Philip Rogosky vanished without a trace in Rome – and the only clue is a pair of burgundy trousers

A cashier in a supermarket says he remembered Philip because with his greying goatee and ponytail made him look like Swedish footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

It was a day like any other. Philip Rogosky, an Oxford-educated film producer, woke up in his apartment in the historic centre of Rome. He was feeling a little under the weather from a bout of flu. His wife Sara suggested he work from home, to which he agreed. She asked him to take out a sack of rubbish when he had a moment. He said he was happy to do so, and then she left for work.

She never saw him again. Her husband vanished into thin air. That was on January 29. More than a month later, his whereabouts are a mystery. The bag of rubbish was taken out. Emails that he received were checked just prior to 10am that day. Then, no trace.

Family and friends are mystified as to why Rogosky, 56, should simply disappear. He did not drink heavily or use drugs. He was in a happy marriage and has two grown-up sons. He was not bankrupt, or depressed, or having an affair. Apart from his recent flu, he didn’t have health problems. He had a good job as a film producer with a company called Wildside and was recently involved in an international production which will be shown this year at Cannes.

He had plenty of friends, gathered over decades during a polyglot, peripatetic life – he was born in Germany, moved to New York at the age of 9, went to high school in Paris and then spent three years at Balliol College, Oxford. He speaks four languages fluently – English, French, German and Italian. His Italian, says his wife Sara Bonavoglia, is “flawless”.

When she came home from work that day and found that Philip was not there, she initially assumed he had gone to work.

But by 10pm, when he still had not returned, she began to be seriously worried.

She called his mobile phone but it was either out of power or turned off.

She dispatched her sons, Jonas, 21, and Sebastian, 20, to Rome’s five main hospitals to check whether Philip had somehow wound up in accident and emergency.

Nothing.

“We’re all in shock,” Sara, who runs a jewellery shop in Rome, told The Telegraph this week.

“You can’t get your head around something like this. It’s very hard to accept because it is so out of character. He was so reliable. He’s been in remote corners of the world and always came back. It’s just absurd that he went out to chuck the garbage across the street and just disappeared. Everyone close to him is surprised.”

Since vanishing, Philip has not used his mobile or withdrawn any money.

Had he intended to leave the house for the day, he would have taken his computer and his charger, Sara says. But both were left at home.

Friends immediately rallied around. They began scouring Rome for any sign of Philip. He and his family live in an apartment right in the heart of Rome, close to Castel Sant’Angelo – the medieval fortress that is grafted on top of the mausoleum built for the emperor Hadrian.

They posted flyers bearing photos of Philip and an appeal for any information as to his whereabouts. The posters are everywhere – in bars and cafes, on lampposts, on the steep-walled embankments along the Tiber. They contacted voluntary organisations who run soup kitchens and work with the homeless.

There were sightings of Philip in the days after he disappeared from home.

A cashier in a supermarket says he remembered Philip because with his greying goatee and ponytail, he looked a bit like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the Swedish football player. A barista in a café says he recognised him and that Philip ordered coffees in quick succession. In the end, he had five. He then paid in cash and left.

Then came a bizarre lead. A week after he vanished, his burgundy trousers were found in the street. They had been neatly laid out, with the pockets turned out, as if they needed to be dried in the sun.

Frustrated with the police’s slow response to her husband’s disappearance, Sara contacted a volunteer organisation that tries to find missing people: the Comitato Scientifico Ricerca Scomparsi or the Scientific Committee for Finding Missing Persons. The national association of volunteers, including criminologists and former police officers, brought in a sniffer dog. Having smelt the trousers, the dog followed a trail for about two kilometres, but then it went cold.

As the weeks go by, friends have become more bewildered, and increasingly worried. “I’ve never known him to have any mental health issues or to need any kind of treatment or to be depressed. We’ve all wracked our brains. I’m aware of absolutely nothing that could explain this case. Everything seems totally implausible,” said Adrian Darbishire, who was at Balliol with Philip and is now a barrister and King’s Counsel in London. “I spoke to him on the phone a few days before he disappeared from home. We just had a normal chat.”

He and Philip go back more than 30 years. “He’s a very interesting, quirky person, very cosmopolitan. He arrived at Oxford wearing a Jean Paul Gaultier jumper and a white duffel coat, speaking four languages. To me, coming from Surrey, he seemed like an extraterrestrial.

“He was told that wearing white socks was a bit chav. So from that point on, he insisted on wearing white socks. He had testicular cancer and lost his hair – he had very good hair. But even then, he managed to look good – his mother knitted him these incredibly cool bottle green skullcaps.”

Philip’s father, Wolf, was a successful advertising executive who made a lot of money. He took the family first to New York and later to Paris, where Philip went to school.

It was at school that he met Sara – they were teenage sweethearts who eventually married.

Wolf bought a vineyard near a village called Montevarchi Terranuova in Tuscany. “His dream was to make great wine and he poured an incredible amount of money into it. He spent millions and he succeeded. In the end, it was very successful. I came across their wine once in a three-star Michelin restaurant in Paris,” said Darbishire.

“Wolf was a marvellous, cigar-chomping, long-lunching gourmand, a generous larger-than-life character.”

Nell Butler, another of Philip’s close friends at Oxford, said: “He is the most sophisticated, clever, funny man you could hope to meet.

“Back in the day, he was very stylish. He would wear a long coat and slip-on canvas white shoes. He was very elegant in his speech, perhaps because he spoke so many languages.

“He found quirky things amusing. He was quite idiosyncratic in a very warm and entertaining way.”

Like Philip, Butler also ended up in television. She is the creator of the hugely popular and much-franchised programme Come Dine With Me and is now CEO of a company called Riverdog Productions.

“I have a lot to thank him for because I went back to Oxford to see him when he was in the fourth year of his language course and it was through him that I met my husband. We are both big fans of Philip to this day.

“I feel so powerless. His disappearance has been on my mind all the time. He’s a middle-class person with a good life and an excellent brain. People don’t just vanish into thin air. But there seems to be no explanation. It’s just bizarre.”

With no obvious motive for him vanishing, Sara, his wife, wonders whether the flu might have triggered some sort of neurological reaction, perhaps confusion or amnesia. It seems a long shot, but there is precious little else to go on.

“When he had flu, for the last three days he vomited. I’ve talked to neuropsychologists. They say the flu could have triggered some sort of neurological problem. It’s not common but it can happen,” said Sara, who is Italian but whose background is as cosmopolitan as Philip’s.

Her father worked for the Bank of Italy and was posted all over the world, including Washington DC, the Philippines, Brussels and Paris.

As time drags on, the chances of finding Philip recede.

“Our family is very close. The boys are coping but it’s really, really tough. We are hoping that Philip is still capable of taking care of himself. If you’re not using your card or your phone, you’re untraceable. You’re gone. I don’t know how we could have done it without the support of friends. It’s become a shared trauma,” said Sara.

Philip’s mysterious disappearance has been featured on an Italian TV programme called Chi l’ha Visto? (Who Saw Them?) which specialises in missing persons cases.

Sara and her friends are now widening their search, arranging for flyers and notices to be posted in train stations, bus stations and airports across Italy, where they will be seen by millions of travellers.

“Whatever happens, at least we know that we’ve done all we can. We have left no stone unturned.”