Missing Person, David Allan Broderick, “Dave”, Canadian

From Dave’s brother:

A few people have recommended hiring a detective/private investigator. A lady at the consulate here in Canada is going to get me names of some reputable ones. Still a little costly for me.

The quote function isn’t working. Gofundme?

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If the wife was somehow involves, she wouldn’t have mentioned the CCTV footage. She would have just said that they argued, and that she found his scooter in a parking lot.

I would politely press the wife for more information; copy of CCTV footage, car license plates, details of the supposed helicopter search (including the area searched and reasons why she chose that area), and the reason why believed he was “living in the mountains”. Those last 2 parts are quite suspicious - like she has more information than she’s letting on.

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I’ve read about bad PIs in Taiwan strongly foreigners along with false hope and false information.

Find one that has one or more foreigners who can vouch for their work. Speak to the clients, ensure they’re legit before proceeding.

You should know that PIs in Taiwan are actually illegal, so if there’a dispute or other questionable behaviour, you won’t have any legal backup.

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Really? How about all the ads we see some the town?

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They use different terms, etc to skirt the legalities.
Mostly they just offer to get piccies of your spouse gettin some strange, and the pics are then used as leverage (irrespective of provenance), so they aren’t actually participating in the process.
But the point is that if they do burn you for a wad of dough, you have no legal recourse.
It’s been said that they’re especially fond of taking advantage of foreigners.
And they’re apparently run, in most cases, by mob concerns as well.

Quite a few foreigners live in the mountains so to speak between and including Taitung and Hualien. They kind of live the simple life some dropping out all together. Or just drink beer smoke dope every day.

Mountains can also mean hills up from the coastal highway 11. Especially for someone living in that area like his wife.

Yeah, I think “living in the mountains” should always have scare quotes, as a generally accepted euphem for (irrespective of actual geopositioning) abrogating all but the most basic responsibilities, maintaining the barest minimum of concern for distractions like gainful employment, public respectability, sobriety, grooming, long pants & shoes, and any music post-dating Ugly Kid Joe.

Fuck me, that looks better and better every time I re-read it…

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Pretty much nailed my lifestyle.

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You make it sound like Taiwan is a cross between Papua New Guinea and the ol country complete with Mosquito Coast fellows and Rastafarian tribes.

Of the few thousand white faced foreigners that live here, I bet less than a dozen live the Robinson Crusoe life. And even then they need banking, current ARCs, some kind of economic activity to buy beer. There are cameras in the 711 where they buy beer.

And dope is illegal in Taiwan, not like in the ol country.

To me, as I said before, living in the mountains sounds like he was dumped like a pet one has grown tired of.

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Living in the mountains covers a lot of ground in Taiwan . It means basically nothing.

In reality there are very very few foreigners that live an off the grid off the map type lifestyle here. They are almost always married and still married if they do so.
The one true hippy I ever knew here who was living free and unencumbered without family and with permanent residency (actually local citizenship eventually I think ) etc still lived fairly close to a big town as he still needed to get into the city for work every now and then and he actually had a big bunch of friends from around Taiwan. There’s photos of him all over Facebook so it’s it’s pretty hard to stay off any kind of social media whatsoever I’m guessing.

Of course there’s the other infamous fella who lives up the top of a mountain and spends more time on Facebook than anything else. He also does the same job he’s always done.

The wife getting divorced and then stating 'he’s in the mountains '?
I mean it’s obvious even from his Facebook he’s all about the sea not mountains…

Now how is he supposed to exist being divorced, no ARC, no nothing…This is a guy that was teaching English and scuba diving for a living.

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Kind of like living “down by the river”.

You described a lot of people living in say, Dulan “mountains”.

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Dulan is the first place I’d look.

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Foreigners and locals alike get mixed up in some things and then disappear. Some are found, some are not. There are quite recent examples that maybe don’t need to be brought up but it does happen.

Aussies say 'gone bush ’ and ‘gone tropo’ …

The PI angle might be complicated by a few factors:

  • It seems apparent from the above the wive’s family may have money and good guanxi (personal connections). It may be that any local PI will have more to gain batting for their side.

  • Language & cultural differences. I’ve lived here for years and I’m still baffled by the things some Taiwanese say and do. A local PI may find it similarly hard to intuit what a foreigner may have done / where they may have gone and with what motivation.

  • Client’s lack of familiarity with local bureaucracy may make it easy for PI to string them along with all kinds of unverifiable filler whilst collecting bank (as mentioned above).

Points one and three should be considered along with the fact that PI in Taiwan are already operating outwith the law.

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Really what should be done at this point is every shred of information available should be compiled:

Hearsay, conjecture, official records, FB posts, this thread, comms between Dave’s brother and Dave, Dave’s brother and the authorities (In Taiwan, interpol, RCMP et al). Does anyone have record of conversation with Dave’s wife? Screenshots of anything relevant - (Like the Canadian embassy one above.)

This pack is then sent with a lot of good multimedia (Photos of Dave and his Daughter, wedding photos, pictures of Dave suited up for work etc.) to every gossip mag and psuedo news site in Taiwan / HK / Malaysia / Singapore. Anywhere where there’s a Chinese speaking community and a big expat community.

It may sound insensitive but this is the kind of story they lap up because it pays the bills.

Thats when things will move and it will be very hard to keep it quiet if anything untoward has happened to him.

Maybe a little too cynical for a Monday night but if short on options something to consider.

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Not a legal expert on the United States of Canada but can the government there subpoena service providers (FB, Gmail, msoft etc) to provide access to online accounts?

Maybe some of Dave’s comms may be of interest to the authorities in Canada?

My two cents for tonight.

To Dave’s bro, sorry if any of the above has come across as insensitive.

Never assume others will act in the most rational way.

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All good everybody, no offense taken from anything.
All good info and things to think about.

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