It’s a high profile missing persons case: A pregnant Pevely woman, gone for twenty months. Now investigators hope technology will provide them with the break they need to find her.

But they’re not using special forensic equipment or a police database. They’re using the social networking site “My Space.”

This isn’t your typical My Space page. While it does have pictures and messages, the primary goal here is generating new leads in this cold case.

The family has documented each day she’s been gone, held vigils and even made pleas in the paper for her safe return. But now Hubert and Bertha Propst are searching somewhere else for their missing daughter: online.

All prospective school employees must be fingerprinted and undergo federal criminal background checks under a new requirement from the state Legislature.

The requirement, which went into effect last week, does not affect current employees, unless they lived outside of the state for at least two years immediately before being hired.

Local school officials said they are prepared to handle the new background checks, which will give administrators a more complete idea of a person’s past.

The state criminal history record and child abuse history clearances that applicants must have will still be required, state Department of Education spokeswoman Nicole Rob said.

Fictional private detectives are a glut on the market. The highest accolade their creators can receive is to be compared to these icons, which is why so many dust jacket blurbs ballyhoo lesser writers as the next Dashiell Hammett or as the heir to Raymond Chandler’s mantle. But few deserve to be mentioned in the same breath.

One who does is Loren D. Estleman, whose superbly realized private eye, Amos Walker, has just appeared in “American Detective,” the 17th novel in a series that began with “Motor City Blue” in 1980.

Estleman pounds out his stories on a mechanical typewriter, just like Chandler did. Like Chandler, he writes in the first person, telling his story from the detective’s perspective. And his creation, Walker, superficially resembles Spade and Marlowe.

In a back office of the Social Services Department in Gate City sits one of the commonwealth’s best fraud investigators.

Carolyn Elliott is no police officer, but she catches criminals part time at a rate that would make a beat cop blush with envy.

Elliott is a full-time employee of Scott County Social Services, but due to budget cuts she only works part time as the department’s fraud investigator.

Video cameras hooked up to computers increase in popularity for home surveillance

When Russell Ricca started having problems with vandalism and trash on his property two years ago, he installed a pair of surveillance cameras on the outside of his house.

Little did he know his home security cameras would record footage of a vehicle burglary across the street, and with his help, police arrested two people for the crime.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) govern civil procedure in the United States district courts, or more simply, court procedures for civil suits. The FRCP are promulgated by the United States Supreme Court pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act, and then approved by the United States Congress. The Court’s modifications to the rules are usually based on recommendations from the Judicial Conference of the United States, the federal judiciary’s internal policy-making body. Although federal courts are required to apply the substantive law of the states as rules of decision in cases where state law is in question, the federal courts almost always use the FRCP as their rules of procedure. States make their own rules that apply in their own courts, but most states have adopted rules that are based on the FRCP.

To all of the disreputable criminals out there: your practice of preying on senior citizens just got a bit tougher.

The New York State Senate last week passed a bill that would subject anyone convicted of harming a senior citizen with increased jail time.

The bill, which is currently being mulled over by the Assembly, would turn any assault against a senior citizen over the age of 70 into a class D or E felony, which carries a penalty of seven years of prison time.

Food vendors, building contractors, classroom speakers and family members enter schools every day.

They are all required to check in, but most don’t undergo background checks.

School employees do. That includes substitute teachers.

So how did a substitute teacher formerly arrested on a charge of criminal domestic violence qualify to teach in a South Pointe High physical education class last week? School district officials are trying to find out.

Senate Proposes Tighter School Security

A new proposal demands that state and local schools expand their security plan. It’s a bill that has already passed the Texas Senate and is headed for a vote in the house. It proposes tighter security rules for all Texas schools.

If the bill is signed into law by Governor Rick Perry, all public school teachers would have to submit their fingerprints for a national criminal background check. Janitors, teacher`s aides, and other non-certified public school employees hired after September 1st would also have to submit fingerprints for a national check, as would the employees of contractors working on school grounds. School districts would also be barred from hiring anyone convicted of a sex offense or other serious crime against children.

For the past several months, I have been traveling around this country presenting training seminars on the subject of marriage counseling for couples with infidelity. The counselors, psychologists, social workers and clergy with whom I meet are alarmed about a double-barreled crisis threatening the American family.

Couples are telling therapists that they are drowning in a frenetic struggle to earn a living, raise a family and make ends meet. Both single-parent families and two-career couples — both affluent and working class — face burdens that they describe as overwhelming. What is most troubling is that the marriage or partnership is getting lost in this whirlwind of activity.

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