Tracing

An Investigators Guide To Finding Wanted and Missing Persons

By David C Palmer FIPI   F.Inst.L.Ex

Investigations into tracing missing persons are taking place constantly - at professional and amateur levels, within and outside the legal sphere. They are done for a number of reasons, but the methodology is principally the same.

This book is intended to aid those whose work, or interest, lies in finding people. It is a guide to the methods and the legalities surrounding what can be very interesting work, the resolution of a puzzle which is not overly affected in its solving by evidential restrictions. It is also intended to address investigations into those persons who are lost either through time, or through a decision to go missing as a result of excessive pressures, legal, sociological and psychological.

It is not intended to find kidnapped people, or genuine 'missing' persons who have gone missing as a result of mental illness. In it's pages, investigators will be provided with advice on how to solve the riddle of a missing or wanted person enquiry: the definitions which apply, and which may direct their enquiries; the techniques of asking questions and developing information from documentary evidence; details of resources that they need to utilise in order to solve their riddles; and much more besides. Such guidance is rare. The majority of books on this subject are published in the United States, with a bias towards their methods and availability of information - methods and information that simply aren't available to British investigators.