Latest news with #missingPersons
CBS News
a day ago
- CBS News
Body recovered in Lewisville Lake as search for second missing boater continues
Searchers have recovered the body of a man from Lewisville Lake, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Meanwhile, the search continued Thursday for a second missing person, described as female, as the effort entered its third day, TPWD said. Advanced sonar joins search The Texas Game Warden Underwater Search and Recovery Team joined the effort, deploying advanced sonar technology to help locate the two missing boaters, a TPWD spokesperson said. Maggie Berger, public information officer for law enforcement at TPWD, said the agency is not identifying the two boaters "out of respect for their family's wishes." She added that the Denton County Medical Examiner's Office "may be able to release his name." Boat found abandoned Tuesday Texas Game Wardens were initially dispatched to the scene on Tuesday after receiving a report of an abandoned vessel. Despite initial efforts, the boaters were not located before nightfall, TPWD officials said. Multi-agency effort continues The search resumed early Wednesday morning, with Game Wardens joined by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as they combed the area. Efforts continued Thursday with the addition of the Underwater Search and Recovery Team, according to TPWD. Officials said the investigation is ongoing. Updates to follow CBS News Texas will provide updates as more information becomes available.
CBS News
4 days ago
- CBS News
Detroit detective dug deep for long-buried answers to missing person cases
Kristina Morris never knew what happened to her father. He disappeared in 1995 when her mother was five months pregnant with her. All she had was faded photographs, family stories and endless questions. She yearned for answers to her father's mysterious disappearance. As a child, she even fantasized that her father worked undercover for the FBI and couldn't disclose his whereabouts. "'Unsolved Mysteries' became one of my favorite shows," Morris said in a recent interview with CBS News. Then in 2018 she got a call from Sgt. Shannon Jones of the Detroit Police Department. Her father's remains were found at a cemetery just north of Detroit in a grave shared by other unidentified crime victims. Morris's father, Bryan Fleeman, had been murdered. Kristina Morris wanted to know what happened to her father, who disappeared in 1995, a few months before she was born. CBS News Solving that mystery might never have happened if Jones hadn't found inspiration five years ago while staring at photographs of missing loved ones. Jones, who runs the Detroit PD's Missing Persons Unit, thought that perhaps clues to her overwhelming case load were buried underground. Literally. "When I first said it, I thought it was crazy,'' Jones told CBS News. She knew Detroit had historically buried unknown crime victims in so-called "paupers' graves" in cemeteries across the city. There were a total of about 200 cold cases in Detroit that Jones had documented that went back to as far as 1959. To Jones, these cases weren't just about police work. They were about restoring the victims' humanity. "Giving them their name," she said. "And for families to be able to have somewhere to go now and talk to their loved ones." Jones's plan: dig up the missing and run their DNA to search for matches. But she needed assistance in executing her plan. That kind of large-scale exhumation project required technology and resources Jones didn't have. She turned to FBI Special Agent Leslie Larsen, an expert in evidence recovery at the FBI Detroit Field Office. "My first thought was I'm all in, let's get organized and let's go dig,'' Larsen told CBS News. "Why not use the resources that we have in our criminal laboratories, which are phenomenal, to take science and apply it to old cases." The veteran FBI agent said, to her knowledge, no one in the country had done a mass exhumation project of this scale. The two women, Jones and Larsen, were intent on being the first. They pored through dusty case files in the basement of the Detroit PD trying to learn as much background as they could about the unidentified bodies they were digging up. Some of the cold cases dated back 30 or 40 years, long before DNA analysis was available. Investigators in Detroit exhumed the bodies of unidentified victims to obtain DNA to help solve cold cases. The FBI techs took DNA from the unidentified remains and ran them through online databases of at-home genetic testing firms or compared them to DNA samples that relatives provided directly to law enforcement. "When you get that lab report back with someone's name on it, that is absolutely a powerful feeling, for sure,'' Larsen said. The two women named their operation UNITED, which stands for Unknown Names Identified Through Exhumation and DNA. To date, Operation UNITED has resulted in 33 positive identifications of people whose disappearance had left family members in anguish. Other cities across the country have reached out to them, wanting to launch similar projects. "I've had people reach out from all over the country asking to bring Operation United to their cities," Larsen said, noting she's gotten requests from departments in Texas, Colorado and Minnesota. Kristina Morris's father was one of the victims identified through the UNITED project. His remains had been buried in one of the shared unmarked graves. Now there is an active homicide investigation into his murder. "It's a lot easier to breathe … [knowing] he didn't up and leave,'' Morris said. She mourns his loss, but found solace that he had not abandoned their family. If it hadn't been for the work of a committed Detroit police sergeant, Morris said, "I would've gone my whole life drowning in the unknown."
CTV News
4 days ago
- CTV News
Previously reported missing Mississauga mother and son found in Tilbury
An OPP cruiser is seen in this 2009 file photo. (Dave Chidley/THE CANADIAN PRESS) After an Amber alert was issued, a mother and son reported as missing from Mississauga were found in Tilbury. The pair were reported missing by the woman's husband, the child's father. Police say the mother and her five-year-old son were found at the KFC in Tilbury. An Amber Alert had been issued around 5 p.m. Thursday after police spent much of the day searching for the pair and saying they may have been in London.
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Irish Times
Trevor Deely, Philip Cairns and other missing-person cases will not be upgraded to murder
An Garda Síochána has decided not to upgrade any further unsolved missing persons cases to murder inquiries following the conclusion of a review that led to those of Fiona Pender and Elizabeth Clarke being revisited. This means the force has, for now, ruled out committing more resources in several other cases where foul play is suspected including those of Philip Cairns and Trevor Deely , who vanished in Dublin in 1986 and 2000 respectively. The news comes as a search for the remains of Annie McCarrick , whose case was in 2023 upgraded to a murder inquiry 30 years after her disappearance, continued at a house in Clondalkin, Dublin. [ 'We were full of hope': Aunt of Annie McCarrick says family disappointed after murder suspect released Opens in new window ] The decision to reclassify the cases of Ms Pender (25), who was seven months pregnant when she vanished from her home in Co Offaly in 1996, and that of Ms Clarke (24), who was last seen in Co Meath in 2013, resulted in extensive search and excavation operations taking place. These were carried out in Laois/Offaly last month in Ms Pender's case and in Co Meath last February in Ms Clarke's. READ MORE In response to queries, Garda headquarters confirmed a review of a large number of missing persons cases was completed last year. 'There were no other missing persons investigations at the time that required upgrading to homicide/murder' investigations, it said. 'The status of such missing person investigations is kept under regular review and can be upgraded if new information and/or evidence comes to light that justifies its upgrading.' In the McCarrick inquiry, the search at the Clondalkin property for the New York woman's remains, aided by a cadaver dog, has been ongoing since last Thursday. A businessman aged in his 60s was arrested last Thursday and released without charge on Friday. That man, the only person ever arrested as part of the 32-year-old investigation, knew Ms McCarrick (26) when she lived in Dublin and was close to her at one time. Gardaí arrested him and commenced the search after receiving new information from a witness that related to the man, who is now the chief suspect. The family currently living at the Clondalkin property bought the house about 15 years ago and have no connection whatsoever to Ms McCarrick or the Garda investigation. However, the house was previously linked to the chief suspect and Ms McCarrick is believed to have stayed there.
Malay Mail
5 days ago
- General
- Malay Mail
‘Hoping for a second miracle': Hostel cook searches for missing daughter, mother after Air India crash
AHMEDABAD, India, June 16 — Around 30 minutes before an Air India jet crashed into a college hostel in India, Ravi Thakor, the cook in the hostel canteen, and his wife stepped out to deliver lunchboxes – leaving behind their two-year-old daughter and his mother. The grandmother and child are missing. Thakor is hoping for what he calls a 'second miracle', one like the astonishing survival of the sole passenger among the 242 people on board the plane. Thakor said he first thought the loud bang he heard when the plane crashed on Thursday in the western city of Ahmedabad was a gas cylinder blast, but soon noticed the building he had just left was engulfed in flames. For days, he's been searching for his mother and his daughter at hospitals and the morgue to no avail. Police told Reuters they were treating it as a missing persons case. 'If one of the plane passengers could survive the crash, there could be a second miracle and my mother and daughter could also be safe,' a visibly distraught Thakor told Reuters outside one of the hospitals. His wife Lalita stood beside him, stone-faced. 'We realise that the chances of finding them alive are bleak but we have not given up hope,' Thakor said. In all, at least 271 people died in the crash – the 241 passengers and crew in the plane, and the rest people on the ground, mostly in the hostel building. Thakor and his wife have given samples of their DNA to hospital authorities but they are yet to hear if any matches have been found among the deceased. Families of victims have been waiting to take possession of their loved ones' remains for days as DNA profiling and other identification checks are taking time. The hospital's additional superintendent, Rajnish Patel, said on Sunday DNA samples of only 32 deceased have been matched so far. When the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner jet struck the hostel canteen on Thursday, many students were eating lunch. Steel tumblers and plates still containing food lay on the few tables that were left intact when Reuters visited the site later. Thakor's mother was still cooking when he and his wife left the hostel that day to deliver lunchboxes and he had just rocked his daughter to sleep on a wooden swing, he said. 'It is possible someone took away my daughter in the chaos that followed,' he said. Of the 242 on board the plane, the only passenger who managed to survive was Viswashkumar Ramesh, 40, who squeezed through the broken hatch after the plane crashed and emerged with only minor injuries. — Reuters
