Thinking like a criminal/stalker

-- Bribe a US Marshall for the new name

-- Break into the home of an old friend or relative and find a letter or postcard from the hiding witness (they are not supposed to make contact, of course, but no doubt many do drop a note to let them know they are okay)

Hmmm... that's all I have right now!

This is a major aspect of the plot in a great many suspense novels.

She can have a new name, but it's unlikely she's got a new face. She might allow herself to gain or lose weight, change her hair, dress differently, but that face will look like hers for a good 15 years. So the person seeking her is going to seek photos and study them, looking for her. Depending on what he knows about her and on whether she lives like a recluse, he may be able to find her in candid photos of any event she attends. (If she's smart, she won't pose for any group photo.)

She probably will contact someone by mail. Apparently many do, once they feel safe, even though they're told not to. Some don't even bother to mail the note when they're away from home, providing a hometown postmark. Duh.

She's probably still interested in what she used to be interested in. Bribes to the owners of mailing lists for her hobbies or pet causes will probably reveal new names after the date she entered the program. Check each person, and you'll find her. It'll help if her interest is pretty esoteric.

Her job skills and education didn't change. The marshalls don't get you a good job, just a job. She may well use some corollary skill, related to her past employment but not exactly the same thing, to make more money. The realtor now stages homes, the chef is a caterer, the teacher runs an after-school program, etc.

Her tastes didn't change. Did she like a particular musician? She might feel safe in a huge crowd attending a concert. An actor? Put him on Broadway, and she'll buy a ticket to see him in person. Or maybe she simply frequents Ethiopian restaurants, or attends quilting shows, or is a regular at the annual gem and mineral show.

Many people arrange to meet loved ones in what they believe to be a neutral place, far from the home of either, especially if they learn of a crisis such as a terminal illness. Of course, you follow the loved ones any time they leave town, and wham, there's your girl.

Computer searches can turn up all kinds of information, especially if somebody's got the skills to hack databases. Any which simply attached a new name to existing records, such as government records (they're sorely underfunded, remember), may give her away.

Did she keep her email? Apparently computer skills can reveal the ISP from which messages originate, even if you're not the recipient but an interceptor.

Check school alumni records, reunions, etc. They may have more recent photos, or gossipy notes about her ignoring someone from way back when, pretending she didn't know them when they ran into her in Branson, forty pounds heavier.

Read "Killshot," "Vanishing Act," and "The Blue Nowhere."

Maryn, who thinks this is fun

How about trying to track down a friend you last knew eight years ago? There's nothing like practical experience for researching something.

It can be harder than you think, most people don't leave as much of a footprint as they do in TV shows.

If I were looking for someone who had changed her name, I would try to become a friend of a relative of hers. If none of her relatives or friends were available, I start looking for people with a range of activities and interests that was like hers.

Even with the internet, there is a huge amount of variation in how hard it is to find someone. Many of the online sources are extremely inaccurate.

bylinebree said:

And she just CAN'T move.

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Why not? Because she doesn't want to? She doesn't think she can?

Or because you need her to stay put for your storyline?

If it's because of either of the first two reasons, I think it's clear that that's exactly what has to happen: she has to move.

(But if it's for the other reason, then please just ignore this post! )

There is a new way in the internet age - a method that was used successfully to track down someone who had faked their own death.

Basically you start a website about them. Nothing fancy, just a list of current rumours as to where they are.

Then log all the IP addresses that visit the site. To help things further, you can setup the site so it isn't googlable, and just forward the site's name to the person's family directly, on the assumption that a comment about it might leak back to them. Or it could be a site about the death of a close friend of theirs. Anything that is basically targetted to them.

Then look at where the hits to the site are coming from. People might feel safe surfing the web - they might believe that their visit is going to get ignored among the millions of others on the web. But they don't realise that the site would only be getting a handful of hits.

Then you just go to the area where the hits are coming from with their photographs and canvas the area in the old fashioned way. You could also set up the site to maliciously try and hack their PC, but that would be much less likely to succeed, and instead more likely frighten them off.

It would work well combining it with other techniques. So they liked macramé? Visit the macramé groups in the towns where the website hits came from. They subscribed to Writer's Digest? How many subscribers are there in that town?

You could also simply set up a webcam and and a remote alarm near their parents (or child's) grave. It would be unlikely to work (perhaps less than 5%) but would be trivial to setup and forget. You'd get an alert & live video feed whenever someone walked past, but it wouldn't be that often. You'd set up another camera and logger to get numberplates coming in and out, so even if you didn't see it live you could correlate it with a number plate. If they had any type of eTag for tollways on their car you could also log that. You could also log any Bluetooth IDs that came near the grave, so if they had their phone/ipod/etc in a standard setup (not in stealth mode) you could log the unique MAC address of the phone.

Some simple loggers sprinkled around the area (perhaps at the entrance to Wallmart, or something common) could then look for the MAC address of their bluetooth enabled phone, and alert you whenever they were within a few meters of one of your detection points. 'Pinch points' (like entrances to buildings) are ideal for this kind of thing, because it forces people to concentrate into a tiny area.

Good luck.

Mac

Your criminal doesn't have to bribe the US Marshal on the case--perhaps he can bribe someone who works in that office? Check w/the USMs but I'm sure like most other federal agencies they have admin staff, tech people, Intel analysts and the like running around. Maybe someone in tech is your best bet as they could hack into the system and get the info he needs.... and then he can kill her to tie up loose ends!

Oh, and then there's also the disgusting trash pull--or recycling for envelopes (if she's not following the rules and sending stuff home and they don't use a shredder).

If you haven't already, you should read the book "Witsec: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program" by Pete Earley and Gerald Shur. It goes into quite a bit of detail about how the program started, but it also gives details on how it works and discusses how things can go wrong.

Did anyone watch Criminal Minds last night? Boyette (sp?) attacked the marshal, then used the contact list in his cell phone to find Hotch's wife. Then pretending to be a marshal, talked her into coming to him. Great writing.

bylinebree said:

The etag for Tollways is also a possibility. I wonder if rental cars have the etags as regular equipment, or if the driver has to stop and pay manually? (Massachusetts, specifically)

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It's called Fast Lane in Massachusetts. And no, I don't believe rental cars come with an Easypass or whatever they're called. I rented a car in Canada this summer and it didn't. My husband rented a car in Chicago and it didn't come with one, and the toll booth he didn't know about required exact change, which he didn't have, and he threw in way more coins than needed and it still sent him a ticket.

The Mass Turnpike runs from Boston west to the New York State Line (and continues on.) It's Interstate 90. It is a toll road, you get a ticket when you get on. I'm pretty sure that's the only toll road in Massachusetts, although there might be a tunnel in Boston that has a toll.

There is somebody on the boards here who works in a branch of government that might be able to help. He might be busy, I see he hasn't chimed in. It could also be that you didn't mention witsec or US Marshals in the subject line.

In Colorado we have the HOV lane (not for toll roads though) and on toll roads, we've gone all-automated, the manual toss-in-coins booths are gone. Which made me worry for all those employees who lost their jobs... : - (

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It can't go all automated, I can't use my easypass with my horse trailer, for instance. I love how in New Jersey you don't even have to slow down. If you have an easypass you go around the toll booths.