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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's strapped in the chair of the city's gas
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chamber here is the captain let me tell you it's pretty comfortable it's good to
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be seen good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend [Music]
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today we are featuring a great beer from one of our many great travels how about
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a little space camper cosmic ipa from the great brewers over at boulevard brewing company in kansas city missouri
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it doesn't have to be a red friday to get down in a great town with a great beer this is a delicious ipa abv 5.9
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percent garage grade four and a half bottle caps out of five and let's give some praise and thank you to some of our
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good friends for helping us out with this week's beer run first up a big cheers to vanessa bailey in beautiful
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toronto ontario canada and we also have marine from doosman wisconsin both marine and vanessa went to our website
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truecrimegarage.com and donated to this week's beer fund and for that we thank you yeah bwwr you win beer run
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make sure you support the show by signing up on our mailing list and go to itunes and leave us a five star review
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it really does help the show and colonel that's enough of the business all right
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everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music]
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when we left off yesterday captain unfortunately the body of five-year-old nevaeh buchanan had been located this
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after less than two weeks of looking for the missing girl now even before her body was found
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police already had persons of interest and these persons of interest were announced within the one
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within the first 24 hours and the second within the first 48 hours of the little
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girl missing so let's get into these two individuals shall we because these are both people that had some kind of
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relationship with the mother with nevaeh's mother and were a little unclear what the current state of the
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relationships were at the time that nevaeh went missing but we have to look at these people
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these are persons of interest per the sheriff so the first guy that we will discuss is george kennedy again the
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current status of their relationship between him and jennifer is a little unclear but per cnn jennifer said that
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she had met george two years earlier while reporting to her probation officer so this is always a good place to find a
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date convenient she said that her relationship with george was that they were just friends she said that they
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haven't officially dated for over a year and a half before nevaeh went missing but they remained friends after they
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were dating jennifer says i'm not a judgmental person so i looked over his sex offenses but at
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the same time i still kept my guards up on that she said that george had a good relationship
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upon my daughter as a father figure always there for her she says if he came around she'd see him and she'd run up to
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him and hug him so to quote the church lady well is it that special a female child hugging a sex offender
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and the mom treating him like some kind of special person in her child's life well when she says i always kept my
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guards up here's how you keep your guards up people don't have that person be involved in your life or your child's
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life yeah and it gets even worse i mean we have jennifer on record saying that all three of our
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relationship together was like a family he george kennedy claimed nevaeh as his daughter
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jennifer says she says that he was in my daughter's life for more than her own father
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yeah and i don't know i i see the situation and i look at it and i go all right so
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jennifer mom or who was supposed to be mom here sherry should get credit as mom because she's doing the motherly duties
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and and actually caring for the child and providing a shelter and food for nevaeh but
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jennifer who is supposed to be mom is she's essentially facilitating grooming of her own child to a known sex offender
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that's the risk here well she has won a bad picker she's selfish she's looking at her needs above her
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family's needs above her daughter's needs it's uh pretty pathetic she says in her own defense that she was
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unaware of his sex offender status at the time that they started dating but of course she came became aware of that at
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some point so you can very quickly push the guy away and say no thank you which she did not do
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now she says they remain friends that they weren't in any kind of romantic relationship
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at this point but the thing that that really pisses me off here is when i hear statements like this
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jennifer's telling media outlets she told many media outlets this that she she's trying to paint herself as some
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kind of good person she's saying i believe in giving people second chances well good for you lady how about giving your
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daughter the first chance by i don't know not making her be in the company of sex offenders right
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so when nevaeh was taken george kennedy was living in a monroe motel room where he had apparently been staying for
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about a month he's keeping it classy and wtol 11 news they were able to get their
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hands on a search warrant that was for kennedy's motel room remember he's named as a person of interest and picked
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up within 24 hours of the little girl going missing now they are asking a judge if they can search this
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motel room the search is granted and the news station gets their hand on the search warrant so we know what they were
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looking for we know some of the things that they found so according to that search warrant
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shorts and a towel were found with blood on them in addition there was blood staining on the
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wall above the bathroom sink in the hotel room property was searched and some was
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seized from the room the monroe county sheriff named kennedy as a person of interest
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but the war also covered a search of a vehicle i want to be clear here i said a vehicle
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this vehicle is believed to be been driven by george kennedy in that vehicle in the center console of
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this is a van there was a jvc radio face case found to have contained a silver multi-tool we don't get an exact
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name brand or an exact description but it's listed as a silver multi-tool which they state appear to have blood on
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the exterior of this tool a preliminary examination confirmed that the blood was
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human that the blood that they found was to human blood also found were photos of young girls
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one of whom reportedly resembled nevaeh well if you're law enforcement you have to be hopeful with
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the evidence that you are finding something else that was very disturbing that was reportedly found
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in the motel room were three shiny metal matchbox style mini motorcycle toys were found in his
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room these would be exactly the kind of toy that nevaeh would want to play with or did play with well
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again law enforcement has to be excited but you have to do your due diligence and you have to make sure that this
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evidence checks out and it's actually evidence in this case but that's not all the warrant also states that police
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questioned two children who were outside playing with nevaeh on the day she disappeared this is really interesting
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stuff here these were two kids ages six and ages eight who were biking and scootering and hanging out in the
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parking lot of the complex with nevaeh as close to her disappearance as we can come up with because the warrant states
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that this was around 6 30 p.m that sunday night that she went missing again as you pointed out a few times captain
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and rightfully so we don't know exactly when she went missing but one of these kids one of these witnesses was a girl
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who told the cops that nevaeh went into the woods to meet up with a man named daddy george
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and the boy witness said that nevaeh was kidnapped by quote a bad man and that the bad man stabbed her in the stomach
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now of course we don't have any evidence to suggest that the girl was was stabbed at all so
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it's difficult when you're interviewing children it's it's difficult really to interview any type of witness
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eyewitness as they often will make mistakes but especially here you wonder is is the boy
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so the boy mentioned in the warrant was for those of you who are paying close attention to the case you guessed it
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correctly this was nevaeh's friend austin the one that she was playing with earlier on the afternoon that she went
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missing we know based off the autopsy that was determined that nevada died from aspirating dirt not stabbing so you
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have to wonder is this kid just did he hear some kind of rumor or see something on tv that he was
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afraid of and when police are probing him for information does he just recite something he saw on
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tv or recite something that he heard was maybe a speculation of people because the people in the neighborhood the
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people in the apartment complex are going to be talking while this girl is missing well i'm poor kid you know he
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has to answer these questions from law enforcement he's probably scared half to death and he probably misses his
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his buddy the other thing that is interesting though too here is that austin's mother
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goes on record and she says look i know that he said that she was stabbed but what my son is saying is factually not
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true it's factually incorrect so i don't know if if she's basing this statement off of
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the autopsy findings or if she is saying you know he couldn't have seen this because i was with him
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in that 6 30 time period he was not out of my sight he didn't he didn't see anything that i would not have seen but
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the daddy george thing is weird because mom jennifer says that there was some kind of family type
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relationship between the three of them so it wouldn't be completely out of the question if nevaeh
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was calling this man daddy george his first name is george and then the other disturbing part of
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this too is that that same news outlet that had the information about the search warrant
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said that george had failed a polygraph examination or failed portions of a polygraph examination this george guy's
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a real piece of [ __ ] crystal [ __ ] is austin's mom and she's on record saying that
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nevaeh left their apartment at 3 30 or 3 45 p.m that day so maybe that's what she's basing that statement off of that
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it's not factually true because my son did not see nevaeh close to the time that she went missing
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it sounds like though and obviously so that the the rest of the family maybe not
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jennifer but the rest of the family immediately suspected george and this is based off of a statement
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given to abc news it says nevaeh's family members said that they are even more suspicious now of george kennedy he
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was age 39 at the time he's a registered sex offender and friend of jennifer's of
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nevaeh's mother and kennedy supposedly worked with cement in the area and didn't live terribly far from or wasn't
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staying terribly far from where the body was found again this is according to family
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statements to the news apparently george worked for a monroe-based company and dealt with
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cement in the course of his his job i don't know exactly what that means captain it i don't know if he works for
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a cement company i don't know if he just works as like a general laborer in some form of
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construction yeah he's probably not that high on the totem pole i think that would be a little bit more of a
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likelihood but the the thing with the with the cement or the concrete and i know i'm gonna get
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an email from somebody that says i'm using the incorrect term i understand that there's a difference i don't know
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the difference so don't worry about it he's not a concrete expert i don't work in congress
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here's the problem with the concrete right you can say a guy works with concrete or
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he's familiar with working with concrete and so that would make him a good suspect but at the same time
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it doesn't sound like it was properly put together and so you could you could use that as
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the reverse and say well it makes him less likely because this person just may not have known what they were doing when
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they were trying to form this concrete slab right or like you said they're in a location that they feel that they have
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to speed up whatever process they're going through they could have just been rattled uh you
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know um go out there to to dump the body and try not to get caught and something happens and it
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rattles you and you have to abort all plans now later jennifer and i'm going to kind
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of fast track this because people have spent a lot of time analyzing this stuff and i don't think that it's necessary to
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the case but you know jennifer defends george kennedy for a bit but then very quickly
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backtracks on those statements well everybody deserves a second chance right it's a
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well and you know it's a very bad look for her to be standing up for a registered sex offender
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so she goes on record later saying that she wouldn't put it past george and adds more fuel to the fire major
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fuel at that by saying in at least two interviews that it was possible that george kennedy owed someone money
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and they took nevaeh and hurt her because george was close to her yeah which i think is
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silly because yeah if if anybody should be looked at it's george and that's what the police were
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doing maybe not so much somebody associated with george yeah a loser like this he owes you money you go after him
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you hurt him you don't nobody's gonna be missing old george kennedy no old papa george
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old papa george all right captain would you like to hear a rundown of george kennedy's criminal record let's hear all
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about papa george so according to abc news in 1998 george kennedy was charged with a felony
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for having sex with a girl under the age of 16. i guess that charge was later dismissed
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according to court records and we're not gonna we're not gonna get into this too much because it's a little
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confusing but don't get aggravated just yet because i think this will come around full circle
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here in addition to that 1998 charge court records show that in december of 2001 kennedy was charged with a home
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invasion and a costing a 13 year old girl during the course of that home invasion
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he took a plea deal for fourth degree criminal sexual conduct and a misdemeanor charge for costing children
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for immoral purposes he was released on parole in 2007 and again this is one of those things i
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jennifer says she believes in giving somebody a second chance uh the parole was this guy's second chance right
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the the state gave him a second chance you owed him nothing because his second chance was parole and
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and part of that parole was that he not be associated with children or not be associated or in
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relationships with women that have children look and they they make that statement through the law
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because these guys prey on single mothers because the single mother goes oh well
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maybe they don't feel that they can do any better than papa george and he's around and he's helping and and well he
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he loves my daughter but it's okay that he has these bad things in the past i'll keep an eye out
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on him i'll make sure [Music] you're you're playing with fire and that's not a chance i would take
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with my my children so it's a little confusing because we say that the the one charge was later
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dismissed but we also say that he took a plea deal for fourth degree criminal sexual conduct
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i don't know if they were able to plea that charge down to fourth degree criminal
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sexual conduct and that's why i said hold on to your anger for a little bit because he
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he likely did serve time for that that it was just the charge was reduced now jennifer on record and there is you can
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find this on youtube where jennifer is interviewed by nancy grace and grace gives her the the business
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during this interview because jennifer says that okay so that charge that was dismissed
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or that he pled down to was because george kennedy raped a 15 year old girl behind a gas station
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uh this in in that uh area of monroe michigan right in monroe county michigan so he's convicted for that in 2002
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but jennifer says she's trying to defend herself and defend her relationship one-time relationship with george
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kennedy by saying we discussed it he told me that so he's 26 at the time of this
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charge of of committing this rape and she says to nancy grace the girl was 15 years old but it was
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consensual the sex act was consensual and nancy grace is very quick to jump in and say hold on
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jennifer in that jurisdiction there is no such thing as consent from somebody that is under the age of 16. it's rape
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get or nancy so good for good for nancy to try to straighten out jennifer george kennedy
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he is not hiding or ducking from the cameras he openly gives jailhouse interviews to local news
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stations and during which he's professing that he's innocent uh he's saying i didn't take her i
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didn't kill her i have no clue what happened to nevaeh um and in fact he was even
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interviewed before they even found her body and he kept saying that hey i'm hoping that they find her alive i'm
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still hoping that they find her alive now after additional forensic testing on some of the items that were removed from
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his motel room investigators came out to the public and admitted that the blood found on the
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items there did not match nevaeh so it was human blood but it did not belong to our victim
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could have just been part of the decor there's another person of interest that is named and again this is very quickly
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in our case here and this other man his name is roy lee smith this guy he too has sex offender status
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he was also an ex of jennifer's he too was named as a person of interest now per
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the detroit free press jennifer said she met smith through george kennedy so this
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is this is where this gets really difficult to see past one or both of these guys right right
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that not only did they both have an association with the victim they both had an association with each other and
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they're both persons of interest separately or together in this case jennifer says that she wasn't
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specifically aware of roy's sex offender status she admitted that she guessed it
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because of her because of the association between him and george kennedy so she's not
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aware that he's a sex offender but says that she susp said that she suspected him of being a sex offender
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i'm not for sure but i'm just assuming since he's hanging out with papa george papa george likes to hang out with a
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bunch of creeps roy lee smith was convicted of third degree criminal sexual conduct for a 1991 rape
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and he was also listed as a habitual offender so he got they tried to give him the maximum here
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he was looking at 15 years to 50 to five zero years prison but he was released from prison in
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february 2008 this after serving 15 years for that conviction remember what we discussed in the one
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search war you may recall that a van was being driven by george kennedy that was
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being searched by police and a bloody tool was removed from that van well this is where things get a little weird
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too roy smith was the actual owner of that van that's why i stated earlier that the
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search warrant didn't say that george kennedy was the owner of this van the search warrant said that it
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is believed that george kennedy had been driving that van roy smith the other sex
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offender actually owned the van so these guys are friends unfortunately two terrible guys with sex
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offender status or chummy well they had a lot in common that's true yeah and supposedly they had swapped vehicles
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they had traded vehicles now this is really weird to a lot of people but it's not so weird to me this is
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something that when i was young i remember hearing quite a bit that it wasn't uncommon for people especially
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when we're talking about vehicles that aren't worth very much or or don't have much of a value to them right
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then it's not uncommon for guys to straight up trade vehicles and just sign off the
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the slips to the other individual so one good piece of news though here that comes of this is
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they had sex offenders parole status both of these individuals and what happens here is because they
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violate that parole these two aren't just locked up in jail and then interrogated and
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investigated for nevaeh's homicide in both instances judges revoked retracted their paroles
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and so both kennedy and smith were sent back to prison this to finish out their full sentences
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for those parole violations [Music] [Music] all right we are back papa george hotel motel holiday inn
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cheers to you colonel cheers to everybody in the back and cheers everybody in the front
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stop looking at me gross gross gross gross uh this brings us to a third guy that
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was pulled in by police for questioning in nevada's disappearance and even named
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as a person of interest this is james easter who was age 64 at the time reportedly he was the subject
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of a tip that came into police because he was seen often at the apartment complex and there's
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some question whether he had registered as a sex offender or he was required to do so but there's
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question if he actually did register uh the detroit free press who did gangbusters work obviously on nevaeh's
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case and we've cited them multiple times throughout part one and through out this episode as well
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but they reported that fbi agents knocked on his door and accused him of following jennifer and nevaeh home from
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kmart remember we said that that day late that afternoon jennifer and nevaeh walked home from kmart
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now this james easter guy would not have been a person that was known to jennifer
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or known to nevaeh but he was known to hang out in the area of this apartment complex and i don't know if there was a
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witness or somebody that stated that they had seen him following them or watching them or if this was just a
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scare tactic to try to present that they may have more information than they actually did
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and see if he would confess to something whatever they have or don't have on this
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guy at the very least they they search his home and i'm a little confused because
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there's no mention of a search warrant so maybe he just openly says come on in guys
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go ahead and search my my home if so that shows a level of cooperation that i may not expect from a child
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killer but inside his home they confiscated over 100 porno tapes uh pornographic videos and
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also his bed spread oh that's disgusting he was held for questioning for well that's actually one of the most
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common things that will be taken from something so disgusting in any kind of case especially these kinds
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of cases he's held for questioning for approximately 12 hours by the fbi he produces receipts
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showing his whereabouts on the day that nevaeh went missing and so they're forced to let him go
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because he has receipts that show them where he was what he was up to now i don't know
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the details of these receipts this is unknown but what we do know is like an idiot
00:28:46
so he's released on saturday night on the 30th he's back at his home around 5 a.m on
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sunday may 31st he's in his yard burning items and these items include receipts tv dinners and a sex toy well sex toys
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make good firewood i don't know if somebody called the police or if they were surveilling him i
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i suspect they were surveilling him yeah because he's like mid-fire burning this stuff
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early in the morning it would have still been dark there so a neighbor could have
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spotted it and maybe called it into the fire department or what have you but he's confronted by police guns drawn
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they're like get on the ground dude and they surround him get on the ground they
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want to know why he's burning stuff the the fbi is called in to sift through the
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debris of the fire they charge him with with a very light arson charge some form of obstruction of justice or
00:29:46
or possibly the destruction of possible evidence it's it's very weird i don't understand why
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somebody would take these receipts was nes it was essentially his get out of jail card
00:30:01
and then later he's being charged with burning them yeah but here's what i wonder knowing
00:30:07
what i know now the crime takes place on a saturday between six o'clock nine o'clock
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i think they're going to look at it it was a sunday no i'm just saying hypothetically
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okay at any time there's a crime that took place i think they're going to look at me
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i don't think it would be that hard to go to some local businesses and get some [ __ ] receipts
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hey i was here saturday i got a cappuccino and blah blah blah it was around uh 6 30.
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i i don't have my receipt and they then they look in their computer and and maybe they find
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something that's close close to what i told them and they print out a receipt that has nothing to do
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with me does that make sense and so it's almost like did he get all these fake receipts and then when he
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used them and and and pass that portion of the test well i better burn them now because if they actually go through with
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a fine-tooth comb and try to go through all the details i'm going to be busted right and that's what i'm saying that
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the the burning of these receipts is incredibly suspicious behavior like it's just makes no sense at all
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especially since they were essentially your get out of jail card they sent him home
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they brought him in for questioning for 12 hours and because of the receipts sent him home and then he's like i'm
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going to burn these now so incredibly suspicious i think they were surveilling him this easter guy he's a
00:31:48
real dumbass to put it as politely as i can he talked way too much sounds like somebody i know he
00:31:55
did four interviews that i could find with the newspapers and spoke openly about the case
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he openly told the newspapers i failed portions of a polygraph test he goes i i wasn't given the details i don't know
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which questions that i failed but i failed portions of the polygraph test according to the fbi that's what they
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told me anyway and then they're like well what questions that they ask you and he
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rattles off a few you know like right did you do it did you abduct her you know the typical questions you would
00:32:29
expect to hear but also things like they asked him at one point in the polygraph test
00:32:34
if you had done it how would you have carried out this crime or how do you think the
00:32:41
killer carried out this crime and he goes into like great detail saying well if it were me i would have
00:32:49
i would have pulled onto the street turned on my hazard lights pretending that i have some kind of problem with my
00:32:55
vehicle then i would have snuck up on the blind side of the pine trees that are in that
00:33:00
area walked up to where the victim was and i would have snatched her there and he even goes into like that would be a
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long way to walk you have to go up past the dumpsters so clearly he has a a very good
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understanding of the area in which we believe that nevaeh was abducted from he even goes out of his
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way to say that you know the one problem with that area if you were looking to do
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something like this is there were always maintenance people hanging around there
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so he's already he knows where the people would be or where possible witnesses could be yeah i mean very strange and
00:33:39
like like you said so far we have three suspects that i think you could easily put either one of them at the top
00:33:48
of the list and then this easter guy just continues to get more strange and more strange so he's
00:33:55
released remember they picked him up on these for the burning for the arson charges
00:34:00
how can we forget him burning his sex toys he's released from jail on june 1st and at that time
00:34:08
a district judge said that easter was no longer a person of interest in nevaeh's case which is
00:34:16
really interesting to me because i don't know why this judge is declaring this is this based off of insufficient
00:34:24
evidence to charge you with anything or because on record we have local law enforcement saying that we
00:34:33
still consider easter to be a person of interest a judge kind of publicly declares him
00:34:40
as not a poi but police have never officially or publicly anyway cleared him in this case and we're sitting here
00:34:50
these all these years later with an unsolved homicide on our hands and then his girlfriend
00:34:57
jane austen told the news that she might be the last person to have seen nevaeh when she said she spotted the little
00:35:06
girl from her balcony so i got to kind of break this down a little bit because this part's a little
00:35:12
confusing so i'm confused yeah one this this dirt bag has a girlfriend yeah all three of these dirt bags apparently
00:35:18
didn't have trouble getting girlfriends as for for at some period of time anyway
00:35:24
but so this easter guy lives in a trailer by himself now the girlfriend janie austin i think i
00:35:35
mispronounced her name earlier is jane austen but janie austin from my understanding lives in the apartment
00:35:42
complex or close to the charlotte arms apartment complex where nevaeh went missing from because she's saying from
00:35:49
my balcony i believe i was one of the last people to see nevaeh before she was abducted so
00:35:56
when we say this guy was hanging around the apartment complex he very likely could have been hanging around the
00:36:01
apartment complex because his girlfriend lived yeah because like you said the first two suspects that we
00:36:07
we brought up had a connection to nevaeh i had a connection to her family right so that would give them a reason
00:36:15
to be on that property but this [ __ ] stain you got to go well did he actually follow them home from
00:36:27
kmart or was he just going to his girlfriend's house yeah it's it's very weird stuff so what
00:36:35
her statement is to the news is that she says that she was out on her balcony in the evening time she sees the little
00:36:45
girl on her scooter you know riding around like she like most of the neighbors would expect
00:36:52
to see and then this woman says that at some point she went inside to prepare dinner and she believes that
00:37:02
it was during that time period that she was inside preparing dinner that the abduction took place because when she
00:37:07
goes back out to her balcony she sees the scooter abandon where it was later found by the mother
00:37:16
yeah and like you said uh roughly about 180 units it's really surprising that nobody saw anything
00:37:23
we have a lot of stuff that i want to get to captain so i think that we can i included a lot of things in my notes
00:37:31
about how the public did not care for jennifer how the public really was very suspicious of her
00:37:40
i don't know how much detail we need to go into that aspect of the case i think there's
00:37:46
so many obvious reasons why people would not like jennifer in this case would not
00:37:52
trust the mother may even suspect the mother of some wrong doing the the problem though with jennifer being
00:38:00
your prime suspect in this case in my opinion is jennifer did not have her own transportation
00:38:08
jennifer also is reportedly actively looking for her daughter at the time that she goes missing or at
00:38:16
least roughly at the time that she goes missing right her story would be even more believable if sherry her mother
00:38:23
would have been home i can trust sherry i think i can't trust jennifer but at the at the very least we have
00:38:30
another witness saying that look nivea was alive and well at 3 30 or 3 45 when her mother came to
00:38:38
my house and the two of them walked to kmart jennifer saying they walked back home
00:38:44
they were doing their own thing jennifer's hanging out in the apartment nevaeh eventually goes out to play we
00:38:49
also have this witness of saying i saw the girl zipping around on her scooter went in to prepare
00:38:55
dinner and came back and the scooter was abandoned right so the problem with jennifer being your
00:39:01
prime suspect i'm not saying she has no involvement at all or may not know more than she's letting
00:39:08
on what i'm saying is she could not have done something to her daughter and disposed of her daughter
00:39:16
she just didn't have the means she didn't have transportation one she would have had to have have some kind of help
00:39:23
is what i'm getting at here as much as i dislike jennifer yeah but give jennifer a second chance everybody
00:39:29
deserves a second chance and i know there was a lot of local rumor especially back in 2009 and 2010
00:39:37
that she knows more i just i see better suspects here yeah i don't think she's a good person
00:39:46
i don't think she did at least not smart she's not smart not smart at all and also she's not
00:39:53
she was selfish she wanted a relationship she wanted companionship and she took that
00:40:01
over the safety of her child and and that is horrible and she's gonna have to live with that the rest of her
00:40:08
life we have to remember if she's not responsible that she also is a victim here and i
00:40:15
know a lot of people don't like polygraphs they don't care for them they don't put any weight in them we're not
00:40:20
putting any weight in them either but when it's part of the story we report it it's part of the story i'm putting a lot
00:40:26
of weight well here we have now on jennifer who openly tells the news that she was told
00:40:32
that she failed a polygraph exam as well so those things are always a little weird to me right you you might be more
00:40:40
some people may be more inclined to be suspicious of an individual who failed a polygraph but i also find it odd
00:40:48
that a person that let's say we have a guilty party and the world doesn't know 100 that this person's guilty
00:40:55
if i were guilty of something i don't think i would openly be telling the news like you know i was told i failed a
00:41:01
polygraph test right um failed parts yes and but yet we have several people who reported that they
00:41:10
they either failed the polygraph test or were at least told by law enforcement that they failed which can be a tactic
00:41:16
uh on its own so what is unclear is if jennifer has ever officially been cleared by police there are some
00:41:27
news articles out there that say that she is not and has never been a suspect but again it's unclear
00:41:35
if she was ever officially cleared by the police and then this is totally weird because
00:41:42
you're totally weird examining this case yeah my first thoughts are george kennedy
00:41:52
borrowing the van or swapping out vehicles with roy smith george kennedy's my my favorite suspect
00:41:59
at this point in our timeline roy is a close second maybe the two of them did it together maybe they're in
00:42:05
cahoots somehow but we have to pivot off of that captain because after a few months
00:42:13
a few months after nevae's nevaeh's murder believe it or not police announced that roy smith and george
00:42:23
kennedy were no longer persons of interest in this case that's a shocker it's a it's a complete shocker but it's
00:42:33
true we have a detective on record saying quote we are looking in a different direction in recent months
00:42:39
based on our investigation we are following up on leads and investigating new information every day so
00:42:47
what happened here is a little unclear but it sounds like they must have moved on to
00:42:54
a different suspect now again we still have that that easter fella who is not mentioned as no longer being a
00:43:04
person of interest but shockingly enough police come out and say this guy these two guys kennedy
00:43:13
and smith are no longer persons of interest in nevaeh's murder now on the first anniversary of nevaeh's murder the task
00:43:21
force that was put together had disbanded but police said that they were still very actively investigating the
00:43:28
case authorities said that they had called on experts from around the country to weigh
00:43:33
in and give their insights and that they were leaving no stone unturned in august of 2009 the reward
00:43:43
for information in nevada's case increased to 20 000 and by the end of 2010 this amount
00:43:51
increased to thousand dollars so there's a lot of people out there hoping for some
00:43:57
information to come forward in this case the special agent in charge of the fbi's
00:44:03
detroit bureau who oversaw the federal agency's role in this investigation is on record saying that there was no
00:44:13
shortage of suspects in this case but sometimes there are too many and that what they needed was one good
00:44:20
one that they can actually connect to the victim connect to the case well that's the problem is when you start
00:44:26
interviewing the family and you realize well look the mom is a little bit of a scumbag herself
00:44:34
and so she's going to have scumbag associates and and you're going to have to start
00:44:39
there and i think that could hinder the case because well every turn you make she's connected
00:44:47
to these guys with that are sexual offenders that have criminal histories and so if you're law enforcement you're
00:44:55
like oh this is going to be easy because we're just going to do this pervert roundup of of all the guys she knows and
00:45:02
we'll get the killer but to me these cases tend to lean towards stranger on stranger in 2012
00:45:13
this case is back in the headlines and this is because the police are giving us a little insight into their
00:45:20
investigation in 2012 they say that they are closer to an arrest in the kidnapping and murder of nevaeh buchanan
00:45:27
this is directly from the county sheriff crutchfield who we've talked about several times during our
00:45:35
discussion of this case he says quote investigators have an eye on a person or persons
00:45:42
and have significantly narrowed their focus but he goes on to say that the public is
00:45:48
not in danger this is a very interesting statement to me and i know that we try to read a lot into these statements but
00:45:54
you have to you have to read between the lines when they're holding back so much
00:45:58
information so if we've cleared two guys that look good kennedy and smith easter is still out
00:46:05
there walking around on the streets and the sheriff says that there's no danger to the public and they got somebody in
00:46:12
their crosshairs somebody that they like right you start to wonder well does that
00:46:17
mean that they're the suspect that they're looking at is dead or locked up yeah because as
00:46:24
they're going through these suspects like we've seen with the first couple probation violations and with those
00:46:31
probation violations we're able to arrest them and like you said provokes some of the privileges and they and
00:46:37
having them to serve the remain the remainder of their sentence when they say hey we don't think that the
00:46:44
public's in danger again probably leans towards incarceration all right now this next part i'm going to
00:46:51
have to go through every piece of this statement because it's it's very interesting and it helps to clear some
00:46:59
things up in this case and gives valuable insights into their investigation this is in 2014 and it sounds like again
00:47:09
they are reminding the public hey we got a suspect that we kind of like here and
00:47:13
it's from a monroe news article and it reads as follows despite widespread public opinion that stated otherwise
00:47:22
police have long ago said jennifer nevaeh's mother had nothing to do with the crime the family still lives
00:47:29
in monroe but has moved from charlotte arms where they lived where nevaeh was kidnapped nevaeh's grandmother sherry
00:47:37
buchanan remains frustrated that no arrest has been made she said she is considering seeking
00:47:43
legal advice because she's not sure what else can be done at this point i want answers
00:47:49
ms buchanan said it's been too long police investigating the case still don't have much to say on the record the
00:47:56
current monroe county sheriff this is dale malone said nothing more than stating it remains an ongoing case but
00:48:04
several of those who have been close to the investigation have said over the years that they are
00:48:09
certain they know who did it the suspect is not any of the men who were identified at the time as persons of
00:48:17
interest those men were strong candidates because of their backgrounds which included
00:48:23
sexual assault and accosting children and because they had befriended jennifer but they didn't do it investigators said
00:48:31
retired sheriff tillman crutchfield who oversaw the investigation that included about 100 individuals agreed that police
00:48:38
were close to making an arrest but just couldn't develop enough solid evidence to seek a warrant and pursue a trial
00:48:47
quote we are very close to making an arrest we know who the person is i believe we
00:48:53
have the right person targeted we had nothing that pointed to the mother end quote
00:48:59
the man many police believe is responsible remains in prison on unrelated convictions and is not going anywhere
00:49:08
anytime soon in fact he is facing additional felony charges for reportedly trying to kill a fellow inmate this
00:49:15
dude's locked up going to be locked up for a very long time it's kind of a monster continuing with the article they
00:49:22
say the killer police said acted impulsively without any planning he reportedly saw an opportunity and
00:49:29
took it apparently if what some police officers believe is true it was a classic yet rare case of
00:49:36
stranger abduction end quote so that's a very interesting article that shows that they
00:49:43
moved on to a completely different suspect well it's pretty crazy because there are so many creepos
00:49:51
in this area and it's sad and uh we need to protect the children a lot better than we are yeah it's it's
00:49:58
difficult because in these investigations you want a suspect as an investigator you probably want a couple suspects but
00:50:06
you don't want dozens of suspects it it complicates the case so uh have we figured anything out about
00:50:14
this unnamed perpetrator well what we do know from that article and other articles this individual is
00:50:22
imprisoned on totally unrelated charges for the next decade if not longer the monroe news reports that the suspect
00:50:31
was born and raised in monroe he is now in his 30s and is con a convicted wife beater
00:50:39
he is in prison on felony charges for repeated domestic assaults some of these on a pregnant person according to court
00:50:47
reports he was a problem teen who was suspended from school had bad grades and fought with his family
00:50:54
and this part is really interesting to me here captain it says he was interviewed at length
00:51:01
during the original investigation but did not confess and was not named not named publicly most of the investigators
00:51:08
are sure it was him so he was somebody that was on their radar made not at the top of
00:51:15
their list but at least on their radar at the very initial stages of this investigation
00:51:22
well this case is difficult because you want resolve and it sounds like law enforcement is
00:51:29
saying we have resolve it's just going to take a little more time the guy's in jail so don't have to worry
00:51:36
about that and we're gonna get more information on him and eventually we'll have charges
00:51:42
against him that's what it seems like to me but it doesn't seem as satisfying as
00:51:47
as you know hanging the guy up in the middle of town square right you want this guy to be named
00:51:55
publicly i think that they probably won't do so because they are working still working to try to build a case
00:52:03
against this individual but based off of their statements off of law enforcement statements to the public and
00:52:10
to the news it sounds like they really believe that this is the guy that they have narrowed
00:52:18
it down through or narrowed it down to this guy and what's so interesting to me about
00:52:26
that and what i think presents a strong argument that they have the guy in their crosshairs have the right guy
00:52:36
targeted here in their investigation is it look at how good these other persons of interest looked
00:52:44
look at how good they what we were calling suspects looked in this case and they've been able to move on from those
00:52:51
people to land on him somebody that was part of the initial investigation somebody that was on their radar early
00:52:58
which often times in these cases and even sometimes in strange abduction cases the person responsible is on the
00:53:06
radar early on in the case yeah and so this is a very powerful and a very interesting suspect to me now
00:53:18
may of this last year sadly was the 13th anniversary of nevaeh's death of her murder
00:53:26
and there was an article that came out at that time that said that throughout the years the sheriff's
00:53:34
office and the early stages of the investigation which involved the task force followed up on over 2 000 leads
00:53:44
by the 13th anniversary and then the following month in june of 2022 you know a considerable amount of time
00:53:54
has passed so of course they have a new sheriff by now but the current sheriff in charge provided a statement to
00:54:01
abc 13 news and said the investigation is sometimes referred to as a cold case this investigation has never been closed
00:54:12
nor has it ever been reduced to a cold case rather this investigation is very much
00:54:19
active and as long as sheriff goodnote is leading this organization solving this heinous crime
00:54:26
will always be among the highest of priorities [Music] so many thoughts and so many ideas about
00:54:47
this case if you have thoughts and opinions go to truecrimegarage.com and leave those on
00:54:53
the blog colonel do we have a recommended reading for the beautiful listeners this week we are recommending
00:54:59
love bombs and molesters an fbi agent's journey by the great kenneth laning here's a quote from friend of the show
00:55:07
the great john douglas says ken lanning was one of the best instructors the fbi behavioral science unit ever had and he
00:55:16
went on to become one of the leading experts in the country on the behavioral analysis of crimes against children this
00:55:24
is the story this book is the story of his life leading up to his assignment at the bsu and how he developed his
00:55:31
expertise and inspired others during his 20-year career make sure you check out love bombs and molesters and fbi agents
00:55:40
journey by the great kenneth lanning you can find that title and many more on our
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website's recommended page at truecrimegarage.com if you're not following us on facebook
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or twitter instagram or youtube check us out at true crime garage and until next week be good be kind and
00:56:01
don't litter [Music] you