Authorities scoured a swath of upstate New York on Saturday in hopes of finding a woman last seen leaving a trendy Manhattan club with a registered sex offender.

State police said they had searched several locations in Orange County and collected forensic evidence in the suspicious disappearance of Laura Garza, 25, of Brooklyn.

While investigators were treating the case as a possible homicide, "we certainly haven't given up hope she is alive," state police Capt. Wayne Olson said Saturday evening.

Garza vanished after leaving the nightclub Marquee at about 4 a.m. Wednesday with two men. She was last seen around sunrise that day in the Orange County community of Newburgh, about 70 miles north of Manhattan, with one of the men, Michael Mele, 23, state police said.

Mele was added to the state sex offender registry in April after being convicted in Rockland County of forcible touching, according to the Newburgh Town police. He was sentenced to six years' probation.

Mele turned himself in to Newburgh Town police Friday on a warrant accusing him of a local law violation in New York City, Olson said; he did not know the details. Mele was apparently later transferred to the Rockland County Sheriff's Department to be booked on a probation violation charge, Olson said.

Rockland jail officers said Mele was in custody Saturday night but had no further information.

Messages left at Mele's home and with his lawyer's answering service were not immediately returned Saturday.

Police combed his apartment complex in Wallkill, near Newburgh, and used a helicopter to scan surrounding areas. They also seized his SUV.

The New York Police Department said it officers questioned Mele.

The club's security cameras captured Garza and Mele together. Police told the New York Post she was seen leaving the club willingly with Mele and another man from upstate New York.

Marquee spokeswoman Virginia Lam said the Chelsea club was working closely with police.

City officials and child-abuse experts don't understand how the abduction and torture of a teenage boy could have gone undetected for more than a year in this middle-class community once dubbed the second-safest in Northern California.

"Unless this child was chained in the basement for the duration, it's just not possible that somebody could not have seen something," said Lindy Turner-Hardin, executive director of the nonprofit Child Abuse Prevention Council of San Joaquin County.

But neighbors of a Tracy couple didn't notice much, except that the 16-year-old boy looked very skinny when he was spotted taking out the trash recently. And he was seldom seen outside even though he was of school age.

Authorities said the couple and the boy's former guardian repeatedly used a baseball bat, a knife and a belt to abuse the teen, often keeping him in chains. The emaciated boy stumbled into a gym behind the family's home Monday with a chain padlocked to his ankle, pleading for safety and shelter.

Michael Schumacher, 34, and his wife Kelly Layne Lau, 30, are accused of more than a dozen charges, including torture, kidnapping and child abuse. The boy's former guardian, Caren Ramirez, 43, was charged with similar offenses.

All three, who have yet to enter pleas, are expected to appear in court Monday. They could face life in prison if convicted.

Authorities said the boy, who had escaped from a group foster home, was abused in the two-story Tudor-style house separated by a fence from the gym where he was discovered. A contractor and a Girl Scout leader were raising four young children there in what the wife's MySpace page depicted as a happy household devoted to dance recitals and Oakland Raiders football.

"This has been kind of a shock for us to gain attention this way," said Suzanne Tucker, mayor pro tem of Tracy. "We're a family-oriented community with a small-town feel where neighbors know each other."

Until this case made national headlines, an increase in gang violence was the highest-profile crime problem in Tracy, which was rated the second-safest city in Northern California by a recent survey.

But Turner-Hardin said that San Joaquin county, where Tracy is located, had lately seen an increase in requests for child abuse services. At the same time, the city just east of San Francisco has had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation.

"With the housing market and unemployment rates really going through the roof, kids sometimes get the bad end of that," she said.

The boy had been under the care of Sacramento County's child welfare system after Ramirez was charged with beating him. He went missing from a group home in May 2007.

Authorities said he returned to Ramirez two months later, this time living in the couple's Tracy home.

After the boy escaped from the group home, officers filed a missing persons report, said Sacramento police spokesman Sgt. Norm Leong. Noting that police respond to about five runaway calls a day, Leong said the boy was never located.

Dr. Victor Carrion, who studies the effects of trauma on children at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, said it wasn't surprising that the boy returned to the person who beat him. Abused children almost certainly develop post-traumatic stress disorder and begin to believe they deserve the mistreatment, he said.

NASA says space shuttle Endeavour will begin its cross-country return trip to Florida on Monday, one day later than expected.

The shuttle's return atop a modified jumbo jet had been expected to begin Sunday morning. The space agency blamed the delay on preparations to install the flight tail cone on the shuttle.

Endeavour touched down in California on Nov. 30 after stormy weather at the shuttle's main Florida landing site forced a landing at Edwards Air Force Base.

It takes about a week and costs $1.8 million to transport the shuttle from California to Florida.

Endeavour returned from a nearly 16-day mission to repair and upgrade the international space station.

In the harsh light of the morning after his sentencing, O.J. Simpson's future was clear Saturday. His new home will be a prison cell in the Nevada desert with his door to freedom hinging on an appeal of a trial that his lawyers say was filled with errors.

"This is not a frivolous appeal," Yale Galanter, Simpson's lawyer, said. "There were some grave errors made by Judge (Jackie) Glass, and we think they are strong enough to overturn the conviction. We also think we have a shot at bail."

Galanter has cited six initial issues for appeal. The most significant concern could be the exclusion of blacks from the jury selection. The defense also will protest the judge allowing comments about Simpson's 1994 Los Angeles murder case in which he was acquitted of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.

On Saturday, Simpson remained at the Clark County jail where he has been housed since his conviction on Oct. 3, along with co-defendant Clarence "C.J." Stewart. The two men were found guilty of 12 criminal charges, including kidnapping, armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.

Simpson was sentenced Friday to 9 to 33 years in prison. Stewart got 7 1/2 to 27 years.

Michael Shapiro, a New York defense lawyer who has followed the Las Vegas case, said Simpson's case may get extra attention from Nevada Supreme Court, the state's only appellate court.

"Superimposed over all of it is that he's O.J. He's not Joe Schmo," Shapiro said. The justices also could be influenced by Simpson's murder trial, he said, calling it "the 800-pound gorilla in the room."

Before any appeal winds its way to the Nevada Supreme Court, Simpson faces years in prison for a September 2007 confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers over collectibles that Simpson insisted were stolen from him.

"Prison will be very taxing on him," Galanter said. At 61, Simpson is not in great health, he said.

"He'll be treated like every other inmate," said Howard Skolnik, director of the Nevada Department of Corrections. "The only issue might be whether we have to provide a little more protective custody because of his notoriety, at least at the start."

Gabriel Grasso, another Simpson lawyer, anticipated that Simpson would find friends in prison, adding that Simpson had been buying snacks for fellow inmates at the Clark County jail.

"I think when he does meet people in jail, they're going to treat him well because he treats them well," Grasso said.

Simpson could be moved within a week to High Desert State Prison, about 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where a 2004 inmate brawl killed one inmate and wounded 18 others. Skolnik said it was unlikely he would go to Nevada's one maximum security facility because he was not under a life sentence. Nevada has six medium security prisons.

Wherever he winds up, the accommodations will be spartan.

Skolnik acknowledged that adjusting to prison may be difficult for a man who once lived the high life as a football star, movie actor and advertising pitchman.

Prison cells average 78 square feet. Each cell has a narrow window about four inches wide and 30 inches long. Most have two beds, a commode, a sink, a shelf and a plastic glass window on the door that allows guards to peer inside.

He won't have much freedom at meal time either. The state allocates $2.18 for meals per day per inmate, and men get a standard 2,800-calorie diet. Hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken and pizza are among the most popular menu items, Skolnik said.