Shutterstock
In 1995, 42-year-old former rock star Philip Taylor Kramer went missing in Los Angeles, California. He vanished shortly after telling friends that he believed he’d cracked the secret to teleporting matter. Shortly before his disappearance, he’d planned to drive to Los Angeles International Airport to pick up a business associate and his wife.
However, on the way to the airport, he suddenly changed his plans. Kramer telephoned his own wife to tell her that his business associate and his company should go straight from the airport to a nearby hotel, where the Kramers would later join them. However, in the minutes that followed, Kramer made a flurry on calls on his cell phone, including to a former bandmate, Ron Bushy, and to the police.
While on the phone with the police, Kramer stated “I’m going to kill myself. And I want everyone to know O.J. Simpson is innocent. They did it.”
He was never seen alive again. His last phone call, and the events that immediately followed it, have been the subject of conspiracy theories for over two decades.
In the 1970s, Kramer had been the bass player in the band Iron Butterfly, playing with them from 1974 until their breakup a few years later. After that, he continued playing with the band’s founder, Ron Bushy, in groups like Magic and Gold.
Following his time as a rock star, Kramer pursued his other passion: technical engineering. He pioneered technology that led to better compression for CD-ROM discs, and claimed to have been responsible for the first full-motion video embedded on CDs.
More strangely, Kramer seemed intent on disproving the theories of Albert Einstein. He claimed that it was possible to create technology that could lead to the transfer of information at speed surpassing the speed of light. This is generally considered to be scientifically impossible, and physicists have maintained that Kramer’s claims aren’t grounded in reality.
Shortly before Kramer’s disappearance, he’d been consulted to check a tape of the FBI interrogating OJ Simpson for his then-current murder trial. In his last phone call, Kramer seems to imply that Simpson is being framed for the murder for some reason. After his phone calls on February 12, 1995, Kramer went missing.
His disappearance led to a widespread search and media sensation. A famous person, a former rock star and current tech engineer, suddenly dropped off the face of the earth in one of the most populous cities on the planet. How could this happen?
Kramer’s skeletal remains were discovered on May 29, 1999, by photographers looking for wrecked cars to shoot. His remains were inside his old Ford Aerostar minivan at the bottom of Decker Canyon in Malibu, California. The official police report ruled Kramer’s death a suicide.
However, his friends and family discount the suicide theory. Kramer’s father, for instance, told reporters in 2015, “Taylor had told me a long time before there were people bothering him. They wanted what he was doing and some of them threatened him. He once told me that if I ever say I’m gonna kill myself, don’t you believe it one bit. I’ll be needing help.”
