http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/policeblotter-1/1112949657145630.xml&coll=1What is the point of my post, you may ask, since it so clearly seems not to be political, and thus not really DU material in any way, shape, or form?
What is the point of ANY post, but to inform and/ or create discussion. Missing persons and the wrongly accused deserve as much democratic consideration and justice as any other person.
Personally, I think they deserve it more so, because their voices (unless they are a young white college kid or white clean-cut mostly female rich person - for example, Smart, Sjodin, Levy, Peterson, Hacking etc.) are rarely heard from or written about or acknowledged in any way shape or form.
Do you know how many persons went missing in California at about the same time as Laci Peterson? Two that I know of specifically. One was hispanic (and also pregnant and also found murdered not too long AFTER Laci) and another was a prostitute, but guess which was talked about incessantly by the media?
And finally, missing persons and serial killers and miscarriages of justice are an example of why the budgets of LE (both here in the U.S and abroad) should be raised (and NOT just for homeland security) which is A VERY POLITICAL subject - in my opinion.
Also, I think conservatively about 120,000 folks are reported missing every year in the United States alone (many missing person sites estimate higher numbers in the hundreds of thousands), but fortunately only 2 percent stay missing for more than 30 days. That number is still over 2,000 A YEAR!
AND if only 10% of that is serial killer related, then that's over 400 serial killer victims in the US a year.
These stats are relatively meaningless by themselves without anything to back them up, but I've found in my research that between one and two bodies a day (on average) are found in remote areas that obviously died under suspicious circumstances and are either never identified or their murders never solved. That is between 300 and 500 bodies a year that "could" atleast be serial killer related.
I have been trying to keep track of all these found bodies on my website:
http://NEWS.OneMissingPerson.org/and most of these news articles were found with google news alerts for "body found" (and from other missing person related groups I belong to) and I get (on average) five reports a day from google. There are probably a lot more I don't hear about.
In short, it's a problem that gets practically no attention which I am trying to rectify by posting here maybe 5% of the total alerts I get everyday. Part of the problem can be rectified by diverting drug and prostitution investigation and harrasment money to the violent crime departments of local LE agencies here and around the world,
Anyway, thanx for asking (in case you were wondering),
d