The vanishing passengers: It’s a mystery as bizarre as it is disturbing – why have 165 people gone missing from cruise ships in recent years?
By NATALIE CLARKE
Last updated at 11:06 PM on 21st September 2011
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His case is far from unique. Over the past few years, there have been an alarming number of unexplained and unsolved disappearances on board cruise liners.
According to the U.S.-based International Cruise Victims Association, 165 people have gone missing at sea since 1995, with at least 13 this year alone — many of them from vessels popular with British holidaymakers.
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Good way to: (1) get rid of a significant other with paying them off; OR (2) good way to disappear if things are not going so good — slip into a second identity — with a shill to “check in”; OR (3) easy to suicide.
No?
#2 is most interesting to me. One would assume that, if you were not as infamous as a “Bernie Made-off” or as famous as Angie Harmon, as well as well off to the tune of millions, then you could use this to skip.
We know that to “leave” the USA is very expensive as the IRS keeps tightening controls on wealth crossing borders. Perhaps this phenomena could be the ultimate exit strategy.
Assuming that the cruise ships have “pretty good” physical security — after all they want to get paid for all the passengers, stowaways are not permitted — one way to do #2 is to book two passengers — Identity #1 and Identity #2. The trick would be for one person to get them both “checked in”. Then during the cruise, morph from ONE to TWO. In the post 9/11 world, one would have to know the process in detail or have some inside help.
Wonder how the crew “checks off” the ship. Could a passenger become a crew member?
This is the stuff of a Sherlock Holmes mystery.
But me, and my tin foil hat, doesn’t rule out that it IS possible. Like a Pink Elephant, I can imagine it; so it must be possible.
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Reinke Faces Life 