The Lawyer Who Just...Disappeared

Allen Schwartz came home early from work one summer day in 2001 and told his wife of 40 years that they needed to talk.

"I'm in trouble," he said. "I'm going to leave."

Schwartz was 71 at the time and had spent almost five decades building a successful Cincinnati law practice. Colleagues considered him a "gentleman lawyer" and his wife, Alice, expected to spend retirement with him in the Clifton home where they raised their three children.

So when Schwartz told his wife she would never see him again, and that he was leaving behind everyone and everything he ever cared about, she couldn't believe he really meant it.

But he did.

She hasn't seen him since. And neither have friends, relatives, neighbors or the prosecutors who later charged him with stealing more than $300,000 from clients.

Schwartz, who will turn 80 this year if he's still alive, remains one of the city's most enduring and unlikely mysteries, a man who was accused of betraying his family and his profession and then, seemingly, vanished into thin air.

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The Lawyer Who Just...Disappeared