People who look like missing but are not

i was searchin through the doe network looking at pictures to see if i have ever seen any of the faces i live in ct and i thought it would be a long shot which it was, but one boy i think he was missing from new mexico i duno i have to search for him again he went missing 1981 i think which would place him in his 30s anyways i volunteer with my father for little leauge we run the food stand this boy who had to be about 10 looked just like him and im going omg but im thinking it cant be him becuse this boy i now in his 30s i duno am im being way off track or is this normal since im farily new to all of this

then im thinking somehow this person is somehow related to them becuse of the looks but then i find out the persons name and im like do i ask them if hes realted to this person but there are people that look like me or that i look like.i wish more children were trained to run or scream, i duno about giving mace to a child is mace legal? i know it can harm u if not properly used but lots of cases the person has mace and stalls the attacker

smile22 said:

i was searchin through the doe network looking at pictures to see if i have ever seen any of the faces i live in ct and i thought it would be a long shot which it was, but one boy i think he was missing from new mexico i duno i have to search for him again he went missing 1981 i think which would place him in his 30s anyways i volunteer with my father for little leauge we run the food stand this boy who had to be about 10 looked just like him and im going omg but im thinking it cant be him becuse this boy i now in his 30s i duno am im being way off track or is this normal since im farily new to all of this

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I wonder if there is any professional work published about this. You'd think that nowadays, with so many photo-databases of missing people that there'd be some articles about the misidentification of look-alike "twins."

smile22 said:

i was searchin through the doe network looking at pictures to see if i have ever seen any of the faces i live in ct and i thought it would be a long shot which it was, but one boy i think he was missing from new mexico i duno i have to search for him again he went missing 1981 i think which would place him in his 30s anyways i volunteer with my father for little leauge we run the food stand this boy who had to be about 10 looked just like him and im going omg but im thinking it cant be him becuse this boy i now in his 30s i duno am im being way off track or is this normal since im farily new to all of this

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O/T- But where in CT are you from? I grew up in Old Saybrook.

I knew a young lady who had the misfortune of being a dead-ringer for Patty Hearst while she was missing/wanted (looks, height, weight, age, everything). Add into the mix that this young lady lived in Sacramento when the SLA had been traced to this area and you can understand her dilemma.

She was stopped not once, but twice, by LE (with guns drawn) as Patty Hearst. Once, before she could prove that she wasn't Hearst, TV remote vans actually showed up at the scene and prepared to report "breaking news" of Patty Hearst's capture. She never really felt safe going out in public until the real Hearst was captured in San Francisco.

Would You Notice A Missing Child?
10News Puts San Diegians To Test
POSTED: 4:42 pm PST March 1, 2006
UPDATED: 6:10 pm PST March 1, 2006
http://www.10news.com/print/7592453/detail.html


excerpt:

SAN DIEGO -- Could you spot a missing child even if he or she was standing directly in front of you?

Every year thousands of children are reported missing.

Finding them could come down to paying attention to the smallest details.

Sometimes a quick glance is all you get in the grocery store or the park.

A missing child could be standing there right under your nose.

If you thought you spotted a child in danger, would you approach or even call for help? Would you even notice.....

I was stationed in NC.at FT. Bragg for a few month's and i had all kind's of people come up and start talking to me like they knowed me all there life but i never seen them before or knowed what in the world they was talking about.. somebody must looked a lot like me lived in that area is all i could think of..

OneLostGrl said:

O/T- But where in CT are you from? I grew up in Old Saybrook.

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i am from new britain but have family in old saybrook and have spent many summers at cornfield point. this summer my grandparents and my aunt and uncle from pa are comming down in july to rent a cottage in saybrook. i cant wait going down for like 2 days its going to be so much fun.

Wondering22, that is a great article. And it points out something very important. I can think of many times I have gone into a store and been in a line with kids, and if they were reasonably well behaved, I wouldn't even be able to describe them when I walked out- mainly because I didn't pay attention. Usually I only notice them if they are too something- too mischevious, too shy or they do something to stand out. And of couse a kidnapper would be aware of that and would make sure the kids were well behaved in a store or while out in public.
Duncan took at least Shasta into more than one store and she wasn't noticed until he took her to Denny's right in her hometown. Nobody noticed.

However, there are soooooooooooooooo many children who resemble oneanother; that's why it's imperative that parents get videotapes of their children, without the "living breathing moving animated" version of their child, it is very difficult for anyone who's never seen them in real life to recognize them from a still photo.

Back in the eighties there was a girl in the news who had been "switched" at birth and went to court to live w/ this set of parents, then the other. She was around 13-14 at the time. I don't remember her name.
People started calling my parents; teachers started asking me questions--it was hilarious! While I was several years older, she and I could have been twins otherwise. Many people actually believed we were somehow sisters and the "switched" thing might have happened to me too!
I admit that it was freaky--in addition to looking alike, our mannerisms were the same; we even had the same cowlicks in the same places BUT I am also identical to one of my cousins. Most people outside the family can't tell us apart! We've even confused family members a time or two!
It wouldn't surprise me if someone called the authorities when the whole mess in Florida was going on.

http://p069.ezboard.com/fjazzyrosefrm230.showMessage?topicID=7.topic



Missing woman mis-ID'd
By Leslie Slape
Aug 26, 2005 - 08:17:28 am PDT


Detectives were hoping they finally had a break in a nine-year missing-persons case, but instead they found a remarkable look-alike.

"We're confident that this is not Phylis Lewellen," Charlie Rosenzweig, chief criminal deputy of the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office, said Thursday.

The woman resembling Lewellen, who disappeared from her home in the Lexington area of Kelso on Dec. 27, 1996, is Tammy Dickie, 43, of Lakeville, Minn.

"It is a big break in the sense that what we didn't know yesterday, we know today, and that's a big help," Rosenzweig said. "But it's disappointing that we still don't have any information about Phylis, which ultimately was our goal."

After a story ran Thursday morning in the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal speculating that a woman in a photo could be Lewellen, Sheriff's Detective Ron Broyles' phone began to ring.

A Journal photographer shot the photo Aug. 10 at a Wyoming motorcycle rally and included it in a special publication for the motorcycle rally in Sturgis. Friends of Lewellen who were at the rally saw the picture and alerted her former husband, Bill, who said the image came as a shock to him and his two children, 15 and 11.

" 'Yes, that is Phylis.' That was my first reaction," Lewellen, who still lives in Lexington, told the Journal.

The shape of the woman's nose and mouth are the same, Lewellen said, right down to a bump on her lip. The way the woman is holding her arms matched a typical posture of his wife, he said.

The woman in the photo also is holding a Coors Light, Phylis Lewellen's favorite beer, and her nails appear to be long and well kept, just like Phylis Lewellen's nails, he said.

But people who know Tammy Dickie and her husband, Joe, called the sheriff's office to set the record straight.

"Now I know why they call it Rapid City -- we got a rapid response from that story they ran," Rosenzweig said.

Joe Dickie said that when Broyles left a message on his phone Thursday, he initially thought something awful happened to his wife, a flight attendant.

"I got a call from the Rapid City Journal, then I got a call from a detective who said, 'Call me, it's urgent, it's about a missing person,' " he said. "My wife left on a trip, so I'm thinking my wife's disappeared. You can imagine what goes on your head."

He said his heart goes out to the Lewellen family, because he knows what they are going through. His aunt disappeared when he was a child and she has never been found.

Thursday, the Lewellen family referred all calls to the sheriff's office.

After talking to Broyles, Dickie looked at the photo, which shows his wife in profile.

"Looking at the profile, I can tell why they think that," he said.

Tammy, 43, is only two years younger than Lewellen would be today. At 5-foot-5, she's only an inch shorter.

"You start thinking, I married my wife in '96," he said. "You start thinking, maybe my wife isn't who I think she is."

Then he compared the images from the front. There's no doubt they're different women, he said.
Joe and Tammy Dickie met July 28, 1996, in the Mall of America parking lot in Minneapolis.

"She was on a layover from one of her flights, and I was pulling into the parking lot in my Harley," he recalled. "She pulled over and asked me out."

They were married Dec. 20, 1996, seven days before Lewellen vanished.

Lewellen has blue-green eyes, long strawberry-blond hair and an Alabama accent. She was wearing jeans, a white sweatshirt and a Western-style coat when she was last seen.

Deputies made an extensive search but have been unable to locate Lewellen, her 1981 Peugeot, or her Rottweiler.

"It's remarkable that the vehicle has never shown up," Rosenzweig said. "It's entered into the national crime data bases. So if it does surface, in a legal sense, the system will notify us."

He said the sheriff's office has gotten a lot of calls since the story broke and he hopes that the national attention will help solve the mystery.

Anyone with information is encouraged to call Broyles at 577-3092, extension 2349. Anonymous tips may be called to Crime Stoppers of Cowlitz County, 577-1206.


© 2005 The Daily News
Lee Publications, Inc.

I found something really interesting in another thread, from posting #700. I think this is fascinating information.

....Perhaps I should describe for you the process of identifying a person who is either unable (through unconsciousness, psychosis, or death) or unwilling (through intentional misleading) to identify themselves; for Fingerprints, Dental records (X-rays), DNA, or possibly a smiling photograph (showing teeth).

For 99% of the population one of these four ways must be used. Notice I didn't even mention photos (of either the deceased or missing person). Photo comparisons are almost entirely and completely unreliable. I can't tell you the number of times a family member has identified a victim by photo, only to find out later they were wrong, and that the victim was someone entirely different....

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http://websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37727&page=28&pp=25