They Said They Were Going To New York City For A Top-Secret Government Mission, And Then They Disappeared

In April 1985, a newly married couple from San Marino, California, was reported missing about one to two months after they were last seen.

John and Linda Sohus met three years before they got married. They were described as an "odd pair," but nothing about them raised suspicion.

According to Linda's friend, Sue Coffman, Linda was highly intelligent and enjoyed art and science fiction. Although she did not play, she attended Dungeons and Dragons games with John.

After John and Linda got married, they moved in with Didi Sohus, John's adoptive mother, who was a former socialite from the 1930s and '40s. The couple did not have the means to live on their own, but when they were presented with an enticing job opportunity, they decided to take it.

Sue Coffman recalls Linda telling her about the couple's plan to travel to New York City, so John could take an interview for a "high-level, high-security government job."

After that, Sue didn't hear from them for over a month, so she called Didi, who told her that she didn't think they would be returning home anytime soon because they were on a "secret mission."

Detectives later found out that Didi kept in contact with John and Linda through her tenant, Christopher Chichester, a half-British man who claimed to be the 13th Baronet of Chichester. He also went by the name Christopher or Christian Gerhartsreiter.

When detectives went to speak with Christopher, they found him in a disheveled state. He reiterated Didi's statement that John and Linda were on a secret mission. He was also in possession of the Sohus' new white truck.

On April 28, 1985, Didi received a postcard with a postmark from New York. It appeared to have been written by Linda. It read, "Looks like we made a wrong turn." Then, in July, Didi notified authorities that Christopher had disappeared with the white pickup truck.

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Authorities finally found the truck in 1988, three years after the couple's disappearance. The truck was sold in Greenwich, Connecticut. The new owners of the vehicle said that the man who sold it to them was a hedge fund manager named Chris Crowe.

Chris went on the run before the police had a chance to talk to him. He called his boss, saying that his parents had been kidnapped in Pakistan, so he would have to take two months off work to look for them. Didi passed away that same year without knowing what happened to John and Linda.

In May 1994, authorities were called to Didi's former home. The new owners made a gruesome discovery while installing a pool in the backyard.

The human remains of an individual were unearthed from the ground. The head was covered in two plastic bags with a telephone wire wrapped around the neck, while the body was wrapped in Saran Wrap.

The victim died from blunt force trauma to the head. Blood was also found in the guesthouse where Christopher had lived. The body remained unidentified for years until advanced DNA technology was developed. It was John Sohus.

In 2008, a man named Clark Rockefeller was wanted for kidnapping his daughter during a supervised visit in Boston. It turned out that he was the same person as Christopher Chichester.

Over the years, he lived under several different aliases. He was sentenced to five years in prison on parental kidnapping charges. In the meantime, detectives set out to prove that the conman was responsible for the Sohus' disappearance.

His trial began in March 2013. In April, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison for the murder of John Sohus. No trace of Linda has ever been found.