“I was assigned a case in which a woman had reported being physically assaulted by her live-in boyfriend. When she returned home, she found that her boyfriend had moved out, and he had taken her father’s extensive gun collection with him. She called police out to her residence to report the theft. She advised officers that she and her children would stay with a friend for the night and would follow up with detectives the next day. Since her boyfriend was an ex-convict, and now armed with numerous firearms, she was afraid he would follow up on his threats to kill her. I was unable to reach her for several days after the incident, but I finally received a phone call from worried family members who reported that the day after the assault she dropped her children off at school and never returned to pick them up. The woman had been missing for several days. She did not take her purse, phone, vehicle, or any clothes. Her family advised that her children were her life, and she would never go anywhere without them. The case became a missing/abducted person investigation. After exhausting all leads and checking for months for the missing woman, I attended the LeadsOnline conference in Las Vegas where I learned how to get the most out of the system’s features. When I returned to Texas, I checked the LeadsOnline database and found that the boyfriend had sold a few of the stolen guns. I ran the woman’s information and learned that she had been selling the firearms before the initial theft report. I followed up with the shops in person and found CCTV footage of the pair traveling the country and selling firearms along the way. Now thinking the woman may have left on her own will, I checked some social media online and found a picture with the missing woman in the background, drinking beer and dancing with her boyfriend, several months after abandoning her children at school. LeadsOnline allowed me to clear the missing person case and finally give some answers to her family about what happened to the missing mother. It also later allowed me to show prosecutors that the woman was not an abductee, but a willing participant in her fugitive boyfriend’s criminal activities.”
Det. Dusty Simmons
Haltom City Police Department
Texas
