ENDURING MYSTERIES
5 unsolved stories of people who vanished, from Roanoke to Hoffa
In 1962, three prisoners escaped from the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary and were never found.
Investigators with the Oakland County sheriff's department dig with the aid of a metal detector around the edge of a backyard pool July 16, 2003, in Hampton Township, mich., as they search for clues to the disappearance of ex-Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.
Hoffa
FBI artist rendering of D.B. Cooper
US HISTORY
They seemed to vanish into thin air.
A famed aviator. A hijacker who exchanged cash for passengers' lives. A labor leader linked to the Mafia. Three men who escaped from a prison thought to be escape-proof. An entire settlement full of English colonists.
Why do these mysteries still vex and fascinate us?
Americans "like the question," said Derek Arnold, a professor at Villanova University who teaches a course on conspiracy theories. "The story is art. The science is realism, and a lot of people would rather have the story than the explanation."
"The theories are fun," he noted. These "ultimate mysteries," he said, give us an opportunity to piece together our own narrative working from clues left for us. "We take those clues and create what we think might have happened, even as we get more refined theories," Arnold said.
Missing aviator
Amelia Earhart was already famous for her aviation exploits when she and navigator Fred Noonan tried to fly around the globe, beginning their journey May 21, 1937, in Oakland, Calif.
Near the end of the trek, the pair disappeared July 2 after Earhart messaged the Coast Guard to say her plane was nearly out of fuel.
On Jan. 5, 1939, Earhart and Noonan were declared legally dead. They and the plane remain missing.
Researchers traveled this year to the tiny, remote island of Nikumaroro, where a mysterious object attracted speculation that it may be the lost aviator's Lockheed Electra 10E. The visual anomaly known as the "Taraia object," was discovered via satellite imagery in the island's lagoon.
On Oct. 19, the team said it found no conclusive evidence linking the object to Earhart's plane.
Labor leader
Jimmy Hoffa was president of the Teamsters union from 1957 to 1971, arguably the most powerful labor leader of the 20th century.
However, his connections to the Mafia ultimately led to a conviction on jury tampering, attempted bribery and fraud charges. He served time in prison, but President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence in 1971 — on the condition that Hoffa refrain from union activity until 1980, according to the Detroit Historical Society.
His disappearance on July 30, 1975, from a Michigan restaurant parking lot fueled decades of speculation.
Most believe he was taken and murdered by mobsters to keep him away from the Teamsters. Speculation about his (or his remains') whereabouts continue to this day. He was legally declared dead in 1982.
The FBI's Detroit Field Office continues to investigate the case, it said as recently as last year.
Lost colony
More than 100 men, women and children set out from England in 1587 on a small ship to establish the first English settlement in North America. After 10 weeks, they landed at Roanoke Island off what is now North Carolina. Surviving in the New World proved incredibly difficult — though not without some joy, like the August 18, 1587, birth of Virginia Dare, the first English baby born in America.
The colonists clashed with Indigenous tribes and worried about a lack of reliable food sources, according to the National Park Service.
Nine days after Virginia Dare was born, according to the North Carolina History Project, John White, the colony's leader and her grandfather, returned to England to seek provisions and help from Sir Walter Raleigh, who'd led prior New World expeditions.
What White thought would be a three-month trip turned into three years due to a Spanish Armada attack in 1588. When he finally returned to Roanoke in 1590, he found the colony abandoned and the word "CROATOAN" carved into a wooden post. There have been numerous efforts to ascertain the fate of the "lost colony." Theories include the colonists' massacre by a native tribe, their assimilation (voluntary or forced) into a tribe, mass starvation or disease.
Working from a map White drew for Raleigh in 1585, archaeologists found a pair of sites near the Chowan River and the Albemarle Sound about 50 miles from Roanoke. They discovered shards of 16th century English pottery and other artifacts and believe the sites were "part of a larger, dispersed settlement of farms along the Chowan River, where 117 immigrants established their New World home."
Alcatraz escapees
Perched on a rocky outcropping in the San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz seemed impenetrable and escape-proof. Originally the site of a military fort, then a military prison, it opened as a federal prison in 1934, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
According to the bureau, 36 men were involved in 14 separate escape attempts; 23 were caught, six were shot and killed as they tried to escape and two drowned.
On June 11, 1962, two brothers, John and Clarence Anglin, and a third man, Frank Morris, "vanished from their cells," the BOP notes on its website.
Morris, in prison for bank robbery and burglary, was the mastermind, according to the FBI. The men used homemade drills and dummy heads — complete with human hair — in their beds. Climbing through vents they'd made bigger and concealing the passages with fake wall pieces, they shimmied up utility poles to the roof, then back down a drainpipe before making their way to the water.
Prison authorities believed they then used life vests improvised from prison-issued raincoats and a pontoon-type raft.
The tools they'd used to escape were later discovered, along with two life vests, oars, letters and photos, but the men were never found.
Weeks later, a man's body, clothed in blue material like a prison uniform, was found up the coast, but it was too badly decomposed to be identified. "Morris and the Anglins are officially listed as missing and presumed drowned," the BOP website says.
The FBI officially closed the case on Dec. 31, 1979, turning it over to the U.S. Marshals Service. Alcatraz ceased operating as a penitentiary in 1963.
Hijacker who got away
A man who called himself Dan Cooper approached an airline counter in Portland, Ore., on Nov. 24, 1971, and bought a one-way ticket to Seattle. He looked unremarkable, quiet and seemed to be in his 40s, wearing a suit and tie.
Later, he handed a flight attendant a note for the pilot, claiming he had a bomb and would detonate it unless he was given four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills.
When the plane landed in Seattle, Cooper let its 36 passengers go in exchange for the cash and parachutes, then ordered the remaining crew to fly to Mexico City.
A little after 8 p.m., Cooper jumped out of the plane somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nevada, with a parachute on his back and the cash in hand. The pilots later landed the plane safely.
Investigators aren't sure the man, also known as D.B. Cooper, survived the jump into the rough, wooded area. That theory was bolstered by a 1980 discovery of $5,800 in rotting $20 bills whose serial numbers matched the money he absconded with. Still, the FBI says, "The daring hijack and disappearance remain an intriguing mystery."
