Where do all the missing people go?

[Basketofkittens]

I’ve been watching some programmes recently on missing people and reading various sites on the internet. It’s interesting but also really sad.

Where do they go? I suppose some are murdered or commit suicide but everybody else? Do they start new lives or move abroad although with modern technology and IT it seems increasingly harder to do that without being traced.

There’s also a police website with details of 1000 bodies found and nobody knows who they are.

Heard a programme from an investigator in Ireland saying about how many are reported missing and by the end the actual missing are only a handful and I was so sad for that handful of relations/,friends and for the people themselves, that they're the minority

www.missingpeople.org.uk/ has photos of all? the reported missing people going back to the 1960s.

The website of unidentified people found is worse, 1000 poor souls who don’t have family or friends to identify them or notice they are missing.

Going to watch something happier before I go to sleep!

I think re. the unidentified that there are an awful lot of people with absolutely nobody to care for them. One of the missing women has been getting to me for a while now. she was found at the foot of the cliffs at Dover. Very clear picture of her face but nobody has said they know her.

The world is a huge place. I used to find missing persons cases interesting but since having my own children, I can’t stand them. It’s my worst nightmare.

I find the thought of disappearing and dying with nobody missing me oddly comforting. I think I've grieved too much to want that for my loved ones after I go.

I went missing overnight from my old life many years ago, I guess some people still wonder where I am and what happened.

What do you mean @DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult ? Were you escaping something or did you leave behind family?

Escaping something and left everyone and everything behind. House full of stuff, only took a couple of things, didn't tell family or friends and buggered off hundreds of miles away. Changed my name too. Never did get back in touch again, although I could do now I guess. I'm a different person than I was back then and it would rake up too many issues, I have my life and my kids and job etc now and I don't feel there's anything to be gained from looking back.

Omg @DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult!

That sounds traumatic! Was it parents you left as well? They don't know if you're alive or they have grandchildren.

I hope you have a happy life now.

That site is really sad. All those people that were never seen again.

Some will be living on the streets, I guess, some may have fallen in rivers and washed out to sea. A lot of unidentified bodies could be immigrants, who could have moved to live anywhere, so no families to identify them here.

You know when you hear a news story about someone who’s “gone missing” and then it just suddenly drops off the radar? Most often the police have located or made contact with the “missing” person and they don’t want to be “found”. And if an NT adult wants to walk it of their old life and disappear, it’s perfectly legal.

The unidentified dead are very sad, though. People who lost contact with anyone who knew them years ago, or never had anyone in the first place.

An awful lot of people reported as missing will have done what @DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult

How heartbreaking it is that the people left behind are always wondering what happened to the missing person, when that person doesn't care enough just to let them know they are alive but don't want to be contacted.

Just gone onto the Missing Persons site. One thing that jumped out at me was, there are so many Oriental Asians missing. As a race, they are way over-represented in those missing people. I wonder why?

Missing persons always makes me think of Andrew Gosden.

His case was so strange, and completely pushed aside in the news by Madeleine McCann.

@vbhafjlb Me too . Did the police have ANY leads in the Andrew Gosden case?

Left parents and siblings and friends behind. Nobody knew where I went. I got married into a family of knobheads who were my new 'Mother' and 'brothers' who were/are pretty awful and I finally left again, but this time around I had kids so some people knew where I went, others didn't, I really wish I could have totally disappeared again.

I don't care about some of the people I left behind at all. Others i do but it would be too difficult to get in touch again. What would be the point in randomly popping up to say I'm alive but you won't see me again, oh and by the way I have kids you will never meet too.

@DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult Do they at least know you are alive?

GirlRaisedInTheSouth I think they were too slow and most CCTV had been wiped/taped over by the time they realised.

The whole thing is just baffling. Nothing adds up.

DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult, how would you feel if one of your kids did the same one day? Would you not want to know he/she was ok?

My uncle got a p/t job after he retired, as a handy person on a site for travellers.

He had a lot of stories from that job, from people on the run from arrest or escaped from prison, to people who had just walked out on their lives who were travelling round to find somewhere/someway to start a new life. There were lots of ways to find cash in hand employment via the regulars on site.

Agree ref Andrew goaded, very odd case and so sad

It's such a sad topic. I recall hearing something a few weeks ago about the subject of missing children, that really stuck with me. This person was doing research into the number of children that go missing in the US, they contacted Federal Authorities (assuming FBI?) and were told that they don't hold national figures that they needed to get the figures from each individual state. They do have the figures for stolen vehicles at a national level though 🤦🏼‍♀️.

Just to add we really have no idea how many missing persons end up victims of human trafficking.

I doubt they would know anything about me or even recognise me anymore, and my birth family are the people I care about least in the world to be honest.

I would be devastated if one of my kids disappeared, but my kids have a very different life than I did before I disappeared when I was a teenager, they would have no reason to do what I did really.

It was over 20 years ago that I did it, they may well be dead now, I have no idea and no interest in finding out. Nothing good would come from getting back in touch.

Its my friends from that time I miss the most, I would love to speak to some of them, it would be too complicated though.

I got married fairly shortly after I left, trying to replace my family, even called my MIL my mother, but they are/were just as toxic as my birth family. Much happier on my own and would happily disappear with my kids if I could do it again. I have no regrets about leaving the way I did really.

There's a really good book, sort of a personal reflection on this phenomena OP called, erm, 'The Missing', written in the aftermath of the Frederick West case. Lots of thoughts about atomisation, rootlessness, transience, urban living patterns etc. The main impetus came from the writer realising that all of the women killed were relatively young, had jobs, friends, family, people who knew them etc. Ie had the trappings of a normal functioning life where one would assume one is somehow connected to society. But in every case, they lay under the patio and in the cellar for years, and people thought they'd moved away, done something else, just come and gone like people do, but they hadn't.

Ofc now you have to factor in things like people trafficking which is on a massive scale. There are many people who have no identity or legal presence and they go missing even easier.