Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - MISSING RILEY STRAIN: AFTER SHOW

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Riley Strain gets separated from his fraternity brothers at Luke Bryan's bar on Broadway in downtown Nashville. Telling his fraternity brothers he will meet them at the hotel, he heads out into the night, alone. Riley Strain never makes it to the hotel. The conversation continued after the show, join us for family friend Chris Dingman's comments.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Where is Riley? Joining us, Chris Dingman, a very dear family friend of the Strains. I want to share something with this group and we can talk. If you guys have questions, I know we're playing chess right now. Nancy understands that too more than anybody. Marathon, I reached out to Marathon the Tuesday after Riley went missing to put in context of how much this ball has been dropped at that area.

The fact that you reached out also and said, hey, we've never even heard of anything. I want to share something with you guys. And Nancy, I love your passion and you're a mama bearer, but I've been in contact with Riley's and I'm calling her his lady friend. She shared some stuff with me last night, which I'm sharing with the family. She and Riley had a private conversation and Riley told her, he goes, you know, you're my favorite person. And she goes, really? And he goes, no, no, wait a minute. You're my second favorite person. And she goes, well, OK, well, who's your favorite? And he goes, my mom.

So, yeah, that's the kid we're looking for. What time was that? What time was that? What we know and we have put together, the last ping that the phone did, we think that is the last conversation. And she is the last person to have any correspondence with him. She had asked him if he was having a good time and he had responded with good lots, L-O-P-S, which was really confusing for her. She's young and she's like, wow, new slang. I don't. So her mom actually Googled it. He's probably writing lots. L-O-T-S. Well, but the funny part with Riley, if you ever communicate him with his phone, the kid was extremely punctual, even if he had had a few beers and exclamation points, emojis. I mean, he was a very punctual kid, a very intelligent kid. So that correspondence

really was odd that, you know, that was said. Could you tell me one more time what it said? I want to make sure I understand. What? It said good, L-O-P-S, lots. Did he ever dictate into his phone? No. So he would have typed that. And he was on foot at night walking. I would think that meant good, lots, lots of fun. I'm very intrigued by what he was saying when he talked to her. He seemed to have his wits about him. Chris, what do you think about this homeless encampment? And, you know, I heard Dr. Bethany talking about how peace loving and sharing the homeless community is. I'm not necessarily agreeing with that. But what do the parents think about that?

We have we actually have two volunteers that have literally been sleeping in the homeless camps that were not homeless. To give you an idea of what we are going to and the outpouring of people in it as a dad, it scares the crap out of me that they're there. We've got their phones pinged. They're doing recordings. Yes, I think there's extremely viable information there. This is information for everybody in this group at the moment. The crazy thing is, is when the TikTok crew hit there, they were already coming to Nashville to protest what the house had done, trying to ban TikTok. We had no idea that there was that huge of a group of TikTokers. They had picked Nashville to come to Nashville to protest,

signs and everything. I was blessed to get in touch with three or four of them. And wow, here we are. It just, you know, I made the comment we're bigger than Tiger King during Corona. We do have people that are physically in the camps. There are a few people of interest that the police are aware of and they are looking for. But homeless people, 99% of them do not want to be found. They don't want to be bothered. What did you just say? Police are looking for who? People are looking, the police are looking for a few homeless people that we do have questions for. The young lady from Nashville iterated that, you know, one of the homeless interviews had yelled

back up the hill to the gentleman, you gentleman, hey, what's going on? And he goes, nothing, it's a drunk guy. We have the name of that gentleman, and we are looking for him. What happened, unfortunately, when everybody went to that specific area, and we have a very limited ground zero for information, a lot of those homeless that was there that evening dispersed and went to other homeless camps in Nashville because they didn't want the press, didn't want to be talked to, didn't want to be seen. We've been blessed with the homeless people that we have been in contact with, though.

They know where those camps are. They've given us names of specific people that they knew was in that street or that area or that exact camp. There's actually a, I'm not sure they're a married couple, but they are a couple that was just down from there about 10 feet. The only lady from Nashville, she'll know the couple I'm talking about probably. They're the ones that, you know, yelled back up. But we have names.

But right now we're just trying to find which camp they went to and what direction they went to. I understand that two groups of homeless encampments state that they saw Riley. Yes. Somebody had mentioned about across the river at the Titan Stadium. That is actual tent city. To give you a demographic, what is where we were at and where Riley was last seen at is, and I don't want to be disrespectful,

it's more of the Beverly Hills of the homeless community in that area. It is the more organized groups, the organized people, the less offensive, et cetera. That's not saying that there's not people there that over in Tent City, and this is literally from our people that are staying in the camps at the moment chris let me understand something you're saying that the homeless people on the other side of the bridge are saying that they saw him no no but the other people on the other side of the bridge where the marathon uh holding facility is uh that is a way more wild west style homeless camp that is where so just just just to be clear on this so these cameras

are trained out over the river to uh protect against threats coming of people coming from the river into the facility and the same with the titan stadium so we were looking at the cameras that actually look under that bridge and chris i would you know i know you said you talked to barrett did you talk to samantha in ohio the of security? Because she's the one who has access to all the counter cameras that are on the dock itself. If not, I can give you her cell phone number. Perfect. Perfect. Where we're at is I'm still based in Springfield, but I've been media for a long time.

And what we've done is we've created Riley's War Room. And we're doing exactly this. In the mornings when we wake up, we're at lunchtime, and then we come home in the evenings, and we put together everything that we found with our contacts. We actually have a burner phone inside the homeless community right now. Guys, we're trying everything we can, but the marathon deal was extremely frustrating for us. Did you tell me that, Chris, did you tell me that you have two people that have embedded themselves in the homeless community right now trying to find out information, staying there

overnight? Yeah, which is just phenomenal, but it's extremely dangerous not knowing the people they're with. If you know or think you know anything about the disappearance of Raleigh Strain, please call 615-862-8600. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.