This case is a little different than the rest, mainly because the person doing the vanishing act was a police chief. Here is the story for ya!
The Disappearance Of Mel Wiley
After a lengthy career in law enforcement, Mel Wiley became the police chief of Hinckley Township, Ohio, in 1982. Three years later, the 47-year-old Wiley would vanish without a trace. The last confirmed sighting of him took place on July 28, 1985. Two days later, his abandoned station wagon was found at Lakefront State Park in Cleveland. When investigators checked Wiley’s apartment, there were no signs of foul play. Several days’ worth of food and water had been left out for Wiley’s two cats, and there were numerous personal items missing from both his apartment and his desk at the police station. The most intriguing clue, however, came from Wiley’s office typewriter.
Investigators performed an analysis on the typewriter’s ribbon and discovered that Wiley had typed a letter to a friend, in which he claimed that he was tired of his life and wanted to disappear. Curiously, Wiley’s friend never received this letter, and no copy of it was found. It seemed plausible that Wiley could have staged his disappearance, as he had gotten divorced from his wife the previous year and expressed a desire to retire from police work in order to become a writer. Wiley even claimed he had been working on a novel, but investigators could never find any manuscript for it. Wiley also never accessed any of the money in his bank account or police pension fund, and there is no paper trail for him. If he did manage to successfully orchestrate his own disappearance, he has managed to stay off the radar for 30 years.
Quite the mystery, right? Seems as though the man really wanted to disappear in the worse way. Evidently he did a good job because the missing person case is still open as far as I know.
Coffee out on the patio again this morning!
