Did you ever play the game six degrees of separation? You have to connect two disparate points by making a trail of sub-connections between them. That is not unlike locating someone. We are given fragments of information and charged with fleshing it out into a clear picture. It could be a bar someone used to frequent, a job they had ten years ago, and a name.
A good connection is one which leads you nearer to the end result while giving you multiple avenues to choose from. Often these are achieved by drudgery, by turning over every rock in the hopes of getting a lead, and sometimes by brilliant logical deduction and leaps of intuition.
Technology can point us in the right direction, databases can give us possibilities and clues, but only a person can confirm the truth through their senses, whether the investigator knocks on the door himself or talks to a neighbor or family member who knows. With that in mind, here are a few strategies for gathering information from people, who may or may not be interested in talking to you.
Playing The Fool
Pretending to be stupider than you are can yield results. An air of friendly incompetence and confusion is something people can relate to better than cold professionalism. They are often compelled to lend assistance to the hapless investigator, because in his incompetence he is no longer perceived as a threat. (I must stress that charm, i.e, putting people at ease is a necessary attribute if this route is taken.)
Using Misdirection to Get Information
Magicians use something called misdirection, a powerful tool to draw a spectator’s focus on something and away from their sleight of hand. An investigator might utilize this by pretending the thing he’s interested in is something else, something benign. If you want the address, draw their attention away from the address. Tell them the subject may have witnessed a car accident and ask where you might contact them. The address of the subject becomes an unimportant detail related to the larger event of the car accident, and the subject is relegated to an incidental witness role, rather than being the sole focus of the investigation.
Greed and Curiosity
Consider human nature, and timeless motivations. A colleague of mine told me there are two important motivations for getting information out of people: Greed and Curiosity. Giving a stranger information is like taking a leap of faith, it can lead to much good or much ill. But humans will override these concerns time and again for the possibility of something interesting that they were hereto unaware of. Your only limitations in how you utilize this knowledge are ethics, the law and your imagination.