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Vacation – most people envision lazy hours on the beach or leisurely strolls through historic towns. But sometimes vacations also end up as a cold case – a crime that has never been solved.

These are the stories of Lars Mittank, Truus and Harry Langendonk and seven tourists on a deceptively beautiful island in Thailand. What they have in common: they are all cold cases.

The case of Lars Mittank

The golden beach on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast is the cheaper Majorca for many Germans. Beach, party and alcohol characterize the Bulgarian Ballermann. Lars Mittank, 28, was on a party holiday with his friends in 2014. When he disappears without a trace after an extremely mysterious event, not only his relatives are shocked.

Holidays in the Bulgarian city of Varna go smoothly. In retrospect, Lars’s friends have nothing unusual to report, except that Lars hasn’t eaten much all week. Events do not begin to unfold until the night of June 5-6. Lars gets into a fight and ruptures his eardrum.

On the day of departure, he is therefore admitted to a hospital and misses his return flight. His friends offer to stay with him, but he refuses.

He goes to the hospital alone, where he is prescribed an antibiotic. Moments later, he was released by the doctor in charge. Since his friends are already on their return flight and he no longer has accommodation, he looks for a new hotel room and, on the advice of his taxi driver, finds cheap accommodation nearby. From now on, the story becomes mysterious.

In the middle of the night, Lars calls his mother and tells her that something is wrong with the hotel, after which the connection drops. Around 3 am he flees the hotel with all his luggage and calls his mother again. He is followed by four men and is now looking for a hiding place, he explains to her in a panic, after which he ends the call again. His mother advises him to go to the airport as soon as possible and, despite his ruptured eardrum, books a plane ticket back to Germany.

He was only picked up by a taxi at 05:00, after waving to the side of the road in panic, the taxi driver said. The taxi takes him to the airport, where he calls his mother one last time. Relieved, he tells her that he has finally arrived at the airport and asks her to send him money via Western Union, but he does not give an amount. The mother sends him 500 euros. However, Lars never retracts it. On her advice, he visits the airport doctor to make sure he can fly with his ear injury.

Later, the doctor says Lars seemed nervous all the time and wasn’t really focused.

Because then something happens that no one can really explain. After 40 minutes at the doctor’s office, an airport employee enters the consulting room. When Lars sees this, he stands up Abruptly up and falls out of the room. He leaves behind his luggage and mobile phone. It appears that Lars is being followed, but the airport security cameras show no suspicious person. The cameras capture Lars fleeing the building, crossing the square and eventually climbing over a high barbed wire fence. Behind it is a dense field of sunflowers, into which Lars disappears.

Lars has not been seen since. No body has ever been found.

Camping holidays with a fatal outcome

In 1997, a brutal double murder shocked the world in the middle of the Bavarian holiday idyll at Lake Chiemsee. He is one of the most famous cold cases in Germany and is as mysterious as he is brutal.

When Truus and Harry Langendonk left the Netherlands in May 1997, they did not yet know that this would be their last camping trip. The two pensioners lead a quiet life, have grandchildren to look after and are looking forward to their holiday in Germany.

On May 7, Truus and Harry Langendonk rest with their camper at the edge of the forest near the town of Traunstein. Witnesses from a nearby model airfield later reported that the Langendonks had set up camping chairs and a table in front of their RV. After that it was quiet.

At around 6:30 p.m., witnesses from the nearby hamlet heard shots fired and several frantic screams from a woman. In addition, a man’s voice commanded someone, they say later. The police are not called because they thought they were hunters.

In reality, a gruesome murder scene has just played out in the mobile home: an unknown perpetrator kills Harry Langendonk with a shot to the head. Truus starts screaming and is shot in the chest. But the killer isn’t done yet. For inexplicable reasons, he cuts both of their throats.

The perpetrator then hangs around the crime scene for more than two hours, cleans up and transports the bodies to the caravan. In the end, he drives the RV and the two dead bodies in the trunk on a wild ride until he runs out of gas. He eventually stops near Nuremberg and sets fire to the car and the corpses inside. The police and fire brigade are only now being called in, but the perpetrator has long since left, writes the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

From Nuremberg he drives through Bavaria in various taxis, always paying with the money from Langendonks’ travel fund. In the early hours of the morning he returns to Traunstein. Less than 100 meters from the crime scene, he gets out of the taxi and disappears into the woods.

The police have been looking for the killer of the Langendonks for more than 25 years, but there is still no trace of him.

Island of the Dead in Thailand

The small Thai holiday island of Koh Tao is known for its turquoise waters, beautiful coral reefs and white sand beaches. But behind this deceptively beautiful facade lies an island of crime and violence, where 7 tourists have died in just three years.

On New Year’s morning 2014, a body was found in the sea off the island. It is the remains of the Briton Nick Pearson. The authorities speak of an accident, the Briton fell from his balcony and drowned.

In September of the same year, British backpackers Hannah Witheridge and David Miller are on the island for a diving holiday. On the night of September 14 to 15, they are attacked with a garden rake and a wooden club and violently murdered. Hannah is also raped.

As a result, two migrant workers are arrested and sentenced to death. However, human rights organizations have expressed massive criticism of the police’s actions, according to Amnesty International, the suspects were forced to confess under torture.

On New Year’s Eve 2015, Frenchman Dimitri Povse was found hanged in his bungalow. The fact that his hands were tied behind his back does not prevent the police from speaking of suicide.

Christina Annesley died just 20 days later from a mixture of antibiotics and alcohol. Here, too, the studies are incomplete.

On the morning of January 8, 2016, British man Luke Miller was found dead in a swimming pool. The cause of death is unclear and the next of kin have massively criticized the investigation, according to the BBC.

In 2017, the body of a young Belgian woman was found half decomposed and eaten by lizards in the jungle. The police speak of suicide, but the mother of the dead strongly disagrees, the Daily Mail reports.