List of solved missing person cases (1970s)
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1970
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 18th, 1970 | Mared Ellen Malarik | 19 | United States | Two West Virginia University students last seen alive on January 18, 1970 leaving a theatre in Morgantown, West Virginia. Their decapitated bodies were discovered on April 16 and serial killer Gerard John Schaefer was thought to be responsible.[1] | Murdered | 3 months |
| Karen Lynn Ferrell | 18 | |||||
| February 24th, 1970 | Jacques Vergès | 44 | France | Vergès, a French-Vietnamese lawyer, left his wife Djamila Bouhired and cut ties with friends and family. He was last seen on February 24, 1970, until he reappeared in 1978 and refused to explain his disappearance or whereabouts.[2] It appeared in December 2017, in a Barbet Schroeder interview, that he was with extremist Palestinian militant Wadie Haddad in Palestine.[3] | Found alive | 8 years |
| February 27th, 1970 | Alberto Fuentes Mohr | 43 | Guatemala | Guatemalan economist, politician and founding member of the Social Democratic Party who served as Minister of Public Finance in the 1960s. He was briefly kidnapped by a FAR rebel on February 27, 1970, but released without harm shortly after.[4] | Found alive | 1-2 days |
| March 8th, 1970 | Jacqueline Ansell-Lamb | 18 | United Kingdom | English secretary who vanished after hitchhiking along the M1 motorway on March 8, 1970. Her body was found days later in woodlands, and detectives believe her murder is linked to that of fellow hitch-hiker Barbara Mayo, who was killed under similar circumstances the same year. It is often reported that the murders were linked by DNA in 1990; however, DNA was only extracted in Mayo's case, and not until 1997.[5][6] | Murdered | 6 days |
| March 31st, 1970 | Susan Blatchford | 11 | United Kingdom | Two British children who disappeared from Enfield, North London, on the afternoon of 31 March 1970 while playing.[7] Seventy-eight days later their bodies were found in a copse in Sewardstone, Essex.[7] Erroneously thought for nearly 30 years to have possibly died from exposure, causing the murdered children to be called the "Babes in the Wood" in the press, pedophile Ronald Jebson confessed to their rape and murder from prison in 1998, and was convicted in 2000.[7] | Murdered | 2 months |
| Gary Hanlon | 12 | |||||
| May 29th, 1970 | Pedro Eugenio Aramburu | 67 | Argentina | Argentine army general who served as acting president from 1955 to 1958, Aramburu was kidnapped and later killed by Montoneros terrorist Mario Firmenich. His body was found a month after his disappearance at an abandoned farmhouse in Timote.[8] | Murdered | 1 month |
| June 22nd, 1970 | Harvey Crewe | 28 | New Zealand | Harvey and Jeannette Crewe, a New Zealand farming couple, were reported missing from their bloodstained farmhouse at Pukekawa, Lower Waikato on June 22, 1970, where their unharmed 18-month-old daughter was found in her cot. Jeannette Crewe's body was found, wrapped in a duvet and bound with copper wire, in the Waikato River on August 16, 1970, and her husband's body was retrieved upriver on September 16, 1970.[9] Initial indications from the scene pointed to foul play occurring between June 17 and 22, but not until the bodies were recovered was it established that both were shot to death.[10] | Murdered | 3 months |
| Jeannette Crewe | 30 | New Zealand | 2 months | |||
| September 6th, 1970 | Donna Lass | 25 | United States | Lass, a nurse who worked at Sahara Tahoe Casino, disappeared on September 6, 1970, from Stateline, Nevada. Her disappearance has been associated with the Zodiac Killer case despite the lack of evidence. In December 2023, South Lake Tahoe Police Department announced that human remains found in 1986 near California State Route 20 in Placer County was positively identified as Lass. The department did not reveal a reason of death or an indication of foul play.[11][12] | Died (unknown cause) | 53 years |
| September 25th, 1970 | Jeffrey Konen | 18 | United States | The first of twenty-nine known victims of serial killer Dean Corll. Konen was last seen hitchhiking from the University of Texas to his parents' home on the evening of September 25, 1970. His body was buried at High Island Beach. Corll's accomplice, David Owen Brooks, led police to Konen's body on August 10, 1973.[13] | Murdered | 3 years |
| October 10th, 1970 | Pierre Laporte | 49 | Canada | Laporte, a Canadian politician and deputy premier of Quebec, was kidnapped by members of the terrorist Front de libération du Québec group on October 10, 1970, and held for ransom. A week later, when the government refused the group's demands, they killed him, with Laporte's body found in the trunk of Paul Rose's car.[14] | Murdered | 1 week |
| October 12th, 1970 | Barbara Mayo | 24 | United Kingdom | Mayo was an English schoolteacher who vanished while hitchhiking on the M1 motorway near Catterick, North Yorkshire on October 12, 1970. Days later, her partially clothed body was found in the woods, and was later linked to the murder of Jacqueline Ansell-Lamb committed months prior. It is often wrongly reported that the murders were confirmed to be linked by DNA in 1990; DNA was only ever extracted in Mayo's case, and not until 1997.[5][6] | Murdered | 4 days |
| November 27th, 1970 | Ronald Hughes | 35 | United States of America | Ronald Hughes was an American attorney who represented Manson family member Leslie Van Houten and disappeared in November 1970 during a camping trip.[15][16] On March 29, 1971, his body was found by two fishermen in Ventura County wedged between two boulders in a gorge.[17] | Died (undetermined cause) | 5 months |
| December 31st, 1970 | Linda Childers | 24 | United States of America | Childers and Carmichael were fugitives from Louisville, Kentucky who were hiding out with fellow criminals Richard DeFreitas and Donald Brant. DeFreitas and Brant decided to murder the two after Childers told DeFreitas' wife that they all might be arrested if found. Childers' and Carmichael's bodies were discovered in 1974, and while Carmichael's body was identified shortly after, Childers' body was identified 49 years later via forensic genealogy in 2024.[18] | Murdered | 53 years |
| Gustavous Lee Carmichael | 24 | 4 years |
1971
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1971 | Shelagh McDonald | 24 | United Kingdom | Shelagh McDonald, a Scottish folk singer and songwriter, who vanished in 1971. Following the reissue of two of her albums on CD in the mid-2000s, articles were written about her work and disappearance.[19] In 2005, McDonald read one such article and contacted the press to explain that following an LSD trip, which had left her with long-term severe flashbacks and disorientation, she had returned to her family who kept her isolated while she recovered.[20][21] | Found alive | 34 years |
| January 20th, 1971 | Rubens Paiva | 42 | Brazil | Brazilian civil engineer, politician and congressman for the Chamber of Deputies who was arrested by police on January 20, 1971, for opposing the military dictatorship. He was then tortured and killed, and his body was never located.[22] | Murdered | Never found |
| April 8th, 1971 | Philip Kovolick | 63 | United States of America | New York mobster and associate of Lepke Buchalter who disappeared on April 8, 1971, in Miami, while expecting extradition to his home state on various charges. His body was later found sealed in a steel drum at the bottom of a rock pit in Hallandale Beach. His killer, John Alvin Baxter, was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder, but it was later reduced to life imprisonment.[23] | Murdered | 21 days |
| April 15th, 1971 | Carol Denise Spinks | 13 | United States of America | Spinks was the first known victim of an unidentified serial killer known as the Freeway Phantom. Spinks was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered while walking home from a grocery store; her body was found six days later on an embankment behind Southeast Washington, D.C. alongside I-295.[24] | Murdered | 6 days |
| June 17th, 1971 | Colette Anise Wilson | 13 | United States of America | 13-year-old Colette Anise Wilson disappeared from the Alvin Bus Stop on County Road 99 and Highway 6 in Alvin, Texas after she was dropped off by her band director on June 17, 1971. Wilson's body was found five months later on November 26, 1971, near the Addicks Reservoir. She had been shot in the head.[25] | Murdered | 5 months |
| July 8th, 1971 | Darlenia Denise Johnson | 16 | United States of America | The second known victim of the Freeway Phantom. Johnson was abducted was abducted while en route to her summer job at a recreation center. Her body was discovered on July 19 just 15 feet (4.6 meters) from where victim Carol Spinks had been discovered two months previously.[26] | Murdered | 11 days |
| July 22nd, 1971 | Joyce Margaret LePage | 21 | United States of America | LePage, a student of Washington State University, was last seen by her friends dropping her off at her on-campus apartment. Her skeletal remains were found wrapped in two blankets and discarded in a ravine south of Pullman, Washington, on April 16, 1972. Serial killer Ted Bundy is considered a suspect in LePage's murder, although he denied any culpability in this case. Her murder remains unsolved.[27] | Murdered | 9 months |
| August 4th, 1971 | Rhonda Johnson | 13 | United States of America | Rhonda Renee Johnson and Sharon Lynn Shaw were two teenage girls who disappeared in Harris County, Texas, on the afternoon of August 4, 1971. In early 1972, their skeletal remains were discovered in and around Clear Lake near Galveston Bay. Local man Michael Lloyd Self was charged with their murders in 1972 and convicted of Shaw's murder in 1975. Controversy arose in 1998 when serial killer Edward Harold Bell confessed to the murders. Bell's confession—and corroborating statements from both law enforcement and prosecutors that Self had been coerced into a false confession—led many to believe that Self had been wrongfully convicted.[28] Self died in prison of cancer in 2000. | Murdered | 6 months |
| Sharon Shaw | 14 | United States of America | ||||
| August 23rd, 1971 | Melissa Highsmith | 2 | United States | Highsmith, a 22-month old toddler from Fort Worth, Texas, was kidnapped on August 23, 1971 by the woman hired to babysit her. The case remained unsolved until an anonymous tip led to the family contacting a woman named Melanie Walden, who turned out to be Highsmith. Melissa Highsmith reunited with her family in November, 2022, and reverted to her original name in May, 2023.[29] | Found alive | 51 years |
| October 28th, 1971 | Gloria Ann Gonzales | 19 | United States of America | 19-year-old Gloria Ann Gonzales was last seen alive near her apartment in Houston, Texas on October 28, 1971. On November 23, 1971, Gonzales's skeletal remains were found near Addicks Reservoir in the area where the body of 13-year-old Colette Anise Wilson was also found. Gonzales had died from blunt force trauma to the head.[30] | Murdered | 3 weeks |
| November 9th, 1971 | Allison Anne Craven | 12 | United States of America | 12-year-old Allison Anne Craven was reported missing by her mother on November 9, 1971, when she returned home to their apartment in Houston, Texas near Interstate 45 after shopping for one hour. Three months later, police found partial remains in a nearby field – two hands, some arm bones, and teeth. On February 25, 1972, the rest of Craven's skeleton was found in a Pearland, Texas field, also near Interstate 45 and ten miles from where she was last seen.[31] | Murdered | 3 months |
| November 29th, 1971[32] | Theo Albrecht | 49 | West Germany | German entrepreneur who was the founder of the Aldi Nord supermarket chain. In 1971, he was kidnapped by lawyer Heinz-Joachim Ollenburg and Paul Kron, who demanded seven million German marks in exchange for his return. He was later released and his kidnappers arrested, but as a result, the Albrechts became reclusive and avoid publicity.[33] | Found alive | 17 days |
| December 24th, 1971 | Wayne Joseph Dukette | 30 | United States of America | A Sunset Beach bartender and first suspected victim of serial killer Randy Kraft. Dukette's nude and putrefied body was discovered at the bottom of a ravine near the Ortega Highway. His cause of death was undetermined, although his high blood alcohol content indicated alcohol poisoning as likely.[34] | Murdered | 15 days |
1972
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 2nd, 1972 | Timothy McCoy | 16 | United States of America | An American teenager who disappeared in Chicago, Illinois on January 2, 1972, after encountering a man named John Wayne Gacy. A few hours later, in the early hours of January 3, 1972, Gacy stabbed McCoy to death and buried his body in the crawl space of his home. Gacy went on to become a serial killer, murdering, raping and torturing at least 32 more victims between 1974 and 1978. McCoy's corpse was not found for nearly seven years until December 1978, when his body (along with several others) was recovered and conclusively identified via dental records on May 9, 1986, 14 years after his death.[35] | Murdered | 14 years |
| February 11th, 1972 | Barbara Ann Derry | 18 | United States of America | A Vancouver, Washington hitchhiker last seen alive on February 11, 1972. Derry is suspected of being a victim of serial killer Warren Forrest. Her stabbed body was discovered within a gristmill silo in Woodland on March 29 and was identified on April 3.[36] | Murdered | 7 weeks |
| March 21st, 1972 | Oberdan Sallustro | 56–57 | Argentina | Oberdan Sallustro was an Italian-Paraguayan Director General of FIAT Concord in Argentina and entrepreneur who was kidnapped by six people on March 21, 1972[37] and found dead on April 10, 1972, after being murdered. | Murdered | 3 weeks |
| May 11th, 1972 | Michael Blassie | 24 | South Vietnam | Blassie was an American Air Force officer and pilot from the 8th Special Operations Squadron dispatched to South Vietnam in 1972. During the Battle of An Lộc, his A-37B Dragonfly was shot down, killing him instantly. His remains were found, but could not be identified and were interred at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. He was finally identified via DNA testing in 1998.[38] | Killed in action | 26 years |
| May 13th, 1972 | Barbara Storm | 20 | West Germany | Barbara Storm was a young German woman from Schüttorf who disappeared on 13 May 1972 was found dead on 17 May 1972 in a forest near Schöppingen after being beaten and strangled.[39] She is believed to have murdered by the "Münsterland Killer". | Murdered | 4 days |
| June 13th, 1972 | Kerry May-Hardy | 22 | United States of America | Abducted while hitchhiking from Capitol Hill, near Seattle in June 1972. Construction workers discovered her skeletal remains buried near a golf course in Roslyn on September 6, 2010. May-Hardy's murder has been linked to serial killer Ted Bundy, although he never confessed to her murder.[40] | Murdered | 38 years |
| July 11th, 1972 | Dolores Della Penna | 17 | United States of America | Dolores Della Penna was a schoolgirl from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who went missing on July 11, 1972. Her limbs and torso were found in different parts of New Jersey a week later, but her head has never been found. She was allegedly abducted by a gang of drug dealers who accused her of stealing from them.[41] | Murdered | 1 week |
| July 19th, 1972 | Steven Kent Sickman | 17 | United States of America | Steven Kent Sickman was a 17-year-old teenager who was murdered by serial killer Dean Corll on July 19, 1972. He was not identified until 2011.[42] | Murdered | 39 years |
| August 7th, 1972 | Jeannette DePalma | 16 | United States of America | Jeannette DePalma was a girl who disappeared on 7 August 1972, after telling her mother she was going to visit a friend. Her body was discovered on September 19, 1972, and it is believed she was killed some time around August 7 in Springfield Township, New Jersey.[43][44] | Murdered | 1 month, 2 weeks |
| August 11th, 1972 | Leonard Joseph Masar | 46 | United States of America | A coffee shop proprietor last seen alive at a Rivera Beach bar on 11 August 1972. Masar's body was discovered buried on Hutchinson Island on 3 January 1973. His murder remains unsolved.[45] | Murdered | 5 months |
| September 27th, 1972 | Susan Carol Place | 17 | United States of America | 17-year-old Susan Carol Place and 16-year-old Georgia Marie Jessup disappeared on September 27, 1972, after encountering Gerard John Schaefer at an adult education center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Place and Jessup told the former's mother that they wanted to go to the beach him. The girls were reported missing after not returning home for four days. On April 1, 1973, their remains were discovered in Port St. Lucie; they were formally identified via dental records on April 5. On May 18, Schaefer was charged with first-degree murder in their deaths. He was found guilty and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment.[46] | Murdered | 6 months |
| Georgia Marie Jessup | 16 | |||||
| October, 1972 | Seamus Wright | 25 | Northern Ireland | Wright and McKee were Belfast-based members of the Provisional IRA suspected of being informants for the British Army’s Military Reaction Force; they were executed and secretly buried in County Meath. Their remains were discovered in June 2015.[47] | Murdered | 43 years |
| Kevin McKee | 17 | |||||
| October 26th, 1972 | Mary Alice Briscolina | 14 | United States of America | 14-year-old Mary Alice Briscolina and 13-year-old Elsie Lina Farmer both disappeared while hitchhiking to a Commercial Boulevard restaurant from a Lauderdale-by-the-Sea motel in Florida on October 26, 1972. Their bodies were discovered separately in undergrowth close to Sunrise Boulevard in January and February of the following year. Both girls had been bludgeoned to death and likely raped. They may have been victims of Gerard John Schaefer, a serial killer active in Florida.[48] | Murdered | 3 months |
| Elsie Lina Farmer | 13 | 4 months | ||||
| December 4th, 1972 | Steven Stayner | 7 | United States of America | Steven Stayner was abducted from the Central California city and county of Merced, California on December 4, 1972, by a man named Kenneth Parnell.[49] He escaped on March 1, 1980, with Timothy White who was also abducted by Parnell.[50] | Found alive | 7 years |
| December 23rd, 1972 | Suzanne Gale Poole | 15 | United States of America | A Florida teenager reported missing by her family shortly before Christmas 1972. Her partial skeletal remains were discovered on June 16, 1974. She had been bound to a mangrove tree in a swampland district of Singer Island. Poole's body was identified in May 2022 via genetic genealogy.[51] | Murdered | 49 years |
1973
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 1st, 1973 | Roseann Quinn | 28 | United States | Roseann Quinn, a 28-year-old schoolteacher was reported missing after she was stabbed to death in her New York apartment on New Year's Day 1973. Her body was found on January 3 by another teacher. The building superintendent. John Wayne Wilson, whom Quinn had brought to her apartment and smoked marijuana with, was arrested in connection with her death; he later died via suicide by hanging.[52] | Murdered | 2 days |
| January 11th, 1973 | Collette Marie Goodenough | 19 | United States | Goodenough and Wilcox disappeared while hitchhiking from Sioux City, Iowa, to Florida. Their bound bodies were discovered along a canal bank in St. Lucie County in January 1977 and were formally identified the following year. Both are believed to have been murdered by serial killer Gerard John Schaefer.[53] | Murdered | 7 years |
| Barbara Ann Wilcox | 19 | |||||
| January 11th, 1973 | Paul Martin Andrews | 14 | United States of America | Andrews was kidnapped from his family home in Portsmouth, Virginia on January 11, 1973, by pedophile Richard Ausley, who stuffed him in a wooden box and only brought him out to assault him. On the eighth day, Ausley left Andrews unattended, giving him enough time to call for help, drawing the attention of two hunters who rescued him. Ausley later turned himself in and was sentenced to 48 years' imprisonment, while Andrews later became an advocate for rape survivors.[54] | Found alive | 8 days |
| January 14th, 1973 | Norman Lamar Prater | 16 | United States | Norman Lamar Prater disappeared on January 14, 1973. He was suspected to have been a victim of serial killer Dean Corll but was actually confirmed to have died in an unrelated hit-and-run incident in Aransas County, Texas in July 1973.[55] | Died (car accident) | 7 months |
| 1973 | Malika Oufkir | 20 | Morocco | Daughter of General Mohamed Oufkir who was detained along with most of her family under arrest from 1973 to 1991, due to her father's actions against the monarchy of Morocco in the 1972 coup d'état attempt. A few years after her release, she emigrated to France and became a writer.[56] | Found alive | 18 years |
| January 27th, 1973 | Dawn Magyar | 20 | United States of America | Dawn Magyar was abducted while she was grocery shopping in Owosso, Michigan in Shiawassee County on January 27, 1973, and her body was discovered in a wooded area in Saginaw County, Michigan on March 4, 1973.[57] The case was resolved 28 years after her body was found when a DNA match was made of her killer.[58] | Murdered | 2 months |
| February 1st, 1973 | Joseph Allen Lyles | 17 | United States of America | Lyles was abducted and murdered by serial killer Dean Corll on February 1, 1973. His body was buried on a stretch of beach in Jefferson County, Texas, and were discovered in 1983. Lyles's body was identified in November 2009, although as several bones were never recovered, his actual cause of death was never established.[59] | Murdered | 36 years |
| February 13th, 1973 | Leslie Marie Perlov | 21 | United States of America | 21-year-old Leslie Marie Perlov, a Stanford University graduate and law firm employee went missing on February 13, 1973 and was found was dead on February 16, 1973 along the Stanford Dish hiking trail. On November 20, 2018, serial killer John Getreu was arrested for the murder. | Murdered | 3 days |
| April 20th, 1973 | Lynda Gough | 19 | United Kingdom | Gloucester woman who disappeared in April 1973. She had been a lodger of a couple called Fred and Rose West. Following her disappearance, Gough's mother travelled to the home of the Wests to enquire as to her daughter's whereabouts, only to find Rose wearing her daughter's clothes and slippers. In 1994, Gough's body was found buried at the home during investigations into the disappearance of the couple's daughter. Fred and Rose West were found to have murdered 12 young women between them and buried most at the home.[60] | Murdered | 21 years |
| July 10th, 1973 | John Paul Getty III | 16 | Italy | A grandson of American oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. Getty was kidnapped within the Piazza Farnese in July 1973 in Rome and held captive for five months. A $17 million ransom was demanded for his safe release. When Getty's grandfather refused to pay this sum (stating his fear that it would make all 13 of his grandchildren into kidnapping targets),[61] his captors severed one ear, which they posted to a local newspaper. Following a $2.2 million ransom payment, Getty was released by his captors in December. He later suffered from drug- and alcohol-related issues caused in part by the trauma of his ordeal; becoming a partially blind quadriplegic by 1981. He died in 2011. | Found alive | 5 months |
| August 1st, 1973 | Peter Wilson | 21 | United Kingdom | Peter Wilson was an Irish man who was abducted on August 1, 1973, and killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. After receiving reliable information his remains were found on November 2, 2010, buried at a beach in Waterfoot, County Antrim.[62] | Murdered | 37 years |
| August 6th, 1973 | Marlies Hemmers | 18 | West Germany | Marlies Hemmers was a female German high school student who disappeared in from Nordhorn, Hemmers on 6 August 1973 and her remains were found on 22 December 1973 across from a horse breeding ground in a small wood.[63] Since her body had decayed it could not be determined what her death cause was. It is believed though that she may have been murdered by the "Münsterland Killer". | Died (unknown cause) | 5 months |
| August 8th, 1973 | Kim Dae-jung | 49 | Japan | South Korean dissident leader who was kidnapped by the KCIA on August 8, 1973, during a conference in Tokyo, Japan. Dae-jung was drugged and moved from Japan to South Korea, but was eventually rescued by the Japanese authorities.[64] | Found alive | 5 days |
| September 2nd, 1973 | Brian McDermott | 10 | United Kingdom | Young Northern Irish child who disappeared from Belfast on 2 September 1973. His body was found a week after he went missing in a sack in the River Lagan. His murder remains unsolved but his brother is the prime suspect in the case.[65] | Murdered | 1 week |
| September 11th, 1973 | Svante Grände | 26 | Chile | Swedish aid worker who disappeared in Southern Chile following the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. He later resurfaced in Argentina, as part of a guerilla group fighting against the regime of Augusto Pinochet.[66] | Found alive | Unknown |
| October 31st, 1973 | Lisa Ann French | 9 | United States of America | French, a 9-year-old girl from Fond du Lac, was Kidnapped, sexually assaulted and ultimately murdered by her neighbor, Gerald Miles Turner Jr., while out trick-or-treating on Halloween. French's body was later found stuffed in a garbage bag in a field near Taycheedah, Wisconsin.[67] | Murdered | 4 days |
| November 10th, 1973 | Carol Ann Cooper | 15 | United Kingdom | Cooper was a child that was staying at a Worcester children's home. On 10 November 1973, she was allowed to travel to visit her grandmother but disappeared after boarding a bus back to the home. Extensive police enquiries failed to locate her. In 1994, her body was found in the cellar of notorious serial killers Fred and Rose West. She had been abducted by them during her journey and murdered.[60] | Murdered | 21 years |
| December 25th, 1973 | Maurício Grabois | 61 | Brazil | Brazilian politician and founder of the Communist Party of Brazil who later started recruiting guerilla fighters to fight against the government. According to military reports, he was killed in Tocantins on December 25, 1973, but his body was never recovered.[68] | Murdered | Never found |
| December 27th, 1973 | Thomas Niedermayer | 45 | United Kingdom | German industrialist and managing director of a Grundig factory in Belfast, Northern Ireland who was kidnapped and subsequently killed by the Provisional IRA on December 27, 1973. His body was located by the Royal Ulster Constabulary in March 1980.[69] | Murdered | 7 years |
| December 27th, 1973 | Lucy Partington | 21 | United Kingdom | 21-year-old University of Exeter student Lucy Partington, cousin of writer Martin Amis, disappeared from a bus stop on the night of December 27, 1973.[70] At 9am on March 6, 1994, her remains were found buried under the cellar at 25 Cromwell Street Gloucester, the home of notorious serial killers Fred and Rose West. It is believed she was tortured, sexually abused and murdered around January 2, 1974, as Fred West checked himself into Gloucester Hospital with a serious wound to his right hand that needed several stitches at 12.25 am the next day[71][72] that was probably received while he dismembered her body. Seventy-two of her bones had been removed by West.[73][74] | Murdered | 20 years |
1974
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| February 1st, 1974 | Lynda Ann Healy | 21 | United States of America | Healy was a victim of serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy beat her unconscious, then dressed her in her blue jeans, a white blouse, and boots before kidnapping her. She was then decapitated and dismembered post-mortem and her mandible was recovered from the Taylor Mountain, Washington, site in 1975 and was matched through dental records.[75] [76] | Murdered | 1 year, 2 months |
| February 12th, 1974 | Hernán Valdés | 40 | Chile | Hernán Valdés was a Chilean writer kidnapped by civilian agents in a case of mistaken identity following Augusto Pinochet's coup d'état in February 1974. After spending more than a month in prison, where he was tortured by the guards, he was released and fled to Europe, where he later wrote a book on the Chilean dictatorship.[77] | Found alive | 1 month |
| February 17th, 1974 | Carla Walker | 17 | United States of America | Walker, a high school student, was kidnapped from her boyfriend's car in Fort Worth on February 17, 1974. Her body, showing signs of rape, torture and strangulation, was found in a drainage ditch three days later. Her killer, Glen Samuel McCurley, was identified via DNA in 2020 and sentenced to life imprisonment.[78] | Murdered | 3 days |
| April 16th, 1974 | Therese Siegenthaler | 21 | United Kingdom | Siegenthaler disappeared while hitchhiking from London to Ireland during Easter 1974. A police investigation that lasted a number of years failed to find her. In 1994 her body was found in the Gloucester home of serial killers Fred and Rose West. They had abducted and murdered her, along with 11 other women.[60] | Murdered | 20 years |
| March 12th, 1974 | Donna Gail Manson | 19 | United States of America | Victim of serial killer Ted Bundy. Manson was abducted while she was walking to a concert at Evergreen State College and her body was left (according to Bundy) at Taylor Mountain site and she was never found.[79] | Murdered | 15 years |
| April 17th, 1974 | Susan Elaine Rancourt | 18 | United States of America | Victim of serial killer Ted Bundy. Rancourt disappeared after attending an evening advisors' meeting at Central Washington State College;[80][81] her skull and mandible were recovered at the Taylor Mountain site in 1975.[76] | Murdered | 1 year |
| May 9th, 1974 | Quek Lee Eng | 53 | Singapore | On 9 May 1974, 53-year-old Quek Lee Eng mysteriously disappeared after she last departed her home to go to her sister-in-law's house, and she was reported missing by her family. Two days later, a severed pair of legs belonging to Quek were discovered at a disused toilet in a mosque at Aljunied, and the police arrested 44-year-old Sim Joo Keow, Quek's sister-in-law who was the last person together with Quek before she went missing. Sim later confessed that she strangled Quek after they argued over a S$2,000 debt which Sim owed to Quek. Quek's upper and lower torso were both found hidden in the earthen jars placed in Sim's house, and a parcel containing Quek's severed head and arms was also found alongside Kallang River. Originally charged with murder, Sim pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and concealing evidence, and sentenced to ten years in jail on 27 January 1975.[82] | Murdered | 2 days |
| May 31st, 1974 | Gloria Nadine Knutson | 19 | United States of America | A student who disappeared while walking home from a Vancouver, Washington nightclub on May 31, 1974. Her body was discovered close to Lacamas Lake in May 1978. She is strongly believed to have been murdered by suspected serial killer Warren Forrest.[83] | Murdered | 4 years |
| June, 1974 | John Hely-Hutchinson, 7th Earl of Donoughmore | 71 | Ireland | Lord Donoughmore was a former Member of Parliament (MP). He and his wife were kidnapped from Knocklofty House, Clonmel in the Republic of Ireland in June 1974 by the IRA. The objective behind their kidnapping was to add pressure on both the British and Irish Governments to address the demands of IRA prisoners on hunger strike in British prisons. Both were held captive for five days before being released unharmed by their captors.[84] | Found alive | 5 days |
| June 25th, 1974 | David Kraiselburd | 62 | Argentina | Argentine journalist who condemned the actions of both right and left-wing paramilitary organizations during the Dirty War in 1974. On June 25, 1974, he was kidnapped by the Montoneros, a left-wing paramilitary organization, and later killed by them when police raided their hideout.[85] | Murdered | 3 weeks |
| July, 1974 | Ruth Marie Terry | 37 | United States of America | On July 26, 1974, the decomposing body of a woman was found by a 12-year-old girl in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The woman, who is believed to have died from a blow to the head, was missing both hands, a forearm, and several teeth. The body was exhumed in 1980, 2000, and 2013 in unsuccessful efforts to identify the woman. On October 31, 2022, the FBI announced the identification of the decedent as 37-year-old Ruth Marie Terry, who had been reported missing by her husband in the summer of 1974. Terry's murder case was closed after her husband, Guy Muldavin, was determined to be her killer.[86] | Murdered | 48 years |
| July 14th, 1974 | Denise Marie Naslund | 19 | United States of America | Victim of serial killer Ted Bundy. Naslund was abducted four hours after Ott from Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah;[87] her skeletal remains were recovered at the Issaquah site in 1974.[88] | Murdered | 2 months |
| August 4th, 1974 | Carol Platt Valenzuela | 20 | United States of America | Carol Platt Valenzuela disappeared on August 4, 1974, during a hitchhiking journey from Camas, Washington to Vancouver, Canada. A hunter found her skeletal remains in the Dole Valley, Washington, on October 12, 1974. Valenzuela's remains were located in close proximity to Martha Morrison, a victim of suspected serial killer Warren Forrest, but Forrest has yet to be convicted of Valenzuela's murder.[89] | Died (unknown cause) | 2 months, 1 week |
| August 24th, 1974 | Inshirah Moussa | 36–37 | Egypt | Moussa and her partner, Ibrahim Shaheen, were an Egyptian couple who, from June 1967, worked for the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Both were arrested by Egyptian Intelligence Services in August 1974; each was tried and sentenced to death by hanging. Shaheen was executed in 1977, whereas Moussa was pardoned following an appeal to Anwar Sadat by Israeli authorities the same year. Moussa subsequently disappeared and then relocated to Israel with her three children. She later converted to Judaism.[90] | Found alive | 3 years |
| September 1st, 1974 | Linda Pagano | 17 | United States of America | Pagano was a teenager who disappeared from Akron, Ohio on September 1, 1974, following a fight with her stepfather, Byron Claflin, the previous night. Initially, law enforcement thought Pagano had run away. On February 5, 1975, an unidentified partial skeleton was found in Strongsville, Ohio. The skeleton belonged to a young white female, and the cause of death had been a gunshot to the head. The case was never connected with Pagano, and due to a clerical error, the unidentified body was never added to NamUs or other databases of unidentified. In 2016, the skeleton was rediscovered by an amateur genealogist looking through records of the cemetery where the young woman was buried. In 2018, forensic DNA analysis confirmed the remains found in 1975 as belonging to Pagano. The key suspect in her case has since died.[91] | Murdered | 44 years |
| September 1st, 1974 | Richard Cowden | 28 | United States of America | On September 1, 1974, the Cowden family mysteriously vanished from a campground in Copper, Oregon. Their bodies were found near Carberry Creek by a pair of prospectors. Their autopsies showed Belinda and David had been shot in the head, Melissa had died of severe head trauma, but Richard's cause of death could not be determined. Convicted murderer Dwaine Little is the prime suspect in the murders, but has never been charged.[92] | Murdered | 7 months |
| Belinda June Cowden | 22 | |||||
| David James Phillips | 5 | |||||
| Melissa Dawn Cowden | 5 months | |||||
| September 1st, 1974 | Martha Morrison | 17 | United States of America | Martha Morrison disappeared some time in September 1974. On October 12, 1974, the remains of two women were found in Dole Valley near Vancouver, Washington. One victim was quickly identified as Carol Platt Valenzuela, who had been reported missing, but the other set remained unidentified. In 2015 Martha Morrison's remains were identified by means of DNA profiling after they were found to have been mislabeled by the police as Carol Platt Valenzuela.[93][94] | Murdered | 40 years |
| September 6th, 1974 | Brooks Bracewell | 12 | United States of America | 12-year-old Brooks Bracewell and 14-year-old Georgia Caroline Geer were both last seen at the UtoteM convenience store off of Interstate 45 on September 6, 1974. Though some remains were discovered by police in Alvin, Texas in 1976, they remained unidentified until April 1981.[95] | Murdered | 6 years |
| Georgia Caroline Geer | 14 | United States of America | ||||
| October 12th, 1974 | Arlis Kay Perry | 19 | United States of America | A 19-year-old American newlywed who was murdered inside Stanford Memorial Church, within the grounds of Stanford University in California, on October 12, 1974. Her body was discovered displayed in a ritualistic and degrading position close to the altar of the church the following day. Her alleged murderer was identified via DNA profiling in 2018, but died by suicide before he was apprehended.[96] | Murdered | 1 day |
| October 18th, 1974 | Melissa Anne Smith | 17 | United States of America | Victim of serial killer Ted Bundy. Smith vanished from Midvale, Utah and her body was found nine days later on a hillside in Summit Park.[97] She was beaten, raped, sodomized, and strangled with nylon stockings. Bundy shampooed Smith's hair and applied makeup to her post-mortem. | Murdered | 9 days |
| October 31st, 1974 | Laura Ann Aime | 17 | United States of America | Victim of serial killer Ted Bundy. Aime disappeared from Lehi, Utah, her body discovered by hikers in American Fork Canyon roughly a month later. She was beaten, raped, sodomized, and strangled with nylon stockings. Bundy shampooed Aime's hair and applied makeup to her post-mortem.[98] | Murdered | 1 month |
| November 14th, 1974 | Shirley Hubbard | 15 | United Kingdom | Girl who disappeared from Worcester, England on 14 November 1974 while walking home from work. Police investigations failed to find any trace of her. In 1994 her body was found buried at the home of notorious Gloucester serial killers Fred and Rose West, who in total killed 12 women. Hubbard had been abducted by them in their car and murdered.[60] | Murdered | 20 years |
| November 16th, 1974 | Mohamed Azad Mohamed Hussein | 29 | Singapore | Mohamed Azad went missing in Singapore on 16 November 1974, after he last went to his fiancée's house to meet his future father-in-law. Five days later, his body was discovered inside a gunny sack washed up the shore of Kallang Basin, with severe open wounds on his head, indicating that he had been murdered. Nadarajah Govindasamy, a businessman and father of Mohamed Azad's fiancée, was charged with the murder, and later sentenced in August 1975 to execution by hanging at Changi Prison on 28 January 1977.[99][100][101][102][103] | Murdered | 5 days |
| November 20th, 1974 | Paul McGonagle | 35 | United States of America | McGonagle, the leader of the Mullen Gang, was killed by Whitey Bulger and buried on a Dorchester, MA, beach in November 1974.[104] | Murdered | 26 years |
| December 13th, 1974 | Betty Van Patter | 45 | United States of America | Van Patter was a bookkeeper for the Black Panther Party who disappeared on December 13, 1974, and her body later found on a beach in the San Francisco Bay. It's believed she was murdered by party members when she threatened to reveal that they had major tax problems, but nobody has been charged in her murder to this day.[105] | Murdered | 5 weeks |
| December 31st, 1974 | Janet Lesley Stewart | 15 | United Kingdom | British schoolgirl who went missing from Manchester on New Year's Eve, 1974. Two years later police found the dismembered body of a woman on waste ground in the Newton Heath area of the city, which was identified as Stewart's. She and two other women in Manchester had been killed by serial killer Trevor Hardy.[106] | Murdered | 2 years |
1975
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 12th, 1975 | Caryn Eileen Campbell | 23 | United States of America | Victim of serial killer Ted Bundy. On January 12, a registered nurse named Caryn Eileen Campbell disappeared while walking down a well-lit hallway between the elevator and her room at the Wildwood Inn (now the Wildwood Lodge) in Snowmass Village, 400 miles (640 km) southeast of Salt Lake City.[107] Her nude body was found a month later next to a dirt road just outside the resort. She had been killed by blows to her head from a blunt instrument that left distinctive linear grooved depressions on her skull; her body also bore deep cuts from a sharp weapon.[108] | Murdered | 1 month |
| January 14th, 1975 | Lesley Whittle | 17 | United Kingdom | Whittle was a British heiress who was kidnapped and held for ransom at a drainage reservoir at Bathpool Park by serial killer Donald Neilson on January 14, 1975. She was killed on the same day, but her body was found months later. Neilson was later convicted of her and another three murders, receiving four life sentences.[109] | Murdered | 2 months |
| February 25th, 1975 | Marcia Trimble | 9 | United States of America | Girl Scout who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and finally strangled while delivering cookies in Nashville, Tennessee on February 25, 1975. Her body was found on Easter Sunday, but her murder remained unsolved until 2008, when Jerome Sidney Barrett was convicted and sentenced to 44 years' imprisonment for her murder.[110] | Murdered | 33 days |
| March 15th, 1975 | Julie Cunningham | 26 | United States of America | Victim of serial killer Ted Bundy. On March 15, 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Snowmass, Vail ski instructor Julie Cunningham, disappeared while walking from her apartment to a dinner date with a friend. Bundy later told Colorado investigators that he approached Cunningham on crutches and asked her to help carry his ski boots to his car, where he clubbed and handcuffed her before sexually assaulting and strangling her at a secondary site near Rifle, 90 miles (140 km) west of Vail.[111][112] Weeks later, he made the six-hour drive from Salt Lake City to revisit her remains.[112][113] | Murdered | 15 years |
| March 25th, 1975 | Katherine Lyon | 10 | United States of America | Katherine and Sheila Lyon disappeared on March 25, 1975[114] while walking home from a nearby mall in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. In 2014 Lloyd Lee Welch, a criminal serving time in a Delaware prison for molesting a child in that state, became a person of interest after cold-case investigators in Montgomery County, Maryland followed up on an interview he gave to a detective at the time of the girls' disappearance. In 2015 Welch was formally indicted and in September 2017, he pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder "for the abduction and killing of Katherine and Shelia Lyon in 1975". Police said he had burned their bodies. | Murdered | 40 years |
| Sheila Lyon | 12 | |||||
| March 29th, 1975 | Sharron Prior | 16 | Canada | Sharron Prior was Canadian teenage girl who was abducted on March 29, 1975 from the Pointe-Saint-Charles area in Montreal, Quebec.[115] and was found dead three days later after being murdered. | Murdered | 3 days |
| April 15th, 1975 | Melanie Suzanne Cooley | 18 | United States of America | A high school student who vanished after leaving Nederland High School in Nederland, Colorado on April 15, 1975. Her body was discovered in Coal Creek Canyon on May 2. She had been bludgeoned with a large rock and strangled. Cooley's murder has been tentatively linked to Ted Bundy, although her murder remains an open case.[116] | Murdered | 17 days |
| July 1st, 1975 | Eamon Molloy | 21 | Northern Ireland | Molloy was abducted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army on 1 July 1975. The IRA accused Molloy of being an informant and his remains were recovered on 28 May 1999.[117] | Murdered | 24 years |
| July 7th, 1975 | Priscilla Ann Blevins | 27 | United States of America | Priscilla Ann Blevins was a 27-year-old woman who was last seen alive at her home in Charlotte, North Carolina on July 7, 1975. Her remains were discovered nearly a decade later along Interstate 40 in Waynesville, North Carolina on March 29, 1985. Blevins remained unidentified for an additional 27 years; her identity was determined via DNA and dental records in 2012.[118] | Murdered | 37 years |
| July 31st, 1975 | John Butkovich | 18 | United States of America | A PDM Contractors employee who vanished without a trace in July 1975. The day before his disappearance, Butkovich confronted John Wayne Gacy about overdue wages. Gacy strangled Butkovich to death on July 31, 1975, and buried him under the concrete floor of the tool room extension of his garage. Butkovich's remains were recovered on December 22, 1978; his body was conclusively identified on December 29, 1978.[119] | Murdered | 3 years |
| August 10th, 1975 | Helen Bailey | 8 | United Kingdom | British child Helen Bailey disappeared while playing near her home in Great Barr, Birmingham, on 10 August 1975. The next day Bailey's body was found on a farm across the highway from her home; her throat had been cut. An inquest in 1976 concluded she may have died as a result of an "accident or practical joke gone wrong", but it has since come to light that she was strangled before her throat was cut and her case has been reclassified as murder. No one has been convicted of her murder as of 2021, despite a prisoner making a plausible confession in 1979.[120] | Murdered | 1 day |
| September, 1975 | Margaret Fetterolf | 16 | United States of America | Fetterolf, student and frequent runaway, vanished from her home in Alexandria, Virginia in the summer of 1975. Her body was found on September 11, 1976, in Woodlawn, Maryland, showing signs of sexual assault and strangulation, but her killer(s) have not been arrested. She was not immediately identified, and was known as "Woodlawn Jane Doe" until her positive identification in 2021.[121] | Murdered | 46 years |
| September 3rd, 1975 | Linda Kay Harmon | 17 | United States of America | Harmon was the first victim of serial killer Larry Ralston; she disappeared on her way to school. Her skeletal remains were discovered one month later.[122] | Murdered | 1 month |
| September 21st, 1975 | Candace Lynn Starr | 16 | United States of America | Candace Starr was kidnapped from her home in Los Angeles by her former boyfriend on September 21, 1975 Michael Singh; for approximately three days she was held hostage before she was killed at a convenience store in New Mexico. She was not identified until 2009, through DNA analysis.[123] | Murdered | 34 years |
| September 24th, 1975 | Pat Lowther | 40 | Canada | Pat Lowther was a Canadian poet from Vancouver, British Columbia who disappeared on September 24, 1975. Her body was found three weeks later in a creek near Squamish, British Columbia and her husband was convicted in 1977 of killing her.[124] | Murdered | 3 weeks |
| October 3rd, 1975 | Tiede Herrema | 54 | Ireland | Dutch businessman who ran a factory in Limerick, Ireland, who was abducted by the Provisional IRA near his home in Castletroy on October 3, 1975. He was held in a house in Monasterevin during a two-week standoff between his kidnappers and the police, but was eventually released without incident.[125] | Found alive | 2 weeks |
| October 5th, 1975 | Lesley Molseed | 11 | United Kingdom | Molseed was an English girl who was kidnapped from her home in Rochdale, on 5 October 1975 and subsequently sexually assaulted and murdered by her abductor. Molseed's body was found three days later, and a mentally ill man was erroneously convicted of her murder but later exonerated in 1992. Molseed's actual killer, Ronald Castree, was identified via DNA evidence in 2006, and sentenced to life imprisonment.[126] | Murdered | 3 days |
| November 5th, 1975 | Travis Walton | 22 | United States of America | Travis Walton, an American forestry worker. disappeared on November 5, 1975 from Arizona in the Apache–Sitgreaves National Forests. He and his coworkers claimed Walton had been abducted by aliens.[127][128] | Found alive | 1 week |
| December, 1975 or 1976 | Terry Peder Rasmussen | 32 | United States of America | Terry Peder Rasmussen was last seen by his family in Christmas of 1975 or 1976 with an unidentified woman. Rasmussen, under multiple aliases, went on to commit numerous crimes, including the Bear Brook murders and the murder of his wife Eunsoon Jun. While serving a 15 years to life in prison for Jun's murder, Rasmussen died in 2010 under a pseudonym. His name was not tied to the Bear Brook murders until 2017, and his real name was also not revealed until later that year through the use of Y-DNA testing.[129][130] | Died prior to identity being discovered | 42 years |
| December 11th, 1975 | Anna Mae Aquash | 30 | United States of America | The body of Native American civil rights activist Anna Mae Aquash was found at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota on February 24, 1976. She had been missing for two months.[131] | Murdered | 2 months |
| December 25th, 1975 | Stephen Menheniott | 18 | United Kingdom | Menheniott, a British teenager with severe learning difficulties, disappeared from his home on the Isles of Scilly on Christmas Day 1975. His parents claimed he had gone to the mainland to visit a girlfriend, but his dentist had been troubled by the injuries he had seen on Menheniott and reported his concerns to the police. His body was found on 1 March 1977, crudely buried in the local graveyard. He had been murdered by his abusive parents, most likely in the first weeks of 1976. The case gained notoriety because it was a rare example of murder on the islands.[132] | Murdered | 1 year, 2 months |
1976
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1976 | Franz Jalics | 49 | Argentina | Hungarian Jesuit priest kidnapped by a death squad in Argentina during the Dirty War. He and another hostage, Orlando Yorio, were held captive for five months before being released by their captors.[133] | Found alive | 5 months |
| February, 1976 | Deborah Diane Smith | 17 | United States of America | 17-year-old Deborah Diane Smith disappeared in Salt Lake City, Utah in early February 1976. Her body was discovered by a Utah Power and Light worker checking on poles in an open pasture near Salt Lake City International Airport on April 1, 1976. Serial killer Ted Bundy is believed by some to be responsible for Smith's homicide, though he was never convicted of this murder.[134] | Murdered | 2 months |
| March 1st, 1976 | P. Rajan | Unknown | India | Student at the National Institute of Technology Calicut who was abducted and tortured by Indian police on March 1, 1976, succumbing to his injuries. His remains were never retrieved, despite repeated inquiries from his family which brought the case to national attention.[135] | Murdered | Never found |
| April 5th, 1976 | Guillermo Vargas Aignasse | 33 | Argentina | Argentine Peronist politician who served as the Provincial Senator for the Tucumán Province until the 1976 Argentine coup d'état, when he was abducted by security forces. He has never been found, but two officers were later convicted of his suspected murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2008.[136] | Murdered | Never found |
| April 6th, 1976 | Darrell Samson | 18 | United States of America | Darrell Samson was last seen alive on April 6, 1976, in Chicago, Illinois. That same day, he was kidnapped and murdered by John Wayne Gacy. Gacy buried him underneath his dining room, with cloth lodged in his throat.[119] | Murdered | 3 years |
| May 4th, 1976 | Nancy Lourie Grigsby | 22 | United States of America | A victim of serial killer Larry Ralston. Grigsby is believed to have been abducted while hitchhiking in Clifton, Ohio on May 4, 1976. Her skeletal remains were discovered in woodland in Clermont County six months later. Grigsby's murderer is known to have become acquainted with her through drinking at a tavern frequented by both in the year prior to her disappearance.[137][138] | Murdered | 6 months |
| May 14th, 1976 | Randall Reffett | 15 | United States of America | On May 14, 1976, Randall Reffett disappeared in Chicago, Illinois, shortly after returning home from a dental appointment. Just hours after Reffett was last seen alive, Samuel Stapleton also vanished without a trace as he walked home from his sister's apartment; the two teenagers were close acquaintaces with each other. They were both murdered by John Wayne Gacy in the same evening and buried underneath his crawl space.[119] | Murdered | 2 years |
| Samuel Stapleton | 14 | 3 years | ||||
| June 3rd, 1976 | Michael Bonnin | 17 | United States of America | On June 3, 1976, Michael Bonnin disappeared while traveling from Chicago to Waukegan. He was killed by John Wayne Gacy, who strangled with him a ligature and buried him underneath his spare bedroom.[119] | Murdered | 2 years |
| June 9th, 1976 | David Stack | 18 | United States of America | Stack was a hitchhiker who was killed on June 9, 1976, by unknown assailants while travelling from Colorado to Utah, with his body found one day later in rural Tooele County. His body remained unidentified until 2015, and his killers remain unknown.[139] | Murdered | 39 years |
| June 13th, 1976 | William Carroll Jr. | 16 | United States of America | On June 13, 1976, John Wayne Gacy lured teenager William Carroll Jr. to his home; he was never seen alive again. Gacy shortly thereafter murdered him. Carroll was buried in a common grave in Gacy's crawl space.[119] | Murdered | 2 years |
| July 4th, 1976 | Dora Bloch | 74–75 | Uganda | Bloch was an Israeli-British citizen who was held hostage during the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 on June 27, 1976. She suffered an illness during the process and the plane was landed in Kampala, Uganda for treatment, but an indeterminate amount of time later, Bloch's body was found in a sugar plantation. It was determined that she had been killed on orders of then-President Idi Amin.[140] | Murdered | 3 years |
| July 17th, 1976 | Carol Ann Park | 30 | United Kingdom | British woman who went missing from her Cumbria home on 17 July 1976. Her husband, Gordon Park, did not report her disappearance for six weeks, claiming she had gone to live with another man. In 1997 amateur divers found her body in Coniston Water, where Park was known to sail, and her case became known as the "Lady in the Lake". Gordon Park was convicted of her murder.[141] | Murdered | 21 years |
| July 24th or 25th, 1976 | Cecelia Genatiempo | 17 | United States of America | High school student abducted, raped and murdered by serial killer John W. Hopkins. Her body was buried in a shallow grave, and was discovered by hunters three months later.[142] | Murdered | 3 months |
| July 28th, 1976 | John Roselli | 71 | United States of America | Roselli, a mobster in the Chicago Outfit, on April 23, 1976, was called before the committee to testify about a conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy.[143] Three months after his first round of testimony, the Committee wanted to recall Roselli, only to learn he had been missing since July 28, 1976. On August 3, Senator Howard Baker, a member of the new SSCIA, requested that the FBI investigate Roselli's disappearance.[143] On August 9, 1976, Roselli's decomposing body was found by a fisherman in a 55-gallon steel fuel drum floating in Dumfoundling Bay near Miami, Florida. | Murdered | 12 days |
| August, 1976 | Margarita Trlin | 21 | Argentina | Argentine architect who was kidnapped in August 1976 during the Dirty War and held in various detention centers, where she was physically and mentally tortured by military officers. She was later released following an Executive Decree.[144] | Found alive | 7 months |
| August 5th, 1976 | James Haakenson | 16 | United States of America | On August 5, 1976, James Haakenson was last heard phoning his family, possibly from John Wayne Gacy's home shortly before his murder. Haakenson died of suffocation. He remained unidentified for four decades, before his identification on July 19, 2017.[119] | Murdered | 40 years |
| August 6th, 1976 | Rick Johnston | 17 | United States of America | On August 6, 1976, just 24 hours after the murder of James Haakenson, Rick Johnston was also murdered by John Wayne Gacy. His body was buried in Gacy's crawl space on top of Haakenson's body.[119] | Murdered | 2 years |
| October 24th, 1976 | Kenneth Parker | 16 | United States of America | On October 24, 1976, teenage friends Kenneth Parker and Michael Marino disappeared after last being seen on Clark Street in Chicago, Illinois. They were abducted and killed by John Wayne Gacy.[119] | Murdered | 3 years |
| Michael Marino | 14 | |||||
| October 26th, 1976 | William Bundy | 19 | United States of America | On October 26, 1976, two days after the deaths of Kenneth Parker and Michael Marino, construction worker William Bundy also disappeared after informing his family he was to attend a party. He was suffocated by John Wayne Gacy. He remained unidentified for 35 years before his November 2011 identification.[119] | Murdered | 35 years |
| November 12th, 1976 | Renee MacRae | 36 | United Kingdom | Scottish woman Renee MacRae and her son Andrew were last seen on 12 November 1976. Their bodies have never been found. In September 2022, William MacDowell was found guilty of the murder of MacRae and her son and sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison.[145] | Murdered | Never found |
| Andrew MacRae | 3 | United Kingdom | ||||
| November, 1976 | Francis Alexander | 21 | United States of America | Sometime around c. December 1, 1976, Francis Alexander was murdered by John Wayne Gacy. His last contact with his family was a phone call to his mother sometime in November and his family did not report him missing as they believed he had moved to California shortly thereafter and started afresh. He remained unidentified for 44 years before having his identity confirmed on October 25, 2021.[119] | Murdered | 44 years |
| December, 1976 | Gregory Godzik | 17 | United States of America | In December 1976, Gregory Godzik disappeared. He was last seen alive by his girlfriend outside her house. Godzik had started working for John Wayne Gacy less than three weeks before his disappearance; he was later murdered by Gacy on December 12, 1976. Godzik's car was later found abandoned and his family had contacted Gacy about Godzik's disappearance, with Gacy claiming that Godzik had expressed desire to run away from home; he also claimed to have received an answering machine message from Godzik shortly after he had disappeared. When asked if he could play the message for Godzik's parents, Gacy said he had erased it.[119] | Murdered | 2 years |
| December, 1976 | Evelyn Colon | 15 | United States of America | The dismembered remains of Colon, a pregnant teenager from New Jersey, were found stuffed in several suitcases in White Haven, Pennsylvania in 1976. She remained unidentified for over four decades, known only as "Beth Doe". In 2021, she was officially identified, and in response, authorities arrested her then-boyfriend, Luis Sierra, and charged him with the murder. He is now awaiting trial for the murder.[146] | Murdered | 45 years |
| December 10th, 1976 | George Seitz | 81 | United States of America | George Seitz was an American military veteran of World War I who disappeared on December 10, 1976, in Jamaica in New York City after he was murdered. Some of his remains were discovered and identified in 2019.[147] Martin Motta pleaded guilty to his murder in October 2022, and received a 20-year sentence.[148] | Murdered | 43 years |
1977
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1977 | Gordon Sanderson | 26 | Canada | Gordon Sanderson's body was found in a septic tank in Lindbrook, Canada on April 13, 1977. He had been shot to death, possibly up to a year before his body was found. Until his identification in 2021, he was referred to as "Septic Tank Sam".[149] | Murdered | 44 years |
| January 15th, 1977 | Elaina Marie Bear | 15 | United States of America | Bear was the fourth victim of serial killer Larry Ralston; she disappeared while hitchhiking home. Her nude, frozen remains were discovered in a Clinton County creek bed six weeks later.[137] | Murdered | Six weeks |
| January 20th, 1977 | John Szyc | 19 | United States of America | On January 20, 1977, John Syzc was never seen alive again after being lured into John Wayne Gacy's car on the pretext of buying Syzc's Plymouth Satellite. Gacy later confessed to strangling the youth in his spare bedroom, as well as selling Szyc's car to an employee.[119] | Murdered | 1 year |
| January 27th, 1977 | Dagmar Hagelin | 17 | Argentina | Swedish-Argentine teenager who was kidnapped, tortured and later killed by Argentine military officers during the Dirty War on January 27, 1977. Her death is believed to be a result of mistaken identity.[150] | Murdered | Never found |
| February 4th, 1977 | Adriana Calvo | 30 | Argentina | Physicist, university professor and researcher who was kidnapped and detained by the Argentine military dictatorship on February 4, 1977. She was released together with her newborn daughter on April 28, and was the first witness to testify at the later Trial of the Juntas in 1985.[151] | Found alive | 2 months |
| March 15th, 1977 | Jon Prestidge | 20 | United States of America | On March 15, 1977, Jon Prestidge disappeared and was last seen alive exiting a Near North Side restaurant in Chicago. John Wayne Gacy likely murdered him in the hours that followed. Shortly before his disappearance, Prestidge had mentioned he had obtained work with a local contractor.[119] | Murdered | 1 year |
| April 5th, 1977 | Guido De Martino | 34 | Italy | Italian politician and member of the Socialist Party who was kidnapped and held hostage by the Camorra, but was released after the ransom of one billion lire was paid.[152] | Found alive | 6 weeks |
| May 7th, 1977 | Pilar Calveiro | 24 | Argentina | Argentine political scientist kidnapped by a member of the Air Force on May 7, 1977, and held in detention by the military dictatorship. After her release, she went into exile in Mexico, where she has continued work to this day.[153] | Found alive | 1 year, 6 months |
| May 15th, 1977 | Robert Nairac | 28 | United Kingdom | Nairac was a British Army officer in 14 Intelligence Company who was abducted from a pub in Dromintee, County Armagh, during an undercover operation on May 15, 1977, during his fourth tour of duty in Northern Ireland as a Military Intelligence Liaison Officer. It was later revealed that Nairac was killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Although several individuals were convicted of Nairac's murder, his body has never been found. He is one of three individuals murdered by the IRA whose graves have never been revealed.[154][155] | Murdered | 6 months |
| May 20th, 1977 | Javier Ybarra Bergé | 64 | Spain | Spanish industrialist and writer who was kidnapped by ETA separatists from his home in Bilbao on May 20, 1977. While he was initially held for ransom, Ybarra was later killed by his captors and his body dumped in a farmhouse, where he was located by authorities. His killers have never been apprehended.[156] | Murdered | 1 month |
| June, 1977 | Christine Thornton | 28 | United States of America | In June 1977, Christine Thornton disappeared in Biloxi, Mississippi. Her body was found in 1982 near Granger, Wyoming, but was not identified until 2015. Serial killer Rodney Alcala was charged with her murder in 2016.[157] | Murdered | 38 years |
| July 5th, 1977 | Matthew Bowman | 19 | United States of America | On July 5, 1977, Matthew Bowman disappeared after his mother last saw him at a suburban train station; he had intended to travel to Harwood Heights, Illinois for a court appointment. Shortly after vanishing, he was killed by John Wayne Gacy.[119] | Murdered | 1 year |
| July 15th, 1977 | Ellen Jane Hover | 23 | United States of America | On July 15, 1977, Ellen Jane Hover was murdered by Rodney Alcala, and her remains were discovered in 1978.[158] | Murdered | 1 year |
| July 25th, 1977 | Elizabeth Roberts | 17 | United States of America | Elizabeth Roberts, formerly known as "Precious Jane Doe", was a teenage girl who went missing on July 25, 1977[159] from Roseburg, Oregon and was found dead in Everett, Washington on 14 August 1977 after being murdered. She was not identified until 43 years later. | Murdered | 43 years |
| July 28th, 1977 | Emanuel Jaques | 12 | Canada | A 12-year-old Canadian boy of Portuguese ancestry who worked as a shoeshine boy in an impoverished district of Toronto. Jaques was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered by three men on July 28, 1977. He was murdered approximately twelve hours after his abduction. Three men were ultimately convicted of Jacques' murder, while a fourth was acquitted.[160] | Murdered | 4 days |
| September 5th, 1977 | Hanns Martin Schleyer | 62 | West Germany | German business executive and industry representative with SS ties who was kidnapped by RAF guerillas on September 5, 1977. His kidnappers demanded that the Germans free several of their members, but after learning that they had died in prison, they drove towards Brussels, executing Schleyer near Mulhouse, France, on October 18.[161] | Murdered | 1 month |
| September 15th, 1977 | Robert Gilroy Jr. | 18 | United States of America | 18-year-old Robert Gilroy Jr., the son of a Chicago police sergeant, was last seen alive on September 15, 1977. He was murdered by John Wayne Gacy and lived four blocks from Gacy's house. He was buried in Gacy's crawl space.[119] | Murdered | 1 year |
| September 25th, 1977 | John Mowery | 19 | United States of America | On September 25, 1977, former U.S. Marine John Mowery disappeared after leaving his mother's house. John Wayne Gacy strangled Mowery and buried his body beneath his master bedroom.[119] | Murdered | 1 year |
| October 17th, 1977 | Russell Nelson | 21 | United States of America | On October 17, 1977, Russell Nelson disappeared after last being seen outside a bar in Chicago, Illinois, looking for contracting work. He was never seen alive again. He was murdered by John Wayne Gacy and buried his body underneath his guest bedroom.[119] | Murdered | 1 year |
| November 9th, 1977 | Evelyn Jane King | 28 | United States of America | The fourth victim of the Hillside Stranglers. King was lured from a bus stop into her murderers' vehicle. Her body was discovered near the Los Feliz Boulevard off-ramp of the Golden State Freeway.[162] | Murdered | 2 weeks |
| November 10th, 1977 | Usharani Ganaison | 7 | Singapore | A seven-year-old schoolgirl who went missing after she went out running an errand for her father late in the night. Her family searched for her but to no avail, and they subsequently reported Usharani missing. The next day in the morning, Usharani was found dead nearby her home in Toa Payoh. An autopsy revealed the child had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. Her uncle, Kalidass Sinnathamby Narayanasamy, was arrested two days later and due to sufficient evidence linking him to the crime, Kalidass was sentenced to death for his niece's murder.[163][164][165][166] | Murdered | 1 day |
| November 10th, 1977 | Robert Winch | 16 | United States of America | On November 10, 1977, Robert Winch vanished without a trace and was murdered by John Wayne Gacy. He was buried in Gacy's crawl space.[119] | Murdered | 1 year |
| November 13th, 1977 | Dolores Cepeda | 12 | United States of America | Two school friends abducted by the Hillside Stranglers while returning home from the Eagle Rock Plaza on Colorado Boulevard in Southern California on November 13, 1977. Their strangled bodies were discovered close to the Dodger Stadium on November 20.[167] | Murdered | 1 week |
| Sonja Johnson | 14 | |||||
| November 18th, 1977 | Tommy Boling | 20 | United States of America | On November 18, 1977, 20-year-old Tommy Boling disappeared after leaving a bar in Chicago, Illinois. He was killed by John Wayne Gacy.[119] | Murdered | 1 year |
| November 25th, 1977 | Cheng Geok Ha | 10 | Singapore | Cheng Geok Ha was a ten-year-old schoolgirl abducted from a car park close to her home at Chai Chee, Singapore, on 25 November 1977. Her body was discovered beneath a manhole on 7 December. An autopsy revealed the child had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. Her neighbour, Quek Kee Siong, was later sentenced to death for Cheng's murder.[168][169] | Murdered | 12 days |
| December 9th, 1977 | David Talsma | 19 | United States of America | On December 9, 1977, U.S. Marine David Talsma disappeared after telling his mother he was to attend a rock concert in Hammond, Indiana. He was lured by John Wayne Gacy to enter his house and died by cause of ligature strangulation. He was buried in Gacy's crawl space.[119] | Murdered | 1 year |
1978
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | Ambrogio Fogar | 36–37 | Atlantic Ocean | Fogar, an Italian sailor, was stranded in the Atlantic Ocean after being capsized by orcas. He survived more than 10 weeks on a life raft with his friend and journalist Mauro Mancini, who died of pneumonia two days after they were rescued.[170] | Found alive | 2 months, 2 weeks |
| 1978 | Doina Bumbea | 28 | North Korea | Romanian painter who was kidnapped by North Korean agents while doing a supposed art exhibition in Pyongyang, North Korea. She was later forcefully married to American defector James Joseph Dresnok, with whom she had two children. She died of cancer in January 1997, having never returned to her homeland.[171] | Detained until her death | 19 years |
| 1978 | Harry Domela | 78 | Unknown | Latvian-German impostor who pretended to be a deposed crown prince, for which he was put on trial, but later acquitted. After experiencing a short term burst of popularity, he disappeared from public view until 1933, when it was learned through Dutch author Jef Last that he was living in the Netherlands under the pseudonym "Victor Zsajka".[172] After Domela was last seen alive in 1978[173] it has now been clarified that according to research done by Jens Kirsten who is a Weimar-based scholar that Domela had died in Maracaibo on October 4, 1979.[172] | Died (unknown cause) | 1 year |
| January 1st, 1978 | Nicholas Scibetta | 22 | United States of America | Scibetta was a New York mobster who was killed by his brother-in-law, Sammy Gravano and disappeared on New Years Day 1978. Part of the motive for the murder was that Scibetta was suspected of being gay. Scibetta was dismembered and except for an arm, his body was never found.[174] | Murdered | Never found |
| January 3rd, 1978 | Roberto Herrera Ibarguen | 57 | Guatemala | Guatemalan politician and member of the National Liberation Movement who was kidnapped and held hostage by a leftist militant group who accused him of organizing the murders of guerilla leaders and repressing teachers' strikes. He was released without incident after a ransom and a commander of theirs was released.[175] | Found alive | 27 days |
| January 8th, 1978 | Brian Glenfeldt | 17 | United States of America | Brian Glenfeldt and Belinda Worsley were both last seen leaving for a Youth-for-Christ meeting in Hialaeh, FL, but failed to meet friends at an ice cream parlor. The two youths were found dead with gunshot wounds in nearby forests. Serial killer John Errol Ferguson was apprehended on April 5th, 1978, and convicted of their murders as part of the Carol City murders. Ferguson was executed in 2013.[176] | Murdered | 2 days |
| Belinda Worley | 17 | |||||
| January 14th, 1978 | Choi Eun-hee | 26 | British Hong Kong | Choi, a South Korean actress, travelled to Hong Kong after being offered to direct a film and possibly work with a Hong Kong performing school. She was instead abducted to North Korea by agents of Kim Jong-il, where she was made to study and direct films with her ex-husband Shin Sang-ok, who was kidnapped 6 months after her. Choi was not aware she had been kidnapped until 5 years after the fact and was able to escape after 8 years of capture.[177] | Found alive | 8 years |
| January 23rd, 1978 | Édouard-Jean Empain | 41 | France | French-Belgian industrialist and the CEO of the Schneider-Empain industrial holding company, Empain was kidnapped[178] and held captive by a group of men, who demanded ransom in exchange for his release. Empain was eventually rescued and most of his abductors arrested, but left permanently traumatized by the event. | Found alive | 2 months |
| January 27th, 1978 | Manon Dubé | 10 | Canada | Canadian girl from Quebec who disappeared from her native village of Massawippi on January 27, 1978. Her body was found on March 24, but the cause of death was never ascertained. The National Post suggested that she had been kidnapped and murdered after having extensive research done on the evidence.[179][180] | Died (unknown cause) | 2 months |
| February 16th, 1978 | William Kindred | 19 | United States of America | On February 16, 1978, John Wayne Gacy killed 19-year-old William Kindred. Kindred disappeared after telling his fiancée, who knew Gacy, that he was going to a bar. He was the final victim to be buried in Gacy's crawl space.[119] | Murdered | 1 year |
| February 12th, 1978 | Giovanna Amati | 18 | Italy | Amati was kidnapped by a trio of French gangsters, led by Jean Daniel Nieto, and held for ransom, during which she was allegedly raped by the ringleader. She was released on April 27, 1978, after the ransom of 800 million lire was paid, but the kidnappers were all later caught, including Nieto, with whom Amati had fallen in love. She later became a professional racing driver and the most recent female driver to enter the Formula One World Championship.[181] | Found alive | 2 months, 2 weeks |
| April 8th, 1978 | Brendan Megraw | 23 | Northern Ireland | Megraw was abducted and murdered by the Provisional IRA on 8 April 1978. His body was discovered in 2014.[182] | Murdered | 36 years |
| May 23rd, 1978 | Charles Antonio Hattula | 25 | United States of America | On May 23, 1978, Charles Hattula was found deceased in the Pecatonica River near Freeport, Illinois. He had been missing since May 13. Des Plaines authorities had suspected that Hattula may have possibly been murdered by John Wayne Gacy; Hattula was known to have conflicts with Gacy. At the time of his death, Gacy had murdered at least 29 young men and boys and had disposed of many of the bodies in his crawl space. As no more bodies could fit in the crawl space, it left the possibility that he may have disposed of Hattula's body in the Pecatonica River. However, Des Plaines authorities were told Hattula had fallen to his death from a bridge, and his death was ruled as asphyxia by drowning. | Drowned | |
| May 25th, 1978 | Brian McKinney | 22 | Northern Ireland | McClory and McKinney were abducted and murdered by the Provisional IRA (PIRA) on May 25, 1978. Their remains were discovered in Colgagh Bog, County Monaghan, on 29 June 1999. McKinney is believed to have been murdered due to his having stolen weapons from the PIRA; McClory is believed to have been abducted due to his known association with McKinney.[183] | Murdered | 21 years |
| John McClory | 18 | |||||
| June 16th-23rd, 1978 | Timothy O'Rourke | 20 | United States of America | Sometime between June 16–23, 1978, Timothy O'Rourke disappeared after last being known to have left his apartment to purchase cigarettes. Shortly before his disappearance, O'Rourke had told his roommate a contractor on the Northwest Side of Chicago, Illinois, had offered him a job. He was murdered by John Wayne Gacy and his body was dumped into the Des Plaines River, as Gacy had no more space for bodies in his crawl space.[119] | Murdered | 6 months |
| June 18th, 1978 | Steven Hicks | 18 | United States of America | On June 18, 1978,[184] Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Mark Hicks, who was almost 19.[185][186] Dahmer lured the youth to his house on the pretext of drinking. Dahmer then bludgeoned and strangled Hicks to death before masturbating over his corpse. The following day,[187] Dahmer dissected Hicks' body in his basement. He later buried the remains in a shallow grave in his back yard.[188] After several weeks, he unearthed the remains and pared the flesh from the bones.[189] He dissolved the flesh in acid before flushing the solution down the toilet. He crushed the bones with a sledgehammer and scattered them in the woodland behind the family home.[190] | Murdered | 13 years |
| July, 1978 | Devonna Nelson | 15 | United States of America | Sometime in July, 1978, 15-year-old runaway Devonna Nelson went missing near Seattle, Washington, where serial killer Wayne Nance was active at the time. On February 27, 1980, her badly decomposed body was discovered by the crew of a slow-moving freight train on a road bank close to the Interstate 90 in the city of Missoula. Nelson's body was not identified until February 16th, 1985, and while Nance is suspected he has never been linked to her death.[191] | Murdered | 7 years |
| July 19th, 1978 | Shin Sang-ok | 26 | British Hong Kong | Shin, a South Korean film director, was abducted by North Korean agents on orders from Kim Jong-il in Hong Kong, where Shin had been looking for his ex-wife Choi Eun-hee, who had been kidnapped 6 months prior. After spending three years in prison, the pair were reunited and ordered to direct movies to boost the North Korean film industry, which they did until their escape in 1986.[177] | Found alive | 8 years |
| July 25th, 1978 | Raymond West | 72 | United States of America | A tax client allegedly murdered by extortionist James W. Lewis in July 1978. Although West's body was discovered in Lewis's attic, all charges filed against West were ultimately dropped due to police not reading him his rights and collecting evidence without a warrant.[192] | Murdered | 3 weeks |
| July 31st, 1978 | Kaoru Hasuike | 20 | Japan | Kaoru Hasuike and his then-girlfriend, Yukiko Okudo, were abducted by North Korean agents from Kashiwazaki, Niigata on July 31, 1978. The two eventually married in North Korea and gave birth to two kids before the family was repatriated to Japan in October 2002.[193][194] | Found alive | 24 years |
| August 12th, 1978 | Hitomi Soga | 19 | Japan | Hitomi Soga and her mother, Miyoshi, was abducted by North Korean agents from their home island of Sado on August 12, 1978. Hitomi was able to return to Japan in October 2002, and her American husband Charles Jenkins as well as their two daughters came to Japan in July 2004. Miyoshi, however, still has not returned to Japan.[195][196][197][198] | Found alive | 24 years |
| August 13th, 1978 | John Dawson Dewhirst | 26 | Democratic Kampuchea | John Dawson Dewhirst was a British teacher and amateur yachtsman. He disappeared after being captured and detained as a suspected spy by the Khmer Rouge on August 13, 1978. While the cause of death is unknown and a body has never been found, the former administrator of the prison Dewhirst was held in admitted that Dewhirst's body, among 9 other dead westerners, was burned to destroy evidence.[199] | Died (unknown cause) | Never found |
| August 22nd, 1978 | Marilee Bruszer | 33 | United States of America | Marilee Bruszer went missing on August 22, 1978, from Long Beach, California. In August 2015, a body that had been discovered in Utah in September 1978 was identified as hers. Her murder remains unsolved[200][201] | Murdered | 37 years |
| November, 1978 | Marlyse Honeychurch | 24 | United States of America | Marlyse Honeychurch and her two daughters, Sarah McWaters and Marie Vaughn, were last seen in November 1978 with a man claiming to be Bob Evans, who was later identified as serial killer Terry Peder Rasmussen. The bodies of Honeychurch and Vaughn were found in a metal drum near a burned down store in the Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire in 1985, while McWaters' body was found nearby in 2000 together with the previously unidentified Rea Rasmussen, whose DNA analysis showed that she was the daughter of Terry. The identities of the three other victims were not identified until 2019, and it is believed the four victims were murdered some time between 1977 and 1981.[130][202] | Murdered | 41 years |
| Marie Vaughn | 7 | |||||
| Sarah McWaters | 11 months | |||||
| November 3rd, 1978 | Theresa Allore | 19 | Canada | Theresa Allore was a Canadian college student who disappeared on November 3, 1978, from Champlain College Lennoxville in the Eastern Townships of Quebec and was found dead five months later.[203] | Murdered | 5 months |
| November 4th, 1978 | Frank Landingin | 19 | United States of America | On November 4, 1978, Frank Landingin was last seen alive by his father walking along Foster Avenue in Chicago, Illinois; he was killed by John Wayne Gacy later that day. Eight days after his disappearance, his naked body was found close to an inlet in the Des Plaines River by two duck hunters on November 12. He was identified on November 14; he was the first victim of Gacy's to be identified.[119] | Murdered | 10 days |
| November 24th, 1978 | James Mazzara | 20 | United States of America | On November 24, 1978, James Mazzara disappeared after Thanksgiving dinner with his family; he was last seen walking in the direction of Bughouse Square. Mazzara had informed his sister the day before his disappearance that he was working in construction. He was killed by John Wayne Gacy and his body was discarded in the Des Plaines River.[119] | Murdered | 1 month |
| December 11th, 1978 | Robert Piest | 15 | United States of America | In the late hours of December 11, 1978, teenager Robert Piest was working at the Nisson Pharmacy. He was approached by John Wayne Gacy, who mentioned that his firm often hired teenage boys almost double the pay Piest earned at the pharmacy. He lured the 15-year-old youth to his house and suffocated him. Gacy stated that Piest was "crying, scared", while also admitting to having received a phone call from a business acquaintance as Piest lay dying. He was dumped in the Des Plaines River. On April 9, 1979, a man walking along a Grundy County towpath discovered a decomposed body tangled in roots on the edge of the Des Plaines River. The body was identified via dental records as being that of Robert Piest the same evening.[119] | Murdered | 3 months |
| December 16th, 1978 | Kerry Graham | 15 | United States of America | Friends Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble disappeared on December 16, 1978, after leaving their homes in Forestville, California to visit a shopping mall in Santa Rosa. Their remains were discovered on July 8, 1979, approximately 80 miles north of Forestville, but they were not identified until November 2015 where their identities were confirmed via the use of DNA profiling.[204] Their murders have yet to be solved. | Murdered | 37 years |
| Francine Trimble | 14 | |||||
| December 20th, 1978 | Elena Holmberg | 47 | Argentina | Argentine diplomat and official of the military dictatorship who vanished on December 20, 1978. Her decomposed body was found over a month later, and positively identified by her cousin. It's believed that she had been assassinated by military officers on orders from Emilio Eduardo Massera, who believed that she had information that would reveal his connections to the Montoneros.[205] | Murdered | 1 month |
| December 29th, 1978 | Stephen Dean Holmes | 14 | United Kingdom | The first victim of serial killer Dennis Nilsen. Holmes was an Irish teenager whom Nilsen lured to his Cricklewood home upon the promise of drinking alcohol on the evening of December 29, 1978; he was strangled to death the following morning and his body later incinerated upon a bonfire. Holmes' identity was established in November 2006.[206] | Murdered | 28 years |
1979
| Date | Person(s) | Age | Country of disappearance | Circumstances | Outcome | Time spent missing or unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | Shirley Soosay | 34 | United States of America | Soosay was a Canadian Cree woman who was last seen by her family at her brother's funeral in 1977. She told her family she would be visiting Seattle, WA, and corresponded with the family by letter until they abruptly stopped in 1979. Soosay's body was discovered in an almond orchard, far from any road, in Delano, California, on July 14th, 1980. Soosay's niece, Violet Soosay-Wolfe, began searching for her that same year but Soosay's body would remain unidentified until 2020. Wilson Chouest was convicted of her murder in 2018 by linking DNA found on Soosay's unidentified body to another woman's murder.[207][208] | Murdered | 40 years |
| January 4th, 1979 | Diann Joyce Remington | 22 | United States of America | Remington was a Spokane Community College student who disappeared from her mother's home in Richland, Washington on January 4, 1979. Her body was found by goose hunters in a field near Benton City on December 29. Convicted kidnapper and murderer Stanley Bernson was convicted of her murder while jailed for an attempted stabbing.[209] | Murdered | 11 months |
| January 14th, 1979 | Marcia Moore | 50 | United States of America | Marcia Moore was an American writer, astrologer and yoga teacher who disappeared on January 14, 1979. Her remains were found two years later in the woods near her Washington home. Friends of Moore speculated that she may have been murdered, but authorities were not to able to determine a cause of death.[210] | Died (unknown cause) | 2 years |
| March, 1979 | Gerard Evans | 24 | Ireland | Gerard Evans disappeared in County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland in March 1979; his remains were found in October 2010 in the townland of Carrickrobin, near Hackballscross, County Louth.[211] | Murdered | 31 years |
| March-May, 1979 | Tammy Alexander | 15 | United States of America | Tammy Alexander disappeared some time in early 1979 after it is believed she ran away from her home in Hernando County, Florida. She was found dead, shot to death in a field, in the town of Caledonia, New York on November 10, 1979. She was not identified until 2015, over 35 years later, by a DNA match after an old school friend tried to locate her and a missing persons report was filed.[212] | Murdered | 35 years |
| March 29th, 1979 | Kathy Halle | 19 | United States of America | Halle disappeared while traveling to collect her sister from a North Aurora shopping center. Her body was discovered in the Fox River the following month. In 2024, police were able to use DNA evidence to link serial killer Bruce Lindahl to her murder.[213] | Murdered | 1 month |
| April 15th, 1979 | Harriet Simmons | 40 | United States of America | A victim of serial killer Terry Hyatt. Simmons was mother of seven and a night manager at a Raleigh restaurant. Simmons disappeared while travelling to her boyfriend's home on April 15, 1979. Her skeletal remains were discovered in the Pisgah National Forest on March 23, 1980.[214] | Murdered | 11 months |
| May 22nd, 1979 | Larry Perry | 9 | United States of America | The first known victim of Michael Carl George. Perry was lured from his grandparents' home in Dumfries, Virginia on May 22, 1979. His body was never found; however, George confessed to the crime in 1982. He later pleaded guilty to pleaded guilty to abduction and involuntary manslaughter. He was later executed for another murder.[215] | Murdered | 3 years |
| May 25th, 1979 | Etan Patz | 6 | United States of America | Etan Patz disappeared while on his way to school in lower Manhattan on May 25, 1979, and by 2001 he was considered legally dead. He was the first missing child featured on a milk carton.[216] In May 2012, authorities re-opened the case.[217] Pedro Hernandez, a former bodega stock clerk, was convicted in February 2017 of kidnapping and murdering the boy, based solely on his own confession. Neither Patz's body, which Hernandez said he put in the trash, nor any other relevant physical evidence was ever identified.[218] | Murdered | Never found |
| June 24th, 1979 | Lucinda Lynn Schaefer | 16 | United States of America | Schaefer disappeared on June 24, 1979 [219] from Redondo Beach, having been kidnapped by serial killer duo Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris.[220] Bittaker and Norris each raped her before strangling her to death, ignoring her requests to pray before being killed. Schaefer's body was thrown into a canyon and has yet to be found.[221] | Murdered | 2 years |
| July 11th, 1979 | Sally Ann McGrath | 22 | United Kingdom | British woman last seen in Cathedral Square, Peterborough at 2:45pm on 11 July 1979, after telling friends that she was heading to the nearby unemployment office. Her body was found in a shallow grave in a forest at Castor Hanglands, Cambridgeshire, in March 1980. It was not until 2012 that sex offender Paul Taylor was convicted of her murder.[222] | Murdered | 8 months |
| August 3rd, 1979 | Maya Fukushima | 5 | Japan | 5-year-old Maya Fukushima went missing from a shrine near her home in Ashikaga, Tochigi. Her body was found naked and stuffed in a backpack on the banks of the Watarase River. Fukushima's case is considered the first of the North Kanto Serial Young Girl Kidnapping and Murder Case, a series of unsolved kidnapping and murder cases of young girls in the Northern Kanto Region.[223] | Murdered | 6 days |
| August 5th, 1979 | Alison Chambers | 16 | United Kingdom | 16-year-old British child who lived in a children's home in Gloucester. She was a frequent visitor to the home of Fred and Rose West who lived in the city. Her disappearance in August 1979 was reported to the Missing Persons Bureau and initially to the police as an absconder from care. Her body was found in the home of the Wests in 1994. Along with 11 other women, she had been murdered by the couple.[60] | Murdered | 15 years |
| August 14th, 1979 | Gwenn Story | 19 | United States of America | A young Ohio native discovered stabbed to death in a Las Vegas, Nevada, parking lot on August 14, 1979. She had died hours prior to her discovery, but remained unidentified until December 2023. Her murder remains unsolved.[224] | Murdered | 44 years |
| August 27th, 1979 | Dori Ghezzi | 33 | Italy | Italian singer and the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest of 1975 who was kidnapped on August 27, 1979, and held for ransom together with fellow singer Fabrizio De André.[225] Both were held in the Supramonte mountains, but released after a ransom of 500 million lire was paid to the abductors. | Found alive | 4 months |
| August 30th, 1979 | Jean Seberg | 40 | France | Jean Seberg was an American actress who lived in France, and disappeared on August 30, 1979. Her body was found on September 8, 1979, wrapped in a blanket in the back seat of her Renault which was parked near her Paris apartment.[226] | Suicide | 9 days |
| November 10th, 1979 | Katarina Jakobsson | 29 | Sweden | On 10 November 1979, Katarina Jakobsson's father reported his daughter missing.[227] Her skeletal remains were retrieved during dives in Inre hamnen, Malmö during late January 1980.[228] In a confession to police, suspect Bengt Hjalmarsson admitted to having murdered and dismembered Jakobsson's corpse in November 1979, before disposing of her flesh by consuming it over the course of several meals.[229] | Murdered | 2 months |
| December, 1979 | Michelle Busha | 18 | United States of America | Busha was a Bay City, TX, woman last seen alive in December, 1979, on the way to Louisiana, having decided to travel the country with her friends the month prior. On May 26, 1980, then Minnesota State Trooper Robert Leroy Nelson picked Busha up outside of Bricelyn, MN; he then raped, beat, and ultimately strangled her to death, leaving her body in Blue Earth, Minnesota. Busha's body was discovered approximately 3-7 days later but would remain unidentified until 2015[230] | Murdered | 35 years |
| December 3rd, 1979 | Kenneth Ockenden | 23 | United Kingdom | Kenneth Ockenden, a Canadian student on a tour of the UK, was last seen in London on December 3, 1979.[231] In 1983, investigators discovered that he had become a victim of the serial killer Dennis Nilsen, who had invited him to his house and strangled him with a headphone cord.[231] Ockenden was one of the few victims of Nilsen who was widely reported as a missing person.[232] | Murdered | 4 years |
