Former Food Network Chef Sentenced in Murder Plot

Los Angeles (CNN) -- The former host of the Food Network's "Calorie Commando" was sentenced Monday to nine years in a California prison after pleading no contest to soliciting two homeless men to kill his wife, Los Angeles Superior Court spokeswoman Elizabeth Martinez said.

Juan-Carlos Cruz's wife was also in court during the sentencing, Martinez said.

Fertility issues were at the center of the murder-for-hire plot, according to sources close to the couple.

Authorities alleged that Cruz offered the two homeless men $500 to kill his wife, Shiara Davila-Morales of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said.

Police in Santa Monica, California, set up a sting and videotaped Cruz arranging the murder with the two men, Davila-Morales said. Cruz even drove one of them to his apartment and showed him how to get into the secure building, she said.

Superior Court Judge H. Chester Horn Jr. ordered Cruz to pay $1,870 in restitution, Martinez said.

Cruz was also ordered to serve half of the nine years before he is eligible to be paroled, Martinez said.

No victim impact statement was ordered, the spokeswoman said.

Cruz's plea agreement called for the nine-year sentence, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said in late October after the plea was announced.

One count of attempted murder was dropped as part of the plea settlement, the prosecutor said at the time.

Two sources close to the couple, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said their 20-year struggle to have a child overwhelmed them.

After spending a lot of money on unsuccessful fertility treatments, Cruz's wife, Jennifer Campbell, was "very depressed and talked about suicide," one source said.

The sources suggested that she may have wanted to end her life but that as a devout Roman Catholic, she believed suicide was a sin.

The failure to have a successful pregnancy was a "pretty overwhelming thing in their lives," the second source said.

The source closest to Campbell said she still loves her husband despite his arrest. The source would not comment on whether she was aware of the alleged planning before his arrest.

The source closest to Cruz, 48, said he was "nothing but a loving and devoted husband."

CNN was unable to talk Cruz or Campbell directly.

The criminal complaint accused Cruz of trying to hire David Carrington and David Walters -- homeless men who go by the street names Little Dave and Big Dave -- to murder Campbell. It was not immediately clear who was Little Dave and who was Big Dave.

The plan fell apart when one of the men informed Santa Monica police, Sgt. Jay Trisler said.

Little Dave told the celebrity news and gossip website TMZ that he was approached first by Cruz, who asked him to kill his wife for cash, and he told his friend Big Dave.

Big Dave said he told a Santa Monica police officer about the plot after he was arrested for loitering.

"We're very fortunate that we have a relationship and rapport with some of the homeless and that they were able to give us information," Trisler said.

Santa Monica police began their undercover investigation of Cruz on May 7, Trisler said. Cruz was arrested later that month at a dog park in the Cheviot Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, he said.

Big Dave and Little Dave got a place to stay while the investigation was under way. Santa Monica police put them in a hotel room to keep them out of sight, Big Dave said.

"They gave us two pizzas, a 12-pack of beer and a bottle of San Jose (tequila)," he said. "I love them."

Cruz, a Los Angeles resident, was an overweight pastry chef at the Hotel Bel Air until he changed his focus to promote low-calorie recipes.

He wrote "The Juan-Carlos Cruz Calorie Countdown Cookbook: A 5-Week Eating Strategy for Sustainable Weight Loss," published in 2007.

The Food Network issued a short statement in October saying Cruz "has not been under contract or associated with Food Network for a number of years."

Rally to Keep Hasanni Campbell Case Alive

SFGate.com- Even the most stalwart volunteers in the search for Hasanni Campbell fear they will never find any trace of the adorable 5-year-old with cerebral palsy who disappeared one year ago today.

"We pretty much know we are searching for a body, but we still need to find him," said Sherri-Lyn Miller, founder of Citizens for the Lost, a civilian search and rescue organization.

The group, which began looking for Hasanni the day he went missing, may have to face the probability that the young boy has perished, but its primary focus is to ensure Campbell's case remains alive and active.

The group has scheduled a rally outside the Alameda County district attorney's office today at 2 p.m. to renew public interest in the case. Miller and Gail Steele, an Alameda County supervisor, are scheduled to meet with the district attorney's office afterward, Miller said.

A lot has happened in the year since Hasanni disappeared - but unfortunately, little has changed with the investigation to find him.

Sadly, neither police nor volunteers are any closer to knowing what happened to the youngster on Aug. 10, 2009. An extensive search conducted by city, county and federal authorities who canvassed the community with canines yielded no sign of him.

His foster father, Louis Ross, maintains that the boy was last seen inside his car parked in the Rockridge neighborhood. Ross and his then-fiancee, Jennifer Campbell, the boy's aunt, issued tearful pleas for his return. Then police disclosed that Ross had sent Campbell expletive-laden text messages, threatening to abandon Hasanni on a BART train platform.

Ross and Campbell were arrested Aug. 27 but later released due to a lack of evidence.

The couple gave birth to their first child in November and moved to Arizona from the Bay Area last February, authorities said. Since then, the couple have split and Ross moved to Maryland to be closer to his own family members.

Miller and others, meanwhile, continue the search.

"I made a promise in the beginning that I wasn't going to stop until we found Hasanni," Miller said.

It has been a year to the day since Miller contacted the Oakland police and asked for a printout of the flyer posted to find the boy.

Miller, who owned a San Leandro print shop, produced 10,000 flyers and T-shirts, then drove to Oakland around 8 a.m. and started looking for the boy.

Since that day, Miller has organized civilian searches involving more than 100 volunteers and stepped on the toes of law enforcement officials on more than one occasion.

Oakland police initially discredited the group's efforts, saying they did not condone civilian searches.

At Fremont's Central Park last spring, a San Jose police search and rescue team was admonished both for volunteering their services and crossing jurisdictional boundaries without permission, she said.

A rally held six months after Hasanni disappeared also produced a weekend search conducted by police that was not publicized, Miller pointed out.

"If it weren't for us, this case would have died last year," Miller said. "We put police in a situation where they had to respond. Do you think the six-month vigil was a mistake?"

If there is another reason that Miller decided to launch an organization around the disappearance of Hasanni, it was because of the outpouring of support for Sandra Cantu, an 8-year-old Tracy girl reported missing on March 27, 2009. Her body was found less than two weeks later in an irrigation ditch. Melissa Huckaby, a 28-year-old Sunday schoolteacher, was convicted of her murder.

"I'd just finished a print job for them and saw all the support the Cantu family had received," Miller said. "I just couldn't understand why Hasanni's case hadn't received the same support."

Officially, the Hasanni Campbell case is still open, but there are no new leads or evidence to chase down, authorities said.

"It's not a good thing to say, but the case of Hasanni Campbell has gone cold," said Officer Holly Joshi, a spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department.

"We're going to keep the case open because it's a priority for us," Joshi added.

"There has to be someone out there who has some information, no matter how small, and it could be the piece that breaks it open for us."

Police Say Missing Boy Dead, Foster Parents Suspects

(CNN) -- Police say the foster parents of a missing 5-year-old California boy with cerebral palsy are suspects in what is now being called a homicide investigation.

Jennifer Campbell and Louis Ross, who are engaged, told police in Oakland, California, that Hasanni Campbell disappeared on August 10 while Ross was dropping him off at the shoe store where his fiance worked.

Police arrested the two as suspects, but released them this week pending further investigation, Lt. Jeff Thomason said.

"We had nothing to do with it. He's our little boy we want him and we want him home, and our main concern is finding him," a tearful Campbell told CNN affiliate KGO.

Campbell, Hasanni's biological aunt, was arrested Friday in the Union City BART station on suspicion of accessory to murder after the fact, Thomason said. Her fiancé, Ross, was arrested a short time later at the couple's Fremont home on suspicion of murder.

Campbell was released Monday and Ross Tuesday after the Alameda County District Attorney's Office concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge them, Deputy District Attorney Tom Rogers said.

"We will continue to review the case as police continue their investigation," Rogers said.

Thomason declined to explain why the case had become a homicide investigation less than a month after Hasanni's guardians reported him missing. No body has been found.

"There's a lot of evidence right now we feel we still need to keep close to the investigation," he said.

"Even though they're released, they're still suspects," he said. "They're the last people who saw Hasanni alive."

Police also have released surveillance video from Wal-Mart showing the couple and Hasanni together on August 6 -- the last independent sighting of Hasanni alive.

In an interview last month with HLN's Nancy Grace, Ross said he left Hasanni outside his BMW for two to five minutes while he went to get his fiance to open the back door of the store.

"By the time I got there, Jennifer is already out of the store, walking toward me, asking, 'Where is Hasanni?' And I say, 'What do you mean, where is Hasanni?' And I look around to the side, and he is no longer there."

Ross and Campbell have maintained their innocence and continued to cooperate with police, said John Burris, a lawyer who has been advising the couple since the boy's disappearance.

"They're both very emotional. It's been traumatic for her as she'd never been in custody before. She felt she'd been treated terribly, that they'd been duplicitous toward her after she'd been cooperating with the investigation," Burris said.

"Mr. Ross is quite emotional as well, though he seemed to be more worried about her," Burris said.

But police believe Hasanni was not near the store August 10, Thomason said.

The officer said the Wal-Mart surveillance footage from August 6 represents the last known sighting of Hasanni alive, independent of his foster parents' reports.

"It shows we have an independent source showing him alive," he said. "We don't believe he was ever in north Oakland on the 10th [of August]."