# 5 Disappearances That Make No Sense, Even to Investigators | 205

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 16 Apr 2026, 1 h 01 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO2361974320.mp3

Five people vanished. No bodies, no leads, no real answers. Hannah Upp had a rare condition called dissociative fugue. She'd black out and disappear for days with no memory of it. It happened more than once. Then a hurricane hit the Virgin Islands and she went missing for good. Searchers believe she walked into the ocean mid-fugue and never came back. Don Lewis was a millionaire who vanished in 1997. Left his van, left his fortune, left behind a lot of people with reasons to want him gone. The case sat mostly forgotten until a Netflix documentary dragged it back into the spotlight. Steven Koecher might be the strangest. Security cameras caught him parking his car and walking calmly through a neighborhood in Henderson, Nevada. A few minutes later, gone. His phone records and the footage don't clear anything up. They make it worse. Dorothy Arnold disappeared in 1910 after a walk in New York City. Her wealthy family kept it quiet for weeks before going to police. By then, anything useful was long gone. Then there's Lars Mittank. Airport security footage from Bulgaria shows him sitting in a terminal, then suddenly sprinting out of the building and into the woods at full speed. Millions of people have watched that clip. Nobody can explain what he was running from. Nobody's seen him since. Episode 205 of the true crime podcast btw, and don't forget to leave a review :) 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw unsolved mysteries, mysterious disappearances, missing persons cases, true crime podcast, unexplained disappearances, lars mittank, hannah upp, don lewis, steven koecher, dorothy arnold, airport disappearance, people who vanished, unsolved cases, strange disappearances, real life mysteries, missing persons documentary, cold cases, eerie mysteries, baffling disappearances, unsolved crime stories, true crime stories, unexplained cases, vanish without a trace, disturbing mysteries, psychological mysteries, fugue state disappearance, tiger king don lewis, las vegas disappearance, historical disappearances, creepy unsolved mysteries, real mysteries podcast, true crime compilation, mysterious cases explained, people who disappeared mysteriously, baffling missing persons, unsolved disappearance stories, dark mysteries, investigative storytelling, true crime deep dive, unsolved mystery cases

## Transcript

[0:00] Imagine you go out for a jog 1 morning and the next thing you
[0:03] remember you're floating face down in New York Harbor and
[0:06] nearly three weeks of your life are just gone.
[0:10] Not gone as in hazy or fuzzy around the edges or hard to
[0:14] recall. Gone as in they never existed
[0:17] inside your head at all. That's what happened to Hannah
[0:21] up in the late summer of 2008. And here's the thing, it would
[0:26] happen two more times before she disappeared for good.
[0:31] Hannah was, by all available accounts, an entirely normal 23
[0:35] year old woman. She'd graduated from Bryn Mawr
[0:38] College in 2007 with a double focus in Spanish and comparative
[0:43] literature. She landed a job teaching middle
[0:46] school Spanish at Thurgood Marshall Academy in Harlem.
[0:49] She lived in Hamilton Heights, a neighborhood on the upper end of
[0:53] Manhattan, and was working toward a master's degree at Pace
[0:56] University on top of her full time teaching load.
[1:00] While her combined workload and university studies meant that
[1:03] she didn't have a lot of free time, she wasn't under any
[1:06] unusual stress and appeared to be handling life very well.
[1:11] On the morning of August 28th, 2008, Hannah left her apartment
[1:16] to go for a run. She didn't take her wallet, her
[1:19] keys, her bank card, or any money.
[1:22] Her roommate reported her missing after she failed to
[1:25] return. The NYPD opened a missing
[1:28] persons case, and the story ran in local media.
[1:32] But despite the coverage, and despite her photo being
[1:34] circulated, there were no immediate leads For nearly three
[1:39] weeks, nobody knew where Hannah Up was, and there were
[1:42] absolutely no sightings of her. Surveillance footage later
[1:46] pulled from an Apple store in midtown Manhattan showed Hannah
[1:50] sitting at a display computer and logging into her Gmail
[1:54] account. She reportedly didn't respond to
[1:57] anyone around her and showed no signs of distress or confusion.
[2:01] She browsed the Internet, then stood up and walked out.
[2:05] Nobody at the store flagged anything unusual because from
[2:09] the outside, she looked like any other person checking her
[2:11] e-mail. That's the thing about
[2:14] dissociative fugues that makes it so unsettling, since the
[2:17] person experiencing it doesn't look lost or confused or in
[2:21] distress. But more on that in a moment.
[2:25] On September 16th, 2819, days after she'd gone for that jog,
[2:30] the crew of the Staten Island Ferry spotted a body floating
[2:33] face down in New York Harbor, near the southern tip of
[2:37] Manhattan. The deckhands initially assumed,
[2:40] not unreasonably, that she was dead, but thankfully she wasn't.
[2:46] Hannah was pulled from the water, alive, severely
[2:49] dehydrated and hypothermic, but breathing.
[2:53] She was rushed to hospital, where she eventually regained
[2:57] consciousness, and when asked what had happened, she
[3:00] reportedly had no idea. As far as her own memory was
[3:04] concerned, roughly 10 minutes had passed since she'd left for
[3:08] her run. 19 days of her life had simply ceased to exist.
[3:14] Doctors ran a battery of neurological and psychiatric
[3:17] tests, but there was no brain damage, no tumor, no sign of
[3:22] substance usage, and no head injury.
[3:25] The diagnosis they arrived at was dissociative fugue, a rare
[3:30] psychiatric condition in which a person temporarily loses access
[3:34] to their own autobiographical memory.
[3:37] Unusually, while in this state, the person suffering from the
[3:41] fugue retains the ability to function in the world in all
[3:45] other respects. To put that in plain terms, a
[3:49] person in a fugue state can walk, talk, ride the subway,
[3:54] check e-mail, and even hold brief conversations.
[3:58] What they can't do is remember who they are, where they live,
[4:03] or that anyone is looking for them.
[4:06] Psychiatrists who've studied dissociative disorders have a
[4:10] working hypothesis for how this actually happens.
[4:14] Episodic memory, the kind that stores your life story, goes
[4:18] offline during these episodes. Procedural memory, the kind that
[4:23] lets you operate a computer or navigate a crowded city street,
[4:27] stays intact. The result is a person who looks
[4:31] normal from the outside but has no idea who they are.
[4:35] What makes Hannah's case unusual, even within the already
[4:39] unusual world of dissociative fugue, is that the condition is
[4:43] almost always linked to severe psychological trauma.
[4:47] This is the kind of thing that generally effects soldiers or
[4:50] people who have been subjected to extreme personal situations,
[4:54] or who have experienced sudden, devastating personal loss.
[4:59] In Hannah's case, extensive therapy, including hypnotherapy,
[5:04] reportedly turned up nothing unusual that could have
[5:07] triggered this response. The fugue seemingly came from
[5:11] nowhere, which made it far harder to treat and almost
[5:15] impossible to predict. By 2013, Hannah had left New
[5:21] York and was working as a teaching assistant at a
[5:24] Montessori school in the Kensington area of Maryland.
[5:28] She was reportedly managing her condition and getting on with
[5:31] her life after that initial unpleasant episode.
[5:35] Then on September 3rd, 2013, Hannah disappeared near the
[5:40] intersection of Kemp Mill Road and Glen Allen Ave. just before
[5:45] 8:00 in the morning. She never showed up at the
[5:47] school, and two days later, on September 5th, she called her
[5:52] mother from the Wheaton Glenmont area of Maryland.
[5:56] She'd apparently woken up in a Creek, disoriented, with no
[5:59] memory of the preceding days. Once again, Hannah described the
[6:04] experience as though only about 10 minutes had elapsed, and once
[6:08] again she had came to her senses in the water.
[6:11] She was found safe, physically unharmed, and was treated and
[6:15] released, and the diagnosis once again was dissociative fugue.
[6:21] This second episode confirmed a pattern that was, from a medical
[6:25] perspective, deeply concerning. Dissociative fugue episodes are
[6:30] supposed to be extraordinarily rare, and recurrence is rarer
[6:34] still. The fact that Hannah had now
[6:37] experienced 2 episodes separated by five years suggested that
[6:42] whatever was happening inside her mind may happen again.
[6:47] It was chronic, and it could be triggered again without warning,
[6:50] and there was no reliable way to prevent it.
[6:54] At some point after the Maryland episode, Hannah relocated to
[6:58] Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.
[7:01] She took a teaching position at the Virgin Islands Montessori
[7:05] School and International Academy, where she reportedly
[7:08] thrived. By all accounts, it was a clean
[7:11] break, an ocean between her and the places where she'd
[7:15] previously vanished. Whether this was a deliberate
[7:18] attempt to put distance between herself and her condition, or
[7:22] simply a career move that happened to take her somewhere
[7:25] warm and far away, isn't entirely clear.
[7:29] What is clear is that in early September 2017, the Caribbean
[7:35] was hit by one of the most destructive hurricanes in
[7:38] recorded history. Hurricane Irma struck St.
[7:41] Thomas on September 6th, 2017, causing catastrophic damage
[7:46] across the island. Power was knocked out across
[7:50] most of the island, buildings were flattened, roads were
[7:53] blocked with debris, and the infrastructure that held daily
[7:57] life together was torn apart. Communications were down, normal
[8:02] routine cease to exist, and the island was in complete chaos.
[8:08] On September 14th, 2017, just eight days after Irma had passed
[8:13] through, Hannah left her home around 8:00 in the morning.
[8:17] She told people she intended to go swimming at Sapphire Beach
[8:20] and then stop by the school to take care of some tasks.
[8:25] The next morning, September 15th, a construction cleanup
[8:29] crew found Hannah's sun dress, sandals, and car keys laid out
[8:33] on the sand near Sapphire Beach. Her car was parked not far away
[8:38] and inside the vehicle investigators found her purse,
[8:42] her phone, her passport, and her credit cards.
[8:46] There was no sign of any foul play or any form of robbery.
[8:50] Everything was untouched as if she had just walked off.
[8:55] Hannah Up has not been seen or heard from since September 14th,
[8:59] 2017. Her mother flew to Saint Thomas
[9:03] on a one way ticket on November 20th of that year and she
[9:07] reportedly had no intention of leaving until her daughter was
[9:11] found. She created a Find Hannah Up
[9:14] page on Facebook and began coordinating search efforts with
[9:18] local volunteers and anyone willing to help.
[9:22] Searches were conducted on land and by sea with the help of
[9:26] local volunteers and emergency personnel.
[9:31] But the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, compounded by Hurricane
[9:35] Maria, which struck the region just days after Hannah vanished,
[9:39] made any kind of systematic effort extraordinarily
[9:41] difficult. The timeline here is important.
[9:45] Irma hit on September 6th, Hannah vanished on September
[9:49] 14th, and then Maria struck on September 20th.
[9:53] Just six days later, the island was being hammered by
[9:56] back-to-back catastrophic storms, and in that kind of
[10:00] environment, finding 1 missing person was close to impossible.
[10:06] There are effectively two ways to interpret what happened to
[10:09] Hannah on that beach in September 2017.
[10:12] The 1st is that she entered another fugue state, walked into
[10:17] the water and drowned. If her previous episodes are any
[10:22] indication, she would have had no awareness of what she was
[10:25] doing and no sense of danger. As I had previously mentioned,
[10:31] her two previous episodes involved her coming to her
[10:34] senses while she was in the water.
[10:37] If she entered the ocean off Sapphire Beach while she was in
[10:40] a fugue state, she may have simply been carried out into the
[10:43] open ocean, never to be found. The second possibility, which
[10:50] seemed potentially possible at the time, is that Hannah entered
[10:53] A fugue state and walked away, as she'd done twice before.
[10:58] Under this theory, in a community where normal systems
[11:02] of identification and surveillance had been knocked
[11:04] offline, Hannah may have been taking refuge, not knowing who
[11:09] she was. This was the possibility
[11:12] Hannah's mother clung to initially, and it isn't entirely
[11:16] irrational. In 2008, Hannah survived 19 days
[11:21] wandering New York City without money, identification, or any
[11:25] apparent sense of self preservation, and she'd come out
[11:28] the other side alive. And in 2013, she'd done it
[11:33] again, though admittedly for a much shorter period of time.
[11:38] If she could manage that in Manhattan and in Maryland, the
[11:41] argument went, she could manage it in the disorganized aftermath
[11:45] of a hurricane. This theory, of course, faded
[11:50] from possibility over the years, and the fundamental problem is
[11:53] the water. In New York, Hannah ended up in
[11:57] the harbor, and in Maryland, she woke up in a Creek.
[12:03] There seems to be something about water, whether drawn to it
[12:07] or simply drifting toward it, that's present in every episode.
[12:12] And the third time the water she reportedly wandered toward was
[12:16] the Caribbean Sea in the wake of a Category 5 hurricane, with
[12:21] another major hurricane on the way.
[12:25] One of the things that really gets me about Hannah's story is
[12:28] that she did everything you'd expect a responsible person to
[12:31] do. She sought treatment after the
[12:33] first episode. She went to therapy, even tried
[12:37] hypnotherapy, and took the condition seriously.
[12:41] But none of it was enough. The fugue states came anyway,
[12:46] and in a pattern that escalated from survivable to likely fatal.
[12:51] As of today, Hannah Up remains officially missing, with her
[12:55] family hanging on to the faintest hope that she may
[12:57] somehow still be alive. On August 20th, 1997, a white
[13:06] 1989 Dodge Ram van was found sitting in the parking lot of
[13:10] Pilot Country Airport, a small airstrip in Spring Hill, FL,
[13:15] about 40 miles north of Tampa. The keys had been left on the
[13:19] floorboard. There was no note, no sign of a
[13:23] struggle, and no indication of where the vehicle's owner had
[13:26] gone. That owner was Jack Donald
[13:30] Lewis, a 59 year old self-made millionaire who went by Don and
[13:34] nobody had seen or heard from him in two days.
[13:38] His wife Carol had reported him missing on August 19th after
[13:42] he'd failed to come home the night before.
[13:45] What followed was one of the strangest missing persons cases
[13:48] in Florida history, a case that would simmer for over 2 decades
[13:52] before exploding into the national consciousness due to
[13:56] tigers. Don Lewis wasn't born into
[13:59] wealth, though he had a remarkable talent for building
[14:02] it. He'd grew his fortune the hard
[14:05] way, grinding through the trucking industry, flipping used
[14:09] cars, and eventually amassing a real estate portfolio across the
[14:13] Tampa Bay area. By the mid 1990s, he was a
[14:18] millionaire several times over, though you wouldn't necessarily
[14:21] know it by looking at him. People who knew him described a
[14:25] man who was more comfortable in jeans and a trucker cap than a
[14:28] suit. He was someone who'd made his
[14:31] money through relentless deal making rather than any kind of
[14:34] corporate Polish, and he liked when people underestimated him.
[14:39] He'd married his first wife, Gladys Cross, and together
[14:43] they'd had three daughters, Donna Pettis, Linda Sanchez and
[14:47] GAIL Rathbone. That marriage ended in divorce
[14:51] in 1990. By then, Don had already been
[14:54] involved with the woman who'd become a central figure in the
[14:57] mystery of his disappearance. He'd met Carol in January 1981
[15:02] on a roadside in Tampa after stopping to ask her out while
[15:06] she was walking. They married in 1991, and a year
[15:11] later the couple Co founded a big cat sanctuary called
[15:15] Wildlife on Easy Street, which would eventually become Big Cat
[15:19] Rescue. The sanctuary sat on their
[15:22] property in the Citrus Park area of Tampa, and from the outside
[15:26] it probably looked like something they both cared about
[15:28] equally. But behind the scenes, they
[15:32] reportedly didn't see eye to eye on what the operation should be.
[15:37] Don wanted to breed exotic cats and run the sanctuary as a
[15:40] business. Carol reportedly wanted to shift
[15:43] toward rescue work and a non profit model.
[15:47] That disagreement, by multiple accounts, generated real tension
[15:51] between them. By 1997, the marriage between
[15:57] Don and Carol Lewis was in serious trouble, and the
[16:00] disagreements over the sanctuary were just the surface layer of a
[16:03] deeper fracture. Don had reportedly begun
[16:07] spending more and more time in Costa Rica, where he owned a 200
[16:11] acre property near the town of Bagasas.
[16:14] He'd been transferring Florida properties into a Costa Rican
[16:17] entity called the Weeto Corporation, and people close to
[16:21] him believed he was preparing to move his assets out of the
[16:24] country. His daughters later said
[16:27] publicly that they believe their father was planning to leave
[16:30] Carroll. Then, in July 1997, just weeks
[16:34] before his disappearance, Don Lewis went to the Hillsborough
[16:38] County Courthouse and filed for a restraining order against his
[16:42] wife. In the filing, he reportedly
[16:45] alleged that Carol had threatened to end his life.
[16:49] But the court didn't grant the injunction, potentially
[16:52] suggesting it may have been a strategic move.
[16:55] That said, the specifics of why it was denied aren't entirely
[17:00] clear from the public record. There was another troubling
[17:04] detail that preceded the disappearance.
[17:07] Don's family and associates later revealed that in the
[17:10] months before he went missing, questions had been raised about
[17:13] his mental competency. A competency evaluation had
[17:17] reportedly been sought, though the circumstances surrounding it
[17:22] and who exactly initiated the process have been the subject of
[17:25] conflicting accounts. What's not in dispute is that
[17:30] Don Lewis in the summer of 1997 had a lot of forces pulling at
[17:36] him from different sides. There was a marriage falling
[17:39] apart, a fight with his wife over the sanctuary, family
[17:43] members worried about his mental state, and money tied up in two
[17:47] countries. The last confirmed sighting of
[17:51] Don Lewis was on August 18th, 1997.
[17:55] He reportedly left his property that morning and told Carol he
[17:59] was heading to Costa Rica. His pilot's license had been
[18:02] suspended at the time following a string of three previous
[18:06] aviation incidents, so he couldn't have legally flown
[18:10] himself anywhere. That said, if he was indeed
[18:15] planning on fairly literally flying the coop and disappearing
[18:18] into thin air, this lack of a license presumably wasn't a
[18:22] major concern. No record of him boarding a
[18:25] commercial flight has ever surfaced, and no passport
[18:29] activity was recorded. For a man who was allegedly
[18:32] planning on leaving the country, there's absolutely no meaningful
[18:36] evidence he ever got on a plane. Two days later, his van turned
[18:40] up at Pilot Country Airport, a rural airstrip in Pasco County.
[18:46] The location was odd. It wasn't a commercial airport.
[18:50] It wasn't particularly close to his home or the sanctuary.
[18:54] The keys on the floorboard suggested the van had been left
[18:57] in a hurry, or perhaps staged to look that way.
[19:02] Investigators at the time couldn't determine how Don might
[19:05] have left the area after arriving at the airstrip, or
[19:09] whether he'd even been the one to drive the van there in the
[19:11] first place. The Hillsborough County
[19:16] Sheriff's Office opened a missing persons investigation,
[19:19] and detectives searched Don's properties.
[19:22] They canvassed the area around Pilot Country Airport, and they
[19:25] also looked into his Costa Rican connections.
[19:29] The investigation quickly hit complications, especially since
[19:33] Don Lewis had reportedly been involved in what I'll
[19:36] euphemistically call some questionable business dealings
[19:39] in Costa Rica. He'd loaned money to individuals
[19:43] who were allegedly connected to organized crime groups in the
[19:46] region. Some investigators explored
[19:49] whether his disappearance could have been connected to those
[19:52] financial entanglements. This theory goes that these
[19:56] underworld figures, rather than paying off their significant
[20:00] debts, decided to pay back their loans in lead.
[20:06] Others looked closer to home, and Don's daughters made no
[20:09] secret of their suspicions about Carol.
[20:13] They pointed to the failed restraining order, the marital
[20:16] strife, and what happened next with their father's estate.
[20:21] Within years, and without a body or any physical evidence of foul
[20:25] play, the case stalled. In 2002, five years after Don
[20:31] Lewis vanished, he was declared legally dead by a Florida court.
[20:35] And that's when the fight over his money started.
[20:39] Carole Lewis produced a will and a power of attorney, both
[20:43] reportedly dated 1992, that named her as the sole
[20:47] beneficiary of Don's estate. His three daughters from his
[20:51] first marriage were effectively cut out, and for Don's family,
[20:55] this was the final insult. The documents themselves became
[20:59] the subject of intense scrutiny, and his daughter's alleged that
[21:03] Don's signature was traced rather than written freehand.
[21:08] They even retained A handwriting expert to say this.
[21:11] But as someone who has personally retained experts a
[21:14] couple 1000 times, they'll in essence tell you whatever you
[21:18] want to hear. And of course, that's without
[21:22] going into the extreme levels of controversy that surrounds
[21:25] handwriting analysis as a forensic science to begin with.
[21:30] There was also a clause in the will which indicated that the
[21:33] will also applied in case of a potential disappearance, which
[21:37] Don's daughters claimed was suspicious.
[21:40] Also, I have to add, without seeing all the wills that the
[21:45] attorney for Don had ever drafted, it's impossible to know
[21:49] whether this was just something standard that was included.
[21:53] It's very common for lawyers to Add all sorts of seemingly
[21:56] bizarre clauses to cover every eventuality that might occur.
[22:01] Part of the reason for this is actually to protect the lawyer
[22:04] from any future claims of negligence.
[22:07] So, Simply put, this seemingly weird clause could have just
[22:11] been an attorney covering his bases.
[22:14] At any rate, no charges were ever filed and the will was held
[22:18] to be valid for all intents and purposes.
[22:22] Carol maintained that the documents were legitimate and
[22:26] that her husband had willingly included those provisions and
[22:29] the estate passed to her. The Costa Rica angle has never
[22:34] been fully resolved, and Don Lewis had significant holdings
[22:37] there and had been transferring more of his wealth there.
[22:41] Some people who followed the case believed it was possible
[22:44] that Don had simply fled to Central America to start a new
[22:48] life. It's a theory that has a certain
[22:51] appeal and it can't be definitively ruled out.
[22:54] But it has problems. No financial activity in Don's
[22:58] name was ever recorded in Costa Rica after August 1997, and no
[23:04] credible sighting of him was ever confirmed.
[23:07] And the people who knew him best?
[23:08] His daughters, his associates, said it simply wasn't consistent
[23:13] with who he was. Don Lewis loved his family, they
[23:17] said, and he wouldn't have vanished voluntarily without
[23:20] contacting his children. That said, there's the element
[23:24] of the Costa Rican business connections raising darker
[23:27] possibilities, too. Even if he had willingly left
[23:31] for Costa Rica and had been planning a new life there, the
[23:34] more sinister elements in his life may have caught up to him.
[23:38] Some have speculated that these people may have known that he
[23:41] was about to go through an expensive divorce and use this
[23:45] as their opportunity to strike. After all, this would be the
[23:49] perfect potential framing for a voluntary missing persons case.
[23:54] In essence, it was one with a wealthy man disappearing after
[23:58] transferring a large portion of his substantial assets beyond
[24:02] the reach of his soon to be ex-wife.
[24:06] For a crime Lord who wanted to wipe out some debts, this may
[24:09] have been an opportunity that was simply too good to pass up.
[24:14] For over 20 years, the disappearance of Don Lewis was a
[24:17] Tampa area cold case known locally but not nationally.
[24:22] That changed in March 2020 when Netflix released a little docu
[24:26] series called Tiger King, and Don Lewis briefly became the
[24:30] most famous missing man in America.
[24:33] The show primarily focused on the feud between Joe Exotic, a
[24:37] very flamboyant Oklahoma zoo operator, and Carol Baskin.
[24:42] By then, Carol, who had remarried, had become a
[24:45] prominent animal rights advocate running Big Cat Rescue.
[24:49] But it devoted a fairly significant screen time to the
[24:52] unresolved disappearance of Don Lewis, and it presented the case
[24:57] to an audience of 10s of millions in the middle of a
[24:59] global lockdown. Joe Exotic, during his feud with
[25:03] Carol, made numerous unsubstantiated allegations
[25:07] about Carol's involvement in Don's disappearance.
[25:10] Most famously, he promoted the theory that Carol Baskin had fed
[25:15] Don's remains to tigers, even making a music video depicting
[25:20] this alleged happening with a Baskin impersonator.
[25:24] The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office was flooded
[25:26] with tips, reportedly receiving hundreds in the weeks following
[25:30] the show's premiere. Despite the renewed attention,
[25:34] no charges have been filed and no remains have been recovered.
[25:41] Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here with my usual reminder to hit
[25:44] the subscribe button and turn on all notifications.
[25:48] Also, don't forget to hit the share button and send this video
[25:50] to your friends who enjoy mysteries or hey, just link it
[25:54] on your preferred social media. At 11:54 on the morning of
[26:00] December 13th, 2009, a home security camera in a retirement
[26:05] community in Henderson, NV, a Las Vegas suburb, recorded
[26:09] something seemingly ordinary. There was a white 2003 Chevy
[26:14] Cavalier pulling into a cul-de-sac on Savannah Springs
[26:17] Ave. and the car belonged to a 30 year old man named Steven
[26:21] Kocher. He parked at the end of the
[26:24] street, got out, and at some point during the next 6 minutes,
[26:29] walked up to a neighbor's door and rang the bell.
[26:33] By the time the resident answered, Kocher was already
[26:36] walking away across the street. The resident reportedly recalled
[26:41] him saying something about needing money.
[26:44] At noon, another security camera picked up a figure believed to
[26:48] be Coacher, walking eastbound along the sidewalk, turning onto
[26:53] Evening Light St. He was carrying what appeared to
[26:57] be a file folder or some sort of portfolio under one arm.
[27:01] He was dressed in a white shirt and slacks, walking with purpose
[27:06] like someone headed to an important meeting.
[27:08] Just like that, he was gone. And no one has seen Steven since
[27:13] his car. Sat on that.
[27:15] Cul-de-sac for days before anyone thought much of it or
[27:19] even noticed it. When it was finally searched,
[27:22] investigators found a shaving kit, clothing, a pillow, a
[27:26] blanket and wrapped Christmas presents he'd bought just two
[27:30] days earlier. His wallet, cell phone and
[27:32] driver's license were all missing.
[27:35] Everything about the car's content suggested a man who'd
[27:38] been living out of his vehicle, sleeping in parking lots and
[27:42] rest stops in the days before he vanished.
[27:45] The Christmas gifts, for their part, suggested a man who still
[27:48] expected to see his family for the holidays.
[27:53] Steven was born on November. 1st 1979 in Amarillo, TX.
[27:58] One of four children of Rolf and Deanne Kutcher.
[28:01] He attended Rick's College, which later became Brigham Young
[28:05] University, Idaho, and eventually transferred to the
[28:09] University of Utah where he earned a degree in
[28:12] communications. He was an Eagle Scout, an active
[28:16] and devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
[28:20] Saints, and by most accounts, a genuine, earnest and well liked
[28:25] person. His father, Rolf, was the
[28:29] executive editor of the Davis County Clipper, and Steven
[28:32] followed him into journalism, landing a position at the Salt
[28:36] Lake Tribune in March of 2007. The Tribune job should have been
[28:41] a step forward, but the overnight shift wore him down.
[28:45] He'd work through the night and then try to sleep through the
[28:47] day, which made it nearly impossible to maintain
[28:51] friendships, attend his church, or have anything resembling a
[28:55] normal social life. He stuck it out for over a year,
[28:59] but by mid 2008 he'd had enough and left.
[29:03] And after that, things only got harder.
[29:07] Steven bounced between odd jobs and cities, never quite landing
[29:11] the kind of stable position he believed he was going to get.
[29:15] In April 2009, citing climate issues in the Salt Lake City
[29:19] area, he moved to St. George, UT.
[29:23] He plugged into his local church, signed up to volunteer
[29:26] with the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and started
[29:29] researching his family history in the area.
[29:33] By all outward appearances, he was trying to build something of
[29:36] a life for himself in the area. But the recession had other
[29:40] plans. Despite sending out resume after
[29:43] resume, full time work wouldn't come.
[29:47] He picked up part time hours handing out Flyers for a local
[29:50] window washing company, but it wasn't enough.
[29:54] By November 2009, he was three months behind on his rent, deep
[29:59] in the hole on his credit cards, and his bank account was rapidly
[30:03] approaching overdraft levels. Three days before he.
[30:07] Vanished. Steven did something that still
[30:10] puzzles investigators. In the early morning hours of
[30:14] December 10th, he got in his Cavalier and drove 300 miles
[30:18] north on Interstate 15 to Salt Lake City.
[30:21] He stopped for gas, then continued West on Interstate 80
[30:26] another 125 miles to West Wendover, NV, refueling again
[30:31] there. From there, he drove roughly 100
[30:34] more miles South into Nevada's Ruby Valley to the ranch of a
[30:38] family named Neff Stephen. Had previously.
[30:41] Dated their daughter Anne Marie and had visited the ranch
[30:45] before. Anne Marie wasn't there, but the
[30:48] Neff family welcomed him anyway, served him lunch and listened as
[30:52] he told them he was thinking of continuing on to Sacramento to
[30:55] visit relatives. It was an unusual and unexpected
[30:59] visit, to be certain, but Steven wasn't behaving in an unusual
[31:03] manner. The Neffs never did figure out
[31:06] what he had come to tell their daughter, and this remains one
[31:08] of the many unsolved mysteries associated with this missing
[31:12] person's case. After about two hours, he turned
[31:16] around and drove all the way back the way he'd come, stopping
[31:20] for gas in Salt Lake City and Springville before arriving back
[31:24] in Saint George. The round trip covered well over
[31:28] 500 miles in a single day, a punishing drive for a man who
[31:32] could barely afford groceries. No one has ever satisfactorily
[31:37] explained what prompted the trip, though some have tried.
[31:41] The visit to the Neph Ranch may have been the primary
[31:44] motivation, but driving over 500 miles on a whim to visit someone
[31:48] who might not be home is unusual behavior.
[31:53] Notably, it's unclear why he told the Neffs that he was
[31:56] considering driving out to Sacramento, since nothing
[32:00] suggested that was part of his plans at the time.
[32:03] It may have been something he thought up in the spur of the
[32:05] moment to provide more explanation for his somewhat
[32:08] unusual trip and why he was in the neighborhood.
[32:12] It's always possible that this trip to the ranch was completely
[32:15] unrelated to his disappearance, but the proximity of it to what
[32:19] happened makes that seem somewhat unlikely.
[32:24] The night before, he vanished. Stephen went to a Kmart in Saint
[32:27] George and bought Christmas presents for his brother and his
[32:31] brother's family. Whatever was going on in his
[32:34] life, he was still thinking about the holidays, and he was
[32:38] clearly still planning ahead. On December 12th, he left Saint
[32:43] George and headed South toward Las Vegas.
[32:46] He reportedly spoke to two friends on his cell phone during
[32:49] the drive and mentioned he was in the Las Vegas area. 1 friend
[32:54] asked if he could cover some volunteer church duties back in
[32:56] Saint George, and Stephen offered to turn around, but the
[33:00] friend told him not to bother. What makes the case?
[33:04] Particularly strange is what happened after those cameras
[33:07] lost sight of him. His cell phone didn't go dark
[33:10] right away, and at around 5:00 PM on December 13th, Stevens
[33:15] phone pinged a cell tower more than 10 miles northeast of where
[33:18] he'd parked his car. Two hours.
[33:21] Later. Around 7:00 PM, the signal moved
[33:24] again, about two miles north of the previous location.
[33:28] The next morning, December 14th, in the early hours, someone used
[33:34] Stevens phone to check a voicemail that had been left by
[33:37] his landlord back in Saint George, The.
[33:41] Signal was picked up. By a tower near US Route 95 and
[33:45] Russell Rd. And after that, the phone
[33:48] remained in that general area for two more days before the
[33:52] signal disappeared entirely. No calls were made during that
[33:56] period and no texts were sent. It was just that one voicemail
[34:00] check and then silence. The phone activity raises an
[34:05] uncomfortable question about who was carrying it and if that
[34:08] person was Steven or not. If he was, then he was alive and
[34:13] moving around the Las Vegas area for at least a day after he
[34:16] vanished. If he.
[34:18] Wasn't carrying it. Then someone else had his phone,
[34:22] which raises the possibility that something happened to him.
[34:25] To this day, investigators have never been able to determine
[34:29] which scenario is more likely. Stevens family reported.
[34:34] Him missing after they couldn't reach him in the days following
[34:37] his disappearance, his father Rolf, who was simultaneously
[34:41] running the Davis County Clipper and serving as a Bishop with the
[34:45] Mormon church, threw himself into the search the.
[34:49] Las Vegas. Metropolitan Police canvas the
[34:52] neighborhood where Stevens car had been found.
[34:55] They brought in helicopters, all terrain vehicles, sniffer dogs
[35:00] and volunteers, but they found absolutely nothing.
[35:05] Sadly, in February. 2011 Roughly 14 months after Stephen
[35:10] disappeared, his father Rolf passed away suddenly the.
[35:15] Family considered this. A devastating piece of
[35:17] circumstantial evidence against the idea that Stephen had simply
[35:21] walked away from his life. They were certain he would have
[35:24] come home for his father's funeral and the fact that he
[35:27] didn't suggested to them that he couldn't.
[35:31] More than 16 years. Have passed, and the case hasn't
[35:35] moved forward in any meaningful way.
[35:38] In 2018, a police detective who worked the case told reporters
[35:42] that they knew about as much then as they did the moment they
[35:46] realized Stephen was gone. No suspect has ever been
[35:50] publicly named, and at least from the public perspective,
[35:54] it's not even certain whether a crime occurred or not.
[35:59] The theories on this case. Breakdown Roughly As you'd
[36:01] expect, some believe Stephen met with foul play in or near the
[36:06] community where he dropped off his car, possibly as the result
[36:10] of a misunderstanding or a situation that escalated
[36:14] quickly. Under this theory, it's possible
[36:17] that his body was dumped somewhere out in the rugged
[36:20] areas surrounding Las Vegas, never to be found.
[36:24] Others believe the cell phone data suggests he left the
[36:27] neighborhood alive and that whatever happened to him
[36:30] occurred later somewhere else in the Las Vegas Valley.
[36:35] A smaller contingent holds out the possibility that Stephen,
[36:39] crushed by financial pressure and isolation, chose to
[36:42] disappear. However, his family has
[36:46] consistently and forcefully rejected this idea, pointing to
[36:50] the Christmas presents and the fact that he never contacted any
[36:53] of them again. Personally, I think given his
[36:56] strong connection to his church and his family, this idea is
[37:00] potentially comforting, but it seems increasingly unlikely.
[37:05] The surveillance footage from. That December morning remains
[37:08] the last confirmed trace of Stephen Kocher, a man in a white
[37:12] shirt and slacks, walking with what looked like purpose,
[37:16] carrying something under his arm, turning a corner on a quiet
[37:19] St. in a quiet community in the Nevada desert.
[37:23] The camera caught him for a few seconds, and then he walked out
[37:26] of frame. And nobody's been able to figure
[37:28] out what happened next. On December 12th. 1910 A 25 year
[37:38] old woman walked out of her family's townhouse on East 79th
[37:41] St. in Manhattan. She told her mother she was
[37:45] going to buy a dress and was never seen again.
[37:48] Her name was Dorothy Arnold, and her disappearance would become
[37:52] one of the most baffling missing persons cases in New York City
[37:55] history. What makes this case so unusual
[37:59] is what happened after she vanished.
[38:02] Her family, one of the wealthiest in New York, waited
[38:05] six weeks before telling the police.
[38:10] To understand why Dorothy. Arnold's disappearance played
[38:13] out the way it did. You need to understand who the
[38:15] Arnold's were. Her father, Francis Arnold, was
[38:20] a prosperous perfume importer with deep ties to New York
[38:24] social elite. The family lived at a
[38:27] fashionable address on the Upper East Side and moved in circles
[38:31] where appearances counted for everything.
[38:34] Dorothy was one of four children and had been educated at the
[38:37] Velton School for Girls in New York before attending College in
[38:41] Pennsylvania before she graduated in 19 O 5.
[38:45] She was by all accounts an intelligent and ambitious young
[38:49] woman with aspirations of becoming a published writer.
[38:52] Dorothy took her craft seriously and devoted real time to it, and
[38:57] this detail matters because it was reportedly a source of
[39:00] ongoing tension within the family.
[39:03] Dorothy had submitted stories and essays to various magazines
[39:07] but had been repeatedly rejected from every single one.
[39:11] According to people close to the family, her father disapproved
[39:15] of her literary ambitions and considered them unsuitable for a
[39:18] woman of her social standing. She was supposed to be attending
[39:22] social events and living in the lap of luxury, not competing to
[39:27] earn money. Some have.
[39:29] Speculated that. The fact that her family name
[39:31] and prestige weren't enough to get published contributed to the
[39:35] humiliation for her father after.
[39:39] All I. Imagine if her name had been
[39:41] Rockefeller or Aster. Her essays would have probably
[39:44] been published. In short, while we can't confirm
[39:48] it, it appears to me at least that her father, who was very
[39:53] class conscious, took this element as a hit to the family's
[39:56] social standing as well. Whatever.
[39:59] The case. This all had a highly negative
[40:02] impact on Dorothy. In the months before she
[40:05] disappeared, Dorothy had grown increasingly withdrawn and
[40:09] frustrated by both these rejections and by her father's
[40:12] lack of support. The morning of December 12th.
[40:16] Was cold and overcast. Dorothy left the Arnold
[40:20] townhouse around 11:30 in the morning, telling her mother she
[40:24] planned to walk along 5th Ave. and buy an evening gown.
[40:28] She had around 25 to $30.00 with her and was wearing a blue dress
[40:32] and a dark hat. What we know of her movements
[40:35] that day comes largely from a single confirmed sighting there.
[40:40] Were two other sightings. Which were largely confirmed,
[40:43] but weren't airtight. But I'll get to those two in a
[40:45] moment. Around 2:00 in the afternoon,
[40:49] she ran into a friend, a woman named Gladys King on 5th Ave.
[40:54] near Brentano's Bookshop, which was then located on 27th St.
[41:00] The two. Spoke briefly on.
[41:01] The sidewalk and Dorothy reportedly mentioned she'd been
[41:04] out walking and enjoying the air and intended to continue up
[41:08] through the park. She.
[41:10] Appeared calm. And in good spirits, with
[41:13] nothing out of the ordinary during their talk.
[41:16] Gladys. King would.
[41:17] Unfortunately, be the last known person who was confirmed with
[41:21] certainty to see Dorothy Arnold alive.
[41:26] Here's where the story takes. Its strangest and potentially
[41:29] darkest turn When Dorothy didn't come home that evening, her
[41:33] family grew concerned. But they didn't call the police.
[41:38] Instead, Francis Arnold did what wealthy men of his era did when
[41:43] they had a problem they wanted kept quiet.
[41:46] He hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to conduct a
[41:51] private search. For six full weeks, the family
[41:55] kept Dorothy's disappearance entirely out of the public eye,
[41:59] with nothing published about her case.
[42:02] The Pinkertons investigated quietly, checking hospitals,
[42:06] morgues, and hotels across New York and beyond, but found
[42:10] nothing. It wasn't until January 25th,
[42:14] 1911 that the family finally contacted the New York Police
[42:18] Department, and even then it was reportedly done through the
[42:22] family's lawyer rather than directly.
[42:25] The reasons for this delay have been debated ever since, and the
[42:29] most common explanation is the simplest.
[42:33] The Arnolds were terrified of scandal.
[42:36] In early 20th century high society.
[42:39] A missing wealthy daughter could mean any number of things an
[42:43] elopement, a pregnancy, or a mental breakdown.
[42:47] All of these possibilities were considered scandalous at the
[42:50] time, so much so that it was apparently worth the increased
[42:54] risk of losing Dorothy forever. Francis Arnold reportedly feared
[42:59] the press more than almost anything, and his instinct was
[43:02] to keep the matter private. By the time the police were
[43:06] brought in, the trail was already stone cold.
[43:09] Captain. John Ayers of.
[43:11] The New York Police Department's Bureau of Missing Persons took
[43:14] charge of the investigation. And what he found, or rather
[43:17] what he didn't find, was troubling.
[43:20] There was no evidence Dorothy had booked passage on any
[43:23] steamship leaving New York. No hospital or asylum had
[43:27] admitted anyone matching her description at any point during
[43:30] the relevant period. No bodies had turned up in the
[43:34] rivers, the parks, or any of the city's public spaces that
[43:38] matched her description. Her bank account, which
[43:41] reportedly held what has been described as quote, UN quote, a
[43:44] modest sum, hadn't been touched. I personally suspect that the
[43:50] amount of money in her bank account was actually quite
[43:52] large, though modest in comparison to the wealth of her
[43:56] family. Detectives canvassed.
[43:59] Shops along 5th Ave. and questioned dozens of people in
[44:03] the area. The police also pieced together
[44:06] that Dorothy had likely made two purchases that afternoon.
[44:11] There was a box of chocolates from Park and Tilford, which was
[44:14] a confectionery shop, and a copy of a book from Brentano's, the
[44:19] same store near where she saw her friend Gladys.
[44:22] These details came from clerk testimony at both shops, who
[44:26] said she was acting totally normally, though given the
[44:29] passage of time, they couldn't absolutely confirm it was her.
[44:33] It was mundane stuff, but investigators noted it because
[44:38] it didn't suggest someone on the verge of a desperate act.
[44:41] People. Planning to do something?
[44:43] Intentionally don't typically buy boxes of chocolate or a
[44:47] light hearted book to read, or so investigators at the time
[44:51] thought. These days, though, we generally
[44:54] accept that people can keep up appearances or act normally even
[44:58] while under severe mental turmoil.
[45:02] The investigation quickly. Focused on a man named George
[45:05] Griscom Junior, a young engineer from Pittsburgh who'd been
[45:09] romantically involved with Dorothy, The family had strongly
[45:13] disapproved of the relationship since, as you may have been able
[45:16] to guess, they came from different social classes.
[45:20] While Griscom was actually from a well to do background, the
[45:24] Arnolds wanted her to marry in a more upwardly direction, so to
[45:27] speak. Frances.
[45:29] Arnold didn't. Consider Griscom A suitable
[45:31] match for his daughter and there was evidence that the couple had
[45:35] carried on their relationship in secret.
[45:38] Letters between the two were later recovered and their
[45:41] content suggested the relationship was very serious.
[45:45] Griscom was in Italy at the. Time of Dorothy's disappearance,
[45:49] which the Arnolds were well aware of.
[45:51] In fact, Dorothy's mother Mary and her brother John reportedly
[45:56] travelled to Florence in January 1911 to confront Griscom and
[46:01] determine whether Dorothy had secretly joined him.
[46:04] Griscom told them he'd received a letter from Dorothy shortly
[46:07] before she vanished, in which she described one of her stories
[46:11] being rejected and expressed deep discouragement, she wrote.
[46:16] That she was going to. Do something drastic with her
[46:18] life, though she didn't specify what.
[46:22] Griscom was eventually cleared as a suspect, but the letter he
[46:25] described was never recovered, and the nature of his
[46:28] relationship with Dorothy kept people talking for years.
[46:32] Some investigators reportedly believed Dorothy may have been
[46:35] pregnant at the time of her disappearance, which would have
[46:39] ruined the Arnold family socially.
[46:43] This theory was never confirmed, but it hungover the case for
[46:46] decades. Multiple theories circulated in
[46:51] the press and among investigators, and none of them
[46:55] were ever definitively ruled in or ruled out.
[46:58] The 1st and most widely discussed was that Dorothy had
[47:01] decided to pull the curtains. Her repeated rejections from
[47:05] publishers, her conflicts with her father, and the vague
[47:09] reference to doing something drastic all pointed in that
[47:12] direction. If she'd walked into Central
[47:15] Park or towards the reservoir area that afternoon, her body
[47:19] could plausibly have gone undiscovered for some time in
[47:22] the parks more remote stretches. The second theory was that.
[47:27] She'd eloped or run away to start a new life, possibly under
[47:31] an assumed name. This would have explained the
[47:34] lack of a body and the absence of any financial trail.
[47:39] If she'd planned it carefully, she might have set aside money
[47:42] the family didn't know about. But no credible sighting.
[47:46] Of her was ever confirmed after December 12th, and for someone
[47:50] of her social prominence to vanish so completely would have
[47:54] taken serious planning. 1/3 theory darker.
[47:59] Than the others was that Dorothy had been the victim of foul
[48:02] play. New York in 1910 was a city of
[48:05] over 4 million people, and violence was rarely investigated
[48:09] with any urgency, even for a socialite, this was.
[48:14] Particularly. True, when the victim's family
[48:16] was more concerned with discretion than any actual form
[48:20] of justice. The six week delay before police
[48:23] involvement meant that any physical evidence was long gone
[48:27] and potential witnesses had scattered.
[48:30] Some investigators reportedly suspected that Dorothy may have
[48:34] visited a doctor for an illegal medical procedure and passed
[48:38] away from complications under. This theory.
[48:42] Whoever performed the procedure disposed of the evidence to
[48:45] avoid prosecution. This theory was taken seriously,
[48:49] but no proof was ever found, and it wasn't even clear that she
[48:53] was ever pregnant. A final.
[48:56] Theory. Which, for reasons you'll soon
[48:58] see almost certainly isn't true, is that her father may have been
[49:03] involved. What happened to the Arnold?
[49:07] Family afterwards was almost as grim as the disappearance
[49:10] itself. Francis Arnold never stopped
[49:13] believing his daughter was alive, and he reportedly spent
[49:17] years funding private investigators and following up
[49:20] on reported sightings, none of which led anywhere.
[49:25] The strain of the case, combined with the relentless press
[49:28] coverage that followed, broke the family financially and
[49:31] emotionally. Francis Arnold passed away in
[49:35] 1922 without ever learning what happened to his daughter, and by
[49:40] every account, the remainder of his life was dedicated to
[49:43] finding her. I.
[49:45] Don't believe Francis. Had anything to do with his
[49:48] daughter's disappearance directly, though I suspect he
[49:51] may have come to believe that his lack of support for her
[49:54] caused it to happen. The New York Police Department.
[49:58] Officially kept the case open for years, but no additional
[50:02] leads ever panned out. Over a century later, the
[50:05] disappearance of Dorothy Arnold remains unsolved, and at this
[50:09] point, it will likely remain an unsolved mystery forever now.
[50:15] That said, I say likely. Here because there's been cases
[50:17] recently where bodies that were discovered over 100 years ago
[50:23] have been successfully identified.
[50:26] If a breakthrough is to come at this point, like all these
[50:29] cases, it will be through the process of forensic genetic
[50:33] genealogy. There's a piece of security.
[50:39] Footage from Varna Airport in Bulgaria dated July 8th, 2014
[50:45] that has been watched millions of times online.
[50:48] It shows a young man sprinting through the terminal at full
[50:51] speed, bursting out the doors, tearing across a parking lot and
[50:56] scaling A barbed wire perimeter fence without hesitating.
[51:00] On the other side, he drops into a field, keeps running and
[51:05] vanishes into a tree line. He left behind his wallet, his
[51:09] passport, his phone and every piece of luggage he'd brought on
[51:13] holiday. And nobody has confirmed seeing
[51:16] him since his name was. Lars.
[51:18] Matank. He was 28 years old and to this
[51:22] day not a single person can explain what he was running
[51:25] from, or whether there was anything to run from at all.
[51:30] Lars Mittang was. Born on February 9th, 1986 and
[51:34] grew up in a small town in Schleswig, Holstein in northern
[51:38] Germany. He worked as a technician at a
[51:41] nearby power plant. He had a girlfriend, a group of
[51:45] close friends and he visited his parents regularly.
[51:50] After his father suffered a stroke, Lars would often stop by
[51:54] the family home after work to help out.
[51:58] By all accounts, he was steady, reliable and well liked.
[52:02] Nothing about his background suggested anything unusual on.
[52:07] June 30th, 2:00. 1014 Lars flew to Varna, Bulgaria with five
[52:12] friends. They were headed to golden
[52:15] Sands, a popular seaside resort on the black seacoast.
[52:20] The. Holiday went well for.
[52:21] The first several days and the group did what groups of young
[52:24] men on a beach holiday tend to do.
[52:27] That changed on the evening of July 6th, the night before they
[52:31] were all supposed to fly home. That evening.
[52:35] Lars and his friends were at a bar in town when he got into an
[52:39] altercation with a group of other German tourists.
[52:43] The. Dispute was reportedly.
[52:44] Over soccer teams and Lars came out of it with a ruptured
[52:48] eardrum and an injured jaw. He went to a local Doctor Who
[52:53] prescribed him an antibiotic called Cefprozil and told him he
[52:57] couldn't fly until his eardrum healed up a bit.
[53:00] This meant Lars had to stay behind while his friends caught
[53:04] their scheduled flight on July 7th.
[53:07] One of his friends offered to stay with him, but Lars turned
[53:10] him down. His mother, Sandra Mitank,
[53:14] booked him into the Hotel Color, a cheap hotel near Varna
[53:18] Airport, and arranged a flight home for the following morning.
[53:23] The plan was simple. One night alone, then home.
[53:27] But Lars never made it. What happened between the
[53:31] afternoon of July 7th and the morning of July 8th is where the
[53:35] story takes a turn that nobody has been able to fully explain.
[53:40] Over the course of that night, Lars called and texted his
[53:43] mother multiple times. Sandra later described him as
[53:47] extremely worried and paranoid. He spoke in whispers, as if
[53:52] afraid someone would overhear, he told.
[53:55] Her the hotel was. Strange and that he didn't feel
[53:57] safe. In one call, he claimed 4 men
[54:01] were following him and that they intended to rob or harm him, and
[54:05] he begged her to cancel his credit cards.
[54:08] In another, he said he was hiding in a high place and was
[54:12] too afraid to move because he feared falling.
[54:16] He also reportedly asked his mother detailed questions about
[54:20] the ingredients in the antibiotic he'd been prescribed,
[54:24] complaining that his ear pain was getting worse and that he
[54:27] felt disoriented. Hotel security cameras from that
[54:31] night showed Lars pacing the corridors, hiding in elevators
[54:36] and peering cautiously out of windows.
[54:40] At around 1:00 in the morning. On July 8th, he left the hotel
[54:43] for roughly an hour before returning, and nobody knows
[54:46] where he went during that time. By morning, he called his mother
[54:51] again and told her the people following him.
[54:54] We're getting closer. Lars arrived at Varna.
[54:58] Airport On the morning of July 8th, he texted Sandra to let her
[55:02] know he was there, but instead of heading to his gate, he went
[55:07] to the airport's medical office since he wanted to see a doctor
[55:10] about his ear before flying. The airport physician, Dr.
[55:15] Kostov, later described Lars as nervous and erratic.
[55:19] While Kostov was examining him, a construction worker walked
[55:23] into the office since the airport was undergoing
[55:26] renovations at the time. According to Kostov, the moment
[55:30] the worker appeared, Lars looked at the worker and began to
[55:33] tremble. He reportedly shouted that he
[55:36] didn't want to perish there and that he needed to get out
[55:39] immediately. And then, just like that, he
[55:42] bolted. He ran out of the medical
[55:44] office, through the terminal and out the front doors.
[55:49] Airport security cameras captured the rest.
[55:53] He sprinted across the parking lot, reached the perimeter
[55:56] fence, climbed it and dropped into a field on the other side.
[56:01] He ran toward a wooded area and disappeared from the frame in.
[56:05] Doing so, he left. Everything behind his bag, his
[56:09] documents, his phone. He had no money, no
[56:13] identification, no means of communication and no way to
[56:17] contact anyone. That was the last confirmed
[56:21] sighting of Lars Mitank. Bulgarian authorities.
[56:25] Launched a search within hours and police dogs and helicopters
[56:29] were deployed across a five mile radius around the airport
[56:33] ground. Teams combed nearby forests and
[56:36] villages and reportedly hundreds of volunteers joined in.
[56:41] Despite this massive search effort, none of it produced a
[56:44] single trace of Lars. Sandra hired a private
[56:48] investigator who checked hospital records across the
[56:51] region for unidentified patients.
[56:54] The German Federal Criminal Police Office became involved
[56:56] shortly afterward, coordinating with Bulgarian authorities
[57:00] through Interpol. But despite these efforts,
[57:03] neither detectives nor the private investigator was able to
[57:07] determine what happened to him. Over the years, there have been
[57:11] reported sightings in several countries, but none have been
[57:15] confirmed. One of the more widely discussed
[57:18] came in 2019, when a truck driver in eastern Germany came
[57:23] forward to say he'd picked up a hitch hiker near Dresden who
[57:26] looked like Lars with a beard. Investigators followed up but
[57:31] couldn't locate the man, and it's widely believed that this
[57:34] was a man who simply coincidentally looked similar.
[57:39] The central question in this. Case isn't just where Lars went,
[57:42] though. It's also why he ran.
[57:45] Something happened inside his head between the evening of July
[57:49] 6th and the morning of July 8th that transformed a normal young
[57:53] man on a beach holiday into someone who was truly terrified.
[57:58] One theory that has received perhaps the most attention
[58:03] centers on the properties of the antibiotic he was prescribed.
[58:08] There have been documented cases of cefprozil causing psychiatric
[58:11] side effects in rare instances, including paranoia,
[58:15] hallucinations and confusion. Lars mother has reportedly
[58:21] supported this theory, as have doctors who later reviewed his
[58:25] medical history. The idea is that the medication,
[58:29] possibly combined with stress, sleep deprivation and the pain
[58:34] of his ear injury, could have triggered a break with reality.
[58:38] But the airport Dr. Kostov, according to some sources, has
[58:42] complicated this theory. It's been reported that Doctor
[58:46] Kostov told the police that Lars had mentioned that he had never
[58:50] even filled the prescription. If that's accurate, it would
[58:53] mean the medication wasn't responsible for his behavior,
[58:56] which leaves the question of what was personally.
[59:00] I have to. Question this since Sandra, his
[59:03] mother, reported that her son had asked to know what
[59:07] ingredients were in the antibiotic he was taking, that
[59:11] suggests to me that Lars may have been in a mental state
[59:14] where he believed he ought not disclose what medication he'd
[59:17] been taking. Which brings me to the next
[59:19] theory. Another possibility.
[59:23] Is that Lars experienced a genuine psychiatric crisis that
[59:27] was largely unrelated to the medication.
[59:30] Acute psychotic episodes can occur in otherwise healthy
[59:33] people, sometimes triggered by stress, isolation, sleep
[59:38] deprivation, or a combination of all three.
[59:43] Lars. Was alone in a.
[59:44] Foreign country for the first time, injured, in pain,
[59:49] separated from everyone he knew and unable to fly home.
[59:54] That's a significant amount of stress for anyone, and the
[59:57] disorientation and fear could have spiraled.
[1:00:02] There's also the possibility. That Lars was actually being
[1:00:05] followed, since we know that the altercation at the bar on July
[1:00:09] 6th was real, the men he fought with were real, and it's
[1:00:14] conceivable that they or their associates tracked him down
[1:00:17] afterward, and that his fear was a rational response to a genuine
[1:00:22] threat. According to those who subscribe
[1:00:25] to this theory, this potentially answers the question as to why
[1:00:29] no trace of Lars was ever found. None of these theories have
[1:00:34] been. Confirmed or ruled out and the
[1:00:36] investigation has produced no physical evidence pointing in
[1:00:39] any direction. In particular, the video of Lars
[1:00:43] has become one of the most watched missing persons videos
[1:00:46] on the Internet. People keep watching it, trying
[1:00:50] to read something in his body language and looking for some
[1:00:53] clue in the footage that might explain what was going through
[1:00:56] his mind in those final seconds. But so.
[1:01:01] Far there isn't. One, there's just a young man
[1:01:04] running as fast as he can, and then there's simply nothing at
[1:01:07] all.

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