Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Killers Amongst Us: Teen barista Samantha Koenig kidnapped at gunpoint (Part 2)

Episode Date: April 21, 2020

Samantha Koenig is kidnapped at gunpoint from the Anchorage, Alaska, coffee stand where she works, February 2013. Former FBI Special Agent Bobby Chacon, who worked on the Koenig investigation, joins Nancy Grace describing how the abduction is caught on camera and a randsom note appears. 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.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hi guys, Nancy Grace here. Welcome back to Killers Amongst Us, a production of iHeart Media and Crime Online. The disappearance of a beautiful young barista, Samantha Koenig. Joining us to help crack the case, investigative reporter Casey Grove from Alaska and FBI Special Agent Bobby Chacon, who's actually in on the FBI investigation. To analyze the clues left behind, Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute, and Dr. Bethany Marshall, renowned L.A. psychoanalyst. As you know by now, we learned Samantha's kidnap was caught on camera and the critical role that surveillance tape played in the ongoing investigation in sub-zero temperatures. We take a look at all the suspects and the red herrings emerging in the hours and days after she goes missing. And then, when it seems as if police and detectives were hitting a wall, a ransom note emerges.

Investigators on the hunt for Samantha and her abductor. You can see the individual jumping in through the window. You can tell she's sort of going along with him because he thinks that he's going to rob the place. It just didn't come across to her that she was in danger until he starts, you know, locking her out. Nancy Grace, killers amongst us. Across the city of Anchorage, police and volunteers are braving sub-freezing temperatures in an all-out search for 18-year-old Samantha Koenig. The longer we go without knowing where Samantha is, the more difficult the case becomes. Police know nothing about her whereabouts, but they have one terrifying clue. She was last seen on a surveillance camera being marched away from work by an armed man.

They left on foot. We know that much. But beyond beyond that her disappearance became a complete mystery at that point. It happened here at this drive-up coffee stand where Samantha worked. When her boyfriend arrived Wednesday night, she was gone. I got off work and went to go get him, get her, and she wasn't there. It was a mess. Her father's been frantically searching for her ever since. 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. Hampering the investigation, this is Alaska in the dead middle of winter. The snow piled up blocked motorists from seeing the coffee shop from the road.

An interesting footnote here, the missing 18-year-old filed a restraining order against a man in November, but never followed through with court proceedings. Police hope there may be more surveillance videos from maybe other businesses in the area that might lead to some extra clues in a very extra harsh Alaska winter. What happened to Samantha Koenig? Her father, who doted on his young daughter, is beside himself as the community pulls together looking for Samantha. Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute. How many times did I argue to a jury, what do you want, a video of the crime? I don't have a video.

You have to put two and two together and come up with four. But in this case, we have a video, but it's telling me nothing, Cheryl. It's a money tree. We don't ever get video. And if we do, it's grainy or it's just outside the parameter of what you can really see. It doesn't give you much here. Not only do we have video, it's from the inside. And Nancy, it can tell us an awful lot. Let me go to Dr. Bethany Marshall renowned California psychoanalyst joining me today along with reporter from Alaska Public Media Casey Grove John Limley crimeonline.com investigative reporter and special guest

FBI special agent Bobby Chacon at bobbychacon. Dr. Bethany, one thing really stuck out in my mind when the reporter said she marched. Now, that tells me that this is someone she fears. This is someone that she's not struggling because she knows he's not going to shoot her with that gun. She sees the gun, she sees the disguise, and she marches. What 18-year-old does that? I mean, because all they know at this point in their life is friendship and fun and family. I can see that she is absolutely terrified. I can only imagine what is going through her mind. And I wonder if she has been told that if she struggles, she'll die. And so she is in some dissociated state of shock where she's complying with the perpetrator, trying to think as fast as she can, but just doing whatever he asks her to do. But what more can we learn from the video?

What facts can we glean? Listen. As day breaks over Anchorage, Samantha's dad calls the local police to report his only daughter missing. One of our officers contacted the owner of Common Grounds coffee shop and she was able to show them video. A man came to the little kiosk window at 8 o'clock. Samantha made a coffee drink for him, turned back around, and then you can tell she's shocked. You see her body language change. She goes from someone who's just serving someone a coffee

to being very nervous and very concerned. Samantha turns out the lights, and you can see the individual jumping in through the window. You can tell she's sort of going along with him because he thinks that he's going to rob the place. It just didn't come across to her that she was in danger until he starts, you know, locking her out.

Samantha and the individual leave the coffee stand and then disappear from line of sight from the camera. The next day, her dad was raising hell about this, trying to figure out where his daughter went. Use this area as a meeting place, because this is where my daughter was taken from. People were just literally like, whose basement is she in? Whose door do we have to go knock down to find her?

There wasn't any narrative for people to understand what happened. Very upsetting. We knew she had to be here somewhere. We had people who were donating money, thousands of dollars. We had t-shirts made, pins made. We had people who were putting fly, thousands of dollars. We had t-shirts made, pens made. We had people who were putting flyers throughout the state of Alaska. These people need to get my daughter back so we can get back with our lives.

I will do anything. Take me. From our friends at Oxygen Method of a Serial Killer, out to John Limley, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. What do we learn from the video? Well, in the video, Nancy, you can see that someone approaches from a distance, a dark figure approaches that little kiosk, that little coffee shop. It's around 8 p.m., the time stamp. Samantha makes him a coffee drink, which is very normal.

She turns back around, and it's at this point you can tell that she is really surprised by something. Her body language stiffens. She goes from a barista to someone who is obviously very nervous and concerned. She backs up. She even puts her hands up. Then she very quickly goes across the room and turns out all the lights. And it's at this point you can see a dark figure comes in through that little window. You can tell that she seems to be going along with what the person is asking her to do. She's most likely just trying to do whatever is necessary to get through this. However, she most likely became really frightened when he begins walking her out of that little shop. Samantha and the individual leave the coffee shop.

And then the last thing you see is the two of them disappearing out of the line of sight of that surveillance camera. Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute. Something is just sticking in my mind, and it's that half-made Americano coffee. I don't know why that's sticking in my mind. Something about it is poignant, but what am I learning? I'm learning that he comes up and he asks for a coffee. She's making that, but didn't she notice anything was wrong when he was hiding himself in that manner? I mean, what led her to go along with it to a certain point? What's your analysis of what you see in the video, Cheryl McCollum? The first thing that strikes me is he walks up. He doesn't drive up. Second thing, she does not greet him. So if this was somebody she sees every Wednesday, she would smile. She would acknowledge that she recognizes

this person. She doesn't do that. He hands her a cup. That's the third thing. So he takes something with him to get her to do something rote. She takes the coffee. She immediately turns her back to start making the cup. I think that's when his action plan is put into place. When she turns around, he's got a weapon. And at that moment, he's telling her, shut the light out. Because Nancy, there's no way an 18-year-old frightened is going to cut the light out. She does that to hide his features. So he has planned this thing pretty smoothly so far. Dr. Bethany Marshall, in a case like this, with a girl's life on the line, you have to look at every suspect, including boyfriends, past boyfriends, current stalkers, people that come to the coffee shop on a regular basis.

But you can't get away from the fact that this is a goldmine of evidence. This video, Samantha disappears into the night, and all we have is this grainy image of her being marched out late at night. What do you see? Well, I see what Cheryl McCollum sees in that she greets him normally as if he were any other customer. She acts like an 18-year-old would. She calmly goes about her job. She starts making a coffee. This tells me that she does not know him. You know, most homicides are intimate homicides, right? We know that and abductions are intimate abductions. Stranger abductions are really rare. But when you watch the surveillance tape, she did not know this guy, Nancy. And again, she's 18 years old. She's young, she's naive. There is a moment of shock when she throws up her hands,

she backs up against the counter, and you can see that she is disoriented and she has no idea what's going on. And it brings to mind the definition of trauma in my field. Trauma is when there is a sudden unexpected event for which there is no prior learning. So something happens to a person and they have absolutely no idea what to do. She has no idea what to do other than to try to protect, defend, and get as far away from this guy as possible. With me right now, FBI Special Agent Bobby Chacon. Bobby, just looking at the video, which is extremely rare when someone just disappears,

it must be breaking the father's heart to look at this video and see the images of his daughter, possibly the very last images of his daughter in life. Absolutely. I mean, obviously, that's what's probably going through his head at this point. She's gone. Who is this person at this window that's causing his daughter so much fear and so much apprehension that she immediately puts her hands up and steps back, steps back away from the window, tells me as an investigator that he probably was brandishing a weapon of some kind because to instill that kind of fear so quickly and to garner that kind of reaction so quickly means she saw something physically that made her step back. Just a verbal threat from somebody

through a small window like that would not cause that. It would tell me that he was probably brandishing a weapon. She saw the weapon and she immediately stepped back and put her hands up. And so as a father looking at that, you know, there can't be any more concern that would make you cause it. I mean, you would look at this and say, my daughter's in danger. When you get a video like this, trained professionals come over every detail. What more do we learn? Just a few days into the search, police discover a promising lead. New surveillance footage captured by a neighboring business from the night of Samantha's abduction. We're able to determine that Samantha walked to a white pickup truck and then the truck drives away. They could estimate about the year that it was built. It was

like a 99 through 2007 Chevrolet pickup truck white. So at that point, it's a matter of trying to track down how many of those vehicles are in the Anchorage Bowl. And there were several thousand of them. That from our friends at Oxygen Method of a serial killer. So now we are learning that video surveillance in the area is picking up more data, more evidence. How does that work, Cheryl McCollum? Nancy, they're going to look for tire tracks, footprints in the snow. Then, again, looking for that particular vehicle where there's a thousand other in the general vicinity, you're talking about a painstaking, you know, he's got a work boot on.

Well, so does everybody else in Alaska. He's got work boot on. Well, so does everybody else in Alaska. He's got a white truck. Well, so does everybody else in Alaska. So this is the kind of thing they've got to weed out the evidence that they do have. But, you know, this guy has obviously put some thought into what am I going to wear, what I'm going to drive, am I going to walk up, am I going to drive up? So law enforcement has to go through and eliminate, quite frankly, obvious elements that just put them behind the eight ball looking for who this person is. Back to John Limley, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. John Limley, again, in a nutshell, what was he wearing? What was his disguise? He is wearing a ski mask and is in all black.

I guess the fact, Bobby Chacon, FBI, that he was wearing a ski mask in most places, that would send up a red flag of alarm. But in Alaska, at night, when you're surrounded by, you know, 12, 15-foot snowdrifts, I guess somebody wearing a ski mask may not have disturbed her. That's right. And you don't see a disturbance in her initially in the first few minutes. So a person wearing a ski mask coming up to that kiosk was probably not uncommon. And so she doesn't react to his initial appearance, how he looked. Wearing a hood and

wearing a mask in that weather is probably totally appropriate it's only a few minutes into the video that you see a dramatic change in her posture and that would lead me to believe that at that point he brandished a weapon through that small window and all during, her dad going bizarre, out of his mind, out of fear. 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. I just need her home every day. She's gone. We're 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. 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. That is Samantha's father, James Koenig, speaking out and just hearing his voice. Dr. Bethany, you know, every morning when I take the children to school, I say a prayer. Please keep the twins safe from everything dangerous, evil, naughty, or hurtful, which is a lot. And that is me just dropping them at school.

Here is a dad. His daughter lives with him. She's the apple of his eye, his heart, his air, and his music, everything. What can he do? Nothing. How many times do you think he went over and over and over this video, Dr. Bethany? Nancy, he has agonized over it. And one sentence he utters stands out to me. I don't know if she's getting any sleep. And then I don't know if she's dead or alive. And when he says, I don't know if she's getting any sleep, it's reminiscent to me that she was once his baby. I mean, her whole existence depended on him. He's still thinking about her basic needs. Is she sleeping?

Is she eating? Is somebody taking care of him? So he's thinking about all the more benign considerations like are her basic needs met? And then he flips to is she dead or alive? It's like his mind is vacillating back and forth between her primary needs and then life and death. What a horrific, shattering experience for a parent. Oh, I can't even imagine. You know, when I get, Cheryl, you've been with me through many, many felony trials.

When I get in that spot and I'm thinking about the pain and the suffering and the anxiety. The only thing I can do to work through that is to go back to the facts and go over and over and over, kind of like a robot. So at this juncture, a guy comes up, he's wearing a ski mask, he's all in black. But come on, I remember this trial. And I think it was when I tried the red rapist. If you remember him, he had raped women all across Atlanta and he had a particular MO and the ones I couldn't get DNA for, which were many, I matched up with a modus operandi method of operation and that was climbing in through a window. It was hot outside in Atlanta. He would rape the person. Often he would recite

Bible verses and then he would leave, sometimes leave a red rose. He would also wear red, hence the name Red Rapist. So long story short, in some of those, he would put pantyhose over his head. And in a surprise move on a now very well-known prosecutor, Clint Rucker, who was assisting me in the trial, I brought a pair of pantyhose and, in closing argument, put them over Clint's face. Let's just say he was not happy, but he didn't show it in front of the jury. I couldn't warn him ahead of time because I knew he wouldn't go along with it. Long story short, you could look right at him, and you knew it was him. The jury had been looking at him for two weeks, so they knew it was him. So when my ladies identified the perp, the defense would say,

hey, but he had pantyhose over his head. I'm like, and? That's all you got? Go ahead. Hit me with that. So here, my point is a long story to make this point, Cheryl, if this had been her boyfriend or an ex or a regular, a ski mask would not have hidden his identity, right? She would have known them. She would have known. And this person clearly spoke to her he told her to cut out the light he as soon as he jumped over the counter she would have recognized clothing the stature she would know him by his eyes she did not know this person not when he

first walked up i mean come on cheryl mccallum if you came up with a ski mask on, I'm not going to say how I would know it was you, but I would know it was you. Dr. Bethany Marshall, I don't know if you've met Bethany in the flesh, Cheryl, but she has, let me just say, an hourglass figure. If there was ever an hourglass figure, it's Bethany Marshall. So if she comes up to me with a ski mask, I'm going to know that's Bethany because I know how she is shaped. I know the way she walks. I could recognize her voice anywhere. So who are the suspects? Nancy, you're identifiable.

Your eyes are very beautiful and unique. Your voice, your accent. If you walked up to me at a kiosk and said, fill this cup up with coffee, I would know it was you. But she did not greet this person. There was nothing familiar about him for her. In the studio, Jackie Howard is mimicking the way I walk, saying she would recognize it anywhere. If I could jump in. Jump, jump, go. Well, all of us have greeting responses. Dogs do, cats do, humans do. We don't just walk up to somebody without saying something. A dog will jump all over you. A cat will rub up against

you. A human vocalizes. Hey, Samantha, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Just thought I'd come by and say hi. All he does is comes and orders a coffee. So that is definitely a stranger because he doesn't greet her verbally. If he had greeted her verbally, she would have known him and known exactly who he was if they were already acquaintances. So who are the suspects? Who is it she would not know behind a ski mask? Well, it's obvious that she has taken away against her will by her reaction. What indication, if any, was there that this was someone that she would have,

that she knew, you know, that there was some, in that interaction, that this was someone that was not a stranger to her, that she knew? You know, I don't think that anything that we've released has been characterized like that. And I'd be really careful of that because we don't think that anything that we've released has been characterized like that. And I'd be really careful of that because we don't know. We don't know one way or the other whether she knew this person or she didn't know this person. But if you think about it, once again, from the perspective of what her job is, she's going to have contact with hundreds of people a day. And she might know people just by recognizing they may

have stopped for coffee once or twice we don't know so we'll have to wait till the case gets further alarmed before we can make any determination as to whether there was a relationship does this appear to be a crime of opportunity where someone saw her and abducted her or whether or not this was someone who specifically sought to, you know, knew Samantha, knew who she was, sought to abduct her in particular. It could go either way. You're hearing from Lieutenant David Parker there in Anchorage. But what about the boyfriend? Is it just too convenient that he shows up that night? She's not there. And then he's the one that raises the alarm. Straight to Casey Grove, reporter with the Alaska Public Media. Casey, what about the boyfriend? You know, I think early on when she

was reported missing and people were kind of speculating about what might have happened, I think there was some question of maybe whether or not she had run off with her boyfriend. And it pretty quickly became apparent that the boyfriend was very worried and not with her. And as time went on, you know, there was kind of less speculation about his involvement and, you know, information about the video sort of being leaked out by the family, that there was this other abductor that had been involved. Another abductor involved. But the reality is you always look, do you not, to Bobby Chacon, former FBI special agent at BobbyChacon.com. Bobby, you always look at the husband, the

boyfriend, the lover, the ex. Why? Well, because in the overwhelming majority of these types of cases, the homicides that I've worked, the offender comes from one of two worlds. It's the world of the location. In other words, had they hung out at that location and the victim just wandered through that area, or it comes from the world of the victim. So they know the victim in some way. And that's the 99% of offenders come from one of those two worlds. And so this is where investigators have to play the extremely delicate balance of looking into the boyfriend, looking into the father, looking into friends. At the same time when these people are basically grieving or in a terrible state of emotional distress, and yet you still have to treat them as persons of interest. So the police and the investigators play a very delicate game here

because at the same time you want to be sympathetic to their plight, you also are still looking at them as possible suspects. It's a very, very difficult line to tell. Back to Casey Grove, reporter with the Alaska Public Media. How did you ever dig up the restraining order, which plays a major role in this? When I think back about this case, I was still, I mean, I had a couple of years of reporting, experienced journalism, experienced professionally under my belt, but I didn't really know how to go about sort of reporting on a case like this. And some of my fellow colleagues

there at the Anchorage Daily News who had more experience suggested that I go just start looking through any kind of court filings whatsoever that anybody that we, you know, any name that had come up so far, but definitely Samantha Koenig. And in the civil court, she had filed, you know, for a restraining order against someone by the name of Christopher Bird. And she had filed for this restraining order and written a lot of information in the application for this restraining order. And I believe got maybe a temporary version of that that didn't involve her having to testify. Because if I remember correctly, I don't think that she came back to testify and get the sort of the stronger long-term protective order but there was this information in this filing that indicated that some kind of at least according to her at least some kind of a sexual assault or some kind of

encounter along those lines had happened between Christopher Bird and Samantha Koenig just a month or two prior to her disappearance. Oh, my stars. Okay, talk about a coincidence. In my book, there is no coincidence in criminal law. To Bobby Chacon, FBI, she takes out a restraining order on a guy that allegedly commits a sex crime on her or tries to anyway and then suddenly she goes missing as this winds its way toward court potentially right i mean this would be a first what you would consider as an investigator your first big break your first big lead that she had an adversarial relationship with a man who she felt threatened her enough that she filed this kind of

paperwork so obviously um once this was discovered um all a lot of effort would be put into finding this person i mean really bobby i mean a tro where you have to go to court cheryl mccollum and beg the court to protect you right well it sounds like what she did is she went and filed the initial temporary protective order, which didn't make her testify. She didn't have to go through that part. But when it got closer to that, she didn't follow up for whatever reason. But there's no question in a case like this, you would put all you've got on this guy until you can rule him out. I mean, how many cases, I can't even count them, where women go forward to start with in a battery

or assault, and then as it gets closer and closer and closer, they back out. I've had a woman, Dr. Bethany Marshall, a California psychoanalyst, come into court with a broken leg and a cast from the hip down and crutches with her boyfriend trying to drop charges.

Of course, I did not drop them. I said, blame me, not her. But I mean, anything could have affected her decision not to drop charges. She could have been afraid of the guy. Well, Nancy, first of all, remember, again, she is 18 years old, Samantha. So this is just a month of two prior to the abduction. She goes to court. What 18-year-old has the wherewithal to go to court to file a TRO against somebody? And then not only that, she is frightened enough of whoever this perpetrator is that she doesn't even want to face him. She wants to file the version where you don't have to go to court. A lot of women don't want to face their perpetrators. Sometimes they feel guilty. They're afraid that they're going to get their boyfriend or whoever it is in trouble.

They're afraid of repercussions. But in this case, Nancy, whatever this assault was at the hands of this perp may have been so bad she didn't even want to see him in the hallways of the court. Casey Grove, a reporter with the Alaska Public Media. I mean, how can that be a coincidence that a few weeks before she disappears into thin air, she's filing for protection after an alleged sex assault by this guy? You know, you've got to remember the tension in Anchorage has just ratcheted way up because people think maybe she's still alive. There's

this reward fund to just try to, you know, get information to try to find her. And then, you know, it comes out that there's this guy that she filed a restraining order against the kind of like one of the only court filings that is in Samantha Koenig's name, and it's about this incident where, you know, she sort of alleges that there maybe was this sexual assault that happened. At the time, it really, people were angry at him. They saw his videos. They kind of saw this persona that he had as this, like, hard-edged kind of rapper guy. His rap name was white Tyson.

Uh, that's, that's kind of how we went online. Um, but I actually sat down with Christopher bird and a friend of his at a lawyer's office as this was all going on and talk to them for at least an hour, you know, about, you know, where he was the night that she disappeared, different confirmation of his alibi. And he didn't really talk about the incident that led to the restraining order, but sort of played that down like that, you know, was sort of her side of the story, and that's not really what happened. And that he just, you you know said over and over again

that he had nothing to do with her disappearance well i mean casey grove alaska public media of course he's going to tell you and some swanky lawyer's office he had nothing to do with it what did you think he was going to do confess to you right there and hold up his wrists and say cuff me for pete's sake well now now hold. You can't just gloss over this. What do you mean, White Tyson? He was sort of a small-time local rapper and had YouTube videos of himself that were a little bit edgy, I guess you could say. There was one where he had a hockey mask on, sort of like Friday the 13th and pit bulls and stuff and kind of like tough, tough rap stuff going on in his videos, I guess, for lack of a better explanation.

So when we see that she has this restraining order filed against this guy and he seems a little rough around the edges and has this kind of at least persona as this like tough, you know, rapper guy, it kind of raised a lot of red flags. Jump in, Cheryl. Mike Tyson, as you know, was also accused and convicted of a sexual assault, Ms. Washington. So I think it's critical, again, when you have a temporary protective order alleging that, and you have somebody kidnapped. Because as you and I know, normally sexual assault is going to be a part of

that another thing Bobby Chacon you're the specialist with the FBI what really got my attention was that in the videos he wears a mask did did you nobody hear that yeah there are you know there are these obvious indications that this person could be you know a solid person of interest in the case so I think early on reasonable or a lot of resources were dedicated to ruling him in or ruling him out um initially but after intense scrutiny investigation casey grove with the alaska public media christopher bird is ruled out and it happened pretty quickly i i think that there was some pressure on the police to look at this guy and you know confirm or disprove his alibi and it turned out

that they could confirm it and and figured out that he really didn't have anything to do with it and I and I do think that they put that information out pretty pretty quickly after his name was sort of out publicly to make sure that, you know, if he was involved, they were going to make sure, you know, they got the guy. And when they found out that he wasn't involved, they wanted to make sure that the public knew that this was not the guy. So now we're back to square one. Every usual SOP, standard operating procedure has failed. It's not the boyfriend. It's not a customer. It's not the guy, White Tyson, Christopher Bird, the rapper, the bad guy she took out the TRO for.

So where does that leave me? Police knocking their heads against the walls. A father going berserk. And then, out of the blue. Two and a half weeks after Samantha's abduction, there's a chilling turn in the case. Her boyfriend just goes sheet white. He's got his phone and there's a text from her phone. Basically it says,

Connors Park, underneath Albert Pick, ain't she pretty. Authorities race to Connors Lake Park, just five miles southwest of downtown Anchorage, not knowing what's waiting for them. When you enter that park, there's a bulletin board. And tacked was a Ziploc bag that had what ultimately was a photograph of Samantha and a ransom note. The fact that there was a ransom note

really ratchets up the tension because, OK, she's alive, and what are we going to do to get her back? Two and a half weeks after Samantha's abduction, there's a chilling turn in the case. Her boyfriend just goes sheet white. He's got his phone, and there's a text from her phone. Basically, it says, Connors Park, underneath Albert Pick, ain't she pretty?

Authorities race to Connors Lake Park, just five miles southwest of downtown Anchorage, not knowing what's waiting for them. When you enter that park, there's a bulletin board. And tacked was a Ziploc bag that had what ultimately was a photograph of Samantha and a ransom note. The fact that there was a ransom note really ratchets up the tension because, okay, she's alive and what are we going to do to get her back?

A fuzzy photo, a ransom note, texted saying, ain't she pretty? Demanding $30,000. What does that sum reveal? Her hair in braids? She never wore her hair in braids? I haven't worn my hair in braids since I was in grammar school. So what would it mean if I came into the studio with my hair in braids one morning? All of these facts matter to Bobby Chacon, FBI special agent. Bobby, the case breaks wide open, and there's so many facts. It's like drinking out of a fire hydrant.

What does it mean that it was texted? What does it mean that it went to the boyfriend, not the dad? What does it all mean? There's a fuzzy picture. You can't really see her that well, but it's enough to identify it's Samantha. Bobby, what do you make of it? Well, like you said, it's a treasure trove of clues for us to follow. I mean, the photograph

would be immediately looked at by our forensic photography people to try to glean, to get rid of that fuzziness. What else can we learn? What's in the background of that photo? Where that might lead to the location where she is or the type of location. Is she inside? Is she outside? Is she in a vehicle? Isn't she a house? You know, so we're looking at all of those things.

And then our forensic linguists are looking at the language used. Like you said, the language used. What does that mean? All of these things. So really a team, a virtual team is put on something like this. And everybody takes a piece to determine what this particular thing means, because every one of those clues is very deep, and you have to pull on that string and take it, and that requires a lot of manpower. So, I mean, we started looking

at all of those things you just mentioned and tried to run each of them out. To Dr. Bethany Marshall, a psychoanalyst out of California, the words, ain't she pretty? Well, it's hard for me to determine is that ain't she pretty, like mocking the victim and mocking the family? Or is this somebody who is very uneducated and this is the best language he can produce? But certainly it tells me a little bit about the MO of the crime. The MO is not just to extract money. I mean, $30,000 is not a lot of money, at least not here in Beverly Hills where I practice. Well, I don't know what world you're living in, Dr. Bethany Marshall, but come down to earth with the rest of us.

$30,000 is a lot of money. Well, that's more than what some people make in an entire year, Dr. Bethany Marshall. But look at what he did to get it. I mean, he abducted a young woman for $30,000. That's a lot of work. Wouldn't it be easier just to get a job? I mean, you know, the MO here is not just money, Nancy. The MO here is to be cruel, sadistic, to mock the family and to say, I possess her. You don't have her anymore. I'm going to continue to egg this crime on more and more and more by just eking out all these little clues, like dangling them like a little carrot in front of you. So I can have fun at having power over this victim and her entire family and the community. To Cheryl McCollum, the ransom note and the words, which put a chill down my spine,

ain't she pretty. And you know, he's done her hair because she did not braid her hair right he chose that he chose the amount he chose where to leave the ransom note everything is his choice Nancy he chose the boyfriend and to me that tells you he's been watching the news he knows who that kid is he knows what's going on at the home base. The money, the amount, says to me it's not about money. He didn't take her to ransom her. He didn't ransom her immediately. He's not asking for $100,000 in unmarked bills.

He's not telling them where to leave it. He's playing a game with them now. Oh, okay. In my mind, to Bobby Chacon, FBI, that makes it worse. Because he is, the kidnapper is playing a game. And the pawn is Samantha Koenig, this teen girl. And it was actually kind of elaborate because we know the boyfriend gets a text and his face goes sheet white. But John Limley, how does the text to the boyfriend relate to the actual ransom note?

Well, Nancy, it is a bizarre text. And as we've heard, just one jumbled sentence, if you can even call it that. Connor Park sign under pick of Albert. Ain't she purdy? And I say purdy that way because it's spelled p-u-r-t-y so police rushed to Connors Lake Park um right next to it Connors slow down slow down tell me that again so there's the picture the photo taken of her fuzzy but they can tell it's her. And underneath the picture, it says what? Connor Park sign, under pick of Albert, ain't she purdy. Connor Park sign, under pick of Albert. What's Albert? Well, police rushed to this Connor's Park, just a few miles away from downtown Anchorage.

As they enter the park, there is a big bulletin board right there beside the road. And sure enough, on it, there is a memorial flyer for a dog named Albert. And right under that is a Ziploc bag with the photo of Samantha and the ransom note. Oh, my stars. It's making my stomach hurt. Bobby Chacon, FBI. So this perp, this guy in a ski mask that marches Samantha Koenig out of the coffee shop, texts the boyfriend, gives him this information,

Connor Park, sign, pic of Albert, and under it, under a picture of a lost dog named Albert, Ziploc bag with a ransom note and a picture of Samantha Koenig. Huge, huge part of the case, huge break in the case. So as odd as it sounds, this was huge news for us and good news that we don't have a abduction murder the night of the videotape that she was taken. We may now have a kidnapping for ransom. So we may now have a living victim. So this energized the investigation. Not only do we, we may have a living victim, we now have contact with the perpetrator, apparently. So this completely turned the investigation on its head from a, you know, abduction and unknown, you know, results of that to now an active kidnapping case with a ransom demand. So this really turned the entire investigation and, quite frankly, brought hope back into

a weeks-old investigation that now we may have the ability to get Samantha back. But what does it say to you? Because I feel like it's like a cat playing with a little mouse and that look in its eyes as it's batting the mouse back and forth, back and forth before it pounces and kills. There's something, hold on, I got to go to a shrink. Dr. Bethany Marshall in the Stephen Avery case, the media darling of making a murderer, he cut off Teresa Hallback's hair before he raped and murdered her. What is it? And here we see Samantha's hair. We know he braided it. She's never worn her hair like that. What does that mean to you? It means to me that these perpetrators treat their victims like dolls, like they have complete control over them. Remember BTK, the BTK murderer?

Dolls featured prominently in the pictures that he took of himself. When you have a doll, you have complete control over it. You can toss it on the sidewalk. You can rip its head off. You can do whatever you want with it. It is not going to protest. And if you treat a human being, an adult woman, like a doll, you're saying you're my possession. I own you. I can do whatever I want with you. And if I was this family and the police at this point, I would be freaking out and I would be trying to prolong this cat and mouse game as long as possible for fear that he's about to move in and kill her. Well, there's another factor, too. John Limley, wasn't there a newspaper? Was she holding local newspaper with the date February 13th of 2012 to give that photo a time

stamp or a date stamp. To Bobby Chacon, FBI special agent, Bobby, you rattled off so many things that we got to look for in this photo. You said background, inside, outside, the language used, the money sum. What are you looking for? What are you trying to find out? Do you look at every single word? And sticking in my mind is the fact that he spelled ain't she pretty. He spelled it P-U-R-T-Y, I think John Lindley said.

Yeah, you're looking at language use. We have forensic linguists that determine what those words mean and why and we have had people most most notably the Unabomber who misspell words on purpose to miss try to mislead us as to their background so the forensic linguists are experts at pouring through that kind of stuff we have our forensic photography people going through that photograph and seeing what else they can glean out of it we have psychologists quite quite frankly, that are telling us what the ransom demand might mean, what the braiding of the hair might mean. So all of this is now creating a picture of the possible perpetrator and possible motivations.

And all of that leads to, you know, who this person is and therefore where they are. What does it mean to you, Dr. Bethany Marshall, that he uses the slang ain't and ain't she purty, P-U-R-T-Y. No fact can be discounted. No clue can be overlooked. What does that mean? To be honest with you, when John Lemley was saying that, I thought, oh, good Lord, this guy has the mentality of a junior high schooler. And then I thought, criminals are not that smart. And then I thought, they think they're so fascinating, but really, they're pretty boring. So it seems sort of stereotyped and rehearsed, ain't she purdy, like he's been watching too many Western movies. But somehow he thinks he's really fascinating. And he's reeling everything and everybody in with this. Well, see, I disagree because a guy that is so sophisticated that he can send a text to the boyfriend, who he obviously has the boyfriend's cell number. He must've gotten that out of her

cell. And then wisely, I mean, I'm assuming that text came from Samantha's phone. Then he has gone to a local park and he has hidden this in a plastic bag that they can't get prints off. And in that is this same fuzzy picture printed out with the ransom demand. See, I think he's a lot more sophisticated. His deliberate choice to misspell pretty, P-U-R-T-Y, to me, is more chilling than any indicator that he can't spell. He spelled every other word correctly, Bobby Chagon. That's right. And, you know, we will look at that, whether or not this was misspelled on purpose, because that will tell us another piece of the mindset of the perpetrator. So you look at that kind of thing. But in the end, it also we also know that it is unnecessary to a ransom demand. Ransom demands many times are very businesslike with instructions and things like that. This is a taunt. So that ratchets up the

concern that this perpetrator is playing games. It's a taunt not normally seen in a ransom man. If your goal is to get money for this person that you took and then release the person once you get that money, there's no reason to taunt the family. There's no reason to taunt the police. So there, it tells us there's an extra motivation behind this perpetrator. 18-year-old Samantha Sammy Koenig vanishes. A typed ransom note demanding $30,000 from Samantha's family was on the back of a photocopy of the photo. And he sends a text from Samantha's cell phone with obscure directions to the note. What does the note reveal? What do we learn

about her kidnapper? And will this clue be enough to bring Samantha home alive? Nancy Grace, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.