Crime Junkie - WANTED: Justice for Hassani Campbell and Tianna Kirchner from Everett

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

This episode was originally released in November 2022, and is one of sixteen episodes from the archives we'll be bringing you every Thursday, now through end of year... for good reason! ;) We highly recommend you listen to each episode between now and end of 2024, and follow us on Instagram @crimejunkiepodcast so you're the first to know what's coming next!

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and we're traveling to a place that I keep telling you to stay out of. Though, clearly, I can't take my own advice because I actually went to Washington just recently. I've been looking into this wild case there that I'm not quite ready to tell you guys about just yet, but let's just say that it's another example of all of the reasons to stay out of Washington. But you know I always go back. Almost two years ago I brought you two cases from two different states that needed your attention, one of which is in Everett, Washington. And I do have a feeling that I'll be going back

here soon for more reasons than one. Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and today's story is about two kids who were failed by the very system in place to protect them, and who are both still waiting for justice. and Tiana Kirchner. It's a little after 4 p.m. on August 10, 2009, when police in Oakland, California get a frantic call from a man who tells them that his foster son is missing. Louis Ross tells the dispatcher that he just showed up to the shoe store where his fiance works with her niece and nephew in tow because they were fostering them,

and she was gonna watch them for the rest of the day. He says he parked around back and got their one-year-old Aliyah out of the car and walked her around to the front of the store, and then he went in and opened the back door to go get five-year-old Hassani. According to an article by Philip Rosenbaum for CNN, Lewis says that he was gone for less than five minutes, but when he got back to the car, Hassani was gone.

He tells police that he searched around the car, but he didn't see him anywhere and not wanting to waste valuable time, he called police. Law enforcement arrives on the scene soon after Lewis makes the call, and they immediately begin searching the surrounding area and talking to Lewis and his fiance, Jennifer Campbell. They learn that Hassani has cerebral palsy, which impacts his ability to walk, and that's why Lewis said he even left him in the car for a few minutes to begin with. Going through the back door is easier for him than walking all the way around

to the front. Lewis and Jennifer insist to police that Hasani isn't the type of kid to just wander away on his own. They've never had an issue with him walking off, and even if he did, they're confident he couldn't have gotten too far because Hasani wears leg braces to help him walk. So even though he can walk pretty well on his own, he's not quite as slippery as maybe other five-year-olds can be. And plus, the store is surrounded by other businesses and houses. There's a lot of people out that day. He has to be around somewhere.

Police shut down a two-block radius surrounding the shoe store and canvassed the area. They stop people on the street, they go into all of the surrounding stores and restaurants, they even go door to door and ask neighbors to check their backyards and basements. They even make a point to check in on all of the registered sex offenders in the area, as well as contact Hassani and Aliyah's biological parents to see if they know anything. But no one does, and everyone's cleared that same day. And if there are any security cameras in the area, they're never reported on, so I can't say if anyone caught anything on tape. So that's when police bring in the dogs, six of them, to try and pick up a scent from

the car. They also call in a helicopter to see if they can spot anything from the air, but they still come up empty-handed. I mean, the search dogs can't even pick up Hasani's scent outside of the car, which to them indicates that Hasani didn't just get out and walk away. It's at this point that some of the officers on the scene begin to question whether or not Hasani was even in that parking lot to begin with. They aren't jumping to the conclusion that Lewis did anything sinister, but as the last person who saw Hasani, they're going to take a closer look at him and his story. And they also get his permission to take his car in for testing.

The following day, the FBI announces that they're joining in on the investigation, and both Lewis and Jennifer are asked to take polygraphs. Lewis agrees, but Jennifer actually declines to take one because she's pregnant and she's concerned that the stress might hurt her baby. Now the results of Lewis's polygraph aren't immediately released by police, and the fact that they aren't initially saying whether he passed or failed starts to turn public opinion of him from sympathetic to suspicious. And listen, a lot of the public is watching this because the news about Hassani's disappearance

has spread like wildfire through the community of Oakland, and within a few days it gains national attention when Nancy Grace airs a segment about the disappearance on her show. One of the things that people really focus in on is the fact that Lewis left Hasani in the car despite saying that he could walk without assistance. That combined with not parking in the front of the store to begin with really makes the public question him. It shifts their opinion. The search for Hasani continues over the next few days, but at some point, Lewis announces that one of the descriptions of Hasani put out by police is actually incorrect.

You see, when police published initial descriptions of Hasani, he was described as wearing leg braces that would be visible over his pants. But according to Lewis now, this isn't true. He says Hasani does wear braces, but they go under his pants, so they actually wouldn't be visible. He says that this misreporting is worrisome because someone could have actually seen Hasani but disregarded the sighting because they didn't see the braces.

But when he makes this announcement, people are like, okay, why did you wait a few days to tell people that and make this correction? Like, this is a pretty huge discrepancy. But that's not the end of the discrepancy. people are like, okay, why did you wait a few days to tell people that and make this correction? Like, this is a pretty huge discrepancy. But that's not the end of the discrepancy, because he does it again after a few more days pass. And then he says that Hasani doesn't wear leg braces at all.

He says that he wears ankle braces that are designed to give him arch support and help him walk, and they don't go all the way up his legs. Which, again, that's a pretty important detail to get wrong. Now I couldn't find where this miscommunication came from, but it doesn't do any favors for Lewis and Jennifer. In fact, it makes them look even more suspicious. But suspicious or not, it's around this time that Lewis and Jennifer start stating publicly that they don't agree with how the investigation is being conducted.

In an article for SFGate by Jackson Vanderbecken, they say that they understand why police would look into them first, specifically Lewis because he was the last one to see Hassani. However, they say that police are only looking at them. And it's not just police, public scrutiny is all on them as well. And it doesn't help that police are saying there aren't any other leads. In fact, a full week after the disappearance, they say that despite all the publicity the case has gotten, they have received less than 50 tips in total, which they say is unusual. And the more time that passes without any leads or any sign of Hasani, the more their innocence gets called into question.

Especially when several things come out about Lewis that makes everyone wonder if his concern for his foster son is all an act. A little over a week after Hasani's disappearance, police say that some parts of Lewis's story regarding the day his foster son went missing are a little odd. For one, they say that earlier that day, Lewis had taken him to a pull-your-own-part auto salvage yard to look for a specific car part. Now what's odd about this is that he left the yard without even getting out of his car. Now this is really unusual because typically with that he left the yard without even getting out of his car.

Now, this is really unusual because typically with places like this, you have to get out of your car to go physically look for the part, like dig through stuff. So the fact that they drove all the way out there, didn't get out of the car, and then left doesn't sit well with people. Now, they aren't sure what he was doing there, but according to another article by Jackson Vanderbecken, they searched it but didn't find anything. By itself, this probably wouldn't be anything that people would think twice about. Weird, sure, but there could totally be a reasonable explanation. Like maybe he got there, Lewis decided that he didn't need the part, or considering

Hassani is only 5, Lewis could have gotten there and realized bringing a 5-year-old along might be more trouble than it's worth. But regardless of the reason, this incident gets cast in a totally different light when it comes out that Lewis had failed his polygraph. Now, as soon as this becomes public knowledge, Lewis adamantly disputes the results. In an interview for an NBC Bay Area article by Jessica Green, he says, quote, they gave me five questions. Three were controls. Is my name Louis Ross? Am I 38 years old?

Do I live in Fremont? Then they asked two other questions around the case. They showed me the results that said I was 99% deceptive. So he told me I didn't even get my name right, end quote. Now the investigators never comment on Louis's claims here, so we only have his word to go on. And since we know polygraphs definitely aren't the most foolproof way of telling whether or not someone is lying, I don't think this is the final nail in the coffin or whatever.

But along with this discovery that Lewis failed his polygraph, the police also say that they found a latex glove in his car. They don't say anything specific about the glove and they never release anything else about what they did or did not find in the car when they looked at it for testing. But Lewis has an explanation for this too. He says that Hasani's sister Aliyah had been playing with the glove and it shouldn't be viewed as suspicious. Now, Louis is taking medical assistant classes at the time,

so the glove could have been from that, but at this point, no one is buying his excuses. Not to mention, like, this could be a massive choking hazard for a one-year-old, so even if he had those gloves with him for something entirely innocent like his class, it seems reckless to let a one-year-old just play with it. So again, things aren't looking good, but a lot of it could be explained away as coincidental, circumstantial.

But something else comes to light that destroys whatever public sympathy was left for Lewis. A text message from Lewis to Jennifer sent days before Hasani was reported missing, and it gets leaked. That text reads, quote, this is f***ing over. I will watch her, but he will be out on the BART and it's your responsibility to get him, so f*** you. End quote. So just for some context, BART stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit. It's basically an above-ground subway system. So what he's saying here is that he's going to keep watching Aliyah, but he's threatening to leave Hasani, five-year-old Hasani, at one of these stations.

When this text leaks, Lewis tries to explain it away by saying that he and Jennifer were just having a quote-unquote simple argument that was resolved quickly. And listen, giving him the benefit of the doubt for a second, I think we can all probably admit to saying something dramatic in the heat of the moment. But I don't know what kind of simple argument involves threatening to abandon a five-year-old out at a subway station. Even when saying stuff you don't mean, like, that's not part of it. Whether he was just being dramatic or not, child protective services who have been aware of the situation from the beginning

remove Aliyah from their custody after this. And then on Friday, August 28, seemingly out of the blue, both Lewis and Jennifer are arrested. Lewis arrested on suspicion of murder and Jennifer on suspicion of being an accessory to murder. In another article by Jackson Vanderbecken, police say that quote, "'This is not a missing persons case anymore.

"'This is a homicide investigation "'and we are talking to the people responsible,' end quote. But here's the thing, when it comes to actual hard evidence that Hassani has been for sure murdered and Lewis and Jennifer did it, they never say what they have. And once the two of them are arrested,

they're never actually charged with anything. You see, from the time of arrest, police have 48 hours, not including the weekends, to charge them. So since they're arrested on Friday, they basically have until Tuesday afternoon. So for a minute, to the public at least, it looks like justice is finally going to be served. Even though police haven't found Hassani's body, everyone's hopeful that Lewis or Jennifer is going

to confess something, they'll finally know what happened. But the public's hopes are dashed when Jennifer is released Monday afternoon without having any charges filed against her, and the next day, Lewis is also released, again, without having any charges filed. This is a truly devastating turn of events, and many people question why they even bothered arresting Lewis and Jennifer in the first place if they didn't have enough to charge them with anything, or even how police are so sure Hassani was murdered without finding him. John Burris, an attorney who had been consulting with the couple, was really vocal on his belief that an arrest was the wrong move for police.

He said that it was likely done to try and make them turn on each other and give something up, but there was no real solid evidence, he says, so police had to release them and they showed their hand, which apparently was empty. However, even though the two were released, the police still stand by their belief that they were the ones responsible for Hassani's disappearance and presumed death. In fact, according to an article by Henry K. Lee for SFGate, they even go so far as to say that Hassani never even made

it to the shoe store to begin with. And basically, the district attorney states that they just simply didn't have enough information to charge either of them at the time. After Louis and Jennifer were released, both of them pulled completely out of any search efforts for Hassani, which just cast more suspicion on them. But even if they were ready to give up on the search, others weren't. Specifically, one woman named Sherrilyn Miller. She runs a print shop, and even though she's never met Hasani or his family,

she says there's something about the missing five-year-old that makes her want to keep searching for as long as it takes. So on September 5th, Sherrilyn helps to organize a dive of a nearby lake in conjunction with San Jose Search and Rescue, which is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization that assists law enforcement in search and rescue operations. It's not clear what brought them to this lake, but despite over 100 volunteers showing up to help out, they don't find anything that could be linked to Hasani. Later that same day, the searchers even branch out to a nearby park and game reserve.

They do end up finding a sweatshirt and a sock that are definitely too big to have been Hasanee's, but they turn their findings over to police anyways, just in case. However, they later come back as having nothing to do with the missing five-year-old. Hasanee's sixth birthday comes and goes on September 26th, and despite continuous efforts from the community and police to find him, everything they try comes up empty. In December, Sherri Lynn helps organize a team of searchers to try and bring more attention to Hussani's case. She prints flyers, she hands out t-shirts, and about 50 people set out around town to

hang missing posters and talk to local residents. One of the places that the volunteers go to hang posters is on Lewis and Jennifer Street, and reportedly two volunteers had an interaction with Lewis that stuck out to them as being really strange. As two of the volunteers were hanging a poster on a parking sign outside his home, Lewis stuck his head out of an upstairs window and shouted, "'You guys need to stay out of my yard. Now according to an article by Justin Burton for SFGate,

they weren't even in his yard. They were on the street and neither of them had done anything to provoke that kind of reaction. Again, nothing really came of this, but it was just weird. A few more months pass without any news from police or Hassani's former foster family. But then on February 2nd, 2010, Sherri Lynn gets a call out of the bulletin A few more months pass without any news from police or Hasani's former foster family. But then, on February 2nd, 2010, Sherri Lynn gets a call out of the blue from a woman who

says that she knows where Hasani's body is. Now, this woman claims she knows because she's a psychic, which, I mean, red flag number one there, but even though the tip definitely isn't the most credible, it is the first lead anyone has had in months. The psychic directs her to a local state park, and that afternoon Sherri Lynn and a small group of searchers head to the park and search in the location the psychic said she saw his body in her vision. However, they don't find anything, but they also don't give up hope.

And the next day, the same group of searchers returns to the park, this time with the psychic woman in tow. Once they get there, the woman says that the terrain doesn't match her vision, so she brings them to another state park that apparently does, but they don't find Hasani's body there either. At the time, the police were aware of this tip, but they didn't participate in the search. And unfortunately, after this, the case goes cold. On the one-year anniversary of Hassani's disappearance, Oakland police hold a press conference where they once again state that they know Hassani was killed by Lewis, but

they don't release any new information. And that's it. No one's been charged. No further arrests have been made. Lewis and Jennifer aren't even living in California anymore. They split up after the birth of their child and moved out of state. Even though Hasani has never been found, one of the things that stuck out to me right away when I learned about his disappearance was the immediate support from the public and

police. The whole community of Oakland seemed to rally together to try and find this little boy and bring him justice. But in the next story I wanna tell you, that's actually not the case. And it highlights the failures of the very systems that are put in place to keep tragedies like this from happening.

The second story I have for you today starts on October 20th, 2016, when police in Woodinville, Washington get a call from a woman who says that she's concerned about her step-great-grandchild, 9-year-old Tiana Kirchner. According to an article from King Five News by Cindy Weiss, she tells police that she hasn't seen Tiana in four years since she was about four or five years old. And based on some things that Tiana's mother and siblings have said over the years, she

believes that Tiana is dead. So this is obviously shocking, right? Like, how can you wait four years before reporting someone missing, much less someone you think is deceased? Well, when police asked her, she says that she was told Tiana was dead, so for a long time I guess it wasn't weird that she hadn't seen her. But at some point, the stories were changing enough that the shifting accounts of how she died weren't adding up.

Like she says that Tiana's mother, Trisha, told her several conflicting stories about where Tiana was over the last four years. Like, at first, it started with Tiana going to live with another relative due to some behavior issues. But then she was told that Tiana had actually died of the chickenpox. And now the most recent story is that she drowned in the bathtub several years ago. So the Woodinville police are also shocked by this information, especially the fact that this seems to have been a four-year saga and no one has gone to law enforcement until right now.

And when they check their records, they don't see anything like a death certificate on file. So while they're still on the phone, they ask her if anyone else knows about Tiana's supposed death. And the woman says that yes, multiple members of their family were given variations of the same stories. And that even CPS has been looking for Tiana for the last four years as well. Now when I heard that CPS has been unsuccessfully looking for this girl for years, I just about lost my mind.

Because at least to me, if your job is to make sure the kids are safe, and you can't put eyes on them for years, like something is wrong here. I actually asked our researcher about this because she used to work at DHS here in Indiana. And I asked her, why wouldn't they have called police before this point? And the best explanation she could even come up with

was that there just might have been understaffing issues. So basically what she said is like these check-ins, which should have been weekly or monthly, because of potential understaffing, maybe became like every six months because of case overloads. I mean, she talked about how cases that take a long time often get pushed to the back burner, because while you're trying to stay on top of the cases you already have, new ones are

always coming in so things get missed and slip through the cracks. But these aren't things, these are people, these are children. And as her and I were having this discussion, I mean, she made it very clear that not putting eyes on a child for years should have been a cause for concern. Like there isn't a legitimate reason this didn't get reported. She was just trying to figure out why maybe it didn't. And she said, truthfully, for a system that is so broken, it's actually not uncommon for slips like this to happen.

Again, that is not to say that they shouldn't have called police. They absolutely should have, as soon as they realized that they hadn't seen Tiana. But this tip from the relative only ends up getting worse, because before she hangs up, the woman on the phone gives police one last chilling detail. She alleges that after Tiana died, Trisha and her husband Jordan placed her body

in a plastic tub, filled it with concrete, and then hid her under another relative's trailer. Now, I don't know what makes her think that. She never says, so I'm not sure if someone else told her or if Tiana's parents said something. But either way, when police hear about that, they waste no time and look up where exactly this trailer is. It turns out it's actually in another jurisdiction.

So they hand the case off to the Snohomish County Police. And when Snohomish County takes a look, they're surprised to find that the Kirchner family has already been on their radar. It turns out a social worker from Child Protective Services had already been in contact with another detective regarding Tiana's whereabouts, although for some unknown reason a missing person's report was never filed. So obviously the next person the police want to talk to is that social worker to figure out why the heck they didn't file a missing person's report.

They get in contact with them and they confirm that CPS has been trying to find her for a while now, but every time someone tried to locate Tiana, her mother would refuse to cooperate. Which I guess I thought that if CPS tells you that they need to see your child, you have to comply. But when I was talking with our researcher, she said that CPS actually doesn't have the authority to force you to produce your child. This is why the police can be called in for more difficult situations. But doing that will just cause more work for an already overloaded caseworker.

So one of the first things that police try to nail down with this CPS worker is how long they'd been looking for Tiana. Because, yeah, remember, this great-grandmother told police that CPS has been looking for her for years. But this timeline is something that both parties disagree on. According to an article by Dan Casuto for King5 News, CPS states that they have only been looking for Tiana for several months, not years.

But in that same article, police allege that they were told by CPS that the search has been going on for several years. So whether this is just a miscommunication or something worse, I don't know. But either way, this little girl hasn't been seen by her family for a while. By now, police have launched a full-scale investigation into where Tiana could be. They learned from CPS that their first contact with the family was in 2007, when Tiana was born as a drug-exposed infant, and therefore she lived with her grandmother while they worked on reunification with her mom.

But by 2010, when Tiana was three, that reunification happened, and CPS closed the case. The last official record of her was from later that year in September. That's when she received an immunization. Once that first case was closed, the family moved around a bit, and CPS states that they didn't have any further involvement until June of 2016. organization. Once that first case was closed, the family moved around a bit, and

CPS states that they didn't have any further involvement until June of 2016. One of Tiana's siblings reported to school officials that her stepfather, Jordan, had touched her inappropriately. So the school called both CPS and police. Now when Jordan was interviewed, he actually admitted to the allegation. But unfortunately, there weren't any charges filed and he was let go. I can't find anything in my source material that would tell me if he was just allowed

back into the home right after admitting to something like that, but eventually I do know that he moved back in with the family. Police learn that shortly after this, a social worker asked Trisha to provide them a list of everyone who lived in their house. And according to the article I mentioned earlier by Cindy Weiss, Trisha complied. But Tiana wasn't on the list. So this is what caught the social workers' attention because they had a record of Tiana from back in 2010. But when Trisha was confronted about this, like why is she all of a sudden not here, Trisha just doubled down and said

that she didn't have any more kids. So the CPS worker goes and talks to Trisha's three other kids. And at least one of them says that Trisha was living with another relative, although they didn't know who, and they say at this point they hadn't seen her in years. So the social worker goes back to Trisha,

confronts her with this, but Trricia refused to give them any information. The only thing she said was that Tiana was with someone, she never says who, and she says that she's gonna ask this mystery person to give CPS a call. But surprise surprise, that call never came. So it's at this point that CPS finally contacted law enforcement and asked for help. This is August. Now, a detective did contact Trisha and ask her where Tiana was at the time. And Trisha said that she was on a camping trip with a friend and would be back on September

2nd in time for school to start. She even told the detective that she would let them know when Tiana was back. Once again, a call never comes in. And the September 2nd deadline came and went with no sign of Tiana. CPS did contact local schools to try and find out where Tiana was enrolled. But according to a King Five article by Liza Javier, they found out that no school in the area had her on their rosters. And shortly after this is when Tiana's great-grandmother contacted the police to tell them that Tiana was dead.

So, now that they're caught up with what's been going on, police execute a search warrant at that trailer that they're suspicious of on October 29th. And what they find just confirms their worst fears. When police look under the trailer, they find a plastic bin filled with concrete. They remove the bin from the property and take it to the medical examiner's office. And over the next few days, they're able to confirm that it does, in fact,

contain the remains of a little girl who was likely around four years old at the time of her death. Finally on November 3rd, they announced that the remains are in fact those of Tiana Kirchner. But they don't release a cause of death and actually a cause of death has never been released. Police also never released anything about the state of the remains. I mean, considering how long Tiana was under the trailer, I'm not sure how much they're even able to let go on if they could tell a cause of death. In the days following the discovery of Tiana, Trisha's kids are removed from the home and placed in the care of friends and relatives. Police also interview multiple members of Tiana's family as well as her mother and stepfather.

There hasn't been a lot released regarding what Tricia and Jordan had to say, but in an affidavit obtained by People, multiple family members remember smelling a really strong foul odor around the time when Tiana is thought to have died. In this affidavit, those family members state that when they asked about the smell, Trisha would tell them that their neighbors were just really into fishing. It's thought that after this is when they put Tiana's body in the plastic bin and covered it with concrete to hide the smell. That affidavit also says that Trisha had asked another relative for help moving the bin to the trailer. It's not clear whether or not that relative knew what was inside, but they do say that

when they put their hand on the lid, supposedly to open it, Trisha put her foot on the top and warned them not to open the lid. But still, at this point, this is what's baffling my mind, no one went to the police. All of a sudden, this little four-year-old girl is gone. There is this weird smell. You are asked to bury a bin. The little girl doesn't come back for not weeks, months, but years.

And no one comes forward. When CPS interviews Tiana's siblings, they describe multiple instances of abuse towards Tiana from both Trisha and Jordan. One of them, in particular, describes an incident where four-year-old Tiana hit her head in the bathtub. According to the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, she says that Jordan went in to get her after she hit her head,

and when he came out with her in his arms, she could see that Tiana's face was black and blue and there was blood coming from her head. Jordan then took Tiana to the bedroom, then gathered up the rest of the kids and took them out to dinner. She says that when they came back, Tiana was just gone. And Trisha told them that her biological father's family had taken her to live with them because they couldn't handle her anymore. After this, none of Tiana's siblings remember seeing her anymore, nothing after that day. They said their mother even packed up all of Tiana's things,

including all the photos of her that they had in the house, and stored everything in a relative's shed. Now, there are some more details that also come out about just how much CPS knew in the months leading up to the discovery of Tiana's body. Specifically, one of the most frustrating things that comes out is that Trisha had misdirected CPS's searches for Tiana multiple times. Like whenever she was asked about Tiana's whereabouts, she would flat out lie and give

the social worker names of people who didn't even exist. So not only was she refusing to cooperate, but she was actively obstructing their investigation, which could result in legal penalties like failure to report or false reporting. But it doesn't even seem like she ever faced those charges. In the weeks following the discovery of Tiana's remains, law enforcement doesn't release any information about their case against Trisha and Jordan, if there even was a case against Trisha and Jordan. But later, according to an article for King Five News, a separate DHS investigation determined that,

both were responsible for negligent treatment of the girl, but not responsible for physical abuse. End quote. That article also states that Trisha admitted to Tiana dying while in her care, but wouldn't give consistent stories regarding exactly how it happened. According to that same article, Tiana's autopsy was completed soon after her remains were discovered, but like I said, the results have never been made public. And despite what seems to many, even me, like kind of an open and shut case, police still have

not made an arrest. And that's it. There hasn't been an update from police since 2017, and right now the people responsible for at least covering up her death are just out there in the world living their lives. In the last update from police in 2017, they said that they're still actively working on making sure they're crossing their T's and dotting their I's because they want to get it right. But it's been over five years since Tiana died, and there still hasn't been closure. The systems put in place to protect kids like Hasani and Tiana failed them. Between overworked social workers and holes in the system, there has to be a way

to make sure tragedies like these are stopped before they can even happen. And I don't have the answers for how to fix something like this, which is so fundamentally broken. But, one of the organizations working to try and give kids like Tiana and Hasani a safer future is Child Help, which is the oldest and largest national nonprofit focused on eradicating child abuse. Child Help's mission is to meet the physical, emotional, educational, and spiritual needs of abused, neglected,

and at-risk children. And their programs and services focus on prevention, intervention, and treatment of child abuse and neglect. One of the resources that they provide is a national hotline. And this hotline is staffed by highly trained crisis counselors 24-7-365. This hotline allows phone, text, and chat, and there are even translation services available in more than 170 different languages. To learn more and support the efforts of Child Help, you can visit ChildHelp.org. And if you are in need of the Child Help National

Child Abuse Hotline, you can contact them at 1-800-4-A-CHILD. And if you have any information about the two cases we covered today, contact information for the appropriate authorities can be found in our show notes. You can also find them on our blog post where we have all the source material for this episode. That's crimejunkiepodcast.com. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepod podcast and I'll be back next week with a brand new episode Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?