Did Unsolved Mysteries Solve Craig Williamson’s Baffling Disappearance?
YouTubeCraig Williamson marrying Christine Reinhard at Lake Tahoe on October 7, 1990, just a few years before Williamson’s amnesia struck and he mysteriously vanished.
He was a fisherman and a farmer who had found the love of his life just a few years before he disappeared. Two years after vanishing, he turned up, claiming he’d suffered from amnesia and had no memory of his wife. But was his diagnosis real, or was Craig Williamson faking the whole thing?
On October 7, 1990, 46-year-old Craig Williamson married 41-year-old Christine Reinhard at Lake Tahoe. The pair had only been dating for a month when they tied the knot, and according to Reinhard, they had known from the start of their relationship that they were going to get married.
Shortly after they wed, they bought land in Reinhard’s home state of Wisconsin and began raising tilapia to sell across the country.
But on August 30, 1993, while on a trip to sell the fish, Williamson spoke to his wife for what seemed like the last time when he called her from a Super 8 motel in Colorado Springs, according to The Seattle Times. Williamson’s last request to Reinhard was to wake him up at 5:30 the next morning so that he could make his way back home to Wisconsin.
YouTubeThough Christine Reinhard was eventually reunited with her husband, Craig Williamson’s memory loss proved to be too significant for the pair to maintain their marriage.
For two years, neither hide nor hair could be found of Williamson. So on May 25, 1994, Unsolved Mysteries aired an episode about Williamson’s strange disappearance. And while the initial airing yielded no leads, a repeat airing of the episode yielded the ultimate lead: Craig Williamson himself.
In July of 1995, it was revealed that Williamson was alive and well, living in Key West and working as a diver, according to The Buffalo News. He claimed that he had been mugged in Colorado Springs, and developed amnesia as a result of the attack. Bob Ming, Williamson’s manager, said that this was a story Williamson repeated frequently to anyone who would listen.
Authorities, however, are skeptical of this claim. They believe that Williamson faked his amnesia and ran away to escape his marriage and the responsibilities of the property that he and Reinhard had purchased. In the end, Williamson and Reinhard divorced but “remained friends.” Nevertheless, this can be considered another case that Unsolved Mysteries solved.
