Missing Children

A surveillance camera caught the bubbly, 8-year-old girl skipping down a street in Tracy, Calif., after a play date on the afternoon of March 27. She never made it home. After a 10-day search that saw law enforcement officers pour into the small Central Valley city, investigators Monday pulled a suitcase that held Sandra Cantu's body from an irrigation pond.

The mother of an 18-month-old girl found dead near a San Fernando Valley freeway has recanted her story about the toddler being abducted during an attack and now says she panicked after her daughter died in an accident and dumped the body herself, a sheriff's official said Thursday. Stacy Barker initially told detectives that she was knocked unconscious by an attacker at a Lancaster park as she was buckling her daughter, Emma Leigh Barker, into her car seat.

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."

Zarouhi Meguerian's older son started first grade at Westchester Lutheran School in 2002 and since then, she's never missed the first day of class. On Sept. 8, Meguerian continued her ritual, visiting the classrooms of sons Alex and Zaven Silah. But the industrial engineer walked alone, holding hands with other mothers instead of her boys. Authorities say Alex, 12, and Zaven, 8, were abducted in July by Meguerian's former husband, George Silah, 46, an Armenian Syrian.

Six-year-old Cole Puffinburger was the subject of a desperate four-day search after police said he was kidnapped at gunpoint by Mexican drug dealers. But it was a bus driver who ultimately found him, healthy, unharmed and walking on an empty sidewalk here, authorities said Sunday. The driver spotted Cole walking near the Strip about 10:30 p.m. Saturday and pulled over to offer the boy a ride. When he realized who he was, the driver called police.

Chicago police asked the FBI on Saturday to help find the missing 7-year-old nephew of Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Hudson after her mother and brother were found shot to death in her childhood home a day earlier. Julian King -- the son of Julia Hudson, Jennifer's sister -- has been missing since Friday, when his grandmother Darnell Donerson, 57, and uncle Jason Hudson, 29, were found dead in Donerson's South Side home. "Let my baby go," Julia Hudson told reporters.

A meter reader may have solved a heartbreaking five-month mystery Thursday when he stumbled across a plastic bag containing what investigators suspect are the remains of Caylee Marie Anthony. The worker walked into a patch of woods less than half a mile from where the missing toddler lived and saw the bag on the ground. When he picked it up, a child's skull rolled out. The area had been underwater when volunteers and officials searched for signs of the girl, who was reported missing in July.

Exactly how Caylee Marie Anthony died may remain a mystery. But the medical examiner in Orange County, Fla., is confident the toddler was a homicide victim. On Friday, Dr. Jan Garavaglia confirmed that the remains found Dec. 11 blocks from Caylee's home belong to the 2-year-old who disappeared in June and was reported missing in July. Garavaglia said that the FBI forensic lab in Virginia matched DNA from the bones to Caylee but that the skeleton gave no hint of what killed her.

Moments after investigators shut down the crime scene where a meter reader discovered Caylee Marie Anthony's remains 10 days ago, they served a search warrant at the nearby home of the toddler's grandparents Saturday afternoon. The case's lead investigators and crime scene technicians stayed inside George and Cindy Anthony's house for nearly two hours before emerging with two large boxes and two bags. Orange County Sheriff's Capt.

Like father, like son, figured Michael Devlin's neighbors when they saw the bulky 41-year-old and the black-haired 15-year-old boy who lived with him. Devlin, a manager at a pizza parlor who worked nights answering phones at a funeral home, kept to himself. The youth everyone assumed was Devlin's son was just as private, fleeing into the small apartment when neighbors even smiled at him.