New search for missing teen

Six months after the disappearance of a 19-year-old female college student, scores of volunteers are planning to again search the Santa Monica Mountains in Malibu this weekend for any clues in her case.

A Northern California Christian search group will lead the effort, the second privately organized search for Donna Jou in the Malibu area in the past three months.

Mike Melson, who participated in the earlier search and will lead the new effort, said dozens of people have signed up on the Jou family’s website to take part.

“The response has been overwhelming, people have registered from San Clemente to Sacramento,” Melson said. “One lady put it best: We’re Christians and the Bible says if this was my daughter, this is what we would want others to do.”

But Los Angeles police detectives have scoured the area for evidence and said that nothing in their investigation so far suggests the Orange County teen was ever taken to the mountain area or killed there, said Det. Ronald Y. Ito of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Search crews have focused on the Santa Monica Mountains because it is an area believed to have been visited by John Steven Burgess, whom police have named as a suspect in the Jou case.

Detectives said Burgess met Jou on Craigslist.org and the pair exchanged e-mails and phone calls.

On June 23, Burgess picked up Jou at her parents’ Rancho Santa Margarita home on his black motorcycle. Jou was last seen at the house Burgess rented in West Los Angeles.

Burgess, a registered sex offender, was arrested in Florida this year and extradited to California. He has refused to talk to authorities about his contacts with Jou. He has not been charged in the case.

Burgess is serving a three-year sentence in state prison for failing to notify authorities of his residence.

Melson acknowledged that the search, which will focus on terrain between Decker and Topanga canyons, would be difficult but said it would be worthwhile.

“There are a lot of cynics who might think doing a search like this is a waste of time,” Melson said. “What would they do if it was their daughter missing?”

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andrew.blankstein@ latimes.com