Missing sister - help me find her car?
Discussion
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.
Try contacting one of the BIG universities.
Their archelogy deptartments more than likely have a LIDAR equipped drone or know who has one.
The LIDAR can scan the ground removing the trees and vegitation from the picture and leave all the undulations on the ground.
It could give you a shape to aim for to narrow the search.
Their archelogy deptartments more than likely have a LIDAR equipped drone or know who has one.
The LIDAR can scan the ground removing the trees and vegitation from the picture and leave all the undulations on the ground.
It could give you a shape to aim for to narrow the search.
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.
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.
I watch quite a lot of Adventures with Purpose on YouTube and they seem to have good results with sonar on water, but I think you located the car didn't you? (Apologies, can't remember the full details)
They also tend to search very specific areas within x miles of the last mobile ping. Did you ever get that location?
They also tend to search very specific areas within x miles of the last mobile ping. Did you ever get that location?
I've done a few similar terrain searches (North Yorkshire Moors) when I did Mountain Rescue about 10 years ago.
It's brutal terrain to search in and very slow and must be hugely frustrating for family.
It's interesting what you say about the SARDA dogs though. The moors have adders and we would often see the dogs deployed. From memory Adders also hibernate so a late autumn pre-spring search should pose little risk.
I can't say you'd have much success, but it might worth a phone call to speak directly to the local MR and SARDA teams to ask if they would use your interest areas for more of their exercises... You never know.
It's brutal terrain to search in and very slow and must be hugely frustrating for family.
It's interesting what you say about the SARDA dogs though. The moors have adders and we would often see the dogs deployed. From memory Adders also hibernate so a late autumn pre-spring search should pose little risk.
I can't say you'd have much success, but it might worth a phone call to speak directly to the local MR and SARDA teams to ask if they would use your interest areas for more of their exercises... You never know.
I don't wish to pry OP, but were there any pointers in your sister's personal life as to why she might disappear?
Reading online reports it seems she is/was a successful small entrepreneur with a thriving business. She went for a drive to "sort her head out" (quoting one of the online articles) and seemingly disappeared into thin air afterwards with (my assumption) zero digital footprint after the last sighting of her.
All of that rather sadly points to a sad finality; was there anything in her life in the build up that could have prompted this? I had a seemingly successful, popular, outgoing friend who 7 years ago just locked up his employer's business, went home and took his life in a planned and detailed way. Hundreds of people came to his funeral, but nobody who knows him has any idea why he went down that particular path of choice. It's heartbreaking, I miss him incredibly, someone I've known for over 40 yrs gone, just like that.
Reading online reports it seems she is/was a successful small entrepreneur with a thriving business. She went for a drive to "sort her head out" (quoting one of the online articles) and seemingly disappeared into thin air afterwards with (my assumption) zero digital footprint after the last sighting of her.
All of that rather sadly points to a sad finality; was there anything in her life in the build up that could have prompted this? I had a seemingly successful, popular, outgoing friend who 7 years ago just locked up his employer's business, went home and took his life in a planned and detailed way. Hundreds of people came to his funeral, but nobody who knows him has any idea why he went down that particular path of choice. It's heartbreaking, I miss him incredibly, someone I've known for over 40 yrs gone, just like that.
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.
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.
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.
PurpleTurtle said:
I don't wish to pry OP, but were there any pointers in your sister's personal life as to why she might disappear?
Reading online reports it seems she is/was a successful small entrepreneur with a thriving business. She went for a drive to "sort her head out" (quoting one of the online articles) and seemingly disappeared into thin air afterwards with (my assumption) zero digital footprint after the last sighting of her.
All of that rather sadly points to a sad finality; was there anything in her life in the build up that could have prompted this? I had a seemingly successful, popular, outgoing friend who 7 years ago just locked up his employer's business, went home and took his life in a planned and detailed way. Hundreds of people came to his funeral, but nobody who knows him has any idea why he went down that particular path of choice. It's heartbreaking, I miss him incredibly, someone I've known for over 40 yrs gone, just like that.
I'm afraid I'm not going to get into her private life; I'm sorry. When you look at somebody who has vanished, there are almost always things that could be a trigger. Having had experience with suicide of other people, the process just isn't necessarily rational.Reading online reports it seems she is/was a successful small entrepreneur with a thriving business. She went for a drive to "sort her head out" (quoting one of the online articles) and seemingly disappeared into thin air afterwards with (my assumption) zero digital footprint after the last sighting of her.
All of that rather sadly points to a sad finality; was there anything in her life in the build up that could have prompted this? I had a seemingly successful, popular, outgoing friend who 7 years ago just locked up his employer's business, went home and took his life in a planned and detailed way. Hundreds of people came to his funeral, but nobody who knows him has any idea why he went down that particular path of choice. It's heartbreaking, I miss him incredibly, someone I've known for over 40 yrs gone, just like that.
At this stage, it doesn't really matter. We just want to find her final resting place to bring closure to the family. If she's found alive then hurrah, but I don't think that's the primary focus right now.
TGCOTF-dewey said:
I've done a few similar terrain searches (North Yorkshire Moors) when I did Mountain Rescue about 10 years ago.
It's brutal terrain to search in and very slow and must be hugely frustrating for family.
It's interesting what you say about the SARDA dogs though. The moors have adders and we would often see the dogs deployed. From memory Adders also hibernate so a late autumn pre-spring search should pose little risk.
I can't say you'd have much success, but it might worth a phone call to speak directly to the local MR and SARDA teams to ask if they would use your interest areas for more of their exercises... You never know.
Thank you. I'm afraid I could only go by what we were told by Police Scotland. Good idea about the MR / SARDA teams - I'll take a look at that. The team out there were billed as "Police Mountain Rescue." We are also working with a volunteer team from West Cumbria who are proposing to go up there - just figuring out logistics.It's brutal terrain to search in and very slow and must be hugely frustrating for family.
It's interesting what you say about the SARDA dogs though. The moors have adders and we would often see the dogs deployed. From memory Adders also hibernate so a late autumn pre-spring search should pose little risk.
I can't say you'd have much success, but it might worth a phone call to speak directly to the local MR and SARDA teams to ask if they would use your interest areas for more of their exercises... You never know.
skwdenyer said:
Thank you. I'm afraid I could only go by what we were told by Police Scotland. Good idea about the MR / SARDA teams - I'll take a look at that. The team out there were billed as "Police Mountain Rescue." We are also working with a volunteer team from West Cumbria who are proposing to go up there - just figuring out logistics.
It would be the Galloway team that covered your search area I think. Volunteer, not police team, but will have been coordinated by the police on the day due to size of search - I was on the Claudia Lawrence search around York. There were 5 or 6 teams deployed over the course of the week. Contact for Galloway https://gallowaymrt.org.uk/contact/
Contact for Scottish SARDA https://www.sarda-scotland.org/contact-us/
Firstly, I'm sorry to hear that the situation remains as it does - I do open this thread with bated breath when I see an update.
Secondly, the resources that have been deployed so far strike me as fairly considerable, and within a (relatively speaking) small area. I'm surprised, tbh, that she hasn't been found by now.
Secondly, the resources that have been deployed so far strike me as fairly considerable, and within a (relatively speaking) small area. I'm surprised, tbh, that she hasn't been found by now.
TheJimi said:
Firstly, I'm sorry to hear that the situation remains as it does - I do open this thread with bated breath when I see an update.
Secondly, the resources that have been deployed so far strike me as fairly considerable, and within a (relatively speaking) small area. I'm surprised, tbh, that she hasn't been found by now.
The fundamental problem is, if you walk across the terrain, she could be 1 metre to your right and you'd never see her. If you fly a drone over the bracken at head height, you could still miss her underneath it.Secondly, the resources that have been deployed so far strike me as fairly considerable, and within a (relatively speaking) small area. I'm surprised, tbh, that she hasn't been found by now.
If you wanted to write a book about how to lose a body, you'd have to try hard to better this terrain. And people probably wouldn't believe you.
skwdenyer said:
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.
You may be overestimating what the Police can obtain from the phone companies, and what can be deduced from it.- 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.
In most cases it is limited to mast location and azimuth.
What network was the phone on? The data available differs depending on the MNO/MVNO
On your map what is the second location? Or is it just that you have been provided a distance and are assuming it relates to a location that far from the mast?
Defcon5 said:
skwdenyer said:
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.
You may be overestimating what the Police can obtain from the phone companies, and what can be deduced from it.- 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.
In most cases it is limited to mast location and azimuth.
What network was the phone on? The data available differs depending on the MNO/MVNO
On your map what is the second location? Or is it just that you have been provided a distance and are assuming it relates to a location that far from the mast?
Now, that calculation will almost always be wrong in "real" terrain, due to reflections, atmospheric and geographical features. My theory was, however, that those other factors were likely to be relatively constant over a period of, say, 10 minutes. So if the tower was reporting a changing distance between handset and tower over a short timescale, it was perhaps more likely than not that indicated a moving handset.
The second point was just an illustration of that. If we knew the distance had changed by (say) 10% over 10 minutes, and we knew what the actually plausible paths were (not everywhere is walkable in that terrain), we could perhaps narrow down some potential search vectors.
Above all, we wanted to know this: did she walk a significant distance from her car in the time between arriving and the last apparent data from her phone (17:30)? The Police determined that her phone *could* have interacted with both available cells from the single location. Therefore they concluded that her last known position was that of her car. However, there appears to have been potentially 2+ hours in which she could have walked before the cell data dried up. If the calculated distance to the cell had increased by an appreciable amount in that time period, that might suggest she had indeed walked. Which would centre the intensive search activity in the wrong place.
Her phone was on EE.
The local cells are, we believe, these (per CellMapper - Police won't officially provide cell locations):
skwdenyer said:
TheJimi said:
Firstly, I'm sorry to hear that the situation remains as it does - I do open this thread with bated breath when I see an update.
Secondly, the resources that have been deployed so far strike me as fairly considerable, and within a (relatively speaking) small area. I'm surprised, tbh, that she hasn't been found by now.
The fundamental problem is, if you walk across the terrain, she could be 1 metre to your right and you'd never see her. If you fly a drone over the bracken at head height, you could still miss her underneath it.Secondly, the resources that have been deployed so far strike me as fairly considerable, and within a (relatively speaking) small area. I'm surprised, tbh, that she hasn't been found by now.
If you wanted to write a book about how to lose a body, you'd have to try hard to better this terrain. And people probably wouldn't believe you.
TheJimi said:
skwdenyer said:
TheJimi said:
Firstly, I'm sorry to hear that the situation remains as it does - I do open this thread with bated breath when I see an update.
Secondly, the resources that have been deployed so far strike me as fairly considerable, and within a (relatively speaking) small area. I'm surprised, tbh, that she hasn't been found by now.
The fundamental problem is, if you walk across the terrain, she could be 1 metre to your right and you'd never see her. If you fly a drone over the bracken at head height, you could still miss her underneath it.Secondly, the resources that have been deployed so far strike me as fairly considerable, and within a (relatively speaking) small area. I'm surprised, tbh, that she hasn't been found by now.
If you wanted to write a book about how to lose a body, you'd have to try hard to better this terrain. And people probably wouldn't believe you.
So sorry to hear your sister was never found
My thoughts are with you and your family and I really hope that you get closure be it positive or not
Not knowing is probably the worst outcome
Loch Doon is such an incredibly wild and beautiful place but I can imagine very difficult to search
My thoughts are with you and your family and I really hope that you get closure be it positive or not
Not knowing is probably the worst outcome
Loch Doon is such an incredibly wild and beautiful place but I can imagine very difficult to search
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