Remains in Colorado car identified as man missing since 1987

Published May 14, 2013

Associated Press

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. –  Authorities in western Colorado say a human skeleton found in a partially buried car belongs to a man who was reported missing 26 years ago.

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports the Mesa County Coroner's Office identified the man on Monday as 65-year-old Ronald Vasey. He went missing in 1987.

The sheriff's department says someone hiking near John Brown Canyon Road, near Gateway, called 911 at about 6 p.m. Thursday to report a crashed vehicle below a cliff. The old station wagon was roughly 100 feet off the roadway, and it was partially obscured by rocks and sediment that presumably washed down over the years.

Deputies found personal items in the car, including clothing and credit cards.

The coroner's office says it appears Vasey committed suicide.

View the original article here

Inmate missing since 1999 surrenders in Oklahoma

• 

  In this photo provided by the Comanche County Detention Center, David Lee Kemp is pictured in a booking photo dated April 26, 2013. Authorities in southwest Oklahoma say they've captured Kemp, a murder suspect who's been on the run since a brazen jail escape with eight other inmates in 1999. Kemp was the only inmate to elude capture after escaping the Comanche County jail on March 11, 1999. He was awaiting trial on two first-degree murder counts in the killings of his ex-wife and another man. (AP Photo/Comanche County Detention Center)The Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY –  After 14 years on the run from the FBI and tips from witnesses in two countries, David Lee Kemp turned himself over to authorities in southwest Oklahoma early Friday morning, local authorities said.

Kemp, of Lawton, Okla., was the only inmate to elude capture after escaping with eight other inmates on March 11, 1999, while awaiting trial on two first-degree murder counts in the killings of his ex-wife and her boyfriend.

Comanche County Sheriff Kenny Stradley said Kemp told police he was done running.

"He said that he was just tired basically of running and it was affecting his health," Stradley told The Associated Press.

Comanche County Jail records show Kemp was taken into custody at about 1:40 a.m. Friday on charges of felony first-degree murder and escaping from a county jail, a misdemeanor.

The sequence of events leading up to his arrest started at a rest stop along Interstate 44, Stradley said, when Kemp knocked on the window of a sleeping truck driver.

"He said, 'I need you to call Comanche County Sheriff's department to come up here. I need to talk to them,'" Stradley told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

A deputy arrived and told Kemp he looked familiar. The deputy then asked for Kemp's name. Kemp told him and was immediately arrested, Stradley said. It's unclear if Kemp has a lawyer.

Kemp is charged in the deaths of Christina Cremer and her boyfriend, Robert Miller, whose bodies were found in August 1998, riddled with bullets in their Lawton apartment. He was apprehended by police in California several days later and taken to Comanche County.

In March 1999, he and eight other inmates overpowered a guard with a large grilling fork and escaped. Most were recaptured the same day.

Since then, Kemp was the subject of the "America's Most Wanted" and "Unsolved Mysteries" TV shows. He was reportedly spotted in Las Vegas and may have also been spotted in Phoenix, Louisiana and even Canada.

Stradley was also sheriff back in 1999 when Kemp escaped, and called Kemp's capture "a big relief."

A spokesman for the county said Kemp was under observation because of suicide concerns.

"He's completely compliant right now and following all the rules," said Jacob Russell, the spokesman. "All the added security at this time will be to and from the courtroom."

View the original article here

Remains ID'd as 13-year-old Hailey Dunn, Texas cheerleader missing since 2010

• 

  Hailey Dunn, a student and cheerleader at Colorado City Middle School in Colorado City, Texas, was reported missing on Dec. 28, 2010. (Colorado City Police Department).

The remains of a 13-year-old Texas cheerleader Hailey Dunn have been found more than two years after she was reported missing.

Hailey's remains were found in a remote West Texas location last month, and the Texas Department of Public Safety informed her mother, Billie Jean Dunn on Friday that the remains are her daughter's, attorney John Young said.

"She's trying to process the entirety of this," Young said. "She has to process that Hailey isn't coming home."

Scurry County Sheriff Trey Wilson said later Friday at a news conference that the remains were found near Lake J.B. Thomas in Scurry County on March 16. The girl's disappearance and cause of death remain under investigation.

Officials are expected to hold a news conference Friday afternoon.

Hailey had been the subject of months of intensive searches in and around her hometown of Colorado City and surrounding fields and landfills.

More than 100 billboards featuring her picture and information about the case have been set up along interstates in West Texas and other states.

Hailey was last seen walking to a friend's house and was reported missing Dec. 28, 2010, when her mother discovered the girl had never arrived.

Billie Jean Dunn told officials she had gotten into a fight with her daughter the night she disappeared. She was arrested a few months later for lying to police about the whereabouts of Adkins, her live-in boyfriend.

Dunn was given a year's probation and reportedly moved to Austin. Adkins had been named a person of interest in the case but was never charged.

Police records revealed Adkins had made troubling statements before Hailey disappeared. According to a police affidavit filed in the investigation, Adkins had remarked to a relative that hurting a teenager would be "like killing a deer." The affidavit also noted that Dunn and Adkins had an apparent fixation on slasher movies and serial killers -- something Dunn called a "hobby."

The affidavit mentioned that in February 2010, police responded to a domestic violence call at the house. Adkins allegedly threatened to kill Billie and Hailey Dunn during a heated argument. After telling police he never issued these threats, he later allegedly confessed to police that he threatened the two. However, both Adkins and Dunn denied having any involvement in the girl's disappearance.

Adkins told The Associated Press that he would "never ever do anything to harm Hailey."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Calif. hiker: 4 days missing felt like a dream

Published April 08, 2013

Associated Press

ORANGE, Calif. –  One of two hikers who got lost in a Southern California mountain wilderness says she remembers nothing but hallucinations between the night she disappeared and her rescue four days later.

At a news conference Monday after she was released from the hospital, Kyndall Jack said that for most of the ordeal, she didn't realize she was missing, or that she had been hiking with her friend Nicolas Cendoya.

Jack said she began hallucinating the night she went missing in Orange County's Cleveland National Forest on March 31. The 18-year-old said the last thing she remembered was fighting off animals with Cendoya, and believes that actually happened, but couldn't be certain.

In the following days, she hallucinated she was being eaten by a python, and tried to eat rocks and dirt.

View the original article here

Family, 2 missing Florida boys in Cuba

Published April 08, 2013

Associated Press

TAMPA, Fla. –  Officials believe a Florida couple suspected of kidnapping their two sons from the woman's parents are in Cuba.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office reports that it received information Monday that the Hakken family had arrived on the island nation. Investigators say they're working with the FBI and the U.S. State Department to verify their reports.

Authorities say Joshua Michael Hakken entered his mother-in-law's house north of Tampa early Wednesday, tied her up and fled with his young sons.

Authorities had been searching by air and sea for a boat Hakken recently bought. The truck the family had been traveling in was found late Thursday, abandoned in a parking garage in Madeira Beach.

The boys had been living since last year with their maternal grandparents, who were granted permanent custody Tuesday.

Authorities have previously characterized the Hakkens as "anti-government."

View the original article here

Man who took hostages from Clinton office in 2007 missing from unit

Published April 07, 2013

Associated Press

MANCHESTER, N.H. –  A man who took hostages at a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign office in 2007 escaped from a minimum-security correctional facility on Sunday, authorities said.

Leeland Eisenberg was discovered missing during a head count Sunday afternoon at the Calumet Transitional Housing Unit in Manchester, state Department of Corrections spokesman Jeff Lyons said.

Eisenberg was sentenced in May 2010 to 3 1/2 to 7 years for probation violations. The 52-year-old would have been eligible for parole in August.

Once he is found, he will be charged with escape, a felony punishable by 3 1/2 to 7 years in prison, Lyons said. Eisenberg isn't considered armed.

Eisenberg spent about two years behind bars for the November 2007 siege at Clinton's Rochester campaign office in which he claimed to have a bomb. No one was hurt in a five-hour standoff and the bomb turned out to be road flares.

At his arraignment in that case, public defender Randy Hawkes portrayed Eisenberg as a man at the end of his rope emotionally after being repeatedly turned down when he sought psychiatric help.

Eisenberg "heard voices and saw a movie in his head telling him he had to sacrifice himself" to shine light on the flaws in the health care system, Hawkes said.

Eisenberg was released on probation in November 2009. His first violation occurred soon after his release, when he failed to charge his monitoring bracelet. He was incarcerated in January 2010 after failing to take mandatory alcohol breath tests.

In February 2010, he cut off his electronic monitoring bracelet and fled, a day after being given a last chance at freedom by a judge who released him despite multiple probation violations. He was found in his Dover apartment the next day.

Eisenberg's long criminal record also includes two rape convictions.

He was sentenced to 10 years for rape in Worcester, Mass., in 1985 but escaped the next year and committed another rape, prosecutors said. He was sentenced to 11 to 20 years for that. He was released from prison in March 2005.

View the original article here

Clinton office hostage taker missing from NH unit

Published April 07, 2013

Associated Press

MANCHESTER, N.H. –  Authorities say a New Hampshire man who took hostages at a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign office in 2007 has vanished from his correctional facility.

The state Department of Corrections tells WMUR-TV (http://bit.ly/10JbGpv ) that Leeland Eisenberg missed a head count Sunday afternoon at the Calumet (kal-yoo-MEHT') Transitional Housing Unit in Manchester.

Eisenberg was sentenced in May 2010 to 3 ½ to 7 years for probation violations. The station reports that he would have been eligible for parole in August.

Authorities say the 52-year-old Eisenberg isn't considered armed.

He spent about two years behind bars for the November 2007 siege at Clinton's Rochester campaign office in which he claimed to have a bomb. No one was hurt in a five-hour standoff and the bomb turned out to be road flares.

View the original article here

Indonesia landslide kills 6 villagers; 18 missing

Published March 25, 2013

Associated Press

BANDUNG, Indonesia –  A government official says a landslide triggered by torrential rain has killed at least six people and left 18 others missing on Indonesia's main island of Java.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho of the Disaster Mitigation Agency says nine houses were buried when mud gushed down from surrounding hills just after dawn Monday in Cililin village, West Bandung district.

He said rescuers pulled out six bodies, including four children, hours after the landslide.

Hundreds of police, soldiers and residents were digging through the debris, using their bare hands, shovels and hoes in search of the others reported missing.

Seasonal downpours cause dozens of landslides and flash floods each year in Indonesia, a vast chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile flood plains.

View the original article here

Indonesia landslide kills 6 villagers; 18 missing

Published March 25, 2013

Associated Press

BANDUNG, Indonesia –  A government official says a landslide triggered by torrential rain has killed at least six people and left 18 others missing on Indonesia's main island of Java.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho of the Disaster Mitigation Agency says nine houses were buried when mud gushed down from surrounding hills just after dawn Monday in Cililin village, West Bandung district.

He said rescuers pulled out six bodies, including four children, hours after the landslide.

Hundreds of police, soldiers and residents were digging through the debris, using their bare hands, shovels and hoes in search of the others reported missing.

Seasonal downpours cause dozens of landslides and flash floods each year in Indonesia, a vast chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile flood plains.

View the original article here

Chinese company looking for missing tycoon

Published March 21, 2013

Associated Press

BEIJING –  A Chinese tycoon with ties to mining companies in the United States, Australia and Africa is missing and a newspaper says he has been detained by police.

Sichuan Jinlu Group said Thursday it is looking for its chairman, Liu Han, and has been unable to contact him by phone.

The newspaper Shanghai Securities News said Liu was detained in Beijing in mid-March while on a business trip.

Chinese police regularly detain people for lengthy questioning without charge or public notice.

Liu's main company, Sichuan Hanlong Group, owns a stake in General Moly, a Colorado miner of molybdenum, a mineral used to harden steel.

Hanlong also owns a stake in Australia's Sundance Resources, which is developing an iron mine in Africa, and is bidding to buy the rest of the company.

View the original article here

Mother of Florida woman missing since 'People's Court' appearance suing daughter's ex-fiance

The mother of a Florida woman who disappeared in 2011 has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the missing woman’s ex-fiance, Fox 35 reported.

Michelle Parker, 33, the mother of three, vanished on Nov. 17, 2011, the day an episode of “The People’s Court” featuring her and her former fiancé aired.

The lawsuit filed by Parker's mother, Yvonne Stewart, seeks damages totaling more than $15,000, alleging that Smith was "negligent or otherwise committed a wrongful act and caused the death" of the woman, the Daily Mail reported. 

Parker and her ex-fiance, Dale Smith Jr., were on the show to settle a dispute over a $5,000 engagement ring.

According to Fox 35, police have named Smith – the father of Parker’s twins -- as the prime suspect in Parker’s disappearance, but he has not been charged with any crime.

Attorney John Morgan told the station there are a lot of unanswered questions surrounding the disappearance of Parker, and he feels the only way to get those answers is to depose people under oath, including Smith and his family. Morgan said they will present evidence that will show Smith knows more than he is saying.

On the legal show, Parker described a tumultuous relationship with Smith that at times she said became violent.

"He gets pretty malicious and vindictive," she told the courtroom, "and he's a mean person especially when he's been drinking."

"He shouldn't have put his hands on me and he shouldn't have put his hands on me prior. He shouldn't have left me three or four times over the past year and a half that we've been together," she said. 

Smith was originally granted custody of his children with Parker, but his custody was revoked. The children are now under the care of Parker's mother.

Parker's vehicle was found abandoned the day after she disappeared, and her family initially thought she was the victim of a carjacking.

Police divers found Parker's cellphone at the bottom of a lake in Belle Isle, Fla., about a month after she disappeared, the Orlando Sentinel reported at the time. 

Parker was last seen wearing jeans, a Florida Gators hooded sweatshirt and a silver cross necklace.

Click for more from Fox 35.

View the original article here

2 missing boys, grandmother found dead in Connecticut

PRESTON, Conn. –  A Connecticut woman and her two young grandchildren were found dead Tuesday night, hours after she allegedly took the boys from their daycare, authorities said.

State police say Ashton and Alton Perry and their grandmother, 47-year-old Debra Denison, were found dead Tuesday night in a parked vehicle in Preston.

Authorities say Denison had picked up 6-month-old Ashton and 2-year-old Alton from their daycare in Danielson at about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday and could not be located.

State police then issued an Amber Alert.

CTNow.com reports that at about 9:30 p.m., police received a report of a suspicious vehicle parked near Lake of Isles with three injured people inside, two of whom appeared to be children.

The two boys and their grandmother were pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy will be performed to determine the manner and cause of death.

State police continue to investigate.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click here for more from CTNow.com.

View the original article here

California couple missing in Peru reportedly spotted in remote village

A California couple that vanished while on a biking trip in Peru and were feared kidnapped have reportedly been spotted in a remote village. 

Garrett Hand and Jamie Neal were last heard from Jan. 25 while traveling from the highlands city of Cuzco to Lima, but U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Leslie Goodman said Tuesday that Peruvian police say the two had been spotted in the Amazon.

Reuters reports Peru's tourism ministry issued a separate statement Tuesday, saying, "the American tourists are continuing to enjoy their trip in the Peruvian Amazon" and were safely on their way by river boat north to the border with Ecuador.

National police spokeswoman Betty Lazo tells the Associated Press she was told by the hostel manager in the jungle city of Iquitos that the two departed on a boat trip on the Napo river.

However, Hand's mother says that until the family has "proof of life" they will not stop their search. 

"Proof of life is my son's voice on the phone and a picture of him holding the missing poster," Francine Fitzgerald said in a statement. 

Fitzgerlad said she was told a plane was being sent to meet the couple but that she was given few other details of their whereabouts or well-being.

Hand and Neal left for Peru in December and were said to have vanished while en route to Lima
from Cusco, an area where U.S. citizens have been warned by the embassy of kidnapping risks.

"The information told to me is that they are on a boat on the river and that they are sending a plane to find them.  I am told to expect information by tomorrow sometime," Fitzgerald's statement reads. "While I appreciate the extraordinary efforts of the media, the U.S. and Peruvian governments, until I hear from and see my son directly, we will not stop." 

 Friends and family have said they were worried the pair had been abducted and that their bank accounts had remained idle since they went missing.

Reuters reports Peru's ministry of tourism said in its statement that the couple were in good health and surprised to learn that they had been reported as missing.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

View the original article here