Missing Children

A man who was once a poster child for missing children has been sentenced to 25 years to life prison for raping a 10-year-old girl he was baby-sitting in upstate New York. Adam Croote, 23, was sentenced Friday in Albany, N.Y., after pleading guilty in March to a felony charge of predatory sexual assault against a child. Authorities said Croote raped the girl in June 2011, then -- when she screamed -- tried to strangle her to make her quiet. He then fled. Croote later surrendered to police, telling them: "I think a hurt a little girl," according to an account in the Times Union.

"Page not found, and neither is this person. " That is the message the people behind NotFound.org want you to see whenever you type in a URL for a Web page that has been deleted from the Internet or was never there in the first place. The group is hoping to use Web pages that display "404-Page Not Found" error messages to find missing people, especially children. Call it the milk carton of 2012. The initiative is a collaboration between Famous , a Belgian advertising agency, and Missing Children Europe  -- an umbrella organization of NGOs that focus on missing and sexually exploited children.

In honor of National Missing Children's Day today, a nonprofit group dedicated to finding runaway and abducted children and reuniting them with their families will host an open house at its first Southern California office in Valley Village. During the open house, which runs from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The possibility that police might finally have captured the man responsible for Etan Patz's disappearance is giving new hope to other parents seeking answers about their own missing children.  "The primary sentiment we are feeling today is that we find this positive and inspiring," said Ernie Allen, president and chief executive of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "What I think it does is send a message to searching families across the country that you don't close these cases just because you don't find a child or achieve resolution.

President Reagan, proclaiming this as National Child Safety Week, praised the cooperation Monday of the private and public sectors in trying to trace the more than 1.5 million children reported missing in the United States.

A national organization is setting up supermarket kiosks that will display the photographs of missing youngsters, spokesmen said Wednesday in Los Angeles. The cubicle "message centers" will bear the pictures of six children, and the photos will be rotated each month, said Sheldon Hearst, president of Supermarket Communication Systems, which operates the message centers in 5,500 major supermarkets across the nation.

John Wayne Airport will receive two computer kiosks displaying pictures and information concerning missing children as part of a new program sponsored by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "This is one more way of dealing with abducted children," said Supervisor William G. Steiner, who sits on the center's board and helped get the kiosks for Orange County while attending the group's national meeting in Washington last week.

CONCORD, N. H. -- Hoping to "jar someone's memory" in the search for two missing children believed to have been murdered by their father, law enforcement officials Tuesday released a detailed description of the suspected burial site of Sarah Gehring, 14, and her 11-year-old brother, Philip. The two disappeared with their father, Manuel Gehring, shortly after watching a Fourth of July fireworks display here.

To 9-year-old Noemi Rodriquez, Disneyland wasn't such a small world after all. Barely 4 feet tall, the elementary school student from Janitzio, Mexico, remembered staring up at the 147-foot-high Matterhorn on a recent sunny afternoon. When she dropped her gaze to look for her teachers and classmates, they had vanished into a sea of Magic Kingdom visitors. She was lost.

A Fresno doctor and his two missing children were reunited Saturday after a Texas judge took them away from their mother, who had abducted them nearly two years earlier. After a marathon court hearing that ended early Saturday, Cooke County District Judge Larry Sullivant gave Dr. Edwin McDonald custody of 7-year-old Edwin and his sister Teresa, 9.

A man who was once a poster child for missing children has been sentenced to 25 years to life prison for raping a 10-year-old girl he was baby-sitting in upstate New York. Adam Croote, 23, was sentenced Friday in Albany, N.Y., after pleading guilty in March to a felony charge of predatory sexual assault against a child. Authorities said Croote raped the girl in June 2011, then -- when she screamed -- tried to strangle her to make her quiet. He then fled. Croote later surrendered to police, telling them: "I think a hurt a little girl," according to an account in the Times Union.

NEW YORK — Gone are the quiet streets and the loading docks, replaced with hordes of shoppers ducking into stores selling scented body butter, premium denim and high-end furniture. But one thing remains unchanged on the narrow stretch of Prince Street in SoHo: the haunting memory of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old boy who left for school one morning in 1979 and never came back. It is one of this city's — and the nation's — most chilling unsolved mysteries, a case many had forgotten or never knew about until Thursday, when police and FBI agents began searching the basement of a building on the same block as the little boy's apartment.

It's no coincidence that National Missing Children Day is observed May 25. The date marks the disappearance of Etan Patz, the young boy who vanished 33 years ago and is now the subject of an intense search by the FBI and local authorities in New York. FBI agents this week dug up the basement of a home in Manhattan's SoHo district in search of his remains. Etan, with his flowing hair and soulful eyes, captured the public's imagination, and his disappearance in 1979 changed the way the nation handles cases of missing children.

Her name is Milagro, or it was before her mother's heart broke into a million bits. The girl was 4, dark-toned and skinny. On the day soldiers took her away, she wore a violet dress with short sleeves and tiny pleats. She had no shoes. "They took my girl and said, 'Go, old lady!'" recalled her mother, Enma Orellana. The woman ran in fear, looking back just once, when the girl cried, "Mama!" That was 29 years ago, when El Salvador waged war with itself and left hurts that have never healed.

Measures to improve the search for missing children, protect intoxicated minors who call 911 for help and expand betting on horseracing in California are among dozens of bills signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, he announced Friday. With less than a week left to act on 765 pieces of legislation, the governor also vetoed 43 bills, including measures that would exempt many state workers from furloughs, regulate pet insurance and outlaw dormancy fees on gift cards. A requirement that minors wear helmets while skiing and snowboarding will not become law even though Schwarzenegger signed it to show his support.

As the silvery UFO-shaped balloon sailed over the high plains and a national television audience watched transfixed Thursday, the Colorado Army National Guard scrambled combat helicopters for a possible rescue of the 6-year-old boy reportedly inside. Flights in and out of Denver International Airport were rerouted. On the ground, would-be rescuers with eyes skyward chased the craft along winding back roads. CNN upped its tape delay to 10 seconds, lest it broadcast a tragedy live.

Police officer and artist Michael Streed and his volunteer team have long coveted a new computer program that enhances drawings of composites and age-progressed portraits, but the cost of the software was beyond their means. Thanks to a $500 donation Monday from the Villa Park Women's League and an anonymous $1,000 contribution made earlier, however, they are a bit closer to their goal of buying new equipment.

Since the first pictures of missing children appeared on milk cartons and shopping bags several months ago, more than 200 corporations ranging from banks to bus companies, restaurants to laundries and even an airline have joined in the massive campaign aimed at returning missing children to their homes. The results so far have been encouraging.

Investigators on Tuesday launched an exhaustive search of the home of accused kidnappers and rapists Phillip and Nancy Garrido and a property next door in connection with the disappearances of two girls two decades ago. Michaela Garecht, 9, was kidnapped in front of a Hayward store in 1988. Two months later, Ilene Misheloff, 13, disappeared after she was seen getting into a car on her way home from school in Dublin. By 4:30 p.m., investigators from several Bay Area law enforcement agencies had finished searching the adjacent property and about half of the Garridos' lot, removing some items, said Hayward Police Lt. Christine Orrey.

Authorities on Thursday released photographs of two men they say kidnapped a 3-year-old boy and images of the green Ford Bronco they were driving. The images were taken from a video surveillance camera at an unidentified business where the suspects were seen May 1 buying the same kind of tape used to tie up the victims in the robbery and kidnapping. A picture of their Bronco was taken Sunday from cameras at a liquor store just a few blocks from the family's Pedley Road home. Deputies say two gunmen stormed the house and tied up Maria Rosalina Millan and her five children Sunday afternoon.