Videos raise more questions about missing Michigan doctor Teleka Patrick

Three weeks ago, Teleka Patrick disappeared.

The 30-year-old doctor in residency failed to show up for work on December 6 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The night before, police 100 miles south in Indiana found her car abandoned but not crashed in a ditch off busy I-94.

Investigators searched but came up empty.

"We looked everywhere," Sgt. Rick Strong of the Indiana State Police told CNN.

Now investigators have more potential evidence, about 20 minutes worth.

Videos provide clues

Surveillance and home videos uploaded to YouTube provide clues about Patrick's movement in the weeks, days and hours before she vanished.

In a different context, the YouTube videos might be considered sweet or romantic. They feature Patrick talking, cooing and singing to someone unnamed and apparently unknown.

Patrick's mother told CNN she wasn't aware of any romantic relationship her daughter may have had. But the videos have an intimate feel to them.

"Hi, baby," Patrick says in one. "I am just coming to you to say 'hi' and tell you about my day."

In another video, Patrick shows a table set for two with omelets and pancakes.

"If you were here, this is what would be your plate," she coos.

The two videos were posted in early November. It's not completely clear why they only drew attention now.

A third video to surface comes from a local hotel in Kalamazoo. That's where Patrick went on the night of December 5, just hours before police found her car in that ditch.

At a little past 7:30 p.m., Patrick, dressed all in black, showed up at a Radisson hotel not far from the hospital where she worked.

She spent around 10 minutes talking with employees at the reception desk but ultimately left.

There's no audio on the video, and it's not clear why Patrick failed to book a room.

But at 7:48 p.m., she strode across the hotel's tiled floors, out the door and onto a hotel shuttle bus.

Those images provide the last known picture of Patrick.

Friends, family shocked

Patrick's disappearance has, from the beginning, drawn shock from many corners.

Her family says Patrick, who had just moved to Michigan, bought a plane ticket to come visit them for the holidays in Florida.

Her colleagues called her "part of our family of medical professionals."

And CNN's audience posted by the droves on iReport asking for coverage in the hopes that more information and coverage would propel the case forward.

The young doctor was described in comments as "wonderful," "beautiful" and "talented."

The newly discovered videos add to the swirl of questions surrounding this case.

Investigators have said they have no evidence of foul play, but they also don't have conclusive evidence that Patrick's movements on December 5 were voluntary.

Police brought out dogs to track Patrick's scent. They led investigators the 30 or so feet out of the ditch where Patrick's car rested to the highway. There, the trace went cold.

"We have scoured, searched and looked at everything we could possibly look at -- all the exits, all the businesses, all the hotels," Strong said. "We posted fliers; we talked to neighbors (who live near the highway). We did a full-blown, on-the-ground search in the wooded area north of where the car was."

Carl Clatterback, a private investigator hired by Patrick's family, told CNN that investigators are looking into the videos. A central question: Who is Patrick talking to in the videos and does that person know anything about what happened to her?

Philippine Police Arrest Abu Sayyaf Militant

Philippine authorities have arrested a suspected Muslim militant accused of kidnapping two European bird-watchers last year, officials said Thursday.

The suspect, Haik Asgali, was arrested late Wednesday in Sulu province in a joint police and military operation, police spokesman Reuben Theodore Sindac said.

He said Asgali's team kidnapped Dutch Ewold Horn and Swiss Lorenzo Vinciguerra while they were on a bird-watching trip in southern Tawi Tawi province in February 2012.

Militants from the Abu Sayyaf group are holding for ransom more than a dozen captives. U.S.-backed military offensives have crippled the group in recent years, but it remains a key security threat.

Sindac said Asgali is an operative of Abu Sayyaf leader Radullan Sahiron, one of the most wanted terrorist suspects in the Philippines.

The United States lists the Abu Sayyaf as a terrorist organization.

AP Exclusive: Al-Qaida Leader Targeting UN Workers

The shadowy leader of a powerful al-Qaida group fighting in Syria sought to kidnap United Nations workers and scrawled out plans for his aides to take over in the event of his death, according to excerpts of letters obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

Iraqi intelligence officials offered the AP the letters, as well as the first known photograph of the Nusra Front leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the head of one of the most powerful bands of radicals fighting the Syrian government in the country's civil war.

The officials said they obtained the information about al-Golani after they captured members of another al-Qaida group in September. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to journalists.

"I was told by a soldier that he observed some of the workers of the U.N. and he will kidnap them. I ask God for his success," read an excerpt of a letter given by officials from Iraq's Falcon Intelligence Cell, an anti-terrorism unit that works under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The officials said other letters planned the kidnapping and killing of other foreigners, and Syrian and Iraqi civilians.

One U.N. worker was kidnapped for eight months in Syria and was released in October. Another two dozen U.N. peacekeepers were briefly held this year. It's not clear if those abductions had any relation to al-Golani's letters.

Syria's uprising began with peaceful protests, but it turned into an armed uprising after Assad's forces cracked down on demonstrators.

Since then, hard-line Islamic brigades have emerged as the strongest rebel forces in Syria, chiefly among them the Nusra Front.

Under al-Golani's leadership, it has dominated rebel-held parts of southern Syria, and it is a powerful fighting force in the Damascus countryside and northern Syria, with an estimated force of 6,000 to 7,000 fighters.

Al-Maliki's Shiite-majority government is considered a quiet ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The officials may have released the letter excerpts to underscore the dominance of al-Qaida in Syria.

The intelligence officials did not where they found the al-Qaida fighters who handed over the documents. They also would not say when the letters were written, though they said it represented a tiny sample of a large cache of documents.

The officials couldn't explain why the letter excerpts were in a sloppily written, grammatically incorrect version of an Arabic dialect used across the Levant. It is believed that al-Golani was an Arabic teacher before he rose through al-Qaida's ranks, and typically hard-line Muslims try to write in classical Arabic.

It may have been that an aide was writing down al-Golani's speech. Arabs typically speak in dialects that are often quite different from the classical Arabic.

"The claim by Iraqi intelligence that Jolani and by extension, Jabhat al-Nusra, have been behind an explicit policy of kidnapping U.N. workers should be treated with some suspicion," said Charles Lister, a prominent analyst of Syria's militant groups. He referred to the Nusra Front by its Arabic name. "While it might well be true, elements within Iraq's security services have a clear interest in portraying jihadists in Syria and Iraq in a highly negative light."

Little is known about al-Golani, including his real name. He is believed to be 39 years old. The photograph suggests a man in his thirties.

Al-Golani is a nom de guerre, indicating he was born in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Three Mexican Drug Cartel Members Sentenced in Plot to Kidnap Drug Debtors

SAN DIEGO, CA—Three Mexican drug cartel members were sentenced today by U.S. District Judge William Q. Hayes for their roles in a conspiracy to kidnap San Diego drug dealers and spirit them away to Mexico for violent revenge over unpaid drug debts.
Carlos Alberto Andrade-De La Cruz was sentenced to 130 months in prison, plus five years of supervised release; Luis Miguel Salas-Rodriguez and Antonio Zermeno-Garcia were sentenced 92 months each, plus five years of supervised release.
According to sentencing documents, the defendants suspected other drug dealers in San Diego of stealing their methamphetamine. The trio plotted to kidnap their targets from the United States, take them back to Mexico, and use violence to collect on their debts. The defendants were arrested in San Diego after the leader of this plot, defendant Andrade-De La Cruz, illegally crossed into the United States from Mexico and met the others in front of the home of the first intended victim.
The investigation began in March 2012 when the Cross-Border Violence Group of the Federal Bureau of Investigation learned of a plot to kidnap and extort three unidentified drug debtors in San Diego. Acting on this information, the FBI sought and obtained judicial authorization to wiretap the telephone of one of the leaders of this plot.
Based on the intercepts, the FBI learned that the defendants blamed three San Diego-based drug dealers for stealing their methamphetamine. As a result, one of the enforcers was initially ordered either to extort money from these debtors or to take high-end, luxury vehicles from the debtors by force. Wiretap conversations revealed that as the defendants discussed various plans to collect on the debt, defendant Andrade-De La Cruz became frustrated with delay. He ultimately gave the “green light” for co-defendant Zermeno-Garcia to kidnap the first of the drug debtors. Wiretaps revealed that Zermeno-Garcia told his conspirators that a debtor could be turned into “pozole”—a term used by drug cartels to describe a “soup” made by dissolving a human body in acid.
On March 14, 2012, the defendants intended to carry out the kidnapping. Andrade-De La Cruz illegally crossed into the United States from Mexico with fraudulent documents and met up with Salas-Rodriguez and Zermeno-Garcia. The FBI tracked each of the three defendants to a location near the residence of the first intended victim. Because of an imminent threat to life, the FBI’s SWAT Team immediately arrested all three defendants. The FBI located the intended victim who told agents that he would have ended up in the trunk of a vehicle if the FBI had not intervened.
At the sentencing hearing, Judge Hayes described the defendants' plan as “cold blooded.” In imposing the lengthy terms of incarceration, Judge Hayes stated that he believed that the defendants had every intention to take the victims to Mexico to exact violence.
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cross-Border Violence Group and highlights the close connection between narcotics trafficking and violence. The Cross-Border Violence Group is a FBI-led task force composed of federal and local law enforcement from the FBI, DEA, Border Patrol, San Diego Sheriff’s Department, San Diego District Attorney’s Office Bureau of Investigation, and the Chula Vista Police Department. Created in 2009, this task force was designed to respond to immediate threats posed by transnational criminal organizations. The Cross-Border Violence Group responds to numerous kidnapping events each year, which are complicated by the fact that threats often arise outside of the United States.
Defendants in Criminal Case No. 12-CR-1244-WQH
Carlos Alberto Andrade-De La Cruz
Luis Miguel Salas Rodriguez
Antonio Zermeno Garcia
Summary of Charges
Count one: Title 18, United States Code, Section 1201(c)-conspiracy to commit kidnapping;
Maximum penalty: life imprisonment
Investigating Agency
Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cross-Border Violence Group

Man Arrested on Conspiracy to Kidnap Charge

ATLANTA—Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Mark F. Giuliano, FBI Atlanta, along with Clayton County Police Chief Gregory Porter, provides the following information as an update in the investigation regarding the September 17, 2013 kidnapping/abduction of a minor child at Clayton County, Georgia:
On Friday, October 11, 2013, the FBI arrested Tony Maurice Graves, aka Tony Ware, age 28, of Atlanta, on a federal criminal complaint/arrest warrant charging him with violation of Title 18 USC 1201(a)(1) and (c), conspiracy to kidnap.
On Wednesday, October 16, 2013, Graves, along with Wildrego Jackson, age 29, also of Atlanta, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Atlanta for violating Title 18 USC 1201(a) (1) and (c), conspiracy to kidnap, and Title 18 USC 924(c), discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. Jackson was previously arrested on September 18, 2013.
This matter remains an active investigation and anyone with additional information should contact the FBI Atlanta Office at (404) 679-9000.

Two Pembroke Brothers Sentenced to Life Imprisonment for Roles in Two Kidnappings

STATESBORO, GA—Antonio Lamont Murray, 39, and Cecil DeWitt Nelson, 33, two brothers from Pembroke, Georgia, were each sentenced to life in prison today by Senior U.S. District Court Judge B. Avant Edenfield for their roles in two separate kidnappings in the Bryan County area. For additional firearm convictions associated with the kidnappings, Murray was also sentenced to a consecutive 57-year prison sentence. There is no parole in the federal system.
United States Attorney Edward J. Tarver stated, “The kidnappings committed by these defendants and others were violent and shameless. Because of timely action by the FBI and its partners in the law enforcement community, the United States Attorney’s Office was able to prosecute those responsible for these horrendous crimes. The United States Attorney’s Office will continue to have as its highest priority the protection of U.S. citizens.”
Murray was convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, two kidnappings, three firearm charges, and obstruction by a federal jury after a three-day trial in August 2012. Nelson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnappings shortly before trial. The evidence presented during Murray’s trial and Nelson’s guilty plea hearing revealed that Murray, Nelson, and others conspired to commit two separate kidnappings in the Bryan County area in late 2011 and early 2012. The first kidnapping occurred on December 1, 2011. During this incident, the victim was abducted at gunpoint and later released only after a ransom was paid. The second kidnapping occurred on January 12, 2012. The second victim was also abducted at gunpoint and released only after a ransom was paid. A co-defendant, Gary Lenion McDonald, 36, from Pembroke, pled guilty to his role in the kidnappings and testified against Murray at trial. McDonald’s sentencing date has yet to be scheduled.
The convictions of Murray, Nelson, and McDonald resulted from a joint investigation by the FBI, the U.S. Marshals, NCIS, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Georgia State Patrol, the Bryan County Sheriff’s Office, the Tattnall County Sheriff’s Office, the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office, the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office, the Richmond Hill Police Department, the Pooler Police Department, the Pembroke Police Department, and the Hinesville Police Department.
Assistant United States Attorneys Brian T. Rafferty and Carlton R. Bourne, Jr. prosecuted the case on behalf of the United States. For additional information, please contact First Assistant United States Attorney James D. Durham at (912) 201-2547.

Men from California and Texas Plead Guilty to Federal Kidnapping Charge

ALBUQUERQUE—Brandon Lawrence Jones, 35, of San Diego, California, and Jesus Manuel Gallegos, 41, of El Paso, Texas, have entered guilty pleas to an indictment charging them with a federal kidnapping charge.
Jones entered his guilty plea on December 28, 2012, and Gallegos entered his guilty plea on January 3, 2013. Both guilty pleas were entered without the benefit of plea agreements.
Court records reflect that, on the night of November 5, 2011, Jones and Gallegos carjacked and kidnapped a man as he was leaving a basketball game in El Paso, Texas.
Using an air pistol that resembled a semi-automatic pistol, Jones forced the victim to get into the passenger seat of the victim’s vehicle. Gallegos later joined Jones and the victim in the vehicle.
After directing the victim to identify banks at which the victim maintained accounts, Jones took bank cards out of the victim’s wallet; forced the victim to reveal the PINs for his bank accounts; and withdrew cash from the victim’s bank accounts.
During this time, Jones and Gallegos repeatedly struck the victim in the face and body with their fists.
Jones and Gallegos drove the vehicle from El Paso to Clines Corner, New Mexico. During one stop, they tied the victim’s hands and feet with duct tape but later released him from the restraints when they realized that it might be hard to explain a restrained passenger as they crossed through the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint at Hatch, New Mexico.
During a stop in Albuquerque, Jones and Gallegos continued to use the victim’s bank card to withdraw money from the victim’s bank accounts.
When they arrived at Clines Corner in the early morning of November 6, 2011, Jones and Gallegos parked the vehicle at a truck stop and fell asleep.
After ensuring his kidnappers were asleep, the victim escaped from the vehicle and sought help from restaurant employees at the Clines Corner truck stop, who called 911 and helped the victim contact family members in El Paso.
Shortly afterward, officers of the New Mexico State Police and Torrance County Sheriff’s Office arrested Jones and Gallegos, who were still asleep in the victim’s vehicle.
When they were arrested, Jones was in possession of a wallet containing the victim’s driver’s license, and Gallegos was in possession of one of the victim’s bank cards. In the vehicle, the officers found an air pistol, which looked like a semi-automatic pistol with a laser site; ATM receipts; and wads of used duct tape.
Jones and Gallegos were arrested on federal charges on November7, 2011, and have been in federal custody since that time.
At their sentencing hearings, which have yet to be scheduled, Jones and Gallegos each face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The case was investigated by the Albuquerque Division of the FBI and the New Mexico State Police. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles L. Barth and William Pflugrath and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Rowley.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney and FBI Assistant Director in Charge Announce Arrest of New Jersey Resident for Kidnapping Conspiracy

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and George Venizelos, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), today announced the arrest of Michael Vanhise for conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Vanhise allegedly agreed to pay co-conspirator Gilberto Valle, who was an active-duty New York City Police Officer at the time, to kidnap a woman in New York (the “victim”) and to bring her to his home in New Jersey, where she would be raped. He also allegedly participated in planning the kidnapping of a female minor. Vanhise was arrested by FBI special agents this morning at his residence in Hamilton, New Jersey, and will be presented later today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Peck in Manhattan federal court.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said, “As alleged in the complaint, Michael Vanhise engaged in conduct that reads like a script for a bad horror film but fortunately, neither he nor his co-conspirators were able to act out the twisted conspiracies described in the complaint in real-life. His arrest today is the second in this bone-chilling case, but we are not finished.”
FBI Assistant Director in Charge George Venizelos said, “The seriousness of the alleged conspiracy is self-evident. No effort to characterize the defendant’s actions is necessary. The factual allegations more than suffice to convey the depravity of the offense.”
According to the allegations in the complaint filed yesterday in Manhattan federal court and other public documents:
In a February 2012 e-mail conversation, Vanhise and Valle negotiated and agreed that Valle would kidnap the victim for $5,000. In those conversations, Vanhise and Valle planned for Valle to render the victim unconscious, bind her hands and feet, gag her, stuff her into a large suitcase, and deliver her to Vanhise’s home. Valle assured Vanhise that the victim would be delivered alive so that he could rape her.
Vanhise also e-mailed photographs of a female minor, whom Vanhise knew well, to other co-conspirators (“CC-2” and “CC-3”). CC-2 and CC-3 both expressed interest in kidnapping the child, and Vanhise provided them with the purported address of the girl, which was in close proximity to the girl’s actual home address.

* * *

Vanhise, 23, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, and a maximum fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss from the offense.
Valle, 28, of Forest Hills, New York, was charged in October 2012 with one count of kidnapping conspiracy and one count of intentionally and knowingly accessing a computer without authorization and exceeding his authorized access, and thereby obtaining information from a department and agency of the United States. His case remains pending.
Mr. Bharara praised the outstanding investigative work of the FBI. He added that the investigation is continuing.
The prosecution of this case is being handled by the Office’s Violent Crimes Unit. Assistant United States Attorneys Hadassa Waxman and Randall W. Jackson are in charge of the prosecution.
The charges against Vanhise and Valle are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.