Lars Mittank

Case background and investigation

Lars Joachim Mittank, born in Berlin on February 9, 1986, lived in Itzehoe in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein and worked at a power plant. According to the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) appeal, which is handled by the criminal police in Itzehoe, he was on holiday with friends in Varna, Bulgaria, from June 30 to July 7, 2014. The group stayed at the Golden Sands resort on the Black Sea coast.

The BKA states that during an altercation on July 5, 2014 Mittank was struck on his left ear and afterwards could barely hear on that side. Der Spiegel and later reports by the Mirror and MEL Magazine described the incident as a dispute with other football fans that left him with a ruptured eardrum. He saw a doctor on July 7, who told him not to fly. His friends returned to Germany that day as planned. According to the BKA, Mittank went to a hospital but was not treated further there. He then took a room at the Hotel Color, near the airport.

His mother, Sandra Mittank, has said in German television interviews quoted by the Mirror and MEL Magazine that he phoned her from the hotel, told her that people were trying to rob or kill him, and asked her to cancel his bank cards. He also sent her a text message asking about the antibiotic he had been prescribed. Those outlets reported that hotel cameras recorded him pacing in the lobby and that he left the building for about an hour during the night.

On the morning of July 8, 2014 Mittank went to see a doctor at Varna Airport. The BKA says that at about 10 a.m. local time he suddenly left the practice and the airport without apparent reason, leaving all his luggage and his mobile phone behind. The airport doctor, Kosta Kostov, told MEL Magazine that Mittank had seemed nervous, distrusted his medication and said he did not want to die there before running out. Security cameras recorded him leaving the terminal. Der Spiegel reported that witnesses saw him cross the car park, climb a fence and disappear into a field, and that border police searched with tracking dogs the next day without result. He did not use the flight booked for that day or an alternative bus booking, and there has been no contact with him since.

The family hired a private investigator, Andreas Gütig, and Der Spiegel reported in August 2014 that Interpol and the German Foreign Office had become involved. No explanation for his behaviour has been established. Possibilities discussed in press coverage include the effects of the head injury, a reaction to medication and an acute psychological crisis; his mother has said he had no history of mental illness, and Kostov said he did not believe Mittank had taken the antibiotic. The airport footage has been viewed millions of times online. Reported sightings have not been confirmed, and the BKA appeal, last updated in June 2024, remains active.