Every now and then, we come across the case of a missing person, who has sometimes been missing for YEARS. And they are discovered dead in their own home! This is mind-blowing to me, every single time I read about it. How can this happen?????
Julia Snyder (53) went missing on February 8, 2020 from Malibu, CA. She suffered from Bipolar. At the time of her disappearance, she had been staying with her parents as her house was being renovated. Their home was very close to hers. On February 19, Julia was found dead in a crawlspace of the family home. Her cause of death was ‘Undetermined’ by the Los Angeles Medical Examiner.
Molly Meghan Miller (31) went missing from her home on December 29, 2017. She had been living with her partner, Anson, at the time. Her body was found on January 1, 2018, hanging in a closet in their home. Her death was ruled a suicide.
Journalist Jackson Landers, who knew Molly and Anson, said they were big on home improvements, and the place was cluttered.
“They would just squirrel away all kinds of construction materials,” Landers explains. “They would have heaps of lumber. Anson would pick up metal scrap that he would make furniture out of, and their house was full of this stuff. I wouldn’t say they were horders exactly, but it was a house that someone as small as Molly could get lost in.”
You can view the zillow listing for Molly’s house here.
You can read more about Molly’s case here.
Molly’s family contacted True Crime Society and have said that much of what Jackson Landers reported was false. Molly did not have cancer as he reported and they asked us to confirm with the public that Molly had no alcohol, drugs or toxins in her body at the time she died. We thank them for sharing this information with us.
Christopher Woitel (50) was last heard from on January 9 of 2021. He sent his niece a message, asking for her mother to check her messages and then he vanished into thin air. You can see Chris’ FB here.
In the days before he went missing, Christopher had been acting erratically and posted many strange things on his social media.
There is a really detailed article from Mission Local about Chris’ disappearance:
In the days leading up to Woitel’s disappearance, family members said he was acting strange and paranoid — writing unusual posts on Facebook, obsessing over the D.C. Capitol riots, asking for money to replace a lost cell phone and talking about an escape to the mountains.
In texts on Jan. 8, Woitel told Haben that he had been hearing explosions outside his apartment, and that San Francisco felt increasingly “unsafe” because he feared protests by Trump supporters could spill into the city. Only hours before his family lost contact with him on Jan. 9, Woitel told Haben that a “man on a loudspeaker” passed by in a car, urging residents to “get out now.”
“Do me a favor and put some money in my account,” Woitel texted Haben, explaining he wanted to stay with friends in the mountains. “75 bucks isn’t going to get me very far.”
Soon after, Woitel stopped responding to calls and texts. On Jan. 8, Woitel’s bank account ceased activity. His friends who owned property in the mountains told Woitel’s family they had not seen him.
Surveillance footage inside Woitel’s three-story apartment building at 65 Guerrero St. shows him enter his third-floor apartment on Jan. 8 at 8:38 p.m. But cameras never captured Woitel emerging from his apartment in the following days, according to a report by private investigator Scott Williams. Police entered Woitel’s apartment a week later and, despite no footage of Woitel leaving the apartment, found no one inside, according to Williams’ report. It is unclear how Woitel left the apartment.
According to that same article, Christopher had befriended a homeless man who went by the name of ‘Bood’. He had some issues with this person and it was thought that maybe Bood held the key to Christopher’s whereabouts. “On Jan. 7, at 9:54 p.m., less than 48 hours before Woitel went missing, surveillance footage captured Bood entering Woitel’s apartment. The next day, at 5:45 a.m., the footage shows Bood leave. He did not return, according to footage reviewed by Williams, the private detective. Between Jan. 8 and Jan. 9, there is no footage of Bood entering or leaving the apartment. But that night, the night before Woitel went missing, Woitel messaged Bood on Facebook. Bood had been using Woitel’s Facebook account to send messages to people Bood knew. “You fucking asshole! DONE. THAT’S IT. ENOUGH. You are on your own,” Woitel wrote to Bood. “You are far too much trouble. Phone number? Get your own. I’m not paying for you to harass people. You are an asshole. Don’t ever come here again!” Bood did not respond. Soon after, Woitel went missing. “
Three weeks later, on Jan. 29, Bood wrote on Facebook that he heard Woitel had been “jumped and robbed for his computers.” He added that Woitel was “killed” by people named “Nigel, Alonzo, lc, and Eric.”
Bood had a similar story for the private investigator.
On the morning of Feb. 2, Williams visited Bood at a homeless encampment near SAE Expression College on Shellmound Street in Emeryville. It is unclear how Williams knew Bood was in possession Woitel’s phone, but he asked Bood why he had it. Bood responded that Woitel had sold it to him for $100 when he visited Woitel on Jan. 7. (Friends and family believe Bood may have stolen the phone or Woitel lent it to him, as he had in the past).
Bood showed the detective the phone, and it was “dead and wet,” Williams wrote in his report.
Around February 10 and 11 (over a month after Chris disappeared), there was a big media push in his case. His family made a Facebook group dedicated to finding him. And just a few days later, they got the breakthrough they had been looking for. Christopher was found dead in the attic of his home. Some facebook posts were made which have now been deleted:
A new statement was released following deletion of the first one:
This is the most recent update about Chris’ case –
A San Francisco man found dead Monday after his family reported him missing last month was discovered in a crawl space above the bathroom of his Mission District apartment, police said Wednesday.
San Francisco police said they do not suspect foul play in Christopher Woitel’s death and said Woitel probably “accessed the crawl space from the roof of the building and not from inside his apartment.”
On Feb. 15, detectives with the Special Victims and Crime Scene Investigations units served a second search warrant at the home “In furtherance of the investigation,” this time looking into a small, roughly 3-foot tall crawl space above the bathroom, where they found Woitel’s body. Police said the area was “hidden from plain view.”
San Francisco firefighters cut a hole in the ceiling to retrieve the man’s remains, police said.
One of the most high-profile missing persons cases in Australia was that of missing man Daniel O’Keeffe. Daniel was 24 when he went missing from the family home in Geelong in July 2011. His family spent years searching for him and raising awareness of his case.
On March 21, 2016 (almost five years after Daniel disappeared), his dad was working on the family home, when he stumbled across Daniel’s remains. Lori O’Keeffe said her husband Des was ‘digging into the side of a hill’ and found a ‘cavity’ when he made the horrific discovery.
‘Dan’s found and we know where he is now. We probably didn’t need to have a full inquest. We now know all the details, and nothing will bring Dan back,’ Lori said.
‘We know what happened to him. I don’t have any unanswered questions. We know that he took his own life and he never left home.
You can read more about Daniel’s case here.
The Todt family from Celebration, Florida were last seen by neighbors in mid December 2019, allegedly driving away from their home with their vehicle packed.
Friends and family thought something might be wrong when they were unable to contact family members over Christmas and New Year. The case of the missing family was first posted in True Crime Society around January 12, 2020. Neighbors of the Todt’s said that they had visited the property and nothing seemed amiss or out of place from what they could see.
Osceola County deputies went to the Todt home on January 13 to serve a Federal Warrant to Anthony Todt for insurance related fraud. Upon arriving at the property, they were met with the smell of death. Anthony Todt allegedly told the deputies that his wife was asleep upstairs and his children may have been at a sleepover.
But deputies said when they went upstairs they found his wife and three children dead in the master bedroom.
Deputies said Anthony confessed to killing his wife, Megan Todt, 42, and their three children, Aleksander Todt, 13, Tyler Todt, 11, and Zoe Todt, 4 — as well as their family dog, Breezy.
Check out our blog post about the Todt case here.
Marianne Marsh (61) was last seen near her home on Birch Lane near Conway, SC on February 14, 2020. Her family created a missing person page for Marianne and wrote about their searches for her.
Over the course of the investigation her home and surrounding areas were searched with helicopters, drones, and by foot multiple times, Mikayla Moskov, Public Information Officer said.
On April 21, 2020, a shocking discovery was made. Marianne was discovered dead in the attic of her home.
Police said a family member contacted police Tuesday after noticing a foul odor coming from Marsh’s home. Another search took place and her remains were found.
It was determined that prior to her death, Marianne hid in a remote and obscure area in the attic of her home, which was not visible to others and “required Marsh’s small physical stature and intimate knowledge of the home’s architecture to successfully enter,” police said.
Maggie Long (17) was reported missing from her home in Bailey, Colorado on December 1, 2017. On the same day that she was last seen, her family home was burned down.
Media reports at the time said:
Dave Wohlers told Denver7 sheriff’s investigators, fire officials and Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents investigated the scene of the suspected arson at the family home located at 3700 County Road 43 on Saturday.
Wohlers told Denver7 they do not have search parties out looking for Long, adding they’re also working to see if there’s a connection between her disappearance and the family home fire.
On December 7, 2017, police revealed that Maggie’s body had been discovered inside the burned out home.
Maggie’s death was classified as a murder and it remains unsolved to this day. The FBI are seeking more information.
You can read more about Maggie’s case here.
There are also cases where people who were never reported missing have been found dead in their homes, many years after they were last seen.
Ronald White (51) was found dead in his apartment, and it’s thought he had been there for up to three years before he was found.
“My son would call me at least twice a month,” his mom Doris Stevens told WFAA. “He would call me from Egypt. He would call me from the Philippines. He would call me right from Dallas,” she said.
But three years ago the phone calls stopped. Stevens, who lives in Long Island, New York, says she became suspicious when she couldn’t reach him on his birthday in April of 2017.
Stevens says her family didn’t have enough money to hire a private investigator. A search of his previous addresses, including the most recent in Glenn Heights, turned up nothing. He’d simply vanished.
That is, until last week at the DeSoto Town Center Apartments on E. Pleasant Run Road. DeSoto police say the apartment complex was investigating multiple units where it appeared tenants were not using water.
Some were rented but empty. But when they had to force the bolted door open at unit 1320 they found Ronald White dead on the kitchen floor. The medical examiner confirmed he died approximately three years ago.
You can read more about Ronald’s case here.