Missing Persons

He vanished five months ago after a cookout at his mother's home, a 33-year-old African American male in blue jeans and red Nikes. He smoked Newports and Marlboros, the authorities noted, and sported a tattoo on his right arm with the mantra, "Live by the sword, die by the sword." Now Gerald Leander Betts stares glumly out from the missing-persons Web site of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. A mute statistic. A son and brother mysteriously gone AWOL.

Prime-time stars — they're dropping like corpses on "CSI. " Word leaked late Tuesday that Laurence Fishburne will leave CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" after just 2½ seasons as Dr. Raymond Langston. CBS hasn't picked a replacement yet, but with Ashton Kutcher substituting for Charlie Sheen on "Two and a Half Men," CBS will start the 2011-12 season with new leads on at least two of its signature series. Meanwhile, the exit of Christopher Meloni as a detective on NBC's "Law & Order: SVU" has thrown that show into disarray, with Mariska Hargitay signed on for a reduced role and executives in an 11th-hour scramble to make a deal with costar Ice-T.

The mystery surrounding the bizarre disappearance of the father of Chicago Bulls basketball superstar Michael Jordan was partially solved Friday when a body that had been found floating in a South Carolina creek on Aug. 3 was identified as that of James Jordan. Officials said that the cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the chest. Jordan, 57, had been missing for three weeks and it wasn't until Thursday that the matter became public.

Los Angeles police detectives said Thursday they are investigating at least four missing persons cases as a result of publicizing photos seized from the South Los Angeles property of Lonnie Franklin Jr., the Grim Sleeper serial slaying suspect. The Los Angeles Police Department received hundreds of phone calls, e-mails and other tips last month after releasing about 180 photographs of unidentified women that were found in a trailer and garage belonging to Franklin. Franklin, 57, is charged with 10 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder ?

Law enforcement authorities thought a two-year undercover drug operation in the Antelope Valley would almost certainly lead them to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Jonathan Aujay. They were wrong. As the drug investigation winds down, with several suspected drug dealers awaiting trial or sentencing in federal court, no one is closer to knowing what happened to Aujay. He is the one deputy in the 8,000-officer department who is the subject of a missing-persons case.

She doesn't rank with Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa or Judge Crater, but more than half a century later, there are still some people who wonder what happened to a young actress named Jean Spangler. It's been 53 years since Spangler, 27, vanished as she walked from her Park La Brea home to the Farmers Market and into thin air. Her disappearance on Oct.

The partial remains of a pregnant woman who vanished nearly a month ago after being lured from her home by the promise of free diapers have been found in the trash in Tijuana. The discovery is the latest development in the disappearance of Margarita Flores, a macabre case that continues to baffle police. Josefina Sonia Saldana, 40, who is accused of kidnapping Flores on Sept. 14 from her Fresno home, remained in jail in lieu of $1 million bail and is the sole suspect in the case.

At least 65 Mexican miners were trapped underground Sunday after an early morning gas explosion in a coal mine outside San Juan de Sabinas, about 70 miles southwest of the Texas border town of Eagle Pass. Mexican soldiers and civilian rescue teams worked into the night trying to clear air shafts and communicate with the workers, but by late Sunday failed to make contact with them. Safety officials reported that at least seven workers near the opening of the mine fled the 2:30 a.m.

As the House on Tuesday approved "Billy's Law," a bill designed to aid families searching for missing loved ones, Janice Smolinski had more than a casual interest. Her son, Billy, for whom the legislation is named, disappeared more than five years ago. The measure, which seeks to expand online public information on missing people and unidentified remains, comes in the wake of missing-persons cases that have drawn national attention, including that of Mitrice Richardson, 24, who disappeared after being released from the Malibu-Lost Hills Station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in September without her car, cellphone or purse.

State officials in Baton Rouge said they were closing the center created to find residents missing after Hurricane Katrina. Officials and volunteers received reports of 13,400 missing people after Katrina hit Aug. 29, 2005. All but 136 were located. The Find Family Assistance Center helped locate residents scattered across the country in the chaotic evacuations.

They were braced for the deflating prospect of overtime, having played a ragged, wobbly final minute. But then the wildly unexpected unfolded on the free-throw line: Chicago star Derrick Rose, having made his first free throw with 0.8 of a second remaining, missed the second one. Overtime would not be needed at the United Center. The Clippers escaped with a 100-99 victory over the Bulls on Saturday night, giving Coach Vinny Del Negro a moment to savor in his first game back here since being fired by the Bulls in May. "He just came in and said, 'Thank you, that was the best present,'" said Blake Griffin, who had his 15th consecutive double-double with 29 points and 12 rebounds.

The fliers for Amber Dubois were posted across Southern California, volunteers scoured fields and parks, police followed hundreds of tips -- but six months after the teenager's disappearance, her family still had no answers. Then search dogs Quincy and Jack were put on the case, tugging their handlers down the same streets Amber strolled the day she vanished, and hopes lifted. It didn't matter that some scientists and dog handler associations considered it highly improbable that canines could trace a human scent months old, or that Quincy and Jack weren't bloodhounds, the typical tracking breed.

Breahna Dawson last saw Mitrice Richardson during a service at the Pomona church they both attend. Dawson remembers the young woman's warm greeting and bright smile. There wasn't much conversation, but she appeared happy and at peace, Dawson said. In the six months that Richardson has been missing, Dawson and other members of New Direction Community Church have prayed daily for her safe return and spent many hours passing out fliers. On Sunday, several church members joined a group of volunteers in skid row in downtown, part of an expanded search that included teams in Malibu, Calabasas, Santa Monica and Hollywood.

The day after a jury voted for the death penalty for serial killer Rodney James Alcala, police detectives released a trove of photographs of women and children they seized more than 30 years ago from a storage locker the killer rented just as police were closing in on him. Detectives said they wanted to know who these people were and whether they might have gone missing during Alcala's murder spree in the late 1970s. Since then, detectives have spent their days fielding a flood of phone calls from people whose loved ones have been missing for decades.

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.

For more than half a century, the disappearance of two Air Force pilots headed from Los Angeles to Yuma, Ariz., remained a mystery. Then last May, a volunteer search team hunting for a long-lost World War II-era female pilot found the shattered remains of the Lockheed T-33 jet missing since Oct. 15, 1955, in about 100 feet of water 1 1/2 miles off Playa del Rey's Dockweiler State Beach. On Friday, descendants of Lts. Richard M. Theiler and Paul D. Smith gathered at the shoreline beneath the LAX flight path to memorialize the two men who vanished 55 years ago. About 40 members of the two families -- some from as far as Spain and Great Britain -- were among 90 or so who heard the pilots eulogized by relatives and by an Air Force chaplain who was accompanied by a pair of uniformed honor guards.

Sheriff's investigators got some unexpected help in identifying a man believed to have committed four armed robberies in the Santa Clarita Valley over the weekend--from a missing person's report filed by the man's wife. The man, Kevin Crotty, 28, of Castaic, was arrested Sunday after he was shot in the shoulder by a clerk as he attempted to rob a liquor store in San Fernando, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said Wednesday.

"Do you hear me? Do you care?" Well, you couldn't really hear Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons at the Palace on Friday night as she sang this oh-so-profound line from the group's hit, "Words," to a sold-out crowd (who obviously did care). Neither apparently could Bozzio hear herself because she constantly left the stage to confer with the soundman. Sound problems weren't the only distraction plaguing the first live show in more than a year by this harbinger of Hollywood New Wave.

The day started out like so many others for Chelsea King. The high school senior, a straight-A student, finished classes and went for a jog Thursday on the hilly trails around Lake Hodges in northern San Diego County. A cross-country team member, the 17-year-old enjoyed taking long runs, but by early evening she still wasn't home. Her father, Brent King, went to the parking lot near the trail head and found her car, still locked. Something was definitely wrong. "He started running down that trail looking for her," David Mikkelson, a family friend, said Monday.

The last exit on Interstate 5 funnels drivers into a swirl of activity at the U.S.-Mexico border in San Ysidro. Mexican pop music blares from an open-air bazaar where Zapata T-shirts and $6.99 hip-hugger jeans are sold. Women headed back to Mexico drag shopping carts stuffed with bags from Kmart. Cabdrivers sit on a bridge overlooking the border and wait for customers. The sidewalks are jammed with people. An advertising kiosk promotes its busy location to potential customers: 1.5 million eyes see this ad every year!