Wystan Hugh Auden wrote that evil is never extraordinary and it is always human, it shares the bed with us and it seats at our table. Sometimes we have to face with absurd disappearances, mysterious, with no explanations. There's no trace of the kid, as if all of a sudden a hole in the ground had took him with it. Nobody saw or heard anything, there are no useful elements to recollect for investigations and the temporal sequence of the disappearance is terrifying: a second earlier the kid had been seen by someone, most of the time a close relative, and the second after he's gone, leaving no trace behind him.

Stories like these regarding children cannot be classified in any typical criminal modality, because it ranges from a total absence to the abundance of motifs, involving one or more familiar characters.

On these tragedies breath unfathomable atmospheres, and suspects related to atypical and unknown social and cultural worlds. In these crimes there's the total absence of humanity, an evil and cold will comparable to real human sacrifices. There are minors to whom is abruptly denied any right to life, to become adults or to conduct a normal life. What happens in those moments, when the minor is kidnapped, which kind of violence is expressed through the same act of kidnapping, what does the kid sees when he gets neared by the beast?

The reason of these questions is not simply curiosity, but also the need to understand the phases of a phenomenon that needs a serious investigative approach, where nothing must be left to improvisation. In kidnapping a minor, as a casual moment, it can be applied the theory of the moral  disengagement by Bandura; it is the only criminological theory that can allow us to better understand the cruelty of the predatory act.

The phases that Bandura indicates as elements leading to the acceptance and to the conduction of a crime constitute the moral disengagement, that in the criminal genesis has precise moments: the moral justification, the euphemistic labeling, the advantageous comparison, the shift of the responsibility, the diffusion of the responsibility, the distortion of the consequences, the de-humanization, the attribution of guilt.

Let's see how these phases apply to the cases of disappearance with no trace of minors. We have to precise that all the cases of disappearance, even if they are different in modalities, present outstanding common elements. Firstly, thinking that elevate moral standards can prevent brutality is a great mistake, therefore the research of the guilty cannot exclude from the list of suspected persons that canonically would not, because of their status, be involved in the crime, as for example the mother, the father, the closest relatives, or respectable persons holding honored and prestigious positions in the society. It is even more likely the kidnapping of a child when the criminal behavior undergoes a shift in its moral-ideological connotation. This fact determines the cruelty of the action, without the experimentation of internal conflicts, with the paradox that sees the action conducted with feelings like deep pride and, after all, morally justified.

The “euphemistic labeling”, or a relative having a close relationship with the hunter, who uses an assuring tone of voice and soft words while speaking about the topic, which tends to transform the inhuman action in something acceptable; the same process reduces the entity of the crime also in front of the eyes of the guilty. The second point applicable of the Bandura's theory regards the “vantage comparison”. The gravity of the predatory behavior can be easily reduced by the comparison with a worse crime.

It is a strategy of auto-absolution that leads to the justification of the same cruel action. In the kidnapping of a minor the shift of responsibility identified by Bandura is ascribed to the same minor: the predator gives the fault to the baby by identifying him with the cause of the predation.

This phase of diffusion of responsibility is used by the predator in order to reduce the internal anguish and to justify himself also in front of the family of the kidnapped. Here comes up the “distortion of the consequences”, that is the predator ignoring, minimizing, ably distorting what happened in the moment in which he is interrogated as suspected or as witness. It is a phase that explicates how these characters appear to be in good faith, worthy of credibility and above all, to be able to contrast, distract and reduce the pressure of the investigations. The phase of the distortion of the consequences allows the predator to live better in spite of the abnormal act they have committed. A great and useful deterrent against violent acts is in fact represented by the perception and the comparison between oneself and the rest of the human beings. As soon as one erases empathy, substituting it with indifference, the victim has no more human features, but it is conceived as a “thing” to possess or to eliminate after its exploitation.

This is the key fact allowing the beginning of the action of kidnapping, and this is the phase identified by Bandura with the “de-humanization”.

One of the questions that is raised in the moment in which it turns out that we are facing a kidnapping of minors is whether the aggression had been organized or not.

Places to be connected with the kidnap of a minor are the place of the meeting, the place of the aggression, the place of the crime, the place of the abandon of the victim and the place where the dead body had been hidden. If the place of the aggression and that of the meeting coincide, this can mean that the kidnapper lives in the neighborhoods, and therefore what we are facing is an unorganized kidnap: in this case it is more probable to find either the victim or his body. If it is not possible to identify the place of the abandon, it means that the crime has been committed by someone who had organized the kidnap, or who has a good capacity in organizing himself in front of unpredictable events, as for example the death of the victim.

Here it is underlined the great difference between the two kind of kid-kidnapping, with or without traces. The lack of traces makes us think about a non improvised crime, but planned into different levels, and the place where the body is hidden becomes impossible to be found, unless it is the same kidnapper to identify it.

Among the fundamental elements in an investigation on the disappearance with no trace of minors there are the study of the characteristics of the surrounding territory in which the crime took place and the analysis of the demographical data of the interested area. In some cases the bodies of the victims are discovered in the area of 1 km from the place of the disappearance, and this fact might let us think, in the case in which the minor is discovered, on the eventuality that the research teams could have pass by the victim without seeing it or without recording any trace.

If, above all, we consider the body proportions of a kid, possibilities for hiding the body are many, and finding the body can be very difficult.

An undervalued aspect in the disappearance with no trace of minors, is that of the anthropological role of the inspector, and how it establish itself in front of these events. It is prevalent the need to find the disappeared minor as soon as possible and, possibly, still alive.

This brings to the identification of the inspector with the protective role of a parent, and this leads him to identify emotionally with what happened. This involvement must affect somehow the investigations.

In point of fact it is psychologically more affordable to consider that the disappearance of the baby is caused by other persons, or by a breakaway or by an accident, but criminological literature does not exclude the possibility that the kidnapper is in reality a person belonging to the same family of the kidnapped.

The risk in considering the disappearance as caused by others, shifting the responsibility on the “monster”- a pedophile, a sexual maniac or an organ dealer- leads to loose touch with the fact that probably we are facing a proximity crime.

Generally the investigative activity, involving an entire investigation team, is concentrated, at least in the beginning, on the research of the minor, and it does not take care of the anthropological analysis of the context from which the minor comes from.

From the kidnapping, then, the research becomes “external”, formulating hypothesis and investigations presuming the action of an extraneous person who “took” the victim or that an “accident” occurred to the minor; it is difficult at least in the very first phases to accept that the author of the crime could be a close relative.

If, instead are organized two different investigative teams with separated tasks, one dedicated to the research on the surrounding territory and the other on the anthropological analysis of the familiar and social environment of the kidnapped, there can be more possibilities to investigate immediately into two directions, with the chance to delineate a more complete frame for the investigation.

The first investigative group will be called “investigative proximity group”, and it will investigate on everything concerning the family and the persons immediately close to the disappeared kid, paying attention also to details like items belonging to the family (cars, computers, objects, physical and psychical pathologies of people belonging to the same family or of closest friends, absence or presence of possible motifs, etc.). The second investigative group will investigate on the usual modalities of a disappearance, by looking for the minor concentrating the research on the territory. It is fundamental for the first investigative group the intelligence cooperation, with absolute discretion for things concerning the investigation processes, giving all the information to the responsible magistrate.

There exist a series of elements of familiar psycho-pathology that can be used by the “proximity intelligence”. Firstly, the observation of how it is felt the kidnap among the persons directly connected with the victim, can give interesting indications. An element in particular is the evaluation of the entity of the pain involving a close relative in the kidnapping of the minor.

Given that every human being has a different way to express pain, it can be uneasy to interpret

mournful behaviors, nonetheless the same essence of pain is universally experienced.

Moral and affective pain inevitably produces deep changes in the relational life of an individual. It can be reasonably thought that someone who had lost a minor can manifest isolation phenomena, social abandon, little care of himself and of his own existence, deep alteration in the relationship with close relatives, alteration in the relationship with the husband/wife, suicide.

In reality the violent loss of a relative can trigger a reaction of intense participation in the investigations, looking for the truth with a real parallel investigative activity to that conduced by the police, and an aggressive behavior that is intended to keep the attention of the society on his own familiar case.

At this point there might be clarified two very important aspects in the investigative logic. The predation of a minor takes place because of three motives in particular. Predation on commission, predation drawn by an unknown person to the family, predation drawn by a close relative, direct or indirect, or by someone known by the family of the minor. Predation can have two exclusive motifs, economical/utilitarian and affective/emotional. Predation on commission is drawn by individuals commissioning the predation for different motives, organs transplant, pedophilia, revenge against the family of the minor. In this case we have a correlation with the economical/utilitarian motif. Predation drawn by an element of the family is very interesting, because it can explain on the one side the total absence of traces, and on the other side transforms the investigation in something more complicated to solve, due to the absence of witnesses. The motif in these cases is predominantly affective/emotional, because the minor is seen as something to take in order to satisfy one's own desire of power, possession, prevarication. Extremely complex is the case of predation drawn by a direct or indirect relative or by someone known by the family.

Elements intersecting in this case are multiple with variables sometime difficult to interpret.

Here are prevailing affective/emotional motifs, with personal revenge as principal motive of the act.

The absence of traces reveals that the kidnapping has been drawn either by a person particularly skilled in how to manage with the minor, or by more persons united in the complicity, who can manage, improvise and solve the kidnapping of the minor and its consequences. The analysis of some episodes occurred in Italy can be interesting for the identification of some recurring elements in the disappearance with no trace of kids.

Cases.

The first case regards Stefania Puglisi, disappeared from Catania on the 6th of December 1981 at the age of 10. Stefania disappears at 7 pm from San Giovanni Galermo, a district of Catania.

She goes out of her grandmother's house in order to take a box in which put away Christmas decorations. The distance she has to cover is very little, no more than fifty meters; the baby carries with her a little Pinocchio, her favorite toy. Under the main entrance of the house she meets a friend with which she chats a bit. Girls might see a car with a man inside: it is a light colored Fiat 500. Stefania is called by the man in the car, and she gets closer to him. Her friend gets inside the house with Stefania's little Pinocchio. From that moment on there are no more news or traces of Stefania Puglisi. The interesting element in this case is the fact that Stefania gets close to the man in the 500 with no fear, leaving the little Pinocchio in the hands of her friend. Generally a child gets close to an adult only if there is already a relationship occurring between them, otherwise there is a totally natural diffidence. If the little Stefania replied to the call of this person, it means that she knew that person, but it is still little understandable the reason why she left her favorite toy to the friend before getting closer to her predator. The fact that the predator could have been a close relative or a close person to the family is here demonstrated by the fact that there had been some time before Stefania's kidnap, a person in the family blackmailing her parents because of some internal tensions. Apparently these tensions were almost hateful. In the case of Stefania Puglisi Besides this relative it had been involved also an uncle of the girl. In the criminological analysis, useful elements are that the family of Stefania was not that rich to justify a kidnap, that there were bad relationship inside the family that could have justified the action, and that Stefania right before the disappearance had been seen by a friend. These elements, as we will see, are common with at least other three cases, that of Angela Celentano, Santina Renda, e that of Denise Pipitone.

Angela Celentano disappears from the Monte Faito, Naples, the 10th August 1996. She is just three years old, and she is participating with her parents to an excursion on the Monte Faito organized by the evangelical community to which her family belongs. Soon after 11 am Angela's father notices her disappearance and there started the research. As in the case of Stefania Puglisi and Denise Pipitone the only witnesses are kids. Renato, aged 11, explains that he, with Angela, was climbing down a path directed to the place in which the excursion was taking place, filled with the cars of the participants to the event.