Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Where do all the missing people go?

144 replies

Basketofkittens · 08/08/2019 23:25

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.

Sad
OP posts:
LakieLady · 09/08/2019 10:00

@DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult

I think you've been very brave, and very resourceful. I hope your "new" life is good to you.

strawberrieshortcake · 09/08/2019 10:20

This thread is about general missing cases. I was referring to missing causes of East Asians in the US not the UK. It is very common there for the families of the missing to be uncooperative with police out of fear they will be implicated or simple due to cultural differences.

I am not negatively implying that their families do not want to look for them. I was simply stating my won experiences.

Original poster
Basketofkittens · 09/08/2019 10:27

How deeply do the police search? Can they see if your passport has left the country? I suppose they check your known bank accounts? Things like national insurance numbers, are checks made on those? Everywhere I have interviewed wants to see a passport of proof to work in the UK. Perhaps some people work in cash in hand jobs?

If you are found, do the police let your family know you are alive?

OP posts:
HerBigChance · 09/08/2019 10:32

I think the Fred West book is by Andrew O'Hagan.

dustarr73 · 09/08/2019 10:33

If you are found, do the police let your family know you are alive?

I think thats down to the missing person.If they are an adult that is.

There was a case in America a child went missing,found years later as an adult.She didnt want to go back.Told her family she was fine.Then disappeared again.

East7thst · 09/08/2019 10:37

I remember an old boss telling me how she had a cousin who had moved away, got married. Parents had died and wasn't really close to the family she had left.
Her husband left her and then she lost her job. No savings. She didnt contact her distant relatives and didnt have enough close friends to ask if she could crash on their sofa. She ended up on the street for a while.

Its terrifying how quickly that could happen to any of us if we didn't have the support system around us.

Stillmissedstillmissing · 09/08/2019 10:38

Diffficultpifcultlemondifficult
I also hope you're living a happier life.

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.

This is what I don't understand, if you know people are still out there looking for you and it would be "pretty devastating ... to be found" wouldn't it make sense to inform the central missing persons organisation that you don't want to be looked for and no one has any claim to you?

Facial recognition systems are increasing all the time and lots of people believe the missing person would not want to be given up on..

I'd always uphold peoples right to walk away, their right to view their family any way they want, erase a painful past, but unless they want to actively punish them, I don't understand why people who have totally moved on and don't want contact, don't want to eliminate any excuse families and friends would have to still be looking for them.

Is it because the final act of taking responsibility for cutting the strings is too much?

SweetMelodies · 09/08/2019 10:39

@ZazieTheCat
But isn’t the previous name kept on record? So if Andrew Gosden for example had changed his name at 18 wouldn’t they just be able to check records now and trace him?

Stillmissedstillmissing · 09/08/2019 10:45

Basketofkittens
If you are found, do the police let your family know you are alive?

If someone including family has reported you missing, and the police find you to be alive, the police inform the person who made the missing persons report that they know you to be alive and therefore not a missing person and the case is closed. They give no further information to the family than that.

Stillmissedstillmissing · 09/08/2019 10:47

They give no further information to the family than that.
That should say the person or family who made the 'misper' report

GirlRaisedInTheSouth · 09/08/2019 10:52

@BorisBadunov Apologies, but I’m not English so to me ‘Asian’ people are Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. If I’d just said ‘Asian’ people in the UK would assume I meant Indian/Pakistani, etc. I added ‘Oriental’ so people knew the race I was referring to.

Not sure why that’s racist to be honest.

Original poster
Basketofkittens · 09/08/2019 10:52

I knew of a woman who was in witness protection due to her ex husband. She had a new identity. I wonder if her family and friends knew what happened to her.

OP posts:
Stillmissedstillmissing · 09/08/2019 11:02

Because of lifestyle there was a technical possibility of witness protection with our situation, police said they'd be unlikely to know, but if they did again we'd just be told alive therefore not missing person and case closed.

Original poster
Basketofkittens · 09/08/2019 11:02

WhentheRabbitsWentWild - yes, I’ve seen Dreams of a Life. Very very sad. Apparently her family had hired a detective to find her but they couldn’t.

She was living in a flat in Wood Green provided by a women’s refuge I think. But nobody checked up on her. I have wondered who the abusive ex boyfriend was and did the police find him to question him.

OP posts:
Original poster
Basketofkittens · 09/08/2019 11:06

Stillmissedstillmissing - I’m sorry to hear about your situation, that’s really sad.

OP posts:
Dinosforall · 09/08/2019 11:15

@BorisBadunov that is a US site. I would say that Oriental is regardes as much more perjorative in the US than the UK (though I would tend to say SE Asian)

jennymanara · 09/08/2019 11:23

I know two people who went missing. One a friend who left his home at 16, hitchhiked and got a live in job in a B and B. Turned up about 15 years later. There was no issue with "starting a new life" as he was not hiding who he was, just not telling family and previous friends where he was,

The other a girl I knew as an adult ran away and lived on the streets of London from 14 years old. She had a pretty harrowing time until she was an adult and could claim benefits and legally get help. She came from a very abusive family.

Also known people who tend to drift through life, moving fairly frequently and discarding people as they went. One of them could easily have been reported missing by someone, but they were unlikely to have really been missing. Just the way they lived.

I agree there are very few truly missing cases in the UK. Most are teenage runaways or adults who have decided to leave friends and family behind. Perfectly legal to do. And sometimes done for very good reasons.

Pinkout · 09/08/2019 11:23

Either dead (murdered, suicide or accident), victim of human trafficking or they have run away and tried to forge a new life for themselves.

jennymanara · 09/08/2019 11:25

Andrew Gosden will have had bank accounts, NI use, etc checked. But I think for most missing people none of that happens. So no need for them to do cash in hand, they can just get an ordinary job like everyone else.

SwedishEdith · 09/08/2019 11:31

BitofFun - I saw that Charlene Downes documentary the other night. She is still missing as no body has been found and no-one convicted of her murder. A horrible case - only the language expert came out of that looking good.

matteroflifeordeath · 09/08/2019 11:43

One of my friends went missing in the 90s abroad, no bank accounts etc used and zero contact since then. He was declared dead at some point due to the length of time he’s been gone :( he’s on all the missing sites but sadly I think after all this time he won’t be seen again.

DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult · 09/08/2019 11:58

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?

It was over 20 years ago now. I can imagine it would be more difficult now. I changed my name by deed pole, paid a solicitor a few quid to sign the document, made a new bank account and got ID with that document, as I was a teen I didn't have a passport or anything before then.

The police maybe even know, because of the marriage I was in it ended in police involvement and I gave them my previous name. Nothing was ever said about it though.

Due to the nature of my childhood I was a pretty 'chaotic' teen and had some police involvement for running away, they used to pick me up and, looking back, it's like they were willing me to tell them what was going on in my life, but I never did. I should have then I maybe could have been saved from it.

My birth family don't deserve to know anything about me, they really don't. The Facebook posts were maybe 6 or 7 years ago now, it would have just been them milking it for a bit of sympathy for sure. Maybe the attention stopped and they had to find some way to get it back.

I'm so very glad I didn't tell my mother (in law) because knowing what I do now she would have got in touch with them.

I don't wish to actively punish them at all, I just want to nothing them, which is what I'm doing. I rarely think about them, I don't care about them and I'm not interested in how they are feeling. I'm very happy on my own, with my children, my friends, my house and job, I would have ended up down a very wrong path had I stayed. I've been the new me for much longer than I was the old me. People have their reasons for doing this, it's not always obvious.

Cocobean30 · 09/08/2019 12:02

Human trafficking/ murdered/ human sacrifice (yes really)

AnastasiaVonBeaverhausen · 09/08/2019 12:03

I often wonder what actually happened to Rebecca Coriam. I think it's fairly obvious that she was killed but it's not definite and the cover up was all very odd.

IntoTheSea · 09/08/2019 12:07

I disappeared too, @DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult. Just thought I'd offer some mutual support Flowers

14 years ago this year; I've been "gone" almost as much time as I was there.