Starek's Disappearance

On a cold and sunny afternoon in mid-November 1952, Estragon “Gogo” Belmont and Vladimir “Didi” Starek walked down a country road to meet their friend “Godot” and have not been seen since. This case report details their disappearance over 50 years ago and its aftermath. Little is known about the circumstances surrounding their departure; detectives only know that they lived in Fourcés, France with their families before vanishing. Their case is one of the most prolific in France, due to the mysterious identities of the men and of the person they were seeking, “Godot.” As family members dwindle and the men’s stories start to fade into the history books as yet another cold case, new eyewitness accounts and personal writings bring new information

However, the two were perfect complements to each other, balancing the other’s unique tendencies when they became too extreme. The pair met in school, becoming fast friends and planning adventures together. Starek’s mother said of the two: “They completed each other’s sentences and would often end up saying the same thing at the same time. You could tell they were cut from the same cloth.” Besides his adventures with Belmont, Starek also pursued interests of his own, including philosophy. One of Starek’s cousins details, “He’d tell us all about the different interpretations and meanings of life he had read about in his books. He always wanted to take a big trip to discover the true meaning of life and what had caused it to come into being.” This search for significance in an unstimulating rural environment was often documented in his journals, where he wrote about his escapades with Estragon and the powerful revelations he hoped to find along the way. A distant cousin discovered one of Starek’s journals five years ago, shown below, that contains entries from 1952, the year Starek and Belmont vanished, until a week before their disappearance. The inscriptions fail to mention Godot but showcase the pair’s plans before they vanished, suggesting a premeditated

In June 2005, an anonymous eyewitness sent a letter to the police explaining an overheard conversation between a blind man and his companion. Upon analysis of this letter, investigators have concluded the blind man’s to be that of Pozzo, an ill-famed aristocrat known for his unpredictability and his history of abusing those below him. In the letter, the eyewitness writes that Pozzo detailed his experience with two random men on the road a few decades ago. The aristocrat’s blindness prevented him from providing a clear location of where he met the pair, and the “Lucky” mentioned in the letter, Pozzo’s slave, died seven years ago, leaving detectives with no other method to discern the pair’s location. Given Pozzo’s history of abuse and slavery, police interviewed him to see whether he could have kidnapped Belmont and Starek for his own personal use. However, Pozzo did not provide as much useful information as the eyewitness’s letter did; he told police, “I don’t recall that ever happening. I think I would remember meeting a pair like that. Maybe it was someone who just looked like me.” While he did not provide details about the men, he did tell detectives that he remembered traveling around Gabbaret, then an underdeveloped town west of