Madalena Cojocari was reported missing a month after her parents last saw her, and only after officials from her middle school began probing.
Linda Baker, a shy, 18-year-old young woman from ritzy Greenwich, Connecticut, ditched her plans for school to move to New York’s East Village and paint—that’s what she told her family, at least. It was 1967 and Linda immersed herself in a hippie lifestyle and drug culture that brought her to panhandling on the streets of New York, and eventually led to her early demise.
Joseph William Smedley II, a 20-year-old multitalented college student in his sophomore year at Indiana State University, disappeared after a night watching the blood moon with his fraternity brothers. A few days later, his body was found floating in a lake close to campus. When he death was ruled a suicide, Vivianna Brenas, Joseph’s sister, felt something wasn’t right, and she continues to advocate for his case to be reopened.
Dubbed the “runaway bride” by the media, Jennifer Wilbanks pulled an earlier Sherri Papini move and faked her kidnapping to avoid marrying her fiancé.
Five years passed before authorities were alerted to the disappearance of 6-year-old Nicole Snyder and her sister, 4-year-old Jasmine Jean Snyder, of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It wasn’t that no one noticed their absence before, but their mother, 32-year-old Marie Sue Snyder, had far more involvement than she let on. Reader discretion: TRIGGER WARNING.