Where do they go - and why?
Hollywood would have you believe that missing people are snatched by psychos who bury their prey alive like Sandra Bullock in 1993's "The Vanishing" or eat them with fava beans and a nice Chianti like Hannibal Lecter's victims in 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs."
Hollywood would have you believe that missing people are snatched by psychos who bury their prey alive like Sandra Bullock in 1993's "The Vanishing" or eat them with fava beans and a nice Chianti like Hannibal Lecter's victims in 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs."
But most people reported missing have far different fates: The majority are found, and may in fact never have been technically missing.
"Every time a kid comes home late from school or misses curfew and mom calls the police, that goes in the (missing-persons) numbers," said Officer Robert Rajchel, who hunts the city's long-term missing juveniles.
Philadelphia police fielded nearly 6,500 reports of missing people in 2006, the most recent year for which police statistics are available.
An overwhelming majority were later accounted for. Rajchel and Det. Valarie Miller-Robinson, who handle most of the city's long-term missing cases, figure there are about 100 people who have been missing at least a month whose cases they are actively investigating.
Most missing-person reports involve juveniles - runaways fleeing problems or those seeking independence, Rajchel said.
Although they may have vanished willingly, they could still be at risk, said Lt. Stephen Biello of the Special Victims Unit.
"These kids run away and think: 'This is great; I'm on my own.' But they don't realize they have to feed themselves, they have to clothe themselves. How do you do that at the age of 13?" Biello said. "These kids are at great risk for homelessness, addiction, prostitution, exploitation."
Adults who willingly disappear may also face peril, Miller-Robinson said.
"We have elderly people with Alzheimer's or dementia who wander off. You might have a woman fleeing an abusive man," she said. "People with drug problems may disappear to go do drugs - or they may just want to privately check themselves into rehab and because of [medical-confidentiality laws], we can't find them."
In many cases, authorities suspect but can't prove foul play.
As cases get older, clues become more scarce. Scientific advances that help crack newer crimes, like DNA testing, typically don't help solve older cases, in which such evidence hasn't historically been collected.
Still, Rajchel and Miller-Robinson don't close their cases until they know the person's fate. They currently have 20 cases pre-dating 1990.
"We [police] all have families, so we realize how important this is to loved ones to find out what happened to these people," said Officer Robert Rajchel, a 23-year police veteran who handles juvenile long-term missing cases. "And after you investigate a while, you get to a point where you want to know too." *
