Missing sister - help me find her car?

[skwdenyer]

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.

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.

[skwdenyer]

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.

[skwdenyer]

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.

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]

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.

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?

Agreed about overestimating. My understanding from independent research was that the tower could report (at least in real time, but maybe not after the event) the calculated distance (from time of flight) between the handset and the tower.

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]

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.

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.

Aye, that is true enough. I know exactly that kind of terrain, having been in and around it a lot throughout my life, and I can see where you're coming from. I'm still mildly surprised given the resources used, although, I suppose in retrospect, I probably shouldn't be.

Had it been other than a hot summers day, IR from drones / helicopter would probably have found her (if she wasn't in the water). But by the time her car was located (24 hours after her last phone signal), the background heat was high enough to be a problem.

[skwdenyer]

NRG1976 said:

Sad to read this. I wonder if a drone, equipped with a metal detector, could pick up any car keys etc. should they be lurking in the undergrowth?

That’s a lovely idea. I did idly look up “long range metal detectors” a few months ago; all I found were scammers selling divining rods for prospecting.

Is there genuinely a long range metal detector tech that’s drone flyable?

[skwdenyer]

PurpleTurtle said:

Is this the spot where her car was located? I've cross-referenced your shared search diagrams to Google maps and think it is the same location.

https://www.google.com/maps/@55.2370593,-4.3725468...

What jumps out at me is why would somebody drive from Cumbria and stop at this specific point on the side of a loch in Scotland?

Is the junction of the road into a pathway into the hills on the left significant?
Did she have prior knowledge of this area, from previous holidays etc? Is it significant in any way?
If you 'drive' that route along the west coast of the loch on Google street view then there are a number of passing places and a couple of other car parking places where one could park the car and access the water.
This area pictured is the first location where there is a more substantial car parking area, and a formal pathway up into the hills.
I know I'm totally clutching at straws here/armchair detective etc, but I wonder if there is any significance to that, in terms of focussing the search on land or water?
Does it suggest a walk into the forest from there?

Edited by PurpleTurtle on Wednesday 19th June 12:19

Edited by PurpleTurtle on Wednesday 19th June 12:20

There's no linkage to Scotland in general, or this area in particular, that we know about.

That's the place, yes. And yes your thoughts are the same as ours. There have been very extensive searches up into the hills along those tracks, covering many many miles (on foot, bicycles, quad bikes, drones, etc.). Closer to the location, the undergrowth was searched back to (IIRC) 10 metres from the track, which in many cases is as far as you can safely get. Further out, it hasn't been fully searched - we need Star Wars style "floating orbs" to search that woodland at scale.

[skwdenyer]

PurpleTurtle said:

I'm sure you've considered this yourself, but if I were looking to go missing from that 'X' location of where her car was found then it would be in that (very) dense forest of fir trees to the north west of where the car was left.

Scotland in June stays very light in the evenings, it is not inconceivable for her to have gone beyond the 900m 'outer circle' of the original search.

This image just shows the problem you are up against though, some of that terrain is almost completely inaccessible due to the density of the tree canopy. Very frustrating, I can imagine.

Thanks. Agreed. We let the Police search in their area, and we (family and volunteers) covered a wider area. That area is terrible to search on foot. Where there are clearings, there is bracken waist high (or higher); trees are so close together as to be impassable; there are endless streams and bogs hidden by undergrowth to catch out the unwary, and the ground underfoot is so uneven (and so covered) as to be ankle-breaking within minutes if not very careful.

Hence my comment about "Star Wars" style floating orbs to search the forested areas. A drone (even one with currently-advanced obstacle avoidance) would last minutes in that environment.

[skwdenyer]

Nige321 said:

I'm so sorry this lady hasn't een found.

One thing that strikes me as odd is the amount of Police secrecy surrounding giving information to the family.
I'm sure they have their reasons, but the search isn't part of a criminal trial, why are the so coy...??

To be clear, they’re coy about divulging methods and assets that might also be used to search for criminals. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, however frustrating sometimes.

[skwdenyer]

Janluke said:

Something that occurred to me the other day and I'm sure its been considered but you mentioned the road in past the Roundhouse being the only road in and out but there is a forest drive (Carrick) that links onto a pubic road so it would be possible to get in or out of that area without going back past the Roundhouse camera

I'm sure you know that but thought it was worth a post

Thanks. The Forest Drive has been closed (gated, locked) for some time, it seems. It *used* to be open at certain times of year, but was definitely not open last year.