Episodes
| Episode | Title | First Broadcast | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Adults | 20120824 | Behind the oak doors of a 17th Century Hampshire Mansion lie thousands of missing persons files - hundreds of stories of broken families, false identities, lies, deception, and loss. This is the Missing Persons' Bureau, the national point of contact for all the country's missing people and unidentified human remains. From abandoned babies to lost children and missing adults, the Bureau tracks the living and identifies the dead. They currently have more than 1000 unidentified people on their books: those who died unnoticed and unnamed. In this programme, reporter Penny Marshall goes inside the UK Missing Persons' Bureau to find out why people go missing and discover what happens after someone disappears, speaking to intelligence officers, police and the families involved to reveal the many stories which lie behind its walls. Presented by Penny Marshall Producer: Melissa FitzGerald A Blakeway production for BBC Radio 4. Penny Marshall goes inside the UK Missing Persons' Bureau. Penny Marshall presents a series looking at the work of the Missing Persons Bureau |
| 02 | 20120831 | We've all heard of Madeleine McCann, the missing child who continues to stare out from the pages of the British press - her face frozen in time from the moment she went missing. Yet Madeleine is just one of around 220,000 British children who disappear each year. Although the majority of children who go missing are found in the first 48 hours, some are not. From abducted children to teenage runaways, these children become the concern of the Missing Persons' Bureau. Many of them are teenagers running away from home to become vulnerable 'sofa surfers' who can fall into harm's way. Reporter Penny Marshall goes into the Missing Persons' Bureau to understand what happens when missing children fade from the headlines, yet remain unfound. She meets the intelligence officers trying to find the missing, and the family members who are 'living in limbo' - families like the Gosdens, whose 14-year-old son Andrew went missing in 2007 and has never been found. Presented by Penny Marshall Producer: Melissa FitzGerald A Blakeway production for BBC Radio 4. Penny Marshall goes into the UK Missing Persons Bureau. Penny Marshall presents a series looking at the work of the Missing Persons Bureau |