The 24-year-old woman disappeared Sept. 17 after being released from the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff’s Station. Her parents have filed negligence claims against L.A. County.
In the six months since Mitrice Richardson vanished in rugged Malibu Canyon, detectives have tracked reported sightings of her. Searchers have combed a total of 40 square miles looking for any sign of her — alive or dead.
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D- Los Angeles) called for the FBI’s involvement, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas asked the Sheriff’s Department to review the policies that led to the release of the Cal State Fullerton graduate from the custody of the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff’s Station shortly after midnight Sept. 17, 2009, without her car, purse or cellphone.
But none of that has assuaged her frustrated parents, who on Tuesday — the day before the six-month mark of their daughter’s disappearance — stood in front of the county’s Hall of Administration and criticized what they see as authorities moving slowly on the search and politicians ignoring them.
Richardson, 24, was arrested at Geoffrey’s, a Malibu restaurant, for not paying an $89 dinner bill. Patrons and staffers said that she had acted bizarrely that night. Since her disappearance, detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department have discovered evidence that she had been suffering from a severe bipolar disorder. Deputies who arrived to arrest her described her as “coherent and rational,” said L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca in a letter to the Board of Supervisors…Read Full Story
MINNEAPOLIS — A new online database promises to crack some of the nation’s 100,000 missing persons cases and provide answers to desperate families, but only a fraction of law enforcement agencies are using it.
The clearinghouse, dubbed NamUs (Name Us), offers a quick way to check whether a missing loved one might be among the 40,000 sets of unidentified remains that languish at any given time with medical examiners across the country. NamUs is free, yet many law enforcement agencies still aren’t aware of it, and others aren’t convinced they should use their limited staff resources to participate.
Janice Smolinski hopes that changes — and soon. Her son, Billy, was 31 when he vanished five years ago. The Cheshire, Conn., woman fears he was murdered, his body hidden away.
She’s now championing a bill in Congress, named “Billy’s Law” after her son, that would set aside more funding and make other changes to encourage wider use of NamUs. Only about 1,100 of the nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide are registered to use the system, even though it already has been hailed for solving 16 cases since it became fully operational last year.
“As these cases become more well known, as people learn about the successes of NamUs, more and more agencies are going to want to be part of it,” said Kristina Rose, acting director of the National Institute of Justice at the Justice Department.
Before NamUs, families and investigators had to go through the slow process of checking with medical examiner’s offices one by one. As the Smolinski family searched for clues to Billy’s fate, they met a maze of federal, state and nonprofit missing person databases that weren’t completely public and didn’t share information well with each other….
When Morgan D. Harrington’s bones were found in an Albemarle County pasture, they had been shattered and broken into jagged pieces, her parents said Wednesday.
“When you view … not just a skeleton, but brutal damage to a skeleton, you can imagine what [her mother] must have gone through,” the victim’s father, Dan Harrington, said.
He and Gil Harrington, Morgan’s mother, addressed the media Wednesday, marking five months since their daughter disappeared. They came from their home in Roanoke to the University of Virginia for the event.
Harrington, 20 and a Virginia Tech student, was killed after leaving an Oct. 17 Metallica concert at the UVa’s John Paul Jones Arena. Harrington was last seen hitchhiking on a railroad bridge on Copeley Road. A farmer found her remains about three months later, on his farm near U.S. 29, in southern Albemarle County.
Gil Harrington said she believes the person who killed her daughter caused the damage to her bones.
“I cannot get the image of Morgan’s shattered bones out of my mind,” Harrington said.
The medical examiner’s office has said only that the case is a homicide and has not released a cause of death.
State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller declined to comment Wednesday on the state of the remains.
Police are continuing to investigate the case, and leads are still coming in, Geller said. Police don’t have suspects yet, she said.
“The man who did this — and I am confident that it is a man — is being protected by his environment, by people in his environment, and that needs to stop,” Gil Harrington said.
Officials continue to wait on the results of DNA testing, Dan Harrington said.
“One thing that we have clearly learned … is that things do not work as they do on ‘CSI,’” he said, referring to the television program that focuses on solving crimes.
The Harringtons also highlighted other Virginia murders and disappearances that have happened since August.
“We have no evidence at this time to link Morgan’s death with … any other murder,” Geller said…. Read full story
SEARCH FOR MICKEY JAMES GUIDRY, 16, AT ANZA BORREGO STATE PARK TO CONTINUE SUNDAY
The family of missing San Marcos teenager Mickey James Guidry harnessed a recent surge of community support this weekend to renew their search for the 16-year-old boy in the desert where he was last seen in November.
Mickey’s family and friends joined about 80 volunteers Saturday to scour the Anza Borrego desert where the family’s jeep was found Nov. 28, undrivable with his wallet and other belongings inside, according to a Facebook page devoted to finding Mickey. A smaller group planned to continue the search Sunday, organizers said…read full story
If you have information about Smith or have seen his vehicle, please contact the SMU Police Department at 214-768-3388.
His mother is making a tearful plea for help to find her missing son.
Sebastian Smith has been gone for three weeks, and his mother is worried he might be in danger.
Smith’s mother, Clarissa Smith, said Sebastian is always reliable and always told her where he was going.
On December 22, the 21-year-old told his mother he was going to the SMU campus, where he studies accounting, and then to work. But Smith never showed up for work that day. Large amounts of cash were withdrawn from his bank account on the same day.
Clarissa worries her son may be in trouble and is hoping someone will be able to provide clues to his whereabouts. “I can’t take anymore of this, not knowing where my kid is,” she said. “My family’s worried, and it’s getting to us.” Smith’s mother said her son was last seen driving his black Toyota Yaris.
The Dallas Police Department is investigating, but authorities say they don’t have any leads.
Smith is 5-feet, 8-inches tall and weighs 250 pounds. He drives a 2007 black Toyota Yaris with Texas license plate number 270-PWP.
If you have information about Smith or have seen his vehicle, please contact the SMU Police Department at 214-768-3388.
