Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Finding Elizabeth Thomas: Disturbing new details about Tad Cummins' 'dark side'

Episode Date: March 27, 2017

The lawyer for Elizabeth Thomas’ dad tells Nancy Grace about “disturbing” new details suggesting the 15-year-old girl did not want to go with Tad Cummins. The former high school health teacher had an “extreme dark side” only being discovered after he allegedly kidnapped the girl, attorney Jason Whatley says. Grace talks with the family’s two lawyers about the search for Cummins and the hope he’ll let the child go in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. entering the public school system for the very first time. Investigators say that she is with Tad Cummins. TBI says that Cummins was a teacher. A student reported seeing Cummins kissing Elizabeth in his classroom in late January. Cummins told two students he's a father figure to Elizabeth. He stole my daughter from me. She's 15. He's 50. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Police arrested Elizabeth's mom, Kimberly Thomas, last year.

They charged her with five counts of child abuse and neglect. If a person was looking for a teenager that could be easily influenced, I would say she would be one that would definitely attract that kind of person. It has now been weeks since a schoolgirl was abducted by her 50-year-old pervy schoolteacher. I'm talking about Tad Cummins, that little girl, Elizabeth Thomas. And still, he has managed to elude not only local law enforcement, but the FBI as well. There is a national Amber Alert to find this girl. But still, nothing. Our hopes were raised last week when there was an alleged sighting in Corpus Christi, Texas.

But since that, nothing. Are they on their way to Mexico to live as a man and wife? That is sick. Plus, there's the issue of his real wife who's waiting back home at Columbia, Tennessee for him. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories, and I am not letting go of Tad Cummins this easily. Oh, no. He can't just abduct, kidnap, make off with a schoolgirl and think he can get away with it. That's not happening. Not on Crime Stories, anyway.

With me, two very special guests, in addition to the Duke, Alan Duke, joining me, investigative reporter. With me is Jason Watley, who is representing Elizabeth's father. In addition to that, his law partner, Corey Ricci, both well-known trial lawyers in the Tennessee area. And Corey, I want to start with you. First of all, gentlemen, thank you for being with us. My first question is this. Am I correct that you represented Anthony Thomas in his case when he went to juvenile court to try to get the children away from Elizabeth's mother? That is absolutely right. allegations came to light concerning Kimberly Thomas, the victims of which were the three oldest minor children, including Elizabeth. The Department of Children's Services became involved

and Anthony fought to keep the children, to keep full custody of the children and to get the mother out of the house. And that's exactly what happened. The mother has not had any contact with the children ever since then, and that was almost a year and a half ago. Well, it's not a secret anymore. The allegations against her have been adjudicated in juvenile court, and there they have a standard of proof. It's beyond a preponderance, which is a civil case. What were the allegations against her mother? They're the allegations that are the same as what she's facing criminally. She had committed multiple acts of abuse against the children, including, I believe, hitting one of their heads against either a washing machine or some other appliance. She made one or more of the girls strip naked in front of one of her friends.

There's also, this allegation came to light after the juvenile court proceedings, but there, I believe, was an EpiPen that was left out that was supposed to be for one of the older children. And the youngest child, who was six or seven at the time, grabbed a hold of it. And for that, Ms. Thomas is facing a felony charge of child abuse. You know, Corey, let me just stop this train right here. I don't understand. Why would you make your daughter strip naked in front of a friend, a grown friend? The woman's got some very serious problems.

But what was her thinking? Why did she say she did that? Well, as I recall, she denied it, and I think she continues to deny it. The evidence, as I understand it, against her is pretty significant. And I don't know what in her mind justified her in committing these awful things. But to this point, she's either on one hand, she's said, I didn't do it, you know, that I'm innocent. On the other hand, she's tried to externalize it in certain ways by saying, well, you know, these girls are just, you know, they're teenage girls and they need to be whipped and they need to behave better. Or, you know, the Department of Children's Services only gets involved in people's lives.

They're only designed to harass people. That's kind of been her response from the beginning of this entire situation. That teenage girls need to be whipped? Words to that effect, yes ma'am. Oh, oh man. And I know that you guys told me the dad, Anthony, is in pest control and has to travel every day, all day, to different homes all over. And he's not in the home, and he did not know what was happening while he was out at work. He did not. In fact, I was not there for this, but when he was made aware,

when the investigators made him aware, he practically had a meltdown. And he, of course, felt awful not having realized this, that it was going on in his very home. And as soon as he found out, he took all the action that any parent would or should. And he's done great things since then. So it's awful that this is now happening. Well, was Elizabeth in the position where she had to testify against her mother at juvenile? She never did testify, as far as I recall. We were able to avoid that. There are certain rules concerning children's testimony in juvenile court proceedings, and none of the minor children had to testify in that proceeding.

I'm glad to hear that. I did a stint in juvenile in inner city Atlanta, and there's a lot of ways to keep the child off the stand in juvenile proceedings that wouldn't wash, they wouldn't fly in big court, as we called it. I'm glad to hear that. What did you make of the sighting? Oh, let me thank our sponsor today. I forgot to do that at the beginning, Alan. With us and sponsoring our podcast today is CrimeCon. CrimeCon.com will give you all the information you need for the biggest gathering of crime sleuths, crime busters, both professional and amateur, to go down. It's happening in Indianapolis June 9 through June 11. Alan and I will be there.

Many, many notable crime fighters will be there as well. Go to CrimeCon.com and use the code word NANCY to get 20% off your fee. Also with us, Mr. Whatley, question to you, who's also on this case. What did you

make of the sighting that allegedly went down in Corpus Christi, Texas? Nancy, at this juncture, we're getting tips of alleged sightings in various parts of the country. That was one that just made national news. I mean, we're getting several others. It's very difficult to know how to react because every single time you hear this, you want to make sure that you follow up on it. You hope and pray that law enforcement is following up on it. It's really, in a very real way, out of the hands of the family. We've been personally involved with some of these alleged sightings, and we're personally

following up ourselves. We're always making sure that law enforcement is aware. So far, it looks as though all of these have also called the tip line for the TBI. And so, you know, we're hopeful that investigation is going forward and checking these out because we're not the professionals here in terms of doing these criminal investigations. But we're doing that ourselves. So in terms of Corpus Christi, you know, we just don't know. I mean, we're very frustrated that we don't have any concrete leads at this point, any videotape from a convenience store or some other place like that that shows Elizabeth or Tad Cummins. And so we're just very frustrated. And we're hoping that some of this

national media attention will help generate some legitimate sightings that can be verified. Let me ask you this. It's recently been discussed that there were romantic emails on the school computer between Tad Cummins and Elizabeth. He was using the school computer. And also a report that on one occasion, Elizabeth actually hid from Tad Cummins when he came looking for her. Is that true? Well, we understand that it is true. And further, something you need to know, and I'll get back to the emails in a minute, we're learning that Elizabeth had opened up to at least two of her siblings expressing that she was afraid of Ted Cummings. And this was in the weeks leading up to her disappearance.

And so the picture is forming that this wasn't just a girl who fantasized about an older man and ran away. And this is a picture that some people are getting. That is not the picture we're getting. This is a girl who was conflicted, who was scared, who we believe very strongly did not believe that she was going to be going anywhere for any substantial length of time. She was under the control of this man. We've learned now that literally he actually had come by the house several times when the father was not home and took her to lunch and even threatened her that she had to go to lunch with him or she'd get kicked out of his class, things of that nature.

These are things that we're learning. Day by day, new information comes out. We also learned that according to the young girl who took her to Shoney's that morning, at least according to what she told one or two of the sisters, that Elizabeth asked her to take her back home that morning and did not want to follow through with it. And the young lady said she could not because she had to go to work, and so she dropped her off at Shoney's. So we're learning more and more very disturbing details that would go to Elizabeth's state of mind and her fear of this man,

and it's painting a very different picture and a grim picture, and obviously the family's just extremely terrified of this. Let me understand something. You're saying that that morning before she was taken by Tad Cummins, she asked a little friend to take her home? Yes. According to our sources, which right now are sisters of Elizabeth, they were told that exact thing by the young girl who actually dropped her off. And we're not in communication with the young girl at this time. We're not in communication with her. Her family sort of shut in communication with the young girl at this time. We're not in communication with her.

Her family sort of shut that down, as we understand at this point, and we just don't have an open line of communication with her. I wonder why she didn't take her home. I mean, it could have been a number of things. Maybe she didn't have time. Maybe she was going the other way. Maybe Elizabeth changed her mind. I don't know.

Or maybe the little girl said, hey, I don't want him mad at me. It could have been anything. And you're stating that he also threatened if she didn't go with him on a lunch date that he'd kick her out of class? Yes. Again, this information is coming from siblings. In particular, there's one sibling that really hasn't been questioned that much at this point if any who's very quiet and shy and uh and and this is information that elizabeth was talking to them about between the time the kissing incident came to surface uh and when uh ultimately

she disappeared i was just wondering did the father anthony notice what if any items were missing from the home what clothing maybe her ipad maybe cds maybe toiletries shoes what if anything is actually missing that belonged to elizabeth well nothing of significant note uh just uh standard clothing clothing and not a lot of it. From our perspective, she did not take a significant amount of items that would have represented the person who was leaving town. And so that's just, that's our take of it at this point. There's really nothing of significance that I know of that would give us some indication that she was planning a long stay or anything of that nature. I'm really surprised she hasn't tried to get in touch with her siblings, especially Sarah, the sister. We are too. Our position would be that she's probably

wanted to get a hold of her siblings, but has been unable to do so. This is one of my fears, and it's come true. I knew it was going to happen, but now I can read it in black and white. There are some comments on Elizabeth's story online. And this person states that it was already known, and now it's confirmed they were romantic. Why persist in calling it an abduction people don't get it i mean she is a child in the eyes of the law we already know that she didn't want to go and she got roped into it she can't give consent to this i mean have i missed something jason listen nancy you haven't missed anything. It's shocking to me. It's very frustrating. It angers me when I hear that kind of talk because that's ridiculous. She was under

his control and he had worked on it. This wasn't just that she's under his control because she was infatuated with her or something like that. He worked on her to program her. It is clear that he had been working on her, softening her, molding her in a way that would make her do what he wanted. This is a classic abduction and anybody that suggests anything else, I think they're just popping off. They don't know. But when you study the facts and you hear what

we're talking about, and there's other stuff that I don't feel comfortable even talking about on the air with you at this point that we're hearing that suggests that Tad Cummins had an extremely dark side and his motive was, there was obviously there was no purity to his motive. Obviously, he was in control of this girl in a way that's very, very sinister. Alan, have you seen the report that she actually hid from him when he came by her work? Where did she work, Jason? Where was her place of work where did she work jason where was her place

of work i didn't know she had a job she worked at he worked at chick-fil-a oh yeah that's right actually i did know that so he comes by there and she actually hid from him and begged people not to tell her teacher that she was there man man i mean i don't know how people could think this is a willing scenario. Do you believe that police are monitoring the cell phones and the home phones of all of her friends and her family, her siblings? I think law enforcement is doing everything they possibly can. I know they've been working extremely hard. It's a statewide effort. You know, local law enforcement, of course, is involved in it as well.

They are probing for information in ways that, frankly, they may not have much experience with in a case like this. I know they're probably seeking help from special agents who have experience in electronic evidence or perhaps cyber crimes. Of course, I don't know the specifics of it, but that's what I think they're doing. And that's probably how they were able to find out how Elizabeth and Mr. Cummins were communicating with each other via, not even via email, but via saved draft on Mr. Cummins' school email account. You know, that's information that, of course, is not readily available. You just pull up your email history and there it is. It requires some sort of forensic investigating that they're clearly undertaking right now. Yeah, to save discarded or deleted items. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, my only question is why she would not try and contact anybody in her family or any of her friends. And I really believe that's got to be Tad Cummins refusing to allow her to do that. What do you think of that, Jason? I mean, obviously, Tad Cummings is in control of the situation. And so no one's ever said he's stupid. He may be demented, but he's not stupid. And so he's not going to allow this girl to have access to a phone or to get a phone from somebody. He's going to have eyes on her at all times because, frankly, he knows his life depends on it. And so that's just how I see it.

And I think that's how the family sees it right now, that he is going to be watching her like a hawk because she is the number one witness against him, obviously. And so, you it's it's hard to state the obvious i don't like to look at it that way but that's the truth now the way this is working alan for instance in one particular email tad cummins compliments elizabeth on her body and then she writes a draft and then they can delete it. They are sharing like a school computer.

And when you have a draft, typically that's not saved. It's not like an email. See what I mean? It's just not sent to someone's address, which would make it harder to find if you didn't know about this secret email. However, it still sits on the computer. When you type something on a school computer, it still sits there. And as a result, that's how they found it. So while it was clever, it was not clever enough to hide the romantic

letters. Hey, re-explain it, Alan. Explain it again how they did it, if you don't mind. And this is kind of a spy thing. And of course, you know, Tad claims he was CIA, right? They establish an email address, which takes about a minute to do on a number of services for free. And you establish it, and you share the password with someone else, the login information. If you want to communicate with them, you type an email, but save it as a draft and never send it. However, later, they can use the login information to log in and look in the draft folder and read it as if they'd received it in their own, but there's never a trail of it being sent to their email address. So that is a surreptitious way of communicating.

Just imagining, with me, Corey Ricci and Jason Watley, the lawyers representing the Thomas family, just imagining pervy 50-year-old Tad Cummins hunched over the computer, coming up with a way to trick the school administration so he can write a little girl sexy romantic emails that is just oh okay alan uh for those of you that want to know more about the story or want to hear the latest or have a tip or have information please go to crime. You'll see our tip number and our email if you don't want to call in. We're doing every single thing we can to help bring Elizabeth home. The reality is he's got nothing to lose. We believe he's armed and this could go sideways at any minute. To Jason Watley and Corey Ricci, Gentlemen, thank you.

And God willing, when we are together again, we'll have good news. Thank you, Nancy. Thank you. Again, I want to thank our sponsor making today's podcast possible, CrimeCon.com. Go to their website and use our code Nancy for 20% off. Crime Sleuths Amateur and Professional convene June 9 in Indianapolis. Please join Alan and I there. We'll be podcasting live and want you to join us. Hopefully when we all talk again, we'll have good news about Elizabeth Thomas,

hopefully on her way home to her family. Nancy Grace with Crime Stories signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.