Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Teen girl kidnapped by IT wiz, drugged daily & held captive. Where is Daphne Westbrook?

Episode Date: March 9, 2021

Daphne Westbrook, 17, has been missing for over a year. Police say she is being held against her will by her father, John Oliver Westbrook. Police also say that the teen is being drugged to keep her controlled. The Hamilton County District Attorney’s office says Daphne Westbrook is endangered both physically and mentally. Joining Nancy Grace Today: Neal Pinkston - District Attorney General for the 11th Judicial District of the State of Tennessee, [e-mail]   Dr. Michael B. Donner, Ph.D. - Psychoanalyst, Clinical and Forensic Psychologist, Expert Witness and Litigation Consultant on Child Custody Matters, Author: "Tearing the Child Apart: The contribution of Narcissism, Envy and Perverse Modes of Thought to Child Custody Wars", michaelbdonner.com @michaelbdonner Greg Smith - Special Deputy Sheriff, Johnson County Sheriff's Office (Kansas), Executive Director of the Kelsey Smith Foundation, www.kelseysarmy.com  Dr. William Morrone - Chief Medical Examiner, Bay County Michigan,  Derek Ellington - Certified Forensic Examiner, Licensed Private Investigator, Ellington Digital Forensics www.ellington.net Evan Axelbank - Reporter, Fox 13 News, Tampa Bay  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Mommy says her girl, her teen girl, goes out to walk her dog. She's never seen again. Can you even imagine that? All the guilt this mom carries around for letting her daughter go out simply to walk the dog. A friend of mine, Daphne Westbrook, has been missing since Sunday. She's 16 years old. Her car was found at Glen Falls.

The last time that her phone was pinged was in Dalton, Georgia she's been missing since Sunday if you have any information regarding this please, please let us know her mother's name

on Facebook if you have any information please Her mother's name, Rona Lynn, on Facebook. You can find her there. And if you have any information, please let her know. Let us know. Try to help us find this person because it's really sad. I've met her twice, and she's a wonderful, wonderful girl. So anyway, it's not looking good right now, so we need to really, really try to help and make this happen. You were just hearing a local musician begging the public for help.

That was Dan Pinson, musician and family friend. At the end, he said, it's not looking good right now. And he's right, because right now we have reason to believe this young girl is being drugged to keep her from going home to mommy. Again, I'm Nancy Grace, and I want to thank you for being with us for Crime Stories. Let me introduce to you an all-star panel to try to make sense of this. Neil Pinkston, District Attorney General for the 11th Judicial District of the State of Tennessee. That's Hamilton County, Chattanooga. Dr. Michael B. Donner, PhD, psychoanalyst, clinical forensic psychologist, expert witness, author of Tearing

the Child Apart. Greg Smith joining me, special friend of the show, Deputy Sheriff, Johnson County Sheriff's Office, Executive Director of the Kelsey Smith Foundation, and you can find him at kelseysarmy.com, Dr. William Maroney, a renowned chief medical examiner joining us out of Michigan, author of America Narcan, with so many publications and projects going, fighting the war against drugs with a traveling mobile unit as we speak. Dr. Maroney joining us, Derek Ellington, Certified Forensics Examiner, PI, and you can find him at ellington.net. But first, to reporter of Fox 13 News, Tampa Bay, Evan Axelbank. Evan, thank you for being with us. I want to talk about when this girl goes missing. You just heard a local musician begging for help.

But, Evan, I want you to take a listen to our friends at WRCB-TV. We just need her to be found before it's too late. Rona Kurtzinger hasn't seen her daughter Daphne Westbrook in over a year. She was driving over to spend the weekend with her dad. She told me, bye mom, I love you. And that was it. The then 16-year-old left her mother's house on a Friday to head by her father's on Florida Avenue in October 2019. Later that weekend, she messaged her mom saying she'd be a couple of hours late getting back.

That was okay. She wanted to go for a walk with her dog and a friend. Daphne never returned home. The only thing that we knew is that she was sad because her dad had said he was going to move away out of state. Wow. I'm just imagining my own children, John David and Lucy, facing the prospect of one parent moving out of state. My mom let the teen girl go for a walk with her dog. She's never seen again. What happened? Straight back down to Evan

Axelbank. Evan, tell me about when mom realizes that Daphne Westbrook has vanished. So, you know, essentially what we know about that moment is that she is essentially saying, I'm going to go and I'm going to walk my dog. And, you know, we know for a fact that she certainly loves her dog. She's got a number of pictures of them with her.

And, you know, without question, this is a routine thing that so many parents, you know, go through. Sure, go ahead and walk the dog. You know, Evan Axelmage is scaring me because we have a mutt. He's a mutt that was billed as a thoroughbred dachshund at the pound anyway. He's not. Let's just leave it at that.

And my daughter and I took him for a walk yesterday and she held the leash the whole time. And I told her at the end of the walk, you know, you've always been afraid and worried that he would get away. But now you've done it. Now you can go on walks by yourself. You know, I'm eating a dirt sandwich right now because that is not going to happen after I read about what happened with Daphne Westbrook. Evan Axelbank joining me from Fox 13 Tampa. Evan, let me ask you this. So she goes for what, the weekend with her dad?

Certainly that is the story that she, you know, that is what she told her mother she was doing. Straight out to Neil Pinkston, D.A., District Attorney General, joining me out of Chattanooga, Hamilton County. Neal Pinkston, I'm trying to get a handle on what happened when she went missing. And I don't think she ran away. I don't think she, quote, went missing. I think she's been kidnapped. And I believe that the mother's fear is actually true. I think this girl is being drugged to keep her from going home to her mother and her friends and her life.

But, Neal Pinkston, didn't she have routine visits with the dad? Yes, her parents are divorced. And by court order, she got to spend every other weekend with her father. And so the time with her father was ending on a Sunday evening in October of 2019 when she called her mother and indicated she'd be a little bit late. She was going to walk to walk one of her dogs. Neil Pinkston, when she spoke to her mother asking about, can I go walk the dogs? Was there anything unusual about the conversation? Did she sound like herself? She sounded like herself and her mother would indicate there was no warning sign or no signal that something was amiss.

You know, to Dr. Michael B. Donner, psychoanalyst joining us, and you can find him at michaelbdonner.com. Dr. Bonner, I call that, as many lawyers do, routine evidence. And I don't mean run-of-the-mill evidence. I mean evidence of routine. If you look up Daphne Westbrook, this teen girl missing, who I believe is being held against her will and drugged. In fact, she looks a lot like Hermione in Harry Potter. Just a beautiful young girl. And almost every picture you see her with her dogs. And I believe their names are Fern and Strawberry. And she loved her friends. She loved her dogs. So to call mom

from dad's house and say, hey, before I come home, I want to walk the dogs, okay? That tells me a lot, Dr. Donner. That tells me that she would call her mother even though she's at her dad's and say hey can I go out and walk the dogs and remember the timing is critical because it's almost time for her to come home from the visit with dad but yet she still thinks cares for loves mommy so much that she actually calls and says, hey, can I go walk the dogs? Even though she's not home with mom. And also as to evidence of routine, walking the dogs would be a normal thing. So if, for instance, my children said, hey, mom, can I go backpacking for the weekend

by myself? I would say, absolutely no. You're not old enough. It's nothing they've ever done before. So mom, I think, is lulled into a sense of complacency here. Everything seems normal. It's almost time for the daughter to come home. The daughter is acting normally.

She's going to walk her dogs, even asking permission. Everything's fine at that moment in time, doctor. Well, it sounds perfectly normal, and it's very difficult for the mother to know that anything is amiss. It seems like the normal sort of interaction that the two of them might have had. Well, at that moment, as mommy is being lulled into a sense of complacency that everything is fine. Take a listen now to our friends at 12 News. This is Robin Eastbrook. Her mother says park rangers told her Daphne's car was at the trailhead for at least 24 hours. She says nothing like this has happened before and she's very worried. We just need to know that she is safe and that she's alive right now very very much so any help

anyone who has seen anything don't be afraid to call even if you don't know the details. If you suspect that you saw our daughter then please please call so that we have leads to follow. That tip line, 423-209-7425. Repeat, 423-209-7425. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. We are talking about a teen girl that seemingly vanishes into thin air. Straight back to Neil Pinkston, District Attorney for the 11th Judicial District in Tennessee. That's Chattanooga. Mr. Pinkston, so she calls Mom and says, hey, can I walk the dog?

Isn't she supposed to come home that night? She is supposed to come home that night. Yes, her time ends with her father's visitation and goes back to her mother. You know, I noticed something you said, your phraseology earlier. You said under court order she got to go to her father's every other weekend, which made me think that it's like, hey, I got to go on vacation or I got to go to fill in the blank. Was she forced to go or did she want to go? Did she want to go more often?

I was interested in the way you phrased that, Neal Pinkston. Well, there were some divorce issues about custody. There have been a number of hearings in the Hamilton County Circuit Court about who was the primary custodial parent, and the court rendered a ruling that the mother was the primary custodial parent and that the daughter could see the father every other weekend and then some more times in the summer. It was contentious, to say the least,

and she wanted to spend more time with her father because I think we found that the mother imposed rules like any parent does with a teenager, but the father was very loose with rules and she could essentially do as she wished there. And so there were times when she wanted to be there more because there were no rules, bad tasks. Why, why, why? Dr. William Maroney, I know you're a chief medical examiner and renowned

author of American Narcan and a whole list of credentials, but I also know you've got a lot of kids. I've watched them grow up. And what a great job you're doing with them, by the way, with a little help from Mrs. Dr. Maroney. Dr. Maroney, why is it there's always one enforcer and one parent that kind of lets them run, as we say back home, hog wild? that's kind of what we all had as parents and that's a model uh well my mom was a softy and my dad was hard as nails and i try to be one and i learned both but the permissiveness in the parent in question the father is what makes him attractive that is what she wants to get away from get away from the rules people like that they influence the culture she could have a father who smokes marijuana therefore she's interested in marijuana

and in the presence studies show us that in the home of marijuana smokers, teenagers are likely to start smoking marijuana. They could be using CBD gummies that have a lot of THC in them and she might like that and her mother might be against that. So drug use and videos and talking online on the Internet, they all play into a permissive parent raises a child looking for that kind of permissiveness. I'm trying to soak in everything that you're saying. Neil Pinkston, is that the idea that you're getting? Was the dad so much more permissive than the mom and that's why she wanted to spend time

there well it's uh nancy's it's not just the idea we're getting it's what the evidence shows uh we've done uh interviews where with uh friends of daphne's who would indicate that uh the father uh before she left before she went went missing, would give her marijuana freely to use. Wait, wait, wait. Wait a minute. Neil Pinkston, you're telling me something I didn't know. Neil Pinkston, the elected district attorney there in Chattanooga. Dr. Maroney, I thought you were just giving examples.

Because I know how you and I feel about marijuana leading to other drugs and parents not getting that and acting like, oh, they just had a secret beer in the backseat of their car. No, that's not what it is. I thought you were just giving an example of permissiveness. Neil Pinkston, so the dad lets the daughter smoke pot uh and he also would provide her with the lsd and mushrooms dear lord in heaven um to greg smith go ahead neil and as i said that that was uh that was before uh she was went missing was kidnapped you know? I can't believe that she still got to go have visitation with her dad feeding her magic mushrooms, LSD pot.

Oh, H-E-double-L-N-O. Greg Smith, special deputy sheriff. You can find him at kelseysarmy.com. He is the director of the Kelsey Smith Foundation. He is the director of the Kelsey Smith Foundation. He is the director of the Kelsey Smith Foundation

because his daughter was kidnapped and murdered. And he has devoted his life to helping other crime victims. With that as the backdrop, Greg Smith, do you remember, of course you do, those moments when you first realized Kelsey was missing? Oh, very vividly. Just like it was yesterday. That's a feeling and a sensation that you'll never forget.

And there's similarities in this case to Kelsey's. I mean, Kelsey's car was found. Same thing that we're hearing here. One thing that really struck me, really doesn't have much of a bearing on the case, but the last person that Kelsey talked to before she was, that we know of before she was killed, family-wise, was my wife on the phone. And she said, bye, mom, I love you. And that's pretty much the same thing we heard on this case. So that really hit me hard. And you know what, Greg, I'm hearing your voice and the torment that you and your family have gone through since Kelsey was kidnapped and

murdered. And I'm thinking about Daphne's mother who has no idea where her daughter is. Now, you earlier heard our friend Evan Axelbank in Tampa and Neil Pinkston, the district attorney, allude to a vehicle. Take a listen to Travis Cummings, WRCB-TV. After finding her vehicle, it became clear she was gone. Within months, investigators started their search for Daphne, her two dogs, and her father, John Oliver Westbrook. The work of multiple agencies spanning from New Mexico to Colorado. They received no cooperation from Westbrook, an IT expert.

He's used untraceable currencies and foreign contact information. And he's used approximately 10 aliases since he's left. He's very adept in hiding his location, identity and hers as well. Hamilton County Attorney General Neil Pinkson says based off of their findings so far, she's being held against her will through witness testimony. She's constantly being given drugs and alcohol that keeps her in an altered state. Yeah, it's no coincidence. You know, sometimes when you're trying a case, you can very simply add two and two,

and hopefully the jury is going to get four. She goes missing. The dad goes on the run. And to top it all off, he's an IT expert. Now, let me understand if I got this right. Neil Pinkston, district attorney investigating and working the case, he's an IT expert. He's used 10 aliases that we know of. He's hiding his location, his identity, and hers as well.

Man, you got a lot of work to do, Neil Pinkston. How are you going to find this guy? Well, hopefully, we've tracked him pretty well recently and hopefully with the public press releases and shows such as yours, somebody out there is going to have seen them, is going to call us, and is going to lead them

to adapting her father. And just a quick reminder, Nancy, that the tip line is 209-7415. I'm so glad you told me that. Let me fix that and say it again. 423-209-7415. 423-209-7415. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

To Evan Axelbank, our reporter joining us, our guest today from FOX 13. That's where you come in. Tell me about what's happening in Tampa. Well, we know that there was a search warrant done at his sister's house in Sebring, which is a little town, maybe hour and a half or so south and east of Tampa. It's a little town. Everyone's going to know everybody there. The sister's social media posts are all over the place. Certainly nothing criminal in that, but it does give you some insight into the kind of you know the kind of background that this family may have and without question police are looking at all of them law enforcement looking at all of

the different aspects of you know who he may be communicating with obviously he goes to great lengths to hide that kind of thing but he does have a sister in Sebring Florida they did do a search warrant on the home to retrieve those devices to find out if there has been any communication with her and him between them. I'm told that they are looking through those devices now to try and figure out if there may be messages or clues as to where he may be headed. And that's where we came into the story in Tampa, Florida, because there's a question is if they've been at least communicating a little bit, perhaps he's headed this way.

And so our area is on high alert to keep an eye out for either of these two. Isn't it true, Neal Pinkston, District Attorney Chattanooga, that there have been signingings all over the country? And with this guy, the dad, John Oliver Westbrook, it's entirely possible that he's been at every single one of them. Yes, that is true. There have been many sightings out west, some in Florida, several in the Seattle area, all over Colorado and New Mexico. And it should be noted, too, he has another sister in Auburn, Washington, that has refused to cooperate with federal and state authorities to help locate Daphne and her father. And the evidence would indicate that that sister has spoken to both of them

and has the present ability to tell everyone where they're at. But won't do it. You know, back to you, Dr. William Maroney, joining me out of Michigan. Don't laugh, Maroney. Don't. But sometimes when I drop the twins off in the morning, the last thing I yell out the window is seven and a half hours and counting till I pick them up. And although I'm working the whole day and doing a million projects, I think about them the whole day. I just can't imagine what this mother is going through.

Thinking of her teen girl with dad who's pumping her full of LSD and pot or whatever they're doing, keeping her on drugs and away from her mother. She's lost her whole childhood. That's the way it happens when drug use enters the adolescent through the permissive culture. I've seen in the drug court teenage girls that were injected by their mother for heroin because they were lonely, and that's how they bonded. So to think that this father's giving drugs, yeah, it's wrong. Yeah, it's moral. Yeah, it's bad. But that's the kind of culture that's out there. Teenage years are experimentation, and teenagers, adolescents look to see what do their parents do and here's this

clicker here's this the teeth sinking into this after she's exposed to drugs and alcohol she doesn't have the capacity to say i'm impaired and i need to clean up, she'll go through withdrawal. And if she doesn't get her drug, she'll get sick. And all the brain does is say, please give me some more drugs because I don't want to get sick. And at that age, you just don't understand. She's just trying not to be sick. And as Dr. Moroney would say, this is Dr. Donner, that is going to actually make her feel a greater affiliation to her father, who's the person giving her the drugs, and further push away the relationship with the mother, who stands for possibly a much healthier relationship, both to society and for itself. I back him up 100%.

Absolutely. People don't understand how the drugs end like that. And now the drugs have become healthy. So it's part of their routine now. And this mother is just standing by, twisting her hands, wondering where her daughter is. Now, for a very long time, it was believed that the dad had kidnapped his daughter, keeping her high on drugs and not letting her go home, moving from place to place and landing in Colorado.

Take a listen to Jim Bidiman and Kate Lee at CBS4 Denver. Police in Tennessee are worried about a teenage girl who is possibly being held here in Colorado against her will. Investigators believe her father kidnapped her. He's already been indicted and charged with aggravated kidnapping. Continuing our coverage of Colorado at 6, Daphne was visiting her dad, John Oliver Westbrook, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She and her two dogs never returned home. Westbrook is known to spend time in Colorado and was reportedly in Pueblo last month.

Daphne was spotted in the Denver area. Right now, investigators think Westbrook takes Daphne to ride horses on occasion, so they especially want to get this word out to the state's equine community. Wow, the equine community, in other words, the people that have and ride horses. So now I've got a Seattle sighting, Colorado sighting. My friend Evan Axelbank of Fox 13 News down in Tampa is telling me about a search warrant being executed in the search for this girl. Take a listen now to Liz Dwecky, Q13 Fox, Seattle. Investigators in our state are looking for a teenager believed to be kidnapped by her own father more than a year ago. John Oliver Westbrook, whose family is from the Auburn area,

would not let his 17-year-old daughter leave after she and her two dogs came to visit from Tennessee. Since then, people have actually reported seeing the two in areas throughout the country. Investigators struggling to track them down. They say Westbrook is an IT expert specializing in security. The father has been indicted on aggravated kidnapping charges. And the lengths the father is going to to keep his daughter hidden.

Take a listen to what officials are saying regarding the means the dad is using. Officials say keeping track of John Westbrook's whereabouts have been difficult. He's used about 15 to 20 different email addresses as well about 10 different aliases. And at one point in the trip out west, purchased hair dye and fake teeth, so altered appearances. Bitcoin and blockchain analysis are essentially anonymous financial transactions that don't involve banks. Also is into virtual and voice over IP telephone numbers. You can't rely on cellular telephone companies to provide location or GPS data. OK, that is a lot of technical information.

You were hearing our friend, Joely Poole, WDEF. Let's bring in yet another expert joining us to make sense of it all. You know his name well, Derek Ellington, Certified Forensic Examiner, Licensed PI at Ellington Digital Forensics, ellington.net. Derek, thanks for being with us. Try to dummy down for people like me that only have a JD, for Pete's sake. They didn't teach this in law school. I need a little bit of help. I heard him talking about IP phones, about all the ways you can cover your tracks about

Bitcoin. I'd like to find out how the guy's making a living to buy all that pot. But that aside, how is he covering his tracks, Derek? Well, Nancy, you and I have talked many times about how these criminals are leveraging the internet. It didn't stick. Okay. Unless it's got yellow crime scene tape around it. I don't get it. So you better school me one more time. Absolutely. So there are a lot of things that the criminals can do to cover their tracks. You've talked about some of them, these anonymous phone numbers, anonymous emails and stuff like that. They even talk about the cryptocurrency or an electronic currency. What's interesting and what gives investigators like

myself and Neil hope is regardless of what these people are using, whether they're hiding emails or using disposable phone numbers, or in the case of cryptocurrency, which we'll talk about in a second, if we can put enough data points together, we can start to follow that trail of breadcrumbs. A good example is that with Bitcoin. People use Bitcoin because they feel like it's anonymous, that they can make transactions and nobody knows who they are. But you heard the other people talking about blockchain and stuff like that. All that is is a fancy way of saying, even if you're using a

internet currency, there's a log of all the transactions. I may not know who you are or where you are, but if you do enough transactions, sooner or later, I'll figure it out. And the really quick example is you might have somebody who's buying drugs or weapons or other illegal things on the dark web. and you and I have talked about the dark web many times, if we have enough transactions, we can figure it out. We've actually busted people because they would buy their drugs and they would buy their guns, and then they would buy a pizza from the local pizza place, all using the same account. So our hope is when we're trying to find somebody like Westbrook, that we get enough data

points and we get lucky. We can kind of pin them in. We keep them communicating, keep them emailing, keep them calling. If we can do that sooner or later, we'll have our break. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. crime stories with nancy grace guys we were talking about a teen girl daphne westbrook who seemingly vanishes into thin air her car is found then mommy faces the realization that her estranged ex-husband has stolen the girl not stolen her, but is dragging her all the way across the country and keeping her on drugs. Daily doses of drugs, authorities say, to keep her away from her mother. With me, Neal Pinkston, the district attorney there in Hamilton County, Chattanooga. I know you just heard everything Derek Ellington said, but I got a feeling that this guy, the father, John Oliver Westbrook, is so smart. He's an IT specialist that he is just as smart as the people trying to catch him.

Yeah, there's no doubt he knows how to hide his identity. But as Derek mentioned, we've gathered a bunch of data points and hopefully keep connecting those dots to find him. But we really need the public's help when they see them to call or email our hotline. We have an email address, findingdaphne at hcdatn.org. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Finding Daphne at what? H, the letter H-C-D-A-T-N dot O-R-G. H, happy C, Charlie, D, dog, A, alpha, P, Penny M mother T N T N is in Tennessee okay I got it help find Daphne

at H C D A T N man you gotta do something with that website who's gonna find that help me for Pete's sake I can't even write it all down guys we're talking about

hey I want to talk about the phone call. The phone call. Jackie, let's backtrack to cut two. Take a listen to our friend Robin Estabrook at 12 News. Rona Kurtzinger looks over a text message from her 16-year-old daughter. She said, hey, mom, is it okay if I go walk my dog Fern with a friend and I come home later? And I told her, yes, that's fine because her curfew is at 11 p.m. Daphne Westbrook was last seen leaving her father's home

on Florida Avenue in St. Elmo on October 6th. Last Tuesday, her mother says she received a concerning call from her daughter. My daughter's voice was very distant. It sounded like she was on speakerphone and she said, I can't believe you would report me missing. I am not missing. And she hung up the car. The driver of the car was on speakerphone. She said, I can't believe you would report me missing. I am not missing and she hung up

the phone. That is the last contact we have had. Police determined that call came from the Dalton Georgia area on Tuesday night. Her car was found at the Glen falls trail head on lookout Malin. If she was going to just run away,

why wouldn't she take her car and she's not using her phone both of those things are are terrifying especially with the internet the way that it is and take a listen to our friends at wdef cut 10 the district attorney's office says dealing with a father daughter abduction case can pose challenges for law enforcement and be deceptive to the public side people think that they look healthy and happy and there's nothing unusual going on, but our investigation would reveal she is generally kept under the influence of drugs and alcohol. She's not free to socially interact with anyone except her father. He's in control of her. She's not free to leave.

Officials say John Westbrook has been charged with aggravated kidnapping, but has still not been apprehended. Guys, I want to circle back to Neil Pinkston, the district attorney there in Chattanooga. Daphne's mother, Rhonda Kurtzinger, says that her daughter has been stripped from everything she knew and loved, her friends, her home, her school. And then she's just out there going from hideout to hideout with a dad that's keeping her high on drugs. What's your best shot of bringing this girl home? Well, we're not going to give up until we do. And so the investigation continues and we're urging and pleading with the public, people that know John, to come forward

and help us bring this girl home. How is he making a living, Neal? He does freelance computer coding and website support through various websites that hire freelance individuals or independent contractors. I'm wondering to you, Derek Ellington. Nancy, let me say. Jump in. I'm sorry, Nancy, to interrupt. I was jumping in to say that is the other issue. It is very easy to do that because a lot of times when you hire people to do this kind of work for you,

there are levels of anonymity to it. So, you know, the person who's working on your company's website could very well be somebody like this because of kind of it's an open market for getting these type of services and there's an anonymity to it. So it's completely plausible that he is able to make money to at least stay on the run. So Dr. Michael Donner, COVID has added a whole other layer of complexity to this because so many people are working from home. They're not seeing the guy they're hiring freelance. They don't know what he looks like.

And even when she gets home, this is going to be a very difficult situation for the daughter and her mother. Father has probably convinced the daughter that he's the better parent and that's the good parent, bad parent trapped. She's going to feel affiliated and attached to her father and it's going to be very difficult for the mother to establish a good relationship with her. This is not over even when she's found. Dr. William Maroney, Chief Medical Examiner, Bay County, Michigan, author of American Narcan. Dr. Maroney, before she can build any relationship with mom,

they've got to get her off drugs. How's that going to happen? That's not easy at her age because you need to have insight. And the one thing missing in adolescence is insight. And she's seeing her father be successful. You know, one of the things I think he's also doing as income is he's selling the drug. He's delivering the drug. He's moving around in drug culture. He's dealing with dealers. He can make money and stay off the grid by selling drugs. And she's learning that, look, there's this whole layer of life under there. It may be kind of fun when she's not high, when she's not sick. What's she doing to be social?

She's being introduced to all these felonious elements. And right now, that's the only thing she has to cope. If you take her and put her in a detox, she's going to be around people who have families and they come visit, and she's not going to understand that. She's not going to identify. Plus, all the medicine we use to help detox adults really hasn't been approved for kids. So it's got to be more psychosocial.

There's a lot of counseling. Deconstruct and deprogram and then build back up. That's what she's going to have to go through. To Greg Smith, Special Deputy Sheriff, Johnson County, Director of Kelsey Smith Foundation. Greg, you don't have your daughter. Can you imagine a father stealing his daughter and then keeping her drugged up? Now, well over a year?

I mean, if you could just have Kelsey back, what you wouldn't give. And then you see a dad doing something like this. Well, and unfortunately, this happens a lot. I mean, we know the statistics show that in a kidnapping case, it's usually somebody that the victim knows. It's quite often a family member in over 80 percent of the cases. So unfortunately, this isn't an anomaly. It's the norm when it comes to these types of crimes, which is just a terrible thing. One thought I had when looking, I was just checking the map while we were talking. I noticed a lot of these states,

Tennessee, Washington, Colorado, all have the Kelsey Smith Act. I realized that her father's an IT expert and he's been using some alternative forms of communications, but that's an option. I realize that her father's an IT expert and he's been using some alternative forms of communications, but that, I mean, that's an option. I don't know if that's been used or not, but I'm just, something that came to mind. How could it be used, Greg? Well, any of those states, their laws are all similar and they all state that if someone is believed to be missing and there's a reasonable suspicion that there could be bodily harm or death, that their phone could be located by law enforcement to find the location of their cell phone. And I'm hearing that she did have a cell phone.

You know, another thing that was very poignant, Neil Pinkston, tell me about the discovery of the Bible. In February of 2021, there's a citizen of Santa Fe, New Mexico, that apparently has a hobby of searching dumpsters, and was going through one of the dumpsters in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and found what he termed as a pristine Bible. It wasn't dirty. It wasn't folded. He didn't want to throw it away. He had some odd feeling. He kept the Bible and took it home with him.

He opened up inside the cover of the Bible, and it was dedicated to Daphne Westbrook from her grandparents for her 16th birthday. And he Googled Daphne Westbrook and found that she was missing and had been kidnapped and contacted the New Mexico State Police about the Bible that he had found. Got a question. Wasn't that dumpster behind the Trader Joe's? Yes, in the area of Trader Joe's in Santa Fe.

Was the video pulled from Trader Joe's to see if they went in there to figure out what they look like right now? No luck on the video, so apparently he must have done it under the cover of darkness and after hours to avoid detection. Also in February, we know Westbrook spent several weeks in Pueblo, Colorado. It seems to me, does it seem to you, Neal Pinkston, that they are going to areas where they have some connection? Yes, either business or friend or family connections that he has, and that dictates their path, as well as he likes to frequent Bitcoin ATMs. And we also know that he prefers states where medicinal marijuana is legal. Dying his hair, false teeth, you name it.

This father is keeping his daughter on drugs. She's now addicted to keep her away from her mother. The tip line, 423-209-7415. Please help us find Daphne. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.