Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Did mommy live-chat her two murdered tots to Dad for revenge?
Episode Date: October 17, 2017The father of 2 Atlanta toddlers allegedly murdered by their mom says the accused killer sent him live video from the death scene. Nancy Grace looks at the latest in the deaths. She is joined by psy...chologist Dr. Tiffany Sanders, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan, forensics expert Karen Smith, reporter John Lindley and CBS46 reporter Daniel Wilkerson. CrimeOnline reporter Leigh Egan joins the team of experts to discuss the case of a Texas toddler missing days after her father claimed he ordered her outdoors because she would not drink a cup of milk. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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crime stories with nancy grace on sirius xumph, channel 132. She allegedly killed her two toddlers and showed the gruesome scene to the baby's father on a video call.
It was like a real horror movie. I mean, it was a Friday the 13th.
Neighbors told me the apartment smelled like death, a smell indicating the bodies may have been there for a few days.
This was something that we saw could possibly happen. She's had issues from a baby. Williams told police she left the kids with a relative around noon
and returned home late in the evening to find the one- and two-year-old dead.
Police say that's not true.
Two little children are dead.
Two brothers. Two little boys.
Mommy, Lamora Williams, leaves her three sons with her cousin who's very close to her.
She comes home.
Two of the babies are dead.
Neighbors say they don't believe that is what happened at all.
Joining me right now at the courthouse, Daniel Wilkerson from CBS 46.
Daniel, let's start at the beginning.
What does mommy say happened?
As you said, the mother said that she left the kids at home with a close family member.
Police are not buying that.
They do not believe that is what happened.
We do know that the two kids who died, ages one and two, died with injuries.
They had burns to their body. We know that police took away a stove as evidence,
and something went tragically wrong in this house.
To Justice Scott Morgan, death investigator joining me today,
professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University.
Joe Scott, thanks so much for being with us today.
Neighbors said the home smelled like death.
Now, I've got to say, from being at a lot of homicide scenes
a lot of dead body scenes a lot of autopsies i know that that that smell it's something you never
forget for instance when you see a movie and somebody gets sick and throws up or they
they cover their nose and their mouth with material it's an involuntary instinct when
you smell that smell there There's nothing like it.
Let me ask you this. What does that smell indicate to you forensically?
To me, when someone says the smell of death, automatically my mind flees to things like decomposition and that sort of thing. But what we might be dealing with here is an environment
that is not habitable or is not clean, is dirty, it's foul.
And also, also, if there are burn injuries that have taken place in this house,
you're going to have that residual odor in the air.
And most human beings are not used to smelling that smell.
And so that can be quite off-putting.
Two little children, a one-year-old and a two-year-old, nicknames Jack and Key,
two little boys are dead.
One-year-old and two-year-old. It's overwhelming to me. Back out to Daniel Wilkerson, CBS 46,
at the courthouse right now. Daniel, what can you tell me about photos or videos? Yeah, apparently the mother, after
this happened, reportedly sent
or called the father, the father
of the children, by FaceTime
and showed him the crime
scene. And so,
I mean, that's just unthinkable within itself.
And he
saw, the father saw the dead bodies
during that fake crime.
Oh, my stars.
Whoa, whoa.
Daniel Wilkerson, CBS 46.
You're telling me the father of the two toddler boys says the mother shared live video of the crime scene with their dead bodies there?
Yes.
That pen is his name that he learns his boys were in trouble when mommy calls him on
video chat and pans the room he sees his sons on the floor am i understanding correctly dan that is
right that is right she called him by facetime hold on hold on wait a minute alan duke joining
me out of la i understand that you have found the dad giving reaction, his response to what happened.
Please roll it for me, Allen.
It was like a real horror movie.
I mean, it was a Friday the 13th.
When I seen my kid, how I seen my kid, that's when I knew what was going on.
Call the kid, I tell you, man, my world, my everything, I'm lost.
I ain't got no soul no more.
What I'm understanding from Daniel Wilkerson is that the two little boys are dead.
And the mom comes in and instead of calling 911 or attempting CPR, anything like that,
John Limley, Crime Stories investigative reporter, she instead chooses to video stream,
to live chat with the dad to show him the dead bodies.
Is that right, John Limley?
That's exactly what we're hearing.
But according to a longtime friend, Nisa Smith,
she says that that wasn't her first call,
that wasn't 911, that she called her
and told her that the boys were dead.
And Nisa Smith says, call the police, Maura,
just call the police.
And Williams was arrested and charged with the murder after her two young children, again, ages one and two, were found dead inside that Southwest Atlanta home.
I don't understand Daniel Wilkerson joining me from CBS 46, how neighbors and family can all know that something horrible is happening to children and they don't do anything
about it because these burn marks on these little boys apparently they weren't all new which means
they had been around uh they had been burned in the past and nobody did anything about it. According to those neighbors, the mother,
according to them, had a history of leaving the children at home by themselves. Again,
in this particular story, she said that she left them with the family member for 11 hours.
There seems to have been some kind of history there. The mother quit a job about a month ago because she could not find a babysitter for all of her children.
Every mom that I know of, it gets completely overwhelmed, especially if you're a working mother.
It's just, I don't know how it gets that way to Dr. Tiffany Sanders joining us.
But somehow, it's all on the mom, or at least that's the perception.
Right.
The working, the bringing home a paycheck, the cleaning, the cooking, the children,
the everything. I don't know how it gets that way. How does it get that way, Tiffany?
You know, women are socialized to be superheroes, you know, superwoman,
taking care of everyone, being the taxi cab driver, the nurse,
the doctor, the lawyer, the babysitter, the teacher. You know, we're socialized to have all
these roles and responsibilities. But this was a young mom, and she likely didn't have as much
resources to manage, you know, three, four children. And as a result, and many of the kids
were young, one to two, three years of age. So you got kids in diapers.
You have kids crying.
You have kids hungry.
You have kids that are needing educational needs.
And it was just probably overwhelming for her.
And she could have also been suffering from postpartum depression with psychosis.
We do not know.
Her family has suggested that she has a history of mental illness, but she was never diagnosed.
So we failed her.
The system failed her.
And as a result, we have two dead children.
I completely disagree with that.
Joseph Scott Morgan, the system didn't burn the babies with the stove.
Okay.
By overwhelmed, I mean that you cry, you are tired,
maybe she spanked the children.
Yell, carry on.
But burning the children with a stove, that's not overwhelmed.
That is a felony.
That is a felony, aggravated assault or even aggravated battery.
And then killing them and live chatting it with the children's dad.
That is not overwhelmed, Joe Scott Morgan.
What did these children live through?
Let's get a little reality check here.
I can tell you this, Nancy.
Whatever is going on, this is what we're going to know.
When these young little angels who have been killed, okay, apparently,
they didn't just spontaneously die.
Their bodies are going to be thoroughly examined at the medical examiner's office. And what's going to happen is these injuries that they have sustained, these wounds are going to be aged.
That means that we're going to go back in time and begin to paint a picture forensically of how old these injuries are.
How long have these children been enduring, enduring this pure hell, moving forward until the final act of their lives. One of the things that was asked at the scene was,
how does a one-year-old and a two-year-old get in a hot stove?
How does that happen, Daniel?
What do we know about cause of death, Daniel?
We just know that the children were found with burns on them.
They took away that stove, so undoubtedly it played some kind of role there if they took it
out. I mean, I guess that call to death will, you know, have to be determined.
And joining me is Dr. Tiffany Sanders, psychologist, Joe Scott Morgan, forensics expert,
death scene investigator, professor at Jacksonville State University, John Limley,
crime stories investigative reporter, and Daniel Wilkerson from CBS 46.
Daniel, at this juncture,
the mother has been taken into custody.
What do we know about anything she may have said
after her two little boys, ages one and two,
were found dead with alleged evidence
of burns on their bodies?
We just know what she did.
You know, she placed that call, that FaceTime call.
So that makes us think that some kind of way,
maybe she was trying to get back at the father.
That's what the grandfather of the children alleges.
He made the statement that, hey, if you want to get back at somebody,
you don't involve children in this way.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
That's the first time hearing of a get back.
Dr. Tiffany Sanders, psychologist, joining me.
You're all about she's overwhelmed.
She's got postpartum.
But her relatives say it was a get back at the dad.
That's not postpartum.
That's called revenge.
Well, that may be revenge.
But why would she be trying to get back at the father?
Because she was abandoned.
I don't know that.
She had no help.
I do not know why she did it.
She had two kids by the man who were under two years of age.
She, a young 24-year-old mother of three children, and they're all under three years of age.
She likely was stressed, overwhelmed, and she was depleted of resources.
And so she probably probably not thinking very clearly
delusional having a psychotic episode she did wait wait wait wait isn't it true
john limley that she called one of her girlfriends first told them what she had done
then she calls the the boyfriend the the dad, shows him the dead bodies.
That doesn't sound crazy to me. And then you've got a relative saying if she wanted to get back
at him, she shouldn't have involved the children. And it's very interesting that this was a video
call, a FaceTime call, so that she could actually show the father the two dead children there on the
floor. This is really sort of playing into the fact that, you know, she was looking to show
evidence that this really had happened. That doesn't sound insane to me. If you are sending,
if you're live chatting and you're showing somebody the scene there was a three-year-old boy in the home unharmed the husband is the same dad to all three of the children it's the same dad but so she
targeted two of the children allegedly killed them and facetimed their bodies to the husband
the dad that's what we know right now daniel Wilkerson, when will we get the autopsy report?
Usually we'll get one preliminary here within a day or so.
Of course, the full autopsy usually takes a lot longer than that.
So we just have to see how it plays out.
Daniel Wilkerson from CBS 46 is joining me at the courthouse right now.
We're on it.
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And now live to Richardson, Texas.
A little girl has gone missing from her home. Her name Sharon and she's absolutely beautiful. And according to police, her father Wesley Matthews sends his daughter and her PJs
at 3 a.m. to stand alone beneath a tree across an alley from the home as punishment for refusing to drink milk.
Okay, let me let that soak in.
All right, with me from Crime Online investigative reporter Lee Egan.
Lee, do I have this right?
The dad, Wesley Matthews, tells police that he sends the little girl in her PJs at 3 a.m.
across the street to stand under a tree as punishment for not drinking milk.
You have that absolutely right.
And it's a story that not many people are buying.
I don't even think the police are buying it.
But, of course, they're being really tight-lipped about this one because they're trying to figure it out.
They're not giving us too much information.
The latest we have is that at some point the police have reason to believe the family SUV left their home around 4 a.m. the same morning that the little girl disappeared.
Okay, hold on.
Let me process what you're saying, that an SUV left the home around the same time the little girl
disappears with me psychologist dr tiffany sanders first of all before i get to the suv which is
really the only clue we have right now dr sanders forcing your child to stand outside as punishment
at 3 a.m well i've never heard of anything like that i I've never. It's pure abuse. It's child abuse.
There's no parenting book that would support that parenting practice to wake your kid up and to forcibly have them stand outside.
This young girl had limited communication skills.
She came from an abandoned family in India.
She's already probably confused, disoriented, and frightened.
The father should be ashamed of himself for even putting his daughter in that predicament.
And I agree.
There's something else going on with this family.
Oh, yeah.
There's something going wrong.
It's called felony child abuse.
And I'm just going with forcing the child outside at 3 a.m. at great risk to her safety and her PJs as punishment for not drinking her milk this little baby
joe scott morgan was adopted and she's been through enough already to land in the hands of
these two the mother and the dad and you know what i blame the mom too if the dad forces the baby out
at 3 a.m as punishment for not drinking milk, you know what? That mother
should have either kicked the dad out of the house or taken the baby and left herself somewhere
safe for the baby. That is not how to treat a child. She's just as much at fault as he is if
these facts are true, Joe Scott Morgan. Yes, she is. And just imagine, if you can, just for a moment,
a little three-year-old child in her PJs, sentenced to stand by this person that's the custodial parent that is forced to stand outside in the dark.
I mean, I think we all remember how terrified we were of the dark when we were that age.
And she's in her PJs, and no one's out there with her.
3 a.m., Nancy.
And so, yeah, it paints a very grim picture, to say the very least.
You do know that this area
is infested with coyotes, Joseph Scott Morgan. Yeah, and that's another issue here, because
at this point, we don't know where this little girl is, do we? And there's a limited number
of possibilities where she could be, and then you begin to think about that there might be
scavengers, predators in the area.
And it's not just animals we have to worry about either, Nancy.
What about other people, strangers, that sort of thing?
An Amber Alert issue for missing three-year-old
Sharon Matthews.
She's been adopted from India,
makes her way here to Texas only to go missing
under horrible circumstances.
Now we have the issue of the mystery SUV.
And another thing that's driving me crazy is the dad is out.
He's not even behind bars on child endangerment or child abuse.
Is that right with me, Alan Duke?
Alan, why is he out of jail?
Why is the mom out of jail?
I don't get it.
I can't really answer that. I guess they're doing the investigation. They don't know where the child is.
They probably just can't make a case yet. We've seen this many times when they think they know
who did something, but they just know they have to wait and watch them. I'm sure they're watching
him. You know what? I disagree with that because I've seen plenty of cases, much less when a baby
is missing and the dad himself says,
oh yeah, I sent her outside at 3 a.m. and her PJs as punishment for not drinking milk.
He needs to be in jail.
And so does the mother.
And I don't know what moron lets this guy go, but you can tell him I said they're a moron
because who other than this North Texas dad allegedly leaves his missing three-year-old little girl near an alley wrought, infested with coyotes as punishment.
I mean, the other night I saw it was late at night.
I was checking on my mom in the middle of the night.
Look out the window and I see two fox in the backyard well there is no way I would even let the dog go out there when I got
the dog um Joe Scott they told me at the pound he was a mini dachshund I don't know what he is
he's a mutt he's a thoroughbred mutt that he is. But I would, there's no way I would even let the dog go outside.
Ever.
Now that I know that there are foxes out there.
Forget it.
And they sent this little baby, a baby girl, outside.
When they know it's infested with, hold on, Joe Scott.
Dr. Tiffany Sanders, you go through so much trouble to adopt a baby.
You know what?
I want that baby.
I would love to have another baby.
You go through all that to get the baby, to mistreat the baby?
Exactly.
It doesn't make any sense.
And I agree with you, Nancy.
The mother should be held liable.
It's just you put the child in danger at 3 a.m.
Why is the child up at 3 a.m. having milk anyway?
If the child has a history of eating difficulties, which is outlined in some reports, why are we forcing her to try to eat and drink at 3 a.m.? Work with a behavioral
therapist. Come up with a solution to parent the child. How about she wasn't hungry? How about that?
I don't need a therapist to tell me that. It's plain as day. She probably wasn't hungry. She
probably was ready to go back to sleep at 3 a.m. Who wants to be drinking and eating at 3 a.m.? Not I. So the practices of this father are suspect.
He likely, I'm suspecting, did something to this young girl who had, you know, just as innocent as ever.
And she came to this country with hope that this family was going to love and protect her.
And they let her down.
To Karen Smith, forensic expert, joining us, what clues, if any, forensically could be gleaned
now? Probably not a whole lot because the dad's walking free. He can go destroy any evidence he
wants to. Exactly. And on its face, this doesn't seem like a forensics case until we dig a little
deeper. So first we're dealing with the SUV. They probably pulled the computer chip and found out
that it left the house for an hour after she went missing. Clue number one, nobody stole it.
It was returned to the house.
So they're not going to find any foreign DNA or fingerprints on the car.
It belongs to the family.
That's what they're going to find.
Second of all, the father said that he waited 15 minutes, went outside.
The little girl was missing.
So he went in, and what did he do?
Laundry.
Clue phone, let's bring out the ALS, the alternate light source.
Let's bring out some chemical enhancers for some of the laundry. This is called crime scene staging.
He had five hours to stage that house before he called police. Let's look at the clothes. Let's
look at her bedroom. Look at the living room. Let's look at the SUV and find out if there's any
clues about nefarious actions with this little girl.
There is a lot of forensics to be done.
And I'm hoping that that's what they're doing in the meantime while they're searching for this little girl.
You know what?
I want to go through the timeline with you.
Karen Smith, forensics expert, joining me.
Because even now, I just am still flummoxed that anybody would let this dad or this mom, frankly, be free
because they can destroy a crime scene. But let's just go with what we know. I want to first talk
about what needs to be done right now, just in case the cops are listening. Number one,
process the crime scene as if a homicide had occurred.
That means Luminal.
Yes.
That means all sorts of testing.
That means going through the laundry, going through the bathroom drains,
going through the sink drains, everything to look for blood or evidence,
fingerprints, bloody fingerprints.
Karen Smith, what do they need to be doing right now?
The first thing they need to do is process that car, which they've done, hoping that they use some chemical enhancers, perhaps luminol or some other other enhanced methods to find any kind of saliva.
If you know, I hate talking about this because it means that something bad has happened.
But we have a missing girl and we have to go down that path, which is really unfortunate.
They need to look at the clothes that were in the laundry.
If he's washing clothes immediately following a disappearance of a child,
there's something there.
And as we've talked about in the past, Nancy,
you can't get rid of everything with laundry detergent.
You can get rid of some things,
but there may be something left in that laundry,
in that washing machine or on the clothes that were in the laundry.
And Karen, one of the things that you and I worked on were reenactments on the chris pine murder case where his mother was found bludgeoned dead
in the garage and the uh the victim's blood was found upstairs in a guest bathroom drain which
meant to me the killer had time to kick back and have a bath upstairs not concerned they would be caught
that's why i'm saying the drains in the bathroom in the kitchen looking for blood but i got a
question for you to joseph scott morgan professor of forensics at jacksonville state university
if there were a dead body and this is not a murder case yet in the car shouldn't they bring
cadaver dogs to the car should we have cadaver dogs on the scene
right now yeah yeah i believe that they should and certainly using using the house as the principal
scene or the primary scene and and kind of working eccentrically out from the house using these dogs
to sweep this area it looks like there's kind of a big open area immediately behind the fencing when
i saw the photos of the house i'd want to search that area out there.
He could not have gone very, very far away from that location.
Hopefully not.
Why do you keep saying that?
Why do you keep pretending that she was left outside and that she's been dragged off by
a coyote?
I mean, come on.
Can somebody help me out here and get real, Joe Scott?
Let's talk about reality.
The dad admits he puts the baby outside.
He looks back at 15 minutes, and she's gone.
So you're telling me you want me to pretend that in that, what,
14-minute window, coyotes drag her off like the Dingo story,
which actually turned out to be true.
But you want me to believe that's what happened,
or that 15 minutes at 3 a.m. a
kidnapper came by and took the girl? I got to tell you, I don't believe anything from a man
that is telling me he put a three-year-old outside in the middle of the night as punishment. I'm not
buying that. So I'm going to look as an investigator, I'm going to look at every possible scenario here.
And if he put that child in the car and took her away or walked her off into the night
or allowed scavengers to come after her, then we need to exhaust every possibility that
we have.
Still felony murder.
Even if that's true, it can still be prosecuted as felony murder because that's felony child
abuse or endangerment and a death occurred.
That's what felony murder is.
Any death that occurs in the commission of a felony. I hadn't heard a word about mommy. I
wonder what mommy's doing right now. She at home doing more laundry. But what about the fact that
we know now Lee Egan, crime online investigative reporter, the Amber Alert has been discontinued.
That is true because they don't have any additional clues to go on to keep the Amber Alert active.
And the mother, she lawyered up almost immediately.
She's not talking, not cooperating.
Nobody even knows where she is at this point.
Why is that, Dr. Tiffany Sanders?
If it's true what Lee Egan is telling me that the mom's not cooperating, if it's true, why is that?
Wouldn't she want to try to find the daughter?
Absolutely, she would want to try to find her daughter.
This is someone that you paid thousands of dollars to adopt this young girl from a different country, wanted a little girl.
You wanted this child, so you're going to be protecting her.
You're going to be ensuring that every stone is covered, every evidence has been sorted through.
So the fact that she is being evasive and not communicating, that's contrary to a caring,
nurturing mother.
And I am really suspicious of her behavior, Nancy.
I am too.
I'm very suspicious.
I don't like it.
Another issue, you know, Karen Smith, forensics expert, you mentioned about the SUV that apparently is spotted leaving the home that morning early
early morning you're talking about a chip in the suv explain right what they're going to do
like you have any hit and run or car accident that that it results in a fatality they're going to
pull these computer chips in any newer car it shows braking it shows speed it shows when the
car is active and when it's not they They pulled the computer chip, apparently, and the car had been driven for approximately an hour.
Let's narrow that down.
We'll talk about 60 miles an hour for one hour going forward and back.
Wait a minute.
You're saying that you know the car was gone for an hour?
That's what they're reporting, that it was gone for 4 a.m. and 5 a.m.
So that's about a 30-mile search radius.
Like Joe Scott said, you start at the beginning.
You start with a small radius. If you don't find anything, we expand out. Now they're dealing with
approximately 30 miles in every direction for where this SUV may have gone. That is a huge
area to search, but they have to do it. And unfortunately, if the car left and came back,
I seriously doubt whoever was driving it went
to go get coffee uh there was something why would you why would you leave when you realize your
daughter's missing unless you're going looking for her crime online investigative reporter lee
egan how do how did we first learn who reported the sharon missing the father reported her missing
five hours after he put her he reportedly put her outside.
So he went back inside, checked on her 15 minutes later she was gone, went back in, did laundry, drove somewhere for an hour, waited another couple of hours, five hours passed before he called police.
Let's just, let's process this so the dad Wesley Matthews tells police he sends his baby in her pjs at 3 a.m
to stand all alone by a tree across an alley from their home in the Dallas area Texas it's
Richardson Texas now this is according to him her punishment when she refuses to drink milk
it's 3 a.m when he goes to look for baby, I don't know where mommy is in this scenario.
When he goes to look for baby Sharon, just 15 short minutes later, according to him, she's gone.
But he's not worried that she's gone because then he goes back inside and does a load of laundry.
Now, this is according to a sworn police affidavit. Then he waits until after the sun comes up before he, as Lee Egan is telling us, reports the baby is gone.
Okay, that's not all.
Detectives searched the home midweek, which I think is too late, and announced that somebody left in the family's SUV around
4 o'clock a.m. the day Sharon goes missing and returns within the hour.
That's according to detectives.
Now, he was apprehended on child endangerment and then has been released and has stopped
cooperating with detectives.
Now, the mom says she was asleep during the whole thing,
but according to sources, she has stopped cooperating.
This is another troubling issue to Alan Duke joining me.
CPS, Child Protective Services, according to reports,
has had, unquote, unspecified contact with the family before Sharon goes missing.
Now, can somebody explain how CPS has already been at the home for something and the baby's still there and then neither parent shows up for the vigil?
There's a vigil for the little girl and the parents don't even bother to come.
Alan, is that true?
Yeah, that's what I understand.
And unfortunately, this is a thread that we've seen in other stories that you and I,
disturbing stories of child abuse that you and I have covered.
The very same day, police get a tip to go and scour a cemetery
near the edge of Richardson for signs of baby Sharon. This little girl has already seen
so much heartache in her life. She was born in India and then she gets passed from one place to
the next. God only knows what happened to her and all those places she was sent before she gets
adopted. She was abandoned by her parents before her second birthday.
Adoption workers rescued her.
And it's according to the adoption agency,
the baby would wait for hours on the stairs until a worker she called nanny would show up.
And then she would run and hug the woman.
That's just breaking my heart.
Her parents abandoned her.
She's passed from place to place.
And finally, at the adoption agency,
a worker shows her love,
and a little baby will sit on the stairs,
sit there until that employee shows up, and then run to her and call her nanny.
That's the only love this child ever got.
Then, miracle, she gets adopted just outside Dallas
where she meets her new sister who's one year older than her.
At age three, she only weighs 22 pounds.
Her dad says she had an eating disorder he says in the small hours
of the morning he couldn't get her to drink her meal why are you feeding a child at 3 a.m
and that's when he sends her outside a hundred feet that's a third of a football field, from the house, behind a fence and across from an alley known to be infested with coyotes.
Hold on, take this in.
100 feet, Joe Scott Morgan, from the house, behind a fence, and across the alley.
I wouldn't even let my children get that far out of my sight in normal waking daylight hours with me with them.
Forget it.
Across a fence, 100 feet away from me, anything could happen.
Yeah, yeah, it can.
And she is completely and totally defenseless.
She's subjected to all of the elements and anything else that's out there.
No one to protect her, Nancy, in this dark, horrible set of circumstances.
And, you know, at the end of the day, he's trying to give her milk.
I can't tell you, and I know you've done this.
Why didn't he just put her in his arms and sit in a rocking chair and rock her and soothe her?
Why did he have to take her and stick her out in the middle of the night?
And how did mommy sleep through the whole thing?
This is what I know.
Candles and flowers are now marking the spot where sharon was said to have last been seen for anyone with information
please please call 972-744-4800 repeat 972-744-4800 a A little girl has gone missing from her home.
Her name, Sharon.
And according to police, her father, Wesley Matthews,
sends his daughter and her PJs at 3 a.m.
to stand alone beneath a tree across an alley from the home
as punishment for refusing to drink milk.
Take a listen to what Mommy's defense lawyer has to say.
Ms. Matthews has previously participated with the Richardson Police Department.
She's distraught over the loss of her daughter, Sharon Matthews.
She does not know the whereabouts, and all she wants is for her daughter to be returned.
You may wonder why she has retained legal counsel.
She's participated with the Richardson Police Department,
and her biological child was removed from her house.
All she wants is her daughter back, Sharon Matthews,
and wants her biological daughter back.
And with regard to why an individual may retain counsel,
everybody has a right to legal counsel.
The mere fact that Wesley may be accused of a crime is not indicative of Ms. Matthews.
Under the rules of ethics, an attorney cannot represent multiple parties that may or may have a conflict. There is no conflict at this point. There's been no accusations
of wrongdoing against Ms. Matthews and at this time they would request their
privacy. All they want is their daughter back, Sharon Matthews.
Why have we not heard from her, sir?
The mere fact that you do not hear from a person who's mourning, some
individuals mourn differently. The mere fact that she may walk up and down the
street and react differently to a time of trauma is not indicative of anything. Can you speak to her emotional state?
How is she doing right now? Well, she's distraught. And as you're all aware, they adopted Sharon.
They love Sharon. Sharon did have medical conditions and they have worked with trying
to get those medical conditions under control. You've heard the Richardson Police Department talk about
that Sharon did have an eating disorder. The mere fact that she had an eating
disorder is not indicative of this case. What happened to Sharon, that's, she's
distraught. Is she standing by Wesley? Is she standing by Wesley and his account
of what happened? She has previously spoken to the Richardson Police
Department and provided cooperation with the Richardson Police Department and provided cooperation with the
Richardson Police Department and the fact that there may be other conversations that
may have occurred between the third parties and Wesley, she's not aware of those.
Is she hopeful?
She is.
She's very hopeful that her daughter will be returned.
Has she or Wesley ever hurt Little Sharon?
Absolutely not. Have you all had, but they have had contact with
CPS. What's that about? We're not at liberty to discuss that. But they have. We're not at
liberty to discuss that. Lee Egan, police are asking the public for something very,
very specific. What is it, Lee? Yes, they are. They're asking people, businesses,
people with homes with security cameras, to please take a look at
their footage on the morning of October 7th and to see if they see a 2013 maroon Acura MDX.
They're trying to get a timeline going. They're trying to see. A maroon Acura. Yes, MDX. This is what Richardson Police Department is saying.
Quote, we'd like to thank those who have provided tips and video up to this point.
I wonder what that video is, Karen Smith.
What video are they talking about?
It could be anything from just a drive-by of a business that was closed that happens to have a surveillance camera out front.
That would be really helpful because right now we have no directionality and no destination of where this
SUV went. So they're looking for any and everything at this point. So anybody that has anything,
yeah, please get that to the Richardson police as soon as possible. You know, it can be subpoenaed,
Joe Scott Morgan, and it's been done before through different providers. It can be radio.
It can be, what do you call it, North Star?
And a lot of vehicles in newer models.
It's never handed over willingly.
It has to be subpoenaed.
But that's just filling out a form and going to a judge.
And it will tell you where the car has gone in these smart cars,
Joe Scott Morgan. I wonder if that's been done or not. I'm not really sure that it has, Nancy,
but this goes back to the bigger point that you and Karen have already touched on. Let's keep in
mind, we have got this five-hour gap. And this idea of timing, setting this timeline, and in
death investigation, crime scene investigation,
we work on linear time.
So this idea of trying to pace him or the vehicle wherever it's going at different geographic locations,
we can plot that.
And this might be actually a key to determining where Sharon is
or where she was let go or where she was placed.
And this is going to be essential to this text.
I want to go back to what the Richardson Police Department is saying.
We would like to thank those who have
provided tips and video up to this point.
We are diligently working our way through
all the material. We continue
to request, as Lee Egan just
told us, businesses and residents
within a 30-minute drive of the
900 block of Sunningdale
to check your video systems,
see if there's any footage that may
have captured a 2013 maroon acura mdx m mother d dog x suv on saturday october 7 between 4 a.m
and 5 a.m it's important this check be conducted before a system overwrite may take place.
Thank you for your assistance.
That's a news release.
And, Lee, if you don't mind, could you resend that out for us on the Crime Online website,
just so our readers can help with that?
We're doing everything we can think of to try and bring baby Sharon home
after all this child has lived through in life
already. The little girl adopted from Nalanda missing now in the U.S. she comes this far
only to go missing. Now the mother according to the Dallas Morning News is, distraught, but still, quote, hopeful the little girl will be found.
The lawyer for the mom says that, I mean, the mom has, the distressed, quote, distraught mom
has gotten a criminal defense lawyer, says that it's Kent Starr.
All she wants is for her daughter to be returned.
Interesting, isn't it, Karen Smith?
All she wants is her daughter to be returned,
but according to sources, she's not cooperating with police.
I don't understand that dichotomy.
I don't understand it either.
If you want your daughter to be returned,
you are giving every single shred of information to them that you can provide,
not lawyering up and saying that, you know,
you were quote unquote asleep when all this happened.
Why would you lawyer up if you're asleep?
Why did you not go to the vigil?
Too many question marks for me as an investigator.
Well, Joe Scott Morgan, when he was,
Starr was asked why the mom had retained a lawyer,
he says that Cindy has cooperatedated with police now that's different from
what we were told that she's not cooperating and that quote everybody has a right to legal counsel
well yeah we all have a right to legal counsel but i'm not running out and hiring a lawyer right now
because i don't need one right yeah i gotta tell you yeah you don't and also as a parent if my
child is missing the last person i want to talk to is a lawyer.
I want to talk to the public so that I can get the word out because time's wasting.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Every time we move further and further out from that moment, Tom, which this child disappeared,
the slimmer the chances are that we're going to be able to recover her.
That's the conundrum here.
Why do you go and get an attorney in these circumstances?
Well, the lawyer says, quote, they adopted Sharon.
They love Sharon, he said of the family.
And he was asked, why isn't the mom spoken publicly?
And he says, quote, some individuals mourn differently.
Okay.
According to police, the search of the home was part of the, quote,
natural progression of the investigation.
And I am looking at the home right now.
It looks like a mansion.
I mean, have you got, Jackie, look at this.
Have you guys seen this house?
Yeah.
It looks, it is some crib.
Let me tell you.
It's huge, red brick.
It's got all the outdoor lighting, a beautiful hedge.
You know what this is not exactly
what i i pictured when we were talking about an alley and a street and coyotes this looks like
it should be on that is that show still on the air homes of the rich and famous or how about
pimp my crib no i don't know this is huge this looks like it should be on a reality TV show, like where the Kardashians have their fake home.
It's humongous.
These people must be rolling in dough.
Okay, the dad, Wesley Matthews, is just 37 years old.
And he is out free.
And so is the mom.
I'm just telling you, it's completely different.
Everybody look at the picture of the home right now. Now
the Humane Society says that coyote attacks are rare
but Matthews, the dad, admits
to police he knew coyotes had been in the alley when he
sent the daughter out there. Lee Egan, Crime Online, is that true? Yep, that is
absolutely true. He knew, he admitted it right is that true? Yep, that is absolutely true.
He knew, he admitted it right off.
Why would he do that?
Why would he send that baby out there
knowing that Coyotes were there?
It just makes no sense to me.
Also, after looking around for her,
he admits he went inside to do laundry
and, quote, decided to wait until it was light outside
to continue searching for her
or for her to return on her own.
Okay.
According to KXASv nbc5 why was the last signing at three o'clock and the parents not call until 8 a.m that's the question we want answered
this is police telling kxas quote as far as why she was out there, how long she was out there.
That's questions we have for the parents.
Right now, the baby's mom does not face any charges, reportedly asleep and unaware of what her husband was doing inside their mansion.
Police go door to door in the neighborhood using search dogs and helicopters looking for Sharon.
They have so far. This is where the security footage comes from.
I mean, once I saw that house, I guarantee you,
every house on that street has video cameras out the yin-yang.
Security footage, electronics, and items in the family's three vehicles.
The three vehicles were towed from the home on Saturday.
Karen Smith, why do you think they took all three vehicles,
and what are they hoping
to find? Well, they know the one left for an hour and came back, but you know what?
They need to take any and everything that may be related to something bad that may have happened,
and that includes all of the vehicles. They're not going to leave any stone unturned at this point,
which is why they issued a search warrant and knocked on the door with that, and now they're
in the home combing it for all of the forensic evidence that they can
possibly get.
That includes the cars.
We also know, Joseph Scott Morgan, that police retrieved an item from near that tree where
the dad claimed Sharon was left alone and they placed the item in a bag.
But right now, we don't know what the item was or whether it's of any evidentiary value the amber alert has been discontinued only because of
insufficient tips to go on and they've got to have a specific vehicle or suspect for that amber alert
to continue joe scott morgan i also understand joe scott that others from the emmanuel bible
chapel the church where they went, had a search.
They searched a field and other areas near the family home and claimed that they were good parents.
Maybe they got a different idea of good parent than I do.
I think that when you're around somebody all the time, like these people are, you don't want to assume the worst of someone, particularly if they're a member of your particular group. So it's hard to even conceptualize many times for people to think that,
oh my gosh, they have done something horrible to their child. But that aside, this piece of
evidence that they found at the scene that is at this point unknown, we work on an idea in
forensics, Nancy, that talks about connectivity.
It talks about every contact leading to trace. If that piece of evidence, if that piece of evidence
has sufficient biological evidence on it, they're going to try to develop that and tie this back
to whatever the event was that brought Sharon's missing state at this point in time. Baby Sharon has developmental issues and limited verbal skills,
probably because of being so malnourished and mistreated before she was adopted,
is described as Asian.
She's about three feet tall.
She only weighs 22 pounds with dark hair and beautiful brown eyes.
Baby Sharon was last seen wearing a pink top, black pajama bottoms, and pink flip-flops.
She was adopted from an India orphanage.
Let's all continue our prayers and our hopes that this little girl is found safe and then finds a loving home.
That's our prayer for right now.
Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off.
Goodbye, friend.
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