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.