Missing Persons

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.

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!

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.

One of the most extensive searches in the history of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department turned up no evidence of Mitrice Richardson, the young woman who has been missing since leaving the Malibu sheriff's station Sept. 17. The fourth fruitless search of the Malibu area left police and sheriff's investigators mystified and family members clinging to hope that she is still alive. "The beautiful thing about today is that they didn't find a cadaver," said Michael Richardson, 42, the father of the missing woman.

Nearly three months after Mitrice Richardson walked out of a Los Angeles County Sheriff's station above Malibu Canyon and vanished into the dark, authorities still don't know where she is or whether she is alive. But based on their investigation and the contents of her diaries, authorities believe that days before she was arrested for not paying her bill at a Malibu restaurant, the 24-year-old Cal State Fullerton graduate had gone without sleep for as many as five nights and "had a major mental breakdown," said Los Angeles Police Det. Chuck Knolls.

The Coral Princess sailed into San Pedro on Monday morning, ending its 15-day Panama cruise; Chiara Faliva flew all the way from Italy to greet it. Far from a relaxing vacation, Faliva is hopscotching the world -- Tuesday she was en route to Colombia -- desperately trying to determine what happened to her brother, a 31-year-old chef who disappeared from the ship a few days after it departed from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The few facts known only...

The mystery surrounding the disappearance of two Hemet teenagers last month was partially solved Friday when police said one had been shot to death and the other was on the run but that his parents had been arrested for allegedly helping cover up the killing. Jose Campos and Adrian Rios, both 17, were last seen at Campos' parents' rented house sometime around Nov. 15. When Rios didn't return home that night, his parents contacted police, who found a shallow grave and burned body parts in the backyard at the rental home.

Writer-director Noah Buschel's ambitious, stylish neo-noir "The Missing Person" starts so self-consciously that it verges on parody but impressively gathers steam, gaining depth and breadth as it evokes 9/11 post-traumatic stress. It's a great-looking movie, with an evocative use of music and, in rugged-yet-sensitive Michael Shannon, has an actor whose forceful, focused presence is the film's sturdy linchpin. Shannon's John Rosow, a martini-loving, hardscrabble Chicago private eye, is awakened in the middle of the night with an offer he can't afford not to take.

The mystery of three missing Hemet teens deepened Wednesday when one turned up alive and well while police unearthed charred human remains at a home where the other two were last seen. "We have found more human remains, but we can't say if it's one person or two or three," said Lt. Dean Evans of the Hemet Police Department. "It does alarm us that the remains have been found at the home of one of the missing juveniles." Evans said one of the original three, Felicia Sharpe, was brought to the police station Wednesday by her mother and was being interviewed by investigators.