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My Research Journal: True Crime
Posted: May 22, 2025
Case: The disappearance of Lars Mittank
For the first time in a long time I have found a case that truly baffles me. I still have theories, as I always do. But because there is so little known about what actually happened to this man... I cannot make anything near a confident theory on what may have happened to him.
Lars Mittank was a 28 year old German man who in the summer of 2014 went on a trip to Varna, Bulgaria with 5 of his friends. This was his first time travelling outside of his home country. As far as anybody knows he had a normal life. He had a stable job, a good relationship with his family, and a girlfriend. Which makes the theory that he may have intentionally planned to run away highly unlikely. According to his friends he had behaved completely normally throughout the trip. He wasn't eating much, but otherwise they didn't notice anything too unusual.
Towards the end of the trip Lars got into a disagreement with some other Germans at a bar. After this he and his friends left the bar and ultimately went their separate ways for the night. The next day he returned to the resort and told his friends he had been attacked by four men the prior night. He went to a doctor and it turned out he had a raptured eardrum which threw off his plans to fly home the next day as it's unsafe to fly with that kind of injury. As a result of this he was perscribed an antibiotic called Cefproizl. His friends offered to stay behind with him but he insisted that they go back to Germany as scheduled and they did.
After his friends left he checked into another hotel, this time alone. That night security footage at the hotel showed him acting strange. He seemed paranoid, like he was watching out for somebody. The footage showed nobody else was in the area at the time but regardless he called his mom and told her he thought someone (or some people) were trying to rob and kill him. He asked her to cancel his credit cards. That night he left the hotel for an hour and to this day nobody knows what he did or where he went in his time away from the hotel. Just another example of how little facts are actually known about this case. Not to mention, nobody witnessed the fight supposedly caused his injury.
The next day he went to the Varna airport to return home and saw the airport doctor. The doctor who saw him has said he seemed "nervous and erratic" during the visit and that he was concerned about the medication he had been perscribed. This fact has raised theories that he may have been experiencing a rare side effect of the medication which can induce hallucinations and paranoia. However, the doctor has also said Lars never got the perscription filled out. He wasn't on the medication at all, which then raises the question: Why did he seem so worried about it? At the time the Varna airport was ungoing renovations. When a construction worker walked into the office Lars suddely yelled "I don't want to die here. I have to get out of here." before rushing out of the office.
After this was the last time Lars was ever seen. The last official sighting of him was on airport security as he ran away from the airport towards a nearby forest. Leaving behind all his belongings in the airport including his wallet and passport which you would think if he was planning on running away he would have taken with him. Which destroys that theory. He additionally had no history of mental health issues which makes the chance that at 28 he suddenly had a random psychotic break highly unlikely. Though not impossible.
A year later a truck driver in Varna said he saw Lars hitchhiking. Then, in 2019 a German truck driver gave a hitchhiker a ride. He was unaware of Lars' disappearance at the time but once he became aware of it he said the man he gave a ride to looked just like him, only older. If either of these sightings were real and he is still alive: He ran away willingly for some reason nobody knows about yet. Otherwise, I assume he died in that forest he was running towards. Some people believe he was murdered but because there is no proof anyone was ever really following him it seems like he was just freaking himself out and ran off. The most likely scenario is that he ran off into the forest and ultimately died from a lack of resources. He left the airport with nothing. No food, no water. He wouldn't have survived long if he hadn't intentionally planned on running away.