FEATURE: MISSING!

Mark McLaughlin
Edinburgh Evening News
February 24, 2009


TOMORROW, the familiar dark blue uniformed figures of Lothian and Borders police officers will be out on Edinburgh's Stevenson Drive.

The officers will be hoping to spark a memory or gather some sliver of information to help them trace a young woman who has been missing since last summer.

Samantha Wright, 25, is one of more than 1700 people reported missing to Lothian and Borders Police last year. Many are missing in name only, such as foreign sailors who jump ship - and many more are found swiftly. But every year there are a small number of people who disappear without trace or explanation. For the families left behind it's heartbreaking.

"When someone is missing for a long time the family naturally start to fear that they are dead, but many people do decide to disappear deliberately and not tell anyone," Superintendent Paul Bullen explains.

"However, we live in one of the most intrusive societies in the world and in this day and age there are very few private places left where you can hide away forever."

For that reason, despite the fact their investigation into Samantha's disappearance has "hit a brick wall", according to Supt Bullen, police are still hopeful she can be found.

Samantha was reported missing last month but hasn't been seen since the summer. Her last known address was in Stevenson Drive.

And while Samantha has been missing for weeks, there are Lothian families who have been desperate for months and even decades for news of a missing loved one.

DEREK BURNS

"YOU never get over losing a child, you just learn to deal with it." It's a loss that his father Derek Burns and his wife Diane have had to cope with every day for the last 20 years.

It was March 1989 when, on a last-minute whim, their son, also named Derek, jumped on a train heading to England. The 20-year-old had decided to visit a former girlfriend - his family haven't seen him since. His father adds sadly: "In a way it would be better if we knew he was dead because at least we would know."

In the months before his disappearance, the former West Calder High School pupil was less than happily settled - he was unemployed and his father feared he was mixing with an unsuitable crowd.

But they do know that Derek was intending to head back to Scotland just before he disappeared - they just have no idea why he never made it home.

Derek Sr, now 69, explains: "As he got into his mid-teens his own attitude to life changed, and he went from being a jolly young fellow to taking the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"He was always going on about how the world was wrong and how someone had to change it."

When he left school he enrolled in a Youth Training Scheme with a local garage, but when an offer of an apprenticeship was withdrawn in favour of more cheap YTS labour he started to drift.

His father, a former corporal in the RAF Airfield Construction Service, was, by 1989, travelling round Scotland selling bathroom fittings.

"I used to take him with me on my runs from time to time to get him out the house, and on the day he disappeared I offered to take him to Dumfries but he said he was going into Edinburgh with his friends. When he didn't come home that night we figured he'd just stayed out with his mates, but when we didn't hear from him the next day we started to worry and my wife Diane phoned round all of his mates and they hadn't heard from him either."

Several years later they tracked down a former friend of Derek's, who was with him at the time of his disappearance and had since moved to Holland, and they were able to piece together some of his final movements, including the visit to a former girlfriend in the south of England.

"That was the last anyone had heard from him," says Derek Sr. "Our hunt for information was made more difficult by the fact that the girl he was going to visit died shortly after he disappeared.

"The police weren't much help because in the eyes of the law he was an adult and could look after himself, so he was never a high priority.

"However, there are 30,000 outstanding missing persons in this country and they can't all be dead, so there's still a glimmer of hope that he's headed off somewhere for a new life away from it all, and is either too settled or too ashamed to get in touch after all these years."

ALAN TEMPLETON

WALKING along the streets of Edinburgh, Douglas Templeton has often had to do double takes. The 72-year-old explains: "A couple of times I've actually gone up people and asked: 'Are you my son?'. Unfortunately, they never are."

Alan Templeton was 25 years old when he disappeared in November 2006. His parents Douglas and Elizabeth had watched him change from a "sunny" child and a popular and ambitious young man into an adult wracked by self-doubt and depression.

"Alan was always very outgoing with lots of friends," says Elizabeth, now 63. "He used to play football, and when he went on to George Watson's College he took on rugby, as well as running marathons for various different charities. He had a wonderful social conscience.

"After school he took a gap year before going on to Aberystwyth University to study film and media, gaining a good degree and winning prizes for the films he made."

Like so many graduates he had trouble getting a job in his chosen profession, and marked time with a series of dead-end jobs in pubs and restaurants, eventually moving to France to join his elder sister Kirsten, now 30, who had a good job in the banking sector.

However, more dead-end jobs followed and, fearing for Alan's mental health, Kirsten made an appointment with her local GP and eventually a psychiatrist. It was suggested that he go back to live with his parents, who were by now living in Pitlochry.

"When he came back it was clear that he was seriously depressed," says Elizabeth. "He wasn't sleeping and he kept talking about getting away.

"He eventually got another job in a pub in the Pleasance, and on the day before he disappeared he was supposed to be working on the day of a big rugby international [Scotland v Australia], but unusually he'd also made plans to meet a friend and go to the game.

"Police later discovered that one of the last texts that were sent to his phone were from his friend, saying 'Where the hell are you?'."

Alan failed to keep either appointment and instead spent the afternoon alone watching the tide roll in at Newhaven Harbour. He stayed the night at a friend's house but the next day walked off by himself, and has not been seen since.

Elizabeth says: "If he did decide to jump into the sea at Newhaven, police said the tide would wash him away and his body may never be found.

"There have been various appeals for information on his whereabouts, with sightings coming in from Thailand, to Luxembourg to Ballachulish, but all of them have turned out to be duds."

MARY FERNS

WHEN a young person goes missing, however unexpectedly, there is always the thought that they are still out there, safe and well, just carving out a new anonymous life for themselves.

It's less easy to picture that happening when the missing person is 88 and dependent on medication. Blind in one eye, with failing hearing and walking with a stick, Mary Ferns vanished in June last year somewhere around Princes Street, 20 miles from her home in the Howden area of Livingston.

"The last thing she said to my dad was that she was off to buy some socks," says stepdaughter Anne Foster.

"He assumed she was off to the Almondvale Centre, but when she didn't come home that night we called the police.

"She was still very independent, despite her age, and lived a very ordered life," says Anne. "She was always very particular about how she looked when she went out, and it was the same on the day she went missing.

"However, she had no change of clothes and was on medication for various ailments related to old age, so it's extremely hard to believe that she just decided to run off.

"You just never know though, do you? It would be wonderful to think she's alive and out there somewhere.

The last thing we would want is for something terrible to have happened to her, or for someone to have done something to her, but if we knew she was dead we could have a funeral and finally be given the opportunity to grieve instead of being stuck in this limbo."

Mary's 81-year-old husband William has, along with the rest of the family, been left with a large inexplicable hole which is filled with brief glimmers of hope that are never fulfilled.

Anne adds: "It's particularly hard for dad, and you can often see it when he looks up from a book on to the chair opposite, where she used to sit, and she's not there."

FINDING HELP

THE only UK charity which works with young runaways, missing adults and their families is Missing People.

The charity - formerly known as the National Missing Persons Helpline - has offered support to the families of missing people Derek Burns, Alan Templeton and Mary Ferns in the Lothians.

Now the service - which costs GBP 1.7 million a year to run - has been given a cash boost from the People's Postcode Lottery.

The lottery is hoping to raise more than GBP 200,000 over the next year to help fund the 24-hour helpline which handles around 20,000 calls every year. The charity also offers a free text service for missing children in Scotland.

Around 210,000 people are reported missing in the UK every year. Most turn up within days.

Missing People also offers support, advice, guidance and practical help for families, as well as a national register of missing people.