Volunteer Efforts Come Up Empty in Malibu
Mountains Search
• Family and Friends Hoped for Clues
in Missing SoCal Student’s Disappearance
Los Angeles celebrity attorney Gloria
Allred pointed a group of evangelical Christians to
the mountains of Malibu last weekend in an effort to keep the
name Donna Jou in the headlines—and to give canyon roads
a thorough search for the young woman’s remains or
belongings.
More than a dozen carloads of members of
Trinity Search & Recovery came from as far away as the
Bay Area to comb roadways and byways above the coast,
looking for any sign of the young woman. They were met by
local volunteers who fanned out on every road between U.S.
101 and the shoreline, seeking anything.
Jou was a 19-year-old premed freshman on
vacation from San Diego State University last summer when she
hopped on the rear of a motorcycle driven by a man who had
replied to her free offer of math tutoring on Craigslist. He
turned out to be a convicted sex offender. She was last
heard from when she sent her mother a text message indicating
that she was being held against her will in a bathroom at a
West Los Angeles house owned by the man, John Steven Burgess,
35.
Burgess has remained silent as to
Jou’s whereabouts, why his motorcycle disappeared, why he
was spotted washing his belongings and throwing them in a
dumpster a block from his house, or why he fled to
Florida. Burgess has been sent to prison on a probation
violation charge.
Allred told reporters she could not reveal
why she was pointing volunteer searchers to the Santa
Monica Mountains where they searched by car Saturday and
Sunday, stopping at every pullout to look for a backpack,
helmet, or other sign of Jou.
Members of her family came up from southern
Orange County to the command post at Malibu Bluffs Park. They
told the press of their devastating loss, and then went
searching along Kanan Dume Road, the serpentine 13-mile canyon
and mountain link that Burgess was known to favor on weekend
motorcycle rides.
Twenty-four specific search areas were
examined by volunteers led by Trinity Search &
Recovery, a Pleasanton-based evangelical group that mixes
prayer with activist outreach efforts. Its director, Mike
Melson, said he started the group after being embarrassed
that evangelicals from Texas and the Midwest would come
searching for missing people in California.
Melson said the group traveled 400 miles to
Malibu to mix prayer and active reconnaissance in the search,
and give Jou’s family hope. Sheriff’s deputies had
reportedly searched local canyon areas last summer, when
Burgess was first identified as a suspect and his frequent
trips through the mountains were noted.
Some of the canyon areas examined by the
group were burned in the two major fires that swept the area
last fall.
Following the two days of searching and
prayer, Allred told reporters that the effort was not a
waste, as it eliminated possible places where Jou, her
belongings or Burgess’s missing motorcycle could have
been disposed of.
