A father’s desperate search for his missing son in Malta has spiraled into a macabre mystery that defies all logic, after a second autopsy in Germany revealed that the 17-year-old’s internal organs had been surgically removed, leaving investigators baffled and the family demanding answers that authorities refuse to provide.
The case began on July 18, 2016, when Mike Monzhold, a German teenager on his first solo adventure, walked into a bike rental shop on the Mediterranean island of Malta. He was excited to explore Roman ruins and scenic cliffs, sending a voice message to his father, Baron Manshold, that he would send pictures throughout the day. That message was the last time anyone heard from him alive.
Eight days later, Baron, who was vacationing in Croatia, learned that his son had missed his flight home. He flew immediately to Malta, where he discovered that local police had already launched a search but had never contacted the family. The father held a press conference, begging for information, and soon received a call that would shatter his world.
Mike’s body had been found at the bottom of a cliff on the west side of the island, wedged in a rocky crevice. The Maltese medical examiner ruled his death an accident, concluding that he had fallen off the cliff while biking. But when Baron arrived at the scene, he noticed details that made no sense.
The rental bike was pristine, without a scratch, despite supposedly falling over 100 feet. The grass where Mike’s body had lain for a week was freshly cut, as if mowed days after his death. And most disturbingly, Mike’s backpack, which he always carried, was missing.
Police claimed no belongings were found at the scene.
Baron, suspicious of the official narrative, arranged for a second autopsy at the University of Hanover in Germany. What the German doctor discovered when he opened Mike’s body was so 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 that he immediately called the Maltese medical examiner for an explanation.
All of Mike’s internal organs were missing. There were no bite marks, no signs of animal scavenging. Instead, the doctor found clean, surgically precise incisions inside the body cavity, as if the organs had been deliberately removed.
The Maltese examiner offered a bizarre explanation, suggesting that rodents had eaten the organs while Mike’s body lay outside, but the German doctor rejected that as medically impossible.
Baron filed a criminal complaint against the Maltese medical examiner in 2021, but prosecutors rejected it, and the case remains officially closed as an accident. The family continues to fight for answers, but the mystery of what happened to Mike’s organs, his missing backpack, and the undamaged bike has never been resolved.
In a separate but equally confounding case, a young man named Armando Noguera vanished in France in 1996 after uncovering a deadly secret. His fiancée, Carolina Suarez, reported him missing after he failed to show up for a family picnic at a property in the woods outside Paris. Police searched the area but found no trace of him.
A year later, a detective investigating an unrelated murder in Amsterdam stumbled upon a connection. The victim, Jose Martins, had been a friend of Armando’s, and both men had ties to a man named Joao Suarez, Carolina’s cousin. Under interrogation, another friend, Manuel Freitas, revealed a chilling story.
Armando had learned that Joao and two others were involved in a murder in Portugal in 1994. When Joao discovered that Armando knew the secret, he lured him into the woods on the morning of the picnic, where he and his accomplices killed him. They then buried his body in the backyard of the Suarez family property, covering the grave with a blanket.
Hours later, the entire family, including Carolina, held their picnic directly on top of Armando’s grave, eating and laughing while his body lay just feet beneath them. It took over a decade for justice to catch up with the killers. In 2009, Joao Suarez and his two friends were convicted of Armando’s murder, but due to the time elapsed, they received only eight to ten years in prison.
The murder of Jose Martins remains officially unsolved, and no one has ever been charged for his death. The cases share a common thread of inexplicable evidence, missing organs, pristine bikes, freshly cut grass, and graves hidden beneath family gatherings, that challenge the official narratives and leave grieving families searching for the truth.
Baron Manshold continues to fight for his son, believing that someone in Malta knows what really happened. He has not given up hope that the truth will eventually come to light, even as authorities insist the case is closed. The mystery of Mike’s missing organs and the bizarre circumstances surrounding his death remain a dark puzzle that may never be fully solved.
