Investigation Basics - Following Leads

Table of Contents
Where to Start With People Leads
Follow Leads In the News
Leads From Other People
Dead Leads - or Leads of the Dead

First: Ask yourself what do I know about the person? Do you have a name and an age, and you know where he once lived? Do you know where he went to high school or college? Does he possess any professional license(s)? If so, you have a good lead. You can start to track down your subject. The reason is, there is an excellent chance there is information in the public records on your subject.

For online investigations, person leads can be things like a name, and address, a phone number, a social security number. Basically, it is any information you can follow (like sign in tracking). The more information you have on the person - the better the lead.

Second: search at an investigation site. You can use my favorite Investigate People search page or go to the Be Your Own Detective Blog and get more leads. The free part of the search will give you a name, location and likely an age of the person you are looking for. The age generated in the report may be slightly off, depending on the source of information. So how will I track down who it is? Sure I have a name, age and city, now what? If you have absolutely no place to start location-wise, you will need an online investigation tool. If you are using either of the above sites, you can just continue by selecting the person, and for a fee you will get a thorough report.

So you want to start from scratch yourself. You will likely need a paid service anyways like Net Detective. Now what that does is access thousands of public records, paid criss-cross directories, and cell phone records and returns that information back to you. Does it identify the person? Often it does, but a conscientious investigator will confirm that information from public records searches his self. What it really does, is it tracks down leads - more information for you to follow.

You may be thinking that you can look up this information in public records your self. Sure you can, if you have endless time and energy and a nice fast internet connection, it should only take you hours, instead of minutes to track this down. If you know what city and state to start at, it may not be so hard. If you have no idea where to start - then good luck, because I know of at least 400 public records links to track down people in Texas alone. These are great places to look. I don't know who has the time for that.

There are so many pieces of information available - how do you know it is a lead? That is where the experience and accomplished investigator separates himself from the novice. Remember the lead points you toward finding your subject. Many leads are dead ends, or worse point you in the wrong direction. That is why having a tool that can gather leads from multiple sources and organize it in a logical fashion is so important. You can sort through and sift the information and not chase down "miss-leads" instead of leads. Sometimes being persistent is better than being good.

So you decided to use a be your own detective search site. You still don't know if you want to pay for the report. What it does is it gives you a list of names and cities with age.

You are now armed with good information. You can enter the information into a good search engine and check the news sites. That is right, news sites. You never know if the person was in a car wreck, won and award, or was a victim in a crime that was reported in the news. Even small town newspapers have news feeds to places like Google, MSN, and Yahoo. A diligent search there just may add a bit of information.

It won't get you a phone number, but it may give you a more specific location. You never know, if you are lucky, you may get a photo too.

Remember the starting place in Part 1? Here is the reminder - Ask yourself what do I know about the person? Do you have a name and an age, and you know where he once lived? Do you know where he went to high school or college? Does he possess any professional license(s)?

So you checked out the search box at the Investigate People search page where you can be your own detective. You are not satisfied with those results, or even worse, you get no returns to follow up on. What do you do next? Here are some other things to consider about your subject. Do you have the name right? Did they change their name - by marriage or other wise? Maybe you remember the first name, but that is really a middle or nick name.

If you cannot find the person, find the next best thing. Find someone who knows the person. If it is an old class mate - ask others from the same class. Now is not the time to be shy - you may need to call them.

Let's see where we are at this point:
1) You checked the Internet Search Site
2) You checked the news
3) You are now checking on class mates or former co-workers

Ok, maybe you were not a class mate. Maybe he was a co-worker. Maybe he worked at another business. You are now at the point where as an investigator, you need to think. The same principles apply. This is where you will have to "get your hands dirty" so to speak in investigating. You can not afford to be shy, and you need to use the investigators best friend - the phone. There are many wonderful things you can do on the internet, but the phone is still one of the most personal and fastest ways to get information.

You may not even need to do a pretext call. A pretext call is where you pretend to be someone else or call for some other reason. Often, when a person leaves a business, people will tell you about another person if the call is more personal than professional. The business may not be able to officially tell you about anyone over the phone.

TOC

Ok all you have is dead end leads - what do you do now? Did you say dead end? One thing you need to consider: Is he dead? This may be the easiest thing to clear up, especially if you know their social security number. When I am investigating other people for someone, when I do not know the subject I am tracking down, this is the first place I go to check to see if they are dead or alive. There is the one in a million chance the records are wrong, but they are very accurate with the death reports.

TOC

The Five Steps of the Investigative Process

1. State the Problem

• Identify subject
  
• Locate subject
  
• Recover evidence
  

2. Form a Hypothesis

• Motive
  
• Opportunity
  
• Means
  

3. Observe and Experiment

• Evaluate hypothesis
  
• Modify/reject hypothesis
  
• Experiment with hypothesis
  

4. Interpret Data

• Interpret results of final observations and experimentation
  

5. Draw Conclusions

• Has the stated problem been answered?
  
• Does evidence support hypothesis?
  
• Has every facet of the investigation been conducted within the law?
  
• Do the facts of the case support prosecution?
  

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Be Your Own Detective Blog

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