6 People Who Just Fucking Disappeared
If you want to achieve immortality, the easiest way is to first rise to prominence, and then just completely disappear off the face of the earth. Think about it--would you have ever heard of Jimmy Hoffa otherwise? The man's been gone for 30 years and they're still trying to find his ass.
Well, here's six more people who seemed intent on giving Hoffa a run for his money:
D.B. Cooper
Who was he?
On November 24, 1971, a man boarded a plane in Portland under the mundane fake name of Dan Cooper (we would have gone with "Viktor Blimpmuscle" or "Saxon Wolfcock" but to each his own). He was dressed in heavy clothing and sunglasses and had a bomb in his suitcase. This was in an innocent time before anyone realized passengers should be checked for that sort of thing, so security was based on the honor system.
Mr. Cooper sat down and handed a note to a stewardess telling her the plane was being hijacked and that he had a bomb (hijackers weren't nearly as rude back then). He demanded $200,000 and four parachutes upon arrival in Seattle.
This is the point in most hijackings where the plane lands and a police sniper shoots the hijacker in the head. Cooper, however, had a plan.
Once on the ground Cooper let all the passengers off (keeping three crew members on board to fly the plane) and in exchange, he got his cash and parachutes. He ordered the pilot to take off once more, while the FBI could only stand on the tarmac below and shake their fists up at the sky.
Cooper and the crew flew to Reno, Nevada, where he forced them to fly the plane low and slow, which are parachutin' conditions. Cooper lowered the rear stairs, jumped out, and was never seen again. All he left behind were two of the parachutes and his tie.
When the police couldn't find the body or the parachutes they started hauling in everyone and their hijacker-looking friends. The list of suspects was at one point around 1,000 people. The first suspect they dragged in was a Portland man named D.B. Cooper who was quickly cleared as a suspect, although the media ran his name as the hijacker's alias (again, all this could have been avoided if he picked an alias like "Brock Meatstone" or "Senator Samson Loveblast").
What They Say Happened:
Officially the FBI has stated that Cooper didn't survive the jump. The FBI reached this conclusion based on the fact that Cooper appeared to be a card carrying idiot, seeing as how he jumped in the middle of a heavy rainstorm and could have had no idea of where he was going to land (he was somewhere northeast of Portland when he jumped). In 1980 a local boy found $5,880 of Cooper's ill-gotten cash washed up on the shores of the Columbia River. The FBI figured the money meant he was either dead or got mugged by Bigfoot.
What We Think Happened:
We'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he landed. We like to think that immediately after, he was accosted by a group of mountain men who did indescribable things to him. They then took his money, moved to Seattle and opened the first Starbucks.
Ambrose Small
Who was he?
Ambrose Small was a Canadian theater tycoon, which is several stages below "Nigerian pogo-stick tycoon" in the tycoon hierarchy. At his height he owned virtually all the theaters in eastern Canada, which he was able to acquire with the help of his wife, a heiress to a brewery fortune. He was also known for being a gambler, a womanizer and openly hating poor people. He was equally known for being a possible walrus hybrid.
In 1919 he decided to get out of the theater business, selling his properties for $1.7 million. The day after he sold all his properties he left his lawyer's office and was never seen again. Your thinking to yourself, "Well he was a rich asshole with enemies, someone probably killed him for his money!" The only problem is that his money was left untouched.
The police were baffled. There was no ransom note and no motive for Ambrose to leave the country without his cash. The police tore the country apart and found nothing, which is what you would expect to find in Canada.
His wife became a suspect, as Ambrose had several mistresses who rode the walrus over the years in a secret room he had built into his office. She was cleared as a suspect and would later donate the money to the Catholic Church.
What They Say Happened:
When they couldn't find anything, the Canadian police followed their SOP and contacted some crazy people claiming to be psychics. The popular theory among them was that Ambrose suddenly came down with a case of amnesia and in his forgetful state, he decided to fucking hide from everyone. They finally closed the case in 1960 after exhaustive Canadian research concluding that if he wasn't already dead, then he would be really fucking old.
Today people claim that his ghost haunts two of the theaters that he used to own, at least until they're torn down to build a couple more Tim Hortons.
What We Think Happened:
He was shamed by his lifestyle and decided to leave the money behind, stored up on blubber and went back to his kind.
Judge Joe Crater
Who was he?
Joseph Force Crater was your average 1930s man: hard working and had a middle name that could kick your middle name's ass.
In April of 1930, he was appointed as an Associate Judge to the New York Supreme Court by future president FDR. Life was looking up for Crater. He had a wife, a good job, a mistress and more potential for corruption than a Teamsters Union President could shake a stick at.
But while he may have been smart enough to become a judge, he hid his corruption with the subtlety of a coked-up elephant driving a semi through an elementary school. Or with all the subtlety of someone named Joe Force Crater.
Not to be confused with the wrestler of the same name
He repeatedly went on "long business trips" away from his wife and made a habit of storing briefcases full of money in his office.
He was last seen on August 6, 1930 entering a cab after having dinner with his mistress. He disappeared along with the contents of his safety deposit box and two briefcases full of money. Most experts figure that because he had the criminal mind of chimp with a railroad spike through its head, he fled to either escape before he was arrested or was killed by the mob.
What They Say Happened:
In 2005, the police received a letter saying that someone knew where the body was buried and who did it. The letter said that he was buried under what currently is the New York Aquarium and named several cops and mobsters as the killers. Crater's mistress was also believed to be involved, although she also disappeared a couple months after Crater. Sadly for her the concept of a disappearing people had already lost its novelty amongst the American public.
The cops came forward and said that they found a body at that site in the 1950s, but not recognizing it as Crater, dumped it in a pile of other unknown bodies and buried them all together. Sure, they could dig through all those unknown remains to run DNA tests, but experts note that the task sounded like a huge pain in the ass.
What We Think Happened:
In his short story The Reapers Image, Stephen King claims that Crater looked into a Death Mirror that caused him to disappear. Who are we to argue with the man?
Boris Weisfeiler
Who was he?
Boris Weisfeiler was a Soviet mathematician who fled to the United States in the '70s. We think he was kind of a mathematical Yakov Smirnoff.
In the math world he is known for the Weisfeiler-Leman Algorithm and Kac-Weisfeiler conjectures. We here at Cracked have more important and sexier things to do than to explain to you what these things mean, just assume that we'd all be dead if he hadn't figured these things out.
Anyway, sometime around Christmas 1985, Weisfeiler decided that it would fun to romp around Chile for awhile, which back then was run by the CIA-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet. During his rule, the country's major tourist attraction were the hours of fun deciding whether you wanted to be killed by guerrillas or the government. Like many people who lived in Chile at the time, Boris Weisfeiler disappeared.
Pinochet often posed as if being photographed for a rap album cover
When people started to notice that he was missing, the Chilean government immediately declared that he had drowned. They didn't have any evidence for this claim, but that's what's awesome about running a dictatorship: You can say pretty much whatever you want.
What They Say Happened:
In 1990 a Chilean informant said that Weisfeiler was abducted by the government when they suspected him of being a Russian spy. He was allegedly held prisoner in the Dignidad colony, a German colony that was run by a child molesting Nazi named Paul Schafer, which the Chilean secret police used to interrogate prisoners.
The Chilean governments since Pinochet have made some half-assed attempts to find Weisfeiler as one of the 1,000 or so other people who turned up missing during Pinochet's reign. They came up with a few people and then called it quits, not really wanting to follow a trail that may very well end at Nazi child molesters.
What he may look like today. Or not.
What We Think Happened:
Weisfeiler and the other 999 missing built an underground civilization to protect them from the race of child molesting Nazi's they believe took over the world. They live on to this day, spending their days battling off C.H.U.D and various British explorers who are trying to drill to the center of the Earth.
The entire ship and crew of the USS Cyclops
Who were they?
They were the crew of the USS Cyclops, a bunch of rough and tumble badass Navy men who protected America from foreign enemies and mythical sea creatures. We think, that or they spent their time performing campy musicals. Not much is known about the crew, but we'll be optimistic about it.
The Cyclops was on its way back to Maryland in 1918 when it made an unexpected two-day stop in Barbados, they shipped off and all 306 crew members and the whole fucking ship were never seen again. To date it is the largest loss of life in a non-combat situation in Navy history. You can thank us when you've won $400 on Jeopardy.
What They Say Happened:
Did we mention that they were believed to have disappeared either in or near the Bermuda Triangle? So most people are working under the assumption they were sucked into another dimension or some shit.
What We Think Happened:
We're going to take it a step further, and say that with a name like the USS Cyclops and the Bermuda Triangle all coming together, we can only assume one thing: the wrath of Poseidon.
Amelia Earhart
Who was she?
For those of you who crawl under your bed during Women's History Month (March, for those of you with misogynist calendars), Amelia Earhart was one of the most famous female pilots in the world and staunch advocate of women's rights. And without a doubt, no woman before or since has done a better job of disappearing without a trace.
Earhart was already famous for being the first woman to be flown across the Atlantic. She didn't actually do any flying, her job was to keep the flight log. Upon returning to America she became an instant celebrity, going on lecture tours and receiving various product endorsements, including Lucky Strike cigarettes. "After a long day of sitting in a plane, a woman needs to cool down with that fine flavor she knows and loves."
When she wasn't sitting in planes and hooking young girls on cigarettes, she took the time to break several aviation records on her own. Finally in 1937 she vowed to fly around the world, much to the chagrin of hot air balloon tycoons everywhere. After a shaky couple of starts and stops she (along with her co-pilot Fred Noonan) took off from Howland Island. The last anyone heard from either of them was a couple of broken radio transmissions. Contrary to what you'd think, the final transmission was not, "Oh, shiiiiiiit!!!!"
Seen here with Aero, the first dog to fly solo across the Pacific
What They Say Happened:
Since neither the plane nor the pilots were found, most experts assumed they crashed and sank. Other people figured she landed on an island some 300 miles from where she took off, spending her days befriending volleyballs and building coconut radios.
What We Think Happened:
Eaten by the Swiss Family Robinson.
