Next Day Gone

This blog dives into the world of unusual disappearances and mysterious deaths. Most of these cases are unsolved at the time of posting. 

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Susan Walsh

Susan Walsh, born Susan Young aspired to be a poet from a young age. Her upbringing was described as “troubled”. Yet, she still attended William Paterson University where she majored in English and writing. In order to pay for university, she would work intermittently as an erotic dancer.  Despite a drug addiction and alcoholism, Walsh graduated with a bachelor’s and worked as a writer for various magazines. 

On July 1996, Walsh left her apartment complex in Nutley, New Jersey where she lived with her son. In a different apartment in the same complex resided her estranged husband, Mark. Walsh had left to run errands and make a phone call using a nearby payphone while her son was left in his father’s care. This was the last time she was seen. At the time of her disappearance, Walsh was halfway through a master’s program at NYU and worked as a freelance journalist and a “stripper”. Friends reported worries that she had restarted her drug habit despite eleven years of sobriety.  Police ruled out Mark as a suspect but had little more to go on than that. Meanwhile rumours had been circulating that her disappearance may have been connected to the investigative journalism she had been doing for the Village Voice at that time. More specifically, she had written an in-depth report on a strip club ring where members of the Russian mafia were allegedly forcing young girls into the sex industry.  Following this article, she wrote a piece on an underground vampire community in New York City. However, this story was never run.  Ultimately, Police were unable to establish any connections between Walsh’s disappearance and her work. Read More

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Annie Le

On the morning of Tuesday, September 8th in 2009, a security camera captured the above photo of Annie Le entering a lab building at the Yale School of Medicine.  Although there were 70 or so cameras around the building, none caught the image of her leaving either this day or the next. Days passed and the entire campus community grew increasingly worried that Le had met a terrible fate. Yale even offered a 10,000 dollar reward for information leading to Le’s whereabouts. Five days after her disappearance, police discovered her body hidden behind a utility panel in the basement of the laboratory. Her cause of death was asphyxiation. 

For More Information: https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/2632-the-death-of-annie-le 

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William Ebenezer Jones III

December 17th 1962  was a chilly morning in Vineland, New Jersey. But, that did not stop 3 year old William Ebenezer Jones from playing outside with his sister, Jill. The two siblings stayed in the front yard while their mother, Evelyn would keep an eye on them through the window while at the same time tending to her younger son and preparing lunch.  The family home was decorated for Christmas. Underneath the tree were William’s presents including a colouring book and a toy tank. Unfortunately, young WIlliam never got the chance to open these presents because on that chilly winter morning, he vanished. 

The day started out like any other, William’s father left for work at the New York Shipbuilding company in Camden while Evelyn ran some errands with the children. Upon returning home, the older two went to play with the family dogs. 

At 11:45, a neighbour caught sight of William who appeared to have wandered off on his own and urged him to return home. Two hours later, Evelyn heard a knock at the door, only to see Jill standing in the doorway. She came inside carrying a plastic poinsettia which she claimed to be from William. She also informed her mother that the “boogeyman” had taken William away. Evelyn rushed from the home in search of her eldest boy. During her search, she was approached by an unknown man who asked for her by name. Evelyn did not reply but instead continued her search. When the search was unfounded, she reported William missing. 

Also missing was their basset hound, Baby. However, she was found not long after a short distance from home and noticeably wet.  Neighbours joined the search and continued for four days along with emergency services and the Navy. Bloodhounds were brought in from Philadelphia. While they did pick up a scent, it was quickly lost near the family home. 

The plastic poinsettia was one avenue investigators pursued. It was discovered that someone had been selling these flowers around the neighbourhood shortly before Wililam’s disappearance. However, this was a dead end when it was discovered that this particular flower came from a neighbours trash.  But not all was lost. The detail about the trash lead investigators to wonder if William had crawled into a trash bin. Sanitation workers were questioned and in return stated that they hadn’t seen the boy. They also added that they wouldn’t have noticed him being emptied into the truck. It was this statement that lead the search team to the landfill. But this also turned up fruitless.  

Over the years, the investigation continued, resulting only in dead ends from supposed psychics. It is now generally believed that William was abducted, but despite a thorough search and extensive investigation, William remains missing.

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Rebecca Coriam

Rebecca Coriam was a 24 year old woman from the UK who was working on a Disney Cruise ship as a youth worker, a job that she started in 2010. While working on the Disney Wonder which was based in Los Angeles, her grandfather passed away. Rebecca left the job for two weeks to be with her family. This was the last time they would see her. 

Rebecca returned to the Wonder and remained in close contact with her family via Skype and Facebook. On March 21st 2011, Rebecca sent her parents a message  telling them that she would call them the next day. 

But that phone call never came. This worried her parents. These fears were confirmed when a Disney official called them to reveal Rebecca’s disappearance. Apparently, Rebecca didn’t show up for 9:00 am shift.

Coworkers searched her room and anywhere else on the ship she could have been. The search came up unfounded. 

Security footage showed Rebecca talking to someone on the phone in the crew area at 5:45 in the morning. In the video, Rebecca looks distraught. A young man approaches her and he appears to ask her if she’s okay. Rebecca hangs up and walks away. 

The crew searched the entire boat while the Coast Guard and Mexican Navy took to the waters to see if Rebecca went overboard. Nothing was found. 

When the ship returned to Los Angeles 3 days later, Rebecca’s parents were flown out. Her parents did not believe that investigators did a thorough enough job. When speaking to the captain, he expressed his condolences and postulated that “Rebecca had been washed overboard by a wave while in the crew pool.” Naturally, her parents did not believe this due to the height of the walls near the crew pool. 

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Brian Shaffer

On April Fool’s day 2006, an Ohio State medical student named Brian Shaffer celebrated the end of the semester with a group of friends at a bar near campus called “The Ugly Tuna”. As closing time grew closer, the bar became louder. The combination of rock music and drunken singing made it near impossible to hear anything else. When the lights came up, Clint and Meredith, Brian’s friends, scanned the room  while calling Brian’s name, only to get no response.  Clint checked the men’s lavatory but this search too came up fruitless. Calls to his phone went unanswered. Clint chalked this up to Brian leaving without him. 

Come morning, Alexis, Brian’s girlfriend called his phone to discuss an upcoming vacation they were going to take together. A vacation on which Brian planned to propose. But the call went straight to voicemail. She was not immediately concerned, thinking that he was probably still asleep with a hangover. 

She tried again later to no avail. This time she called Brain’s father Randy to voice her concern. 

Out of worry for his son, Randy went to Brian’s apartment. Everything was in its place, his car was outside, his books were stacked neatly upon the shelves, his bed was made, but there was no Brian.

On April 2nd, Brian was officially reported missing. Sergeant John Hurst of the Columbus Police Department stated that investigators placed Brian at the Ugly Tuna with his friend Clint. Upon looking at the security video, Brian is shown coming up an escalator towards the bar. He chats briefly with two women who leave. He then reenters the venue just before 2 in the morning. Then Brian goes off camera and is not seen since. 

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Sex Differences In Human Skeletons: Skulls

Determining the sex of a recovered skeleton to aid in identification can be a difficult process due to race, age, lifestyle, and environmental conditions of the site; often times investigators can only make an educated guess as to whether a skeleton could be male or female depending on the quality of the remains and the reasons listed above.

However, there are slight differences in the structure of male and female skeletons that are reasonably constant, the most obvious of which can be seen in the skull:

Shape of lower jaw

The lower mandible of males tends to be significantly heavier and more angular when compared to the rest of the facial structure.

Females, on the other hand, tend to have a rounder, lighter lower mandible with the chin featuring a more prominent point.

Shape of eyes

Males tend to have deeper-set orbital sockets with a small shelf of bone extending between the brows

Females tend to have shallower, more widely-spaced orbital sockets with no brow bone

Shape of nose cavity

Males have a wider, thicker nose cavity that appears pear-shaped

Females have a less prominent nose cavity that appears teardrop-shaped

Size/Overall Appearance

Males tend to have larger, thicker skulls with more prominent bone structure around the jaw, cheeks, and back of the head

Females tend to have rounder, more delicate skulls with less bone structure and much smoother overall texture and appearance.

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Ted Conrad

20 year old Ted Conrad worked as a bank teller at the Society National Bank while he studied at Cuyahoga Community College. He had a nice apartment, steady girlfriend named Kathleen Einhouse and a high IQ. Friends would describe him as quiet and articulate. Ted also had an obsession. The movie, The Thomas Crown Affair which was about a millionaire who was bored with his life and decided to find excitement in the form of robbing a bank, inspired him. So much so, that he decided to make life imitate art. 

On the afternoon of his 20th birthday, Ted walked out of the bank with his brown paper sack in hand. The sack  stack of 50 and 100 dollar bills that equaled $215,000 (1.3 million in today’s money).

After leaving the bank, Ted visited his landlady and waved to her before getting into a taxi. He called his girlfriend Kathleen and told her that he was attending a concert in Pennsylvania. This was the last anyone heard from Ted.

Kathleen received 2 letters from Ted. The first letter came one week after the robbery. It was postmarked Washington D.C. The second was one week after that and came from Englewood, California. In both letters, Ted admitted to the crime.

The following October, a couple claimed to have seen Conrad in Hawaii. They happened to be sitting near him at a hotel bar and the three began talking. When the couple told Ted that they were from Cleveland, he excused himself to the bathroom and never came back. When they returned home, they saw a news story about the bank robbery and reported their encounter to police.

In 1969, Ted was indicted for embezzlement and falsifying bank records. This could land him a sentence of 20 years in prison. The case is still open and active.

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Beverly Potts

Beverly Potts left her residence in Cleveland Ohio to attend a festival in the evening. She and a friend, Patricia Swing, made it to Halloran Park at around 8 PM. Beverly had been given permission to stay until the show was over, but Patricia had to be home by dark, so she left around forty minutes after arriving. This was the last time Patricia saw her friend. The last confirmed sighting of Beverly was at 9:30 PM when the show was over and the people began filtering out of Holloran Park. A 13 year old  acquaintance of Beverly saw a girl who he thought to be her walking across the park towards her home. 

But she never made it home. At 10:30 pm, her parents reported her missing and an immediate search turned up nothing. 

The only viable clues didn’t appear until 1994, decades after her disappearance, in the form of a letter that was discovered in a renovated house. The letter claimed that the writer’s husband had brutally murdered Beverly and disposed of the body. After significant research by investigators, it was unfortunately deemed to be a dead end. It is thought that the letter had been an attempt by the author to get revenge on an abusive husband by framing him for murder.

The case fell dormant again until 2000 when The Plain Dealer received a series of odd and anonymous letters. The first latter only stated that the writer killed Beverly Potts after kidnapping and molesting her. He described how he had decided to confess because he was dying of an illness.  Similar letters would continue to arrive over the next three years from the same individual. These letters would continue to detail the incident graphically. The second letter promised that the writer had arranged upon his death to have sent a sealed brown envelope that would include even more details and proof of the deed in the form of a rare coin that Beverly carried with her. 

In a third letter, the author offered to turn himself in, stating that he would appear in Halloran Park on the 50th anniversary of the disappearance. The anniversary came and went and the author was a no-show. 

The final letter merely stated that he changed his mind about turning himself in and instead gave one cryptic clue. He had checked himself into a nursing home.  

Since none of these letters bore a signature, there was no way to know they were sent by nor of their authenticity. To this day, no one knows what happened to Beverly.

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The full surveillance video of Elisa Lam in the elevator. This is the last known sighting of her alive. 

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Elisa Lam

21 year old Canadian University Student Elisa Lam took a trip to the United States. Her trip included stops in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Santa Cruz. In January of 2013, Elisa visited San Diego and then went on to Los Angeles.  In Los Angeles she booked a 3 night stay in the notorious Cecil Hotel. While there, she shared a room with two roommates. But this arrangement didn’t last long. Her roommates asked for her to be moved due to “strange behaviour”.  Throughout her trip, Elisa stayed in contact with her family. He called her mother daily. The calls stopped on January 31st and this caused her family to worry. They reported her missing.  When no trace of Elisa could be found police released the security camera footage showing her last movements. 

Three weeks after she vanished, the front desk started to get complaints about low water pressure and a strange taste of the water. When maintenance went to go investigate the water towers on the roof of the hotel, they found Elisa’s body along with the clothes she was wearing in the surveillance video.

The autopsy report showed some key points:

1. Lam took at least one antidepressant that day. 

2. Lam had taken her second antidepressant and mood stabilizer recently, but not that day.

3. Lam had not taken her anti-psychotic recently.

4. There was no indication of foul play. But the coroner noted that they could not perform a full examination due to the inability to examine the blood from the decomposing body.

You can read the full autopsy report here. 

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THE STORY OF THE TOXIC LADY

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The Dyatlov Pass Incident

In January of 1959, a group of university students from Ural State Technical University embarked on a hiking trek. They traveled up on the Otorten mountain. All students were experienced hikers and skiers. 

On the first day of February, the weather took a turn for the worse in the pass that lead to Otorten mountain. A snowstorm blew the students off course and pushed them to the slope of a mountain named Kholat Syakhl or “Mountain of the Dead”. On this mountain, the students set up camp for the night. 

The group was expected to return on February 12th. But the students did not return on that day. When February 20th rolled around, people began to worry.  The rescue teams encountered a strange scene. The tent was cut open from the inside while the students’ belongings remained. The students were found six miles away from their campsite, without their skies, shoes, or coats in approx. -30 degree *F weather. 

Two of the students had fractured skulls, two more suffered from chest fractors and one hiker was missing her tongue. The cause of death was ruled a “compelling natural force” and closed the case.

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