Disappearance of Russell Bohling

Russell Bohling, born 29 December 1991, was an English man who disappeared from West Ella, East Riding of Yorkshire, on 2 March 2010. He had left the family home that morning to attend Bishop Burton College in Beverley, where he was studying bricklaying, though it is not confirmed whether he attended classes that day. His Renault Clio was later found 45 miles away at Bempton Cliffs on the East Yorkshire coast, near a former Royal Air Force bunker. The car was noted by an RSPB worker at 5:00pm on the day of the disappearance and remained in place overnight; it had a full day's parking ticket purchased at 11:30am.

Initial searches of the former RAF bunker checked only for a living person, a decision later criticized by Bohling's family. The Humberside Fire and Rescue Service used heat-sensitive cameras and torches in its first search, methods that would not have detected a deceased person. A more thorough search of the bunker was conducted in December 2012 as a training exercise, with the family present throughout; they paid £1,200 to have the bunker's sealed concrete opened. Additional searches covered the surrounding land, Bempton Cliffs (a known suicide location), the sea and air via the Coastguard, and the family's holiday home at Ravenscar in North Yorkshire, where his training shoes were later found by the family two years after his disappearance. The family pursued unsuccessful court proceedings over the adequacy of the investigation.

Subsequent investigation established that in the days before he vanished, Bohling had travelled to York, Bradford and Bridlington without informing anyone, for reasons that remain unknown. He had logged onto an RAF Bempton website and viewed a page about Ravenscar on the morning he disappeared. His father said Bohling had shown interest in erotic and satanic artwork left in the bunker by a cult in the 1970s, and had stored related material on a USB stick that did not match his other devices; the stick was never recovered. The family argue a third party must have been involved, citing the car's low fuel level, the unused debit card, and Bohling's speech and language disorder that made him prone to saying "yes" reflexively when asked if he was alright. They also raised a planned £300,000 payment from his father intended to help him start a business as a possible factor. Police have suggested Bohling may have taken his own life, referencing a tape he recorded at age 15 depicting a mock suicide, which his family say was made years earlier during exam-related anxiety and is unconnected to his disappearance.

The case was featured on BBC's Crimewatch in summer 2010. Human feet found on the Humber Estuary banks in August and September 2010, including one in a brown steel-capped boot matching a boot missing from Bohling's belongings, were investigated but ultimately found unconnected to his case. Bohling's father was separately convicted of possessing child pornography, discovered on a computer he had voluntarily given to police in hopes it might help locate his son.