There were a few on this list that I wasn’t aware of, and I had completely forgotten about Hunter Thompson’s crazy buddy, Dr. Gonzo, aka The Brown Buffalo, nee Oscar Zeta Acosta.
Seven famous people who disappeared
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This kind of list always had Judge Crater and Roald Amundsen on it. I guess DOGE cut the list from 10 to 7. I heard Top 40 radio has been slashed down to Top 19
The excellent Italian/Soviet movie from 1969 ‘The Red Tent’ about the dirigible/airship The Italia fictionalized Roald Amundsen to give him an ironic ending rather than the factual ending. I guess when you hire Sean Connery to play the character, you need a far more dramatic ending than ‘he disappeared.’
Also, left off the list are Representatives Begich and Boggs whose plane disappeared in Alaska in 1972. I think there was at least one other person with them.
This is even more proof of the existence of aliens.
Rico Harris remains one of the most puzzling to me. A former Harlem Globetrotter stops at a park to do some sightseeing, and vanishes forever. His phone was found with inadvertent videos of him driving in his car alone, throwing CD’s around, drinking, singing, and acting very strangely. He was seen briefly at the park and his giant footsteps were found on a bridge over a small creek. His backpack with all his possessions was later found many miles away on the side of the road. He was never seen or heard from again. How does a 6’8″ giant go missing?!
David Paulides is the author of a number of books about people who have gone missing in parks called the Missing 411 series and this case fits right in. There are those who criticize Paulides and claim that he is a fraud who alters the evidence in the cases when necessary and that there is nothing unusual (in a statistical sense) with a relatively small number of people going missing in parks in the United States every year.
Their explanation to many of Paulidies cases (and I don’t know if it’s correct or not or would fit this situation) is that there are far more caves in parks than people, even experienced park users/hikers… recognize and that these caves are far larger and complicated that people realize, so that most likely most of those who have disappeared simply ignorantly decided to check out a cave, or even fell into a cave and, given this, were obviously never seen again.
I gather Paulidies, who is familiar with the situation of caves in parks, disputes this theory, but it is more prosaic than the theory Paulidies leans towards, which is indeed of alien abductions.
Onr more point on the caves, in that they were obviously never seen again: I have no sense of direction personally, but in a cave it can be completely pitch black and even people who have a great sense of direction say that they get totally confused and lost immediately when in a pitch black cave. Combine that with panic and maybe with the weird accoustics of a cave for a person who is shouting, and it probably does make sense that people in parks go get lost in caves or fall into them. Obviously if they fall into them, they’re likely to suffer an injury as well which makes the situation even more dire.
Of course, irrespective, us in the know know that it’s the aliens who are putting the missing into the caves.
Not Rico though. Dying in a cave was more likely Robert William Fisher’s fate, lol. Rico had been a recovering alkie, fired from the Globetrotters for boozing, trying to get his life together. He was driving cross country for a job interview his GF got him. He drove halfway and called her saying he was gonna stop at a state park for the scenery. That was the last time he was heard from. His car was found in the park lot, completely out of gas and a total mess inside. He’d obviously been in the park, was seen there, but evidently walked away. We know that because his backpack was found a long way away from there. The accidental videos on his phone paint a picture of a guy who evidently decided he didn’t want to finish his journey, fell off the wagon, went to the park for maybe one last look at nature’s beauty, then walked on down the road, disposing of his backpack along the way and disappearing forever. Looks like he most likely gave up on his life and offed himself, but no trace of him was ever found after a massive search. So the usual theories persist like he’s still alive somewhere living as someone else, or was kidnapped & killed, etc. But the evidence they found on his phone of weird behavior, along with common sense that his life was mostly broken and probably felt hopeless to him, pretty much reveal that he checked out on his own. But where does a guy that big go to vanish? Who knows, maybe you’re right, maybe he found a cave somewhere, or a remote body of water. Seems obvious though: he didn’t his body to be found.
Paulides does make mountains out of molehills, but there’s a lot of fucking molehills in our state parks. I think the lesson is how easy it is to vanish in the wilderness. Nature will just swallow you up. Fast.
Even when they find remains, it can be very minimal, spread out, and I’m conditions worse than your average ancient burial ground.
People always get on about how we should be finding bigfoot corpses, but we don’t really find ANY corpses in the wilderness. They get reduced to bone fragments with a speed that’s terrifying.
But yeah. Unlike in civilization, there are just too many instances of “they were there literally one second then completely vanished the next” that defy all explanation. Even people they find, unlike in civilization, there are a bunch of instances of missing people being found, alive, MILES from where they went missing. Toddlers and shit.
Acosta is a great story. Fear and Loathing actually happened when Thompson and Acosta fled LA for awhile to avoid being killed by the LAPD, the Hell’s Angels, or both.
By the time Acosta left on his boating excursion, the list of people who wanted him dead was long.
Did he just boat to Mexico, scuttle it, and live out his life in some beachside town? Or were his pursuers waiting for him, and he’s at the bottom of the Pacific? Or did he just get shitfaced and wreck his own boat?
We’ll likely never know, and that’s interesting.
Apparently Glenn Miller disappeared so thoroughly they had to use a photo of Jimmy Stewart portraying him from his biopic in the article.
Michael Rockefeller didn’t make the list?
of course harkening back to another list, DB Cooper