throwaway022009's comments

Unfortunately, it's actually not that hard. My brother vanished when he was 23 and to this day, he's still a missing person's case. You'd hope that your friends would search for you, but most people are just too busy with their own lives to exert too much effort when it's not their problem.

He was someone with over a thousand Facebook friends, but no one seemed to notice that he stopped posting. The first few months he was missing, his friends continued to send him invites to parties, events, etc. As time when on and he didn't respond, they naturally stopped sending invites. A few friends sent emails saying, "Hey, I haven't seen you in a while. I'm worried. Call me." Eventually they too stopped. All it took was a matter of months before people stopped to reach out.

When news broke that he was first missing, his friends seemed more annoyed than anything. I suppose most of them thought this was a hoax (not that he's ever done anything like this before). They were reluctant to be bothered, to break up their day to simply answer a few questions the detectives had to paint a better picture of my brother. I don't blame them too much, no one wants additional drama in their lives.

Of course, the scenario will be unique for everyone. Everyone has a different group of friends, different resources. Unfortunately for me, I was blocked. I practically had access to all his accounts with the help of his girl friend, but at the end of the day, I couldn't get a subpoena to see if there were any deleted gmail or facebook messages. I wasn't able to get a subpoena to track the cellphone fast enough. He was just casted off as a statistic, just another quarter-life crisis suicide case. I sincerely hope the family gets some good news about Dan Ha, because there's nothing worse than having to wake up every morning wondering if you could have done more.

If only it were that easy... my brother went missing in February 2009 and as of today it's still an "ongoing" investigation. I was basically blocked at every turn...

In order for to get a cellphone log or trace, the detectives on the case needs to file for a subpoena. A judge will then need to sign off on it which takes 24-48 hours. Following that, they need to submit it to the cellphone company which claims it might take a billing cycle before the data is provided since it's on the "cell towers" and it's not transmitted yet. Even then, the information is useless. It's nothing more than what you receive on your monthly billing statement.

Police has no authority to just do it since it's up to the cellphone provider.