5 things you need to know about the mysterious disappearance of Henry Nowak
- Henry Nowak, a 67-year-old retired carpenter from upstate New York, vanished without a trace on March 12, 2024, after leaving his home to run a routine errand to a local hardware store in Little Falls.
- Surveillance footage captured Nowak entering the store, but he never exited; police are baffled by the lack of any digital footprint or physical evidence beyond a single cryptic note found in his truck — a torn receipt with the words 'Check the old mill' scrawled in pencil.
- Investigators have linked Nowak's disappearance to a series of unsolved local cold cases tied to an abandoned textile mill, where three other men went missing between 2018 and 2022, though no bodies were ever found.
- Nowak's family reports he had been acting 'strangely withdrawn' in the weeks prior, often muttering about 'digging up old secrets,' and had made multiple calls to the Herkimer County Historical Society about a 1980s land dispute.
- A citizen-led search team using ground-penetrating radar discovered a previously unknown underground chamber beneath the mill's collapsed south wing just yesterday, but local authorities have sealed the site pending a court order for excavation.