Mitrice Richardson released by sheriff; Disappears into the night *deceased*

[Clarence Boddicker]

Lucky i wasn't one of the unfortunate hikers to find poor Mr Howard but i figured i had to mention it because his car fell no more than 25 feet from a very popular trail to the beach and it still took 3 years for some one to find him. I personally just hope Mitrice really is in las Vegas living under an assumed name or something

[Valasca]

On Monday, park rangers in a remote area of Malibu Canyon found what appeared to be human remains. Authorities are now investigating the find and trying t determine if the bones found belong to missing Los Angeles woman Mitrice Richardson.

Mitrice was last seen leaving the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station at about 1 a.m. on Sept. 17, 2009. She had been arrested by authorities because she could not pay a dinner bill at Geoffrey's restaurant. In her possession she also had a small amount of marijuana.

According to reports, she was disoriented upon her release from detention and was sent into the dead of night without her cell phone, purse, or car.

NBC News has learned that the detective overseeing Mitrice’s case, Lt. Mike Rosson, was called to the scene of the find – an area above Malibu of Pima Road.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the remains found include a skull, along with a number of assorted bones. They were discovered in a deep ravine that “had previously been identified as an area where marijuana had been grown,” according to sheriff’s spokesperson Steve Whitmore.

A family spokesperson told NBC that Mitrice’s family was not aware of the recent developments.

http://www.examiner.com/x-1168-Crime...-Angeles-woman

[DingDang]

Mitrice Richardson's remains found

The skeletal remains of a woman found Monday in Malibu Canyon are that of Mitrice Richardson, who had been missing for nearly a year, a family friend told CNN.

Rhonda Hampton said the coroner's office called Richardson's mother, Latice Sutton, Thursday morning to report that a positive identification was made for her daughter.

May she rest in peace. My heart breaks for her family.

[jenthgr8]

What an incredible tragedy. At least her family has a solid answer now rather than wondering what happened to her. :(

[Valasca]

TY, DingDang. Here's more.

Skeletal remains found Monday in a remote area of California's Malibu Canyon are those of Mitrice Richardson, who has been missing for nearly a year, a family friend told CNN Thursday.

Rhonda Hampton said the coroner's office called Richardson's mother, Latice Sutton, Thursday morning to report that a positive identification was made of Richardson following an autopsy.

"We're in shock," Hampton said. "I was always holding out hope. This is devastating, regardless of whether we believed she was in that canyon. You don't want that to be true, so there's a level of denial because that's what keeps you going."

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office would not comment on the report but said the sheriff would hold a news conference later Thursday morning.

The remains, which included a human skull, were found Monday by park rangers searching the area for marijuana groves, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.

iReport: See pictures of the search, Richardson's family

"It's incredibly treacherous terrain," Whitmore said of the remote site. "There is no road, no trail even if you know exactly where you are going."

Whitmore said it appeared the remains had been in the area "for quite awhile."

The apparent discovery of Richardson's remains comes almost 12 months since she disappeared after leaving a Los Angeles County Sheriff's station in Malibu, California, in the early morning hours of September 17, 2009.

The former beauty pageant contestant, who was 24 at the time, had been arrested the previous evening at an upscale restaurant for allegedly not paying for her meal, and patrons at the restaurant said she exhibited strange behavior.

Her family has said the college honors graduate suffered from mental health issues and should have been kept at the sheriff's station until a relative arrived to pick her up.

Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter told CNN on Monday that an anthropologist and pathologist were examining the remains, and an odontologist -- or dental expert -- would also help make a final identification.

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that the remains are those of a woman and that "women's clothing was also found near the scene." The newspaper cited unidentified law enforcement sources.

iReport: Watch Richardson's mother discuss leaks to the media

Winter said clothing was found "near the body," but declined to elaborate on what type, saying many people had been using the area where marijuana was known to be harvested.

Sutton held a news conference Tuesday night outside the coroner's office, saying she had been told that the clothing found was a pair of Levis, and appealed to officials to let her view the clothing.

"I do know that my daughter was wearing jeans that night," Sutton said.

Michael Richardson, Mitrice's father, told HLN's "Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell" on Wednesday that he isn't giving up the search for his daughter.

"I'm still remaining hopeful, positive, prayerful ... and until they can give me a definitive answer about it, Mitrice is still needing for us to search for her," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/12/...remains.found/

[Dakota Valkyrie]

This makes me incredibly sad. I had been holding out hope that she was living out an oblivious manic episode somewhere.

[Hellsbells]

California mom: Exhume daughter's body

Los Angeles (CNN) -- -- The mother of a 24-year-old California woman whose decomposed remains were found in Malibu Canyon in August said Monday she believes her daughter was murdered and asked that the coroner exhume the remains and the FBI crime lab examine her clothing.

Sheriff Lee Baca said last August that authorities had "no indication of a homicide," but Latice Sutton, 46, Richardson's mother, said she and a forensic anthropologist with the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Missing Persons Identification Resource Center disagree with the sheriff.

The Los Angeles County coroner already has agreed with Sutton's request that medical examiner personally visit the remote area where deputies retrieved Richardson's remains, said Clea Koff, a forensic anthropologist with the resource center, who's working with Sutton.

And Baca has agreed to meet with Sutton on December 29, Sutton said. For the FBI crime lab to examine Richardson's clothing, the sheriff has to request their involvement, she said.

But Sutton said she isn't satisfied that her daughter's death has been investigated thoroughly. She held a news conference at a Los Angeles church Monday to highlight her crusade.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/12...fornia.exhume/

[Dakota Valkyrie]

The remains of Mitrice Richardson, the woman who disappeared after being released from the Lost Hills/Malibu sheriff’s station and was found dead nearly a year later, will be exhumed and sent to the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va., for further examination, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca.

Clothing that was found near her remains — and assumed to be hers — as well as a hank of hair discovered near her will also be sent for investigation.

“I am responding to the family’s wishes,” Baca said in a phone interview.

He said he called the FBI’s assistant director here in L.A. in late December to request the agency’s involvement.

“But I also think it doesn’t hurt having the FBI say, ‘We’ve examined this and find the following,’" Baca said. "I think the needs of the family should be my first priority.”
[...]

The department, which faces two negligence lawsuits in this matter, was found to have correctly followed its policy that early morning.

“Certainly you have to think twice about everything you do in this business we’re in,” said Baca, who has met several times with Richardson’s family members since she went missing. “The most important thing is that Mitrice was offered the opportunity to stay [at the station] until it was a safer period of time for her to leave. I don’t know if there’s a policy that can stop a free person from leaving a jail facility which she had a right to do as an adult.”
[...]

The L.A. County coroner has agreed to the exhumation, Baca said. Its own report on Richardson’s skeletal remains listed the cause of death as undetermined.

Richardson’s mother and an anthropologist who works with families of missing persons had publicly said that body should be examined further and they wanted the FBI involved.

“I feel very elated that Sheriff Baca and the head medical examiner have heard my pleas,” said Richardson’s mother, Latice Sutton. “There is more on Mitrice’s body to explain what happened to her.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lano...m-sheriff.html

[Valasca]

mitrice will be exhumed.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/05/...x.html?hpt=Sbi

ETA: awesome, DV beat me to it.

[Rockin Ma]

From January 20th:
http://malibusurfsidenews.com/storie...101200003.html

It has been three weeks since family members of Mitrice Richardson were told that Sheriff Lee Baca has requested that the Federal Bureau of Investigation become involved in the investigation of her death, the saga of which first unfolded in Malibu.

Family members said they were assured at a personal meeting and in emails, and Baca responded to media inquiries, that FBI involvement was imminent but the specifics still had to be worked out.

Now some of them are beginning to quietly question whether the FBI is going to get involved at all.

On Tuesday, the spokesperson for the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office, Laura Eimiller, told the Malibu Surfside News that Baca's "request for assistance is still under review."

Eimiller indicated, "Because there is no basis for federal jurisdiction in this case, the issue is what could FBI experts provide that the sheriff's department experts could not."

When asked this week whether the sheriff might have overstated the extent of FBI commitment to the dead woman's family, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department spokesperson Steve Whitmore said, "The sheriff is trying to do what the family wants. He can just ask the FBI, and he was given the indication that it would do what it can."

Richardson went missing after being booked at the Lost Hills Sheriff's Station on Sept. 16, 2009, for alleged nonpayment of a Malibu restaurant tab, at which time the 24-year-old reportedly was acting bizarrely, and for possession of a minimal amount of marijuana. Both are field-citable offenses.

Richardson was released the next morning shortly after midnight, alone, without her car, which had been taken to the Malibu impound lot, her purse, or her cell phone, in the remote industrial area where the Lost Hills Sheriff's Station is located.

Eleven months later, park rangers stumbled upon the honors college graduate's partially skeletonized and mummified remains on a routine patrol of a former marijuana grove less than eight miles from Lost Hills in the Malibu Canyon backcountry.

The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, which officially ruled that a cause of death could not be determined and criticized the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for impeding its investigation, has been waiting for the rugged terrain in the steep ravine where the remains were found to become accessible for another field search.

A coroner's department Special Operations Response Team, or SORT, was scheduled to go to the site last month to search for bones that are still missing and possible other clues, but that effort was cancelled due to the series of storms that deluged the local mountains.

Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter told The News that he hopes that another SORT attempt can be undertaken within a week or two, if not sooner.

He said that no date for the field search has been set, but his people are ready to go as soon as the LASD and the FBI, which he currently expects to take part in the effort, are able to coordinate with each other.

LASD's Whitmore said the sheriff's department "stands ready to assist the search effort with air support or whatever else is needed."

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Lawyers for the parents of a woman found dead in Malibu after being released by sheriff's deputies are entitled to video showing the woman's behavior inside and outside the jail and station house, a judge ruled today.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William F. Fahey ordered lawyers for the county to make the video of Mitrice Richardson available by tomorrow afternoon.

The judge also ruled that the plaintiffs are entitled to Los Angeles police records generated between September 2009, when the Cal State Fullerton graduate went missing, through Dec. 10, 2009.
[...]

The LAPD and lawyers for the Sheriff's Department argued that making the records public could jeopardize the investigation of Richardson's death, but the judge sided with the family.

Richard's divorced parents, Michael Richardson and Latice Sutton, filed separate wrongful death suits against the county last year. They are now consolidated.
[...]

http://www.dailynews.com/ci_17260891

[Gidget]

I really wish they would just let Mitrice rest in peace.

[Rockin Ma]

@Elfearsandvampireteeth where did you hear they determined she died from the elements?

[princessgrandma]

It's a shame that as long as a buck is to be had, Mitrice won't be allowed to rest in peace.

[Valasca]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lano...e-exhumed.html

Authorities are expected Wednesday to exhume the remains of Mitrice Richardson, the missing woman who was found dead almost a year after being released from the Los Angeles County sheriff's Malibu station, her father confirmed.

Richardson’s family is hoping further testing will help determine how the 24-year-old died. Since Richardson's skeleton was discovered in a rugged Malibu Canyon ravine last August, the sheriff’s department has been dogged by criticisms of its handling of the remains.

In February, for example, months after her body was recovered, authorities found eight more bones in the area. That discovery came just a few months after Richardson’s mother said she found a finger bone while at the site memorializing her daughter.

The grim discoveries followed public criticism of the sheriff's department from a prominent coroner’s official who told The Times that deputies had removed Richardson’s remains from the canyon without his permission, possibly violating the law and undermining the thoroughness of the coroner's inquiry.

Sheriff’s officials argued they had no choice because it was getting dark, and animals might have destroyed the remains if they had not acted. A probe into the matter is yet to be completed.
Richardson drew national media attention in September 2009 when she disappeared after being released from the sheriff's Lost Hills/Malibu station around midnight without her car, purse or cellphone.

She had been arrested for not paying a dinner bill at Geoffrey's restaurant in Malibu.

About 11 months after her disappearance, and a dramatic, wide-scale search, her remains were spotted in a remote Malibu Canyon ravine.

Richardson’s father, Michael, told The Times on Wednesday the body was set to be exhumed by coroner’s officials, probably in the morning, at the Inglewood cemetery where she was buried. He said he kept quiet about the exhumation beforehand to minimize media attention.

He said he got a call from Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter earlier this month telling him that the original remains and the bones found later were going to be reexamined at the insistence of Mitrice’s family.

“My best hope, maybe the finger they found is the fingernail where she scratched somebody, somebody she was in a fight with, something that’s going to give us who did this to her,” Michael Richardson said.

The sheriff’s department had no issue with the family's wishes, spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

Winter could not be reached Wednesday morning despite multiple attempts.

Richardson's family has filed suit against LASD for its handling of the case. The department’s watchdog, however, deemed her release from custody as being in line with department policy.

[sintax]

I've been thinking about Mitrice lately. Or rather, her mother. I'll bet she is not happy about all this talk about protecting Casey Anthony upon her release from the custody of Orange County officials. If Mitrice would have had somebody think about her release half as much as they are thinking about Casey's release, Mitrice might still be here with us.

[Valasca]

But @sintax, Mitrice is black. We only seem to care about white people.

[sintax]

But @sintax, Mitrice is black. We only seem to care about white people.

Silly me! I forgot!!!