The World’s Best Bounty Hunter: How Michelle Gomez Finds People Who Vanish
About this episode
Mariana van Zeller interviews skip tracer Michelle Gomez about her unique methods for finding people who have intentionally vanished.
How do you find people who do not want to be found? In this episode of The Hidden Third, Mariana sits down with skip tracer and private investigator Michelle Gomez – described by Wired as “the world’s best bounty hunter” – to unpack how she tracks down people who have disappeared on purpose, from the fugitive Ryan Eugene Mullen to a fake “Prince of Dubai.” At 4'11" and just over 100 pounds, Michelle doesn’t look like the person you’d send after fugitives, stolen heavy equipment, or missing yachts – and that’s exactly why she’s so good at it. She leans into her unassuming appearance and uses quirky disguises, from Girl Scout getups to sex‑worker personas, wigs, and glasses, to get close to people who do not want to talk. Michelle grew up in Texas, the daughter of two IBM engineers, and her parents made her build a computer from scratch and solder her own motherboard before she was a teenager. That early crash course in how systems fit together became the blueprint for her career: today she applies the same mindset to people, combing through digital traces, financial records, and tiny “location blips” to build a profile and find the one thread that gives a target away. Over more…
People in this episode
Host: Mariana van Zeller
Guest: Michelle Gomez
Topics covered
- bounty hunting
- private investigation
- skip tracing
- disguise techniques
- open-source intelligence
- social engineering
Keywords
- bounty hunter
- skip tracer
- disappeared
- investigation
- OSINT
- social engineering
- disguise
- fugitive
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: IBM, Wired
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