Friday, 12 Mar 2010, 9:29 PM CST

NED HIBBERD, Reporter

FOX 26 TELEVISION - HOUSTON

HOUSTON - Private investigators from across the globe have gathered in Dallas for the World Investigators Conference.

And in this business of spying, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Nobody knows that better than a guy who’s been doing it for half a century: Jay J. Armes.

Armes has no hands. But that’s no handicap for the world-famous private eye. He operates his prosthetic metal hooks with incredible ease.

Armes has written a book about his life and he’s even inspired a 70s-era action figure. But over the years, his assignments have changed.

These days, the El Paso-based detective says he finds himself negotiating with Mexican drug cartels.

“I've solved 70 kidnappings right across the border in Juarez,” Armes says. “Right now, across the border is like working in Iraq because there are killings every single day.”

Sound like an exciting career?

Next week, the University of North Texas begins offering a class that’s the first of its kind: five months of training, turning newbies into gumshoes.

“It's very condensed and it's hands-on,” says Scott Belshaw, Ph.D. “So you're working with actual-- your instructors are actual private investigators in the field.”

Belshaw and Armes are just two out of hundreds of private investigators participating in the conference, which is held every five years.

“There are people here from France, from Malaysia, from Mexico, from Spain, from England,” says ace investigator Steven Rambam. “And from, I believe, 40 different states.”

They are trading tips and tricks and tracking technology, which can now put a spy-cam and digital recorder in a chip the size of a small thumb drive.

The Cheaters TV show has a booth at the WIC. But overall, the profession is evolving, says Rosemarie Mesis, who owns PI Magazine.

In short: less brawn, more brains.

“It's our profession that works on cases that get people out of jail that don't belong incarcerated,” says Mesis. “We work on innocence projects, we locate people.”

Many of those people don’t want to be found so some things haven’t changed all that much.

In 1921, for example, word spread in newsprint about wanted criminals. A newspaper called “The Detective” printed their mug shots and their crimes.

Today, that function is fulfilled on FOX 26 by the television show, America’s Most Wanted.

“People call America’s Most Wanted the electronic poster,” says the show’s host, John Walsh. “We've been on 22 years. Last Saturday night was our one-thousandth show.”

John Walsh addressed the conference Friday morning.

His show has helped collar more than 1,000 fugitives in 35 countries, including 17 on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list.