The disappearance last month of Long Island native Gabby Petito garnered headlines from coast to coast as new twists and turns emerged — but it’s just one of the countless missing persons cases to grip the nation.
Here are some of the most compelling:
Jimmy Hoffa
The tough-as-nails Teamsters boss disappeared outside a Michigan diner on July 30, 1975, and is presumed to have been murdered — although his body has never been found.
Hoffa, longtime president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was outside the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township to meet with a pair of Mafia bigwigs when he disappeared.
Earlier this year, a former mob lawyer said he helped bury Hoffa at a Georgia golf course. Hoffa’s death is also the subject of Martin Scorsese’s hit 2020 film “The Irishman.”
DB Cooper
The mysterious airline passenger remains one of the FBI’s biggest mysteries.
A nondescript man identifying himself as “Dan Cooper” robbed a Portland-to-Seattle Northwest Airlines flight on Nov. 24, 1971, telling the crew he had a bomb.
Cooper demanded $200,000 in $20 bills, then parachuted out of the plane — and into obscurity, according to the FBI. The agency reopened the case in 2016, but Cooper has never been found or positively identified.
Etan Patz
The 6-year-old New Yorker disappeared from a Soho street while on his way to his school bus stop on May 25, 1979 — becoming the first “milk carton” missing child.
In 2016, a local bodega clerk, 56-year-old Pedro Hernandez, was convicted of kidnapping and murdering the boy and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison the following year. The boy’s body was never found.
Laci Peterson
Peterson, 27, was eight months pregnant when she disappeared from her home in Modesto, California, on Christmas Eve in 2002. Her body was found four months later in San Francisco Bay.
Her husband, Scott Peterson, was convicted in her death in 2005. Prosecutors contend that he dumped his wife’s body into the bay from his fishing boat.
Judge Joseph Force Crater
The History Channel called the Big Apple Supreme Court judge “the missingest man in New York.” The 41-year-old jurist disappeared near Times Square on Aug. 6, 1930.
The Pennsylvania-born judge, appointed to the bench by Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had returned from a family trip to Maine when he vanished.
His law clerk later told police Crater destroyed documents and withdrew $5,000 before disappearing.
He was never found despite a massive manhunt and was declared dead in 1939.
Kristin Smart
The 19-year-old co-ed went missing after attending an off-campus party near California Polytechnic State University on May 25, 1996, and was never heard from again. She was officially declared dead in 2002, although her body has never been recovered.
Paul Flores, 44, a former student at the school, was arrested earlier this year and charged with murder in the case, along with his father, Ruben Flores, 80, for allegedly helping his son dispose of the body.
Prosecutors said Paul Flores walked Smart home, then raped and killed her.
Natalee Holloway
The Alabama teenager was on a class trip in Aruba when she disappeared on May 30, 2005. Holloway, 18, had received a scholarship to attend the University of Alabama.
In 2017, remains found on the island proved not to be those of Holloway, whose disappearance was the subject of an Oxygen television series. She was declared dead in 2011.
In a bizarre twist, John Christoper Ludwick, who claimed he helped to bury Holloway’s body, was stabbed to death in 2018 during a failed kidnapping attempt in Florida.
Lauren Spierer
The 20-year-old Indiana University student from Scarsdale disappeared on June 3, 2011, after a night of partying with friends near the school campus.
Spierer was seen on surveillance video walking alone in Bloomington shortly before she went missing. No suspects were ever identified and she has never been found despite hundreds of leads as to her whereabouts over the years.
The FBI, Bloomington police and a private investigator hired by Spierer’s parents followed up on the leads but continued to hit dead ends.
Sherri Papini
The 34-year-old California “super mom” was out for a broad-daylight jog when she vanished — only to reappear three weeks later with an unconfirmed tale that she had been kidnapped by two women and then released.
Although she resurfaced, Papini’s claim remains a compelling mystery — she has remained tight-lipped since about her own disappearance.
Last year, investigators said they received a tip from a Southern California man who claimed he was with Papini for the 22 days she was missing, saying the abduction was a hoax. Meanwhile, Papini has returned to the quiet life of a California housewife.
Anne Marie Fahey
Fahey went missing in June 1999 after breaking up with her married boyfriend, who was convicted of her murder three years later, Insider said.
Thomas Capano was accused of shooting the 30-year-old Fahey in Delaware and dumping her body in the Atlantic Ocean. Her remains were never found.
Capano was a powerful and influential attorney in Wilmington and had even served as an adviser to the state’s governor. But prosecutors said he became jealous when Fahey told him she had a new love interest.
