The Most Disturbing Stories of People Going Missing

Absolutely, mysteries like these capture our imagination and intrigue us with their unresolved nature. They often invite speculation, theories, and sometimes even fear or fascination. What do you find most intriguing about unsolved mysteries like these?But some of the most disturbing mysteries out there are the stories of ordinary people vanishing into thin air. Maybe they went for a hike, or a bike ride. Maybe they went on a cruise. Or perhaps they were simply spending a quiet night alone at home. Whatever the reason, they disappeared and were never seen again. We always assume it could never happen to us, but then again… didn't the missing people likely assume the exact same thing? It's the stuff of nightmares, these unsolved disappearances, and yet we just can't seem to look away. We theorize, we investigate, and we compile lists into YouTube videos. Today, we're delving deep into some of the most disturbing stories of people going missing. If you've ever been up late at night, perusing lists of the most disturbing real images ever captured on film, chances are you've seen a photograph of a young woman and a boy, bound and gagged with black tape over their mouths, but you may not know the context. This haunting image has been connected to the disappearance of a young woman named Tara Calico. It was the morning of September 20, 1988, and 19-year-old Tara Calico left her home in Valencia County, New Mexico, to go for a bike ride. She took the same route every day along New Mexico State Road 47. Tara's mother, Patty, sometimes rode with her, but after an incident with a car driving aggressively close to her, Patty had been leaving Tara to take the ride by herself. She suggested that Tara bring some mace with her for self-defense, but Tara didn't think she needed it. After all, she'd been taking that same route for years with no issues. As she left, Tara joked to her mother that she had better come out and look for her if she wasn't back by noon. After all, she had a tennis date with her boyfriend at 12:30 and didn't want to miss it. It was only a joke, but when noon rolled around, Tara was still not home. She had disappeared in broad daylight on the route she had biked for years. Patty drove up and down the route that afternoon, searching for any sign of the missing girl, but couldn't find a thing. She called the police, and a search party was put together, but neither her bike nor Tara herself were found. A few witnesses remembered seeing Tara, and a couple recalled a light-colored pickup truck driving down the road at the same time, but no one saw any signs of foul play. The only signs that Tara had ever been there at all were pieces of her broken walkman, along with a cassette tape, found on the ground. At first, police suspected that the girl was a runaway. But according to John Doel, Tara's stepfather, as well as Patty, Tara was a happy girl with no reason to do something like that. The couple were heartbroken, waiting for any evidence that might lead them to Tara. On June 15, 1989, nearly nine months after Tara first vanished, an unlikely and disturbing clue surfaced. A Polaroid picture was found in a convenience store parking lot in Port St. Joe, Florida, 1500 miles from where Tara had been riding her bike. In the photo, a teenage girl and young boy were lying on sheets and a pillow, bound and with duct tape over their mouths. The woman who found the picture called the police and described a white Toyota van that had been parked in the spot before she arrived. Its driver was a man in his thirties with a mustache. Police attempted to catch the vehicle with a roadblock but could not find it or its driver. The photograph quickly gained national prominence, and caught the attention of friends of Patty, who believed it could be Tara. There was some debate as to whether or not the girl in the photograph was Tara, but certain details led Patty to believe that it was. The girl had a discolored streak on her thigh, just like a scar Tara had gotten in a car accident. There was a V.C. Andrews paperback next to her, one of Tara's favorite writers. Authorities weighed in next and were divided on the subject. The Los Alamos National Laboratory did not believe it was Tara, while the FBI could not reach a definitive conclusion. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard in the United Kingdom agreed that the girl in the photo was Tara. No matter who the girl in the photo was, the picture had certainly been taken recently, no later than May of that same year. Soon after, the young boy in the Polaroid was identified as nine-year-old Michael Henley, whose family came forward. Michael disappeared while on a hunting trip with his father in New Mexico in April 1988. Now, his family was convinced their son was in this photo. However, in 1990, Michael's body was found seven miles from the campsite where he disappeared. He had died from exposure before the Polaroid had even been taken. To this day, Tara Calico's disappearance remains unsolved. In 2008, the Valencia County Sheriff claimed to know what had happened to Tara. He said that two men, teenagers at the time, were following Tara on her bike when an accident occurred. In a panic, they disposed of her body and covered it up. However, with no body, no arrest could be made. There has been little to support these claims since 2008. Over the years, some additional Polaroid photographs have appeared, which could have depicted Tara Calico. One, a blurry photo of a girl's face with tape over the mouth, found near a construction site in Montecito, California, and taken sometime after May 1989, compelled Patty. She believed this could be an additional image of her daughter. The other, a picture of a woman sitting next to a man on an Amtrak train, bound and with her eyes covered, was taken around February of 1990. Patty did not believe this photo to be of Tara. More than thirty years after her disappearance, Tara's case remains unsolved, with nothing to go on other than a smattering of uncertain evidence and a haunting Polaroid picture. In June of 2023, however, there was a ray of light through all these exceedingly dark clouds. The Valencia County Sheriff’s Office announced they’d made a break in the case, with Sheriff Denise Vigil saying, “At this time, law enforcement believes there is sufficient evidence to submit this investigation to the district attorney's office for review of potential charges. Currently, the identities and specifics of the persons of interest are sealed by the court and will remain so until a court order otherwise.” We’re still waiting for updates on that one. When we think of disappearances, we tend to assume that they occurred somewhere remote. The dense forests of a national park or a ship in the middle of the ocean. But sometimes, someone can vanish from within the walls of a place that millions of people consider holy, sacred, and presumably safe. Emanuela Orlandi, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a Vatican official, left home to attend her flute lesson on June 22, 1983. She reached class safely and called her sister after it ended, but she never made it back home. She was declared missing the next day, and the search began for the girl who had gone missing in the Vatican. On June 25, a tip was called in describing a girl with a flute and wearing clothing matching Orlandi's at the time of her disappearance. According to his story, she was in Rome, calling herself Barbarella, and had run away from home to sell Avon. This was a dream that she had previously mentioned to her sister. Another tip came in on June 28, in which a man told authorities he had met a girl named Barbara, a runaway, who he had encountered at a bar near the music school where Orlandi's flute lessons were given. However, she could not be tracked down, and the theories surrounding the case began to get stranger and stranger. Other tips poured in, claiming that a Turkish terrorist group called the Grey Wolves had kidnapped Orlandi as part of a conspiracy to hold her hostage and exchange her for an assassin. But there were also theories involving the Mafia presence in the surrounding area, as well as the Vatican itself. The ex-girlfriend of Enrico De Pedis, leader of the Rome-based crime syndicate Banda della Magliana, claimed that he had once confided in her about kidnapping Orlandi with plans to hold her for ransom. However, there has never been concrete evidence linking him to the disappearance. Another extremely upsetting theory comes from Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's chief exorcist. He claims that Orlandi was taken as part of a plot by the Vatican, police, and local lawmakers to sexually traffic young women. He said on the subject, "This was a crime with a sexual motive. Parties were organized, with a Vatican gendarme acting as the ‘recruiter’ of the girls. The network involved diplomatic personnel from a foreign embassy to the Holy See. I believe Emanuela ended up as a victim of this circle.” None of these theories have been linked to definitive proof. Since her disappearance, her family has been primarily focused on locating her body so that they can have some sort of closure. In 2019, the Orlandi family's lawyer, Laura Sgro, received a bizarre letter containing a photograph of a tomb beneath the Vatican and the ominous instructions, "Look where the angel is pointing." This referred to the marble angel placed there. The tomb was searched, but no human remains were found there. In fact, the tomb was completely empty, according to Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti. The Vatican's cooperation with this part of the investigation came as a surprise to Orlandi's sister, Pietro. According to him, when he asked Pope Francis for help in 2013, the only response he received was that his sister was "in heaven." The Orlandi family is determined to continue the search as long as they can, until they can find answers about what happened to Emanuela all those years ago. From holy places to cursed places, some locations just seem to be a magnet for misfortune. Most of us have heard of the Bermuda Triangle, but how about the Bennington Triangle? The term, coined in 1992 during a radio appearance by New England Author Joseph A. Citro, refers to an area in southwestern Vermont in which several people went missing between 1945 and 1950. The name refers to Bennington, Vermont, and Bennington College and draws a deliberate parallel between the disappearances there and the ships that vanished in the Bermuda Triangle. One of the most infamous disappearances that occurred in the Bennington Triangle is that of a young woman named Paula Welden. Paula Welden, 18 years old, was a sophomore at Bennington College, where she lived an ordinary, quiet student life until one brisk winter day on December 1, 1946. After working a double shift at her job in the university's dining hall, she told her roommate, Elizabeth Johnson, that she wanted to go out and take a hike on the Long Trail, a five-mile portion of a 272-mile trail, this section of which runs up Glastenbury Mountain. It was about 2:45 PM, cold out and likely to get colder as the sun set that evening, and Paula was dressed in blue jeans, a red parka with a fur-lined hood, and a pair of Top-Sider sneakers. As she prepared to leave, Paula called out to Johnson: "I'm all through with studies. I'm taking a long walk." Those would be the last words Paula's roommate would ever hear her speak. Shortly after Paula left her room, she was spotted by Danny Fager, the owner of a local gas station across the street from the college. Fifteen minutes later, a local man named Louis Knapp saw a girl in a red parka hitchhiking along Route 67A near the college. Realizing she was likely a Bennington student in need of a ride, he stopped to pick her up. Aside from the red coat and the girl's clumsiness- she tripped on her way into his truck, and he advised her to be careful. She told him she was on her way to hike the Long Trail, and so he dropped her off on Route 9, near the trail's entrance, before pulling into his driveway at home. A few minutes after Knapp dropped Paula off, his daughter went outside, but there was no sign of the hitchhiker. This struck her as odd since the flat Route 9 allowed anyone to see a half-mile in either direction. But Knapp and his daughter were not the last people to see Paula. Just before 4 PM, Paula encountered Ernest Whitman, the owner of a nearby cabin in Bickford Hollow. She reportedly asked him how far she could go on the trail. He replied, "It's four miles to the fork," before warning her that she was dressed too lightly for the Winter weather. Whether she didn't hear him or simply chose not to respond, Paula said nothing and continued along the trail. That was quite possibly the last time anyone ever spoke to Paula Welden. As the afternoon turned to evening, and evening turned to night, Paula's roommate Elizabeth began to wonder what was taking her so long. She brushed off the worry at first, convincing herself that perhaps Paula was having a late night studying somewhere else on campus. But when morning came, and Paula still wasn't back, Elizabeth contacted the College President, Lewis Webster Jones. He phoned Paula's parents and asked them a question that chilled them both to the bone: Had Paula gone home for the weekend? She most certainly had not, and Paula's mother fainted from the shock of the news that her daughter was missing. Paula's father immediately left the Welden home in Connecticut and traveled to Bennington, where he organized a search party that included students from Bennington and Williams College, as well as local members of the community. College President Jones canceled classes to aid in the search, sending groups of 20 along the Long Trail, where they dropped handfuls of confetti to signal to other groups that a given area had already been checked. After a day of searching and no new leads, Mr. Welden called in the New York and Connecticut State Police. At the time, Vermont had no state police force but did have a State Investigator who offered a 5,000 dollar reward for any information on Paula's whereabouts. As the investigation continued, several potential leads surfaced, but they all brought more questions than answers. A waitress in Fall River, Massachusetts, claimed to have served an upset young woman matching Paula's description. She was accompanied by a man around 25 years old, who appeared drunk and angry. Mr. Welden believed that a boyfriend of Paula's must have been responsible for her disappearance, but no conclusive proof could be found. A year after the disappearance, a woman named Mary Welden was spotted at a campground in South Carolina, but after speaking with her on the phone, Mrs. Welden confirmed that she was not her daughter. Nine years after Paula went missing, a lumberjack approached authorities, claiming that he was in Bickford Hollow when Paula vanished and that he knew where her body was buried. The man later admitted to lying. Then, in 1968, a body was finally found, a skeleton buried near where Paula disappeared. However, an examination of the remains determined that they were far too old to belong to Paula. To this day, Paula Welden's disappearance has never been solved. But Paula was not the only victim of the Bennington Triangle. In December 1949, 68-year-old James Tedford vanished from a bus headed to Bennington. He briefly left the bus in Burlington, where he chatted with an old friend, then returned to his journey. When the bus reached Bennington, Tedford's belongings and bus schedule were on it, but he was not. He was never found. In October 1950, 8-year-old Paul Jepson was with his mother at the Bennington town dump when he walked away from their truck. As soon as she noticed his absence, she called the police. Bloodhounds followed the boy's scent to the highway before the trail suddenly went cold in the middle of the road near Glastenbury Mountain. He was never found. Only a few weeks later, Freda Langer, age 53, was camping with her family. She and a cousin went swimming in a stream when Langer left to retrieve dry clothes from the campsite. However, she never reached the campsite. Unlike the other "Bennington Triangle'' disappearances, Langer's body was found seven months later, her cause of death ruled an accidental drowning. And in November 1950, 16-year-old Martha Jeannette Jones was reported missing. She had been missing for a month, but her family had assumed she was at seminary school, and her school assumed she was at home with her family. Over the course of five years, six people vanished near Bennington or Glastenbury. Only one of their bodies was ever found. The rest are still a mystery. People have blamed everything from Bigfoot, to UFO's, to a serial killer, to simply the confusing nature of the Long Trail itself. But it is unlikely we will ever know for sure. Cave diving is regarded as one of the most dangerous underwater hobbies, and it stands to reason that it would come with its fair share of casualties. But rarely do cave divers vanish into the depths without a trace. And yet, that is exactly what happened to Ben McDaniel when he went diving in Vortex Spring Cave on Wednesday, August 18, 2010. Vortex Spring contains the largest diving facility in the state of Florida, where divers of all levels can dive in the upper areas of the water. However, more experienced divers are inclined to explore the cave. Below the spring, there is a 9x12 feet opening to a cavern, which extends to a depth of 115 feet. There, the entrance to the cave can be found, blocked by a steel rebar gate. In order to enter this section, you must show your cave certification to the dive shop, who will lend out a key to the gate. Ben did not have a cave diving certification; the dive shop employees believed that Ben had been forcing the gate open for some time and diving in the cave anyway. However, he had been doing so safely, and they were inclined to allow him to continue. On the day of his disappearance, one of the dive shop employees accompanied Ben down to the gate and opened it for him. He watched Ben proceed into the cave and out of sight, never to be seen again. The dive shop employees left for the night, and the next morning, Ben's truck was still in the parking lot. No one really noticed it at the time, but by Friday, they noticed that the truck was still there, and no one had seen Ben since Wednesday. They sensed that something was very wrong and called the police. The police searched Ben's truck and found his wallet, phone, and dive logs, which included a map of the areas of the cave he had already explored. When the police went by Ben's family beach house, his dog was inside and had not been fed for two days. This was more than enough evidence to suggest that Ben had drowned inside the cave. As word of Ben's disappearance spread through the community, cave divers volunteered to join in the search and what they assumed would be the inevitable recovery of Ben's body. But the case would prove to be far murkier than that. The divers searched the large tunnels and small tunnels to no avail, then began to inspect smaller crevices and fissures, assuming Ben had accidentally wedged himself into a crevice and drowned. However, they found nothing. Well, not nothing. They did find some incredibly confusing evidence in the form of Ben's air tanks, discovered in the outer cavern area and inside of the cave. All three of the tanks discovered contained regular air. This was highly unusual, as at least one of the tanks should have contained a different gas mixture in order to prevent nitrogen narcosis. Because Ben had already investigated so much of the cave, he should have already known better than to dive with tanks full of ordinary air. In fact, he likely would not have survived his previous dives without the particular gas mixture required for cave dives of that depth. After this discovery, with still no sign of Ben's body, the search party reached out to legendary diver Edd Sorenson, a highly skilled cave diver with a specialization in recovery. Edd made three drives, covering 1,700 feet of the cave, at least 200 more feet than Ben had mapped. But in spite of his efforts and his skills, he found nothing. There was nobody there. No more equipment. He even searched for signs of increased fish activity, which could indicate the presence of decaying organic matter, like a corpse, somewhere in the cave. But there was nothing. The lack of evidence extended to the environment itself. There were no markings on the walls or silt disturbances, which would be expected in the event that Ben had squeezed into some of the tighter, more dangerous tunnels. Not only that, but Ben was markedly larger than Edd in both height and weight. Edd suggested that it was highly unlikely that Ben would have been able to make it further into the caves than he had. It just didn't make any sense. Unwilling to accept this lack of closure, Ben's parents financed a remotely operated underwater vehicle, which was used to search the cave. But the vehicle was unable to progress any further than the human divers had. It was beginning to look like Ben wasn't in the cave at all. But if he wasn't in the cave, then where did he go? Police brought in the two divers who saw him the night of his disappearance and questioned them, even giving them a lie detector test out of suspicions that he had drowned the night before, and they had removed his body to avoid attracting attention. However, they passed the test, and the theory was shelved. Some investigators suggested that Ben had washed out through one of the spring's outlets, but police searched the swamps that the spring flowed into and found nothing. They also searched other nearby bodies of water, including Blue Creek, Sandy Creek, and the Choctawhatchee River, but again, nothing was found. The waters were tested for bacteria, which would spike in the event of a decomposing body, but no bacteria increases were detected. Another suggested theory was that Ben had deliberately faked his own disappearance in search of a fresh start. He had experienced financial hardship in the past in the form of significant debts. However, both his parents and girlfriend disputed this, claiming that he had seemed positive and optimistic of late. As years passed and no new evidence surfaced, Ben's parents began to suspect foul play. They hired a private investigator, who looked into the dive shop and its workers. The investigator found that the owner of the shop was facing criminal charges for the assault and kidnapping of a temporary employee who owed him money. However, by the time this was uncovered, the owner had died after falling down a flight of stairs. If something did happen between him and Ben, that story likely died with him. There is still no sign of Ben McDaniel or any indication that there ever will be. Perhaps he is somewhere in the cave, in a deep, dark crevice that no one has been able to uncover yet. Perhaps he faked his death. Perhaps he was murdered in a debt collection gone wrong. We will likely never know the truth. Diving deep beneath the surface of the water can be dangerous, but even aboard the deck of a cruise ship, disaster can still strike. At least, it did for Amy Lynn Bradley in 1998. On March 21 of that year, Amy Lynn, her brother Brad, and their parents Ron and Iva, boarded the ship Rhapsody of the Seas in Puerto Rico. The ship would travel to Aruba, then on to Curacao. On the night of March 23, Amy and her brother went dancing to a live band in the ship's nightclub, before turning in for the night at around 1 AM. That was the last time Brad ever saw his sister. At about 5:30 AM, Ron Bradley looked out at the balcony of the family cabin and saw Amy there. He thought nothing of it, but when he looked back, she was gone. Worried, he went to her room and found that she wasn't there. The family looked all over the ship but could find no sign of Amy. The cruise ship crew refused to page Amy Lynn until the ship was docked at port, afraid of upsetting other passengers. The crew agreed to search common areas but refused to search staff or passenger cabins. Meanwhile, the Bradley family was frantic. It was possible that Amy Lynn had fallen overboard and drowned, but the family insisted this was unlikely. She was a trained lifeguard and known for her strong swimming ability, and no one could find any signs of a body in the water around the ship. Even more concerningly, a witness reported seeing Amy near the dance club at around 6 AM with a man named Alister Douglas, who she had been seen dancing with at the club the night before. He denied this. Though the case was far from closed, the story did not end there. In August of 1998, five months after Amy Lynn's disappearance, two Canadian tourists reported seeing a woman matching her description on the beach. The woman even had the same tattoos. Then, in 1999, a Navy officer met a woman in a brothel in Curacao who asked him for help, telling him that her name was Amy Lynn Bradley. He didn't report it until he saw her face in People magazine. Six years later, a woman claimed to have met Amy Lynn in a department store bathroom in Barbados, where she introduced herself as "Amy from Virginia." In 2005, the Bradleys received an upsetting email from an organization that looks for sex trafficking victims on pornographic websites. The email contained a photo of a woman in her underwear, lying on a bed. The woman appeared to be Amy. To this day, Amy's disappearance remains an ongoing investigation, with the FBI offering an award of up to 25,000 dollars for any information that might lead them to her whereabouts. The disappearances we've covered so far have all been individuals who disappeared while on their own. However, solitude isn't always a prerequisite for a missing persons case. In 2009, all three members of a family disappeared from their home, with no suggestions of where they could have gone. On October 8, 2009, Bobby Dale Jamison, his wife Sherilynn, and their six-year-old daughter Madyson vanished from their home in Eufaula, Oklahoma. A few days later, the police found their pickup truck in Latimer Counter, about an hour's drive from their house. In the truck, the police found IDs, wallets, phones, Sherilynn's purse, their still-alive family dog, and 32,000 dollars in cash. This was especially strange, given that Bobby Dale and Sherilynn were both on disability at the time of their disappearance, and no one knew where they could have gotten their hands on that much money or what they were intending to do with it. More importantly, where had the family gone? There were no clear signs of them being forced out of the car by someone else, but that didn't mean there was no foul play. A search party began to search the woods around the area where the truck was found, but no signs of the family turned up. The case went cold and remained that way until November 16, 2013. Four years after the truck turned up, three miles from where it was found, some hunters discovered the partial skeletal remains of two adults and one child. They were examined, and it was determined that these skeletons belonged to the missing Jamison family. However, due to the advanced state of decomposition, the cause of death was not identifiable. The case was reopened, and even though the police now had bodies to fill in some of the blanks, more questions kept popping up. They discovered security footage from outside of the Jamison family home. In it, the couple was going back and forth between the house and truck, packing their things. The police also discovered that, before their disappearance, Bobby Dale had spoken to his pastor about a fear that the house was haunted. He described "two to four ghosts" on the roof of the home. There were also rumors of a Satanic bible purchased by Sherilynn and claims from Sherilynn's mother, Connie, that the Jamisons had become involved with a cult. This particular theory has never had any evidence to back it up, but other unsettling theories have surfaced over the years. Police discovered an eleven-page letter from Sherilynn to Bobby, in which she was incredibly angry with him over a variety of things. This letter caused them to float the theory that Bobby Dale had driven the family out to the woods and killed his wife and daughter, then himself. However, there was no proof for this theory, and it would not explain the presence of the massive amount of cash found in the truck. Another theory involved Bobby Dale's father, Bob Dean. Bobby Dale had filed an order of protection against his father, citing threats of violence and even murder from him toward the family. However, Bob Dean died two months after the Jamison family disappeared due to a long history of health problems. Jack Jamison, his brother, insisted that Bob Dean had spent the time leading up to the disappearance primarily in hospitals or rest homes and would not have been able to play a part in it. In spite of the abundance of theories, there are still no answers in the case of the Jamison family. Another disappearance involving multiple victims is that of the infamous Fort Worth trio. 17-year-old Rachel Trlica, 14-year-old Renee Wilson, and nine-year-old Julie Ann Mosley, were out doing some last-minute Christmas shopping on December 23, 1974, at Seminary South Mall. At about noon, Rachel parked her car near the Sears, in the east lot. Renee planned to be home by 4 for a Christmas party, while Julie's mother was expecting her by 6. But when both of those times passed, and the girls were not home, their parents became concerned. The car was found still in the lot, locked, with newly purchased items in the backseat. Police theorized that the girls had run away, but their families could think of no reason why they would have done so. The following day, a letter arrived at the home of Rachel and her husband, Tommy. The letter claimed to be from Rachel but curiously was addressed to Thomas A. Trlica, rather than Tommy. Rachel never called him Thomas. The stamp on the envelope had been canceled, and the ZIP code of the cancellation was blurred. The letter read: “I know I’m going to catch it, but we just had to get away. We’re going to Houston. See you in about a week. The car is in Sear’s upper lot. Love Rachel.” The FBI analysis of the handwriting was inconclusive, but Tommy insisted that Rachel did not write the letter. One week later, the girls had not returned in spite of the letter's promise. Six weeks after the disappearance, Julie's mother received a phone call from an unidentified girl who called her "Mama." She believed this was her missing daughter. In spite of decades of searching and false hope in the form of human remains later determined not to belong to the trio, their fate is still unknown. The truth can be horrifying, but as we see time and time again, the unknown is often even scarier. And to wrap up the proceedings, we have a disturbing story of a disappearance that would forever change how we respond to disappearances like this - The heartwrenching case of eight-year-old Cherrie Mahan, who disappeared in 1985 after getting off the school bus, just fifty feet from her rural Pennsylvania home. When Mahan disembarked from the bus at 4:10 PM on February 22nd, 1985, she waved goodbye to her friends who were being picked up by one of their mothers, and was last seen by a bystander heading back in the direction of her home. The closest the police had to a lead on her possible kidnapper was an old van with a mural of a skier on a snow-capped mountain painted on the side. Despite an extensive search and an almost 40,000 dollar reward, Mahan was never found. She was declared legally dead in 1998, despite the police never discovering a body. What does the disappearance of Cherrie Maham mark such a shift in missing people? Her photo was the first one to be featured in a poster campaign featuring the words, “Have You Seen Me?” a new iconic and infamous style of poster, especially for missing children. In 2011, Pennsylvania State Police Officer Robert McGraw said, “I believe Cherrie was abducted by someone she knows very well, and I believe this person had the ability to basically lure Cherrie [into] their vehicle without her giving it a second thought prior to her disappearance ... I can't imagine if that was my child. I can't imagine the pain her mother must wake up with every day." And we know this is true. In 2019, Cherrie’s mother, Janice McKinney, was quoted saying, “I just wish someone would come forth and tell me what happened. That's all I pray for, all the time, is just to know." This very lack of closure is why the pain and fascination behind cases like these can endure, even decades after the victims first vanish without a trace. Now check out “Employee Missing for 10 Years Found Inside Supermarket.” Or watch this instead!