Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Girl dressed for party found dead in freezer

Episode Date: November 3, 2017

Nancy Grace explores the mystery of Kenneka's Jenkins death inside a freezer at a Chicago hotel. Investigator say she was so drunk after a party that she accidentally walked into the freezer and was locked inside, but her family suspects she was murdered. Larry Rogers Jr., the lawyer for Kenneka's mother, joins Nancy and crime scene investigator Sheryl McCollum, CrimeOnline reporter Jacqueline Gray and co-host Alan Duke. A 911 call recording reveals how police initially discouraged the 19-year-old's mother from immediately filing a missing persons report, a delay her family thinks contributed to the teen's death.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Right now, listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. F-R-E-E. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Nancy Grace. ZipRecruiter.com slash Nancy Grace. One more time to try it for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Nancy Grace. Thank you, ZipRecruiter. I was already here last night, a gathering with a friend. Now her friends, they say that they left her on the front of the hotel and she's not able to be found now. Give her a couple hours. You know, she could have went somewhere with one of her other friends.

The mom went to the front desk asking, will you please look at the videos from the very beginning? You got nothing but resistance from the Crowne Plaza Hotel. The inference today that had Kanika been held or the security cameras checked sooner she might be alive. They never looked for, they never did anything while a young 19 year old disoriented girl is sitting in their freezer. We beg if I happen no one helps. A beautiful young girl dead trapped in a freezer? How did that happen? Right now, many theories swirling as the investigation goes on into the death of a beautiful young girl, Kanika Jenkins. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. With me, special guest Larry Rogers, Jr., lawyer for the family of Kanika Jenkins, a well-known veteran trial lawyer.

Also with me, Cheryl McCollum, crime scene analyst and the director of the Cold Case Institute. Questions swirling around the death of this young girl. Kanika Jenkins found dead in highly questionable circumstances. Out to CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter Jacqueline Gray. Jacqueline, tell me what you know about this case. Kanika left out of her house late on September 8th to go to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rosemont, Illinois. And by about 3 a.m. the next day, her friends alerted her mother that they couldn't find her. So her mother went to the hotel searching for her daughter. And over the course of, what, 12 hours, they end up finding her body in a freezer in an area that was under construction.

From what I recall, Larry Rogers, when she was found dead from hypothermia inside an industrial-type refrigerator there in the bottom of a pretty high-end hotel. Her pants were pulled down around her hips. Her shirt was pulled up around her bra. Her jeans were filthy as if she had been dragged along the ground. There were abrasions to her knee area, her legs, her face. There is no way this is accidental. And what's interesting, Larry Rogers, is the night before, she had been all dressed up with all her little friends went anywhere covered in dirt. That's not how it went down. Larry, let's start at the beginning. What happened?

You know, that's exactly what her mother, the question she raised when she contacted me. She wanted me to help her figure out what happened to Kanika, her daughter. This is one of the worst tragedies I've seen. And it's quite frankly, as you indicated, shocking shoe, one of her shoes was off and she was, her clothing was dirty. And as you indicated, she had gone out for a night of fun with some friends. And then she ends up in this remote area of the hotel in an unused kitchen in a freezer that for some unexplained reason was on. A freezer that was not being used. It had nothing in it, but it was on in an abandoned portion of the kitchen. So there are a lot of questions that need to be answered.

And we've committed to the mind that we'll get to the bottom of it. Joining me, Cheryl McCollum, crime scene analyst and expert, expert renowned in her field now the director of the Cole case investigative research institute Cheryl thanks for being with us along with Larry Rogers Jr trial lawyer representing Kanika's family let's take it from the beginning you know I met with her her mother, Cheryl, along with Larry, when we were all at Dr. Oz. And her mom just broke my heart because I got the feeling that she felt if she yelled or cursed or threw some kind of a fit trying to find her daughter, she'd be mistreated. And you know what? She was right because they go to the hotel what

was the hotel larry the crown crown plaza that's right clouds crown plaza in rosemont chicago really high end the crown hotels are pretty nice so she was there cheryl with all her little girlfriends all dressed up and cute you know how teen girls are. And so she goes, then this is what the mom, I heard the mom say, that she gets a call at 4 o'clock in the morning, and Kanika's little friends say, we can't find Kanika. And the mom is like, what? Because they were all three together. So she immediately dials her daughter, her teen girl's phone. And one of the three friends picking up and go, we've got

her cell phone too. So the mom, they come get the mom. The mom comes over there. They totally blow the mom off. They asked to see the security video, which've got a huge security bank, a video, Cheryl. They won't let them look at the video. And they won't start searching the hotel. They say basically, oh, she's out with friends. Now, this child has been described as drunk. She was not drunk. She was not, repeat, not drunk or high on drugs.

That's not true. So they look and they look and they look Cheryl like I forgot how many 18 24 hours later they police finally somebody finally finds her dead in a freezer you know she could have been saved you know that right if they had just looked at the crime the video surveillance it shows her and it shows where she was going to like a construction type unused area that completely abandoned. I don't know how she got down there because that Crown Hotel is like a maze. So what do you make of it now that I've given you the setup? Nancy, I took a little bit of time to really go over the crime scene photographs.

And these are the things that jumped out at me. There's four main things. One, the shoe that's off. The shoe that is off of her body, the right shoe, you can see blood on her foot. So that shoe was not taken off because her body started to heat up. She removed that shoe because she was injured. You can see the blood plain as day. The other thing that bothers me about her shoes is they're brand the blood plain as day. The other thing that bothers me about her shoes is they're brand new. They are clean. They are white. I mean, she was excited about putting on this outfit, but there's some scuff marks on the shoe that they're going to have to explain to me. Specifically, they are scuff marks up near the ankle on the inside.

That to me could very possibly be indicative of somebody being drugged. The other problem that I'm having is the pocket of her pants is turned inside out. Like somebody went into her pocket. She wouldn't have done that. She would have corrected her pocket immediately if she had gone to look for a key or something like that and then the other thing that's very telling to me if you watch the video where she's walking in the kitchen area toward what looks like would be where the freezer is even though there's not video of that for some reason her hair is straight if you look at the crime scene photograph, her hair is now curly. Now, hold on, hold on. To Larry Rogers, Jr., lawyer for Kanika Jenkins' family, do you remember what the mom told us, Larry?

She said that she went to go and she wanted to see the crime scene and they wouldn't let her. Then she said she saw the body and she just looked at it. She said Kanika's hair was a mess and she would never have done that. Uh-uh. Yes, this was a beautiful young girl. By all accounts, she was just having a night out with some friends. She was not a bad girl. She was working. She was a great young lady. Her mom had a great relationship with her. And a testament to that is the fact that when her friends told her they were missing,

no one for one moment thought that she ever left that hotel. Her friends knew she had to be somewhere in the hotel. When her mom, Teresa, came out within hours, she went straight to the front desk and said she would never have left. She's here in this hotel. And they would not take a moment, just a moment, to take a look at the video surveillance cameras. And that would have saved this young lady's life. Investigative reporter Crime Online's Jacqueline Gray. Jacqueline, what jumps out at you about what went wrong that night. A few things jump out, and most of the things that jump out is after Teresa Martin, Kanika's mother, went to the hotel looking for help.

The hotel staff wouldn't look at the footage until much hours later. She was also threatened with arrest. She called the dispatcher, and they told her to just take it easy, you know, go home. She'll probably turn up. And that's not, in my opinion, not the appropriate response to a mother who knows her child's missing. And she was right, you know, her child ended up dying. Meanwhile, she was trying to find her and she was getting no help from police or from the hotel staff. And that's, you know, one thing that pops out to me right now.

It would have saved her life. It absolutely would have saved her life, Cheryl McCollum. Nancy, there's no question about it, but I want to get back to the importance of her hair for a minute. Whenever I was on your show, sometimes y'all would occasionally straighten my hair. Well, I've got naturally curly hair. The minute there was any humidity, any moisture, my hair would revert back to being curly. That means her hair was either wet or she was sweaty. Something happened to make her hair go back curly, Nancy. That is not somebody that went into a freezer, passed out, and froze to death.

That's not what happened here. And you don't have to look any further than her hair to know that. And something else that needs to happen, unless they already know because I haven't seen the photograph, it doesn't appear that there's scuff marks on the inside of that door where she would have been kicking it trying to get out. I don't see any marks like that. Her fingernails are still intact. There's so many questions surrounding this case for me, Nancy. It is horrifying.

Newly released surveillance video shows Kanika stumbling in the hallway. She got lost within the hotel, and then we later discover apparently someone had slipped a very dangerous drug. Cheryl McCollum, it's called topiramate, and it is an anti-seizure drug. It is also a pain drug, and it can make you very, very disoriented. This little girl had never in her life been caught with drugs, been alcohol, nothing like that in her life. This was a good student. Her mother depended on her. She had a job. The works.

Very actually, I don't want to say a loner because that has a bad connotation she reminds me a lot of my little girl lucy she's very very shy you know cheryl any night i say hey do you guys want to go out to dinner john david's all like yeah mom let's go for tacos and then we'll go to frozen yogurt. Lucy's like, I just want to go home. You know, no matter how I try to tempt them, she always wants to come home. She really was a sweet girl. Yeah.

Her mom convinced me, and the sister that I talked to also. She was a real little homebody, and I just don't see it, Cheryl. I don't see it at all. I don't see it either, Nancy. And I'll tell you something else that really concerns me. As you know, I've got two teenagers now. And to get them away and separate them from a cell phone takes a fact of Congress, practically. The fact that she was somehow separated from her cell phone concerns me greatly. She would not have done that. And that means she had no way to call for help, even if she were watching cell phone. Oh, Cheryl, I left something out.

To Larry Rogers Jr., a renowned lawyer that is representing Kanika Jenkins' family. So the mom comes to the hotel. They won't let her look at the security video. They won't look at the security video. Finally, some of the kids that were at the party they have cell phone pictures of kanika before that night and they start going from door to door begging people have you seen her have you seen her do you know what they do they throw the family

out they kick them out and call police on the family. Hello? Is that right, Larry? They did not take their pleas for assistance and for help. Even just looking at the cameras were ignored. And they got desperate. They were looking for her. They knew that she was not the type of young lady that would have left the hotel. They knocked on doors. Someone even pulled a fire alarm.

And the only thing the crowd thought. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Tell us that part. Tell us that part. They were so desperate to find her, and nobody was helping them. Tell Cheryl what happened, Larry Rogers. One of the young people pulled a fire alarm because they felt she was somewhere in the hotel. They didn't know if she was in a room and someone had abducted her or exactly what had happened. And that's the only thing that really prompted

the beginnings of an investigation by the Rosemont Police Department. They finally came out and said, what's really going on here? And that's really what prompted. So a lot of credit has to be given to this family and to these young people knowing Kanika and knowing that she would not have left that hotel. If their pleas had only been heard by the hotel staff, this young lady would be alive today. Well, I'm telling you, it's a sorry day. It is a sad day, Cheryl, when you can't get any help and you have to pull the darn fire alarm to get someone to pay attention to you, trying to say, your daughter is missing, and she's somewhere in this hotel. Can you help me find her?

They had to pull the fire alarm. Now, listen to this timeline, and correct me if I'm wrong, Larry Rogers, because you know the timeline better than me. This teen girl was seen leaving the elevator alone, which she had not left alone. She was with a little girlfriends to start with at 3.20 a.m. Somebody somewhere had slipped her topiramate, okay, which is not a street drug. All right. Nobody in her family has ever had topiramate. It's a seizure medication. And she is just struggling to even keep her balance. And you see her.

I don't know where the security guards were at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, but they sure were not looking at the security bank because she can hardly walk. She's falling into the walls, and this is not from being drunk. She then is spotted somehow down in this maze of a kitchen there beneath the crown plaza hotel and she gets somehow somehow to a completely abandoned area that has not been locked off from for people to come into then there's no camera that shows how she got put into that freezer. But we know somewhere something went wrong.

Her hair is a mess. There's blood on her foot. Her pants are pulled down. Her shirt is pulled up. Everything is askew. There's no scuff marks, nothing to show she tried to get out. I don't quite understand it, but the whole thing was she spotted at 3.20 a.m. or should have been spotted on the security video. That's what it shows now that we've gotten a chance to

look at it. Do you know when they finally told police? They were on the phone with the mom at 4 a.m. We can't find Kanika. 1 p.m. that day. That almost 12 hours passed. No, actually it was more like 21 hours. It was the next morning that they finally located her. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was by the time they found her.

She goes missing at 3.20 a.m. It was after 1 a.m. She's found dead. All that time, Cheryl, the mom was begging for help, couldn't get anybody to listen. Let me pause right now in our search for justice in this case and thank our partner who is making our investigation possible today on SiriusXM 132. It's LegalZoom. As a business owner, you know how important it is to keep things moving forward.

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the year winds down. For special savings, enter code NANCY in the referral box at checkout. Code NANCY. Special savings only at LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom. Thank you for making our investigation into the death of Kanika Jenkins possible today. With me is veteran trial lawyer Larry Rogers Jr. and director of the Cold Case Institute, Cheryl McCollum, Jacqueline Gray, crime online investigative reporter. What more can you tell me? My whole issue I was having while I was writing about this and reading about it was, there was, why was she down there? You know, it was an under construction area. They had cameras everywhere

but the freezer which i would feel like that would be like a huge liability a freezer you know heavy freezer it's not being supervised and that whole part i feel like hasn't been acknowledged by the hotel it seems like right now they're doing a lot of damage control but they're not really giving still giving us enough information to work with to get a timeline. Out of the 46 or so cameras that they had, surveillance cameras that they had there on the premises, there are two significant ones that would have captured her path toward this kitchen. And for some odd and strange reason, they're claiming those were not working. Just a lot of unexplained issues here with this case, and we want to get to the bottom of them.

Nathan, I've got to jump in here. As a crime scene investigator, I pull videos from hotels all the time. All you have to do is type in the date and the time. It is all digital. It would have shown them immediately. It would not have taken 10 minutes, Nancy, to see her path and to follow it and go find her. Oh, Cheryl, this is making me sick. Cheryl, Larry, I know I told you.

Larry knows this story. Cheryl, did I ever tell you when I was in Arizona, and of course, I knew I'd be gone over two nights, so I took the children with me. They, at that time, were, I guess, five. It was during the Jody Arias trial, and we were staying in this high-rise hotel, and we were on the, waiting for the elevator, and it was a big bank of elevators, like 10 elevators, five on each side, and we were waiting and one opened at the far end and I said that's not the one going the right way guys honey Lucy at the last second jumped on the elevator and it closed I dove for it I dove headfirst for it Cheryl I

tried I dove into the elevator and it closed just like in the movies. Cheryl, do you hear what I'm saying? There was me and John David and I and Lucy lost an elevator. And it was one of those fancy elevators. I couldn't tell what floor she got off anything. Oh, dear Lord in heaven. I immediately went to the lobby, screaming my head off, left John David with security, told them what was happening. I started going up floor to floor to floor to floor, screaming off the elevators. I was.

Can you imagine if some creepy pervy dude got Lucy at four or five years old and the little thing thought she was on our floor where we were staying and was trying to find it? Well, I went every floor. I couldn't find her. I was dialing 911. I was on the elevator and it wouldn't go through. I got off the elevator, hit send for 911 and turned to my left. And there was a security with Lucy, a lady with Lucy and John David. A lady had found her like three floors down, wandering the hall alone, Cheryl, asked her where she was going and took her down to the lobby. What I experienced in that 20 minutes, I never want to think about again. And that's what this mom has been living through ever since this happened, Cheryl.

Inexcusable. And according to the lawyer with me right now, Larry Rogers says the hotel, quote, never checked. They never searched. They never did anything while a young teen girl was dying in their freezer. Why? Why, Larry? It's inexplicable. It's inexcusable. And we expect to hold them fully accountable for it. The Crown Plaza has not produced any legitimate explanation for why they didn't do the simple thing of looking at the cameras. Why do you have the cameras if you don't even take the time to look at them? I'll tell you what. I'm just so beside myself about this child.

And if you look at her in the kitchen, Cheryl, this is just before she is in the freezer. Her hair is straight. Her pants are on. Her shoes are fine. There's no cut. Nothing like that. She's perfectly fine. Still all dressed up with her hair all done up and a little jean outfit on.

She's fine. I'm looking at her right now as we're talking. I'm looking at the video walking through that abandoned kitchen, probably trying to find her way out of there. She's fine. Well, Nancy, let me just say the obvious. We keep being told that nobody was watching those cameras. We don't know that. Maybe somebody did see her. Maybe somebody followed her after a little while. Another thing, Larry Rogers Jr., lawyer for the Kanika Jenkins family, the mother told me that when she went down to see the freezer, when they finally let her see it, that there was a video camera on top of it blinking red,

and she said, what did that camera show? Remember what she said, Larry? That's correct. She thinks that she described consistently a camera that she says should have captured her daughter walking in that freezer. And we've been unable to identify any footage that they produced from a camera that depicts that. And not only that, there are other cameras that should have caught her past that, again, we've got no footage from where they're claiming that they weren't working at the time. So, again, a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of questions about her. Now, we have reached out to the Crown Plaza Hotel

and have not heard anything back from them. Now, I don't know what that means, nothing. But I'm anxious to hear their side of this. I want to hear their side of this. What else does the autopsy reveal? Larry Rogers, Jr. with me, Cheryl McCollum with me. Cheryl, what did you see that sparked your interest in her autopsy? Well, obviously that her blood alcohol

was not that high to, you know, be indicative of her walking the way she was walking. So the drugs in her system or the drug in her system, again, some of the folks that were at that party that have not been interviewed by the police need to come forward. There needs to be a full investigation of how that drug got into her system and caused her to be incapacitated. Jacqueline, what do you make of the autopsy? What I make out of it is that there's not really much here. It just seems like another effort to brush off her death as an accident. One of the biggest things that I noticed in the autopsy was they had said she died from hypothermia with alcohol intoxication and tapiramate, which is a drug that's used to treat epilepsy and migraines. And they said that that was in her system and that it was a contributing factor.

But from what we're hearing from her family is that she was never prescribed this drug. They have no clue how it got in her system. And there's really no explanation why it was in her system. They mentioned that there was no date rate drugs in her system, that her blood alcohol content was 0.112. And at one point, there was no evidence that she was forced to take the drug, which this point i don't get how they could tell whether she was forced or whether it was slipped in her drink but there's really no explanation on why of all the drugs party drugs and whatnot why was this in her system yeah we are very concerned with rosemont's police department having closed the investigation uh so quickly and concluded that there was no foul play.

A lot of the questions have not been answered. There are hotel staff that was present in the hotel who has not been interviewed. This investigation is far from over. And Rosemont prematurely determined that there was no foul play here. We need to figure out exactly what happened. Why is her shoe off? Why does she have the injury to her foot that we see on the pictures? Why does her hair look the way it is?

Why is her clothing displaced? All of those are questions that need to be answered. In addition, why is this camera footage and video footage missing? The Crowne Plaza has not provided any legitimate explanation for why there is missing video footage. And in particular, why would it be video footage that wouldn't? Yeah, and I don't understand why they wouldn't let them look at the video footage. Now, this is what they're saying now.

A spokesperson for the Crowne Plaza Hotel said that they have extended the offer to Kanika's family to privately view 36 total hours of surveillance footage from 40 different cameras inside. Quote, our hearts go out to the Kanika's mother, her family and friends. We hope covering the funeral costs provide a small bit of relief for them, says the hotel spokesperson, Glenn Harston. Huh. What do you think about that, Larry Rogers Jr.? That was an offer they extended early on. We've received the video footage and looked at it, and again, there is footage that's missing from cameras we know to have been present. And we've got no explanation about why those cameras didn't capture this young lady and what would have happened to that video footage. So you really believe that there's missing video footage?

I know that there are cameras. I saw them myself. I've toured the facility. I saw the cameras and they would have captured the path that they are describing Kanika to have traveled toward this freezer area, and no video footage from those cameras of Kanika. I know that she was alive at 1 30 a.m. because she sent a text message at 1 30 a.m., and that's the last that was heard of her. You know, another thing that really hurt me when I was talking to the mom, Larry Rogers, was that she kept trying to, Oz, if you had gone to that lobby and you had asked to see surveillance video and report your daughter missing, they would have showed it to you. But I think that they totally discounted her because she was a woman, because it was late at night, because she's a minority, because the whole group was perceived as partying. And in fact, when she called 911, which I'm going to play for you in a minute, the mom trying to report the daughter missing.

And what did they tell her, Larry Rogers Jr.? They told her to give it a few hours. You know, this is a mom who knew her daughter. She got up out of her bed and went to the hotel. She knew that Kanika would never have left the premises alone or with anyone voluntarily. And she went out there. She reported it to the Crowne Plaza staff. They didn't help her.

She called 911. Rosemont told her to give it a few hours. I want you to hear Kanika's mom calling 911. Judge for yourself. 911, what's the address of your emergency? Yes, I'm at the Crown Plaza at O'Hare Airport. And I was calling because my daughter came to this to a party here last night a gathering with her friends and um now her friends they say that they left on the front of the hotel and she's not able to be found now she's 19 years old so so what would you suggest

well again again the only thing i would suggest maybe is just, you know, give her a couple hours. You know, she could have went somewhere with one of her other friends. I mean, and who knows what her friends are saying is true, you know what I mean? Exactly. You could tell her not to be saying, you could tell, it don't sound right. I'm a parent. I've been young before. And it's not sounding right. It don't sound right. I'm a parent. I've been young before. And it's not sounding right. It don't sound right, period. That's why I came out here

myself. So when do you, how long does it take for me to file a missing person report? Well, you can file it at any time. It just, like I said, you know, just give it a little bit of time, you know. If you hadn't heard from her by, I want to say about 10, 11 o'clock, then by all means, you know, give us a call again. You can come to the station, and we can help you out from there. Okay. Thank you. All right.

I'll do that. Okay. Thank you so much. Okay. Okay. You're very welcome. Have a good day. That 911 call at 715 a.m. Remember, she gets called a little after 4 a.m., gets dressed, goes to the hotel, tries to get help searching.

Finally, with no help at all, in fact, the mom's nearly arrested, she makes a missing persons report around 7.15 a.m. Where she's told basically, oh, don't worry. All this time, her daughter is dying right there in the hotel in the freezer. Let me stop briefly and thank our partner making our investigation into Kanika's death possible. It's Link AKC. Guys, you know how much I love our family dog, Fat Boy, aka Nitro.a. Nitro. I'm always looking for new things to try with him, whether it's food, a fun chew toy, a treat, or now an amazing new collar.

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Plus free shipping at linkakc.com. Linkakc.com. Code NANCY. Link AKC, thank you for being our partner today in our search for the truth in the Kanika Jenkins case. And now, hope you've got your seatbelts buckled. I want you to hear the dispatch call when Kanika's dead body was found. 301 right here. 301. Everything 10-4? Negative. I have that subject in the kitchen in a freezer. She is frozen solid. Give it a few hours.

Cheryl McCollum, I have never heard of a 911 dispatch going, you know what? She's fine. She's probably fine. Just give it a couple hours. She's probably with her friends. What? I've never heard that in my life. And I'm going to tell you again, the person that pulled the fire alarm is a hero.

Who did pull the fire alarm? Larry Rogers Jr.? I don't have the name of the individual, but it was one of the family or friends that were desperately looking for Kanika throughout that hotel. And again, that desperation led to them pulling the fire alarm. And finally, finally, a response came that really asked them what's going on. And that's what triggered them to begin to look at the video footage. And it shouldn't take that much, Nancy, as you indicated.

It shouldn't require a desperate move. Well, I tell you what, when I went down to that lobby, Larry Rogers Jr., in the hotel in Arizona, I said, my daughter has just gotten on an elevator. I can't find her. I'm looking for her right now. Help me. This is my son. Don't lose him. And I turned around and they helped. They helped. You know, they held John David and I went up looking. They sent people looking and a good Samaritan found her and brought her back. Oh, and by the way, I never, I said and hugged the lady and thanked her, but I never got her name. I never found out who she was.

Nothing. The lady that got my little girl, Lucy, and, you know, potentially could have saved her life. I'm just imagining Kanika staggering around and ending up in that freezer. My EP, executive producer, Alan Duke, joining me. Alan, what do you think? Of all of the disturbing aspects of this, the thing that bothers me the most is the idea of Kanika's mom in the hotel shortly after her daughter went into that freezer on the phone with police asking for help at the hotel, asking employees, staff there to help. Yet when she called 911, she was told, go home, wait for her to come home

because that's what kids do. Call us back maybe in about three or four hours. Well, those are fatal three or four hours. And it disturbs me to think what would have happened if that law enforcement agent who answered the 911 call had said, you know what, we're sending an officer down there immediately to search the hotel, and we're going to find your daughter. And maybe they would have found her before she froze to death. We see this too many times in missing person cases where law enforcement doesn't initially treat it as a case. They think it's a voluntary disappearance.

They think that this, especially if it's a young person, that they're off partying someplace, or they think that drugs are involved, and they don't want to put their resources into searching for this missing person. And I can tell you just in this year, while we've been doing this show, there have been several cases where I personally talked to the families and heard their frustration about this. Weeks later, their daughter, their sister, whoever, they were found dead. And police had waited days or weeks before they started investigating. That is the most disturbing thing. And I wish I knew what we could do about it. Again, Larry Rogers Jr., what was her condition when her body was found in the freezer, Larry?

She was stiff, rigor mortis had set in, she was frozen, and she was positioned in just the most odd position that you could imagine. It was pretty traumatic for her mom to see those photos. We actually asked the Rosemont Police Department not to make them public because it was so traumatic. And her pleas in that regard were dismissed as well. You know, when you say she was in this weird position, what position was it? She was positioned sort of on her left side with her face down toward the ground and more or less positioned into a corner of the freezer. And this is a small freezer that was about four feet by five feet in dimension. And it was just a very sad and tragic photograph to see.

It must have been terrible for that young lady. What do you think of that position, Cheryl McCollum? Because I've now discovered, I believe that there is an opening, a release valve within the freezer that she could have gotten out unless she was disabled. The way she positioned in that corner, like her face is down literally in the corner. Again, it doesn't look like something she did naturally. And her hair is all in her face.

It's not like away from her face where she just got cold and fell over and froze to death. It looked violent, like she was struggling. I'm looking at the video right now of her walking toward the freezer. Her clothes are in place. Her hair is perfect. She's got on a little jean shirt. Everything's fine. Both shoes on.

Everything. She's perfectly in order. None of it makes sense to me. And now it has been decided it's an accident. Now I'm waiting to hear back from the Crowne Plaza Hotel. I want to hear what they have to say. So far, nothing. But according to her mother,

Teresa, Teresa Martin, she says, quote, to me, I feel they helped kill my child, the police department and this hotel. Why is she saying that Larry Rogers Jr. about the police? Well, she feels that her pleas for help were ignored from the very beginning. And if they had only just responded to her, they had taken the time to look at the cameras. They had begun to look for her when she first called. We wouldn't be here today. The young lady would be alive and we wouldn't be here.

That's the tragedy of it all. What now, Larry Rogers Jr.? What we've done now is we've commissioned a private autopsy to investigate her injuries. We've done now is we've commissioned a private autopsy to investigate our injuries. We've done a private toxicology testing that we expect to get the results on shortly. We've done a forensic examination of the freezer and are in the process of agreeing to have the doors and framework removed so we can have that tested possibly by an engineer. And then we expect to explore specifically what happened with this missing video footage, again, to try and help this, this poor mom get to the bottom of what happened to her, to her daughter.

Well, another thing I don't understand, Larry, is Teresa tells me that police tried to arrest her as she tried to search the hotel for her little girl. She's dead. Okay, why was the mom, why did police try to arrest her? That's true. That's true. They were more concerned with why, with the fact that people were in the hotel looking for Kanika than the fact that Kanika was missing. Again, just a tragic way of addressing a desperate mom in search of her daughter.

Wait, they were more concerned about what? The police department and the hotel staff was more concerned they were in the hotel knocking on doors and trying to keep them from knocking on doors than they were about the fact that Kanika was missing. Rather than focusing on the fact that there was a young 19-year-old girl who had entered that hotel and was missing and couldn't be located, they were more concerned about kicking out her family and friends.

I can't get my head around it, Sheryl McCall. And again. Can you imagine a cop, when I'm running up and down the hall screaming and crying for Lucy, trying to drag me out while she could be dying or molested or being hurt at that very minute to come and try to arrest the mother? Cheryl, you've got two children. I cannot fathom how they are more concerned with disturbing the peace than they are with somebody dying on their property that doesn't have to.

And literally, if they were worried about them running up and down the hall, all they had to do was show them the videotape. That's all they had to do. Get them in an office, show them the tape, let's go find her. Period. I'm just sick. The witnesses told police that they lost track of Kanika when she left just for a moment to go fetch her car keys and her cell phone from another room. That never happened. Somehow, everything went sideways. How is the mom, Teresa Martin, doing now, Larry Rogers Jr.? Because when I

met with her, she was just, oh, oh, my star. She looked like she was just numb. She could hardly even talk. Yeah, she's a very strong woman, an amazing woman. She's been just perfect in terms of a client, in terms of her disposition. She did any and everything she could do to try and locate her daughter as quickly as possible. She's hurt. I think she indicated that to herself, Nancy. She's hurt by the fact that her pleas were ignored, and those pleas really would have likely made a difference in whether her daughter was alive today. With me is Larry Rogers, Jr., a veteran trial lawyer, the lawyer for Kanika's family, and my friend and longtime colleague, Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Institute, and Alan Duke, of course, joining me from LA. Our search for justice is not over. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.