Case Details
- Photo URLs:
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- Missing Since:
- Missing Since 11/13/1980
- Missing From:
- Missing From Cape Hatteras, North Carolina
- Classification:
- Classification Lost/Injured Missing
- Gender:
- Male
- Race:
- Race White
- Date of Birth:
- Date of Birth 07/18/1959 (65)
- Age:
- Age 21 years old
- Height and Weight:
- Height and Weight 5’10, 175 pounds
- Clothing/Jewelry Description:
- Clothing/Jewelry Description Layered clothing and foul-weather fishing gear. No jewelry.
- Distinguishing Characteristics:
- Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian male. Brown hair, hazel eyes. Mays goes by his middle name, Jeffrey, or the nickname Jeff, and some agencies refer to him as Jeffrey Mays.
- Details of Disappearance:
- On November 13, 1980, Jeffrey Mays and his friend Ted Wall, both commercial fishermen, went fishing off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. They were last seen at 1:30 PM, 16 miles offshore. Another fisherman helped them fix their boat’s engine earlier that day. They disappeared without a trace.
Mays and Wall were in Mays’s sturdy 23-foot Sea-Ox fishing boat, which is nearly impossible to sink. The boat (registration NC9304 AK, manufacturer’s number XNA30250M79J) had a fiberglass console, black outriggers, and beige sides.
A massive two-week Coast Guard search covering a huge area (104,000 square miles) found nothing – neither the boat nor the men.
Mays’s family and friends suspect the disappearance was connected to drug dealing, a common side hustle for fishermen during the slow winter months. While this is suspected, no one has ever been arrested.
Mays’s mother wrote a book about his disappearance, and she and his best friend believe he might be alive and living in Alaska.
- Agency:
- United States Coast Guard 252-441-0300
- Source Links:
This person was missing Missing Since 11/13/1980