The States With The Most Reported Missing Persons Cases Per 100K People, Visualized

The disappearance and death of Gabby Petito has fully captured the attention of America. Cable news has had wall-to-wall coverage for over the past week: The Washington Post tallied 398 mentions on Fox News, 346 mentions on CNN and 100 mentions on MSNBC. The exhaustive press coverage has also piqued interest in other less-publicized missing persons cases that have remained unsolved.

Inspired by the Petito case, Redditor Malcolm Tunnell (u/malxredleader) took a look at the number of open missing persons cases per 100k people in each state as of September 23, 2021, and made a heat map showing which states have the most and least missing people. He observed that while 3.6 percent of current missing persons cases are missing indigenous persons, the true number is estimated to be higher.

One of the biggest takeaways is that Alaska has by far the highest rate of missing persons cases in America, with nearly one out of every 617 people in the state missing.

[Via Reddit]