Sandra and John Jacobson

Thirty-six-year-old Sandra Jacobson and her five-year-old son, John were last seen on November 16, 1996 in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Sandra and John had plans to have dinner at Sandra's mother, Bernice's house. While on her way back to her mother's house, Sandra called the Bismarck Police Department on her cell phone, claiming that satanic ritual abuse was taking place on a farm near Center, North Dakota.

When she got to Bernice's house, Sandra appeared to be having mental health issues and agreed to let Bernice take her to the hospital; however, Sandra wanted to get some gasoline for her car and took John with her. Sandra purchased the fuel, but she and John never returned to Bernice's house. Bernice reported them missing at 10:00 p.m. that night.

The next day, Sandra's car was found abandoned at the parking lot of Centennial Beach near the Missouri River in Bismarck, but there was no sign of Sandra or John. The driver's side door of the car was wide open, the keys were inside of the ignition and Sandra's purse was sitting on the front seat.

At the time of Sandra and John's disappearances, Sandra was separated from her second husband, Alan Jacobson for three months. She was living in a trailer in Center, Dakota with John and her sixteen-year-old son, Spencer (from a previous marriage). Sandra believed she was in the process of a divorce which was being handled by Alan and was anxious about a possible custody battle; however, the police discovered that there was no divorce pending.

Alan stated that he was out of town on a business trip to Missouri, but the police have been unable to verify his alibi and Alan refused to submit a DNA sample. In May of 1997, a child's shoe was discovered near the river in Centennial Park which was believed to belong to John, but it was later determined that the shoe was too large to fit John.

Hours before Sandra went missing, she tried to call her ex-husband, Vernon Nastrom, but he didn't answer her. He told the police that while they were married, Sandra was fascinated with the idea of the end of the world and made a suicide pact with him to jump off the Memorial Bridge together if it looked like the world was going to end.

In 2005, Vernon was murdered after he was run over by his own car and left to die in a ditch on a maintenance road north of Tuttle, North Dakota. The murder remains unsolved and there's no indication that it is connected to Sandra and John's disappearance.

Although they were legally declared dead, Sandra and John remain missing; their cases are still classified as endangered missing people.