A Legendary Rock Bassist-Turned-Rocket Scientist Left His House in 1995 and Vanished for Years By Virginia Chamlee

Philip Taylor Kramer was by all accounts in the prime of his life when, one February in 1995, he vanished without a trace — not to be found until years later.

Kramer had been the bass guitarist for the legendary heavy metal band Iron Butterfly before he went on to work as a rocket scientist at Northrop guidance systems, where he worked on the MX nuclear missile in the 1980s. He then co-founded a tech company called Total Multimedia, Inc., with his stock in the company worth north of one million dollars.

But on Feb. 12, 1997, he left his home in the L.A. suburb of Thousand Oaks to pick up a business associate at Los Angeles International Airport. He was seen arriving on schedule in his Ford minivan but an hour later, he left alone — making a series of phone calls, including one to his wife Jennifer, in which he said, “I’ve got the biggest surprise for you.” When she called back, he said, “I’ll always love you. I’ll see you on the other side.”

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He made another call to his former Iron Butterfly bandmate Ron Bushy, leaving a voicemail that said, “I love you more than life itself.”

And then there was a very different call to 911, in which he told the emergency operator, “I’m going to kill myself.”

Speaking to PEOPLE for a 1997 article, his sister Kathy Kramer said she had been startled by her brother’s behavior just one day prior to his disappearance: “He was talking about supernovas and earthquakes, saying, ‘If you’re centered, you’ll be saved.’ In my entire life my brother never scared me. But that day I was scared.”

His family organized a search party of more than 200 people in the weeks after Kramer’s disappearance, with the Ventura County sheriff’s department leading an investigation. Speaking to PEOPLE in that earlier interview, his sister Kathy estimated that she handed out some 90,000 missing posters — even taking her search to America’s Most Wanted, Donahue and Sally Jesse Raphael.

Due to his defense job, the FBI even got involved, though no law enforcement agency could come to a conclusion.

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“The bottom line,” Senior Deputy Tom Bennett of the VenturaCounty sheriff’s department told PEOPLE in 1997, “is we don’t know what happened.”

The youngest of three children of a Youngstown State University physics professor and a retired teacher, Kramer was 42 when he disappeared — and in the weeks prior, he had been under an enormous amount of stress, his family said at the time.

“He told me, ‘If I ever say I’m going to kill myself, don’t believe it. I’ll just be asking for help,’ ” his father Ray told PEOPLE.

Just two years after that interview — on May 29, 1999, Kramer’s smashed Ford minivan, driver’s license, and skeletal remains were found by photographers looking for old car wrecks to shoot at the bottom of Decker Canyon near Malibu, California.

An associate of Iron Butterfly took to the band’s website to share the news two days later, writing, “The remains of what is assumed to be that of Phil Kramer were found at the bottom of a canyon last Saturday near Malibu, Calif. His van apparently plummeted off a 300-foot cliff, sending Phil to his death. Due to the circumstances, one can only speculate suicide. On behalf of the entire Iron Butterfly organization and fan base, I send sympathy to his family and friends. My personal wishes go to [Iron Butterfly drummer] Ron Bushy, who was probably closer to Phil than any man outside the family. I’m sorry Ron — Phil was one hell of a nice guy.”

And while the evidence suggested an intentional car crash, his family and friends struggled to come to grips with that, with Bushy telling the Los Angeles Daily News: “I don’t think it was a suicide. That’s just not like Taylor. I’ve never known him to run away from something. He just tackles it head-on. He had a zest for life.”