The Unsolved Mystery of the Cave Explorers

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Over 55 years ago three Missouri boys stepped from their homes & into oblivion. The mystery of their disappearance has never been solved, and many wonder if the answer lies in some nearby caves.

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Search efforts for the 3 boys who disappeared near the Murphy Cave Complex in 1967

On May 10, 1967 three boys who ventured into caves near their home were never seen again. They routinely explored caves in Hannibal’s Southside neighborhood. Primed by Twain's stories that were set in Hannibal they sought adventures in these dark places, but on this day they never returned home. Suppertime came and went and their places at the table remained empty.

The day before their disappearance, the boys were searching in a cave exposed by construction for Highway 79. Allegedly workers had chased them away, and the parents forbade them to return. Despite their parent's instructions they made plans to go after they got out of school.

A massive and expensive search for them sparked attention from newspapers across the country, and for 10 days everyone hoped that good news would be announced about the explorers.

The disappearance of William "Billy" Hoag, 10, Joel "Joey" Hoag, 13 and Edwin "Craig" Dowell, 14, remains one of Hannibal’s greatest mysteries. What happened to them inside the Murphy's Cave complex? Could they have been trapped in another cave because of the reconstruction on Highway 79?

The darker fears were either that they ran away, or were kidnapped and taken away from Hannibal.

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The Hannibal Story Missing Boys Murphy's Cave Missouri c.May 1967

On Wednesday, May 10, 1967 Lynn Strube, 14, reportedly saw the boys headed in the direction of Murphy’s Cave around 4:30 p.m., flashlights and a shovel in hand. Hers was the last known sighting of the boys.

This is why most of the rescue efforts were focused on the cave system with an entrance near Birch and Walnut Streets. The Mark Twain Emergency Squad responded first, and a multitude of spelunkers joined the search for the boys.

The National Speleological Society was brought in by Presidential Jet 2, with William Karras in charge of the search, according to Courier-Post reports.

The search did not stop even when the sun went down, and floodlights glared into the dark recesses. By the third day it was feared the search had become a body recovery mission instead of a rescue mission.

There was speculation that while work crews blasted to build Missouri Highway 79, they had perhaps become trapped in a smaller cave after a blast sealed it.

“Friends came forward and said that the boys, and other boys of the South Side had been entering these holes in late afternoon after the construction workers left for the day,” wrote J. Hurley and Roberta Hagood in their book, Hannibal Yesterdays (1992) :, “This kind of activity would require daring and would have appealed to boys in spite of the great danger.”

The Courier-Post reported on May 12, “Mayor Harry Musgrove requested that the National Guard begin a search this morning from the Universal Atlas Cement Plant at Ilasco north along the river to a point beyond the cave area.”

Even trains that left Hannibal after 4:40 p.m. on May 10, were searching for signs of the boys.

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Article detailing the search for the 3 boys c.1967

As the days passed, tips poured into the Hannibal Police Department, asking crews to scour islands in the Mississippi River. All of them led to dead ends.

A group of boys sighted in the St. Louis area, turned out to be from Cape Girardeau.

Psychics from across the country contacted officials with their premonitions. One described a vision of the boys locked in a rail car with oranges bound for somewhere in the U.S.

Besides the caves, the woods surrounding the area were searched, as were abandoned houses in the city's South Side.

Ten days passed, and the  preliminary search was called off. Localized searches continued, but by the end of June 1967 all efforts ceased.

In 2006, an entrance to the cave was uncovered during the construction of the A.D. Stowell Elementary School, rekindling memories of the boys.

A resident of Hannibal who knew the boys, authored a book in which psychics supposedly claimed the boys had fallen victim to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, and that after abusing and strangling them, dumped their bodies into one grave in a wood nearby.

One of the Hoags' surviving sister, wondered if the construction company was complicit in a cover up when they realized they had blasted an area, where they had failed to put up caution signs.

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Memorial for Hannibal's lost cave explorers

On Lover's Leap Park overlooking the Mississippi River, a plaque has been erected in memory of the boys.

In 2022 a property owner near Lover's Leap said he had discovered a new entry into what is now known as the Lost Boys Cave. The entry was 40 yards away from where they were last seen in 1967. The Missouri Department of Transportation and the Missouri Geological Survey investigated the new claim.
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Nothing came of this new discovery, so it seems the trio are still lost.

The mystery continues today, leaving people wondering if a trace of the boys sits somewhere beneath Hannibal, waiting for the moment when another cave entrance or passageway illuminates a puzzle unsolved after half a century.

The Hoag family would seem to haunted by heart ache. The year after two of their sons Joey and Billy disappeared, Michael T. Hoag Jr. age 25, died in a car crash.

​They lost two grandsons born to their daughter Debra. Both boys died the same day of their birth, James Lee Mastin in 1969, and Jeffrey L. Mastin in 1971.

In 1976, another son Robin Jay Hoag, born in 1960 died mysteriously and no obituary was published.

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Four boys lost in Hannibal caves c.1900

This was not the first time boys became lost in the Hannibal caves. In February, 1900 Charles Turner, Carl Schanbacher, Ernest Foster and his brother entered the cavern at the foot of 6th Street in the morning, with the idea of finding gold. The little candle they took soon burned out, and once enveloped in total darkness they realized they were lost. They prayed and cried and finally Ernest Foster took off his vest, and set it on fire so they could find their way along a passage. They kept yelling and two small boys who happened to be near the cave entrance heard them, and answered back. This is how they found their way to daylight after being lost about 4 hours. They were covered in mud and were terribly frightened, and promised never to enter any cave again.

Three of the boys lived into old age, except Charles Turner who died 3 years later from typhoid fever.

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