Charles Franklin Gibson, 45, vanished from Hallandale, Florida, on March 7, 1981, after a dinner with his girlfriend Gertrude Menacher, Menacher’s daughter Angela DeLawder, and DeLawder’s boyfriend Ivan Gutierrez. All four were last seen together; a week later Gibson’s Cadillac was found abandoned in a Miami International Airport parking lot, its location reportedly provided to police by an informant. Menacher did not own a car, and neighbors later saw a woman and two men emptying her Miami apartment into a U-Haul. The woman allegedly told the neighbor the apartment’s occupants had been killed on a northern Florida expressway.

Gibson had cleared his Miami Shores apartment before he disappeared. He had a robbery conviction, was on lifetime parole, associated with gang members, and was believed to have acted as an enforcer for drug syndicates. Authorities had active warrants in 1981 for Gibson and Menacher in connection with aiding a prison escapee, Harvey Michael McElroy, who had been murdered in January 1981; police sought them for questioning in that killing. Investigators have suggested the four may have been killed because of what Gibson and Menacher knew, though disappearance and voluntary disappearance remain possibilities, with unconfirmed leads pointing as far as Germany or Colombia.