From a man who entered a bar and was never
seen or heard from again to a teenage girl who disappeared while on spring break, here
are 7 people who vanished without a trace: Number 7 Brian Shaffer
On March 31, 2006, Brian Shaffer, a medical student from Ohio State University, was out
drinking with friends to celebrate the beginning of spring break. They started their night at a bar called the
Ugly Tuna Saloona and then went bar hopping. After midnight, they returned to the Ugly
Tuna, where Brian was separated from his friends, who eventually assumed he’d gone home. Brian was recorded by a security camera at
the Ugly Tuna Saloona at 1:55 AM on April 1. He was talking to two young women and saying
goodbye. Shortly afterwards, at 2:00 AM, Brian entered
the bar but was never recorded leaving. In fact, he was never seen or heard from again. The puzzling aspect is that there were no
other entrances to the bar accessible to the public and the surveillance video hadn’t
been tampered with. The case received media attention throughout
the US. Even though he’d recently lost his mother,
Brian was doing well in school and made plans to go on vacation with his girlfriend. Columbus police considered many possibilities,
including, briefly, that he might have been a victim of the Smiley Face serial killer. While this hypothesis was later abandoned,
foul play hasn’t been ruled out. Some suspicion fell on one of Brian’s friends
who’d been out with him that night and who later refused to take a lie detector test. There’s also a theory that he might be alive
and living somewhere else. The truth, so far, is that no one knows-or
is unwilling to talk about- what happened to Brian Shaffer. Number 6 Barbara Bollick
In July, 2007, Barbara Bollick, from Corvallis, Montana, went on a hiking trip in the Bitteroot
Mountains. She was joined by her friend Jim Ramaker,
who was visiting from California. At one point, as they were approaching an
overlook, Jim stopped to admire the view. In doing so he turned his head from Barbara,
who was about 20 to 30 feet behind him at the time, for less than a minute. However, when Jim turned his head back he
found that Barbara had completely disappeared. Jim alerted the authorities who launched a
thorough search of the area but never found any trace of the 55-year-old woman. Naturally, Jim became the main suspect when
foul play was proposed as a hypothesis. Nevertheless, there was no obvious motive
or any evidence linking him to her disappearance. Moreover, the man was reportedly very cooperative
with the investigators and, had he been the one responsible, a better story would be expected
than that she vanished into thin air. Jim was ruled out as a suspect. More than a decade since Barbara Bolick disappeared,
there’s still no explanation for what happened. Number 5 Maura Murray
Maura Murray disappeared in February 2004, after emailing her employer and professors
at the University of Massachusetts that she had to take a week off due to a family emergency,
a claim her family couldn’t corroborate. On the evening of February 9, she crashed
her car into a tree near Woodsville, New Hampshire. A bus driver returning home, stopped and asked
Maura if she was hurt and if she needed him to call the police. According to one report, the woman pleaded
with him not to call the police and assured him that she was all right and that she’d
already called AAA. In reality, no such call was ever recorded. The bus driver knew reception in the area
was bad, so he called the authorities when he got home. When the police arrived at the site of the
accident, about 20 minutes later, Maura’s car was there but the young woman was gone. There was no sign of a struggle. Her cellphone, debit and credit cards were
missing but haven’t been used since. Nobody knows for sure what happened to her,
but the next day, Maura’s fiancé in Oklahoma received a voicemail, which could have been
from her. There were no words and all the man heard
was sobbing at the other end. In 2009, Murray’s case was given to New
Hampshire’s cold case division but some suspect that she’s disappeared on purpose. Number 4 Brandon Swanson
On May 14, 2008, Brandon Swanson was returning to his hometown of Marshall, Minnesota, after
celebrating the end of the spring semester. Shortly after midnight, the 19-year-old veered
off the road and drove his car into a ditch. Brandon wasn’t hurt but he didn’t know
exactly where he was, so he called his parents on his cellphone. He asked them to come pick him up and that
he thought he was somewhere near Lynd. His parents were unable to locate Brandon,
who stayed on the phone with them for about 45 minutes. Then, the phone call ended abruptly with Brandon
exclaiming ‘Oh, shit!’ That was the last time he was ever heard from. The following morning, his parents went to
the police to report him missing but were told to be patient, as this type of behavior
was common for young men his age. However, phone records subsequently revealed
that he’d been near Porter, 25 miles in a different direction from where he said he
was. That’s when the circumstances of his disappearance
got more complicated. His car was eventually located near Taunton,
but there was no sign of Brandon. Foul play wasn’t ruled out but there’s
also a theory that he might’ve accidentally fallen in the Yellow Medicine River and drowned. After years of extensive searches, his body
was never found. Number 3 Nicole Morin
The day was July 30, 1985. At 10:30 AM, 8-year-old Nicole Morin left
her mother’s penthouse apartment in Toronto, Ontario. She went to the lobby of the 20-story West
Mall apartment building to get the mail. Afterwards, she returned to the apartment
and spoke to a friend on the intercom, whom she’d made plans with to swim in the building’s
pool. At 11:00 AM the little girl said goodbye to
her mother and left the apartment. About 15 minutes later, her friend called
the intercom to ask why Nicole hadn’t arrived. She was last seen in the hallway of the penthouse
or, according to one report, entering the elevator. More than three decades after she vanished,
after one of the largest police investigations in Toronto’s history, there’s still no
evidence to indicate what might have happened to her. One popular theory is that she was abducted
as soon as she left the penthouse, but it seems unlikely that such an act, committed
in broad daylight in a building of many tenants, would have gone unnoticed. Number 2 Michael Negrete
18-year-old Michael Negrete attended UCLA on a music scholarship and was reportedly
a popular freshman. On December 10, 1999 he went to a party on
the floor he lived on at Dykstra Hall. Michael then returned to his room where he
played an online game with his friends until about 4 AM. He briefly went to congratulate another player
and was last seen returning to his own room. What’s strange is that, when his roommate
woke up at 9 AM, Michael’s keys, wallet, shoes, clothing and musical instruments were
still there. However, Michael was nowhere to be found. Nobody had seen him since 4 AM, and, as of
November 2018, there still haven’t been any confirmed sightings of Michael Negrete. Extensive searches were carried out with bloodhounds
and over 500 leads were submitted. Michael’s parents hired private detectives
and offered a $100,000 reward for any information leading to his whereabouts. Nothing ever panned out. There was just one promising lead several
students had given, a Caucasian man who no one could account for. He was on the floor the night of Michael’s
disappearance. A sketch was released and the police urged
the man to come forward, stressing that he wasn’t under investigation. No one ever did. Theories regarding Michael’s disappearance
have included abduction and homicide, possibly connected to the illegal trade of human organs. Number 1 Brittanee Drexel
While on spring break in April 2009, 17-year-old Brittanee Marie Drexel disappeared from Myrtle
Beach, South Carolina, while she was on spring break. The teenager had told her mother that she
was going to stay at a friend’s house in Rochester, New York, which was closer to home. Brittanee was last seen at about 9:00 PM,
on a surveillance camera, leaving the Blue Water Resort. At the hotel, she visited 20-year-old club
promoter Peter Brozowitz, an acquaintance from Rochester. Brittanee was texting with her boyfriend,
John, on the way back to her hotel, which was about a mile away. Then the texts suddenly stopped and John’s
phone calls went straight to voicemail. That’s when he called Brittanee’s mother
and told her that she’d actually gone to Myrtle Beach. Her parents were devastated when it soon emerged
that their daughter had gone missing. The last time her cellphone pinged was in
an area rife with swamps and alligators. Brittanee was never seen again and her body
was never found. Between 1:00 and 2:00 AM, Brozowitz abruptly
left his hotel and returned to Rochester but the four friends he’d been sharing a room
with stayed behind. However, none of the men were conclusively
linked to Brittanee’s disappearance. There’s a belief that she was abducted and
fell victim to human trafficking. The last report on the case came from a jailhouse
confession, in 2016. Taquan Brown was serving time for voluntary
manslaughter in a different case and his story on the matter was, for many, hard to hear. It involved Brittanee being gang raped for
several days and subsequently shot, killed and fed to the alligators. Brown named Da’Shaun Taylor as the man responsible
and his story was corroborated by another inmate who gave his account to an FBI agent. However, both inmates’ stories lacked the
substance necessary to build a case and Taylor completely denied the allegations. So far nobody has been charged in Brittanee
Drexel’s disappearance. Thanks for watching! Do you know other cases of people vanishing
without a trace? Tell us about them in the comment section
below!
