Los Angeles News

LOS ANGELES (CBS) ― The mother of a missing Orange County woman appealed to a registered sex offender extradited back to Los Angeles for information about what happened to her daughter.

John Steven Burgess is a suspect in the disappearance of Donna Jou, a 19-year-old resident of Rancho Santa Margarita and student at San Diego State University, who was last seen riding on the back of his motorcycle June 23.

Burgess was arrested by Florida police last week on suspicion of shoplifting and returned to California, where he faces a hearing Oct. 10 on felony charges of failing to register as a sex offender.

Burgess has said he has information on Jou, but won't talk until he is given immunity on the sex charge.

"I hope this time Mr. Burgess decides to help us and put us out of this misery once and for all," said Jou's mother, Nili Jou, in a statement released today by her attorney, Gloria Allred.

Allred called a news conference today to implore Burgess -- who goes by the nickname "Sinjin" -- to reveal what he knows about the disappearance of the girl.

"Mr. Burgess admits that he has information about Donna which he refuses to disclose unless prosecutors offer him immunity in the failure-to-register case," Allred said. "We find this attempt to play 'let's make a deal' truly offensive because a young woman's life is at stake."

The attorney said her clients deserve to know what happened to their daughter, and that Burgess should be sympathetic because he also has a daughter.

"If his daughter was missing and was last seen with a sex offender, wouldn't he want to know where she was, and wouldn't he want all the information available to help find her?" Allred asked.

Burgess disappeared shortly after the girl was reported missing, and cleared out of his apartment in west Los Angeles. Orange County sheriff's deputies believe Burgess may have kept Jou confined for some time, and a cryptic instant message asking for help is the last time anyone heard from her.

Burgess was arrested in Jacksonville, Fla., in July on suspicion of possessing crack cocaine. Although he made bail in that case, he was arrested last week on suspicion of shoplifting and carrying fake identification.

Jou was last seen June 23 as she rode away from her mother's house in Rancho Santa Margarita on the back of Burgess' motorcycle. She was later seen at his west Los Angeles home at a party, authorities said.

Jou met Burgess through craigslist.com, where he used another man's photo on the Web site, and Jou swapped notes via the internet with him for about a month before meeting him in person, investigators said.

In 2002, Burgess was convicted of three counts of battery. The next year he was convicted of performing a lewd act on a child and sentenced to 146 days in jail, placed on three years probation and required to register as a sex offender for life.

Shortly after Jou's disappearance, Los Angeles police found an abandoned tool box from Burgess' truck about 1 1/2 miles from his rented home in Palms. The tool box contained a motorcycle helmet, a personalized license plate -- SINJIN1 -- as well as rope, a pair of gloves and a scrub brush, authorities said.

Jou was taking summer classes at Rancho Santiago Community College in Orange when she disappeared. At San Diego State, she was an honors student with a 4.0 grade-point average. Her family, however, said she wasn't streetwise.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)