Missing sister - help me find her car?

[skwdenyer]

Greendubber said:

Meh, it's only the internet, missing family members trump all that nonsense.


Sounds like they're doing all they can, if you need a second opinion or any clarification on anything just ask and I'll see if I can help without stepping on their toes etc.

Thank you.

[skwdenyer]

deadtom said:

Has there been any progress?

I don't live anywhere nearby so I can't be of any real use, I am just one of what must be many on here watching from the sidelines quietly hoping for good news for you and your family.

Thank you. Sadly not.

New press releases went out on Friday, and we've now got some national coverage (especially in syndicated local media, which is good). Also on the BBC website now:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-6620...
https://www.itv.com/news/border/2023-07-14/appeal-...
etc.

We've had some luck identifying her missing bag, in the hope somebody has seen it. For rucksack aficionados, we think it is a Deuter Step Out 12 in Mint/Petrol colourway. Maybe somebody found it and picked it up?

Everything is a long-shot at this point. We just need one more piece of date, one more sighting, to establish a direction of travel, a timeline, etc.

[skwdenyer]

turbobloke said:

Killer2005 said:

I was just stopping by to see if there has been any progress but sadly not. All the best OP

I'll echo that.

Thank you all. Still no further forward. Active searching is continuing. We generated a good media push to mark the 28th day since she vanished.

My BIL went back up there this weekend, but weather is very poor, and apparently the bracken is now a full foot taller than it was a month ago - so any terrain searching is now even harder than it was (and of course we're not expecting to find her alive in the undergrowth, obviously).

The only glimmer of useful data came from a combination of a deeper dive into cell tower data and some new (to Police Scotland) equipment. Apparently her phone managed a handshake against a cell tower it shouldn't have been able to see. So the tech team have been out this week trying to figure out where on the ground that might have been possible.

Because we still just need one more piece of data to establish some sort of vector for the relevant period, from which hopefully we can build a platform for obtaining closure.

[skwdenyer]

gotoPzero said:

That to me suggests the location at that time might have been on the top of a hill.

If it was a 2G management message (i.e location update etc) then that could easily happen over considerable distance, even though its spurious.

Due to the terrain around that area you could end up in a situation where you are in fringe coverage of what ever sites the mobile could see then you come over a hill and suddenly it can see a BTS 20km+ away and says - HELLO!

This might have only been for a moment, but I think that points towards being well elevated.

Back in the day when I was involved in RF design for mobile networks we could often see this sort of activity from our drive testing in rural areas.

You can also sometimes get this because of the beam pattern used can sometimes include some pretty serious side lobes which if you are in the right spot you might get coverage from an unexpected cell.

HTH.

Yes, my thoughts too. Given that her car was next to a large body of water, a cell ping from an elevated position would be a very important finding. We've only discovered this new information in the last few days, so I'm spending time today working on constructing a GIS model of terrain and cell towers to try to aid activities.

Does anyone have any useful experience to add there? I've got a hold of QGIS and the OS Terrain 50 dataset for a start, but I'm struggling to get reliable data out of Cellmapper - which seems a *very* strangely-designed tool.

[skwdenyer]

Caddyshack said:

Sorry to read this thread.

I wonder if you might get help if you contacted someone in the Royal Signals, they probably have access to working this sort of stuff out for you?

Thank you. Does anyone know anyone in the Royal Signals?

[skwdenyer]

gotoPzero said:

I will PM you.

Thank you; replied.

[skwdenyer]

Fermit said:

I've nothing constructive to add, I can only give you my best wishes, as it's an utterly horrid situation you're in. We're just a few miles away from S.Yorks, if there is anything we can assist with if things were to move this direction at any point.

Thank you. That’s very kind.

[skwdenyer]

sebdangerfield said:

It sounds like they’ve been out to do a radio frequency propagation survey? Did they say when the handset connected and which network?

Cell mapper is notoriously difficult to use. Do you have or could you PM me the cell id? I may be able to access some historic RF data from previous surveys I’ve done or can acquire.

Thanks. I’ll PM you later on.

[skwdenyer]

surveyor said:

Sorry to hear the no news status. On the cell data it is worth speaking to a company called Mastdata.

Thank you. I’ll add that to my list for the coming week.

[skwdenyer]

gotoPzero said:

Did you get my email cheers

Yes, thanks. Just out dealing with a different family emergency (sat in A&E waiting room right now). I’ll reply tomorrow when I’m back in front of actual information.

[skwdenyer]

Hello everyone

Apologies for radio silence - especially those who emailed me. I will get back to you all.

We haven't (yet) managed to get a hold of the very detailed cell tower info I hoped for - "operational reasons." But we have now also obtained some additional information that leads us to believe (for now) it is a little bit more likely than not she didn't leave the area. I can't go into that here I'm afraid.

The police enquiry continues, but search activity is being wound down right now unless and until new evidence crops up to inform new search parameters.

In honesty, I've been avoiding coming back to this thread. Not because I don't hugely appreciate the goodwill of those who've commented - I really do - but because I didn't really want to write down what I've put above. None of us really wants to believe she's not coming back. A few things cropped up that gave us cause for hope, but all too quickly those have been dashed.

The rollercoaster of emotions has been - and continues to be - pretty awful.

Meanwhile, if anyone has any practical experience of applying for a Guardianship under the Guardianship (Missing Persons) Act 2017 I'd be really pleased to hear from you. Despite its existence, we haven't yet found anyone who has actually used it. The lawyers we've spoken to seem to be talking-up the complexity (and consequent fees) in a way that doesn't give us much hope. I may have to DIY that.

Thank you again, one and all. It really does mean a lot. And I haven't given up on the cell tower issue; it is just that it has turned out to be rather trickier than I imagined, and potentially overtaken by other events. But I'll email those who reached out about that to see what we can still do.

We haven't given up hope, despite everything. But, as Douglas Adams wrote for Marvin the Paranoid Android: "It's not the despair. I can cope with the despair. It's the hope that gets me."

[skwdenyer]

krisdelta said:

+1 - my thoughts with you, very eloquently put as quoted. You can only do what you can, and you’re doing more than many could or would.

I frequently have to solve seemingly-intractable problems professionally (well, not this minute, as I was also made redundant just the other day - a bit of an annus horribilis so far, including other things I haven’t written here about).

As Annette Bening’s character in The Siege says “the most committed, wins.” I am usually the most committed. I will take any opportunity, prise open any door, to get to a resolution.

The problem with my sister’s disappearance is that I have so little to go on. I would crawl over broken glass to get her back, but I can’t find where the trail starts.

If one wanted to write about the “perfect” place to go missing, one would be hard-pressed to pick a better location than Loch Doon in summer: so accessible, so apparently busy with visitors, and yet so devoid of clues, sightings and traces of her presence & filled with easy opportunities to vanish without trace.

So far the one thing I have learned with certainty is that searching an extensive area quickly at high resolution is very difficult. The Police can’t even send dogs into the undergrowth because of the fear of snakes. If a helicopter’s IR camera can’t find you quickly then it is just a hard, all-but-impossible, slog.

If I had the time, and the resources, I’d use what I know of machine learning & sensor technology, and what I’ve had to learn about drones during this process, to create low-cost, semi-autonomous search tools. I haven’t figured out the size of the market yet, of course, but it probably isn’t large enough to attract any major investment. And, honestly, thinking about that is primarily a displacement activity to take my mind off of the underlying problem.

Anyhow, thank you all again.

[skwdenyer]

vaud said:

skwdenyer said:

If I had the time, and the resources, I’d use what I know of machine learning & sensor technology, and what I’ve had to learn about drones during this process, to create low-cost, semi-autonomous search tools. I haven’t figured out the size of the market yet, of course, but it probably isn’t large enough to attract any major investment. And, honestly, thinking about that is primarily a displacement activity to take my mind off of the underlying problem..

They are in development, I'll see what I can find that is sharable/public domain. The early generations ones are quite basic but they are getting there.

Again, thoughts are with you.

Than you. That would be interesting.

[skwdenyer]

vaud said:

OP, I saw this article the other day and remembered that you had mentioned the use of drones and AI in searches:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12694433/...

Apologies for the Mail link, but for once it seems accurate.

Thoughts remain with you.

Thank you. Yes, I saw that. And yes, that's along the lines a small team of us came up with earlier in the year. I'm still deciding whether or not to do some formal work in that area.

youngsyr said:

No update as of last week.

https://www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk/news/23894...

Indeed not, sadly.

[skwdenyer]

Fermit said:

skwdenyer. Something just made me think of your predicament. I'm sure no update RE Mary means nothing to report. Thoughts with you and your family at what must be a testing Christmas.

Thank you very much. You're right, sadly, nothing to report, and not an easy Christmas.

[skwdenyer]

A year ago today, my Sister went missing. Today we’re no further forward: no sightings, no vectors, no remains, no end to the emotional rollercoaster or the family pain. Not helped by the untimely death of another close family member in January.

If any other PHers have suffered a loss remotely like this, you have my greatest sympathies.

Edited by skwdenyer on Sunday 16th June 20:26

[skwdenyer]

Thank you all.

[skwdenyer]

Thank you for all the kind words.

For those with any interest (either in this case, or in finding people in general), this is the sort of terrain we're dealing with:







The bracken is around waist height or higher (meaning somebody laying in the bracken a metre or two to the side of you would be invisible) and with dense fronds (meaning drone searching has to be carried out at bracken-top height). The trees are so densely-planted as to in places be all-but impossible to get between - we need Star Wars style "orbs" able to autonomously navigate through the trees to search properly.

The aerials shots above are from my drone. As you can see, it is incredibly hard to conduct any sort of aerial search. By the time the bracken has died down, snow appears, or the weather is so bad as to prevent flying.

Nevertheless, this terrain has been searched extensively out to about 900 metres radius from where her car was found. To search fully the potential area (2 hours' walk, so say up to 5 miles' radius) is an area of over 200 million square metres, of which about 75% is land which can be properly and completely searched in metre-wide strips at the rate of as low as 2000 square metres per hour. Even at 4000 sq m / hr, that's 37,500 man-hours, or over 20 man years (working full time hours with breaks).

Hence I'm still investigating what additional aerial tech may be used to fully rule out her remains being present on land. And why I'm so interested in the tech problem more generally to help ensure this never happens to anyone else.

As for the water, extensive sonar searching has been carried out in the relevant areas, but by no means the whole Loch. Again, the problem is time and resource. Water-borne "drones" (ROVs in aquatic parlance) do exist, but the Loch is not the clear waters of the Bahamas. It *might* be possible to "fingertip" search the Loch bed with an ROV, but I don't yet know how to get that done with available resources.

Now, if anyone has any friends at the NSA or similar who could get me access to really high-resolution satellite imagery for specific dates, that would be terrific...

[skwdenyer]

EmailAddress said:

Were dogs ever involved in the search? I presume there was a finite resource available.

Dogs were used in an attempt to track her movements from her car, but did not yield any results.

"Recovery dogs" (the latest euphemism for cadaver dogs) were involved at various stages. Unfortunately, this is prime snake country - we've encountered adders whilst searching ourselves. The dogs are not allowed to just run free into the wilderness because of it. The recovery dogs were also taken along the shore in the hope of alerting to a presence in the water, but again that didn't yield results (well, they did alert in a couple of places, but extensive searching with divers, sonar, etc. didn't find anything). It isn't a perfect science.

The local rangers have kept an eye out for buzzards and other carrion birds circling, but that's not very reliable.

[skwdenyer]

EmailAddress said:

skwdenyer said:

EmailAddress said:

Were dogs ever involved in the search? I presume there was a finite resource available.

Dogs were used in an attempt to track her movements from her car, but did not yield any results.

"Recovery dogs" (the latest euphemism for cadaver dogs) were involved at various stages. Unfortunately, this is prime snake country - we've encountered adders whilst searching ourselves. The dogs are not allowed to just run free into the wilderness because of it. The recovery dogs were also taken along the shore in the hope of alerting to a presence in the water, but again that didn't yield results (well, they did alert in a couple of places, but extensive searching with divers, sonar, etc. didn't find anything). It isn't a perfect science.

The local rangers have kept an eye out for buzzards and other carrion birds circling, but that's not very reliable.

Interesting. Thanks.

I've expressed my feeling for you and your family earlier in the thread and going forward it looks like you may appreciate a more technical development, or ideas based discussion?

I think we're all on the same page here in terms of what the scenario has taken from you.

Correct me if I'm out of place.

So we have a large area, with no heat signature anymore. It's not feasible to search every inch by hand.

It's not feasible to search every inch by dog.

The waters are beyond scope. As is satellite imagery.

How far did things get with her digital footprint? Payments, cards, mobile etc. Were you allowed into that radius of data? I seem to remember you hitting some resistance on info sharing due to the potential for 'a person' not 'wanting' to be found etc.

And one final time; please don't think we are treating this as a cold case or an info grab. We're all following your lead. Have all been behind you since the beginning, and will continue to keep your sister in our thoughts as you progress in whatever way brings you any comfort.

All the best mate.

It has been an awful year. We've been carried along an emotional rollercoaster. As requested by them, we've given the authorities ample space in which to search (and, in fairness, they've done a lot). We've been frustrated in places by their unwillingness to share technical data, specific search methods, and so on - however much I appreciate their desire to maintain operational confidentiality, it has been jolly annoying when we have family members ready willing and *able* to bring significant technical ability to the mix.

But here we are. And, yes, at this stage the emotional stuff is now just a part of our lives. I'd wondered whether, a year down the line, we'd be OK to give up on the searching aspect (we're under little illusion but that she took her own life in or close to Loch Doon); we're not.

So now we need to find a technical solution to bringing closure to the family.

We still don't have access to her personal bank accounts, Apple account, and so on. The Police have had access to some of that (although they won't tell us how much). We're going to the High Court shortly (just waiting for a hearing date) to make an application under the Guardianship (Missing Persons) Act 2017 to appoint Guardians who may then act in her stead (which we believe will give us much more access). That's a £10k bill we didn't expect, however!

The Police have told us that her digital footprint ended at around 17:30 on 16th June 2023. There are (or were, at the time) only two mobile phone masts covering the area (and only parts of it) - the primary one on the opposite side of the valley, and another much further South South East of the Loch. Police have been somewhat vague, but we believe this is canonical:

- her phone was tracked (primary cell tower access) around 15:30 on the day entering the area - this matches the only available CCTV footage, of her car entering Loch Doon past The Roundhouse (only vehicular access point);
- she sent at least one text message during the afternoon (c.16:30) and Whatsapp reported to others she was "last seen" at c.17:30;
- her phone also connected briefly to the second cell tower, but Police later determined it was possible to get a ping on that tower from the location of her car, so this didn't - to them - indicate a vector of travel;
- there's been no further cell traffic from her phone.

Here's the primary cell tower location, in a figure from a technical question I sent to the Police about whether they could provide additional detail on calculated distances from cell to handset (which they didn't provide):



Technical questions such as did her phone turn off / run out of battery / suddenly die when entering water (I believe some of this info might be available on tower logs) have remained unanswered. As have any questions about ping times (perhaps indicating distance or, more specifically, changes of distance) and other similar queries.

This is the search area from the Police. Normally they'd search out to 500m from the last known location, because their data model tells them that's where people are found. That's the smaller circle. In this case, they searched out to 900m - the larger circle. The blue dots don't mean anything (just artefacts of whatever I used to draw the circles with known dimensions); the red dot is the location of her car.



I have seen Police Scotland's search maps. I wasn't allowed to take copies, and I'm not allowed to publish what I remember. But I can say that:

- sonar was run most of the way down the West bank of the Loch from near the top to the bottom of the 900m circle;
- it was also run out over the Loch in the 900m area;
- searchers with waders covered up to waist height along both shores;
- searches with boats covered a significant area from here to the North (current runs South-to-North);

More generally, on the afternoon/evening of 17th June 2023 and thereafter over a long period, there were significant deployments of:

- mountain rescue;
- helicopter assets;
- drones (both high level generally, and very very low level in the primary search area);
- searchers on foot, on mountain bikes, on quad bikes;
- house to house enquiries and recovery of CCTV footage;
- and so on.

We (family) launched a major outreach and publicity campaign to try to elicit sightings, photographs, etc. - either at the Loch or anywhere else. Thousands of posters have been put up in an area from Gretna to the West Scottish ports and all around the local area; on public transport and at transport hubs; and so on. We appointed a dedicated press officer to liaise with the media, achieving far greater penetration than the Police's efforts, including a large number of radio, TV, online and print media stories, not just immediately but at intervals thereafter. The Police have run down every potential sighting.

In early 2024, once the bracken had died back, Police Scotland renewed a physical search of the area, on foot and with drones.

So what are we left with? Realistically, very very little more than we started with. What we know:

- Mary is missing, along with her phone, the distinctive backpack she had with her, and her car keys;
- there's no digital footprint visible to the Police since 16th June 2023.

For reasons I can't go into, we don't believe (but cannot rule out) that Mary had a plan to vanish and leave a false trail. Vehicles that left the area after she vanished have been run down where possible (although it is worth noting a surprising percentage of vehicles seen on CCTV turned out to have inaccurate addresses at DVLA...). CCTV has been analysed and shows no signs of Mary leaving the valley.

So the working assumption is she is still there: either in the Loch, or amidst the undergrowth.

What can be done now, a year later?

All these are low-probability events, but it is possible:

- some sort of high resolution satellite imagery might provide a clue;
- additional sonar / ROV resources can be deployed and find something in the Loch;
- additional drone / physical searching may yield a result.

Happy to answer any questions where I can. Nothing is off the table. Definitely interested in ideas for how to square this circle.