Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Killers Amongst Us: Teen barista Samantha Koenig kidnapped at gunpoint (Part 1)

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Samantha Koenig is kidnapped at gunpoint from the Anchorage, Alaska, coffee stand where she worked, February 2013. Former FBI Special Agent Bobby Chacon, who worked on the Koeniginvestigation, joins Nancy Grace in an exploration of the case. The expert panel also includes Cold Case Research Institute Director Sheryl McCollum, Atlanta judge and lawyer Ashley Willcott, Los Angeles psycho analyst Dr. Bethany Marshall, Casey Grove with Alaska Public Media and Crime Stories Reporter Robyn Walensky. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Hi guys, Nancy Grace here. Welcome back to Killers Amongst Us, a production of iHeartMedia and Crime Online. Today, we start with the mystery of Samantha Koenig, a beautiful young Alaska barista who seemingly vanishes from her local coffee shop. Joining us to help crack the case, investigative reporter Casey Grove from Alaska and of the Cold Case Research Institute, and Dr. Bethany Marshall, renowned L.A. psychoanalyst. Of course, it all starts with Samantha's dad and his heartbreaking plea. I want to ask for her captors, if they would please send my daughter home.

I will give you anything in this world. Call me anonymously. You don't have to go through the police. I will meet you. I will give you whatever you want. Just please bring my daughter back. Nancy Grace, killers amongst us. I just need her home. Every day she's gone, the odds are against us. And I need the whole community to come together and find my daughter. Go door to door, every neighborhood and anything suspicious, no matter how small you think it is, call the police, call me, I will investigate it. Just please help find my daughter.

How are you holding up, Travis? Not good. I don't think any of us are holding up in this. I don't know if my daughter's being fed, taken care of, if she's still alive, if she's getting any sleep. I don't think any of us are. Tell us about Samantha. What's she like being a mother? She's one of the sweetest girls you'll ever know. She's got the biggest heart. She's funny. She's sarcastic.

I mean, she's... Every girl that knows her calls her her best friend. She's very funny. I mean, people on the Internet are slandering my daughter's name, saying she's a prostitute, a drug addict, and all sorts of crap. And she is the furthest thing from that. That doesn't sound like someone every person she meets calls their best friend, and I won't put up with it anymore, and the people watching this that are putting that on TV, I'm going to send it to

the cyber unit of the Anchorage Police Department, and you will be prosecuted for slandering my daughter's name. You are hearing a heartbroken father. It's the father of Samantha Koenig. That's her dad, James Koenig, begging, begging for help. And as his daughter is missing in the cold, the icy snow of Alaska, Internet trolls creep into the scenario, slandering her. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Were they jealous because Samantha Koenig, absolutely beautiful, with long hair and big blue eyes. She was just a teen girl. A teen girl at that time, working a night job at a coffee shop. A teen barista goes missing, her dad begging for help. To Casey Grove, joining us from Alaska Public Media, what do you remember about that night when Samantha goes missing? I was in the newsroom and, you know, just got an email press release from the Anchorage Police Department

with a picture of this 18-year-old girl that had gone missing. And we get those occasionally. It's a pretty standard news release from the police department that someone might be missing or their family's looking for them. Unfortunately, sort of bring your own, you know, thoughts into that about like what this person's life might be like or who they are. And frankly, sometimes you see, you know, information in the specialties like this person might be homeless or something like that. And you might think about it a little differently, I guess is what I'm saying. And this was an 18-year-old girl

who looked like a normal barista who would have worked at any coffee stand in Anchorage. And they were saying that she had not come home after working her shift at one of these coffee stands. And it just kind of seemed like a different type of victim for that sort of a case i remember getting that email seeing the picture and thinking that it wasn't kind of just somebody that wandered off that maybe had had mental problems and they couldn't find them or had been living on the street and they couldn't find them it was that night what happened when she went home

from work. Honestly, like that night did not trigger any kind of big red flags. It just seemed slightly different than maybe the average, you know, missing person flyer that goes out. At first, when Samantha or Sammy Kona goes missing, nobody knew what to think exactly. She had been working a night shift at a local coffee shop. That was her job, and she loved it, and people loved her. Her photo quickly went out on the Internet. She's really stunning and quirky at the same time. To Dr. Bethany Marshall, L.A. psychoanalyst, I understand why. At first, everybody knew something wasn't quite right.

She was a brilliant girl, made great grades, had a wicked sense of humor, hilarious. She had regulars that would go through the coffee shop drive-thru every single day just to say hello to her. She had a tight group of friends. Of course, she had a boyfriend. Of course, she had an ex. She had a loving father, as you heard him heartbroken in the search for her. But imagine that wild, cold terrain. When you look at the coffee shop, it's situated. Actually, I'll let Robin Walensky, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter and author of Beautiful Life, CSI, behind the Casey Anthony trial, describe it for me, Robin, the coffee shop, where it sits and how it looks. Well, it's in downtown Anchorage, Alaska. And it's, you notice it because it's, you know, this bright blue paint

and it's called Common Grounds Espresso. Everybody goes there for their cup of joe and people would go there in all kinds of weather. Hey, it's Alaska, you know, so what if it's cold out? So what if it's snowing? And Samantha definitely had her regulars at this coffee stand where people, it was really frequented a lot by the locals in town. Robin Walensky, you're absolutely right. It really stands out because of that bright blue. And when I think coffee shop, you know, Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute, this is significant. It's subtle subtle but an important distinction when i think coffee shop i think of like starbucks or you know all the independents

that you go in and you sit down and you've got wi-fi and everybody's chillaxing not me of course because i'm riding like a bat out of hell everywhere in my car but that's what i think of coffee shop this was a very different it was a standalone drive around little structure in a parking lot cheryl and why is that subtle but important difference well the structure means that there's not 30 people inside as witnesses she's in there basically by herself it's just just a drive-up. So it's only her. You're not going to have a lot of witnesses like you would at a Starbucks. You're right. And it reminds me so much in law school, I worked three jobs and one of them was working in a sandwich shop mostly at night. And it was on the very tail end of a large strip mall. It's called Zed's Sandwich Shop.

It's not even there anymore. On the very edge where cars could drive up to the window or they could come in as well. And it would be 10 o'clock at night. Everything else would be closed. It would be pitch dark outside. And that is what I am imagining it was like that night. Bobby Chacon, special agent, FBI. Do you think that's an accurate description of where Samantha was that night? Yes, I do. I mean, this was what I call a kiosk. It was a people that are old enough to remember

photo mats, which is where you used to drive up and drop your film off to get. I'm sorry, they did not have a photo mount out in the middle of nowhere where I grew up we had to go 20 minutes to get to a gas station this is a small drive up coffee stand it's not even a shop it's a and and it's something that you know the big difference between this and a coffee shop would be if you walked into any Starbucks or any type of coffee shop there's usually other customers standing around waiting for coffee and this is something where there's an individual in a car driving up to an individual in a little booth to make your coffee so it's a it's not a place where you'd have a lot of other people mulling around or standing around once you get your coffee you're gone because you're in your car and so it's

not a place where you you talk to barista, you mingle with people. It's very in and out. It's very quick. It's very transient. That's the kind of transactions that take place. You know, you triggered something in my mind just then when you said you get your coffee and you take off. You know what? Most people probably didn't even look back in the rearview mirror.

They're looking forward. They're looking turn left, turn right. You got your coffee. The car smells awesome, and you're on your way. You know what? Let's go and hear it from the horse's mouth. Joining me from Alaska is Casey Grove with the Alaska Public Media. Casey, what's the shop like?

And, guys, the reason we're asking this, hear me, this is critical to every investigation. And when you are a crime scene investigator or a prosecutor or a lawman or a law person like myself, you see and you take in a million facts at once. The temperature, the setting, the weather outside, rainy, dark, the parking lot, who could have been there, who would have seen her, a million things go through your mind all at once. And imagine yourself as a crime scene investigator and you hear this girl is missing. Like Casey just told us, it comes across an email. This girl's missing. She's beautiful. He sees the picture. He sees the email and thinks, hmm.

When you go and you go to this parking lot, I wish you could see it the way I see it. You immediately are taking in a million facts. And this is one of them. Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media. Tell me about the coffee shop. It's very significant. It's kind of this interesting thing about Anchorage. I think it's actually been written about that we have more of these little coffee huts than sort of most places.

They're kiosks, people call them. They're outdoors. We have a pretty strong car culture here because it's winter for a lot of the year. And so, you know, you kind of need a good car to get around. And one thing that people do when they're driving around their cars is they'll stop and get coffee at a hut, like a latte or something like that. And so some of them are, you know, actual structures attached to a building or they're just like a little hut sitting in a parking lot. This particular one, Common Grounds, was sort of a teal. They have a couple of these little huts in town and they're kind of teal colored, you know, small little hut where maybe two people would work inside making coffee and serving it out of windows on each side.

There's no inside seating or anything like that. It's not uncommon for people to walk up or bike up, but for the most part, you drive up. It's a little drive-through coffee hut kind of situation. Well, Casey, let me follow up on that. Of course, there's a lot of coffee huts, as you call them. I've never heard them call that Casey but whatever I'm going with it because you know what it does kind of look like a hut I guess there are a lot of coffee huts in Alaska it's freezing and when you say teal that's really underplaying it this this kiosk it looks like an out okay, big enough for maybe four or five people inside to stand. It's so bright against that Alaska snow.

And as I recall, that night, all the snow, it looked like the parking lot had been freshly cleaned because the snow was in drifts that were like 10 or 12 feet high all the way around the edges of that parking lot. Why is that significant to me? Because anybody on the other side of that snowdrift can't see what's happening at the coffee stand. The night this girl, this teen barista, just seemingly disappears into thin air, which leads me to my next question Casey Grove on the other side of that snow drift what was around the coffee shop were there other stores like what I was describing earlier where I worked through law school there were stores next to me it was like a big L shape and I was at the tip of the L but everything was closed at the time

I was working so no one would have seen anything. I was like a sitting duck. So what was around her, Casey Grove? There really aren't any stores right nearby. There's an athletic club that has since changed hands, but there was a large building on one side of this hut across a pretty big parking lot, like a parking lot big enough for a bunch of people to go to an athletic club. And then on the direct opposite side, it had a giant snow berm piled up because of all the snow that had been falling in Anchorage that winter. Across from that, a pretty busy road that no one driving on that road would be able to see the hut

because of all the snow and then across that road more large parking lots and like box stores like like a home depot and a lowe's i think are all right there so not a very big trafficked area, exactly. Just sort of a spot to pull off that road and get a cup of coffee. You know, all of that that you're telling me, Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media, is significant. Cheryl McCollum, you were with me and all the many, many years I tried felonies. And you know when you get a great witness on the stand and they talk, but you're not getting exactly what you want. You just have to keep after them. And, you know, when you get a great witness on the stand and they talk, but you're not getting exactly what you want. You just have to keep after them. And, you know, I would find myself getting closer and closer and closer physically to the witness until I thought I was just going to have to crawl into the witness stand and sit on them and say, listen, this is what I'm asking.

Right. Right. So, Casey, let me ask you, I'm talking also about, in addition to what was around her, what was the weather at that time? In Alaska, when I say it snows a lot, I mean that there's snow piled up everywhere. There are plow trucks trying to remove it from the streets constantly. Every morning you get up in a snowy winter, every morning you get up and have to clean your car off. And there could be six inches of snow piled up or a foot. You know, and that's sometimes can be like day after day after day.

In this particular case, it was snowing that morning, you know, making it hard to drive, to see while you're driving, you know, definitely was very characteristic of that winter. It's not always like that, but definitely that winter, there was a lot of, you know, pushing snow around by trucks and just sort of dealing with this constant sort of driving through snow, standing around in the parking lot out there and just getting covered in snow, trying to write in your notebook and talking to people. You know, I'm trying to think, to Dr. Bethany Marshall, renowned L.A. psychoanalyst, about Samantha,

about Samantha Koenig, teen girl, working at night, great grades, wicked funny, living with her dad. Her dad's a pretty cool guy. And I'm thinking about being in that coffee kiosk late at night, surrounded by snow and dark and cold. Nancy, when I take a look at this kiosk, I have a picture of it in my mind. I have a similar coffee kiosk near my house. It is bathed in sunlight. And when the sun goes down, it's bathed in the light of street lamps.

And there are businesses all around. And any young person in that kiosk is within eyesight or vision of at least a dozen people at all times. This kiosk that Samantha Koenig was in, it could be like one of those ski chalets at the top of the Swiss Alps. Nothing around but howling wind and drifts of snow. And you might think, well, hey, there's a freeway right next to it. Not really, because there's this huge snow drift between the ski chalet, or I'm sorry, the Freudian slip, the coffee chalet and the freeway. So no one could see this young woman. Nancy, have you seen her photos? She is so full of life. She's absolutely gorgeous. She wants to work. I know so many young people who do not want to get a job. They graduate from high school. They lollygag. They drag their feet before going to college,

or they graduate from college and they feel so special and entitled. They don't feel ready to enter the job market yet. Not only is she working late at night, She's sharing a truck with her boyfriend. She's sharing resources. She is beloved by her family. And every photograph of her, she's looking straight at that camera as if to say, I own the world. I am somebody. I am going somewhere. This is not a young woman marginalized by society out in a lonely kiosk because she has nothing going on. This girl had a lot going on. This is a problem for cities and towns in Alaska

is that if you're in a place where it snows a lot, you just have to figure out ways to deal with that. So this parking lot where this hut was, they needed to scrape that snow up into a big pile over the entire winter. Sometimes you have to scrape that snow up into a big pile, you know, over the entire winter. Sometimes you have to truck it out, but in this case, they had sort of pushed it up into a big berm that was taller than the hut itself. So, you know, if the hut is eight or 10 or 12 feet tall,

depending on what sort of a little foundation it's on, if you were driving by on the road, right next to it, within about 100 feet, 50 feet away, you could not see over this giant berm that was at least, you know, 20 feet tall. So to give it some perspective, I mean, it's a little house. You're at the same level as it. You can't see it because there's so much snow between you and that little house. I get what you're saying, but if you could just speculate. You've been there. You made the measurements.

You looked yourself, and I'll go back to Bobby Chacon on this as well. But how far do you believe people could see Samantha? I mean, if you were driving in front of the shop, Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media, say you were driving by and you were at a red light or just from the street, if you were driving in front of the shop, could you look in and see her? You'd have to be standing right next to it. There's only like a little driveway between the giant snow berm and the hut. And so the only space there is enough space for a car to drive up because they had plowed everything back from that.

Samantha Koenig, just stunning. And I'm looking at her right now, and you know, in some shots, her eyes look blue, in some they look green. No denying, she's gorgeous. And Bobbi Chacon, FBI special agent at BobbiChacon.com. Bobbi, she's like a sitting duck. She's the prize. She's gorgeous, long brown hair, almost down to the elbows.

And she's alone out there at night in the middle of Anchorage, Alaska in a coffee kiosk. So that night, Casey Grove gets the email, girl missing. He sees the picture. He thinks, hmm, what happens next, Bobby? Well, you know, in cases like this, it's difficult for investigators because teenagers of that age, she was 19, 18, 19 years old, can be somewhat impulsive. And when one goes missing, the initial hours, you really have to focus on what the person's life was like. Did this person just get moody and decide to have a fight with the boyfriend and decide to just drive away for a few hours to clear their head, things like that. So really, in the first few hours of an investigation like this, you're kind of trying to figure out what the life situation of this person was. Now, as you described, Samantha, she was kind of the typical all-American teenage girl.

I mean, she had one of her first jobs. She was working. She was pretty. She was pretty. She had a boyfriend. She had all the things, the trappings of a normal teenage life in America. Now, you're right. She was working at night in a secluded place.

So those things kind of increase a risk to a person. And so when you get on the scene like this and you get the initial abduction report, you have to start going, okay, did this person run away? You start talking to the family. What kind of mood was she in lately? Did she fight with her dad?

Did she fight with her boyfriend? And all of those things you have to start looking at in an attempt to determine what really happened here tonight. Well, to you, Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute, I'm with Bobby Chacon. I mean, he is FBI special agent. But you also have to look at the scene. You have to figure out, was there a struggle? Is there money in the cash register? Is there a broken window? Is the door left ajar? Where is her vehicle?

What can you find? Are her clothes there? What would you be looking at? Because you're in the middle of Alaska frontier. You go to this kiosk. You know the girl is missing. It's at night. It's freezing. The wind is blowing. Snow is everywhere. You can barely see, you know, 10 feet in front of you. You're the CSI. You're the crime scene investigator. What do you do? Step by step. Walk me start when you pull in the parking lot. Well, I'm going to park as far away as I can safely, and I'm going to rope the whole area off. First thing I'm going to do is I'm going to look for footprints. Did somebody walk up? Did somebody walk away?

What direction are the footprints going? Is there one set? Whoa. You know how important that is, Cheryl, that you said that? To this day, people are still talking about, were there footprints outside JonBenet Ramsey's home? Absolutely. And it's a big conundrum. Were there? Were there not? Nobody knows. You're right. You have to look for that in every situation before everybody starts tromping through the scene. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. You're going to get everybody out of there. And, you know, you want to know if there's one set of footprints or there are two.

If there's only one, was somebody carried? Was somebody drugged? So you're looking for everything. I want to know if there's a cigarette butt in the parking lot. I want to know if the street lights are working or if one's been busted. I'm going to look at that berm. I'm going to go back. If I don't have anything the next night, I'm going to go back at the exact same time of day. And then I'm going to look for watch locations. Where could somebody have parked and watched her? What could they see? So if you have big windows,

even in a small kiosk, if she's got illumination in there of a light throne and it's dark outside, you can see her, but she can't see you. So I want to know every single thing that could possibly, from that scene, tell me what happened to her. If her car is there, then are there tire tracks that are fresh that are leaving out that don't go around where somebody bought coffee? I want to know everything, Nancy. Everything is significant. I'm trying to imagine that night as they are out there trying to make sense of her just disappearing, you know, Robin Walensky, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter and author of Beautiful Life, CSI, behind the Casey Anthony trial.

Speaking of CSI, Robin, that night, did they determine what time her last transaction was? Did they find if money was missing from the register? Was the door locked? I mean, what did they find when they first got to the scene? They first got to the scene, Nancy. No one was there. There was money missing from the register. I guess they would have to have, you know, go back through those receipts.

Did somebody buy a coffee at five o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock at night? You can't imagine that on that night with all that snow and the terrible weather that it would have been, you know, as busy as your local Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks in a major city, but it would have been very easy to determine when the last transaction was, but it was so desolate and nothing around. And there was that front window where you would greet the customers, where she would greet the customers. And she was really, Nancy, the perfect person for this job. Think about it. When you go to get your coffee, I have a relationship with the people that serve me coffee every day. And people had a relationship with her. It's like your bartender, the person who's making your coffee for you.

And so she was the perfect person. And think about this, Nancy. Here's another thing that comes to my mind. You have an 18-year-old, right? Talk about an amazing work ethic that she would still be there on a freezing cold night with all that snow. And it was her task to lock up that coffee shop. And here she is, gone. Casey Grove with Alaska Public Media.

What about the theory that money was missing? Was any money actually stolen, Casey? The only talk at the time, you know, right around the time that she went missing was whether or not maybe she had stolen the till. And there wasn't anything about Samantha to make people think that. But at that coffee stand, or at least at one of the Common Grounds coffee stands, a girl had stolen the cash register, had stolen the till from the cash register maybe two weeks prior and sort of just left, never came back to her job. And so I think there was a rumor at one point very early on that maybe Samantha had taken this money or her and her boyfriend had taken it and run off. But then we find out that her boyfriend went to pick her up. She wasn't there. And in a lot of ways, this case really, as it unfolded, it went from what could have been a simple missing persons case where the girl just has gone off with her boyfriend and ran off and is going to come home safe and sound to every step of the way, getting worse and worse and worse up to the worst possible

imagined, worst possible imaginable fate for that victim. But following up on what we're saying, Casey Grove, if money had been missing, who would the likely suspects be? You know, just give me a description of the area. Was it rural? Was it close to the city? This is in a part of Anchorage, which is the largest city in Alaska. A lot of people would say it's like the only real city in Alaska.

So it would not look any different than, you know, the midtown area of kind of an average-sized city anywhere in the country. I mean, one side of this busy road, Tudor Road, is box stores, Home Depot, that sort of thing. And the other side is mostly residential, single-family homes, that kind of thing. It's right in the heart of the city. I mean, it's south of downtown by about 20 blocks. It's in a pretty busy commercial blending into industrial district in the city with residential. I mean, it's right in the middle of the city though. I mean, if you think about Alaska, it is not anything like rural Alaska. It's not like, you know, the suburbs or anything like that. It's right in Anchorage. Robin Walensky, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter.

This is significant. Was there money missing from the teal? Nancy, yes, money was missing from the Common Grounds Expresso. Yeah, that changes things to me. Cheryl McCollum, because now it could be just a robbery gone wrong. But where is she? A robbery gone wrong, usually, in my mind

means they end up shooting and killing somebody. That's how the robbery goes wrong. She just disappears into thin air. What does it mean to you? And of course, hold on, we don't find that out until the next morning. Is that right, Bobby Chacon, FBI? You were on the case? That's right. That's right. One of her co-workers who responded to the kiosk the next morning found it somewhat disheveled.

They found a partially made coffee on the counter. They found a note from Samantha asking if she had to work that Saturday, you know, and so clearly that it wasn't, the kiosk was not closed up as normally, as the normal procedure was. So Bobby Chacon, special agent FBI, what does that mean to you? Because typically, in my mind, when you say robbery gone wrong, you think someone's committing a robbery, and they kill the victim or shoot the victim. And there's the place is ransacked and all the money's gone. But here we have the money gone, but the place isn't ransacked. It's somewhat disheveled, but she's clearly left a note before she's closing up. Hey, do I have to work tomorrow? And this is intriguing to me. This would be one of the first things I looked at.

There's a half-made coffee sitting there. It turns out to be an Americano coffee. What does that say to you, Bobby, as you assess the scene? Well, you're right, Nancy. When a robbery gone wrong usually results from the resistance of the person being robbed at the point of which they're being robbed. So you would see a struggle. You would see maybe blood. You would see some form of violence that happened at the point of the robbery. When someone is taken from or disappeared from the scene of a robbery and there isn't that physical evidence to indicate a struggle

or some kind of violent interaction, then you're thinking, why was this person taken away from this location? They clearly, if they got what they wanted, if the robbery was successful and they got the money that they were looking for, why would they take that person away? And unfortunately, as an investigator, you have to think, did this person not want a witness left behind to the robbery or something like that? So you start, your mind is going in several different directions. But the number one thing is it's not really a robbery gone wrong because that usually results from resistance, which means violence.

And there was no real sign of violence within this coffee kiosk where Samantha disappeared from. So to you, Casey Grove, with Alaska Public Media, was the coffee shop locked? Was it closed up? Was the door wide open? There was some dispute about whether or not this coffee stand was locked up or whether the till had been taken or whether her belongings were still there.

There were things actually in the first couple of days that were misreported about that. And I think that, if I I remember correctly it may have been reported early on that all of her belongings had been taken that maybe she had them that she had put her coat and everything on and left and I think later it was reported that she hadn't and I'm trying to remember which one was true, but it was a little bit unclear how the shop had been left, how she had left or what evidence there was of how she had left. Well, I know this much. The money was gone from the till. There was no sign of a struggle. But that half-made Americano sitting there on the counter when the boyfriend drives up to get her. She's not there. So let me ask you this, Casey, when she goes missing, what type of a search ensued?

There were volunteer searches. I think her father was the most active in kind of organizing that, but he had friends that were going around town, putting up flyers all over town. There were actual search parties. You know, I think that initially, and they weren't saying this at the time, but I think initially the police really didn't have much to go on as far as where they were going to even start to look. So it was, you know, searching wooded areas, you know, searching parts of town that wouldn't be obvious, you know, just out in the open.

But really not much to go on as far as where to look. So to me, Bobby Chacon, FBI, the first thing I would do is look at boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, problems, stalkers. She's there sitting in the middle of a snowdrift at night. Was there a regular that would drive through day after day after day that had become fixated on her? I would try to find out from the till, what was the last order? Why was she making that Americano? What time was that? But let's first, we're looking at the crime scene. We're looking at the disappearance. We're looking at the parking lot. We're looking at the crime scene we're looking at the disappearance we're looking at the parking lot we're looking inside the coffee stand we're taking a look at her her profile who is she now at the same time an alternate and um contemporaneous investigation is ongoing as to potential suspects we don't know for all i know she's hopped on a train and is headed to Hollywood

to seek her fortune. I don't know what's happened. The money's gone. She's gone. No sign of a struggle. So at this point, Bobby Chacon, cops have got to be looking at who is in her life. They'll probably even look at her father, right? Nobody is off limits. Who are they looking at, Bobby? Well, that's what you're doing. You're exactly right, Nancy. You're rebuilding this person's life or you're building this person's life in your own mind, because the way these investigations progress is this comes in as a missing person. Then it becomes a suspicious missing person before it becomes an abduction. So you have to go through this process of realizing you're right. Did this person just kind of get away for a few hours was there something in their life that was causing

them anxiety that they needed to to you get away from friends and family so you have to look at every possibility you because an investigator did when a person is missing time is of the essence and if you go down a wrong path in one of these theories you're wasting valuable time so So in a way, I know it sounds self-defeating, but you have to keep every option open because time is so valuable when

someone's missing. So if you go down a wrong path, you lose valuable time. So you're looking at every possibility. So this means that you need more than one person. You need a teamwork in this case. You need to talk to her friends, her family, her coworkers. If she's going to school, her former schoolmates, because this is a young woman, she could still have people that she's friendly with from high school or from middle school or whatever. You look at social media, you immediately try to get on social media,

and you look at all these different things of what's happening in this person's life that could have caused some kind of, you know, emotional problem or some kind of issue that made them want to get away. So they're going through all the customers. They're trying to figure out who works in the area, who would pass her every day, who would stop at a red light and just stare over at her. We're looking at every single person in Samantha's life. Take a listen to Lieutenant David Parker and Lieutenant Michelle Butcher. You see the restraining order. You see that there's, you know, two months before she, you know, is willing to file court paperwork that says that this guy sexually assaulted her or attacked her. I mean, that seems like the obvious starting point, of course, right?

I mean, and that certainly is what the public is focused on. So I just wonder if there's anything else you can do to shed light on whether or not that guy is believed to have been involved or if he can be ruled out or if that's still a work in progress. At this point, it's still an open part of the investigation. And we want to make sure that, I mean, everybody has jumped, or not everybody, but many people in the public have jumped to that conclusion. And to the point where, you know, they could be, I understand from some of the news reports

that he's complaining that people are accusing him openly. We don't need that kind of thing. That doesn't help this investigation at all. Let the police do their work. Let them work through this process. As you know, this is not a one-hour TV cop drama. This is real life, and it takes time to work through these things. It takes good forensic work. It takes good interview skills. It takes good piecing together the puzzle, and it ain't like TV. So we have to be really careful. You can't just jump to the conclusion and, you know, start accusing this guy and then one day say,

oh, no, maybe it wasn't him after all. You can't do that. We need to let the police do their work and make the determination as to what happened and who caused it. You're hearing police spokespeople, Lieutenant David Parker and Lieutenant Michelle Butcher at the time. Bobby Chacon, who's he talking about? He's not talking about the boyfriend. Who is that? Well, apparently there was another individual that Samantha had some type of relationship with that. I think the November of 2011, she filed paperwork for a restraining order. I don't think the restraining order was ever issued by a judge, but I think the paperwork was filed. So, you know, the police are exactly right. This is one of those paths that you go down because it's obvious that she had some kind of adverse relationship with whoever she filed this order against. But, you know, you try to rule it

out or rule it in. And so, like, that's the problem that the police are alluding to, that when something like that gets out into the public, the person's life can be altered and public perception of the case can change. You know what, Bobby? I appreciate other people's lives getting altered, and I don't want that to happen either. But the reality is the girl is gone. I don't want to hurt anybody's reputation,

but the fact that she was looking at a restraining order against someone she thought was harassing her is significant to me. So this guy as a possibility. You've got the boyfriend, of course, is always a possibility. You've got some pervy dude stalker as a possibility. Of course, you always look at family members, the father as a possibility. To Bobby Chacon, what about the boyfriend? What do we know? Well, we know that he was supposed to pick her up after work. She didn't have a car with her. I'm not sure whether they were living together or not, but she spent a lot of time at his house. He drove a truck, and we know that he had gotten a text from her that evening saying that she had a bad day and she was maybe going away for the weekend.

And so, you know, typical relationship of people that age. You know, you have your ups and downs, you have your emotional crises and stuff. But there was nothing out of the ordinary about the boyfriend that would make make you think that he would take action like this. To Dr. Bethany Marshall right there. Dr. Bethany, the text. She had never, quote, gone away for the weekend. That had never happened. Never. She's a teen girl working at a coffee shop.

Why would she text this mysterious text to a boyfriend, not say a word to her father with whom she lived, that she was leaving for the weekend? That doesn't make sense to me right there. To me, that's the first tip off. She didn't take the money. She did not go off on her own. I'm going to go away for the weekend to clear my head. That sounds like a load of BS. That's a technical legal term. But right there, that that's wrong. That cup of coffee, that half made Americano and that text. Tell me this is all wrong. See, her regular behavior deviates at this point.

We know she loves her parents. She lives with her dad. We know that she shares a vehicle with her boyfriend and she shares a bank account. So this is a young woman who's highly collaborative, engaged, involved with the people in her life. All of a sudden now, the kiosk is left disheveled. She's not there when her boyfriend comes to pick her up. And there's this strange text saying, I am going away for the weekend. I would wonder, did her phone fall into the hands of the perpetrator? And did that person write the text?

Back to you, Casey Grove. I want to figure out the boyfriend conundrum. What do we know about her boyfriend? Samantha had a boyfriend that was actually picking her up that night and was the first person to really note that she was missing. I couldn't tell you how long they had been together, but he, the next day, as this kind of became an abduction case, like I said, it went from sort of this is a missing person

to now we have a reason to believe she's been abducted. He was there in the parking lot, just looked ashen. I mean, he looked, you know, terrible. Like he knew something bad had happened. He was sort of the first one to know that the night before. As police, as FBI are sifting through mounds and mounds of evidence, following every lead, literally looking for a needle in a haystack. It emerges that there is, in fact, video surveillance.

Listen to NBC Anchorage. Detectives now say a surveillance camera posted above the entrance to the Common Grounds Espresso Hut on Tudor and Fairbanks shows an armed man abducting Koenig on Wednesday night. Police say the two left the area on foot, and Koenig's family has not heard from her since. They left on foot. We know that much. But beyond that, her disappearance became a complete mystery at that point. I got off work and went to go get her, and she wasn't there. It was a mess. Investigators are not yet releasing the surveillance tape. They will only say the abductor was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt and possibly a baseball cap.

Bobby, what exactly do we learn? I mean, I get the gist of it. We understand that a guy comes in. He's wearing a ski mask, apparently. He orders a coffee. Samantha makes the coffee and hands it to him when he apparently what pull there's a scuffle he pulls out a gun samantha tries to get money out of the tilt what do we think happened inside that kiosk based on the surveillance video alone well in the video what you can see and you

can tell a lot by a person's body language and so samantha is going about her normal duty of making a coffee so clearly someone at the window about her normal duty of making a coffee. So clearly someone at the window, whoever was at that window, ordered a coffee, and she starts making it. You see that. But partly through making that coffee, she looks back at the window, and you can see her body language immediately change. Her hands go up several times, and you can see her get nervous and make furtive gestures about what she's supposed to do.

And you automatically see through her body language that whoever's at that window is threatening her. And so you automatically notice immediately that something is wrong here. This is not the typical transaction. So you see her start to get really nervous, put her hands up several times, trying to comply with whatever that person is telling her to do. To Dr. Bethany Marshall, LA Psychoanalyst, I'm just trying to imagine her dad. Can you imagine he's out there in the snow the next morning, 6 a.m. handing out flyers, begging people to help find his daughter? Nancy, so distraught and probably blaming himself, as you can imagine, and telling himself, I should have just supported her. I should not have encouraged her to get a job. You know, as parents, we encourage our kids to work, right? We want them to own their own lives, to support their lives. that their employers or whoever employs them will keep them safe. But then if something happens, like in this case, the parent blames themselves.

This dad, his charge was his daughter. His duty was to protect her, and that got violated by some stranger in the night. And if you look at that surveillance footage, Nancy, it's so sad to me because as he's marching her across the parking lot, the perpetrator, it looks like he has one arm around her. I don't know if he has a gun pointed towards her, but it sent chills up my spine.

I thought it's like the sheep to the slaughter. He's just leading her away, and she looks very passive and stooped over as if she knows there's absolutely nothing she can do to get away. Where is teen girl Samantha Koenig? Where did the guy march her off into the night and the snow and the parking lot until they seemingly just walked off the edge of their surveillance video into what? What can we learn from the surveillance video?

Again, a needle in a haystack. Nancy Grace, signing off. Goodbye, friend.