Are there any famous people who have suddenly, voluntarily, and so completely vanished from public life that no fan or journalist has ever been able to track them down?
The prototypical example I’m thinking of is Deep Purple and Captain Beyond singer Rod Evans. He involved himself in an unauthorized Deep Purple “reunion” tour in 1980, got sued, and then completely disappeared from public life. There have been rumours that he got a medical degree and became a hospital director in California, though AFAIK no journalist has ever succeeded in finding him to confirm this. His whereabouts since 1980 have been a complete mystery to the public.
Are there any other cases comparable to that of Rod Evans? Note that I’m not talking about famous people, like Bill Watterson, whose whereabouts are known but who nowadays usually decline to give interviews or attend public events. Nor am I talking about people like Glenn Miller or Jimmy Hoffa who were probably killed in an accident, in a crime, or in combat. I’m talking about people who are widely believed to be alive and well but who cannot be tracked down despite active efforts on the part of their fans or the media.
Care to explain further? Their respective Wikipedia articles don’t give any particularly long gaps in their biographies (though I suppose the details might have come from research or interviews following any disappearance).
No one ever hears from Jack Chick until a new tract comes out. No one knows what he looks like, or he has only given one professional interview since 1975.
Dave Trampier and Carl Sargent are famous examples in the D&D sphere. Trampier was the artist behind the Wormy cartoon in Dragon Magazine and just stopped. Sargent disappeared shortly after moving to America - IIRC there were rumours of an accident
Thanks for the link! Trampier’s story is just as fascinating as Evans’s—even more so, actually, because of his freak rediscovery after his unexplained 20-year absence.
[Bambi Woods](Bambi Woods), perhaps born Barbara Woodson. She was the star of the hugely successful film Debbie Does Dallas along with a few sequels. There have been unconfirmed reports of her death while some insist she is still alive.
There is a reported recent telephone interview with her somewhere on the internet. In the interview Woodson says she is still in contact with another “disappeared” porn starlet, Desiree Cousteau.
Ruth Anne Moorehouse, one of the Manson family members has still not been found.
I am not sure whether this counts but if I started a new thread I would probably be suspected of ramping.
Satan’s Empire.
In the late 1970s the UK music scene saw an influx of home grown Heavy Rock and Heavy Metal bands who were often collected under the banner NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal). Quite a few bands became popular in the UK general charts (Saxon, Tygers of Pang Tang to name two) and existing bands saw increased chart action (Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Gillan).
Many of the new bands were signed to (or began by signing to) Newcastle based NEAT Records. NEAT released a cassette only compilation album called Lead Weight. (I think it was cassette only but could be wrong.)
One of the tracks on Lead Weight was “Soldiers of War” by the aforementioned Satan’s Empire.
I’ve always loved it. While it doesn’t particularly break new ground it has, as they say, good singing, good playing and despite wooly production is quite “epic” in a modest way.
However it appears to be the only thing the band ever recorded. Four Scottish lads had enough talent to generate a decent rock track, release it as a self pressed single, signed for Neat and have it released on a compilation and then… Nothing. Disappeared.
No Wikipedia page. Even searching Google doesn’t seem to show anything much, just repeated sites mentioning Soldiers of War as their only recorded track. There only seems to be one picture of the band and it is tiny and badly scanned.
Hermann Szobel released a fantastic album of highly complex melodic jazz (reminiscent of Frank Zappa) back in 1976. A little over a year later, he just disappeared; he has not been seen or heard since AFAIK. I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to track him down, too, and despite good info that he is in Israel, I’ve yet to locate him.
That Satan’s Empire track is pretty good, TCMF-2L. It looks like most of the band kept gigging after they broke up in 1983, mostly in other local bands. I did find info that the guitar player (Sandy Ritichie) and the drummer (Billy Masterson) recorded an EP called The Art of Terror in the mid '90s under the moniker Partners In Rhyme, but so far I haven’t been able to track down a label or find a copy.
