True Crime Society – Lars Mittank – the most famous missing person case on social media?

Lars Mittank, who has been described as “the most famous missing person on YouTube,” was 28 when he vanished from an airport in Bulgaria in 2014 while vacationing from Germany. He was said to be acting bizarrely right before he disappeared. Now, 11 years later, he remains missing.

Lars Joachim Mittank was born on 9 February 1986. Lars’ mother is Sandra Mittank and his father is mentioned in many articles, but we cannot confirm his name.

Lars and Sandra had a close relationship. Lars was raised in Itzehoe in Northern Germany. He was said to be popular, had a girlfriend and a job at a local power plant. Lars’ father suffered a stroke at one point and Lars helped out with his care.

Lars loved football (soccer) and supported his local team, Weder Bremen. Lars was often seen wearing Adidas t-shirts and old sneakers.

The trip to Bulgaria was the first time that Lars had traveled abroad. On 30 June 2014, Lars went with five of his school friends to Varna, a beach resort on Bulgaria’s Black Sea Coast.

“The week went by really fast,” Paul Rohmann, one of Mittank’s friends, told German television in 2016. “We relaxed on the beach, swam in the pool, played football, went clubbing. He was relaxed. He was in a good mood.”

“I noticed he didn’t eat much,” added Tim Schuldt, who was also on the trip. “He’d have a bowl of soup or a small plate of salad, and that was it.”

Aside from the lack of appetite, Lars’ friends have said that his behavior was normal and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

On 6 July 2014, which was the day before the group were due to return to Germany, Lars got into a fight with some other German tourists. They had all been at a bar and the fight was over football.

Lars left his friends after the argument and disappeared for the rest of the night. He turned back up to the hotel the next day and told them that he had been beaten up by the four of the men he had previously argued with.

“I heard about it the next morning,” his friend Paul said. “I was surprised. He was a peaceful guy.”

Lars suffered an injured jaw and a ruptured eardrum following the fight. He went to see a doctor and was advised not to fly home. He was also prescribed antibiotics.

Lars’ friends wanted to change their flight plans to stay with him but he insisted that he was fine and they should board their scheduled flight. He planned to fly home a day later after his ear had some time to heal.

The group (including Lars) checked out of the resort and his friends flew home. Lars checked into the Hotel Color Varna for one night as it was close to the airport and was cheap.

After he checked in, Lars’ behaviour became unusual. He called his mother Sandra and spoke in whispers to her. He said that people were trying to rob and kill him and that she should cancel all his credit cards.

Sandra would later speak to the media about the call. “I thought, God, my son is in danger. I could hear his heart pounding over the phone. He said people were trying to rob him or kill him.”

Later that night, he texted her about his antibiotics, which doctors routinely prescribe for ear infections: “What is Cefuroxime 500?”

“Why did he text me about those tablets?” Sandra later asked.

Lars was also seen on CCTV in the hotel, pacing up and down the corridors, looking out windows and hiding in an elevator (very Elisa Lam of him).

Lars left the hotel at 1am for one hour, before returning. His whereabouts during that time are unknown.

The following morning, Lars called Sandra again and told her that the people who were chasing him were closing in.

“In hindsight, I should have asked him more questions,” Sandra has said. “But his cell phone was running out of battery, so our final conversation didn’t last for long.”

Lars left the hotel and went to the Varna airport on 8 July 2014. This was the day that he had planned to fly home to Germany.

He texted Sandra and said that he had arrived at the airport.

He went to the airport doctor, Kosta Kostov upon his arrival. I guess this was to check if his ear had healed enough to fly?

The doctor described Lars as being ‘ nervous and erratic.’

The doctor told Lars that his ear had healed enough and that he was able to fly home that day.

Lars refused to leave the doctor’s office. He said he was worried that the antibiotics he had been prescribed were incorrect.

While Lars was seeing the doctor, a construction worker entered the office as the airport was being renovated. The doctor has said that Lars became very agitated.

He yelled, “I don’t want to die here! I have to get out of here!” He then got up and fled the office. He left behind all of his luggage, which included his wallet, mobile phone, and passport. All Lars took with him were the clothes on his body – a yellow t-shirt, denim shorts and white sneakers.

He was captured by airport security cameras fleeing the terminal. Once outside, he can be seen on the footage jogging away from the airport, climbing a fence, running into a meadow, and sprinting off camera in the direction of an adjacent forest. Those are his last confirmed whereabouts.

“Every time I see that video, I feel like I want to protect him,” Sandra later said. “I want to rescue him.”

Police were unable to determine where Lars went after he fled the airport. They searched the area with drones and cadaver dogs and nothing was found.

Sandra ended up hiring a private investigator. That person checked hospital records and found nothing.

Lars did have some experience in hunting and fishing but it is not thought he could have survived due to the heat and lack of food – summer temperature ranges between about 75-90f/ 17-30 c.

Around a year after he disappeared, a truck driver reported that he had seen Lars hitchhiking in Varna. There have been multiple international sightings of Lars, but none have been confirmed.

Someone on reddit even posted that they had found him in Canada – https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/71nug8/lars_mittank_found_in_canada/

“I remember watching a YouTube video about him,” the Redditor wrote. “I’m 99.9 percent sure it’s him. He looked rough, almost homeless.”

In December 2016, a man who resembled Lars was found in Brazil. He was walking barefoot along a highway and was disoriented.

The man ended up being identified as Anton Pilipa, a Canadian man who had been missing for five years.

In 2019, a German truck driver came forward and said that he thought he had given Lars a ride. The driver said that the man had long hair and a beard. He said that his eyes seemed tired and his cheekbones were prominent.

Sandra has theorized that Lars had a rare reaction to Cefprozil, the medication that he had been prescribed. A cephalosporin, it has been known to induce psychotic side effects, including hallucinations and paranoia.

However, Lars had told the airport doctor that he had not filled the prescription and had not been taking the medication.

“He didn’t take those antibiotics. He didn’t even fill out his prescription”, Dr Kostov said. “So his behavior couldn’t have been a result of that. I can’t think of a single reason why he left my office in such a panic. I’m still confused.”

As we mentioned, Lars’ case is often referred to as one of the most famous missing person cases on YouTube. Videos about him have had millions of views. These are some comments from that platform:

“He planned his disappearance. I would bet money on it,” one person writes.

Sandra denies that Lars would have left voluntarily as they “had a special bond.”

“He swallowed drugs and freaked out because he was scared of getting caught. He later died from an overdose,” theorizes another.

Some people have also theorized that Lars was trafficked. Bulgaria has one of the highest rates of trafficking in the European Union.

“I think if he is alive, then he’s either being tortured or was sold as a sex slave,” another YouTube commenter guessed. “It’s definitely not anything good, and he would be better off dead if that were the case. I feel really bad for his mother. I can’t imagine losing my boy and not having closure.”

John Lordan from the Lordan Arts social media has some thoughts:

“It’s clear he was struggling with a severe paranoia. But was it due to the reality of his situation? Or how he perceived it? If it was his perception, which I think is more likely, we’re looking at a psychological break, which, of course, then begs other questions: Was this due to an undisclosed or possibly undiagnosed mental disorder? Or a terrible side effect of legal or illegal drugs? Or some combination of those factors?”

“There are several factors that could have brought it on,” a redditor argues. “We don’t know how serious the hit to the head was, other than from a doctor who is inclined to downplay it since he only treated the ruptured eardrum. Combine that with experimenting with drugs, alcohol and a lack of sleep… three things that aren’t uncommon for people to experience in their 20s while on holiday. That doesn’t, though, explain the airport video. For someone who has left his bags and is running, he appears remarkably uninterested in what’s going on behind him. Even with psychosis, you would be expecting him to be extremely concerned about being followed.”

Lars is described as being 5’11” and weighing 187 lbs. with dark blond hair and a scar on his left forearm, according to the German Police. He would now be 39 years old.