Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Religious Fanatic Dad Kidnaps Tot, ON THE RUN, CAPTURED!

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

Florida boy, JoJo Morales, 6, who was kidnapped by his religious fanatic dad and his grandmother, has been found. Police say the boy was found safe 2,000 miles away in Canada.  A private investigator working the case found an abandoned SUV containing items belonging to the little boy — in Maine very near the Canadian border.   Morales went missing after his father failed to return the child to his mother as part of their custody agreement.  A tipster spotted JoJo at a Walmart.    Police believe 45-year-old Jorge Morales planned his disappearance act for more than a year, before taking his autistic son.  Yanet Concepcion tells Crime Stories she will be reunited with her son tonight.   Joining Nancy Grace Today: Yanet Concepcion - Victims Mother Kathleen Murphy - Family Attorney (North Carolina); Twitter: @RalDivorceLaw  Joe Carillo - Private Investigator, Leverage Investigations; Facebook: Leveragepi; Founder: Bringing Them Home Project Dr. Thomas Plante- The Augustin Cardinal Bea, S.J., Professor of Psychology and Religious Studies, Santa Clara University; Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine; Editor, Spirituality in Clinical Practice;  Author: "Human Interaction with the Divine, the Sacred, and the Deceased: Psychological, Scientific, and Theological Perspectives." Dave Mack - CrimeOnline Investigative Reporter  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Major breakthrough in the search for a six-year-old kidnapped, missing, autistic boy. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. First of all, take a listen to this. Six-year-old Jojo Morales at the center of a contentious custody battle ever since his parents split three years ago. It has been hell. It truly has been hell. I've had trouble eating, sleeping, and it's just been, you know, any mother can identify with me. It was back in August when George Morales and his mother, Lilliam Pena Morales, disappeared with Jojo. Investigators

believed they traveled north into Canada, but for weeks they found no sign of the trio. That is until Sunday when they were spotted at a Walmart in Moncton, Canada. A spotting. Is it correct? Is it really Jojo? Are our hopes raised only to be dashed? You are hearing our friends from WPLG Local 10 news. That is a major break in itself. From what we know, the kidnapper is a right-wing religious nut who had made statements that this little boy was on his way to heaven. The search intensifying. Now take a listen to this. This is an amber alert. There are certain criteria that need to be met for that to be issued. Among them, law enforcement needs to believe that there's a chance that the child could be in harm's way. So let's show you who he is. This is the boy. His full name is Jorge Gabriel Morales. His nickname is Jojo. He is a six-year-old boy with autism.

He's got brown hair, brown eyes, about three feet tall, weighing about 50 pounds. He does have a scar under his right eye. No one has heard from them now, and his mother is desperate to get him back home. My biggest accomplishment has just been taken away from me. I just miss him so much. Janet Leal Concepcion is beside herself, unable to sleep, unable to eat, totally devastated that her six-year-old son, Jojo, has been missing since Saturday. Can you even imagine your child suddenly gone missing. Again, this is a six-year-old little autistic

boy joining me in All-Star Panel to make sense of what we know right now. But first of all, I want to go out to JoJo's mom, Jeanette. Jeanette, thank you for being with us. Jeanette, tell us about JoJo. When you say he is autistic, what do you mean by that? Because there are so many degrees. I mean, for instance, if Jojo was in fact this child spotted, could he go up to a cashier and say, I've been kidnapped. I want my mommy. When we're talking about autism, like you were saying, the spectrum is very wide. And we have been blessed that he's on the high functioning part of the spectrum. Unfortunately, he would not be able to express exactly the situation he's in. So if he was

spotted, he would not be able to say, hey, I'm kidnapped. Somebody take me to my mom. He would just, you know, probably just say, hey, what kind of car do you have? He won't really express what he's going through. He wouldn't be aware of his situation at all. Joining me, an all-star panel, in addition to JoJo's mother, Jeanette, I want to go to Dr. Thomas Plant, who is critical to today's broadcast. Professor of Psychology, Religious Studies at Stanford University School of Medicine and editor of Spirituality and Clinical Practice, author of Human Interaction with the Divine,

the Sacred, and the Deceased. Dr. Plant, thank you so much for being with us. We are dealing with a kidnapper who seemingly is a religious zealot who many of us believe would murder the little boy rather than have him live a life of sin in his eyes. A six-year-old child with autism can be a sinner, is sinful, is bad. So what is that? Yeah, Nancy, it's such a challenging and difficult situation when you have someone that is using their religious beliefs, practices, and tradition in a way to justify egregious, potentially murderous, illegal kind of behavior. And sadly, that happens sometimes.

Unfortunately, some people will use their religion, practices, traditions, and so forth for great good, and some people choose to use them for great harm. And they justify their impulses, their challenged beliefs and so forth in a way that somehow makes them feel that they're doing the right thing rather than the wrong thing. And so this is terribly disturbing and it happens way too often. And we all have to do all that we can within all of the religious traditions in order to try to stop that kind of behavior. I'm just wondering if it has a particular name, because I've sin, which would only lead to the child ending up with the devil. That's right. And usually we'll call this a variety of things, one of which is rationalization.

Of course, it's an ego defense mechanism where people will rationalize their problematic behavior. Another is cognitive dissonance, which is when you have sort of a thought and a belief or a thought and a behavior that is not consistent, then you are highly motivated to alter one in order to justify the other. So that would be cognitive dissonance. And in this case, someone is taking, let's say, a religious tradition, let's say it's Christianity or something like that, and if they are familiar with the Bible, the Gospels, and so forth, they may read these messages of love and support and helping the marginalized and the pure and children and this and that and the orphans, and yet somehow try to justify that reading with these impulses of kidnapping and harm and so forth. So that would be what we would call cognitive dissonance reduction.

I'm trying to just take in everything you're saying. I'm just a JD, right? You are the expert, Dr. Plant. It seems to me that a Christian zealot of this ilk, the man that stole, kidnapped baby Jojo, read the Old Testament and forgot about the New Testament and got hung up on a father willing to kill his child to please an angry God. Revenge and war and the smell of burning meat is a good thing

in offering to heaven. Not what the message is in the New Testament at all. It's like the New Testament is a whole correction of the Old Testament. I'm just a lay person. I'm no Bible scholar like you are. So I'm just trying

to figure out how does rationalization, which we all do, rise to, I'm going to kidnap this child and I'm going to kill this little six-year-old boy rather than him be a sinner. I mean, how does it leap from rationalization, which we all do that, to becoming a violent criminal and taking the baby away from his mother? No, you make a great point, Nancy, that rationalization and so forth can get to the extreme. And people inevitably will cherry pick Bible verses and so forth and interpret it in the way that they want to. One thing we haven't talked about thus far is the role of psychopathology here.

And then we don't know in terms of whether or not this particular person has a delusional disorder or has a personality disorder or other kinds of disorders that might dovetail with their religious experience or religious beliefs or practices or whatever. Okay, Dr. Plant, you're just going to have to talk more slowly. Oh, I'm sorry. Because everybody here, we're all scratching our heads. Will you say that one more time? Listen, this little boy, at best, has been taken 2,000 miles away from his mother

in what we believe to be a violent kidnap. Now, rationalization, to me, that's like, oh, you know what? I've already cheated on my diet all day long. I might as well have a whole packet full of onion rolls. That's rationalization. And that's wrong. I get it. But this is a whole nother thing, Dr. Plant. No, you're right. Things can be in the extreme. And there's no question that this is in the extreme. And sadly, it happens too common happens too often on an awful lot of people. And we see this day in and day out where people will try to justify their egregious behavior, their criminal behavior, their murderous behavior, somehow that it's blessed by their tradition or their understanding of God or whatever, which does just not pan out if you actually are knowledgeable or thoughtful about these various religious traditions.

All I can say is when it comes to religion in this case, this scenario with baby Jojo being violently kidnapped, the angels are crying about this twisting of the Holy Word. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace Has there been a spotting of JoJo? Is he truly with his father and grandmother, who I believe has stirred the pot from the get-go? Take a listen to this. George Morales is just six years old. He also goes by Jojo. And it's believed that he was kidnapped by his father and grandmother.

Now, that happened just hours after Jojo's mother was granted full custody. Now take a look at this flyer. These are the people who are believed to be with Jojo. Now his mother, Ines Concepcion, tells us he is autistic and was last seen in Homestead. She believes his father may hurt him because of something he told his son. She says he spent time researching living off the grid, and last September, her son began making cryptic comments. Concepcion recorded some of these conversations. He commented to me that I wanted to take him to live in a farm with windmills, and he wanted me to go with him. When Concepcion went to pick up her son as part of a custody exchange in late August, they had picked up and left.

Oh, that just hurts my stomach to hear it. Those are our friends at WPLG Local 10. You know, Joe Carrillo with us, private investigator at LeveragePI.com, Leverage Investigations, founder of Bringing Them Home Project. You know what? At leveragepi.com leverage investigations found our bringing them home project. You know what? Nothing strikes fear in me like off the grid. Look, I know how to find somebody on the run. I made a living at that.

Finding fugitives, convicting them, getting them behind bars. But when you say off the grid, forget about cell phone tracking, any kind of data, credit cards, ATM withdrawals, GPS navigation. They're not going to call anybody they know back home because they know they can be traced. That's off the grid. You're not going to see them at the Walmart or the gas station. They're not growing their own corn and living off the land. That's what off the grid means to me. And it's virtually impossible to find them.

I'm an old timer. And when I started looking for people, there was no cell phone tracking because there was no no cell phone and the only way you find somebody that's running is to chase them and they started running in Maine so we sent people to Maine and started chasing him way ahead of everybody else we found an angel up there named Jennifer Dorman who had a special dog because nobody knew whether they were in Maine or Canada or on the moon. And we ran that dog twice with authorization, and that dog ran straight into Canada. We knew. That answered the question for everybody.

Where did they go? Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. I want to start at the beginning because I'm really getting a lot of information. Guys, the self-professed old-timer, which is not an old-timer at all, is the only one that was able to make a breakthrough in this case. Joe Carrillo is joining us. Let's just start with how you find them in Maine. You're the one that did that. How did you get us that far?

Well, their car was found in Maine right away and reported to the police. So as soon as we got into the case, we obviously got that information. So we knew the car was up there and we knew nobody from Miami-Dade had been up there. Nobody. So we sent an investigator to Maine and he. State police who then we kind of put everybody together to really start the ball rolling. And then we came up. They found the car, but we're the ones that got them there.

Guys, we're talking to Joe Carrillo, a private investigator, who managed to at least find the dad, the religious maniac dad and his mother. They're quite the two peas in the pod. And little Jojo got him as far as Maine. You know, I want you to take a listen now to our cut for our friends at WFOR CBS. Now, as I mentioned, Jojo's mother was granted full custody. But she says when she went to pick her son up from the apartment, her ex-husband lives with his mom. There was nothing there.

And all of their numbers are now disconnected. Now Concepcion says her son is extremely smart, knows her phone number by heart, but is unable to have a normal conversation. I just want my baby back. I really do. There's nothing I wouldn't do in the world to have my baby back. This is his father. He's also named Jorge Morales. He is 45 years old with brown hair, brown eyes, and is six feet tall. Yesterday, Miami-Dade police announced that together with the state attorney's office, they issued a warrant for his arrest for illegally taking JoJo. He does not have overnight custody of him.

His grandmother picked him up from his mom's house here in deep southwest Miami-Dade on August 27th and when mom went to pick him up he was nowhere to be found and hasn't been heard from since. Two thoughts running through my head how how this whole thing started immediately after mom gets a custody victory and two how often this occurs over custody. First, I want to go to Janet Concepcion. This is JoJo's mom. So you got a custody victory and you were awarded custody. Your ex-husband kidnaps the baby and goes on the run.

As I always say, I'm going to come to you in a moment, Kathleen Murphy, veteran, expert, domestic lawyer. There's a reason he did not have overnight visitation. There's a reason baby Jojo could not spend the night with Daddy. And this is exactly it. Very often, this activity is glamorized. Oh, Mommy kidnapped her child. B.S. There is a reason Mommy can't spend the night with the baby to start with. Trust me on that. Jeanette, tell me what happened when you first realized Jojo was gone. It was, I first

got, you know, that feeling of something is really wrong here. And my worst nightmare came through because the court granted us overnight for the same reason. We were able to demonstrate that he was trying to move without telling anybody because we found out he was living in a hotel first without us knowing anything. And every time that we would go and exchange, he would come out of his house like he was living there when he wasn't. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That's a whole nother layer of subterfuge and lying. So let me understand this. With me is Jojo's mom, and we have been on an odyssey trying to find Jojo. So he's supposed to be living in his home.

You find out that he's actually living in a hotel, but when you go drop off and pick up, he walks out of the old house like he's still living there? Absolutely. And the only reason why I noticed was because my son was having a change in behavior. Didn't want to go with them. He was acting up. My son was out of his routine. And that really, really disturbed him. So I immediately take action. I call one of my realtor friends and I tell him, hey, by any chance, can you find out

if this guy sold his house? And then he calls me back screaming, oh my God, he sold it over three weeks ago. And I was, you know, on the floor crying and I'm like, oh, oh my God, this guy is, you know, he's going to run away. And then we went through an emergency motion through the court and the court obviously is trying to make the right decision. And then we went through an emergency motion through the court and the court obviously is trying to make the right decision and they just granted us all overnight, not full custody until later on, but overnight

so that he wouldn't become a fly wreck. So, Janet, let me fast forward to the moment you go to pick up JoJo and nobody's there and the grandma, who I really think

masterminded this whole thing, she's gone too. All three of them gone. What happened? I immediately called the police and I called the police and I called my lawyer so that my lawyer can,

you know, advocate for us, being that this is such a battle in court and that there was a psychiatric evaluation so that they would, you know, realize the seriousness of the situation. Later, the police come because the father had daytime custody. They weren't able to do much at the moment except trying to confirm that he wasn't there where were you but was this at the home was this at a hotel where did you go knock on the door to get him and nobody was there they they were leaving after they lost overnight they went to an apartment closer to 187th Street and 107th Avenue. And so is that where you went to the apartment?

And you go up and ring the doorbell? No, we wait outside because there is more history to this. I had a stay-away order against him. So his mom would walk outside with my kid outside in the gate. Oh my goodness. Kathleen Murphy, joining me high-profile family lawyer out of North Carolina

at ncdomesticlaw.com Really? She can't, mommy can't even go up to the door. Not her fault because she's got a stay-away order on the dad. So if she violates her own order, then she's screwed. So she has to pull up and sit there in the car and wait for the grandma, who is a nutcake herself, the grandma to come out. You know she's the one stirring up all

this religious hatred. She has to wait for the grandma to come out before she can get the baby so the mom goes up there and sits and sits and sits and then why is it so confusing Kathleen Murphy why is it so difficult for the court systems to put the smack down on people I heard Janet say something about a psychological evaluation I'm wondering if this father had a psychological evaluation. I wonder also what was the custodial order? Was it she had sole legal and physical custody? I understand it was temporary. Why was it temporary? Just because he sold a house. Clearly there's more there. And if there's more more there why didn't the court make his visits supervised until they could get to the bottom of this oh like in josh powell remember yeah remember susan powell's husband that killed her by the way and he's walking free and nobody does a darn thing

about it then he gets supervised visits with the boys and And then he has the boys, slams the door in the supervisor's face, and kills the boys and burns the house down. That kind of supervised visit. It's all, is it D-Fax? Is that who's doing the supervised visits, Kathleen? There are agencies that do supervised visitation. Some of them are private. Some of them are funded through United Way agencies.

Here you can hire a professional supervisor to meet you in public places. You know what? I'm just going to stay married if I have to go through all this to see the twins. Just forget it. This guy, this dad made that impossible because of his vile behavior, his aggression, his violence. And then he goes spouting religious nonsense as a justification to kill the boy. And he takes off. I mean, back to you, Dr. Thomas Plant. How often have you seen religion, and that's a double air quote right there, turn into something horrible. Yeah, Nancy, it's terrible. You know, that religion can be used as a terrible weapon.

It can be used for great good and great evil. And sadly, as you well know, and I'm sure the other guests on your show know too, when it comes to custody and when it comes to high conflict divorce, sometimes people act remarkably awful, and they try to justify their awful behavior by using religious themes. And that can be just kind of crazy making. At some level, a lot of people in these circumstances are trying to get back at their divorced spouse, and they use the child as sort of the battlefield in order to achieve that goal. It's horrific. It really is. You know, I'm just listening to this scenario and thinking,

again, that's exactly why dad did not have spend the night privileges. Well, the entire community, law enforcement community, along with Joe Carrillo, private investigator, thank God in heaven, at Leverage PI, come together to try to find baby JoJo. Listen to our friends at Local 10. Detectives are considering this a kidnapping case, which is why that Amber Alert is in effect. These are the billboards you'll likely see on major highways throughout South Florida. The hope is that with an Amber Alert out, we'll be able to track down little Jorge Morales or Jojo as they call him. Now we do know that perhaps the child may be taking some type of medication.

Now it's already gone three to four days without that medication. So now we start, our investigators get a little concerned. Let's show you dad's car. This is a gray 2006 Ford Expedition with the license plate CSIU53. Local 10 did speak with the boy's mother on Monday about how she and JoJo's father have been in a contentious custody battle ever since they split up three years ago. She is begging for JoJo's safe return. I'm afraid. I'm terrified. I'm really broken. I just wish that he would know that we're looking for him. Then mom, Jeanette, begins to lose hope as the days pass. Let's go to our cut 15 when mom is at the lowest point. A breakthrough emerges in the search. Days later, police found a potential clue close to 2,000 miles

away, this SUV. Maine State Police say the three may have been in the SUV. It was found in Littleton, Maine, near the Canadian border. Concepcion is working with private investigator Joe Carrillo, who's worked thousands of missing persons cases. I think it's a very dangerous case. It's not the run of the mill. And the search for a six-year-old boy in Florida is now linked to Maine. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says Jorge Morales disappeared August 27th in Miami. Police say an abandoned vehicle in Littleton, Maine was found with items believed to be related to him.

JoJo's mother says that her son is on the autism spectrum and may have difficulty communicating. Investigators believe that he was abducted by his father, Jorge Morales, and grandmother, Lillian Morales. They both now face felony charges. You know, on the run with your mom and your little boy, Jeanette Concepcion with me right now. Jeanette, I just got to ask, was your husband like this when you married him? What pushed him off the deep end? No, no, no. He was not. He lost his mind during the divorce. I don't know how he turned into this person. There is a reason, obviously, why the divorce, why we split up. We couldn't meet eye to eye. He was very obsessed with things. I felt like a prisoner in my own house.

And me and my son became an obsession of him. So we couldn't even go anywhere without him, which was including moms get together with kids and all of that. He just felt like he had to be present for all of it because he was paranoid that nobody else could protect his son and and even and we're talking about about insane stuff such as we will change his diaper and he will come and change it again because he was he was obsessed obsessed in in a sick way and and he became come and change it again because he was obsessed, obsessed in a sick way. And it became such a horrible and miserable time for me and my son that I was miserable.

My son could feel it. And that's when I decided to get divorced. Why would he want to rechange the baby's diaper? I have no idea. I have no idea. He would do stranger things too, such as I will prepare the food and he will re-prepare the food because, you know, everything was, we were not good enough. I breastfed him until he was a year. And when I stopped at a year,

he stopped talking to me because I was malnutritioning my kid and stop I should keep breastfeeding until he was two years old three years old which it was just obsession it was an obsession with absolutely everything okay I just got to get this in my head for a moment so you would cook supper yes and then he would come in and recook supper oh I can tell you all he double l break loose if that happened after I cook a whole meal okay wait give me an example And he would come in and recook supper? Oh, I can tell you all H-E-L-L-L-B-R-E-A-T-E-R-O-O-S. If that happened after I cooked a whole meal. Okay, wait, give me an example. Like, what happened?

I've got to hear this. Yeah, I would make a plate of food for my son. You know, the little things that he would eat. Like what? What would he eat? Rice. And he wouldn't let me cook the beans because if I put this unorganic thing on it or something that was not run by him, he would get really upset. What would happen when he got upset, Jeanette?

He would just basically, you know, throw a tantrum like another kid. I felt like I was raising two kids. Okay, Kathleen Murphy, I guess as upsetting as that sounds, I guess you've seen that a whole lot more. Yeah, it doesn't really matter in custody court where they're presuming that equal custody is best for children. There literally are no trials with any evidence anymore as to fitness of parents. Literally, maybe 2% of the cases are heard before the courts, and people raise issues, and the courts just rubber stamp custody. And I'm sure that happened in Jeanette's case at the beginning. Well, the thing I don't get is there are all these red flags. Doesn't matter.

Waving. You know how the matador taunts the bull with the red cape? It's just like that. You see this happening and no one did anything about it. No matter how many times Jeanette tells the judge what's going on, it ends up with dad violently kidnapping baby Jojo, who is autistic and cannot tell anyone what's happening. And then in the last hours,

we have an incredible break in the case. Take a listen to our friends at CBS4 Miami. I got a call from the FBI today. It was like around 1230 or 1 p.m. And the FBI doesn't really call that much. So I was like, this is really good or really bad. So when he say, I have good news for you, I just, you know, I almost passed out on the floor. And then I started screaming.

And I got to speak to my son, which was awesome. And he say he misses me. And, you know, and I love him so much. He wanted pizza. I thought my son was going to die. It was very hard to sleep. It was very hard to eat. All I could think about was him and what was he doing, if he was okay, if he was asking for his mom.

This security video here is from when he was spotted in Maine with his dad before they made their way to Canada, where Yannette says he was spotted inside of a Walmart. Somebody saw something, they got the attention of the police, and that's how they caught him. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace Straight out to Jeanette Concepcion. This is little JoJo's mom. I understand that tonight,

late tonight you are going to be reunited with Jojo oh my god Nancy this has been such a rollercoaster but I tonight I get to see him I've been facetiming him

he's been asking me where have I been and then finally today it's going to after 10 p.m. I'm finally gonna get to hug him it's gonna hurt you know I I cannot wait to smell him to see his little face and and he you know he tells me that he was he was trying to find me my poor thing he doesn't know what's going on at all autism can be a blessing in disguise because he thinks that he was on a vacation and he's just glad the vacation is over you know it's it's amazing it's amazing the feeling that i have inside there is no word that i can use to point at it it's just so good it's so good yes jeanette i mean you and I have discussed this off air. Do you know how rare it is that we get to report that a child has been found safe and alive?

I know. I know, Nancy. And I know I am possibly one of the luckiest person. And I've been blessed by God so much and by so many prayers and, and so much support from the community that I did not expect. I mean, even social media has been working for the good this time. And he has just been amazing, amazing. I know, I know cases don't end like this. I know. And I know that if we were waiting longer before he was seven, we would probably find him in heaven. So I'm just so blessed right now. So blessed. Jeanette, why do you say if he had gone to his seventh birthday, your husband would have killed him?

That's why my son will be repeating here in my house, which was my biggest fear. He kept saying that he heard from dad that he had to go to heaven before he was seven or eight. Otherwise, he wouldn't meet Jesus. Okay. Do I still have Dr. Plant with me? Yes. Dr. Plant, did you hear that? That if he didn't die and go to heaven before age seven or eight, he would never get to

see Christ? You know, it's just horrific that we're in a situation where someone can try and believe something is outrageous and unsupported by any of the only of the reasonable religious traditions out there to justify this horrific behavior. And it's kind of mind-boggling, but unfortunately, it can help to propel someone to do a terribly egregious and murderous act. With me is Dr. Thomas Plant, professor at Stanford University. I want to go quickly to our 20. This is Trent Kelly at Local 10.

Somebody called and somebody said something, and I'm just so grateful for that person because you know it just took that. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police taking George and Lilium into custody while confirming Jojo was safe and in good condition. His mother describing that phone call with her son the first time they've spoken in months. All I said was hey baby I missed you and he goes it's mommy it's mommy. Straight out to special guest joining us, in addition to Jeanette Concepcion, Joe Carrillo, the man behind the recovery of baby JoJo. You can find him at leveragepi.com. Joe, tell me how the whole thing unfolded. Well, the recovery was amazing, Nancy.

We were definitely, and when I say we, our group as well as law enforcement, we're definitely going in the right direction. We had worked numerous sightings that were coming into us, the law enforcement, and we went from being 30 days behind, we were know that he stopped. He settled down. He was building a cabin. He was also shopping in places we knew he would go to to get some special food. And we didn't stop. It's just that, you know, we were moving slowly, but we were in the right direction and we would have found him. But it took shows like yours and social media and television and a good citizen to make a call. And it's what Janet said, you know, social media did a wonderful thing this time. Joe, what do you mean by you knew he would be shopping for special things like what? You know, a lot of the things that we do is get into the mind of this person and chase them that way. For example, we found in the car in Maine that he left behind a rare type of bread that he absolutely loved. And Janet says he can't live without. We knew that that type of bread is only sold in Canada at Walmarts. So we started putting out a net in all the Walmarts because we knew that he'd show up at a Walmart. Now, I don't know if that's what caused the tipster, but something did.

We don't have privy to that information so we were chasing him because of his habits for example he had two cats with him although they haven't found the cats we put nets out at pet shops and we were getting calls that we were checking up he loves pizza there was some spottings at a pizza. We put nets out at the pizza parters. And when I say we, it was the RCMP, Miami-Dade, us, and the FBI. In this case, everybody worked together, and the results is a true miracle because it's like you say, Nancy, we don't get these outcomes in these type of cases. It just doesn't happen. And I told Janet this morning, because it's the first time she could hear it, that when I was talking to the folks that were working this, nobody believed that they were alive. And we, my group, could not work a case that way when it involves a six-year-old child. I knew that they were going to be found alive. He didn't go through all this trouble not to be. And we were on the right path.

And it took a lot of minds and a lot of work jointly. And at the end, a good citizen of Canada has to know that he saved a child's life. Nothing short of saving a child's life. Joe Carrillo, I've just got to ask you it's the father that loves the special bread yes ma'am what kind of bread is it i've got to know what is it janet can answer that i don't recall right now janet what is the bread what is it i don't remember the name but it's a it's a raw bread that is that's frozen and because it has life cultures in it i think i understand why not everybody carries that okay what is the first

thing you're gonna do when you see jojo tonight god willing uh i'm gonna hug him i'm gonna smell i'm gonna smell him completely from head to toe i just want to hug him. I'm going to smell. I'm going to smell him completely from head to toe. I just want to hug him so bad. And we're already planning on cruises, vacations, Disney, and all the things that he loves. And we're already planning on having his favorite food. And it's going to be whatever he wants, at least for the first week. He's going to feel like a superstar. You know, I'm just in amazement with this wonderful,

wonderful news. And please, please let us know soon about your happy reunion. All I can say is praise God. And thank goodness you acted the way you did as quickly as you did, Jeanette. And thank

heaven for Joe Carrillo. Nancy Grace signing off. Goodbye friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.