hypothetical question r/t cold case investigations

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M-Quigley
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hypothetical question r/t cold case investigations

Post by M-Quigley »

This is just a hypothetical question for anyone with investigative knowledge or experience about events from decades ago. The question is, say for example a professional investigator wanted to know who lived at a certain location 40 years ago? You can easily find out who owned the property (a rental house in the country) but the person who owned the property and rented it out is dead. The surviving family doesn't recall who rented the property. Also the house is no longer there, and the area is now a parking lot in a development. What methods would a professional investigator be able to do to find out who once lived there?
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schmieg
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Re: hypothetical question r/t cold case investigations

Post by schmieg »

M-Quigley wrote:This is just a hypothetical question for anyone with investigative knowledge or experience about events from decades ago. The question is, say for example a professional investigator wanted to know who lived at a certain location 40 years ago? You can easily find out who owned the property (a rental house in the country) but the person who owned the property and rented it out is dead. The surviving family doesn't recall who rented the property. Also the house is no longer there, and the area is now a parking lot in a development. What methods would a professional investigator be able to do to find out who once lived there?
See if a library has a reverse directory from back during that period. Some smaller municipalities also have local directories and there will possibly be archives somewhere.
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Re: hypothetical question r/t cold case investigations

Post by WestonDon »

I would contact the utility companies to see if they still have records of who was paying the bills back then.
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Re: hypothetical question r/t cold case investigations

Post by ArmedAviator »

A renter likely used the house as a permanent residence, therefore city income tax records would likely point in the right direction.
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Re: hypothetical question r/t cold case investigations

Post by pk47 »

Another possibility is the census record for the location, if the year is when the census was conducted.
M-Quigley
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Re: hypothetical question r/t cold case investigations

Post by M-Quigley »

ArmedAviator wrote:A renter likely used the house as a permanent residence, therefore city income tax records would likely point in the right direction.
The property wasn't in the city, and it's unknown if the occupants that lived there worked in a city or not. Perhaps state tax records might be able to find it if city records cannot, although in either case I don't know how difficult it would be for an investigator to access all of the city or state records from 40 yrs ago. Not sure how much from 1976 is on a computer database versus paper. Even if on computer, would those records be able to be accessed on modern systems now?

When I was a teenager in the seventies, the school had a field trip at the local PD where the PD spokesman was showing off their computerized records. (punch cards going down a track into an automated filing system.) One of the hot jobs for people at the local trade school was punch card data entry technicians.
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Re: hypothetical question r/t cold case investigations

Post by willbird »

pk47 wrote:Another possibility is the census record for the location, if the year is when the census was conducted.
But there is a date for release of that info ?? I stumbled across it looking for info on where my wife's grandma lived when my mother in law was born..they were a little fuzzy because there were so many kids in the family.

There is some time period that must elapse before those records are released...maybe 50 years or some such ??
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Re: hypothetical question r/t cold case investigations

Post by Brian D. »

willbird wrote:
pk47 wrote:Another possibility is the census record for the location, if the year is when the census was conducted.
But there is a date for release of that info ?? I stumbled across it looking for info on where my wife's grandma lived when my mother in law was born..they were a little fuzzy because there were so many kids in the family.

There is some time period that must elapse before those records are released...maybe 50 years or some such ??
General release of the data is when 72 years have elapsed. I suppose that was based on a sort of "maximum life expectancy" when the rules were made however long ago. By that reckoning you'd be looking only at information of dead people, who aren't as likely to object. :wink:

I knew you were on the right track in your thoughts, so I took a minute to look it up on the U.S. Census Bureau website.
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Re: hypothetical question r/t cold case investigations

Post by willbird »

Brian D. wrote:
willbird wrote:
pk47 wrote:Another possibility is the census record for the location, if the year is when the census was conducted.
But there is a date for release of that info ?? I stumbled across it looking for info on where my wife's grandma lived when my mother in law was born..they were a little fuzzy because there were so many kids in the family.

There is some time period that must elapse before those records are released...maybe 50 years or some such ??
General release of the data is when 72 years have elapsed. I suppose that was based on a sort of "maximum life expectancy" when the rules were made however long ago. By that reckoning you'd be looking only at information of dead people, who aren't as likely to object. :wink:

I knew you were on the right track in your thoughts, so I took a minute to look it up on the U.S. Census Bureau website.
yea I knew I tripped over a date range....but had not filed away the exact number, wifes grandma is in her 90's so some census data did show up on her, and some of mother in laws older siblings.
Have a great day today unless you have made other plans :-).
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