Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - LSU co-ed car parked running, but WHERE IS KORI?

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

Lousiana authorities are searching for a missing LSU student Kori Gauthier after police found her wrecked car on a bridge. Family members told reporters that the police didn’t notify them about the crash. They first learned she was missing when Gauthier’s employer called them after she didn’t show up for work. The family says they also learned she missed a doctor’s appointment and missed classes. The family reached out to police after pinging the locator on Kori's phone. Kori’s car was towed to an impound lot, following the wreck. Gauthier's phone and wallet were still inside the vehicle.Joining Nancy Grace today: Gabrielle Clements - LSU student Kirby Clements - Gabrielle's father Dale Carson - Criminal Defense Attorney (Jacksonville), Former FBI Agent, Former Police Officer, Author: "Arrest-Proof Yourself" Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst, www.drbethanymarshall.com, New Netflix show: 'Bling Empire' Sheryl McCollum - Forensic Expert & Cold Case Investigative Research Institute Founder Toney Wade - Commander, Cajun Coast Search and Rescue Team, Facebook.com/CajunCoastSAR, cajuncoastk9sar.com Alexis Tereszcuk - CrimeOnline.com Investigative Reporter, Writer/Fact Checker, Lead Stories dot Com, Twitter: @swimmie2009  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. A young co-ed at LSU is missing finding out she didn't show up for work. Gauthier's car was found unoccupied on the Mississippi River Bridge. A state trooper had reported an abandoned vehicle to the local police, but there was an accident before authorities arrived. Another driver hit Gauthier's car, causing extensive damage. The Baton Rouge Police Department says that Gauthier's car was still running. The LSU freshman's personal belongings, including her phone and wallet, were still inside. The car was towed to a junkyard. That's where her family found it by

pinging her phone. Reports say the police department did not contact the registered owner after towing the vehicle. Well, that settles it. I'm never letting John, David, or Lucy out of their rooms again. My 13-year-old twins, I mean, this family is very, very involved in their daughter's life. They let her go off to LSU, and the next thing you know, she doesn't show up for work. They can't find her. They don't hear a word from anybody. And the only way they do figure out where she is is by pinging her cell phone. With me, an all-star panel to try and make sense of it all.

First of all, Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute. Dr. Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst and star of a new Netflix series, Bling Empire, and you can find her at drbethanymarshall.com. Dale Carson is with us, criminal defense attorney out of Jacksonville, former FBI that worked on the Wayne Williams Atlanta and Missing and Murdered Children case, former cop and author of Arrest Proof Yourself. Tony Wade, in the search for Corey, the commander of the Cajun Coast Search and Rescue Team. You can find him on Facebook at Cajun Coast SAR, Cajun Coast Canine SAR.com. S-A-R dot com. Also with me, a young LSU student who has totally immersed herself

in the search for Corey, Gabrielle Clements, and her dad, my longtime friend and colleague, Kirby Clements. But first, to Alexis Tereszczuk, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, also with LeadStories.com,

Alexis Tereszczuk, what is happening? Corey is a beautiful 19-year-old freshman in college. She was leaving her dorm. She left the dorm on Tuesday night before midnight. All of a sudden, after midnight, this is, well, let me say, this is the last time anybody has heard from her since. She has been missing for about a week now. She gets in her car. She is driving, driving across a bridge and disappears. Absolutely no traces of her whatsoever.

No text messages, no phone calls. We don't know where she is. A young man is driving across the bridge. And unfortunately, because of traffic, hits her car. He gets right out immediately. He's so concerned. He looks inside, looks, and he sees that there's a cell phone in there. The car is running.

There is a person there, but there is not a person. Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. You said there's a purse in there, but there's not a person. Well, that was a lot of information to take in so quickly. Let me understand this. So this young girl, Corey Gauthier, LSU co-ed. Freshman. Freshman.

She leaves, goes out in her car. Nobody knows where she's going. The next thing you know, her car is rammed from behind on the bridge over the Mississippi River. You know, that's interesting. You said she was going home. Was her car pointed toward home or

not? She was traveling east. I think she, I believe that's where people believe she was going. Now let's follow up with Tony Wade, our longtime colleague and friend, commander of the Cajun Coast Search and Rescue Team, who is looking for Corey right now. Guys, I want you to take a listen to this. Our friends at NBC 33. Last that we knew, she was on campus. So we call LSU PD first.

And so they that's why they are taking the lead. The family says that her vehicle was found on the Mississippi River Bridge and that it was involved in an accident around 1 a.m. on April 7th. Last thing that we know of she sent my son a snapchat at midnight. LSU put out a statement saying that the car was unoccupied when it was hit. We found out today that a state trooper reported that he saw an abandoned vehicle on the Mississippi River Bridge and then by the time the dispatch called it in and somebody from the sheriff's office could get there, the wreck had already happened. And that it was headed eastbound on the bridge toward Baton Rouge.

Not sure if she was trying to come to my house and changed her mind or what she was doing, but we know she left Baton Rouge and then eventually was going back into Baton Rouge. You know, I just keep looking at this girl's picture and I see her big brown eyes and her beautiful smile. It looks like she's looking right at me. Can we find her? Can we help find her? The tip line 225-578-0807. Repeat 225-578-0807. Where is Corey? You know, this young girl has just turned 18 years old. She is a freshman at LSU. That's just a few years older than my children.

And when I think of sending them off and suddenly this happens to them. Back to you, Tony Wade, or should I say Commander Wade with the Cajun Coast Search and Rescue Team. Tell me about the search and about that bridge. You know, Tony, you and I talked at length when I took the children on an RV trip, and we went over the Mississippi, and we went to the confluence where the Mississippi meets the Missouri. And I'm just thinking about her car stopped, still running over the mighty Mississippi. What could have happened on that bridge? Tell me about the search, Tony.

You know, the search right now is a massive search. There are just a lot of people, a lot of different groups are out searching right now. We did get a report that a canine from a different team made an alert on the river in the same, you know, in one spot. So they're searching it pretty good right now. But the Mississippi is just so difficult to search because the currents are rolling and rolling. And there's multiple things on the bottom for things to get tangled in. It's just it's a really tough search. You know, the Mississippi is so vast, Commander Wade, and you're telling me that one particular area of the Mississippi is being searched right now, Tony?

Yes, they're running sonar on a spot right now where the dogs had indicated, you know, south of the bridge. But again, the Mississippi just throws us so many challenges at a search that confuse the dogs or what have you. It's just a really difficult search. I know there's a lot of ground searches along the banks of the river going on. It's going to go for days. And there's no certainty in this case that she's actually in the river. I mean, for all we know, Commander Wade, she could have been wrestled out of that car because the car is still running and dragged off to be raped or attacked in some way. And the dogs are hitting in that area.

You know, in some parts of the Mississippi, it's as deep as 90 feet, correct? Yes, I think the spots that the dogs alerted in, they were saying between 85 and 90 feet. And the water's zero visibility as well. There's no visibility. Is that Dale Carson jumping in? It is. Jump in, Dale. And I also want to talk to you about those airbags, what you were telling me.

Go ahead, Dale. Well, the zero visibility water just amplifies the problem because of the current. When you're diving in zero visibility water, as I've done on occasion, you can't see anything. It's a matter of feeling for things. Turtles and all that sort of thing, you don't know what you're going to lay your hand on. But when I looked at the photographs

of the actual crash, it's interesting that the airbags were deployed. And my research indicates that a static car, the airbags with a rear-end strike are not supposed to walk. Okay, slow down, slow down. When you and Tony Wade with his Cajun accent start

talking, it's so fast. It's a lot of information to take in. You guys got to slow down. You know, we're just lawyers. Okay? Okay. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we're talking about a missing girl.

She's 18 years old, freshman, LSU, the whole world in front of her. I want to find this girl. Her family wants to find this girl. So, Dale, slow it down. You and Tony, slow it down. What did you just say about the bags? So the bags in the car, airbags, are not supposed to both deploy if there's no one in the car or if it's rear-ended. And it appears what you were saying is certainly possible that she was in the car. We will know that when the DNA is checked on the airbags. Every time an airbag deploys, it leaves a trace of the driver on the airbag, if there is a driver. So the airbags, AlexisTorreshockCrimeOnline.com and LeadStories.com, the airbags did deploy?

Yes, that's what we understand. But this is so strange to me that a state trooper drives by, he sees an abandoned car, he doesn't stop, he doesn't investigate. If I drove by an abandoned car, similar to the boy that drove by the car, he would stop and try to help. I mean, I'd stop and help every dog in my neighborhood without a car. Alexis Therese Chuck, listen to me. We've been together a long time, Alexis. If you see an abandoned car, do not get out of your car to go help. Call 911.

But I'm not a police officer. Don't get out. Okay, but you just said, okay, anyway, don't get out of the car. I didn't say that. You're right. Cheryl McCollum, Director of Cold Case Research Institute. You can find her at coldcasecrime.org. Jump in, Cheryl.

My biggest concern, Nancy, is the car was still running. That means whatever happened to her happened very quickly. If she got out of the car because somebody staged a wreck with her, whatever could have happened by a perpetrator, again, was very, very fast. I'm also heart sick for her family. Can you imagine using Find My iPhone only to see that her car is totaled in a junkyard? You know, I want to go through the timeline again. Kirby Clements joining me. This is Gabrielle Clements' dad. Gabrielle has totally immersed herself in trying to find Corey. She also is at LSU. Kirby, okay, the timeline that I understand is she gets in her car and jump in, Alexis, if you

got a different timeline. And the next thing we know, her car is reported abandoned on a bridge over the Mississippi. The airbags are deployed. The car is still running. Her purse and cell phone are on the car. The car gets towed. After this starts hitting the news, thanks to people like your daughter, Gabrielle Clements, the guy who hit her car calls either the dad or the uncle to say, I hit her car, but nobody was in it. Is that right, Alexis Drozdchuk? That is exactly right. He is the one that he knew what happened. He thought it was so strange, and he reached out to the family

because he didn't know how to contact anybody. He contacted the police when he hit the car, and they came, but he didn't know how to find the person that had been shot. But no, Corey. Okay, Kirby Clements, you and I have worked on, prosecuted a lot of missing people ending up in murder cases. Tell me what your take is on this case, Kirby. One of the things that I had heard was that, you know, they have an app on your phone. I think the school provides an app that you can notify people, you know, where you are. And that it appeared that her car had gone toward the bridge, then gone back in the L.S. towards LSU and then gone back toward the bridge again. I mean, right.

She had moved. Is that Gabrielle? Yes. Gabrielle, tell us what you know, dear. Right. So according to what I saw on Twitter that had been posted by the family using the app called Life360, they saw the accident. They saw that using like videos from the surrounding stores, places she passed, she drove towards the bridge and then away and then towards and away about four times prior to actually getting onto the bridge where the accident occurred. So it was more so like a sporadic driving where they weren't sure what she was doing because she had already texted, I believe, her cousin or her brother that she was on the way to them.

So they were anticipating her arrival. She moves back and forth, and then the car is found on the bridge. Okay, guys, Life 360 works. I know. I've got it on the twins. We all have it on each other. So when Lucy thinks she's going on a walk by herself, listening to whatever she's listening to, we know that she's okay and where she is because we can see her walking, you know, home. It works.

So Gabrielle Clements, tell me your understanding of the CARS movements. So from my understanding, she went, it was like she was going westbound and eastbound. So she kept going forwards and backwards. It was a lot of speculation when no one understood why. She'd already said the direction she was going in. It was a known destination. I believe the DPS had the address she was going to typed in, but her family made a note that they, that she would have known exactly where she was driving to. So everything was confusing towards the ending. And I think they narrowed it down to about a 10 minute time in which they did not know what she was doing. What does that tell you Kirby?

Well, I, what got me concerned is cause I was thinking, well, was it someone in the car with her? Or was she being followed by someone and was trying to, you know, avoid, you know, anything? And because I think that it was reported that the vehicle decelerated rapidly, you know, at the bridge. So those are my concerns is that it was either someone in the car, was she having an argument and just, you know, got out? Or was it a, she was being followed. And again, as you indicated, someone staged an accident and that was concerning. But what was even more concerning was the fact that once they found the car with the purse, I mean, if you find a vehicle running with no driver, that says to me, start looking around for the driver right now, because it's a vehicle on the bridge, purse, cell phone. Why tow? Someone should have been looking that night.

You know what's amazing to me, Tony Wade, Commander Cajun Coast Search and Rescue, is that there's not a surveillance camera on the bridge. What I'm understanding is there's cameras at the beginning and the end of the bridge, but no cameras where the incident would have taken place. And what do those cameras show, Tony? That's what I was told. What do those cameras show? I haven't heard any information at all.

All I was told is there's no cameras where the accident took place at. But it seems to me we would be able to tell if somebody was in the car with her. Yeah, that has been my question all along. But Nancy Grace, it also sounds like hesitation marks in a suicide. You know, you're trying to decide what to do, and finally you decide this is what you're going to do, which leads me to the point I was involved in the Atlanta kidnappings and killings. And when a body strikes the water, it doesn't float. You can't see it.

It goes directly underwater, and it's several days before it will actually return to the surface. And with that current and the actual river, the Mississippi River right there is in flood stage. And so that body could be, if it's in the water, could be miles from there by now. Del Carson, you're the expert. I know that. But Cheryl McCollum, to me, if this were a suicide of a girl this age, which is statistically very, very low likelihood, think about it. If you were going to commit suicide, I think you would pull up, cut the car off, and sit there and think. Not erratically go forward and back and forward and back and forward and back, over and back. That sounds like someone is hitting the brake and then trying to go forward, almost as if you're in some kind of a struggle.

Exactly. Well, I'll tell you the thing that bothers me the most here is perception matters. And you've got a person that no contact was made with the car owner, no contact to try to find the driver. Nobody went out of their way to figure out why do we have a running car on a bridge that's been wrecked with airbags employed? And then you've got the school taking down posters of a missing student. The perception is nobody cared. And we got to do something about that today. Crime stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we were talking about a missing girl. She's just 18 years old, just turned.

Corey Gauthier, LSU freshman. Her car is found running with her cell phone and her purse in the car. It's been rear-ended on a bridge over the Mississippi. Let's talk about Gabrielle Clements. Is it true that a lot of the posters, missing posters, about her were taken down on campus? Right. So a lot of the students went around after the uncle came to LSU. He passed out posters. There was a large student help, and they put posters up all throughout LSU Student Union. That's like a really dense part of the campus that gets a lot of foot traffic. So more people to see the flyers and LSU had them removed and they sent out an email to us basically explaining that it didn't have the official LSU markings, whatever may have been.

But in my opinion, I was like this. A girl is missing at the end of the day. Even if your school name isn't on the papers, the goal should be to find her, not say that you are attached to anything. So I don't, I felt as though it just, it was very stressful to see that. And so eventually they did go and put the posters back up and this was during, um, around when they were doing school tours. So they took them down during the tours, put them back up. So prospective students and their parents wouldn't see there was a student missing? Right.

Wow. But also it's like more people. Exactly. Here's the truth of what we learned from LSU Amber Shearer. We are sorry for the confusion that caused the posters to initially be taken down. An employee was following our student union's policies against hanging flyers on the walls. Obviously, this is a unique situation. The removal was unwarranted.

The flyers have been replaced. Yeah, I don't know what I think about that. That's a whole other can of worms. I can tell you what I think about it. Go ahead. When common sense is not employed and you just we got to go by policy are you kidding me this isn't a poster put up about hey join the nazi club and it doesn't have the school official stamp saying you can put this up this is a child missing and it should have been everywhere with

no concern you know what i agree with you and there's going to be plenty of time for finger pointing after we find her. I'm just not buying this whole suicide thing. Dr. Bethany Marshall, we need to shrink. Nancy. Jump in, Bethany. Nancy, you talked about seeing the picture of her and her family. She is gorgeous. Beautiful long brown hair, big eyes.

This woman, I know you can't tell if somebody has a mental defect just from a picture, but she looks so intact. She's dressed beautifully. The car is well maintained. This is an 18-year-old who has the rest of her life in front of her. This is not a girl who's going to jump off a bridge. Even her belt perfectly matched her pants and her top. She's completely well put together. She is not a suicidal young woman. Nancy, I just had a flashback to at times when I was in my late teens and early 20s driving down the freeway and I would see a car pull up

behind me and men leering and trying to follow me. It happens to young women all the time. And what do they do? They start looking for the nearest police station, or they start fumbling with their ways of the navigation and trying to find a safe place to go. I don't know if somebody was in the car with her, and that was the reason for the erratic driving, or someone was following her. But just her beauty and the time of night made her a prime target. I would be curious, was she using Waze? What was the navigation system? What was she searching for that made her go back and forth? Was she looking for a safe haven? You know, to you, Alexis, to us at CrimeOnline.com, what can you tell us about, did she put her home address in the nav?

She did. Also didn't make sense to me because she knew how to get home. Her mom's home address, actually. Yeah. So she would know that. Although sometimes I like to put it in the nav to see if I can beat my time home or something like that. Or just to see how long it takes. What time of the day or night was this? This was after midnight.

Well, probably started about 1030 at night and then the car accident was after midnight. Well, probably started about 1030 at night and then the car accident was after midnight. So it was Tuesday night to Wednesday, very, very, very early in the morning. No, she has no mental defect, Bethany, at all. I'm looking at this other picture of her while we're talking of her wearing her little purple beanie hat. Just, you know, she was so involved this this girl has no mental defects she was not suicidal nothing but what can you tell me about the boyfriend Alexis Tereshchuk didn't she have a boyfriend she did have does have a boyfriend and her family said that he was the last person to see her that night and that they were together.

I guess they were in their maybe his dorm and meaning he's a student at LSU. And they got in an argument and he is the last person who has seen her alive. That is what her family has said. I assume at LSU, Gabrielle Clements, it's blanketed with surveillance cameras. Right. Gabrielle Clements, it's blanketed with surveillance cameras, right? So we would know if she was the one that got into her car or somebody else got into her car, right? Right. So LSU frequently asks us to just identify people. We'll get emails, identify this person, which we did not get regarding her case.

It actually took a good moment for them to send us something, which they have now. But no, so far we have not seen anything regarding her last moments at LSU, at least not to my knowledge. Do you know what dorm she was in, Gabrielle? No, I don't. But now Gabrielle used to be an RA, so she's also aware of the fact that, you know, freshmen are supposed to live on campus, so they're supposed to be more. Correct, so freshmen supposed to live on campus, so they're supposed to be more...

Correct, so freshmen have to live on campus. Most of the time, your RAs are aware of, like, if you're leaving, if you're going out of town, that was the job, was to keep up with your residents. So it just, yeah. Nancy, there is a picture from, well, it hasn't been published, but I understand from her family that that's how they can describe exactly what she was wearing, that there is a, there is video camera at the dorm

that she was leaving. And so that they can see that she was wearing kind of a LSU purple sweatshirt and leggings. And I think black leggings, purple sweatshirt. What did you say? I want to say pink slippers, but maybe, maybe, you know, just like tennis shoes. And then her hair was in a bun, but the photograph has not been released, but there is, I believe her family had seen the photo. Guys, the search is intensifying for a missing LSU co-ed. Her name is Corey Gauthier. Her car found abandoned rear ended on a bridge over the Mississippi river. She was leaving from her dorm area to go to her mom's house that night. She has not been seen since.

Last seen with the boy, last known to be with the boyfriend. They have an argument. She leaves. This girl in no way was suicidal. Why was the car going backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards before it got to where it finally stopped? The airbags deployed. Is there DNA on them to Tony Wade, commander of the Cajun search and rescue team,

his team in charge of the search. I understand this dog, this canine, has alerted twice during the search for Corey Gauthier. What do you know? Well, that's about all I know about that right now. I know we got a call that some dogs from a separate team had alerted on a spot of the river. They backed them off of the spot and went back, and the dog alerted again. You know, there's so many people missing in that area. It's one of the things that concerns me.

We still got two duck hunters that have been missing for months now. I don't know. i trust the dogs when a dog tells me there's something there i i i trust that that but after the dogs are learning it's just it's so difficult to try and do any type of recovery you know they put cement slabs in the mississippi river to help fight erosion they have cables on those so you can't necessarily drag like you would do for a normal drowning case because you're tangled up in the cables and putting divers in the water there is extremely risky because of the risk of entanglement. It's just the Mississippi, we have searched on the Mississippi River for years now and it's just it is one of the most

challenging places that I've ever been to do it to operate in search. It's just one of the most challenging places that I've ever been to operate and search. It's just extremely difficult. It's extremely dangerous. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we're talking about a missing girl, just 18, LSU freshman, Corey Gauthier. Dale, her cell phone. Don't you know a girl this age, if she had thought of suicide, would have sent a suicide text? You know that, right?

I do. And one of the things that concerns me is that the troopers went by and they didn't stop. And this is now the scene of an abduction or a homicide right there. And so there's no effort to check the railings for anything. And it may be that the accident that happened was only the second accident, not the first accident. Because when you have airbags deployed, that indicates something has struck the front of the car. And apparently, based on the testimony of this individual driving the car, he hit the rear of her car, which should not deploy the airbags. So, you know, the doc brings up something really interesting, and it is that this girl's put together.

The likelihood of her committing suicide is minimal, to be sure. And your idea that someone else was in the car with her or she was being followed seems to be more accurate. Nancy, can I jump in? Yes. Also, she missed a doctor's appointment. That's relevant to me because that's a future event that she sent and she set in stone. That's not somebody suicidal. The other thing is a Snapchat she sent her brother at midnight. What happened between that Snapchat at midnight and being on the bridge at one? That doesn't sound suicidal. Again, she's sending social texts. She's making doctor's appointments.

She's got class. She's got work. What about that, Dr. Bethany? She's right. Well, I agree. This young woman had a future ahead of her. I wondered what the doctor's appointment was for. I mean, what was going on with her health?

Was she pregnant? Was something going on with the boyfriend towards her? But, Nancy, there's another big story hole here, and I'm waiting for somebody to fill it in. Was there anything going on on women. Did this young woman have a stalker? Has anybody looked at her online profile, her Twitter, her Instagram, you know, her emails to see if anybody was preoccupied with her? You know, 18-year-old young women who travel predictable routes and are in college are at a very high risk for abduction, sexual abduction, homicide. So there's so many more avenues to explore. The scene of the crime potentially is not just on the bridge. It may have started months or weeks earlier with some other relationship

or something that was going on in her life or where she was being victimized somewhere. I actually have a point on that one. That's actually rather, actually, that's the whole reason Gabrielle actually came home. And we're not making this about Gabrielle at all. But Gabby had an experience out at LSU just in February. Just go ahead and just give the... Right. So I was driving across the street. I regularly drive. A group of white males in a truck next to me asked me to wind down my window. I do.

They're just asking me questions. And at the end, they yell that they're coming for me and proceed to follow me. I was driving to a friend's house at the time in which I switched my direction. I thought I should just go home. It's about 9 o'clock at night. They follow me. I take a different route home. I'm cutting through back streets. They're still behind me. Eventually I, um, duck off into a CVS parking lot and I just turn off my car lights and sit there, see the car drive next to the, on the street next to me. They don't see me. They keep going to which I go into the CVS, call my father and have a worker there escort me out.

So that was I reported it to LSU police pretty recently, actually, not at the time, but did still report it and basically came home within a week of it happening. It was enough for me to just decide I didn't need to be out there anymore. So if something like that did happen to her, God forbid, but I could understand that. I could see that route happening. You know what, Gabrielle, you just put chills down my arms. Kirby, after all you've gone through to raise this child to think, somebody would come along and try to get her like that. I'm just wondering what, if anything like that happened with Corey.

And that's what concerned me because when they gave the route of the car and I was trapped, because Gabby was telling me, you know, dad, this is what's going on. And so I was like, well, what did she do? And then she explained the route. I'm like, you know, that sounds like somebody that's trying to avoid someone. And then I thought about her situation. With the back and forth and the circling. Guys, take a listen to our friend Scotty Hunter, WAFB.

As the search intensifies in the air, on land, and in the water, the biggest question that remains for the 9U's investigators is why more wasn't done the moment someone else crashed into Gauthier's car early Tuesday. The man who slammed into Gauthier's car on the bridge said nobody was inside when he went to check the car. And when they swerved over and cut lanes, all I saw was a parked car. So I locked up my brakes because it was either the white car or the 18-wheeler. According to police, her car was left running on the bridge. Once officers got to the scene, they found Gauthier's personal belongings, including her phone, inside.

And they had her car towed to a junkyard. Back to you, Alexis. Jump in. This is why crime scenes are so important. Was the car in drive or park when it was rear-ended? I mean, those are important critical factors that are lost over time. When you tow a car out of there, that all changes. And we don't have that information because the trooper didn't stop and assess whether or not somebody was hurt or in distress on the bridge the first time it

was seen. You know what? You're right. Commander Tony Way, that adds into the intricacies of this search, all the missteps at the beginning. I understand that you were also using drones and helicopters in the search. Yes, there are multiple drones up. Helicopters have been involved in the search. It's just widespread. And again, how things are handled in the beginning, the faster you can get these resources on scene, you increase your odds of finding something. You know, I think this was mishandled from the very beginning. You know, that trooper should have stopped.

You know, and I agree with the evidence of the crime scene that all of that has changed. None of the car was removed. I agree with that 100%. But as a search aspect, it just makes it very difficult when first we're not giving information, and then we have to wait several days before we're even allowed to do anything. I just think across the nation, things need to change like this. There's probably a lot of people out there that could have been found alive that weren't because everything was held up

through policy and procedure. I think those policies and procedures need to be looked at and changed accordingly. You know what, Tony Wade, I agree with you, and there have been so many missteps in this case, I hardly know where to start. First of all,

them not, police, law enforcement, not doing anything about the car on the bridge. How can you not notice that it's running and the airbags are deployed? Second of all, the posters being taken down. Third of all, acting like there's no urgency, as we see so often when young girls go missing. They immediately think they're a, quote, runaway. Everything has gone wrong so far until the Cajun Coast Guard has gotten involved. Guys, I want you to take a listen to our friends at WAFB. LeVar Gauthier says he only found out his daughter was missing after his wife couldn't get a hold of her Wednesday.

Her mom called me multiple times, and that's highly unusual. And she sent me a text that my daughter wasn't answering her phone. So I immediately started calling, trying to contact her, and I got nothing. The one step police did not take was notifying the owner of the abandoned car. Once he found out she was missing, her dad says he raced to Baton Rouge. I left La Paz from work, and I came to Bat Baton Rouge and that's kind of when the process got started. BRPD says their main focus was to move the car off the bridge to prevent any other crashes. In a statement, they told WAFB in part, the registered owner of the unoccupied vehicle was not contacted, but this investigation remained ongoing. From taking down the missing posters,

to not noticing a car running over the Mississippi with the airbags deployed, to not noticing the rear ending, to not contacting the owner of the car, her dad, when it was first towed. Everything seemingly has gone sideways in this case. Is there a chance we can bring Corey Gauthier home alive? Tip line 225-578-0807. And repeat, 225-578-0807. We wait as justice unfolds. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend.

This is an iHeart Podcast.