I'm reading a thread over at websleuths about a young mother of 3 who was getting a divorce and went missing. Police did very little to find her and basically just said she's an adult, she has a right to be missing, buhbye. (She was found dead 13 years later.)

My QUESTION is, how common is it for a 22 year old mother of 3, in the middle of a divorce, to just leave her life, job, kids, parents, siblings, everything, and never make contact?

This isn't the only case I've noticed where police won't investigate or do very little investigation, insisting that an adult has a right to be missing. But do people really do it so often as to justify not bothering to look for a young woman who abandoned her job, family, and children without warning?

I just can't understand why police won't investigate a case that looks so much like foul play unless every missing mommy case they come across is actually a voluntarily missing person.

I do realize there's been that one recent case of the "typical" suburban mom who dropped her kids off at school, then years later was just found voluntarily living kinda homeless and looking like an addict. Is that kind of missing mom case the exception or the rule?

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ETA - finished reading the WS thread. The case is about Sherry Leighty who went missing in 1999. Her Mother in Law and Father in Law were the last to see her as they dropped her off for work although she never actually showed up at work. Her body was found on the inlaw's 150 acre hunting property! The Father in Law had a fishy story from the beginning and the large vacant parcel was known to police and never searched.

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=197502