LATE SHIFT: UNSOLVED MYSTERIES VERSION

We near the end of September 29, 2012 - ninety-nine years since the last time German engineer Rudolf Diesel was last seen alive. Diesel boarded the SS Dresden in Antwerp, bound for Dresden, had dinner, requested a wake-up call at 6:15 the next morning, and then was never seen again. Diesel's bed had not been slept in, and ten days later a crew of Dutch sailors found a badly decomposed corpse, from which they retrieved several personal effects, later identified as belonging to Diesel.

But how did Diesel die, and why? Was this foul play? Suicide? An accident? Why did Diesel leave his wife a bag with 200,000 German marks in it before he departed, with instructions to not open it for a week? Was the body the sailors found even Diesel's?

Or did the man known as Rudolf Diesel fake his own death only to work his way up the college coaching ranks, finally perfecting his machine at Oregon?

This is the late shift thread. The clues are out there, friends, if we only know where to look.