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In December 2001, Michele Lyn Hundley Smith left her North Carolina home to buy Christmas presents and never came back, leaving behind a husband, two baffled teenage daughters and an eight-year-old son.
It took twenty-four years, multiple missing person reports and searches including by the FBI, before she was found living alone in a trailer, 173 miles away but in the same state, by a sheriff.
Smith claimed she left for “domestic issues,” according to an officer who interviewed her. She was hauled back to face an old drunk driving charge and many questions from those she left behind.
It was a disappearing act worthy of magician David Copperfield, and exactly how she did it hasn’t yet been explained.
Although it may have practically been a little easier to do back in 2001 before the internet and social media became widespread, it’s always been emotionally very hard for people to leave a life behind and start again, according to professionals.
“The biggest psychological problem is getting to your new location and realizing your old life is dead and that you need to make a new life,” said Frank Ahearn, privacy expert and blackmail fixer who helps people to start over.
“You left everyone behind and there is always the temptation to reach out to people from the past. But you can’t. You need to realize that the life you left behind is over. If you break the discipline, you will put yourself in harm’s way,” he added to The Post.
“Some people become complacent. Let’s say you used to like rodeos and you start showing up at rodeos and run into people from your past. That is not good.
“You can’t do the things from your past if you want to stay disappeared. You have to stop being the person you used to be. That is a psychological challenge for a lot of people.”
Ahearn — who makes it clear he refuses to work with crooks or anyone under criminal investigation — says people disappear for reasons such as abuse, family strife, or sometimes either coming into a large sum of cash or losing it. “It usually comes down to violence or money,” he sums up.
Becoming invisible also brings fresh challenges thanks to surveillance cameras everywhere, including Ring doorbells throughout neighborhoods and online research providing a roadmap for the freshly skedaddled.
“We have video everywhere. It’s hard to get away from, although [government surveillance] is usually not available to the general public,” said Michael McKeever, a private investigator based in New York.
Modern technology can be an asset when it comes to laying a false trail, though.
“You can create disinformation,” explains Ahearn, who co-authored the book “How to Disappear.” “You do your real planning on a burner phone that you keep in a storage unit. But on your accessible computer, you look up real estate, banking and utility companies in, say, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and San Francisco.
“Then you go somewhere completely different. Private detectives hired to find you have to look in all those cities. That makes it expensive.”
As Smith learned, going off radar indefinitely is harder than just the initial split. In another case, South Carolina native Michele Whitaker was 32 when she was accidentally released from jail in 2002.
She relocated to Oregon and was thought to have been murdered. Whitaker would have stayed gone, but she wound up on an episode of “Forensic Files,” presumed to have been murdered, leading an Oregonian to recognize her and report her whereabouts to authorities in 2008. She was by then living on a farm and working as a nanny, but flew back east to reunite with her parents.
Short of turning up on a TV show, which she could not control, Whitaker followed a plan McKeever would approve of: “You want to go to another state, not use your name, not use your Social Security number, not drive a car there.”
Once the alarm is raised over a missing person these days, many people spring into action. When Hawaiian photographer Hannah Kobayashi missed her connecting flight through Los Angeles airport in Nov. 2024, posters were printed, both police and civilian search teams were hunting through the city and Facebook groups were set up within hours.
Online posts were able to re-trace her steps through some of the city and it was quickly established she’d taken a bus to the border. On Nov. 12, 2024, video showed her crossing into Mexico on foot, where she later said she went for “healing” and “peace.”
However, her sabbatical was short lived. Around December 11, 2024, police located Kobayashi and brought her back to the US and her family. She has yet to tell her full story, but was rumored to have skipped out on a plan to take part in a sham marriage for cash.
Because everyone has a camera on their phone these days, Ahearn advises people to avoid technology as much as possible.
“You need to be more off the grid. You stay away from touristy places. You don’t hang out with people who use mobile phones to take pictures. And you stay away from places like Starbucks where you can wind up in the background of someone’s selfie,” he said.
Of course, being incentivized to lay low can help the cause. Such as in the case of Virginia high school football coach Travis L. Turner, who has been accused of texting explicit photos to a 16-year-old student. He disappeared almost immediately after the allegations were made on November 20, 2025.
Turner’s family insists he is innocent of the charges, but since he has disappeared, he has not been able to offer any defense.
Thankfully, most alleged criminals aren’t brilliant at planning their getaway and melting into the background. Take the case of Luigi Mangione, accused murderer of United Healthcare boss Brian Thompson.
After allegedly gunning down Thompson in broad daylight in Manhattan, he had escaped 275 miles to Altoona, Penn., but couldn’t resist what turned out to be a not-so-happy meal at a packed McDonalds. He was immediately recognized by customers who had seen an image circulated by authorities and a manager called police.
“I think, for him, it was a case of somebody thinking they’re smarter than they actually are,” said McKeever, referring to how Mangione did nothing to change his look, particularly his distinctive eyebrows. “With those Dracula eyebrows, I don’t know what you can do.”
Ahearn said he puts his clients through their paces before he takes them on.
“The first question is about how they will earn money; if they are handy and can be paid in cash, that’s good,” he said.
“Then I tell them to keep an office [for planning] and a second one in case that doesn’t work out. Then I ask them where they want to live and how they will exist. They can’t become party animals and hang out in bars. And before all of that, they have to sell their house and car, put their money into pre-paid credit cards. The more you have, the more time consuming it is.”
Sometimes, it’s the seemingly little things, which most wouldn’t even think about before heading underground, that can turn things upside down.
Ahearn remembers a situation from when he was working the other side of the fence, locating the missing rather than helping them leave.
“I was looking for a guy and couldn’t uncover anything about him,” said Ahearn. “Then I spoke to the super of his building.” There was nothing distinct about the guy except for one thing: “He had 30 magnets on his refrigerator. They were all from Jupiter, Florida.”
With that, Ahearn’s quarry was quickly turned up. As a go-to guy for disappearances, where would he himself consider heading? “Sicily,” he replied, naming the Italian island associated with the mafia without hesitation.
“People there mind their own business. The weather is nice, the food is tasty and nobody cares who you are.”
English (US)