Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - GIRL 13, HEADS TO BUS STOP, NEVER SEEN AGAIN: WHERE'S TABITHA? PARENTS BREAK SILENCE

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

It's an early Tuesday morning in East Nashville.A family is just waking up for the day, and everyone is getting ready for work and sending their daughter off to school.  Debra Tuders leaves for work at 6:30 a.m. Thirty minutes later, Bo Tuders wakes Tabitha up for school. Tabithia's siblings are still sleeping. Neighbors see Tabitha walking to the bus stop as usual. That afternoon, Tabitha isn't on the bus home. Her parents think that Tabitha may have missed the bus, walked, or maybe was with a friend, but by 5 p.m., panic sets in. Bo and Debra Tuders drive to Bailey Middle School, where a teacher tells them Tabitha was not in class that day.   Nashville Police, canvassing the area, receive several tips. Some neighbors report seeing Tabitha at the bus stop on 14th and Boscobel Street but then see her cross 14th and head down Boscobel. A neighborhood boy says he saw Tabitha enter a red car at the corner of 15th Street. He described the driver as a 30 to 40-year-old Black male. Tracker dogs trace Tabitha's scent on a route similar to the boy's account. Jamie Tuders' ex-boyfriend matched that description and drove a red car, but police placed him elsewhere that morning. The tracker dogs lose Tabitha's scent in an alleyway. Friends say Tabitha would never have gone in the alley alone.   Tabitha's clothes, toiletries, and money are left behind. Tabitha did not take her backpack to school that day; she only carried her signed report card. On Tabitha's desk at home, police find several 'business' cards with Tabitha's name, phone number, and address, alongside a picture of Winne the Pooh. Her parents did not know Tabitha had the cards and could not explain why she may have had them. Investigators also discover a note reading 'T.D.T - n – M.T.L.' Detectives believe them to be initials, TDT for Tabitha Danielle Tuders, but MTL has never been identified.    JOINING NANCY TODAY: Debra Tuders - Tabitha's mom  Bo Tuders - Tabitha's Dad  Marc Klaas – Founder, KlaasKids Foundation; X: @PollyDad Dr. John Delatorre –  Licensed Psychologist and Mediator (specializing in forensic psychology); Psychological Consultant to Project Absentis: a nonprofit organization that searches for missing persons; X, IG, and TikTok – @drjohndelatorre Steve Fischer  – Missing Persons Private Investigator, Search & Rescue Specialist, & Owner of Search Investigations; X: @SF_Investigates (helping in the search for Riley) Sydney Sumner - Crime Online Investigative Reporter See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Just like every morning, a beautiful young girl, just 13, heads to the school bus stop and she's never seen alive again. Tonight, where is Tabitha? Good evening. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. I want to thank you for being with us. It's an early Tuesday morning in East Nashville, and a family is just waking up for the day. Everyone's getting ready for work and sending their daughter off to school. Neighbors spot 13-year-old Tabitha Tudors heading to the bus stop on South 14th Street at 8 a.m. that morning. She never made

it on to that school bus. Welcome, everyone, joining us in All-Star Panel to make sense of what we know tonight in the disappearance of Tabitha. But first, I want to go to two very special guests joining us, Deborah and Bo Tudors. These are Tabitha's parents, her mother and father. To the Tudors, welcome and thank you for being with us. Miss Tudor, tell me what you remember about that morning when

Tabitha went missing. That morning when I woke up to get ready for work, she was laying at the foot of my bed where normally that's where once we go to sleep, she comes in there and then her dad woke her up to get ready for school when he left to go to work and she walked up to the bus stop and that was the last time we seen her. Did she have breakfast at home that morning? No, ma'am. She normally eats at school. Ah, okay. One of those schools where

they have breakfast for you. What time of the morning was that, Ms. Tudors? It was 7.50. 7.50 when she left for school or when she woke up? When she left for school. She woke up at 7. Tabitha was 13 when she went missing, but she often would come and sleep, snuggling in the same bed with you and your husband, right? She normally made a pallet at the foot of the bed, but yes. And when you say a pallet at the foot of the bed, you mean on the bed or in the floor or where? In the floor. She made it in the floor at the foot of the bed.

Would she, as a little girl younger than 13, was she afraid to sleep by herself or she just wanted to be with you guys? She just wanted to be close to me and that's where she slept. Mr. Tudors, again, thank you for being with us. What do you recall about the morning when Tabitha disappeared? My wife, she got up and left for work. And probably about 40 minutes later, I woke Tabitha up, told her, baby, get up because I got to go to work. And she said, all right, I'm updated. I said, OK, baby, I love you.

And I left for work. And that's the last time I saw her. You know what's shocking about this? And I'm going to go now to my longtime friend and colleague who has me about the toll that the last decades have taken on you handling one case after the next after the next. So thank you for being with us and for being here for Tabitha and her parents. Mark, one thing that always strikes me and it strikes me about the murder of my fiance, as you and I have discussed off camera, is how everything that morning is seemingly just fine. You think everything's fine. I remember when I walked out of that statistics exam, Mark, I thought, oh, it's beautiful. It's so sunny, beautiful outside. And within minutes, I learned that Keith had been murdered.

And when I hear Deborah and Bo Tudors describe that morning, like every morning, there's something so heartbreaking about that dichotomy. Well, it's the normal patterns of a life. You're doing what you do every day. You're getting your coffee. You're saying I love you to your child in a way that you always say it. But then 15, 20 minutes later, you find out that the whole world has stopped, that the whole world has fallen off a cliff. And you find yourself in this new reality that nobody is prepared for. And you have to do absolutely the best thing you can do to be able to, in their case and in my case, to be able to get up in the morning and to be able to put one foot in front of the other as you try to unravel this mystery and work with the authorities on discovering what happened to your child. Now, the vast difference between what's happened with the tutors and what has happened with me is that within two months, I had finality. I knew exactly where Polly was. I knew that she was not coming back alive,

but the tutors are stuck in a loop. They're just stuck in this thing where all they've got left is hope. They have absolutely no answers, whatever. And I can tell you definitively, from my point of view, you're much better off knowing, regardless of what that means, than living in the loop of never having the answers that you so desperately seek and so desperately need to be able to move your life forward. Mark, I've got to ask you another question, and then I'm going to go back to the tutors with the same question. Tabitha Tudor's parents, her mother and father, are with us, along with Mark Klass and the rest of our All-Star panel. Mark, two things.

One, after Polly's kidnap and murder, do you, every time you say goodbye to somebody you love, like when I see that, you know, my twins are driving now, and when I watch them pull out of the driveway in the morning, I can't help but think, am I going to see them this afternoon? It's horrible to this day because I remember when I saw Keith drive away and he put his hand out the window and waved goodbye. I never saw him again. Does it ever go away, Mark?

I've learned how to compartmentalize and I can't have it at the forefront of my mind that every time I say goodbye to my wife, I might never see her again. It's something that I'm completely aware of, but I don't let it come to the forefront of my mind because I think that would probably drive me nuts at some point. And it's hard enough when, as you know, when you go through a tragedy like this, just holding on to the facts in Tabitha's disappearance, I find myself not allowing my mind to go too close to the facts of Keith's murder. Like, what exactly went down? Did the bullet go all the way through his head? Did the bullet go all the way through his mouth? I can't, I don't, I can do it, but I don't do it

because I don't want to get sucked into that and be morose around the twins. Do you keep Polly's disappearance at arm's length? Listen, she was so full of life. She was afraid of the dark and she was afraid of the boogeyman. And the boogeyman came in and took her in the dark and within an hour murdered her. I can't go there. I can't contemplate the last moments of her life. It is just so, so, I could watch my language here, so horrific, so horrible, so dastardly, so inhumane that I have to skirt it. I have to compartmentalize it. Same to Deborah and Bo Tudors, who I want to tell everybody

by coming on with us today, it's bringing back to the surface everything they went through when Tabitha just went to the bus stop and disappeared. Mr. Tudors, tell me, how has her disappearance affected you? It's heartbreaking, you know, never knowing if you ever see your child again. Or, you know, it's a 50-50 chance, you know, that she's gone. But if she's gone, we'll see her again in the Lord's house. Ms. Tudors, how has Tabitha's disappearance affected your life? Well, her disappearance, you know, like Bo said, it's heartbreaking. The not knowing whether she's here with us or not.

It took me a while to get back on my feet because she was my baby. And not knowing what happened to her or anything. It would drive you crazy. She woke up that morning, you know, to go to the bus stop and thinking that her day was going to be okay. And then she never came back home. And I know she was scared of whatever happened. What do you mean? Because Tabitha was, she was so little, you know, if somebody took her,

she wouldn't have been strong enough to fight them off. She was tiny. And who would have imagined that anyone would make off with Tabitha that early in the morning? Most people can barely get their clothes on straight and have a cup of coffee. And why would you ever imagine that anything could go wrong between your house and the bus stop? It's true. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Breaking their silence, Tabitha's parents, her mother and father are with us.

We are now following up on the details, the details of Tabitha's disappearance. Tabitha leaves that morning to go to the bus stop and she's never seen again. What do we know? To Sydney Sumner joining us, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, where exactly did this happen? Nancy, the Tudor's home is in the 1300 block of Lillian Street. Tabitha's bus stop is just around the corner at 14th and Boscobel. So she would take a right from the house, head down 14th and catch the bus at Boscobel Street. This is where she was last seen by several neighbors.

Some do report seeing Tabitha cross Boscobel Street, heading towards 15th, but those sightings are not confirmed. Well, the bus stop, as a matter of fact, to my understanding, Sydney Sumner, is only.1 mile away from her home at 14th and Biscobal. That's absolutely correct, Nancy. So Tabitha usually left the house around 7.50 a.m. when she was supposed to catch the bus at 8 a.m. So it gave her five minutes to walk to the bus stop and just five minutes to wait. To Bo Tudors, isn't that correct? A straight shot to the bus stop.

Yes, ma'am. She didn't have to go through anybody's backyard or cross a fence or down an alley, nothing like that, that it was very visible. Her pathway, correct, Mr. Tudors? Yes, ma'am. Like what you said earlier, just a straight shot to it. She come out of the house, went to the right, went to 14th, took a right and top of the hill and there was the bus stop. And there were other children there. I remember my bus stop, the whole neighborhood was there. The elementary was on one side of the road and the high school was on the other side of the road. So there were other children there, correct? Yes, ma'am. I

believe they said there was other children there. Yes. You know, Sidney Sumner, I've been looking into it as we started researching the case and delving into the records. There were other children there, correct, Sidney? Yes, that is absolutely correct. And a boy who was waiting at that bus stop actually provided police with a tip. Back to Mark Klass joining us. Mark, you and I have marveled, not in a good way, at the number of kidnappings and disappearances that take place en route to school, to the bus stop, all the way home from school, from the pickup line, everything relating to getting to and from school. What is the statistic regarding the disappearances? Sure. This is something I heard 10 years ago at a

conference in Dallas, Texas, from the lips of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. One third of all predatory abductions occur on school routes. Now, the thing that incenses me about that, Nancy, is that that's a statistic that if it was out there and people besides you and I were talking about this, things could be done to protect the kids on those routes. We could do low-tech things like a neighborhood watch kind of a thing to make sure that the kids are able to get to and from where they're going. We could do high surveillance kinds of things with cameras. There are all kinds of solutions to this problem. But this is something that despite all of the resources they had, and these are from my lips

to yours, for all the resources the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has, they have never gone to Congress and said, we need an initiative to do something about that. They've never highlighted it to the public so that the public can be aware of this grim, grim statistic. To the family of Tabitha Tudor, you guys didn't understand that Tabitha was missing until well on into the school day. Is that correct? Yes, ma'am. What happened, Ms. Tudors? She always

comes home. She's at home by five after four. When she didn't arrive home that day, I got worried. So I allowed 15 minutes for the bus to come to be late. And then she still didn't come home. And then I went to the school to see if she was up there and I couldn't get nobody to the door so I came back home I got my husband both and then me and him both went back up there and knocked on the door and finally a custodian let me in and we asked him if Tabitha was there and he said that there was a teacher around the corner with some kids so I walked around through the corner where they were, and the teacher and all the kids said that Tabitha didn't make it to school that day, that she never got on the bus.

And then we called the authorities to come out and tell them that she had been taken. So it wasn't, Ms. Tudors, until well on into the day, late in the afternoon, that you realized she was gone. Nobody would answer the door at the school. You had to beat on the door. You finally got a hold of the custodian. And how exactly did you find out she was never in school that day? Who told you that? I didn't know that she was in school today until I went up to the school that evening to see if she might have missed the bus. And then the custodian let me in and I talked to the teacher that was around the corner. And he said that Tabitha never came to school that day. So I never knew that she wasn't there.

What went through your mind when you found out she never made it to school? I was scared myself and just worrying about where she might be or whatever. And then when I got with Bo, you know, we didn't know what to think because we thought that our child would be safe to go to school and she never made it. And nobody ever called us to let us know that she wasn't there. So all day long, I was thinking she was in school. Mr. Tudors, what went through your mind when you learned Tabitha had never even made it to school? The school should have called, you know, because my wife, she worked for the school system at that time.

You know, the school should have called her and let her know that our child was in school. But then, you know, that's far beyond the point. But it just, it scared me. My heart dropped and it's been dropped ever since. To Steve Fisher joining us, missing persons private investigator at searchinvestigations.org. Steve, thank you for being with us. The first hours are so critical in a search. And when we realized Tabitha left that morning at 7.50, 7.50 a.m., all those hours, nearly 12 hours had passed. That get to them, you know, they have a much better survival rate. You're so right.

Mark, class, agree or disagree? Well, I do. I do agree. The statistics are pretty clear that 74 percent of children that are murdered as a result of a predatory abduction will be dead within the first three hours. To Deborah and Bo Tudors, Tabitha's mom and dad, had Tabitha ever missed the bus before? Yes, once. And she called me at work, and then I came home and took her to school and went back to work. How far away did you work, Ms. Tudors?

Probably about six miles. So, 10 minutes? Yes, ma'am. And Mr. Tudors, how about yourself? Probably about seven, eight miles. Where do you work, Ms. Tudors? Tom Joy Elementary. And what do you do there? I work in the cafeteria serving children's food. And Mr. Tudors, where do you work? Well, at the time of the disappearance, I was driving truck for Summers Lumber and Timber. But you were home the day she disappeared, correct? That morning. Then I left about 7 and headed to work.

So if she had missed the bus, she typically would have gone home and called you and you would take her. One of you, probably you, Mrs. Tudors. How long was her walk to school if she had decided to walk? Oh, it's pretty good ways. Okay, so she would have called you. Yes, ma'am. She would have called you to get a ride. Okay, okay.

Guys, this is not the first time by far that parents were not alerted their child never made it to school, causing, as you can imagine in my line of business, causing the unspeakable result. Does the name Aliana DeFries ring a bell? Because I will never forget it. Listen. My wife and I were watching a movie at 530 in the evening. And we received a call from Ms. Cooper.

And she asked us, did you guys pick up Aliana? I said, no, we didn't pick her up. If we would have picked her up, we would have contacted you the day before. Why? What's going on? And she said she never made it to school. When the mom calls and says, do you have Aliana? You call the school, right?

And what did they tell you? We were told that there was a glitch in the system that day, so things weren't working. And I asked them, well, you have people sitting in offices every time I go to the school. Why can't they directly call parents to do what they're supposed to do? You're hearing me speaking with Aliana's father, Damon. Aliana had left to go to school that morning as normal, just like Tabitha. She was never seen alive again. To Mr. Tudors, did you ever ask the school, why didn't you tell us she wasn't there? They said, we've asked them.

They said that's something they don't do. Okay, so the head start that whoever took Tabitha got is almost insurmountable, but it is not insurmountable. But just think about it, Mark Klass, 60 miles an hour, every hour that passes. 60 miles an hour times 10. That's a far distance away from home for a young girl, a 13-year-old girl. A mile a minute. That's how fast your child can disappear. Another reason that the timing is so important. Another reason that you have to be able to know what's going on. I would hope that that school changed their mindless policy after Tabitha disappeared. And at least now are informing parents if kids don't come. Then is there a break? Was Tabitha spotted getting into a car?

Listen. Nashville police canvassing the area received several tips. Some neighbors report seeing Tabitha at the bus stop on 14th and Boscobel Street, but then saw her cross 14th and head down Boscobel. A neighborhood boy says he saw Tabitha get into a red car at the corner of 15th Street. He described the driver as a black male, 30 to 40 years old. Tracker dogs traced Tabitha's scent on a route similar to the boy's account. Jamie Tudor's ex-boyfriend matched that description and drove a red car, but police placed him elsewhere that morning. The tracker dogs lose Tabitha's scent in an alleyway. Friends say Tabitha

would have never gone in the alley alone. Okay, let's analyze what we're hearing. I've looked very carefully at the scene. I understand how a little boy at the bus stop could have seen a car where he says he saw the red car. I don't understand how at that distance he could see whether the driver was a male, a female, black or white, 30 to 40, or wearing a hat. Now, one thing that could corroborate that story is that tracker dogs track Tabitha to about that location, and then they lose her scent either in the street or in an alleyway. To Deborah Tudors, What do you know about the validity of the eyewitness that says she got into a red car? Do you believe that happened? You know, at this time,

I really don't know what to believe. I know the boy said that she had crossed the street, was coming down to the second bus stop, and midway, he said the car made a red car made a U-turn and then went back up with Tabitha in it. When she leaves the house and turns right at the stop sign to go up the hill, there is an alley there, but she passes that alley and then her bus stop is at the top. But where the boy is, is where she was going down to the second bus stop.

Because I've always told her, don't stay at that first bus stop by yourself. If the other two kids don't come, go to the second one because that's the one that's got the most kids. And that's what she did that morning. So you think she passed her first bus stop and was going to the second bus stop. Okay. Now I'm understanding why she would have been there. Do you believe, Bo Tudors, that the little boy, I don't think he was lying, but could he have seen what he thought he saw from his vantage point? From where he was at, he could see all the way up to the top of the hill. He could actually saw what he thought he saw. Okay, another question right there. The tracker

dogs, the tracker dogs that follow Tabitha's scent, do they follow her scent to where the boy says he sees the red car? Yes, ma'am. To me, that's very strong evidence. And to me, that corroborates what he says. I still don't see how he could tell who was driving from his vantage point. But the fact that the tracker dogs go to that spot and then her scent ends is very powerful evidence. Mark Klass, what do you make of it? This was certainly unscientific, but more than 80% of the predatory abductions that occurred in cars happened within about a mile of a freeway on-ramp or off-ramp. So I think it's very telling.

And I don't know the geography here, but I would think that if this is not within just a mile or so of a freeway on-ramp, this had to be somebody local. J.C. Lee Dugard walks up the hill toward her school bus stop. J.C.'s halfway up the hill when a gray midsize car with two people in it do a U-turn at the bus stop and go back to where J.C. is. The driver of the car, Phillip Garrido, motions for J.C. to come closer, and thinking he needs directions, she complies. As J.C. gets near the car, Garrido rolls down his window and tases J.C. with a stun gun. Garrido's wife, Nancy, gets out and drags J.C. into the backseat of the car. The name J.C. Dugard went on to live in a shed of sorts in the backyard of her two abductors and gave birth to two children by her kidnapper in that shed.

Her parents, her family had given up hope of ever seeing her alive again. But amazingly, she was rescued. Again, a child taken en route to a bus stop, en route to school, en route home from school. It goes on and on. And you just heard a disturbing statistic from Mark Klass, Victims' Rights Champion. One-third of children who go missing on stranger abduction occurs related to getting to or home from school. Joining me right now, the parents of Tabitha Tudors. She goes missing on the way to her bus stop. Her typical bus stop was 0.1 mile away from her home. There is another twist. Listen. Tabitha's clothes, toiletries, and money were left behind.

Tabitha did not even take her backpack to school that day, only carrying her signed report card with her. In Tabitha's desk at home, police find several business cards with Tabitha's name, phone number, and address on them, alongside a picture of Winnie the Pooh. Her parents did not know Tabitha had the cards and could not explain why she may have had them. Investigators also discover a note reading TDT in MTL. Detectives believe them to be initials, TDT for Tabitha Danielle Tudors, but MTL has never been identified. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Joining us in All-Star Panel, I'm going to go now to Dr. John Delatore, a psychologist, mediator specializing

in forensic psychology. Dr. Delatore, thank you so much for being with us. I'm bringing you into the discussion now because I wanted you to hear everything we know so far. And now we find out about this note. It was a single piece of paper in Tabitha's room that said T-D-T in caps, N in small, M-T-L, Tabitha and N, Tabitha and M-T-L. It must be nerve wracking when you are trying to find your loved one. And then you find a note written by them, by Tabitha, you have no idea what it means. That ends up, I've learned, by victim's families and victim's families blaming themselves. Like, who is MTL? M Mother T Toy L Love.

Who is MTL? Is it anybody? Is this real? Does this have anything to do with her disappearance? Why didn't I know? I'm her mother. I'm her father. Teen girls can write anything in their diary.

That doesn't make it true. No, it doesn't make it true. But she is entering in that phase of life where she's going to start having and wanting her own autonomy. And it's certainly possible that MTL isn't the actual initials of a person. Maybe it stands for my true love. Maybe it's possible that Tabitha is starting to explore and think about what it would be like to be in relationships with other people,

including romantic ones. There's all different kinds of things that is going on within an individual that as parents, you probably have no idea are actually going on. For whatever reason, Tabitha is keeping them a secret. Maybe she's not ready to tell her parents yet. Maybe all of this is fake and she doesn't want to be laughed at and ostracized. Dr. Delatore, when my children were in

the fifth grade, they came home and announced, Katie has a boyfriend. It's a little girl in their class. I'm like, what is a boyfriend to you? No, no, no. They said, Katie's dating somebody. I'm like, who is Katie dating since she's 11 years old? And what does dating mean to you? And they went, Oh, it's somebody she talked to at school. So it, it may mean nothing at all. Uh, and she wasn't on the phone all the time. Her room was ransacked. They looked at everything with a fine tooth comb. There was no indication she had a boyfriend, a boyfriend hopeful, nothing. Well, it doesn't matter that it doesn't actually mean anything in the real world. It matters to her, right? All of this stuff matters. It's important to her or else she wouldn't have done it. She seems to be a very deliberate person, a person who's constantly thinking about what she needs to be doing and how she's going to be happy with her life.

So she's not doing random stuff just to get in trouble or something like that. She is very particular about stuff. She is very sort of regimented and has a plan. To Bo and Deborah Tudors. Ms. Tudors, what does this little note mean? Now, her initials and other initials. Does it mean anything? No, ma'am. We don't know who the initials were, you know, because Tabitha, she didn't have a boyfriend.

She didn't really talk to boys at all, you know, on the phone or anything. Like you said at the beginning, she was mainly just read to the neighbor next door, the elderly lady, and that's about all she did. So we don't know who the nippers they are. A source told me that on one occasion, Tabitha went with one of her little friend girls to the library and used the computer. Is that true? Not in my knowledge, it's not true. But, you know, she was always home. We very seldom let her go somewhere that we didn't know where she was going.

She did go down across the street to a neighbor's house, but we could see her from the back porch. And I will call them and let them know that she's on her way, and I'll stand on the porch, and he'll stand on his porch until she gets there. Mr. Tudor, as Tabitha's dad, is with us along with her mom. What have you been told about the local registered sex offenders? They said they've questioned them all and that some of them are cleared and some of them are not. So, you know, I don't know what that means.

You have to talk to the authorities about that because, you know, I don't know and I don't understand it. But there was quite a few within a mile radius of our house that we never knew until this happened. To Mrs. Tudor, at first, L.E., law enforcement, treated as a runaway. Did you try to convince them she was not a runaway? Well, I told them at the beginning when they said that she was a runaway and I told them that she wasn't a runaway. Well, I told them at the beginning when they said that she was a runaway, and I told them that she wasn't a runaway. And they said, well, how did you know? You know, because they consider 13-year-old kids runaways. But I know in my heart that she didn't run away.

Again, losing valuable time by labeling her a runaway. She had never run away from home. For Pete's sake, she slept at the foot of her parents' bed by her ownaway. She had never run away from home for Pete's sake. She slept at the foot of her parents' bed by her own desire. To you, Ms. Tudors, what is your message today? Well, today is if anybody knows anything, just please come forward, you know, and let us know what they know and where she might be. I mean, if she's deceased, let us find where she's at so we can put her to rest and we have closure. Mr. Tudors, what is your message? Just to love your children unconditionally because you never know when something like this is going to happen to anybody.

And I don't wish this heartbreak on any parents out there. Ms. Tudors, Tabitha went missing April 29, 2003. Do you still think about her every single day? Yes, ma'am. We talk about her every day with the grandkids and even out in public when I go somewhere, somebody will stop me and they'll tell me that, you know, they still have to have their prayers and everything and just tell me to be strong, you know. And I still have hope that one day she will come home or we will find her. What about it, Mr. Taters? You know, we talk about her every day,

and our grandchildren that was born after Tabitha come up missing, you show them a picture of Tabitha and you ask them who that is. That's my Aunt Tabitha. Somebody took her when she was little. You know, they've been taught that way. When you say you talk about her every day, what do you talk about? The memories that we have of her and what would she be like now, whatever. What memory in your mind is the most vivid, Mr. Tudor?

Oh, there's a bunch of them. It's just we went to Gatlinburg one year on vacation and we went to a zoo up there and a little billy goat was coming at her and she just froze and had tears

in her eyes. It scared her so bad. But after it happened, we told her that everything was all right and she started laughing about it. And just a lot of memories that we have of her. This little girl was so timid, she was afraid of a billy goat. What is your most vivid memory of Tabitha, Ms. Tudors? You know, my memory of Tabitha was this happy little girl at 13, you know, and then she just disappeared. And then I still have my memories of her. They won't ever take them.

We miss our daughter. And we wish she was back home. I do too, Ms. Tudors. If you know or think you know anything about missing Tabitha Tudors, she has now been missing over 20 years. Contact Memphis tip line 901-747-4300. Repeat 901-747-4300. 3 0 0. Repeat 9 0 1 7 4 7 4 3 100. We stop to remember American hero, Florida trooper Zachary Fink, just 26, dying in a crash pursuing a suspect's vehicle. He is survived by his grieving mother, father, and loving fiance, American hero trooper Zachary Fink. Thank you to all of our guests being with us. Thank you to all of you for

joining us tonight and every night. Nancy Grace signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.