Mitrice Richardson: More Remains Found?

Mailbu Canyon - Coroner's investigators searching a rugged ravine in Malibu Canyon on Sunday found more remains believed to be from a woman whose disappearance after her release from a Los Angeles County sheriff's station has sparked a long public dispute between the department and her family, authorities said.

A sheriff's helicopter lowered a team of 12 people including coroner's investigators and a homicide detective into the same area where Mitrice Richardson's remains were found Aug. 9, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

In a search of more than four hours, the team found eight bone fragments that they believe came from Richardson but need to be tested for DNA before authorities can be certain, Whitmore said.

The coroner asked for the search and the sheriff's department facilitated it, Whitmore said, taking investigators into the canyon for the fourth time since remains were first discovered. Whitmore said the investigators think no more such searches will be necessary.

"They believe this is it," he said.

The coroner's office has called her cause of death "undetermined," and Richardson's family has asked for further investigation, including more searching and the exhuming and reexamination of the remains that were found last year.

The family has sharply and publicly criticized the sheriff's department for the release of the 24-year-old Richardson, the nearly yearlong search for her after she disappeared and the investigation of her remains. They have sued the county for wrongful death and negligence.

Sheriff Lee Baca had asked last month that the FBI assist in the investigation of the remains, a move the family supported, but on Friday the bureau declined, citing chain-of-custody issues and saying their efforts and resources would be duplicating work already done by the local authorities, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Richardson disappeared in Sept. 17, 2009 after she was released from the Lost Hills/Malibu sheriff's station in Calabasas, where she was taken and held for two hours after failing to pay an $86 restaurant bill. She did not have her car, cash, cell phone or purse because they were in her car, which was towed.

In the months after she disappeared, searchers combed 40 square miles in a hunt for the woman, and authorities said there were numerous reports that she had been spotted in Las Vegas.

Her skeleton was finally discovered 11 months later in the ravine eight miles from the sheriff's station.

A report last year by the county's Office of Independent Review found that the Sheriff's Department followed policy and acted prudently. The watchdog group said Richardson refused offers to remain jailed until daybreak or until she could get a ride, and that authorities made substantial efforts to find her in the months after she vanished.