Where Is Nicholas Cunfermann? Novato man who disappeared nearly 40 years ago

This summer will mark 40 years since a North Bay man disappeared from his hometown without a trace.

"The last night he was seen, he was with my sister," Pamela Smith explained about her older brother, Nicholas Cunfermann. "He dropped her off down at my mother's house, and he lived right on Center Road here in Novato. And he has never been seen since. Just poof."

That was Aug. 24, 1986. Cunfermann was 32 years old.

"My brother and a car disappeared. His car disappeared also!" Smith remarked. "It was like a root beer brown color, yeah, and it was an old El Camino — Chevy El Camino that was all souped up, jacked up. Him and the car disappeared, nothing else. His house was intact."

Smith describes the brother she called Nicky as "fun-loving," a guy who fixed up an old boat he christened The General Sturgeon; the one who drove her too fast, burning rubber down suburban streets; the one who kept two pigs in his yard, though it wasn't really allowed.

But she, her sister, and their parents were adamant: He would never have left without a word.

"My mother was heartbroken, heartbroken over this," Smith recalled sadly. "And she even tried doing some investigation herself."

Smith's mother Barbara Cunfermann is living with dementia now and can't speak about her son. But her decades of research, kept meticulously in a brown leather binder, is now in the hands of Novato Police detectives.

Novato Police Sergeant Wes Carrol showed it to Bay Area Unsolved.

"When we go through here, these are just some of her own investigations, people she's called and contacted over the years," he explained. "And you can see it goes all the way up from the 90s, goes all the way to 2018, '19, until we finally took it into evidence."

Carrol said they've digitized Barbara Cunfermann's work, which gave Corporal Paul Shaw more information to launch his own renewed investigation several years ago.

"Partner and I ended up doing a three-state trip to interview all of the first-hand witnesses," Shaw said. "Because the biggest problem with the case was that it was rumors on rumors on rumors with sixth, seventh, eighth-hand information from someone they overheard at a bar."

Shaw said talking to all those people helped him track down the origins of many theories of what happened to Nicholas Cunfermann, including that he was one of the victims in a triple homicide; that he and his car are buried in West Marin; or that he was killed in a dispute after some barefoot riding horseplay that got out of hand.

"Someone knows something and hopefully they can come forward with some first-hand knowledge or evidence that can help us find him, his vehicle, and what happened to him," he added.

Smith wants to dispel one rumor herself: that he walked away to avoid paying child support for a pregnant girlfriend. In fact, his parents ended up raising his daughter when her mother fell on hard times.

But she said another girlfriend did bring trouble to his door.

"She was beautiful!" Smith recalled. "Beautiful girl! And she really liked my brother. But my brother had nothing to offer her.

She married another guy, one from San Francisco. But Smith said she kept coming to see her brother.

"So, he'd come and get her and bring her home. And therein is where we believe that maybe not him, but had somebody do something," Smith said seriously. "Couldn't control his wife, so get rid of my brother."

Detective Shaw told Bay Area Unsolved he has spoken to that particular girlfriend, but even when pressed, he wouldn't disclose any details about their conversation or whether it gave him any new leads. What he would say is he wants to hear from someone else.

"If you know what happened, if you have any idea of what happened and you know who was involved, if someone told you something directly that they were involved in, we would love to hear that information. We have gotten a lot of tips, and we've been able to track those down, but we definitely need the tip that solves it."

And until that information comes, Smith is still waiting, even after 40 years. She said the not knowing weighs on her "horribly."

"You know, when somebody passes away, it happens, and you go through the whole grief. But with my brother, there's no closure. There's just no closure. And that's what I want for myself," she said.

If you have any information about Nicholas Cunfermann's disappearance, please reach out to the Novato Police Department – call 415-899-7004 or text "TIP NOVATO" to 888-777 or email crimetips@novato.gov