How do people vanish?

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I've just been reading a story of a woman who went missing years ago and has now been found alive and well. This is out of interest, I do not want to vanish but I was pondering just how you'd do it now as so much is centrally computerised. These are my main questions : you leave for a new city
How do you get somewhere to live? How do you get a job/new ID to set up a new bank account?
I get that you might use cash for the first bit if you've managed to save

Well that's a bit of a stretch but OK!

Sounds entirely legit, actually. It's all stuff that has happened numerous times and even after the SC ruling, the police are saying they're in no rush to prevent men who say they're women strip searching women so authorities are still clinging on despite the illegality. So actually that's a good idea.

Now I think you'd need to find someone about your age who died recently but the death was not registered.
Yeah it was different times!
I watch a lot of true crime stuff and how people are caught is amazing. The amount of surveillance we are under without always realising is phenomenal!

Sometimes it's just a fancy day dream to disappear and start again. I think the reality would be that you are always on high alert and expecting to be caught.
That's no way to live.

While it's possible she chose to disappear, it's far more likely her husband was responsible for her "disappearance".

The case of John Darwin (‘Canoe Man’, faked his own death for the insurance money and stayed ‘dead’ for five years) always strikes me as ludicrously simple. He actually moved back into the marital home after his ‘death’ —a secret door behind a wardrobe led to a bedsit he and his wife owned in the building next door, where he would hide if his wife had visitors. Apparently he once met and was recognised by one of the other tenants, who said ‘Aren’t you meant to be dead?’but just said ‘Don’t say anything’. And incredibly, the tenant didn’t, because he ‘didn’t want to get involved’. ) He applied for a passport in a false name, to using his real home address!

Not exactly disappearing, but my GM faked documents to make up a child. We didn't find out about until we were cleaning out her house.

The made-up kid was supposedly the son of my aunt, (her daughter) and my ex-uncle, who my GM was determined to get back together. He had moved overseas. This was in the 1990s. He didn't know about my birth, and it gave Nan an opportunity to make up their child.

Nan somehow got a copy of my baptism certificate, (from a church), used that to get a copy of my birth certificate (in person, I don't know how she talked her way into that), then used a colour photocopier and created new certificates for the boy she made up. Along with my baby photos, she sent that to her ex-son-in-law.

He contacted my aunt, furious that she hadn't told him about their 'child', my aunt denied it as she knew nothing about it. She asked her mother if she had told her ex they had a baby and Nan denied it. So my aunt thought the ex had gone mental, and didn't tell him when she moved / changed her phone number.

But he and Nan were corresponding - she told him that her daughter had lied to him, the boy existed. I don't know if he believed that, but he wrote back when she sent updates. When I went to preschool and primary school she picked a boy I was friends with and photographed him at events. She also used my school reports, which she requested photocopies of from my mother, and faked them to send to him. Luckily he was a disinterested father and never came looking for his son.

We didn't find out about this until she died. She kept a file with all the fake docs, including the forgeries in progress. I was 9 at the time, and I don't know what was said by my aunt - if anything - to her ex afterwards. But my mum has told me the story because it was my ID that was used, and I remember the drama.

Surely he’d have been charged if the police had any suspicions. You don’t need a body to be charged with murder in this country.

Best friends brother, following the death of their Mum. He just disappeared. Worried that he had harmed himself the police did investigate (a bit)

About 4 years later he was arrested (minor) the police did phone her but told her he didn’t want to be ‘found’ or have anything to do with the family. She asked the police to hold onto him for as long as they could so she could travel to him - they couldn’t.

It’s so hard for her to not understand the why. She can’t find any record of him anywhere. It’s been around 15 years ago since the last contact from police - terribly sad.

Long lost family and other shows always seem to have an air of "mystery" around them .Like all people who vanish just seem to have lots of reasons why.In reality many women disappeared due to violent partners ,some sort of "trouble" (often pregnant,when unmarried) and so on .Nowadays it is easier to leave and start again ,but still difficult.in a culture which sees marriage as an ideal.

Oh my goodness. That’s dreadful on so many levels.

Yes! I didn't really realise how extreme it was until I became a mother. I mean I knew it was crazy, but it didn't really hit home until then. My mother was too embarrassed to tell my classmate's mother her son had been used in the scam, too.

@KimberleyClark
Don’t assume that! I know of a family where the children thought the mother had walked out on them. It wasn’t until the father died years later and one of the children was renovating the house when they discovered the mother’s body! The father died without facing the consequences of his actions and was not even suspected by police at the time of the ‘disappearance’.

I remember watching an episode of Long Lost Family I think it was, and it was this group of sisters looking for their half sister. They'd been raised all together, but then I think a parent had died or something, and half sister took off. They didn't know if she was alive or dead. But in the end she was found living only about 30 miles away. Same name and everything.
I think she'd gone in the 90s. I did think the sisters hadn't tried very hard. Especially when we moved into the age of internet.

My grandma was abandoned by her father as a toddler. He disappeared off to America and was never heard from again. This was in the mid 1920s, so it was easy. He just got on a ship and off he went.
Later research discovered that he'd got married (so was a bigamist, as he never divorced my grandmas mum) and had another daughter. This daughter never had any children, so the line died there.
But we always thought it was sad for my grandma to have never known this. When she was older she had many, many very close female friendships. She'd have loved to have had a sister.

This. You would have to live with someone who paid for all your needs in a building that you never left and you were never ill.

I think these days he would be. The spouse is the prime suspect unless/until they can be ruled out. They’d have evidence of her bank account not having been touched too.

Obviously you wouldn’t be able to hide from government agencies, as you’d need them to get a new ID. But you can change your name just by making your own deed poll and getting it signed by two people. You could absolutely fake the signatures, no one has ever contacted the signatories on mine.

Then you can use that to get a new passport and driving licence in the new name. Move somewhere new where no one knows you by your old name and civilians wouldn’t be able to find you.

Wouldn't you just go to the dark Web? I thought you could buy all kinds of documents there.

That sounds awful, I am so sorry. Although to be fair to the police, going missing isn’t a crime as an adult.

Back in the 50s a missing woman wouldn't necessarily have been investigated. Especially if her husband was an "upstanding member of the community" and said she'd run off with another man.

There's an Australian podcast called The Teacher's Pet . It's the best podcast I've ever listened to. It tells the story of a woman in Australia in the early 80s who "ran off with another man" according to her husband. And because he was a locally famous Aussie Rules player he was believed. It's shocking and well worth a listen.

You do hear about this occasionally there was a case I saw that a mum and son had left the father the father said she had gone to be with her "lover" but he had killed them and dumped them. He was eventually convicted he was an old man by that time but It was a relief for her remaining siblings.

Personally,I'm not bothered
He was (is?) a cocklodger who trapped me into pregnancy and fucked off before ds turned 6 months old
He's proud of the fact he's never paid a penny for either of his children (he once got his other child to buy him lunch out of this child's pocket money)
He'll be cocklodging from some other poor woman right now if his cash in hand job has fallen through
Is family are a bit dysfunctional (with clear favourites-he was the bottom of that pile) but I do feel sorry for them-they deserve to know where their son/brother is and that he's OK even if he doesn't want to see them

Still wouldn't be enough to charge him.

@KimberleyClark
Yeah definitely less likely to get away with this today but people did in the past. Those poor kids grew up thinking their mother had abandoned. Mind you, I don’t suppose knowing she’d been killed by their father would have been much better!