The Vanishing of John Lake: A Sports Editor's Final Deadline
Ninth in our series "Missing American Authors"
On a cold December evening in 1967, John Eric Lake walked into the labyrinth of Manhattan's subway system and disappeared forever. The 37-year-old sports editor of Newsweek magazine had just finished dinner with a friend in Midtown, declining her invitation to come upstairs and choosing instead to take the subway to his Greenwich Village apartment. He never arrived home, leaving behind a mystery that has haunted his family for decades.
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| John Lake from a family photo album | Eric Lake released this photo into the public domain |
A Promising Career Cut Short
John Lake's journey to Newsweek began at Syracuse University, where he met his future wife Alice Conlon while both studied journalism. After graduating in 1951, the couple married in Hawaii while John served in the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor (Ellsworth American 2011). Their early years together painted a picture of professional ambition and domestic happiness—John working his way up through various newspapers including the New York Herald Tribune, Syracuse Post Standard, and Binghamton News Press, while Alice carved out her own career as a feature writer and reporter.
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| John Lake in his Newsweek office in September 1967 | This is a scan of a photo of John Lake from a family photo album | Eric Lake released this photo into the public domain |
By 1964, John had achieved what many journalists could only dream of: the position of sports editor at Newsweek magazine during what colleagues would later call the publication's "Golden Age" (Gussow 2004). This was Newsweek's era of taking editorial chances and challenging Time magazine for supremacy in the weekly news market. For a sports journalist, it was a coveted position at the height of American magazine journalism.
Cracks in the Foundation
But success in journalism, as John Lake would discover, doesn't always translate to success in life. By 1967, the man who met deadlines with professional precision was struggling to meet the demands of his personal life. His marriage to Alice had deteriorated, leading to separation and financial strain from divorce proceedings. He had moved out of the family home in New Jersey, leaving behind his two young children—daughter Kathleen, 8, and son Eric, just 5 years old—for a sparse studio apartment in Greenwich Village (Barry 2005).
Colleagues at Newsweek noticed changes in John's demeanor. The Doe Network reports that he had been depressed for at least a year, struggling with both his deteriorating marriage and growing dissatisfaction with his high-profile job (Doe Network 1999). Despite his prestigious position, financial troubles plagued him. Some coworkers would later tell investigators that John seemed to be seeking peace, though none believed him capable of suicide.
The Final Evening
December 10, 1967, began like many other Sunday evenings for John Lake. He met Sandra, a nurse and acquaintance, for dinner at a French restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. But this evening would be different—John drank heavily and became what Sandra later described to private investigators as "maudlin" (Barry 2005).
After dinner, they shared a taxi to Sandra's apartment on East 54th Street. John asked if he could come up, but she declined, citing work the next morning. She suggested he take the waiting cab to his Greenwich Village apartment, but John opted for the subway instead. As Sandra turned toward her apartment door, John Lake walked into the December night—and into history as one of New York's most enduring missing person cases (Charley Project 2006).
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| New York City City Hall Subway Station | By David Sagarin | Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
In an era before cell phones and constant communication, it wasn't unusual for someone to be out of touch for a few days. It took four days before anyone filed a missing person report with the NYPD: John Lake, 37 years old, six feet tall, 180 pounds, wearing black-rimmed glasses (Barry 2005).
The Search and the Questions
The investigation into John Lake's disappearance involved both the NYPD and the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Many of his Newsweek colleagues believed he had left voluntarily, seeking escape from his mounting personal and professional pressures (Doe Network 1999). The timing seemed to support this theory—John had access to the skills and connections that might help someone disappear intentionally, and his depression was well-documented among those who knew him.
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| Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency Letterhead | From The Spy of the Rebellion by Allan Pinkerton, 1884 | Public Domain |
Yet questions remained. John was described as someone unimpressed by material wealth, preferring literature, theater, and folk music to the trappings of success. He was a fitness enthusiast and sports lover who enjoyed the occasional cigar. If he had chosen to disappear, investigators reasoned, he would likely have embraced a simple lifestyle somewhere far from the pressures of New York journalism (Charley Project 2006).
After seven years with no trace of John Lake, he was declared legally dead in 1975. His widow Alice made the bold decision to start over, moving with their children to Islesford on Little Cranberry Island, Maine, where she purchased and operated a general store (Ellsworth American 2011). Alice never remarried, carrying the weight of uncertainty about her husband's fate until her death in 2011.
A Son's Quest for Answers
For Eric Lake, who was only five when his father vanished, growing up meant constructing a father figure from fragments of memory: attending a Columbia University football game together, a conversation about brake lights in the family's Ford Fairlane, his father's 5 o'clock shadow and hairy hands, those distinctive black-rimmed glasses that Eric would later wear himself (Barry 2005).
In 2002, Eric discovered boxes of records in his family's Maine attic—love letters from his father to his mother, daily reports from the detective agency hired to find the missing sports editor, and other documents that brought new dimensions to his understanding of the father he barely knew. This discovery launched Eric on his own investigation, contacting Sandra the nurse (by then living in Chicago), befriending his father's high school classmates, Navy buddies, and Newsweek colleagues (Barry 2005).
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| John Lake Age-progression to 73 years by Wesley Neville |
Eric's search led him back to New York, where he found a sympathetic detective in the NYPD's Missing Persons Unit willing to revisit the decades-old case. The detective began comparing photographs of John Lake with images of unidentified corpses from the late 1960s—a grim but necessary part of the investigation.
In 2004, the NYPD reopened John Lake's case, though it remains unsolved (Doe Network 1999). At a 2004 Newsweek alumni reunion, Eric attended with notebook in hand, still investigating his father's disappearance for a book he planned to call "Missing Person" (Gussow 2004).
The Mystery Endures
John Lake's disappearance represents more than just another missing person case—it reflects the particular vulnerabilities of success in mid-20th century America. Here was a man who had achieved professional recognition in a competitive field, yet found himself overwhelmed by personal demons and societal expectations. His story resonates because it reminds us that outward success can mask inner turmoil, and that even in our most connected age, it remains possible to simply vanish.
The case also highlights the unique challenges of investigating disappearances in pre-digital New York. In 1967, surveillance cameras were rare, electronic records virtually nonexistent, and communication patterns far less traceable than today. Manhattan's subway system, with its countless exits and connections, could easily swallow someone who wanted to disappear—or someone who met with foul play.
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| View of New York City | By Anthony Quintano | Flickr CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons |
Whether John Lake chose to walk away from his life or became the victim of circumstances we may never know, his story continues to haunt those who knew him and those who have encountered his case. For his son Eric, now in his sixties, the search for answers about that December night in 1967 represents more than solving a mystery—it's about understanding the father he lost and the man he never really knew.
As Dan Barry wrote in his 2005 New York Times piece about the case, this massive city has "a yawning black hole into which you can willfully dive or accidentally slip." John Lake's disappearance reminds us that sometimes, despite our best efforts to illuminate the darkness, some questions remain forever unanswered, some mysteries forever unsolved.
💬 Join the Conversation
What do you think happened to John Lake on that December night in 1967? Do you believe he chose to disappear and start a new life, or do you think something more sinister occurred?
Have you ever encountered a missing person case that particularly resonated with you? What draws us to these unsolved mysteries, and how do they reflect the vulnerabilities we all face in our daily lives?
Join us in our next post as we explore the mysterious disappearance of Susan Walsh...
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📚 For Further Reading
Barry, Dan. "About New York: The Father Who Never Came Home." New York Times, August 24, 2005.
Gussow, Mel. "Newsweek Alumni: Nostalgia and History." New York Times, March 1, 2004.
The Charley Project. "John Eric Lake," 2006. https://charleyproject.org/case/john-eric-lake.
The Doe Network. "Case File 997DMNY: John Eric Lake," 1999. https://www.doenetwork.org/cases/cases/997dmny.html.
The Ellsworth American. "Alice Conlon Lake Obituary." November 2, 2011. https://www.ellsworthamerican.com/obituaries/alice-conlon-lake/article_def69dee-7f64-5980-bc26-c71c7c6fe9f8.html.
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