In late November 2009, the quiet streets of Council Bluffs, Iowa, were swept by a severe snowstorm. Amid the howling wind and falling snow, 25-year-old Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada vanished without a trace. An employee at the No Frills Supermarket, Larry left his family home barefoot, without his coat, keys, or phone. Alarm bells rang immediately; his parents knew something was gravely wrong.
“He ran out the door, and we couldn’t stop him,” Larry’s mother recalled through a translator. “It was snowing hard, and he didn’t even have a coat.”
When Larry failed to return that night, his family contacted police. The search was swift and thorough, involving local authorities, volunteers, and media coverage. Posters went up, neighborhoods were canvassed, and news outlets broadcast his disappearance, yet Larry seemed to vanish into thin air. There were no leads, no sightings, no evidence of foul play. For his family, each passing day stretched the limits of hope and despair.
In the days leading to his disappearance, Larry’s behavior had been unusual and erratic. Friends and family described him as experiencing hallucinations, paranoia, and heightened anxiety. He had recently started taking medication for mild depression. “He was hearing voices that told him to eat sugar,” his mother said, describing how Larry believed consuming sugar would calm his racing heart. His family noted that he had always been a kind, responsible, and loving young man, yet in those final days before he ran out into the blizzard, he was not himself.
Authorities suspected that Larry’s flight from home was not premeditated. Capt. Todd Weddum of the Council Bluffs Police Department explained, “It didn’t appear that he intended to disappear. It looked like something had gone wrong psychologically or physically that day.”
Despite exhaustive efforts—search parties, missing-person alerts, and media pleas—Larry remained elusive. For a decade, the Murillo family lived with the agonizing uncertainty of his fate, praying for answers that never came. His disappearance became a haunting, unending puzzle, leaving friends, coworkers, and the community bewildered.
