Locate International is a community interest company dedicated to helping families of unsolved missing person cases, find their loved ones. Steve Shepherd is the co-director of Locate International. He worked in Law Enforcement for 25 years with specialisms as a Lost Person Search Manager and Online Safety Consultant for the UK Safer Internet Centre. Having retired in 2019, he has worked within the MOD using OSINT skills and recently for the Home Office around Harmful Sexual Behaviours Online.

• Project: University Cold Case Unit
• Spotlight partner: Locate International
• Other partner organisations: 10 other universities covering England, Scotland and Wales; the National Police Chiefs Council, Devon and Cornwall Police, the Lower Saxony Police Academy and International Cold Case Analysis Project (ICCAP), Chorus Intelligence and Solv Technology

Tell us a bit about your organisation and what led you to working with School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Locate International was created to explore new and innovative ways of thinking and to work to support long-term missing person enquires. By combining the talents of some of the best universities in the UK into Cold Case units, combined with a volunteer model, we wanted to make a positive change in missing people and unidentified body cases. The police service faces an enormous challenge regarding resources and finances. This can lead to an inequality in investigations, especially long-term and unidentified bodies. 

Why were you passionate about this project and why is it important to the work you already do?

When you look at the pain and suffering of the family and friends of those who wake up every day not knowing what has happened to a loved one, it is heartbreaking. We want to help bring closure to as many of those people as we can, as well as support the Police to ensure that everything that can be done has and is being done.  

What have you enjoyed most about this collaboration? 

Watching the enthusiasm of the students and staff in the cold case unit has been excellent. Allowing them to work on real-world cases and seeing how they have responded so positively, pushing themselves to make a difference and coming up with new lines of enquires to forward investigations is fantastic.

What have you learnt through this project and what's next for Locate International?

By working together, we can make a real-world difference. We are looking forward to the project expanding and growing, facilitating new cases to work on and new technology to allow students from not only the UK but across the world to work together on some of the most challenging long-term missing cases.