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.