She took off to make history... and was never seen again.

On This Day, July 2, 1937, legendary aviator Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world.

She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were flying toward Howland Island when radio contact was suddenly lost.

Despite one of the largest search operations in history, no trace of the aircraft or its crew was ever found.

More than 85 years later, Amelia Earhart's disappearance remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in aviation history. Was it a crash at sea, a navigational error, or something else entirely?

​The lights were off, the curtains closed. The victim lay on her back, a tulip-decorated quilt pulled up to her chin. The quilt had been smoothed and its sides neatly tucked in. When police entered her bedroom at Maplewood Garden Apartments in Syracuse on the evening of August 19, 1985, she looked serene, as if she had simply drifted off to sleep.

Except she wasn’t sleeping. Dr. Nanette Gordon had been dead for as long as two-and-a-half days, and everything about her death has stymied investigators ever since.

People die in their sleep all the time, but Gordon, 30, was young and healthy. A resident pathologist at the SUNY Health Science Center in Syracuse, she hoped to eventually do cancer research at Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City once her residency ended in June of 1986. She enjoyed hiking, swimming, running, playing racquetball, and going to concerts with friends.

She was returning from a concert with a friend late on the night of Friday, August 16 around 11:00 p.m. Her friend dropped her off at her apartment complex and and drove away.

The neighbor who lived directly upstairs from Gordon told police she’d heard “terrible screams” coming from the young doctor’s apartment around 4:00 a.m. Saturday. The neighbor left a note for the building manager, then followed up with a phone call Monday. Gordon’s car had been in the same place all weekend, she said, and newspapers were piling up outside her door. Something must be wrong.

Around 5:00 p.m. that night, the building manager and her husband unlocked the door to Gordon’s apartment. When they saw Gordon lying motionless in her bed, they phoned police.

Detectives later noted how orderly everything appeared. One commented that the bed itself, where Gordon was found nude under the quilt, was “too perfect,” like an Army bunk ready for inspection. A pathologist who reviewed death scene photos said the scene appeared doctored.

William Fitzpatrick, chief homicide prosecutor, said, “It was one of the oddest death scenes I’ve ever seen. It looked staged.”

The only thing out of place in the bedroom was a house plant, spilled onto the floor from the nightstand next to her bed. Potting soil was found in the closed nightstand drawer. In the dining room, a large ceramic vase had been knocked over. There was no sign of forced entry.

In a letter to the victim’s family, District Attorney Richard Hennessy Jr., wrote, “The scene preserved in this case was most unique in that everything appeared to be in absolutely perfect order. Indeed, too much so.”

 

Cause of death: “Pending”

Dr. Gordon had just finished working a rotation during the month of July at the Onondaga County Medical Examiner’s Office. When her body was brought to this same office late Monday night, the Medical Examiner himself, Dr. Erik Mitchell, performed the autopsy on his former colleague.

Mitchell found small red spots on the eyeballs and on windpipe cartilage. The bone at the root of the tongue had reddish discoloration behind it, as did the tissue behind the larynx. The brain showed signs of vascular congestion. Chemical tests were negative. There was no evidence of sexual injury.

On the death certificate signed on August 20, 1985, Mitchell typed “pending” in the blank area for cause of death. Mitchell told Gordon’s family he simply did not have enough information to make a definitive diagnosis.

The family was furious. They hired an independent pathologist from Philadelphia to review the autopsy findings and death scene photos. The pathologist said the pattern of  “little hemorrhages” was likely caused by lack of oxygen, and concluded that Gordon was strangled. He, too, commented that the death scene appeared staged, and theorized she’d been killed elsewhere in the apartment, then placed in her bed.

He wasn’t the only one who thought Gordon had probably been murdered. Most of the detectives who worked the case also believed it, as did DA Hennessey, who told Gordon’s family, “There is little doubt in my mind that her death was due to foul play.”

All of Gordon’s known associates, past and present, including Dr. Erik Mitchell himself, were quickly interviewed, investigated, and cleared. If the young doctor was indeed murdered, who could have done it? And why?

 

Missing money, strange phone calls.

Two weeks before her death, Gordon discovered money missing from her purse. She told a friend it was the second time money had recently gone missing from her apartment. She also mentioned finding items like her underwear moved around.

Then there were the strange phone calls left by a neighbor on Gordon’s answering machine the weekend she died. In the first message, the neighbor said he had heard screams coming from Gordon’s apartment. In the second message, the caller said never mind – the first message was a mistake.

Police quickly determined the caller was a middle-aged man who lived in the apartment directly above Gordon’s. He lived with his elderly mother, the same woman who had reported hearing screams. The man sometimes did maintenance work for the complex, and had a key to Gordon’s apartment.

When questioned by police, he gave conflicting statements about what he saw and heard in the early morning hours of Saturday, August 17, 1985. He refused to take a polygraph test, promptly hired a lawyer, and never spoke to the police again. Not long after, he moved to Oswego County.

 

A psychologist’s perspective.

Two years after Nanette Gordon was found dead in bed, Dr. Erik Mitchell amended the death certificate. Despite the findings of the Philadelphia pathologist, he changed the cause of death from “pending” to simply “undetermined.”

The family redoubled their efforts to have their daughter’s death officially ruled a homicide. They lawyered up, and lobbied for Dr. Mitchell to resign. The State Health Department found no wrongdoing by the medical examiner, but in October of 1989, County Executive Nicholas Pirro removed Mitchell from the case and appointed a panel of three independent pathologists. Two of the three experts said Gordon was killed by asphyxiation. The cause of death was finally changed to “homicide.”

Meanwhile, a psychology professor from Syracuse University, Dr. Murray Miron, created a criminal profile of the person who likely murdered Nanette Gordon.

According to Miron, the killer was a loner male, a Peeping Tom, with poor social skills. He had probably crept into Gordon’s bedroom before to watch her sleep, and rummage through her things. He was likely doing exactly that in the early-morning hours of August 17, 1985, when Gordon suddenly awoke and recognized him.

Miron theorized that Gordon was suffocated during a violent struggle. Then, shocked by her nudity, the intruder tucked her back into bed, and did his best to tidy up before fleeing the scene.

The man probably did not have murder on his mind when he entered Gordon’s apartment, Miron told the media. “He couldn’t believe what he’d done.”

The elderly neighbor awakened by Gordon’s screams told police she discovered her son awake as well, rushing back into their apartment. He had also heard the screams, he said, and went to check. Call the building manager, she told him. He did, and left a message, but then apparently realized he had phoned Nanette Gordon by mistake. He called back a few minutes later and canceled the message.

In his only conversation with the police, the man admitted to leaving the messages on Gordon’s answering machine. The messages were a mistake, he said.

“You have the right suspect.”

Five years after Nanette Gordon was found dead, an unknown woman called 911.

“You have the right suspect,” she said. “Pursue it.” She hung up when the 911 operator asked for her name.

The same woman apparently phoned the Gordon family attorney around the same time. You’re on the right track,” she said. “The guy upstairs did it.” Then she hung up.

The same woman made a second 911 call in January of 1992, saying basically the same thing before hanging up. Despite public pleas, investigators have never uncovered her identity.

They have also never publicly identified the man who remains the one and only suspect in the murder of Nanette Gordon. In a 2019 interview, Onondaga County District Attorney  William Fitzpatrick said the suspect had recently died. He asked that the woman who phoned 911 back in 1990 and 1992 contact the Sheriff’s Department to share what she knew. Because the suspect was now dead, he said, there would be no need for the woman to testify. No one responded.

As a young homicide prosecutor, Fitzpatrick was one of the first investigators on the scene of the murder of Nanette Gordon in 1985. He has said her death remains one of the top cold cases he’d like to see solved while he is still DA.

If you have any information regarding the murder of Nanette Gordon, please phone the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office at (315) 435-3051.

What happened to Kyle Vaughan?

Kyle was 24 when he disappeared from Newbridge, South Wales, on 30 December 2012. His damaged car was found on the A467 between Risca and Crosskeys. The case later became a murder investigation, but no one has been charged.

I’ve put together a sourced write-up of the case here, focusing on the known facts and the impact on his family with links. I’d be grateful for any corrections, additional sources, or respectful discussion.

https://open.substack.com/pub/shannongwyer/p/what-happened-to-kyle-vaughan?r=8nxyy8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

A wealthy Chinese immigrant couple vanished from their $3.9 million mansion in New York. Over a year later, they're still missing. What do you think happened?

This case has completely fascinated me, and I rarely see it discussed anywhere.

In March 2025, a wealthy Chinese couple, Peishun Fan (48) and Juanjuan Zhang (44), disappeared from their mansion in the affluent village of Old Brookville on Long Island, New York.

The family had immigrated to the U.S. in 2022 and purchased their home outright with cash for about $3.9 million. They spoke very little English, mostly socialized within the local Chinese community, and were described by neighbors as quiet and friendly.

The last known timeline

• On March 30, the family hosted a small dinner at home with their younger son's friends.
• Around 10:30 PM, the guests left. This was the last confirmed sighting of the couple.
• Early the next morning, their 20-year-old son, his girlfriend, and his 12-year-old brother left for a planned overnight trip to the Catskill Mountains.

While driving, the eldest son reportedly received several strange, fragmented text messages from his parents. Their attorney has never revealed the contents, only saying they appeared to have been sent during some kind of emergency.

When the son tried calling them, both phones were off.

Later that day, neighborhood security contacted him, saying they had noticed suspicious people around the property. The son asked friends nearby to check on the house.

The scene

What they found was bizarre.

• The front door was wide open.
• Lights were on.
• Half-eaten food was still on the table.
• Car keys, house keys, wallets, passports, jewelry, and both luxury vehicles were still there.
• There were no signs of forced entry, no struggle, no blood, and nothing appeared to have been stolen.

Police and the FBI searched the entire house, including using luminol, but found virtually no evidence explaining where the couple went.

It was as if they had simply vanished.

Then,

About three months later, the eldest son received bank alerts showing that nearly $2.9 million had been transferred out of his parents' accounts.

Investigators discovered someone had fraudulently changed the accounts into joint survivorship accounts, allowing another person to withdraw the money.

A 56-year-old woman was identified as the beneficiary. She had little money before the transfers but quickly began withdrawing hundreds of thousands of dollars and funneling money through a newly created shell company.

Bank surveillance also showed she was accompanied by a younger man with a history involving stolen identities, fake driver's licenses, and financial fraud.

The woman was arrested and later pleaded guilty to bank fraud.

The younger man posted bail, disappeared before trial, and remains a fugitive.

Interestingly, investigators believe this fraud ring probably did not kidnap or murder the couple. Their theory is that the scammers simply took advantage of the fact that the couple had already disappeared and no one was actively monitoring their accounts.

Other strange details

• A black SUV with its license plate deliberately covered in mud was reportedly seen outside the house around the time of the disappearance.
• The home's security systems apparently failed or weren't functioning properly.
• The couple had left behind everything they would need if they intended to travel.
• Despite extensive searches, there have been no confirmed sightings, no bodies, and no financial activity from the couple themselves.

A possible motive?

Chinese reports claim the husband was a successful businessman involved in major construction and civil engineering projects before immigrating to the U.S. They also claim he had briefly been detained by Chinese authorities before leaving the country and that the family kept a deliberately low profile after arriving in America.

None of that has been confirmed by U.S. investigators, but it has led to speculation that the disappearance could have been connected to events from their lives before moving to the United States.

So what do you think?

Some possibilities:

• They willingly opened the door to someone they knew and were abducted. Perhaps they were targeted because people knew they had significant wealth.
• The case is connected to the husband's past business dealings. The family seemed to be running away from something as they immigrated to the US seemingly overnight, even changing their names.
• The financial fraud ring is involved in their killing.
• The couple immigrated in 2022, yet by late 2023 they were able to purchase a $3.9 million home entirely in cash. From what I understand, China has strict annual limits on how much money individuals can legally convert and transfer overseas (around the equivalent of US$50,000 per person per year under normal foreign exchange rules). If they used an underground money-transfer network, the people involved would have known exactly how wealthy they were, where they lived, and how their finances were structured. That would provide both motive and opportunity without requiring some elaborate international revenge plot.
• The timing of the eldest son's trip makes him look a bit suspicious. He, his girlfriend, and his younger brother left for the Catskills on Monday, March 31, when the younger brother was off from school for Eid al-Fitr. However, they planned to stay overnight even though school resumed the next morning. However, there doesn't seem to be much motive for him to hurt his parents.

The FBI has never publicly identified a suspect in the disappearance itself, and more than a year later, the couple is still missing.

What theory makes the most sense to you?