People Search: Missing Persons

There are countless books available that address the subject of finding missing people. You've read most of them and have found that they are either long on theory and short on substance, or they are cleverly disguised sales pitches geared towards selling you one of the many Internet Detective software products. This guide is different.

This free guide is presented in a no-nonsense way that shows you exactly what steps to take to locate nearly anyone who has ever passed through your life.

There are three categories of missing people. They are:

1). People who are happily going on with their lives. They're not really missing. There are probably hundreds of people who know where they are. You're just not one of them. This category includes former schoolmates, friends, former lovers and other acquaintances.

2). People who aren't really missing, they're just making their best efforts to avoid you. Now, while this category could include anyone who is also in category #1, it also includes debtors, deadbeat dads and moms and former spouses who are ducking alimony or other financial or family responsibilities.

3). All others.

This category includes people who have been abducted or run away. People who are involved in criminal activity and are making an effort to disguise their identity and whereabouts and anyone else who doesn't want to be found for various reasons,

This guide deals with the people in the first two categories.

Finding Missing People

People have gone missing pretty much since the first search party left looking for a fellow caveman who went hunting and never returned.

Today there are so many people looking for other people that an entire missing people industry was born.

The name of this industry is: Skip Tracing. "Skip" as in people who have "skipped out" and "tracing" as in "tracing their past to determine their whereabouts". People who practice this profession are called Skip Tracers.

This book is intended to take you thorough the steps to trace, or find, a person who is missing from your life. It is not intended to make you a professional skip tracer even though you will learn many of the same skills as they do.

Many states classify professional skip tracers as Private Investigators, so you may need an appropriate PI license if you plan to put your skip tracing skills to work for the general public. There is no licensing requirement if you are doing it for yourself.

As mentioned in the Introduction, this book assumes that you are not looking for a person who is missing as the result of abduction or other criminal activity, or has gone through great pains to disguise their identity or whereabouts.

There are many different methods which can be employed to find missing people. We will only show you how to perform the steps which are legal to perform. Some skip tracers bend or even break the law in their efforts to find their target person. We won't be doing that here.

Is finding a missing person an art, a science, or both? Probably both is the correct answer. The Art is following your feelings when you get them, trying to imagine what the missing person is thinking, feeling, or even where they are right now. The science is following the methodology by performing the right steps in the right order. When you achieve a balance between Art and Science you usually end up finding your target person.

Categories of missing people

All of the missing people that we will be focusing on in this book have one thing in common:—

They know where they are. They're not missing at all. You just don't know where they are.

The reason that they aren't really missing is because it's almost a sure bet that lots of people know exactly where your target person is. All you have to do is find someone who will tell you.

Why People Go Missing

Besides people who have simply moved on with their lives without telling you about it, there are a number of reasons why someone may be "missing".

• They owe a lot of money
• They are skipping out on family obligations.
• They are committing life insurance fraud.
• They are "burned out" and want a new life.
• They are hiding from criminal prosecution.
• They've done something that they are ashamed of.
• They are in jail or prison.
• They are deceased.
• They have been abducted.

This book will focus on finding people who fit into the most common categories:—

• Deadbeat Dads or Moms
• Debtors
• Family members
• Friends
• Other loved ones

Skip Tracing Basics

Every bit of information that you can discover about a missing person puts you one step closer to finding them. Organization is the key word to keep in mind when you are collecting clues. The best way to keep track of everything and to make sure that you are asking the right questions is to create a basic profile of the person that you are seeking.

The Profile Form

The basic profile is a form that you fill out which details everything that you know about the person you are looking. In the beginning there will be a lot of blank areas on the profile which will represent things that you need to know but have not yet found out. When the form is completely filled out then it is almost a 100% sure bet that you have located your target.

When you are first filling out the profile it helps to think about it as if you were completing a crossword puzzle. The easiest way to complete a crossword puzzle is to go through it once and fill in the blanks for every word that you know. Then you go back and use those answers to help you fill out the more difficult blanks. This theory works very well when you are skip tracing.

Gathering Known Data

You'll be surprised how much information you really know about someone when you start assembling known data. This information can sometimes lead you directly to the person that you are seeking. Other times it will provide a bridge to another piece of data that can point you to your target. Don't ever assume that a piece of information isn't important. If its on the Basic Profile form then its there for a reason. Do everything that you can to fill it in. You'll be glad that you did later.

Remember that you are doing a crossword puzzle and that you are trying to turn clues into an address. Make sure that you never miss the opportunity to fill in a blank. For example, if you have found someone who used to know where your subject lived, but has lost track of that person themselves then ask them if they can help fill in any open blanks on your profile form. You could hit upon someone who is a goldmine of information.

Known data consists of hard facts such as:—

• First, Middle and Last Name
• Date of Birth
• Social Security Number
• High School attended
• College attended
• Known previous addresses
• Military Service
• Employment History
• Names of relatives
• Addresses of relatives
• Known friends and associates

Gathering Assumed Data

Known data consists of hard facts. Assumed data is more subtle. It includes making notes about things that your subject may have said to you or someone else about where they would move to if they ever had a chance, or what college they wanted to go to.

While you have no way of knowing if this assumed data will ever prove to be valuable, its good to have this information available in case you hit dead ends and have to expand your search.

Creating the Action Plan

Once you have assembled as much known and assumed data that you can, its time to get started on your quest to find the missing person.

The type of action plan that you make is going to depend upon the category of person that you are looking for. Some will be easier to find then others. Old classmates and friends, for example, are among the easiest to locate.

People who are purposely hiding, like deadbeat parents and debtors, on the other hand, can be downright difficult to find because they employ all sorts of "tricks" to remain hidden like having their telephone service listed in someone else's name, or using a false name and Social Security number.

Your action plan should move from the easiest search to the most difficult. Along the way you want to fill in as many empty spots on your profile form as possible.

Regardless of the category of person you are trying to find, always follow each step in your action plan. You never know which one will pay off.

Don't be afraid to jump around when following your plan. If your investigation takes you down a certain path then continue to follow that path until it ends.

Quick Search Techniques

Since the focus of this book is to enable you to find the average missing person in 30 minutes or less, I am not going to waste your time giving you a lot of background on each search tool. We're going to jump right into taking you through the steps of actually finding someone.

This chapter deals with quick search techniques. These are the techniques that will enable you to find the average missing person in 30 minutes or less. If none of these techniques work then you can move on to the next chapter which details alternate techniques.

In my personal experience I have been able to find 9 out of 10 people that I have been looking for using one or more of the techniques in this chapter. In the following scenario I am going to use the name of a fictitious person. When you are following along simply replace my examples name with the name of the person who you are really looking for. The chances are that by the time you reach the last word in this book you will have found your missing person.

I am going to present each step in the order that you should perform them. Obviously, if you do not have a piece of information that is needed to perform that step then you will have to skip to the next or take a detour to some other method to get that missing piece of information. Right now I am teaching you the 100% "textbook" way to proceed. As you get good at this you will develop a sense of knowing exactly which step should be number one for your particular search.

Ready? Let's get started.

Step 1 - Profile Sheet

Print out a copy of the Profile Sheet in Appendix "A" and complete all of the information that you can. I have completed all of the information that I know for my fictitious person.

Missing Person Profile Sheet

• Full Birth Name:
• Date of Birth:
• Social Security Number:
• High School:
• Year Graduated:
• Address during High School:
• College: U.C. Santa Barbara
• Year Graduated: 1989
• Address during college:
• Military Service:
• Date Inducted:
• Date Discharged:
• Rank at Discharge:
• Last known good address:
• Year address was valid:
• Last Employer:
• Last Profession:
• Who else knows them:
• Are they married now:
• What is their married name:
• Are they divorced now:
• What was their spouse's name:

As you work through this list you will no doubt update many of the individual items multiple times. For example, as you get closer to finding the person you may have several addresses under item #14 and you might be able to fill in several names under item #18.

Now that we have the basic profile completed, its time to build the action plan to determine what we are going to do and the order that we are going to do it in.

Step 2 - Are they alive?

No one lives forever and you can save yourself a lot of time by checking to make sure that your subject is still alive and living somewhere waiting to be found. Let's check the Social Security Death Records database to be sure.

Notice that there are two forms on this page. The top form appears directly under the heading "Discover interesting facts about your family". You don't want that form. Scroll down to the form right under the heading that says: "Social Security Death Index (SSDI)". Enter as much of the information into that form as you can and click the Submit button. Do not click the Advanced Search button.

The search will return anyone who is deceased that has the same name as the person you are looking for. In most cases it will also return their Date of Birth (DOB), City and State of last residence, their Social Security Number (SSN) and the State that the SSN was issued in.

This should be enough information for you to determine if your subject is deceased.

Step 3 - Try the Schools

Your next step depends upon whether or not you have High School or College details. If you do then your work may be just about over.

Alumni or Reunion directories are very popular. There is an excellent chance that your subject is either listed in one of these directories or someone who knows them is listed.

The major reunion directories cover thousands of colleges and high schools across the United States. There is usually a free and a paid membership option. The free option often lets you search for a members name after you join. Some sites even let you search before you join.

Some sites will allow free members to post messages in public chat or message board areas. This is a great way to "shout out" and see if anyone knows where your missing person is.

If your subject is listed then you're all set. If not, then try reaching out to other members from the same year. Its rare that you won't find someone who knows something that can help you.

Here are the top reunion sites:

• SchoolNews
• Alumni-Find
• Classmates
• Reunions.com

You can find a complete listing on alumni and reunion sites here.

Step 4 - Hit the Phone Listings

There are literally hundreds of telephone directories available on-line. Some directory sites even provide access to a limited number of international telephone directories.

Searching an on-line telephone directory is very simple. You enter the persons Last Name, First Name and the City and State that you want to search.

If you don't know all of that information, some sites will let you search my First and Last Name only and some will let you search simply by last name.

Obviously the more information you enter the shorter your list will be. The great thing about these directories is that you can get a snapshot of all people with your subjects name across the entire country.

Of course, this is only going to help you if the person has a phone and that phone is listed in their name. While you may not come up with your subject directly, the chances are good that you can shake loose a relative or two.

Here are the top white pages search sites and the minimum information that is required in order to perform a search at that site:

• SwitchBoard.com
• InfoSpace
• SMARTPages
• SuperPages
• YahooPeople

If you found your subject then you're all done. If you found some people that you think might either be your subject or someone who might know your subject, then simply give them a call and see what you can find out.

Step 5 - Expanding the Search

If you've come this far and you haven't found your missing person yet, don't worry. I'm about to introduce you to some more powerful searching tools. Some of these tools charge a fee to use but I'm going to show you how to get all the leads you can handle out of them for free!

Don't worry; we won't be doing anything illegal. We're just going to use the information that they are willing to provide people at no cost and then use other free methods to develop that information further.

There are a number of fee-based web sites that will give you access to public record information. This public information varies from liens and lawsuit filings to drivers license information, birth, death, marriage and divorce records.

The type of information that is available depends upon the state that you are searching in. Different states have varying laws about what public information can be disclosed. There are also federal laws which take precedence over individual states.

There is no question that the fee-based sites are the quickest way to find most people. The only issue is whether or not you want to spend the money to access the files.

Let's take a look at some of the major fee-based systems and what you can get from them.

FreePublicRecords.com

The "Free" in their title refers to the fact that this web site will let you search public records without paying a surcharge above their very modest annual membership fee of year. Not really my definition of free.
The good news is that you can get some very good leads from this service without paying any fee at all. Here's how it works.

First, go to their "People Finder" link
Type in your subject's First and Last name.
Leave the State blank if you don't know it for sure.
Click the "Submit Search Request" button.

If all you see is a page of links offering to sell you information then your search failed.

However, if the search found matches then you will see a list of every person in the database who matched the name you entered including their Last name, First name, City State and Age. That's more than enough information to take over to one of the free White Pages sites and possibly wrap up your search in a few minutes and it didn't cost you a dime!

There's a slight bug in the program at this site. It places the person's middle initial right next to the last letter in their first name. So, when you are looking at the listing and you see "LISAJ", for example, there's a good chance that its really "LISA J".

PeopleFinder.com

This is another site which checks public records. Don't confuse it with the PeopleFinder link at the first site that I gave you. It's an entirely different site. They seem to have more records than FreePublicRecords.com does but they only show you the Age and State for free. Still, that's a start and you can go back to the telephone directories and see what you can find.

IntelUS.com

Yet another public records site with a free search option. This one will only reveal the persons Age, State and the last date that the record was updated. That's all pretty valuable information, especially the date last updated. That will tell you how fresh the lead is.

One interesting feature of this site is that it will also show you the names of other people residing in the same household.

The end of the Quick Search Options

If you've reached this point and you have not found your subject yet, its time to play some long shots. The next chapter will discuss your remaining options before you have to resort to hiring someone to do the work for you.

When Quick Searching Fails

There's still some hope of finding your missing person even though you have tried all of the most obvious methods.

In this chapter we're going to try some alternate search methods that may not lead you directly to the person you are seeking, but one of these methods may uncover enough information for you to add to your Profile sheet and go back to the Quick Search section armed with more information.

Using Internet Search Engines

It is mind boggling how much information has been categorized and indexed by search engines. Each of the major search engines take a different approach to the technology but they all manage to do the job pretty well.

The key to success when using a search engine is to understand the advanced search capabilities of each one.

Advanced searching enables you to cut through the clutter and return pages that are more relevant to what you are looking for.

People who are actually trying to hide usually won't be easily found using standard Internet search engines. You do have a good chance of locating missing friends and associates if they have some sort of web presence, email address, or if they have been included in a newspaper article, are associated with a special club or place of employment, or if they have their own web site or web-based business. The information you find from your search can help in tracking down that person you are looking for even if it does not lead to them directly.

Let's look at each of the major search engines and directories that are likely candidates for helping you find your favorite missing person.

Google

Google is definitely the 800 pound gorilla in the search engine marketplace. As of January 1, 2005 they claim to have indexed over 8 billion pages of Internet content. It's hard to imagine not finding someone when you have over 8 billion places to look but, it happens nonetheless.

The best way to search Google is incrementally because it does have so much content. Use Google's advanced search page to help you.

The most important fields on the advanced search form are these at the top of the page. The advanced features allow you to tailor your search and eliminate a lot of irrelevant pages that usually show up whenever a search is performed.

Here is what Google's Advanced Search section looks like:

with all of the words

with the exact phrase

with at least one of the words

without the words

This is where you get to easily tune your search for best results. If the results that you want don't come up in the first search then you gradually widen your search by adjusting the advanced search settings for each subsequent search.

"With exact phrase" is the most restrictive search string. When you select this option you are telling Google to return only pages which exactly match the text that you entered.

This means that if you entered "Ima Sample" as the name of the person that you were looking for, and there were 300 pages of content about her but they were listed under her hyphenated married name of "Ima Good-Sample", Google would not find any of the pages and you would have missed a perfect opportunity to nab Ms. Sample's address.

That's why it's important to play with the advanced search settings as you retry your search requests.

In addition to the advanced search options, Google has some very good shortcut search capabilities as well. Rather then list them all, you can read about them here.

Google Images

Google maintains a search directory of millions of web site images. Although this is a long shot, there is a chance that your subject has had their picture posted on a web site. If that's the case then a quick trip to images.google.com could pay off.

Start by entering the person's First and Last name in quotes like this "Ima Sample". If you get a hit then click on each picture that comes up and visit the associated web site to see if this is your subject.

TIP: Hold the SHIFT key down before you click. This will open the target web site in a new browser window. When you are through with that site you simply close that window and you will be back on the Google page.

This way you don't have to hit your BACK button when you go deep into another site. This trick works with any URL that you click, not just on Google.

If you do not get a hit then try entering the Last name only in quotes. As a final resort enter the Last name without quotes.

Yahoo

Yahoo also has advanced search capabilities which will let you narrow down search results. The advanced options work almost exactly like Google's. You simply fill in the blanks or select from drop-down lists until your search criteria is defined.

Also like Google you have the opportunity to tighten the parameters so much that you might miss good leads which would have turned up if you had allowed a little wider latitude.

E-Mail Directories

Since there are billions of e-mail addresses in use, there is a good chance that your missing person has one. E-Mail Address Directories are always worth checking but don't be surprised if you come up empty.

E-Mail directories get their information from shared public subscription lists. Some sites also employ software "robots" to find email addresses that are listed on web sites.

These lists go out of date all the time and there is no guarantee that the email address you do find is going to still be active.

Also, since there is a good chance that there are hundreds of people who have the same name as your target person, there is no guarantee that you've found the right email address for the person that you are seeking.

Here is a list of the top E-Mail Directories and the minimum information that is required in order to perform a search at that site:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Town or City
• State
• Addresses.com

• PeopleSearch
• SwitchBoard.com
• My.Email.Address.Is
• YahooPeople
• MESA
• Other Public Record Searches
• State Public Records

Many states make a great deal of their public information available on the web. Florida is a good example. They allow online searching in all of these categories:—

• Corporations, UCC's, and Trademarks
• Corporations Lookup
• Fictitious Business Names
• Inmate Population Search
• Missing Children Database
• Partnerships - General & Ltd
• Professional Licenses
• Sex Offenders
• UCC Filings and Liens

If we suspected that Ms. Ima Sample lived in Florida, and she wasn't purposely in hiding, there is a good chance that one of these databases would uncover her address. Hopefully it wouldn't be the Sex Offenders database.

This website is a great resource for finding public records databases on a state-by-state basis. Just click on the U.S. map for the state that you are interested in.

Not all states have online searching capabilities. Those that do will generally have a link to them from the state's official home page.

Federal Public Records

The U.S. Government maintains a number of public record databases as well. Many of them are free to access. A good place to start is FedWorld.gov.

U.S. Active Duty Military Locator

Your target could be serving on active duty with one of the branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. Here is a link to all of the military personnel locators.

Federal Prisoner Locator

It's possible that your missing person can't be found because they are incarcerated in a U.S. Federal Prison. Use this site to find out.

State Prison Locator

If they aren't in Federal Prison there's a chance that one of the states has them as a guest. use this site to find out.

Criminal Records

It is possible that your missing person has a criminal record and, if so, you may be able to trace them through those records.

Not all states provide open access to their criminal record archives. Use this site as a starting point.

Genealogy Records

A number of people and organizations have put a great deal of effort into faithfully recreating the family trees of millions upon millions of our ancestors. Here are a few of the best free sites that are worth checking.

Roots Web

RootsWeb gives you free access to these records and plenty of the listed names are alive and doing just fine. One of them might be your subject. Often times you will get the date of birth and the last known address.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Also known as the Mormon Church or simply LDS, this religious group has made a lifelong commitment to documenting the genealogy of every living being on the planet. There's a chance that your missing person, or a member of his or her family, can be found here.

End of the Road

If you have come this far and you still have not found your missing person then you may want o consider hiring a Private Investigator or, if the person owes you money, a debt collection agency.

Your other option would be to go back to the public records sites listed in the Quick Search section and pay their membership fee. While there is no guarantee, there is a chance that as a paid member you may be able to uncover information that you could not find as a free member.