Oyiwoda Alex

10 CELEBS WHO VANISHED AND ARE STILL MISSING TODAY We live in a strange world. But there are some particular circumstances that really do make us shiver in wonder and mystery. The following 10 celebrities simply disappeared, and have never been found, dead or alive. 1. Daniel Küblböck Famous 33-year old German actor, popstar, and third runner up on the 2003 edition of Germany’s Pop idol, Daniel Küblböck, has been reported missing since the 9th of September, this year. Although it is widely believed that he went overboard from the AIDAluna near the coast of Canada, his body was never found – and this is why wild theories have developed concerning his whereabouts. An anonymous source calims that Daniel Küblböck is alive. This theory holds that he faked it all and is still alive and well. The anonymous source further alleges that he made contact with Küblböck and that they talked for several hours. He claims that Küblböck had always wanted to fake his death and run off to start a new life. He had to make the fake performance convincing enough that the media and, by extension, everyone else would buy it. Interestingly, Robin Gasser, the actor’s 22-year old ex-boyfriend also thinks that there is a high possibility that this conspiracy theory is true. He admits that he believes the part about his ex’s desire to start a new life may be true. Many loved ones recount Küblböck’s desire to live as a woman. It may be that he did not want to have to undergo the transition under the watchful (and sometimes overly critical) eye of the public. Interestingly, Küblböck posted on his official Facebook fan page just a month before he wound up missing about how he was still struggling with and deeply affected by the pain from months of being bullied in childhood. He has four siblings, including an older brother named Michael who died from a heroin overdose in 2013, who Küblböck had not been in communication with many years prior. What really happened? We may never know. 2. Harold Holt The 17th Prime Minister of Australia and leader of the Liberal Party, Harold Edward Holt, had spent almost two years of his tenure before he mysteriously disappeared on the 17th of December, 1967, after he went swimming at the deserted Cheviot Beach in Australia, and never returned ashore. The feeling of national embarrassment that followed was beyond words, as it dawned on the nation that they had managed to mislay a whole prime minister. Following the loss, one of the greatest search operations in the history of Australia went underway, but Prime Minister Holt was never found. While he is thought to have drowned, some people believe that he faked his death, and some claim that he was killed by the CIA, while some others still hold that he must have been picked up by a submarine so that he could defect to China. The real story – nobody knows. Indeed, Holt’s disappearance remains a topic of interest in Australian folklore. The prime minister is remembered more for the circumstances that ended his office than for his achievements. His loss is said to have ended the “age of innocence” of the nation of Australia, and ushered them into the present time whereby national leaders can no longer totally seclude their private lives form the scrutiny of the public. 3. Rісhеу Еdwаrds Richard James “Richey” Edwards was a Welsh musician and member of Manic Street Preachers, an alternative rock band. He served as their lyricist and rhythm guitarist. Well-known for his dark, depressing, satirical song-writing style, Edwards was handsome and moody. He had a thing for pulling off disturbing publicity stunts as well. To cite an instance, when a journalist with the music magazine NME suggested that his band was pretentious, Edwards is known to have grabbed a razor blade and marked “4 REAL” on his own arm. When Richey was reported missing, in February of 1995, it may well have just been another chapter in his twin stories of self-destruction and self-promotion. His car was found near the Severn Bridge, north of Bristol, which was already popular as a jumping spot for the suicidal. But his body was never found. His band continued their career, and it was quite successful even in his absence. Reportedly, they still keep aside his portion of their earnings, “just in case.” 4. Jim Sullivan Musician, James Anthony Sullivan, was on his way from Los Angeles, California, to Nashville, Tennessee, for what was supposed to be his big break, in March 1975. His Volkswagen Beetle was found abandoned in the desert outside of Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Sullivan simply disappeared without a trace! Taking off from Los Angeles on the 4th of March, alone in his car, Sullivan is said to have checked into the La Mesa Motel in Santa Rosa. However, it is also reported that he did not pass the night there, but left his key inside the room and went to buy some vodka at the town store. The next day, he was found over 40 km away from the motel at a remote ranch belonging to the Gennetti family, in the desert. His car was later found parked there and he was said to have been last seen walking away from it. In the car were his money, papers, clothes, guitar, and a box of his records. But Sullivan was never to be seen again. The disappearance of Jim Sullivan has since then had variously been attributed to murder, disorientation, and even alien abduction, as his first album was tilted “U.F.O.” The alien conspiracy theory is fuelled by the fact that Sullivan disappeared in New Mexico, close to Roswell and Area 51. Now, isn’t it quite understandable that so many people belong to that school of thought? Several search parties were sent out, but none found any trace of the musician. Although a decomposed corpse that was suspected to be his was found some miles away, it was determined not to actually be the body of Jim Sullivan. 5. Bison Dele Born Brian Carson Williams, Bison Dele was an American professional basketball center player who played in big NBA teams including the Detroit Pistons and the Chicago Bulls. And then, at the peak of his career in 1999, he suddenly retired for reasons no one can explain. But the story gets even weirder. In July, 2002, Bison Dele, his girlfriend Serena Karlan, and his elder brother Miles Dabord, sailed from Tahiti on his catamaran, the Hakuna Matata (which ironically means “no worries” in Swahili), skippered by Bertrand Saldo. But the only person to return was Dabord. He was the only one seen or heard from after the 8th of July when the last of three satellite phone calls were made from the vessel. Dele and Karlan were in regular contact with their family members and banks prior to this. Dabord alone was aboard the boat when it washed up on the shores of Tahiti. The police detained him in Phoenix, Arizona, using a sting operation set up by Dele’s family, by which time he had forged his brother’s signature to buy $152,000 in his Dele’s passport as identification. Did Dabord murder his brother for the money? There had been some history of sibling rivalry between the brothers, but Dabord is reported to have called their mother a little earlier to let her know that he would never hurt his brother. Should we believe that? Did Dabord mean that it was a drunken accident? Although the truth remains unclear, investigations concluded that Dele, his girlfriend and the skipper were murdered by Dabord and their bodies thrown overboard, or that Dabord made them to walk off the boat right into the ocean. But since the bodies were likely dropped in the middle of the ocean, there is an extremely low likelihood of ever finding them. 6. Lord Lucan John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, commonly known as Lord Lucan, was the eldest son of George Bingham, the 6th Earl of Lucan. He was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat. After fighting in the Second World War, Lucan developed a taste for gambling and was well-known for his exuberance and extravagance. He was even once considered for a James Bond role. According to his wife, Lucan confessed to her the murder of Sandra Rivett, a woman who worked for his family. He killed her with a lead pipe in his own house one night in November, 1974. When his wife came to see what was happening, he attacked her too. After she escaped, Lord Lucan was sighted in East Sussex where he went to visit his friend, who claimed to have been unaware of the surrounding circumstances at the time. A warrant for his arrest for the murder of Sandra Rivett and the attempted murder of his wife was issued, but nobody reported seeing him after that. Lord Lucan was reported to have made contact with some family and friends through calls and letters right after the incident, claiming his innocence, but forensics found some blood of both women in his car and on some of the letters he wrote. Some say he killed himself, but his body was never found. The mysterious disappearance of the noble still remains a trending topic of intrigue in the UK, and Lucan remains an emblem of British elites gone rogue. 7. Michael Rockefeller Unarguably one of the most powerful households of all time, the Rockefellers have many weird stories surrounding them. One of these stories involves Michael, the fifth child of the 41st Vice President of the United States, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. As a fourth generation bearer of that famous surname, Michael had so many options open to him in life, and he chose photographing the Asmat tribe of Netherlands, New Guinea. He set off in 1961 with Dutch anthropologist, Rene Wassing, and all was going well until their boat capsized. Too impatient to wait for them to be rescued, Michael decided to swim 12 miles to shore, and he has never been heard from since then. While Wassing was rescued about 9 hours later, no one can say what exactly might have happened to Rockefeller. Different theories exist. Some say that he must have been eaten by sharks or crocodiles. Some say that he might have made it to shore and been eaten by the Asmat cannibals, or joined their ranks, perhaps in a bid to embrace a simple primitive life and escape the “entrapment” of his family’s wealth. Or maybe he just drowned. Information later uncovered revealed that two Dutch missionaries that had lived for several years among the Asmat people and spoke their language had reported to local authorities that they came by talk with the Asmat about Rockefeller’s murder. The primitives reportedly speared him dead, cut off his head and ate his brain. They drained his blood and drenched themselves in it while performing their fetish and erotic rites. They then cooked the rest of his body, and then made daggers out of his thighbones and forged points for their fishing spears out of his tibias. They drained A skull thought to have belonged to him was even found by a police investigator, but all such information has been buried and suppressed. 8. Jean Spangler In contrast to most of the other cases, it was the disappearance of Jean Spangler that made her really globally famous. She had had a few minor acting gigs, including an uncredited appearance in the movie “Young Man with a Horn” that starred Kirk Douglas and Doris Day. In 1949, Spangler told her sister that she was going off to have an argument with her ex-husband. She was never seen again. Her purse was found, in which there was an unfinished note in her writing that made mention of a certain “Kirk” and a “Dr. Scott.” Who were they? Some suspect that Spangler, who was three months pregnant at the time, was on her way to get an abortion, which was illegal at the time. Nobody made the connection, but suspiciously, her one-time co-actor Kirk Douglas, called in to declare his innocence to the police, which only ended up making him the major suspect. Could it be that she died in a botched abortion to get rid of Kirk Douglas’ baby? Or perhaps Kirk got her killed himself, to silence her. Some believe that she was the victim of a serial killer referred to by the press as the “Black Dahila” who had killed Elizabeth Short in 1947. But no real connections could be made, and so authorities gave up on the case. Perhaps Jean was simply not famous enough. In addition to this, women’s rights were not as respected at the time as they are today, and so cases like this were easily swept under the carpet. 9. Oscar Zeta Acosta Oscar “Zeta” Acosta Fierro was an American novelist, attorney, politician and activist who was known for his novels “Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo” and “The Revolt of the Cockroach People” written in 1972 and 1973, respectively. Acosta is actually characterized by Dr. Gonzo in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” a true life story written by his long-time friend, author, Hunter S. Thompson, a character who Thompson described as “too weird to live and too rare to die.” A movie adaptation of the story by the same name was also acted, with the role played by Benicio Del Toro. Acosta simply disappeared in 1974 during a trip to Mazatlan, Mexico, his ancestral home. According to his son who believes that he was the last person his father contacted, he was murdered, judging by the people he was known to be involved with. His last words to his son included that he was “about to board a boat full of white snow.” This was likely a reference to mean that he was in the company of drug-dealers. Did they murder him? The son believes he must have gotten into a brawl and gotten killed. Whatever the case, Acosta’s body was never found. 10. Jim Gray James Nicholas Gray, a renowned, Turing Award-winning American computer scientist disappeared in 2007. Gray was an experienced sailor, but on the 28th of January, 2007, a fair-weather day, he did not return home from a short trip to the Farallon Islands that he embarked on alone to scatter his mother’s ashes. The Coast Guard searched for Gray for four days using planes, choppers and boats, but nothing was found. A DigitalGlobe satellite scan of the area was done on the 1st of February, and the thousands of images gotten were taken. A “Jim Gray Group” was formed by Gray’s students, colleagues and friends to study the images for clues as to what happened. This search ended about two weeks late, and a sophisticated underwater search ended on the 31st of May. John Gray was never found, and on the 28th of January, 2012, he was legally declared dead. Some mysteries will never be uncovered, and we may never know what really happened to these 10 missing celebrities.