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Posted: 09-12-2001 01:19 Post subject: Missing Persons

The phenomena of missing persons is huge but seemingly little investigated. Thousands of people vanish every year without being found. Where do they all go? What's your theory?
Here's some facts and figures from the UK National Missing Persons Helpline:

"It is estimated that about 250 000 people are reported missing in the UK each year. The vast majority return safe and sound within 72 hours - but thousands do not; NMPH receives thousands of missing persons reports every year, but on a positive note the charity helps to resolve 60% of cases it works on. It receives more than 200 000 calls per year.

Very little general information exists on missing adults. NMPH has begun researching this area because there is a dearth of statistical information and analysis on missing persons.
The Helpline's database indicates that
 The younger the missing adult, the more likely (s)he is to turn up;
 Males aged 24 - 33 are more likely to disappear than any other group (the peak ages are 28 and 29)
 Female adults are more likely to go missing the younger they are (the peak ages are 26 and 27)
 More turn up in March than any other month "

Posted: 09-12-2001 18:47 Post subject:

I agree with you, Dark Detective, a large number of people seem to disappear in the UK, never to reappear. I remember back in 1964, a bloke called Ellison wrote a book suggesting that then 9,000 people were disappearing each year & that was probably an underestimate even then.

I just can't belive that they are beamed up to UFO's, or drop through cracks in reality, BUT, in this day & age, when we need NI numbers, just to start a job, where do they go too?

Posted: 09-12-2001 18:57 Post subject:

Can it be established whether any of these people would have a good reason for disappearing, eg, depressed, bad marriage/relationship, bad debts, etc?

And are there any instances of people who 'appear from nowhere' who are not illegal immigrants/asylum seekers?

Those statistics are rather worrying, Detective!

confused

Carole

Posted: 09-12-2001 19:29 Post subject:

The problem with missing persons carole, often seems to be the person who reports them, "I kicked the s**t out of them every night for the last ten years" seems to become: "I don't know any reason for them to leave me". From the male prospective it often seems that the wife/female partner has unrealistic expectations as to he males earning/providing prospects.Which lends to the same sort of report.

The few missing people who are found, generally have found a more relaxed sort of life & don't want to return.

Posted: 11-12-2001 15:48 Post subject:

Seeing that most estimates put the British black economy at a turnover of several billion a year, that's probably large enough to support 9,000 mispers per year.
Plus its ricidioulsy even to get/create a new id, using the classic Fred Forysyth, Day of the Jackel system (hang around in a graveyard, find somebody dead who is the same age of you, request their birth certificate, use that as a foundation for all your other id's).
There was a good documentry about it on Channel Four. Most people who did get caught or found out because they couldn't maintain the discipline of staying away from their hometowns and orginial family.

Posted: 11-12-2001 16:07 Post subject:

About ten years ago chatsubo, I understood that the Forsyth/graveyard system had become too risky, due to spot checks by the passport office, (though it's a real b***er to find a record of death), as well as the risk that someone had applied for the same dead persons identity.

The latest trick at that time, seemed to be to use the original identity of someone who has been adopted & issued with a new birth certificate.

A few years ago, at St Catherines House I was looking at some of these indexes & asked what the pencil ticks were against some of them. The suggestion made to me,was that these were the ones already used for false identities. The word "adopted", will be marked in the margin of any full copy of a birth certificate, but not on a short certificate. BUT you only need a short certificate to get a passport!!!!!

Seeing the ticks by the entries, it was intresting to note, that even in this kind of fraud, a kind of etiquette seems to be involved!!!!!

Posted: 11-12-2001 16:58 Post subject:

I would conjecture that there is a huge set of possibilities, enough of which that no single one accounts for a large number of missing people. There are probably a number of 'perfect' murders committed (no body, no determinable motive). Some people certainly choose to disappear, whether for criminal or personal reasons. A good many people probably keep to themselves a decent bit and meet accidental demises in remote locations. I can concieve of 'inconvienent', though natural deaths where the body is disposed of. Some suicides probably end up as missing persons. Just to name a few.

I think a good statistical analysis would certainly be called for. How many disappear on foot (leaving behind their car/bike/whatever)? How many leave virtually everything behind? How many are known or suspected criminals? How long between last verified contact and reported missing? Were they last seen close to home? Were they travelling? What else?

Posted: 11-12-2001 17:11 Post subject:

The NMPH cites the following as the main reasons for the disappeared that are later accounted for:

Abuse
Debt
Domestic dispute
Illness
General anxiety or stress
Depression or other mental illness
Amnesia, senility or Alzheimer's disease
Alcohol, drug or solvent misuse
Abduction (most feared but least likely) or
Just because they feel like it.

At first I would have thought it would be difficult in the US to just up sticks and vanish, then resurface as someone else given the need for ID, SS# .etc. however since there's quite a large scale of illegal immigration how hard can it be? I can well imagine given the vast expanses of wild country in the US that plenty of 'perfect' murders could be easily carried out. Even so, I just find the phenomena baffling because it's just so huge.

Posted: 11-12-2001 17:17 Post subject:

I can't give you an exact source (sorry, brain addled by flu), but I do remember reading an article saying around 300,000 people go missing in the US each year.
Sounds high, but in proportion with the US population, sound roughly the same as the UK.
I'll have a google for the article, and see what I can turn up.

Posted: 11-12-2001 18:16 Post subject:

It sounds about right chatsubo.

Between 1974 & 1984, only 18 police forces in England & Wales, (thats 55% of the population), provided figures for missing persons.

These, varied between 56,668 & 76,358 persons missing each year in these counties, which would suggest that in this time betwen 103,000 & 139,000 people went missing each year, in England & Wales!!!!

Maybe the most frightning figure, is the number of so called "long term missing". In 1964 it was sugested, (in Ellison, M., Missing From Home, Pan Books, 1964), that of the (then) 9,000 per year who go missing, 55% to 60% never turn up again!!!!

Posted: 11-12-2001 18:57 Post subject:

As for switching identities, this is the method I've been taught: Go to any courthouse/official records place that has lousy security, or invoke whatever 'social engineering' skills you possess. Go to birth/death records. Find some poor soul who was born around the same year as you, but who died as an infant. Grab the folder, take the birth cert, destroy the death cert. Apply for a social security card. Use social security card to get whatever identification you need... go from there. It's also pretty cheap/easy to get hold of a customized 'genuine' fake driver's license. Clever criminals may use this method much more than suspected?

Read a story somewhere about a guy who just switched lives one day because of a nervous breakdown. He was identified by a friend/relative by chance in a totally different part of the country. Evidently he had no idea he had even done it, and had managed to start a new life/family, as he wasn't identified for about 10 years. Is it possible that amnesiacs may just sort of transition back into society? And that there may be a higher number of these cases than suspected? The nature of this scenario would make it terribly difficult to identify or quantify.

Posted: 12-12-2001 15:54 Post subject:

Of course there could be quite a few Harold Shipman like serial killers. Obviously mad, but not self-destructive, and methodical and clever enough to dispose of hundreds of corpses every year.
Either that, or they've been drafted as slave labour for those underground bases in New Mexico.

Posted: 12-12-2001 18:43 Post subject: IT needs to be fed...

_Obviously_, they're all being offered up to whatever it is that produces the "bad vibes" in the House of Commons (see the "meditating a no-no" thread on this board)..... Or Tony Blair hopes that the Dark Forces (tm) will revitalise the flagging economy, if he can only find enough people to fill that Wicker Man (come on, you didn't think all those burnt sheep actually had anything to do with foot & mouth, did you?!!?)...
Sorry, feeling a bit frivolous today. Apologies.

Posted: 12-12-2001 21:06 Post subject:

Of course Mike L. your suggestions apply to Amerika!!!!

I would like to belive that such things do not happen in Great Britain,, the central registration of births, marrages & deaths seems to prohibit the distruction of a death certificate.

BUT, they do not preclude bigamous marrages of convenience or duplicate identities, i.e. cloning.

Posted: 12-12-2001 21:53 Post subject: