Donald Lee Izzett, Jr., known to some as Donnie, was 19 years old when he vanished in 1995 after finishing his freshman year at Frostburg State University in Maryland. He was from Cumberland, Maryland, and is described in public missing-person records as a young white man with brown hair, brown eyes that some agencies have also described as blue, a mole on his neck, and a scar on his abdomen.
He had recently completed his first year of college and, in the weeks after leaving school, began traveling and moving between places, a period that left his family trying to follow a shifting trail across several states.
The last confirmed contact his mother had with him came on May 14, 1995. Public accounts say Donald called her from Santa Monica, California, crying and upset, saying he wanted to come home and needed money. He reportedly said he would call back with instructions about where money could be wired, but that second call never came. Other accounts of that Mother’s Day call describe it as frightening and abrupt, with the phone going dead after sounds of distress, leaving his mother with a memory that became the emotional center of the case.
After that call, the trail became complicated. NamUs reports that a person using Donald’s name received a traffic citation in Buckeye, Arizona, on May 22, 1995, and that Donald was later reportedly heard from by a friend in San Francisco in July 1995. Other public case summaries describe him as having traveled through or been connected to California, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Canada, and other places during that period. The Charley Project adds that the Buckeye citation involved a vehicle associated with a man Donald knew as Shane, and that Donald missed a later Arizona court date. Investigators and family members were left with fragments: a desperate call from California, a citation in Arizona, possible sightings or contacts in Mississippi and San Francisco, and no verified return to his family.
As the years passed, attention increasingly turned toward Pike County, Mississippi, and the possibility that Donald met with foul play during his travels. Public reports describe searches of wooded or rural areas in Mississippi, including searches in the late 1990s and later efforts in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. The Associated Press reported that investigators and archaeologists searched soil in Pike County for Donald’s remains and that a district attorney’s investigator said authorities believed Donald was killed after last being seen in Pike County or New Orleans. Another 2019 report said possible charred bone fragments had been uncovered during a dig, but those reports did not establish a confirmed resolution of the case.
No one has been charged in connection with Donald’s disappearance, and public missing-person sources continue to describe the case as unresolved. For his family, the case is not only a matter of locations, dates, and investigative leads, but the story of a young man at the edge of adulthood who had just finished his first year of college and was trying to find his way through a difficult, uncertain period. The known record begins in Cumberland, where he last visited his mother, moves through the painful Mother’s Day phone call from California, follows scattered traces across the country, and ends with investigators still trying to determine what happened to Donald Lee Izzett, Jr., a 19-year-old son, student, and traveler whose disappearance has remained unanswered for decades.Last Seen: May 14, 1995
