Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Suspect With Distinctive Facial Scarring Wanted in Tacoma Tot Teekah Lewis Disappearance

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

Two-year-old Teekah Lewis disappeared from a local bowling alley in Tacoma, Washington. She was there with her family: her mom, aunts, uncles, friends were all there bowling in lanes 7 and 8. It was league night at Frontier Lanes bowling alley, so there were tons of people there.But amidst all her family, Teekah seemingly vanished into thin air while just 10 feet away from her mother, Theresa Lewis. While family and friends bowled, the little girl played at the wheel of a video arcade game. Theresa Lewis says she looked away from her baby girl for less than a minute, and when she looked back, she was gone. A witness comes forward describing a man with facial scarring as a potential suspect.Joining Nancy Grace today: Theresa Lewis - Victim's Mother Dale Carson - Criminal Defense Attorney (Jacksonville), Former FBI Agent, Former Police Officer, Author: "Arrest-Proof Yourself" Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst, www.drbethanymarshall.com, New Netflix show: 'Bling Empire'  Dan Scott - Former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sergeant, 26 years with Special Victims Bureau Specializing in Child Abuse  Olivia LaVoice - Crime reporter for Q13FOX (Seattle) TIPLINE: Tacoma Police Crime Tips Crime Tips [phone] or Crime Stoppers 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. In the middle of a bowling alley, you think everybody's having fun because I know we do. Lots of fun at the bowling alley. But how does a little girl seemingly disappear into thin air from the middle of a bowling alley with her family there? How does that happen? Because when I go bowling with the twins, with or without my husband David, I can see them sitting right there. They don't just disappear into thin air, but that is exactly what happened to this little girl. We want answers.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. crime stories with nancy grace i'm nancy grace this is crime stories thank you for being with us here at fox nation and xm 111 first of all take a listen to this it was january 23rd tika was at a crowded bowling alley with her family in Tacoma, Washington. Members of the family were taking turns watching Tika and some other young children with them, and they were distracted for a few moments. When they turned around, she was gone. Since then, no one has seen her. Now, I get being distracted at the bowling alley because when it's your turn to bowl,

you get the ball, you go up, you set your sights on the pins and you roll it out. You see what happens. You wait and you see your score. So you're looking, I would guess at least a minute. And I know when a lot of functions say at a church function or a family reunion or where you feel you know everybody, you're not staring at your child the whole time. How did this little girl, just two years old, she's beautiful. How does she go missing in a crowded bowling alley? Again, thank you for being with us here at Fox station,

Sirius XM 111. I want to introduce to you an all star panel of guests, each one an expert in their own right to try to make sense of it all. With me, Dale Carson, criminal defense attorney, joining us out of Jacksonville, not just a criminal defense attorney, a renowned criminal defense attorney, but former FBI and former cop, author of Arrest Proof Yourself. I don't like that, but the rest I like a lot. Psycho analyst to the stars joining us out of L.A., Dr. Bethany Marshall. You can find her at drbethanymarshall.com, and she's star of a Netflix series, Bling

Empire. Investigator Dan Scott, former L.A. County Sheriff Sergeant, 26 years Special Victims Bureau specializing in child cases. Olivia LaVoie's crime reporter joining us for Q13 Fox at Seattle. And you can find her on Twitter at Q13 Olivia. But first, I want to go to a very special guest joining us, a woman I feel that I've befriended over the years, Teresa English. This is Tika's mother.

First of all, Miss English, thank you for being with us. You know, a lot of blame, I'll just put it out there, has been cast on you because you're the mom and Tika disappeared on your watch. But after many, many investigations into this particular case, I think the attacks on you are unjustified. Tell me, Ms. English, what happened? What do you remember of the night Tika just disappeared in the bowling alley? It was a family function. I had family members there.

I had my brother and my sister-in-law. I had my boyfriend at the time. And we were all just having fun, you know, and Tika was... Miss English, Miss English, let me write this down. Because you know what? The many times I've looked at this case, I didn't know how, who, what members of your extended family were there. Was this some kind of a reunion or a get together of sorts? It was a get together because I never got out the house. You know, I had four other kids. So

my brother invited me to go out with them. And my oldest three daughters, they went with their aunt and I had my two youngest one. I had my two year old and my 10 months old at the time. Your two year old and your 10 months old. Oh man, you got your hands full. I know how it was when the twins were 10 months old, how they were when they were two years old and they were starting to walk. Okay.

So your brother is his wife there. His wife is there. My other and they were starting to walk. Okay. So your brother, is his wife there? His wife is there. My other brother and his girlfriend was there. Yes. Did they have children and were the children there? Yes. My brother had his son and he was, oh, he was just a couple months old. So he was focused on his baby boy.

And what about the second brother? He was him and his girlfriend? It was him and his wife. It was him and his baby boy. And what about the second brother? He was him and his girlfriend? It was him and his wife. It was him and his girlfriend. Yeah, him and his girlfriend at the time. Did they have children? No, they didn't have no kids. So it was you, your brother, and his wife, the brother, and the girlfriend, the infant son the brother had.

Anybody else from your family? Oh, your boyfriend. Yes, at the time, yes. And anybody else? My sister, she had her family members there. So it was a big group. How many family members did your sister bring? Oh, there was probably like six, seven other ones. So it was a pretty big group. Now, hold on just a moment, Ms. English. I want to

go straight out to Dale Carson joining us out of Jacksonville right now. Now, not only a criminal defense attorney, but former FBI and cop. Dale, you know, that's kind of almost like a family reunion. And I am lulled into a sense of complacency when I'm at a family get-together. Because you feel like with your own family, so many of them around, for Pete's sake, that's at least 12 people, I think, right there. You feel safe. And you feel like everybody is watching each other's children, or at least I would feel that way. Well, that's right. And I think that one of the odd things that we don't understand about pedophiles and serial killers is that they often communicate with one another.

And it's a known fact in those circles that amusement areas are primed for picking up potential victims. And we've seen this here in Florida where these arcades, as they were back in the 90s, of course it's different today, were basically used as a stomping ground for people picking up young boys and girls who would be runaways and end up in those places. And they would go in and they'd place a stack of quarters, which were used at that time to operate the machines. And that's how they would lure them. So I don't think anybody really realizes that when you're in a family group like that and you're paying attention to one another, you're certainly not expecting that someone would

think that an amusement area is someplace where you might find an abducted child. And so I don't think that's a real problem. You know what, Dale? I'm very torn about what you're saying. Part of me knows that it's true. But I remember my brother, my older brother, helped put himself through college working at one of those arcades in the mall. At the time, I also worked at the mall at Sears and Roebuck. And I would go by and I would see my brother there. And he's about seven or eight years older than me. And I never thought of it that way. But let me tell you this, Dale, one of the first, not the first, but one of the first child molestation cases I had was a little boy.

I recall he was about 9 to 11 years old, and he was learning disabled. He could hardly speak. And he loved the video arcade deal, loved it. And his mom would give him a roll of quarters and take him to the videocade and arcade, and like sit in the parking lot and work or whatever she was doing. And then, you know, they'd go home. Well, one time she found, I think it was a $20 folded up bill in his pocket. Turns out at the arcade, he had met a pedophile who would sodomize the little boy and in payment would give him some quarters. So it seems like a very innocent place when I was growing up working at Sears and Roebuck.

It's not always innocent. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. crime stories with nancy grace i want to follow up on what dill corson lawyer out of jacksonville is saying with um dan scott former la county sheriff sergeant he's right so while mom who's with us right now theresa english is minding her own business and she's there with her two babies you don't think wow right over there that group of people I don't know, one of them could be a pedophile. I've been so freaked out about this case. When I took the children alone, when they were two or three,

starting, you know, going bowling and playing, they'd have to go everywhere with me, even to the bathroom. We could hardly get through a game of bowling because whenever one of them had to go, we'd all go because of this case, Tika's case. Jump in, Dan Scott. It's always easy, and the first person you blame is the mom or the parents. But you have to remember these are predators that solely look for children. They are experts at it. They're experts at blending in. Yes, it's scary. And yes, we do our best to watch our children at all times. But it only takes a moment to turn your attention away when these people will snatch. That's all they do is think about where they can obtain a child.

You just said something that really hits home to me. In fact, you just gave me chills on my arm. You said that's all they think about. You're right. For instance, all I think about besides crime stories is the twins. What am I going to cook them for dinner? What are they? What's their homework assignment? Where do they have to be? What's the latest in scouts? All of that. I'm consumed with that. That's all they think about. And I want you to take a listen to this. This is our friends at CrimeOnline.com.

Listen. As Tika Lewis is playing in one of the driving games in the bowling alley arcade, her mother, Teresa English, looks away just for a few moments to check on her other children in one of the bowling lanes. When English turns back around, Tika is gone. English looks around and between the other games, then runs to the nearby ladies' room to check there. No Tika. Just six feet away from the arcade where Tika was playing is a side door to the mauling alley. Teresa English runs through the door and into the parking lot,

screaming her daughter's name. Where is Tika? Oh, Miss English, Miss English, Miss English. You know, I can hear that a hundred times and every time it's just so upsetting. Tell me when you first noticed, Miss English, that Tika wasn't everything, you know, from day one, from the day I had her, she was my everything. I freaked out, you know, you, I mean, I, I was at a panic. I looked in the video game. She was gone.

I told, I told everybody in the group, I said, Tika's not here. Tika's gone. You know, where is she? And I ran. What were you doing? Were you bowling? Were you watching somebody bowl? What happened when you turned around? What made you realize she wasn't there?

I went to bowl. It was my turn to bowl. So I went to bowl and Tika was there because, you know, I had just seen her. And I told her, I'm going to go bowl. I I'll be right back and so I went to go bull I turned around and it took that quick for her to be gone it was just like within a couple seconds because I went to bull I didn't change I didn't check my score. I turned around, you know, and she was gone that quick. Joining me right now is Dr. Angela Arnold. She's a renowned psychiatrist joining us out of the Atlanta jurisdiction,

and you can find her at AngelaArnoldMD.com. Dr. Angie, I have to tell you something. Hearing Teresa English talk. Yes. And listen, you know, I will jump on a mom and a New York Minute if I think they have anything to do with something that happened to their child. You know that. I know that.

When I hear Teresa English talk, It literally is giving me chill bumps because it reminds me of the day I was in the babies or us, you know, that big warehouse thing. Yeah. Looking for organic suntan lotion. And I was down on the very bottom level. They have those really tall shelves like they do at Lowe's maybe or Home Depot. And I was all the way down there. John David and Lucy were right behind me. And I was digging

around trying to find it and I couldn't find it. I stood up and I was looking up and then I said, well, I guess they don't have it. And I turned around and there was Lucy. No John David. And that feeling, it's just, it's awful. I will never forget it as long as I live.

And I really am angry that people have been blaming Miss English. She went up to bowl. She turns around and Tika's gone. She immediately sounds the alarm. Can you imagine running to the lady's bathroom? Right. Oh, she's going to be in there. And calm down. This is going to be okay. You go in there. She's not there. And then you can feel it rising in your chest. I'm really angry with people blaming Miss English all this time. You know, Nancy, I think that the people who have the audacity to blame the mother have never been, they must not be mothers themselves.

Because I think that practically every mother has turned their back for a minute and their children have gone missing. And I have felt that panic. I was at Lenox Mall one time, turned around in Gymboree and my two little babies were gone. I almost had the whole mall locked down. And then some woman comes walking down the thing and down the sidewalk or whatever you want to call it. And she had my children and she goes, they were watching TV at Pottery Barn. And I was like, oh, dear Lord in heaven. That's halfway down the mall. I'm going to make this quick, but I just have to tell you one more thing. I was out in Arizona covering the Jodi Arias trial.

And the three of us were staying in a hotel. And I had had the twins out at the pool. We were coming in and we all got on the elevator. I pushed John David in. I said, Lucy, come on. Lucy just froze. The elevator closed. I tried to get her. I came immediately back down. As soon as I started pushing all the buttons, she was gone. Oh my God. She got on another elevator and I was running up and down all through all trying to, can you imagine if some perv had grabbed her on another

floor i would never have found her i found her but my point is in that moment right in that split second you can lose your child through no wrongdoing of your own joining me right now in addition to theresa english this is tika's mother, is a very well-known crime reporter, Olivia LaVoie. Joining us from Q13 Fox Seattle. Olivia, tell me about this bowling alley where Tika goes missing. The bowling alley is no longer there, but at the time it was incredibly popular, and especially on a Saturday night. And at the time that Tika went missing around 10 p.m., it was very crowded. And I think that that contributed to the chaos of that night. I mean, on one hand, you might think, oh, the more people, the better, because

that means there's more witnesses. But in this case, it seems to have been detrimental. You know, there's reports that it was so loud in the bowling alley that when the manager initially went on the loudspeaker to announce that Tika was missing, that it was difficult to hear. It seemed like, you know, people weren't stopping in their tracks and listening per se. So, yes, very, very crowded that night in particular. Oh, Olivia LaVoie, just hearing that makes my skin crawl because it seems like everything was going wrong. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Miss English, so you run to the bathroom looking for Tika and what happens?

My sister-in-law's sister was in there and I asked her, I said, is Tika there? And she was like, no. And I said, she's gone. She's nowhere to be found. So I went up to the announcer and I said, and there was an off-duty officer there and he was supposed to be patrolling the grounds but he wasn't he was watching everybody bowl and I told him I said my daughter's gone and he said are you sure and I said yes we searched everywhere everywhere and I said we need help I need my daughter. And he, you know, told everybody, look for a child underneath the chair. She might have fell asleep.

I said, she didn't fall asleep. She's nowhere. We searched everywhere already. I said, we need backup. You guys need to bring more law enforcement over here. I need my baby. My baby's gone. So like 20, 30 minutes later, that's when the first officer came in. My baby was long gone

by then. And I told him, you guys took too long. It's too long of a wait. Guys, I want you to hear our friends at Crime Online. Teresa English realizes she needs help and grabs an off-duty Tacoma police officer working for the bowling alley. After another search, the Tacoma police, the FBI, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children are called in. Throughout the night, hundreds of officers search the woods and go door to door in a nearby residential neighborhood. With concerns of a family abduction, relatives are questioned. Teresa English voluntarily submits to two polygraph exams. Tika's father has an ironclad alibi. The parents are cleared.

More than two dozen detectives are working on Tika's case full time. Take a listen to this. We had gone to that bowling alley plenty of times, and that was kind of an area where people would kind of just come there with their families and kids can kind of roam. Saturday night, January 23rd, 1999, New Frontiers Bowling Alley was filled with people who had become part of a nightmare. One teenage boy in particular, but he had no way of knowing that then. I had to use the restroom, so I went towards where the restrooms were. This rude guy bumped into me with this little girl, and since he was white and Tika was mixed, or, you know, the little girl was mixed, I just thought it was the father just rushing his daughter to the bathroom.

The night went on as usual. When the teen and his family went to leave, they noticed police were searching for something, but they wouldn't know what, or rather who, until days later. You're hearing our friend Olivia LaVoie's Q13 Fox. Olivia, tell me about this sighting of a white male rushing by, holding the hand of a little girl. interviewed him 21 years later. He's now an adult man and you can tell how much what he saw that night has stuck with him because a few days after he bumped into this man, you know, it's a distinct memory for him because he says it was so jarring for him as a teenager to have this adult man bump into him and not acknowledge it and just, you know, keep going. And also the man had deep pockmarks on his face. The teenage boy, he had never seen anything like that. That really stood out to him. And then three days later,

he sees Kika's face all over the news. And he says, that's the little girl that was with the man, the rude man that night. And he immediately, his family immediately alerted police. Police did speak with him once back then in 1999. But that was it. It took over 20 years for this tip to be unearthed by a cold case detective who zeroed in on it and felt like this is truly important. People really need to hear this suspect description. Tyler, I'd like for everyone to hear our cut zero two. This is Olivia LaVoie's Q13 Fox. Listen. The little girl he saw that night when he came face to face with the rude man was Tika Lewis, the two-year-old who was at the bowling alley with a dozen family members

when in an instant she vanished. I had to say something. So he did. He was interviewed by detectives in January 1999, but then nothing. No one contacted me. I was easy to find. Maybe what I had to say just wasn't relevant or wasn't useful. Flash forward two decades. Someone did think what he had to say was most definitely relevant and useful. The cold case investigator who picked through thousands of pages and hundreds of tips when he spotted the one that leaped off the page. This witness actually describes a type of encounter with Tika by this individual. And the description of the individual is not generic. It's specific and it's detailed. It is very detailed. Now listen to our cut 07. Listen.

At that time, there would have been no way for the caller to know a man with a pockmarked face had been mentioned in the first few days of the investigation. The individual that we're trying to identify is a white male, 5'11", with a husky build. He is described as having shoulder-length brown curly or wavy hair with a thick mustache and a heavily pockmarked face. The night of Tika's disappearance, he was wearing a blue flannel shirt and faded jeans. His motivation to solve this case is simple, Tika's mother. It really makes it easy to try to keep the case alive for her and to try to find her some answers. She has never given up on her daughter, finding her daughter. And I really admire that.

He's not going to stop looking until we find something. Back to Olivia LaVoie's crime reporter, Q13 Fox, joining us out of Seattle. Olivia, I hear the reporter stating that a caller called in about a white male with pot marks on his face. Who was the caller? So the caller was a woman who was at the bowling alley about a week or so after Tika's disappearance, I think it was actually less than that, just a matter of days, and America's Most Wanted was at the bowling alley shooting a reenactment of the case, to feature the case, and this woman noticed that a man with a heavily poxmarked face was hanging around the news crew,

and she felt, you know, I mean, it's not unusual that if America's Most Wanted is in your town filming something that, you know, you might hang around and watch. But this individual's behavior was so odd to her that she called the Tacoma Police Department to say, hey, you guys should check this guy out. Here's his description. Something was off with him, just the way he was sort of lurking. And in the description,

she notes that he has a heavily pockmarked face. And the detective, the cold case detective who connected these tips said, there's no way that's a coincidence. There's no way that woman could have known that we had another witness see a man with pockmarked face with Tika that night. OK, a lot of things crashing in my head right now. But one thing that tells me Dan Scott, former L.A. County Sheriff Sergeant, 26 years SVU, is that this guy is local. It's not that he was coming through the interstate that night,

maybe a trucker or maybe a visitor. He's local because he's still in town a week later when America's Most Wanted shows up at the bowling alley to do a reenact. He's still there. This guy is local. I agree completely. And it's a tragedy that they did not, the police did not pick up on this. I mean, I hate to bash anybody and second guess them, but there were opportunities to put that description out to the public. immediately. They did call the FBI, which is what they should have done, and they got the assistance because the FBI is excellent at this type of crime. But how they missed that, I have no idea. If they would have got that unique description out to the public, I agree, he is probably a local, or was at least at the time. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Back to Teresa English. This is Tika's mother.

Teresa, again, thank you so much. Sometimes I hate to ask to speak to you because I don't want to dredge everything back up again. But yet, I feel we have to. What do you make of these reports of the white male with pot marks? I mean, come on. You've got a white male with pot marks seeing that night plowing through a crowd, dragging a little girl that matches Tika's description by the hand. Then you see this guy, this freaky dude, a white male with pot marks showing up at the reenact with America's Most Wanted back at the bowling alley. You don't know how mad I was when I found out this information.

I was livid, you know, knowing that this young teenager came up to, you know, called three days later and said that he's seen who took Tika and they did nothing about this. Nothing. I want to follow up on what we're talking about. People often return to the scene and this guy shows back up at the bowling alley. And they're hiding in plain sight, Nancy. We've learned from this. And I will simply tell you that we now film funerals and a number of other things looking for the subject or the perp to show up again. And it's interesting in connection with the America's Most Wanted, you wonder if they still have film in the cameras that they kept to look back into the crowd

to see if that individual is there. Because we understand that people get pleasure out of this. They want to come and see what's happening. So their pleasure is derived in part from actually witnessing the suffering of individuals whom they have injured. Tyler, let's play 00C. Our friends at Crime Online. After Tika goes missing, cold case detectives review old police reports. They focus on those involving children who had been approached by a stranger around the bowling alley. There had been several. The year before Tika disappeared, a man reported to security that his four-year-old son had been assaulted in the restroom by a white man

with curly brown hair and a beard. A few weeks before Tika disappeared, the mother of a six-year-old boy stopped an attempted abduction of her son. The suspect also described as a white male with brown hair. And on the same day Tika went missing, there was another incident. A man had taken his two children to the park less than a mile away from New Frontier Lanes. He saw a stranger near the bathrooms who was motioning for the two children to come to him. The father chased the man off. He was a white male with brown hair wearing a baseball hat. He's never been identified. At this close proximity to the bowling alley, that is no coincidence. I want you to hear Tika's father talking about when Tika goes missing.

This is Shelby Miller, K-I-R-O. 7. I've thought of my daughter every single day. January 23rd, 1999. Robert Lewis's life changed forever. Police say someone abducted his innocent brown-eyed baby girl from the New Frontier bowling alley in Tacoma. More than two decades later, Robert hasn't given up hope. We sit there and we watch Blue's Clues and she'll have her Tweety Bird slippers on and that's that's what I remember just my little baby. Thursday Tacoma police released new details about the investigation. Detectives are searching for information about a white man who's 30 to 40 years old has brown curly hair a mustache and pock marks on his face. They say he was seen at the bowling alley the night the two-year-old was abducted. These developments stopped Tika's father in his tracks.

Put me right back to 1999. I got that phone call. To Olivia LaVoie, crime reporter with Q13 Fox. Again, Olivia, thank you for being with us. A lot of the reporting has been done by you. A lot of the investigative work. Where does the case stand right now, Olivia? You know, unfortunately, there hasn't been much movement with the case, which is incredibly disappointing because when we released this new information

over a year ago now, about a year and a half ago, we really thought this was going to be it. This suspect description was surely going to get investigators some very solid leads on who this suspect could be and that just hasn't happened. So I feel it's very important to keep that suspect description out there to remind people this individual had a deeply pockmarked face. Surely someone out there has to know who we're describing. Back to Teresa English. Ms. English, I know you have other children, but there's no way to fill the empty hole of Tika missing.

Tell me how you get through each day. If it wasn't for my other kids, I probably wouldn't be here. I have a missing piece in my heart. Everything is gone. And the only thing that's going to put my heart to hold is to find out what happened to my daughter. You know, it's been 22 years old. My daughter's about to turn 25. And I've been living a nightmare because I don't know what happened to my daughter, you know, and is the police really working on my daughter's case? No, they're not. They're not. And all I've asked for 22 years is what happened to Tika? Who took my baby? Who took her? Now they know. They just need to find out who this man is. They could have found her 22 years ago if they wouldn't listen to this witness. They would have brought him back in.

This is a credible witness. This man still remembers from day one about what this man looks like. This man showed up. This should have been, you know, he showed up twice at the bowling alley. They should have took that when people were coming forward saying, hey, this is the guy. We need to find out who this man is. Where is Peta? Where is she? If she's not out here no more, we just want to find out where she's at. What did you do with her? All we want is closure. And we've been asking that for 22 years now. All we want is closure. If you know or even think you know anything regarding the white male, brown hair, heavily pot-marked face. If you think you know anything, please dial 253-591-5959.

Repeat, 253-591-5959. Or Crime Stoppers, which is 800-222-TIPS. 800-222-8477. Our prayers for Tika go on. But we want justice. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.