Margaret Fleming- missing for 17 years?!

[Beebeeeight]

A woman with learning disabilities was reported missing 6 weeks ago, apparently after the DWP knocked on her door.

She lived with 2 carers and was reported to be a recluse.

But now it is being reported that no one else has seen her since 1999 and the police are digging up the garden.

I know mn has rules about not speculating but

Luna No, she was 36 at the time she disappeared. They never use "current age" unless using an age progression picture or artist rendering.

IMO, the photos of her look around the right age.

Ah right. So if she was 36 in 1999, she'd be in her 50s now. I'm sure as is always the case the Police know more than they're making public and eventually the truth will come out.

Surely they meant born in 1980ish, 19 when last seen in the community in 99, should be 36 now?

They were appealing for college friends from c 1998.

If there's this much confusion over her age, Police Scotland need to look again at the way they're communicating. Because I'm now unsure whether they are appealing for information about someone who was a teenager in the late 1990s, in her 30s in the 1990s or who is in their 50s now.

I suppose though if you had been at College with her and remembered her, you'd know how old she was/is.

I think that when the story first surfaced back in mid-November it was being treated as a bog standard missing person, reports of Police appealing for sightings of a 36 year old missing. So that would mean she was 36 at that point in November, and a teenager when she was at college in Greenock. They are also appealing for any delivery drivers or other people who called at the house and saw her between 1999 and now.

36 this year, when her careers reported her missing. Police haven't yet confirmed whether she actually went missing earlier - her careers said they last saw her this October. So that's what's on the missing report, along with what they said she was wearing at the time.

I don't think there's any information about how old those two photos of her are. They're pretty poor quality too. It's sad and surprising that her carers don't have any better photos of her to use for the appeal.

None of the carers' friends who had visited them at home have ever seen Margaret.

www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/vanished-margaret-fleming-only-reported-9466357

What an odd case

There's some drone photos in the Daily Mail - the house they were living in looks completely trashed. Was that the police search?

I wonder if her room was still "lived in", whether she'd had new clothes or toiletries bought recently, or whether everything is 17 years old.

Very sad case, and I hope it's not what it looks like.

They've been digging up the garden which is probably why it looks trashed.

Speculation ...I know what I think.

Similar (but not the same) as the case of Susan and Christopher Edwards who murdered her parents and buried them in the garden. They then emptied the bank accounts and claimed their pensions for the next twenty years.

I hope this is not the case in for Margaret Fleming.

The Edwards were only detected when the DWP started making enquiries about her father who would have been over 100 yrs old by that point,

Dh passed through there the other day just before it was reported on the news saw police had cornered it off she was only reported missing after the DWP wanted an interview. It is very odd not one person noticed she wasn't around

Was it for the father I assumed it was for her

Sorry mis read this is other people you are talking about

Those bin bags aren't the police - they were already in the house, which was in a disgusting state.

It looks highly unlikely she went missing in October.

Its sadly looking less odd and more obvious by the day.

Oh, my bad, I thought she was 36 when she went missing. That'll teach me not to read more carefully.

To the person who asked whether the police search would be the reason the place was trashed, definitely not. Even if you have probable cause to search a property, you have to treat the place as that person's property. You figuratively turn it inside out, you don't literally do it!

The place looks completely neglected to me. The trash inside would've been there already.

The police don't dig up gardens for people they think are just missing. They dig up gardens when they think there is someone under them and they can only think that if the people they have interviewed have indicated there might be. The police know what happened. Obviously they can't say yet.

I know it is obvious isn't it that poor woman

just watched the drone footage. Seems quite a specific spot they're digging. Like they have been told where to dig.

If she was around she will
Have had a phone. The carers will have called her, texted her. DWP visits because of a new application for benefits. When was that made? Before or after the carers claim to have last heard of her?

The police don't dig up gardens for people they think are just missing. They dig up gardens when they think there is someone under them and they can only think that if the people they have interviewed have indicated there might be. The police know what happened. Obviously they can't say yet.

Exactly. They have to have probable cause in order to get a search warrant in the first place, but there's additional steps for digging up the yard etc. They know that they're going to find something under there, or they wouldn't be doing it.