• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

People Who Just Disappear (Go Missing)

Yet this group manage it, I suppose aided by YouTube income, donations and volunteer divers. Good on them, they've brought closure to families who would otherwise have been left in limbo, possibly for ever.
I think the Lake District is a bit different from the lakes in America.
 
Adventures With Purpose is a YouTube channel, basically involving the recovery of submerged vehicles in the US with the aim of solving missing persons cases. Pretty successful they are too. Shame that the Police don't have the resources or will to do the same.
I hadn't seen that and am enjoying it, thank you.

Underwater salvaging is extraordinarily dangerous. Mr Ballen has stories. :(
 
I think the Lake District is a bit different from the lakes in America.
You'd be surprised, though I bet you know about all this -

Amateur divers used to search Coniston Water every day for the wreckage of Donald Campbell's Bluebird speedboat which crashed in 1967.*
Neither the boat nor his body was located for 30-odd years.

In 1997 an amateur diving crew found the body of one Carol Park, missing since 1976. When the news first broke it seemed obvious that these were Campbell's remains.

The facts were even stranger: Mrs Park had been murdered by her husband and dumped in the lake from his boat, landing on a ledge where determined divers could find it rather than sinking to the depths of the lake.

*I saw this on the TV news at the time and read about it in the Daily Mirror next day. Fascinating to a kid of 8-and-a-half or so.
 
This could explain some older cases in the Northwestern United States:
http://www.portlandtunnels.com/historical-background-of-portlands-shady-past.html

"Oral tradition has kept the history of the Portland Underground alive. [. . .] Tours given by the Cascade Geographic Society reveal the stories of shanghaiers and crimps who, at one time, controlled West Portland, East Portland, Albina, Northwest Portland, Lair Hill Park, Corbett, St. Johns, Linnton, Brooklyn, Lents, Kenton, Milwaukie, Oregon City, Sucker (today's Lake Oswego), and other waterfront towns and nearby communities. During the heyday of shanghaiing, a minimum of 1500 people per year were shanghaied out of Portland."

:pop: That's a lot of people for, at the time, a sparsely populated area!
 
Bumping here for want of anywhere else.

Police are currently searching a popular fishing area for the remains of Claudia Lawrence who went missing in York some years ago.

It's hard to know what news would be best for her poor family.
 
Bumping here for want of anywhere else.

Police are currently searching a popular fishing area for the remains of Claudia Lawrence who went missing in York some years ago.

It's hard to know what news would be best for her poor family.
As I've said before, the common thinking around here is that the police very well know who is to blame but nobody will talk and lack of evidence means that they can't do anything. They periodically announce a 'new lead', chiefly, I think, to shake the tree.
 
I read ‘On Chapel Sands’ recently and found it very moving. I don’t think people realise the damage done when you are lied to about who you are. All done for the best of course, but a lot of grief could have been avoided i think.
 
It was far easier in the past to get away with murder, people disappeared with some frequency , I am investigating someone in my family tree who just disappeared from the record, and we have searched and searched for him, no death certificate, he was a serial bigamist, we can only surmise that he was bumped off by angry family (3 times he committed bigamy ) or more likely change identity and ran off to some far distant place never to be heard of again.

He had about six children and according to my wife no one would ever talk about him he disappeared just after WW11

I will keep looking for him
 
As I've said before, the common thinking around here is that the police very well know who is to blame but nobody will talk and lack of evidence means that they can't do anything. They periodically announce a 'new lead', chiefly, I think, to shake the tree.
Last I heard, a lake was being drained.
 
He had about six children and according to my wife no one would ever talk about him he disappeared just after WW11

I will keep looking for him
WW11 is in the far future, so relax.
 
It was far easier in the past to get away with murder, people disappeared with some frequency , I am investigating someone in my family tree who just disappeared from the record, and we have searched and searched for him, no death certificate, he was a serial bigamist, we can only surmise that he was bumped off by angry family (3 times he committed bigamy ) or more likely change identity and ran off to some far distant place never to be heard of again.

He had about six children and according to my wife no one would ever talk about him he disappeared just after WW11

I will keep looking for him
At one time (as you'll know) people could disappear to the Colonies and make a new life. Dunno when that stopped being an option but I talk to Americans whose ancestors of the middle 19th century did it.
 
Last I heard, a lake was being drained.
The police have concluded their search.

"Claudia Lawrence's mother has "no hope" new leads from the public will help to find her daughter after a search failed to find major clues.

Hopes of a breakthrough in the missing 35-year-old's case were dashed when the two-week evidence hunt ended on Sunday.

Police said news of the operation at Sand Hutton gravel pits, near York, had prompted people to provide fresh tips."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-58460158
 
At one time (as you'll know) people could disappear to the Colonies and make a new life. Dunno when that stopped being an option but I talk to Americans whose ancestors of the middle 19th century did it.

I think it was mostly due to legislation being brought in to restrict immigration. Particularly in the US.
 
The police have concluded their search.

"Claudia Lawrence's mother has "no hope" new leads from the public will help to find her daughter after a search failed to find major clues.

Hopes of a breakthrough in the missing 35-year-old's case were dashed when the two-week evidence hunt ended on Sunday.

Police said news of the operation at Sand Hutton gravel pits, near York, had prompted people to provide fresh tips."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-58460158
Yep, local papers are full of it. Still shaking that tree...
 
It was far easier in the past to get away with murder, people disappeared with some frequency , I am investigating someone in my family tree who just disappeared from the record, and we have searched and searched for him, no death certificate, he was a serial bigamist, we can only surmise that he was bumped off by angry family (3 times he committed bigamy ) or more likely change identity and ran off to some far distant place never to be heard of again.

He had about six children and according to my wife no one would ever talk about him he disappeared just after WW11

I will keep looking for him
It's still very easy to get away with murder if you can make sure the body is either disappeared or is of someone regarded as insignificant. Hence the huge amount of unsolved murders of prostitutes both male and female.
 
It's still very easy to get away with murder if you can make sure the body is either disappeared or is of someone regarded as insignificant. Hence the huge amount of unsolved murders of prostitutes both male and female.
There can be a conviction without a body. It's rare though.

Murders of people seen as relatively 'insignificant' might not be easily solved if their lives are erratic and they're in a low-status, secretive business like sex work which gives them contact with strangers.
Victims might not even be missed for a while, giving the killer time to cover their tracks.

The idea of getting away with a murder because the killer is not acquainted with the victim was explored in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.
Might have to watch that again now.
 
There can be a conviction without a body. It's rare though.

Murders of people seen as relatively 'insignificant' might not be easily solved if their lives are erratic and they're in a low-status, secretive business like sex work which gives them contact with strangers.
Victims might not even be missed for a while, giving the killer time to cover their tracks.

The idea of getting away with a murder because the killer is not acquainted with the victim was explored in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.
Might have to watch that again now.
LOVE Strangers on a Train. It's such a good concept.
 
There can be a conviction without a body. It's rare though.

Murders of people seen as relatively 'insignificant' might not be easily solved if their lives are erratic and they're in a low-status, secretive business like sex work which gives them contact with strangers.
Victims might not even be missed for a while, giving the killer time to cover their tracks.

The idea of getting away with a murder because the killer is not acquainted with the victim was explored in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.
Might have to watch that again now.
Hence the many unidentified bodies found throughout the UK (National Missing Persons )
 
There can be a conviction without a body. It's rare though.

Murders of people seen as relatively 'insignificant' might not be easily solved if their lives are erratic and they're in a low-status, secretive business like sex work which gives them contact with strangers.
Victims might not even be missed for a while, giving the killer time to cover their tracks.

The idea of getting away with a murder because the killer is not acquainted with the victim was explored in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.
Might have to watch that again now.
A few months ago I was doing some research and came across an unsolved murder from the 1960s in the village where I now live. The body of a "chinaman" was dumped in a stream by the village green. He was never identified and the murderer was never caught... I've asked a few oldtimers, and no-one I've asked can even remember the murder, which must have been a bit of an event for the village at the time.
 
A few months ago I was doing some research and came across an unsolved murder from the 1960s in the village where I now live. The body of a "chinaman" was dumped in a stream by the village green. He was never identified and the murderer was never caught... I've asked a few oldtimers, and no-one I've asked can even remember the murder, which must have been a bit of an event for the village at the time.
You know what you have to do now. :omr:

I once spent a happy afternoon searching the local newspaper's microfilm archives and came across the odd weirdness that I'd never heard of before.

(No unsolved murders although there was certainly something going on at one point, not mentioned as far as I could see in the newspaper, when women were being found dead in their homes having apparently fallen down the stairs.

We lived in a typical working-class/everybody knows everyone else area, but people locked their front doors and in my family we kids weren't allowed to open it ourselves and had to fetch an adult. I now believe that was in case the murderer walked in.)
 
This could be up there with Eliza Lam,
The mystery of Sneha Anne Philip.

"Twenty years have passed since Sneha Anne Philip was last seen alive in New York City.

Within that time, she’s been included, removed and readded to the official 9/11 victims list, accounts of her actions have been given and retracted, and even her official date of death has been changed.

The descriptions of her life and character given by police and her family are so markedly different, they could be about two entirely separate people."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...philip-mystery-disappeared-9-11-b1917381.html
 
Can't find it right now but I saw an interview re. Claudia where someone was saying they couldn't understand why they were searching at Sand Hutton as the police had had these tip offs back when Claudia disappeared re. the weird man with the spade seen by locals in the woods... and they hadn't acted on it at the time. A new anonymous tip off, am assuming - and yet apparently this wasn't new info..?

Am guessing the pond was drained in hopes of finding her backpack which has never been found, if they genuinely think she was buried in the woods it's not likely they thought they'd find a body in that pond?

Her house was at the end of York that is a pretty short drive to Sand Hutton - which is just off the A64, so a major route out of York. (We drive past where she lived a couple times most weeks on our way to the A64).

Why did they not act on the tip offs given originally but are acting on them now?

Something about this recent search makes me think I've guessed which known suspect they're honing in on.

https://medium.com/@Krystyna.Sierbi...-same-elton-john-track-your-song-6cfce6f0834d

I was researching at the Borthwick Institute, on the York campus, across the way from where Claudia worked, the morning she disappeared. I'd had an early dental appointment and had got straight on a bus afterwards to the university. Normally, I just got a bus into town and walked the last bit out to the uni - but that day, I had this horrible feeling and so got the bus, rather than walk.

ETA: Found it. It was Claudia's mum, Joan, who mentioned talk of the weird man in the woods, around the time Claudia disappeared:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mum-missing-claudia-lawrence-makes-24830747
 
Last edited:
As happens once in a while, I can be reading a thread that catches my eye (this one for instance), then moments later, exploring elsewhere, I'll come across a story relevant to the topic.

Today I came across this story (of which I've heard of before, but never really delved into - the article is over a year old):

Richey Edwards: The mysterious disappearance of the Manic Street Preachers star, 25 years on​

The guitarist vanished on 1 February 1995 and is widely presumed to have taken his own life, but a body was never found and there is no definitive proof that he died by suicide. A quarter of a century later, Ed Power reflects on the rock star whose legacy is one of tragedy and conspiracy.

The scars came back when he drank too much. Or so Richey Edwards explained to an interviewer in Toronto in April 1992. “It’s healing very well,” elaborated the Manic Street Preachers’ guitarist and lyricist. A fragile grin played across his face.

He proffered the arm into which he had notoriously carved “4 Real” with a razor blade the previous May. The faintest traces of the words were visible as a glowering welt. “It always comes out nice and red if he’s had a bottle of vodka,” nodded his bandmate Nicky Wire. “Brings it out in the blood.”


Edwards continued to smile sadly as Wire spoke. That expression of delicate amusement tipping into something bleaker was already familiar to the Welsh quartet’s fanbase, in particular the segment drawn to Richey’s gothic beauty and haunting lyrics. He was the heart and bruised soul of the group.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-...nce-missing-25-year-anniversary-a9308046.html
 
Back
Top