Few Clues in Brown Graduate's Disappearance

PROVIDENCE-- Providence police and a private investigator are trying to determine what happened to a recent Brown University graduate from Russia who was reported missing.

Konstantin Salikhov is 31 years old and hasn't been seen since a trip to the West Coast last month.

Salikhov is 6 feet tall and recently completed a doctorate in math. He's an avid runner.

"Just a quiet reserved kid. Didn't need much. A minimalist. Never knew he was a Ph.D. in math," said Stephen Kariotis, Salikhov's landlord.

Salikhov has lived at 210 Waterman St. in Providence for the past five years. He left a note inside his small apartment saying he was on vacation until Aug. 24. He told his parents in Russia he was going out west on a camping trip in early August by himself.

He sent photos to his parents, whom he talked to regularly. He hiked in Sequoia National Park and visited geysers in Wyoming before returning a rented car to San Francisco on Aug. 20.

He called his parents the next day.

"I believe this because of the connection and whatever the time was, it (the phone call) was kind of broken up. He just stated, 'Mom and Dad, I'm home and I'm safe.' And that was pretty much the extent of the phone call and, 'I'll talk to you at a later time,'" said Mark Chauppetta, a private detective.

Salikhov's parents hired Chauppetta when they didn't hear from their son.

"They were pretty close-knit, kept in touch with each other. And then after not hearing back from him, that's when they became concerned and called the Russian consulate office," Chauppetta said.

Providence police said Salikhov's credit cards have not been used since Aug. 20 and that there has been no cell phone use in the past 2 weeks.

They said they believe Salikhov is still in California, but San Francisco police told NBC 10 that they know nothing about the case and that no one has contacted them.

"They probably felt that there was no crime committed, that he's a 31-year-old male. He likes to camp. He hasn't shown up. He graduated from college. So, I don't think they were that concerned," Chauppetta said. "But now, not being in touch with his parents, not being in touch with anyone, not being seen here."

The car Salikhov used in Providence is also missing. It's a silver Hyundai Elantra with Rhode Island license plate 712-678.

Officials at Logan International Airport and at T.F. Green Airport reported no sign of it.

The detective is trying to obtain records from Salikhov's checking account and to find any record if he flew back from California.

Providence police asked anyone with information about Salikhov to call them.

Brown University released a statment on Wednesday, saying Salikhov received his PhD in mathematics from Brown in May 2010.

In early September, Providence Police contacted Brown's Department of Public Safety (DPS) concerning a possible missing person investigation of Salikhov. Although Salikhov is no longer a student at Brown, DPS has been cooperating with Providence police on this matter.

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Estranged dad missing for three decades, so Queens woman becomes private investigator to find him

After three failed attempts to find her estranged father, Eliza Perez decided to get some professional training to aid her search - she became a private investigator.

It paid off.

She met her father, Louis Perez, for the first time in 29 years on May 17 and had the added satisfaction of introducing him to her newborn daughter, Valeria.

They are now living in South Richmond Hill, catching up on decades of being a family.

"Sometimes now I sit here, and I look at her, and I'm shocked. It took a little while to sink in," Louis, 57, said of being reunited with his daughter.

The family saga may have found its happy ending in Queens, but it started in North Carolina and took a long detour in Puerto Rico.

When Louis was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1975, he moved to Manhattan. He was struggling with posttraumatic stress disorder from his three years working in an armory in North Carolina during the Vietnam War.

It was during one of his flashbacks that he stabbed his wife, Rosa, he said.

"I just woke up in the middle of a bad nightmare," he recalled. "I didn't really wake up until I heard her screaming and saw the kitchen knife and all the blood."

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Olivia Newton-John's Former Boyfriend 'Found'

Patrick McDermott, 48, disappeared five years ago during a night fishing trip in California, having broken up with the Australian singer and actress after a nine-year relationship.

He was initially believed to have fallen overboard but his body was never recovered.

In January last year, investigators said he was alive and well, and living off the coast of Mexico.

The detectives claimed they trapped him after he regularly logged on to a website they set up to track his whereabouts.

While indicating that Mr McDermott is still in the Mexico area, the detectives claimed to have suspended their search after making a deal with their quarry.

Philip Klein, a Texas-based private investigator leading the hunt, said they had "concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr McDermott is alive".

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Missing Persons Group Celebrates 15 Years of Service

Wilmington, N.C. – While it’s the CUE Center’s birthday, the all-volunteer missing person’s organization is giving a gift at a celebration this Saturday to mark the group’s 15th year of service working on the behalf of missing persons nationwide.

Monica Caison became a tireless advocate for the missing after being exposed to the families of missing persons at least three times before she was 25 years old. In 1994, she singlehandedly started the non-profit Community United Effort (CUE) Center for Missing Persons from a tiny back yard shed and a mere $76.00 dollars in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Now, the non-profit group, which is entirely funded by donations, has hundred’s of volunteers aiding the centers mission and receives calls for help from across the nation. CUE Center is proud of their all-volunteer network made up of more than 8,000 people and professional search groups — all of whom share the same goals: to find the missing, to advocate for their causes, and to support their families through what is often the most confusing and desperate times of their lives.

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A PI and Web Designers Help Find Missing Persons

Carl A. Bartol, a licensed private investigator and founder of the Prevent Delinquency Project recently teamed up with two of the Internet's top blog designers in the quest to find missing children and adults.

Each year more than 800,000 children and countless adults are reported missing in the United States. Technorati, an Internet-based search engine estimates that approximately 125,000 new bloggers come online each day. This amounts to millions of blogs and posts every year. In thinking outside the box of ways to aid in the search for missing children and adults, Bartol and his Prevent Delinquency Project (http://www.preventdelinquency.org) teamed up with two of the web's top designers, Ophelia Nicholson (http://www.ophelianicholson.com), and Linda Jackson (http://www.wpskins.org), to develop WordPress blog themes specifically designed to help locate lost loved ones. To their credit, they have completed two such themes to date and more are on the horizon.

Private Investigator Volunteers to Help Find Jaliek Rainwalker

“A lot of people are thinking, having different thoughts about what's going on in the case and we just want to be able to look into every single avenue,” said Jamie Richardson, a private investigator who can't show his face on camera.

Exclusive: Private Investigator Speaks Out About Szostak Case

"We strongly believe that somebody out there knows something, saw something, heard something or was told something about what happened to Josh," said Private Investigator Patrick Anastasi.

On December 22nd, Josh Szostak went out to hit the Albany bars with some friends. He parked outside the Elbo Room on Delaware and Morton. The group later went to the Bayou café downtown. After midnight, he separated from his friends - and vanished.

Better protocol needed to find missing persons

Better protocol needed to find missing persons | Home News Tribune Online: "When police located a 73-year-old Alzheimer's patient who had gone missing last Wednesday, the swift and relatively simple rescue might have suggested that the county's new protocols for finding 'at-risk' missing people are working just fine, and maybe they are.

Still, one has to wonder if more needs to be done, especially in the most complex cases involving a child in hiding, for example, or a mentally handicapped person who has wandered off the beaten path. The recent history of such incidents in New Jersey makes it clear that Middlesex County and the state should adopt stronger search-and-rescue guidelines.

The elderly South Brunswick man who was tracked down 3 1/2 miles from his home was on foot and on a main road. But what if he wasn't? It was frigid that night. Suppose he had fallen or was lost in the woods?"

Missing-persons cases tax police

The News-Press: Fort Myers: "Missing persons investigations tax police resources, require some hard investigative judgments and very often leave families dissatisfied with the results, police say.

Some cases have what police call “red flags” — circumstances that seem to scream foul play. Others are tougher. Sometimes they’re just people who want to disappear.

Most times, records show, they’re kids, and a lot of them are habitual runaways."