Publicity

The disappearee should attempt to keep out of the public eye as much as possible. While we have already discussed the reasons for not taking a job as a TV reporter, radio announcer, bellhop or other highly public job, there are subtler ways that vanishers trip themselves up through publicity.

Stay away from public activities like rallies, marches, protests, etc. Such events are swarming with media photographers. You never know when you'll wake up one morning and see your smiling face on page one.

You should also avoid membership in publicity-seeking clubs. Their membership records may be available to the authorities or other investigators looking for you. A number of disappearees have been found when their pictures turned up in small club newsletters.

As a photographer myself, I can tell you that there are a great number of people who are absolute masters at avoiding the camera or spoiling shots. Their faces are always partially obscured by someone else's head or some object. And it happens enough that I know it is not coincidence; they watch out for cameras and keep themselves out of the line of fire.

Some people just run into bum luck and have their identities revealed. A good example of this is the old William Desmond Taylor murder case. Taylor was a top Hollywood movie director of his time who wound up murdered one day. In a case like this the police immediately make a thorough, painstaking investigation, starting from scratch. And scratch is, "Who was he?"

It turned out that Taylor was a disappearee who in his original identity had been a prosperous businessman from New York who had simply walked out of his life some years before. Since that time he served with distinction as an officer in the Canadian Army, had been in Alaska, and finally wound up as a movie director in Hollywood. His new identity was so well established that not much more was ever discovered. And his killer has not been identified to this day.

In the natural course of their investigation the police questioned his valet, a man who called himself "Sands." Sands was never a suspect himself. And as they had no particular reason to detain him, the police let him go, explaining that if they thought of more questions they would look him up.

They did think of some more questions, but they're probably still looking. For when Sands walked out of the police station he walked into oblivion and was never seen again. Many of the people involved in the case believe that Sands was Taylor's brother who had also disappeared some years before. An intensive search was mounted, but to no avail.

It was only through the incredible bad luck of Taylor's murder that any attention at all was ever paid to Sands.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 841