Kidnapings

A former baby-sitter was arrested and the 10-year-old girl he is suspected of abducting hours earlier in Riverside was recovered in good condition Tuesday when a tribal police officer stopped the man's pickup on a reservation in Nevada. "She was extremely glad to see me," said Ray East, the Walker River Indian Reservation policeman who stopped the pickup. "She's in excellent condition."

WATSONVILLE, Calif. - She introduced herself as Sarani Hernandez and said in Spanish that she needed help. She took a seat in the lobby of the police station. Officer Elizabeth Sousa was asked to talk to her. It was a quiet morning a few days after Thanksgiving. She listened as the woman began telling the story of an abduction. Her two boys were being held in Juarez, Mexico, she said; they were U.S. citizens. Hernandez opened her cellphone to a picture of Edwin and Angel, sent as evidence they were still alive.

A dead man was officially named Adam Walsh's killer Tuesday, but not because of any new evidence or a deathbed confession. Police simply took another look at 27 years of tips, psychic revelations, often-botched police work and a serial killer's chilling admissions and decided it was time. Time to ease the suffering of the Walsh family and time to point the finger at the man Hollywood Police Chief Chad Wagner said had been the prime suspect all along: Ottis Toole.

MEXICO CITY - The Mexican capital has managed to avoid the kind of gangland violence that has gripped many other parts of the country in recent years. But the mysterious disappearance of 11 young people from a bar this week is raising new fear about the city's ability to remain relatively immune from the trouble. The disappearance of the patrons in the Zona Rosa, a nightclub-packed neighborhood just blocks from the U.S. Embassy, has made national headlines and dominated TV news here.

A woman convicted of hiring two men to torture and kill her lover because she thought he had stolen from her and was seeing another woman was sentenced in San Diego on Wednesday to life in prison. Federal prosecutors said that in August 1998, Kimberley Bailey lured private investigator Richard C. Post III to Tijuana, where he was kidnapped by John Krueger and Humberto Uribe. Over the next five days, Uribe and several other men beat Post and tortured him with pliers, the U.S.

The 68-year-old man accused of snatching 10-year-old Nichole Taylor Timmons from her bedroom Monday night waived extradition from Nevada on Wednesday and is expected to return here by week's end to face a battery of state charges. Riverside Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Soccio said suspect Glenn MacArthur Park was "answering questions well and cooperating with the investigation" being conducted by authorities in Reno.

A kidnapped mother and daughter were rescued and a suspect was under arrest Friday in what police described as an elaborate extortion plot that included a fake bomb, a demand for money from a car dealership and a police surveillance operation that spanned the city. Sylvia Antoun, 41, and her 12-year-old daughter were found handcuffed in a restroom at a storage facility in the San Fernando Valley about 9:30 a.m. Friday after being forced from their home a day earlier.

A neighbor of a 15-year-old girl who was kidnapped in this western Nebraska town was arrested after her body was found Wednesday, authorities said Thursday. Heather Guerrero's body was discovered in an abandoned house 12 miles from Gering, where she was abducted while delivering newspapers before dawn Tuesday. Jeffrey A. Hessler, 24, of Gering was arrested on suspicion of murder, kidnapping, sexual assault and use of a firearm to commit a felony, said the Scotts Bluff County attorney's office.

Marjorie Miller reports that "the U.S. government said it would no longer kidnap Mexican citizens but refused to back up its pledge with any legal guarantees" (July 2). U.S. officials seem to be unaware that Mexico and other countries already have a new and plain-spoken legal safeguard against future kidnapings. On Nov. 11, 1990, the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs came into force. In text blunt enough for all to understand, the convention enjoins that a treaty party "shall not undertake in the territory of another Party the exercise of jurisdiction and performance of functions which are exclusively reserved for the authorities of that other Party by its domestic law."

An Iraqi court Tuesday convicted a Sunni architect in the 2004 kidnapping-slaying of British aid worker Margaret Hassan and sentenced him to life in prison. Hassan was married to an Iraqi and had lived in the country for 30 years. She was seized in October 2004 on her way to work in Baghdad, where she served as director of CARE International in Iraq.

Several men -- including a friend of a bank manager who was kidnapped and strapped with explosives as part of a bizarre bank robbery in East L.A. last fall -- have been indicted in connection with the crimes, several law enforcement sources said. Ray Vega, 33, of Arizona is among several suspects taken into custody after an indictment by a federal grand jury in connection with the Sept. 5 incident. Vega had previously been arrested and released from custody after posting $100,000 bail.

CAIRO - Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip remained closed Sunday as the families and colleagues of seven Egyptian soldiers who were kidnapped in the northern Sinai Peninsula last week continued a sit-in. A video was briefly posted on YouTube showing seven men identified as the abductees, imploring the government to secure their release. "Rescue us, Mr. President. We can't take it. Rescue us, people," the men plead, according to an Associated Press account. It was unclear who posted the video.

Ariel Castro, facing kidnapping and rape charges in connection with the Cleveland case of three women held prisoner for about a decade, will plead not guilty, his lawyers said Wednesday. The announcement, made on national television, is part of the defense's opening salvos in what could become a death penalty case. Castro, 52, has been charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape, but prosecutors have indicated that he will face more charges from a Cuyahoga County grand jury that is dealing with the case.

Three escapees from a Kansas prison were caught in Missouri, two of them after attempting to kidnap the mayor of a small town, authorities said. The Kansas Department of Corrections reported that Randy Ridens Sr., Allen Hurst and Scott Gilbert were back in custody Friday night, several hours after they walked away from a minimum-security wing of Lansing Correction Facility northwest of Kansas City. Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd told The Associated Press that Hurst, 31, and Gilbert, 49, were in the county jail on $5-million bail and by Saturday were facing a dozen felony charges.

A 28-year-old Van Nuys man has been charged in the kidnapping and death of a Glendale man who was run over with a vehicle and shot to death in Sun Valley, authorities said this week. Hachik Maskovian faces four felony murder-related charges in the death of 33-year-old Joshua West, including that the incident was premeditated and that he was kidnapped during the April 24 incident, according to a Los Angeles County Superior Court criminal complaint. West died of multiple gunshot wounds but was also cut and suffered blunt-force trauma, said Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman Ed Winter.

Michelle Knight, one of the three Cleveland women kidnapped and held captive for about a decade, has been discharged from the hospital where she had been receiving care. In a statement emailed to reporters Friday, MetroHealth Medical Center said Knight had left the hospital and was asking for privacy. “Michelle Knight is in good spirits and would like the community to know that she is extremely grateful for the outpouring of flowers and gifts. She is especially thankful for the Cleveland Courage Fund.

The mother of a kidnapped 3-year-old boy made a desperate plea for his release Tuesday before draping herself over his picture and sobbing. "Please, I am asking them to release my son and give him back to me," a distraught Maria Rosalina Millan implored in Spanish during a news conference at the San Bernardino County sheriff's station. "He doesn't owe anything. I don't owe anything. He's a good boy."

An 88-year-old great-grandmother was kidnapped from her kitchen in her pajamas and kept chained inside a hitch-on trailer for five days before being rescued, authorities said Tuesday. Hedwig "Heddy" Braun of East Troy, Wis., was reported in good condition Tuesday, three days after investigators tracked her down and arrested a longtime family friend in a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme. Reinier Ravesteijn, 45, allegedly demanded $3 million from Braun's grandson, who owns a construction business.

Michelle Knight, the longest-held of three women kidnapped and imprisoned in a Cleveland house for years, was discharged Friday from the hospital where she had been cared for after her ordeal. Reportedly in good spirits, Knight left MetroHealth Medical Center on the same day state officials announced that DNA testing had established that Ariel Castro, being held on kidnapping and rape charges, was the father of the 6-year-old girl born to another of the imprisoned women. Like her fellow captives, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, Knight asked for privacy.