Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Missing Texas mom Emily Wade found in flooded creek, but questions remain

Episode Date: January 22, 2019

Missing mom Emily Wade's body was found in a Texas creek, downstream from a flooded road crossing, but so far investigators have not found her car. Nancy Grace questions about how Wade might have died outside of the vehicle, which is contrary to most cases in which cars are swamped by flood waters. She is joined by Toney Wade, commander of Cajun Coast Search and Rescue -- the volunteer search team that found Wade's remains Monday. Nancy's experts also include Atlanta lawyer Ashley Willcott, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan, and Crime Stories reporter John Lemley. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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with action information that you can use to change your life and protect your child. Give that as a gift, not another onesie. Find out how to protect your child when you're out at the mall or the store or the grocery, in the parking lot, at home. Find out about protection regarding babysitters and daycare, even online. I'd rather have that any day of the week than a plastic toy or, God forbid, a toy gun. Join Justice Nation. Go to crimestopshere.com. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Emily Wade is originally from Kentucky.

The car she was driving was her mom's 2012 silver Nissan Altima with Kentucky license plates 411PAZ. We just want her home. Jared Jones and Emily Wade share custody of their 7-year-old daughter. As of this morning, they hadn't told her yet that her mom is missing. It's going to break her heart. It is. We don't know what to say to her, but we're going to have to tell her something. She's very intuitive and she knows something is wrong. Her family says Emily Wade's bank account hasn't been touched, that her cell phone, one she

only uses for text messaging, hasn't been used either. They are baffled and so are police and both are asking for the public's help to bring Emily home. No, she's never done anything like this before. That's what scares me. She would not do this to her mother. I know she wouldn't do it to me. She knows how to worry. She would not do this to me. She would not do this to her daughter. No, nothing like this. That's the mom of a beautiful young mom herself emily wade the mother to a little girl and emily's ex jared jones talking about the search for emily who seemingly just disappears off the face of the earth has a regular day at and then says she's having pizza and a movie with a co-worker.

She leaves. The co-worker spots the taillights heading into the distance, and then she's never seen again. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. In the last hours, the search for Emily Wade comes to a sad but still mysterious end. Listen.

Emily Wade was gone 10 days when her mother told us she feared the worst. I'm scared. I'm scared of what this outcome is going to be. The 16th day she learned those fears were founded. Emily's family said it was too tough to talk tonight after a group of searchers found a body they believed to be Emily's south of town. You know, in this case, there was no tips, no leads. We just had no clue. We were eliminating places, what we were doing.

It was members of Tony Wade's Cajun Coast Search and Rescue who were out looking Monday morning. The foliage, the trees, extremely thick. Where a good part of Ensign Road is washed out by Chambers Creek. Teams searched by air here last week, but Monday on foot, they found her about 500 feet downstream. It's so thick that we really couldn't get into where she was found, which is really, really thick. The creek is high and police confirm it also was on January 5th when Emily disappeared. She was driving, having left a friend's house at 8.30. It was dark, and these signs off Ensign Road may have been her only warning about water, if she could see them.

Still, we don't know for sure if she drove through here. Her car hasn't been found, and the medical examiner will share how she died but in the meantime overlooking a winding washed out road even the experts can't help but wonder i think they need to put up some more barricades or something just cold completely close the access to it when it's when when the water's going to be up like that you know try and avoid another tragedy you are hearing our friends at ktrk tv talking to tony way commander of the cajun coast search and rescue with me now tony wade the commander of the cajun coast search and rescue along with ashley wilcott juvenile judge

lawyer you can find her at ashleywil.com, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University, death investigator and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, Joseph Scott Morgan, and crimeonline.com investigative reporter, John Limley. John, maybe you need to recount that again for me, because it doesn't make sense to me that she's having pizza and a movie with a co-worker. She's going a very short distance home to the apartment she shares with her mom who helps her take care of her little girl. And she's not far away at all. She knows the

way. And then she ends up by accident drowned in a body of water outside of her car and nobody can find the car. You just better explain it to me, John Limley. Certainly. It is a head-scratcher as to how all of this could have happened in such a relatively short amount of time. As we've been talking about over the past few days, Emily Wade lived in an apartment with not only her seven-year-old daughter, but also her mom as well in Ennis, Texas, about 35 miles south of Dallas. Now, on the first Saturday of the year, that's

January 5th, Emily asked her mom, after she got home from work at Chili's restaurant, if she could use her mom's car to go to a male co-worker's house. The two of them were going to eat pizza and watch a movie. Now, the last time her family saw her was late afternoon as Emily left for that friend's house. Apparently, she stayed there, well, long enough to watch a movie and eat some pizza, a few hours, and according to the co-worker, she left his house around 8 30, presumably heading for home. Okay, so that's 8 30. I don't know if it was, I'm sure it had to have been dark by that point. Let's go to the expert with me, Tony Wade, Commander of the Cajun Coast Search and Rescue.

Tony, it's a real pleasure and honor to have you with us. I don't understand, Tony, how she accidentally ended up outside of her car, dead in a body of water, and the car hasn't shown up you know that's that's one of the questions that we're asking uh you know do we do or do i think that it's possible uh yes i do by all means looking at the area and everything i think it is possible um you know but typically in history when we found someone uh that that drove off into a body of water or something out there, they were found in the car, not outside of the car. It does raise some questions for us.

We were told last night by a rumor that they had a sonar hit on the car in the creek. But that has yet to be confirmed. They haven't retrieved the car yet. Looking at the area, I can see where somebody is. It's really just an of the way place. Dark, dark, really dark. I can see somebody with at night drive off into the creek. Uh, but as you know, at the same time, it raises a lot of questions too.

There's a lot of things don't fit for me. Um, uh, it just makes me wonder, I'm the same way I'm this I'm scratching my head on this deal. What doesn't fit for my, my, my me guys special guest tony way commander of the cajun coast search and rescue is was this spot on the way from the co-worker's apartment to her home tony no no it wasn't uh it's it's not far from the co-worker's house. It's just, it's a different route, a much longer route, but it's not far from the co-worker's house at all. Not far from the co-worker's house, but not on the route home. Now, when you say it was not on the route home, when you say, Commander Wade, that it was not on the route home was there

a way was it the long way home could she have gotten home without turning back that way or was this like totally uh i'm driving to california as opposed to atlanta that's really not on the way okay so could was this a long way home? Well, it was, you know, she could have gotten home that way. It was, it was this, that would have been a, an extremely long route. She had to make a huge circle to get back home. So that doesn't make sense. So this was not on the way home.

It doesn't. Not on the way home. It doesn't make sense to me at all. Now, okay. Let me, let me go to the next thing describe the area for me commander wade please it's uh it's a very rural area um corn corn fields uh cotton fields it's just kind of out of the way there's there's very limited lighting out there it's just really really dark. It's a gravel road.

It's not even paved. You know, it's just this little corner tucked out of the way. You know, I don't know what she would have been doing going that way. I want to go to John Loomley, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. What details do you have? Well, as far as the weather goes, which would have led to this swollen creek, this part of Texas has had much more than its share of rain, really going all the way back to last summer. On January 5th, the sun set around 530. So by the time Emily left her

co-worker's house, it had been dark for a few hours. And as you're driving along Ensign Road, there are, as Tony has mentioned, a couple of signs warning that the low water crossing ahead is considered closed when there's high water. However, one of those signs has fallen over. The other one's difficult to read, even in the best of conditions. There are no streetlights. With all of this, and especially if Emily was not concentrating on her driving, it's easy to see how she could drive right into that school and greet. Well, I completely disagree with you, John Limley, because if what you're saying is correct, there were signs, warning signs. She had to go, hey, this isn't the right way. I didn't pass this on the way to his place. This is not the way home.

To me, this doesn't make sense. Guys, there are no video cameras. There are no cameras outside that we know of, the coworkers or her home, to help us in the search but regarding cameras how valuable they are when do you want to spot an intruder in your home when do you want video evidence do you want to catch that burglar casing your home or after he's already inside you can ask john his blink camera alerted him to burglars trying to break in while he and his family are home. Or Shannon, her Blink camera caught a thief stealing packages. Both times, Blink video clips sent to police to crack the case and convict the crooks. Blink motion-activated indoor-outdoor cameras, wire-free, set up in minutes,

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They're a brilliant way to monitor your package deliveries. Go to BlinkProtect.com slash Nancy, BlinkProtect.com slash Nancy. That's BlinkPprotect.com slash Nancy blinkprotect.com slash Nancy. That's blinkprotect.com slash Nancy. Blink is an Amazon company. If she could get to a phone, if she could get to us at all, she would. And that's what scares me the most. Shirley Wade is going on day 10 of not hearing from her daughter, Emily Wade. Emily's mother says the last time she saw her daughter, she was going to a co-worker's to eat pizza and watch a movie. Police say they have talked with that co-worker who says he saw Wade drive away from his house around 830 that same night. Wade was driving her mother's 2012 silver Nissan Altima with Kentucky license plates. You are hearing our friends at WKYTV. That's Hillary Thornton and Emily's mom, Shirley Wade.

Now, in the last hours, we learned that the body of the missing Texas mom, beautiful young mom, Emily Wade, discovered in a creek bed. Was she swept into flooding waters? And why can't they find her car? How did she get out of her car? And this was not on the way home from the coworkers to her home. A lot of unanswered questions that I'm not buying the accident theory. Not yet anyway.

Straight out to Joseph Scott Morgan, forensics expert, author, Blood Beneath My Feet. Weigh in, Joe Scott, because how do you get out of your car? That doesn't seem right to me. To me, I've got to find out what the autopsy says. Yeah, I do too, Nancy. I want to know what the ME has to say from the autopsy. And, you know, one of the big questions here, she's apparently, I'm understanding, Tony, she's kind of free floating in this body of water.

I want to know how she came to be outside of the vehicle. Were the windows down? Was she unbelted? Does she have impact-related injuries? Right there, if it's raining, I can guarantee you she didn't have her windows down. Well, I agree. That's one of the things that I'm wondering, and that's the big conundrum here. Also, what was the weather like that night? Was it pouring down rain? Was it misting? Was she just trying to get her head clear? reported on this on this case the idea was that uh was that her house where she resided was

literally just around the corner from this other guy's place now keep in mind she's from kentucky she's not a native of ennis this area right here she's not going to be familiar with these areas particularly hold on right there right there joseph Scott Morgan. Ashley Wilcott, how many more stupid women driver comments do we have to hear? If she lived right around the corner, why was she this far away going completely the wrong way, where there are signs going warning, warning, warning? You don't think she figured that out? Yeah, so none of this adds up, right? I think that's what we're all seeing is it doesn't make good common sense going the wrong way, ignoring warnings, and oh, she got into flood

water, deceased, but we can't find the car. We don't know what happened, but something doesn't smell right. I understand it was not raining at the time. Now, the flooding was residual from earlier rainfall. Is that right? Let me go out to Commander Tony Wade joining us. What do you know about that, Commander? Well, what I understand, it had rained that day. I've never been able to pinpoint if it was raining that night or not. I do know that this creek is fed from Lake Bardwell.

Lake Bardwell has some dams on it, and when the water rises to a point that they're considered or worried about flooding, they open those dams, then it pours into the creek. And the current is pretty strong. One of the other things that I want to comment on, you know, there was a reporting with the news that said that she was last seen on Clay Street, which is right around the corner from her home, which is totally false. The area that she was last seen in, the co-worker's house, is quite some distance from her home. It's not close to her home at all. It's several miles, probably 15 or 20 minutes away.

We went down to the creek on Sunday. The Sunday that we started our searching, we went down to the creek. We were able to cross the bridge. They had closed the dam so that they could search the area. They opened the dams back up, I think, on Monday. You cannot cross there at all anymore. The current is just pouring through there. You know, the comments about her being in the car, windows down or what have you, I just, for some reason, I'm just not buying that. History repeats itself in my mind.

We worked several cases like this before, and the victims were always found in the car. Did she get in the water and drive off into the water and try to get out of the car to swim to shore? I mean, that's a possibility, but I just, I don't buy it. I don't buy the whole scenario that she drove off into that creek. I just, there's just something about it just not striking me that that's what happened. Me too. Commander, with me is Tony Way, commander of the Cajun Coast Search and Rescue. Tony, there's just something about it just not striking me that's what happened me too commander with me is tony way commander of the cajun coast search and rescue tony there's just something about it maybe i'm just conditioned from all the years of fighting crime and investigations that i think

there's a monster in every shadow but you know how hard it is commander when you go in the water in a vehicle to get that window down and get out that's hard yes yes yeah i i totally understand why is it so hard commander why is it so hard well you know you have the pressures of the water it's going to be very hard to open the door or window where the windows aren't going to roll down with electric windows once the car is submerged to begin with you know the electrical system is going to short out so the windows aren't going to roll down with electric windows once the car is submerged to begin with you know the electrical system is going to short out so the windows aren't going to roll down she would have had to open the door when a car is sinking uh like that and the pressure from the water outside trying to get in it's just going to be next to impossible to open the door you know once the car fills up with water then you can open the door but i just i'm not buying

this story i'm just not buying it at all. So at the electric windows, they short out the minute the water, the boat goes in the, the car goes in the water. Yes. Yeah, the whole electrical system is going to short out and shut down. So you should have to be, you know, superhuman to get out once that car went in the water. I'm scared to death, I'll be honest with you. I'm scared to death is what's wrong. I just don't know what's

wrong. I don't know where she is. She's been gone now for four days and it's killing me. I love her so much and I just want her to come home. This is not the outcome anyone was hoping for. According to a search volunteer, the body believed to be that of 38-year-old Emily Wade was found not far from the home of a co-worker she was visiting the night that she went missing. Now, Wade disappeared, as you mentioned, on January 5th. According to her mother, Wade told her that she was going to a co-worker's house that night to have dinner and watch a movie. She never made it back home. Now, Wade's mother told me that co-worker said Wade left the house a The woman's body was found in a creek bed. The woman's body was found in a creek bed and was taken to the hospital to get back home.

Now Wade's mother told me that co worker said Wade left the house a few hours later, and detectives say that co worker has been cooperative since the very beginning of this missing persons investigation. Now, according to Ennis police

search volunteers found a woman's body matching Wade's description late Monday morning in a creek bed known to have flooded that night. The floodwaters in that area are still flowing very quickly. The low water crossing there is still impassable. Now investigators are still waiting on the medical examiner in Dallas County to determine the cause of death as well as ID this body to see if it is in fact that of Emily Wade. From there they can determine if this was an accident or something more. Now I can tell you

that Wade has an eight-year-old daughter who has been staying with her father, Wade's ex-boyfriend, here in the Ennis area. So, still a lot of unanswered questions tonight. Hi, Nancy Grace here. Have you ever Googled yourself, your neighbors, somebody at work, a crush? 57% of Americans admit to keeping an eye on their own online reputation. 46% admit to using the Internet to look up somebody from their past. But Google and Facebook, the tip of the iceberg when it comes to finding personal information. There's an innovative new website called Truthfinder. It's now revealing the full scoop on millions of Americans. Truthfinder can search through hundreds of millions of public

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Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Her family is worried we spoke with the father of Emily's seven-year-old daughter who describes her as a happy person and especially close with her mother and her young girl our daughter is she's hanging in there she's staying strong she's got such a tough little cookie and I. And I think she's staying strong for me and her granny. But we just, I know she's hurting, and we just want her mom back. Emily recently moved here from Kentucky. She was last seen driving a 2012 Nissan Altima with Kentucky license plates.

I'm not buying the whole accident theory yet. In the last hours, the body of Emily Wade has been found in a body of water. Not in her car. Her car hasn't even been found yet. Straight out to forensics expert, author of Blood Beneath My Feet, Joseph Scott Morgan. Joe Scott, there's so many reasons that the autopsy is so important. Hold on. To Tony Wade, commander of the Cajun Coast Search and Rescue, you saw her body.

Was there any visible injury, Commander Wade? I didn't get down there to look at the body closely, but from what we could see and also what we were told, that she was in pristine shape. Pristine. The body looked really well. To Joseph Scott Morgan again, I wanted to get that fact before you're in your consideration, Joe Scott.

The autopsy is critical. It's going to tell us so much on so many different levels. What all will they be looking for to determine cause of death, possible assault, and will water hinder those findings? Yeah, I tell you, I appreciate what Tony was saying. There's nothing like having eyes on at the scene, but many times, particularly at night, it's hard to appreciate everything that's out there.

So they're going to look completely externally at her to see if there's any kind of trauma whatsoever in those bright lights of the morgue. But what is critical here, Nancy, and you kind of alluded to it, was the water. Does she have anything in her lungs that gives us an indication that she may have essentially taken water on? That is, she's attempting to breathe, she's submerged, she drowns. So one of the things that we look for in cases like this is to see the weight of the lungs and also the presence of water in the lungs. And also something else that's interesting, we look for water in the inner ear in cases of drowning as well. So that's going to be telltale, and we won't know anything more

until these autopsy results are released. It just rips your heart out. I'm having a hard time. I just, every day gets harder. A mother's heart is breaking. I'm scared I'll never see her again alive. Shirley Wade, living with her 38-year-old daughter Emily Wade in Ennis, an hour south of Dallas when her daughter disappeared. Emily, a waitress at

Chili's, reportedly went to a co-worker's for pizza and a movie. She hasn't been seen since. Emily was last seen wearing a peach-colored sweater. Police say she was driving a silver 2012 Nissan Altima with Kentucky plates. If anybody has seen Emily, seen that Nissan anywhere, please, we're asking you to contact the department. You are hearing from our friend Carrie Sanders at NBC News. I'm just not buying it. Something is off.

To Ashley Wilcott, judge and lawyer at AshleyWilcott.com. Ashley, it just doesn't seem right to me, and I'm hoping against hope that being submerged in water did not destroy forensic evidence on her person. Well, I'm hoping against hope that being submerged in water did not destroy forensic evidence on her person. Well, I'm afraid that it will. I mean, that's just the reality, right? Once you are submerged in water, that's going to remove some of it, but it doesn't mean there won't be forensic evidence. The other thing, Nancy, is I'm just hopeful and prayerful and it sounds like they are that law enforcement looks at the totality of the circumstances and starts wide

open and then narrows down. She might have been submerged in a car. She could have been kidnapped, killed, and dumped in the creek. We don't know what happened. And so they have to start broad with every single scenario and narrow down as they get any evidence from her body. Back to our commander joining us, Tony Way, commander of the Cajun Coast Search and Rescue. What about it, Commander Way? What is it that doesn't sit right

with you? We probably were a thousand or so cases a year of missing persons. And we have found people that have driven off in water and things like that. And they were always inside the car. The relation to where she was from the co-worker's home throws up a big flag for me. Her being outside of the car throws a big flag up to me. Just her being in that area alone, it just doesn't fit right. It doesn't seem. Everything about Emily, you know, we always try to figure a pattern together of a person's life, of how they act, what they do, and all these things. And it's just this outside of the pattern that we came up with Emily.

I just don't place her in that area on her own. I don't place her being out of the car once we came up with Emily I just don't place her in that area on her own I don't place me on her getting her being out of the car once it was submerged I just there's too many things about it that just doesn't fit the typical the typical situation it's just it's just everything on the outside of it I don't I don't agree with it at all because I've been thinking for the longest time I carried in my minivan and somehow it's gotten lost it looked like a mini hammer and it's used for if you go off a bridge because if you have a minivan like mine, it's a Toyota Sienna, if you have one

like that, there aren't roll-up windows as an alternative, which I think that cars with electrical windows should also have a roll-up as well, but they don't't so if that car went into the water as you were describing commander tony wade it would short out the electrical system and you'd have to break the window from inside and that's really hard to do with the pressure of the water coming in on the outside so you'd have to have something with which to break it i'm just thinking about her and that car that she had uh john lindley correct me if i'm wrong was a model that would have had electric windows so correct how in the heck what kind of car was it john uh 2012 nissan altima yeah so i don't understand how her going in the water what she had time to think oh no i'm going underwater let me let the window down i don't think that's how that played out commander wade i i don't either i don't i don't i don't buy that at

all uh it's just it doesn't fit to joseph scott morgan forensics expert author of blood beneath my feet joe scott when you're looking at a case like this you compare it you compare it to all the other cases you've ever handled ever read about ever investigated and that's where wade commander wade's coming from something's off i don't know maybe she's gonna surprise us we're gonna find out that she's like hercules and she managed to get out of the car but that body the body is going to tell me so much because that electrical system shorted out the minute that car got in the water right so how did she get out where's the car why is she separate from the car why is it she strapped into the car

why is she in there unstrapped with the windows up but the body yes ashley wilcott's right superficial evidence will be washed away by the water but uh was she clothed were her clothes on correctly or has she been redressed post-mortem water will not get rid of dna inside your body i don't think as if she had been sex assaulted joe scott morgan what about scratches things like that yeah there's any number of physical findings that would be and also uh let's keep in mind that if she sustained any kind of blunt force injuries or any kind of marks around her neck, that's not going to be eradicated as a result of the water either. So you're going to have to look at all of this in the totality. Now, the number one generator of blunt force trauma related to deaths in the United States are in fact, a motor vehicle accident. So for the medical examiner, they're going to have to be able to delineate, are these

consistent with, say, for instance, a car accident or was she assaulted in some way? Wait a minute, right there, right there, there's a problem. Commander Tony Wade, if she had a crash and hit her head, she sure as heck wouldn't have been able to get out of that car if had a head injury that that's correct you know and and surveying the scene look at the scene there's there's no signs where they would have been a vehicle accident you know none of the trees have marks on it where she would hit a tree or any of that kind of stuff it did areas just clean there's no indication of a traffic accident here's WKYT TV's Hillary

Thornton talking with Emily's brother. The 38-year-old moved to Texas a couple of years ago from Cynthiana, however, came back to Kentucky several months ago to help her mother recover from surgery. Once she was better, they both moved back down to Texas just three weeks ago. They made that move to be with Emily's seven-year-old daughter. So sad because we'll be in Emily's apartment and somebody will come over or knock on the door and she says, Is that Mommy? You know, so I can imagine what she's going through. My mom's having a real tough time with this also. I know her daughter's missing and she's down here with all her family.

She's got it's me right now down here. Emily's brother, Chad, who still lives here in Kentucky, is now down in Texas helping with search efforts. So we've had a few leads here and there, but nothing has really panned out. Emily Wade was gone 10 days when her mother told us she feared the worst. I'm scared. I'm scared of what this outcome is going to be. The 16th day she learned those fears were founded. Emily's family said it was too tough to talk tonight after a group of searchers found a body

they believed to be Emily's south of town. You know, in this case, there was no tips, no leads. We just had no clue. We were eliminating places, what we were doing. It was members of Tony Wade's Cajun Coast Search and Rescue who were out looking Monday morning. The foliage, the trees, extremely thick. Where a good part of Ensign Road is washed out by Chambers Creek.

Teams searched by air here last week, but Monday on foot, they found her about 500 feet down street. It's so thick that we really couldn't get into where she was found. It was just really, really thick. The creek is high, and police confirm it also was on January 5th when Emily disappeared. She was driving, having left a friend's house at 830. It was dark, and these signs off Ensign Road may have been her only warning about water, if she could see them. Still, we don't know for sure if she drove through here. Her car hasn't been found, and the medical examiner will share how she died.

But in the meantime, overlooking a winding, washed-out road, even the experts can't help but wonder. I think they need to put up some more barricades or something to completely close the access to it when the water's going to be up like that, try to avoid another tragedy. You're hearing our friends at KTRK-TV and the commander of the Cajun Coast Search and Rescue, Tony Wade. Tony, I got a question about that terrain.

You were talking about how thick and dense the foliage is. Could her car have gotten through there? Well, you know, there's a crossing there, and they call it the low water crossing. A very low bridge. You've got to go down a steep hill to cross the little bridge and then back up. When the water's up like that, the bridge is underwater. So, you know, she could have driven down the roads and not see it at night and try and attempt to cross it the signs that they have up saying the bridge closed looks like some there's some small looks like hand-painted

signs that are hanging on the side of the road so you you know yeah you can miss those signs i just i firmly believe that the county needs to put up some barricades just when the uh when the water's high like that uh you know being dark like it is in an area and not familiar with the area, you know, I see it possible that she could have driven off of it. I think it's highly unlikely, but, you know, the possibility is there. Why do you think it's unlikely that she went off? Why do you think it's unlikely that she went off of it? Just everything doesn't, the whole picture that's being painted out there doesn't fit.

Let me ask you this, Tony. The car not being right there. Tony, that bridge, did it have rails on either side? No, there's no rails on it. None whatsoever. How wide is it? You can only cross one vehicle at a time on the bridge. It's not that wide.

It's a very narrow bridge. But that was not on her way home. No, it wasn't. It's not at all on her way home. She should have went the other way. That's one of the other things that throws up a flag for me, why she would be in that area. It just doesn't fit.

Another thing I heard, John Lindley, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, is that she had lived in Texas for many years. Then she went to Kentucky. Then they moved back to Texas. So she was not a stranger to the area. No, not at all. In fact, as we heard in that earlier news report, she had moved back and forth from Harrison County, Kentucky to Ennis County. A number of times her mom had surgery at one point, some back surgery.

She needs some help. So she moved back with her. She went back to Kentucky and then it was just a little over a month before her disappearance that Emily had moved back with her daughter, her seven-year-old daughter, into that apartment with her mom. Let me ask you this. How have they managed to clear the ex and the, you know, the ex-husband, seemingly on pretty good terms, and the co-worker, the male co-worker? How did they clear them, John Limley? At this point, they haven't ruled anyone out. However, they have said that they are not considered persons of interest. Now, this was before Monday's discovery. We've yet to hear from investigators as to whether that status has changed. Yeah, what about that, Joe Scott

Morgan? They were named, I thought they had been cleared, but Limley is correcting me, and I think he may be right. They were just not named suspects, but the cops seemed to me to be confident they weren't involved. How would they have done that? Well, you know, we can piece together things like timeline, Nancy. We can also talk about alibis relative to this. So they could, in fact, clear from an investigative standpoint from this perspective. But listen, Nancy, in a case like this, nothing is outside of the realm of consideration. Remember, our working premise is always every death is a homicide until proven otherwise. And that's what we work on. John Limley, how are cops investigating the Chili's where she worked?

That was my first concern. First, you look at the husband or the ex or the boyfriend. Then you go to coworkers and you go to neighbors. But where she worked, she was constantly exposed to all sorts of potential predators. How have they or can they investigate people in and out of Chili's, specifically the last day that she worked? Investigators have not released details about that. However, we know as part of their investigation, not only have they been interviewing this co-worker, but they have visited the Chili's restaurant, at least talked with staff, and through that, we surmised they have most likely

asked staff of any, well, for lack of a better phrase, suspicious characters that might have come in. Well, that's not that odd. Joe Scott Morgan, you're the forensics expert. When you have one guy that comes in by himself and sits at the same spot and always asks for the same waitress, that's something that the others notice, Joe Scott. Oh, yeah, you're absolutely right right because these are, you know, if the person is a regular, it's no big thing, but if they come in and say, for instance, and they focus on that one person constantly, constantly, constantly, maybe they even show up and say, hey, is she working tonight? And then they turn around and leave. It's these behavior patterns that we look at from an investigative standpoint to try to piece these things together, to try to eliminate these suspects, to either include or exclude them.

Back to Commander Tony Wade joining us from the Cajun Coast Search and Rescue. Commander Wade, had this area been searched before and she was not spotted and then she is? Yeah, it was searched. You know, we were told by police detectives that they had had the dams closed and they had dropped the water level there and they had really searched that area. You know, we had been out there and searched the area. They had volunteers that were working with us that went out to search the area and there was nothing found. And then, you know, yesterday, of course, somebody was located there. So it just, I don't know, something doesn't seem right to me.

Now, that's critical in my mind, Commander Wade. She wasn't there to start with. When they went back, she was there. How could that possibly work naturally? You know, we have to look at all scenarios involved in this, you know, and with that portion of it. The way the current's running, it's possible she was upstream and was lodged on something and broke free and drifted down there. That's not out of the realm of reality, whether I believe it or not. I just feel comfortable in the fact that I don't think she was there prior to Monday being found. If you have information, if you know or think you know anything about the disappearance of this gorgeous young mom,

Emily Wade, please call 972-875-4462. Repeat, 972-875-4462. Thank you to Ashley Wilcott, Joe Scott Morgan, John Limley, and our special guest, Commander Tony Wade. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.