unexplained-events:

Death Valley Germans

In July of 1996, a family of four German tourists who were hiking in Death Valley National Park went missing. The group consisted of Egbert Rimkus, his girlfriend Cornelia Meyer, and their respective sons Georg Weber (11) and Max Meyer (4). Their rental van was found on October 21, 1996, in a very remote part of the park called Anvil Canyon. Anvil Canyon was not easily accessible to vehicles, and vehicles were in fact prohibited in the area. Though the family had not been on their return flight to Germany, and there was no further clues as to what happened to them or where they had gone, the discovery of the van led law enforcement to believe the family hadn’t made it out of the park. An extensive search and rescue was performed, but was called off on the 26th of October when nothing was found. 

In November of 2009, over ten years after the initial disappearance, two off duty search and rescuers found the remains of two adults in Death Valley. Egbert Rimkus and Cornelia Meyer’s IDs were found nearby, and further DNA testing confirmed that one set of the remains belonged to Rimkus. The other set of remains were too degraded for testing, but authorities felt certain that they belonged to Cornelia Meyer. The children’s remains were never found.