Man Searches for Half-Brother, Missing for 47 Years

Children don't just disappear...

That's what most people living in Wichita Falls in the 1960s thought.

But Dec. 9, 1961, 11-year-old Andy Sims vanished, launching what has become a 47-year-old mystery — What happened to Andy?

Andy, who was in the fifth-grade at Jefferson Elementary School, lived at 4600 Stanford, a corner house tucked into a quiet neighborhood not far from what today is Southwest Parkway. That part of town has developed a lot since the early 1960s when it was a newer suburban area still surrounded by dairy and pasture land.

DNA Tests Match Feet Washed Ashore

DNA analysis has matched a pair of the feet that have washed up on B.C. shores this year, confirming they are from the same female and providing a small advance for investigators trying to solve the mystery that has drawn global attention.

"It helps. It allows us to confirm two cases are now one so investigators can focus," said Jeff Dolan of the B.C. Coroner's Service.

Online People Search Aids Christmas Reunion

Michael Taylor had never met his father, David, until they were reunited for the first time last week. The father and son met each other on Michael's 25th birthday, making the occasion even more special. Michael initially contacted Tracesmart in response to the company's Missing Person Campaign which has been running since March, and has helped to reunite many other families in time for Christmas.

Family of Missing Woman Hires Investigator

The family of a missing Thief River Falls, Minn., woman has enlisted the services of a private investigator to help look for Gina Anderson, who was last seen more than a month ago.

Investigator Gary Peterson, of Spring Valley, Minn., met with members of Anderson's family Sunday evening in Thief River Falls, said Anderson's sister, Jackie Pagel.

Family Not Giving Up Search for Missing Woman

There's an empty chair at her Thanksgiving table, but the mother of a missing Gaston County woman still has reasons to be grateful.

Kim Fraley is giving thanks for a new billboard offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who can help locate her daughter, 22-year-old Jamie Fraley. Fairway Outdoor Advertising donated the space, and the paper billboard was designed and placed by the Kristen Foundation.

Another Body Found In Louisiana Mystery Deaths

More than three years ago, Jefferson Davis Parish authorities began investigating the deaths of Jennings women who were known to live illicit lifestyles.

All the women were in their 20s and had escalated levels of cocaine and alcohol in their bodies when they were found in rural but public areas of the small, poor parish.
With a seventh body found shortly after noon today that is suspected to be that of the 17-year-old relative of one of the victims, officials are investigating tips but are without a lead suspect.

“It is a big puzzle and we’re putting those pieces slowly together,” parish Sheriff Ricky Edwards said. “It takes time and we have to do it right. We can’t just go out and do things and ruin the case.” All the women grew up in an economically disadvantaged section of Jennings within blocks of each other. They were at least acquaintances and traveled in the same circles.

Canadian Rescue Group Helps Find Missing People

For families desperate to find missing loved ones, Manitoba Search and Rescue (MSAR) helps co-ordinate and carry out searches across the province.

"We will provide assistance to anyone," said George Leonard, operations manager for the non-profit group.

He started the organization himself about seven years ago. The group has since grown to include 238 members, featuring people with backgrounds as wilderness guides, RCMP officers, paramedics and firefighters, among others.

Last year, MSAR carried out 103 searches in Manitoba, said Leonard.

When family or friends of a missing person contact the group, a variety of steps are taken to organize a search.

Music Tour Highlights Missing Persons in the Community

GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation presents the 3rd International Squeaky Wheel Tour® (SWT), launching October 17, 2008. The acclaimed 19-day event draws attention to several hundred missing people, each profiled by the musicians participating throughout the US and other countries, and is supported by the families of the missing and nonprofit organizations worldwide.

Musicians participating in SWT earmark their concerts or events to profile a missing person(s) in their community. They profile that missing person during their show and ask attendees to take a flyer to post throughout their community. Audience members become official GINA Volunteers simply by coming to the events and posting flyers.

This year's tour has reached across international boundaries that take us from England in 1996 to Dallas 2008. Damien Nettles disappeared from Cowes, Isle of Wight, England November 2, 1996. He is both an American and British citizen. His immediate family now lives in Dallas and continues to search for Damien whenever and however possible. Damien's family recently connected with GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation when GINA was preparing a Squeaky Wheel Tour® web cast profiling UK missing persons to air November 2, 2008 at 2:30 CST www.411Gina.org . The Internet has become a valuable tool to help bridge the gap for families to get information out world-wide about their missing loved ones.

Body Found in Suv May Be Jennifer Hudson's Nephew

Less than 24 hours after Jennifer Hudson and her family offered a $100,000 reward for the safe return of the singer's 7-year-old nephew, Julian King, Chicago media reported on Monday morning (October 27) that police found the body of a male child in a vehicle on Chicago's West Side. At press time, according to the Chicago Tribune, police and the Cook County medical examiner's officer were investigating the scene where the boy was found and attempting to determine the identity of the deceased.

According to CNN, an FBI deputy director at a news conference on an unrelated matter said that the body is "believed to be" King and that the bureau is working with the Chicago Police Department to confirm the identity. The Tribune reported late Monday morning that members of the Hudson family were expected at the medical examiner's office in the early afternoon, and a press conference was scheduled following the identification of the body.

King has been missing since Friday, the same day detectives discovered that Hudson's mother and older brother had been shot to death inside the family's home on Chicago's South Side. An Amber Alert was issued on Friday after King was reported missing.

For a Jane Doe, Seeking an Identity and Immigration Status

One person was positive the woman was the well-dressed bag lady who used to frequent a Pathmark supermarket near the Woodbridge Center mall. Another remembered serving her cheeseburgers at the local Burger King.

Since November 1994, when she was found wandering a New Jersey mall, a woman’s identity has been a mystery. But Lt. Eduardo Ojeda, shown visiting the woman, hopes an answer is near.

A woman from East Harlem believes that Jane Doe may be a former neighbor, Jenny Peña, above with her son, right.

Nydia Nieves, a 41-year-old laundress from Reading, Pa., was sure it was someone she knew, too — an Ecuadorean immigrant named Jenny Peña, whose disabled son lives on Staten Island. Ms. Nieves drove 70 miles to visit the woman here at Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital, where the sign on the woman’s door says simply J. Doe, and held her hand.

“Inside of me, I feel that it’s her,” Ms. Nieves said afterward.

After 14 years of languishing in anonymity, of not belonging to anybody, the woman may soon be reclaimed, discovered, identified. The calls have been pouring in since the New Jersey Human Services Department circulated her photograph to the news media last month, and Lt. Eduardo Ojeda, who works for the department and is leading the hunt, said he is certain that “somewhere in there there’s going to be a bingo.”

Search Continues for Missing Detroit 2-Year Old

Volunteers along with a couple family members of missing 2-year-old Tangena Hussain held a vigil Saturday evening at the Mobil station at Eight Mile and Greenfield where the girl went missing 10 days ago.

Nilufa Begam, the girl's mother, said volunteers are helping pass out fliers to track down information on the girl who disappeared after her mother's boyfriend, Jamrul Hussain, said he left her in a 1997 Geo Prizm Oct. 2 while he ran inside to buy gum, police said. Hussain is not related to the girl.

"Everything is going great," Begam said Saturday around 5:30 p.m. "We're just staying here giving out fliers to people. I don't know what we're going to do next."

James Tate, spokesman for Detroit police, said Saturday the department has searched for Tangena everyday since she went missing, but there have been no developments leading to the girl.

"We're still investigating it as a missing persons case," he said.

Shawn Patrick Smith, Hussain's attorney, said volunteers will hand out fliers in hopes that someone remembers something that can lead to Tangena. Smith said he and others will also spread the word about her disappearance because he said some in the community still don't know she is missing.

Volunteers Search For Missing Student

A large group of volunteers, many of them UMass Dartmouth students, gathered near Chase and Town roads Saturday morning, steeling themselves for a rigorous and emotional day.

They were preparing to search for clues about a fellow UMass student, Neo Babson Maximus, who disappeared a year ago into the woods near campus.

Mr. Maximus, who changed his legal name from Charles Allen Jr., vanished on Oct. 13, 2007. The 22-year-old student was last seen allegedly trying to break into a house on College Lane Road.

The amateur searchers had attended a training session Friday evening to prepare themselves for the "line search" across four square miles of fields and woods around the university.

Meanwhile, other groups of professional search-and-rescue personnel arrived from across New England to assist with the effort. About 200 people arrived at the command post Saturday morning, including volunteers from the Bristol County Sheriff's Department, the American Red Cross and four private investigation firms.

SOMEONE KNOWS MORE, MISSING BACKPACKER'S BOYFRIEND SAYS

The boyfriend of missing Melbourne backpacker Britt Lapthorne says he believes someone is withholding information as to the circumstances surrounding her disappearance.
Ms Lapthorne, who has been missing for 19 days, was last seen in the Croatian coastal town of Dubrovnik, and her family have hired a private investigator to look into the case.

Body found
The body has been taken to the local morgue.
Speaking at a press conference today in Dubrovnik deputy chief of police Ivan Kukrika said to was not unusual to find the bodies of Albanian refugees off the coast of this medieval city.
Mr Kukrika said the body in the ocean appeared to have been there for months not weeks.
The body was found in the ocean below the road, between the hostel where she was staying and the nightclub where she was last seen.
Locals witnessed five Water Police boats off the coast where the body was found, and one boat retrieved the body and took it aboard.

Hiker Discovers Items Linked to Missing Adventurer

A pilot involved in a renewed search for the adventurer Steve Fossett spotted what he believed to be plane wreckage Wednesday in rugged east-central California mountains. On Monday, a hiker came across items believed to belong to the missing aviator.

Preston Morrow was hiking in a rugged California area.

Officials said they would know by a news conference on Thursday morning whether it was wreckage and if so if whether it belonged to Mr. Fossett, who has been missing for 13 months.

“We’re asking for confirmation from the ground search and rescue teams” who were camping overnight in the mountains, said Erica Stuart, a spokeswoman for the Madera County sheriff. “We need to know if it is wreckage and, if it is, whose wreckage it is.”

'NO HELP' TO FIND MISSING GIRL

THE family of Melbourne backpacker Britt Lapthorne, who went missing in Croatia 10 days ago, say she was last seen talking with a group of men inviting her and some friends to get into their car outside a Dubrovnik nightclub.
Her distraught father Nigel Lapthorne also said he had received no help from Dubrovnik police or Australian authorities in his bid to find his 21-year-old daughter.
However, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith tonight said an Australian federal Police (AFP) officer had been deployed from London to assist with the investigation.
"We are very concerned that despite search efforts by local authorities, Ms Lapthorne remains missing in Dubrovnik,'' the spokesman said.
"Croatian authorities have agreed for the AFP to assist in their investigations and an AFP officer is currently being deployed from London,'' he said.
Mr Lapthorne said the family was not receiving any help from police in the Croatian coastal resort and claimed they had not launched an investigation into the case.
His son Darren has flown to Croatia to retrace the last steps of his sister after she left the Fuego Club on September 18.
He said the people in the historic town had been good to his son with one hotel providing free accommodation and also contacting a private investigator to help him find out what happened to his sister.

Woman Uses Special Gift to Help Solve Mysteries

Gail Lionetti says she has a gift that has led her to work on high-profile police cases involving people whose names are familiar to those who follow such news events, names like Sam Manzie, Jon- Benet Ramsey and Natalie Holloway.

Lionetti is clairvoyant, clairaudient medium, who has put her gift to use working with law enforcement agencies throughout the United States as a private investigator.

After surviving a difficult childhood and two near-death experiences, Lionetti, who resides in Freehold, said she decided to use her psychic gifts to help people understand their lives from a spiritual and supernatural perspective.

Lionetti, who grew up in Hazlet, said that when she was 6 years old she realized she was connecting with something. She explained that a lot of times with children, spirits will connect with them through the child's most treasured possession. To the 6- year-old Lionetti, the spirits were communicating through her dolls.

As time went on, Lionetti began to question what was happening to her.

"There was one point in my life that I did not believe in this. I was very skeptical, I'm still skeptical on a lot of things. But I was able to open more by meeting with other people and searching things out and finding that I really did have a gift," she explained.

About 30 years ago, Lionetti said, she began doing readings for people, including some celebrities. She also began working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and said she has a 98 percent mark of finding a missing person. As a private investigator, Lionetti has her own company, Scorpion Investigations.

NEWBURGH ADDS SYSTEM FOR MISSING PERSON ALERTS

The search for missing persons in Newburgh will get a high-tech boost. The town’s police department has formalized an agreement with A Child Is Missing, an alert program that uses rapid telephone calls to help find not only lost children, but also missing elderly, college students and those who may be mentally or physically disabled.“A lot of times we have one officer working, and if there is a missing child or someone with Alzheimer’s out that we cannot find, it is easier if we have 1,000 eyes looking rather than just one officer,” said Newburgh assistant police chief Howard ‘Tiger’ Williams. “This thing can be used community wide. I hope the county applies for this as well, and I think the Chandler and Evansville police will apply as well. It will be a great tool for law enforcement.”When a police officer in Newburgh takes a report of a missing person, that officer will in turn call the A Child Is Missing (ACIM) center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.A technician will take the specifics, such as a physical description, type of clothing worn, and last known whereabouts.That technician can then record a customized message with those details.Then, using mapping systems, ACIM will place telephone calls to homes in the area, up to 1,000 calls in 60 seconds.
The message will tell local residents who to call if they have information regarding the missing person.“If you have 1,000 people going outside to look for an individual, it will help you,” said Williams. “And, if it calls your house and an answering machine kicks on, it will still go ahead and leave a message so you can listen to it when you get home.”To date, ACIM has helped with more than 370 safe recoveries. That includes a 9-year old boy who went missing in Muncie on Aug. 27, a missing elderly man who’d become lost in the woods behind his Bloomington home on Aug. 17, and a 6-year-old boy who’d gone missing in Monticello on July 14.ACIM is staffed 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week. Multiple cases can be worked simultaneously, and the program can work across jurisdictional boundaries. If a person does go missing in Newburgh, those living outside the town could also receive telephone calls.Williams isn’t sure how much the ACIM program will be used in Newburgh, which has fewer than 4,000 residents.National statistics, however, show that a child goes missing once every 40 seconds in the United States.“I hope it is something that we never use,” said Williams. “But you know, with Alzheimer’s patients and things like that, there is probably a bigger chance we will use it.”

PI FEARS TROUBLE FOR MISSING STUDENT

A private investigator hired by the family of a Hungarian exchange student who dropped out of Oneonta High School in June said the 19-year-old may have been forced into prostitution.
Augustine Papay Jr., a retired New York City homicide detective, was in Oneonta late last week as part of his investigation into the disappearance of Natalia Timar.
"I am aware that she got involved in a bad crowd and may have befriended some criminal elements because she was naive and a trusting-type person," Papay said in a news release to The Daily Star.
"However, I have reason to believe that Ms. Natalia Timar may be an endangered missing person."
Timar, her passport, plane ticket back to Hungary and other belongings were found missing from her host family's home in Oneonta on June 2, according to Tom Overbaugh, vice chairman of the Youth Exchange Program of Rotary District 7170, which includes the Oneonta Rotary Club.
State police launched an investigation but later concluded there was no foul play involved, Overbaugh previously said.
But in Papay's release, the investigator said that although it was initially believed Timar's disappearance was voluntary, there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that she may be held against her will and was forced into prostitution in New York City by people involved in the sex trade.
"She was an ideal poster child for them and I believe that her movements and communications are now being restricted and she is being held against her will," Papay said.
Papay said he shared this evidence with the state police and FBI, but he did not disclose it to The Daily Star.
Timar's family has offered a $1,000 reward for information that leads to her whereabouts, he said.
"Natalia has not contacted her parents in the past three months and the family is devastated ever since they lost contact with her," Papay said. "Her mother is suffering from lung cancer and she hopes that someone will come forward with new information regarding the whereabouts of her youngest daughter."

PRIVATE EYE TRACES MISSING DOG

Members of a Derbyshire family have been reunited with their missing dog after hiring a private investigator to track it down.
The Kecks suspected their dog, a basset hound, had been stolen from their home in August last year.A website appeal, a call to police and a search by the RSPCA failed to find the animal.
A chance encounter with another basset owner gave daughter Alicia, 22, the potential lead they were looking for. Someone had "found" a dog fitting the description at about the same time the pet went missing.
The Kecks hired a private investigator to look into the possible link and the pet, now a two-year-old, was traced to another family in Long Eaton, about 30 miles away.The unsuspecting family took Ivy in good faith from a young woman who is believed to have stolen the dog, said investigator Rod Repton. The new family made the dog their pet and had even spent £400 on vet's fees when the animal fell ill.The Keck family was reunited with the dog earlier this month, more than one year after its disappearance.

WIDOW WANTED MURDER PROBED

Mulalo Sivhidzho asked her father-in-law to hire a private investigator to probe her husband’s murder in order to prove that she was innocent, the Johannesburg high court heard yesterday.
Sivhidzho’s legal counsel, Advocate Christo Meiring, told the court that when the deceased’s father, City Press editor-in-chief Mathatha Tsedu, visited her in the police cells, she pleaded with him to hire a private investigator .
However, Tsedu denied ever having such a conversation with Sivhidzho, pictured.
“All I asked her was if she had been involved in my son’s murder, she said no, and I left it there,” said Tsedu.
Meiring also said Sivhidzho will deny that she conducted interviews with journalists at her husband’s murder scene. But Tsedu referred to a sound clip that was played out on SAFM the morning after the incident, saying that the clip had been recorded at the scene.
The trial continues.

BONDSMAN: MOM NOT HELPING SEARCH FOR DAUGHTER

A week after her release from a Florida jail, controversy continues to swirl around the mother of missing toddler Caylee Anthony.
The bail bondsman who bailed Casey Anthony out of jail told ABCNews.com today that Anthony has not made an effort to help bounty hunters find her missing daughter.

Tony Padilla, the nephew of California bounty hunter Leonard Padilla, who arranged to have Anthony released on bond last week, said, "Maybe we got duped a little bit. Maybe we overestimated her."

Asked whether he would have bonded Anthony out of jail knowing what he knows now, Padilla said, "Hindsight being 20/20, probably not."

Leonard Padilla arranged to post Anthony's $500,000 bond, saying he thought he could persuade the 22-year-old to reveal what happened to her missing daughter.

Padilla's comments come as the Orlando Sentinel reports today that air sample tests taken from Casey Anthony's car found evidence that a decomposing body was in the trunk.

At a July bond hearing, police said "evidence of decomposition," including hairs the same length and color as Caylee's, was found in the trunk of the car.

DJ KERSHAW ON THE RUN

Former DJ Andy Kershaw says he is on the run and is sleeping on friends' floors to avoid arrest by the police.

Troubled Kershaw, who grew up in Oldham, has been arrested on a number of occasions and has already served a prison sentence for breaking an order banning him from contacting his former partner, Juliette Banner.

Father-of-two Kershaw had been with Juliette for 17 years, until they split in 2006. And in 2007 she won a restraining order against him.

In January he served 44 days of a three-month prison sentence for breaking the terms of the order on the Isle of Man, where the couple had made their home.

And now he claims he is living away from the island in the knowledge that the police from the Isle of Man have a warrant out for his arrest.

During the 90s Kershaw became one of the country's most respected broadcasters.

And after the couple moved to the Isle of Man in 2006 - amid worries about the standards of schools close to their former north London home - he continued to broadcast his show and brought performers to the island for a series of concerts.

But shortly after the move, Kershaw says Juliette discovered he had had a fling while in London, after reading a text message stored on his phone.

After Juliette moved out in October 2006, Kershaw repeatedly tried to convince her to return.

But by July 2007, by which time Juliette had a new partner, there had been a number of disagreements between them and Juliette obtained a restraining order against him.

After a series of breeches of the order, Kershaw was sentenced to three months in prison in January, of which he served just over half.

Speaking of his time in prison on the Isle of Man, he is reported to have said: "It would have made Charles Darwin wince. The place was full of heroin.

"I feel no bitterness or hostility towards the officers in that jail, the majority of whom were very nice and sympathetic. Just about every officer and prisoner said I shouldn't be in there. The majority were in there for drugs offences.

"I was with heroin dealers and men of violence. They realised I was a regular bloke and that I was in there for an enormous injustice.

"The main problem that I had was the sheer, crushing boredom. I read 32 books in 47 days. Unless you go in there you won't understand how boring it is. You are locked up for 22 hours a day.

Just days after his release Kershaw was arrested for breaching the restraining order and at a court hearing he was given a one-year jail term, suspended for two years.

Now he is living in a secret location - reportedly sleeping on friends' floors and sleeping rough - amid fears that the police in the Isle of Man have a warrant out for his arrest.

At one point he was reported as a missing person by his sister. And after contacting police in Derby, in order to be taken off the Missing Person's Register, he says police from the Isle of Man made an attempt to arrest him.

In the interview Kershaw, who says he now has a new partner, says he intends to seek legal advice later this month in order to take the matter forward.

UNEXPECTED ASSISTANCE

Did you know that the U.S. Social Security Administration will forward a letter to a missing person?

It’s not as simple as asking the agency to send a message because you’ve lost track of that person. The program has some pretty stringent rules. And obviously, in cases where foul play is most likely, Social Security is unlikely to yield any results, anyway. But if you can meet the requirements, there is the possibility you could at the very least contact a missing loved one who, for whatever reason, has voluntarily disappeared.

Here is what Social Security Online says about this:

“We will attempt to forward a letter to a missing person under circumstances involving a matter of great importance, such as a death or serious illness in the missing person’s immediate family, or a sizeable amount of money that is due the missing person. Also, the circumstances must concern a matter about which the missing person is unaware and would undoubtedly want to be informed. (Generally, when a son, daughter, brother, or sister wishes to establish contact, we write to the missing person, rather than forward a letter from the relative.) Because this service is not related in any way to a Social Security program, its use must be limited so that it does not interfere with our regular program activities.”

The agency does not charge for the service when there is a humanitarian purpose, but does assess a fee of $25 to cover its costs when it involves a financial matter.

While it certainly won’t work for everyone, it might be an unexplored bridge to a loved in some cases.

SON FINDS DAD 30 YEARS LATER

A nickname, a name of a ship and the longing of a son to meet the father he never knew. That was all a private investigator had to solve a 30-year-old cold case.

But last week, he closed the case when his client Richard Terwin returned from Cuba after meeting his dad.

Their reunion was the culmination of a five-year-long search by private detective Christian Botha, who began the case with very little to go on.

"All Richard had was a nickname, Babis Voreas, and a letter from a ship's captain allowing Richard's mother to board the ship while it was in harbour," said Botha.

Voreas had come to East London as a mechanical engineer on board a ship, just over 30 years ago. While in the coastal town, he met Terwin's mother. A romance blossomed and she fell pregnant.

But there was a problem.

"He had promised to marry someone in Greece, I think it was sort of an arranged marriage," Terwin said.

Terwin's father left East London but he wrote letters to his mother until his son was 2 years old.

At age 18, Terwin began searching for his father, and in 2003 he asked for a professional's help.

Right from the start, Botha hit dead ends: "I found out that the shipping company no longer existed, and the ship was scrapped about 15 years ago."

The years went by and Botha's luck didn't change.

Then about a year ago Botha got a lead. "A Greek friend of mine told me that Babis is short for Charalampos. I found a phone listing for a Charalampos Voreas in the Greek resort town of Kranidi."

But the phone number no longer worked.

Botha fired off hundreds of e-mails to people living in the town. He got lucky. "Out of the blue I get this e-mail, which said he knew Babis and that he was in Cuba."

Botha got a cellphone number for Voreas and dialled it. "I asked 'Are you Babis Voreas and did you have a son called Richard?'. He said yes, then started crying. He didn't want to put the phone down."

Terwin made contact with his father, and a year later made the trip to Cuba.

Caylee Anthony: "We're Probably Looking For a Body"

Orange County sheriff's investigators turned their attention Sunday to the possibility that missing 3-year-old Caylee Marie Anthony is dead, and joined with hundreds of volunteers to canvass wooded areas in southeast Orlando in search of the toddler.

"Since we've gotten things back from the FBI lab, we know that we're probably looking for a body," said Sgt. John Allen, the lead investigator in the case. "We're to the point in the investigation where we think it'd be good to go back and retrace some of our steps."

Caylee Marie was last seen in mid-June and was reported missing to authorities July 15. During a bail hearing in July for her mother, Casey Anthony, investigators said they had found strands of hair, a stain and dirt in the trunk of the woman's car, which had been abandoned in a parking lot.

On Wednesday, the Sheriff's Office said air-sample tests from the abandoned car show that the trunk once held a decomposing human body.

The results of DNA samples sent to FBI forensics labs have not been made public.

Television stations said Sunday that Allen had gone further -- telling them lab results indicated the body in the trunk of the Anthony's white Pontiac was in fact Caylee Marie.

"We clearly have evidence that indicates that there was a dead body in the trunk of Casey's car, and that that body was Caylee," Allen told WFTV-Channel 9 in an interview that aired Sunday evening.

Hundreds of Immigrants Disappear a Year Trying to Cross the Border

On the night of April 4, 2007, Leticia Gonzalez, a native of El Salvador, was overjoyed when she received a phone call from her daughters, Luz Karina Campos, 12, and Blanca Lilian, 10. The girls were in Tampico, Mexico, and preparing for the last leg of their journey to join their mother in Los Angeles. She never imagined that this would be the last time she would hear their voices.

Gonzalez had been working to build a better life for her family in Southern California for eight years. When little Luz Karina was asked what she wanted for her birthday, she said all she wanted was to spend it with her mother. Gonzalez paid coyotes nearly $20,000 to assure the safe arrival of her children. But a week after the call, the girls had not arrived and she had received no further news. Fearing the worst, she turned to consular officials and community organizations for help.

From October 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008, a documented 256 immigrants have died on the border between the United States and Mexico. In the same time frame the U.S. Border Patrol reports having rescued 853 immigrants who were still alive, left behind to die in the desert by coyotes or brought in as missing persons.

Family members of immigrants are confronted with innumerable problems in finding information about loved ones who have disappeared. There is no system in place to track them since authorities do not currently have a database of immigrants reported as missing. Additionally, with the exception of Mexico, Latin American countries do not maintain resources to aid family members in their searches. Consular authorities receive reports of missing persons, but there is no established procedure for follow-up when a person vanishes on the way to the U.S.

PI Helps Locate Missing Children

A former lieutenant with the Waldo County Sheriff's Department, who now works as a private investigator, assisted authorities in finding two girls who went missing Monday, Aug. 24, from Maine.

Jodie Perfect of Carroll Plantation hired Gary Boynton, who operates World Wide Investigations in Belfast, to help find her two daughters, Aleah Perfect, 6, and Amara Perfect, 2.

Jodie Perfect reported the girls missing Monday, Aug. 25, after their father and her estranged husband, Peter Perfect, 44, did not bring the girls home Sunday.

Jodie Perfect hired Boynton, a 26-year veteran of the Waldo County Sheriff's Department, soon after reporting her daughters missing to the Maine State Police.

Jodie Perfect had reportedly recently served her husband with divorce papers.

Friday afternoon, Boynton returned from Ohio with Jodie Perfect and her daughters after retrieving them from the home of Peter Perfect's brother in Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

Israeli Police Search For Missing Child

Police in Israel are searching for a missing girl who detectives fear was killed by her grandfather and whose disappearance has gripped the nation.

Divers were yesterday working through the Yarkon river, north of Tel Aviv, looking for the body of Rose Pizem, four, who police think was killed, bundled into a suitcase and then dropped in the water as long as three months ago.

The girl's mother, Marie-Charlotte Renault, 23, and the child's paternal grandfather, Ronny Ron, 45, who were in a relationship, are both being held on remand suspected of involvement in the murder.

Although Rose disappeared in May, police only heard of her disappearance two weeks ago when they were alerted by welfare workers that the girl was missing from her home in Netanya.

Rose was born in Paris in 2004, when her newly married parents, Renault and Benjamin Pizem, were still teenagers. After a year the couple travelled to Israel to meet Pizem's father, Ron, whom Pizem had never met before.

But after some months Renault announced she had fallen in love with Ron and was staying in Israel to be with him. Pizem returned to France with his daughter, Rose.

HIT AND RUN UNSOLVED DESPITE RUMORS

September will be 20 years since Ray Dennis left his home in Erwin for the Mule Days Festival in Benson. He and a friend went every year but in 1988, Dennis never came home. He was 25.

A man found his body in the road; it was an apparent hit-and-run. Dennis had been drinking and he and his girlfriend left Benson in the early morning hours of Sept. 25. They weren’t driving long before Dennis’s car broke down and after an unsuccessful search for a ride and then an argument, the two parted ways.

Theories of the crime ran the gamut – was he beaten to death and thrown in the road to make it look like a hit-and-run? If it was a hit and run, was it an accident or on purpose?

Former State Trooper Dean Hewitt, who responded to the scene that morning, remembers it as an unusual crime scene – no debris in the road, no skid marks, and the appearance that Dennis had been dragged a number of feet.

“After looking over the scene, the accident scene did not appear to be a standard motor vehicle collision involving a pedestrian,” Hewitt said, noting the lack of debris on the road.

According to a report prepared by a private investigation firm hired by Dennis’s mother, there were claims by some that in search of a ride or by coincidence, Giggio made contact with an ex-boyfriend that night and there was an argument between Mary and Ray about whether to accept a ride from him and his friend. At that point, details get hazy but the story ends the same: Ray is hit by the car and left dead in the middle of the road.

Blood and hair were found on the undercarriage of the car, but after extensive testing, the hair and blood were not a match. Still, Johnson harbors suspicions and is waiting for an apology or, at the very least, an explanation of what happened that night.

Efforts to reach Bradshaw, Gautier and Giggio for comment were unsuccessful. NC Wanted contacted Bradshaw's father, Arthur Allen, who the vehicle was registerd to, but he refused to comment, explaining that he had been advised by his lawyer not to discuss the case.

Father of Missing Girl Raising Money to Hire PI

The father of missing Dublin teenager Amy Fitzpatrick is campaigning to raise funds to hire a private investigator to help in the search for his daughter in Spain.

Christopher Fitzpatrick wants to bring in an independent investigator to help find the 16-year-old, who has not been seen since she failed to return to her Spanish home on January 1.

She had been living in the tourist resort of Riviera del Sol on the Costa del Sol for the past few years with her mother but went missing after she left a friend's house to walk the 10-minute journey home.

Her father, who lives in Ireland, wants to hire a private investigator, and has also called for CCTV footage from the track along which she apparently walked home to be examined.

New Tools Help In Search of Missing Persons

The craters dug by authorities at a Seymour farm this month heightened Janice and Bill Smolinski's hopes that, after four tortured years, they might at least bring the body of their missing son home.

In Cheshire, 18 miles north of the digging prompted by a new investigative lead, unbridled smiles alternated with hand-wringing while they waited. Then came crushing news: days spent churning up dirt yielded no answers in their then-31-year-old Waterbury son's disappearance. Still, the family presses on, hoping that they may yet bring Billy Smolinski Jr. home, if only to bury him.

Their hope hangs, in part, on two relatively new tools available to law enforcement for matching unidentified bodies with missing people nationwide. Previously used primarily for forensic crime solving, a database called CODIS is increasingly being used to match DNA from human remains with that of missing people, or their family members.

A second new tool, called NamUs, posts pictures of the unidentified dead and information online. It will be linked to a missing persons database next year.

Pioneers who have had success solving cases with these tools say they remain grossly underused. They especially fret over languishing cases in which, for lack of an established identity, homicides are going unsolved. In many cases, police departments' and coroners' awareness has simply not caught up with the technology.

Mother of Missing 3-Year Old Out on Bond

Casey Anthony is talking freely with her parents and helping with new leads into whereabouts of missing 3-year-old Caylee Marie, the family's spokesman said today.

"She is being cooperative and is sincerely worried about the well-being of her child. There is no doubt that this child has been kidnapped," said Los Angeles-based spokesman Larry Garrison. He said she is providing more details she couldn't give in jail.

Anthony, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of child neglect and filing a false report, was released from the Orange County Jail on Thursday after more than a month behind bars.

Garrison refused to go into details about what information supports a kidnapping. Garrison said it would impact the ongoing investigation.

Cards could help uncover cold case clues

While inmates in jails across New York pass the time by playing card games -- poker, gin rummy and solitaire -- they may also be helping crack cold cases.
The idea is simple: Each of the 52 playing cards contains information about a murder, a missing person or another unsolved crime.
Inmates know information law enforcement agents don't, and as corrections officers can attest, inmates love to talk as long as it's not about their own crimes.
Most of the cases featured on the New York cards deal with missing persons, but some show unsolved murders, some dating back to the 1980s.
Inmates can provide information by calling a hotline. They're not required to provide their names.
"Sooner or later, someone will hear, someone talks, it always happens whether it's two days from now or five years from now."
Even inmates think the cards are a good idea.

Amber Alert results in arrest of 2 Raywood women

A search for two Houston boys ended with the arrest of a Raywood woman and her mother Friday evening.
Kisha Victorian, 27, and Kate Smith, 46, were each charged with two counts of violation of a protective order after taking Victorian's two sons last week.
Victorian was also charged with two counts of interference of child custody.
The women took Torris Andre Lee II, 6, and Teandre Jamal Lee, 4, from their father, Torris Lee last Tuesday.
Cpl. Hugh Bishop with the Liberty County Sheriff's Office said they lured Lee, a Houston resident, to Smith's home in Raywood by saying they had set up a meeting with the boys' case worker.
Once Lee arrived, the women distracted him and took the boys. Lee waited until Friday to report the incident because he had received several assurances from Victorian that she was going to return the boys, said Bishop.
Protective orders had been issued against both women due to violence against the children.
"We thought that was enough to say they were in danger," said Bishop.
The Sheriff's Office issued an Amber Alert for the boys on Friday afternoon and soon located the boys in Beaumont.
Both children were in Sheriff's Office custody by 6 p.m. Friday, according to Bishop.
Victorian is being held at the Liberty County Jail pending trial. Bail was set at $3,500 for each count of violation of a protective order and $7,500 for each count of interference with child custody for a total of $22,000.
Smith was released on a $7,000 bond.

Madeleine McCann's parents hire US private investigators

The team are said to be taking over primary responsibility for the investigating into Madeleine's disappearance, although the Spanish firm Metodo 3, which has until now spearheaded the search, will continue to follow up information from Spain and Portugal.

The news comes shortly after Portuguese police shelved the case and released a 30,000 page dossier detailing their investigation.

The dossier has revealed thousands of potential sightings of the three-year-old following her disappearance from the family's rented holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve on May 3 last year.

The US firm, which has not been named, is said to have been offered a £500,000 six-month contract by the Find Madeleine Fund, which has received donations from several wealthy benefactors and wellwishers around the world.

L.A. Authorities Link Rockefeller To Calif. Missing Persons Case

Boston kidnapping suspect Clark Rockefeller is a German man wanted for questioning in connection with a 1985 California missing persons case, the Los Angeles County sheriff said Monday.

Officials in California said Monday that Rockefeller is in fact the same man who called himself Christopher Chichester in the mid-1980s. At the time, Chichester was a tenant of a property owned by John and Linda Sohus, who disappeared and are believed dead. Chichester disappeared before authorities could question him.

Last week, Rockefeller refused to talk with California investigators about the case.

Rockefeller's attorney Stephen Hrones denied his client had any link to the California case.

"They are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at him. This matter in California is all speculation," Hrones said.

Last week, a man in a small town in Bavaria identified pictures of Rockefeller as his younger brother, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who went to America in the late 1970s as a teen and then lost contact with the family.

Sandra Boss Issues Video Plea for Return of Missing Daughter

The mother of a 7-year-old allegedly kidnapped from Boston by her father issued an Internet video Thursday pleading for the girl's safe return.

Sandra Boss asked her ex-husband, Clark Rockefeller, to return their daughter, Reigh Boss, who goes by the nickname "Snooks." In the video, released by the Boston Police Department, Boss told Rockefeller that there must be a better way to deal with their differences.

"We both love her dearly and have only her best interests and well-being at heart," Boss said. "I ask you now, please, please bring Snooks back. There has to be a better way for us to solve our differences than this way."

Bones Found in Mesa County

Mesa County Sheriff's Office investigators are searching for clues after human remains were found in the region.

The department is not disclosing the location of the find nor identifying who found the remains, said sheriff's spokeswoman Heather Benjamin. Investigators "want to keep the area clear for a forensic search."

The Mesa County coroner's office is working with investigators to identify the remains.

"We believe this will take a long time," Benjamin said.

It is too early to speculate whose body has been located, she added.

Police Use Facebook to Track Missing Persons

Australian Federal Police will use social networking websites Facebook, bebo and MySpace as the latest tool to track down missing persons.

The websites have become a common forum for friends and family involved in high-profile missing person cases to appeal for information on their loved ones.

Last month, friends of murdered Hervey Bay woman Lisa Keem created a Facebook group dedicated to finding her alleged killer, now in custody, while numerous groups have been set up still seeking information on missing British girl Madeline McCann.

Missing Toddler's Mom 'Person of Interest'

In a bond hearing today, the lead detective in the investigation into the June disappearance of 2-year-old Caylee Anthony named Casey Anthony, 22, the toddler's mother, a "person of interest."

While Anthony is currently being held on three relatively small charges, including child neglect and obstructing an investigation, prosecutors said that the case was turning into "what is looking to be a homicide investigation."

The detective, Yuri Mellich of the Orange Co., Fla., Sheriff's Missing Persons Unit, called Anthony a "person of interest" after revealing in testimony that samples of hair of similar length and color to Caylee's were found in the trunk of a car owned by the Anthony family and last driven by Casey.

Plus, a police dog trained to seek out the decomposition of human bodies also alerted its handler to the car trunk.

Judge Stan Strickland set Anthony's bail at $500,000 with the restriction that if the bail is posted, Anthony must wear a GPS tracking device at all times.

New Tool To Match Remains to Missing Persons

A local mother's dedication could help solve thousands of family mysteries and some murders.

Debbie Culberson is on the board of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

Culberson worked with the Justice Department to create a centralized, online tool to match the unidentified dead, with missing persons across the country.

Local 12's Deborah Dixon shows how, for Culberson, the mission is personal, as she looks for the remains of her daughter, Carrie, killed 12 years ago.

Great American Ball Park filled to capacity. It would take 8,000 more people to equal the number of unidentified dead in America.

"The number of unidentified bodies is astounding," said Dr. Amy Burrows-Beckham, Kentucky medical examiner. "It's been called the nation's silent national disaster."

Some of the unidentified dead were murdered. Thousands have families searching for answers.

There was no way to do that, until now.

Now there is NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System

Online Predators

According the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC), every day more than 2,000 parents or caretakers call law enforcement to report a missing minor. The FBI also says missing persons reports have multiplied by more than five times since the invention of the internet.

Over the years, stories of predators seeking victims online have made news. However, the message hasn't hit home with some teens who risk their lives meeting up with strangers from cyberspace. Grant County Sheriff's detectives are dealing with such a case.

Connie Farrell doesn't know where to find her daughter, 17-year-old Pamelia Alise Westbrook. "I believe that she left on her own, but I don't know if she does not want to come home or someone is not letting come home," says Farrell. She's been missing since Sunday, June 29th. Farrell says that day, her daughter likely chatted with someone online who picked her up from her family's home in Grant County. "I'm scared that she just can't come home," says Farrell.

Family Found: Sisters Reunited In South Korea Thanks to Private Investigator

Wanda King's life in the United States has been a good one.

But as a child in North Korea, she lived under communism and saw the effects of war. She remembers seeing red skies after atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and her mother warning, "Don't you go outside! You're going to be sick." As American bombs fell on her own country during the Korean War, she and her family fled south with hundreds of other refugees to escape the fighting. They ate insects and slept in rice paddies to survive.

"I don't have a happy life when I was young," she said. "I have a hard life."

Although conditions improved after the war, she was still living in poverty in 1962 when she met Ben King, a young soldier from Davie County. He fell in love with her, and he vowed not to leave South Korea without her.

She was 23 when she married him and left her family behind in Seoul. She built her own family in a new country.

Her children grew up with plenty of food and without fear of bombs falling in the night. King, now 68, watched with pride as they married and started forming their own families.

Despite all that she had, King ­mourned what she had lost.

Search on for Missing Hemet Man, Someone has Withdrawn $92,000 From His Account

Police suspect elder abuse may have led to the disappearance of a missing 80-year-old Hemet man whose bank account was emptied of about $92,000.

Neighbors told police that a caretaker working for Edward Andrews, 80, appears to be the same man who withdrew Andrews' money from banks in three counties and bought a big screen television in Orange County. The neighbors were shown a surveillance photo of the man.

Ohio Launches New Missing Adult Alert

Law enforcement officials across Ohio are preparing to launch a new plan that creates a statewide emergency alert program to aid in the identification and location of missing adults who are endangered and age 65 or older or have a mental impairment.

Alerting the public about a missing child (the Amber Alert) is something Ohio has championed since its inception, according to Ohio Emergency Management Agency officials.

Children's Homes See one a Day go on Run

Police deal with more than 60 missing people from the city's children's homes and psychiatric hospital every month, it was revealed today.

New figures show youngsters were reported missing from one of the Capital's ten care facilities on an almost daily basis between January and March. It was a similar situation at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital where patients with mental illnesses and those attending drug and alcohol rehabilitation disappeared on most days.

Investigator Donates Time to Missing Kids

She went jogging like she did most mornings.

But on May 27, Crystal Sexton, a rising junior at Loganville High, kept running. Her mother got in her car and drove around, looking for the 16-year-old.

“I said, ‘Something is wrong,’ ” Donna Sexton told me. ” ‘This is not right. Something is just not right.’ “

She called Loganville Police and the Walton County Sheriff’s Office. She passed out fliers with Crystal’s photo.

Police: Missing Man May be Headed to Canada

Police are searching for David Dumas, 25, of Spring Lake Ranch in Cuttingsville.

Staff at the facility filed a missing persons complaint at about 1:45 p.m. Sunday, after Dumas failed to arrive to take his morning medications, according to Vermont State Police at Rutland. Dumas, who holds dual citizenship, had been complaining about being in the United States and wished to return to Canada, where his father lives, police said.

McCanns Back Facebook-Based Missing Children Scheme

The parents of Madeleine McCann have added their support to a new scheme for locating missing children through social networking websites such as Facebook.

The charity Missing Persons has created an application for Facebook users which allows the display of the details of missing young people on their own profile page.

No New Clues Found in Search for Long-Missing Brockton Teen

The search will move on to a nearby pond in September, said private investigator Phillip White.

The investigation recently turned up information that the teen had frequently visited the area of the park, White said.

White is part of the team of private investigators, working pro bono through the Molly Bish Foundation, who have interviewed dozens of people and conducted several searches for evidence in the area, with the assistance of state and Brockton police.