POLICE release scores of missing person appeals every year in an attempt to track down known criminals, identify suspects, and locate people who have gone missing.

Appeals show that all of us can play our part in keeping our localities safe, and that whilst police carry out their duty of protecting us, we can help them to help us too.

But there are cases in Colchester – and across Essex more widely – of people who have been missing for years with no trace of their whereabouts to help investigators.

In sadder cases, people are found years after they died meaning it is almost impossible to identify them – no name, no address, and little more than a case number on a database used to refer to them.

Across Essex, there are 11 cases of people whose remains have been found but without enough details for pathologists to work out who they actually are.

Advances in forensic technology mean bodies can be placed using DNA and dental checks, but in some cases this progress has come too late.

Back in the spring of 1970, the body of a male was found in a burned-out caravan in farmland near Mile End, Colchester.

According to the UK Missing Person’s Unit, the man may have been a rough sleeper and is likely to have been between the ages of 40 and 50.

Nobody knows how the fire in the caravan started and, more sadly, nobody knows who the man was.

In the summer of 1977, investigators tried to identify a man who died in quite different circumstances after his body was recovered from the sea in Colne Point, Tendring.

It was estimated the body had been in the sea for six months and that the man may have been a worker on an oilrig or a seaman.

There were some details – namely a pair of leather Phillips shoes and red hose socks – which were hoped could be enough for investigating officers to establish who he was.

But the six-month period he remained in the North Sea made the task too difficult for officers, and his identity remains something of a myth.

Nonetheless, there is a small chance people have some information about who these people could have been.

If you do, you should contact www.missingpersons.police.uk.

An Essex Police spokesman said: “Every year we receive reports of people who have gone missing. They go missing for a number of personalto-them reasons, but it is sufficiently worrying for their family to turn to police to help find them. If anyone has any information about a missing person, please contact us.”

If you do, you should contact www.missingpersons.police.uk.