There is no question that Private Investigators can aid a missing child investigation, but you have to be careful and understand benefits and disadvantages of hiring a Private Investigator. Before you hire your own investigator:

• Ensure that they are licensed in your state;
  
• Ask for and check references;
  
• Find out how long they have been in business, whether or not they have any experience in this type of case and what their success rate is;
  
• Ask what kind of investigative techniques they employ: Interviews, Surveillance, Pretexts, Professional Networking, and/or Database Searches.
  

The benefits of hiring a private investigator include:

• You can never have too many people looking for a child kidnapped by a predator.
  
• They are not bound by the same legal constraints as official law enforcement, so they do not have to read Miranda warnings and can employ creative investigative techniques.
  
• They may bring a good contact list to the case and give you access to unique and valuable resources.
  
• Your case will be their number one priority and they may be able to tell you things that law enforcement cannot.
  

Disadvantages include:

• Their rates can be very high;
  
• If you are not careful you can be exploited.
  
• They may not solve the case.
  

This is a service that contacted us about their service that might be helpful:

Public Records Finder - links to free public records http://www.publicrecordfinder.com