soon after. He later said that the disappearance was a result of mental health issues.[481] | Found alive | 2 days |
| 2016 | Yangjie Li | 25 | Germany | A 25-year-oldAnhalt University of Applied Sciences architecture student. Li—a Chinese native—disappeared while jogging close to her apartment; her body was discovered on May 13. A 20-year-old local man named Sebastian Flech was sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder in November 2017.[482] | Murdered | 2 days |
| 2016 | Emilie Meng | 17 | Denmark | Emilie Meng was a Danish teenage girl who disappeared inKorsør on July 10, 2016[483] and was found dead five months later after being killed. | Murdered | 5 months |
| 2016 | Cui Yajie | 31 | Singapore | Cui Yajie is a 31-year-old engineer born and raised inTianjin,China before she came toSingapore in 2012 to look for work. Cui went missing since July 12, 2016, and her 48-year-old boyfriendLeslie Khoo Kwee Hock was the last person to see her. Khoo was interrogated as a suspect, and he eventually confessed that he killed Cui during a heated argument in their car. Khoo also admitted that he burned the body for three consecutive days inside a forest atLim Chu Kang, and led the police to where he burned the body. Khoo was thus arrested on July 20, 2016, and charged with murder. Three years later, theHigh Court of Singapore found 51-year-old Leslie Khoo guilty of murder and sentenced him tolife imprisonment.[484] | Murdered | 8 days |
| 2016 | Sierah Joughin | 20 | United States | Joughin was an American woman who was abducted inDelta, Ohio, on July 19, 2016. Her remains were found three days later in a shallow grave, and a nearby resident was charged with her abduction and murder.[485] | Murdered | 3 days |
| 2016 | Philip Finnegan | 24 | Ireland | Finnegan was an Irish criminal who was murdered on August 10, 2016, for supposedly owing money to the Dublin mafia. His body was found on September 2, and his killer, Stephen Penrose, was subsequently convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.[486] | Murdered | 27 days |
| 2016 | Elizabeth Griffith | 29 | United States | A victim of convicted serial killer and rapistShawn Grate. Griffith was last seen alive inAshland County, Ohio, on August 16, 2016. An autopsy concluded she was strangled to death.[487] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2016 | Diana Quer | 18 | Spain | 18-year-old Diana Quer disappeared in the small town ofA Pobra do Caramiñal inGalicia, Spain, during the early morning hours of 22 August 2016. On 25 December 2017, 41-year-old José Abuín, who was being interrogated in relation to an attack on another woman that morning, confessed to murdering Quer and revealed the location of her body. On 17 December 2019, Abuín was found guilty of aggravated murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.[488] | Murdered | 1 year |
| 2016 | Chad Robinson | 36 | Australia | Australian professional rugby league footballer who was reported missing on November 26, 2016. His fate remained unclear until December 22, when his body was found inside a crashed car inKenthurst.[489] | Automobile accident | 26 days |
| 2016 | Narumi Kurosaki | 21 | France | Japanese student who went missing inBesançon in December 2016. In 2022, her ex-boyfriend, a Chilean national named Nicolás Zepeda, was found guilty of murder.[490] Zepeda has since appealed the sentence and is waiting retrial. Kurosaki's body has yet to be found. On February 26, 2025, the Court of Cassation, France's highest appeals court, ordered a retrial and ruled that the Chilean would remain in jail for a third trial for the murder.[491] | Murdered | Not found |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Dean Finnochiaro | 19 | United States | All four men went missing around the same time frame; Finnochiaro, Meo and Sturgis were found buried in a 12-foot-deep grave, while the body of Patrick was found buried in a 6-foot-deep grave on the same property, not far from the other bodies. Cosmo DiNardo and his cousin, Sean Kratz, pleaded guilty to the robbery and murders of all four men.[492] | Murdered | 4–5 days |
| Thomas Meo | 21 | |||||
| Jimi Patrick | 19 | |||||
| Mark Sturgis | 22 | |||||
| 2017 | Marrisa Shen | 13 | Canada | A Canadian schoolgirl who was raped and murdered by Ibrahim Ali, a Syrian refugee who had recently arrived in Canada, in a secluded area of a park inBurnaby, British Columbia. She was reported missing by her parents a few hours before her body was found, after she failed to return home from what was supposed to be a brief trip to a nearbyTim Hortons. | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2017 | Genesis Cornejo-Alvarado | 15 | United States | Cornejo-Alvarado was an American schoolgirl who was kidnapped, raped, drugged, and ultimately killed by two SalvadoranMS-13 gang members in January 2017 inHouston, Texas. Her body was found on a street, and positively identified a month later. The killers were later sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment for her murder.[493] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2017 | Birna Brjánsdóttir | 20 | Iceland | Vanished while going to a club inReykjavík with her friends on January 14, 2017. Her body was later found in the ocean, with indications that she had been killed. Subsequently, fisherman and drug smuggler Thomas Møller Olsen was convicted and sentenced to 19 years' imprisonment for her murder.[494] | Murdered | 8 days |
| 2017 | Randy Potter | 53 | United States | Potter was last seen leaving hisLenexa, Kansas, home on the morning of January 17, 2017. On September 12, his decomposed body was found in his truck, parked atKansas City International Airport, where he had apparently gone to take his own life the morning of his disappearance.[495] | Suicide | 8 months |
| 2017 | Alianna DeFreeze | 14 | United States | American schoolgirl who was kidnapped, raped, tortured and subsequently killed inCleveland, Ohio on January 26, 2017, with her body found three days later. Her killer, a hardened criminal named Christopher Whittaker, was later found guilty and sentenced to death for the murder. DeFreeze's case served as an inspiration to introduce laws concerning child safety.[496] | Murdered | 3 days |
| 2017 | Abigail Williams | 13 | United States | Abigail Williams and Liberty German were two American teenage girls who disappeared fromDelphi, Indiana, on February 13, 2017, while they were hiking on a trail and they were reported missing after their parents called the police. They were found dead the next day after being killed.[497] | Murdered | 1 day |
| Liberty German | 14 | |||||
| 2017 | Zaida Catalán | 36 | Democratic Republic of the Congo | Swedish politician and activist who was abducted on March 12, 2017, while on aUN mission in theDemocratic Republic of the Congo, together with her American colleague Michael Sharp. Their decapitated bodies were found in shallow graves not long after. More than 50 people were arrested and later convicted of the case, with sentences ranging fromdeath to 10 years' imprisonment.[498] | Murdered | More than 2 weeks |
| 2017 | Akbar Salubiro | 25 | Indonesia | Akbar Salubiro was a man who went missing on March 25, 2017, inMamuju, Indonesia. His remains were found two days later inside the body of areticulated python.[499] | Killed and eaten by a reticulated python | 2 days |
| 2017 | Bruno Borges | 24 | Brazil | Bruno de Melo Silva Borges is a Brazilian student who disappeared after leaving his home inRio Branco, Acre on March 27, 2017. In his bedroom, Bruno left several encrypted messages, 14 handwritten books, and a statue of the philosopher Giordano Bruno.[500] The Civil Police of Acre investigated the case and Interpol was called.[501][502] Borges' disappearance got wide coverage on the Internet, generating memes.[503] At dawn on August 11 the same year, Borges returned to his house.[504] During the investigation, it was revealed Borges had the help of two friends and a cousin to carry out the "project", and that he had signed a contract allocating part of the proceeds of the sale of his books to his three helpers.[505] Since then, there have been several accusations the case was a scheme to promote Borges' books.[506][507] Borges disagrees, stating that the accusations were made by sensationalist media.[508] | Found alive | 5 months |
| 2017 | Serena McKay | 19 | Canada | AnIndigenous woman fromManitoba, Canada, whose murder was recorded and posted on social media—includingstreaming onFacebook Live. McKay was found dead after she had died ultimately ofhypothermia following a sustained assault after she was reported missing. Her primary assailants were two teenage girls aged 16 and 17.[509] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2017 | Yingying Zhang | 26 | United States | Zhang was kidnapped on June 9, 2017, when visiting Chinese scholar at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She was abducted by Brendt Allen Christensen,[510] a Champaign resident and former physics graduate student at the university. Christensen lured Zhang into his car at a bus stop on campus with the promise of a ride after she missed a bus, but then took her to his apartment where he raped her while his wife was out of town for the weekend. On June 30, 2017, theFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested and charged Christensen in federal court. Christensen was convicted of one count of kidnapping resulting in death and two counts of making false statements to agents of the FBI, for which he received a sentence of life imprisonment.[511] | Killed in kidnapping | Not found |
| 2017 | Alloura Wells | 27 | Canada | Alloura Wells was aCanadian woman who disappeared in July 2017 and was found dead on August 5, 2017 and wasn't identified until November 23 after she had been reported missing.[512] | Drowning | 5 months |
| 2017 | Derk Bolt | 62 | Colombia | Dutch TV presenter who was kidnapped together with a colleague on June 17, 2017, from the Colombian town ofEl Tarra, byELN militants. The pair were released without harm a few days after their abduction.[513] | Found alive | 4 days |
| 2017 | Santiago Maldonado | 27 | Argentina | Maldonado was anArgentine craftsman and tattoo artist from the town ofVeinticinco de Mayo,province of Buenos Aires, who was reported missing after a demonstration in Chubut on August 1, 2017.[514] His body was found three months after, drowned atChubut River. On October 21, 2017, after a 12-hour autopsy involving 55 experts, Judge Gustavo Lleral confirmed that Maldonado's body did not have any signs of violence and the cause of death was established as death by drowning.[515] | Drowned | 10 weeks |
| 2017 | Ali Zeidan | 67 | Libya | Former Prime Minister of Libya and liberal politician twice kidnapped by armed militants, in 2013 and 2017, but was released without incident both times.[516] | Found alive | 10 days |
| 2017 | Maëlys de Araujo | 8 | France | Maëlys de Araujo disappeared during a wedding party inLe Pont-de-Beauvoisin, Isère, on the night of August 26–27, 2017. In February 2018, Nordahl Lelandais, who had been arrested on suspicion of kidnapping her, told police he had accidentally killed her and led them where he had hidden her body.[517] | Murdered | 6 months |
| 2017 | Sherin Mathews | 3 | United States | Mathews was anIndian-American toddler fromRichardson, Texas[518] who disappeared on October 7, 2017. Her body was found on October 22, 2017, in a culvert under a road near her home.[519] | Murdered | 15 days |
| 2017 | Alex Batty | 11 | Spain | Alex Batty went missing at the age of 11 in October 2017. Batty disappeared after going on a holiday trip to Spain with his mother and grandfather. For the following six years, Batty lived with them inMorocco, Spain, and southwestFrance. At the age of 14, Batty decided to return to a more traditional life, and escaped three years later at the age of 17. In December 2023, Batty left forToulouse and was later found by a delivery driver.[520] | Found alive | 6 years |
| 2017 | Tala Farea | 15–16 | United States | Saudi Arabian sisters whose bodies were found floating in theHudson River. Coroners determined that they died in asuicide pact, allegedly to escape the abuse they had suffered while living in a facility.[521] | Suicide | More than 1 year |
| Rotana Farea | 22–23 | |||||
| 2017 | Ko Joon-hee | 5 | South Korea | South Korean girl who disappeared fromJeonju on November 18, 2017, but was reported missing a month later. It was later discovered that she had died following horrific abuse by her biological father, and was later found buried on a hill.[522] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2017 | Tess Richey | 22 | Canada | Tess Richey was aCanadian woman who disappeared fromToronto, Ontario on November 25, 2017 and was found dead on November 29, 2017 after being killed.[523] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2017 | M Maroof Zaman | Unknown | Bangladesh | Former Bangladeshi diplomat and ambassador to Vietnam who was abducted on December 4, 2017, by a group of unidentified men. His fate remained unknown until March 16, 2019, when he was allowed to safely return home.[524] | Found alive | 1 year |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Zainab Ansari | 7–8 | Pakistan | Zainab Ansari was kidnapped by serial killer Imran Ali on January 4, 2018, while on her way toQuran recitation classes at her home inKasur, Pakistan. Her body, showing signs of brutal rape and torture pre-mortem, was later found at a garbage disposal site.[525] | Murdered | 5 days |
| 2018 | Blaze Bernstein | 19 | United States | AJewish student murdered by a former high school classmates and member ofneo-Nazi terrorist groupAtomwaffen Division both due to his religion and the fact he was gay.[526] | Murdered | 8 days |
| 2018 | Vladimir Cvijan | 41 | Serbia | Cvijan, a former member of theNational Assembly of Serbia, disappeared under suspicious circumstances in January 2018. His death was confirmed by the Serbian government in March 2021.[527] | Drowned | 3 years |
| 2018 | Mark Salling | 35 | Los Angeles, California, U.S. | Mark Salling, an American actor and musician known for his role asNoah "Puck" Puckerman on the television seriesGlee, was reported missing on January 30, 2018. His body was discovered hanging from a tree in theSunland area ofLos Angeles near his home. Salling's death was ruled a suicide; he had pleaded guilty in 2017 to possession ofchild pornography, and a sentencing hearing had been scheduled for March 7, 2018.[528] | Suicide | 6 hours |
| 2018 | Pamela Mastropietro | 18 | Italy | Italian drug addict who was killed by a Nigerian drug dealer in Rome on January 30, 2018; her mutilated body, stuffed in two suitcases, was found the next month. The killer, Innocent Oseghale, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the case.[529] | Murdered | Several days |
| 2018 | Timothy J. Cunningham | 36 | United States | Epidemiologist working for the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention and author of 28 publications centering around sleep deprivation and various diseases, Cunningham vanished after leaving his workplace, complaining that he did not feel well. His body was found in theChattahoochee River after more than a month, having drowned in apparent suicide.[530] | Suicide | More than 1 month |
| 2018 | Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum | 33 | United Arab Emirates | Member of Dubai's ruling family who was abducted on orders of her father in March 2018, after she attempted to escape from the country. As of 2021, she has allegedly been seen travelling freely across Europe, with several people campaigning for her release being personally contacted by her as well.[531] | Found alive | 3 years |
| 2018 | Scott Hutchison | 36 | United Kingdom | Hutchison, the lead singer for Scottish indie rock bandFrightened Rabbit, disappeared on May 9, 2018, from a hotel inSouth Queensferry, Scotland.[532] Two days later, his body was found at the nearbyPort Edgar marina.[533] | Unknown | 2 days |
| 2018 | Ana Kriégel | 14 | Ireland | Kriégel was a Russian-Irish girl who was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered by a pair of underage boys inLucan, Dublin. The two unnamed boys, the youngest to be charged with murder in Irish history, were subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment and 15 years, respectively.[534] | Murdered | 3 days |
| 2018 | Susanna Feldmann | 14 | Germany | German girl who was kidnapped, raped and killed inWiesbaden on May 22, 2018, and her remains found in early June of that year. Her killer, Ali Bashar Ahmad Zebari, an Iraqi Kurdish refugee, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder, which spawned anti-immigrant sentiments.[535] | Murdered | Unknown |
| 2018 | Tianna Phillips | 25 | United States | Disappeared fromBerwick, Pennsylvania on June 13, 2018, following an argument with her boyfriend. She was bludgeoned and stabbed to death by serial killerHarold Haulman, who confessed to her murder in 2021. Her remains are believed to have been discarded inScott Township, but were never found.[536] | Murdered | Not found |
| 2018 | Dennis Day | 76 | United States | Day was a theatre director, and had previously been a cast member ofThe Mickey Mouse Club. He was last seen alive on July 17, 2018, and his body was discovered in April 2019. A live-in handyman, Daniel James Burda, was later charged with several counts regarding Day's death, including hismanslaughter.[537] | Unknown | 9 months |
| 2018 | Vance Rodriguez | 42 | United States | Rodriguez, an American hiker who disappeared from New York City in July 2018, was found dead on July 23, 2018, in theBig Cypress National Preserve. Rodriguez was previously known as "Mostly Harmless", "Ben Bilemy" and "Denim",[538] before he was identified in 2021.[539] | Starvation | 2–3 weeks |
| 2018 | Mollie Tibbetts | 20 | United States | Tibbetts, aUniversity of Iowa student, was last seen during an evening jog on July 18, 2018. She was later found and pronounced dead on August 21, 2018.[540] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2018 | Chrysa Spiliotis | 62 | Greece | Greek stage and television actress who perished during a wildfire inMati on July 23, 2018. Her body was identified several days after her husband's.[541] | Killed in wildfire | 6 days |
| 2018 | Hasinur Rahman | Unknown | Bangladesh | Hasinur Rahman is an ex-Bangladesh Army soldier who was abducted by police on August 8, 2018, for an unclear reason. He was detained for two years, before being released on February 22, 2020.[542] | Found alive | 2 years |
| 2018 | Meng Hongwei | 64 | China | The president ofInterpol visited his home country China in September 2018 and was reported missing by his wife on October 4, after he had no contact with her or anyone else since September 29. On October 8, Chinese authorities confirmed that he was arrested for alleged corruption and bribery.[543] | Found alive | 9 days |
| 2018 | Jamal Khashoggi | 59 | Turkey | The Saudi Arabian journalist was not seen since he had an appointment at the Saudi consulate inIstanbul on October 2, 2018. Saudi state television confirmed his death on October 20.[544] According to Turkish authorities, he was murdered by Saudi intelligence agents.[545] The murder is alleged to have been captured on listening equipment in the embassy. | Murdered | Not found |
| 2018 | Jayme Closs | 13 | United States | Closs disappeared on October 15, 2018, from her home inBarron, Wisconsin. Both of her parents were shot to death and she was abducted. Jake Thomas Patterson pleaded guilty to two counts offirst-degree intentional homicide and one count ofkidnapping. Closs was recovered alive after she escaped on January 9, 2019. On May 24, 2019, Patterson was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole plus an additional 40 years.[546] | Found alive | 3 months |
| 2018 | Tahir Dawar | 49 | Pakistan | Tahir Dawar (Urdu:طاہر داوڑ;Pashto:طاهر داوړ), who went by his middle name of "Tahir", was kidnapped on October 26, 2018, fromIslamabad[547] and murdered. Dawar was aPashto poet and police officer from Pakistan. On November 13, 2018, Dawar's body was found in theDur Baba District ofNangarhar Province.[548] | Murdered | 20 days |
| 2018 | Michael Spavor | 42 | China | Canadian consultant who, together diplomat Michael Kovrig, were detained inBeijing, China in December 2018 on politically motivated charges relating to the recent arrest ofMeng Wanzhou. The pair were held in detention and given prison sentences for supposed espionage, but were later released after theDOJ dropped charges against Wanzhou.[549] | Found alive | 3 years |
| 2018 | Joy Morgan | 20 | United Kingdom | British university student Morgan was last seen at a church celebration inIlford on December 26, 2018. On December 28 her name was removed from a "church social media chat group". It was not until February 7, 2019, that concerned flatmates reported her missing. Two days later a man who attended the same church as Morgan was arrested and Morgan's keys were found in his car. It was later found that her phone had been detected in his car on December 28, most likely as he attempted to dispose of her body. The man, Shohfah-El Israel, was convicted of her murder on August 5, 2019, but he refused to reveal the location of her body. Two months after the conviction her body was found in woodland nearStevenage.[550] | Murdered | 8 months |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Emiliano Sala | 28 | United Kingdom | Emiliano Sala, a footballer, disappeared two days after signing withCardiff City fromFC Nantes in asuspected plane crash en route fromNantes toCardiff, on January 21, 2019.[551]Guernsey Police announced that they had called off the search for the plane or survivors.[552] On February 3, it was announced that another underwater search for the aircraft had begun, using the AAIB'sGeo Ocean III vessel which, together with a privately funded vessel, was conductingsonar surveys.[553] On February 4, investigators stated that there was one body visible inside the wreckage.[554] On February 7, the body was formally identified as that of Sala byDorset Police.[555][556][557][558] | Plane crash | 17 days |
| 2019 | Libby Squire | 22 | United Kingdom | University of Hull student who was lured, raped and subsequently murdered by Pawel Relowicz on 1 February 2019, who dumped her body in theRiver Hull. Her body was found on March 20. Relowicz was later convicted and sentenced to life for her murder.[559] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2019 | Caroline Mwatha | 37 | Kenya | Mwatha was aKenyanhuman rights activist who went missing on February 6, 2019.[560] Mwatha was later found dead just six days later on February 12 inNairobi's City mortuary. | Exsanguination | 6 days |
| 2019 | Leah Croucher | 19 | England | Croucher, a British woman, was reported missing on February 15, 2019, last seen alive on CCTV on February 15, 2019, at 8:16 am on Buzzacott Lane inFurzton. Her remains were found on October 12, 2022, and identified as hers on October 21, 2022.[561] | Unknown | 3 years |
| 2019 | Andreen McDonald | 29 | United States | McDonald, a 29-year-old businesswoman andphilanthropist fromPort Antonio, Jamaica, who resided inSan Antonio,Texas, was murdered in her home by her husband,U.S. Air Forcemajor Andre McDonald, on February 28, 2019. Andreen McDonald was reported missing on March 1, 2019, and her remains were found by a passerby on a private ranch in northernBexar County, Texas, on July 11, 2019. In 2023, Andre McDonald was found guilty ofmanslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison.[562] | Murdered | 4 months |
| 2019 | Lam Wing-kee | 63 | Taiwan | Lam Wing-kee was a Hong Kong businessman and owner ofCauseway Bay Books inTaipei,Taiwan who imposed a self-exile in response to theHong Kong extradition bill disappeared in April 2019. He resurfaced a year later.[563] | Found alive | 1 year |
| 2019 | Mackenzie Lueck | 23 | United States | University of Utah student who was reported missing after going to meet a date on June 17, 2019. Following the arrest of the man, Nigerian national Ayoola Ajayi, authorities located Lueck's body—she had been bound, strangled and her remains burned. Ajayi subsequently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.[564] | Murdered | 11 days |
| 2019 | Desmond "Etika" Amofah | 29 | United States | Amofah, a YouTuber better known by his online alias Etika, posted a YouTube video titled "I'm sorry" to his personal YouTube channel TR1Iceman, alluding to his suicidal thoughts as he was walking down New York City streets; in the video he admitted to having mental health issues, struggled with the attention he had been getting from streaming, and apologized for pushing people away from him. Prior to the incident, Amofah had gotten fame for reacting to famous gaming, notablyNintendo Directs.[565] He was last heard from at 8 pm that night and was reported missing to theNew York Police Department (NYPD) by June 20.[566] On the evening of June 24, NYPD and emergency medical services had recovered his body near Pier 16, approximately half a mile (0.8 km) down theEast River[567] and confirmed that he was deceased by the point of recovery.[565] Two days later, theOffice of Chief Medical Examiner determined that the cause of death was drowning, and the manner was suicide.[568] | Suicide | 4 days |
| 2019 | Rafael Acosta Arévalo | 50 | Venezuela | Venezuelan military officer who was abducted, tortured and later killed by theDGCIM on June 22, 2019. It was carried out on orders fromNicolás Maduro, who claimed that Arévalo had planned acoup d'état.[569] | Murdered | 1 week |
| 2019 | Florijana Ismaili | 24 | Italy | On June 29, 2019, Switzerland national team footballer Ismaili dived into the water from a boat diving platform while on holiday atLake Como inLombardy, but did not resurface. The next day, she was declared missing.[570][571][572] Local authorities conducted an investigation, including usingremotely operated underwater vehicles (ROV). On July 2, Ismaili's body was found at the bottom of Lake Como at a depth of 204 metres (669 feet).[573][574] Anautopsy revealed that the cause of death was from "an acute episode of asphyxia".[575] | Drowned | 3 days |
| 2019 | Suzanne Eaton | 59 | Greece | Eaton was an American scientist and professor ofmolecular biology at theMax Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics inDresden, Germany. She was last seen on July 2, 2019, playing the piano within the hotel lobby where she was attending a works conference inChania, Crete. Her body was discovered six days later. An autopsy determined she had died byasphyxiation. The following year, a 27-year-old named Giannis Paraskakis was convicted of her rape and murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.[576] | Murdered | 6 days |
| 2019 | Yasuhiro Takemoto | 47 | Fushimi, Kyoto, Japan | Takemoto, Nishiya, and Kigami were Japaneseanimators andfilm directors. All three were unaccounted for and reported missing by their family following the 2019Kyoto Animation arson attack. Their deaths in the arson attack were confirmed by August 2, 2019.[577][578][579][580] | Murdered | 1 week |
| Futoshi Nishiya | 37 | |||||
| Yoshiji Kigami | 61 | |||||
| 2019 | Alexandra Măceșanu | 15 | Romania | Măceșanu and Melencu were two teenage girls who were kidnapped on July 25, 2019, inOlt County,Caracal, Romania. Though their bodies were not recovered it was later revealed that their kidnapper had killed them.[581] | Murdered | Bodies not found |
| Luiza Melencu | 18 | |||||
| 2019 | V. G. Siddhartha | 59 | Mangaluru, Karnataka, India | V. G. Siddhartha was an Indian businessman fromKarnataka who had disappeared on July 29, 2019, and was found dead on July 31, 2019, near the mouth of the riverNethravati after committing suicide by drowning himself.[582] | Suicide | 2 days |
| 2019 | Emma Grace Cole | 3 | Delaware, United States | Cole went missing sometime in July 2019 and her remains were found two months later. She was found to have been tortured and murdered, and the killers were Cole's birth mother Kristie Lynn Haas and stepfather Brandon. Haas was jailed for 30 years on charges of murder and abuse while Brandon was convicted of endangering the welfare of a child and sentenced to jail for more than four years.[583] | Murdered | 2 months |
| 2019 | Tylee Ryan | 16 | United States | Tylee Ryan and J. J. Vallow were two American siblings fromRexburg, Idaho, who disappeared in September 2019 under circumstances involving their mother Lori Vallow and her lover (later husband) Chad Daybell. Their bodies were later discovered in June 2020 and Vallow and Daybell were charged with the murder of the children in June 2021.[584] Vallow and Daybell were convicted of their murders in 2023,[585] and in 2024 respectively.[586] | Murdered | 9 months |
| J. J. Vallow | 7 | |||||
| 2019 | Kathleen Jo Henry | 30 | United States | Sexually assaulted and murdered at aTownePlace Suites hotel inAnchorage, Alaska on September 4, 2019, but her body was found only on October 2. Her alleged killer, South African-born Brian Steven Smith, has been charged with her murder and that of another woman and is awaiting trial.[587] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2019 | Harmony Montgomery | 5 | United States | A five-year-old child murdered by her biological father, Adam Montgomery, inManchester, New Hampshire sometime in the fall of 2019. Harmony's body was never found. Her father was found guilty of second-degree murder in February 2024.[588] | Murdered | 3 years |
| 2019 | Chan Yin-lam | 15 | Hong Kong | A 15-year-old student whose nude body was found floating in the sea nearYau Tong, Hong Kong on September 22, 2019. Although police asserted that her death was not a result offoul play, and a jury later returned anopen verdict, speculation remains that Yin-lam was murdered by Hong Kong authorities in connection with her participation in the2019 Hong Kong protests.[589] | Undetermined | 3 days |
| 2019 | Elisa Pomarelli | 29 | Italy | A 29-year-old woman went missing inCarpaneto Piacentino on 25 August 2019 and was later found murdered.[590] | Murdered | 13 days |
| 2019 | Yolanda Klug | 23 | Germany | Klug was a German woman who disappeared inLeipzig on September 25, 2019, and whose disappearance has been linked toScientology. A walker discovered her bones on February 25, 2023, in the "Rödel" forest area nearFreyburg. The cause of death is unclear.[591] | Undetermined | 3 years, 5 months and 5 days |
| 2019 | Edmundo Rada | Unknown | Venezuela | Edmundo Angulo, who was nicknamed "Pipo",[592][593] was aVenezuelan politician in theSucre Municipality who disappeared on October 16, 2019, and was murdered[594] and found dead on October 17, 2019,[595] just one day later inCaracas. | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2019 | Anesha Murnane | 38 | United States of America | Anesha Murnane was an American woman fromHomer, Alaska, who went missing on October 17, 2019. Although she was never found, it was later revealed that she had been murdered.[596] | Murdered | Never found |
| 2019 | Aniah Blanchard | 19 | United States | Blanchard, the stepdaughter ofUFC fighterWalt Harris, was kidnapped from a gas station inAuburn, Alabama, on October 24, 2019. A month later, her body was found inMacon County, having been shot to death. Her suspected killer, Ibraheem Yazeed, was arrested in 2021 and is currently held without bond, awaiting his capital murder trial. In response to this case, a law dedicated to Aniah was created to reform the bail system in the state of Alabama.[597] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2019 | Marta Calvo | 25 | Spain | 25-year-old Spanish woman Marta Calvo disappeared after attending a house party.[598] Serial killerJorge Ignacio Palma was convicted for her killing but her body has never been found.[599] | Murdered | Never found |
| 2019 | M. Maroof Zaman | Unknown | Bangladesh | Zaman returned home on March 16, 2019. Kazi Reazul Hoque, Chairperson of theNational Human Rights Commission, welcomed his return and called for accountability.[600] Zaman's family confirmed his return but declined to provide further details, requesting privacy.[601] A 2022 whistleblower investigation by theSweden-based news portalNetra News suggested that Zaman had been secretly detained at ‘Aynaghar’, a clandestine facility operated by theDirectorate General of Forces Intelligence.[602] | Released from detention center | 467 days |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Mark Frerichs | 57 | Afghanistan | Frerichs is an Americancivil engineer who was kidnapped by theTaliban-affiliatedHaqqani network on January 31, 2020. His status remained unknown for two years until April 1, 2022, when a video released by the Taliban showed Frerichs pleading for help. On September 19, 2022, Frerichs was released by the Taliban-led government of theIslamic Emirate of Afghanistan in exchange forBashir Noorzai.[603] | Found alive | 2 years 7 months |
| 2020 | Keane Mulready-Woods | 17 | Ireland | Mulready-Woods was an Irish teenager fromDrogheda,County Louth who disappeared on January 12, 2020. His dismembered remains were found in separate locations, including a burning car, over the course of several weeks beginning January 13.[604] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2020 | Chen Qiushi | 34 | China | Qiushi, a lawyer and citizen journalist, was abducted by Chinese government officials on February 6, 2020, due to his coverage of the2019–2020 Hong Kong protests and the mishandling of theCOVID-19 pandemic in the country. In September 2020, a government agency reported that he was under strict surveillance at his parents' home.[605] | Found alive | 7 months |
| 2020 | Li Zehua | 24–25 | China | Chinese journalist and rapper who was detained by government officials while attempting to locate journalistChen Qiushi. Two months later, he posted a video saying that he had been temporarily arrested by police and later released.[606] | Found alive | 2 months |
| 2020 | Mazen al-Hamada | 47 | Syria | Mazen al-Hamada, an activist fromDeir ez-Zor, was a victim ofenforced disappearance when he was kidnapped by Syrian security officials on 23 February 2020. His body was found inSednaya Prison on 9 December 2024.[607] He is believed to have been executed a few days before his body was discovered.[608] | Murdered | 4 years and 10 months |
| 2020 | Gretchen Anthony | 51 | United States | 51-year-old Gretchen Stoughton Anthony was an American woman fromJupiter, Florida, who was last seen alive on March 20, 2020. Her estranged husband, David Ethan Anthony, was arrested a week later and charged with her murder and kidnapping. In exchange for having his charges reduced, David admitted to entering Gretchen's home inAbacoa, Florida, and stabbing her to death in her garage. David also disclosed the location of Gretchen's remains, which were found in a wooded area near her home on December 21, 2020.[609] | Murdered | 9 months |
| 2020 | Soumaïla Cissé | 71 | Mali | Malian Minister of Finance from 1993 to 2000 and president for theUnion for the Republic and Democracy who was abducted byJama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin jihadists on March 26, 2020. There was no news of his condition, until his release on October 6, 2020.[610] | Found alive | 6 months |
| 2020 | Vanessa Guillén | 20 | United States | Guillén was a 20-year-old woman who was serving in theUnited States Army at the time of her disappearance. She had told her family and close friends that she was being sexually harassed by a fellow soldier, but never made an official complaint to her chain of command. Guillén was last seen on April 22, 2020, at approximately 1:00 pm in the parking lot of her unit onFort Hood,Texas. On June 30, 2020, authorities discovered human remains along theLeon River, inBelton, which after examination indicated that they were indeed Guillén's. The autopsy revealed the cause of death was due to bludgeoning.[611][612] | Murdered | 2 months 8 days |
| 2020 | Facundo Astudillo Castro | 22–23 | Argentina | Castro was anArgentine man who disappeared on April 30, 2020, during theCOVID-19 pandemic after he was stopped by thepolice[613][614] inMayor Buratovich, Buenos Aires. Castro was found dead on August 15, 2020.[615] Castro's death was revealed to be caused bydrowning. | Drowned | 107 days |
| 2020 | Luis Espinoza | 31 | Argentina | Espinoza was anArgentinian citizen who was shot and killed by police officers on May 15, 2020, who suspected that he participated in an illegalhorse race. His body was then dumped in a ravine, and later located after his family members inquired about his disappearance. Several police officers have been charged with his murder.[616] | Murdered | 1 week |
| 2020 | Shad Gaspard | 39 | United States | On May 17, 2020, formerWWE wrestler Shad Gaspard and his 10-year-old son went swimming at theMarina Del Rey Beach in California. Both Gaspard and his son were caught in a rip current. Gaspard directed life guards to save his son first. His son was saved, but Gaspard had submerged underwater. Lifeguards at the beach, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Los Angeles Fire Department were searching for Gaspard until 7:30 pm that evening, when the search was called off. Three days later, on May 20, 2020, Gaspard's body was found on the beach and identified by the Los Angeles County coroner's office.[617][618] | Drowned | 3 days |
| 2020 | Bibaa Henry | 46 | United Kingdom | Two British women who disappeared while walking home from a party in north-west London on June 6, 2020. Although reported missing, the police allegedly showed little interest in searching for them; their family found their bodies inFryent Country Park the next day. They had been murdered by a man as a result of a "satanic pact". The case gained notoriety after it emerged that the police officers who found the bodies tookselfies with them.[619] | Murdered | 1 day |
| Nicole Smallman | 27 | |||||
| 2020 | Oluwatoyin Salau | 19 | United States | Oluwatoyin Salau was a community activist who disappeared fromTallahassee, Florida, on June 13, 2020, and was found dead four days later after being murdered.[620] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2020 | Bernadette Walker | 17 | United Kingdom | Walker was a 17-year-old student atPeterborough College who disappeared on 18 July 2020. Her stepfather, Scott Walker was convicted of murdering her[621] and has since died in prison. | Murdered | 1 year |
| 2020 | İpek Er | 18 | Turkey | İpek Er was an 18-year-old Kurdish student fromBatman who died by suicide on August 18, 2020, following a suicide attempt resulting from her kidnapping and repeated rape over a 20-day period of confinement the previous month.[622] | Suicide | 20 days |
| 2020 | Naya Rivera | 33 | United States | Rivera, an American actress best known for her role onGlee, wasdeclared missing after she went swimming with her 4-year-old son inLake Piru, California, on July 8, 2020, and never returned. She was declaredpresumed dead in a drowning incident the next day,[623] and her body was recovered on July 13, 2020.[624] It is suspected that she and her son got caught in a current; she pushed her son onto their boat, but could not get up herself.[625][626] | Drowned | 5 days |
| 2020 | Megan Khung Yu Wai | 4 | Singapore | Four-year-old Megan Khung Yu Wai was reported missing by her maternal grandmother on July 20, 2020. The police managed to establish that the girl had died in February 2020 and her body was burned three months later in May 2020. Three suspects, consisting of the girl's birth mother, the mother's boyfriend and a friend of the couple, were charged with murder and disposal of Khung's corpse.[627][628][629] | Murdered | 5 months |
| 2020 | Park Won-soon | 64 | South Korea | Park was a South Korean politician, lawyer, and activist, and was the longest-servingmayor of Seoul.[630] He disappeared on July 9, 2020, and was found dead a day later; it was revealed that he died by suicide.[631][632] | Suicide | 1 day |
| 2020 | Esther Dingley | 37 | France | Dingley was an English hiker and blogger who disappeared while going on a solo trip through thePyrenees. Partial remains were found in July 2021, and later confirmed to be Dingley's following aDNA examination.[633] She had possibly died from slipping off a cliff. | Unknown | 8 months |
| 2020 | Melissa Caddick | 49 | Australia | Australian financial advisor who vanished on November 12, 2020, amid allegations that she was running aPonzi scheme. Her partial human remains were found floating in the ocean in February 2021, but cause of death is yet to be established.[634] | Unknown | 4 months |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Peter Neumair | 68 | Italy | On January 4, 2021, an elderly couple Peter Neumair and Laura Perselli were reported missing from their home inSouth Tyrol,Italy.[635] They were later found murdered by their son Benno Neumair.[636] | Murdered | 4 months |
| Laura Perselli | 63 | 1 month | ||||
| 2021 | Louis Nix | 29 | United States | Louis Nix was an American professionalfootball player who went missing on 24 February 2021, inJacksonville, Florida, and was found dead three days later on 27 February.[637][638] | Drowned | 3 days |
| 2021 | Sarah Everard | 33 | United Kingdom | On the evening of March 3, 2021, Everard, a marketing executive living inBrixton Hill, disappeared after leaving a friend's house. Six days after her disappearance, 48-year-oldMetropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping Everard and was later rearrested on March 10 on suspicion of her murder when human remains were found nearAshford, Kent.[639][640] The remains were confirmed to be Everard's on March 12 and Couzens was charged with her kidnap and murder later the same day.[641][642] On June 8, 2021, Couzens pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping her.[643] On July 9, 2021, he pleaded guilty to murdering her.[644] | Murdered | 7 days |
| 2021 | Ahmadullah | 13–17 | Pakistan | The four boys were last seen hunting for wild hare in the area ofJanikhel, Pakistan, in early February 2021. On March 21, 2021, their mutilated remains were found in a mass grave by a shepherd's dog: one had been beheaded, another shot and the final two stoned to death. Their deaths remain under investigation, and have sparked a nationwide protest from family, relatives and locals, who are demanding tighter security against militants operating in the area and the capture of the boys' killers.[645] | Various | 3 weeks |
| Atifullah | ||||||
| Mohammad Rahim | ||||||
| Razamullah | ||||||
| 2021 | Olivia Zimmermann de Zárate | 6 | Spain | Kidnapped along with her sister, Anna, by their biological father Tomás Antonio Gimeno Casañas on the island ofTenerife, Spain on April 27, 2021. He allegedly murdered both girls at his house in Igueste de Candelaria, and then dumped both bodies in the ocean, where Olivia's was found off the coast ofSanta Cruz de Tenerife on June 10. Her sister's body has still not been found.[646] | Murdered | 45 days |
| 2021 | James Dean | 35 | United Kingdom | Dean, an English footballer who played as aforward for several teams since beginning his career in 2003, was reported missing on May 6, 2021, after he was last seen the day prior. Three days later, his body was located by police inOswaldtwistle. Foul play was ruled out in his death.[647] | Unknown | 4 days |
| 2021 | Skilyr Hicks | 23 | United States | American singer and songwriter, best noted for her appearance on the eighth season ofAmerica's Got Talent. A repeat runaway with possible mental health issues, she went missing from her home inNorth Augusta, South Carolina, on May 8, 2021, only to be found unharmed days later.[648] She died later the same year. | Found alive | 5 days |
| 2021 | Tristyn Bailey | 13 | United States | On the morning of 9 May 2021, 13-year-old cheerleader Tristyn Bailey fromSt. Johns County, Florida, was reported missing by her family. Later that day, Bailey's stabbed body was found by a resident in a wooded area. Her classmate Aiden Fucci was arrested for her murder and sentenced to life in prison.[649] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2021 | Ken Kadokura | 47 | Japan | Japanese professional baseballpitcher Ken Kadokura was reportedly missing since May 15, 2021. On June 6, 2021, his wife reported that he returned to his home.[650][651] | Found alive | 22 days |
| 2021 | Esther Brown | 67 | United Kingdom | Scottish pensioner who was reported missing on May 28, 2021. She was found dead in her flat inGlasgow four days later. A week after her body was discovered, paroled sex offender Jason Graham was arrested and subsequently confessed to her rape and murder. He has pleaded guilty, and awaits sentencing.[652] | Murdered | 3 days |
| 2021 | Mee Kuen Chong | 67 | United Kingdom | Chong was murdered by a neighbour,Jemma Mitchell, for financial gain, on June 11, 2021. The murder occurred at herNorth London address. Mitchell later attempted to forge Chong's will to make Mitchell the primary beneficiary. Her body was disposed of inSalcombe,Devon, and was discovered on 27 June. Mitchell was later sentenced to life imprisonment.[653] | Murdered | 16 days |
| 2021 | Julius Ssekitoleko | 21 | Japan | UgandanOlympic weightlifter who went missing while attending the2020 Summer Olympics inTokyo on July 18, 2021. He was located inNagoya two days later, explaining that he wished to start a new life.[654] | Found alive | 2 days |
| 2021 | Kylen Schulte | 24 | United States | Married couple who were shot to death by an unidentified offender while camping inMoab, Utah, on August 13, 2021, and were later declared missing. In December 2022, the case was closed and Adam Pinkusiewicz was cited as the murderer.[655] | Murdered | 5 days |
| Crystal Turner | 38 | |||||
| 2021 | Gabby Petito | 22 | United States | Gabby Petito was last seen with her fiancé Brian Laundrie on August 27, 2021, at a Tex-Mex-style restaurant inJackson, Wyoming.[656] She had told her mother a few days earlier that they were in the vicinity ofGrand Teton National Park. On September 11 Petito was declared missing, and on September 19 she was found dead in theBridger–Teton National Forest.[657][658] An autopsy found that she had been killed by strangulation.[659] Laundrie was reported missing on September 17, a few days after he left his parents home inNorth Port, Florida. His remains were found on October 20 inMyakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, and it was later found that he had committed suicide.[660] | Murdered | 23 days |
| Brian Laundrie | 23 | Suicide | 1 month | |||
| 2021 | Ali Sadpara | 45 | Pakistan | Ali Sadpara, John Snorri Sigurjónsson, and Juan Pablo Mohr Prieto were mountaineers who disappeared while ascendingK2 in the mountain range ofKarakoram. The three were last seen alive at theK2 Bottleneck. Their bodies were discovered by a Madison Mountaineering Sherpa Team on July 26, 2021.[661] | Misadventure | 171 days |
| Juan Pablo Mohr Prieto | 33 | 171 days | ||||
| John Snorri Sigurjónsson | 47 | 171 days | ||||
| 2021 | Lauren Cho | 30 | United States | Lauren Cho was last seen in the area betweenMorongo Valley andYucca Valley, California walking away from her friend's converted bus after an argument on June 28, 2021. On October 9, 2021, investigators found unidentified human remains in the rugged terrain of the open desert of Yucca Valley, during their search for Cho. On October 28, 2021, investigators confirmed that the remains found on October 9 belonged to Cho.[662][663] | Unknown | 3 months, 11 days |
| 2021 | Tanya Fear | 31 | United States | British actress and comedian who was reported missing from herLos Angeles apartment on September 9, 2021. She was later found unharmed, having received treatment at a local hospital for an undisclosed reason.[664] | Found alive | 4 days |
| 2021 | Cleo Smith | 4 | Australia | Australian toddler who disappeared from a campsite inGascoyne, Western Australia, whilst camping with her family on October 5, 2021.[665] She was found in a house inCarnarvon, Western Australia.[666] | Found alive | 18 days |
| 2021 | Peng Shuai | 35 | China | Chinese professional tennis player who vanished off social media in November 2021, shortly after accusing a high-ranking Chinese politician of sexual assault. She reappeared two weeks later, claiming that her post had been misunderstood and that she had never actually accused anyone.[667] | Found alive | 2 weeks |
| 2021 | Hanifa Abubakar | 5 | Nigeria | Hanifa Abubakar, a girl fromNassarawa,Kano State, Nigeria, was kidnapped on December 2, 2021,[668] and found dead on January 20, 2022. | Murdered | Less than two months |
| 2021 | Kamarie Holland | 5 | United States | Holland was a five-year-old child abducted from herColumbus, Georgia, home on December 12, 2021, by Jeremy Williams. She was sexually assaulted and murdered by strangulation inPhenix City, Alabama, on December 13. The abduction and sexual assault was committed upon the agreement Holland's mother, Kristy Siple—who staged a child abduction scenario—would be paid $1,300 by Williams to engage in sex with Holland. Siple was ultimately sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment; Williams was found guilty of four counts of capital murder. He is currently incarcerated on death row.[669] | Drowned | 3 days |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Hans-Joachim Lohre | Unknown | Mali | German Roman Catholic priest and missionary who was kidnapped by unknown assailants in Mali.[670] | Released | 1 year |
| 2022 | Charlise Mutten | 9 | Australia | Charlise Mutten was an Australian girl who disappeared while visiting the estate of her mother's fiancé, Justin Stein, inMount Wilson. Her body was found a few days later, and Stein has subsequently been charged in her death.[671] | Murdered | 4 days |
| 2022 | Shane O'Connor | 17 | Ireland | Shane O'Connor, the teenage son of Irish musicianSinéad O'Connor, had disappeared fromNewbridge, County Kildare on January 6, 2022, and was found dead just two days later.[672] | Suicide | 2 days |
| 2022 | Rebecca Contois | 24 | Canada | Contois was anIndigenous Canadian woman allegedly murdered by Jeremy Skibicki. She was last seen alive in the first week of February 2022. Her remains were found discarded in a garbage bin near an apartment complex inNorth Kildonan,Winnipeg, on May 16.[673] | Murdered | 3 months |
| 2022 | Lindsey Pearlman | 43 | United States | American actress, voice actress and animal rights activist. Pearlman was reported missing to theLos Angeles Police Department on February 13, 2022; her body was discovered in her car on February 18. The cause of her death was determined to be suicide via intentionaloverdose ofsodium nitrite.[674] | Suicide | 5 days |
| 2022 | Naomi Irion | 19 | United States | Irion was abducted from a parking lot inFernley, Nevada, by 41-year-old Troy Driver on March 12, 2022. Her body was discovered inChurchill County on March 29. Irion had been shot to death. Driver committed suicide while in custody prior to his trial for her murder.[675] | Murdered | 17 days |
| 2022 | Oluwabamise Ayanwole | 22 | Nigeria | Ayanwole was a Nigerian woman who was abducted after boarding aBRT inLagos, Nigeria. Her nude body was found nine days later, close to Carter Bridge onLagos Island. The driver of the bus, Andrew Nice Omininikoron, was later arrested on suspicion of her rape and murder.[676] | Murdered | 9 days |
| 2022 | Maksim Yevhenovych Levin | 40 | Ukraine | Levin was a Ukrainian photographer killed by Russian armed forces during a mission to document the consequences of theRussian invasion of Ukraine inKyiv Oblast. He is believed to have died on March 13; his body was found near a village on April 1, 2022.[677] | Murdered | 19 days |
| 2022 | Gonzalo Lira | 53 | Ukraine | Gonzalo Lira was a maleChilean-American filmmaker, novelist and commentator who disappeared for a short time in April 2022 after he claimed that he had been detained by theSecurity Service of Ukraine,[678] after he had resurfaced. | Found alive | Unknown |
| 2022 | Lily Peters | 10 | United States | Lily Peters was an American girl fromChippewa Falls, Wisconsin, who after not arriving home on April 24, 2022, was reported missing by her father and was found dead the next day after being killed.[679] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2022 | Aguil Chut-Deng | 55 | Australia | Aguil Chut-Deng, who was also known as Aguil Chut-Deng and Aguil de'Chut Deng, aSouth Sudanese activist and revolutionary, was found dead on 26 April 2022 in a wooded area inBrisbane after being reported missing a day earlier.[680] | Undetermined | 1 day |
| 2022 | Emmeril Kahn Mumtadz | 22 | Switzerland | Emmeril Kahn Mumtadz, the son ofWest Java GovernorRidwan Kamil, disappeared after being swept away at theAare River's current inBern, Switzerland on May 26, 2022. He was presumed dead eight days later by his family. His body was found on June 9 at the Engehalde Dam.[681][682] | Drowned | 2 weeks |
| 2022 | Ezra Miller | 29 | United States | Miller, an American actor, and Iron Eyes—a Native American activist—disappeared on 10 June 2022. Both were located in August.[683] | Found alive | 2 months |
| Tokata Iron Eyes | 18–19 | |||||
| 2022 | Dom Phillips | 57 | Brazil | Dom Phillips was a British journalist who went missing in Brazil in June 2022, along with his guide, Bruno Pereira. Phillips had been writing a book on theAmazon rainforest and had travelled to Brazil to meet locals. The disappearance of Phillips and Pereira was first reported on June 5, when their boat failed to arrive at an expected meeting point near the border withPeru. On June 16, eleven days after the disappearance was reported, a Brazilian man later named as Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira admitted to murdering both Phillips and Pereira, and led police to the site where he had buried the bodies. Following the discovery, police arrested Oliveira and his brother Oseney. One day later, on June 17, officials confirmed that Phillips' body had been identified through dental records.[684] Pereira's body was identified the following day on June 18, and a third suspect named Jeferson da Silva Lima (also known as Pelado da Dinha) was arrested after turning himself in to a police station inAtalaia do Norte. Officials later stated that Phillips and Pereira had been shot with hunting ammunition.[685] | Murdered | 12 days |
| Bruno Pereira | 41 | Murdered | 13 days | |||
| 2022 | Dawn Dumont | 48 | Canada | A Canadian writer and former lawyer and journalist who staged her own disappearance and death on July 24, 2022. Dumont and her child were found alive inOregon on August 5.[686] | Found alive | 12 days |
| 2022 | Luke Bell | 32 | United States | Luke Bell was an Americancountry singer-songwriter and musician who disappeared on August 20, 2022, inTucson, Arizona, and was found dead nine days later.[687] In September, it was revealed that he had died from afentanyl overdose on August 26.[688] | Drug overdose | 9 days |
| 2022 | Tom Marsh | 60 | Atacama Desert, Chile | 60-year-old astronomer and astrophysicist Tom Marsh disappeared while visiting theLa Silla Observatory inChile on 16 September 2022. His body was discovered in theAtacama Desert on 10 November 2022.[689] | Undetermined | 55 days |
| 2022 | Hamish Kilgour | 65 | New Zealand | Hamish Kilgour was the drummer and co-founder ofThe Clean, an influential New Zealand indie rock band.[690] Kilgour was last seen at a shopping plaza inChristchurch on November 27, 2022, and was reported missing by his family on December 1.[691] Kilgour's death was announced by Christchurch police on December 6.[692] | Undetermined | 10 days |
| 2022 | Theophilus London | 35 | United States | Theophilus London, a Trinidadian-born American rapper, was reported missing by his family in December 2022. London had been last contacted that July, stopped updating his social media accounts the same month, and was last seen in Los Angeles on October 15.[693] London was located by his family on January 4, 2023.[694] | Found alive | 2 months, 21 days |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Jeff Machado | 44 | Brazil | Jeff Machado was a Brazilian actor and journalist who went missing in January 2023 inRio de Janeiro in the neighborhood ofCampo Grande. He was found dead on May 22, 2023[695] after being found buried in a trunk after being murdered by unknown people. | Murdered | 5 months |
| 2023 | Nicola Bulley | 45 | United Kingdom | Nicola Bulley was reported missing on the morning of January 27, 2023. She had taken her dog for a walk near theRiver Wyre, and her dog and mobile phone—still connected to a workMicrosoft Teams call—were found but there was no trace of Bulley. Police hypothesised that she had fallen into the river; her body was recovered approximately one mile (1.6 km) downstream on February 19.[696] | Drowned | 23 days |
| 2023 | Abby Choi Tin-fung | 28 | Hong Kong | On February 24, 2023, three days after her disappearance, the headless corpse of 28-year-old Abby Choi Tin-fung, a media personality and influencer, was discovered at a Tai Po village in Hong Kong. Reportedly, some of her body parts were hidden inside a refrigerator and some of them were cooked. The police therefore classified the case as murder.[697] In total, seven suspects, including Choi's ex-husband, were arrested in connection to the murder.[698][699][700] | Murdered | 3 days |
| 2023 | Constance Marten | 35 | United Kingdom | A British couple went missing on January 5, 2023, when their car was found abandoned and on fire nearBolton. They were found on February 27, 2023, when they were arrested inBrighton. They went missing with their newborn baby, who was believed to have been born a couple days before they went missing, but were found without their baby (see below).[701] | Found alive | 53 days |
| Mark Gordon | 48 | |||||
| Baby A | 1–2 months | After the couple were found (see above) without their baby, an extensive search encompassing around 90 sq mi (230 km2) involving over 200 police officers took place.[702][703] A baby's remains were found almost 48 hours after the search began, on March 1, 2023, having been wrapped in a plastic bag and hidden inside a shed on anallotment inHollingbury,Brighton, near where the couple were arrested.[704] The couple were charged with multiple crimes in relation to the disappearance including causing or allowing the death of a child and manslaughter by gross negligence.[705] | Unknown | 55 days | ||
| 2023 | Stefán Arnar Gunnarsson | 45 | Iceland | AnIcelandic handball coach and player. Gunnarsson was reported missing on March 2, 2023. His body was found washed ashore on a beach inReykjanesbær on 2 April. He had died of drowning in an apparent suicide.[706] | Drowning | 1 month |
| 2023 | David Mitogo | 32 | Spain | Aforward for theEquatorial Guinea national football team. Mitogo disappeared close to the riverMinho. His body was recovered from the riverAvia two weeks later.[707] | Unknown | 2 weeks |
| 2023 | Giulia Tramontano | 29 | Italy | A missing pregnant woman was reported missing inMilan on 28 May 2023.[708] Three days later her body was discovered and her boyfriend was found guilty of the murder.[709] | Murdered | 3 days |
| 2023 | Cecilia Strzyzowski | 28 | Argentina | Strzyzowski was a 28-year-old Argentine woman who was allegedly murdered in an act offemicide by up to six individuals including her partner, César Sena, on June 2, 2023. Crushed and charred bones were later discovered believed to belong to Strzyzowski were later discovered in the Tragadero River, close to Sena's home, but could not be conclusively identified as belonging to Strzyzowski. However, extensive traces of blood discovered in Sena's house was determined on July 11 to source from her.[710] | Murdered | 1 month |
| 2023 | Paul-Henri Nargeolet | 77 | Atlantic Ocean | Five people (including Dawood's 19-year-old son, Suleman) who perished on 18 June 2023 when thesubmersibleTitan imploded near thewreck of theTitanic. On 22 June, following the discovery of a debris field approximately 490 metres from thebow of theTitanic,OceanGate confirmed the deaths of all five passengers. A subsequentUnited States Coast Guard conference attributed the implosion of theTitan to a catastrophic loss of thepressure hull.[711] | Misadventure | 4 days |
| Shahzada Dawood | 48 | |||||
| Hamish Harding | 58 | |||||
| Stockton Rush | 61 | |||||
| 2023 | Julian Sands | 65 | United States | Julian Sands was a British film and television actor. On January 13, 2023, just over a week after his 65th birthday, Sands went hiking in theSan Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles. He was reported missing later that day after severe storms hit the area and he failed to return home. Sands' car was found five days later near the area he was reported missing from. On June 24, 2023, hikers reported finding a body in the area near where Sands disappeared, and the remains were confirmed as Sands' three days later on June 27.[712] | Undetermined | 5 months, 14 days |
| 2023 | Yanfei Bao | 44 | New Zealand | A real estate agent who disappeared from a suburb ofChristchurch on 19 July 2023; her body was discovered in a shallow grave by police on rural farmland nearLincoln on 30 July 2024.[713] On 4 December 2024, Chinese national Tingjun Chao was convicted of Bao's murder.[714] | Murdered | 1 year |
| 2023 | Jonila Castro | 21 | Philippines | Two youth environmental activists disappeared inOrion, Bataan on 2 September 2023.[715] They resurfaced two weeks later.[716] | Found alive | 17 days |
| Jhed Tamano | 22 | |||||
| 2023 | Lina Delsarte | 15 | France | Delsarte, a 15-year-old girl disappeared from her home inSaint-Blaise-la-Roche on 23 September 2023.[717] She was later discovered murdered when her remains were discovered on 16 October 2024 in woods nearNevers.[718] | Murdered | 13 months |
| 2023 | Shani Louk | 22 | Israel | Louk was a 22-year-old German-Israeli abducted byHamas militants during the October 7, 2023Re'im music festival massacre. Footage of her abduction became one of the most viral videos of theGaza war. On 30 October, theIsrael Defense Forces informed Louk's relatives that a section of thepetrous part of the temporal bone had been identified viaDNA analysis as belonging to Louk, indicating she had likely died at the festival. Her remains were found on May 17, 2024, in the Gaza Strip.[719] | Murdered | 23 days |
| 2023 | Tina Satchwell | 45 | Ireland | Tina Satchwell was reported missing by her husband after she was last seen on March 20, 2017, at their home inYoughal,Ireland. Six years after her disappearance, on October 11, 2023, Richard Satchwell was arrested on suspicion of her murder after a utility company had found suspicious materials whilst inspecting a drainage block in the area. A police search conducted at his home the following day discovered human remains wrapped in black plastic and buried underneath a concrete floor in his stairwell. The remains were confirmed to be those of Tina Satchwell's via dental records, and he was subsequently charged with murder. | Murdered | 6 years, 6 months and 25 days |
| 2023 | Émile Soleil | 2 | France | Young boy who disappeared on July 8, 2023, during a stay at his grandparents house in the Frenchcommune ofLe Vernet, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, bodily remains were later found in a nearby forest. | Undetermined | 266 days |
| 2023 | Ross McDonnell | 44 | United States | Ross McDonnell was a filmmaker and photographer. He was last seen riding a bicycle after he left his apartment inBedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn on November 4, 2023. The bicycle was later found locked up at Fort Tilden Beach inBreezy Point, Queens. On November 17, 2023, a headless and armless body was found in Breezy Point. It was later confirmed that it was McDonnell. Foul play is not suspected.[720] | Undetermined | At least 13 days |
| 2023 | Giulia Cecchettin | 22 | Italy | An Italian college student murdered by her former boyfriend, Filippo Turetta, on November 11, 2023. Her body was discovered in the ski resort ofPiancavallo on November 18.[721] | Murdered | 1 week |
| 2023 | Alexei Navalny | 47 | Russia | ARussian opposition leader, lawyer, andpolitical prisoner who has organised anti-government demonstrations and campaigned againstcorruption in Russia. Navalny briefly disappeared on December 5, 2023; he was later discovered to be incarcerated in theYamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.[722] | Found incarcerated | 3 weeks |
| 2023 | Sam Nordquist | 24 | United States | Sam Nordquist, was an American man who wastransgender who disappeared fromHopewell in December 2024 and was found dead on February 2, 2024 after being killed.[723] | Murdered | Over a month |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Hinako Ashihara | 50 | Japan | Hinako Ashihara, amangaka, was reported missing on January 28. Two days before she went missing, she criticizedNippon TV on her blog for mishandling the live action adaptation of her manga,Sexy Tanaka-san, before deleting the blog post and apologizing. Her body was found inNikko, Tochigi a day later on January 29. She is believed to have died by suicide.[724][725][726][727] | Suicide | 1 day |
| 2024 | Audrii Cunningham | 11 | United States | Audrii Cunningham went missing fromLivingston, Texas, on February 15, 2024, and was found dead five days later.[728] | Murdered | 5 days |
| 2024 | Alexandra Föderl-Schmid | 53 | Austria | The Austrian journalist and deputy editor-in-chief of German newspaperSüddeutsche Zeitung disappeared on 8 February. One day later, she was found alive and hypothermic under a bridge over theInn river inBraunau am Inn.[729] | Found alive | 1 day |
| 2024 | Jesse Baird | 26 | Australia | Jesse Baird was a television presenter andAustralian rules footballgoal umpire. He was last seen with his partner Luke Davies, aged 29, on the evening of February 18, 2024.[730] On February 21, personal belongings of both men were found in askip bin inCronulla, and a subsequent police search of Baird'sPaddington home found large quantities of blood and bullet casings from a police firearm.[731] On February 23,police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon was charged with murder, and on February 27, the bodies of Baird and Davies were found inBungonia, nearGoulburn.[732][733][734] | Murdered | 9 days |
| 2024 | Danka Ilić | 1 | Republic of Serbia | A young Serbian girl who disappeared on 26 March 2024. Ten days after her disappearance, two suspects were arrested for her alleged murder. Her body was never found.[735] | Murdered | 10 days |
| 2024 | Sade Robinson | 19 | United States | A college student who went missing in Wisconsin.[736] Her severed leg washed up onLake Michigan the next day.[737] The other body parts were discovered later.[738] | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2024 | Benjamin Achimeir | 14 | Israel | Benjamin Achimeir, a teenage boy went missing on April 12, 2024,[739] after he left a farm located close to anIsraeli settlement in the West Bank and was found dead a day later. | Murdered | 1 day |
| 2024 | Michael Mosley | 67 | Greece | British television journalist, producer and presenter who was reported missing by his wife while they were on holiday with their children on the Greek island ofSymi on June 5, 2024. Mosley's wife alerted authorities after he failed to return to their hotel. Asearch and rescue team including local people, local police, fire crews, and police fromAthens useddrones, and extensively searched the tracks and paths he might have taken on foot, with the search extending the following day.[740] On June 9, 2024, Mosley's body was found near a fence on Agia Marina beach in Symi.[741][742] | Natural causes | 5 days |
| 2024 | Saulos Chilima | 51 | Malawi | Saulos Chilima, the Malawian Vice President and economist, and Patricia Shanil Muluzi, a teacher, Malawian politician andFirst Lady of Malawi from 1999 until 2004 who disappeared on June 10, 2024, while aboard an aircraftdisappeared from radar inChikangawa Forest Reserve inMzimba District. The plane and their bodies were found a day later after it had crashed.[743] | Accident | 1 day |
| Patricia Shanil Muluzi | 59 | |||||
| 2024 | Jacques Freitag | 42 | South Africa | South Africanhigh jumper Jacques Freitag went missing on July 1, 2024, fromPretoria West, and was found dead two weeks after being killed.[744] | Murdered | 2 weeks |
| 2024 | Geneva Lopez | 26 | Philippines | Lopez was aFilipino model; she and herIsraeli partner, Cohen, were reported missing inCapas, Tarlac, on June 21. Their bodies were discovered in a quarry on July 6. Both had been shot to death.[745] | Murdered | 15 days |
| Yitshak Cohen | 37 | |||||
| 2024 | Bryson Muir | 14 | United States | The son ofNFL playerDaniel Muir. Muir was last seen outside his grandmother's home inCleveland, Ohio on June 16; he was found alive on July 3. Following his discovery, his father was arrested and charged with domestic battery and obstruction of justice.[746] | Found alive | 17 days |
| 2024 | Jay Slater | 19 | Tenerife | Slater was a 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from England who had flown to Tenerife on holiday. On June 17, after he had attended the NRG Festival near his accommodation inLos Cristianos, he travelled some 11 hours northwestward to the mountain village ofMasca with two men.[747] He was last heard from at 08:50WEST, after informing his friend that he would be attempting to walk back to his accommodation and was reported missing at 09:04 WEST.[748] 28 days later, his body was found after local authorities identified that he had likely died from an accidental fall.[749] | Likely accident | 28 days |
| 2024 | Mike Lynch | 59 | Italy | Mike Lynch disappeared on August 19, 2024, after thesuper yacht he was travelling in sank off the coast ofSicily, with Lynch and 21 others on board. The yacht was struck by awaterspout and subsequently capsized and sank. His body was found a day later on August 20. | Drowned | 1 day |
| 2024 | Humaira Asghar | 31 | Pakistan | Humaira Asghar, a Pakistani actress disappeared In October 2024. She was found deceased on 8 July 2025.[750] | Unknown | 9 months |
| 2024 | Hannah Kobayashi | 30 | United States | Hannah Kobayashi disappeared on 8 November 2024 after leavingLos Angeles International Airport. She was found unharmed in Tijuana, Mexico and returned to the United States on 16 December 2024. | Found alive | 38 days |
| 2024 | Zvi Kogan | 28 | United Arab Emirates | An Israeli-Moldovanrabbi residing in theUnited Arab Emirates. Kogan was an envoy of theOrthodox JewishHasidic organizationChabad. He was last seen at the kosher supermarket he managed inDubai. Shortly thereafter, Kogan was abducted and killed. On 24 November 2024, a body was found and confirmed to be that of Kogan.[751] | Murdered | 3 days |
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 January 2025 | Eliza Huszti | 32 | United Kingdom | Eliza and Henrietta Huszti were two sisters from a set of triplets who went missing fromAberdeen in the north east of Scotland on 7 January 2025 and were both found dead on 31 January after their bodies were found in theRiver Dee.[752] | Found dead | Three weeks |
| Henrietta Huszti | 32 | |||||
| January 2025 | Mizuki Itagaki | 24 | Japan | Mizuki Itagaki, a 24-year-old male Japanese actor, was reported missing in late January 2025. He was later found dead in Tokyo approximately mid-March 2025.[753] | Found dead | c. Two months |
| April 2025 | Sam Ruddock | 36 | United States | Sam Ruddock, aParalympic athlete disappeared in April 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada, after going to seeWrestleMania 41, has been found safe.[754] | Found alive | 12 days |
| 15 May 2025 | Pheobe Bishop | 17 | Australia | Pheobe Bishop, a 17-year-old Australian, was reported missing after she failed to board a flight. Her remains were found on 6 June and Identified on 17 June.[755] | Found dead | 33 days |
Muhammad Ahmed was 5 when he was caught with his mother from Karachi in 2003 is now 10 years old. Pakistani and US authorities have been denying such arrest.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)As for Dave Walker, friends and family around the world tried to keep the case alive, and a Toronto-based criminal historian and blogger named Peter Vronsky – a close friend of Mr. Walker since the early 1990s – continues to compile an exhaustive account of his death and the subsequent investigation.
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