John and Jane Doe's someone must have missed them

[charlieinthehaystack]

reading the endless list of John and Jane Doe's, people who have been found deceased but have never had a name put to them. This is not only murders but also vagrants etc who have just died of natural causes. they can be found in rivers seas buildings or just in the wild. As time goes on it is less likely a name is going to be put to them though of course. I think it is odd especially the older ones who sometimes are non UK citizens as years ago someone who was not from UK would stand out more and I dont mean that in a predjudiced way but in my small town they would have stood out. surely if they suddenly went someone must have noticed but i suppose in big cities people are more anonymous. with outstanding tattoos clothes etc its sad to think noone knows them. just thinking some would possibly be run aways from childrens homes etc

I think it can happen quite easily that people don't have someone to miss them.

I was brought up by my grandparents and they're a long time dead now. I'm 9 years younger than my next sibling and we are not in contact. Even back when we had very infrequent contact we lived in different cities. My sister once went to work in Ibiza for an entire summer and nobody in the family knew. If something had happened to one of us in that period then it would have only bene noticeable when a Christmas card didn't arrive. Even that would like have been something that didn't arouse instant concern.

My best friend was the only child of two only children. She moved around constantly as a child so has very few long term friends.

We've both said before (after a case on tv where a body was found after years and nobody had realised the person was missing) that that could have been either of us had we not got married.

In many cases they have been missed and reported missing, but only recently has it been possible (through familial DNA) to link a missing person report in one area to human remains found in a different area a year or so later. I think a lot of these cases are gradually being resolved retrospectively, but it will take a while.

It is very sad when it turns out someone was never reported missing - I read an article about an American woman, Mary Silvani that was very thought provoking as to how this can happen even though they had friends and family who did miss them. I think it will happen less now that people are in touch through social media etc.

Edit to add: mind you I do think once we are dead it makes no difference whatever to the victim - it is more about the families left wondering.

What is the aibu here?

You do get people that live a fairly transient existence
Maybe somebody who travelled for work from abroad and didn't really know anyone.

It’s not that hard to grasp, OP. Some people have, by chance, misfortune or design, very few links to other people. A significant minority on Mn talk about their total lack of friends, are NC with their families, and/or have no one but their DH. Joyce Vincent was being sought by her family after she’d died, and other people in her life always thought she had people she was closer to because she seemed to acquire entirely different circles when she changed jobs/areas. Added to her escaping DV, and living somewhere without a sense of community, and direct debits paying her bills, and have someone who’d been dead for years before her body was found.

An elderly woman near where I’m from was found dead in a gully after a neighbour hadn’t seen her in a while — she had a large family of siblings elsewhere, but had dementia, and had lived alone in a remote self-built shack without electricity or water, and was alone since she’d been widowed. She had no one in her day to day life apart from her cats. The only time anyone saw her was people who would offer her a lift when she walked into town for cat food.

My FIL died last year and he could have Been somebody who died who nobody missed
My dh has-been estranged from him for nearly 30 years ,no because there was a falling out at such but after his first marriage broke up to my dh,smum he moved away met a much younger women and contact with his kids dwindled
It was his neighbour that alerted the police he hadent seem My FIL for a few days and the police found him deceased
It's quite sad because apparently his second marriage had broken up and he was on his own for the last few years of his life he had six grandchildren he had never met.

I find it very sad. Especially the ones you occasionally see of children. There's a website of them that I've looked at once or twice (I think it's US based), and the children always get me. Some of them are babies and toddlers, and found fully dressed, with nappies on. Well, someone dressed them that morning? Put a nappy on them? Where is that person now?

There's a sad explanation too. If people are trying to evade the authorities, social workers etc they may not report a child dead or missing if it may result in having their other children removed. There is an excellent podcast on BBC Scotland about a heartbreaking case, it's called The Cruelty.

Sadly the person who put the nappy on them is usually involved in their death and the abandonment of their remains. I remember some years ago reading about several such cases ("Dennis Doe", "Christmas Doe" and others). In every case it appeared the children had been well looked after and dressed with care, so I wondered if their mothers had also been killed.

But no, those cases have gradually been solved and in each case the mother was complicit in their death, and seems to have gone on quite happily living their lives for decades until they were finally arrested. Furthermore, both the cases named were not solved through DNA but because someone who knew the child finally contacted the police and gave them a name.

Normally it's the person who dressed them who it responsible for their death and their remains being dumped.

I was reading an article about missing children whose bodies were later found and in every single case, the parents were responsible.

My father died alone and his body wasn't found for a couple of weeks. It was only via a series of coincidences that my siblings and I were traced as his only relatives and informed of his death. He wasn't a nice man. Far far from it.

If he'd ended up in a ditch or somewhere, no-one would have known who he was. He hadn't bothered to contact me or my siblings in over 30 years when he died, so we would never have reported him missing, we didn't even know where he lived. He wasn't particularly liked so I don't think anyone he knew would have bothered to report that they'd not seen him in a while.

Of course - objectively I feel sorry for this man, his life a waste. A sad, lonely, bitter, man with a horrible history. I'm sure he was an innocent baby once so life must have destroyed him. It's not his fault I guess.

However, I'm sure there are many people who are cut off from family or friends, perhaps are not that nice, have dark histories. Noone would know or care if they were missing.

Sometimes very sadly, drugs and prostitiution are involved in Jane/John doe cases and that upsets me a lot. That people got to that place.

Sadly, there may be some lovely people, young and old who've got themselves into tricky situations that mean there is noone to report them missing or join the dots.

Yes. There’s a current ‘missing, believed dead’ child case ongoing here at the moment, where a family member reported a child missing this past summer, saying they had seen him a day or two earlier, but then it emerged the child hadn’t been seen by anyone else since he stopped attending school two years earlier (family had been talking about moving countries, so it seems to have been assumed they had), mother discovered by police in the UK, and reports of a different child having possibly been taken to SS meetings to impersonate the missing child etc. No body, no crime scene, no leads.

It's awful isn't it @OriginalShutters?

I was watching a documentary not so long ago about a woman who killed her daughter and then fled to Africa - if the little girls' dad hadn't been due a visit with her, who knows what could have happened.

It is sad, but I find it very easy to understand how it could happen.

I'm unmarried and childless, Mum has one sibling who lives in the USA, Dad an only child and he's NC with any of his family, I don't know any of them now. I'm an only child aside from a half-sibling who's 17 years senior, with two children. I am not close to her (young adult) children, love them both to bits but our lives don't intertwine. Once she and my parents are gone, if I disappeared, I doubt anyone would be much concerned.

Sorry if someone already has but may be a good thread to post this website.

You never know.

https://missingpersons.police.uk/en-gb/case-search/z660242

There was one victim of the Kings Cross tube station fire who has never been identified. So sad.

There's been a recent push in Ireland to take DNA samples from people who report missing relatives so that they can be used to match to unidentified bodies found later. Otherwise the numbers of missing people are large enough that finding a match can be difficult.

He was identified in 2004, he was a missing man called Alexander Fallon.

Ah. Must have missed that. Thanks.

I can envisage lots of reasons how and why this happens.

We had a neighbour that we became close to when I was a child. She had a big falling out with her brother. Her parents were long dead and she didn't have any children of her own. She had no friends and had never worked, so not even any ex-colleagues that she talked to. If it wasn't for their relationship with us, if she had gone missing, there would have been no-one that would have missed her, or a way to identify her.

I've also often wondered whether the police would be able to use something like Ancestry.com to upload a DNA profile and see if they can trace any relatives or identity that way.

I don’t think it’s necessarily that nobody misses them.

Last year a woman named Rita Roberts from Cardiff, was identified as being a Jane Doe in Belgium, her body was found in 1992 pre-dna testing. She had been missing for 31 years at the time she was identified.

absolutely heartbreaking a few I read and wish I hadn't.

I did read one case where they dug up a garden and found a young girls body. after lengthy investigations and a Crimewatch reconstruction some people pushed for their friend to ring them as they thought he used to know the girl from a bus station cafe. turns out he was more than that, he was actually implicit in her murder. seems she was a runaway from a childrens home so no one missed her she got involved with this guy and his mate who were making porn films. along with the girls friend they tried to get them to act a lesbian scene but when the original girl refused she was killed, the girl kept quiet and the guys buried the other girl in the garden. years later when the house of multiple occupancy was sold the garden was turned over and hence the body came to light, it was fascinating the old lady who lived in one flat used to be the rent collector she remembered the one guy, the carpet the girl was buried in one previous resident remembered it being in her flat to replace one damaged in a flood, the girl who was there that day broke her silence and the guy who rang gave the name of the other guy. came to light who the girl was but i dont think anyone really came forward to 'claim' her but i could be wrong she was just a teenage runaway as many jane and john does are or prostitutes of no fixed address

If I’m ever a Jane Doe, and they do an autopsy on me, I think they could probably figure out who I am from the metal pieces in my body: I’ve read somewhere that they have unique numbers on. But it takes resources and an active will to do the work.

A lot of old cases are starting to be solved in the States, by the DNA Doe project. Places like Othram Labs are using advanced DNA testing and genetic genealogy to figure out who Does are. There was a case known as ‘the boy in the box’ which was tragic (trigger warning if you look it up) but was solved relatively recently after over 50 years I think. He finally got his name back.

I don't disagree. It usually is parental involvement. Which just makes it sadder. Like, what on earth happened to you? What caused this terrible thing to happen?