Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Finding Paislee Shultis

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

A New York girl reported missing for two years has been found safe. Paislee Shultis was four at the time of her disappearance. Investigators suspected that Paislee’s biological parents, who didn’t have custody, took her. Today that was proven. After receiving a tip that someone was hiding Paislee, New York State police found the child and her parents at a home in Saugerties. A detective helped search inside the home and when he shined a flashlight at an odd-looking place in the staircase, he noticed a blanket.Police removed a few steps in the area and located Paislee and her biological mother, 33-year-old Kimberly Cooper, in a “small, cold and wet” space. Cooper and father Kirk Shultis, Jr., were both arrested and charged with felony custodial interference and endangering the welfare of a child. Paislee is in good health and is now back with her older sister and legal guardian. KlaasKids founder, Marc Klaas, joins Crime Stories with Nancy Grace Executive Producer Jackie Howard to discuss the uplifting discovery. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm Jackie Howard, executive producer on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Police have been searching for Paisley Schultes for nearly two years. The little girl was four years old when she was reported missing in 2019. It was thought that she had been kidnapped by her non-custodial parents. At the time the little girl went missing, her parents were involved in a larger custodial battle over the little girl and her older sibling. Police have now announced that Paisley Schultes, now six, has been found safe and alive. She was found at the home of her grandfather, who owned the house where the little girl was found.

Paisley was taken to the police station where she was met by paramedics, and she was pronounced in good health and released to her legal guardian. This is not the first time that police had been to this home. They had made multiple attempts to look for the little girl at the residence. However, they were met with opposition. At the time, police did not have a search warrant. They met with opposition from the residents, denying them access to the home. After receiving a tip, state police took a search warrant to the residents.

Kirk Schultz Sr., again, who owns the house, told police he did not know where the little girl was and had not seen her since she went missing. However, investigators went into the home, and an eagle-eye investigator is who made all the difference in this case. Detective Eric Thiel noticed something odd about the way steps were built. Something was out of place. Thiel then took a flashlight and shined it through a crack between the wooden steps and saw what he thought was a blanket. Then detectives saw a pair of tiny feet. They removed more steps and found Paisley along with her 33-year-old mother, Kimberly Cooper. Cooper and father Kirk Schultes Jr. were taken into custody at the time. Joining me now is Mark Klass, the founder of Klass Kids. Mark, what's your thoughts?

Well, there's several things. First of all, it's a wonderful thing when any missing child is recovered. And we all know that with the passage of time, that recovery becomes less likely and less likely. So it's a marvelous thing that she has been recovered. And that has to give great hope to all of the other parents of children that remain missing. Certainly there's that. The second thing that really strikes me about this case is the conditions under which this child was living. I mean, they were not sending her to school and they were not educating her at home. They were hiding her out in this horrible little box underneath the staircase.

They were hiding her in secrecy. She was off the grid. And nobody deserves that in their life. She deserves all the advantages that come with a loving family in their childhood, not this kind of horrible treatment that she was receiving. It was not in her best welfare or in the best welfare of anybody associated with this situation. Now, obviously, we know that. But as a four-year-old child, is it possible that she just thought this was normal, that, you know, when somebody knocks on the door, you run and hide? Of course she thought it was normal.

She's been conditioned to believe that it's normal. She is just a little child. We have to remember. And I suppose she probably thinks in her mind, if it even goes that far, that all little children are in similar circumstances. I mean, can't you look back on your life and see things that you thought were normal in your childhood that actually turned out not to be normal? I know I can. What is the difference, Mark? And I'm not talking about an abduction where the child is mistreated or killed. What is the difference in a parental abduction, even if it's a non-parental, and a stranger abduction?

Was this child in any less danger? She was in much less danger. Parental abductions are usually about non-custodial parents kidnapping the child so that they can have custody for whatever reason. Very rarely in those situations are the children's lives endangered. I mean, there have been some high profile cases, but generally these are the children that when they are located are going to be alive. Is it always that way? I mean, you're talking a high percentage there for that? No, I'm talking about a high percentage.

I mean, there are revenge cases or vindicative situations where if I can't have the child, nobody can have the child, and parents will take those children and then unfortunately murder them. There's really no justifiable excuse for a non-custodial parent to take a young child. It's not in the child's best interest the vast majority of the time. And if a judgment needs to be made, that judgment needs to be made in a court of law, not in the back alleys of somebody's mind. This little girl has been missing for two years. Obviously, the family, she was found at the grandfather's home. The entire family set out to hide this child. I mean, in a case like this, two years is really kind of just a drop in the bucket.

It is. Sure. I mean, this could have gone on indefinitely. Unfortunately, they weren't clever enough to to keep her that well hidden because they received multiple tips that the little girl is or might be in the house. So this was not the first rodeo for these officers. They'd been back there plenty of times before. It's just that this time, an eagle-eyed detective figured out what was going on, and they were able to locate her in the secret room under the staircase, the small, dark, damp secret room under the staircase. Why do you think it took so long? Because as you said, the police have been at that residence several times. What took so long to find her? Well, for whatever reason, it took two years to

get a warrant to the property. I mean, that's what made the difference. This time they had carte blanche to move around in and around the property, and they, that's what made the difference. This time they had carte blanche to move around in and around the property, and they've never had that before. Sometimes there would be resistance from the family regarding allowing the police in, and sometimes they would be allowed in maybe to the entryway, but certainly not to be able to do an exhaustive search, which is what resulted in her recovery. Mark, how does an Amber Alert work in this type of situation, a parental abduction versus a stranger abduction?

Because of the criteria that is set up for Amber Alerts, the only cases that oftentimes qualify are parental abduction cases. And that's because one of the criteria is abductor's vehicle information. Now, in a case like Pauley's or J.C. Dugard's or so many of these other historical cases, nobody knows what the abductor was driving because they exist in stealth. But in parental situations, you do know. So it turns out that many, many, many AMBER alerts that are issued in this country are issued in non-custodial cases. And as we discussed earlier, those are not the cases where the children need the most. The ones where the children need AMBER alerts are situations where the child has been taken in the dead of night by somebody that is not known to anybody. Because those are the ones that find themselves dead eventually. So, you know, as critical as parental abductions are,

I think there should be another alert criteria because it gums up the whole idea of Amber Alerts. Again, Paisley Schultes, missing for two years, has been found safe and alive with her non-custodial parents. Schultes Jr. and Sr. were both charged with first-degree custodial interference, a felony, and endangering the welfare of a child. Cooper has been charged with second-degree custodial interference, endangering the welfare of a child as well. These charges are both misdemeanors. This is an I Heart podcast.