INTRODUCTION
MISSING!
At any one moment, thousands of people might be missing. Some pop up after a period of time, and others are eventually found under tragic circumstances.
This book is not about those people. Instead it takes a look at an intriguing few who, after years, decades, and sometimes centuries of investigation, still leave unanswered questions. Family, friends, law enforcement, historians, and all who are curious want to know what happened. Books have been written, theories explored, and adventurous searches undertaken, but final proof about their fate remains just out of reach. In a fuzzy area of no conclusive facts, these missing can creep into the realm of mysterious legend, tantalizing myth, or wispy ghost stories.
Some of these people were already famous and had a huge effect on the lives and times around them. Others became famous only after they disappeared, and their missing status led to changes in such areas as politics and airplane construction.
Did you know that a man who tried to help truck drivers during the Great Depression found himself in deep trouble with dangerous mobsters? For decades, many investigators have followed clues to a possible burial site in such places as New Jersey’s Giants Stadium and a Florida swamp.
Did you know that a hijacker who disappeared after parachuting from a plane left behind a clip-on tie that was recently discovered to contain new clues?
Did you know that a girl who knew all about commas and the alphabet at age two, and was typing at age three, soon became widely admired as a child novelist?
Did you know that President Franklin Roosevelt had a runway built on a tiny Pacific island for a famous aviator before she began a long flight around the world?
Did you know that a man was kidnapped after he announced a decision to publish secrets about an organization that turned out to be not so secret after all?
And did you know that two young princes went missing five hundred years ago during a long civil war in England? Someone in the royal family was responsible for their disappearance, but who? Were they murdered? Did either survive?
These stories begin with intrigue but are not quite finished. Acceptable proof to end them would be DNA evidence, fingerprints, a photo, a body, something very solid and not in dispute.
Meanwhile, the stories continue to swirl with new theories, adventurous searches, and reevaluations of old clues with new methods.
Every curious and determined investigator hopes to discover the final answer and be the person to end the mystery.
Copyright © 2019 by Brenda Z. Guiberson
