People disappearing creates fear

Photo: Politsei- ja piirivalveamet

Searches for Markkus (17) lost in Võru, South Estonia for tenth day have come to seeking help from soothsayers and diviners. The visions claimed by the latter have yielded no fruit. 

Clairvoyants Ilona Kaldre and Veet Mano are talking about a brutal crime but that’s where their information stops. Generalities like this are no help looking for lost people.

Keeping on the search, the police are inclined to think it has been an accident. «Pardon my scepticism, but I know of no positive incident in seeking for lost people with help by clairvoyants,» says Southern prefecture crisis regulation team head Ottomar Virk. «It’s been nothing but noise.»

Therefore, the police faithfully trust their tried and tested methods, the ones that usually work: working with contacts of the lost, and in urgent cases the landscape searches.

Hope waning

After his disappearance in Võru in the night of October 24th, all of this has been applied. The hopes for a happy ending, however, are getting dimmer with each day that goes by. About to get lost, the youth of 17 was obviously distressed as visible in security recordings obtained by the police revealing his inadequate roaming – and this the police considers key factor.

It looks likely that as Markkus was walking towards Tartu Highway in Võru that night, he was not adequately aware of surroundings. Therefore, the investigators are interested in what Markkus and his friends may have consumed in the evening.

Though bumping into a wall of silence here, they think it probable that the confused youth may have ventured into someplace swampy and encountered an accident. Therefore, they are still combing the landscape which is generally believed to be helpful during 72 hours after an individual gets into trouble.

With Markkus, the deadline was passed a while ago, but they are still looking. «Sometimes, all it takes is to look at some places twice,» says Mr Virk.

Second by second, burning the midnight oil, the police have been inspecting the blurry video recordings. Helpfully, they have thus been directed to the other end of the city. But... that’s all.

The lad still lost, theories are abounding on what may have happened. The wildest are related to illegal organs donation business and the like. Estonia’s experienced police investigators, with years of such rumours heard, attribute that to fantasy inspired by films.

They do admit though that the tales fall to fertile ground. Especially when considering that these past months, in Southern Estonia alone six vital young men have gone missing. We are talking about such cases as have been shared with the public by police.

The news of one of them having returned after several days on the rough side of life never got the media limelight. Just as the side note that two of the lost were mentally challenged. Therefore, horror stories are spreading about kidnappings and the like.

Parents in dark

The police assure us that to their best knowledge such stories have no basis. This year alone, they have been involved in searches for over 3,300 missing people. Lion’s share of the incidents were solved in a few hours: the individual had either intentionally left home, or was in hiding as fed up with family.  

«Talking about minors, it’s often the case that the parents don’t even know with whom their missing child communicates outside the home,» said Pärnu youth policewoman Keiju Püvi. Finding that out is often the primary task for the police in searches, as the result of which the family learns more about what the kids are about.

Ms Püvi shares about this incident when a missing lad surfaced in Germany, having hitchhiked thither from Pärnu. «He was lost for about a week,» recalls the policewoman.

Likewise, this fall for an entire month the police were looking for a young lady who refused to travel to Oman with her parents and disappeared at the airport. As it was suspected, her being «lost» was due to warm feelings towards a young man.  

The only minor lost and never found in Northern Estonia this fall was from Vietnam. Having been caught in Estonia while here illegally, he had obtained a home and was already acquiring an education in Estonia but he never returned home from school one day. Probably, the lost Vietnamese just travelled on from here.