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.

There was a dreadful flood in Lynmouth in N Devon in the 50s. When we were there we saw the memorial in the church to those who died. The really eerie thing was the final row just listing "Unknown Woman", "Unknown Man" etc. Very sobering.

@DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult Have you checked to see if you are listed on the Missing Persons website?

OMG @DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult
Are you on the missing persons list? Isn't it illegal to just disappear and act like you've died?!

@DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult

Please get in touch with your birth family. Just to let them know you’re alive :(

I hadn’t heard of Andrew Gosden until reading this thread, and have just been reading about him online. How sad , his story gave me chills up my spine as I have a son of a similar age. Surely the fact he walked a long way home from school on the 2 days leading up to his disappearance must be a sigh that something was amiss.

Please get in touch with your birth family. Just to let them know you’re alive

I'm sure there's a very good reason she hasn't though. I doubt they're decent, kind people pining for their precious, treasured daughter.

I'm sure DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult didn't make the decision to disappear lightly. Unfortunately, terrible dark things usually lie behind a decision like that.

Another one is Ruth Wilson, seems like she obviously disappeared intentionally and it’s possible never came to harm. How do you start a new life without being identified though? You’d need a new name/identity and I don’t see how you could do that without revealing your current identity?

The Andre Gosden case must be heartbreaking for his parents- even if he is alive and perfectly well in society it seems he clearly doesn’t want to be found

It's not illegal to walk away from your life and start afresh at all. I didn't act like I died, I just moved and changed my name.

My birth family don't deserve to know if I'm alive or not. I don't care what they think or feel. I had probably the worst childhood you could imagine, which is likely why I got in with an abusive husband and toxic family when I did start over again.

I'm not sure if I'm on any missing person thing, I do know there have been a Facebook post or 2 looking for me, which is why people should be very careful with what they share on there, it would be pretty devastating for me to be found now. I look very different, probably unrecognizable, from the pictures they have though so it's all good.

Its not quite the same thing but I know a couple of people who deliberately 'disappeared' including an old schoolmate and two family members.

The schoolmate committed a petty theft and disappeared to Scotland. She contacted her brother to say she was getting married. Nobody else heard from her until she contacted her family years later to say she was coming back from Australia! She arrived with an Australian man and no mention was ever made of her first Scottish husband. She stayed a couple of weeks and went back to Australia and nobody has heard from her since. Her parents passed away and she didn't return to the funeral.

A relative of mine also went to another country and never contacted the family again. And my sister did likewise. I was heartbroken. I was so close to her. She/we didn't have a particularly nice childhood and she felt very hard done by even though it wasn't worse than mine. She left for uni and never came back. She now lives in another country and I heard via somebody she is now married. She was very critical of people's appearances, accents, weight, mannerisms and I don't miss that but it makes me incredibly sad that she doesn't know my children. What is harder is one of them looks very like her so it is a constant reminder. Perhaps it runs in families or perhaps some families don't have the bond that makes them stick together. It is something I am quite scared of happening with my own children.

Sweet I changed my surname by deed poll about 20 years ago. I just wanted to use my mother’s maiden name not my dad’s as they divorced when I was little. It was really simple- I just got local magistrates to witness it, then it was accepted by all government agencies/banks etc. I thought at the time it was really, really easy.

It’s less easy to do now I think- money laundering and anti-terrorist laws have seen to that. There are more checks now. But as long as someone wasn’t on the run from the law or debt, it would totally still be possible.

My friend's brother went missing in his early 20s and nearly 20 years on there has been no word of him. He had epilepsy, even with meds he could have the occasional severe seizure. He was a social outcast, and shortly before he disappeared had been accused of sexual assault but no action taken. He was a real mummy's boy, pretty spoiled and still lived at home.

I can't see him being able to just start a new life with no money and no job, I'm assuming the police would have been able to check medical records to see if he had been prescribed medication under his name anywhere in the country. No body has ever been found and I wonder if without a car he would have been able to go to somewhere remote and commit suicide. He had very few friends, so nobody to help him. Another option is foul play somewhere.

His parents are devastated, his dad had a breakdown a few years back.

I remember the Fred West story. I told my teenage dd at the time, that if she wanted to run away anytime could she please just get in touch to let me know she was ok.

Now I live in Mexico, where there are so many missing people and children, it is dreadful. Some were disappeared by the police and the army, others have been trafficked and/or murdered. The police don't take DNA samples from unknown murder victims so there are a lot of families who will never know what happened to their loved ones. Hopefully with our new government some of these things will improve.

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

I’ve always wondered this as well.

I've just looked at that missing persons website- it doesn't seem to get updated with any known resolution, as there's an entry for Charlene Downes, who featured in a murder documentary recently. It must have been known for a long time, but she is still listed .

I thought the same about the website, huge number of Vietnamese

If anyone is wondering about the over representation of East Asians in missing person cases, it’s often not because they necessarily go missing any more than any other race but they are not found as often because their family are uncooperative with the police as they are scared of them and don’t want to interact with them.

Often they won’t even be reported missing by their own family but people at their school and work because their families do not want at all to be associated with police.

I think some of them just may run away from their families but i am sure there are more sinister reasons for others unfortunately.

I've always wondered what happened to Lord Lucan

I do know there have been a Facebook post or 2 looking for me, which is why people should be very careful with what they share on there,

I agree with this. It's amazing how many people share posts looking for long lost family or 'missing' people. The advice is to only share official police posts.

Diffficultpifcultlemondifficult - I don't blame you for leaving a toxic family. I think it was very brave of you to start over completelty so young.
I was watching the Jade Goody programme and as her mum was admitting that she taught Jade to role a spliff age 5 and had punters next door to JAdes bedroom as I was wondering why Jade didn't cut ties with her after she got her ticket to fame and money. I imagine your childhood held similar horrors. You are right, your birth family don't deserve to know you are okay.

If you're into missing people, look up the missing 411 cases, there's most of the cases on YouTube.

It's weird stuff, doesn't make much sense on why or how these people are going missing and being found. But if you get into search for the UK 411 cases.

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.

I'm intrigued! Not because I'd ever do this but how on this world of CCTV and ID documents and everything did you manage to just fall off the grid?

I think falling off the grid years ago would have been easier than now.

Please Stop giving DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult a hard time. I wish I'd had the guts to do it.

There is probably one one relative who really cares about me and that hurts. When people are invited to a family gathering and you are forgotten about or you're invited but it is so difficult you cannot get to the place the gathering is at.

I only found out about a family wedding because I made a visit to another relative (the one who cares) and saw the invite.