It's hard for a celebrity to actually disappear from the public eye and stay missing. For years, people have claimed that Elvis is still alive, but there's no question that if someone who resembled the famous rocker had been seen in line at McDonald's in the '80s, it would have made national news. However, there are a few celebrities who have simply disappeared over the years, and while they weren't as famous as Elvis, it's still somewhat shocking that no one knows if they died or simply went off to start a new life. Let's take a look at some famous people who went missing and were never found.
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00:00Other than having gobs of money, being a celebrity can't be easy.
00:04Sometimes people might be out to get you, or you might just want to vanish and stay
00:08gone.
00:09We don't know why, but these celebrities disappeared and are still missing today.
00:13At the time he went missing, Hale Boggs was one of the most famous politicians in America.
00:17A Democrat from New Orleans, Boggs had sat on the Warren Commission investigating JFK's
00:22assassination before becoming House Majority Leader during the Nixon years.
00:26Even though he looks black and white here, he had a personality that you could call colorful.
00:31He verbally attacked J. Edgar Hoover in Congress, he was thought to be an alcoholic, and he
00:36became famous for doubting the lone gunman theory of the JFK shooting.
00:40So yeah, Hale Boggs, kind of a big deal in 1972, hence the nationwide shock when he disappeared.
00:47On October 16th that year, Boggs was in Alaska helping a fellow congressman's re-election
00:52bid.
00:53The two got on a light aircraft heading for remote Juneau.
00:56According to Medium, they were never seen again.
00:58The weather was terrible that day.
01:00As soon as Boggs failed to show in Juneau, everyone guessed what had probably happened.
01:05What was then the biggest search operation in U.S. history was launched, with 90 planes
01:09searching 325,000 square miles of Alaska, but no trace of the missing aircraft or its
01:16occupants was ever found.
01:18To this day, there are some out there who think Boggs was killed for his work investigating
01:22the JFK assassination.
01:24It's not like there could be any other explanation for a small airplane vanishing over water
01:28in bad weather, right?
01:30Man!
01:31It's a mystery!
01:32It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma!
01:36Were he anybody else, Michael Rockefeller's disappearance in 1961 would not have been
01:40big news.
01:41But he wasn't anybody else.
01:43He was Michael freaking Rockefeller, son of the famous Nelson Rockefeller.
01:48It may have only been because of his name, but when Michael Rockefeller vanished off
01:51the coast of what was then Netherlands New Guinea, the world sat up and paid attention.
01:56The whole story is more strange and twisted than you can imagine.
02:00After a privileged upbringing, Michael decided to take a trip way out into the Pacific to
02:04both collect primitive art and maybe find himself.
02:08He wound up boating around New Guinea, the island today split between Indonesia and Papua
02:12New Guinea, and even made some friends among the local tribes.
02:16At least, he thought he did.
02:17On November 19, 1961, Michael's boat overturned near the Asmat region of the island.
02:23The boy swam to shore to look for help, and that's it.
02:26Nobody ever saw him again.
02:28While it's widely assumed he drowned, at least some members of local tribes have told stories
02:33indicating he was killed on reaching shore.
02:36If you don't know the name Daniel Lynn Lagerlof, that's because you didn't spend the formative
02:40years of your life living in the land of gritty Swedish noir fiction.
02:44A writer and director, Lagerlof was the mind behind multiple Swedish classics.
02:49In 2011, Lagerlof was scouting locations for an upcoming thriller project in southern Sweden,
02:54inside a nature reserve known as Sjöpanen.
02:57A wild and remote island just off the mainland, Sjöpanen is bleak, windswept, and not the
03:02sort of place you'd expect to easily get lost.
03:05All of which is why Lagerlof's fate is so puzzling.
03:08According to Sweden's news website Local, Lagerlof split off from his friends to investigate
03:13the island alone.
03:14He was never seen again.
03:16Sjöpanen is surrounded by water, so it's entirely possible the director slipped and
03:20fell in and simply vanished beneath the waves.
03:23He's presumed dead, but no body has been found, and no one can say for certain what happened.
03:27Officially, he remains missing.
03:30In a certain place at a certain point in time, Zaheer Rehan's name was known to millions.
03:35He shot to international fame in 1971 with his 20-minute documentary Stop Genocide.
03:40Depicting the plight of Bangladeshi refugees fleeing the country's liberation war with
03:44Pakistan, it shone a spotlight on those suffering under a military regime that may have killed
03:49up to three million people.
03:51It also shone a spotlight on Rehan himself.
03:54In January 1972, barely a month after the war had ended with Bangladesh declaring independence,
04:01Rehan went missing.
04:02It's thought he was abducted by Pakistani security forces.
04:05After that?
04:06Well, you can probably guess.
04:08The tragic part is that Rehan was only in a position to be kidnapped because he was
04:12looking for his missing brother.
04:14The Dhaka Tribune claims Rehan's brother was abducted off the streets of Bangladesh two
04:18days before the end of the war.
04:20When the dust of the conflict had settled, Rehan went looking for him, only to vanish
04:24himself.
04:26In another universe, Welding Keys is one of those names you got sick of studying in American
04:30Lit class.
04:31What the f-----?
04:40A poet who tried to bridge the divide between Jazz Age experimentation and New Age madness,
04:45Keys was someone who was always on the verge of making it big.
04:49Living in New York, he attended literary parties alongside people like the novelist Graham
04:53Green.
04:54But Keys never became famous, exactly.
04:57The sad part was, he disappeared too soon for that.
05:01Keys spent decades failing to break into the literary scene, and by 1955, he was gloomily
05:06talking about vanishing off to Mexico and never returning.
05:09In July of that year, he told his friend Janet Richards,
05:12"...things are pretty bad," and mentioned going away.
05:15After that, he up and vanished into legend.
05:18The next day, July 19, 1955, Keys' car was discovered by the Golden Gate Bridge.
05:24His wallet, sleeping bag, and account savings book went missing along with him.
05:28Who knows, maybe Keys managed to forge a new life down south, away from all the pressures
05:32of literature.