20/20 - Tracking Susana
Episode Date: May 9, 2026When a 16-year-old girl vanishes, her family investigates her disappearance. TV cameras capture the moment police discover a clue that breaks the case wide open and changes everything. Learn more abou...t your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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An all-new 2020 starts right now.
When it's counting, 911.
I need to make a report.
My sister's been missing since yesterday.
No one has seen her.
What's your sister's name?
Susanna, moreover.
When Susanna walked out the back gate of Sterling Glen Apartments, there's a sidewalk there that would take her straight to her residence.
Where can I see her last known location?
Have a screenshot.
You have a screenshot?
They could see that she was walking back from the apartment complex down Singleton Road.
And all of a sudden she goes in the opposite direction in the car, and that's when it started panicking.
Something happened to her on the way home.
This case is just, it's unreal.
She walked that way.
Gooden County Police are hoping that you can help them find a teenager 16-year-old Susanna Morales.
A police now believe that she may have gotten into a car that night July 26th.
She was a young, full of life teenager who vanished pretty much out of thin air.
You know why we're here?
We just thought about the worst.
They needed to do something.
Brushes, brushes.
Susanna was the baby.
She would get everything that we wanted and we were at her age.
at her age. She was definitely spoiled.
Y'all really went out. This is cute. I like this.
Our best moments is laughing together as a family.
Oh, Chiquette.
Suzanne Morales was very close to her family.
They lived in Norcross here in Gwinnett County.
We are a large county just north of Atlanta.
And we are one of the most diverse counties in the United States.
Where are you from originally?
Mexico.
What were you looking for?
Vivier meho, right?
Three daughters?
Three daughters?
Julisa, Jasmine, and Susanna.
Her name was Susanna, but you called her...
Susie.
Me and Susanna had a 10 years difference.
Me being the oldest, I used to take care of them.
Susanna was very outgoing.
going. It was a little closer to Susanna probably because three-year age gap between us.
She was always making TikTok videos.
She loved to record music videos of herself singing.
Susanna's best friends that I've known since like middle school for her was Kayet and a brother.
Shumaya.
They were very, very close.
We had fun together.
We didn't have to do much to be happy around each other.
She was a very bubbly person.
Remember, she was very sweet, very nice.
Susanna's hair was very curly.
She loved exploring new colors with it.
She had dyed her hair green, red, and blonde at one point.
She worked with her mother at a local McDonald's.
She loved music.
She loved to play a ukulele that had been given to her.
She loved to sing.
Take me through that day, July 20,
26, 22.
I used
peskado that day.
Susanna didn't really like fish
and didn't want to eat that, so she asked her mother
if she could go to her friend Esmeralda's home.
How close was that house?
Six minutes.
She told her mom she got to her friend's house
safe, and that was around 7.19 p.m.
I just want to know if you got there.
Uh-huh. And she responds...
Yes. See. With a thumbs up.
Later that night, approximately 9.40-ish p.m., Susanna's mom starts calling Susanna and asking her to come home because it's getting late.
You were going to go pick her up.
I'd call her three times and he always
accustomed to me to contest.
Susanna mom reached out for Susanna to be like, hey, where are you?
And she texted and text her and text her and text her.
Susie, do you want me to go for you?
Please.
My daughter, please.
My daughter, please answer.
Because Susanna's mother was not able to get in touch with her,
she reached out to Esmerelda and her family.
She called me asking if Susanna was at my house.
Susanna had actually never come over there.
Of course, that's my best friend, so I will back her up.
I told her that Susanna was leaving
while I was able to get enough time to get a hold of Susanna.
Initially, as Marelda, being a teenage friend,
was trying to cover for Susanna.
I contacted her calling her, no response.
So I texted her and told her that her mother was looking for her,
and she better be on her way home before I get in trouble.
Susanna's mother recalls talking to Esmeralda's mother,
who told her Susanna was never there.
So mom at that point is worried and like, hey,
why was my daughter not where she said she was?
I remember getting a call from my mom, like around 9 or 10,
a p.m. at night.
And she was just asking me if I've heard from Susanne
I know if I had talked to her because she wasn't answering her phone.
Susanna's mother was continuously contacting people,
trying to figure out where Susanna might be.
She had a very good relationship with her sisters and her mom,
so that was not characteristic if she did not get in contact with her mom.
I told my mom that maybe Susanna's phone had died
or that she fell asleep,
and that's just week to morning to hear from her.
You realize there's something really wrong here.
I know that was in danger.
One of Susanna's friends gets a crash alert on her cell phone.
Susanna's in a moving vehicle and there's a serious crash.
That's Susanna, your screen-shunders.
On her 15th birthday?
For her kinsenera, what did she want more than anything?
Mommy, I want tacos.
Tacos?
Tacos, Susi.
All she wanted was great tacos.
She wanted us to buy her a mannequin seanna dress, pink, sparkly, short-kin
Santa dress.
Susanna was always hanging out with her friends.
None of them drove, so they all were young and would walk to each other's house.
On July 26, 2022, while Susanna's mother was attempting to locate her and worried about where
Susanna was, Susanna's friend Kaya had gotten a notification on her phone through a
mobile application on their phone called Live 360.
It's an app where you can add people to your circle.
You can add friends, family members, and it'll tell you their location.
It also provides other safety features.
Like parents can track their kids.
It shows how fast they're driving.
It shows if the phone battery is low, things like that.
Around 10.30 p.m., Susanna's friend, Kaya, had gotten a notification on her phone that
Susanna's phone had been involved in some kind of crash.
Kaya gets what they call a crash alert on her phone.
To get a crash alert, there has to be serious force with that phone.
Susanna could have potentially been involved in a car accident.
Once Kaya got the Live 360 notification crash alert, she contacted Esmeralda.
So her friends at that point are worried about Susanna and Susanna didn't drive.
After speaking with Esmeralda, she went out there and checked it out because we were thinking she got into a car accident.
They had the location of where the alert was sent from.
So they went to that location and started looking for Susanna.
I was on the phone with Kaya.
My sister had Susanna's phone number.
My sister was calling her phone to see maybe we could find it or find any debris of any sort of car crash.
But that road and that neighborhood was very quiet that night.
So obviously there was no car crash.
There's no signs at all of a vehicle crash, no signs of Susanna, and no signs of her phone.
She couldn't find any debris or anything, so we just assumed that she was sleeping over at a friend's house, and we slept on it.
The next day, I received a terrifying call from my mom where she was sobbing, and I was like, what happened?
My mom called me and told me that she was going to call the police because she hasn't hurt for Susanna.
And I turned her to wait for me, and I left work.
I don't think I was really worried until I got the screenshots from the Life 360,
and that's when I started panicking.
And it basically showed the trip of her walking home,
and all of a sudden she goes in the opposite direction in the car.
And it was like a notification of Life 360 that Susanna might have been in a crash.
She's heading down Singleton Road in the direction of Back Home.
Then we see about five minutes later, her direction,
pattern changed and she's going the exact opposite way away from her house and here we
see she's now driving in a vehicle at a top speed of 40 miles an hour. Ultimately we get
the crash alert at that location. That's the last known location where Susanna phones
pings. Once we got the screenshots, we realized Susanna had gone to a different friend's
house. She actually had gone to her friend Alyssa and Kelly's apartment complex.
Kelly is a girl that Susanna's mom for whatever reason didn't like. She didn't want
Susanna to be around certain friends because she believed they were a bad influence.
Susanna knew that her mom was going to say no about her going to Kelly's house.
So she asked, can I go to Esmeralda's house? So that's where Maria thought she was going to go.
But instead she ended up going to Kelly's house, which
She lived in the Sterling Glen Apartments.
The Sterling Glen Apartments is a fairly typical apartment complex for that area.
A lot of different buildings that have multiple apartment units in them.
There is a clubhouse and a pool.
Because of the crime in the area, they also employ a courtesy officer to help patrol the area.
The family have at this point reached out to all their friends of Susanna.
No one knows where she is, so they reach out to the Gwinnett County Police.
Lisa, make a report.
My sister's been listening since yesterday.
How old is your sister?
16.
Okay.
Is your mom or dad there?
Yes.
I'll have an officer out there
as soon if possible to meet with you and your mom, okay?
Okay, thank you so much.
Maria speaks Spanish.
So just to have that clear communication,
if we can, we send officers that speak Spanish.
Good days.
My, my,
My daughter, a 6th of the time, and she went to her
her phone is apagable.
Her friend has her on Life 360, no that is?
Mm-hmm.
But it's not like renewing her location.
And once the officer arrived at the house,
we were just letting them know what was going on
that Susanna had her made home since last night
and she wasn't answering any calls.
So where can I see her last known location?
That's special.
We were showing him the screenshots
from the Life-316 on the message.
that we had and they asked us to send that to them so we did.
When you're looking at the 360 of her been in a car,
it can be someone took her or it can be that she ran away.
Whose car is she in? What happened? Is she okay?
My name is Xavier Biggers.
I've been in policing for 20 years.
I've always wanted to be a police officer since I was five years old.
At the time of Susanna Morales' disappearance,
disappearance. My title was a sergeant over the special victims unit. Initially I had
nothing other than what the officers on scene had given me. You showed them something
on your phone?
The photo?
The photo of Susie?
What had a place to when she was?
Jeans, a yellow tank top. They show Susanna's hair. She had black fingernails. That's something that stood out
us something descriptive for her.
They gave us if I could help to localize,
so we don't we can't do that?
No.
So what I can do right is the report initial,
saying that she's not been here.
They gave us a report number.
Good morning.
I need to list a juvenile missing.
When Susanna mother called us to report her missing,
she was put on the system by the officer
that made the report as a missing person.
On that day, I was the on-call sergeant.
They called me and let me know that they went door-to-door trying to get more information about her disappearance.
They went to Sterling Glen apartments where Kelly lives.
Seven-eighth.
Hello.
Hello.
They spent about a good three to four hours that that apartment complex looking for.
She here?
She's working right now.
And they actually spoke with Kelly and talked with her.
You know why we're here?
we're here?
What can you tell us about her?
She left me, 10, and then I there was on the middle.
Right.
It's so strange.
Susanna ended up walking over to her friend Kelly and Alyssa's home at the apartment complex.
We were actually able to locate social media videos that were taken of Susanna and her friends that
We were doing a belly piercing, just taking videos.
We were just hanging out.
We ended up walking to the back of the gate, to the apartments, and then I just said goodbye.
Around 10 p.m., Kelly said that she took Susanna to the exit of the Sterling Glen apartments on Singleton Road.
Singleton Road is located in a pretty populated area.
There are residential areas as well as businesses.
Even at night, there's a lot of foot traffic as well as vehicles.
Susanna had walked on that road numerous times, so she was familiar with it.
However, once you pass the businesses, it is a very dark walk back to Susanna's house.
This is where Kelly basically walked Susanna out to the back gate,
and Susanna went home this way from the back gate.
From Sterling Glen apartments to Susanna home.
is probably only about a 15-minute walk.
To get home, Susanna would have exited the Stirlingland Apartments through the back gate,
taking a left on Singleton Road, and then traveled down Singleton Road and taken a left onto Santa Ana Drive where her home was located.
I was a homicide detective with Gwynette County Police at the time of Susanna Morales' disappearance.
I worked on the same floor as the Special Victims Unit.
I heard them talking about it, so of course I jumped in and I was asking questions.
asking questions.
There was something up with this that wasn't a typical case.
Somewhere after she walked past this parking lot,
her phone changed directions and began going back
towards the Stirlingland Apartments at a speed
that's consistent with her being a vehicle.
And within less than a mile, a crash alert is received.
So this is the direction, the 360 application
was showing Susanna was going in at 40 miles per hour.
Then this is the area that it pretty much crashes out and roundabout here.
We checked to see if there were any accidents in that area.
There was no accidents reported in that area.
Given that there's no actual evidence of a car crash, our assumption is that her phone
is thrown out the window out of a moving vehicle and that the phone is damaged or broken
to cause the crash alert.
When you're looking at the 360 of her being in a car, you can see it from both ways,
and I saw it from both ways.
It can be someone took her or it can be that she ran away.
So.
I knew she didn't run away.
She was on the way home and something happened.
Just because of the information that we had about hanging out with Kelly and the fact that
she told her mother that she was going one place and she ended up going somewhere else, we
was thinking maybe that she had thrown herself on the way or got rid of it because she knew
she was going to get in trouble.
So we linked this as possibly while she was running away.
Even with that, we were working the case as a regular missing person by gathering the information
we had far as her friends, her social media, and doing the things as our policy have stated,
and work it at that point.
Did you ever think she would run away?
No, no.
I never, never, never, never, I never, never, never.
She didn't take her torture.
She didn't take clothes.
She didn't take anything.
So we were really, really scared at that moment.
And that's when we as a family start looking for her.
They needed to do something.
Susanna's nowhere to be found.
They go out, they start canvassing.
Then the family thinks they found something.
That's her, that's her.
That is her.
That's her.
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Just be honest, we don't throw out search parties unless it's a critical person.
Diabetic, can't leave by their own, something that will have exigent circumstances for us to find this person.
She's 16, right?
Yeah, let me make a couple of phone calls.
After filing the police report, we said that we weren't going to wait.
We had to do something.
something and so using the screenshots that we had we kind of retraced her steps
we started looking for her in the exact point where the app shows where the incident
was the ping hit at this area right here her family came here and it was unfortunate
that this was not the location where Susanna was at it was just the last area where
her cell phone pinged at we tried to retrace her steps that we thought the
she would take.
So we started at Kelly's apartment.
We're almost practically the detectives.
You were the detectives.
Yeah, we always
looking,
investigating,
and asking.
They needed to do something.
Susanna's nowhere to be found.
They go out, they start canvassing as well.
We were asking all the businesses
to see if they had any cameras.
And we got to a daycare.
The camera system that the place had,
It was super old, so it was like an hour ahead or behind.
I'll tell you the time of this.
At first we couldn't get anything until he went back to the right hour.
We saw Susanna.
That is her.
That's her.
We're like, oh my God, that's her, that's her.
In the video, Susanna is wearing the yellow tank top, jeans, and white crocs.
She's alone.
There's no cars near her, no strangers.
She appeared to be walking towards the direction of her home,
and that nothing was wrong at that moment.
Susanna walked this way.
She walked past the cameras coming right there.
She walked down this pathway here.
Once we saw that, our mind was thinking that
she got kidnapped, she's being raped, she's trafficking.
We just thought about the worst.
It was a bad feeling because we knew for sure something that happened,
because she was on the way home.
How did you feel?
It was more the angstia, because I said,
I if she had, I went and my a my little, someone's got.
I feel that she'd have gritted, mom, help me, but I'm not there.
You have to look at what she abducted.
abducted. We have close to 40 to 50 missing persons reports in our system a month.
And I would say majority of those, they come back home within the first week. All hands
are on deck when it comes to a person that's been abducted versus someone is just being
missing because you have to show that foul play is actually involved. And at that time, we
didn't have any information that Susanna was abducted by anyone. However, we, we didn't have any information that Susanna was abducted by anyone. However,
I had taken the case as a personal matter and I was looking for her like someone had taken her.
My daughter is 16 at the time when this occurred.
I looked at this as if she was my daughter because every day I saw my daughter, I saw her.
So I was working harder every day because I came over here to the extra store's face knowing that
Susanna was continuing her walk. But unfortunately the video camera only caught the brush,
At the bottom of here, it didn't capture the sidewalk.
We actually checked the buses' cameras during that time frame when she went missing.
We didn't see any footage of her on any of the buses.
At Sterling Glen Apartments, the only cameras that they have are on top of the building.
Those are considered like live-feed cameras, which means live-feed, not recording.
Once Susanna was reported missing, and nobody was able to find any location for her or any information about where she was.
she had gone. Susanna's family and her friends and the community began to launch a campaign to try
and find Susanna. We decided we would make these big posters and say, have you seen her? Can you
please call this number? And we were posting all over social media. I remember I got a call
from this woman. She was saying, I have your sister. I have your sister. In that moment, my heart dropped.
Especially nowadays with social media, people do things to make you feel like a moment of hope and false hope.
And that's what happened.
He'll just not messing with me.
Unfortunately, there are evil people out there and they pray on this.
The family is begging and pleading with anyone to find Susanna.
You just don't know what happened.
We don't know if she got picked up.
We don't know if she got lost.
She wouldn't just go out and not tell her.
This was a case that grabbed so much attention.
You're talking about a teenager, and all of a sudden she goes missing.
It blows your mind.
We did receive a lot of tips from people who were genuine and did care and tried to give potential sightings of her.
One tip brings her family to the brink.
Someone saw Susanna's bright curly hands.
at a hotel.
Police are dispatched to the scene.
What do they find?
You know my mom were going on every single day.
If we would get a tip at 2 in the morning, we would be out looking for her at 2 in the morning.
I remember that we would get a lot of sightings of her.
And so we would always go and check out.
At one point a tip comes in that someone saw Susanna's bright curly hair at a hotel.
And when we went, we were just like driving around the hotel.
the hotel and then in one of the windows we saw like a silhouette of two women and one
had um super curly hair and we were like for sure that it was Susanna so we called the police
we had officers go to the hotel because they were actually in the park lot saying that
suzana was actually there they were taking forever to get there and when the police got there
they went inside and they were able to talk to one of the women that was there
but lady that had left was the one with curly hair
And so we were like, oh my God, what if that was her?
So we were left with that doubt if that lady was her or not.
They never gave up hoping.
I lived off their hope.
After my eight hours of work, I would still spend two to three more extra hours
during our college Susanna time.
Just driving around just to seeing if I could see
Susanna sitting on a stoop or sitting at the playground,
hoping that I would possibly see her just walking down.
walking down the sidewalk.
I mean, my car doesn't really look like, I mean,
a police guard.
So I would actually go in plain clothes
and just like camp out at some of these hotels.
And after a while, some of the criminals
who do a lot of prostitution start noticing who I was.
This is the RV camp.
Someone said that they had thought they saw her,
saw a sighting of her over here.
And then I just got into a routine
that I would do the exact same thing.
And I would go from the hotels to here, to the businesses, to the apartment complex, to Sterling Glen.
I just kept doing the exact same thing over and over because I just felt that if I didn't do it,
that will be the day that someone saw it.
It was a super hard time.
I was honestly really just trying to be strong from my mom.
He decided that disappeared my
life, for
to say, it's
the longer that Susanna
remained missing, the bigger
of a story this became
in the local community.
It's been more than a month
since anyone in Susanna Morales'
family has heard from the 16-year-old.
This flyer is all across
North Cross in Gwinnett County.
Today, Gwinnett Police said
they can't find her alone.
Honestly, we're just tired of not knowing
that's like the hardest part.
But our goal was just to make sure that everybody knew her face.
If anybody was testing her, they would call us.
Gwinnett Police on Monday said they have exhausted all options and need the public's help to find her.
The Meadow Creek High student is not believed to be in any danger.
What's the evidence for them to think that?
Or do they have evidence that show otherwise?
While we're going through the fall, police don't have any updates on it.
During that time, I also, I was pregnant.
I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep.
But all I love to do was crying.
I got pregnant with why I couldn't do anything.
And so mainly I felt guilt for not being able to look for her more.
As the investigation began to month after month turn up no results,
the special victims unit turned the case over to the homicide unit.
What's interesting about this case is there's a team with the first 48 TV show
that was embedded with police during this investigation into this
disappearance of a teenage girl.
STU's been working a missing juvenile case
for going actually six months today.
I was asked to come in and assist.
And I just got kind of pushy, I guess.
Not in a bad way.
I just kind of hijacked the case.
Carter is just, man, she's a warrior.
And she knows she just have a knack for stuff.
There was zero communication coming from Susanna.
after that crash alert.
Literally zero activity.
Nothing.
She's a teenager.
That's unheard of.
We did have hope that somebody knew
was coming to the case
and hopefully they were able to see something
that nobody else saw.
I started from scratch.
We took metal detectors
where her phone was last seen
on Live 360 and attempted to locate it.
We're just going to check that Center Median
I really want to find.
We didn't find the phone. We just tried.
I spoke to friends. I spoke to family.
You treat this just like a real homicide case, not just a person just walked away.
Everyone is now considered a suspect at this point.
Throughout those investigations, the police realized that absolutely none of them had any information
whatsoever as to Susanna's disappearance.
So I asked for another media release to be sent out just to keep her name relevant.
And we had no suspects at that time.
We don't know who's watching.
This is 16-year-old Susanna Morales,
a teenager who's been missing since summer.
Cell phone data and cameras show her last known location
was in Guinead County, walking home.
We needed either someone come forward with some information
or don't Susanna come home.
If you have information, please call Guinect County Police.
And then within about two weeks or so,
we had a break in the case.
I received a call saying, did you hear the news?
They found your sister.
Y'all really went out.
Nobody expected to still be looking for her.
Winnet County Police Department out of lease.
They said they have exhausted all options.
Looking for this missing high school student.
We had the meeting where it was decided like I would kind of take over the case.
And then we just started doing all these other search warrants.
And we got a call.
Winning County, Nilema-Wan, what's the location for the emergency fee?
He was driving.
He noticed on the side of Highway 3,
Highway 316 a trail that went into the wood line.
He had a small kind of off-road vehicle
and he liked to adventure and find different trails.
And so he took that trail down the side of Highway 316.
He ultimately said that he got a phone call,
got out and began to walk around the woods
as he was on the phone.
I was just out walking through the woods
off the side of 316, but I found a human skull.
All right, we're going to have an officer head out that way.
A patrol officer sent to check out those remains.
The immediate assumption is, hey, it's probably an animal, it's a skull.
Oh, it's going. How are you doing?
That way, a little walk.
Just a hundred yards.
Can't show us?
Sure.
Officers arrive and they meet the man who made the 911 call from the side of the highway,
and he kind of leads them into the woods where he found it.
Is it off like this road or is it a little way is off?
It's right up over here.
There's no stores, there's no real residence, it's just literally the side of a highway.
It's not a place that people normally would pull over and just walk around or there's no reason for someone to be there.
We see on that officer's body camp when he gets there the officer sees a skull.
And the remains are too big to be a small animal and it's clearly they are here.
human. And there's more, I walk straight that way and there's a
step back a little bit. We'll see how far we've got to cordon this off. I got some taping back
in my car too. So the Gwinnett County Police Department confirmed that they did appear to be
human remains. And so the Gwinnett County Medical Examiner, Homicide Unit, and crime scene
specialists responded to the area. We were called out because a citizen
discovered skeletal remains. This is just all wooded. There's nothing out here. We're going to go
Yeah.
This general area right here is where the remains were located.
This is going to be all right.
Yeah, I know.
The first thing that I saw when I got here was a human skull on the ground.
Right now they're collecting some of the larger bones of the foot.
We've retrieved a significant portion of the skeleton.
The skull is complete.
There's no clothing, there's no wallet.
There's no, you know, possessions, no effects.
Police look and there's absolutely nothing to identify the person.
the person. Not even any indication if they're male or female, a dull, child, nothing.
I have not seen any sharp force injuries to the bones. Right now we don't have a cause of
death. We don't have an identity. Looking at it, the gross plates is not fused. He said,
tibia younger, 17-18-inch. The first words from the forensic pathologist when she sees what we have are,
if you have any missing teenage girls.
So the medical examiner, Dr. Terry,
she's able to tell that they're female,
and that is when red flags start going off in our heads.
Could this be Susanna?
As we were sifting through the top soil
and recovering some of the small bones of the hands,
one of the medical examiner investigators,
he recovered some fingernails.
We found some fingernails.
This pain was killing off of them, right?
Yeah, like the black.
This started missing.
As soon as I saw the nail polish on the fingernails, I recalled a photo that Detective Carter had shown me of Susanna.
In that photograph, her nails were painted black.
It kind of put a chill in my spine.
Something you took note of was that the remains that we were able to actually recover
indicated that her clothes were not with her at the time that she was killed.
I definitely remember thinking that whoever this girl turned out to be,
You know, it was immediately obvious that she didn't walk out into the woods, as thick as it was, she didn't walk out here in the nude with no shoes on.
That was immediately suspicious.
By the time the medical examiner process was seen it was completely dark in the middle of the woods.
Our immediate concern at that point was trying to verify if, in fact, these were Susanna.
Could it really be Susanna?
All of ours hearts break, because of course,
we still hope she's alive.
I made arrangements to have uniform officers out here
so that there would be bodies all night guarding this perimeter,
making sure that no evidence could be tampered with,
to come back out here the next day
to search for additional items just because it was too dark
to perform that thorough of a search.
Hey, y'all hold up!
Recruit found a gun.
It felt really strange that a firearm would be out here.
Probably 30 yards past when the skeletal remains were found.
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I was just out walking through the woods off the side of 316, but I found a human
skull.
I walked straight that way and there's a few more over there.
So we went that next morning out to the remains.
So just make sure that you're scanning carefully because there are going to be small pieces that you need for.
In addition to clothing, shoes, something like that.
All right, go ahead.
It's going to form the line from here down to the gartero.
It's fill in any gaps.
So we line up police officers to do a grid.
Walking through the woods near that remains
to see is there anything that could have been left there.
Hey, y'all hold up.
The crink found a gun.
Probably 200 feet off the highway here was a black pistol,
just barely covered with pine straw.
It was a 9mm firearm that had a flashlight attached to the firearm as well,
and it appeared it had been there for some time.
Probably 30 yards past where the skeletal remains were found.
It's definitely suspicious.
You want to run that really quick?
We're going to 10.29-clawed pistol, serial Bravo, Rangio, X-ray, Vettel, 074.
The 99.
It means it's stolen.
The gun was loaded, but there was no evidence to say that it had been fired.
That's where the gun is actually found.
Is where that dead in.
Definitely the close proximity that the gun was to the remains, and then the gun being listed has stolen it, it doesn't take a rocket science to figure out that that they're probably related.
I want to talk to the guy who reported it missing.
Police run that serial number of the firearm. They find out that that gun was
reported missing by someone named Miles Bryant.
Miles Bryant actually lived in the Sterling Glen apartments.
I told the report and saw that it had been reported stolen the same day that Susanna was reported as missing from the same location, Sterlingland Apartments.
She's last seen July 26, 2022, 10 o'clock p.m.
The next morning in the early,
early morning hours, that gun's reported stolen from the Sterling Glen apartments.
Miles Bryant is the owner of that gun.
He lives at the Sterling Glen apartment complex where Susanna was last seen.
All of our evidence is coming back to Sterling Glen.
Miles Bryant, the guy who reported a gun stolen, the day after Susanna went missing.
He reported from his courtesy officer job at Winstgate Village.
He was working in security.
Yes.
Oh my gosh.
It's a cop.
Yeah.
The moment that I found out that he was a cop, it was like, are you serious?
What the heck?
Like, it was kind of extremely shocking because you never think you're going to see that.
It was like getting crazy.
Where is you an officer?
I know.
I learned that the person who reported the gun as stolen was Miles Bryant.
From there, I started doing.
I started doing some research on him.
Miles Bryant was working for the Dorville.
Police Department, Dorval is between our area in Gwynette
and the city of Atlanta, not far from us.
His side gig was to do security.
He was a courtesy officer for the apartment complex
where he lived, and that's typical.
You'll see officers live in different apartment complex,
and they'll do security for them.
He appears very young, and he is young.
He was in his early 20s.
Miles grew up here.
He went to school here in Gwynette County.
Me and Miles Bryant grew up since I was in elementary school.
We were best friends.
He was kind of nerdy.
He wore glasses.
He liked me if he wasn't my type.
So I just kind of threw him into the friend zone.
Miles played football at Berkmore High School.
He was a running back.
His number was 23.
He would post highlight videos of himself to his huddle account.
He's an ROTC in high school.
He joins the Army National Guard.
Miles was very proud of his National Guard service.
He posted photos of himself in his uniform on social media.
He always wanted to be a police officer.
Detective Carter began to review that report of the missing weapon,
weapon, believing that it was very possible somebody had stolen this gun and used it to abduct
Susanna.
Hey, Mr. Bryant.
You're probably getting slammed.
I'm sorry.
No, you're good.
At that point, that's when we pull that body cam video on the gun reported missing.
So yesterday, so I can't find my wallet, and then this morning, I looked on my floorboard
and my Black 19 holster.
Right.
Oh, I hate to say, I think I look for me.
They didn't smash the window or nothing.
I'm gonna .
Miles Bryant reports that from his personal vehicle, his own truck,
his wallet is taken, and his gun is taken.
I looked down this morning and saw my host, I said,
I can't find my wallet, my host is there,
my gun and the hostess is never separate, you know?
Okay.
Anyway, I'll list in the truck just to say it's down on the report.
Yeah.
I don't really care about, you know, the detective, something like that.
I just want to be on.
We found it very odd that Mr. Bryant would
Mr. Bryant would not want detectives to follow up on a stolen gun report.
Hey, I just want to document this, but you don't need to send it to detectives.
You don't need to investigate that.
That's on her dump.
If you need anything, hit me up.
I'm more than well talking.
I appreciate it, bro.
Hey.
Hopefully you find your well and it's not actually...
Yeah, I know.
When the police department discovered he was a police officer, they didn't want to believe that he was necessarily involved.
in this, but at the same time, it was very difficult to figure out and think about how his gun
could have ended up in the woods where Susanna was last located, 22 miles away from where he lived.
I was like hardcore at that point. We need to talk to this person because they're definitely
going to have information or some kind of involvement. We're literally talking to everyone here,
so we got no leads, man. We're just running. Myself and Detective Carter went and got the dinner
records for Susanna. The medical exam was able to match them up and actually told us that it was
Susanna. Me and Carter, we just sat there and cried for about 10 minutes because we, um, we didn't want to believe that it was her.
We're about to go make death notification to the family. I'm not looking forward to it, but it has to be done.
Break the horrible news. Do you guys want to go inside for a second? I remember going to
to my mom's house to wait for the police,
so I know beggars and Carter were coming,
and then that's when they informed us
that they had fallen her remains.
And I was like, what?
They found my sister.
I remember Grandis hearing my mom screaming,
and I was in shock.
I was like, that can't be true.
Like, that can be true.
Our mom literally just fell to the ground.
Her soul just left her body.
It was the hardest thing that I've ever done,
and to this day,
It's still, obviously you can see that it still stick with me.
A bad news that's
when she's a mother
where Susanna.
I feel that no
there's a legion in my heart.
I love my sister.
But something has died
in my.
Unfortunately, because of
the way the body was disposed of,
We have no indication of what happened to Susanna.
But what the medical examiner also determined very quickly was that there was also absolutely
no evidence of any clothing that had been on Susanna prior to her being left there.
And that was significant because with an accidental death, it would be very unlikely, nearly
you know, unheard of for Susanna to not be dressed, to not be clothed.
And so that immediately told us that we suspected that,
this was a homicide.
Investigators in Quinnett County just told us human remains found along Highway
316, that's in Gwynette County, are those of a 16-year-old girl who disappeared in July.
I remember Carter promising me that she would find out what happened and who did it.
Looking at Miles, we're kind of wondering, you know, what his involvement may have been.
Is he a true victim and had his gun stolen and whoever stole it is responsible, you know, for maybe
taking Susanna or is this a ruse to distance himself from his gun being located out in the woods
where the remains were found they then obtained a search warrant for mr. Bryant's cellular phone
records we just got phone records back on our suspects he is in the wood line at 1 a.m.,
which is three hours later after Susanna goes missing.
Miles Bryant was a police officer.
He had two phones, a personal cell phone and a work cell phone.
Both phones put him in that location,
and he's in the same location at the same time as Susanna's remains.
Oh, I wanted to go arrest him.
I wanted to go arrest Miles like right away.
I wanted to leave that night and go get him because it was alarming.
I'm like, he's in a position of power.
I'm like, we can't just leave him like this.
But this is a cop involved in this.
We need to make sure we handle this correctly.
I went out there and just waited for him to walk outside, and we just approached him asking for his help for our investigation on Susanna.
Hey man, what's up?
You doing all right?
We're just down here.
We're trying to look for anybody helping us out with that missing girl.
Oh.
Yeah.
You're the courtesy officer or something?
Yes, sir.
Cool, man.
You know anything about that?
Yeah, no, I don't.
Miles' response to the information he had about Susanna.
It was a little surprising.
he should be more informed with what's going on in his complex if he's a good courtesy officer.
You know, you got some time for us to come up to our headquarters and just talk about
what you see on a daily basis and stuff like that.
Yeah, so at that time, there was no arrest warrants for Miles,
so he really needed to come voluntarily.
So we kind of just urged him that we needed his help.
Yeah, um, there's the day to be today.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now?
I have to go meet my girlfriend and I work.
Okay.
What time's work at?
Four?
Yeah, it shouldn't be.
We're literally talking to everyone here.
We got no leave, man.
We're just trying to document everything.
That's all we are.
No problem.
Okay?
You can get up front seat, all right, man?
Yeah, we'll get you up there, knock this out.
We don't put him in the back of a patrol car.
We actually let him sit up front in the police car,
trying to make him feel comfortable,
make him see, hey, we're just police officers, one-on-one, friends,
talking to each other.
So we brought Miles up here.
He sat in this chair here and we interviewed him.
Hey, how you doing?
In the interview room, we have seats where we put certain people.
Like we're a detective sit, where suspect sits.
We let him sit in a detective seat.
We didn't change anything.
We wanted him to be as comfortable as possible.
I'm a detective partner.
We don't know how to get a lot of for this case.
So I'm going to start working a little bit more.
So Detective Carter obviously wanted to build a little bit more.
Obviously wanted to build a rapport with him.
They're both working for the same goal,
trying to accomplish the same thing,
and that's fine, a missing girl.
Have you ever seen her?
She used to be older quite a bit.
Okay, I haven't recognized the picture.
I've recognized it.
So the initial plan for the interview again,
just go in there, be relaxed,
ask him very open and did questions.
I asked him about his gun,
have you heard anything about the gun?
And I played dumb.
I know that your gun was all of,
do you know he was located,
anything yet? No, I've heard anything. I haven't run it yet. I want to, we probably need to check that.
And then at one point when I think I got as much information as I probably could get from him with
just being super casual, I dropped that one bomb. Basically, my firegent did confirm so we did find
your gun. Actually, yeah, you watched the news, you know we found Savannah, but there was actually
a gun found out there too. For real? Yeah. You been shaking? Yeah, it's crazy, you know? I told you
You were coming up to you, you know, we wanted your help and everything and your hands are shaking in my car.
All right.
We had not disclosed prior to the interview with Mr. Bryant that we had found a firearm near Susanna's body.
So he learned that for the first time sitting there in the interview room.
That's crazy.
I found my gun.
And it's the same serial number.
He just verified it.
It's crazy.
I know.
So help me walk through it a little bit.
Do you know where she was found?
316 somewhere at that point when I told him we found his gun he does start shaking a little bit more
that's crazy if I'm not good so try to involve I mean that's a crazy coincidence yeah I think you
got stolen from you this same day so it's probably someone that was walking around out there yeah
try to think hard with me did you know her at all around nothing nothing you know what your gun was
found there you know how this goes we have to do like this that and a third to do everything
Um, which we did. We got our due diligence.
So I did get your phone record.
Mm-hmm.
So I had new, I know you were already up there.
Mm-hmm.
So kind of tell, you were there for a little while.
So once Miles was confronted with the phone records,
he changed his story to say that he got in this crazy chase,
fight with his girlfriend.
I'm gonna get, God, I mean that part.
She tried to chase him.
I'm gonna try to chase him.
Where her car.
Yeah, I mean, I was driving around.
I was driving and,
And I remember I was driving, and I was still in our area.
I remember I was dropping.
She tried to chase me.
Yeah.
Like the Jerry Sprayer episode.
His story went from there's no reason I would be there.
I'm never there to, oh yeah, actually I was there.
And I stopped and pulled over and I was on the phone.
Going up towards Lawrencebury area, I think, oh man, that sounds bad.
It is over around 316.
I mean, you're saying that's bad.
I mean, Lawrenceville big.
You're saying that's bad.
the area where...
Yeah, because...
I'm be honest, I'm really sorry, okay?
So my gun was found in that area,
you know,
technically was in that area, stuff like that, you know?
I mean, it sounds bad, but I...
Man, you know.
Miles ultimately, you know, says that he admits that he was out there.
He kind of has to, because his phone put him out there,
but he said he was...
Doesn't get out of his vehicle, doesn't do anything in the woods.
Why were you in the woods?
I was in the woods.
You were in the woods.
You were.
You're not helping me out much, man.
Interviewing him was just so frustrating because this poor girl didn't deserve this.
Like, she didn't.
And I just wanted him to take responsibility and actually tell us what happened instead of deflecting and trying to say that he had nothing to do with it.
So I say, okay, I'm like, this isn't working with me.
I said, fine, we're going to take a break.
The speech is going to come up with it.
You want to try?
You want to try?
Maybe it's because I'm a female, because he doesn't respect females.
We decided, you know, we were kind of running into dead ends interviewing Miles, and that's
when me and Sergeant Poppy decided to come in and just get more aggressive with him.
Sergeant Poppy, I'm a congress supervisor.
The confessional was going to be huge in this case because without a manner of death, we needed Miles
to tell us how he killed her.
We decided to take an aggressive approach and just tell him that he was essentially just
And at the end of the day, you can't give us any information on why your gun is there.
And why you're there for an extended period of time.
In the same spot that her body was found.
I don't know.
I was by myself the entire night besides when my girlfriend was chasing me.
That's not a good answer.
And your girlfriend's going to tell us she was chasing you that night.
Yeah, she remembered.
I then speak to his girlfriend on the phone to people.
confirm whether she was chasing him that night or not.
Quick question.
He says you caught him shooting that night.
You weren't chasing him?
But she said she never chased him.
Your girlfriend?
Does she absolutely not.
She did not chase you that night?
She did not chase me?
I swear.
So I even told Miles that I thought he was, you know, lying about his gun being stolen,
telling him that he was trying to distance himself from the crime.
And he just denied, denied, denied everything.
I think you dropped your gun.
She could find that you gave up the left.
No.
She didn't even want a detective aside.
to your case. You told the officer, you don't even have to investigate this. Because if you,
because if we investigate it, we're going to find it and it's going to be near a dead body that you
killed. No. You can say no, I don't hear that word for you no more. You know, you don't represent
this bad at all or this country. So do. I was hoping talking to Miles about, you know,
honor, pride, integrity might tug on his, you know, conscious a little bit. I was hoping, talking to Miles about, you know,
know, conscious a little bit because people get into law enforcement for the right reason.
And I was hoping maybe that would strike a court in Miles, but unfortunately it didn't.
Honor, integrity, sacrifice. You're none of those.
Unless you could provide us with that thing, that's going to say it's not you, but you haven't done that.
What do you all want? I'll tell you everything I got.
All right, man.
If we're charged, we'll be back in a couple of minutes.
I said, stay home, we still driving around.
We tell him, look dude, you're under arrest.
Go ahead, stand up for you.
We get his phone, we get his passwords, and he is transported to the jail.
Oh, we can't, bro, I can I go to jail.
I have a f***er.
At that time, because we weren't 100% sure on the cause of death
and we were still looking for additional evidence,
we charged him with false report of a crime.
a crime. You can't just go to a judge and say, well, I just know it. I just feel it. You know,
we have to come with some evidence. We started investigating Miles Bryant's past, and there starts
to be a bunch of weird behavior with women. We begin to realize who Mr. Bryant really was
under the surface, and it was this repeated pattern all involving young women. I was very scared
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It was Wednesday morning, about 10 a.m.
when Leslie Jenning Prier's colleagues became concerned.
She hadn't come to work.
In 2001, Leslie Prier was living in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
When on a spring morning, the unthinkable happened.
There were signs of a struggle, but no forced entry.
This woman was strangled and she was beaten.
She was found in the shower with the water running.
For the next two decades, Leslie Pryor's case remained unsolved,
and the shocking truth about the real killer stayed hidden,
until very recently when new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible.
I'm Stephanie Ramos, and this is Blood and Water, a new series from ABC Audio in 2020.
And he almost got away with it. He almost got away with it.
Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.
The funeral was very surprising seeing a lot of community together.
A lot of people out there supporting our family.
I think that every one of us
have a reflection on this day.
And that Kinsenra dress was the one she was buried in.
Yes, that vestido,
decided to put herself on
on his rest.
And I put his vestige and with that she,
she went.
What I could do was cry and cry.
The most emotional part about the funeral was is hearing my mom cry out justice for Susie to the Lord.
Susanna Morales' family got a call from investigators just hours after laying her to rest Monday.
When was the first time you heard the name Miles Bryant?
The first time you heard the name Miles Bryant?
Brian?
We're going to the service of
to sepulting when we received the
call that had news for
for us.
And we went to the office of the police
and there was the first
that we heard the
number of it.
22-year-old Miles Bryant started the day
as an officer with Doraville Police.
Now he's behind bars off the job
and linked to the disappearance of a dead teen.
I got search warrants
and conducted forensic download
on his cell phones and then began reviewing that data.
I was able to show and put him out there
based on his activity logs on his cell phone.
Like how quickly you're moving your steps and stuff like that?
At 120 a.m., he traveled 381 meters,
131, 140 meters, 141, 373 meters.
Technology is amazing.
In a cell phone, you can see how many steps somebody takes.
takes. You can see their heart rates, get their location. Do you know where she was found?
So when Miles told us he was just sitting in the truck. Do you ever go in the woods and stuff out there?
In a loose, no. He was actually dumping Susanna's body in the woods and then losing his gun
and freaking out because he can't find his gun because it's pitch black out there. That's him running
around. Where is my gun? Yep. Looking for his gun. It's interesting that those phone records
put him at that remote location where the remains and gun are found twice.
The night time when Susanna goes missing, and then the next morning.
Our theory is that he goes back to the woods.
We assume he's looking for the gun that he dropped.
So we also got like his Google search history.
He is on Google zooming in on the wooded area where he leaves her.
Safari searched for how long does it take a body to decompose?
Oh yeah, bike drop.
The man arrested last week for the death of 16-year-old Susanna Morales
is now charged with her murder.
22-year-old former Doraville police officer Miles Bryant now faces charges of felony murder and kidnapping.
It's disheartening when you think that a police officer would be involved in something as heinous as this situation.
It is an affront to what these officers do on a daily basis.
We went to arraignment.
We entered a plea if not guilty.
They didn't do their job, they didn't do their due diligence.
I think there were some feelings from many in the community
that the police didn't care about Susanna,
about her being missing because she was Hispanic.
And while I didn't feel that way, and I don't think the police felt that way,
I think that was a feeling in the community at the time.
It was still seven months of us, looking for her, seven months of us, worrying about her.
I feel like if we could have found out sooner, that would have been a little more helpful for us,
that maybe we could have buried her body and not just her bones.
Chief McClure defended his department.
Again, this case was immediately assigned to an investigator,
and they began following up on leads trying to locate Susanna.
When I was looking into Miles, I located a lot of documented history
and encounters we had with him, where it seemed like he kind of targeted women.
Me and Miles Bryant were friends from fifth grade all the way up to 10th grade.
We kind of stopped talking a little bit, but then after graduation he hit me up to start talking again.
He was asked me about his ex-girlfriend a lot.
And I kind of got like an icky feeling.
Lasha Bates told him, I don't want to deal with you anymore.
And he just wouldn't take no for an answer on that.
He continued to reach out.
He continued to like follow around, show up at her apartment, try to
to break into her apartment.
Covering his face and pulling on the door handle, then again, knocking.
This happened nearly five months after Gwinnett police say Bryant dumped the naked body of Morales in July.
My neighbor's ringham captured two times, Miles Bryant showing up to my home uninvited.
It freaked me out.
When I called Doraville's department, I spoke to the chief, and the chief was telling me that he'd speak to Miles and give me a call back.
So his superiors start investigating that.
Bryant says that he only did that because she posted something he found strange on social media.
So he went by her house to check about her well-being.
And Doraville just writes it off as a misunderstanding between two people.
But they do tell him not to have any more contact with Valacia Bates.
When you look at it in light of what came out in relation to the Susanna Morales case, however, it's very concerning.
I was very scared for my life. I felt like everything was against me as far as the odds, just the fact that he was a cop.
Mr. Bryant lived two lives. On the surface, he was a well-respected police officer, but then on the other side was this dark and hidden secrets.
We and the DA's office, we all used to be.
looked through his body cam footage.
There was a call located where he responded to a missing juvenile.
So somebody picked you up, then what?
In that video, he basically described what he's basically done to Susanna,
which is very scary.
We're doing a missing person, then we find your body out there in the woods.
Then what?
Miles Bryan, an ex-cop now on the other side of the law,
accused of kidnapping and murdering 16-year-old Susanna Morales.
And we have yet to hear
why prosecutors think the former police officer would abduct the teenager and kill her.
They did say that he is accused of trying to dump her body in a wooded area.
Reporting live in Gwinnett County, Courtney Francisco, Channel 2 Action News.
This was a high-profile trial.
The courtroom was packed, a lot of family and friends, and it involved a police officer.
So you can imagine the interest is really high.
He was supposed to serve and protect.
Instead, he abused the woman.
He is a cop who turned into a killer.
Unfortunately, because of the way Miles Bryant dumped Susanna's body,
we didn't have evidence to prove a cause of death.
I thought it was important for the jury to understand that it's his fault that we don't.
have that. The defendant doesn't get to escape justice because he's good. Our strategy was
basically to try to get the jury to see that it was basically a speculation as to what
really happened that led to the death of Ms. Morales. We do know that Miles left her in the
woods. We don't know if she was unconscious at that time or if she was dead. We don't know that he
did anything to her to cause that.
He might have lured her through the use of a badge or gotten her in the vehicle somehow,
but very quickly I think he incapacitated her and ultimately murdered her.
And as the courtesy officer there at the apartment complex, he had run into Susanna
and had seen her along with her friends.
Do you swear from...
Susanna's friend, the Lissa testifies at the trial that they had met Miles Bryant before
at the apartment complex.
The defendant, Miles Bryant.
Have you seen him before?
We all knew it was a cop in our neighborhood.
Had you ever had any personal interactions with the defendant before Susanna disappeared?
Yes.
He came with his backpack and he had a drink with him and he had little shot cups and he had
edibles and stuff.
And he asked how old I was and then when I told him my age, he like still wanted to talk to me
but didn't talk to me because of my age, so he knew not to drink with me, but he wanted to drink
with me before he knew my age. But he still offered the edibles.
And Susanna was with you?
Yes. He offered us to give us a ride to get pizza, but we said no, because we're underage,
you're grown. How old were you back in July of 2022? I was 17.
Too young to drink, right? Right.
It proved to us a connection. There was some time when Mr. Bryant had seen Susanna.
before, even though he claimed to never have seen her.
Prosecutors were painting a picture of Officer Creepie.
His employment record was strong evidence that he had some questionable encounters.
I'm going to show you what's March in the state's against six.
Prosecutors showed the body camera footage of Miles Bryant telling a 13-year-old what could
happen to her is she runs away from home.
A mom had reported her 13-year-old daughter was missing.
And he is there taking the information.
While he's there, this young 13-year-old girl comes back.
Miles starts talking to her and says, pretty much narrates what I believe you did to Susanna.
Something that happened to you, we're doing a missing person, then we find your body
out there in the woods, then what?
Nowadays people don't care.
People are my size big and just come snatch you up.
You can scream, you can shout out, you want, they're going to throw you in your back.
and go take you to your parents and everything you'll get.
And there's nothing you can do.
You can't fight it.
It was definitely disturbing.
Keri is interacting with another young
Hispanic female, a teenager,
and scaring her.
You got a cell phone?
No.
See, little of something happened out there.
What are you going to call?
And this was a couple months before Susanna ever went missing.
And it was almost this premonition that he had put thought into this.
It's ridiculous.
that he would use his position in order to pray on young women.
Emotional testimony today in the trial of a former police officer.
I had prepped a lot for this trial because it meant so much to me
and I didn't want to be the reason anything messed up.
So I was very, you know, locked in and focused.
I get up there and then the emotions just start coming.
Detective Cashler was communicating with me
and telling me that they believed it was going to be,
Sorry.
A Hispanic teenage girl.
That's all the questions I have.
Mr. Rick?
I don't have any questions, ma'am.
Thank you.
The defense attorney in this case
doesn't really challenge a lot of the things
that are said about Miles Bryant,
and she doesn't call any witnesses.
There's still one person we're all waiting to hear from, however.
Mr. Brian, do you swear or affirm
that testimony you're about to give in this case
is the truth, the whole truth,
nothing but the truth.
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The ex-cop plans to testify in his own defense.
When the defense attorney says we're going to hear from Oz Bryant, that was a big bit of news for us.
Miles Bryant is the only one who was in this woods.
Susanna's mom and family could finally get answers.
He told us he didn't do this.
Look at her.
Have nothing to do with this, though.
If he wanted to take that back, he needed to get up on the stand and say it.
Are you aware that this is the only time you can testify during your trial?
Yes, ma'am.
Do you personally, Miles Bryant, want to testify or not?
No, ma'am.
He didn't take the stand.
So everyone waiting with that baited breath.
with that baited breath, how he can explain himself.
They did not get that at all.
He's a predatory monster with a batch.
I'll ask you to find him guilty.
Is there any evidence of malice in murder?
There is not.
When we were ready for the verdict, it was like 8 p.m.
And we were there, what it seemed like forever, to be honest.
Tonight, we learned the fate of the former police officer accused of killing this
teenager, Susanna Morales.
The judge is given the paper.
She's reading it.
I swear it's like in slow-mo it takes forever.
Count one, malice murder.
We, the jury found the defendant guilty.
And as soon as she said guilty to malice murder, I knew at that moment we had him.
The guilty on malice murder would have, was going to send him to prison forever.
Miles Bryant found guilty of malice murder, kidnapping, felony murder, and felony murder.
false report of a crime. I felt maybe just like a little bit of relief that he wasn't able to walk
away free from what he did. I would like to know from Miles Bryant why did he do it? What did my
sister do to him to serve such a death? I don't think they're ever going to get those answers.
I think they'll have to live with an understanding that we got the right person.
Susanna's family is able to give the victim impact statements. Then Miles is asked.
Does he have anything to say?
I just want to apologize everybody and to the victim's family.
He says, sorry.
He just gives some, he should have just been quiet.
No, I didn't care about his biology, to be honest,
because we still had that unknown of what happened that night.
The judge then sentenced Bryant to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
You moved from that house.
Yeah.
Do you still wait for her?
still wait for her?
Yes.
She was your baby.
She was your baby.
How often do you think about her?
And all the days,
I've learned to
to come and to
to,
but
the
the
dolor.
Just I'm
saying,
when you're
when you're
to get this
daughter, it's
the video of Susanna
singing
the song location
made Akelelele.
It's one of my favorite videos to look back on.
So, no, choose.
My last memory was I got on her bed.
And I was like, Susie, I love you so much.
And I hugged her.
She was like, I love you too.
And I think that was the best experience,
and the last experience I have with her.
I want her to remember by her laugh.
She was a beautiful girl.
And at the end of the day, she was just a sister,
a daughter, a friend.
And that night, she was on the way home, and nobody had the right to take that away from her.
She was on the way home.
We should note tonight that Miles Bryant's motion for a new trial has been denied.
He's now appealing that decision to the state Supreme Court.
David, for more on Susanna's case or similar homicide investigations, you can check out the first 48 Thursdays on A&E.
That's our program for tonight.
Thanks for watching.
I'm Deborah Roberts.
And I'm David Muir from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News.
Good night.
There was only one.
It's sweating time.
Megastar, adored by millions.
Then one day, he disappeared for a decade.
Where in the world is Richard Simmons?
Now, his closest alien friends speak out for the first time to Diane Sawyer.
He had to be in a lot of pain.
It had to be in a lot of pain.
And what does Richards live in housekeeper?
The last person to see him alive now say happened behind closed doors?
This is the first time I'm talking about this.
The mystery of Richard Simmons, a Diane Sawyer special.
Premier's Tuesday, May 12 on ABC and stream on Disney Plus and Hulu.
