The Missing People Situations in this post are fictional, except for the comments about our Murdered Mailbox.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is a group of people who are not in the missing persons database. Some of them will turn up as unidentified bodies and others may be among our living unidentified people who have suffered amnesia, but most of them are never going to be counted. After some research for a novel I am working on, I can understand why and how this under reporting is happening. I hope you will, too. Are you ready?
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Chances are good that you have a family member, a great uncle, or a second cousin four times removed who has disappeared from family gatherings. Your family members might casually wonder what he might be up to these days. Someone will reply that no one has heard from him, or the last they heard he was working at a mill and had a new girlfriend. Then the conversation changes to general remarks about Aunt Cleo\u2019s weight loss.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The family down the street always has something going on. The middle boy has been suspended from school. He is never home at curfew and when he is at home, he is acting out. His family is a nervous wreck and nothing they say or do resolves the situation. A sense of relief settles over the family when the kid begins staying at an older kid\u2019s apartment. No one has seen him for a few weeks.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The homeless man who holds the sign at the local big box store is using a name he wasn\u2019t born with. He is socially awkward. Homeless people are notorious for being transient. He will be missed, but no report is going to be taken on his disappearance.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Why don\u2019t people report missing family members and friends? I don\u2019t know if you have talked to a police officer recently. When our mailbox became the victim of an Indepence Day celebration, the police seemed more interested in my husband\u2019s identity and history than the event itself. He provided his ID, phone number, employment information and answered a lot of questions that did not seem to relate to the Mailbox Murder.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A person who has been busted for a crime, a person on parole or probation who is not supposed to be hanging out with other people of questionable reputation is certainly not going to make a report that his buddy and fellow prankster has gone missing. A woman who has gone missing herself, perhaps hiding from an abusive life partner is not going to want to provide personal information about herself in order to report an abduction she witnessed. There are many reasons for failing to report a crime, a body, or a missing person.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Another topic of discussion that I am reserving for another post is that a simple investigative statement that someone saw or spoke to a missing person is enough to close a missing person case.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is no answer to the problem of not knowing the number of these people. I am not even sure what to call them. I can understand why it happens and I have to admit there may come a time in my life when I would at least hesitate to report a missing person for fear of getting them in trouble or who knows, providing my own information might not be in my best interest.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Till I post again, please don\u2019t hesitate to comment. I hope I am writing a best seller. Thanks for letting me share my research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A person who has been busted for a crime, a person on parole or probation who is not supposed to be hanging out with other people of questionable reputation is certainly not going to make a report that his buddy and fellow prankster has gone missing. A woman who has gone missing herself, perhaps hiding from an abusive life partner is not going to want to provide personal information about herself in order to report an abduction she witnessed. There are many reasons for failing to report a crime, a body, or a missing person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,216],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-homelessness","tag-missing-people"],"yoast_head":"\n