by Sue Black
UK police forces receive, on average, 300,000 calls relating to missing persons every year – nearly 600 reports a day. About half of this number will go on to be officially recorded as missing, of which around 11 per cent will be classified as high-risk and vulnerable. Over 50 per cent will be between the ages of twelve and seventeen and many of these will fall into the ‘absent’ or ‘run-away’ category. A small majority (about 57 per cent) will be girls. Mercifully, many children return or are found alive but more than 16,000 will remain ‘lost’ for a year or more. When adults go missing, the balance shifts: around 62 per cent are men, most commonly between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-nine, and of the 250 or so people a year found dead in suspicious circumstances, fewer than thirty are children.
The UK Missing Persons Bureau lies within the remit of the National Crime Agency, which has links with INTERPOL, EUROPOL and other international organisations. When someone goes missing, INTERPOL posts what are called ‘yellow notices’ across its 192 member countries to alert their police forces. ‘Black notices’ are issued when a body is found and cannot be identified. In an ideal world, all the black notices would correspond to a yellow notice. We attempt to match them by comparing features of identity from the missing person (antemortem) with those of the deceased (postmortem).
The obvious starting points for the collection of antemortem data are the existing national police-controlled DNA and fingerprint databases. However, the deceased will only be represented here if he or she has come to the attention of the police (DNA is also held on different databases for all active forensic investigators, police officers, the armed forces and others, either for identification purposes or to exclude them when samples from a crime scene are being analysed). Via INTERPOL, we can ask permission for other international law enforcement agencies to search their databases if we have reason to believe such a search may prove productive. Most countries do not have universal records of the DNA or fingerprints of the general population and there is no nationwide database for dental records. So unless you are in the police, the military or have been previously convicted of a crime, it is highly unlikely that your identifying features will appear on any database.
Let’s take as an example the skeletal remains of the young, white man mentioned here, for whom the missing persons database returned 1,500 possible matches. He had been found in remote woodland in the north of Scotland by a man walking his dog. The police and a forensic anthropologist attended. The bones were lying on the surface of the woodland floor, roughly in the correct anatomical position, although the skull was down at the feet. Hanging from one of the branches of a tall Scots pine tree above the body was the hood of a jacket containing a human bone – the second cervical vertebra from the neck. The body below was missing this vertebra, which proved to be a good fit with the skeleton. It was therefore reasonable to suppose that the body had been hanging from the tree and that, as it decomposed, the tissues of the neck had stretched and eventually given way. The body had fallen to the ground, the head going in a slightly different direction because of the separation of tissues, and the neck bone had fallen into the hood.
All the indications were that the death was not suspicious and was most likely suicide. For whatever reason, it seemed this person had climbed up the tree, tied the hood of the jacket around a branch and jumped off. But we now needed to attempt to identify the deceased so that we could investigate the death properly and inform the closest relatives.
There was no circumstantial evidence of identity. No wallet, no driving licence, no bank cards. We extracted DNA from the bones but there was no match on the DNA database. Since the remains were skeletonised, there were no fingerprints. Our anthropological assessment revealed that the body was that of a white male between twenty and thirty years of age, 5ft 6ins to 5ft 8ins in height.
From his skeleton, we were able to identify some old injuries that had fully healed by the time he died: fractures to three of his ribs on the right-hand side; a fracture of the right collarbone and another to his right kneecap. If all these injuries were sustained in the same incident it was highly likely that he would have been treated at a hospital and there would be medical records. He’d also had four teeth taken out, the first premolar on each side from both the upper and lower jaws. The drift of the remaining teeth showed that these were unlikely to have been congenitally absent but had been removed professionally. Somewhere, then, a dentist would have records of these specific extractions. But we would have to find them.
It was these basic characteristics that generated those 1,500 potential identities. Clearly the police cannot pursue such a vast quantity of vague leads as the drain on resources would be immense. To give them something they can work with, we need to reduce the number of possibilities to double, or preferably single, digits. We undertook a facial reconstruction to recreate the man’s features from the contours of his skull. The aim of this process, an ingenious blend of science and art, is not to produce a perfect replica of a deceased person’s face but a likeness close enough to be potentially recognisable by those who knew him or may have seen him and thus to generate more precise leads for the police to follow.
The face was reproduced on posters displayed around the area where the body had been found and circulated more widely via newspapers, television, a missing persons website and INTERPOL. After the case was covered by the BBC television programme Crimewatch, several strong leads emerged, many of them pointing to the same individual. One of the calls was from his mother. She happened to have been watching the programme and the facial reconstruction reminded her of her son: her worst nightmare imaginable.
With a name to eliminate or confirm, an investigation can be shifted up a gear from broad physical identity to the realm of possible personal identity. The police can begin to interview relatives and obtain DNA samples for comparison. In this case, Mum’s DNA produced a positive match, as did her son’s biological profile – white, 5ft 7ins tall and twenty-two years of age when last seen – his dental records, GP’s notes, hospital records and radiographs. He had got into a fight several years before he went missing and his broken bones had all been documented in the hospital.
There was indeed no crime to investigate. The man had left home about three years before his body was found, telling his family that he was going to lie low for a while because he had got into some trouble and owed money to a drug supplier. He’d said he was going to head up north and that they shouldn’t worry, he’d be fine. He was known in the place where he died as something of a recluse with drink and drug habits, and by a different abbreviation of his name from the one he’d gone by at home.
That a young man chose to end his life is very sad. It is not our place to speculate about or judge what led him to commit suicide, but by giving him back his name, we allowed his story to be told. We were able to provide answers for a distraught family and to return his body to them. The news we bring to relatives is rarely happy, but we believe it is delivered with a kindness, honesty and respect that will ultimately help to set in motion a coping and healing process.
There is no doubt that had our young suicide been carrying some identifying documentation we would have concluded that particular case more swiftly. While most people usually have something on them that gives a clue as to who they are, or at least provides a starting point for an investigation, records such as a universal DNA database or compulsory identity cards would certainly make it easier to identify those who don’t. However, the notion of officialdom keeping any closer tabs on us than they do already is controversial and raises concerns for many about the erosion of civil liberties and the right to privacy.
We view our identity as being intimate to us but in reality, we share its finer details with everyone with whom we interact. And every now and again someone acting in an official capacity will want you to share it with them – in our case, when you are no longer alive.
A conversation in The Death Ship, written in 1926, between the protagonist and a law en
forcement officer sums this up. The author, B. Traven, is an apt contributor to musings on identity as he was himself something of a mystery man. He used a pen name, and his true identity, and indeed more or less every detail of his life, are still hotly disputed.
‘You ought to have some papers to show who you are,’ the police officer advised me.
‘I do not need any paper. I know who I am,’ I said.
‘Maybe so. Other people are also interested in knowing who you are.’
CHAPTER 3
Death in the family
‘If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death’
Samuel Butler
writer (1835–1902)
Uncle Willie on Rosemarkie beach.
‘GO AND CHECK Uncle Willie is OK.’
It was a simple command, casually thrown over his shoulder as my father left the room to attend to the friends and family waiting with my mother and sister in the chapel of the funeral home.
Uncle Willie, my surrogate grandfather, had been dead for over three days. I don’t think my father was asking me this because he was squeamish himself. As a typical old-fashioned, no-nonsense ex-military Scotsman of his generation, he would not have been fazed by the sight of Willie’s body. And as he did not believe that being a girl meant you should be mollycoddled, he probably took the view that, given my chosen field, I was the best person for the task.
I had dissected a number of cadavers by now, and helped to embalm them, but I was still barely out of my teens and of course learning in the dissecting room was an entirely different matter from coming face to face for the first time with the newly dead body of someone I cared about deeply. It simply didn’t occur to my father that I was unprepared to encounter the corpse of my favourite great-uncle in the viewing room of a funeral home. I certainly didn’t know what he meant by ‘OK’. But he had given me the job and we always did what Father told us – it would never have crossed my mind to say that I didn’t want to. My father always barked his orders as if national service had never ended and his sergeant-major’s moustache still bristled with an authority that brooked no dissent.
Willie had been a huge presence in more ways than one. A jovial man of wide girth, he had not a single grey hair on his head when he died at the respectably good age of eighty-three. He had fought in the Second World War but, like so many men of his generation, he never talked about it. By trade he was a master plasterer and was responsible for the beautiful and ornate cornicing in many of the grand houses in the more affluent parts of Inverness.
It was a source of great sadness to Willie and his wife Christina, always known as Teenie, that they had no children of their own. So when my maternal grandmother, Teenie’s sister, died seven days after giving birth to my mother, they gladly took in the baby, bringing her up in a house full of love and laughter. They were true grandparents to me in every sense: kind, caring and generous to a fault.
In his retirement years Willie used to wash cars at the local garage to make a few extra pennies. I remember him standing in the wash bay, hose in hand, ‘Willie’s wellies’, as he used to call them, on his feet, both turned down on his calves because his legs were too fat for them, cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, always laughing. For some reason he loved blowing raspberries, which made him irresistibly naughty to us children. With help from the family, he cared for his disabled wife throughout the often extreme ravages of her dementia, crippling arthritis and debilitating osteoporosis. He considered it his duty to her, as was the way of many families back then, and would not discuss her going into a hospital or nursing home.
After Teenie died, Willie would come to lunch at our house every Sunday and usually joined us on family outings when the weather was kind. I never saw him outside his own home in anything but a three-piece suit, shirt and tie. He only had two suits, one in heavy tweed for everyday wear, and a best suit for funerals.
There is a photograph of Uncle Willie that epitomises his zest for life and the laughter he spread. It was taken on Rosemarkie beach on the Black Isle, just north of Inverness. It was a baking hot day and we had driven there for a picnic on the beach, all crammed into Father’s car, which at that time would have been his two-tone black-and-tan 3.8 Mark II Jaguar, his absolute pride and joy.
Even to eat his sandwiches on the shores of the Moray Firth, Uncle Willie was dressed as if for church, in his suit and perfectly polished shoes. We unfolded one of those lightweight, tubular metal garden chairs on the dry sand and suggested he took a rest in the shade while we set out the blankets and picnic further down the beach. As we busied ourselves with Mother’s spread – as usual, enough to feed an entire battalion – there was an explosion of hilarity behind us. Uncle Willie had wedged himself inextricably into the flimsy chair and as his not inconsiderable heft bore down on the spindly frame, it started to buckle and sink into the sand. Like the captain of a ship disappearing under the waves, he raised his hand to his forehead in salute as he descended, rather gracefully, his legs straight out in front of him, until he came to rest on his bottom. The picture shows him roaring with laughter at his farcical plight and you cannot help but smile with him. He had little in life but he was a hugely contented man.
Uncle Willie died in a way that would have made him laugh just as heartily, had he been capable of it. One Sunday, at our house for lunch, he just slumped at the table, as if suddenly dropping off to sleep. He had suffered a ruptured aortic aneurysm, something that strikes without warning – a mercifully instantaneous death for him but a brutal shock for my rather emotional and sensitive mother. One moment he was his usual jolly self and the next he was gone. Unfortunately for Uncle Willie, and for my mother’s tablecloth, he collapsed rather inelegantly, face first, into his bowl of Heinz tomato soup. It was as if our uncle was determined to keep his sense of humour to the bitter end.
And now here we were, relatives and friends united in grief at the funeral home, ready to mourn the passing of the last of a generation. But first I had to take a deep breath, pull up my big-girl pants, do what my father had asked of me and perform the last service I could for Uncle Willie: check he was ‘OK’.
I imagine that for everybody, viewing a dead loved one is a moment to pause and take stock of what they were in life, to hold on to that memory and not allow it to be clouded by what they have become in death. Willie had been a kind, gentle soul and an irresistible life force. I never heard him utter a bad word about anybody or complain about anything. This was the man who would let me place pretend bets on horse races, who took me to the shops to buy sweets, who let me help him wash cars – a man who was simply a joy to have in my young life. My only regret was not having the chance to get to know him better as an adult.
I remember the subdued lighting of the viewing room, the vaguely hymnal music playing low over the speakers, the smell of flowers and perhaps a slight whiff of disinfectant. The wooden coffin was raised on the catafalque in the centre, surrounded by flowers, the lid yawning open, waiting to be screwed down for ever so that he could rest in peace.
Registering cataclysmic shock, I realised suddenly, and all too clearly, the enormity of what had been asked of me by my father. The man in the coffin would not be buried until I gave him the all-clear. Uncle Willie had to pass muster. I felt I had been entrusted with an important mission but I was more than a little apprehensive. There was no way of knowing just how prepared I was for this and how it might affect me.
I approached the coffin, hearing my own heartbeat in my ears, and peered inside. But this wasn’t Uncle Willie. I took a sharp intake of breath. Lying within the white lining was a much smaller man, the ruddy complexion replaced by a waxy pallor and maybe just a hint of foundation. There were no laughter lines around his eyes, his lips had a blue tinge and he was, inconceivably, silent. For sure, he was wearing Willie’s best funeral suit, but the essence of the man had gone and all that was left was a faint physical trace of him in a shell once occupied by a huge personality. I realise
d that day that when the animation of the person we were is stripped out of the vessel we have used to pilot our way through life, it leaves little more than an echo or a shadow in the physical world.
Of course, it was Uncle Willie in the coffin – or at least, what remained of him. He was just not as I remembered him. It was an experience that would replay in my mind in later years when I witnessed families walking up and down rows of dead bodies laid out on the ground after a mass fatality, searching for the face of someone they desperately wanted, or in many cases did not want, to see there. I recall some of my colleagues being incredulous that people could not recognise the bodies of their closest relatives. But through my own personal encounters with death I had come to understand that the dead, even those you know, look very different from the living. The changes brought about in the appearance of a human body are more profound than can be accounted for simply by the cessation of blood flow and loss of pressure, the relaxation of muscles and the powering down of the brain. Something quite inexplicable is lost – whether we choose to call it a soul, a personality, humanity or just a presence.
The dead are not as they are depicted in the movies by actors lying perfectly still as if in a deep sleep. There is a void in them which serves somehow to weaken the certainty of the bonds of recognition. Of course the explanation for that is simple – we have never seen them dead before. Dead really is dead, it is not just sleeping or lying motionless.
Back then I couldn’t understand my inability to recognise Uncle Willie, and it unsettled me. It wasn’t as if I could attribute his appearance to disruption caused by a violent death or decomposition. It hadn’t been a violent death, and it had occurred only three days earlier over Mother’s soup – Scotland does not hang around to bury her dead.