Grand Rapids police would like to get more information from two people who provided anonymous tips in the case of a missing mother of five.

Latrice Maze, 26, was last seen in downtown Grand Rapids on March 19. Her family has said she has never left without a phone call to someone to check in.

On March 30 and 31, according to the Grand Rapids Police Department, two separate tipsters called Silent Observer with information about Maze’s disappearance.

http://liarcatchers.com/missing_persons_investigations.html

Those tips in particular are peeking the interest of GRPD investigators. Detectives won’t discuss specifics of the tips.

They say neither involved a sighting or specific information on the whereabouts of Maze. But the information may help provide evidence as the missing person cases moves forward.

Meantime, Maze’s family refuses to give up hope.

“It’s just… it’s just a struggle for us.” says Latrice Maze’s cousin Pam Green.

They’ve held a vigil, put up fliers with her picture and continue knocking on doors in and around Burton and Division in Grand Rapids, where Maze was last seen.

“It’s been very difficult for the family. We’re just… each day that goes by we have no answers.We want to know where she is.”

From everything police have learned from family and friends, it’s not like the mother of five to just disappear, not to check in with someone if she had to be gone.

Maze failed to show up for an appointment involving a daughter in foster care on the 19th. Police were called the next day after she didn’t pick up one of her children from school.

As days turn into weeks investigators grow more and more concerned.

And so do family and friends…

“We’re just keeping hope that she’s still alive… and that she’ll come back to us.” says Green.

Maze was last seen wearing a white shirt, black slacks, and a blue and yellow scarf wrapped around her head.

The tipsters who called Silent Observer are now asked to call GRPD at 616.456.3604. They may also call Silent Observer at 616.774.2345 and provide information for police to contact them.

As the search for missing College of New Jersey senior Paige Aiello entered its fourth day yesterday, authorities were trying to use security camera footage to trace her path from her Hillsborough home to a New Brunswick parking deck and the George Washington Bridge Tuesday.

Though Aiello’s purse, cell phone, and car keys were found on an upper walkway of the bridge Tuesday night, a Port Authority spokesman said yesterday there is no visual evidence that Aiello jumped into the Hudson River below. Not all of the cameras record, however, as some are set up for traffic monitoring rather than security, the spokesman said.

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While boats from the Coast Guard and New York Police Department combed the waters below the bridge Tuesday night, the NYPD has not been back to search since, a department spokesman said yesterday.

On the TCNJ campus yesterday, student affairs personnel were continuing to reach out to Aiello’s tennis teammates and friends, offering counseling and checking on their well-being, college spokesman Matt Golden said.

“It’s hard to describe,” he said of the mood on campus. “There’s concern, there’s hope, there’s sadness, there’s questioning.”

News of the discovery on the George Washington Bridge has prompted some to draw conclusions. “You run all kinds of scenarios through your head,” Golden said. “I think the best thing for us to do is avoid speculation.”

Hope and messages of caring were abundant on social media yesterday. A “Find Paige Aiello” Facebook page has quickly gained thousands of followers, and a photo collage of Aiello on Facebook’s “Missing” page for New York and New Jersey was shared by people nationwide. A Twitter account with the user name “FindPaigeAiello” has also been created, and was filled with wishes for her safe return.

Aiello, who was just a few days shy of her 22nd birthday when she disappeared, was stressed and had a recent breakdown that led her parents to keep a close watch on her as she spent more time at their Hillsborough home than in her on-campus apartment, her family said. Her father drove her home Tuesday, leaving the house at 1 p.m., which is when she was last seen, according to the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office. When Aiello’s mother returned home around 3 p.m. that day, both her car and her daughter were gone. The family went to police a few hours later.

The car was found late Tuesday night in a parking deck in New Brunswick near the NJ Transit train station, where authorities are reviewing any available video surveillance. NJ Transit referred all questions about the video to the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office yesterday, which had nothing to report.

Anyone with information on Aiello’s disappearance is asked to call the Hillsborough Township Police Department at (908) 369-4323, the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office at (908) 575-3300, Somerset County Crime Stoppers’ Tip Line at (888) 577-TIPS(8477) or online at www.888577tips.org or www.scpo.net and click on either “Crime Stoppers” or “TIPS HOTLINE”. All calls are confidential.

State police will search a wooded area behind the Price Chopper supermarket on Route 50 on Sunday in connection with a missing person case from nine years ago.

According to a state police news release, police will search starting at 9 a.m. for clues in the disappearance of Craig A. Frear, a student at Scotia-Glenville High School who went missing at the age of 17. This summer marks the ninth anniversary of his disappearance.

He disappeared after visiting a female friend at Cambridge Manor in Scotia and was last seen walking along a footpath toward the railroad tracks.

http://liarcatchers.com/missing_persons_investigations.html

The disappearance was immediately reported by his parents, but authorities delayed alerting the media because they suspected he had ran away from home and thought news coverage would drive him farther away.

Sunday’s search will be conducted by volunteers from Northeast Mobile Search & Rescue. They have helped state police and forest rangers with other searches in the past. Frear’s brother, Matthew Frear, will also be involved.

Police say they have continued to investigate the disappearance in the years that followed, with interviews of family members, co-workers, neighbors and classmates.

In the spring of 2012, more than 60 people scoured along the Mohawk River, a search prompted by the discovery of a jawbone between locks 9 and 10. Even though forensic analysis confirmed the bone was not Frear’s, a search was still initiated. Before that, the area had been examined in 2009.

Frear’s family has posted a $10,000 reward for information that helps to find him.

Anyone with information about Frear is asked to call state police at 783-3211 or 630-1700.

With the fragile beginnings of a thaw along the edges of Vallecito Lake, the search for Dylan Redwine — the Monument boy who disappeared from his father’s house Nov. 19 — is heating up.

This spring, once the lake sheds the ice, it’s the new focus, said Denise Hess, lead organizer of volunteers searching for Dylan.

“The whole idea here is that one of three things is going to happen: We’re going to find Dylan. We may find somebody else and another family has closure, or there’s nothing in the lake and we can eliminate it altogether and focus on somewhere else,” Hess said.

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The earliest the lake is expected to thaw enough for searchers would be mid-April, she said.

A lot has happened during a cold and brutal winter in the high country of southwest Colorado where Dylan disappeared.

Dylan turned 14.

As of April 2, 273 inches of snowfall smothered the ground at Durango Mountain Resort.

The Redwine family, Dylan’s mom Elaine, brother Corey, and father Mark, appeared on the Dr. Phil Show. Mark and Elaine are divorced.

There were tears, anger and accusations.

Elaine and Corey accused Mark of being involved in Dylan’s disappearance. Mark accused Elaine of being involved. Mark bailed on a lie detector test.

Nothing was resolved.

Searchers have come and gone. Investigators have turned up few leads. The few they received have been fruitless.

Dan Bender, spokesman for the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office, said investigators continued to follow leads over the winter, in some cases searching under bridges and snowshoeing up to cabins.

Spring brings hope.

The organization Hess heads, “Find Missing Dylan Redwine,” is trying to raise money to hire teams that specialize in deep water searches.

Several have been contacted, and a couple have told Hess they won’t charge for the search, but their expenses such as lodging and travel need to be paid.

“These people know water, they know how it acts and they have made many, many water recoveries,” Hess said.

The lake has been searched by a search and rescue team from the New Mexico State Patrol. That team included dogs, divers, several boats and sonar.

But there were complications. Because of the lake’s depth — averaging 30 to 40 feet, the altitude of the lake and temperature of the water, divers could stay down only 20 minutes a day, Bender said.

The dogs, however, alerted to human scents at a few spots in the lake, which the divers searched.

“There was nothing suspicious found,” he said. “Having said that, it’s almost 12 miles around the lake. It’s very large and that’s not to say there isn’t a chance that Dylan could be in the lake. But we checked it as thoroughly as we could at that time.”

Technology may be the difference maker.

“No offense to the sheriff’s office, the divers are great, but these people are trained specifically for this and we feel there is a big difference,” she said.

The specialists who’ve been contacted use 180-degree sonar on a cable that can be dropped into the water as long as necessary.

If the sonar detects something, a remotely operated underwater vehicle will be used for additional investigation. An ROV is operated remotely by a person on a boat. They are commonly used by deepwater industries.

The areas of the lake that will be searched include the deepest spots along the dam and along the eastern shoreline, Hess said.

The lake “needs to be eliminated one way or another. The cadaver dogs hit on something,” Hess said. “What did you hit on? We don’t know.”

Joe Duran’s wife did not worry at first when she returned to their San Fernando home and her retired husband was not there last month.

Walking to convenience stores is something Duran would do in the spur of the moment, often spending time in the neighborhood of Hubbard and Truman streets.

A day later, Duran’s wife and daughter reported him missing.

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Now more than a month later, the 70-year-old Duran still has not returned home — or shown up anywhere — and San Fernando Police are requesting the public’s help in locating him.

There is concern Duran has become incapacitated, and even if located, may not be able to identify himself. Duran suffers from alcohol dependency, said San Fernando police Det. Irwin Rosenberg.

“He is forgetful and may be subject to seizures,” Rosenberg said.

Duran has wandered off previously, and survived a frightful episode a decade ago when he was struck by a truck, Rosenberg said.

Police have contacted hospitals and jails, and also the coroner’s office, but there’s been no sign of Duran. Police issued a statewide “Silver Alert,” but it has not generated any responses.

Out of leads, Rosenberg is hoping someone will recognize Duran’s photo and call his office at 818-898-1267.

On Wednesday, when a high-profile hearing brought a herd of news media to the San Fernando Courthouse near the city’s police station, Rosenberg walked over to press Duran’s missing person bulletin into reporters’ hands with a request to spread the word.

Joe Flores Duran is described as 5 feet 6 inches tall, 155 pounds with brown eyes and thinning gray hair. He was last seen wearing a navy blue jacket over a white t-shirt, with beige pants.

He was last seen about 2 p.m. on March 1 at his home on San Fernando’s Second Street.

Complicating his situation even further, he did not a cellphone with him, and presumably has no money.

Anyone with information about Duran is asked to call 818-898-1267.