how many missing people do you know of in real life?

[notnowmarmaduke]

Just wondered - we are always saying how common it is, but how many of us know many missing people? Of course you might be closely associated with a missing person and not know it, as people don't necessarily talk about it, or might just not know themselves.

I have only known two people reported as missing, long term. one friends father, who was the classic went out for a pint of milk and was never seen again. ( 30+ years now). One runaway teen never found (15+ years)

Apart from that I have known a few runaway teens who were found, and two people reported as missing who I know went into witness protection

Also, have you ever been reported missing?

I can't think of any

@NooNoo1979 I'm sure you don't mean to come across as insensitive so perhaps a little more tact? It's a thread filled with heartbreak & regret, with some posters very directly & intimately affected

Not sure how to clasify enstrangled or missing but I know 2 and heard of quite a few others.
One is my brother, other is my husband’s halfbrother. Both went missing two years apart, haven’t heard of either for years.
Then my brother got in touch by email with my other brother and vanished again.
My husband’s brother spoke to their mum a few months ago and went missing again.
The ripple affect on our families is huge.
Other cases are my friend’s father was arrested by police (back in 70’) and never seen again. Also I know of few cases were people went missing during/after Second World War.

Sending thoughts to anyone impacted by missing persons and strength to anyone who needed to go missing

My brother's friend, he was the best man at his wedding. He was the nicest man but he had a gambling addiction that wouldn't let go of him. He went to prison for embezzling company money to fund his addiction but his fiancee stood by him. When he went to prison for the second time, for the same crime, his fiancee left him and went on to marry his younger brother.

When he was released from prison he was just broken and drifted away from his family and everyone he knew. He was last heard of about nine years ago, no one has seen him since. It's so strange to still see him smiling on my brother's wedding photos and not know if he's alive or dead.

Seven. An astounding SEVEN. The ones that haunt me are, the young man who disappeared from a group of young people attending Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was walking at the back of a group, talking with a friend who was a step ahead of him. The friend turned to answer a comment he made, and he was just...gone. Never heard from, never a body found. Between one sentence and the next. I had been invited on that trip. The other is more recent (as such things go). Back in 2008, I moved into a new apartment complex. There was a lovely young lady who always spoke when she saw me. I was outside one day when she and her husband walked by, and they struck up a conversation. She invited me to their unit for coffee the next day, but I had plans, and to be honest, her husband gave me the creeps. She disappeared that next day, and was missing for weeks before bits of her body began surfacing all over the county. It was her husband and his mother. And one other...a mother of three who disappeared without a trace. Never found. And she was a wonderful mother. I just know she was killed very soon after her disappearance.

A friend's sister went missing suddenly & very out of character. Police refused to treat it as a missing person- insisting she had moved away. A year later her body was discovered in the flat of a person being arrested for suspected murder of another woman. It was 5 miles from her home.

I am so very sorry that you are going through this. {{HUGS}}

I am so sorry that you, your child and your families have had to go through such a tragedy.
I hope they find out who did it.

Nanaof1
Thank you.
I don't have much faith in the police. They fucked it from the start.
I will never forget the detective telling me "it all points to a young man who got tired of family life and wanted out" Couldn't have been further from the truth.

I'm so sorry so many of you have experienced this personally.

At a slight tangent there is a really interesting documentary called, "looking for Mike". It's available on YouTube.

'Mike' is killed and that's when his friend discovers he had been living under a false identity.

I know of two.

One was a man that my dad worked with for many years, but didn't socialise with beyond work. Not long before he was due to retire he stopped turning up, and couldn't be contacted. My dad spent quite some time trying to trace him, because he felt that their company had made little effort to do so. The guy would have been due his pension, and dad felt that his colleague should have had it to help look after himself on his later years. He travelled to several places he knew the man had family links to but never found a trace. He was an alcoholic and in poor health, so dad presumed he had passed away, but it was a bit strange that he couldn't find him/a record of his passing.

The other was a young man that I was at school with. We were quite friendly through school and in the year or two after we left school, and he visited me at my parents house a few times for endless brews and chats. We worked together at a supermarket on a Saturday too. One week he said that his family were moving to another part of the city, and he would be changing to another 6th form college, but see you soon type of thing. I never heard from him again, and always wondered what happened to him. He wasn't reported missing or anything, and may have simply just gone off, lived his life, and didn't get back in touch. It was before mobile phones or anything.

I still wonder now sometimes, 35 years later though, as he's never shown up on social media or Internet searches. I'm from a small, close knit town and it is a little odd that I've never heard anything of him ever since even via mutual friends.

I remember reading in the newspaper about a guy that just went out one morning to work and never came back . Many months later he was found living down South but said he wanted no contact. I think he won / inherited some money / moved in with someone else . A shit thing to do to the people he left behind with the worry of where he was .

@stillmissed are the police involved with the item you found?

I'm so sorry for what you're going through, and to the others on here affected by missing people

I’m so sorry you went through such atrocities as a child by ones who should have kept you safe 🫶🏻

Thanks for the recommendation. I watched it last night. Very sad.

What I find intriguing is people who are there one minute and gone the next.
Like they're out for a hike,walk a bit ahead or behind and then seemingly just vanish

A guy at work was missing for about a month The stereotypical 50 year old single loner guy. Went on holiday before Xmas but never came back. No family or friends noticed until he’d missed a few days of work
he was due to change hotels and never checked
out then in. No one again alerted anyone. Hotel just packed his stuff up 😢
he was eventually found having fallen on a cliff side.
honestly have no opinion on whether it was an accident or not, he apparently was in good spirits but who knows.
very sad

I heard one on a call in programme, it might have been the Wright stuff, but it doesn't matter.

A couple, man goes out to buy some cigarettes and doesn't come home. Two years later he walks in to the house, in the same clothes he was wearing, with his cigarettes, sits down and light up.

He had actually broken his bail conditions, was arrested on his way to the shop and been in prison.

@Anotherdayanotherdollar it's interesting isn't it. We may all be working with someone and not know who they are.

I knew an extremely elderly couple who had clearly been rebels when they were young, and mentally they still were. But now they were so frail they could hardly stand or speak. Then she went missing. Her body was found in a river after a week or more. It seemed she had decided it was time to go. Her husband died a few months later.

One of my cousin's teachers at college went missing about 20 years ago. She has never been found, but her husband was convicted of her murder and is still in jail, still protesting his innocence. Some people think her disappearance has the hallmarks of a local serial killer, who has been convicted of two murders and has been overheard saying he's committed more.

One of my cousin's teachers at college went missing about 20 years ago. She has never been found, but her husband was convicted of her murder and is still in jail, still protesting his innocence. Some people think her disappearance has the hallmarks of a local serial killer, who has been convicted of two murders and has been overheard saying he's committed more.

It's not the Glyn Razzell case that has been the subject of a BBC doc, is it? That guy is 100% guilty

Christopher Halliwell didn't kill her imo. I think there's others like Sally Ann John that he did.

We had the police around lots as DP used to taxi with him.

Linda was killed by her husband :(

Yes. Linda Razzell was killed by her husband. I have no doubt. That BBC documentary about the innocence project that wanted to appeal his conviction made him look even worse/more guilty than the general public remembered

I live near a city with a river running through it, and a lot of students. Sadly we get missing persons almost every year, and nearly all of them have gone into the water. Accident, drunken misadventure, suicide - it almost doesn't matter, some poor family have lost a loved one.

But don't underestimate water, please. Whenever I hear of someone mysteriously vanishing but last being seen somewhere close to a body of water, I think 'they're in there', and they almost always are. People forget how easy it is to drown.

Very true. There's a YouTube series, can't remember what it's called, where a team search large bodies of water for missing people/vehicles. It's very moving & can be very sad, they've found a few people who disappeared unexpectedly - it really brought home to me how many people who have gone missing have probably ended up the in water.

I also recall reading about a teenage couple of went missing one night & then decades later they were found in their car in a lake, it had gone off the road.