Three missing boys who prompted a massive, two day manhunt (which included checking sexual offender registries) have been found -- in the trunk of a car right where they'd last been seen playing:

....it ended abruptly around 7 p.m., when David Agosto opened the door of a maroon Toyota Camry parked inside Cruz's yard and popped the trunk as TV cameras recorded the event.

He looked inside and recoiled in horror, hopping away, crying, hitting a wall, jumping, sitting on the ground. He was later taken away by ambulance, moaning.

It was not immediately clear what prompted Agosto to open the trunk of the Camry, and Camden County Prosecutor Vincent P. Sarubbi offered no explanation when asked.

"We have not determined if it is foul play or just a tragic accident," Sarubbi said.

Investigators, who did not note any sign of trauma on the boys' bodies, were awaiting the results of autopsies to determine how they died. The autopsies were being conducted through the night, and results were expected sometime today.

Camden Police Chief Edwin Figueroa said last night that the car had been searched during the hunt for the boys but that he did not know if the trunk had been opened.

Sarubbi asked residents who had been keeping vigil at the Cruz home to stay away to let investigators work.

"Right now, that's a crime scene, and we're treating that as a crime scene, despite the fact that it happened in such close proximity to one of the residences of one of these boys," he said.

Apparently, police searched the car and numerous houses in the area, but it just never occurred to them to search the trunk

Many questioned whether the search was thorough and why the trunk had not been opened.

"It's really a shame. That should never happen," said John DiPompo, 59, of North 33d Street, a block from where the bodies were discovered. "It makes me mad. The neighbors are all up in arms that they didn't search the car first."

DiPompo said two detectives combed through his home, including the cellar and the basement, as well as garages and bushes in the neighborhood, even a doghouse.

Figueroa said police started searching the area Thursday morning and checked the car.

"We're also going to look at our logs, find out exactly what officers were in that area," he said.

He said that the car was an older model, not equipped with a release button that the boys could have used to free themselves once inside the trunk.

David Rivera, who has lived across the street for 20 years, said the Cruz family had moved in within the last month.

"The kids used to come out and play," he said. "The oldest used to chase butterflies. The middle one used to watch out for him."

Ingrid Hartman, a neighbor, said she saw children playing around the car Thursday.

"I saw kids opening the front door," she said. "I just thought they were kids being kids."

But never mind that! We are now told the car was at fault -- for being "an older model, not equipped with a release button that the boys could have used to free themselves once inside the trunk."

Good work men!

The only thing to do now is to draft appropriate legislation making it a crime to have older cars with trunks that can't be opened! Children might manage to get inside and lock themselves in. Certainly it isn't the fault of police for not looking. (And we can't expect parents to search their own cars, can we?)

I have no idea why, but the New York Times is a bit harder on Chief Figueroa:

It was also not clear why the 150 police officers who had been searching rivers, drainpipes and tick-infested woods for the last two days had not searched the trunk of a car parked in the yard of the home where the boys disappeared.

"We're still looking into that," said Camden's police chief, Edwin J. Figueroa.

Police officials were also unable to explain why none of the bloodhounds used in the search did not pick up the scent of the children near the car, a maroon Toyota Camry.

While I think the bloodhounds (who have some brains and should know better) can be faulted for not finding the boys, the evil Toyota Corporation is the primary culprit! Toyota built that unsafe car trunk! Toyota failed to send out notices to every owner that even in the event of a massive search, it might not occur to police to open the unsafe car trunks to find children last seen playing with the car.

The buck has to stop somewhere.

MORE: It's theoretically possible that I was too hard on the cops involved, and I note that an autopsy is being performed, but the results aren't in. It might yet turn out that the boys were murdered and then placed in the trunk after the police searched it. (It would renew my faith a little.)

AND MORE: According to a more recent story, police are more and more sure they did search the trunk:

The parents of the three Camden boys and investigators are now haunted by the same impossible question: were they there the whole time?

"Right now, we know the car was searched. We did begin the search Thursday morning in that area along with a canine, a bloodhound," said Camden Police Chief Edwin J. Figueroa.

"We're also going to look at our logs to find out what officers were in the area, to make a final determination of what areas of that vehicle were searched."

they focused on the possibility that the boys were murdered and placed in the trunk afterward. "It is weird. I think it had to have been someone else," said Sarah Rivera, a family friend who joined more than a dozen devastated family members outside of Camden Police Headquarters last night.

There was no evidence to suggest that the boys were slain, Figueroa said.

Camden County Prosecutor Vincent Sarubbi added that a medical examiner would probably work all night on the boys' autopsies, to determine a cause of death.

UPDATE (12:22 p.m.): CASE CLOSED!

Autopsy: Boys died from accidental suffocation

POSTED: Saturday, June 25, 2005 11:54:50 AM
UPDATED: Saturday, June 25, 2005 12:01:15 PM

CAMDEN, New Jersey -- Autopsy results show three boys whose bodies were found in the trunk of a car following a massive, two-day search died from accidental suffocation.

Authorities in Camden, New Jersey, say foul play is not suspected.

The bodies were discovered by the father of one of the boys, who opened the car’s trunk last night after searchers had spent hours scouring the neighborhood. There, he found the bodies of his six-year-old son and his son’s five- and eleven-year-old playmates.

The boys had vanished without a trace Wednesday night while playing in the same yard where their bodies were found.

AND EXCUSE ME for asking, but why is this Philadelphia-area news coming out of Cleveland?

MORE: The Philadelphia Inquirer now has a writeup on the autopsy. (Don't know why the Cleveland story was the first to make it onto Google.)

AFTERTHOUGHT: I hope readers will remember that my mind was on pit bulls as I focused on the stupidity above. In these cases, feelings trump logic, and even facts. (Related thoughts here.)

AND EVEN MORE (06/25/05, 10:15 p.m.): This is going to sound even stranger, but I just heard a reporter on Philadelphia's KYW News Radio (1060 AM) state that the mystery is deepening, as apparently the police now insist that they did search the trunk, and it was empty.

I thought this over, and my initial reaction was that the police were lying in a bad attempt to cover up their negligence. But that really doesn't make sense, because unless they're absolute idiots, cops are well aware of the problems posed by bad coverups. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Surely no one could have killed the kids and put them in there, with the autopsy showing no foul play....

Then suddenly, it occurred to me that there is a reasonable explanation consistent with the police story.

The kids were playing hide and seek somewhere else (they'd most likely been doing something they shouldn't have), then once they started back and saw what a fuss the grownups were making with the cops, they realized they'd be in huge trouble, so they took their first opportunity to hide, without thinking it through. This would explain how they could have hidden inside the trunk, but after it had already been searched.

If you think about it, guilt would supply a kid with a motive to do something exactly like that. Simply going into a trunk doesn't make much sense, especially for an 11-year-old, unless there's a reason. Hiding in the trunk is stupid and childish, but hell, these were kids.

If the cops are telling the truth, that's my theory.

(Toyota's liability is unchanged.)

MORE: And now it's back to an admission they didn't search the trunk, along with the announcement of a bureaucratic investigation:

Police officials began an investigation into why none of the 150 officers assigned to the search checked the trunk of the car, a battered Toyota Camry parked just feet from where the boys were last seen Wednesday evening.

Chief Edwin Figueroa of the Camden Police Department said that officers did search the car on the night the boys were reported missing but added that he did not know why the trunk had been overlooked.

"I can't guess what went on in the individual minds of the police officers out there," Figueroa said.

The family would have done better to hire a private detective!

MORE: A forensic expert from New York confirms that the boys only had around three hours of air. Considering that the disappearance was at 5:00 p.m., and parents didn't call the police until after 8:00 p.m., any negligence by police may have been moot. Notwithstanding my amazement that it never occurred to a single one of the 150 officers to pop the trunk, I'm inclined to agree with commenter Persnickety below that if anyone is primarily to blame, it's the parents.

In lawyer language, of course, it'll be Toyota.

LAST (AND I HOPE LAST) UPDATE (07/01/05): An attorney for the family of one of the boys is looking into liability issues:

Authorities said that the deaths were accidental, and that the children apparently had climbed into the trunk while playing.

A medical examiner has not ruled on when the boys died, but a forensic pathologist has said they likely perished before police were called.

Peter M. Villari, a Conshohocken attorney for Anibal's mother, Elba Cruz, said it was possible that no one was to blame for the deaths. Still, he said, he is investigating whether authorities or Toyota might bear some responsibility.

Even if there are grounds for a lawsuit, Villari said, that does not mean Elba Cruz will want to file one.