LinuxQuestions.org - crond dead but pid file exists

None of my cron jobs are running, Im not sure what happend but when I check crond I get this message
[root@linux cron]# service crond status
crond dead but pid file exists

I can try to start cond and it appears to run fine but my logs do show this one strange error which google cannot help with:
Jan 27 10:15:20 localhost crond[25030]: (CRON) STARTUP (fork ok)
Jan 27 10:15:20 localhost crond[25030]: (CRON) STAT FAILED (cron)
Jan 27 10:15:20 localhost crond: crond startup succeeded

I immediately check the status and again I get, "crond dead but pid file exists"

I have also tried googling for "crond dead but pid file exists" which didnt help much either.

Still investigating... cron logs
Jan 7 19:01:00 www CROND[19124]: (root) CMD (nice -n 19 run-parts /etc/cron.hourly)
Jan 7 19:44:00 www crond[3038]: (CRON) STAT FAILED (cron)
and has been dead since.. Im trying to find out what happened between this time.... eitherway, Im still lost.

****UPDATE ****
When cron starts some initialization files and some programs write their PID in /var/lock or /var/run, if it dies unexpectedly it's unable to delete them and it thinks that cron is still running.

Quote:

[root@linux var]# find -name cron*
./log/cron
./run/crond.pid
./run/crond.temp
./lock/subsys/crond
./spool/cron
[root@linux var]# mv ./run/crond.pid ./run/crond.temp
[root@linux var]# mv ./lock/subsys/crond /home/user/Desktop/Trash/
[root@linux var]# service crond status
crond is stopped
[root@linux var]# service crond start
Starting crond: [ OK ]
[root@linux var]# service crond status
crond dead but pid file exists

Crap I thought I had it that time.
****END OF UPDATE ****

Can someone help me troubleshoot this problem?
TheGNUbie