Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - MISSOURI GIRL MISSING 5 MONTHS FOUND IN SEX OFFENDER'S CLOSET 700 MILES AWAY, NAKED, ALIVE

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

A Columbia, Missouri, father receives a call from his teenage daughter’s high school, reporting she is absent after missing all her classes. He calls his 15-year-old several times. After receiving no answer, he rushes home from work to check on her. He hopes she simply overslept or missed the bus. But she isn’t there, and some of her belongings, including her phone, are also missing. The teen is immediately reported missing. Police believe she intentionally prepared to leave home. After searches turn up nothing and her phone remains unused since the day she vanished, investigators begin interviewing her friends. Fellow students say she may have been talking to someone online. More than four months later, police find the girl cowering naked in a closet in a Fort Collins, Colorado, home, where she had been forced to work in a snow shoveling business. Joining Nancy Grace today: Greg Morse - Criminal Defense Attorney of Morse Legal, Author of “The Untested” [found on Amazon] Caryn Stark - Forensic Psychologist, Renowned TV and Radio Trauma Expert and Consultant; Instagram: carynpsych, FB: Caryn Stark Private Practice   Todd Shipley - Digital Cyber-Crime expert, Former Detective Sergeant with the Reno, Nevada Police Dept. [25 year in law enforcement], Author of: "Surviving a Cyberattack: Securing Social Media and Protecting Your Home," and “Investigating Internet Crimes: An Introduction to solving Crimes in Cyberspace;" X Twitter: @webcase Titania Jordan - Chief Parent Officer of Bark Parental Controls, and Author: "Parenting In A Tech World;"Instagram/X: @TitaniaJordan  Gigi McKelvey - Journalist, Host of Podcast “Pretty Lies and Alibis;"Facebook, IG, TikTok: @PrettyLiesAndAlibis, X: @PrettiesLiesAlibi  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A little Missouri girl missing five long months just found in a sex offender's closet 700 miles away, naked, cowering, but alive. Good evening. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories, and I want to thank you for being with us. Columbia, Missouri. A father receives a call from his daughter's high school. His 15-year-old daughter never showed up to class that morning. Calls to the teen cell go unanswered, and when dad rushes home to check on her, he finds the home empty, his daughter nowhere in sight. A parent's worst nightmare. You go to work, you think everything

is fine, and then you get that call from the school, your daughter never showed up. Joining me, an all-star panel to make sense of what we are learning now, listen. A Columbia, Missouri father gets a call from his daughter's high school that she never arrived to class. The dad calls his 15-year-old several times and getting no answer, rushes home from work to check on her. He's hopeful that she just overslept or missed the bus. But when he gets home, the teen isn't there and some of her belongings, including her phone, are missing. Okay, that's a sign right there that her phone is missing, probably her school backpack. But that doesn't necessarily mean anything is wrong. She typically takes her phone related to getting to school?

It could be at the bus stop. It could be walking the route to school, getting off the bus, walking back home, even approaching the school like Kyron Horman. It goes on and on. Nearly half, over 33% of all child disappearances, kidnaps, stranger related occur as it connects to getting to and from school. So right there, we see a problem. Joining me, Greg Morse, high profile lawyer, criminal defense attorney out of Palm Beach, author of The Untested. He is the partner at Morse Legal. Greg, right there, that is where law enforcement starts the search. First of all, law enforcement always says, oh, she'll be back home. Don't worry.

She's probably out with her little boyfriend. That's what they normally say. But then when and if they get concerned about the missing child, then they start looking at the school and the routes to school. Explain. Yeah. So police are going to start and spiral outwards when they're looking for a missing person. Most people are locally found. So they're going to start think maybe she's a teenager. She went to her friend's house, didn't call her parents. Then they're going to start retracing the steps she should have taken, spoken with her friends and things of that nature. Although this case exemplifies why you need to start with the phone.

Karen Stark joining me, renowned forensic psychologist, TV, radio trauma expert. And you can find her at Karen Stark dot com. Karen with a C. Karen, thank you for being with us, Karen. Why is it that law enforcement always at the get-go, whether it's a missing girl, a missing boy, or typically a missing woman, they go, oh, they'll be back. They're out with their little boyfriend or fill in the blank. They never take it seriously at the beginning. They don't, Nancy. They really are trying to get the parents to not be upset or the people that are looking for them. And for some reason, they keep trying to say things like, well, she's a runaway or she's with a friend, just like you said,

and really trying to quiet the fact that these people might be getting really upset, of course, and frightened. Why is that, Todd Shipley? Todd Shipley is joining us, digital cybercrime expert, former detective sergeant with Reno Police, never a lack of business in Reno, 25 years in LA and author of Surviving a Cyber Attack, also author of Investigating Internet Crimes. Todd, thanks for being with us. Why is it in your 24 years in LA law enforcement, I'm sure you saw it over and over and over where detectives, investigators, beat cops would say, ah, she'll be back. Well, because it commonly is that way. You know, particularly with runaway kids, they, you know, look at it that it's somebody that walked off to a girlfriend's

house or went someplace with a boyfriend and they'll show up within you know hours or days and it won't be a kidnapping it's hard at least initially to figure that out straight out to gigi mckelvey joining me uh journalist host of pretty lies and alibis podcast gigi thank you for being with us another factor into why in this jurisdiction police may not have taken her disappearance seriously at the beginning is because this neck of the woods, Columbia, Missouri, is the safest place, the safest urban area in Missouri in which to live. Well, Columbia, Missouri has one of the lowest crime rates in the state. It's very close to nature. We just don't hear bad things like this happening in this ideal Midwestern town. And so I think with the comfort of living in a place like that, you don't necessarily think the worst is going to happen

right there in your hometown. Yeah, you know, you're right, Gigi McKelvey. It's got a pretty low, pretty low population, 130,000. It is close to nature. That's what it's known for, the Missouri River. Not only that, it's got this extensive trail going through the city, very low crime rate. So Greg Morse, I don't totally, well, I do blame the police, but I get where they're coming from. This type of case is very rare for them. So when it's an aberrance, then you don't, you got to put on blinders, I guess, would be a way to describe what happened at the get-go, Greg. Well, that's what happens. Again, the police don't want to spend resources. They think this is going to turn out fine. Another teenager that's mad

or went out late with their boyfriend or other friends, they'll come home in a day or two. That's the common way this usually turns out for people. So that time is valuable. But police also know that most of these cases are going to turn out to be a teenager that comes home a day or two later. And this is very similar to an issue with law enforcement. If you recall the Cheshire murders in Connecticut, the police were outside that home. And the reason why they didn't go in because it's an upscale neighborhood in Connecticut,

they would never expect what happened in that home and the horrible things that the two perpetrators did to the family to happen. So they waited outside and more bad stuff happened. It's difficult for law enforcement to know when to, you know, jump into an investigation, believe there's crime that's happening. And we have to get on it right away to let's see if this situation plays out. But time is valuable when people go missing. And that's the difficult dilemma here. Well, you know, I heard Mark Klass describe it as 60 miles an hour. That's how quickly your child can get away at the least.

60 miles an hour if they're in a perps car. So with that in mind, the dad originally tried to soothe himself by saying, oh, maybe she overslept. Maybe she missed the bus and races home. And that's a psychological issue. Karen Stark, why is it that our minds, are they trying to protect us? Don't go to, oh, my star, she's been kidnapped by a sex offender. She's going to die. We don't race to that conclusion. Our mind doesn't let us go there. He thought she overslept. Well, because it's such a horrible conclusion to come to, Nancy. I feel like people protect themselves, actually, when it comes to something like that. You just

don't want to believe. Think about it, that something can happen to you. It happens to other people until, in fact, it does happen to you. So it's really a good psychological defense. The dad comes home, realizes that his little girl has not overslept. She hasn't missed the bus. Her cell phone and backpack are gone. He doesn't buy into, oh, she's just off with a little friend and reports her missing immediately. The Columbia, Missouri teen girl is immediately reported missing. Searches of the area turn up nothing and her phone is not pinged since the day of her disappearance. Investigators turned to interviewing her friends. Fellow students say the 15-year-old may have been talking to someone online. Okay, that is significant that her phone has not pinged since the day she disappeared.

Okay, straight back out to Todd Shipley, cybercrime expert. Explain, what does that mean that your phone doesn't ping? Well, it means that the phone was turned off and was not registering on a cell site someplace within the city that she would normally be near. So they were able to query those sites and find out that her cell phone wasn't registering on any location nearby, the house, the school, wherever she normally was, and they couldn't find her. Explain what is a ping. Be specific, Todd Shipley. The ping is an electronic message from your phone to a cell tower to let it know that it's in the area so that it can receive information from the system. So you have to announce that you're in a location so that the

data can be sent to your specific phone. And that ping allows the cell tower to say, oh, you're in this area and I can send messages, phone calls, whatever to the internet to your phone and be able to identify where you're at. And so none of that was there because the phone was turned off. So can I put it in regular people talk, Todd Shipley? And this comes up so often in trials. Typically, it's defense attorneys like you, Greg Morris, arguing that pings don't mean anything and we cannot rely on pings. But what pings are, and I think we're going to see that, by the way, in the upcoming Brian Koberger trial, a lot of digital and phone evidence, the evidence and the lack there of evidence, such as him cutting off his phone, turning it off just before the murders and then turning it back

on just after the murders. So there's a lack of digital evidence at the time of the murders in this particular window. But Greg Morris, defense attorneys like you, who've won a lot of cases, have made it part of their repertoire to argue pings can't be relied upon. But it's really elementary. It's rudimentary. You turn your cell phone on and you get in the car to, let's just pretend, go to your son's soccer game. And as you pass cell towers, the signal emitted from your phone pings off or registers with those horribly ugly cell towers we pass. Some are decorated to look like a tree, a tree with really weird leaves, but the horrible, ugly cell towers. Every time you pass one, your phone will ping,

connect with that cell tower. It's really not hard to understand yet. Somehow, defense attorneys like you managed to obfuscate the simple truth. How do you do that, Morse? Well, because cell site location information and these pings you're talking about, sure, to see if a person's in a general area, is their phone on? Are they moving somewhere? But why do you make it sound so mysterious, Morse? But it doesn't. These pings you're talking about, like it's mystical, magical. It's not. The cell site tower from AT&T down the street from my house on the intercoastal was out. So my cell phone had to ping off of a different tower located further away from me once that tower was out. So let's suppose a crime was committed.

How far? Again, that's my point. How far away was the other cell tower? It's still, you're not getting location. How far away was it? cell tower? It's still, you're not getting location. How far away was it? Two miles? A mile? I don't know exactly how far away it is, but it shifted from my local where you would identify me in an area. Because that would ruin your argument if you said it was only one mile further.

And if it was a mile, isn't a mile a big difference? Okay, that's how they do it. So let's suppose. It's like. Let's suppose. They mess your head up if you're on the jury. Let's suppose there's a crime on First Street in New York. But actually, I was on 20th Street, but my phone pinged off the First Street tower.

So now the police believe I was in the area of the murder, even though I wasn't, because cell site location information was misleading. Let me counter your argument with one word. Triangulation. Have you heard that word? Okay, Shipley, don't go too DEFCON 4. Explain what triangulation means to totally destroy Morse's argument. The problem is he's mixing up the two things. The communication, the ping itself saying I'm here,

and your geolocation of where that phone is at are two very different things. And yes, it is very difficult to figure out exactly and precisely where a person is through these pings. But that geolocation, that triangulation, we can narrow down a physical location where somebody is because talking to two cell towers is just simple math. And you have to figure out where it was and what angle it has, because the towers, which most people don't know, have faces on them. And so which face of that cell tower did the ping come off of? So it knows a general location where it's coming from anyway. So you put two of those together and you can actually get a location or narrow it down to where that person was geographically in the area.

If you know somebody who's missing and you get information or some type of connection with them and they have been out of touch for a while, make sure you call law enforcement. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A missing persons report is filed after a 15-year-old Missouri teen fails to show up to school one December morning. An intense investigation is launched, but the exhaustive searches yield little to no clues about the whereabouts of the missing teen. Her socials have gone silent and her phone has not pinged since her disappearance. Hold your horses. Did everybody miss what we just reported? Investigators began, after they hit a dead end, interviewing her little friends. The little friends say the teen may have been talking to someone online. Okay, to Titania Jordan joining me, Chief Parent Officer

at Bark Parental Controls, author of Parenting in a Tech World. Now, this is how I found out about Bark, which led me to Tonya. We got Bark and put it on the children's cell phones. It picks up words like scary words, like sex. I want to see you naked. Send me nudes. Hurt myself. Okay. It's so sensitive. And this is not an ad. It's so sensitive. I got an alert. You have an alert on your son, John David's phone. Well, I nearly did a back lip because he never does anything wrong. Knock on wood product. So I looked it up and it said self harm on my six foot six, 200 something pounds, son, self harm. You wouldn't expect that, right? I looked at what it was.

He's a soccer goalie and he had made a really good dive. I saw it happen where he's basically horizontal catching the ball and his arm went through the net and he got a big bruise right here, but he was so proud. He showed off the bruise saying, I saved the goal, right? It was so sensitive that it picked up the bruise on his arm and alerted me. Um, the other day, you're going to, you're going to laugh about this part to Tanya. I got an alert on John David. It's never Lucy's phone. It's always John David's phone. And I looked it up and it said, disturbing, blah, blah, blah, nature. Guess what it was? The Nancy Grace Show, crime stories about some victim having been kidnapped and killed. And he subscribes to,

um, uh, I guess YouTube and he picked up the banner on YouTube. Luckily he had not opened it, but still that is how sensitive Bart is. Now that aside, that's how I found Titania. Titania, red flag waving. Listen to this. Investigators speak to her little friends. They say she may have been talking to someone online. Translation, she is talking to someone online, someone she kept secret from her dad. That's what that means. So online secret, take it on. No parent thinks that this will happen to their child. But when you know that right at which predators are online engaging with children, you can't not think that it could be your child. You have to be prepared. You have to be monitoring. You have to take easy steps,

like don't allow connected tech in their bedrooms overnight behind closed doors. If you do give your child tech, make sure it's safer tech that will proactively alert you when creepy older men and sex offenders are trying to engage with your child, which the Bark phone does. Well, here's the other thing. And again, I'm not pushing Bark. If you don't know exactly what to do, like what do you do? Go grab their phone and run off with it. It's a physical thing to like jump on them and take their phone away, which I have done. It's not easy.

And run away with it. Lock yourself in the bathroom and try to scroll through their stuff. Okay. No, something like a net nanny, like bark to me, that's an easy way to do it. So you don't have to scroll through their phone and look for what you don't even know what you're looking for. As a matter of fact, this particular app boo B O O it's a dating friendship app and it allows completely anonymous trolling, you know, where you look for a friend or a love interest.

As a matter of fact, this little girl had signed up for Boo. Listen. A Columbia, Missouri girl signs up for Boo, a popular dating and friendship app that matches users based on common personality markers like zodiac signs, enneagram types, and the results of an in-app personality quiz. When she hits it off with another user, the two move to Snapchat and develop a romantic relationship through texts, pictures, videos, and audio messages. After a month of chatting, the teen's online beau desperately wants to meet her in person. You know what's really interesting about the Boo app, Titania, is it actually looks like a game. I don't know if you remember the Mrs. Pac-Man and Pac-Man games, video games, some of the first ones. These little creatures look like them,

like the little Pac-Man creatures. And it looks like, see that right there? It looks like a little game where you, quote, meet new people. It looks so inviting and so harmless, doesn't it, Titania? It sure does. I'm actually pulling up the App Store now to see what it's rated because there is no governing body that mandates that people who submit their apps to the app store are accurate, right? It's up to each app maker to rate that. Also, a good thing to know, whether you're using Bark or Apple Screen Time or Google Family Link, you can get alerted to when your child downloads an app. So you can go and look it up just like you wouldn't drop them off at an international airport

all alone. Don't let them encounter everyone in the world and all the content ever created online without you understanding the portal through which they're doing so. Okay. So now you're telling me I need an app that tells me every time the twins download an app on their phone. Is that what you just said? If you don't have Bark, you have Bark. So we will alert you when your child has downloaded a problematic app. Okay, and so listen to this, Karen Stark. Okay, this is going to make Karen Stark and Todd Shipley do a backflip.

Okay, try to stay seated. So it connects you with friends online based on a romantic relationship, based on an in-app personality quiz. What sex offender can't lie on that? Okay. Zodiac signs, Enneagram types, a quiz, Zodiac signs. You know how many times we have covered cases where a registered sex offender, or probably even worse, a sex offender that's not registered. So we don't even know he's lurking, goes on to chat rooms, goes on to apps like Boo, Kick, Snapchat. We saw it in the Delphi double murders of Abby and Libby, two cute little girls in Delphi. And that was the false lead in the case before Richard Allen was identified, where they had been online talking to a catfish, just like the stereotypical creepy dude. But he was posing. He had put a picture on there of some buff young guy that kind of looked like

a tattoo-less Justin Bieber, who was a real person. He was using that person's photo to lure little girls and get them to send naked photos or topless photos of themselves trying to hook up with them. Remember that freak? Yeah. So you can put any picture you want online. You can lie in your Zodiac quiz and get hooked up with a little girl like this little girl. Zodiac quiz, my rear end. Nancy, this isn't really, really, and I can't emphasize enough, important for parents to know because an act like

this, and there are others, it really is a playground for someone who's a predator. They are in heaven because they can mask who they are and they could start the grooming process, which means that they begin to insert themselves into the child's life. They act like they're a friend, a confident. They understand everything that they're saying. And they become important, especially to a child, a teenager maybe, who's feeling unhappy, alone, and needs to find a friend. So what do you make of that, Titania Jordan?

The Zodiac quiz that apparently united this little girl with a registered sex offender. Here's the thing. The Boo app and many other apps are rated 17+. It tells you right there in the app store. But any child can go in and lie about the year they were born and get immediate access. Problem number one. Problem number two, as there are no current laws to hold these companies accountable, the laws meant to protect children online have not been updated since 1998. And so acts like the Kids Online Safety Act that are still stalled and have bipartisan support could actually hold these platforms accountable and prevent children from being harmed, whether it's on Snapchat, Boo, or the next thing that pops up.

And little did this dad, a loving dad, know that about 500 miles away, a registered sex offender was wooing his little girl online. Columbia, Missouri. A father receives a call from his daughter's high school. His 15-year-old daughter never showed up to class that morning. Calls to the teen's cell go unanswered. And when dad rushes home to check on her, he finds the home empty, his daughter nowhere in sight. A parent's worst nightmare, you think, maybe she ever slept. Maybe she, uh, empty, his daughter nowhere in sight. A parent's worst nightmare. You think maybe she ever slept. Maybe she this, that, the other thing. And you get home and find out none of that is true. And your girl is missing. At the same time, this is what we learned.

In the early morning hours of December 6th, 2024, the 44-year-old man, the Columbia teen, met on boo, drives to Missouri in a rental car and picks her up. Before going anywhere, he breaks her cell phone. The man then drives her 11 hours to a home in Fort Collins, Colorado. To avoid detection, the man wraps the teen in a blanket to carry her inside the house. So many facts jumping out right there. A, a 44 year old registered sex offender who meets the little girl on the boo. Oh, my stars. Him meets a little girl on the boo app drives all the way from Colorado to Missouri in a rental car. So wait a minute right there. Greg Morse in a rental car, he doesn't even take his own vehicle. He has a car. So why does he use a rental car to hide his movements? So it won't show up on his

nav system or so his car won't be identified at toll stops or by license grabbers right there. I'm forming intent as we speak, Greg Morse. Well, a rental car, you know, doesn't prove he sexually battered the girl. It doesn't prove he kidnapped her. It doesn't prove any of those things. People use rental cars all the time. If this was a drug case, I'd say, OK, it's pretty common that people use rental cars to commit drug transactions. At least that's been my experience in 25 years. This is a case where a rental car is just a rental car. It doesn't add any evidence one way or the other

to the crimes that this person's charged with. Not at all. Of course, of course, Greg Morse, you think that proves nothing that he went to the trouble of using a rental car, I would argue to a jury, to hide evidence of his whereabouts. But it's eerily reminiscent of the case of a young girl, Sophia Martin Franklin, who was, let me just say, romancing a much older man like this guy. In her case, the guy's 40, nearly 41 years old. Take a listen. Sophia makes a new online friend as she finishes up her sophomore year. Sophia's friend pushes her to meet in person, but there's two big problems. He lives in Arkansas and he's a 40-year-old man. Gary Day is four years into a six-year probation sentence and is used to surprise

visits from his probation officer. But in December, the 40-year-old seems extremely nervous when the officer stops by. The supervisor also catches a glimpse of a woman running out the back door. She is just 16 years old and from Wisconsin. Sophia's sister spots Day's Buick idling a block down the street. While she calls police, a family member goes to check on Sophia and finds her room empty. The Franklins immediately report Sophia missing. So this young girl, pregnant with a 40-year-old sex offender's child, he He drives multi-states from Arkansas to Wisconsin to abduct her. I mean, Gigi McKelvey, you and I investigated this case together. Gigi, journalist, host of Pretty Lies and Alibis, which shows sex offenders, registered or not, will go to great, great lengths to get their target, Gigi.

Absolutely. There's nothing that will stand in anybody's way when they have their sights set on somebody they see as vulnerable and somebody they can manipulate and convince them to come with them. It's happening almost every single day. I mean, at this point, I'm ready to get my kid a flip phone and not even let her get online in the big bad online apps like do that are not monitoring sex offenders. And at the same rate, do we need to change the way we monitor sex offenders from a law enforcement perspective to monitor internet use? Should it be mandatory? Every single

convicted sex offender has their internet monitored. Do we have the manpower? If not, we need to get it because our kids are getting hurt. They're getting killed. They're being traumatized for life by these men who have their sights set on these kids who, for the most part, in some way are very vulnerable and too trusting. You know, Todd Shipley, Gigi McKelvey just said something really interesting. I guarantee you that the computer activity, the online activity of registered sex offenders is not monitored. But it would not require a fleet of human bodies doing it. It could be something like a net nanny, like a bark for sex

offenders. Every time their phone pops up with an undesirable word like send nudes, anything of that nature, an alert would go off. But you know, now that I'm thinking about it, Shipley, we can't even keep up with registered sex offenders and where they live, much less what's happening on their cell phones. But isn't that kind of an idea? Well, certainly it is. But I mean, keeping in the back of your mind that we have to know where they're at. We have to have to know what devices they have. We have to have a court order to be able to do that because it depends on the probation or the... No, you don't need a court order.

It could be a stipulation of their parole. It could be a stipulation, of course, but you still have to have that in place. I mean, my writing partner in my last books was a probation officer, and that was always the frustration at the federal level that they had was how they monitored these people. And it wasn't consistent across the country. One area did it very well. One area didn't do it at all.

And that becomes the problem in that these guys figure that out and they work through these loopholes and figure out what they can and can't do. Because I can go down to Walgreens and buy a phone. I don't need, you know, if I give you the phone that I've got, the monitor. Yeah, you're right. I can just go get another phone. They just have to go get a burner phone. You're exactly right, Todd Shipley.

It's like stomping out a roach. You get one, there's 50 more hiding behind your potted plant. Karen Stark, the compulsion of sex offenders that attack children. Most of us don't understand it. It took me a long time prosecuting them to get it through my head. I'm never going to understand and stop trying to understand. You don't have to understand their motivation to prove the case. But out of curiosity, this compulsion is so strong, they will drive across the country to get to their target victim.

That's the truth. And they will take incredible risks, Nancy, when it comes to law enforcement, just to be able to fulfill their desires. You have to understand that these people, they see children as objects that they can control. They find all kinds of excuses. Sometimes they even say that, for instance, the teenager was attracted to them because they need to fulfill their fantasy and desire to be with children or teenagers. They can't stop themselves. They will do anything to be able to keep going and they escalate over time, which is important to know. Statistics show that once the 72-hour mark has been reached, very often the child victim is dead, leaving no evidence behind. Luckily, our friend and colleague

Alicia Kozikevich survived a scenario just like this one. Between dinner and dessert, I vanished. I walked outside of my house to meet somebody who I thought was my friend, and he kidnapped me. And he took me from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Virginia and held me captive in his basement dungeon. Even though it's been all these years, it's still very difficult to talk about. He said, I'm beginning to like you too much. Tonight we're going to go for a ride. And I knew that was clearly a threat. And what I had been doing to try to humanize myself was working too well and he was becoming attached. So he was going to have to end my life sooner. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

In the early morning hours of December 6th, 2024, the 44-year-old man the Columbia teen met on boo drives to Missouri and picks her up. Before going anywhere, he breaks her cell phone. The man then drives her 11 hours to a home in Fort Collins, Colorado. To avoid detection, the man wraps the teen in a blanket to carry her inside the house. Okay, red flag there. He wraps her up in a blanket to take her in so his roommates don't see her. To Gigi McKelvey joining us, host of Pretty Lies and Alibis podcast. The little girl becomes terrified because he tells her his roommates can't know she's there. He then takes her driver's permit and her little student ID, tells her she's not allowed to leave the room. Then he turns on a sound machine to cover up what's happening in that bedroom between the two of them. So the roommates can't hear. No wonder

she's afraid, Gigi. It's terrifying, Nancy. You have to wonder at that point, what is she thinking? I mean, there are people just outside those doors that could get her to safety. But I'm sure this man has got her so scared. If she makes a peek, who knows? Did he say he would kill her? What he would do to her? But to know that there are people just a room or two away and you have to be quiet so you're not found. This poor child is going to need therapy for the rest of her life to overcome the trauma she has endured with everything this man has put her through. And the fact that he's doing these sound machines and he's avoiding tolls, it all shows he is avoiding being caught because he knows what he did was wrong.

I mean, to drive that distance alone, Nancy, blows my mind. It shows the intent clear as day what he wanted to do with that innocent young girl. Listen. The 44-year-old man tells his teen girlfriend it isn't safe for her to leave his room, but reluctantly agrees to take her out if she dyes her hair and wears large sunglasses. But occasional outings quickly turn to forced labor. The man makes the girl work for his snow shoveling company alongside paid employees wearing a mask to conceal her age and identity. Todd Shipley, did you hear that? He makes her dye her hair and wear large sunglasses, then puts her outside in a mask under threat, and this is molesting her at night, puts her outside in the cold to work for his snow removal company,

shoveling sidewalks and roads, and the girl can't get in touch with her dad or anybody else. Of course, he's manipulated her into a situation where she believes she's not free to go. And so he watches her, he guides her, he ensures that she does exactly what he wants. So she's in fear the whole time she's there. The fantasy of what originally started rapidly went away as he's controlling everything that she does.

But then a break in the case. More than four months after the Missouri teen convinces the man to give her a cell phone to help pass the time while she sits in his room alone. The man sets up one of his old phones for her, believing the device is too old to access social media. But the teen manages to download Instagram and access her account. The girl messages a friend for help, saying she's in another state, and the friend goes straight to police. Once that Instagram is sent, and remember, the perp thought she couldn't use a flip phone as a portal to the internet. He was wrong. Detectives immediately begin working on

identifying the location of the IP address. Listen. The Missouri Cybercrimes Task Force immediately gets to work tracing the IP address used to send the Instagram messages. The Missouri Task Force reaches out to Fort Collins, Colorado Police Cybercrime Unit, believing they've pinpointed the address where the girl is being held. Maximilian Bonderskew, who should be registered as a sex offender, lives at the home. Bonderskew failed to update his registration, so Fort Collins Police have no problem securing a search warrant for the home on Warren Landing. Backed by a SWAT team, Fort Collins police speak with Bondrescu at his home. Bondrescu denies knowledge of a missing Missouri girl and says officers may find an adult female in the home, but certainly not a minor. However, officers searching the home open a closet door

in Bondrescu's bedroom and find a naked girl cowering inside. The girl identifies herself as the Columbia teen officers are looking for. Her confiscated ID cards are also found in the home. This is so disturbing. It mirrors a case I personally investigated and covered. I always called her the girl in the pink hat, Jessica Lunsford. This little girl goes missing. Cops immediately start looking for her. I befriended her dad. We worked together. As it turns out, one of the homes the police canvassed was where she was ultimately found. But originally when cops went there, they didn't see her. She was being kept prisoner in a closet by John Evander Cooey. Cooey had been molesting her the entire time.

The girl in the pink hat, Jessica Lunsford, was buried alive and died that way. When cops first came to his door, he was living with relatives in a mobile home, he didn't let them in fully. They didn't look. In other words, they didn't look in closets. Thank God in this case, the case in chief, L.E. looked in the closets. To you, Gigi McKelvey, thank God they looked in the closets and just didn't take his word for it. Like what happened in Jessica's case. What happened?

Yeah, I mean, thank goodness they looked in the closet because every one of these young people that are taken this way have the risk of becoming another Jessica Lunsford. These people have no respect for the law, no respect for children, no respect for humanity in general. And these, you know, these investigations have to be so precise when you have a missing child because missing one small detail, like a closet, could be the biggest clue in the whole case, which is your victim. And so I think when they go in to look for these kids, you have to turn everything over and consider and think like the perpetrator, where would you hide this child if law enforcement came knocking? Because we can't have kids that are killed and buried alive because the investigation or the search warrant wasn't executed fully.

It's a disservice to these victims and it's just careless. And we saw that in the Jessica Lunsford case. In this case, however, night and day comparison, the little girl is found naked, cowering, but alive in fear, but alive. The case is not over. The state is building its evidence. If you know or think you know anything about this case, if you were a worker in the snow removal company that he owns, it's called Foco Snow Go, a snow removal service in Fort Collins, Colorado. If you saw them in route, if you know anything at all, the state needs you. 970-416-2026. He was let off the hook before and was required to register for life as a sex offender. Yet he got his hands on this little girl. I want him behind bars for the rest of his life.

Don't you? Tip line 970-416-2026. Thank you to our guests, but especially to you for being with us. Good night, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.