Recently in missing Category

SACRAMENTO, Calif.  -- A woman who entered a California police station is believed to be 1991 abduction victim Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was 11 when kidnapped.
Deputies are 99 percent sure the woman is Dugard, said Lt. Les Lovell of the El Dorado Sheriff's Department. He says DNA tests were being conducted.
Witnesses reported that a vehicle with two people drove up to Dugard and abducted her while her stepfather was watching.
Lovell says two people have been taken into custody.
The sheriff's department has scheduled a news conference to discuss the case later today.

From reporter Daniel Tedford:

COMMERCE - Investigators called on the public on Friday to help find an El Monte woman who went missing more than a week ago under suspicious circumstances.

Maria Chavez, 39, was last seen May 7 at 8:45 p.m. after leaving her shop at an indoor swap meet in East Los Angeles.

She was in her 1998 champagne colored Honda Accord. The car was later found abandoned on the side of the road on the 17000 block of Pacific Coast Highway in Los Angeles.

"We really need the public's assistance to help find Maria," said Lt. Dave Dolson at a press conference Friday.

Detectives suspect foul play in Chavez's disappearance, but declined to elaborate.

Chavez was described as a devoted single mother. She has a young daughter, and her disappearance is out of character, police and relatives said.

Police have been in contact with the father of her child, but have no suspects.

"All leads are being followed," Dolson said.

Family members of Chavez attended Friday's press conference. They included her two brothers, a sister and a friend of the family.

One brother, with a wavering voice and tears, requested the public's help in finding his sister.

* Above: Photo of Maria Chavez courtesy of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department

 Esquire ran the definitive Moe story on its Web site today. The tale, by Richard Shapiro, tells the story of Moe through the words of St. James and LaDonna Davis. It's a touching tale much of it familiar to residents of West Covina and the San Gabriel Valley.

Here's the final paragraph of the piece titled "St. James, LaDonna and Little Moe: The Worst Story I Ever Heard."

After all the years St. James and LaDonna shared with Moe and everything they've endured, how could he be gone forever? How could they not someday see their boy again?

This from the Boston Herald, via the Associated Press:

BOSTON -- A lawyer for the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller says the German native could face deportation.

Jeffrey Denner, the attorney for the man authorities say is really Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, told the Boston Globe Friday that federal immigration officials have filed legal papers seeking to turn him over for possible deportation if he is convicted of kidnapping. Removal would take place after any possible sentence.

Prosecutors are considering a prison term of four-and-a-half to five years if Gerhartsreiter agrees to plead guilty to kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter.

*Rockefeller is due back in court tomorrow, accordign to Jake Wark, spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney's office. Here's a copy of his press release:

The defendant formerly known as CLARK ROCKEFELLER will return to Suffolk Superior Court tomorrow in connection with his pending parental kidnapping case. CHRISTIAN KARL GERHARTSTREITER (D.O.B. 2/21/61) is charged with that offense as well as counts of providing a false name to police, assault and battery, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.  The proceedings are expected tomorrow at 3:00 on the ninth floor of the courthouse.

Sheriff's deputies are seeking 86-year-old Basil Tellou after the elderly man disappeared from his home in Duarte on Jan. 20.

Tellou, also known as "The Bishop" is well known in Pasadena's Playhouse District and apparently frequents Vroman's.

Back in the 1940s and 1950s, Tellou worked as a bit player in Hollywood and appeared in a movie titled "Harbor of the Missing Men."

Here's a link to his IMDB page.

If you thought Moe the Chimp or Homer Simpson's pal Mojo were cool, you'll want to know more about Richard the helper monkey. This from an article in the NY Times Magazine:

On a rainy day in November, I walked through a T. J. Maxx store in Springfield, Mo., with Debby Rose and Richard, her 25-pound bonnet macaque monkey -- one of the most controversial service animals working today. Rose was wearing brown pants and a brown-and-gold-patterned shirt. Richard was wearing a brown long-sleeved polo over a white T-shirt with jeans and a tan vest that said "Please Don't Pet Me I'm Working." Richard stood in the child seat of Rose's shopping cart, facing forward, bouncing up and down, smacking his lips and grinning as Rose pushed him down the aisles.

Richard is a hands-on shopper. If Rose pointed at a sweater or purse she liked, or a pair of shoes, his hand darted out to touch them. As we passed a pair of tan, fuzzy winter boots that Rose particularly liked, Richard leaned out of the cart and quickly licked one on its toe.

People stared as we walked. "Why do you have him?" they'd ask.

"He's a service animal trained for my disability, kind of like a seizure-alert dog," Rose told them, again and again.

The man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller and is at the center of a San Marino missing persons' mystery will have seized gold coins and cash returned to him to help pay for his defense in his parental kidnapping case, as the Associated Press reports below:

BOSTON -- The man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller will get back about half of the
gold coins and cash seized by authorities after he was arrested for allegedly kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter.
Prosecutors agreed Monday to turn over 160 gold coins -- worth about $140,000 -- and $6,480 in cash so he can pay for his defense. Prosecutors and the man's attorneys said the money came from a divorce settlement with his ex-wife.
He has pleaded not guilty to parental kidnapping.
Authorities say Rockefeller is actually German citizen Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who has
been labeled a "person of interest" in the 1985 disappearance of a San Marino couple.
"Clark Rockefeller" was charged with kidnapping his daughter, Reigh, during a supervised visit in Boston in July. He was arrested in early August in Baltimore, where Reigh was found unharmed. The girl was returned to his ex-wife, Sandra Boss, who lives in London.
During the hearing in Suffolk Superior Court on Monday, Assistant District Attorney David Deakin said prosecutors agreed to return half of the seized cash and coins because there was no evidence Gerhartsreiter obtained it illegally and he "has a right to pay for his defense."
The agreement allows Gerhartsreiter's defense to seek the return of the rest of the money at a later date.
In all, authorities had seized 321 gold coins and nearly $13,000 in cash when Gerhartsreiter was arrested in Baltimore. Deakin said that prosecutors consider the money to be evidence of
pre-meditation in the kidnapping and plan to mention it at Gerhartsreiter's trial.
Defense lawyer Tim Bradl said the Monday agreement also allows the defense to get the keys to his client's Baltimore condominium. Bradl said his client wants his attorneys to retrieve dolls in the condo and return them to his daughter.
The FBI said in August that it had matched fingerprints from Gerhartsreiter's immigration papers from the early 1980s to those taken from a wine glass he touched in July. He has insisted in interviews that his name is Clark Rockefeller and that he does not remember large chunks of his past.

Clark Rockefeller has hired a new lead defense attorney, Jeffrey Denner, of Boston. The move came earlier this week and may have gone unnoticed if Denner hadn't asked for the FBI to return about $280 large in gold coins Rockefeller had in his possession when arrested.

That's not the only Rockefeller news.

Los Angeles County investigators are seeking access to Rockefeller's sealed divorce records in Suffolk County Probate Court. The Suffolk County DA has already taken a look at the papers, so it seems likely LA County will get their own look as well.

What might be in the papers in anyone's guess.  One theory floating around is that Rockefeller confessed to his wife that he wasn't Rockefeller -- and she made note of that in the proceedings.

That could go to a consciousness of guilt in a homicide prosecution. As in, why else would he change his name?

The obvious defense is that Rockefeller had already assumed several identities after coming to the country in the 1970s as German foreign exchange student Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter.

I think the proseution theory is a good one though. And I'm wondering if there may be something even more damaging, like a confession to Sandra Boss that he was Christopher Chichester and he once lived with a couple in San Marino that disappeared.

Whatever is in there, the cops and DAs office are being extremely closed-mouthed.

Here's a link to today's story on the case.

SHeriff's homicide detectives are seeking the divorce records of Clark Rockfeller, officials said Wednesday.

The detectives are hoping the papers will shed some light on their investigation into the disappearance of a San Marino couple from their home 23 years ago.

I'll have more on this later.

Los Angeles police will dig near two freeway ramps in Ventura County today in a search for the remains of a San Fernando Valley boy killed by a serial murderer 40 years ago.

LAPD officers, aided by dozens of FBI agents and police from other agencies, will excavate where four police dogs have indicated that human bones have been buried, the Ventura County Star reported Sunday.

A ground-penetrating radar unit from Caltrans has indicated a likely burial location, and a particle detector that sniffs out decaying human bones "went off like a Geiger counter in the same place," said Los Angeles Police Detective Vivian Flores.

The interchange of the 23 Freeway at Tierra Rejada Road in Moorpark is about 25 miles west of the Arleta home where Roger Dale Madison was last seen alive on Dec. 14, 1968. A construction crew chief who was building the freeway, Mack Ray Edwards, confessed to kidnapping and murdering the boy, throwing him into a hole and covering him up with rocks and fill dirt as the 23 was being built.

Edwards, known as the most-notorious serial killer of children in California history, confessed to as many as 18 kidnappings and murders dating back to at least 1953. Although he was never charged with killing Roger Madison, he confessed to the crime shortly before he hanged himself with a television cord while on death row at San Quentin.

Flores said Edwards' confession in the Madison case was not followed up in 1970, but the reasons

Elizabeth Duer, 27, missing for several days from her home on Kenoak Drive in Baldwin Park was found last night in a ward at the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center, officials said.

Duer, a student at Cal Poly, was being sought by the Baldwin Park Police Department after her boyfriend and parents reported her missing.

A nurse at the hospital recognized Duer from news accounts, police said. During an earlier check of the hospital police were given the impression that Duer was not a patient there.

Information as to Duer's whereabouts for the past several days remains sketchy.

Police had been following up on some information obtained from a home computer by the District Attorney's Office, before Duer was finally located, authorities said.

Here's the latest story.