Man Searches for Half-Brother, Missing for 47 Years

Children don't just disappear...

That's what most people living in Wichita Falls in the 1960s thought.

But Dec. 9, 1961, 11-year-old Andy Sims vanished, launching what has become a 47-year-old mystery — What happened to Andy?

Andy, who was in the fifth-grade at Jefferson Elementary School, lived at 4600 Stanford, a corner house tucked into a quiet neighborhood not far from what today is Southwest Parkway. That part of town has developed a lot since the early 1960s when it was a newer suburban area still surrounded by dairy and pasture land.

DNA Tests Match Feet Washed Ashore

DNA analysis has matched a pair of the feet that have washed up on B.C. shores this year, confirming they are from the same female and providing a small advance for investigators trying to solve the mystery that has drawn global attention.

"It helps. It allows us to confirm two cases are now one so investigators can focus," said Jeff Dolan of the B.C. Coroner's Service.

Online People Search Aids Christmas Reunion

Michael Taylor had never met his father, David, until they were reunited for the first time last week. The father and son met each other on Michael's 25th birthday, making the occasion even more special. Michael initially contacted Tracesmart in response to the company's Missing Person Campaign which has been running since March, and has helped to reunite many other families in time for Christmas.

Family of Missing Woman Hires Investigator

The family of a missing Thief River Falls, Minn., woman has enlisted the services of a private investigator to help look for Gina Anderson, who was last seen more than a month ago.

Investigator Gary Peterson, of Spring Valley, Minn., met with members of Anderson's family Sunday evening in Thief River Falls, said Anderson's sister, Jackie Pagel.

Family Not Giving Up Search for Missing Woman

There's an empty chair at her Thanksgiving table, but the mother of a missing Gaston County woman still has reasons to be grateful.

Kim Fraley is giving thanks for a new billboard offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who can help locate her daughter, 22-year-old Jamie Fraley. Fairway Outdoor Advertising donated the space, and the paper billboard was designed and placed by the Kristen Foundation.

Another Body Found In Louisiana Mystery Deaths

More than three years ago, Jefferson Davis Parish authorities began investigating the deaths of Jennings women who were known to live illicit lifestyles.

All the women were in their 20s and had escalated levels of cocaine and alcohol in their bodies when they were found in rural but public areas of the small, poor parish.
With a seventh body found shortly after noon today that is suspected to be that of the 17-year-old relative of one of the victims, officials are investigating tips but are without a lead suspect.

“It is a big puzzle and we’re putting those pieces slowly together,” parish Sheriff Ricky Edwards said. “It takes time and we have to do it right. We can’t just go out and do things and ruin the case.” All the women grew up in an economically disadvantaged section of Jennings within blocks of each other. They were at least acquaintances and traveled in the same circles.

Canadian Rescue Group Helps Find Missing People

For families desperate to find missing loved ones, Manitoba Search and Rescue (MSAR) helps co-ordinate and carry out searches across the province.

"We will provide assistance to anyone," said George Leonard, operations manager for the non-profit group.

He started the organization himself about seven years ago. The group has since grown to include 238 members, featuring people with backgrounds as wilderness guides, RCMP officers, paramedics and firefighters, among others.

Last year, MSAR carried out 103 searches in Manitoba, said Leonard.

When family or friends of a missing person contact the group, a variety of steps are taken to organize a search.

Music Tour Highlights Missing Persons in the Community

GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation presents the 3rd International Squeaky Wheel Tour® (SWT), launching October 17, 2008. The acclaimed 19-day event draws attention to several hundred missing people, each profiled by the musicians participating throughout the US and other countries, and is supported by the families of the missing and nonprofit organizations worldwide.

Musicians participating in SWT earmark their concerts or events to profile a missing person(s) in their community. They profile that missing person during their show and ask attendees to take a flyer to post throughout their community. Audience members become official GINA Volunteers simply by coming to the events and posting flyers.

This year's tour has reached across international boundaries that take us from England in 1996 to Dallas 2008. Damien Nettles disappeared from Cowes, Isle of Wight, England November 2, 1996. He is both an American and British citizen. His immediate family now lives in Dallas and continues to search for Damien whenever and however possible. Damien's family recently connected with GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation when GINA was preparing a Squeaky Wheel Tour® web cast profiling UK missing persons to air November 2, 2008 at 2:30 CST www.411Gina.org . The Internet has become a valuable tool to help bridge the gap for families to get information out world-wide about their missing loved ones.

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.

Woman Uses Special Gift to Help Solve Mysteries

Gail Lionetti says she has a gift that has led her to work on high-profile police cases involving people whose names are familiar to those who follow such news events, names like Sam Manzie, Jon- Benet Ramsey and Natalie Holloway.

Lionetti is clairvoyant, clairaudient medium, who has put her gift to use working with law enforcement agencies throughout the United States as a private investigator.

After surviving a difficult childhood and two near-death experiences, Lionetti, who resides in Freehold, said she decided to use her psychic gifts to help people understand their lives from a spiritual and supernatural perspective.

Lionetti, who grew up in Hazlet, said that when she was 6 years old she realized she was connecting with something. She explained that a lot of times with children, spirits will connect with them through the child's most treasured possession. To the 6- year-old Lionetti, the spirits were communicating through her dolls.

As time went on, Lionetti began to question what was happening to her.

"There was one point in my life that I did not believe in this. I was very skeptical, I'm still skeptical on a lot of things. But I was able to open more by meeting with other people and searching things out and finding that I really did have a gift," she explained.

About 30 years ago, Lionetti said, she began doing readings for people, including some celebrities. She also began working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and said she has a 98 percent mark of finding a missing person. As a private investigator, Lionetti has her own company, Scorpion Investigations.

NEWBURGH ADDS SYSTEM FOR MISSING PERSON ALERTS

The search for missing persons in Newburgh will get a high-tech boost. The town’s police department has formalized an agreement with A Child Is Missing, an alert program that uses rapid telephone calls to help find not only lost children, but also missing elderly, college students and those who may be mentally or physically disabled.“A lot of times we have one officer working, and if there is a missing child or someone with Alzheimer’s out that we cannot find, it is easier if we have 1,000 eyes looking rather than just one officer,” said Newburgh assistant police chief Howard ‘Tiger’ Williams. “This thing can be used community wide. I hope the county applies for this as well, and I think the Chandler and Evansville police will apply as well. It will be a great tool for law enforcement.”When a police officer in Newburgh takes a report of a missing person, that officer will in turn call the A Child Is Missing (ACIM) center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.A technician will take the specifics, such as a physical description, type of clothing worn, and last known whereabouts.That technician can then record a customized message with those details.Then, using mapping systems, ACIM will place telephone calls to homes in the area, up to 1,000 calls in 60 seconds.
The message will tell local residents who to call if they have information regarding the missing person.“If you have 1,000 people going outside to look for an individual, it will help you,” said Williams. “And, if it calls your house and an answering machine kicks on, it will still go ahead and leave a message so you can listen to it when you get home.”To date, ACIM has helped with more than 370 safe recoveries. That includes a 9-year old boy who went missing in Muncie on Aug. 27, a missing elderly man who’d become lost in the woods behind his Bloomington home on Aug. 17, and a 6-year-old boy who’d gone missing in Monticello on July 14.ACIM is staffed 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week. Multiple cases can be worked simultaneously, and the program can work across jurisdictional boundaries. If a person does go missing in Newburgh, those living outside the town could also receive telephone calls.Williams isn’t sure how much the ACIM program will be used in Newburgh, which has fewer than 4,000 residents.National statistics, however, show that a child goes missing once every 40 seconds in the United States.“I hope it is something that we never use,” said Williams. “But you know, with Alzheimer’s patients and things like that, there is probably a bigger chance we will use it.”

PI FEARS TROUBLE FOR MISSING STUDENT

A private investigator hired by the family of a Hungarian exchange student who dropped out of Oneonta High School in June said the 19-year-old may have been forced into prostitution.
Augustine Papay Jr., a retired New York City homicide detective, was in Oneonta late last week as part of his investigation into the disappearance of Natalia Timar.
"I am aware that she got involved in a bad crowd and may have befriended some criminal elements because she was naive and a trusting-type person," Papay said in a news release to The Daily Star.
"However, I have reason to believe that Ms. Natalia Timar may be an endangered missing person."
Timar, her passport, plane ticket back to Hungary and other belongings were found missing from her host family's home in Oneonta on June 2, according to Tom Overbaugh, vice chairman of the Youth Exchange Program of Rotary District 7170, which includes the Oneonta Rotary Club.
State police launched an investigation but later concluded there was no foul play involved, Overbaugh previously said.
But in Papay's release, the investigator said that although it was initially believed Timar's disappearance was voluntary, there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that she may be held against her will and was forced into prostitution in New York City by people involved in the sex trade.
"She was an ideal poster child for them and I believe that her movements and communications are now being restricted and she is being held against her will," Papay said.
Papay said he shared this evidence with the state police and FBI, but he did not disclose it to The Daily Star.
Timar's family has offered a $1,000 reward for information that leads to her whereabouts, he said.
"Natalia has not contacted her parents in the past three months and the family is devastated ever since they lost contact with her," Papay said. "Her mother is suffering from lung cancer and she hopes that someone will come forward with new information regarding the whereabouts of her youngest daughter."

PRIVATE EYE TRACES MISSING DOG

Members of a Derbyshire family have been reunited with their missing dog after hiring a private investigator to track it down.
The Kecks suspected their dog, a basset hound, had been stolen from their home in August last year.A website appeal, a call to police and a search by the RSPCA failed to find the animal.
A chance encounter with another basset owner gave daughter Alicia, 22, the potential lead they were looking for. Someone had "found" a dog fitting the description at about the same time the pet went missing.
The Kecks hired a private investigator to look into the possible link and the pet, now a two-year-old, was traced to another family in Long Eaton, about 30 miles away.The unsuspecting family took Ivy in good faith from a young woman who is believed to have stolen the dog, said investigator Rod Repton. The new family made the dog their pet and had even spent £400 on vet's fees when the animal fell ill.The Keck family was reunited with the dog earlier this month, more than one year after its disappearance.

WIDOW WANTED MURDER PROBED

Mulalo Sivhidzho asked her father-in-law to hire a private investigator to probe her husband’s murder in order to prove that she was innocent, the Johannesburg high court heard yesterday.
Sivhidzho’s legal counsel, Advocate Christo Meiring, told the court that when the deceased’s father, City Press editor-in-chief Mathatha Tsedu, visited her in the police cells, she pleaded with him to hire a private investigator .
However, Tsedu denied ever having such a conversation with Sivhidzho, pictured.
“All I asked her was if she had been involved in my son’s murder, she said no, and I left it there,” said Tsedu.
Meiring also said Sivhidzho will deny that she conducted interviews with journalists at her husband’s murder scene. But Tsedu referred to a sound clip that was played out on SAFM the morning after the incident, saying that the clip had been recorded at the scene.
The trial continues.