True Crime with Kimbyr - Small-Town Tragedy: The Heartbreaking Story of Diamond Bradley: Part 2

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Diamond Bradley was more than just a high school student—she was a beloved daughter, sister, and friend, known for her bright personality and love for family. However, as social media became a prominent part of her life, it also introduced unforeseen dangers. In this episode of True Crime with Kimbyr, we explore Diamond's interactions online, her dreams, and the challenges she faced as a teenager navigating relationships and small-town life. This poignant story underscores the importance of online safety while honoring Diamond’s memory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Diamond had been missing for 14 hours, and Diavana knew at this point, she would have definitely let someone know where she was. She did all the time, especially because Diamond had two phones. That's right. Deavonna is so worried that she decides to reveal one of Diamond secrets. Her life may depend on it. Diamond has a secret phone. So Diavana tells De Quan this, and he had no idea that Diamond had been hiding a second phone. He had no idea how she could have gotten it, so they went upstairs to her room and they looked for it and they end up finding it in the top dresser drawer. The phone doesn't have a cell phone plan. It was just Wi-Fi and it was also locked with a passcode. They bring the phone to Doris, who is just as shocked and surprised as her son. She had no idea

that Diamond had another phone. So she brings it right down to the police station. The police believe by looking at this phone right away, the only reason why she would have a second phone is because she was probably doing something that her mom didn't approve of, but what? Well, for one thing I can tell you from looking through Diamond's Facebook post, she was always on the hunt for iPhones. So that's how she could have gotten the phone. They were confused about how, look at this. I saw posts dating back to 2015.

There are at least five posts from 2016 and even 2017, where Diamond is asking if anyone is selling an iPhone. With the latest post, only being seven months ago in May of 2017, Diamond posted, who's selling an iPhone 5S or 5C for the low? And she did get a response from someone, so it wouldn't have been that hard for her to get her hands on a phone, especially because of the fact she didn't need a cellular plan. She was just using it on the house's Wi-Fi.

Diamond was also posting about looking for a laptop a few months ago as well. Cell phones, laptops, there are two things that most teens cannot even live without these days. But it was confusing to Diamond's family why she needed two phones. Investigators tried to get into the phone. They noticed several different passwords. Of course, you've got the lock screen that most of us had. They could not get into it. But Sergeant Kinken notices she can see notification pop-ups.

She doesn't even have to unlock the phone. She can read through those. And she does, hoping that she can get some information from them. From the notifications alone, Sergeant Kinkin can tell the Diamond talks to a number of people. There were a lot of messages coming through on that phone. and many of them were asking her to hang out or to meet up. Kinkin shows Doris, and she asked her, do any of these names look familiar? And she says no.

And at this point, the sergeant turns the phone over to the forensic department so that they can do a thorough analysis on it. Meanwhile, officers decide they need to canvas his neighborhood. There was an officer, Josh Pellegrini, who began talking to the neighbors, going to businesses in the close proximity to Diamond's house, to see if anyone had seen her that day. He also wanted CCTV footage from any of the businesses, knowing that that was one of the ways that these missing persons cases get solved. They want to see if Diamond was captured on video somewhere.

Because Doris had told the police officers that Diamond frequently went to the Marathon gas station right across the alley from their house, that is where Pellegrino starts. When he gets inside, he notices that the gas station does have cameras inside, but they do not have any on the outside of the building, and that was disappointing.

But one of the cameras was facing the doorway, a glass doorway, and he thought that it could be promising. Maybe it would enable him to see something on the street, people walking by in the sidewalk, anything. So he asked the clerk to pull the footage, and sure enough, here is the view through those doors. You are able to get a tiny glimpse of what's out front, but they don't see diamond on the footage. However, he does request a copy and he turns it over to the station because there are still hours of footage that they could go through. These analysts, they dig through this footage for hours and hours. They go frame by frame.

They're looking in the past 24 hours to see if they could catch a glimpse of anything. Legs walking by, a shoe. It doesn't matter. They just wanted a lead. Once the forensic team was able to get past the initial passcode on Diamond's lock screen, she had passcodes on her apps. In order to open some of them, you had to know a password. and that seemed very strange, especially for a 16-year-old.

So what was she using this phone for? Because it didn't have service, like her other phone, they are not able to pull up any records as far as calls or text or concern. All they can do is gather things from the apps that she had been using. And while they are doing this forensic analysis on this phone, they uncover something very concerning. Diamond, who is a minor, had been using these pass codes on several different dating apps and dating ones.

websites. Now that was an even bigger surprise, especially to Doris. But someone did know all about Diamond's online dating, her cousin DiOvana. A secret, she wasn't expecting to get out. She'd always been supportive of Diamond, but she told her, you need to be careful. You need to always let someone know where you were. Call us, text us. It's better to be in trouble and be alive than something terrible happen. So did something terrible happen? Doris, was very strict when it came to dating. She was older. She was, of course, wiser. She'd been through this already.

And she tried to warn her young daughter about the dangers that could be lurking, even within people you think you know. She tried to warn Diamond that not everyone is trying to be your friend. But from Diamond's Facebook posts, we can tell that that was one thing that Diamond seemed desperate for.

Friends. Doris would tell her that she had to be really careful with who she got involved with, who she plan to meet with. She had to give her these warnings because of course she's her mother, but also because of Diamond's taste in men. That's right. Doris was concerned by the fact that the men Diamond would be interested in were always a lot older than she was. And that worried Doris. I mean, we're talking about a 16-year-old. She's a juvenile. She's not an adult. So even someone that's two years older at 18 would be too old for many parents to consent to. And Doris didn't like it. Some men

were much older than 18. And when Diamond said she liked older men, she would explain to her mom that that's just what she liked. And she told her, I can't help it. But Doris, like many other moms, was like, you know what, you're going to have to help it because I'm not condoning it. And of course, Diamond just thought her mom was way too overprotective. But was she?

If a child is not yet 18, in many people's eyes, it's a parent's job to inform them and to guide them. And that means restricting them from things that they're not mature enough to handle. Doris thought so, that it was her job. But Diamond wasn't having it, which is most likely why she had this secret cell phone to hide her dating life from Doris.

Her brother also tried to talk some sense into her when she was only 15. He scolded her and said, you're 15, you're growing up way too fast. Slow down. There's no need to rush. But she really didn't like to be told what to do. I could tell that though she looked young,

she did seem to portray herself as older in many of her posts and her pictures on Facebook. So many young people cannot wait to grow up, but they don't understand how dangerous it can be to act like an adult when you're not ready. By January 25th, Diamond had been gone for more than 24 hours. The family had now created missing persons posters. They were handing them out.

There were 500 of them being passed all around town, being hung up, asking people if they had seen her. It had a recent picture of her, numbers you could call if you had any information about her whereabouts. Dequan even went to the last town where her phone pinged Tonica and pass flyers out there. He went to Ottawa. He went to another town called Princeton. At this point, he thought she had been kidnapped and he knew that time was running out. He kept blaming himself again and again. If he just got there earlier, this wouldn't have happened. Investigators have zero leads. So they go back to that footage at the gas station and they

decide to watch more of it. They can see a car pulls into the parking space outside. It's hard to tell what kind it is because like usual, the video quality is super low. But they do see a man, he comes in the gas station, he buys something and he leaves. So they want to focus on this footage. They want to see if this guy's doing anything suspicious. Here's what they saw. From what they can tell, there's no sign of diamond inside with this man and not any sign of her outside in the parking lot. It appears like the man bought something and then got right back in his car and pulled away. Later that same day, January 25th, Doris and Jasmine, which is another one of Diamond sisters on her dad's side, one of her half or step-sisters, came down to the police station and they wanted

to speak to Sergeant Kincan. Jasmine said that she had some really important information about her sister. Diamond wasn't just dating guys, unfortunately. She got into something even more dangerous. Jasmine explains that while Diamond was on these dating sites, she would notice that these ads would pop up. There were things that people would advertise. Some were women advertising meetups with men. And Diamond was intrigued. She wanted to understand how that worked and she realized that was a business that women were putting out these ads and then men were paying them to meet up with them. No one knew the extent of Diamond's curiosity or how long this had been going on, but Diamond apparently did put out ads on these adult sites, offering to meet with men.

This was one reason why there were so many notifications on her lock screen. Almost all of those messages were from men that were responding to either an ad or her profile on dating sites. Doris is astonished. She doesn't know why Jasmine did not speak up any sooner about this, and she can't help but feel hurt. She's the last one to find out the Diamond thought that. that she needed to do this in order to make money. And Doris felt like a failure as a mother. But De Quas knew otherwise. Doris was a good mother.

She was a balance of being strict and also letting her kids have some freedom to explore things. She just never would have imagined that Diamond would do something like this. And it hurt me too because I saw so many people judging Diamond because of this choice,

but we have to keep something in the forefront of our minds. She's a child. She was still learning about life. She probably has to be. had little to no understanding about the type of men who may be on these websites and exactly what they're looking for because usually it's much more than a mere date. And that's sad. Maybe liking older men had more to do with the fact that older men had the money to be on these

websites and pay women. That probably seemed interesting to Diamond. At this young age, the pros might outweigh the cons because she can't see the apparent dangers. The problem is a lot of predators visit sites like this and they have the intention of going there to find the most vulnerable people. Girls just like Diamond. It's terrifying for her family to think that maybe one of these men have kidnapped Diamond or something worse. Investigators know that so many teenagers are bored. They have nothing to do, nothing to do in Spring Valley. They just have their phones and their computers. They're on them all day long. Their parents don't know what they're getting. into who they're talking to, and social media is bringing us closer to strangers than ever before.

January 26th comes around. It's been two days since Diamond has gone missing. The investigators finally gets what seems like a promising lead. Someone just called in, and they said they saw a young female matching Diamond's description walking down a highway ramp. It's a few miles away, but it is in the direction where her cell phone last pinked. So the caller said she was wearing a pink jacket in black pants. The investigators called Doris. They ask, does Diamond have a pink jacket? She says, yes. So they say, can you check and see if it's home? And she said, no, it's not here. So the police think this could be her. So they are dispatched out to the location where the witness said that she saw the girl walking. They tracked the girl down. She indeed matched the description of

Diamond. So they approach her. And that's when they realized it was not her. However, it was an acquaintance of Diamonds, she knew her, and she had not heard or seen from her the last few days. Another dead end. And the Spring Bradley Police Department, they need help. So they reach out to the FBI to see if they could possibly go through Diamond's primary phone and track down every location that she had been at. And thankfully, they're able to do this. And there was a route that was established. It was a path that they believed Diamond traveled on the morning of her disappearance. Now, they have timestamps of where her. her phone was that morning. It showed this entire path. So they map out this path and then they want to look

for any businesses or residences in this area with cameras that are facing that street. There's an intersection at St. Paul and Spalding Street where there's a local bar at the Valley Pub. So they see a camera and it's facing the intersection. They pull the footage and at this point they know that Diamond had to be traveling by car because of the rate her phone had been traveling. She passed this intersection at around 6.40 a.m. But the cars on the footage were way too blurry. They couldn't see license plates. They could hardly tell what type of cars these were. But they could possibly tell the color. But it is not great footage. They're trying to pause the video every frame. They're just going frame by frame to see if they can uncover even the smallest clue. Like a foot stepping into the

frame or maybe a pant leg, anything that could lead them to diamond. This takes hours. It takes days. they finally determined there are 13 cars that came through that intersection during the time that they believed Diamond went missing as her phone was being tracked down that road. So they decided to set up a squad car at that intersection and they put a dash camera on it just to see what kind of cars go by on a regular basis, like what local cars drive in and out of this section. They have two days worth of data and they have it analyzed and are able to determine a less than a less than a less. of the 13 cars on the footage during the time frame the Diamond's phone crossed an intersection went through the same intersection every day. So they're locals, but wait. There's two vehicles

that don't really belong there, so to speak. One was a red Chevy 1,500 pickup truck, and the other was a black Jeep of some kind. And I thought this was so interesting how they narrowed all this down. It doesn't mean that a local person who traveled on that road wasn't involved in Diamond's disappearance, but it would be better to start with the cars that were sort of like outliers. They want to see if the vehicle is passed by any other camera that was on the path at Diamond took. So they locate a house. It has an outdoor camera that face the street, they get the footage, and they see at 6.50 a.m., a black Jeep passed by.

So that's two times now that the same car is on the same path that they knew Diamond's phone traveled at that exact time. What they don't see is a red pickup. truck so now they want to focus entirely on this black Jeep, but they can't see a license plate, they can't see anyone in the car, so they can't tell if Diamond's actually in there. But meanwhile, the detectives are looking into people Diamond was talking to on the dating apps and social media. They're digging all through her phone, her computer, and they find out the record show the last text message that she sent was to a guy named Gerald.

He goes by the name Jay. He's 26 years old. And one of the text messages is extremely disturbing, so they call him in for an interview. Detectives want to know how Jay knows Diamond, considering he's so much older than her. What's their relationship? Surprisingly, they were not just friends, they were more than friends. They were in a romantic relationship at one point. Mind you, she's under 18, but that's the thing. He says that he did not know she was only 16, and when he found out he immediately,

started to distance himself from her. So they pull out the phone records. They show him the text from Diamond. It was on the morning she disappeared at 6 a.m. They asked Jay if he remembers getting this text message and he says yes. And he explained what the text entailed. He said that Diamond texted him asking, do you want to go to IHop later?

But then immediately after that text, like within seconds, before he could even answer, he got another text. It was from her again saying, sorry my bad wrong person. The initial text asking him to go to IOP was typical. Diamond liked to go there in the morning. But the fact that she texted him, sorry, wrong person meant that she was apparently asking someone other than him

to go with her that day. And now she's missing. Jay said he texted back with like a thumbs up emoji, just letting her know like, okay, I got it. Cool. Nothing too peculiar about any of that. But remember I said that there was a very disturbing text within this exchange?

Well, that text. text came into Jay's phone around 6.40 a.m. and it was only two words. I'm dying. That's chilling. When I heard this part of the story, I got chills and made my stomach turn and they want to know what was this about. And what was Jay's relationship with her at this point? Was something wrong? Did she realize, wait, he rejected me before. Why would I be asking him to go to IHOP? What did she feel like when Jay said he didn't want to be with her? Was she upset that the relationship was ending? they just want to know more and they think that Jay knows more than he's telling them. Why would Diamond text him with that? He says he doesn't know. When Doris heard that this guy,

Jay, 26-year-old guy, was the last person to interact with her 16-year-old minor daughter. She was livid. She confronted him. And in the mental state that she was in, she was in a very fragile state of mind. So it's very understandable. She went off on him. She was yelling, what did you do to my daughter? but Jay insisted he didn't do anything and he would never do anything to hurt Diamond. But the police aren't so sure. They want to know all about what Jay was doing the night of the 23rd, the night of Doris's birthday, the last evening anyone saw Diamond. And Jay said he was up all night playing video games.

He never left the house. He didn't know anything was even wrong with Diamond. He found that out the next day that she had gone missing. But they can't just take his word for it. And I'm sure nowadays, this was 2018, I think they probably could have contacted the game provider or even the internet provider to find out if Jay was lying. But he had a witness. Someone he said was with him that night and the next morning. And it was yet another shock to everyone involved.

He said he was with Diamond's cousin DiOvana. Wow. Another shocking piece of information, but nothing led them to where Diamond would be. They decide that it's time that they bring their focus back to that black Jeep. The next landmark that the phone pings is to the south over a bridge, and they locate another camera located on the path. It's at the top of Route 89, and it's on what's known as Tater Oil Hill. Sure enough, they pull the footage, and they see the same black Jeep passing by at 655.

Wow. This had to be the vehicle that Diamond was in. They know that after this, Diamond's phone traveled into the next county over, which is Putnam County. After that, the signal is lost because the phone was powered off or it died. They felt like this Jeep was going to be the key to finding out what happened to Diamond. They had to find. And they finally felt like they were actually getting somewhere. But it was too late because on Saturday, January 27th, only three days after Diamond was reported missing,

a call came in to the Putnam County Sheriff's Office a little before. noon. Someone passing by in a rural road in Granville Township spotted something. Here's that call now. I'm going to Sheriff's Office. And where did you find the body? Okay. Do you know if, I mean, is she deceased as far as you can tell she's dead? Absolutely. Sadly, they had found the body of a young female and she was deceased. The chief of Putnam County, Chad Hage, he was at home and he was notified of this discovery. And when he got out on the scene, it was obvious to him that this was not an accident. She had been murdered. He could see injuries all over her body on her back, her stomach, her legs, arms, and her hands. She was a young black female, and the chief was made aware

that there was a missing teenager matching her description out in Spring Valley. So he called over there immediately to let them know that they could have found her.