Where is Lars? | The disappearance of Lars Mittank | Something Dark Podcast
In July 2014 a group of five friends travelled from Germany to Varna, Bulgaria for a summer holiday. This holiday was spent like any other, they were partying, relaxing at the beach and enjoying their time off. Just one day before the group were scheduled to fly home something happened and it resulted in one of them disappearing.
What began as a carefree Eastern European getaway ended in a family’s worst nightmare and a mystery that endures to this day.
Today we are going to be discussing the case of Lars Mittank.
Lars Mittank was born on February 9, 1986 in Berlin, Germany. He grew up in Itzehoe, Schleswig-Holstein. Lars worked at the Wilhelmshaven Power Station in a small coastal town in Lower Saxony, in northwest Germany. He lived a regular life, He supported his local football team, Werder Breman, had a long-term girlfriend and was very close with his parents. After his father suffered a stroke, he often helped at his parents' home after work.
In July 2014, Lars and four of his close friends flew from to Varne, Bulgaria, for a week-long holiday. Varna is the third-largest city in Bulgaria and the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. They group were booked to stay in the Viva Club Hotel located on the Golden Sands resort, approximately around 17km north of downtown Varna. Golden Sands is said to be the Bulgarian equivalent of Ibiza – it’s increasingly popular among European tourists who are drawn to the area by the sun, sand and cheap alcohol.
Over the course of the five days, they spent their days swimming in the pool, sunbathing on the beach, clubbing and playing football. It was the height of the summer season and the World Cup semi-finals were playing in every bar. The first five days of the vacation were said to be largely uneventful, with one friend, Paul Rohmann, stating: ‘The week went by really fast,’ Then, on the 5th of July, Lars got into an altercation with other German tourists over football; The fight took place in a McDonald’s, after a boozy all-nighter. It was between him and a group of other German tourists. It was over football. He was a Werder Bremen fan; they supported rival team Bayern Munich. He stood no chance. It was four against one, and his friends were back at the hotel.
Later that night, after several hours of drinking, Lars’s friends went for a bite to eat at a local restaurant. Lars informed them that he wasn’t hungry and was going to return to the hotel alone. However, when his friends returned to the hotel later that night, Lars wasn’t there and wouldn’t show up until early the following morning. Lars told his friends that he had been beaten up while walking back to the hotel alone. He said that the German tourists he had an earlier altercation with had paid people to beat him up. He complained to his friends that his ear was sore and he was struggling to hear.
When Lars was still suffering with earache two days later, he went to a doctor who diagnosed him with a ruptured eardrum as well as an injured jaw. He was informed by the doctor that he was in no condition to fly home like arranged later that day because the air pressure changes could have caused more damage to his ear. The doctor also prescribed Lars the antibiotic, Cefprozil (500 mg), and advised him to go to hospital, which Lars refused.
As the group checked out of their hotel at noon, Lars told them — he’d changed his travel plans. Because of his ear, he had to stay put for a bit — doctor’s orders. It was no big deal, though, just a temporary setback. He told them he would fly home the following day. He told his friends to go on without him. They offered to delay their return until he healed up, but he urged them not to and scheduled a later flight. One of Lars friends in the group later told German television that Lars was “relaxed” and in a “good mood” when they left him. He said he’d be alright.
Lars, however, needed a place to crash in the meantime. The problem was it was high season, and nearly every room in nearly every hotel was occupied. Lars struggled to find a hotel in the same area he and his friends had been staying and instead, booked a cheap hotel named in an unfamiliar and more run-down area. He checked into his new hotel, and this is when he began exhibiting strange, erratic behavior.
He called his mom, Sandra, from his room. He was whispering, acting strangely. He told her to cancel his bank card because he feared it had been copied when he had checked in to the new hotel. Several times throughout the night, Sandra spoke with her son on the phone and over text message. She said that he appeared to be extremely worried and paranoid and during one call, he told her that he was being followed by four men. Lars also asked his mother about a specific ingredient which was in the antibiotics which he had been prescribed.
“I thought, God, my son is in danger,” Sandra Mittank told German TV. “I could hear his heart pounding over the phone. He said people were trying to rob him or kill him.” During some of the phone calls, Lars whispered as if he were afraid somebody would overhear him and said that the hotel was ‘strange’ and said that he did not feel safe in Bulgaria. CCTV footage from inside the hotel captured Lars pacing up and down the lobby. It also captured him constantly looking out of the windows and even hiding in the elevator.
It was apparent that he was terrified of something or someone but the only suspicious person ever captured on the surveillance footage was Lars. At around 1AM, he was captured leaving the hotel for around an hour before returning to his hotel room and It’s unknown where he was for this hour. When dawn broke, he called his mom again. He said the people who were chasing him were getting close. “In hindsight, I should have asked him more questions,” Sandra has said. “But his cell phone was running out of battery, so our final conversation didn’t last for long.”
Lars had become so paranoid that he decided he would try and fly home. Sandra had booked him a flight for that afternoon and also purchased him a bus ticket in case he was unable to fly. She also sent him €500, which he never withdrew. Lars waved down a taxi and rode to the airport. He texted his mom: “I just made it to the terminal…” He was captured on surveillance footage entering the airport; he was carrying a backpack and a travel bag. From here, he walked into Dr. Kosta Kostov’s office, he needed an okay from the airport doctor in order to fly. He dropped his bags on the floor and sat on a chair. He was still acting strange. “It was just a standard checkup,” Kostov said “But he was really nervous and erratic.”
Kostov examined Lars’ ear. Everything was fine. He could get on the plane. But the paranoia festered. “He didn’t trust the medication he’d been given for his ear pain,” Kostov says. “Looking back, the whole thing was bizarre.” A construction worker entered the room. (The terminal was being refurbished.) Lars started to tremble. He muttered something under his breath. Then he said: “I don’t want to die here. I have to get out of here.” Suddenly, he leapt from his chair and exited the room, leaving his luggage behind.
He was captured on surveillance footage running through the airport past the boarding gates, check-in desks and baggage drops through the main entrance in a frantic state. He wasn’t carrying his backpack or his travel bag which contained his mobile phone; he had left it behind in the doctor’s office. He ran across the parking lot, CCTV footage outside the airport captured Lars jump a two-metre-high fence and then run into a meadow and disappear into a field of sunflowers, located beside the Bulgarian national highway A2. Lars’ wallet, phone and passport were still in his backpack in the doctors office. All he had were the clothes on his body: a yellow T-shirt, jean shorts and white sneakers.
This was the last image ever captured of Lars. Later, the footage made the national news. “Every time I see that video, I feel like I want to protect him,” Sandra has said. “I want to rescue him.”
Since then, so many theories about what happened to Lars have surfaced. A popular theory is that Lars was looking for an excuse to run away and start a new life. According to Dr. Todd Grande, a certified mental health counselor who covered Lars Mittank’s disappearance on his YouTube channel. This theory doesn’t hold water, Lars was on good terms with his loved ones. His friends offered to reschedule their flight so he didn’t have to fly back alone, and he texted his mother throughout the trip. Lars also didn’t take anything with him when he fled to help him start a new life, leaving his passport, phone and wallet at the airport.
Another theory is that Lars was involved with some kind of criminal enterprise that neither his loved ones nor authorities knew about — drug trafficking, maybe. While this theory would explain why Lars was never found, there’s little evidence to support it. Yet another possibility is that Lars really was killed. While staying behind in Bulgaria, he told his mother that he was being followed. Many online sleuths suspect that the men he fought with at the bar were still after him. If they were in pursuit, it could explain why Lars ran away.
It also could explain why no one ever found his body.
A fourth theory holds that Lars could have been under the influence of drugs around the time of his disappearance. A lot of people believe the Cefprozil, the antibiotic which Lars had been prescribed to treat his ruptured eardrum, possibly combined with another substance, might have led to him suffering a psychotic episode. As strange as it sounds, it’s not impossible. Dizziness, restlessness and hyperactivity are listed as common side effects of the drug. On top of that, studies suggest that acute psychosis could be a “potential adverse effect” of some antibiotics. This could explain how the behavior of someone with no history of mental illness could’ve changed so suddenly. If Lars was suffering from psychosis, the Cefprozil he was taking may have not even been its direct cause.
In his video, Dr. Grande proposes Lars may have experienced “first break psychosis” or the “onset of something like schizophrenia.” This, he argues, would explain his paranoia, delusions, and anxiety. It could also explain the bizarre behavior displayed in the CCTV footage of him. While Dr. Grande thinks that the psychosis theory is the most convincing of the bunch, he stresses that it does not explain why Lars ran away or why his body was never found.
A week passed, then another and another. Lars had been missing for almost a month. Sandra hired a local private investigator, Andreas Gütig, who jumped on the case. He watched the airport video over and over again. Maybe the police missed something, but they hadn’t. He contacted hospitals and homeless shelters. Perhaps without identification, Lars was simply a John Doe in some Bulgarian ER, but he wasn’t. Gütig traveled to Varna and handed out missing-person flyers: Have you seen this man? Five-foot-9, 180 pounds, average build. No one, however, recognized his blonde hair, brown eyes or wide nose.
Over the course of the past eight years, there have been numerous reported alleged sightings of Lars from as far as Porto Velho, Brazil, but each one, tragically leads to a dead end. Sandra, has never given up searching for her lost son. She strongly suspects that the injuries he sustained in Bulgaria caused him to lose his memory and ultimately resulted with him ending up homeless. She has been extremely pro-active in the search for her son. She continues to post updates on the ‘Find Lars Mittank’ Facebook page and prints out thousands of missing person flyers.
While so much time has elapsed since Lars vanished and there has not yet been a credible sighting of him, Sandra still holds out hope that one day, she will find out the truth about what happened to her son. ‘There’s a good chance he’ll come back,’ Sandra said. ‘He just needs my help.’
