Ancient •
The Younger Lady (25–35) is the informal name given to the
mummy of a woman who lived during the
Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (c. 1549 to 1292 BCE), and was discovered in the
Egyptian
Valley of the Kings in tomb
KV35 by archaeologist
Victor Loret in 1898. The cause of her death is unknown. Through recent DNA tests, this mummy has been identified as the mother of the pharaoh
Tutankhamun and a daughter of pharaoh
Amenhotep III and
Queen Tiye. Early speculation that these were the remains of
Queen Nefertiti has been disproven. •
Tutankhamun (18–19), male Egyptian pharaoh, is believed to have died around 1323 BC, though his cause of death remains unknown, with one theory being that he was fatally injured in a
chariot crash. •
Zoroaster (76) was an ancient male
Iranian prophet who lived during 1000 BCE and who was said to perform miracles; he founded the religion now known as
Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster's cause of death is unknown; it is said that Zoroaster was killed by invading Turanians around the time that he was last seen, but this was never confirmed. • The
Hasanlu Lovers are the remains of two humans found in
Teppe Hasanlu, Iran, in 1972 who are thought to have died . While it has been suggested that they died from asphyxiation, no definitive cause of death has been established. • The
Borremose bodies are three
bog bodies that were found in 1946 and 1948 in
Himmerland, Denmark, in the
Borremose peat bog. They have been dated to have lived in the
Nordic Bronze Age during 770 BCE. The causes of their deaths are unknown. • The
Saltmen are the remains of six men who lived during the remainder of the
Achaemenid dynasty (550–330 BCE) that were found in 2010 in the salt mines in
Chehrabad on the southern part of the Hamzehlu village in the
Zanjan Province in Iran. Though it is known that most of them were accidentally killed by the collapse of galleries where they worked, the causes of the deaths of the other saltmen remain unknown. •
Alexander the Great (32) died in 323 BCE after a short illness. Exactly what the illness was is a subject of debate; however, it is known that he was a heavy drinker throughout his life. •
Orgetorix, who died in 61 BCE, was a wealthy aristocrat among the
Helvetii, a Celtic-speaking people residing in what is now
Switzerland during the consulship of
Julius Caesar of the
Roman Republic. He was put on trial for conspiring to seize control of
Gaul. His cause of death beyond this is disputed. •
Cleopatra (39), the last ruler of
Ptolemaic Egypt, is believed to have died in August of 30 BCE in
Alexandria. According to popular belief,
Cleopatra killed herself by allowing an
asp (
Egyptian cobra) to bite her. According to
Greek and
Roman historians, Cleopatra poisoned herself using either a
toxic ointment or sharp implement such as a hairpin.
Primary source accounts are derived mainly from the works of the ancient Roman historians
Strabo,
Plutarch, and
Cassius Dio. Modern scholars debate the validity of ancient reports involving snakebites as the cause of death and whether she was murdered. Some academics hypothesize that her
Roman political rival
Octavian forced her to commit suicide in the manner of her choosing. The location of
Cleopatra's tomb is unknown. •
Judas Iscariot, a
disciple and one of the
Twelve Apostles of
Jesus; the circumstances of his death in AD 31 vary widely depending on the source, though many state that Judas died by
suicide, specifically
hanging himself. • The
Weerdinge Men were two
bog bodies found naked in the southern part of
Bourtanger Moor in
Drenthe in the
Netherlands in 1904. Though one of the men is known to have been murdered, the cause of the other man's death is unknown. They died between 160 BCE and 220 CE. •
Windeby I (16) is the name given to the
bog body in 1952 that was preserved in a
peat bog close to
Windeby located in Northern
Germany containing the remains of a teenage male who lived between 41 BCE and 118 CE. His death cause is disputed and unknown.
Medieval •
Princess Yongtai (15–16), 701. In both the
Old Book of Tang and
New Book of Tang, it is recorded that she was executed by
Empress Wu Zetian with her brother and husband because of spreading rumors about the two officials
Zhang Yizhi and Zhang Changzong, who were also the lovers of Empress Wu Zetian. However, from her epitaph, it was said she was pregnant when she died. From a piece of her pelvic bone, it has been presumed that she died from childbirth, because her pelvis seems to be smaller than other women at the same age. It is also suspected that she went into shock on hearing the news that her brother and husband had been executed, and it caused a fatal miscarriage. •
Emperor Taizu of Song (49), the first emperor of
Song dynasty, died in 976. There are no records about how he died. However, his younger brother was granted the throne due to the fact that he had two grown sons. There is a folk story "shadows by the candle and sounds from an axe" possibly indicating that he was murdered by his brother, but it may also have been a suicide. •
Roopkund is a high-altitude
glacial lake in the
Uttarakhand state of
India. It lies in the lap of
Trishul massif, located in the
Himalayas. It is widely known for the hundreds of ancient human skeletons found at the edge of the lake. The human skeletal remains are visible at its bottom when the snow melts. Research generally points to a semi-legendary event where a group of people were killed in a sudden, violent hailstorm in the 9th century. Studies placed the time of mass death around the 9th century CE (1,200 years old) and second group of skeletons were dated to the 19th century CE. The skeletons' identities are unknown, but radiocarbon dating suggests that the older remains were deposited over an extended period of time, while the remains of the younger group were deposited during a single event. • King
William II of England (43–44), 1100, was killed by an arrow while hunting; it may or may not have been an accident. •
Agnès Sorel (28), 1450, was
Charles VII of France's chief royal mistress, having four daughters with him. Sorel fell ill while pregnant with their 4th daughter, and after giving birth, died on 9 February 1450 from causes which are disputed.
Early modern • The
Lovers of Cluj-Napoca (30s), a nickname given to two skeletons found in a former Dominican convent in
Cluj-Napoca, Romania in 2013, are thought to have lived between 1450 and 1550. Their exact causes of death are unclear. •
Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter (45), a
Lancastrian, died after mysteriously falling overboard and drowning while sailing through the
English Channel in September 1475. Though there are different theories to what happened, none were ever proved to be true. •
Regiomontanus (40), whose real name was "Johannes Müller von Königsberg", was an
astrologer,
mathematician, and
astronomer of the
German Renaissance who was active in countries in Europe. He was thought to have died from the plague on 6 July 1476, but this is not known for sure. •
Princes in the Tower, used to refer to
Edward V, King of England and
Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York who disappeared in the summer of 1483. In 1674, workmen at the
Tower of London dug up a wooden box under the staircase in the Tower which contained two small human skeletons. The bones were widely accepted at the time as those of the princes, but this remains uncertain.
King Charles II had the bones buried in
Westminster Abbey, where they remain. •
Amy Robsart (28), 1560, was the first wife of
Lord Robert Dudley, favourite of
Queen Elizabeth I of England. She is primarily known for her death by falling down a flight of stairs, the circumstances of which have often been regarded as suspicious. • King
Charles XII (36) of
Sweden was struck in the head by a projectile and killed. The definitive circumstances around Charles's death remain unclear. Despite multiple investigations of the battlefield, Charles's skull and his clothes, it is not known where and when he was hit, or whether the shot came from the ranks of the enemy or from his own men. •
Cornelia Zangheri Bandi (66) was an
Italian noblewoman whose death on 15 March 1731 may have been a case of
spontaneous human combustion. But the case has never been proven, with the true cause of death remaining unknown. who disappeared in 1788. Who it belonged to and the cause of death are unknown. •
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (35), composer, died on 5 December 1791. The circumstances of his death have attracted much research and speculation, as it remains unclear whether he died from disease or poisoning. There have also been
conspiracy theories.
19th century •
Meriwether Lewis (35), a US explorer who helped explore
Louisiana Purchase territory, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds in an inn along the Natchez Trace nature trail in Tennessee, in 1809. Though it was originally declared a suicide, historians debate whether it was possibly murder due to the nature of his injuries and the lack of a thorough autopsy. • The
Female Stranger (23) refers to an unnamed US woman who died in 1816 and was elevated to national intrigue by the mysterious headstone and romanticized tale. Accounts of the stranger increase in oddity over time and help to incite further speculation as to the identity of the person buried in the grave. The reported location of the woman's death, Room 8 at
Gadsby's Tavern, is also a tourist destination, and supposedly her ghostly visage can be seen standing at the window. •
Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach (57), a German legal scholar, died on 29 May 1833. The circumstances remain unclear – his family as well as he himself shortly before his death believed that he had been poisoned due to his protection of and research work on
Kaspar Hauser, who himself died the same year under suspicious circumstances (see below). • The events leading to the death of German youth
Kaspar Hauser (21) remain a mystery, like many points regarding his life and identity. On 14 December 1833, he came home with a deep stab wound in his chest and died three days later. While he claimed he was attacked, the court of enquiry doubted this due to inconsistencies in his story and speculated that he wounded himself to seek attention and revive the fading public interest in him, a theory that is also supported by some historians today. •
Thomas Simpson (31) was a
Scottish Arctic explorer,
Hudson's Bay Company agent and cousin of Company Governor Sir
George Simpson. His violent death in what is now the state of
Minnesota allegedly by suicide after gunning down two traveling companions in the wilderness on 6 June 1840 has long been a subject of controversy and has never been solved. •
John Gregory (42) was an English engineer who served aboard
HMS Erebus during the
1845 Franklin Expedition, which sought to explore uncharted parts of the
Northwest Passage. He is believed to have died some time around May 1848. Gregory's remains were identified via
DNA analysis in 2021, although his exact cause of death is undetermined. •
Edgar Allan Poe (40) US writer, editor, and literary critic, died on 7 October 1849 under circumstances that remain mysterious, and the cause of his death is disputed. On 3 October 1849, he was found delirious in
Baltimore, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the
Washington College Hospital, where he died days later. • Sometime between 1849 and 1859, a skeleton was found on
King William Island and thought to be that of
Harry Goodsir (28–29), who disappeared in 1848. After testing the bones, it is believed that the cause of death was an infected tooth, but this was not confirmed. Also another discovered skeleton was thought to belong to
Henry Thomas Dundas Le Vesconte (25–26), who disappeared along with Goodsir, aboard
Franklin's lost expedition, but this was proven untrue. To whom it belonged and cause of death are unknown. Dundas Le Vesconte's body was found, but his cause of death is unknown. •
Edward James Roye (57) was the first of Liberia's
True Whig Party, who served as the
fifth President of Liberia from 1870 until he was overthrown a year later and whose death followed on 11 February 1872. The circumstances of his death remain unknown. •
Zeng Guofan (60), a Chinese statesman, military general, and
Confucian scholar of the late
Qing dynasty. He is best known for raising and organizing the
Xiang Army to aid the Qing military in suppressing the
Taiping Rebellion and restoring the stability of the Qing Empire. Along with other prominent figures such as
Zuo Zongtang and
Li Hongzhang of his time, Zeng set the scene for the
Tongzhi Restoration, an attempt to arrest the decline of the Qing dynasty. He died on 12 March 1872 of mysterious reasons. •
L'Inconnue de la Seine was the name given to an unidentified young woman who, according to an oft-repeated story, was pulled out of the French
River Seine at the
Quai du Louvre in
Paris around the late 1880s. Since the body showed no signs of violence,
suicide was suspected. •
Vincent Van Gogh (37), a Dutch
artist who was the rival to
Paul Gauguin, was found dead in his hotel room at the
Auberge Ravoux in
Auvers-sur-Oise on July 29 1890. Sustaining a gunshot to his chest two days earlier, it is unknown who or what caused his death. While suicide was always in the question due to Van Gogh known mental state, the placement of the wound did not make sense for suicide, so it's been widely speculated that he was accidentally shot by 16-year-old René Secrétan, who would often tease the artist. • Composer
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (53) died in
Saint Petersburg in November 1893 nine days after his
Sixth Symphony, called the "Pathétique", had debuted. His cause of death is debated and remains unsolved. •
Barney Barnato (46), an English
Randlord and entrepreneur who was a prominent rival to
Cecil Rhodes, was found dead at sea near
Madeira, Portugal on 14 June 1897. While suicide was the prevailing theory, his family rejected it, saying that it was unlike him to do such a thing.
1900–1924 •
Sursinhji Takhtasinhji Gohil (26), popularly known by his pen name
Kalapi, was a
Gujarati poet and the Thakor (prince) of
Lathi state in
Gujarat who died on 9 June 1900. He is mostly known for his poems depicting his own
pathos. It is believed that Kalapi's love for a woman named Shobhana became a source of conflict with their acquaintance Rajba-Ramaba and gave her a motive to
poison him. •
Gaetano Bresci (31) was an Italian anarchist who assassinated King
Umberto I of Italy in
Monza on 29 July 1900. Due to capital punishment being abolished 11 years earlier, he was sentenced to penal servitude at
Santo Stefano Island, where he was found dead in his cell on 22 May 1901. While his death was reported as being suicide by hanging, it is believed he was murdered. •
David Park Barnitz (23) was a US
Harvard graduate and poet, who died on 10 October 1901 from unclear circumstances, as there are conflicting ideas about how he died. •
Paul Rée (51) was a
German philosopher, author, and physician who died on 28 October 1901 after he fell into the Charnadüra Gorge in the Swiss Alps near
Celerina when he was hiking. It is unknown whether it was a suicide or an accident. •
William Llewellyn (5), was a
Welsh boy who disappeared on 11 April 1902, while he was in the Rhigos mountains and was found dead on 26 April 1902. His death cause is unknown. •
Émile Zola (62),
French author who died on 29 September 1902 from carbon monoxide poisoning that was caused by a sealed chimney. His enemies were blamed for his death, but were not proven to have been actually responsible. It is also possible that Zola committed suicide. •
Gabriel Syveton (40), French politician and historian, was found dead in
Neuilly-sur-Seine on 8 December 1904 in his office by gas poisoning. It is unknown whether this was a murder or suicide. • On 14 March 1911 in the Belgian
Ostend harbour, a deceased body was found that resembled
Cecil Grace (30), who was a British pioneer aviator who disappeared on 22 December 1910 over the
English Channel. The body could not be identified since it was too badly disfigured, and its identity and cause of death remain unknown. • German inventor
Rudolf Diesel (55) disappeared in the
English Channel in 1913 and was found dead at sea 10 days later. His cause of death is debated. •
Tom Thomson (39) was a Canadian artist who was active in the early 20th century. Though his career was short, he managed to produce around 400
oil sketches on small
wood panels, as well as around 50 larger works on canvas. Thomson disappeared on 8 July 1917 and was found dead a few days later. It is unknown whether his death was murder or suicide. • US
silent film actress
Virginia Rappe (30) was found to have died of
peritonitis due to a
ruptured bladder on 9 September 1921. While this could have resulted from ongoing health problems such as
cystitis or complications from a recent
abortion (
illegal at the time), her acquaintance Maude Delmont told the
San Francisco Police Department that silent film comedian
Fatty Arbuckle sexually assaulted Rappe during a
Labor Day party in his suite at the
St. Francis Hotel, another possible cause of the ruptured bladder. Arbuckle was charged with rape and
involuntary manslaughter but acquitted. • In July 1922, an expedition was conducted during which a skeleton was discovered on the mainland shore across from
Dikson Island. It is thought to be either
Peter Tessem or Paul Knutsen. Its death cause is not known for certain. • In 1923, an unidentified body on the grounds of an abandoned Argentinian
Jesuit church in
Corrientes whose death might have been caused by stabbing was found. It was thought to have been that of
Alejandro Carrascosas (22), who had disappeared a year earlier. The body was never identified and the cause of the deceased's death is not known. •
Andrew Irvine (22), and
George Mallory (37), were both British
mountaineers who disappeared on 8 or 9 June 1924, while they were climbing mount
Mount Everest. Mallory's remains were found in 1999. In October 2024 Irvine's partial remains were found. Their cause of death is unknown.
1925–1949 •
Rudolf Steiner (64), Austrian
esotericist who developed
anthroposophy and
Waldorf education, died from illness on 30 March 1925, but the nature of the illness was never confirmed and remains controversial, with theories suggesting
cancer or
poisoning as the most probable causes. •
Ottavio Bottecchia (32), 1927, Italian cyclist, was found by the side of a road, covered with bruises and with a serious skull fracture. His undamaged bicycle was discovered propped against a nearby tree. Bottecchia was taken to a hospital, but died soon afterwards. An official inquiry concluded accidental death, but it was suggested he had run afoul of the powerful and growing
National Fascist Party in
Italy at the time. •
José Rosario Oviedo (42), a
Cuban rumba dancer known as "Malanga", died in 1927. The exact circumstances under which he died have never been known for certain. One common account has it that he was murdered after a dance contest through broken glass hidden in his food, but no death certificate was ever filed and the location of his grave is unknown. •
Frances Smith (18), was a US female teenage college student who disappeared on 13 January 1928 from
Smith College in
Massachusetts and was found dead from unknown causes on 29 March 1929. •
Pyotr Wrangel (49), was a
Russian officer who died on 25 April 1928 from reasons that have been debated as his family stated that they think that he was poisoned by the butler of his brother. This was never proven for certain though. •
Alfred Loewenstein (51) was a Belgian financier who's believed to have fallen out of a plane's rear door while going to use the lavatory. He disappeared while crossing the
North Sea on 4 July 1928, and his body was found in France 15 days later. His death cause is unknown. •
Starr Faithfull (25), a US
Greenwich Village flapper, was found drowned on the beach at
Long Beach on 8 June 1931. Although Faithfull had left a suicide note, her family contended that she was murdered by wealthy politician
Andrew James Peters, former
mayor of Boston, who had allegedly
sexually abused Faithfull for years beginning when she was 11 years old and paid the Faithfulls to keep silent about it. Despite a lengthy investigation, it was never determined whether Faithfull's death was homicide, suicide, or accident. •
Ivar Kreuger (52), a
Swedish civil engineer, financier, entrepreneur and industrialist who died in a
Paris hotel room on 12 March 1932. Though it was thought to have been a suicide it may also have been a murder. •
Jay Ferdinand Towner III (23), a US
Princeton University undergraduate, was found dead on campus shortly after an 11 November 1933, football game. He had suffered broken wrists and severe internal injuries. His death was variously attributed to a fall suffered in the stands during the game or a car accident amid conflicting accounts of his whereabouts prior to his death; the exact cause has never been determined. •
Zachary Smith Reynolds (20) was the son of US millionaire and businessman
R. J. Reynolds. He died from a gunshot wound to the head on 6 July 1932, at his home in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It is unclear if his death was a
suicide or a
murder. •
Paul Bern (42) was a US film director,
screenwriter from
Wandsbek,
Hamburg, Germany. He became the assistant to
Irving Thalberg after he became the producer for
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He was found dead in
Beverly Hills, California on 5 September 1932 after being shot. Even though he left a note saying that he committed suicide it is also believed that his
ex-common-law wife had killed him as she very shortly later herself committed suicide. •
Ivo Pilar (59), was a
Croatian lawyer, politician, publicist, and historian who was found dead on 3 September 1933 at his home in
Zagreb,
Kingdom of Yugoslavia and it is unknown whether he was killed or if it was a suicide. •
Franziska Kessel (28) was a
German politician who after being sent to jail in
Mainz was found dead in her cell on 23 April 1934. It is unknown whether Kessel committed suicide or was murdered. •
Thelma Todd (29), was a US actress notable for appearing in multiple comedy films where she starred alongside
Buster Keaton,
Charley Chase,
Laurel and Hardy and the
Marx Brothers. On the morning of Monday, 16 December 1935, she was found dead in her car inside the garage of
Jewel Carmen, a former actress and former wife of Todd's lover and business partner,
Roland West. Her death was determined to have been caused by
carbon monoxide poisoning. The exact circumstances of the case could not be determined and sparked wide speculations and theories. The case was officially closed as "accidental with possible suicide tendencies." It could never be determined and still sparks debate whether her death was accidental, suicide or murder. •
Katherine E. Hull (22), US woman who went missing on 2 April 1936 from
Lebanon Springs after going hitchhiking and whose remains found on 8 December 1943 in
Hancock. Her cause of death is unknown. •
Robert Johnson (27), a US early
blues singer and guitarist, died on 16 August 1938, near
Greenwood. The cause was not officially recorded. He was reportedly in extreme pain and suffering from
convulsions; this has led to theories he had been
poisoned with strychnine by a jealous husband; however, the alleged poisoning is said to have taken place several days earlier and most strychnine deaths take place within hours of ingestion. Another report claims he died of
syphilis or
pneumonia. The uncertain location of his gravesite has made it impossible to exhume his body for further investigation. •
Kyrylo Studynsky (30–31) was a western
Ukrainian cultural and political figure who was forced to leave
Lviv in July 1941 and died shortly after from unknown reasons. •
Jeanette Loff (35) was a US actress, musician, and singer who came to prominence for her appearances in several
Pathé Exchange and
Universal Pictures films in the 1920s who died on 4 August 1942 from
ammonia poisoning in
Los Angeles. Though law enforcement was unable to determine whether her death was an accident or a
suicide, Loff's family maintained that she had been
murdered. The real cause behind her death remains unknown. •
Władysław Sikorski (62), prime minister of the
Polish Government in exile, was among 16 people killed on 4 July 1943 when
their plane crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from the
Royal Air Force base at
Gibraltar Airport. The plane had not managed to gain sufficient altitude due to its
elevators being prevented from working properly; British investigators found the cause was most likely an accident while their Polish counterparts called it undetermined. The bodies of Sikorski's daughter, chief of staff and other key aides purportedly on the plane were never found, and the plane's only survivor, the pilot, had uncharacteristically worn his life preserver in the cockpit. Sabotage and a possible assassination have been suspected, with
Nazi Germany, the
Soviet Union, the
United Kingdom, or even rival factions in the Polish government in exile theorized to have been involved. Poland reopened the case in 2008; an exhumation of Sikorski's body found his injuries consistent with death from an air crash, ruling out some theories that he had been killed before being put on the plane, but the investigators still could not rule out the possibility of sabotage. British files on the case will remain sealed until 2050. •
Herschel Grynszpan, whose assassination of Nazi diplomat
Ernst vom Rath was used to justify
massive pogroms, is assumed to have died sometime between 1940 and 1945 in a concentration camp. • A number of Nazis disappeared in the final days of Nazi Germany, and their whereabouts are either still unknown (with them likely now being dead), or their deaths occurred under unknown circumstances. For example,
Martin Bormann's body was not found for 27 years (in 1972) and was not identified until 1998.
Heinrich Müller has still not been located. •
Emil Hácha (72), a
Czech lawyer, the third President of
Czechoslovakia from 1938 to 1939, who died in
Pankrác Prison on 27 June 1945 under mysterious circumstances, and his death cause remains unknown. Hácha had collaborated with the Nazis during the
German occupation, and had been arrested by the
Red Army after the
liberation of Prague. •
Lipót Klug (91), a
Jewish-Hungarian mathematician, professor who died towards the end of the
Second World War on 24 March 1945 in what were said to have been strange circumstances, his true cause of death having never been revealed. • King
Ananda Mahidol of Thailand (20) died of gunshot wounds, either the product of
suicide, accident or assassination, on 9 June 1946. Mahidol's successor (and younger brother) King
Bhumibol Adulyadej, Prime Minister
Pridi Banomyong, and the former Japanese intelligence officer
Masanobu Tsuji have alternatively been accused of complicity. • The
Body in the cylinder refers to a male decedent discovered within a partially sealed steel cylinder on a derelict
WWII bomb site in
Liverpool,
England. The discovery was made on 13 July 1945 and it is believed that the body had lain undiscovered for 60 years. Inquiries named a strong (but unconfirmed) candidate for the identity of the decedent; however, the cause of death and the reason for their presence in the cylinder remain a mystery. •
Alexander Alekhine (53), the fourth
World Chess Champion, was found dead in a hotel room in
Estoril, Portugal on 24 March 1946. Several causes of death have been proposed, but the two most likely are a heart attack or choking on a piece of meat which was found lodged in his throat in an autopsy. •
Vera West was a US fashion designer and film costume designer, who worked for
Universal Pictures. She was found dead in her swimming pool on 29 June 1947, having possibly committed suicide by drowning, although police were never able to ascertain the precise circumstances surrounding her death. •
Kim Man-il (3–4), was the second son of North Korean founding leader
Kim Il Sung and the younger brother of the second leader of North Korea
Kim Jong Il, who in
Pyongyang,
Soviet Korea in either 1947 or 1948 is said to have drowned under conflicting circumstances. • The
Trow Ghyll skeleton, discovered in a cave in rural north
Yorkshire, England in 1947, remains unidentified. The death probably occurred in 1941; the fact that the body was discovered with a glass bottle of cyanide has led to speculation that it was someone connected with espionage. •
Jan Masaryk (61), 1948, son of
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Czech diplomat, politician and Foreign Minister of
Czechoslovakia, was found dead in the courtyard of the
Foreign Ministry below his bathroom window. The initial investigation concluded that he committed suicide by jumping out of the window, although many are convinced that he was pushed. A new investigation by the
Czechoslovak government after the
Velvet Revolution ruled his death a murder. •
Sadanori Shimoyama (47), 1948, first director of
Japanese National Railways, was last seen leaving his official car to go into a department store on his way to work the morning of 5 July of that year. Others reported seeing him at various train stations, and walking along one line, that afternoon. His dismembered body was found at noon the next day on the
Jōban Line. It had indisputably gotten that way as a result of being struck by a train, but the autopsy suggested he had died before being struck. That conclusion has been disputed, and whether his death was a suicide or murder remains undetermined. •
Irwin Foster Hilliard (85) was a Canadian political figure and lawyer in
Ontario who was last seen on 23 November 1948 before going on a shopping trip. He was found dead on 22 December 1948 close to
Lambton. His death cause is unknown. •
Nora Gregor (47), whose full name was "Eleonora Hermina Gregor", was an
Austrian actress who acted both on stage and in movies who died on 20 January 1949 in
Viña del Mar from a debated cause.
1950–1974 •
Syama Prasad Mukherjee (52), an Indian politician, died in a prison hospital 23 June 1953, one and a half months after his arrest for attempting to enter
Jammu and Kashmir without a permit. The exact cause of death has never been disclosed; Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru, from whose government Mukherjee had resigned in protest over Nehru's decision to normalise relations with
Pakistan despite that country's treatment of its Hindu population, said he made inquiries and was satisfied that his former minister's death was due to natural causes; speculation has continued that Mukherjee was murdered due to some unusual circumstances of his arrest and treatment. •
Raimondo Lanza di Trabia (39) was an
Italian man who was successful in many fields. On 30 November 1954 in
Rome, Lanza di Trabia died from circumstances that are suspicious after he fell out of a hotel room window. •
Herman Schultheis (33) was a US technician and photographer who worked for
Walt Disney Studios who disappeared on 20 May 1955 near
Tikal,
Guatemala. His remains were found on 23 November 1956, along with some of his belongings. His death cause is unknown. • The
Dyatlov Pass incident was the deaths of nine
hikers on the Russian
Kholat Syakhl mountain in the northern
Ural Mountains range on 2 February 1959; the bodies were not recovered until that May. While most of the victims were found to have died of
hypothermia after apparently abandoning their tent high on an exposed mountainside, two had fractured skulls, two had broken ribs, and one was missing her tongue. There were no witnesses or survivors to provide any testimony, and the cause of death was listed as a "compelling natural force", most likely an
avalanche, by Soviet investigators. . The bodies of Dr Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler were discovered at this location on 1 January 1963 •
Barthélemy Boganda (48), who was Prime Minister of the
Central African Republic, died on 29 March 1959 in Boukpayanga during a mysterious plane crash. •
Diana Barrymore (38), daughter of actor
John Barrymore, was a US stage and movie actress and a relative of US actress
Drew Barrymore. On 25 January 1960, she died in her hometown of
New York City. At first her death was said to be the result of a drug overdose. After an
autopsy was conducted, this was proven to be untrue. Speculation included a theory that she had committed
suicide, but this was never proven. She had admitted publicly she was a recovering alcoholic. In July 1957, she gave a US television interview to
Mike Wallace in which she said, "At the moment, I don't drink. I hope to be able, one day, in perhaps the near future [or] the very distant future, to be able to drink like a normal human being. That may never be possible." •
Dag Hammarskjöld (56), a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second
Secretary-General of the United Nations, died on 18 September 1961 in Ndola,
Northern Rhodesia in a mysterious plane crash. •
Lucas Samalenge (33), a
Katangese and
Congolese politician who died under suspicious circumstances on 19 November 1961 in
Lubumbashi. •
Dr Gilbert Stanley Bogle (39) and Margaret Olive Chandler (29) were found dead, both partially undressed, near the banks of the
Lane Cove River in
Sydney, Australia, on 1 January 1963. Their bluish pallor and the presence of vomit and excrement led to a finding that they were poisoned, but the coroner could not identify the toxin. Murder (possibly by Chandler's husband) was suspected, but no suspect has ever been identified.
A 2006 TV documentary suggested their deaths were not due to foul play but the result of
hydrogen sulfide gas leaking from the river bed and reaching dangerously high concentrations in the low-lying depressions where their bodies were found. • The death certificate of US
Dorothy Kilgallen (52) states that she died on 8 November 1965 from "acute ethanol and barbiturate intoxication / circumstances undetermined." She was famous in the United States as a syndicated newspaper columnist and radio/television personality, most notably as a regular panelist on the longest running game show in history at the time,
CBS's ''
What's My Line''. The
New York City medical examiner James Luke categorized the cause of death as "circumstances undetermined." •
Hedviga Golik (42) was a
Croatian woman from
Zagreb, who in 1966 sat down in front of her TV with a cup of tea and died from unknown reasons. Her body was discovered 42 years later when the police entered her apartment. •
Lal Bahadur Shastri (61), an Indian politician who was the second
Prime Minister of India, mysteriously died on 11 January 1966, just hours after signing the
Tashkent Declaration. His death cause is disputed. • The
Lead Masks Case involves the death of two
Brazilian electronic technicians, Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana, whose bodies were discovered on 20 August 1966, in
Niterói,
Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil. After an
autopsy was performed the cause of death could not be proven since the organs were too badly decomposed. •
Alvar Larsson (13) was a
Swedish boy who disappeared on 16 April 1967 while going for a walk. In November 1982, a human skull was found on a small island 6 km away that was identified as belonging to Larsson. but has since recanted all his confessions. •
Joan Robinson Hill (38) was a US socialite who died in 1969. At first ruled to have died of
influenza following a brief hospitalization on 19 March, suspicions arose when her body was released to the funeral home and embalmed before a legally required autopsy could occur. Despite the compromised evidence, three autopsies, all with their own irregularities, were performed and her husband John eventually became the only person indicted by a Texas grand jury for murder by omission, or failing to take proper action in the face of a life-threatening situation. The first attempt to prosecute him ended in a mistrial in 1972; he was murdered before he could be retried and the gunman suspected of his murder died in a police shootout. Two other alleged accomplices were later convicted. •
Edward Mutesa (45), who was
Kabaka of the
Kingdom of Buganda in
Uganda, died on 21 November 1969 from alcohol poisoning, in his London flat. He may have committed suicide or been poisoned by someone. •
Katherine Walsh (23), US actress who died in
London, England on 7 October 1970 while she was at a party at her home. While it is known that she died from barbiturate poisoning and alcohol, it is unknown whether it was a suicide or accident. died of unknown causes on 12 October 1970 •
Mustafa Zaidi (40),
Pakistani Urdu poet from India who died in
Karachi from unknown reasons on 12 October 1970. The case has never been solved. •
Ronald Hughes (35), a US attorney who disappeared while on a camping trip in November 1970. He had been representing
Leslie Van Houten in the
Tate–LaBianca murder trial. His body was found in March 1971, but his cause of death could not be determined. • The
Isdal Woman was a partially charred unidentified corpse found on 29 November 1970, hidden off a
hiking trail near
Bergen, Norway. The official conclusion that her death was a
suicide has not been widely accepted, since some believed she was murdered. Her identity remains unknown and is considered one of Norway's most profound mysteries. The case has been the subject of intense speculation for many years. Multiple investigations point to the possibility that she was a
spy. •
Michael O'Sullivan (37), a US man who had a brief, but successful acting career, was found dead at his apartment in
San Francisco, California, on 24 July 1971 with a bottle of sleeping pills next to him from what may have been a death by suicide. • Italian
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (45), who had during the 1950s published the smuggled manuscript of
Boris Pasternak's novel
Doctor Zhivago, but later became a left-wing militant during Italy's
Years of Lead, was found dead at the base of a power-line transmission tower outside
Segrate, near his native
Milan, on 15 March 1972. It was believed that he had died when a bomb he was attempting to plant on the tower went off, and later testimony by members of the
Red Brigades supported this. However, the death was always viewed suspiciously, and in the 2010s forensic reports surfaced that suggested he had been tied to the tower before the bomb went off, with various intelligence agencies inside and outside of Italy suspected of responsibility. •
Gia Scala (38) was a US model and actress from
Liverpool,
Merseyside, England who on 30 April 1972 was found dead in her house in the
Hollywood Hills. Her cause of death remains undetermined. •
Nigel Green (47) was a
character actor who was born in South Africa, and was raised in
London, England, who died in
Brighton,
Sussex on 15 May 1972 after taking too many sleeping pills. It is unknown if this was a suicide or not. •
Amaryllis Garnett was an English actress and diarist who appeared in various productions in the 1960s, with her most notable appearance being Judith of Balbec from the original 1966 version of
A Choice of Kings. With the onset of the 1970s, however, she fell into a deep depression, and on 6 May 1973 she was found drowned in the
Chelsea river. Whether her drowning was accidental or a suicide remains unclear. •
Kafundanga Chingunji served as the first
chief of staff in the government of
UNITA, pro-
Western rebels, during the
Angolan Civil War. Officially, Chingunji died from
cerebral malaria in January 1974 on Angola's border with
Zambia. His wife and others who saw his body say someone poisoned Chingunji. Rumors later alleged
Jonas Savimbi, the head of UNITA, ordered his assassination. It is unknown for sure what the exact circumstances of his death were. •
Karen Silkwood (28), a US nuclear power whistleblower, died in a car accident on 13 November 1974, while driving to a meeting with a
New York Times reporter in
Oklahoma City. Whether that accident involved another vehicle, whose driver may have deliberately run her off the road, or resulted from her own fatigue, remains a matter of debate. •
Aman Andom (50) was an Ethiopian military figure and was the acting
head of state of Ethiopia who died on 23 November 1974. Sources say that he died by suicide, while others say that he was killed by political rivals among the coup leadership, possibly including
Mengistu Haile Mariam.
1975–1989 •
Sandra Mozarowsky (18), a Spanish teenage actress, who on 14 September 1977 fell to her death from her balcony in
Madrid. It is unknown if she died by suicide or if she fell by accident. •
Manon Dubé (10) was a Canadian girl from
Quebec, who vanished while sledding with friends in Massawippi on 27 January 1978. Her body was found on 24 March 1978, but the exact cause of death was never determined. • The
Yuba County Five were a group of young men from
Yuba County, United States, each with mild
intellectual disabilities or
psychiatric conditions, who were reported missing after attending a college basketball game at
California State University, Chico (also known as Chico State), on the night of 24 February 1978. Four of them—Bill Sterling, 29; Jack Huett, 24; Ted Weiher, 32; and Jack Madruga, 30—were later found dead; the fifth, Gary Mathias, 25, has never been found. Their causes to the lead-up of their disappearances and deaths are still unknown. •
Marcia Moore (50), a writer on
yoga and
astrology, disappeared near her home in the
Seattle, Washington area during the winter of 1979. In 1981 her skeletal remains were found in nearby woods. It has been presumed in the absence of any evidence that would more conclusively establish a cause of death that she died of
hypothermia while wandering the woods under the influence of
ketamine, a drug whose use she had promoted. However, true-crime writer
Ann Rule, a friend, says what appeared to be a bullet hole was found in her jawbone, although authorities said it could just as easily have been a result of the bone decaying during the cold winters. Officially the cause of Moore's death remains undetermined. •
Marin Preda (57) was a
Romanian director of
Cartea Românească publishing house who wrote novels about wars that had ended. Preda was found dead on 16 May 1980 at
Mogoșoaia Palace from
asphyxiation. •
Gustav Wagner, former deputy commander of the
Sobibor extermination camp, died 3 October 1980 in Brazil. His death was officially ruled as a suicide by self-inflicted knife wounds. Sobibor survivor
Stanisław Szmajzner had identified Wagner shortly before. •
Douglas Crofut (38) was a US radiographer who died of both
radiation poisoning and
radiation burns on 27 July 1981 in
Tulsa, Oklahoma. The event is thought to have been either a suicide or murder, but this remains uncertain. . Her husband has been named as a
person of interest in her death • On 29 November 1981, actress
Natalie Wood (43), who was a passenger on the yacht owned by her and her husband
Robert Wagner, was found drowned near
Santa Catalina Island, California. Two other people were on board the Wagners' yacht at the time: actor
Christopher Walken and Dennis Davern, a longtime employee of the Wagners who served as skipper of the yacht. While drowning has always been accepted as the direct cause of her death, the circumstances under which she went into the water have never been clear. After reopening the investigation in 2012 the coroner changed the cause of death from "accident" to "undetermined" based on cuts and bruises on her body that may or may not have been suffered before her death. In 2018 Wagner was identified as a
person of interest. •
Don Kemp (34–35) was a New York advertising executive who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in
Wyoming in 1982, where he had planned to begin a new life. His remains were discovered in 1986, but the circumstances surrounding his death, and whether or not it was homicidal, remain unclear. •
Eduardo Frei Montalva (71), who was president of
Chile from 1964 to 1970, died on 22 January 1982. As of 2005, his death is being investigated because of allegations that he was poisoned. • The cause of death of the baby born to Joanne Hayes in Ireland's 1984
Kerry Babies case was never established. •
Radomir Radović (32–33), a Yugoslav civil engineering technician and trade unionist who advocated for an independent trade union in the country, was found dead at his villa in
Orašac on 30 April 1984. While the ruling party claimed that he had died by
suicide, this claim was disputed by fellow intellectuals, and his true cause of death remains unclear. • 25-year old Japanese office worker Kenji Iwamura purportedly died during the 1984–1990
SOS incident. • The
YOGTZE case refers to the death of unemployed German food engineer Günther Stoll (34) on 26 October 1984. Stoll died under strange and largely unknown circumstances after leaving behind the cryptic message "YOGTZE." •
Ana Mendieta (36), a Cuban-American feminist artist, died on 8 September 1985 after falling out of the window of her New York City apartment under unclear circumstances. Her husband,
Carl Andre, said that she killed herself; he was charged with her murder but was found not guilty at a
bench trial, the judge finding that it was not proven whether or not she was murdered. •
Samora Machel (53), a
Mozambican politician, military commander, and revolutionary, was killed on 19 October 1986 in a mysterious plane crash close to the
Mozambican-South African border. •
Cam Lyman (54–55) was a US multimillionaire
dog breeder from
Westwood, who disappeared in the summer of 1987. In December 1997 his body was found in a
septic tank on his estate in
Hopkinton, Rhode Island by the new owners of the house. Lyman's death remains a mystery. • On 11 October 1987,
West German Christian Democratic Union politician
Uwe Barschel (43) was found dead and fully clothed in a filled bathtub in his room at the Hotel
Beau-Rivage in
Geneva,
Switzerland.
Lorazepam and other drugs were found in his system. The circumstances of his death remain unclear and controversial, with suicide or murder both considered possible explanations and the case still being investigated. • Pakistani president
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (64), the country's longest-serving leader, and 30 others, including the country's top military leaders and the US ambassador, were killed in a
17 August 1988 plane crash. Whether it was an accident or foul play, the result of sabotage or a shootdown, is a matter of debate. US investigators came to the former conclusion, while their Pakistani counterparts produced a report reaching the latter. Theories as to responsibility if it were an act of malice have put the blame on a number of domestic and foreign actors. • On the morning of 24 March 1989, beloved US teacher Hal Arthur was gunned down in front of his home in
Sherman Oaks, while placing some papers in the back seat of his car before heading to US Grant High School in
Van Nuys, where he had taught for over 20 years. Police said that he was killed by a gunman with a semiautomatic weapon who shot him three times in the back. A student was arrested in the case, but eventually released, due to lack of evidence. • On 8 June 1989, Canadian nurse
Cindy James (44) was found dead of a multiple-drug overdose in the yard of an abandoned house in the
Vancouver suburb of
Richmond, hogtied and with a nylon stocking around her neck. During the seven years leading up to her death, she had made approximately 100 reports to police of incidents of stalking, harassment, vandalism, and physical attacks. •
Duncan MacPherson (23), was a
Canadian professional
ice hockey player who disappeared 9 August 1989 when he went on a trip to Austria, In 2003 his body was found on a mountain where he had gone snowboarding and his death cause is unknown.
1990–1999 •
Donna Marie Prudhomme (34) disappeared from
Nassau Bay, US, in July 1991 and was found dead on 8 September 1991. Her cause of death is unknown. • Berlin police were called to a
Lichtenberg apartment on the night of 3 December 1991 after neighbors complained of loud arguments, barking dogs and a parade of men coming and going. Inside they found the body of
Beate Ulbricht (47), adopted daughter of
Walter Ulbricht, the first Communist leader of
East Germany, by then defunct. Visible facial injuries suggested a death by blunt force trauma, but whether that had resulted from an accident or foul play has never been determined. She had recently given a series of interviews about her family life in which she recalled her mother,
Lotte, as harsh and unloving, in contrast to her late father; Lotte was unsurprised when a reporter informed her of Beate's death. The unsolved stabbing death two years later of a man thought to be Beate's lover in her last years may be connected. • A skull fragment found in a wooded area of
Baldwin, US, in 1992 turned out to be that of
Michael Rosenblum (25), of nearby
Pittsburgh, who had not been seen since 14 February 1980, near where the bone was found. While the cause of death could not be determined, circumstantial evidence accumulated over the years suggested that Baldwin's police department had covered up its own officers' involvement in Rosenblum's disappearance; the chief had been fired and reinstated a short time later over the allegations. • The remains of US boy
Timothy Wiltsey (5), of
South Amboy, were found in a muddy brook behind an office park in nearby
Edison on 23 April 1992, almost a year after his mother Michelle Lodzinski reported him missing from a carnival. Decomposition was too advanced to determine how Wiltsey had died. Suspicion accumulated around Lodzinski in later years owing to reports that she had changed her account of his disappearance several times, and her conviction for an attempt to stage her own kidnapping in 1994 followed by another conviction for theft several years later. In 2014 she was arrested for her son's murder and convicted after trial two years later, but the
state Supreme Court vacated that conviction in 2021 for insufficient evidence. •
Marsha P. Johnson (46) was a US gay rights activist who on 6 July 1992 was found dead floating in the
Hudson River in
New York. It is unknown whether she died by suicide or was murdered. •
Chris McCandless (24), US hiker who after going hiking in
Alaska in 1992 was found dead in August 1992, possibly due to starvation, but it is not known for sure how he died. • US couple
Arnold Archambeau (20) and Ruby Bruguier (18) left a passenger behind in their overturned car following an accident before dawn on 12 December 1992 outside
Lake Andes. They were never seen alive again; almost three months later their bodies were found near the accident site. Police do not believe they were there during the intervening winter months as they were not found during several searches of the area. Autopsies attributed the deaths to hypothermia; however Bruguier's body was in a far more advanced stage of decomposition and other evidence at the scene has reinforced investigators' belief that the two died elsewhere and their bodies were moved there. The
FBI investigated as well, due to the victims being
Native Americans and the incident taking place on a
reservation, but closed their file in 1999 having found insufficient evidence that a crime occurred. •
David Glenn Lewis (52) was found dead on 1 February 1993, the victim of a
hit and run, shortly after he was seen wandering on US
Washington State Route 24 in
Moxee, just outside
Yakima. The town of Moxee is from Lewis's home in
Amarillo; evidence conflicts as to whether he was there for the preceding two days or traveled from the city. At the time of his death, he was wearing clothing his family said was not his. His body remained unidentified until 2004. The driver of the vehicle that struck him also remains unidentified, and since his presence in the Yakima area has not been explained, whether his death was an accident, suicide or foul play cannot be determined. •
Divya Bharti was an Indian actress known for
Bollywood films in the early 90s. She was the first co-actress of successful actor Sharukh Khan. She accidentally fell from the 5th floor of her building on 5 April 1993 at the age 19. The mystery surrounding her death remained unsolved, creating conspiracy theories regarding her family, social life, and husband Sajid Nadiadwala. •
Mansour Rashid El-Kikhia was a Libyan politician and human rights activist known for his opposition to Muammar Gaddafi's regime. On 10 December 1993, he was kidnapped while on a diplomatic visit to Cairo, Egypt, allegedly by Libyan
Mukhabarat operatives. His fate remained unclear until October 2012, when his body was found in a refrigerator in
Tripoli, indicating that he had likely died while in custody. •
Zviad Gamsakhurdia (54), former president of
Georgia, died on 31 December 1993 from circumstances that remain very unclear. It is known that he died in the village of Khibula in the
Samegrelo region of western Georgia. • On 27 April 1994, British actress
Lynne Frederick (39) was found dead by her mother in her US
West Los Angeles home. Foul play and suicide were ruled out and an
autopsy failed to determine the cause of death. Some in the media speculated she died from the effects of
alcoholism. Her remains were cremated at
Golders Green Crematorium in London, and her ashes were interred with those of her first husband,
Peter Sellers. •
Oscar Gomez, US student and activist during the 1990s, died under mysterious circumstances on 16 November 1994 in
Santa Barbara, while he was protesting with his fellow students. •
Sonja Engelbrecht (19) was a young teenage woman who went missing on the night of 10–11 April 1995, in
Munich, and whose remains were first discovered on 23 November 2021. Her cause of death remains unknown. •
Caroline Byrne (24), an Australian model, was found at the bottom of a cliff at
The Gap in
Sydney on 8 June 1995. Her boyfriend at the time of her death was charged with killing her and was convicted, but was acquitted of the conviction in February 2012 as the decision was overturned. It is unclear whether her death was a
murder or
suicide. •
Carl Isaacs Jr. (21), formerly known
Rock County John Doe, and also commonly referred as
John Clinton Doe, was the name given to a now-identified set of skeletal remains of a young adult white male found alongside Turtle Creek near
Clinton, US, on 26 November 1995. His death cause is also unknown. •
Green Boots is the name given to the
unidentified corpse of a climber that became a landmark on the main Northeast ridge route of
Mount Everest. Though his identity has not been officially confirmed, he is believed to be
Tsewang Paljor, an Indian climber who died on Mount Everest in 1996. • English actor
Barry Evans (53) died on 9 February 1997. The police went to his house to inform him that they had recovered his stolen car, which was reported the day before, but he was found dead in his home. The coroner found a blow to Evans' head and also found high levels of alcohol in his system. A short will was found on a table next to his body and a spilt packet of aspirin tablets, bearing a pre-decimalisation price tag, indicating that the pack was at least 26 years old, was found on the floor, although the coroner concluded that he had not taken any of them. The cause of his death was never confirmed. • US screenwriter
Gary DeVore (55) left
Santa Fe, on 28 June 1997, for
Hollywood to deliver his final draft of a script for a remake of
The Big Steal, a 1950 film in part about a man who stages his own disappearance. He never arrived and was considered missing for a year until his body was found in his car in the
California Aqueduct. His hands were missing, and from its position the car did not appear to have entered the waterway after an accident. No cause of death has been established. •
Ricky Reel (21), a
computer science student at
Brunel University, was last seen alive in the early morning of 15 October 1997; his body was recovered from the
River Thames six days later. Although the
Metropolitan Police initially declared his death
accidental, an
open verdict was later returned. Speculation remains as to a racial motive behind his death. •
Unnamed Japanese man (69), was a man who died in his home in 1998 in
Japan from unknown reasons and was found dead in 2000 when people entered his home. •
Theodore Sindikubwabo, interim president during the
Rwanda genocide, died in 1998. Cause of death is unknown, but it has been speculated that he died of
HIV or was killed by
Interahamwe hardliners. •
Patricia Lee Partin was among four US women who left
Los Angeles, and disappeared alongside
Florinda Donner in 1998; her remains were found in the desert sands of
Death Valley in 2003. Partin's cause of death remains unknown. • Greek philosopher
Dimitris Liantinis (55) disappeared on 1 June 1998. In July 2005, human bones were found in the area of the mountain Taygetos; forensic examinations verified that it was the body of Liantinis. No lethal substances were found to identify the cause of death. •
Sani Abacha (54), military dictator of Nigeria, died on 8 June1998. A popular theory in Nigeria is that he died after consuming a poisoned apple, but a confidants reported that after shaking hands with a visiting
Yasser Arafat, he began feeling unwell and died shortly afterward. •
Kevin Hjalmarsson (4), a
Swedish boy who went missing, was found dead in
Arvika on 16 August 1998. Though he was originally thought to have been murdered, it is now claimed by the police that he is thought to have died in an unknown accident. •
Bardhyl Çaushi (62–63), a
Kosovo Albanian activist and human rights lawyer, was kidnapped in 1999 by Yugoslav forces and found dead in 2005 from reasons that could not be determined. •
Viacheslav Chornovil (61), a prominent Ukrainian politician, died in a car crash under unclear circumstances on 25 March 1999. His political allies and supporters have alleged that he was killed by members of a
Ministry of Internal Affairs unit on the orders of President
Leonid Kuchma to ensure his victory in the
1999 Ukrainian presidential election. Investigations into whether Chornovil was murdered or died accidentally have closed and reopened on several occasions without a conclusion. •
William DaShawn Hamilton (6) was a US child whose skeletal remains were found near a cemetery near
Atlanta in 1999. His mother was convicted in 2024 of concealing (but not of causing) his his cause of death is unknown. •
Yves Godard (43) was a French doctor who, along with his son and daughter, disappeared on a sailing trip in September 1999. A skull fragment belonging to his daughter Camille was found in 2000; six years later bone fragments belonging to Godard were found in the
English Channel. No trace of his son or Godard's boat has been found. His wife, who did not go on the sailing trip and stayed at home, also disappeared at the same time. Investigators found traces of blood in the family home and in Godard's caravan, raising suspicion that Godard's wife was murdered. In 2012, the case was closed without charges. Prosecutors ruled out accidental death and believe that Godard probably
murdered his family before committing suicide at sea, but acknowledge that they are not certain of this. •
Hangthong Thammawattana (49), a
Thai businessman and politician, was found dead from a gunshot wound in the early hours of 6 September 1999 in his family's mansion. It is unknown if it was a suicide or murder. •
Jaryd Atadero (3) was a US boy who went missing on 2 October 1999 in
Colorado in the Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forest. On 6 May 2003, some of his remains were discovered by two businessmen while they were hiking. Though there are different theories to how he died, the true cause is not known.
2000–2009 •
Lolo Ferrari (37) was a French dancer, singer and film actress who also performed in
pornography and was known for her large
surgically enhanced breasts. Ferrari was found deceased on the morning of 5 March 2000 of causes never determined. •
Erin Foster (18) and Jeremy Bechtel (17) were a US teenage couple from
Sparta, who disappeared on 3 April 2000, after leaving a party. In 2021, they were both found dead in a car underwater. What led up to the event is unknown. •
Rodney Marks (32), an Australian
astrophysicist, died of a sudden illness on 12 May 2000 at
Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in
Antarctica. His body could not be flown to
New Zealand and autopsied until after the Antarctic winter ended six months later; the cause of death was found to be
methanol poisoning. Suicide was ruled out, as he seem to have no motive and had readily sought treatment for his apparent illness, nor did an accidental overdose seem likely because there was plenty of alcoholic drink available at the base. The New Zealand police believed instead that the methanol was "unknowingly" introduced into Marks' system but could not conclusively call the case a homicide. Further investigation has been frustrated by the refusal of US agencies to share their findings, the global dispersal of researchers and personnel at the base that winter, the 2006 disappearance of the doctor who treated Marks, and the loss of any possible crime scene evidence during the winter after Marks' death. •
Soad Hosny (58) was an actress from
Cairo, Egypt, who died in
London after she mysteriously fell from the balcony of her friend's apartment on 21 June 2001. • On 11 August 2001, Irish musician
Paul Cunniffe (40), formerly of the bands
Blaze X and the
Saw Doctors, died in a fall in the London neighborhood of
Whitechapel. The circumstances that led to the fall, however, or even exactly where it occurred, remain unknown. His is one of several deaths among friends and acquaintances of
Pete Doherty. •
Daniel Nolan (14) was an English schoolboy who disappeared from the
Hampshire harbor town of
Hamble-le-Rice after a fishing expedition on 1 January 2002. Sections of Nolan's body were discovered inside two socks in
Swanage,
Dorset, on 15 May 2003. His cause of death is undetermined. •
Abu Nidal (65), Palestinian terrorist leader behind the 1985
Rome and Vienna airport attacks, already suffering from
leukemia, was reported to have died from a gunshot wound in
Baghdad on 16 August 2002.
Iraq's government at the time claimed his death was a suicide; however, the
Fatah Revolutionary Council, which Nidal founded, claimed he was assassinated on
Saddam Hussein's orders to prevent his possible capture during the
US invasion of Iraq that began six months later. •
Jeremiah Duggan (22), a British student studying in
Paris, was found dead on a highway in
Wiesbaden, Germany, early on 27 March 2003. The initial investigation concluded he died by suicide by running into traffic. However, his mother, noting that he had called her in great distress over his involvement with the
LaRouche movement, who may have discovered that he was British and Jewish, within an hour of his death, never accepted that theory, and a later investigation found evidence that the accident was perhaps staged to cover an earlier beating. The case was reopened in 2012 after extensive litigation in England, resulting in a change of the cause of death to "unexplained", with the note that Duggan may have been involved in some "altercation" beforehand. . Suspicion remains Möllemann may have died by suicide as opposed to his death being
via misadventure •
Jürgen Möllemann (57), German
Free Democratic Party politician, died on 5 June 2003 in a
parachuting incident at
Marl-Lohmühle. His death was investigated by the Essen district attorney's office, which published a final report on 9 July 2003. While outside interference was ruled out, no definite verdict was reached on whether he died by
suicide or had
died via misadventure. Shortly before his death, Möllemann, a passionate and experienced skydiver, was confronted with allegations of involvement in illegal arms deals and evaded taxes on millions of euros he allegedly earned from these activities. To enable a full investigation on these charges, the
Bundestag lifted his
parliamentary immunity on 5 June 2003 at 12:28, 22 minutes before his death. The tax evasion charges were dropped after his death. • US singer-songwriter
Elliott Smith (34) died of stab wounds inflicted in his
Los Angeles home on 21 October 2003. His girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba, claims she got out of the shower after an argument—having heard him scream—to find him with a knife sticking out of his chest, and found a short suicide note on a
Post-It shortly thereafter. Despite common belief, the note did not misspell Elliott's name by leaving out a 't'; it was instead the coroner who made the mistake on the report. While he did indeed have a history of
depression and
drug addiction, friends say
he was actively working to finish an album at the time and seemed optimistic. The coroner found the stab wounds were inconsistent with a
suicide attempt but could not conclude it was a
homicide either; the cause of the stabbing remains undetermined and has not been further investigated. •
Jonathan Luna (38), an Assistant US Attorney from
Baltimore, was found dead of multiple stab wounds inflicted with his own penknife in
Denver, on the morning of 4 December 2003 in a stream underneath his car, which had been driven there overnight from Baltimore. The FBI, which has jurisdiction over the possible murder of US federal employees, found that Luna had mounting financial problems and was facing investigation over missing money at his office; they considered it a suicide or botched attempt at staging a kidnapping. However, the
Lancaster County coroner's office, pointing to evidence suggesting he had been abducted and someone else was driving for at least the final stage of his drive, ruled it a homicide and considers the case open. •
Lamduan Armitage was a formerly unidentified woman whose body was discovered in 2004 on the mountain
Pen-y-ghent in
Yorkshire,
England, leading her to be known as the
Lady of the Hills. She was found to have originally come from
South-East Asia, but despite an international police investigation, the identity of the woman, and how she arrived at the location remained a mystery until 2019. The woman was identified in March 2019 through DNA testing. Her cause of death remains unknown. •
Alonzo Brooks (23), US man who went missing from
La Cygne, on 3 April 2004 and was found dead on 1 May 2004. After the pathologists did an
autopsy they have not yet been able to tell the cause of his death. • The coroner investigating the death of
Richard Lancelyn Green (51), a British
Arthur Conan Doyle scholar found
garrotted with a shoelace on his bed in his home on 27 March 2004, returned an open verdict. Many friends and family suspected homicide as he had complained of someone following him in his efforts to stop the auction of a cache of Doyle's personal papers he believed were wrongfully acquired. However, despite suicide by garrotte being unusual and difficult, some investigators believed that he had followed the example of one of Doyle's
Sherlock Holmes stories in which a woman stages her suicide to look like a murder. •
John Garang (60), Sudanese politician and former rebel
revolutionary leader, died on 30 July 2005 in
New Cush,
Sudan in a suspicious helicopter crash. •
Barbara Precht's (69) body was found on 29 November 2006 in
Cincinnati, US. She remained unidentified until November 2014. Her husband was later located and is considered a person of interest in her death, which has unknown circumstances. • British
Joyce Carol Vincent (38) was found dead in her London flat in January 2006, two years after death; the body had decomposed so much as to make identifying a cause of death impossible; her story was profiled in the 2011 documentary
Dreams of a Life. • US writer
Rey Rivera (32) was working for
Stansberry and Associates, went missing from his house on 16 May 2006 and was found dead on
Belvedere Hotel on 24 May 2006 in
Mount Vernon. Even though the
Baltimore Police Department has claimed that his death was most likely to be a
suicide, this has not been proven to be the case. • British
Bob Woolmer (58),
Pakistan's national
cricket coach, was found dead in his hotel room on 18 March 2007, after losing in the
Cricket World Cup 2007 in the
West Indies. Investigators first ruled the death a suicide, but the jury that heard the inquest returned an open verdict. • The body of
Corryn Rayney (44) was found in the
Perth suburb of
Kings Park, Western Australia a week after her 7 August 2007 disappearance; her husband Lloyd was charged in her murder even though a cause of death had not been determined. A judge acquitted him at his 2012 trial, finding the largely circumstantial case was compromised by police misconduct. The verdict was upheld on appeal the following year; Rayney and his lawyers have called for two known sex criminals to be investigated. • The Canadian
Salish Sea human foot discoveries are the severed feet found from 20 August 2007 to present that are known to belong to people who are thought to be dead. The circumstances behind these events remain unclear. •
Tony Harris (36), US
basketball player who had played in multiple countries, disappeared from
Brasília, Brazil on 4 November 2007 and was found dead on 18 November 2007. There are different ideas about why he died, yet the true cause of his death is unknown. • After
Ophélie Bretnacher (22), a French exchange student, left a
Budapest nightclub for her apartment early 2 December 2008, security cameras recorded her walking in that direction; it was the last time she was seen alive. Her handbag was found later on the
Széchenyi Chain Bridge over the
Danube, which she had been recorded crossing. Two months later, her body was found washed up on the river island of
Csepel, within the city but upstream from the bridge. Hungarian authorities were unable to determine the cause of death and closed the case in 2014. • US professional wrestler
Steven James Bisson (32), who went by the ring name of "Steve Bradley", was found dead on 4 December 2008 in
Manchester, New Hampshire, in a parking lot across the street from a pro wrestling school where he once operated. Bradley's cause of death is undetermined, as the
autopsy could not reveal what he died from. • The
Peter Bergmann case is an unsolved mystery pertaining to the death of an unidentified man in
County Sligo, Ireland, whose naked body was found on a beach; the autopsy found no signs of drowning or foul play and thus the cause of death remains undetermined. From 12 to 16 June 2009, a man using the alias "Peter Bergmann" visited the coastal seaport town of
Sligo in northwest Ireland. He used this alias to check into the Sligo City Hotel, where he stayed during most of his visit. Hotel staff and tenants say he had a heavy German accent. Despite conducting a five-month investigation into the death of "Peter Bergmann", the
Garda Síochána have never been able to identify the man or develop any leads in the case. • Skeletal remains found in a dry creek bed in the
Malibu Canyon, US, on 9 August 2010, were those of
Mitrice Richardson (25). She was last seen on the night of 16 September 2009 in the backyard of a former local television news anchor after being arrested for marijuana possession and failure to pay the bill at a local restaurant where she had been acting strangely, behavior investigators did not believe was caused by alcohol or drugs. The coroner has said her death did not appear to be a homicide, but the body was too decayed to determine the exact cause of death. • Irish
Paul 'Frank' Byrne was last seen alive in
Tallaght,
Dublin on 15 July 2009 leaving with other men in a car. and were all later found dead after four years in November 2013. Their death causes could not be determined.
2010–2019 • On 23 August 2010, the partially decomposed body of
Gareth Williams (32), a Welsh mathematician who worked for British intelligence
GCHQ, but who was seconded to
MI6 at the time of his death, was found in a padlocked bag in the bathroom of a
safe house in the London neighbourhood of
Pimlico. It was determined he had been dead for about a week. Due to the nature of his work, the investigation had to withhold details of it and some other aspects from any material made public; his family and friends allege that the
Metropolitan Police compromised and mishandled key forensic evidence in the early stages of their response. An initial investigation by the coroner's office concluded that the death was a homicide; a later re-investigation by the police claimed that it was instead an accident. •
Rajiv Dixit (43), an Indian
public speaker and
social activist, died on 30 November 2010 in
Bhilai,
Chhattisgarh, of a heart attack. It is claimed that Dixit refused to undergo emergency medical treatment, and died shortly thereafter. No
autopsy was conducted. •
Anneka Di Lorenzo (58) was a US film star and a nude model who was found dead in January 2011 after drowning in the sea off
Camp Pendleton. It is unknown whether or not her death was either a murder or suicide. • British citizen
Lee Bradley Brown (39) was arrested by
Dubai police on holiday there 6 April 2011 and charged with assault after an incident with a hotel maid; accounts of the circumstances differ. Held without bail, he died in custody six days later after, police claimed, being beaten by cellmates; later they said he had "thrown himself on the ground repeatedly." An autopsy, however, found that Brown had choked on his own vomit under the influence of
hashish. British officials allowed to examine the body disputed that conclusion, saying they saw no evidence of choking or
blunt force trauma; Dubai authorities declined repeated requests to share evidence such as CCTV footage of the original incident and the police station. A coroner's inquest in the UK that considered only the autopsy report and the diplomats' reports returned an open verdict. •
Anjuman Shehzadi (33–34), Pakistani film and stage actress, was found dead in
Lahore under mysterious circumstances on 15 May 2011. Her death remains unsolved. •
Maddy Scott (20) was a Canadian woman who disappeared on 28 May 2011 from
Vanderhoof, British Columbia and was found dead on 27 May 2023. Her cause of death is unknown. •
Tom J. Anderson (35), formerly known by his birth name "Ahmad Rezaee", was a businessman and the eldest son of Iranian Major General
Mohsen Rezaee. On 12 November 2011, he was found dead in the Gloria Hotel, located in
Dubai Media City, where he was staying. There are different theories about how he died, yet the cause of his death remains unknown. •
Stephen Corrigan (48) was an
Irish man who disappeared on 22 November 2011; on 9 April 2020 some remains of his skeleton were found in
Rathmines, Dublin. Corrigan's death cause is unknown. •
Christoph Bulwin (40),
German man who died of complications related to
mercury poisoning on 9 May 2012. He may have been poisoned by someone whose identity is unknown. •
Arkadiusz Sojka (32), was a football (soccer) player
striker from Poland who went missing in June 2012 from
Przesieka, and was found dead in October 2012. His cause of death is not known. •
Candice Cohen-Ahnine (35), a French Jewish woman who successfully fought a legal battle against Saudi prince
Sattam bin Khalid Al Saud over their illegitimate daughter, fell to her death in
Paris on 16 August 2012. Her death is considered suspicious in nature due to the circumstances. • On 14 February 2013, British businessman
Harry Roy Veevers died in
Kenya, but the reasons for his death remain unknown as his sons claim he was poisoned. The court could not make a clear judgement as the evidence were inconclusive. • Exiled
Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky (67) was found dead in his home near
Ascot, England on 23 March 2013. At first glance he had hanged himself; he had recently lost what remained of his fortune, and some close friends had unexpectedly died, which left him despondent. The police soon ruled the case a suicide, but at the inquest, Berezovsky's daughter, who believes her father was murdered at the behest of the
Russian government, introduced a report by a German pathologist that cast enough doubt for the coroner to return an open verdict. •
Zsolt Erőss (45), a
Hungarian high-altitude mountaineer, disappeared on 21 May 2013 while he was climbing
Kangchenjunga. Erőss' body was found in 2014, and his death cause is unknown. • The decomposing remains of Canadian journalist
Dave Walker (57) were found in
Cambodia's
Angkor temple complex on 1 May 2014, ending a search that began shortly after he failed to return to his hotel's guest house on the night of 14 February that year. While the medical examiner concluded that he had died weeks earlier, the cause of Walker's death could not be determined. • Bone fragments found along the Rio Culebra near
Boquete,
Panama, in late June 2014 were matched to
Lisanne Froon, 22, and Kris Kremers, 21, of
Amersfoort, the Netherlands. The two were last seen alive on 1 April when they went hiking on the popular El Pianista trail. After unsuccessful initial searches, a backpack belonging to the women was turned in by a local. It contained their phones, a Canon camera, and personal effects. After two months, a small fraction of their remains was found as well. Their cell phones showed that they repeatedly attempted to contact emergency numbers shortly after taking pictures of themselves at the
Continental Divide. Those calls continued over several days, and Froon's camera contained 90 photographs taken in the night of 8 April, seven days after their disappearance. Most photos showed the jungle in the dark, but some contained rock formations, small pieces of paper and other items in close-up, and one contained the back of Kremers' head. It was impossible to determine from the remains exactly how they had died. Local officials believe the women suffered an accidental injury shortly after getting lost in a network of trails in the region's
cloud forests and got lost in the wilderness around
Volcán Barú; however, Panamanian lawyers for their families have pointed to failings of the investigation and suggested both women could have met with foul play. • On 27 June 2014, the body of
Andrew Sadek (20) was recovered from the
Red River near
Breckenridge, Minnesota, with a small-caliber gunshot wound and a backpack full of rocks. He was last seen by a security camera leaving his dorm at
North Dakota State College of Science in
Wahpeton around 2:00 on 1 May. At the time, he had been working as a
confidential informant for local police after being arrested for selling marijuana on campus, which could otherwise have resulted in a long prison sentence. It has not been determined yet whether his death was suicide or murder. Like
Rachel Hoffman's death, the case has been used as an example of the mishandling of youthful CIs by police. •
Gennadiy Tsypkalov (43) was a political and military figure of the unrecognized
Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). According to officials of the
Luhansk People's Republic, Tsypkalov died by
suicide on 17 May 2014, yet according to some of Tsypkalov's colleagues whom
Igor Plotnitsky dismissed, the leadership of LPR murdered Tsypkalov. His true death cause is unknown. •
Lennon Lacy, a US student at West Bladen High School in
Bladenboro, was found dead in the center of a mobile home community hanging from the frame of a swing set on 29 August 2014. It is unclear whether he died by
suicide or murder. •
John Sheridan (72), formerly US
New Jersey's Transportation Commissioner, was found dead in his
Skillman home along with his wife Joyce on the morning of 28 September 2014. The bodies were in an upstairs bedroom where a fire had been set; they were found with multiple stab wounds. An original ruling of
murder-suicide was changed to undetermined in 2017 after a court challenge by the couple's sons, motivated by complaints of mishandled evidence and some evidence suggesting the couple had been attacked by an intruder. The sons called for the investigation to be reopened, which the state attorney general did in 2022. • The
Unnao dead bodies row, discovered on 14 January 2015, were the remains of over 100 unidentified bodies found floating in the
River Ganges in
Unnao district located in the Indian state of
Uttar Pradesh. The cause of their deaths is unknown. •
Alberto Nisman (51), an Argentine federal prosecutor, was found dead in his apartment with a gunshot wound to the head on 18 January 2015. He had been investigating the 1994
AMIA bombing, Argentina's deadliest terror attack, and publicly accused President
Cristina Kirchner and other high officials of covering up for suspects in the case for foreign-policy reasons; he was scheduled to present these allegations to Congress the next day. While some circumstances of his death are consistent with an early statement that he died by suicide, friends and relatives say he was eagerly looking ahead to his appearance before Congress and did not seem depressed or despondent. Kirchner has suggested the country's intelligence services were behind the killing since he was about to expose their attempts to bring her down and called for them to be dismantled. The case remains under investigation. •
Kayla Mueller (26), a US
human rights activist and
humanitarian aid worker who was taken captive by the
Islamic State in August 2013 in
Aleppo,
Syria, where she was helping
Doctors Without Borders, was reported to have died in a Jordanian air strike during the
Syrian Civil War in
Raqqa on 6 February 2015. Her death was confirmed by the
Pentagon, but the circumstances could not be established by the US. The Pentagon confirmed that the building ISIS claims she died in was hit during the bombings but disputed that Mueller or any other civilian was inside at the time. The site had been bombed by the coalition twice before and was targeted again because ISIS soldiers sometimes return to bombed sites, thinking the coalition would not bomb those sites again, according to Pentagon spokesman
John Kirby. After
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's death in October 2019, new speculations arose that Al-Baghdadi may have had her executed. •
Josh Greenberg (29), co-founder of the music-streaming service
Grooveshark, which had shut down a few months earlier after settling several copyright-infringement suits brought by major music companies, was found dead in his bed by his girlfriend on 29 July 2015 at their apartment in
Gainesville, Florida. The autopsy could not establish a cause of death; investigators said that suicide or foul play are unlikely. •
Vladimir Cvijan, Serbian lawyer and politician, former MP (2012–2014) and legal advisor and General Secretary of
President of Serbia (2004–2010). High-ranked member of ruling
SNS of
Aleksandar Vučić, from 2010 to 2014, and later dissident disappeared in 2017, allegedly fleeing to the
United States. However, in March 2021, Serbian media published a document in which the Public Prosecutor of the Higher Public Prosecutors Office in Belgrade stated that the Prosecutor's Office had issued an order ordering the payment of costs to the Institute for Forensic Medicine of the
Faculty of Medicine,
University of Belgrade for the
autopsy of Vladimir Cvijan's body on 20 November 2018 in
Belgrade, Serbia. The cause, circumstances and exact date of his death are still unknown. . Leader of the
Luhansk People's Republic. His body was discovered on 27 January 2017 •
Valery Bolotov (46) was a
Ukrainian militant leader known for his involvement in the
War in Donbas in
eastern Ukraine, and as the leader of the unrecognized
Luhansk People's Republic. Bolotov was found dead on 27 January 2017 in his own home in
Moscow, Russia. The preliminary results of clinical tests showed an
acute heart failure as reason for death.
Poisoning later was suspected. The causes of his death are being investigated and are not currently known. •
Otto Warmbier (22) was a US college student who was arrested and detained in
North Korea since January 2016, on charges that he had attempted to steal a propaganda poster. During his imprisonment, he suffered an unspecified injury which caused him to go into a coma, from which he died on 19 June 2017. •
Sean Suiter (43) was a US homicide detective working in
Baltimore City who died on 16 November 2017 of a gunshot to the head. It is not known whether it was self-inflicted or not. •
Rogelio Martinez (36), an agent of the
United States Border Patrol, died on 19 November 2017 in
Culberson County while on duty. His cause of death is thought to be murder, but this remains uncertain owing to a lack of evidence. A four-month investigation was conducted by the FBI into his death cause, but the results were inconclusive. •
Sridevi (54) was an Indian actress who died on 24 February 2018 after she was found drowning in her bathtub by her husband in the
Emirates Hotel of
Dubai. Her mysterious accidental death in a foreign country remains unsolved and has led to a number of conspiracy theories. • US computer hacker
Adrian Lamo (37) was found dead 14 March 2018 on a pile of sheets in the guest bedroom of the
Wichita, Kansas, home of a couple he was living with. After three months of investigating, the county coroner was unable to identify a cause of death. While some alternative theories suggest his death was related to his controversial involvement in the criminal cases against
Chelsea Manning and
Julian Assange, the most likely theory is a possible adverse interactions between medication found near him and
kratom, which he often used. •
Fernando Albán (56), a
Venezuelan-
Colombian politician, lawyer, and activist, who died on 8 October 2018, while being held in the headquarters of the
Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN) in
Plaza Venezuela, Caracas. His cause of death is unknown. • Hong Kong teenager
Chan Yin-lam, who participated in the
2019 Hong Kong protests, was found dead and naked in the harbour off Tseung Kwan O on 22 September 2019. This sparked conspiracy theories in pro-protest circles, notably the online platform
LIHKG that Chan had been killed by the police. On 11 September 2020, a coroner's inquest jury ruled that the cause of death could not be determined. •
Yolanda Klug (26), German woman whose disappearance in
Leipzig on 25 September 2019 has been linked to
Scientology. A walker discovered her bones on 25 February 2023 in the "Rödel" forest area near
Freyburg. The cause of death is unclear. •
Marc Bennett (52), a British citizen working for
Qatar Airways, was found hanged in his
Doha hotel room on 24 December 2019. Authorities there ruled it suicide, a finding Bennett's friend and family disputed as he was actively making plans for his future at a new job with a
Saudi company. The airline might have been upset by this since Qatar and Saudi Arabia did not have good relations at the time; a couple of months earlier, after he had let them know that he was dissatisfied and leaving, he was arrested and charged with possessing stolen documents from the company. During the month he was held, he said he was tortured. The
West Sussex Coroner's Office reinvestigated the death and found that foul play "could not be ruled out".
2020s •
Ana Lucrecia Taglioretti (24) was a blind female Paraguayan violinist and prodigy who had performed at events for charitable causes. She was found dead on 9 January 2020 in her apartment in
Asunción, Paraguay, by her mother during a welfare check. Her cause of death is unknown. •
Facundo Astudillo Castro (22–23) was an
Argentine man who disappeared on 30 April 2020 during the
COVID-19 pandemic after being stopped by
police in
Mayor Buratovich,
Buenos Aires. Castro was found dead on 15 August 2020. Though Castro's death was revealed to be caused by
drowning, it could not be determined if it was a result of homicide, suicide, or an accident. •
Esther Dingley (37) was an English hiker and blogger who disappeared on a solo trip through the
Pyrenees. Partial remains were found in July 2021, and later confirmed to be Dingley's following a
DNA examination. Her cause of death is currently unknown. •
John Snorri Sigurjónsson (48),
Juan Pablo Mohr Prieto (37), and
Ali Sadpara (45), three high-altitude mountaineers, went missing while climbing the
Bottleneck area of Pakistan's
K2 mountain on 5 February 2021. The three men's bodies were found on 26 July of that year, but cause of death could not be determined. •
Melissa Caddick (49) was an Australian financial advisor who vanished on 12 November 2020, amid allegations that she was running a
Ponzi scheme. Her partial remains were found floating in the ocean in February 2021, but cause of death is yet to be established. •
James Dean (35) was an English footballer and champion kickboxer who disappeared in the area of
Oswaldtwistle on 5 May 2021. His body was found four days later. While authorities have said that the case is not treated as a homicide, no cause of death has been determined. The police announced his death was not being treated as suspicious. •
Kristina Đukić (21) was a
Serbian livestreamer and
YouTuber who was found dead in
Belgrade on 8 December 2021 from causes that have yet to be determined. •
Aguil Chut-Deng (55), also known as "Aguil Chut-Deng Acouth" and "Aguil de'Chut Deng", was a
South Sudanese activist and revolutionary who was found dead on 26 April 2022 in a wooded area in
Brisbane after being reported missing a day earlier. Her cause of death is not yet known. •
Dan Rapoport (52), Latvian-born US businessman, fell to his death from a building in Washington, D.C., on 14 August 2022. The cause of the fall has not been officially determined. Speculation has considered the possibilities of both suicide or homicide by either aggrieved business connections or the Russian government, of whom Rapoport had become increasingly critical. •
Julian Sands (65), English actor who went missing in January 2023 in the
San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles, while hiking. Sands' remains were found in June, but due to the condition of the body his cause of death could not be established. •
Émile Soleil (2), disappeared on 8 July 2023 in the French commune of
Le Vernet, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. No trace of him was found until March 2024, when his skull was found by a hiker. His cause of death could not be determined. •
Elinés Olivero (22), Venezuelan female military officer who died in
Tumeremo, Venezuela on 1 October 2023, either by suicide or was murdered. •
Ross McDonnell (44) was an Irish photographer, cinematographer, and film director, who went missing in
New York City, US, on 4 November 2023 and whose partial remains were found on 17 November 2023. His cause of death is unknown, but local authorities believe his body was dismembered by sharp rocks. •
Humaira Asghar (41), Pakistani actress and model, disappeared since 7 October 2024 initially thought to have cut off from media industry and social media. She was found dead (severely decomposed) on 8 July 2025 in her Karachi apartment, during a court-ordered eviction due to months of unpaid rent. A foul odour from the flat led police and a bailiff to forcibly enter the locked apartment, where they discovered her decomposed body. Investigators at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre concluded that she most likely died on 7 October 2024. Due to the advanced state of decomposition, her cause of death could not be determined. ==Date of death disputed==