Kristin Tomlin, a twenty-year-old Portland Oregon native boarded a yacht in northern California on November 12, 1981, and was never seen again. She set sail with three friends, two men and one woman. The two men reported that Kristin and the other woman were lost at sea when their yacht sunk after it was hit by a freighter during a storm. An exhaustive search found no evidence that the yacht had sunk or that the two women had died. As tales of stolen yachts, insurance fraud payouts, and multiple aliases began to unfold, investigators called off their search, believing that the entire story was a hoax.