He has found four of the twelve that way already.

One of them is a woman who married in 2019 and whose entire online existence is under a name that is not in any yearbook.

One is a man who changed his in 2021 for reasons that are his own and that Julian did not ask about.

And one, he told me, took him six weeks, and was a man who had moved twice and changed an email and whose only findable trace was a comment on a fishing forum in 2020.

Julian sent him a message.