These 30 Famous People Mysteriously Disappeared And Were Never Found

Amelia Earhart made history by becoming the first female aviator to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean. A female icon and celebrated author, she promoted commercial air travel and wrote many best-selling books about her adventures in the sky.

With a passion for pushing the envelope and shattering records, she embarked on what would be her last flight on July 2, 1937. Her goal was ambitious: to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world.

Earhart boarded a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra airplane alongside her navigator, Fred Noonan. The pair were last seen in Law, New Guinea, where they made their last stop before the incident.

Investigators believe the plane ran out of fuel somewhere over the central Pacific Ocean and crashed near Howland Island. Earhart was pronounced dead one year and six months after hers and Noonan’s disappearance.

The son of Hollywood legend Errol Flynn, Sean was also a photojournalist, adventurer, and actor.

His fearless pursuit of dangerous assignments during the Vietnam War eventually led to his disappearance on April 6, 1970, while he was covering the conflict in Cambodia.

Due to the influence of his father, Sean was given ample opportunities to develop an acting career, having made his debut at the age of fifteen on an episode of Errol’s television show, The Errol Flynn Theatre.

Sean’s pivot to journalism was the result of becoming disillusioned with acting, searching for a more meaningful and adventurous career of his own. He eventually formed part of a group of high-risk photographers who would regularly go into combat areas to take the best pictures possible.

Sean and his partner, Dana Stone, who was reporting on behalf of CBS, were seized by members of the Viet Cong while heading to a press conference in Saigon by motorcycle. Their bodies were never found.

Elizabeth Eaton Converse, most commonly known by her stage name Connie, is often hailed as one of the first modern singer-songwriters, and a talented composer, poet, and writer.

She disappeared on August 10, 1974. According to Howard Fishman, who wrote her biography, a combination of personal setbacks devastated her mental health, plunging her into a deep depression that led her to pack her belongings into her Volkswagen Beetle and drive away, never to be seen again.

Testimony of friends and family point to Connie being a lesbian, feeling rejected in both her personal and professional life by her religious parents. She found solace in writing for the Journal of Conflict Resolution, but lost her job after its offices moved to Yale in 1972.

While her family tried to locate her, the private investigator who they had hired ultimately told them that he couldn’t bring her back, and that they should respect her decision to disappear.

Known for being the 17th Prime Minister of Australia, Holt vanished without a trace on December 17, 1967, while swimming at Cheviot Beach, Victoria, which sparked one of the largest search efforts in the country’s history.

With his body unable to be found, many conspiracy theories surfaced in the aftermath of the event. Among the most outlandish was the idea of Holt being a spy from China, whose body was seized by a submarine of the Asian nation.

Tony Eggleton, a political consultant and friend of Holt’s, said that he tried to confront him about the dangers of his hobby, but that the Prime Minister dismissed him, saying, "Look Tony, what are the odds of a prime minister being drowned or taken by a shark?"

Holt’s death has been attributed to drowning, and he was later commemorated with the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre.

The Mexican-American attorney made a name for himself by being an activist in the Chicano Movement, as well as for his novels: 1972’s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and 1973’s The Revolt of the Cockroach People.

He disappeared on May 27, 1974, aged 39, while traveling in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico. His son, Marco Acosta, would later state that while the body was never found, his father “got into a fight, and got killed.”

Zeta was a close friend of author Hunter S. Thompson, who immortalized him by recounting their adventures while traveling to Las Vegas in the autobiographical novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, published on November 11, 1971.