A Columbia, Missouri, father receives a call from his teenage daughter’s high school, reporting she is absent after missing all her classes.
He calls his 15-year-old several times. After receiving no answer, he rushes home from work to check on her. He hopes she simply overslept or missed the bus. But she isn’t there, and some of her belongings, including her phone, are also missing.
The teen is immediately reported missing. Police believe she intentionally prepared to leave home. After searches turn up nothing and her phone remains unused since the day she vanished, investigators begin interviewing her friends. Fellow students say she may have been talking to someone online.
More than four months later, police find the girl cowering naked in a closet in a Fort Collins, Colorado, home, where she had been forced to work in a snow shoveling business.
Joining Nancy Grace today:
- Greg Morse - Criminal Defense Attorney of Morse Legal, Author of “The Untested” [found on Amazon]
- Caryn Stark - Forensic Psychologist, Renowned TV and Radio Trauma Expert and Consultant; Instagram: carynpsych, FB: Caryn Stark Private Practice
- Todd Shipley - Digital Cyber-Crime expert, Former Detective Sergeant with the Reno, Nevada Police Dept. [25 year in law enforcement], Author of: "Surviving a Cyberattack: Securing Social Media and Protecting Your Home," and “Investigating Internet Crimes: An Introduction to solving Crimes in Cyberspace;" X Twitter: @webcase
- Titania Jordan - Chief Parent Officer of Bark Parental Controls, and Author: "Parenting In A Tech World;"Instagram/X: @TitaniaJordan
- Gigi McKelvey - Journalist, Host of Podcast “Pretty Lies and Alibis;"Facebook, IG, TikTok: @PrettyLiesAndAlibis, X: @PrettiesLiesAlibi
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A little Missouri girl missing
five long months, just found in a sex offender's closet
seven hundred miles away, naked, cowering, but alive. Good evening,
(00:22):
I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories, and I want
to thank you for being with us.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Columbia, Missouri, a father receives a call from his daughter's
high school. His fifteen year old daughter never showed up
to class that morning. Calls to the team's cell go unanswered,
and when dad rushes home to check on her, he
finds the home empty, his daughter nowhere in sight.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
A parent's worst nightmare. You go to work, you think
everything is fine, and then you get that call from
the school your daughter never showed up. Joining me an
all star panel to make sense of what we are learning.
Now listen, hey, Columbia, Missouri.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Father gets a call from his daughter's high school that
she never arrived to class. The dad calls his fifteen
year old several times, and, getting no answer, rushes home
from work to check on her. He's hopeful that she
just overslept or missed the bus, but when he gets home,
the teen isn't there, and some of her belongings, including
her phone, are missing.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Okay, that's a sign right there that her phone is missing,
probably her school backpack, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything
is wrong. She typically takes her phone and her backpack
to school every day. Did you know that over thirty
three percent of all child disappearances kidnaps occur in around
(01:47):
or related to getting to school. It could be at
the bus stop, it could be walking the route to school,
getting off the bus, walking back home, even approaching the school.
Like Kiren Horman, it goes on and on. Nearly half,
(02:07):
over thirty three percent of all child disappearances kidnaps stranger
related occur as it connects to getting to and from school.
So right there we see a problem joining me. Greg Morris,
high profile lawyer, criminal defense attorney out of Palm Beach,
(02:29):
author of the Untested. He is the partner at Moore's Legal. Greg.
Right there, that is where law enforcement starts the search.
First of all, law enforcement always says, oh, she'll be
back home, don't worry, she's probably out with her little boyfriend.
That's what they normally say. But then when and if
(02:52):
they get concerned about the missing child, then they start
looking at the school and the routes to school. Explain.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, so police are going to start and spiral outwards.
When they're looking for a missing person. Most people are
locally found, so they're going to start think, maybe she's
a teenager, she went to her friend's house, didn't call
her parents.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Then they're going to.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Start retracing the steps she should have taken, spoken with
her friends, and things of that nature. Although this case
exemplifies why you need to start with the phone.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Karen Starting joining me renowned forensic psychologist, TV radio trauma expert,
and you can find her at karenstart dot com. Karen
with a C. Karen, thank you for being with us. Karen.
What is it that law enforcement always at the get go,
whether it's a missing girl, a missing boy, or typically
a missing woman, they go, oh, there'll be back, they're
(03:48):
out with their little boyfriend or fill in the blank.
They never take it seriously at the beginning. They don't, Nancy.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
They really are trying to get the parents to not
be upset or the people that are looking for them,
and for some reason they keep trying to say things like, well,
she's a runaway or she's with a friend, just like
you said, I'm really trying to quiet the fact that
these people might be getting really upset, of course and frightened.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Why is that? Todd Shipley. Todd Shipley is joining US
digital cyber crime expert, former detective sergeant with the Reno Police,
never lack of business in Reno, twenty five years in
LA and author of Surviving a Cyber Attack, also author
of Investigating Internet Crimes. Todd, thanks for being with us.
Why is it? In your twenty four years in LA
(04:40):
law enforcement? I'm sure you saw it over and over
and over where detectives, investigators beat cops and saying, ah,
she'll be back.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Well, because it commonly is that way, you know, particularly
with runaway kids. They look at it that it's somebody
that walked off through a girlfriend's house or went someplace
with a boyfriend, and they'll show up within you know,
hours or days and it won't be a kid depping.
It's hard, at least initially to figure that out.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Straight out to Gg McKelvey joining me, journalist, host of
Pretty Lies and Alibi's podcast, Gg, thank you for being
with us. Another factor into why in this jurisdiction police
may not have taken her disappearance seriously. At the beginning
is because this neck of the woods, Columbia, Missouri is
(05:28):
the safest place, the safest urban area in Missouri in
which to live well.
Speaker 7 (05:33):
Columbia, Missouri has one of the lowest crime rates in
the state. It's very close to nature. We just don't
hear bad things like this happening in this ideal midwestern town.
And so I think with the comfort of living in
a place like that, you don't necessarily think the worst
is going to happen right there in your hometown.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, you know, you're right, Gg McKelvey. It's got a
pretty low, pretty low popular one hundred and thirty thousand.
It is close to nature. That's what it's known for,
the Missouri River. Not only that, it's got this extensive
trail going through the city, very low crime rate. So
(06:16):
Greg Morris, I don't totally well, I do blame the police,
but I get where they're coming from. This type of
case is very rare for them. So when it's an
aberans then you don't you got to put on blinders,
I guess would be a way to describe what happened
at the get go, Greg, Well, that's.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
What happens again. The police don't want to spend resources.
They think this is going to turn out fine. Another
teenager that's met or went out late with their boyfriend
or other friends.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
They'll come home in a day or two. That's the
common way.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
This, you know, usually turns out for people, So that
time is valuable. But police also know that most of
these cases are going to turn out to be a
teenager that comes home a day or two later. And
this is very similar to an issue with law enforcement.
If you recall the Cheshire murders in Connecticut. The police
were outside that home and the reason why they didn't
(07:14):
go in because it's an upscale neighborhood in Connecticut. They
would never expect what happened in that home and the
horrible things that the two perpetrators did to the family
to happen.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
So they waited outside and more bad stuff happened.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
It's difficult for law enforcement to know when to jump.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Into an investigation.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Believe there's crime that's happening, and we have to get
on it right away too.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Let's see if this situation plays out. But time is.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Valuable when people go missing, and that's the difficult dilemma here.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Well, you know I heard Mark Klass describe it as
sixty miles an hour. That's how quickly your child can
get away, at the least sixty miles an hour if
they're in a perpse car. So with that in mind,
the dad originally tried to soothe himself by saying, oh,
(08:05):
maybe she overslept, maybe she missed the bus and races home.
And that's a psychological issue. Karen start, why is it
that our minds are they trying to protect us? Don't
go to oh, my stars, she's been kidnapped by a
sex offender. She's going to die. We don't race to
that conclusion. Her mind doesn't let us go there. He
(08:26):
thought she overslept.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Well, because it's such a horrible conclusion to come to, Nancy,
I feel like people protect themselves. Actually, when it comes
to something like that, you just don't want to believe,
think about it, that something can happen to you, it
happens to other people, until in fact it does happen
to you. So it's really a good psychological defense.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
The dad comes home realizes that his little girl has
not overslept, she hasn't missed the bus, Her cell phone
and backpack are gone. He doesn't buy into she's just
off for the little frint and reports her missing immediately.
Speaker 8 (09:03):
The Columbia, Missouri teen girl is immediately reported missing. Searches
of the area turn up nothing, and her phone is
not ping since the day of her disappearance. Investigators turned
to interviewing her friends. Fellow students say the fifteen year
old may have been talking to someone online.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Okay, that is significant that her phone has not pinged
since the day she disappeared. Okay, straight back out to
Todd Shipley cybercrime expert, explain, what does that mean that
your phone doesn't ping?
Speaker 6 (09:33):
Well, it means that the phone was turned off and
was not registering on a cell site someplace within the
city that she would normally be near. So they were
able to query those sites and find out that her
cell phone wasn't registering on any location nearby the house,
the school, wherever she normally was, and they couldn't find her.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Explain what is a ping? Ba specific Todds.
Speaker 6 (10:01):
The ping is an electronic message from your phone to
a cell tower to let it know that it's in
the area so that it can receive information from the system.
So you have to announce that you're in a location
so that the data can be sent to your specific phone,
and that ping allows the cell tower to say, oh,
(10:21):
you're in this area, and I can send messages, phone calls,
whatever to you know, the Internet to your phone and
be able to identify where you're at. And so none
of that was there because the phone was turned off.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
So can I put it in regular people talk? Todd Shipley,
And this comes up so often in trials. Typically it's
defense attorneys like you, Greg Morris, arguing that pings don't
mean anything and we cannot rely on pings. But what
pings are and I think we're going to see that,
by the way, and the upcoming Brian Coberger trial a
(10:55):
lot of digital and phone evidence, the evidence and the
lack there of evidence such as him cutting off his phone,
turning it off just before the murders, and then turning
it back on just after the murders. So there's a
lack of digital evidence at the time of the murders
(11:17):
in this particular window. But Greg Morris, the defense attorneys
like you who've won a lot of cases, have made
it part of their repertoire to argue pings can't be
relied upon. But it's really elementary. It's rudimentary. You turn
your cell phone on and you get in the car too.
(11:38):
Let's just pretend go to your son's soccer game, and
as you pass cell towers, the signal emitted from your
phone pings off or registers with those horribly ugly cell
towers we pass. Some are decorated to look like a tree,
(11:58):
a tree with really weird leaves, but the horrible ugly
cell towers. Every time you pass one, your phone will
connect with that cell tower. It's really not hard to understand.
Yet somehow defense attorneys like you managed to obfuscate the
simple truth. How do you do that? Morse?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Well, because cell site location information and these pings you're
talking about sure to see if a person's in a
general area, is their phone on? Are they moving somewhere?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
But why why do you make it soell so mysterious,
nors But it doesn't these pings you're talking about like
it's mystical, magical, it's not so.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
The cell site tower from AT and T down the
street from my house on the inner coastal was out,
so my cell phone had to ping off of a
different tower located further away from me.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Once that tower was out.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So let's suppose a progress so far's again how far
that's my point.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
How far away was the other cell tower?
Speaker 4 (12:57):
It's still you're not getting location far away?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Was it two miles? A mile?
Speaker 3 (13:02):
I don't know exactly how far away it is, but
it checked it from my local Where you would I.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Lie because that would ruin your argument if you said
it was only one mile further.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
And if it was a mile, isn't a mile a
big difference?
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Well that's how they do it. So what's suppose you
mess your head up if you're on the jury.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Let's suppose there's a crime on First Street in New York,
But actually.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
I was on twentieth Street, but my phone pinged off
the First Street tower. So now the police believe I
was in the area of the murder even though I
wasn't because cell site location information was misleading.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Let me counter your argument with one word, triangulation. Have
you heard that word? Okay, Shipley, don't go to deathcom
for explain what triangulation means to totally destroy Morse's argument.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
The problem is he's mixing up the two things, the communication,
the ping itself saying I'm here in your geolocation of
where that phone is at or two very different things.
And yes, it is very difficult to figure out exactly
precisely where a person is through these pings, but that geolocation,
that triangulation, we can narrow down a physical location where
(14:12):
somebody is because talking to two cell towers is just
simple math, and you have to figure out where it
was and what angle it is because the towers, which
most people don't know, have faces on them, and so
which face of that cell tower did the ping come
off of, So it knows a general location where it's
coming from. Anyway, So you put two of those together
(14:34):
and you can actually get a location or narrow it
down to where that person was geographically in the area.
Speaker 9 (14:43):
If you know somebody who's missing and you get information
or some type of connection with them and they have
been off of you know, out of touch for a while,
make sure you call law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
A missing person's report is filed after a fifteen year
old Missouri teen fails to show up to school one
December morning. An intense investigation is launched, but the exhaustive
searches yield little to no clues about the whereabouts of
the missing teen. Her socials have gone silent and her
phone has not pinged since her disappearance.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Hold your horses, did everybody miss what we just reported?
Investigators began after they hit a dead end, interviewing her
little friends. The little friends say the teen may have
been talking to someone online. Okay, to Titania and Jordan
(15:50):
joining me, Chief parent officer at Bark, Parental Controls, author
of Parenting and a Tech World. Now, this is how
I found out about Bark, which led me to Titoya.
We got BARK and put it on the children's cell phones.
It picks up words like scary words like sex, I
(16:13):
want to see you naked, send me nudes, hurt myself? Okay,
it's so sensitive, and this is not an AD. It's
so sensitive. I got an alert. You have an alert
on your son John David's phone. Well, I nearly did
a backlip because he never does anything wrong. Knock on
wood product. So I looked it up and it said
(16:35):
self harm on my six foot six, two hundred and
something pounds. Soun self harm. You wouldn't expect that, right.
I looked at what it was. He's a soccer goalie
and he had made a really good dive. I saw
it happen where he's basically horizontal catching the ball and
(16:55):
his arm went through the net and he got a
big bruise right here. But he was so proud he
showed off the bruise, saying, I save the goal. Right.
It was so sensitive that it picked up the bruise
on his arm and alerted me the other day, you're
(17:17):
gonna you're gonna laugh about this part to Tanya. I
got an alert on John Dave. It's never Losey's phone,
It's always John David's phone. And I looked it up
and it said disturbing blah blah blah nature. Guess what
it was? The Nancy Gray Show crime stories about some
victim having been kidnapped and killed. And he subscribes to
(17:43):
our I guess YouTube, And he picked up the banner
on YouTube. Luckily he had not opened it. But still,
that is how sensitive Bart is. Now that aside, that's
how I found Titania. Titania red flag waving. Listen on
this investigators speak to her little friends. They say she
(18:03):
may have been talking to someone online. Translation, she is
talking to someone online, someone she kept secret from her dad.
That's what that means so online secret take it on.
Speaker 10 (18:17):
No parent thinks that this will happen to their child,
But when you know that rate at which predators are
online engaging with children, you can't not think that it
could be your child. You have to be prepared, You
have to be monitoring. You have to take easy steps
like don't allow connected tech in their bedrooms overnight behind
(18:39):
closed doors. If you do give your child tech, make
sure it's safer tech that will proactively alert you when
creepy older men and sex offenders are trying to engage
with your child, which the bark phone does.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Well, here's the other thing, and again I'm not pushing Mark.
If you don't know exactly what to do, like what
do you do? Gorab their phone and run off with it.
It's a physical thing to jump on them and take
their phone away, which I have done. It's not easy,
and run away with it. Lock yourself in the bathroom
and try to scroll through their stuff. Okay, no, something
(19:16):
like a net nanny like bart to me, that's an
easy way to do it, so you don't have to
scroll through their phone and look for what you don't
even know what you're looking for. As a matter of fact,
this particular app, Boo Boo. It's a dating friendship app
and it allows completely anonymous trolling. You know, where you
(19:41):
look for a friend or a love interest. As a
matter of fact, this little girl had signed up for Boo.
Speaker 11 (19:49):
Listen, a Columbia, Missouri girl signs up for Boo, a
popular dating and friendship app that matches users based on
common personality markers like zodiac signs, any types, and the
results of an in app personality quiz. When she hits
it off with another user, the two moved to Snapchat
and develop a romantic relationship through texts, pictures, videos, and
(20:11):
audio messages. After a month of chatting, the teen's online
bow desperately wants to meet her in person.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
You know what's really interesting about the Boo at Titanya,
is it actually looks like a game. I don't know
if you remember the missus pac Man and pac Man
games video games, some of the first ones. These little
creatures look like them, like the little pac Man creatures,
(20:40):
And it looks like see that right there. It looks
like a little game where you quote meet new people.
It looks so inviting and so harmless, doesn't it?
Speaker 9 (20:51):
To Tanya?
Speaker 10 (20:52):
It sure does. I'm actually pulling up the app Store
now to see what it's rated, because there is no
governing body that mandates that people who submit their apps
to the App Store are accurate, right, It's up to
each app maker to rate. That Also a good thing
to know. Whether you're using Bark or Apple screen Time
(21:15):
or Google Family Link, you can get alerted to when
your child downloads an app, so you can go and
look it up. Just like you wouldn't drop them off
at an international airport all alone. Don't let them encounter
everyone in the world and all the content ever created
online without you understanding the portal through which they're doing.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
So okay, so now you're telling me, I neede an
app that tells me every time the twins download an
app on their phone. Is that what you just said.
Speaker 10 (21:44):
If you don't have Bark, you have Bark, so we
will alert you when your child has downloaded a problematic app.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Okay, and so listen to this, Karen Stark. Okay, this
is going to make Karen Stark and Todd Shipley do
a backflip. Okay, try to stay seated. So it connects
you with friends online based on a romantic relationship based
on an in app personality quiz What sex offender can't
(22:12):
lie on that? Okay? Zodiac signs integram types a quiz
Zodiac signs. You know how many times we have covered
cases where a registered sex offender, or probably even worse,
a sex offender that's not registered so we don't even
(22:33):
know he's lurking, goes on to chat rooms, goes onto
apps like Boo kick Snapchat. We saw it in the
Delphi double murders of Abby and Libby, two cute little
girls in Delphi, and that was the false lead in
the case before Richard Allen was identified, where they had
(22:55):
been online talking to a catfish stereotypical creepy dude, but
he was posing. He had put a picture on there
of some buff young guy that kind of looked like
a tattoo list Justin Bieber, who was a real person.
(23:15):
He was using that person's photo to lure little girls
and get them to send naked photos or topless photos
of themselves, trying to hook up with them. Remember that freak. Yeah,
so you can put any picture you want online, you
can lie and you're zodiac quiz and get hooked up
with a little girl like this little girl zodiac quiz
(23:39):
my rear.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
End, Nancy, this isn't really really and I can't emphasize
enough important for parents to know because an act like this,
and there are others, it really is a playground for
someone who's a predator. They are in heaven because they
could ask who they are, and they could start the
rooming process, which means that they begin to insert themselves
(24:04):
into the child's life. They act like they're a friend
to confident they understand everything that they're saying, and they
become important, especially to a child, a teenager maybe who's
feeling unhappy alone and needs to find a friend.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
So what do you make of that? To Tanya Jordan,
the zodiac quiz that apparently united this little girl with
a registered sex offender. Here's the thing.
Speaker 10 (24:31):
The Boo app and many other apps are rated seventeen plus.
It tells you right there in the app store, But
any child can go in and lie about the year
they were born and get immediate access.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Problem number one.
Speaker 10 (24:44):
Problem number two, as there are no current laws to
hold these companies accountable. The laws meant to protect children
online have not been updated since nineteen ninety eight, and
so acts like the Kids Online Safety Act that are
still stalled and have by partisan support, could actually hold
these platforms accountable and prevent children from being harmed, whether
(25:05):
it's on Snapchat, Boo or the next thing that pops up.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
And little did this Dad, A loving dad know that
about five hundred miles away, a registered sex offender was
wooing his little girl online.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Columbia, Missouri, a father receives a call from his daughter's
high school. His fifteen year old daughter never showed up
to class that morning. Calls to the team's cell go unanswered,
and when dad rushes home to check on her, he
finds the home empty, his daughter nowhere in sight, appearance.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Worst nightmare. You think maybe she ever slept, maybe she
ah this, that the other thing. And you get home
and find out none of that is true and your
girl is missing. At the same time, this is what
we learned.
Speaker 12 (25:53):
In the early morning hours of December sixth, twenty twenty four,
the forty four year old man the Columbia teen met
on Boo to Missouri in a rental car and picks
her up. Before going anywhere, he breaks her cell phone.
The man then drives her eleven hours to a home
in Fort Collins, Colorado. To avoid detection, the man wraps
the teen in a blanket to carry her inside the house.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
So many facts jumping out right there, A forty four
year old registered sex offender who meets the little girl
on the Boo Oh My Stars. Him meets a little
girl on the boo app drives all the way from
Colorado to Missouri in a rental car. So wait a minute,
(26:36):
right there, Greg Morse, in a rental car. He doesn't
even take his own vehicle. He has a car, So
why does he use a rental car to hide his
movements so it won'ts show up on his NAV system
or so his car won't be identified at toll stops
or by licensed grabbers? Right there, I'm forming intent as
we speak, Greg Morse.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Well, a rental car, you know, doesn't prove he sexually
battered the girl. It doesn't prove he kidnapped her. It
doesn't prove any of those things. People use rental cars
all the time. If this was a drug case, I'd say, okay,
it's pretty common that people use rental cars to commit
drug transactions. At least that's been my experience in twenty
(27:19):
five years. This is a case where a rental car
is just a rental car. It doesn't add any evidence
one way or the other to the crimes that this
person's charged with.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Not at all, of.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Course, of course, Greg Morse, you think that proves nothing
that he went to the trouble of using a rental car.
I would argue to a jury to hide evidence of
his whereabouts. But it's early reminiscent of the case of
a young girl, Sophia Martin Franklin, who was let me
(27:53):
just say, romancing a much older man like this guy.
In her case, the guy's forty nearly forty one years old.
Take a listen.
Speaker 8 (28:03):
Sophia makes a new online friend as she finishes up
her sophomore year. Sophia's friend pushes her to meet in person,
but there's two big problems. He lives in Arkansas and
he's a forty year old man.
Speaker 11 (28:15):
Gary Day is four years into a six year probation
sentence and is used to surprise visits from his probation officer.
But in December, the forty year old seems extremely nervous
when the officer stops by, the supervisor also catches a
glimpse of a woman running out the back door. She
is just sixteen years old and from Wisconsin. Sophia's sister
spots days buick idling a block down the street while
(28:38):
she calls police. A family member goes to check on
Sophia and finds her room empty. The Franklins immediately report
Sophia missing.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
So this young girl pregnant with a forty year old
sex offenders child, he drives multi states from Arkansas to
Wisconsin to abduct her. I mean, GG McKelvey, you and
(29:06):
I investigated this case together. GG, journalist host of Pretty
Lies and Alibis, which shows sex offenders registered or not,
will go to great, great links to get their target. GG.
Speaker 7 (29:24):
Absolutely, there's nothing that will stand in anybody's way when
they have their site set on somebody basy as vulnerable
and somebody they can manipulate and convince them to come
with them. It's happening almost every single day. I mean,
at this point, I'm ready to get my kid a
flip phone and not even let her get online in
(29:44):
the big bad online apps like do that are not
monitoring sex offenders. And at the same rate, do we
need to change the way we monitor sex offenders from
a law enforcement perspective. To monitor Internet, you should it
be mandatory every single convicted sex offender has their Internet monitored.
Do we have the manpower? If not, we need to
(30:06):
get it because our kids are getting hurt, they're getting killed,
They're being traumatized for life by these men who have
their site set on these kids, who, for the most part,
in some way are very vulnerable and too trusting.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
You know, Tad Shipley gg McKelvey just says something really interesting.
I guarantee you that the computer activity, the online activity
of registered sex offenders is not monitored, but it would
not require a fleet of human bodies doing it. It
could be something like a net nanny, like a bark
(30:41):
for sex offenders. Every time their phone pops up with
an undesirable word like send nudes anything of that nature,
and alert would go off. But you know, now that
I'm thinking about it, Shipley, we can't even keep up
with registered sex offenders and where they live, much less
was happening on their cell phones. But isn't that kind
(31:04):
of an idea.
Speaker 6 (31:05):
Well, yeah, certainly it is. But I mean keeping in
you know, the back of your mind that we have
to know where they're at, We have to have to
know what devices they have. We have to have a
court order to be able to do that because it
depends on the probation or the No.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
You don't need a court order. It could be a
stipulation of their.
Speaker 6 (31:24):
Station, of course, but you still have to have that
in place. I mean, my writing partner in my last
books was a probation officer, and that was always the
frustration at the pible level that they had was how
they monitored these people, and it wasn't consistent across the country.
One area did it very well, one area didn't do
it at all. And that becomes the problem, and that
these guys figure that out, and they work through these
(31:47):
loopholes and figure out what they can and can't do.
Because I can go down to Walgreens and buy a phone,
I don't need, you know, if I give you the
phone that I've got the monitor, they.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Just have to go get a burner phone. You're exactly
right to Shipley. It's like stomping out a roach. You
get one, there's fifty more hiding behind your potted plant.
Karen start the compulsion of sex offenders that attack children.
Most of us don't understand it. It took me a
long time prosecuting them to get it through my head.
(32:20):
I'm never going to understand and stop trying to understand.
You don't have to understand their motivation to prove the case,
but out of curiosity. This compulsion is so strong they
will drive across the country to get to their target victim.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
That's the truth, and they will take incredible risks, Nancy,
when it comes to law enforcement, just to be able
to fulfill their desires. You have to understand that these people,
they see children as objects that they can control. They
find all kinds of excuses. Sometimes they even say that,
for instance, the teenager was a true to them. Because
(33:02):
they need to fulfill their fantasy and desire to bet
with children or teenagers, they can't stop themselves. They will
do anything to be able to keep going, and they
escalate over time, which is important to know.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Statistics show that once the seventy two hour mark has
been reached, very often the child victim is dead, leaving
no evidence behind. Luckily, our friend and colleague Alicia kazy
Kevitch survived a scenario just like this one.
Speaker 13 (33:38):
Between dinner and dessert, I vanished. I walked outside of
my house to meet somebody who I thought was my
friend and he kidnaped me, and he took me from Peta, Pennsylvania,
to Virginia and held me captive in his basement dungeons.
Even though it's been all these vieered, it's so very
difficult to talk about.
Speaker 7 (33:59):
You said, I'm.
Speaker 13 (34:00):
Beginning to like you too much. Tonight, We're going to
go for a ride. And I knew that was clearly
a threat. And what I had been doing to try
to humanize myself was working too well, and he was
becoming attached. So he was going to have to end
my life sooner.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Crime Stores with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 12 (34:28):
In the early morning hours of December sixth, twenty twenty four,
the forty four year old man the Columbia teen met
On Boo, drives to Missouri and picks her up. Before
going anywhere, he breaks her cell phone. The man then
drives her eleven hours to a home in Fort Collins, Colorado.
To avoid detection, the man wraps the teen in a
blanket to carry her inside the house.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Okay, red flag. There he wraps her up in a
blanket to take her in so his roommates don't see her.
To JJ McKelvey joining us host of Pretty Lies and
Alibi's podcast. The little girl becomes terrified because he tells
her his roommates can't know she's there. He then takes
(35:11):
her drivers permit and her little student id tells her
she's not allowed to leave the room. Then he turns
on a sound machine to cover up what's happening in
that bedroom between the two of them, so the roommates
can't hear. No wonder she's afraid, Gigi.
Speaker 7 (35:29):
It's terrifying. Nancy. You have to wonder at that point,
what is she thinking. I mean, there are people just
outside those doors that could get her to safety. But
I'm sure this man has got her so scared. If
she makes a peep, who knows did he say he would.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Kill her, what he would do to her.
Speaker 7 (35:47):
But to know that there are people just a room
or two away, and you have to be quiet so
you're not found. This poor child is going to need
therapy for the rest of her life to overcome the
trauma she has endured with everything this man has put
her through. And the fact that he's doing these sound
machines and he's avoiding tolls, it all shows he is
(36:09):
avoiding being caught because he knows what he did was wrong,
I mean to drive that distance alone. Nancy blows my mind.
It shows the intent clear as day, what he wanted
to do with that innocent young girl.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Listen.
Speaker 8 (36:23):
The forty four year old man tells his team girlfriend
it isn't safe for her to leave his room, but
reluctantly agrees to take her out if she dyes her
hair and wears large sunglasses. But occasional outings quickly turned
to forced labor. The man makes the girl work for
his snow shoveling company alongside paid employees, wearing a mask
(36:44):
to conceal her age and identity.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
God Shipley, did you hear that? He makes her dye
her hair and wear large sunglasses, then puts her outside
in a mask under threat, and this is molesting her
at night, puts her outside in the cold to work
for his snow removal company, shoveling sidewalks in roads, and
(37:09):
the girl can't get in touch with her dad or
anybody else.
Speaker 6 (37:12):
Of course, he's manipulated her into a situation where she
believes she's not free to go, and so he watches her,
He guides her, He ensures that she does exactly what
he wants, so she's in fear the whole time she's there.
The fantasy of what originally started rapidly went away as
(37:32):
he's controlling everything that she does.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
But then a break in the case more than four
months after.
Speaker 11 (37:39):
The Missouri teen convinces the man to give her a
cell phone to help pass the time while she sits
in his room alone. The man sets up one of
his old phones for her, believing the device is too
old to access social media, but the team manages to
download Instagram and access her account. The girl messages a
friend for help, saying she's in another state and go
(38:00):
straight to police.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Once that Instagram is sent. And remember the perp thought
she couldn't use a flip phone as a portal to
the Internet. He was wrong to take us immediately began
working on identifying the location of the IP address listen.
Speaker 12 (38:16):
The Missouri Cybercrimes Task Force immediately gets to work tracing
the IP address used to send the Instagram messages. The
Missouri task Force reaches out to Fort Collins, Colorado Police
cybercrime unit, believing they've pinpointed the address where the girl
is being held. Maximilian Bond Rescue, who should be registered
as a sex offender lives at the home. Bond Rescue
failed to update his registration, so Fort Collins police have
(38:37):
no problem securing a search warrant for the home on
Warre and Landing.
Speaker 8 (38:40):
Backed by a swat team. Fort Collins police speak with
in bond Rescue at his home. Bond Rescue denies knowledge
of a missing Missouri girl and says officers may find
an adult female in the home, but certainly not a miner. However,
officers searching the home open a closet door and Bond
Rescue's bedroom and find a naked girl cowering inside. The
girl identifies herself as the Columbia teen officers are looking
(39:03):
for her. Confiscated ID cards are also found in the home.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
This is so disturbing it mirrors a case I personally
investigated and covered. I always called her the Girl and
the Pink Hat Jessica Lunsford. This little girl goes missing,
cops immediately start looking for her. I befriended her dad.
(39:30):
We worked together. As it turns out, one of the
homes the police canvassed was where she was ultimately found,
but originally when cops went there, they didn't see her.
She was being kept prisoner in a closet by killer
(39:55):
John Evander Cooey. Cooeye had been molesting her the entire time.
The girl in the pink hat, Jessica Lunsford, was buried
alive and died that way. When cops first came to
(40:16):
his door, he was living with relatives in a mobile home.
He didn't let them in. Fully, they didn't look in
other words, they didn't look in closets. Thank god, in
this case, the case in chief l E looked in
(40:37):
the closets. To you, Gig McKelvey, thanked God. They looked
in the closets and just didn't take his word for
it like what happened in Jessica's case. What happened, Yeah, I.
Speaker 7 (40:53):
Mean, thank goodness they looked in the closet, because every
one of these young people that are taken this way
have the risk of becoming another Jessica Lunsford. These people
have no respect for the law and no respect for children,
no respect for humanity in general, and the You know,
these investigations have to be so precise when you have
(41:14):
a missing child, because missing one small detail like a closet,
could be the biggest clue in the whole case, which
is your victim and so I think when they go
in to look for these kids, you have to turn
everything over and consider and think, like the perpetrator, where
would you hide this child if law enforcement came knocking.
(41:35):
Because we can't have kids that are killed and buried
alive because the investigation or the search forant wasn't executed fully.
It's a disservice to these victims and it's just careless.
And we saw that in the Jessica Lunsford case.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
In this case, however, night and day comparison, the little
girl is found naked, cowering but alive, fear but alive.
The case is not over. The state is building its evidence.
If you know or think you know anything about this case.
(42:12):
If you were a worker in the snow removal company
that he owns, it's called faux Co snow Go, a
snow removal service in Fort Collins, Colorado, if you saw
them en route, if you know anything at all, the
state needs you nine seven zero four one six to
(42:34):
zero two six. He was let off the hook before
and was required to register for life as a sex offender,
yet he got his hands on this little girl. I
want him behind bars for the rest of his life.
Don't you Tip line nine seven zero four one six
(42:56):
two zero two six. Thank you to our guest, but
especially to you for being with us. Good Night friend,
m HM.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A little Missouri girl missing
five long months, just found in a sex offender's closet
seven hundred miles away, naked, cowering, but alive. Good evening,
(00:22):
I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories, and I want
to thank you for being with us.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Columbia, Missouri, a father receives a call from his daughter's
high school. His fifteen year old daughter never showed up
to class that morning. Calls to the team's cell go unanswered,
and when dad rushes home to check on her, he
finds the home empty, his daughter nowhere in sight.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
A parent's worst nightmare. You go to work, you think
everything is fine, and then you get that call from
the school your daughter never showed up. Joining me an
all star panel to make sense of what we are learning.
Now listen, hey, Columbia, Missouri.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Father gets a call from his daughter's high school that
she never arrived to class. The dad calls his fifteen
year old several times, and, getting no answer, rushes home
from work to check on her. He's hopeful that she
just overslept or missed the bus, but when he gets home,
the teen isn't there, and some of her belongings, including
her phone, are missing.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Okay, that's a sign right there that her phone is missing,
probably her school backpack, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything
is wrong. She typically takes her phone and her backpack
to school every day. Did you know that over thirty
three percent of all child disappearances kidnaps occur in around
(01:47):
or related to getting to school. It could be at
the bus stop, it could be walking the route to school,
getting off the bus, walking back home, even approaching the school.
Like Kiren Horman, it goes on and on. Nearly half,
(02:07):
over thirty three percent of all child disappearances kidnaps stranger
related occur as it connects to getting to and from school.
So right there we see a problem joining me. Greg Morris,
high profile lawyer, criminal defense attorney out of Palm Beach,
(02:29):
author of the Untested. He is the partner at Moore's Legal. Greg.
Right there, that is where law enforcement starts the search.
First of all, law enforcement always says, oh, she'll be
back home, don't worry, she's probably out with her little boyfriend.
That's what they normally say. But then when and if
(02:52):
they get concerned about the missing child, then they start
looking at the school and the routes to school. Explain.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, so police are going to start and spiral outwards.
When they're looking for a missing person. Most people are
locally found, so they're going to start think, maybe she's
a teenager, she went to her friend's house, didn't call
her parents.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Then they're going to.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Start retracing the steps she should have taken, spoken with
her friends, and things of that nature. Although this case
exemplifies why you need to start with the phone.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Karen Starting joining me renowned forensic psychologist, TV radio trauma expert,
and you can find her at karenstart dot com. Karen
with a C. Karen, thank you for being with us. Karen.
What is it that law enforcement always at the get go,
whether it's a missing girl, a missing boy, or typically
a missing woman, they go, oh, there'll be back, they're
(03:48):
out with their little boyfriend or fill in the blank.
They never take it seriously at the beginning. They don't, Nancy.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
They really are trying to get the parents to not
be upset or the people that are looking for them,
and for some reason they keep trying to say things like, well,
she's a runaway or she's with a friend, just like
you said, I'm really trying to quiet the fact that
these people might be getting really upset, of course and frightened.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Why is that? Todd Shipley. Todd Shipley is joining US
digital cyber crime expert, former detective sergeant with the Reno Police,
never lack of business in Reno, twenty five years in
LA and author of Surviving a Cyber Attack, also author
of Investigating Internet Crimes. Todd, thanks for being with us.
Why is it? In your twenty four years in LA
(04:40):
law enforcement? I'm sure you saw it over and over
and over where detectives, investigators beat cops and saying, ah,
she'll be back.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Well, because it commonly is that way, you know, particularly
with runaway kids. They look at it that it's somebody
that walked off through a girlfriend's house or went someplace
with a boyfriend, and they'll show up within you know,
hours or days and it won't be a kid depping.
It's hard, at least initially to figure that out.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Straight out to Gg McKelvey joining me, journalist, host of
Pretty Lies and Alibi's podcast, Gg, thank you for being
with us. Another factor into why in this jurisdiction police
may not have taken her disappearance seriously. At the beginning
is because this neck of the woods, Columbia, Missouri is
(05:28):
the safest place, the safest urban area in Missouri in
which to live well.
Speaker 7 (05:33):
Columbia, Missouri has one of the lowest crime rates in
the state. It's very close to nature. We just don't
hear bad things like this happening in this ideal midwestern town.
And so I think with the comfort of living in
a place like that, you don't necessarily think the worst
is going to happen right there in your hometown.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, you know, you're right, Gg McKelvey. It's got a
pretty low, pretty low popular one hundred and thirty thousand.
It is close to nature. That's what it's known for,
the Missouri River. Not only that, it's got this extensive
trail going through the city, very low crime rate. So
(06:16):
Greg Morris, I don't totally well, I do blame the police,
but I get where they're coming from. This type of
case is very rare for them. So when it's an
aberans then you don't you got to put on blinders,
I guess would be a way to describe what happened
at the get go, Greg, Well, that's.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
What happens again. The police don't want to spend resources.
They think this is going to turn out fine. Another
teenager that's met or went out late with their boyfriend
or other friends.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
They'll come home in a day or two. That's the
common way.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
This, you know, usually turns out for people, So that
time is valuable. But police also know that most of
these cases are going to turn out to be a
teenager that comes home a day or two later. And
this is very similar to an issue with law enforcement.
If you recall the Cheshire murders in Connecticut. The police
were outside that home and the reason why they didn't
(07:14):
go in because it's an upscale neighborhood in Connecticut. They
would never expect what happened in that home and the
horrible things that the two perpetrators did to the family
to happen.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
So they waited outside and more bad stuff happened.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
It's difficult for law enforcement to know when to jump.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Into an investigation.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Believe there's crime that's happening, and we have to get
on it right away too.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Let's see if this situation plays out. But time is.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Valuable when people go missing, and that's the difficult dilemma here.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Well, you know I heard Mark Klass describe it as
sixty miles an hour. That's how quickly your child can
get away, at the least sixty miles an hour if
they're in a perpse car. So with that in mind,
the dad originally tried to soothe himself by saying, oh,
(08:05):
maybe she overslept, maybe she missed the bus and races home.
And that's a psychological issue. Karen start, why is it
that our minds are they trying to protect us? Don't
go to oh, my stars, she's been kidnapped by a
sex offender. She's going to die. We don't race to
that conclusion. Her mind doesn't let us go there. He
(08:26):
thought she overslept.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Well, because it's such a horrible conclusion to come to, Nancy,
I feel like people protect themselves. Actually, when it comes
to something like that, you just don't want to believe,
think about it, that something can happen to you, it
happens to other people, until in fact it does happen
to you. So it's really a good psychological defense.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
The dad comes home realizes that his little girl has
not overslept, she hasn't missed the bus, Her cell phone
and backpack are gone. He doesn't buy into she's just
off for the little frint and reports her missing immediately.
Speaker 8 (09:03):
The Columbia, Missouri teen girl is immediately reported missing. Searches
of the area turn up nothing, and her phone is
not ping since the day of her disappearance. Investigators turned
to interviewing her friends. Fellow students say the fifteen year
old may have been talking to someone online.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Okay, that is significant that her phone has not pinged
since the day she disappeared. Okay, straight back out to
Todd Shipley cybercrime expert, explain, what does that mean that
your phone doesn't ping?
Speaker 6 (09:33):
Well, it means that the phone was turned off and
was not registering on a cell site someplace within the
city that she would normally be near. So they were
able to query those sites and find out that her
cell phone wasn't registering on any location nearby the house,
the school, wherever she normally was, and they couldn't find her.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Explain what is a ping? Ba specific Todds.
Speaker 6 (10:01):
The ping is an electronic message from your phone to
a cell tower to let it know that it's in
the area so that it can receive information from the system.
So you have to announce that you're in a location
so that the data can be sent to your specific phone,
and that ping allows the cell tower to say, oh,
(10:21):
you're in this area, and I can send messages, phone calls,
whatever to you know, the Internet to your phone and
be able to identify where you're at. And so none
of that was there because the phone was turned off.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
So can I put it in regular people talk? Todd Shipley,
And this comes up so often in trials. Typically it's
defense attorneys like you, Greg Morris, arguing that pings don't
mean anything and we cannot rely on pings. But what
pings are and I think we're going to see that,
by the way, and the upcoming Brian Coberger trial a
(10:55):
lot of digital and phone evidence, the evidence and the
lack there of evidence such as him cutting off his phone,
turning it off just before the murders, and then turning
it back on just after the murders. So there's a
lack of digital evidence at the time of the murders
(11:17):
in this particular window. But Greg Morris, the defense attorneys
like you who've won a lot of cases, have made
it part of their repertoire to argue pings can't be
relied upon. But it's really elementary. It's rudimentary. You turn
your cell phone on and you get in the car too.
(11:38):
Let's just pretend go to your son's soccer game, and
as you pass cell towers, the signal emitted from your
phone pings off or registers with those horribly ugly cell
towers we pass. Some are decorated to look like a tree,
(11:58):
a tree with really weird leaves, but the horrible ugly
cell towers. Every time you pass one, your phone will
connect with that cell tower. It's really not hard to understand.
Yet somehow defense attorneys like you managed to obfuscate the
simple truth. How do you do that? Morse?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Well, because cell site location information and these pings you're
talking about sure to see if a person's in a
general area, is their phone on? Are they moving somewhere?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
But why why do you make it soell so mysterious,
nors But it doesn't these pings you're talking about like
it's mystical, magical, it's not so.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
The cell site tower from AT and T down the
street from my house on the inner coastal was out,
so my cell phone had to ping off of a
different tower located further away from me.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Once that tower was out.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So let's suppose a progress so far's again how far
that's my point.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
How far away was the other cell tower?
Speaker 4 (12:57):
It's still you're not getting location far away?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Was it two miles? A mile?
Speaker 3 (13:02):
I don't know exactly how far away it is, but
it checked it from my local Where you would I.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Lie because that would ruin your argument if you said
it was only one mile further.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
And if it was a mile, isn't a mile a
big difference?
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Well that's how they do it. So what's suppose you
mess your head up if you're on the jury.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Let's suppose there's a crime on First Street in New York,
But actually.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
I was on twentieth Street, but my phone pinged off
the First Street tower. So now the police believe I
was in the area of the murder even though I
wasn't because cell site location information was misleading.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Let me counter your argument with one word, triangulation. Have
you heard that word? Okay, Shipley, don't go to deathcom
for explain what triangulation means to totally destroy Morse's argument.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
The problem is he's mixing up the two things, the communication,
the ping itself saying I'm here in your geolocation of
where that phone is at or two very different things.
And yes, it is very difficult to figure out exactly
precisely where a person is through these pings, but that geolocation,
that triangulation, we can narrow down a physical location where
(14:12):
somebody is because talking to two cell towers is just
simple math, and you have to figure out where it
was and what angle it is because the towers, which
most people don't know, have faces on them, and so
which face of that cell tower did the ping come
off of, So it knows a general location where it's
coming from. Anyway, So you put two of those together
(14:34):
and you can actually get a location or narrow it
down to where that person was geographically in the area.
Speaker 9 (14:43):
If you know somebody who's missing and you get information
or some type of connection with them and they have
been off of you know, out of touch for a while,
make sure you call law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
A missing person's report is filed after a fifteen year
old Missouri teen fails to show up to school one
December morning. An intense investigation is launched, but the exhaustive
searches yield little to no clues about the whereabouts of
the missing teen. Her socials have gone silent and her
phone has not pinged since her disappearance.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Hold your horses, did everybody miss what we just reported?
Investigators began after they hit a dead end, interviewing her
little friends. The little friends say the teen may have
been talking to someone online. Okay, to Titania and Jordan
(15:50):
joining me, Chief parent officer at Bark, Parental Controls, author
of Parenting and a Tech World. Now, this is how
I found out about Bark, which led me to Titoya.
We got BARK and put it on the children's cell phones.
It picks up words like scary words like sex, I
(16:13):
want to see you naked, send me nudes, hurt myself? Okay,
it's so sensitive, and this is not an AD. It's
so sensitive. I got an alert. You have an alert
on your son John David's phone. Well, I nearly did
a backlip because he never does anything wrong. Knock on
wood product. So I looked it up and it said
(16:35):
self harm on my six foot six, two hundred and
something pounds. Soun self harm. You wouldn't expect that, right.
I looked at what it was. He's a soccer goalie
and he had made a really good dive. I saw
it happen where he's basically horizontal catching the ball and
(16:55):
his arm went through the net and he got a
big bruise right here. But he was so proud he
showed off the bruise, saying, I save the goal. Right.
It was so sensitive that it picked up the bruise
on his arm and alerted me the other day, you're
(17:17):
gonna you're gonna laugh about this part to Tanya. I
got an alert on John Dave. It's never Losey's phone,
It's always John David's phone. And I looked it up
and it said disturbing blah blah blah nature. Guess what
it was? The Nancy Gray Show crime stories about some
victim having been kidnapped and killed. And he subscribes to
(17:43):
our I guess YouTube, And he picked up the banner
on YouTube. Luckily he had not opened it. But still,
that is how sensitive Bart is. Now that aside, that's
how I found Titania. Titania red flag waving. Listen on
this investigators speak to her little friends. They say she
(18:03):
may have been talking to someone online. Translation, she is
talking to someone online, someone she kept secret from her dad.
That's what that means so online secret take it on.
Speaker 10 (18:17):
No parent thinks that this will happen to their child,
But when you know that rate at which predators are
online engaging with children, you can't not think that it
could be your child. You have to be prepared, You
have to be monitoring. You have to take easy steps
like don't allow connected tech in their bedrooms overnight behind
(18:39):
closed doors. If you do give your child tech, make
sure it's safer tech that will proactively alert you when
creepy older men and sex offenders are trying to engage
with your child, which the bark phone does.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Well, here's the other thing, and again I'm not pushing Mark.
If you don't know exactly what to do, like what
do you do? Gorab their phone and run off with it.
It's a physical thing to jump on them and take
their phone away, which I have done. It's not easy,
and run away with it. Lock yourself in the bathroom
and try to scroll through their stuff. Okay, no, something
(19:16):
like a net nanny like bart to me, that's an
easy way to do it, so you don't have to
scroll through their phone and look for what you don't
even know what you're looking for. As a matter of fact,
this particular app, Boo Boo. It's a dating friendship app
and it allows completely anonymous trolling. You know, where you
(19:41):
look for a friend or a love interest. As a
matter of fact, this little girl had signed up for Boo.
Speaker 11 (19:49):
Listen, a Columbia, Missouri girl signs up for Boo, a
popular dating and friendship app that matches users based on
common personality markers like zodiac signs, any types, and the
results of an in app personality quiz. When she hits
it off with another user, the two moved to Snapchat
and develop a romantic relationship through texts, pictures, videos, and
(20:11):
audio messages. After a month of chatting, the teen's online
bow desperately wants to meet her in person.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
You know what's really interesting about the Boo at Titanya,
is it actually looks like a game. I don't know
if you remember the missus pac Man and pac Man
games video games, some of the first ones. These little
creatures look like them, like the little pac Man creatures,
(20:40):
And it looks like see that right there. It looks
like a little game where you quote meet new people.
It looks so inviting and so harmless, doesn't it?
Speaker 9 (20:51):
To Tanya?
Speaker 10 (20:52):
It sure does. I'm actually pulling up the app Store
now to see what it's rated, because there is no
governing body that mandates that people who submit their apps
to the App Store are accurate, right, It's up to
each app maker to rate. That Also a good thing
to know. Whether you're using Bark or Apple screen Time
(21:15):
or Google Family Link, you can get alerted to when
your child downloads an app, so you can go and
look it up. Just like you wouldn't drop them off
at an international airport all alone. Don't let them encounter
everyone in the world and all the content ever created
online without you understanding the portal through which they're doing.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
So okay, so now you're telling me, I neede an
app that tells me every time the twins download an
app on their phone. Is that what you just said.
Speaker 10 (21:44):
If you don't have Bark, you have Bark, so we
will alert you when your child has downloaded a problematic app.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Okay, and so listen to this, Karen Stark. Okay, this
is going to make Karen Stark and Todd Shipley do
a backflip. Okay, try to stay seated. So it connects
you with friends online based on a romantic relationship based
on an in app personality quiz What sex offender can't
(22:12):
lie on that? Okay? Zodiac signs integram types a quiz
Zodiac signs. You know how many times we have covered
cases where a registered sex offender, or probably even worse,
a sex offender that's not registered so we don't even
(22:33):
know he's lurking, goes on to chat rooms, goes onto
apps like Boo kick Snapchat. We saw it in the
Delphi double murders of Abby and Libby, two cute little
girls in Delphi, and that was the false lead in
the case before Richard Allen was identified, where they had
(22:55):
been online talking to a catfish stereotypical creepy dude, but
he was posing. He had put a picture on there
of some buff young guy that kind of looked like
a tattoo list Justin Bieber, who was a real person.
(23:15):
He was using that person's photo to lure little girls
and get them to send naked photos or topless photos
of themselves, trying to hook up with them. Remember that freak. Yeah,
so you can put any picture you want online, you
can lie and you're zodiac quiz and get hooked up
with a little girl like this little girl zodiac quiz
(23:39):
my rear.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
End, Nancy, this isn't really really and I can't emphasize
enough important for parents to know because an act like this,
and there are others, it really is a playground for
someone who's a predator. They are in heaven because they
could ask who they are, and they could start the
rooming process, which means that they begin to insert themselves
(24:04):
into the child's life. They act like they're a friend
to confident they understand everything that they're saying, and they
become important, especially to a child, a teenager maybe who's
feeling unhappy alone and needs to find a friend.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
So what do you make of that? To Tanya Jordan,
the zodiac quiz that apparently united this little girl with
a registered sex offender. Here's the thing.
Speaker 10 (24:31):
The Boo app and many other apps are rated seventeen plus.
It tells you right there in the app store, But
any child can go in and lie about the year
they were born and get immediate access.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Problem number one.
Speaker 10 (24:44):
Problem number two, as there are no current laws to
hold these companies accountable. The laws meant to protect children
online have not been updated since nineteen ninety eight, and
so acts like the Kids Online Safety Act that are
still stalled and have by partisan support, could actually hold
these platforms accountable and prevent children from being harmed, whether
(25:05):
it's on Snapchat, Boo or the next thing that pops up.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
And little did this Dad, A loving dad know that
about five hundred miles away, a registered sex offender was
wooing his little girl online.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Columbia, Missouri, a father receives a call from his daughter's
high school. His fifteen year old daughter never showed up
to class that morning. Calls to the team's cell go unanswered,
and when dad rushes home to check on her, he
finds the home empty, his daughter nowhere in sight, appearance.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Worst nightmare. You think maybe she ever slept, maybe she
ah this, that the other thing. And you get home
and find out none of that is true and your
girl is missing. At the same time, this is what
we learned.
Speaker 12 (25:53):
In the early morning hours of December sixth, twenty twenty four,
the forty four year old man the Columbia teen met
on Boo to Missouri in a rental car and picks
her up. Before going anywhere, he breaks her cell phone.
The man then drives her eleven hours to a home
in Fort Collins, Colorado. To avoid detection, the man wraps
the teen in a blanket to carry her inside the house.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
So many facts jumping out right there, A forty four
year old registered sex offender who meets the little girl
on the Boo Oh My Stars. Him meets a little
girl on the boo app drives all the way from
Colorado to Missouri in a rental car. So wait a minute,
(26:36):
right there, Greg Morse, in a rental car. He doesn't
even take his own vehicle. He has a car, So
why does he use a rental car to hide his
movements so it won'ts show up on his NAV system
or so his car won't be identified at toll stops
or by licensed grabbers? Right there, I'm forming intent as
we speak, Greg Morse.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Well, a rental car, you know, doesn't prove he sexually
battered the girl. It doesn't prove he kidnapped her. It
doesn't prove any of those things. People use rental cars
all the time. If this was a drug case, I'd say, okay,
it's pretty common that people use rental cars to commit
drug transactions. At least that's been my experience in twenty
(27:19):
five years. This is a case where a rental car
is just a rental car. It doesn't add any evidence
one way or the other to the crimes that this
person's charged with.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Not at all, of.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Course, of course, Greg Morse, you think that proves nothing
that he went to the trouble of using a rental car.
I would argue to a jury to hide evidence of
his whereabouts. But it's early reminiscent of the case of
a young girl, Sophia Martin Franklin, who was let me
(27:53):
just say, romancing a much older man like this guy.
In her case, the guy's forty nearly forty one years old.
Take a listen.
Speaker 8 (28:03):
Sophia makes a new online friend as she finishes up
her sophomore year. Sophia's friend pushes her to meet in person,
but there's two big problems. He lives in Arkansas and
he's a forty year old man.
Speaker 11 (28:15):
Gary Day is four years into a six year probation
sentence and is used to surprise visits from his probation officer.
But in December, the forty year old seems extremely nervous
when the officer stops by, the supervisor also catches a
glimpse of a woman running out the back door. She
is just sixteen years old and from Wisconsin. Sophia's sister
spots days buick idling a block down the street while
(28:38):
she calls police. A family member goes to check on
Sophia and finds her room empty. The Franklins immediately report
Sophia missing.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
So this young girl pregnant with a forty year old
sex offenders child, he drives multi states from Arkansas to
Wisconsin to abduct her. I mean, GG McKelvey, you and
(29:06):
I investigated this case together. GG, journalist host of Pretty
Lies and Alibis, which shows sex offenders registered or not,
will go to great, great links to get their target. GG.
Speaker 7 (29:24):
Absolutely, there's nothing that will stand in anybody's way when
they have their site set on somebody basy as vulnerable
and somebody they can manipulate and convince them to come
with them. It's happening almost every single day. I mean,
at this point, I'm ready to get my kid a
flip phone and not even let her get online in
(29:44):
the big bad online apps like do that are not
monitoring sex offenders. And at the same rate, do we
need to change the way we monitor sex offenders from
a law enforcement perspective. To monitor Internet, you should it
be mandatory every single convicted sex offender has their Internet monitored.
Do we have the manpower? If not, we need to
(30:06):
get it because our kids are getting hurt, they're getting killed,
They're being traumatized for life by these men who have
their site set on these kids, who, for the most part,
in some way are very vulnerable and too trusting.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
You know, Tad Shipley gg McKelvey just says something really interesting.
I guarantee you that the computer activity, the online activity
of registered sex offenders is not monitored, but it would
not require a fleet of human bodies doing it. It
could be something like a net nanny, like a bark
(30:41):
for sex offenders. Every time their phone pops up with
an undesirable word like send nudes anything of that nature,
and alert would go off. But you know, now that
I'm thinking about it, Shipley, we can't even keep up
with registered sex offenders and where they live, much less
was happening on their cell phones. But isn't that kind
(31:04):
of an idea.
Speaker 6 (31:05):
Well, yeah, certainly it is. But I mean keeping in
you know, the back of your mind that we have
to know where they're at, We have to have to
know what devices they have. We have to have a
court order to be able to do that because it
depends on the probation or the No.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
You don't need a court order. It could be a
stipulation of their.
Speaker 6 (31:24):
Station, of course, but you still have to have that
in place. I mean, my writing partner in my last
books was a probation officer, and that was always the
frustration at the pible level that they had was how
they monitored these people, and it wasn't consistent across the country.
One area did it very well, one area didn't do
it at all. And that becomes the problem, and that
these guys figure that out, and they work through these
(31:47):
loopholes and figure out what they can and can't do.
Because I can go down to Walgreens and buy a phone,
I don't need, you know, if I give you the
phone that I've got the monitor, they.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Just have to go get a burner phone. You're exactly
right to Shipley. It's like stomping out a roach. You
get one, there's fifty more hiding behind your potted plant.
Karen start the compulsion of sex offenders that attack children.
Most of us don't understand it. It took me a
long time prosecuting them to get it through my head.
(32:20):
I'm never going to understand and stop trying to understand.
You don't have to understand their motivation to prove the case,
but out of curiosity. This compulsion is so strong they
will drive across the country to get to their target victim.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
That's the truth, and they will take incredible risks, Nancy,
when it comes to law enforcement, just to be able
to fulfill their desires. You have to understand that these people,
they see children as objects that they can control. They
find all kinds of excuses. Sometimes they even say that,
for instance, the teenager was a true to them. Because
(33:02):
they need to fulfill their fantasy and desire to bet
with children or teenagers, they can't stop themselves. They will
do anything to be able to keep going, and they
escalate over time, which is important to know.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Statistics show that once the seventy two hour mark has
been reached, very often the child victim is dead, leaving
no evidence behind. Luckily, our friend and colleague Alicia kazy
Kevitch survived a scenario just like this one.
Speaker 13 (33:38):
Between dinner and dessert, I vanished. I walked outside of
my house to meet somebody who I thought was my
friend and he kidnaped me, and he took me from Peta, Pennsylvania,
to Virginia and held me captive in his basement dungeons.
Even though it's been all these vieered, it's so very
difficult to talk about.
Speaker 7 (33:59):
You said, I'm.
Speaker 13 (34:00):
Beginning to like you too much. Tonight, We're going to
go for a ride. And I knew that was clearly
a threat. And what I had been doing to try
to humanize myself was working too well, and he was
becoming attached. So he was going to have to end
my life sooner.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Crime Stores with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 12 (34:28):
In the early morning hours of December sixth, twenty twenty four,
the forty four year old man the Columbia teen met
On Boo, drives to Missouri and picks her up. Before
going anywhere, he breaks her cell phone. The man then
drives her eleven hours to a home in Fort Collins, Colorado.
To avoid detection, the man wraps the teen in a
blanket to carry her inside the house.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Okay, red flag. There he wraps her up in a
blanket to take her in so his roommates don't see her.
To JJ McKelvey joining us host of Pretty Lies and
Alibi's podcast. The little girl becomes terrified because he tells
her his roommates can't know she's there. He then takes
(35:11):
her drivers permit and her little student id tells her
she's not allowed to leave the room. Then he turns
on a sound machine to cover up what's happening in
that bedroom between the two of them, so the roommates
can't hear. No wonder she's afraid, Gigi.
Speaker 7 (35:29):
It's terrifying. Nancy. You have to wonder at that point,
what is she thinking. I mean, there are people just
outside those doors that could get her to safety. But
I'm sure this man has got her so scared. If
she makes a peep, who knows did he say he would.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Kill her, what he would do to her.
Speaker 7 (35:47):
But to know that there are people just a room
or two away, and you have to be quiet so
you're not found. This poor child is going to need
therapy for the rest of her life to overcome the
trauma she has endured with everything this man has put
her through. And the fact that he's doing these sound
machines and he's avoiding tolls, it all shows he is
(36:09):
avoiding being caught because he knows what he did was wrong,
I mean to drive that distance alone. Nancy blows my mind.
It shows the intent clear as day, what he wanted
to do with that innocent young girl.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Listen.
Speaker 8 (36:23):
The forty four year old man tells his team girlfriend
it isn't safe for her to leave his room, but
reluctantly agrees to take her out if she dyes her
hair and wears large sunglasses. But occasional outings quickly turned
to forced labor. The man makes the girl work for
his snow shoveling company alongside paid employees, wearing a mask
(36:44):
to conceal her age and identity.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
God Shipley, did you hear that? He makes her dye
her hair and wear large sunglasses, then puts her outside
in a mask under threat, and this is molesting her
at night, puts her outside in the cold to work
for his snow removal company, shoveling sidewalks in roads, and
(37:09):
the girl can't get in touch with her dad or
anybody else.
Speaker 6 (37:12):
Of course, he's manipulated her into a situation where she
believes she's not free to go, and so he watches her,
He guides her, He ensures that she does exactly what
he wants, so she's in fear the whole time she's there.
The fantasy of what originally started rapidly went away as
(37:32):
he's controlling everything that she does.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
But then a break in the case more than four
months after.
Speaker 11 (37:39):
The Missouri teen convinces the man to give her a
cell phone to help pass the time while she sits
in his room alone. The man sets up one of
his old phones for her, believing the device is too
old to access social media, but the team manages to
download Instagram and access her account. The girl messages a
friend for help, saying she's in another state and go
(38:00):
straight to police.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Once that Instagram is sent. And remember the perp thought
she couldn't use a flip phone as a portal to
the Internet. He was wrong to take us immediately began
working on identifying the location of the IP address listen.
Speaker 12 (38:16):
The Missouri Cybercrimes Task Force immediately gets to work tracing
the IP address used to send the Instagram messages. The
Missouri task Force reaches out to Fort Collins, Colorado Police
cybercrime unit, believing they've pinpointed the address where the girl
is being held. Maximilian Bond Rescue, who should be registered
as a sex offender lives at the home. Bond Rescue
failed to update his registration, so Fort Collins police have
(38:37):
no problem securing a search warrant for the home on
Warre and Landing.
Speaker 8 (38:40):
Backed by a swat team. Fort Collins police speak with
in bond Rescue at his home. Bond Rescue denies knowledge
of a missing Missouri girl and says officers may find
an adult female in the home, but certainly not a miner. However,
officers searching the home open a closet door and Bond
Rescue's bedroom and find a naked girl cowering inside. The
girl identifies herself as the Columbia teen officers are looking
(39:03):
for her. Confiscated ID cards are also found in the home.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
This is so disturbing it mirrors a case I personally
investigated and covered. I always called her the Girl and
the Pink Hat Jessica Lunsford. This little girl goes missing,
cops immediately start looking for her. I befriended her dad.
(39:30):
We worked together. As it turns out, one of the
homes the police canvassed was where she was ultimately found,
but originally when cops went there, they didn't see her.
She was being kept prisoner in a closet by killer
(39:55):
John Evander Cooey. Cooeye had been molesting her the entire time.
The girl in the pink hat, Jessica Lunsford, was buried
alive and died that way. When cops first came to
(40:16):
his door, he was living with relatives in a mobile home.
He didn't let them in. Fully, they didn't look in
other words, they didn't look in closets. Thank god, in
this case, the case in chief l E looked in
(40:37):
the closets. To you, Gig McKelvey, thanked God. They looked
in the closets and just didn't take his word for
it like what happened in Jessica's case. What happened, Yeah, I.
Speaker 7 (40:53):
Mean, thank goodness they looked in the closet, because every
one of these young people that are taken this way
have the risk of becoming another Jessica Lunsford. These people
have no respect for the law and no respect for children,
no respect for humanity in general, and the You know,
these investigations have to be so precise when you have
(41:14):
a missing child, because missing one small detail like a closet,
could be the biggest clue in the whole case, which
is your victim and so I think when they go
in to look for these kids, you have to turn
everything over and consider and think, like the perpetrator, where
would you hide this child if law enforcement came knocking.
(41:35):
Because we can't have kids that are killed and buried
alive because the investigation or the search forant wasn't executed fully.
It's a disservice to these victims and it's just careless.
And we saw that in the Jessica Lunsford case.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
In this case, however, night and day comparison, the little
girl is found naked, cowering but alive, fear but alive.
The case is not over. The state is building its evidence.
If you know or think you know anything about this case.
(42:12):
If you were a worker in the snow removal company
that he owns, it's called faux Co snow Go, a
snow removal service in Fort Collins, Colorado, if you saw
them en route, if you know anything at all, the
state needs you nine seven zero four one six to
(42:34):
zero two six. He was let off the hook before
and was required to register for life as a sex offender,
yet he got his hands on this little girl. I
want him behind bars for the rest of his life.
Don't you Tip line nine seven zero four one six
(42:56):
two zero two six. Thank you to our guest, but
especially to you for being with us. Good Night friend,
m HM.
Host
Nancy Grace
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