Missing Persons Bureau Has Few Failures

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30190, 23 July 1963, Page 3

Missing Persons Bureau Has Few Failures

N.Z.P.A.

VANCOUVER. In an Ns U years at the Btetag Person* Bureau, Detective Duncan Smith has come across only one case of a “really strong <l** disappearance. That was the case of Mrs Leolo Duitman, a 56-year-old shorthand writer who bad worked for the same firm for 14 years and lived as regular and normal a life as it is possible to imagine. When she went for lunch on October 4, 1955, she complained of a headache. She has never been seen again. Detective Smith handles an average of 2000 reports and 500 inquiries about “missing”

people a year. Most of the inquiries are about people who are not really mining, but just cannot be found. Of 2096 persons reported missing last year, 2083 turned up. “With children,” says Detective Smith, “it is just a matter ot time. I have just one boy and one girl 1 cannot account for since I took over the bureau. But they will turn up eventually." Detective Smith says that the amount of time which the police spend on a case is dictated by their concern about it For example: “If your wife did. not come home all night, nobody would give much of a damn. But if your Little boy did not come home all night we should move heaven and earth to find him.” His most heart-warming case, he says, occurred earlier this year when a girl walked into his office and said: “I want to find my father.” She had, it appeared, been bom out of wedlock and brought up by an aunt. As she grew up, she had gathered scraps of information about her father, his name and occupation, and what be looked like. She learned that he had moved to Vancouver. But, she told Detective Smith: “I have never seen him.” It took a time. But the detective did eventually find the father, to the great satisfaction of both of them.