BELLEVUE, Neb. -- Searchers looking for Danny Joe Eberle, who disappeared while delivering Sunday newspapers, today found a body in a wooded area near a lake at Offutt Air Force Base.
Authorities refused to release the identity of the body, found shortly after about 100 officers from more than a half-dozen metropolitan Omaha law enforcement agencies and 30 airmen from Offutt began searching a 9 square-mile area about 9:30 a.m. CDT.
Danny, 13, has been missing since he picked up his bundle of papers about 5:30 a.m. Sunday. His bicE:le and all but three of his 70 newspapers were found a few blocks away about 8:30 a.m.
Authorities have been unable to find any evidence of what happened to him.
Police Chief Warren Robinson said today's search was to be bounded by the Missouri River on the east, the Platte River on the south and Fontenelle Forest on the north, and the effort was to move west through the county.
'Being a river city, you start at river's edge and work your way out,' Robinson said.
He said searchers would use a helicoptor and a small plane in hopes of finding 'anything that might help in the return of Danny.'
John Evans, assistant agent in charge of the Nebraska-Iowa FBI Office in Omaha, said 15 FBI agents were following up leads in Nebraska and at least one other state, though he declined to name the state.
He also said he was checking for similarities in Eberle's disappearance and the case of Johnny Gosch, 12, West Des Moines, Iowa, who disappeared Sept. 5, 1982, while delivering the Des Moines Sunday Register.
