June 2016
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The South Central Indiana Human Resource Association, affiliated with the Society of Human Resource Managers, will host its July luncheon Wednesday, July 13 at the Monroe County Convention Center, 302 S. College Ave., Bloomington, Indiana. A guest speaker will talk on "Developing Your Emerging Leaders." For more information, contact schira@hotmail.com. Trace Investigations is a SCHIRA and SHRM member.



We are grateful to have the opportunity to provide you this valuable information. We take special care to ensure the information we provide you in "Tracings" is the latest and most current information available.  In this edition, we have addressed the importance of asking, "Where's the evidence?" and how searching for the "best" evidence provides results. 

The goal of this e-newsletter is to provide you with critical information that will help you prevail in your business affairs wherever fact finding is an essential component. We will share what we have learned in our 30+ years as professional investigators and intelligence analysts.

We want to write about topics that will assist you in succeeding in your business endeavors. Please e-mail us your topics of interest to
tracings@traceinvestigations.com.
 
We encourage you to share our e-newsletter with others in your sphere of influence. 
 
Sincerely,
The Trace Team

art1 "Where's the evidence?"
Last month I posed a question I have asked many times in casual conversations: Why are there virtually no stories or photos these days about flying saucers or alien abductions, since the ubiquitous presence of camcorders and cell phone cameras? Then I went on to discuss our modern day version of an unidentified flying object -- drones. Let's leave the topic of drones and ask the question again: Where's the evidence of alien abductions and flyers saucers, now that almost everyone has a camera on their cell phone? But that has always been the real question, hasn't it: Where's the evidence?

Lest I raise the attention of true believers, let me connect the question to what we do as legal investigators: we search for the best evidence to withstand the scrutiny of a trier-of-fact, a jury or a judge, in anticipation of litigation whether or not the case ever gets to trial. Whether we are searching for documentary evidence, witnesses or forensic clues, we cannot accept at face value something revealed during an investigation. A document must be traced to its original source and verified; a witness statement must be... Read More
 
art2 Searching for the best evidence: Where's Timothy Duncan Jr.?
The names and places are changed, of course, but the case is a real one, an interesting one for sure. Trace Investigations was hired by the executor of an estate to locate the missing son of Timothy Duncan Sr., who had passed leaving a small fortune. The only named heir in the will was his son, Tim, who had moved away from his Indiana home in his early 20s, over twenty years earlier. Details on why he had moved were sketchy, but Tim was estranged from his family at the time, according to Mr. Duncan's only sibling, a younger brother and his children, Timothy Jr.'s cousins, Derek and Dedra, twins a few years younger than Tim. The executor of the estate was Mr. Duncan's longtime attorney and he had not been able to locate Tim, who had "dropped off the face of the earth." The only other information he had was "Tim was a little strange." When pressed for details, the attorney said that Tim was an introvert who kept to himself, more so after his mother passed away when he was an adolescent. He was not close to his cousins and had no known close friends. He was a troubled teen all through high school, and he and his father had never been close. He attended a state university for two years, living in a guest cottage on his father's property. The only thing at college he had showed any interest in was theatre. One day after an argument with his father, Tim packed his bags, got in his car and left. That was the last anyone had seen or heard from Tim.

We began our investigation as we do with most cases on a missing person, by entering Tim's identifying information in our databases. Our information revealed... Read More