Credit card/bank account activity is one of the first things checked. Different kinds of missing adults will be acted on in different ways - if it's very out of character for someone to be missing (e.g. a parent abandoning small children, someone with very regular observed habits) there will be a quicker and more thorough investigation than for someone with erratic habits or someone who went out drinking, for example. How quickly this gets noticed and acted on has some leeway - a very large police department will have more electronic cross-checking but less human contact between police; a small police department will have the opposite. There would certainly be a search in the area, but what kind of search is going to depend on what the police think has happened, which in turn is going to depend on who is in the currently linked cases
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It would also likely depend on the physical area where people are lost, and history in the area. For example, if it's a basic urban center, or suburban area, and they've only had two or three missing people in the past decade... well, that's going to raise alarm bells very differently from an area that's on the edge of a wilderness preserve where they lose a few hikers every season.
Or a densely populated and/or lower class part of the city, where people who go missing may not be reported immediately, either because someone thinks they've on a binge / on vacation / hooked up with that idiot (girl- or) boy-friend again / didn't (s)he move to a new apartment? Or someone may just be isolated enough that no one realizes they've gone missing.
Keep in mind that some workplaces will come looking for you if you don't show up for a few day, but others will assume you have quit, and send you the termination notice in the mail. No one may realize person X is missing until the landlord starts pounding on the door for the late rent - assuming it isn't on autopay from their checking account, and they don't have a condo.
One or two 'late discoveries' of missing people could delay the discovery of a pattern if you need it to. Toss in an actual missing person or two (a runaway or someone who leaves their spouse without warning, or even a random dissociative fugue) and it could take a while for a pattern to show up.
I don't have anything to offer here than a second opinion, but it seems to me that one of the most important things would be whether you are talking about a small town, or a city.
In a city, thousands of adults can go missing in a year and while most of them turn up again within a few days, without the relatives making a fuss and obvious ties that make voluntary disappearance unlikely, there would be little chance of a connection being made. In a small town with only one police station, there would be fewer cases that were not related to your case and the desk sargent may notice a increase in incidents and refer them on to someone else to look into. Your list of points are not really things that would necessarily be noticed until after the connection was made.
I don't think bloodhounds are much help in cities - too many other scents and, once a day or so had passed, those other scents would overlay any trail left by your disappeared.
On the other hand ... if the city uses something like CompSTAT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompStat#United_States and has people willing to spend time to look into anomalies, this could get flagged very quickly
Well, in the 1990s in Ireland, a number of women went missing in a certain area. A lot of them were around the same age (late teens to mid-20s). To this day, there is no consensus as to whether or not the cases are linked. Most of us believe that at least some of them are but as far as I know the police are still saying there is no evidence to confirm this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland's_Vanishing_Triangle Looking up some of the names or just the term "Ireland's vanishing triangle" will probably get you more information. It might give you some indications as it seems like the general situations are similar. There were no credit card similarities or anything in this case, but the victims seem to have more in common.
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Keep in mind that some workplaces will come looking for you if you don't show up for a few day, but others will assume you have quit, and send you the termination notice in the mail. No one may realize person X is missing until the landlord starts pounding on the door for the late rent - assuming it isn't on autopay from their checking account, and they don't have a condo.
One or two 'late discoveries' of missing people could delay the discovery of a pattern if you need it to. Toss in an actual missing person or two (a runaway or someone who leaves their spouse without warning, or even a random dissociative fugue) and it could take a while for a pattern to show up.
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In a city, thousands of adults can go missing in a year and while most of them turn up again within a few days, without the relatives making a fuss and obvious ties that make voluntary disappearance unlikely, there would be little chance of a connection being made. In a small town with only one police station, there would be fewer cases that were not related to your case and the desk sargent may notice a increase in incidents and refer them on to someone else to look into. Your list of points are not really things that would necessarily be noticed until after the connection was made.
I don't think bloodhounds are much help in cities - too many other scents and, once a day or so had passed, those other scents would overlay any trail left by your disappeared.
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-Margaret.
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