Lost and Found
How technology, tips, and plain old luck help police solve most missing-person cases
Cracking a missing-person case can be a life-changing event. In 1985, Bill Thomas, a social worker with the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, was assigned the case of 9-year-old Inez Jean McCarney. The girl's foster mother told Thomas that Inez had described vivid dreams of her mother in Florida. Most important, the little girl recalled a night when a strange woman woke her up and took her away. After three months of interviewing Inez, Thomas took a long shot and contacted the NCMEC. He was stunned. The agency had an Inez Jean Sanders in its files. She had been reported missing by her mother. A woman her mother had met at a truck stop in Arizona, it turned out, had abducted the child and then abandoned her. When the FBI brought Thomas a picture of Inez, it was a match. Two days later, the girl was reunited with her mother, still living in Florida. Last week, choking back tears, Thomas recalled the moment. Getting Inez back to her mom, he said, "was the highlight of my social work career." It also taught him that "no matter what a kid is telling you, it means something. You have to pay attention to it."
Abductions by strangers understandably generate the most fear and attention, but such kidnappings are only the fourth-largest category of missing children reported to NCMEC. According to the Center's Ben Ermini, runaways are first, followed by family abductions, those lost or otherwise missing, and finally, nonfamily abductions. In the past decade, the center has resolved 925 nonfamily cases. In those cases, 191 children--about 21 percent--were found murdered. Though the speculation that swirls around cases like Chandra Levy's surely may make it seem otherwise, most cases of missing children and adults aren't the result of foul play. When a crime has been committed, however, the cops' record of success at rescuing the person isn't great. "Police response varies throughout the nation," says Keppel. "It varies towards the bad."
That's especially true in smaller police departments that operate with limited resources. And because the cases are so infrequent, there is a general lack of experience and readiness. But David Klinger, a University of Missouri criminologist, says police are unfairly criticized. "It's the tail wagging the dog," says Klinger. He argues that police can't be faulted for waiting a period of time to see if a person is indeed missing. After all, it's not a crime for an adult to disappear. Even parents wait an average of two hours before reporting that a child is gone.
This go-slow approach, while understandable, can cost plenty. "In the most serious cases," says the NCMEC's Allen, "time is the enemy." Nearly 25 percent of homicides begin with a missing-person complaint, and nearly three quarters of child-abduction victims who are murdered are killed within three hours of being grabbed, says Keppel. A 1990 U.S. law has barred waiting periods by police departments (some departments even had 24-to-72-hour mandatory waits in the past) for missing-child cases, requiring an immediate police report and NCIC entry in every missing-child case. And generally if it's a young child, under age 10, police react quickly.
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