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[Music] do [Music] welcome to true crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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for listening i'm your host nick and with me as always is a man who just keeps trying to get a little better a
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little better than before he is the captain and it's not working it's good to be seen and good to see you thanks
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for listening thanks for telling a friend [Music] this week we are very excited to be slow
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and that is enough for the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
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crime [Music] [Music] sunday night may 24th 2009 monroe county michigan authorities issued an amber alert for
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five-year-old nevaeh buchanan that night the alert indicated that she was last seen at the charlotte arms apartment
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complex in the parking lot area around 6 30 pm she was 3 feet 10 inches tall and about
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45 pounds was wearing a light blue sleeveless shirt with red and white horizontal stripes
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and a white v-neck collar and knee-length jeans she was barefoot when she left her
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mother's apartment police swarmed the large apartment complex and started talking to the
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residents search parties comprising of 100 law enforcement personnel and 500 volunteers
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fanned out from the complex and checked everywhere they could think of helicopters scanned the area from
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overhead divers plumbed the depths of local quarries her mother jennifer said she spent all
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day and all night looking everywhere for her little girl people searched frantically for days to
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no avail within five days it was reported that the local sheriff's department had
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talked to 250 people the michigan state police and fbi helped out making up a task force with the
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local police all the tactics and strategies for locating someone were deployed but nevaeh was gone
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this is true crime garage [Music] five-year-old nevaeh buchanan loved her scooter and neighbors were accustomed to
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seeing the little girls zipping around in their charlotte arms apartment complex parking lot
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the apartment complex is located on north malcolm street in monroe michigan it was may 24 2009
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this is the day before memorial day it's a sunny day and a great time for children to be outside playing with
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friends nevaeh and other kids from the complex like to cut through a hole in the fence
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and play at a playground that abutted to the complex's grounds sometimes they stuck to the parking lot
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some kids saw nevaeh here that day on her scooter speeding around and then she was gone nevaeh's mother jennifer was
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used to her daughter running around the complex with the other kids it's unclear whether nevaeh had rules in
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place about being allowed to go outside on her own after all she was only five years old
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jennifer was home sitting on the couch in their apartment around 6 30 p.m watching the tv show john and kate plus
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eight nivea was bored and tells her mom mom i'm going upstairs to austin's austin was an eight-year-old boy that
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lived in the apartment one floor up from nevaeh and jennifer nevaeh and austin were buddies and his apartment
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was somewhere where she hung out regularly we will go through the events as they
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have been reported that led up to the disappearance of nevaeh but it is important to note
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that at the time five-year-old nevaeh her mother jennifer are living with jennifer's mother sherry
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the apartment is technically the grandmother's apartment so sherry's apartment and on this memorial day weekend
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jennifer had a friend of hers and the friend's little daughter staying with them in the apartment as well so
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it's a little cramped nevaeh's mother says around the 6 30 time period she comes in to change her clothes yeah she
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changes her clothes she grabs a popsicle and then jennifer says that nevaeh went
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back outside jennifer would later say that she assumed that her daughter went to
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eight-year-old austin's apartment unit to play there she assumed the two friends were playing with toys or
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watching tv now jennifer says that about 30 minutes later or so jennifer's friend's daughter which is a
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little girl as well she came into the apartment said nevaeh is riding her scooter in the road you
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know one little kid tattling on another little kid jennifer spent some time looking for her
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shoes because she wanted to go outside and confront her daughter and let her know you can't be riding your scooter in
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the road right so she spent some time looking for her shoes we don't know exactly how much time and this is kind
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of key because this is something we will circle back to around in a little bit but
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she makes her way outside and she's looking in all the normal spots and cannot find her daughter
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jennifer checked at other units in the apartment complex as well where she knew that nevaeh had some friends this
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including the little boy austin's apartment she could not locate her daughter well
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and at this point you're looking around this complex you know where she plays you can't find her obviously some panic
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is going to start setting in with her mother so she calls the apartment manager to help her look for her
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daughter and jennifer does a lap around the building and around the other side and this is where she finds
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a big major red flag here because leaning up against the back of the building jennifer found her daughter's purple and
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green scooter abandoned it seems that jennifer may have underestimated how long nevaeh was
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gone we have to note here that she told many people this included reporters and this included true crime tv personality
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nancy grace that it was only about 30 minutes that her little girl was gone but in
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reality all the news outlets later have reported that she didn't actually start looking
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for her daughter until closer to 8 p.m right so we have a bit of a time discrepancy there and it could just be
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you know a mother's panicking she's nervous she gets her times wrong or as we will see there are reasons later
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to call into question jennifer's behaviors and her words yeah or she doesn't want to look like a
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horrible individual so she's going to tell everybody that she's been searching all day
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when really she didn't pay much attention to her daughter that's a very good possibility and often i find when
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my mind is racing my times are a little off because things seem to be happening rather quickly when you're in that panic
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state right so jennifer calls her mother sheri whom she and nevaeh are living with
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sherry was at work she's finishing up her shift at a food town grocery store in monroe
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with this news sherry puts down what she's doing she leaves work and raced home to help look for
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nevaeh well let's give a little bit of background on nevaeh there is a justice for nevaeh website so we gathered a lot
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of the following information from that website and the site says that nevaeh buchanan
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was a typical five-year-old girl she loved stuffed animals and like most little girls she named them all
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her favorite was a stuffed beagle that she named harley now she named him harley because in
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addition to stuffed animals nevaeh loved motorcycles she was born february 3rd 2004
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people that knew nevaeh described her as shy adorable a little girl who liked to wear her hair
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in a ponytail neighbors described her as timid with a soft voice real fragile and then someone said nevaeh had a smile
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that could melt a glacier her mother jennifer told the media that her daughter loved motorcycles and
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trucks she was a tomboy and was obsessed with the movie jungle book well who isn't now a more complete history
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of nevaeh is that she had just graduated from preschool and was heading off to kindergarten in
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the fall she lived in the charlotte arms apartment complex with her maternal grandmother sherry
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now one detail here captain is that sherry actually had legal guardianship of nevaeh had legal guardianship of her for
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some time this was because jennifer nevaeh's mom at one time was a drug addict and was
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sent to prison when this went down sherry had taken her granddaughter in and nevaeh had lived
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with sherry in that apartment under sherry's care for several years jennifer serves her time in prison and
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then when she's released in early 2009 she moved in with her mom and her daughter so this has been her home for
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quite some time yes it has been and one thing that is kind of clear here is that
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as far as being taken care of and being raised it looked like nevaeh considered sherry
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more of her mother because that's what she knew for most of her life well and nevaeh goes missing in may 2009
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and so her mom gets out of prison early 2009 so she's really not back in her child's
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life for that long until she goes missing i think that might be kind of key here as well now
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we also we also should note that jennifer nevaeh's mom was only 24 years of age when her
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five-year-old daughter nevaeh went missing the father shane honan jose was only 22 at the time when nevaeh went
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missing so he was 17-ish when nevaeh was conceived he wasn't really in her life um according to medium.com
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shane the father had not spoken to his daughter nevaeh in three years but when she went missing
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he traveled to monroe he lived in ohio so monroe is very close to monroe michigan is very close to the
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ohio border and shane from my understanding lives in toledo ohio which is the northern part of our state
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he travels to monroe to help look for his daughter even though he's not spoken to her in quite some time
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this i i think we need to commend him a little bit we we don't want to applaud him for not being a part of her life but
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at the same time he actually risked being arrested going to monroe he had recently not been
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able to pay his child support since losing his job so he goes in there with the intention
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of of helping now what we can see here captain very quickly in this case and we're going to
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fan out quite a bit ourselves in our search looking for actual suspects but we need to paint this the picture for
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what it is this other than sherry the grandmother this is not a great situation for young nevaeh
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her father's absent he's he's a boy pretty much when she's born mother's absent because she's got drug
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addiction problems and then commits crimes i mean she's she was in prison for actual crimes not drug related
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crimes from my understanding so not a great situation as far as mom and dad goes
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sherry the grandmothers stepping up stepping in and trying to help and trying to raise this this beautiful
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little girl well it's so sad because it's like the odds are stacked against her and that's sad
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so where we stand now captain we have a little girl missing from her apartment complex in monroe michigan
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let's look at the earliest stages of this investigation first someone and this is a little weird but it's
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never been reported exactly who this could have been jennifer her mom could have been grandma sherry
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could have been the apartment manager could be somebody else entirely somebody called 9-1-1 at 8 15 p.m
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and police issued the amber alert for five-year-old nevaeh that same night now nevaeh was gone
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monroe county sheriff tillman crutchfield announced that they were looking for two witnesses this is very
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early on in their investigation announces to the public we're looking for two witnesses and he states that
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these are elementary age boys who were seen playing on the playground at the hollywood elementary school that
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backed up to the charlotte arms apartment complex and he said that this would have been
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around the last time that nevaeh was seen they were also seeking a green boxy minivan
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that was seen parked at the playground between 6 and 7 pm on the evening that nevaeh disappeared
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he said that they thought that the van driver might be a witness but of course an unknown van in the area
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where a child went missing was cause for raised eyebrows banned the green minivan well like you said this
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case is going to be tough because we know that she's outside playing but we don't know
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how long she was gone once she was reported gone again for those not familiar monroe michigan it's a small
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town about 20 000 people somewhat near the ohio line the river raisin runs through the middle
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of town the apartment complex itself the charlotte arms is located between north
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malcolm street and riverview avenue next to that hollywood elementary school reportedly this apartment complex has
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180 units so this is a rather large apartment complex in my opinion and it's made up of a number of
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buildings these buildings captain are only three stories high i've seen it reported that the residents
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were on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum as with most neighborhoods some of these
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residents have a somewhat checkered past now nevaeh sherry and jennifer's unit was on the ground level this is
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important to me when we're looking at this case so for anyone or in this case nevaeh to get
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from the apartment where we know she was safe well and fine to the parking lot area where it's
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suspected that she was would have been last seen or went missing from this based off of the scooter where the
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scooters later located all the little girl had to do was walk out the front door
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which is what jennifer seemingly allowed her to do the other thing too we got a note this is a five-year-old
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girl yes she's probably used to playing outside with other kids but we get the jennifer's friend's daughter who seems
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to be keeping an eye on nevaeh but not jennifer herself so it would be a tough situation because
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essentially your daughter's being raised by your mother you then come into the picture
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there is some kind of routine there's some kind of familiarity already happening with discipline and
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who's telling you what to do and and all that stuff that you almost have to take a back seat
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as a as a parent and these cases are incredibly difficult to report and it's not just because we're talking
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about a little girl that's missing but it's also because when you have a situation like this it's easy to
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blame the parent or the parents and you also have to keep in mind that they if they're innocent if they did nothing
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wrong here you know maybe they could have been a little more strict or kept in better a better eye on nevaeh or
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obviously put her in a better situation in her young life as far as being a father or mother goes but
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if neither of them did anything wrong well then they're very much victims too so these are difficult to to try to walk
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that fine line of telling not just what we think and what we see but also trying to
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stay keep an open heart to to these victims it's absolutely irresponsible and unimaginable to
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spend years not talking with your daughter not being involved in your daughter's life
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it's ridiculous now we will fast forward to june 4th 2009 by this time nevaeh has been
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missing for almost two weeks now in many of these true crime stories we hear about fishermen finding bodies
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in the water unaware that a person is actually missing they catch a glimpse of something unusual
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maybe bobbing in the river or stream as they cast in their line but fishermen don't usually find bodies by
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stepping on them like we have here in this week's case but here in the garage captain there's a
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first time for everything right so now we introduce guy bickley his 15 year old son ryan and guy's
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father lol so we have three generations of the bickley family setting out to spend some
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time fishing on the river raisin near dixon road in rozenville township this part of the river is roughly about
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30 or so feet across this particular spot is about 10 miles away from the charlotte arms apartment
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complex they the bickleys had never fished this part of the river before they said that they parked off of dixon
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road inside the guard rail on the edge of a steep slope that led down to the river
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the trio followed an overgrown path down through brushy terrain leading to a good spot
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along the riverbank at this spot there were some rocks which is typically ideal for fishermen in this
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situation because you can stand or perch up on these rocks while casting another group of rocks was easily
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accessible by walking across a small patch of concrete that looked as though it may
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have tumbled there from the roadway above so guy bickley is standing on that concrete patch
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and he says a chunk of it broke off he noted that the concrete was thinly spread
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so when what we would later find out would be an eight inch by six inch chunk of this concrete
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breaks off he says right away he smelled and saw that something was not right he said
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flies were buzzing around in the area guy chipped off a little more of the concrete to see
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what was going on then he stops because he does see something under the concrete was what looked like
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human skin and hair and he said it smelled like death so they called the authorities
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excavation of that concrete revealed a shallow grave containing an intact corpse of a child
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everyone knew who it was that kind of situation even before nevaeh was formally id'd
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the shirt on the little body fit the description of the one nevaeh was last seen wearing
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it was not immediately apparent what the cause of death was very sad scene per abc news monroe county sheriff tillman
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crutchfield said shortly after the discovery of nevaeh's body that there were no visible
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signs of abuse and that she had been buried along the river raisin for quote a while
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he declined to comment specifically about how the body was buried only that it had some type of concrete or cement
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on top he also would not say what else investigators recovered from the grave obviously somebody that's trying to
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conceal her her body yes very much so and went to some great lengths to do so now
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you know the sheriff himself is probably in a bit of a state of shock as well they've spent almost two weeks now
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looking for this little girl this is how she's found nobody wanted to find her this way he does throw in the
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comment when he's being asked about what they found he says authorities are looking for a disturbed
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individual which i i feel like that's kind of a throw your hands in the air kind of sit
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not in a good way you know throw your hands in the air like i don't know i i'm kind of at a loss here for words
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i don't know exactly who we are looking for at this point to go back to the day she went missing like you said there's
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over 180 units so that's a lot of individuals in this town looking for this little girl
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and talking and spreading the word that this little girl is missing so this is going to be big news
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when they end up finding her in the concrete yeah and from my experience following
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these cases and from what we've covered here in the garage captain we know that these stranger
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child abductions are rather rare now i'm not saying that that's an impossibility here it certainly could be
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the situation but oftentimes it's somebody somewhat close to the child that is responsible either somebody that
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is known to the family or in this case and what i think you're circling around here is that
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the possibility is that the threat or or or whoever is responsible could be somebody that
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that lived in that apartment complex or had reason to be there for any number of reasons well also like
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you said there's a this playground that's abutting the property that's beside the apartment property
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creeps are going to find out about that pretty quickly yeah that's that's the thing for me that i kept
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i can't shake off is this idea that if you were somewhat local stranger to the family
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stranger to people from that apartment complex we've always said this with when it comes to especially serial offenders
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right serial offenders typically have a victim type and they know where to go looking for their
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victim that they prefer it's almost like you and i going to the grocery store we i don't go out and hunt
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my own meat because there's a store right down the street where it will have plenty of it there and i do
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i hunt my own meat all the time but here here's the thing though too is what do we know
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so far this girl is taken from an apartment complex she has now found the same town
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right about 10 miles away from the apartment complex but before we move on to something else what i wanted to point
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out was if if a predator was looking for this type of victim a younger child boy or girl
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unfortunately this is an ideal place to find said victim because as you pointed out
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the playground the elementary school the apartment complex where there's kids outside buzzing and zipping around and
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playing all day long and there's a pool there as well i mean that's that's some of the key
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locations for these types of creeps to find this type of victim and this is all smashed together all in one locale right
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and what the point i was trying to get at before rudely being cut off no is this to me
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seems like a location that you'd have to know by being a local and being where her body was found yes
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no no i'm talking about the apartment complex but look if you if you're not a local
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you're just going to drive to the next part of town and go all this here's this playground that's connected to
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this uh apartment complex which is connected to a pool which is connected to this elementary school like you said
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this is probably somebody that lives in the area or knows the area is familiar with the area and then she's found 10
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miles away so to me this evidence is saying that this person is local you know and when we mean when we say
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local you know 20 30 mile radius from the abduction point or the the point where um her body was
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found now i want to hit on some things before we move on to our next items here in this investigation and this is in
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regards to the body being found so we we should note here that the police have never
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said what state of undress or dress that nevaeh was in but there was a now deleted fox detroit news piece that
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said she was in the hole without clothing and her clothing and a bush beer can were thrown in the hole
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with her fbi have traced the beer can to a highlight market in monroe so they were able to trace where this
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beer can came from or at least where it was purchased from the thing here is it what's not clear
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is this beer can being found it's actually not clear whether it was found in the hole or just nearby that
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makes sense but one thing that kind of confirms the clothing being tossed in on top of the
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girl was that one of the guys guy bickley who found her confirmed that he could see her bare
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back when the concrete broke apart so that gives a little more some of that speculation some of that's
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rumor again a lot of those details coming from what is a now deleted article news article
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about uh this case but if those if that information is in fact true it gives a little more insight to the scene
00:30:22
but just to be clear this this is a hole that was covered by concrete to describe it as plain and
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simple as i can it appears that somebody dug a somewhat shallow grave placed items in there and then
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created this concrete slab there likely there or brought it with them right and placed it over top whoever did
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this was really hoping that she would never be found [Music] [Music] all right we are back cheers mates
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cheers captain to the windows to the walls cheers to everybody in the front and back let's get back into it so
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police searched the river area near where the body was found they spent two days there pouring over
00:31:45
the area looking for any footprints any possible debris that they could find in the area and see if it's connected to
00:31:51
their case they did take dna from the three bickley boys so they could eliminate anything with their dna on it
00:31:59
they issued a press release asking all who may have fished in that area to call the
00:32:06
police call the sheriff's department if they had seen anything at all during their time spent there because keep in
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mind at this point as far as what the public knows is this girl goes missing and then
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just a little under two weeks later her body is found in this location 10 miles away
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we don't know us the public we don't know when she was placed there was it the same day she was abducted
00:32:34
was it a day before she was found i mean there's a there's a considerable gap of time there my guess is that she
00:32:42
was kidnapped and taken somewhere else but this location's weird to me because it would be somewhat remote because it's
00:32:51
for fishermen but it would seem like maybe that this spot would be known by fishermen
00:32:57
almost like the person would want to put her oh well this is a secluded area but
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i'm going to cover up so well that like this dark secret is going to be right underneath everybody's feet
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while they're fishing yeah i can't speak as to how popular this fishing spot was
00:33:16
because we have kind of conflicting thoughts when you want to create an educated guess on that one we have the
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bickleys who say they fished often and had never fished that spot before but at the same time
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we have guy bickley who says that he was told of the spot from other fishermen so
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it is somewhat known this particular spot anyway even though investigators wouldn't address it they clearly did
00:33:44
find something else at the grave maybe it was the clothing maybe it was the beer can as we mentioned earlier but we
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do know that they did find something else at this site where her body was recovered from because in mid-june
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articles said that investigators were awaiting results of forensic testing on items recovered with nevaeh's body at
00:34:06
the riverfront sheriff crutchfield told the detroit free press quote we have specific information that is known to
00:34:13
the perpetrator and we are going to hold that near and dear to us end quote the police have never discussed what
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else was found in the area and never really gave details about the concrete that was
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found on top of nevada we should note here that this particular area was a fishing spot known to some locals like
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we just said but the detroit free press reported that on the day after the body was found investigators were contacting
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area home improvement and hardware stores this is because they were trying to track down purchases of quick setting
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concrete mixes reportedly specifically 90 pound bags so this is from medium and it says only a few stores in the
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area sold such large bags one of them being coleman cement company now this could be
00:35:07
this is likely unrelated but it's interesting to note that the fence outside of the coleman cement
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company had recently been cut now there's no report of if anything was stolen and if it if
00:35:27
things were stolen what they would have been did they find something at the scene that indicated to them that they
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are looking for a 90 pound bag search because uh sorry a 90 pound bag purchase because that's what they were
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specifically asking for when they were calling all these different places and medium is saying that coleman cement
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company was one of the few places that sold bags that size and it was also reported that it that
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sometime around this time frame that a fence outside of the company had been cut outside of their
00:36:05
building had been cut right so i'm saying that we have that report that there's damage
00:36:11
to the fence which would indicate to me or most people that someone was trying to steal
00:36:18
something however that report does not tell us that one that anything was stolen and
00:36:24
two if anything was stolen what it was yeah they probably did some kind of measurement of the concrete and maybe
00:36:31
that's how they got to the 90 pounds possibly i mean you could buy two bags of a smaller size yeah no very
00:36:40
good point and maybe like you said there's a a flap from from the concrete because you know these bags
00:36:48
when you go to make the concrete you just rip them open and and toss them to the side so
00:36:54
heck maybe there there was the bag there well that's what i'm saying i you know they spent two days at that crime scene
00:37:02
looking over all of the debris in the area maybe they came across a 90-pound bag of concrete mix
00:37:11
and i say that because guy bickley who found the grave just so happened to be familiar with
00:37:16
concrete and the general workings of concrete he tells the news that in his opinion whoever buried
00:37:24
nevada probably used river water to mix the concrete he said it looked to him as
00:37:30
though someone had dug a hole put the girl in poured a bag of concrete mix on top
00:37:36
and poured water over the whole thing so not actually mixing it up in a proper way
00:37:44
kind of hastily doing it there on the scene so not a professional job not really the proper
00:37:49
method for for making the concrete right but maybe that's you know good because the concrete cracked and we were able to
00:38:00
see that she was buried if they would have done a better job maybe that concrete never cracks and we we
00:38:06
never find her there was a reward for finding nevaeh at the time of discovering her body so after the body
00:38:17
was positively identified using dna the bickleys split twenty thousand dollars this was reward money that was being
00:38:25
offered by the fbi now reportedly guy bickley the bickleys were a little they accepted the money begrudgingly
00:38:35
right they guy bickley says on record if the reward money came from the community he would
00:38:41
have declined it but since it was funds from the federal government he accepted it and he told the news screw
00:38:48
the money it has released a lot of emotions that i don't like what he meant was he hated being the one
00:38:55
finding nevaeh's body he said he would have preferred that someone else had found her he found himself breaking down
00:39:02
at the memory of seeing her little body in the concrete grave and said that the emotional impact was wreaking havoc on
00:39:09
his daily life well that's something he's never gonna forget and how could you i mean that would be devastating for
00:39:16
anybody i feel compelled to give a warning here i know that a lot of shows give you a
00:39:22
warning at the top of the show saying that some of the information discussed here might be
00:39:28
graphic in nature or disturbing to hear we here at the garage don't feel the need to to always give those warnings at
00:39:36
the top of the show because it's a true crime show it's dark material you should expect to hear
00:39:42
something that's uncomfortable maybe even something that you don't want to hear but
00:39:46
you know i've i've become a little thick skinned when it comes to a lot of this stuff
00:39:53
and this part still bothered me a little bit so i feel compelled to give a little
00:39:57
bit of a warning here because we are going to go very briefly through the autopsy not not the entire
00:40:04
thing an autopsy on the remains was performed by dr carl schmidt of the wayne county medical examiner's office
00:40:12
the next part that i'm going to read is directly from the autopsy report it says
00:40:17
quote this child was found in a shallow grave part of the body was interred was found face down and the back was covered
00:40:25
by a layer of cement-like material the body showed moderate signs of decomposition
00:40:32
dr schmidt's opinion was that the death was caused by aspiration of fine particulate material
00:40:41
here he means dirt her death was caused by her not being able to breathe and she couldn't breathe
00:40:47
because of dirt the particulate material was found in the upper airway the trachea and the medium of the small
00:40:57
caliber airways this means that the child's face was forcibly maintained or embedded into a
00:41:04
dirt surface now whether this resulted from another person forcibly pressing the child's face into dirt or whether
00:41:13
she was buried alive cannot be determined by this autopsy but the manner of death of
00:41:20
course was ruled a homicide well this is difficult too because you don't know if
00:41:25
the killer put her in there knowing that she was dead or not you know what i mean like exactly
00:41:35
he could have put her in there assuming at that point she was dead then obviously we now know
00:41:41
um the cause of death yes and again there was a certain level of decomposition that had already taken
00:41:47
place this to me indicates that she was likely there for a considerable amount of time
00:41:55
likely shortly after the abduction or closer to the time of and date of the abduction and you're exactly right
00:42:03
captain we've seen plenty of cases where someone attempts to smother or strangle
00:42:09
a victim and they come to and maybe this monster thought that she was already dead before placing her in
00:42:20
in the ground and then leaving her there but the again it's it's the autopsy gives us some insights but
00:42:30
not a whole lot as far as figuring some things out right because we don't know the facts of it is that she was still
00:42:39
breathing when she was either buried alive under this concrete or suffocated by someone holding her face into the
00:42:44
dirt those are pretty much the two options that we're left with but there was no visible trauma to her
00:42:52
body such as blows to the head or sharp force injuries seems like we have no puncture wounds we don't have any
00:42:59
bruising around the neck or even around our arms that the autopsy tells us about
00:43:05
nothing that came up in the autopsy it doesn't mean that it didn't happen it just means that the state that her body
00:43:11
was found in those things could not be determined but yes there's no what is clear in the autopsy is there's
00:43:19
no visible signs of trauma to her body such as blows to the head or sharp force injuries so
00:43:25
that clears up that in my opinion now sheriff crutchfield is on record saying that the body had
00:43:33
evidently been there for quite some time those were his words this leading many to conclude that nevaeh was killed
00:43:41
shortly after she was last seen yeah it's a tough one because if i'm playing detective here
00:43:48
again 10 mile gap between where she is abducted and where she is found so i'm thinking local
00:44:00
both spots i think you could argue that you need to be local to know them well or feel safe around
00:44:09
because again if you're not from that area and you go to that apartment complex with the the play area and the pool and
00:44:17
everything you might not feel as brazen to to try to take a victim if you know the area better if you study
00:44:29
the area better you're going to feel more inclined and feel safer as the killer to to try to take a victim
00:44:39
but then we have this half-assed shallow grave with some concrete that we don't even think that the
00:44:49
individual took the time to mix so that so that means on some level this guy is half hazard
00:44:56
i i think that could play into the you know the the psyche of this individual well i'm going to take the
00:45:04
time to bury her to make this grave but i'm not going to do a good job doing it if that makes any
00:45:12
sense so when i look at this spot where the body's recovered from it's remote you're getting there by one of two
00:45:23
methods boat or vehicle and i purposely described how the bickleys had to park and where they
00:45:32
chose to park their vehicle to go fishing in the spot to demonstrate what it would take somebody to get
00:45:40
from the road to this spot where nevaeh is found and what i see here what what i tend to believe
00:45:52
is that the perpetrator is haphazardly putting together this air quote's grave to
00:46:02
conceal the body but does not feel comfortable and does not have a lot of time to do this
00:46:12
if a body's going to be discovered there you really don't want your car your vehicle your truck your license plate
00:46:20
being spotted parked on the side of this country road right you know the the bickley said that they
00:46:28
parked on the other side of the guard rail i live near water i live near an area that that a lot of people fish and
00:46:35
a lot of people park like that they park off of the side of the road uh off of the guard you know behind the
00:46:42
guard rails so some drunk doesn't come along and accidentally crash into their car
00:46:47
and it has nothing to do with true crime it has nothing to do with the our job here
00:46:52
in the garage but for whatever reason i take mental note when i'm driving and see somebody parked
00:46:59
especially at night even though they're all fishermen you know what i mean like this is an area
00:47:04
where people fish but it's it's easy to spot a vehicle when it's parked there by itself when you don't
00:47:10
see anything in the immediate area it's easy to go oh i saw a green bronco there
00:47:16
or a red s10 pickup truck right well it sticks out because it sticks out yeah and if
00:47:25
the other method would be for somebody to use a boat or some kind of watercraft to get there
00:47:31
i don't know a lot about this this water way here um so i i i can't really speculate on that
00:47:39
angle too much but i see somebody that's hastily putting together and trying to conceal the body that to
00:47:47
me would indicate or i would lean toward the opinion of they probably drove to this location
00:47:53
now it's also important to note here captain that the autopsy report did not even address
00:47:59
the following items so we don't know one way or the other what the conclusion was but it did not
00:48:05
address whether the victim was sexually assaulted now per fox news jennifer buchanan the
00:48:11
mother said that police told her that nevaeh was not sexually assaulted and that no drugs
00:48:17
were found in her system again on record police would not discuss whether the child was sexually abused
00:48:23
but there was a detective on record stating that the toxicology reports came back negative
00:48:31
here i want to point out something and be perfectly clear jennifer buchanan says that police told her that she was
00:48:38
not the victim was not sexually assaulted i don't have a strong belief that they would tell her
00:48:47
i agree factual information about the case especially given the the living situation and given
00:48:54
jennifer her situation her past her police record i don't know that they're going to be
00:49:00
giving mom all of the facts here in this case and when we get when we get eyeballs deep into this investigation
00:49:09
you will see why it's it's normal it's perfectly normal for these types of investigations to
00:49:15
have hold back information and what the public doesn't always understand is that
00:49:18
whole bank information is not just hold back information from the general public
00:49:22
it's oftentimes hold back information from the persons closest to the victim and closest to the investigation itself
00:49:29
meaning mom likely does not know much more about this investigation than the public does once we get eyeballs deep in
00:49:37
this we will see and you will understand very quickly why police would be hesitant to discuss particular details
00:49:47
about this case evidentiary details about this case with jennifer for a second here let's pretend that
00:49:58
there was no sexual assault right right that makes me go well what the hell's going on here why would someone kidnap
00:50:06
and murder a child if not to sexually assault them typically unfortunately that is
00:50:14
the motive in a lot of these cases so to offer up an educated guess here we have a couple of options in my opinion
00:50:22
captain one nevaeh could have been a source of some type of sexual pleasure for the abductor without any actual
00:50:29
contact taking place two perhaps her abductor had every intention of sexually assaulting the victim but
00:50:41
something happened she fought back he panicked and killed her before going through with it
00:50:47
three maybe the abduction in the murder was the goal the entire time and was the only goal perhaps to
00:50:55
i don't know silence her over previous abuse send a message to someone get back at someone or
00:51:03
even potentially set someone up and again to be clear that the body being found in a state of undress
00:51:11
is from one source that source has deleted the article we do not know why they deleted the
00:51:18
article so something could be wrong could be factually incorrect that was in that
00:51:24
article and the the factually incorrect item could be that she was in fact clothed when she
00:51:31
was found but there seems to be a lot indicating that that she was in some form of undress when she was discovered
00:51:38
now the community really pulled together here they went all out they donated for
00:51:44
nevaeh's funeral services the funeral was attended by a thousand people there were funeral homes that offered to
00:51:52
donate their services to the family so kudos to the community for for pulling together to help this this young girl
00:52:00
and to help out uh her family in this worst of situations now everyone described monroe as a quiet
00:52:09
little town a tranquil community where things like this don't happen that's what we hear so
00:52:15
often when things like this do happen is this is an area where these things don't
00:52:19
happen but her horrific murder was absolutely devastating and terrifying to the residents
00:52:29
nevaeh's headstone which she was buried in st joseph cemetery in monroe michigan it reads
00:52:37
monroe's little angel the entrance to the steep rocky path leading to the riverbank where her body
00:52:45
was found was marked by a cross and rock sculptures and mementos of things like stuffed animals were
00:52:53
placed there by people in the community now before nevaeh was found of course police were focusing in on
00:53:03
finding her and the investigation centered on interviewing residents of the apartment complex
00:53:09
following leads generated from eyewitness statements and interviewing those residents
00:53:16
and also tracking down registered sex offenders and so on but of course after she was found the
00:53:22
investigation went down a little bit of a different avenue they started following up on
00:53:29
the 1200 tips that they had received remember they were very quickly and actively
00:53:35
asking the public for help right from jump street on this case and it appears that the public responded
00:53:43
in the form of over 1200 tips that were received by law enforcement well that's a lot of tips
00:53:49
but what a devastating situation for the the parents in that community you'd be afraid that this could happen to your
00:53:56
child and if you're a child in this community you're afraid that this could happen to you next but as
00:54:02
said in the early stages of the investigation they focused on sketchy people in the
00:54:07
apartment complex and of course they visited the apartment where nevaeh's little friend austin
00:54:12
baker lived with his parents she had played there with austin earlier that day this fills out the timeline a little bit
00:54:21
more so at some point she's at austin's house or apartment earlier that day and then jennifer comes to the apartment
00:54:28
to collect nevaeh and the two of them walk to kmart now austin is also the same boy whose apartment
00:54:38
jennifer said that she assumed nevaeh was heading to when she left the apartment later around 6 30 and then
00:54:46
vanished police took carpet samples this was a little confusing to me here captain
00:54:53
when they visited austin's place and interviewed his parents and interviewed him they took carpet samples from the
00:54:59
apartment i guess they're trying to match fibers uh it's been reported that possibly fibers were found under
00:55:05
nevaeh's fingernails but what's been reported is that all most if not all of the apartment units
00:55:16
were believed to have the same carpeting so it's not really clear to me how matching the fibers
00:55:23
from austin's apartment or really any other apartment at charlotte arms would help them focus in on a specific suspect
00:55:30
and keep in mind nevaeh lived in an apartment complex in another unit so right the carpeting in her own apartment
00:55:40
could be identical to those in the other apartments unless it's one of those situations i actually used to work for a
00:55:46
company that would when the people would move out we'd go in and we'd change the carpet
00:55:52
and when paint and so is it possible that they changed the carpet and so they know that some of
00:55:58
the buildings have older carpets some of the buildings have newer carpet and that
00:56:02
would give us some kind of look if we have 180 units then maybe that divides that in half
00:56:12
right and so now now i'm looking at 90 some people that could be involved and not
00:56:18
180. one thing that we weren't able to find was the surveillance situation if there
00:56:25
were any type of security cameras at this apartment complex it's hard to believe that in 2009 that there would be
00:56:31
none at all but if there had been in this case to me it seems very likely that at least there were no cameras on the
00:56:41
back of the building where her scooter was later found because if we had that information if we
00:56:47
had surveillance from that area i feel like we're not sitting here over a decade later with an unsolved
00:56:54
case now i mentioned earlier that we are going to call in a question a lot of jennifer's behaviors and to me it's not
00:57:03
so much about the time frame in which her daughter goes missing it's more about her actions leading up
00:57:09
to her daughter's disappearance so even before nevaeh's body was found police already had suspects
00:57:19
and these were publicly named suspects before the body was even found in fact this was within 24 hours of the
00:57:26
little girl missing police were already honing in on a couple of potential suspects
00:57:32
it was two guys and these two guys were both exes ex-boyfriends of jennifer's and they were both immediately picked up
00:57:40
on probation violations as soon as investigators got their names from jennifer so what probation violations were they
00:57:48
picked up on they're picked up because they were both registered sex offenders who had
00:57:55
victimized children in the past oh creepos so after it came out that they were each
00:58:01
hanging out with jennifer each of these and kudos to the police for doing this they get these guys names and they're
00:58:11
like you know what it's a probation violation for each one of these guys to be associated with the
00:58:17
child a parole violation so let's go find these guys pick them up arrest them and throw their asses in
00:58:24
some jail cells and we can interview them talk to them see if we can get them to talk
00:58:30
because we're interested in what these guys have to say and what they may know because of for so many obvious reasons
00:58:40
this is a very cold cold world we live in i mean go take a look at her and to imagine that somebody would want to
00:58:50
harm her just makes no sense so technically captain both of these guys are arrested
00:58:56
for quote simply being associated with a child this per abc news their parole conditions require that
00:59:05
they have no association with children and that they not even have romantic relationships with women who have
00:59:13
children the sheriff publicly named both of them as persons of interest and threw them in
00:59:19
cells while the investigators did their thing [Music] all right thank you so much for joining
00:59:38
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00:59:59
be kind and don't litter [Music] [Applause] [Music] you