murksiderock
Superstar
All these hip hop blogs are repeating "his wife is still alive and a millionaire today and keeping it g", which is untrue. If people tell the story they need to at least be honest with it.
I have zero inside information, everything I'm about to say is public record. You gotta dig for some of it but I wish the hip hop blogs had more journalistic integrity sometimes.
Barbara Hinton (Frank's wife) is dead. I'm having a hard time uncovering where she was and when she died, but her oldest son says she's dead, that's good enough for me.
Some of these blogs are saying that Frank's wife and kids vanished right after he did and were never seen ir heard from again, which is just lazy journalism. You can find that they stayed in New York for a little while after he vanished, and she was getting hit up by The Feds pretty often.
Barbara and her 3 sons with Frank left NY in the mid-to-late 70s and relocated to Cincinnati. In the 80s the sons ended up back in New York....there is no record that Barbara ever came back to NY, which doesn't mean she didn't, but I doubt that she did. Why would she? The pull to NY would be much stronger for her kids than it was for her.
She was getting visits from the FBI about Frank, at least thru the early-to-mid 90s; I haven't found anything yet that verifies contact with her after the 90s. Which means one thing certainly---->she didn't just go off the grid, what incentive would she have to just disappear 20-25 years after her husband left?
The FBI knew where she was in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, they knew where her kids were, they were keeping a trail on them. They didn't just "lose" the wife and kids in the 90s.
So those to me are certainties. This isn't certain, but the fact I can't yet find any record of contact with her after the 90s, at least hints at the possibility that a)she maybe has been dead for a long time now; and/or b)FBI knew enough by 20-25 years after Frank disappeared, to kno he was either dead, or they believed entirely that his wife and kids had no knowledge of where he was if he was still alive.
There are a couple Frank Matthews death theories, so there's that. Also, his kids were also getting random visits from the FBI in the 80s and 90s.
Frank's middle son, Frank Mathews Jr, died in Cincinnati in 2023. I can't remember if the youngest son is still alive or not; the oldest son is still alive in Brooklyn.
I'm about to say a theory I can't prove, bit I think it's pretty clear that the sons didn't have any contact with their dad and didn't know where he was. Could be entirely wrong, and I'm sure they had more clues than an internet sleuth like me....but there's a video of an ex-agent who used to pull up on the boys at random times when they were adults, and they grilled these mf's pretty extensively.
The youngest son (I think) was a junkie and no matter what angle they tried with any of em, the agent said after multiple encounters, he was convinced the boys knew nothing. That's good enough for me and makes sense because any man that's willing to leave his wife and kids in the middle of the night, prioritizes his safety over theirs, so why would he contact tge kids?
Everything I've read and seen, seems to indicate that while Barbara may have initially had a clue on Frank's plans, she lost contact with him at some point.
Also, everything I've read and seen, there are plenty of theories on if Frank is still alive, or how he died, but there is a slight consensus with agents that he was probably dead before 1990; there seems to be in the minds of agents, enough evidence that supports he was still alive thru most, if not all, of the 80s.
Obviously this could be wrong on either side, they have no proof he's still alive, they also have no proof he's dead. It's literally an either/or coin flip, but there isn't a strong belief among the FBI that he's still alive.
To this point I live in Raleigh, right next to Frank's hometown of Durham, and I've been told that people who are related to him, or are related to people who were close to him down here, either still believe he's alive, or was thru the 2010s.
(FBI staked out a Matthews family reunion in NC in the mid-2010s on a tip that he'd be there, but he never showed. That stakeout is public info).
I think people convinced themselves he was still alive, and people who knew him in NC who may or may not have had contact with him after his disappearance, just added to his mythology.
Again I could be 100% wrong and not only could he still be alive but maybe one of these local mf's are really related to someone who knows what he's up to.
The notion that he left with $17 or $20 million came from somewhere, somebody dropped that information. $20m in '73 is equivalent to $145m today, it's enough money that somebody could live for 52 years and never work a single day. $20m is also a ton of money to be carrying around, so in theory, he obviously had to rinse it somehow.
I'm not sure that I buy that he left with $20m. How would somebody know that? Clearly he left with a plan and enough money that he would be in good shape for quite awhile---->and he clearly left his wife with enough money to survive and relocate and still be good. One of the agents who used to trail one of his sons said the kid didn't work. It's absolutely believable that he left enough money behind to set his kids for life. Its just the number I have an issue with.
Can't remember all his details but the last confirmed sighting of him was with his girl at the Houston airport or something, maybe it was Miami. I personally think he's been dead for quite awhile. He had alot of health issues already at 29 when he vanished. And the FBI today "calling off" the search for him is just a note, they haven't had major resources devoted to him in years, this is just saying they are now putting zero resources on him, they think he's dead.
and never found him???
