Want to disappear, not an easy thing to do I think. In reality there are probably several reasons to want to disappear, these are pretty variable. You may well have a good reason to not want to be found, going from the unwelcome attentions of a stalker or an ex partner who was or is violent. This could run all the way through to debt or even fleeing the police – but without any prejudice I’ve been thinking about this and how would I do it.
The previous couple of posts have made me think about this quite seriously, so as far as I can see there are four basic methods (and at least one other). But I would have to say that at this point I know who I can absolutely count on, so the method that I’d use won’t actually be mentioned here. The first and probably the least likely to succeed is the Reginald Perrin, that is the old leave a pile of clothes on the beach, your car in the car park and vanish. The initial results of this would probably lead to a major manhunt involving at least the police and the coastguard, probably not something that you’d want. It does also mean that for quite a while you’d have a relatively high visibility, where there would be a fairly good chance that you would be recognised. Still if you got past this point, you’ll always be in the position of John Darwin where it’s likely that you’ll be caught and exposed. Not generally something that you’d want, especially if you’ve decided to drop off the planet.
Now as I’ve already said in some of the previous posts there are just so many possibilities for being tracked that it’s important you recognise them all, how important – well increasingly so as time goes on. Think on how you would do this, you want to vanish – for whatever reason and something as simple as sending a careless email could give it all away. So how to tackle this issue, well I’ve superficially covered method one. What I would add is that there is a good chance that the getting caught chances are high, with some additional planning these can be massively reduced. The longer you have to plan, the better your chances of success.
Lets take the first scenario, the one already mentioned. This guy has done a Reginald Perrin, he has staged his own death and has decided to vanish abroad. From that point onwards he’s really on his own and because of the way he’s gone people are actually aware of the fact and are aware of his original identity. So we have the chance that he’ll be seen/recognised and exposed, at the very least. So what mistakes did he make, well quite a few actually. The first was that it seems that there were only a few days of planning, the second was that there were other people involved and the third seems to revolve around the criminal aspects of the whole situation. Namely he defrauded the insurers, actually stole an identity and finally he returned to the scene of the crime where he was seen and aroused the suspicion of the police.
So how would I have done this, well I certainly wouldn’t have chosen a method that would have involved the police or defrauding insurers without much more planing and one of the last things that I’d have done was returned to the original scene. But most importantly I’d have done some serious planning. Lets examine the circumstances, there is a certain element of debt which the debtors are obviously going to try and recover. Now in true debtor style there is only one thing that they want, that is the return of the money. To do that they have to make application through the courts, a process that can be delayed for a significant period of time probably by as much as a year if the truth be told. This actually gives you a year to plan and execute the plan, but critically it also gives a year to obfuscate the finances. So there would have been less chance of the Panama connection being identified, by police and the media – who I’m sure would never have used any illegal methods at this point. So the moral of this story is, don’t raise your head above the parapet unless you’re prepared to be shot at.
Next part to follow soon.
Oh dear – you seem to have disappeared!!