Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Convicted sex offender walks free on technicality, kills two Arizona girls

Episode Date: September 19, 2018

The fate of little Isabel Celis was unknown for 5 years after the 6-year-old disappeared from her bed in Tucson -- until her remains were found in a desert grave last year. With the arrest of a convicted sex offender, the family know has more answers. The family of another murdered Tuscon girl - Maribel Gonzales -- also knows what happened to the 13-year-old in 2014. Christopher Matthew Clements, 36, is charged with killing both. Nancy Grace looks at how the system may have failed as the suspect was allowed to walk free despite a long rap sheet of crimes. Her experts in this episode include Marc Klaas -- founder of Klass Kids Foundation, psychologist Caryn Stark, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan,  juvenile judge & lawyer Ashley Willcott, and CrimeOnline.com reporter Jennifer Dzikowski. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Unspeakable Crime, The Killing of Jessica Chambers, Saturdays at 7, 6 Central on Oxygen, the new network for crime. My sister's gone. Someone broke in and grabbed her. Hurry, man. Okay, what is your name? Sergio Saldí. Okay, we have a call in place. The officers are on the way already. Okay.

Okay? Who else is there? My dad. These people are looking. Just hurry, man. We are on the way, okay? How old are you, Sergio? Two. All right, just take a deep breath, okay? I know it's hard.

She doesn't have any medical conditions? No, she has nothing. I thought she had what? She has nothing. There's no medical conditions. She's healthy. No allergies, no medical conditions. Okay, you didn't hear anything at all?

No, I didn't hear anything at all? No, I didn't hear anything at all. You're hearing raw 911 call when a little girl goes missing from her own bedroom. In the last hours, a stunning break in the case and the disappearance of Isabel Salis. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Joining me, Karen Start, New York psychologist, Joe Scott Morgan. Joining me, forensics expert, author of Blood Beneath My

Feet, Ashley Wilcott, judge, lawyer, founder of childcrimewatch.com, Jennifer Cikowski, reporter with crimeonline.com, and special guest joining me, the founder of Class Kids Foundation, crime victim, Mark Class. Mark, I remember distinctly when Isabel Solis first went missing. And the circumstances surrounding her disappearance were very, very unusual. The whole family had been out to a softball park the night before. They had stayed there late. Everybody came back. They were up a little late, but the whole family was home that night.

I saw the home myself. There was a large, solid, ad Adobe-style fence around the backyard with a gate that a perp would have to get through or over to get into Isabel's window. The dog didn't bark. Nothing. Do you recall when Isabel went missing, Mark? Yeah, of course I recall it, Nancy. I recall it because at the time it seemed so similar to what happened to Polly, a little girl minding her own business, doing absolutely nothing in the sanctity of her own home.

In her own home when she goes missing, and amazingly, nobody hears or sees a thing. The dog doesn't even bark. Now, when you compare, and this is what threw authorities off at the beginning, when you compare the father's 911 call, which we're about to listen to, with the mother, she is frantic. She is beside herself. The father, extremely calm. Cops didn't like that. But as you will learn from many defense attorneys, there is no playbook for shock or grief or sorrow. To Jennifer Stegowski, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. Let's

start at the beginning. What happened? I think we should start the night before, Jennifer. The night before, Isabel was enjoying a softball game with her family the night before. And, you know, I know you said this is an extremely passionate case for you. Mom had gone to work the next morning. The husband, Sergio Salas, is the one who called 911 and said that he thought Isabella had been abducted from her home. Call it a father's premonition, I guess, because he sure seemed to know. He did seem very calm, but he seemed to know. He went to get her up for her baseball game, and she was gone. She simply vanished into thin air. We are talking about a beautiful little girl

who vanishes from her own home. You know, Mark Klass, Victims Advocate, founder of Klass Kids Foundation. What are the statistics about when children vanish? How often is it a stranger? How often do they vanish from their own home? How often is it family related or someone they know? Well, that's a good question. Stranger, pure stranger abductions, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, occurred somewhere under 150 times per year. And this is out of about 600,000 children that are reported missing every year. The vast majority of those children, somewhere over 50%, are considered runaway. The next highest category are family-involved abductions, where supposedly, say, a non-custodial father or mother will take the child

as a way of getting back to custodial parents. And then you have acquaintance types of abductions where it's somebody that's known to the family. But when you get down to this, when you squeeze this down to the pure stranger abduction, which is exactly what it looks like Isabelle's situation is, it happens very rarely in our society. And then we have about 24 hours to be able, well, really we have about three hours to be able to recover those children because statistically of the children that are murdered as a result of an abduction, 74% will be dead within the first three hours. You know what, Mark Klass, when you say that, well, pretty much when you say anything,

we believe it because you're not speaking just from experience. You're speaking from the heart. We all are familiar with Polly, your daughter, who was taken from her home. She was even having a little spend-the-night party of girls over at her home. She was taken from her own home during the night. And, of course, police first, as they always, and they should, focus on you, the friends, the neighbors, the this, the, and you are the gold standard mark class. You're like, here, I'll take a poly, I'll take, you take my DNA, search my place, search my car, do whatever you want so you can get past me and find my daughter. You are the example.

And Ashley Wilcott, juvenile judge, lawyer, founder of childcrimewatch.com, when class says, you know, after three hours, it's over. That, to this day, I've heard him say it a thousand times. It gives me chills and chill bumps, because it's true. After the child's gone three hours, the likelihood of getting the child back alive is drastically reduced. It's almost impossible. And that's true, Nancy, statistically, that after that amount of time, generally, typically, they absolutely are no longer alive, tragically. And this is every parent's worst nightmare that Mark Klaas has lived. And that is stranger, stranger abduction. Can you imagine you go to sleep, you have your child in the bed,

everything's good. You wake up the next morning and your six-year-old is missing. This is every parent's nightmare. You know, Karen Stark, New York psychologist, whenever I talk about a missing child or I cover it, you know, I sleep in the room with the twins that night and for nights after. I can't help myself because what she said is true. It's almost like there's nothing you can do to guard against it. Because in this case with Isabel Solis, everything was fine. The mom was home. The dad was home. The brother was home. The dog was there laying in the floor ready to bark his head off. Everything was fine. And then she's gone. I mean, where does that leave the rest of us? Well, it's obviously it's something that when you think about what happened to Mark, Nancy, it's just horrific because it's so much every parent's worst nightmare that they don't let themselves go there most of the time.

And then you hear something like this and you think, how could this possibly happen? It's shocking. How could a stranger enter your house and you understand that you're left with this bafflement and this horror of having lost your child? It's a helplessness. Knowing that they're going to be killed most of the time because nobody wants to have a little kid around. Or a witness. Who's been abducted and then have to say exactly that something happened to them. You know, to Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics at Jacksonville

State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet. Let's quickly look at the timeline, Joe Scott. I want to hear what your analysis is. It was a very balmy, a nice day. It was in April. And what we learn is that the night before, Isabel went to bed late, 11 p.m. And I found that significant. That's why I kept asking Jennifer to start the night before. Who was watching her at the softball game at the park where they were? If anybody. Were friends, did friends come over? As a matter of fact, I think they did come to the home after the game. That's 11 p.m. Before 8 a.m., Isabel's mother, Rebecca, leaves for work early, early in the morning. 8 a.m., the family members wake up. They discover she's not in her bed. They can't find her anywhere in the home. They call 911. By that evening, critical time there, they call 8 a.m. That evening,

the FBI search dogs arrived from Virginia to aid in the search. Lost a lot of time right there, Joe Scott Morgan, a lot of time, 12 hours. Yeah, and that's key in this case. You were talking about how that critical window of three hours, Nancy. This is my take on it relative to the way these people view children. They stalk these children many times. They'll see these things that to them draw them in, these things being these precious little angels that are out there. And then after they have had their way with these children, they become nothing more than objects and they just rip them to shreds. And then at the end of the day, we the investigators have to go back in and try to apply what we're seeing at

the scene to a timeline. In this particular case, this occurred pretty quickly. I would imagine Nancy, he saw her potentially at the softball game. Hey, even something scarier, he may have been watching her for days prior to that. He saw the family all together. He knew that it was going to be a late night, and he waited just to creep into the house and extract this little girl from there to do what he wanted to do with her. Do you have anyone that you would perceive as an enemy, anybody that would hold a grudge against you for any reason? No, that's girl from there to do what he wanted to do with her do you have anyone that you would perceive as an enemy anybody that would hold a grudge against you for any reason no that's the whole problem is that we don't understand why or what how we made isabel a target because you know we're her parents so we're like what did we do how did we make her the target and we've this is a nightly

daily hour thing that we're like thinking, why is it Isabel? And we don't know. We go through our heads and who's been in our house. And like we just said, for us, we wanted everybody and anybody who's been around Isabel and in our house to be questioned to the utmost the way we were. To be held under the same scrutiny as us, because we don't know. And we're going round and round and round, and yes, it's extremely frustrating. It's extremely frustrating not having her back. It's extremely frustrating, even with the police department.

We share the same frustrations. We express our frustrations with them about the investigation and everything and they they share them right back. They share them right back. It isn't unspoken and you know again we do know that there's only so much information that we're allowed to be told and and again it's all for protection of Isabelle and not to interfere with anything we are talking about the disappearance of a beautiful young girl just six years old from her

home in Arizona Isabelle sell us now her disappearance linked to another young girl, Maribel. In the last days, a stunning twist in the case. Back to the evening, the morning that she goes missing. Everything was normal. The mom gets up, leaves. How many times, Ashley Wilcott, juvenile judge, lawyer, and founder of ChildCrimeWatch.com, do you ever leave without looking at your children asleep before you go out the front door? Never. Not only that, I mean, I always check on them. As silly as it is, this is so crazy. We can have a nice dinner. They do all their homework. They

go upstairs to bed. I go upstairs to go to bed. When I go upstairs to go to bed, I even check on them then. I check on them at all times because it's just a parental capacity. I want to see, lay eyes on my child, even in my own home. She goes missing. The dogs are brought in nearly 12 hours later, brought in from Quantico. Is 12 hours too late? Joseph Scott Morgan, forensics expert, professor of forensics at Jacksonville State, author of Blood Beneath My Feet. Is it too late by then?

Don't they have local dogs? Why wait for dogs from Quantico? Yeah, that's kind of a head-scratcher, Nancy. I'm wondering, you know, why did they wait to come? This is a huge distance that they have to come with these animals. And I would think that out there, there would be a group of canines that could go out and help them in this search. But at any rate, that's what happened. Yeah. After 12 hours, Nancy, you're talking about the trail really going cold here because, you know, are you in the midst of a rescue operation or are you, you know,

are you at a point where you might have to use cadaver dogs at that point? And that's a completely different field. So I found that very strange, yes. Then they bring in the psychics. Time passes. Suddenly we all are baffled when the father is barred from visiting his sons. New attention is now focused on the father. Why? Let's take a listen to his 911 call. 911, what's your emergency? I want to report a missing person. My little girl is six years old. I believe she was abducted from our house. What's

the address? Okay, stay on the line for Tucson Police. I will. Tucson Police Department. Deb Hart. Hello. I need to report a missing child. I believe she was abducted from my house. Okay. How old? Six years old.

Okay. Is it your daughter? Yes. Why do you think she was abducted? I have no idea. We woke up this morning. I went to go get her up for her baseball game, and she's gone. We woke up this morning. I went to go get her up for her baseball game and she's gone. I woke up my sons.

We looked everywhere in the house and my oldest son noticed that her window was wide open and the screen was laying in the backyard. We've looked all around the house. My sons are running around the house looking for her. The screen was on the ground outside? Yes. What's your address? What's your address?

What's your name, sir? My name is Sergio, S-E-R-G-I-O, middle initial D, last name is C-E-L-I-S. I-S as in Sam? Yes. OK, what's your name? Isabel, I-S-B-E-L, I-S-A-B-E-L-M, as in man, is the middle initial. Okay, same last name?

Yes. Okay, what's her actual birth date? Okay. Is mom there also? She had just left for work. I just called her, and I told her to get her butt home. Okay. I get it.

To Mark Klass, Victim's Advocate and founder of Klass Kids Foundation, when I heard that, I told her to get her butt home. I get it. To Mark Klass, Victim's Advocate and Founder of Klass Kids Foundation, when I heard that, I told her to get her butt home. That put me on edge right there, Mark Klass, because that didn't sound right. It still doesn't sound right. No, it doesn't sound right. But what he's doing is he is trying to hold it together. His little girl is missing. And against all odds, he understands exactly what has gone on. And he's trying to be calm. He's trying to notify police. He's trying to keep everybody from panicking. And he did a hell of a job doing that, Nancy. He did such a great job of doing that that he brought a lot of suspicion upon himself. Your suspicion from you, suspicion from me,

suspicion from so many other people. And he held a good front. But I'll tell you what, I'll tell you exactly what happened is when nighttime comes, when Sergio is alone in bed, when Sergio is thinking about that, he's dying inside. He's crying. He's begging God to bring his little girl back. And then in the morning, it snaps back into gear. And he tells himself that she's all right, that if he keeps it together, and if he works with the cops, he'll get her home.

And that's what kept Sergio going. And I, for one, feel so terribly for even suspecting this man who was doing exactly what he had to do for his daughter, but just in a way that other people couldn't comprehend it. You know what, Mark? Again, you're absolutely correct. But when a child is missing,

as she will cut statistically, we look at the father, sometimes the mother, the brothers, the stepbrothers and the uncles, the next-door neighbors, the grandparents, the cousins, the family friends, and you go out from there. Of course, he's the first person you look at. And that calm, cool demeanor, actually laughing on the phone to 911, a lot of people couldn't relate to that, Ashley. I mean, we were focused on finding the girl and everybody was in the crosshairs. Yeah. And it should be that way.

Regardless of a person's demeanor, the family has to be considered a person of interest up front at the beginning, because in spite of this being a stranger abduction, many, many times that is not the case. And it is at the hands of a caretaker, a parent, a boyfriend, someone living in the home. So they have to investigate those people. And again, if you're a parent and your child's missing and you know you didn't do it, investigate me, do what you need. Here's all of my blood, my DNA. Why wouldn't a parent say, I'll give you everything you need to investigate me because I didn't do this and you've got to get off of me and find the person who did it?

Well, you're right. And so is Mark Klass. But I want you to listen and compare the father to the mother. Listen. You looked everywhere under the bed. the mother listen okay where's your husband and your kids I'm waiting for the call. Okay. And how tall is she? She's like 44, 45 inches long. She's 44 pounds. And her hair color, you said brown?

Brown. And she has two little braids going down. They're like, she put ponytails in her hair so she's got like four ponytails on each side that go down her and it's split in the middle. Four braids of ponytails? It's a two, it's like two braids. Two braids, okay. But it's made with ponytails instead of braids.

Does any marks scars other than the window out i can't see anything else and the doors locked to outside so they had to have jumped over the fence or i don't know what they did but oh my god the cops are here can i just hang up no please thank you you are hearing the mother of isabel salisa she's on the phone frantic we were comparing her to the father. His 911 call came under suspicion when he was so incredibly calm, reporting his daughter missing, even laughing at one point. The little girl, 6-year-old Isabel Solis, vanishes from her bedroom on April 21, Midtown Tucson, Arizona. We believe sometime between midnight and 8 a.m. the following morning.

What happened to Isabel? Supposedly last seen in her bedroom around 11 that evening. The family had gotten home around 10 30 p.m. the night before. Everybody took their showers and went to bed except for the dad. The dad claiming to have stayed up later than everyone else in the family. Of course, there's the mother, two sons. They were 10 and 14 at the time that night. He claims he was watching a baseball game until about midnight and mentioned Isabel's room was just on the other side of the wall where he was nearby. He says, quote, I was in the living room watching the Diamondbacks game at midnight. I fell asleep. I never heard anything weird.

So I was just like on the other side of the wall from her. That is a chilling thought. The dad was also the first to notice that Isabel went missing the following morning when he says he went to get her up and start her baseball game. Both the father and the older son call 9-1-1. You've heard pieces of that. That was close to 9 a.m., an hour past from the time they realized she was missing, and they call 9-1-1. A solid hour goes by. Then you hear the mother on 9-1-1 when she gets back home from work. The father reporting she was wearing a pink tie-dye shirt and navy blue shorts when she was last seen. The mom reporting her wearing an old navy shirt with a flag on it.

What happened to Isabel? Then the older son, the 14-year-old, notices a screen to her window looked like it had been removed. Everyone was deflated when a pink tie-dye shirt was found nearby, about 30 feet away from the home. Again, in the backyard, and I've looked at it myself, there was a tall fence, a thick Adobe-style fence surrounding the backyard. He'd have to be able to get through the gate or climb over it. Chilling to hear Mark Klass, founder of Klass Kids Foundation, the dad says he was just on the other side of the wall. Her wall, her bedroom wall, separating the family room from her bedroom and heard nothing.

If that's true, that now takes the time to about 1 a.m. to 8 a.m., seven hours for someone to get in the home and take the little girl unheard. Oh, my palms are sweaty because I think I'm kind of reliving my own kind of my own situation here. Sergio. Sergio is a great father, and I just feel so bad that I ever suspected this man for even one minute, because you can tell by the frantic nature of his wife's 911 call that he knew he had to keep it together. Somebody had to keep it together. And the problem is, Nancy, is that we allow, we're a forgiving nation.

We allow people second chances and third chances and fourth chances. We take our children out to little ball games where the only people that are out there are the parents of other little kids and perhaps somebody that might suspect, that might want to cause harm to some of those children. So as caring a father and as caring as those parents were, and having an adobe wall between her and the rest of the world, it just wasn't enough. It just wasn't enough. It wasn't enough because we're such a forgiving nation. We give people second chances and third chances and fourth chances. And it breaks my heart. And now in the last days, a stunning twist. Listen.

Christopher Matthew Clements was indicted on multiple felony charges to include the murders of Isabel Mercedes Salas and Maribel Victoria Gonzalez. Clements was served the indictment at the Maricopa County Jail where he is being held in conjunction with unrelated matters. As you were just hearing, Christopher Matthew Clements, who had just been released from federal prison for failure to register as a sex offender. His conviction overturned on a technicality. We are learning now this guy, Christopher Matthew Clements, moves into a home just two miles away from six-year-old Isabel Sellis. That's where she went missing less than one month later. I'm dumbstruck.

I am overwhelmed right now because Mark Klaas, the first thing you do once you start the dogs looking, once you start looking for the girl is you look for registered sex offenders in the area he moves into a home just two miles away from her how do i know she wasn't still alive the problem is is that this guy's history indicates that he failed to register as a sex offender wherever he happened to be throughout the country. And he was never held accountable for that. Nobody ever said, well, you haven't registered, therefore you're going to go back to prison. What they would do is they would give him a pass and he would continue to fail to register.

And he did that here and he did that there and he did continue to fail to register. And he did that here, and he did that there, and he did that absolutely everywhere. So I'm not even sure that he was on the registry at that point, but you're exactly right. Megan's Law, registering sex offenders and giving the community the ability to find out who they are and where they are, works in every one of the 50 states, and people should be using that registry.

They should know who the predators are, who the registered sex offenders are in their community. And law enforcement should know it, and they should thoroughly vet these guys and check these guys out and make sure that their alibis are tight. And this is one guy whose alibi was absolutely not tight on the night that Isabel disappeared. To Jennifer Stokowski, investigative reporter of CrimeOnline.com, what do we know about this guy's record? You know, we're talking about a convict with a long rap sheet, a very long rap sheet. So, and this is spanning 20 years in four states, dating back to when he was just 16 years old. In 1998, Christopher sexually penetrated a victim with a foreign object while staying in Oregon. He was sentenced to 18 months

imprisonment, followed by 10 years of community supervision, which as we know, that doesn't seem to have happened. In July 2002, he received a felony assault charge in King County, Washington. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year of probation. About four months later, after that, he was arrested yet again on a felony charge of identity theft and a misdemeanor charge of obstructing a peace officer. He pleaded guilty a month later and was again sentenced to one year of probation. In 2006, he was charged with felony theft, making harassing calls, and violating a protective order. It really is unclear at this time with that case what his sentence may have been or for those charges.

Did he just get probation again? I'm guessing, but there's not a lot of info on that. Now we jump into 2006. Christopher was arrested in Florida for failing to register as a sex offender. One of the times after he attempted to file an injunction, you know, barring harassment against a woman from the area, that's when they figured out that he had failed to file as a sex offender. He pleaded no contest and was, you guessed it, sentenced to probation. In 2007, he moved to Tucson, Arizona, where he once again faced charges prevailing to register as a sex offender.

This time, he got out on this technicality that he wasn't, well, almost let out, that he was not read his Miranda rights. The charges were almost dropped, but he was re-indicted. He was convicted and sentenced to 46 months in prison, along with five years of supervised release. You know, just wait a second, wait a second, because I'm getting sick to my stomach. Is anybody noticing beside me that every time he gets a slap on the wrist? I mean, to you, Joe Scott Morgan, you've been in plenty of courtrooms. The judge has the rap sheet right in front of him or her. So why does this guy keep getting probation, probation, probation over and over and over, early release, on and on and on. And now Isabel is dead and her parents have been dragged through the mud.

Yeah, yeah. It's like it's the path of least resistance in the courts. They just dispose of this case as quickly as they can because he's just another face appearing in their courts. Of course, that doesn't apply to Isabel now, does it? He's not just another face. He's a person that purposely went and removed the screen off of her window, Nancy. Off of her window, crept into her window, into the home of this family, and destroyed this little

girl's life and her family's life as well. We miss you so much, Isabel. Your brothers miss you so much. We want you back. We're looking for you. We will not stop looking for you. We want you back more than anything else in the world. Obviously, we don't want to be here, but we will be in front of these cameras. We will talk to everyone we need to talk.

We are starting to get out there even more. We are gathering up our strength. We do have to take care of her brothers, but we want you back and we miss you so much. Your brothers miss you so much and we are we're willing to do everything and anything we can. So we are doing, you know, getting in front of the places we don't want to be and absolutely everything else. We have lots of things going on that we were part of the volunteer groups. We are going to be at these benefits and we are going to start being out in front. You are hearing Isabel's parents speaking out to the media about the search for their little girl Isabel Solis after they themselves, especially the father, was attacked partially because of his demeanor was very calm cool even laughing at the time she

went missing now we understand the turmoil inside of him he was trying to stay calm and cool to find his daughter the first one to report her missing the last one to see her the night before suspicion turned on him. It was wrong. The perp, now we know, a convicted sex offender who had moved just two miles away from Isabel's home. Within a month, she was gone. To Jennifer Stogowski, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, I want to talk to you about Maribel Gonzalez and how she relates to the disappearance of Isabel Solis because it was years before Isabel's body, her remains were found buried in a rural area from an anonymous tip to police. How does that relate to Maribel Gonzalez? Maribel left her home in Tucson. It was less than a mile away from where sweet

Isabel had vanished from. She was walking to a friend's house, but she never returned. Mary Bell's body was found two days after she was reported missing in a remote part of northern Tucson, and it's reported that it was in the general area of where Isabel's remains were found. Police discovered Maribel's nude body lying under a mesquite tree, covered by two tires and lying face down. Maribel Gonzalez went missing from her home in Tucson in 2014. Her body, as Jennifer just reported, was found several days later, miles away in a deserted area near Trico Road. We also know that Isabel's body, her remains, there was really

nothing left of her but her skull, was found in a similar rural area. I'm just trying to figure out, in answer to Jennifer's question, why the two were not cooperating. There was several years between Isabel's disappearance and the other disappearance of Maribel. We still don't know how Isabel was killed, but we do know her clothes were not found with her. And like Maribel Gonzalez, who was also nude, that indicates a sex motive. In the last hours, we are learning more and more about the man charged in not one but two abductions and murders. I have no doubt in my mind to Joe Scott Morgan, forensics expert, this is not his first time. You don't go from zero to 120 overnight. I wonder if there are other dead bodies out there. Yeah, I do too, Nancy. And this is the curious thing about it. He's been in Florida. He's been in Oregon.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I think he may have been in Washington State. And, of course, he's been in Arizona. And you see these movements. And, look, everything that he does, all those other charges that you heard about this guy with theft and all these other things, they're just in border around the edges. They're a means to an end to do what this guy is about. The ultimate heinous crime out there. He's a hunter. He's out there hunting these little children day after day. That's what this guy thinks about. It's what he obsesses about.

And then, you know, kind of the finale here. These two little girls that we're talking about today within close proximity of one another, it all came around in a great big circle. I wonder how many other bodies are out there. Twice in just two years, a little Tucson girl disappears and ends up dead in a spot of desert in rural Pima County. Isabel Solis and Maribel Victoria Gonzalez.

They don't have a lot more in common. Isabel just six, Maribel 13. She disappeared walking to a friend's home. Isabel taken from her own home. But what they do have in common is Christopher Matthew Clements. Mark Klass, do you believe he was stalking these two girls? Of course he was stalking. There's no question about that. He stalked them. He saw them. He stalked them. He took them and he murdered them. That's what happened. And, you know,

another commonality is that these girls are victims of a criminal justice system that just completely failed them in every way possible. What exactly were the judges thinking when they looked at this guy's 20-year rap sheet and continually gave him a pass? What did they think the endgame was going to be exactly? I think they had to know what the endgame was going to be, but they were hoping that it wouldn't be within their jurisdiction. Nancy, back in the

1990s, there was a voter-driven initiative called Three Strikes and You're Out that created to hold characters like this accountable for their actions. It basically said, whatever you've done in the past, that if you have convictions in the past, if you commit another crime in the future, you're looking at 25 years to life. And that piece of legislation was so successful that it helped cut crime in half in California. And now it's been undone in California and it's being undone in other places. And characters like this Clements are going to be back out on the streets again. And little girls are going to be targets. And we're not even going to be able, and we're not even going

to be able to take them to their little league games because characters like this are going to be lurking in the bushes waiting for their opportunity. It's just sickening. Tashie Wilcott, juvenile judge, lawyer, and founder of childcrimewatch.com. Mark Klass, again, is correct. How can judges keep doing it, Tashie, with the rap sheet right in front of them when they do these lenient sentences? So as you know, I sit as a pro tem judge, Nancy, and there's no excuse. There's no defending that. Here's the problem is that I see, unfortunately, sometimes judges get caught up in the fact that court dockets are very, very full. It's not an excuse. They need to look at all of the history of a criminal before them. And they don't. I see it time after time where they just

sentence based on the one thing they're there and they don't take the time to delve into it and say, wow, look at this criminal history. Look at this rap sheet. What do we need to do? Because a judge should not just look at what's immediately in front of me. A judge is tasked with looking at the entire picture, which includes all the criminal history. So this is another system fail. Judges have got to be diligent and looking at every single thing a defendant has done to then apply the law to the facts to make the best sentence so that this predator does not continue to be a predator. Karen Stark, New York psychologist, weigh in. The worst part is that I think that one of the

guests said they do get to see the rap sheet. They do get to see what's going on in this person's criminal past and they go ahead and give them a free pass anyway, which is really hard to comprehend. The hardest part to comprehend is that the parents are left with guilt, Nancy. They will never get over this, and they will always blame themselves. You can hear it in Mark's voice. They wonder what could they have done differently. They relive it. It is the worst thing that could happen to any

parent. When we talk about violent crime, it's almost as if we're drinking from a fire hydrant. It's just too much, too fast, too furious. If you have heard about the murder of Jessica Chambers, don't miss the new docuseries on oxygen, the true story of a teen girl, cheerleader, Mississippi, burned alive. The story of the man now accused of the heinous crime. Is the right guy on trial? Who is he? And who was Jessica Chambers? How does such a horrific crime even occur?

More questions than answers. It's a case that has captured national headlines, taken over social media, and has now left and is leaving a small town divided. It's a must-see TV event with exclusive interviews that take you inside the investigation as the search for answers and justice goes on. Don't miss it. It is Unspeakable Crime, The Killing of Jessica Chambers, Saturdays, 7, 6 Central, on Oxygen, the new network for crime. You know, Mark, I just can't get it out of my mind about Isabel and now Maribel.

Weigh in, Mark? Our little boys and our little girls are the most precious things we have in our lives. And it's our duty as individuals and as governments to protect them. And there's been an abject failure all along the line for these two little girls. And we would hope that their legacy would be that we will correct the wrongs that have been done so that the other children can be protected. So that, as Karen mentioned a moment ago, folks won't have to live with the guilt of wondering what they could have done forever and ever and ever. At this hour, the perp behind bars. Arizona is a death penalty state. The families of two little girls waiting,

along with us as justice unfolds. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.