John Lake Missing Person Case

Dec 28, 2009

Sep 15, 2022

John

Lake

95

37

70 inches

72 inches

160 lbs

190 lbs

White / Caucasian

Male

On a December evening in 1967, a promising journalist named John Eric Lake vanished into the bustling streets of New York City, leaving behind a life and a mystery that would endure for decades. The 37-year-old sports editor for Newsweek was last seen on December 10th in Manhattan. That evening, he had dinner and drinks with a female acquaintance. After taking a taxi with her to her apartment on East 54th Street, she declined his request to come up, citing an early workday. Though she suggested he take the waiting cab to his own apartment in Greenwich Village, Lake stated he would take the subway instead and was last seen walking towards the station. He was never heard from again. A missing persons report was not filed by his wife, Alice, until four days after he was last seen. At the time of his disappearance, John Lake was a man dealing with significant personal and professional pressures. He and his wife, with whom he had two children, had separated, and he had recently agreed to a divorce which he had previously resisted. This created a financial strain on him. Colleagues at Newsweek described him as being dissatisfied with his job and believed he had been depressed for about a year leading up to his disappearance. Despite his high-profile career, which included ghostwriting an autobiography for baseball great Bob Gibson, some of his associates felt his disappearance might have been a voluntary act to escape his circumstances, though none believed he was suicidal. The investigation into his disappearance was handled by both the New York City Police Department and the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which was hired by Newsweek, but neither agency was able to uncover his whereabouts. Years stretched into decades with no definitive answers in the case of John Eric Lake. In 1975, seven years after he was last seen, John Lake was legally declared dead in absentia. However, the case remained an open wound for his family, with his son continuing the search for his father for many years. At one point, his son was shown a police photograph of an unidentified man found deceased in February 1968 who bore a resemblance to his father, but a positive identification could not be made due to facial injuries. The unidentified man had been buried in a mass grave, making DNA comparison impossible. The case of John Eric Lake is a poignant story of a man who, on an ordinary night in a city of millions, simply vanished, leaving behind a legacy of unanswered questions and a family forever marked by his absence.

Dec 10, 1967

New York City

New York

New York County

2362

New York City Police Department - Missing Persons Squad

New York

New York

New York County

10039

2770 Frederick Douglass Boulevard, New York

2126947781

Local

Law Enforcement

29273

1967-12-14

New York City Police Department - Missing Persons Squad

6422

Brown

Brown

Brown

09/20/2026