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.