On the night of August 6, 1930, New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater had dinner at a chophouse on West 45th Street in Manhattan. He was 41. Tall, well dressed, politically connected. He'd been on the bench for only a few months. He ate with a friend and a showgirl. Around 9:30 p.m. he got up and said he was heading to a Broadway show. He walked outside onto the busy street. He was never seen again. That day had been strange. That morning he'd had his assistant cash two checks for him, around $5,000, an enormous sum in 1930. He'd also cleaned out files from his office and carried them back to his apartment in two briefcases. His wife was at their summer place in Maine. His colleagues assumed he was on vacation. Nobody reported him missing for nearly a month. When the news finally broke, it became the biggest missing persons story in America. New York was in the middle of a massive investigation into corruption in its city government. Crater was tied to the political machine at the center of it. Then his wife found something. Months after he vanished, she opened a dresser drawer in their apartment, one police said they'd already searched. Inside was an envelope full of cash, checks, stocks, and insurance policies. And a note in her husband's handwriting. It ended with the words "I am very weary." Theories piled up for decades. That he ran off with a mistress. That he was killed to keep him quiet. That he fled with the money. In 1939, he was declared legally dead. Then in 2005, a woman died and left behind a handwritten note. It claimed her late husband knew Crater had been murdered, and buried under the boardwalk at Coney Island. It was never proven. 96 years later, the judge who walked out of a restaurant into a Manhattan night is still missing.

On the morning of December 12, 1910, 25 year old Dorothy Arnold stepped out of her family's mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was a wealthy socialite. Her father imported perfume. Her uncle sat on the U.S. Supreme Court. She told her mother she was going shopping for a dress for her sister's party. Her mother offered to come along. Dorothy said no, she'd be fine. She walked down Fifth Avenue in a dark blue suit and a big black hat. She stopped at a candy shop and bought a pound of chocolates. Then she went to Brentano's bookstore and picked up a book of light humor sketches. Around 2 p.m. she ran into a friend on Fifth Avenue. They chatted for a few minutes. Dorothy said she was going to walk home through Central Park. Then she turned and walked away. That was the last time anyone ever saw Dorothy Arnold. She didn't come home for dinner. She didn't come home that night. And here's the strangest part. Her family didn't call the police. For six weeks, they kept it secret. They hired private detectives. They told friends she was sick in bed. They were terrified of a scandal. When the story finally broke, it became a national sensation. Reporters dug up her secrets. She'd been secretly trying to become a writer, and magazines kept rejecting her stories. And she'd been seeing an older man her parents didn't approve of. Rumors spread everywhere. That she'd run off to Europe. That she'd died in a botched secret surgery. That she'd taken her own life over her failed writing career. Her father eventually announced that he believed she was dead. He spent a fortune trying to prove it. He never did. No body. No letter. No trace. Not one confirmed sighting in 116 years. A rich young woman vanished on a busy New York afternoon, somewhere between Fifth Avenue and Central Park. Where did she go?

On the night of March 31, 2006, Brian Shaffer, a 27 year old Ohio State medical student, went out in Columbus to kick off spring break. He'd had a brutal month. His mom had died of cancer just three weeks earlier. But he was still going to class, and in two days he was flying to Miami with his girlfriend. He had dinner with his dad that night. Then he and a friend hit the bars. Just after 1 a.m., security cameras caught Brian riding an escalator up into the Ugly Tuna Saloona, a packed second floor bar near campus. Around 1:55 a.m., the cameras caught him again, just outside the entrance, chatting with two young women. Then he walked out of frame, back toward the bar. That is the last time anyone has ever seen Brian Shaffer. The cameras never recorded him leaving. Not on the escalator. Not through the front. His friends waited, called him, and eventually went home. Monday morning, he never showed up for his flight. Up to 50 officers searched at a time in those first days. Over the years, police have sifted through more than 5,000 tips. His phone was never used again. His bank account was never touched. His credit cards were never charged. Two years later, his father, still searching, was killed when a tree fell on him in his own yard. Then in 2026, a podcast got a tip naming a possible person of interest. When they brought the name to a Columbus detective, they learned police had already been given that same name by one of Brian's friends back in 2006. 20 years later, no body. No arrest. No answer. He walked into a bar full of people, in front of cameras, and vanished. How?