No Body No ID: Finding a killer when the victim is missing or unknown

In the UK someone is reported missing every 90 seconds and, while over 75% will return within a few days, 1% are still missing after 12 months, some never return at all, having been murdered and their body never found. For detectives these investigations pose particular problems. Where do you begin when the most vital piece of information, the victim is missing? Conversely, there are over 1000 unidentified found remains registered in the UK, and while detectives can establish many things from the remains not knowing the identity of the victim makes it hard to know what has happened to them and by whom. This talk draws on a small-scale pilot project exploring how the police seek to solve these challenging investigations, case study examples will be drawn on to share some of the opportunities and challenges these investigations present before considering what can be learned from these especially hard to solve investigations.