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.