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.