Unseen - 8-Year-Old Hunts Down Her Own Killer | The Case of Jennifer Schuett | UNSEEN

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

“Am I scaring you little girl?”-- 8-year-old Jennifer is scared of the dark, and on the one night her mother asks her to sleep in her own room, she wakes up in the arms of a police officer carrying her out of the house in the middle of the night. The man wants her to believe that she is safe, but she realizes he doesn't have a badge as he drives off to a remote area. Later that night, her kidnapper leaves her for dead in the middle of a field after brutally attacking her, and from that moment on, Jennifer vows to remember every single detail about him in order to make sure he’s caught. Her injuries leave her unable to talk, yet she still finds a way to catch him… 19 years later. External Footage From: "CBS 48 Hours", "ABC News", "NBC Today Show", "CBC News", "Clinton School", "Galveston College", "Dickinson Police". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You ever heard of the name Jennifer Shuit? Yes. Do you ever have occasion to come in contact with her? This suspect has been on the run for 19 years, but in 15 seconds he's going to lose control for the first time. There's two sides to every story. There is no other side. You're to see her. I think you would be extremely proud of her.

She's a lot. She's a lot. Hit your old Jennifer Shooitt. Kidnapped, assaulted, silence, left for dead. She was only a child at the time and lost the ability to speak after she was horribly wounded by her attacker. But she survived, remembering every details, and went on to solve her own case, finally putting an end to Dennis L. Bradford, Ring of Terror. I wanted to help because I was the only living witness. In the small town of Dickinson, Texas,

curious little girl Jennifer lives with her single mother Ellen, in a small apartment in a bad neighborhood. As far as I can remember back in my childhood, I just didn't like the dark or sleeping alone, so I found comfort and going to bed with my mom. We were all that we had was each other. On August 9, 1990 at 2.30 a.m., and I exceptionally asked Jennifer to go sleep in her home room because she needed to wake up early the next morning. Jennifer went to her room and read until she fell asleep. In the morning, Ellen can find Jennifer, and the window of her bedroom leading out to the parking lot is wide open. Sometime early Friday morning, eight-year-old Jennifer Shewitt was abducted from her apartment bedroom. Jennifer's mother entered the bedroom and found

the bedroom window open and her daughter gone. Went Jennifer, Jennifer, there was no sign of her any, you know, she was just gone. After the police arrived, they went on the hunt right away. It started to become evident very quickly to the officers that this was not just a runaway case. As anything new develops, I'll be more unhappy to talk to be all about it. Later that day, at 6.30 p.m., the police received a call from some parents in the area. Their kids were playing in the field beside the town and tripped over something. Oryfyingly, they realized it was the body of a little girl. And I remember being put into the life flight helicopter.

At this point, they knew they were running all the time. they had to get her to an hospital. As she's airlifted, I'm thinking that we're obviously going to have a murder case here. Her injuries were so serious that her survival was unlikely. Jennifer's condition was grave. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear. We felt that she probably would have been sexually assaulted. And really then, like, at eight years old, you don't really understand what rape means.

She was in such an horrific state that they bared her mother from entering the room. And you could see, you know, that she was very fearful. inexplicably, her attacker missed all major out her reason her neck. It was big news in the tiny town of Dickinson, Texas. Jennifer's mother was frantic. It's just been us two together. We completed her surgery. Her airway is stable. When Jennifer regained consciousness after the surgery, her behavior suddenly changed.

I was kind of a hard patient to deal with because I had a lot of male doctors, and I was scared of males. The Dickinson Police Department dispatched a whole squad to serve her room in the hospital. With this, with all the male doctors and staff, Jennifer ended up in a constant state of panic. Everyone was a suspect in my book. One weird detail at the time was her distrust of any and all police officers. But this fact would end up making much more sense once Jennifer started to share her side of the story. With Jennifer, we knew that we had a survivor that couldn't speak.

The challenges were to extract information from her. We're talking about an eight-year-old. Jennifer wasn't able to tell an investigator anything directly. Since they had no other choice, they ended her a notebook and some pens and asked her to answer the question in writing. It was mainly me writing notes to my mother, and then she would hand them to the officer outside.

She was only eight years old, but considered very intelligent for her age. She was very detailed-oriented in the way she described the events. So after falling asleep in her bedroom, she woke up in the arms of a stranger. He was running with me. carrying me down the sidewalk, and I immediately tried to scream, but he covered my nose and mouth. He whispered to her that he was a police officer and that she needed to calm down.

Then they got into a car and he held her on his lap as they drove away. At this point, she knew something was wrong. On one hand, she knew the police were the good guy, but on the other, she has been told to never trust a stranger. As a child, I wanted to believe him, but the part of me that was scared of the dark, knew that there was something really wrong here. This tipped the investigator on why she wouldn't trust no males, especially not police officers.

I started to realize that I had actually been kidnapped. I was very afraid of what would happen next. To calm her down, the man pulled this car into the local elementary school. There, he said they'll wait until the son comes up for her mom to come and pick her up. I remember anxiously waiting for those headlights, but they never came. The men was smoking and drinking and offering her candies. A big red flag for anyone familiar with stranger danger

or other child safety program teaching school around that time. I remember him saying, well, your mom's not coming. And starting up the car. They drove outside of town and pulled up to a field. There, Jennifer started to ask questions. I was a very curious eight-year-old. I was kind of interrogating him. I was wanting him to prove to me that he was a police officer.

I wanted to know, where's your gun, where's your badge? He told me once parked that his gun was in the back seat. So I stood on the front bucket seat of the vehicle to look into the back seat. And this is the moment it happened. Out of respect for Jennifer and the other victims of her attacker, we won't be covering the assault, as it is extremely graphic. When she woke up, she was being dragged by her ankle, naked, in the middle of a field. It's crazy to think that someone that young will know exactly what to do in that type of situation.

But she played dead, knowing that it was our only chance at survival. And he dropped my legs. I heard him walk off. He left her four dead, on top of an antil. As the sun was coming up, she could hear children playing and ducks barking around in the field. I realized I couldn't scream. I had just enough strength to throw my right hand on top of my neck. And I looked at my hand and it was full of blood.

At this point, she was drifting in and out of consciousness. But the fire ants keep biting her and wicking her. and waking her up. And even as death was lurking in, she kept reminding herself of all the details she witnessed, thinking that if she survived, she would catch him.

I remember saying that he looked greasy and like he may have had a scar or something on his face. I remember writing down that there were beer cans in the car and the brand of cigarettes that he had. Just every little detail that I could remember everything

that I thought would help in finding him. By asking him, question when she was in the car, she even got him to tell her his name. And so I wrote, he said his name was Dennis. A sketch artist was brought in to help her turn her memories into something the police could use. I couldn't talk, and I'm trying to describe a person through notes. Without saying a single word, Jennifer was able to help produce this. But sadly, this didn't sound like a strong case to the police.

They reached out to the public with the sketch to no avail, and in the end, the small police department didn't uncover anything, except some pieces of clothing from Jennifer and her attacker, lying in the field. I was just so frustrating to me to not be able to say what I wanted to in the way that I wanted to say it. She would try to express her disagreement and get even angrier by the fact that she couldn't speak her mind anymore. And this is when a miracle happened.

In one of her mute rants, a tiny little sound came out of her mouth. Doctors were shocked since her vocal cords were basically cut in half and were never expected to reconnect. but somehow they started to heal. I even regained my voice while I was in the hospital. I like to say I haven't shut up since. Soon after that, she was discharged from the hospital, went back home, and even returned to school the next year.

But going back out into this world where you were just so viciously attacked, who would want to go back into that? She wasn't the only one going through trauma at this time. The entire small town of Dickinson followed. Because the whole community was on edge, No one knew who had done this to me. The police added more staff to its department

and started to position officers in schoolyards and even inside classrooms. As time is progressing, the leads are getting colder and colder and you're losing your resources. It's very frustrating. The case gets cold. And Jennifer ended up waiting for 18 years with no sign of progress on her case.

And then I got a phone call that Detective Tim Kromy would be taking over my case and he wanted to meet with me. For the first time in years, a police officer asks to me with her. He told her something which gave her hope. Sitting down with Jennifer for the first time, I told her I said, Jennifer, I will do whatever I can do in my power

till the end of my career to get you the answers that you need for this case. And that simple sentence changed my life. I felt like he was as dedicated to the solving of my case as I was. It was a unique aspect of having Jennifer there to help with certain aspects of the case that otherwise we had never known. I really wanted to be a part of the solving of my own case. I wanted to help because I was the only living witness. He contacted the FBI and asked them to analyze the pieces of clothing they found in the field 18 years prior.

Often work in cold cases, time is your enemy. People forget, people move away, people die. This was one of the benefits of time in our case was the advances of technology in the DNA field. As time went on and it took so long, my optimism, faded. If we didn't get a DNA hit, I wondered if we were ever going to solve this case. The procedures took an entire year, but weren't fruitless. It was 2.30 in the morning. My phone rings. And it's the DNA lab. The DNA examiner told me we got a hit. On September 22, 2009, the FBI gave them a name. Dennis, Earl, Bradford.

Who? Who is that? We never saw that name in a report. when Tim and I made the connection back to the notes that Jennifer wrote saying his name was Dennis. Jennifer was eight years old, on pain medication, couldn't speak, and then all these years later for that to actually be the fact. At that point, it was monumental that this girl was so accurate. He was a 39-year-old man from Arkansas who had just been released from prison for a hunter or kidnapping. Only six months after Jennifer abduction, he was arrested from tempting to sexually assault, another woman in a bar. Seven years after the first abduction, the men went for another woman,

choked her and pulled a knife to her throat, just like he did to Jennifer. And it was from that sexual assault that his DNA was put into the national database that ultimately matched back to the evidence we submitted. They also received a copy of his driver license from 1990. As you can see, Jennifer's sketch and the driver license picture are a perfect match. It was almost as if drawing a sketch based on that driver's license photo. It was was that accurate. Soon after, the police got a warrant and arrested Dennis. When they called me that morning and told me that they really arrested this person, Dennis Earl Bradford, it was the most surreal moment of my life. We were hoping, most importantly,

to get a confession. We didn't want there to be any way this could be beat in court. I looked her in my car. And she was freaking out that I told her, please just all right. I told the little girl that I was in the police office. I told her that she lost it. I was like a savage animal. I never had a guts. For the announcement of the capture of Dennis, Jennifer took the stand in front of the media.

Above all, I'd like to thank Detective Tim Coney with the Dickinson. with the Dickinson's Police Department and Special Agent Richard Renison with the FBI for all of their hard work and dedication over the last year and a half and for his promise from day one never giving up on my case and for hearing my voice and seeing my determination she then started to prepare for the trial in which Dennis would be pleading guilty anything to say to Jennifer Sherwin so we were like wow how great would it be to pick August 10th, 20 years to the day of the attack, and kind of just come full circle and close it out.

I remember staying up late, endless nights, trying to perfect my victim impact statement, just trying to perfect what I wanted to say. I had 19 years worth of things to say to this person. But in the end, that trial never happened, because Dennis Ong himself in his cell once he was incarcerated, On the day the trial would have taken place, she went to his grave and read her victim in fact statement to him. Dennis Bradford, you chose the wrong little 45-pound, 8-year-old girl to try and murder,

because for 19 years, I've thought of you every single day and helped in searching for you. In my heart, I knew you were out there. And now I know, listening to my heart all of these years and never giving up on finding you, I was right. She was wondering if this could give her a closer of some sort If he could hear her from beyond And at that very moment She was bitten by a fire end Just like the ones from that day on the field

To her, this was a sign The final note to her story Looking for a protein shake that tastes as good as it performs Meet rockin protein max Packed with 50 grams of fuel It'll help you keep up when your day won't slow down And because it's always creamy and never chalky Every sip tastes great

Even better, it's lactose-free and has zero added sugar. It's not every day you find a protein shake you actually want to finish. Catch rock and protein in the dairy cooler at a store near you. Rock and Protein and Shamrock Farms are registered trademarks of Shamrock Foods Company. Throughout this journey, I've had two main goals, and they were to find the man who kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and attempted to murder me 19 years ago so that he could not hurt anyone else.

And to use my voice and telling my story, to as many people as I possibly could in hopes that I may encourage other victims of violent crime to stand up and speak out against criminals. Today I can say very proudly that I have accomplished both of these goals. I hope that my case will remain as a reminder to all victims of violent crime to never give up hope in seeking justice, No matter how long it may take or how hard it may be. With determination and by using your voice, speak out, you're capable of anything. Even if the scars will never go away, Jennifer refused to let her victim's status prevent her from living her life. She even attempted to start a family.

But unfortunately, because of the violent sexual assault she had gone through, she was thought it was pretty much impossible for her to conceive a child. But after sharing her story, a doctor came forward to help her. When Jonathan and I found out that we were expecting, we were in complete shock. Two years later, they had their first daughter, and then a son. It's like pinch me. Who would have thought? They're really my happy ending. Today, she continued to raise her voice as a victim advocate. He tried to silence her, but she was always stronger, even as a child.

I am not a victim, but instead victorious.