Disappearance and Death of Robert Hoagland

Robert Hoagland, a chef and property appraiser living in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown, Connecticut, was last confirmed seen on the morning of July 28, 2013, when a Mobil gas station's security cameras recorded him buying fuel for his wife's car and a map of the eastern United States. Later that morning, his son Max saw him mowing the lawn, a conversation also witnessed by a neighbor. Hoagland failed to meet his wife, Lori, at the airport the next day upon her return from a trip to Turkey, and did not show up for work. He was reported missing.

In the period before his disappearance, the family had been dealing with son Max's drug addiction, including the theft of two laptops that Robert believed Max had taken to trade for drugs. Robert had traveled to an abandoned building in Bridgeport to confront men described as Max's "associates" over the theft, and $600 had been withdrawn from a family bank account days before he vanished. When Lori returned home, she found Robert's phone, keys, passport, and medication in the house, along with his lawnmower and shoes, while the family's Volkswagen was missing. Max was separately arrested near the Bridgeport building on a trespassing charge unrelated, according to Lori, to Robert's disappearance.

Investigators, family members, and volunteers searched wooded areas and Lake Zoar, distributed flyers, and pursued numerous tips over the following years, including reported sightings in Rhode Island, Los Angeles, Brookfield, Carmel, New York, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. None of these leads were confirmed. Newtown police described the case as a case with "everything on the table," considering both foul play and voluntary disappearance as possibilities, without concluding which was more likely. The case was featured in a 2016 episode of the Investigation Discovery series Disappeared.

In fact, Hoagland had relocated to Rock Hill, New York, later in 2013 under the name "Richard King," working as a contract property appraiser and living with a roommate who was unaware of his true identity. He volunteered at a soup kitchen in Monticello and maintained a routine domestic life with his roommate for nine years. In late 2022, Hoagland's health began declining, and on December 5, 2022, his roommate found him dead in their shared home in Rock Hill after he failed to appear for a planned dinner and did not go to work. Deputies from the Sullivan County Sheriff's Office located mail and paperwork bearing his real name, and authorities confirmed his identity in coordination with Newtown police. Hoagland was 59 at the time of his death. No criminal proceedings are described in connection with his disappearance or death.