FBI to Mark Six Years Since Former Agent Went Missing in Iran

Mar 082013
 

Courtesy Levinson family(NEW YORK) — Thousands of former FBI agents across the country on Friday are expected to observe a moment of silence in honor of their missing colleague, ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson, who six years ago on Saturday was kidnapped in Iran.

Levinson, who spent more than two decades in the Bureau before retiring in 1998, was traveling as a private businessman when he was taken captive by unknown assailants on Iran’s Kish island March 9, 2007.

Since then, his family has mounted a worldwide campaign demanding that Iran set him free, pushing U.S. officials in a meeting in the Oval Office last March to negotiate for him.  

On Friday, the family is scheduled to meet with the FBI and State Department about the case, but as one family member told ABC News, “There is no news, unfortunately.”

After his sudden disappearance, the first public sign of life from Levinson, who has diabetes, came in a hostage video posted on the Internet a little over a year ago.

“Please help me get home,” says Levinson in the video.  “Thirty-three years of service to the United States deserves something.  Please help me.”

In January, the family released a series of pictures of Levinson they received from his captors in 2011.  This time the 64-year-old appeared haggard in an orange mock-prison uniform with a long gray beard and chains over his shoulders.  There were five different photos, each staged with a different disturbing message by his captors.  In each he holds a sign, one of which reads “Help me.”

People involved in the case said the pictures, which also reference Guantanamo, were designed to suggest he is being held by al Qaeda, although the same people are certain Levinson is in Iran.

Authorities either do not know or have not publicly identified Levinson’s suspected captors, but the U.S. government has repeatedly asked the Iranian government’s help in finding him.

However, despite those pleas and a $1 million reward offered by the FBI for information leading to Levinson’s discovery, it appears he will mark his sixth year away from his family and in captivity.  Levinson turns 65 years old on Sunday.

“Bob’s former colleagues have not forgotten him and we call on the international community to redouble its efforts to gain his release,” said Konrad Motyka, President of the FBI Agents Association.  “Let’s make this the last solemn anniversary that needs to be marked by focusing world attention on Levinson’s continued unjustified imprisonment and gaining his release.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

New Orleans Schoolteacher Missing After Leaving Bar

Mar 072013
 

Click to name Right: Terrilyn Monnette on the night she disappeared. (Images Courtesy of Amy Hoyle)(NEW ORLEANS) — New Orleans police and family members are frantically searching for an elementary school teacher who has been missing since last Saturday.

Twenty-six-year-old Terrilynn Monnette was last seen with friends at a bar in the Lakeview section of the Crescent City last Friday evening. She left the bar around 4 o’clock Saturday morning with a male acquaintance,  reported ABC’s New Orleans affiliate WGNO, telling her friends that she was going to take a nap in her car before driving home because she’d had a few drinks.

The bar’s general manager told WGNO that the two talked in the parking lot “for a little while,” but the bar’s video surveillance showed they left in separate cars. “He went one way, she went the other,” the bar manager said.

An eyewitness has told police that he saw the missing teacher with an unidentified man in the bar’s parking lot, according to information on the missing person’s flyer that Monnette’s family has been distributing.

Police detectives are searching for Monnette’s car — a black Louisiana-registered Honda Accord with license plate number WUN494, according to the missing person’s flyer.

They are also looking at area surveillance tapes, including one from an adjacent bank, reported WGNO.  

Thursday morning a handful of people fanned out in the area near the bar, where the 5 feet 8 inch 180-pound woman was last seen. Monnette’s longtime friend and sorority sister Lezette Montion, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, has taken time off to help with the search.

”I have the experience to deal with land navigation and hunting — and that’s kind of in a sense what we are doing,” Montion told ABC News. “We’re hunting for clues. Anything that will kind of tip us off, because all we have to go off is the video from the bar.”

“We’ve already found a calculator and brief case,” said Monnette, items friends hope will help police in their investigation. “And, you know, we women…carry our whole world in our cars sometimes, and none of us know what she had in her vehicle.”

 It is not clear whether the located items belonged to the missing teacher.

“It’s a huge area to cover in the search,” said Montion. “I would just like as many people as possible to come help us look.”

The search was to continue for the next couple of days, but, according to Montion, the detectives investigating the case asked her team of volunteers to stop the search out of fear that it would “contaminate” evidence.  According to Montion, police told her they would resume the search Saturday — a full week after Monnette disappeared.

“New Orleans is huge and it’s surrounded by water.  How could you stop searching for a loved one?” Montion told ABC News.

Calls to the New Orleans Police Department by ABC News were not immediately returned.

A native of California, Monnette had been teaching in the New Orleans area for two years, and recently became a second-grade teacher at Woodland West Elementary school in Jefferson Parish. Woodland West Principal Amy Hoyle said Monnette showed outstanding promise.  

“She came after the school year started, which is usually hard for teachers.  But she handled it great, and she emerged quickly as a teacher leader,” Hoyle told ABC News.

“She took the lowest-performing classes, and in a matter of four months, she turned those students into some of our highest achievers.”

Hoyle said Monnette’s colleagues and second-grade students were, “all very aware that this is going on.”  Woodland West Elementary has provided grief counselors, Hoyle said.

Police urge anyone with any information to call 504-821-2222.

 

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Missing Pennsylvania Girl Abducted from School Found

Jan 152013
 

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children(PHILADELPHIA) — A 5-year-old girl has been found after allegedly being abducted by a stranger from her classroom at a Philadelphia elementary school, where officials didn’t learn of her disappearance until six hours later.

Nailla Robinson was found early Tuesday morning by a man in a nearby park in Upper Darby under bleachers and transported to the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania to be checked for hypothermia.

Police say the little girl told them a stranger took her from the school on Monday.  She said she was blindfolded and walked a couple of blocks to a house.  Robinson said a teenage girl later took her from that house to the playground, according to police.

Robinson was taken from Bryant Elementary School Monday at about 8:50 a.m. by a woman covered with an all black niqab, a piece of cloth that covers the face, according to surveillance video.  The school did not know Robinson was missing until six hours later when the girl’s day care arrived to pick her up.

“I don’t know if it’s an accident or whatever it is, please bring my baby home.  Don’t hurt her,” Robinson’s mother, Latifah Rashid, told ABC News affiliate WPVI-TV on Monday.

Rashid told WPVI that she dropped Robinson off at 8:45 a.m., five minutes before she was taken from the school by another woman.

“[She] told her teacher that she was me, her mother, and that she was taking her out to breakfast and Nailla was already signed out at the office and she took my child and left,” Rashid said.

Police say the woman knew Robinson by name and there was a substitute teacher in the classroom, according to WPVI.

“There’s a signature in the book you’re required anytime you go into the schools,” Lt. John Walker of the Philadelphia Police Department said.  “There’s a list of people who can pick a child up.  She did sign a name but it’s not legible so we are not quite sure who the person is.”

The school district released a statement, saying there were some major procedural violations by Bryant Elementary and “an adult is not allowed to go to any classrooms to check children out.”

The surveillance video shows the woman leading Robinson through the halls of the school before exiting the premises.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter had offered a $10,000 return for information leading to the girl’s safe return.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Missing Utah Teen Found; Police Call Disappearance ‘Suspicious’

Jan 112013
 

ABC News(SALT LAKE CITY) — The frantic search for a missing 13-year-old girl in Utah came to a close overnight when police found the teenager at a local Walmart after she’d disappeared with no mobile phone, shoes or even a coat.  

But what looks like a case of a teen runaway is being called suspicious by police.

Brooklyn Gittins’ family said the young girl went to bed Tuesday night wearing her pajamas.  When they awoke, she was gone, and even her eyeglasses were left behind.  She contacted her family late Thursday night.

Lt. Justin Hoyal of Salt Lake Unified Police told ABC News that she is safe at home now.

“We believe that she did leave her house on Tuesday evening, and somebody picked her up and harbored her for the last two and a half days.  We’re going to investigate,” Hoyal said.  “She’s 13 years old, and for someone to hold her is wrong.  We’ll do everything to find the person and bring [that person] to justice.”

Gittins was unharmed and was still wearing her gray T-shirt and black pajama pants.  She had no shoes or coat.

“Brooklyn called her grandmother about 11:30 p.m. and told her that she was at the Walmart in South Jordan,” Salt Lake police said.  “Her grandmother then called Utah police department.  We responded to the Walmart and located Brooklyn.  The disappearance is suspicious and we are still investigating where she went and who she was with.”

Police say there were no signs of forced entry in her home outside Salt Lake City, and none of the straight-A student’s friends had heard from her after she vanished.

“There are elements of this case that are extremely concerning.  We are hopeful that, however, that this is simply a runaway,” police said on Thursday.

Gittins has gone missing before.  Her family says she ran away last summer, but soon returned

More than 500 volunteers, as well as dog teams, fanned out Thursday to search the area near Gittins’ home.  However, authorities sent the volunteers home overnight, saying the storm that brought all the heavy snow was too dangerous.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Tyler Perry, Al Sharpton, NAACP Offer $100K Reward in Florida Missing Persons Cases

Jan 112013
 

Jason Merritt/Getty Images(NAPLES, Fla.) — What happened to Terrance Williams and Felipe Santos nearly a decade ago? For years, there have been whispers in Naples, Fla., about the men and the last person they were seen with, a police officer who said he dropped off the two men at separate convenience stores.

On Thursday, movie mogul Tyler Perry, the Rev. Al Sharpton and NAACP president Ben Jealous announced as much as $100,000 in rewards for information on the cases.

“This is injustice,” said Perry, who throughout a news conference in Naples clutched the hand of Williams’ mother.

“I don’t think this is about race or social status as much as it is about, no matter who we are, we should be outraged that this is happening in America in 2013,” he added, according to video recordings of the event.

Seconds after Perry offered his reward, a man in the audience interrupted, approaching the podium to claim he had information pertinent to the case and feared for his life, according to video of the event.

“Be here for my safety,” said the man, sobbing.

Perry said local law enforcement assured him that it will do everything possible to protect people who speak out, adding, “The world is watching.”

 

“Just like this man has come forward. I am sure there are others,” Sharpton told the crowd of about 150 people.

Later, Collier County authorities spoke with the man to determine if he had any relevant information.

Santos, 23 at the time of his disappearance in October 2003, vanished following a road incident, where Santos was arrested for driving without proper documentation, Naples Daily News reports.

According to the newspaper, Cpl. Steven Calkins of Collier County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a memo that he had dropped Santos off at a nearby convenience store instead of making the arrest.

Three months later, Williams, then 27, who had recently moved from Tennessee to Florida, pulled his vehicle over after experiencing car trouble, the Naples Daily News reported. He was spotted by Calkins near a North Naples cemetery.

Calkins later told investigators that he took Williams to a nearby convenience store, where he let him off and never saw him again, the newspaper reports.

Calkins, a 17-year law enforcement veteran, was questioned and fired in 2004 after failing a polygraph test and giving inconsistent statements about his encounter with Williams, according to the Naples Daily News. His patrol car was tested for blood and signs of struggle, but nothing was found.

On Thursday, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office said it had not spoken to Calkins since he was fired.

ABC News’ attempts to reach Calkins by phone were unsuccessful.

In 2006, Calkins denied wrongdoing and called it “very bad luck” that he was the last person seen with the missing men, according to the Naples Daily News.

Perry’s $100,000 in rewards broke down into four separate $25,000 offers, according to a news release by the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. The four $25,000 rewards were for information leading to the locations of either Santos or Williams, or convictions in either case.

Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk said he was pleased to have Perry raising awareness of the cases.

“We need the right piece of new information,” Rambosk said in a news release. “We are hopeful that Tyler Perry’s involvement will not only keep Terrance and Felipe in the public eye, but also prompt someone to step forward with the information we need.

“We are asking anyone who may have information to please contact us,” he added. “Every tip, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, is important.”

“The only way to turn a cold case into a live case is turn up the heat,” said Jealous. “The NAACP has not forgotten about Mr. Williams, Mr. Santos and this deputy who remains of interest.”

Sharpton said Perry sparked his interest when he called him to question why civil rights leaders weren’t dealing with missing-persons cases. In 2011, nearly 680,000 people were reported missing by the National Crime Information Center, and 34 percent were African American although the group makes up only 13 percent of the population.

“This kind of issue requires all of us black, white, Latino, Asian, rich and poor to come together,” said Sharpton of the now-multi-agency investigation into the men’s disappearances.

The FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Florida State Attorney’s Office also were involved in the investigation, the sheriff’s office said.

“I’ll never give up,” said Marcia Roberts, Williams’ mother, who held the hands of Perry often throughout the news conference and called Perry a godsend.

“Terrance has four children,” she said. “I have to have answers. I demand to have answers.”

After nine years, she hoped the renewed interest helps thaw her son’s cold case.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

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