An Amber alert or a child abduction emergency alert is a message distributed by a child abduction alert system to ask the public for help in finding abducted children. The system originated in the United States.
Richard Allen Davis is an American convicted murderer whose criminal record fueled support for the passage of California's "three-strikes law" for repeat offenders and the involuntary civil commitment act for sex offenders and predators. He was convicted in 1996 of first-degree murder with special circumstances of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. As of January 2024, Davis remains on California's death row in the Adjustment Center at San Quentin State Prison.
Polly Hannah Klaas was an American murder victim whose case garnered national media attention. On October 1, 1993, at age 12, she was kidnapped at knifepoint during a slumber party at her mother's home in Petaluma, California, and strangled to death. Richard Allen Davis was convicted of her murder in 1996 and sentenced to death.
Jacob Erwin Wetterling was an American boy from St. Joseph, Minnesota, who was kidnapped from his hometown and murdered on October 22, 1989, at the age of 11. The identity of his abductor remained a mystery for nearly 27 years.
Skechers USA, Inc. is an American multinational footwear and apparel company. Headquartered in Manhattan Beach, California, it was founded in 1992 and is the third largest footwear brand in the United States.
The killing of Molly Anne Bish is a currently unsolved child murder which occurred in Warren, Massachusetts, on June 27, 2000, when 16-year-old high school student Molly Anne Bish disappeared while working as a lifeguard.
Kiplyn Davis was a 15-year-old Spanish Fork high school student who disappeared from her high school campus in Spanish Fork, Utah. She is one of the featured children on the Polly Klaas Foundation website. In 2011, a classmate was convicted of manslaughter in the murder of Davis and sentenced to 15 years in prison. However, the man refused to name his alleged accomplices or indicate where Davis's remains were supposedly concealed.
Pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11, and boys at age 11 or 12, psychiatric diagnostic criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13. People with the disorder are often referred to as pedophiles.
Polly Horvath is an American-Canadian author of novels for children and young adults. She won the 2003 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The Canning Season, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In 2010, Horvath received the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People.
The murders of Katherine and Sheila Lyon were the abduction, sexual abuse and murder of two sisters – aged 10 and 12 respectively – who disappeared from a shopping center in Wheaton, Maryland, on March 25, 1975.
Shmira or Shomrim are organizations of proactive volunteer Jewish civilian patrols which have been set up in Haredi communities in neighborhoods across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Israel, Belgium, and Australia to combat burglary, vandalism, mugging, assault, domestic violence, nuisance crimes and antisemitic attacks, and to help and support victims of crime. They also help locate missing people.
The Shawn Hornbeck Foundation was a non-profit charitable organization based in Richwoods, Missouri, devoted to the search for and rescue of abducted children. It ran the Shawn Hornbeck Search and Rescue Team.
Arthur Stanley Brown was an Australian man charged for the 26 August 1970 rape and murders of Judith and Susan Mackay in Townsville, Queensland. In his 2000 trial, the jury failed to reach a verdict, and a new trial was blocked on the grounds that Brown was too senile to be tried again. Brown's arrest attracted wide publicity, leading to a witness to the 1973 Adelaide Oval abductions identifying Brown as the suspect she had seen. Brown is thus considered a prime suspect for both these abductions and the Beaumont children disappearance in 1966 as well as for several other murders.
Child abduction or child theft is the unauthorized removal of a minor from the custody of the child's natural parents or legally appointed guardians.
Harvard E. "Pete" Palmer Jr. is a prominent national authority on promotion and operation of car donation programs for charitable causes. He is "arguably one of the individuals with the broadest knowledge of the far-flung vehicle donation industry." He is a spokesperson for the Vehicle Donation Coalition. His writing includes an op-ed piece in The San Francisco Examiner about how to choose a worthy cause for donating a car, citing California's State Registrar of Charitable Trusts as a source for checking the records of particular charities soliciting in that state.
John Albert Gardner III is an American convicted double murderer, rapist, and child molester. He confessed to the February 2009 rape and murder of 14-year-old Amber Dubois from Escondido, California, and the February 2010 rape and murder of 17-year-old Chelsea King from Poway, California, after he entered a plea agreement that spared him from execution. Additionally, Gardner attempted to rape 22-year-old Candice Moncayo of San Diego County, and had been previously incarcerated for the molestation of a 13-year-old girl.
Morgan Chauntel Nick is an American girl who was abducted at a Little League Baseball game. Her mother is known for creating the Morgan Nick Foundation, which helps people find their missing children.
On May 27, 2011, Michelle Hoang Thi Le a 26-year-old American nursing student from the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, was murdered in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Hayward, California, by 27-year-old Giselle Diwag Esteban.
The Hunt with John Walsh is an American investigation/documentary series that debuted on CNN on July 13, 2014. The series is hosted by John Walsh. The second season premiered on July 12, 2015, and the third season premiered on June 19, 2016. The fourth season premiered on CNN's sister station, HLN, on July 23, 2017. A successor to the show, In Pursuit with John Walsh was announced in early 2018. It premiered in January 2019 on Investigation Discovery.
Paul Carroll Skiba, his daughter Sarah Arielle Skiba, and Lorenzo DeShawn Chivers, an employee of Skiba's moving business, disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Westminster, Colorado, United States, on February 7, 1999.
