Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2006 | 7:36 a.m.
When her husband failed to come home in mid-October from a security job he said he had lined up in Florida, Tara Mulleneaux filed a missing persons report with Metro Police. But she knew she had to do more.
Mulleneaux, a 32-year-old mother of four - none older than 3 1/2 years - began surfing the Internet seeking his whereabouts.
She discovered a number of Web sites that help people find missing persons - dead or alive - and found her 38-year-old husband Michael's profile on three Web sites.
They are used by single men looking for female partners.
Because the postings listed Las Vegas as Michael's home, Tara believes he never went to Florida. But the operators of the Web sites won't give Tara the address Michael claimed, citing privacy laws.
"We don't have any money, and he took our only vehicle," she said. "I can't afford to hire a private detective. The Internet is a cheap and effective way to get a lot of information. It has given me a little hope and peace of mind."
The Las Vegas woman has joined a growing number of people who in recent years - and with the encouragement of law enforcement - in using the Internet to find wandering spouses, runaway children and displaced survivors of catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina.
Tara Mulleneaux believes she was thinking outside the box when she even posted a message on the Craigslist Web site, which more often is used to find jobs, apartments or collectibles, not missing persons.
She got three responses to her Craigslist posting - an individual who recommended she see a psychic, and reporters from the Washington Post and the Sun.
"I chose Craigslist because with so many people using it I figured someone might have seen Michael," Tara said. "Also, when someone you love is missing, you will use whatever means available that might get him home. I will try almost anything at this point."
Mulleneaux's comments reflect those of tens of thousands of others in her situation, said national missing persons expert Todd Matthews, who represents the Web site thelostandthefound.com, a nonprofit global resource group for locating missing, murdered or unidentified people.
"At one time, the Internet was thought of as this dark, evil place, but in the last eight years, its resources for finding missing people have tripled or quadrupled each year," he said. "More and more people are turning to the Internet to share a wealth of information for locating people."
One of Matthews' other Web sites, missingpieces.info, lists hundreds of nationwide links to missing persons organizations that have sprung up in recent years.
The Tennessee-based Matthews recommends doenetwork.us as a good start for people looking for missing persons because of its strong ties to police agencies and the National Center for Missing Adults.
Matthews said another good site is outpostforhope.org. whose founder located a loved one after a five-year search.
The FBI's national crime database lists 100,000 missing adults in the United States. When it comes to recovering some of them such as Mulleneaux, law enforcement's hands are tied because walking out on a spouse is not a crime.
Metro Police Missing Persons Sgt. Tom Wagner said that even if police find Michael Mulleneaux, who they say is in the FBI's crime database as a missing person, they cannot force him home. At most, they can ask him to call home.
Police then would tell Tara her husband is OK, but privacy laws would prohibit law enforcement officials from telling her where they found him.
Wagner urges people to use the Internet and other legal means "to take ownership" of their own cases.
"If you are a left-behind loved one, you cannot solely rely on anyone else," Wagner said. "You need to reach out to associates, friends and co-workers; check when and where credit cards were last used; go online, and - if you have the financial means - hire a private detective."
Wagner said that with 1,200 people a month on average being reported missing to Metro Police, authorities can use all the help they can get.
Wagner said there is about an 80 percent recovery rate for missing persons who are not abducted by strangers. Most end up coming home on their own. The Internet helps find others.
"We often recover many runaway kids from their profile on (the) MySpace (Web site). The Internet helps narrow things down," Matthews says.
He says he has used the Internet to find 36 missing people since 2001.
"You need a lot of luck and a lot of persistence," he said. "If you think you are going to solve one of these cases in two hours it's not going to happen unless you are incredibly lucky."
Some Web sites that Matthews is involved with get several thousand hits daily - from cops, relatives of missing persons and even strangers who have nothing at stake, but are caught up in amateur sleuthing.
"People watch an episode of CSI, then start surfing these Web sites trying to find missing people," Matthews said. "Also, many of the volunteers who run the Web sites see so many reports and start cross-referencing the new posts with past data to find people both living and dead."
Tara Mulleneaux said that while she was upset to find Michael's profile on singles Web sites, she is encouraged that he is alive - assuming someone didn't steal his identity.
Ironically, Tara met Michael five years ago on a singles' Web site when both were living in Southern California. After dating for four months, Tara, who had never been married, wed the previously married ex-Marine and grandson of late pre-World War II Green Bay Packers standout end Carl "Moose" Mulleneaux.
Tara and Michael have two sons and two daughters.
In 2004, Michael lost a good sales job and could not find meaningful work for a year, Tara said. Last year, Michael disappeared from home for six weeks but came back after learning Tara's mother had died, Tara said.
The couple moved to Las Vegas in May 2005, and he got work with a security firm - a job that, unbeknownst to Tara, Michael quit a week before he supposedly left for Miami on Sept. 29 for a security job. Michael didn't give Tara much information about the Florida job, promising only to keep her posted. The day he drove off in the couple's uninsured, unregistered van was the last contact she has had with him.
Tara filed the police report on Oct. 17 when he was a week late getting back home from the job.
A short time later, she posted photos and a message on Craigslist, along with her e-mail address, [email protected].
She said she is looking for him as much out of concern for his safety as out of hurt that he would have left his young family. "I want to find him," Mulleneaux said. "I'd like him to come home and help him get the help he obviously needs."
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