In 1967 three young boys out of Hannibal, Missouri went missing after exploring a cave known as Murphy’s cave. The boys have never been seen or heard from since and we are going to talk about everything from the investigation to where the Case stands today.
sources for episode:
https://missourilife.com/three-boys-disappear-in-hannibal-may-10-1967/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/s/Z6pEZxBc7T
https://rcccmcc.com/2020/04/17/william-francis-hoag/
https://charleyproject.org/case/william-hoag
https://rcccmcc.com/2020/04/17/joel-wise-hoag/
https://maryhallberg.wixsite.com/maryhallberg/post/the-lost-boys-of-hannibal-missing-for-55-years
https://charleyproject.org/case/joel-hoag
https://charleyproject.org/case/edwin-craig-dowell
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/149044005/edwin_craig-dowell
https://rcccmcc.com/2020/04/17/edwin-craig-dowell/
https://websleuths.com/threads/mo-edwin-dowell-14-joel-13-william-hoag-11-hannibal-10-may-1967.174595/
https://hannibal.net/2019/07/15/new-book-suggests-serial-killers-involvement-in-missing-boys-case/
https://www.doenetwork.org/cases/software/mp-main.html?id=4945dmmo
https://www.foxnews.com/us/the-lost-boys-mississippi-river-town-haunted-by-unsolved-disappearance-50-years-later.amp
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/149044012/joel-hoag
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/149044014/william-hoag
https://missouriresources.mo.gov/the-dark-side-of-missouri-geology/
Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now into your crime, and then together we're going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to get into a little right now, it's your crime, and then we're going to get into this week's case. I do want to give you guys a heads up. I am having all of my wisdom teeth out tomorrow, So next week's episode is going to be from my good friends Jules and Jen over at Fireeyes Media. They are in the process of doing a long form investigative podcast, Secrets Beyond the Sacramento River, and I'm going to be releasing episode two of that podcast here on my feed next week for you guys to listen to, so please tune in for that, and I hope to be back to normal after that. I'm hoping the healing process won't be as grueling as I've heard it can be. So cross your fingers, say your prayers if that's your kind of thing, that I do okay with getting my wisdom teeth out because I am a little bit nervous and by a little bit, I mean a lot. So let's go ahead and get into right now in true crime. So the Cider's family story that I talked about on the podcast last week, Literally right after I recorded, they released officially that Elizabeth is pregnant again for the seventeenth time. Now she's in jail awaiting a possible trial for all of this. So yeah, she is pregnant yet again. And it's insane that this woman has been pregnant so frequently since she hooked up with the Ciders family, since she was moved in married Gary Siders Junior, she has been pregnant. So there is still a lot to unpack here. I'm sure their investigation is in process. There is another report that records are showing that the oldest of the sixth missed every day of school in the twenty one twenty two school year, which sparked a now dismissed truancy case. So this is interesting because seemingly nobody knew that these kids were there or that these kids existed, but things are starting to come out now that creuse Otherwise, a complaint was filed on October nineteenth of twenty twenty one that said six of the Cider's children who were enrolled at Addaville Elementary had yet to attend a day of school. The superintendent confirmed that the first day of school that year was August twenty fifth, meaning that by this point in time in October, the kids had missed eight weeks of classes. Records then show that the case was dismissed on January seventh of twenty twenty two because Gary Junior and Elizabeth could not be served and their whereabouts were unknown. And another thing that's so interesting about this is these kids were all born in hospitals. So this case is just a culmination of a lot of different agencies not doing their due diligence, not following through, not questioning things. Why was this truancy case never handled appropriately? It was just blatantly dismissed for one reason or another. And I do think that they did what they needed to do to try to get away with things. I'm not saying that they're not part of this, but it's not like they had these children and they were hiding them in their home for all these years and nobody knew about them. These kids were known about by a bunch of different entities, apparently because the kids were being born in hospitals, and then they were being brought home to one home or another. They were enrolled in school and never went and that kind of stuff was never followed up on. So it's really interesting that we kind of out this point where all of these kids have been found living in absolutely deplorable conditions and everyone is shocked that there were kids living inside of that home for so long in such a small, confined space. This one is continuing to develop and unfold, so I'll be sure to keep you guys updated on all of this. So one of the other cases that I have been closely following is the investigation into Nolan Wells's disappearance and subsequent in death. So Nolan Wells was eighteen years old. He graduated in twenty twenty five from Ocean Springs High School in Mississippi, and he was enrolled in community college at Southwest Mississippi, and he was a wide receiver on their football team. So Nolan had made plans for the fourth of July weekend. He was getting ready to have to go back and start with his football practices again. So this was kind of one last hurrah before he was going to have to go back to the daily Hustle and Bustle. So he had made plans to visit Horn Island, which is a federally protected Barrier island which is gorgeous. It's known for its untouched beaches and quiet isolation. And this was something that often Nolan would do is go to Horn Island with his friends, so this wasn't something unusual. So he and his friends would boat out to the island and there was a lot of people there. I've seen as many as possibly three hundred people being on this island, all partying together. Again, it's the fourth of July weekend, so obviously there is a lot going on there. So Nolan went out on a boat with his friends and those friends returned to the mainland and they returned without Nolan. One of the friends ended up calling Nolan's parents around eleven PM and said that Nolan was missing, and his family went ahead and reported him. Now, his friends have said that they were obviously off and on the boat. He left his phone on the boat, and when they decided that they wanted to leave and head back, he decided he was going to stay back because he had met this girl that he was chatting with and he wanted to spend some time with her, so he stayed back. He left his phone on the boat, and they left him on the island, and that was pretty much their version of events. Nolan's phone was eventually tracked down, and when his parents gained access to it, it looked like everything had been cleared from it. There was no videos from the day or pictures, and Nolan was the type of guy who was always posting on Snapchat. He loved taking photos and commemorating his day, so the fact that there was nothing posted was just so out of the ordinary for Nolan. That same day, the Jackson County Sheriff's Department announced that they were coordinate with the United States Coast Guard and Mississippi's Department of Marine Resources to search the island in hopes of finding Nolan. And at this point in time, everybody is of the belief that Nolan stayed back on the island because he wanted to hang out with this girl, and that he was just going to catch a ride back with somebody else, because he did have other friends on the island, and it was not out of the ordinary to think that he could just catch a ride back. However, Nolan is reported as not being the type of guy that would leave his group of friends that he came with. This was not something that he would do. He was taught to never stay behind, always stay with his group, so that's interesting. And also leaving his phone behind. It just doesn't sit right with me that an eighteen year old would just willingly leave his phone behind, especially knowing that his friends are going to be leaving him and that phone is going to be going with them. You would think if he was willingly staying behind, that he would want to have his phone with him at the very least in case he needed to call somebody because one situation or another where he needed somebody to come get him. On July sixth, a body matching Nolan's description was found near the shoreline. There were no immediate signs of any foul play detected, and that is kind of where things stand today because they are saying that there's no foul play that is suspected in the death of Nolan, and his family is pushing back on this because he went to this island with a group of friends. He never came back from that island, so something had to have happened. Now, I'm not saying that there isn't a place where this could have been an accidental drowning, but there was a lot of people there, and you would think that if that was the case, somebody would have seen something, and somebody would have been willing to come forward with their tale of events. Because nobody is really saying anything, and everybody has a different story about what happened that day, it does look a little suspicious overall. And the girl that he allegedly had stayed back to hang out with contacted Nolan's mom and said that didn't happen, and she described it as basically a high and by type of situation. So there is a lot going on here. Nolan's family retained civil rights attorney Ben Crump on July seventh to represent them as the investigation into Nolan's death continues. Nolan's parents have said that they do not like the fact that they are very much kind of putting this as an accidental drowning. They said it doesn't sit right with them, and I agree, because where there is a world where Nolan could have drowned accidentally, there's also a world where if that was the case, there wouldn't be so many different stories being spun, and why are you spinning a story if it truly was just a tragic accident. This is giving me the Noah Pressgrove case all over again, and it's crazy how many parallels there really are between these cases. The second I saw it reminded me of Noah's case. Now, Nolan was a young black man hanging out with a majority white crew, and again there's nothing wrong with that. Of course, these were his long term, longtime friends, people that he trusted. He's known them for a long time. But we're also talking about Mississippi, and unfortunately, there still is the racial divide in our country, specifically in places like Mississippi. So there also is an aspect of it where we have to question if Nolan was targeted because of the color of his skin, and that is why everything is so hush hush, And that is something that has been brought up by Nolan's family and those that are close to the case and who are looking into everything and who knew Nolan. So that is not something that I personally am saying, but it does make you kind of wonder if that could possibly be a motive here. It's something worth looking into, so I'm going to keep you guys updated on the Nolan Wells of it all because there is a lot going on here. There's a lot that is coming out on the daily. But I will be sure to stay on top of it and let you guys know if any new developments that happen. So we are going to go ahead now and get into this week's episode. All righty guys, we are jumping into a brand new unsolved case today. I'm going to be telling you about the unsolved disappearance of three young teenage boys out of Hannibal, Missouri, in May of nineteen sixty seven. These disappearances are that of Billy Hogue, his brother Joey Hogue, and their friend Edwin Dell. They are often called Hannibal's Lost Boys. The story is going to be a little bit different than the cases I typically cover because it does seem that these three boys going missing is just a matter of them exploring a cave, getting trapped and they were unable to successfully exit the cave safely. Although there is some speculation in reports about these disappearances possibly being connected to John Wayne Gacy, there is some unknown with this case and due to how long ago their disappearances were there are still some things that are in question. I'm going to lay it all out and discuss everything that has been reported on. Let's go ahead and get into the story, and as always, we're going to spend some time to talk about the three boys who we are going to be covering today and who they were before their names became connected to the Murphy's Cave mystery. Who are my sources for this episode. My main one was a write up that I found on Reddit, and I thought they did a really good job at summarizing everything in the case and going into detail about who the boys were. So I am going to be linking that below, and as always, I am going to have all of my other sources linked as well, because I did reference some different articles and other resources from the Internet for this episode. Joel Wise Hogue was born on July twenty fifth of nineteen fifty four to his mother, Helen Hogue and his father, Mike Hoague. Joel typically went by joe or Joey, so throughout this episode, I am going to refer to him as his preferred name, Joey. Joey had ten siblings. He had six brothers and four sisters, Joey was described as a serious kid, at least in comparison to his younger brother Billy, who I'm going to be talking about next. He was very interested in science astronomy. He was very into journaling, and he kept up with it meticulously each night before bed. He was adventurous and enjoyed exploring. He enjoyed looking at the stars and was often seen looking through his telescope. Joey also had ambitions to be the first man on the moon. At the time of his disappearance, Joey was twelve years old and only a couple months shy of turning thirteen. A lot of sources do refer to him being thirteen, but technically he was only twelve when he went missing. William Francis Hoag, who went by Bill or Billy, was the younger brother to Joey. He was born on October fourth of nineteen fifty five to his parents, Mike and Helen, shortly after Joey. He is described as a funny and mischievous type of child. He enjoyed going to explore and going on adventures with his classmates and neighbors. He was also described by one of his sisters as liking to do whatever his oldie brother Joey liked to do. Billy was eleven years old when he disappeared. Edwin Craig Doll was born on the twenty ninth of December of nineteen fifty two. He went by his middle name Craig, so I am going to be calling him Craig throughout the remainder of this episode. Craig's parents' names are not public record. As far as I could find. Craig had three brothers and is described as a normal kid who was crazy about bicycles. As reported by his mom, Craig was fourteen years old at the time of his disappearance. Joey, Billy, and Craig lived in Hannibal, Missouri, and, being teenage boys in nineteen sixty seven, they loved to explore. Giving context of where they live I do believe is important for the story, so this is taken directly from a Google dot Com search on Hannibal. Hannibal, Missouri, is a historic city on the Mississippi River, famous as the boyhood home of author Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens and the setting for the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry finn It's a major tourist destination with attractions like the Mark Twain boyhood home and museum, Mark Twain Cave, riverboat cruises, and a walkable historic downtown with local shops, restaurants, and murals. The city's economy is boosted by tourism, building on its rich history as a steamboat port and its literary connections. So I'm sure growing up there in nineteen sixty seven was no different for the three boys that we are talking about in today's episode. This was before the internet, cell phones, social media, video games, and other gaming platforms. It was pretty run of the mill for kids to play outside and explore and create their own adventure. So how did we get here today where these boys have never been found? Let's go ahead and get in to all of that now. So everything started on May eighth of nineteen sixty seven, which was a Monday, Billy and Joey went exploring a cave that was known as Murphy's Cave located in Hannibal. The cave was close to a construction site that was located on Highway seventy nine. As the boys were exploring, they were spotted by a worker who told the boys to leave the cave alone, and he told them that it was dangerous for them to be there. Now, it is important to note that there were no precautions that were taken to prevent anyone from entering the cave. It wasn't blocked off and it was open, so even though it was dangerous, there were no precautions that were taken to prevent people from entering into the cave, so anyone, especially young teenage boys who were curious, could easily access it, and Joey and Billy were young and curious, so after leaving the cave that day and getting caught by the worker, their curiosity got the best of them and they decided that they were going to return on Tuesday, May ninth with two of their friends. They had actually decided to sneak out of the house that day to go explore the cave again. Once they got home that night, their clothes were covered in red clay mud, which led their mother, Helen, to realize what they had done, and she scolded them. Later that evening, both Helen and Mike told the boys that they were not allowed to return to the cave and if they did, they would be in big trouble. The next day was Wednesday, May tenth of nineteen sixty seven. Mike and Helen had left the Hogue residence to run to the local town meet market, and they left their eldest children in charge of the younger siblings, and they were given explicit instructions to make sure that Joey and Billy did not leave the house. That day, Joey got home from school and went to his room to change out of his school clothes and into his play clothes. Their eldest sister told Joey and Billy that they needed to stay in the yard and that they were not allowed to leave as per their parents' instruction. At some point, though, the elder siblings lost track of their two younger siblings and they did not realize that Billy and Joey had indeed snuck away. To go back to the cave with them, they took a flashlight and a homemade lantern or it's also reported it could be a homemade ladder and a shovel with them, so obviously, whatever they had found in the couple of days before in the cave, they thought it was intriguing and they wanted to go back so much that they disobeyed their parents and snuck out, and they even got their neighborhood friends involved in everything. To me, this is just boys doing boy things and not realizing how truly unsafe this was. For the remainder of the afternoon, Joey and Billy would be seen around town with some of their friends, one of them being fourteen year old Craig Dell. Now it isn't super clear the relationship between Craig, Billy, and Joey, if they were friends, neighbors, or just acquaintances, but Craig and Joey both did attend Hannibal Junior High together. They had asked another friend of theirs, who was an eleven year old boy named Greg Henderson, to also go with them to the cave that day, but he wasn't able to make it due to conflicting reports. Either he was called home early for dinner or he was grounded and not allowed to leave his home. The reason does vary depending on what source you look at for Greg not going out that day, but it is safe to say that whatever situation stopped him from going that day likely saved his life. There is a lot of contradiction to when the boys were last exactly seen. It's reported that they were seen in Murphy's Cave around four thirty five pm, but there are also reports that they were seen around town between four forty and five fifteen pm. There are different reports that they were seen together and sometimes they were seen apart, so it's really hard to pin down a timeline of when exactly they all went into the cave. There are various different reports of the last spotting of the boys. Some reports say that they were last spotted by a teenage girl, and some reports say that they were last spotted by a local teacher. There's also a report that says that they were last seen on top of a cliff that was called Lover's Leap by somebody who was a janitor at one of the children's schools. But one thing is clear, five fifteen pm, all traces of the three boys were completely lost. So whatever happened to them, it happened right before five fifteen pm. So around that time five fifteen PM, a friend of Billy and Joey's went to their house to see if they were there, and in the meantime, Helen and Mike had come home from the meat market and they realized that Billy and Joey had in fact snuff out and they told this friend that if he saw them, he needed to tell them to come home immediately. By five forty five PM, Billy and Joey still weren't home, so their brother Tim went out to look for them, and his first instinct, of course, was to go to Murphy's Cave. And when he was there, he did see some of Billy and Joey's friends there, and those friends had seen Billy, Joey, and Craig as well go into the cave a little bit earlier. Tim took it upon himself to go into the cave as well looking for them, but he was not able to find them or any trace of them at all. Just a short time later, Helen called the police to report that Billy and joe were missing. Now that very same day there was ongoing construction work by the cave, and that ongoing construction work had nearly caused a cave in at Murphy's Cave, So investigators initially were fearful that the boys had gone inside of the cave and then it nearly caved in, and then the boys essentially had no way out. But the fact that this happened has never been confirmed and was only speculation in the very beginning, and it has become very much part of the story. When researching and looking up news articles, it's often mentioned that this near cave in at the cave happened. So a law enforcement the Mark Twain Emergency, and the Missouri Guardsmen were all brought to help to search for these boys. Over two hundred cave explorers also volunteered their efforts to help assist in finding the boys. So this included a very extensive search of Murphy's Cave. The cave was noted to have a lot of spaces that were very very narrow. Some of them, in fact, were so narrow that the searchers were not able to fit into the spaces. They did have a searcher who was only ninety eight pounds and this individual could barely fit into those spaces, So the cave obviously had a lot of small, confined spaces that easily could have trapped these boys inside of the families of the boys were very present during the searches, and Helen and Mike specifically were very adamant that the search party and into other caves in the area in order to try and find the boys. Now, I am not fully sure of how much they did expand the search during the investigation and in the search for the boys, if they did search other caves in the area, and how far the search truly went. Helen did everything she could herself to try and find the boys. She would climb on a bunch of different hills around Hannibal trying to figure out where they could possibly be. Investigators did end up bringing in two police dogs in the search for the boys. One of these dogs was from Hannibal and one was from Saint Louis, but unfortunately, they were not able to successfully locate them. There was also another type of dog that was brought in to try and help and locate the boys, and that was also unsuccessful. The ground distribution equipment that was at the construction work site also discovered that there were two new cave entrances that they previously had not known about. One of them was caved in, but one of them remained open, and more and more each day that the construction work was going on, they discovered more and more tunnels in these caves. The Mark Twain Emergency Squad said that there was a slide in a cave passage about twenty feet to the right of the entrance and about twenty feet to the right of the entrance that blocked from entering a section of the cave which was running alongside facing the bluff. Now, there was a sock that was found in their search that was thought to have belonged to Craig, and it was found in a quarry by members of the Mark Twain Emergency Squad. There was a red substance on the sock that they believed could have been blood, but it has never been substantiated that this sock did in fact belong to Craig. So with as much construction as was going on, and there was all these searches that were ongoing, they unfortunately were never able to successfully locate the boys or any clues that they had been there or around the area. Other than the obvious eyewitness statements and the testimonies from people that knew the boys and knew that that's where they had gone exploring. There was never any physical evidence that was left behind minus the sock that, like I said, wasn't proven to belong to Craig. The most recent lead was in two thousand and six, so there was some construction workers who were building a new elementary school on Highway seventy nine, and they found a fifty foot long cave and investigators checked to see if Billy, Joey, and Craig were in there, but there was nothing that led them to believe that they had ever been there. So it is literally like these three boys just vanished into thin air. And the caves were very extensive, they were very deep, they had a lot of openings, a lot of tunnels. There's no way that they possibly could have searched every single cave in the direct area, and there is really no telling where these boys are inside of Hannibal. Now, before we get into this next part, I do want to preface with what I'm about to say with the next part is heavy on the rumor and speculation and the possible connection of the individual we're going to talk about. But when you do look up this case and information regarding it, this theory is brought up in every article, and I wanted to go ahead and talk about it because we truly don't know what happened to these boys, and there is a possibility that maybe what we think happened didn't happen, so that is why I want to bring up this next part, because it is still unsolved, and because everything that we've talked about so far is a mystery. We have to go into theories and possibilities that what we think maybe happen isn't what happened. So there is a theory that the boys didn't even enter the cave after all, and they were taken by none other than John Wayne Gacy. Now, there is a book that is written by a man named John Wingate, and it is called a Hannibal Narrative, and this book suggests that the boys might have been victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. If you don't know, John was convicted of murdering thirty three young boys and men in Chicago, Illinois, between nineteen seventy two and nineteen seventy eight. John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer, predator, and he did prey upon young men. So the theory is that John Wayne Gate see happened upon the three boys and offered them a ride home, and then he proceeded to abduct, assault and then kill them. And I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that John Wayne Gacy could be involved. Of course, because he is a predator and he did really, really bad things. But all of the speculation was very much fueled by some different psychics that would reach out to the author of this book, John Wingate, when he would go to Hannibal for different book signings. So there were three different psychics that all said separately that John Wayne Gacy was responsible for the boy's disappearance and subsequent murders. The first psychic ended up showing up to John Wingate's book signing and said that she felt the boy's presence when John was speaking. Then there was another psychic that she said without doubt it was John Wayne Gacy that was responsible for the abduction and murder of Billy, Joey, and Craig. And then there was another psychic from Wyoming and she said that she saw pictures of the three boys and she saw them being assaulted and murdered by John Wayne Gacy. That was a vision that she had. So these three psychics all claim the same thing, and they were not connected to one another. They had no way of knowing what one another was saying. This was all basically them coming to John Wingate after he wrote his book and saying that they felt that this was a possibility. Now. I watched a lot of unsolved mysteries back in the day, and there was always a psychic coming out of the woodworks claiming to know something about a missing person or an unsolved homicide. And I do believe that there are people out there that have a higher power and are able to see things that we might not be able to see on the surface. But I'm not necessarily on board with this line of thinking. Necessarily, I don't think that these women actually knew that John Wayne Gacy was involved. I think they saw a narrative that John Wingate had put out, and it's plausible, of course, and they just kind of ran with it. But that is just my own personal opinion on the matter. But John Wayne Gacy's name had been brought up in the past impossible connection with these crimes. When he was first arrested in nineteen seventy eight, there were a lot of rumors going around about whether or not he could have been involved at the time of the boy's disappearance, and it was discovered that he was living and working in Waterloo, Iowa in nineteen sixty seven, and his mom was living in Little Rock, Arkansas at the time. So if John Wayne Gacy was going to go visit his mom, he would take Highway sixty one, which would take him right through the town of Hannibal. So I really don't think that this speculation is too far fetched, and I do think there very well could be some parallels, and if nothing else, it's worth mentioning because, like I said, this investigation could have gone in an entirely wrong direction, and that's why there hasn't been any resolution. There was also reports that during the search for the boys that happened in nineteen sixty seven, there were many people in Hannibal that reported seeing a mystery man that was kind of hanging out at the entrances to the caves during the days when all of the construction was taking place. But then after the boys disappeared, this mystery man was never seen again. And I think too anytime there's a psychic involved in cases, there is a lot of skepticism out there. But these three psychics, like I said, did not know each other, and they all said very similar things without knowing the other story. So is it true? Is it possible? I never want to say that the answer is absolutely no, but I am a little bit on the fence personally with whether or not I believe any of this. Two of the psychics actually did say that the mystery man who was seen outside of the caves was actually John Wayne Gacy. And I don't think it's super far fetched to think that John Wayne Gacy would be capable of something like this, because we know that he is historically a horrific human. John Wayne Gacy would have been thirty five years old when the boys went missing in nineteen sixty seven. All three of these psychics separately visited Hannibal with John Wingate at separate times, and none of these women had, like I said, coordinated with each other or talk to each other, and they all had a sense that the boys were taken from the exact same location. One of the psychics had suggested that she believed that John Wayne Gacy could be responsible for two other abductions in Monroe City, a boy named John Wagner who disappeared in February of nineteen sixty eight, and in June of nineteen seventy seven, a boy named Ricky Enox who left his home with an unidentified individual that had Illinois license plates. Both of these boys also remain missing, and their remains have never been found. So there is a lot of speculation that John Wayne Gacy could potentially be connected to all of these cases, but there has never been any proof or evidence that has in fact said that. We know that John Wayne Gacy was a super drain individual, and I honestly wouldn't put anything past him, But at this point in time, the evidence just isn't there. Authorities have stated that they do believe that all of the boys are deceased and that it likely was just a tragic accident. They went into the cave, ended up getting trapped, and they were unable to successfully free themselves and passed away. The three boys are still known today as Hannibal's Lost Boys, and there is a memorial marker for them inside of the cave. In twenty ten, a book was written by a man named Charles Stewart, and the book is called A Sorrow of the Heart and it was dedicated to these three boys. So that is where the case stands today. The boys have never been found. Mike and Helen Hoague have since passed away, as have many of Billy and Joey's siblings. Seven of the ten siblings half passed away, including Billy and Joey. In that their older brother, who was also named Mike after his father what he was named Michael Junior. He passed away in February of the next year after a two car collision. He was only twenty five years old. So Mike and Helen experienced so much loss in such a short amount of time. To lose three of your kids in less than a year is just awful and traumatizing, and I can't even imagine what all that they went through. And I think it's so sad and tragic for these families that they never got answers as to what happened to their boys. Now, there really isn't much known about Craig's family, nothing publicly that has been put out there, but I do know that they very much mourned the loss of their son, and this whole case is just awful and tragic, and that none of these families were able to get answers as to what exactly happened to their boys. I do hope that one day, maybe this case will be solved, Maybe something will be found that will lead investigators into being able to make a determination of what exactly happened to these boys. But for now, this case remains unsolved and they remain the lost Boys of Hannibal. I do want to thank you guys so much for listening to this week's episode. Craig, Billy, and Joey were so young, they had so much ahead of them, and they simply just went out to explore when a tragedy happened. And although we don't know the exact extent of that tragedy, it is pretty easy to say that the boys are no longer with us, and that is sad and tragic that they never got to live out all of their years and all of the things that they could have done with their lives they were never able to. I hope one day that I'll be able to give you guys an update on this one, but for now, that is where everything stands with the Murphy's Cave disappearances of nineteen sixty seven. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you are enjoying my podcast, please be sure to leave me a five star review on whatever listening platform that you listen on. It really does help push the podcast out to other people who may be interested in the aspect of unsolved cases, and it really helps get eyes and ears on these cases that so desperately need it, because time is running out in a lot of these cases. This one is a perfect example. It happened in nineteen sixty seven, so time is running out to figure out what happened to these boys. I hope you guys have a great weekend ahead. Wish me luck in wisdom tooth surgery, and I will hopefully see you guys back here next week and then officially the week after for a brand new unsolved case. Have a great one, stay safe and I'll see you then. Bye.

