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thank you [Music] [Music] thank you foreign garage wherever you are whatever you're
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only has two concerns eyeliner and cigarettes ladies and gentlemen here is the cat yes yes yes you can find me on
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telling a friend [Music] on today's show we will be sipping on this fabulous beer called Ruby from our
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of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
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[Music] thank you here he comes [Applause] [Music] it must have been the Devil Himself that
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did it that would be the only explanation that would make any sense at all and the heinous and horrific crimes that
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we are going to tell you about today two girls enjoying a beautiful day out together on
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their own in a remote area you go missing from a public area accessible to all this is a park that includes trails
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and the girls were taken from here in broad daylight later they are found dead they're the victims of an abduction and
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homicide for someone to take and kill victims this young for the offender to take the risk that
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they did and get away with it well then it must have been the Devil Himself when we try to size up this monster
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the first thing we all naturally question is has he killed before and we think well he must have
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he must have done this before to be capable of such cruelty to have such evil in his heart
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to commit these crimes if he has killed before if he is responsible for this double
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homicide two young girls taken from a public place well then he will most certainly do this
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again how many nightmares will he create but this sounds all too eerily familiar
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unfortunately that is one of the parts of this nightmare that we know to be true
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this last February makes five years unsolved since the murders of Libby German and
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Abigail Williams two young girls out hiking on a beautiful day in a remote area they go missing from a public area
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accessible to all they were taken in broad daylight later found dead when we first covered the Delphi murders
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case in May of 2017. no one here in the garage believed that five more years would pass
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we would still be looking for the monster that committed those homicides must be the Devil Himself
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but now just a little over a week we're celebrating the independence of our great country
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and as temperatures of the summer in the midwest slowly but steadily climb we are reminded of a double homicide
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another one the Killer is still unknown the case that when we first covered it back in 2020
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I would have thought could have should have some Solution by now but very sadly I say tomorrow will make
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it 10 years now to the day 10 years since that horrible day when someone or someone took Elizabeth
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Collins and lyric cook the two cousins were last seen riding their bikes together
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near Myers Lake just afternoon in Evansdale Iowa later they were found dead it must have been the Devil Himself
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this is another look a new look still unsolved and unresolved cases Elizabeth Collins and Larry Cook
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the Evansdale murders Ten Years Later and this is True Crime garage [Music] Friday July 13
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2012. we have two little girls reported missing this is eight-year-old Elizabeth
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Collins and her ten-year-old cousin lyric cook the two disappeared while out riding
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bikes together in Evansdale Iowa when they didn't return from the bike ride the Evansdale Police Department was
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notified and the girls were reported missing lyric Cook's grandmother says she last
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saw the girls around 12 15 in the afternoon on that Friday the 13th but we do end up with a few eyewitnesses who
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say they too saw the girls out on their bike ride Evansdale is a small community under 5
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000 residents back in 2012 and still less than 5 000 people today Evansdale is located in the northeastern
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part of the state of Iowa Evansdale is in Blackhawk County Iowa and while this is more of a small town
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it is very near Waterloo and Cedar Falls cities that combine have over 100 000 people the girl's grandmother
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Wilma cook told the Press she last saw the girls riding their bikes near downtown Evansdale about 12 15 PM July
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13th the girls were also seen at about 12 23 p.m that same day this on brovan Boulevard in Evansdale
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and then spotted between 12 30 and 1 pm on Gilbert drive not far from Myers Lake
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Myers Lake is a recreational area and a popular fishing spot these are the last known sightings of
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the girls let's talk about the girls here for a minute so in the summer of 2012 eight-year-old Elizabeth Collins lived
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with her parents and siblings in Evansdale Iowa Evansdale is a blue-collar town with
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many residents involved in agriculture production in some manner Elizabeth who attended Poyner Elementary
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was described by her mother as a bubbly little person who was always active and busy one of her best friends was her
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cousin lyric cook age 10 who lived just minutes away in the next town over Waterloo
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lyric went to Kingsley Elementary and she was also an active outgoing Girl Who Loved bowling cheerleading and
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gymnastics and playing outside lyric and Elizabeth's mothers Misty cook and Heather Collins are sisters
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Heather was married to Elizabeth's father Drew Collins and the couple had four children
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Elizabeth being one of them they seem to be a very typical American family with hard-working religious
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parents raising a bunch of children Heather's mother Wilma came over for four or five hours most days to help out
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Heather's sister Misty was also married she's married to a guy named Dan morsey now at the time that the girls vanished
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Misty and Dan were estranged and had been separated for Years lyric lived with her grandmother Wilma cook who as
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we have already established is Misty and Heather's mom lyric and her cousin Elizabeth played
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together nearly every day when Wilma went over to the Collins's to help out well let's get back to that Friday the
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13th July 2012. here's how the events went down according to multiple interviews with
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the family and articles about the family Wilma took Lyric over to the Collins's house around breakfast time
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now Drew Collins left the house in Evansdale early that morning to go to work at the tree trimming company that
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he owns Heather Collins had an appointment and she wanted to run some other errands
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so her mom Wilma came over and brought lyric with her as usual Wilma stayed home with the kids while
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Heather went out and Lyric and Elizabeth set off around 11 30 for a bike ride this was something
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they routinely did and the girls were expected to stay within a short distance of the house
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now Captain we covered this back in April of 2020 and episodes 393 and 394. and one thing we talked about concerning
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this bike ride right and we already established that it's a usual typical activity for the girls to enjoy together
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is there was no real clearly defining boundaries on where they could not go with their bike ride but it was
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established that they were to stay close to the home and the grandmother stated that she
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could go outside call the girls names they would respond and they would return to the house
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so while we don't have any clear defining boundaries here what we do have is a situation where
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she's saying stay close enough that you can hear me and then if I need you to come back to the house you come back to
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the house but we know how kids are they sometimes push boundaries they forget about boundaries or they think they see
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a window of opportunity of oh they won't miss us for 15 minutes or 20 minutes let's go check this spot out right so
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it's widely been reported that the grandmother saw the the two girls zipping by on their bikes around 12 15.
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yeah and this is you hear these little parts of these stories and that's what makes them even more sad and tragic when
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you're kind of picturing this you think to yourself this seems like a very happy situation right right even
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though we have kind of a not ideal situation with lyrics parents but she's a happy kid living with Grandma and
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regularly goes over to her cousin's house and is watched by Grandma and gets to hang out with her cousin who also
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happens to be one of her very best friends so this is a very ideal situation for these kids and a great way
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to be spending their summer months out of school what reminds you of a scene from a movie and I know the the movies
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are written about real life but just this moment where the grandmother's outside in the sun is shining and her
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grandkids are playing on their bikes and she watches them ride by right before tragedy hits yeah the good parts of it
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remind me of my childhood when the days of summer when you're this young they just seemed endless like you're outside
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just playing forever but what we have here Captain is you're right we have tragedy that is about to occur Panic is
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about to set in and this will start and it probably starts at a very small level
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and then ramps up from there right but this is all going to commence when the girls do not come back from this bike
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ride and when they don't return we have concern that's going to set in so what we do know is that we have
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Grandma Wilma says she saw the girls she noted the time it was about 12 15 in the
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afternoon when she saw them riding around on their bikes and we do know we don't have an exact
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time of when Heather returns to the house but it's after the last time that Wilma sees the girls and both have
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stated it was shortly after that one thing I find interesting here too is we have this very
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well-defined timeline that we're going to continue on for this day this timeline's so key and so very important
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to this case but when we have the statements of Grandma and mother stating it's about 12
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15 when I last saw the girls Heather comes home shortly after that this is a small town one thing that does not
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happen is when Heather's returning home she doesn't cross paths with the girls she doesn't see her daughter and her
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niece at any time when she's returning to the house well the next time they're spotted is between 12 30 and 1 o'clock
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and they're spotted on Gilbert Drive which is mile and a half to two miles away from their their mother's house yes
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so they could be in an opposite direction than what Heather was traveling the key thing though here is
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that we know that Heather returns to the house before one o'clock so we got a small window of time 12 15 ish to about
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one o'clock and the reason that we know one o'clock is a Time marker is because Heather says she gets home the girls
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aren't there she's immediately concerned but she's not in panic like thinking anything
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terrible has happened both the girls Heather and Wilma all had stuff scheduled for later that day very
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shortly after this time period in fact and so they were all going to kind of go their separate ways and do the things
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that they needed to achieve that day things that the girls were actually looking forward to right so when they
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didn't return of course Wilma and Heather started to get nervous now our one o'clock time marker comes in
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because what we are told by Wilma and Heather is that by one o'clock Heather sent out her older son Kelly to scout
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out the area to go find the girls tell them to come home hey you were supposed to be home a while ago
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but he returns home reporting that he could not find them he didn't see them could didn't find any sign of them at
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all at this point we have one of the fathers is back at the house Drew he stopped at home this is
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something he would often do he owns the tree trimming company he's in charge of his schedule often he would drop by for
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a quick lunch Heather told drew that she was going to go out and look for the girls again you
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can tell by all of this in the way that it's playing out that nobody is overly concerned at this point they're just
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kids that are probably not where they should be or lost track of time and should have came home earlier but did
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not it happens a lot when you have siblings hey your your little brother your little sister they're they're
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playing with their friends somewhere I can't find them can you get on your bike and go look around because the girls are
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on the bike and now you escalate it more to go okay well you keep looking you you
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ride your bike around keep looking I'm going to now Drive the neighborhood to try to find them yeah and growing up
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unless we had something to do or had some place to be in the summer months my parents did not care where I was they
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did not care if I was outside all day long and I would often be busy and the only indicators of time that I really
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had was there was somebody in the neighborhood that would ring like a lunch Bell like a you know Dinner Bell
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lunch Bell for the kids to come running back and grab some lunch and so I always
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knew that would be like around noon or one-ish and then after that it was like you
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would start seeing the parents come home between 5 6 6 30 and then Sundown those
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were like the three things that told me about what time it was because I couldn't care any less what time it
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was as long as I was out having a good time but especially there in a small town so you would you would definitely
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feel the traffic of people coming home and then you'd feel the calmness of once everybody got home and then obviously
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the calmness of of night setting in so Kelly the older son who's sent out by Heather and Wilma to go looking for the
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girls he comes back he goes out around one o'clock does not find the girls now we have a situation where adults are
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going to start paying attention to time and we have Heather who says she got into her car at 1 20 and she herself
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started driving around canvassing the neighborhood going to Elizabeth's school and the softball field but Saul no sign
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of the girls so you can see what's happening here we're starting to Fan out right go out a little bit further and
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for further looking for the girls because we've covered some ground already and nobody has seen them
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nobody's been able to locate them Misty remember she's a Lyric's mother says Wilma called her at work around 2PM
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to tell her that they could not find the girls so Misty called her ex Dan Morrissey they're still technically
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married at this time but again they've not been together for quite some time from my understanding
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Dan is living at his mother's home in Waterloo now we have three more people that will be joining the search rather
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quickly so this is Dan who is the other father his son Dylan who was at home with Dan
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that day and his mother Vicky so we got three people that show up now to assist in looking for the girls
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Misty leaves work and went over to her sister's house just a short distance away I don't have a time marker for that
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but we know that she receives the call around 2 p.m and she lives very close to where
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her sister lives but this is becoming a scary situation at this time Heather is still out driving around and she returns
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home around 2 20. unfortunately empty-handed and does not have any information either about where the girls
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are at this point the family began driving all over Evansdale we got multiple family members multiple cars
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out driving around all over Evansdale looking for both girls well Panic is also probably starting to set in what's
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weird and this will only be weird because later we will have some information that will make this strange
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but they ended up at Myers Lake this was around 2 45. and in fact they're at Myers Lake they see other people there
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and they start asking people whether they had seen two little girls on bikes now there is a man that they speak to
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and he says he was walking on the trail and he said he did in fact see two little girls on bikes he said they were
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traveling west on the bike trail but the time that he saw them was unclear he was
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a little uncertain of the time meanwhile Heather made the decision to go to the Evansdale Police Department
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sometime between 2 30 and 3 P.M and you know kudos to her because some people feel like oh these are just kids being
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kids we'll find them we shouldn't bother the police with it no I think as soon as
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you start getting nervous as soon as you start Panic setting in as the captain said that's when you you get somebody
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else involved I agree that's what they're there for let them know we can't find our kids we're concerned can you
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help and like you said Heather is going to go to the police to report the girls missing she's at the police department
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around 2 30 to 3 P.M most reports that we have seen have the time of her in-person visit to the Evansdale PD at 2
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48 pm three Evansdale squad cars after the after Heather's there she explains the
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situation three Evansdale squad cars were now scouring the area and checking not just checking the area they go and
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check the home first and start Fanning out from there within half an hour we have Blackhawk sheriff's deputies and
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Evansdale firefighters joining in on the effort on the search effort well I like
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this a lot because like you said they go back and search the family home they're not taking anybody's word for
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anything and that's not and as law enforcement that's what you're supposed to do hey our our uh little girls are
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missing they were on their bikes okay well let's start in the house let's look make sure nothing happened in the house
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and then we we go from there yeah and that seems silly some people were probably thinking well they they wasted
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a little bit of time here and no that's that's common practice I cannot tell you I've I've had 10 to a
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dozen officers tell me that when we get a missing person's call if it's a little
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kid 90 of the time believe it or not we find them inside the home they're hiding
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somewhere in the home or everybody went out looking for little Johnny and while they were out looking he came back home
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yeah he's just hanging out in his room well unfortunately that does not seem to be the situation here and things are
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going to go from scary to incredibly scary within a matter of minutes because Elizabeth's
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purse and both of the girls bicycles were found on a trail in the Southeast corner
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of Myers Lake around 4 pm that afternoon [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Applause]
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[Music] all right we are back cheers mates cheers mates tall cans in the air cheers
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to you Captain just before the break we said that the purse of one of the girls both of the bicycles belonging to the
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girls were found on a trail in the Southeast corner of Myers Lake around 4 P.M that afternoon now we already stated
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earlier that the family some of the family members went to that area to that Myers
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Lake location and we're looking for the girls even before they were officially reported missing to law enforcement and
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this area is rather big so just because they were there before does not mean that the bikes weren't already in that
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location you know the parents then report them missing the police start looking for the girls
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they start by looking at the house and of course this is one of those situations that I wish I could tell you
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that they found the girls at the house that day instead what we find are the bikes and the purse but no Elizabeth
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no lyric to be found and unfortunately the finding of the bikes in the purse does not really give
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them any clues as to where the girls could have been no other than the fact that they were out of their boundaries
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let's talk about what we know about where the bikes were found so this Myers Lake covers 27 Acres with water and is
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about 25 feet deep at its deepest parts the lake is a major recreational area for the people of Evansdale it's stocked
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with fish has a boat ramp there's restrooms there a playground picnic areas with a grill all things that you
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would expect to see at a large Park it's very scenic but it also has a really nice paved bike path winding its way
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through three quarters of a mile around the lake according to a report in the Globe
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Gazette the girl's bikes were found on the Evansdale nature trail right at the Southeastern tip of the
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lake between two lines of chain-link fence by the maintenance gate leading to a rock jetty
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and a water Outlet on the lake this gate was not locked photos show that this area of the paved nature trail is
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straight and with the fence on both sides and the trees overhead it has almost like a
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tunnel appearance right picture that you have fencing on both sides you have the
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trees overhead and underneath you have this paved Scenic Trail Bike Trail right according
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to the girl's Aunt Tammy the bikes were found about 12 feet from the edge of the
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water on the trail this will lead to the suspicion that the police have early on in the
00:28:49
investigation that being that the girls went into the lake and may have drowned or had some
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kind of accident in the lake we can Circle back to that in a minute the investigators also found Elizabeth's
00:29:04
purple purse and cell phone now we need to note that this phone does not have any type of service
00:29:11
from my understanding it was just used for games it was used for her to play games now Captain when we covered this
00:29:20
two years ago well more than two years ago now you brought up some interesting questions about this phone and we wanted
00:29:28
to know if she could have been using this phone to communicate with anyone and I unfortunately do not have those
00:29:37
answers that Still Remains unclear to this day as we all know it doesn't require service if she's in an area that
00:29:45
she has Wi-Fi and if the phone has Wi-Fi capabilities right and she likely did have Wi-Fi capabilities to be playing
00:29:54
certain games on that phone doesn't doesn't require them to play all of them but certainly some of them yes but if
00:30:00
you have internet connection to play those games you have internet connection to possibly communicate with somebody
00:30:07
but to break down where they find the the bikes simply to me if if I'm in law enforcement or I'm part of the family
00:30:15
searching I'm seeing this scene of the bikes and the person going this is not good no
00:30:22
it's uh I'm leaning towards something really bad happen at this point yeah if I see this scene I I agree with their
00:30:30
concern of well maybe they ended up in the lake you know they're 10 they're eight years old they're young that could
00:30:36
be the situation the family's quick to point out the law enforcement both of the girls knew how to swim the other
00:30:41
thing that the family was concerned about when the thought of drowning in the lake came up was the family was
00:30:48
quick to point out look none of their clothing none of their shoes are found we would expect our kids to take their
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shoes off at the very least before going into the lake it was a very hot day that day I mean it was middle of July
00:31:03
so the lake makes some sense but I'm with you Captain if I see these bikes abandoned sitting here
00:31:11
when I was a kid I didn't go anywhere without if I left my bike unattended it was in my friend's front yard or in
00:31:18
somebody's garage it wasn't just leaving it in a public place where I couldn't turn and look to see my bike at any time
00:31:26
because I was you had a nice Mongoose bike I had a Dyno we all had bikes that we didn't
00:31:31
want somebody to come along and snatch well it's also your biggest possession at the time yeah that's true
00:31:39
that's true it was like my Corvette uh for my 10 year old Corvette but but for everybody for every kid that's like the
00:31:47
biggest thing that you have the most expensive and you're not going to just leave that so once you see these bikes
00:31:54
laying on this side of the path you you look around and you don't see any any signs of them anywhere
00:32:02
this is bad and this is the other thing that scares me too is the purse I think the purse might scare me more than
00:32:10
finding the bikes so the way that this is described is that the purse was on the lake side of
00:32:16
the fence about 10 feet to the east of where the bikes were found and about two feet from the fence officials said
00:32:25
now this location is interesting to me as cars can't get to this spot so what I mean by that is these bikes
00:32:35
are found in a location where someone couldn't just pull up and snatch and grab the girls
00:32:42
you know snatch them off of their bikes at this spot and drive off to me that's weird right and I get maybe that's kind
00:32:49
of why they were honing in on the lake possibility early on there's a lot of accidents
00:32:55
especially with children with water but and it doesn't have to be that they went swimming it could just be simply
00:33:02
that they're going to put their toes in the water and then something bad happened
00:33:06
right and we spent a lot of time talking about the searching of the lake in our original coverage so if you want to
00:33:13
check that out and some of the other details that we won't get into this time around because we covered it so good
00:33:20
before those are episodes 393 and 394. so we're going to try awesome well but this time what we will want to do is
00:33:31
to dive into some things that weren't discussed that we didn't get to or anything that has changed in our
00:33:37
thoughts and feelings about this case since that time well that's one of the things that I find very fascinating with
00:33:45
these cases that aren't solved right away and we're coming up on 10 years but these cases maybe they don't have
00:33:53
answers but they continue to evolve right and when these girls are missing and this case first broke we had some
00:34:02
decent coverage of this missing person's case on the Nancy Grace show and I found
00:34:09
both of these accounts to be very insightful regarding where the bikes were found in
00:34:16
a description of how the uh bikes were when when found and this comes from two reporters so the first reporter was a
00:34:25
man named Jim Spellman Spellman said what I find so fascinating is the geography of where the bikes were
00:34:33
found because again it's this kind of dead end area and if there was an abduction that
00:34:39
happened how would you get two girls all of the way to the end of and he cuts off
00:34:45
and then says it's a 10 minute walk from the end of this bike path at the very least to the end of where you might be
00:34:54
able to get to a car or something like that okay that's awfully insightful think
00:35:00
about the distance that that must be from where the location of the bikes were to where you could possibly have
00:35:06
any type of vehicle to put the girls into and drive off with them he's saying in his opinion that at the very least he
00:35:14
believes it to be about a 10 minute walk from where the bikes were found to the end of the bike path where a car or a
00:35:21
vehicle would be and I'm not trying to crap all over their point because I do think it's important to point out but
00:35:27
the girls could have already put down their bikes and they could be walking around the water so at the time of
00:35:33
abduction if they were abducted by that area and put into a vehicle or you know coerced into a vehicle or or
00:35:45
threatened to get into the vehicle they could have already been closer to to that side easier area to be abducted
00:35:53
well yeah and I don't think that this means I I just like hearing the the tales of
00:35:59
getting a better description of where these bikes were found by this Jim Spellman because I don't think that it
00:36:04
indicates that they weren't abducted at this location as you pointed out they could have been on foot they could have
00:36:10
set their bikes down just to look around Mill about what have you someone bad guy
00:36:16
crosses their path decides to take them and walks them controls them lowers them
00:36:23
coerces them to his vehicle which is 10 minutes away it is fascinating to me though that in the course of that walk
00:36:32
we don't have an eyewitness or an ear witness that says they saw something strange they saw
00:36:39
something troubling or heard anything of concern around that time right the thing
00:36:46
again though to me with the purse that scares me is the purse the way that it's described almost sounds like you have
00:36:53
the bikes here and I know the purse is only like 10 feet away but the way that that description reads to me Captain is
00:37:00
that the purse is on the other side of the fence well chill out you're already getting a colonel fire pants and it that
00:37:07
to me sounds like oh snap either these kids like hop the fence and then something bad happened
00:37:15
when they got over there she immediately drops her purse that seems unlikely what
00:37:19
seems more likely to me is if in fact the location of where the bikes were found if that is in direct relation to
00:37:27
the abduction site if they were abducted there this purse its location it feels like to me like
00:37:36
like a perpetrator grabbed it with and tossed it with the attention of of tossing it as far as he could or or just
00:37:44
tossing it out of the area to free up an additional hand to control the girls it
00:37:49
it seems it seems all very weird it's a it's a very strange situation to kind of
00:37:56
try to dissect now another reporter his name is Jesse Gavin went on to discuss the likelihood of
00:38:03
someone abducting the girls from the highway side of the trail right you have these fences right that
00:38:10
are on both sides of this bike trail on one side of one fence is the lake on one
00:38:17
side of the other fence is the highway so we already have this other reporter who's talking a little bit about where
00:38:25
the bikes were found but this reporters talking in direct relation to the highway side of the trail and they go on
00:38:32
to say apparently there was a hole in the fence somewhere along this section of the trail that was the result of a
00:38:38
man losing control of his car on the highway and crashing through the fence so this is not a complete fence at this
00:38:45
point due to some damage from this single car accident the reporter said quote well like Jim said it wouldn't be
00:38:53
the most likely scenario obviously that is kind of an area that's closed off to main roads since it's a bike trail
00:39:02
obviously it's very close to an interstate but it would be kind of tough to get to that interstate the other
00:39:10
thing you've got to keep in mind about that interstate is it's being worked on right now
00:39:17
there's a lot of construction activity going on right there so there's going to be backed up traffic
00:39:24
traffic is going to be slowed down so any kind of suspicious activity that happens in that area it's going to be
00:39:31
seen by somebody it's going to be seen by a lot of people people driving along the highway would surely have noticed a
00:39:39
car stopped along the roadside and possibly two little girls entering or being placed in
00:39:45
a vehicle after walking through a hole in the fence he goes on to say and remind us all that
00:39:51
after all it was broad daylight back to your point about the the purse being 10 feet away to me okay if it's on the
00:39:59
other side of the fence fine but just it being 10 feet away it kind of shows that
00:40:05
these bikes weren't placed down that the that the purse wasn't just placed down because if if I'm riding a bike and I
00:40:13
have a purse and I and I get off the bike and I don't want to carry the purse around I'm just going to lay it right
00:40:18
down beside the bike yeah and the thing here too that I I want to kind of throw out there
00:40:24
is just because the bikes are found there and the purse was found there and ultimately we know that they are
00:40:33
found dead unfortunately many miles away from this Myers Lake location so an abduction
00:40:40
is the only thing that makes sense but just because the bikes and the purse are found in this location doesn't mean that
00:40:46
that's exactly where or has to be where the abduction took place no because let's say the abduction took
00:40:54
place in in um close by neighborhood the abduction happens it gets the girls into the
00:41:00
vehicle has their bikes with them in the vehicle goes down to this park grabs both of their grabs both of their
00:41:08
bicycles it's a 10-minute walk dumps them there to to throw people off hey now look around this park like you said
00:41:16
it was what do you say 20 some acres big I mean that's a that's a big area to start
00:41:23
searching that that kind of throws people off the scent yeah the thing here too is you know if somebody knows that
00:41:31
area let's pretend for a moment that the abductor knows this area somewhat well they don't even have to know it very
00:41:38
well actually at all I would think looking at the the location and where this kind of takes place but if you have
00:41:46
the ability to do so it would be difficult because if you just abducted two girls now you have all these moving
00:41:53
parts and pieces of trying to conceal the bikes at the same time but if you had the ability to control
00:42:00
them and conceal the bikes at the same time it does make a lot of sense right maybe the girls were abducted close by
00:42:07
the road or right at the roadside before even getting to that bike trail and that
00:42:12
bike trail is right there and you go you know what if Mom and Dad or anybody comes looking
00:42:17
for these girls they're going to be out in a vehicle driving around looking for the girls and if the bikes are found
00:42:23
right here by the roadside they're going to be alerted to something bad immediately
00:42:30
at the very least I could take these bikes and tuck them away back in the middle of this Trail here where they
00:42:37
wouldn't be seen from the road and whoever's out looking for these girls will just keep driving yeah that's
00:42:43
an excellent point knowing that people will be searching from a car and what is going to be in their eyesight so we
00:42:49
spend all this time here Captain talking about what were the girls bikes doing by
00:42:55
Myers Lake anyway and we should be pointing out here as well that Myers Lake is not extremely
00:43:03
close to their home in fact it's it's beyond wherever that imaginary line was that the girls were allowed to be riding
00:43:11
their bikes and this is according to the family Myers Lake is one and a half miles away from the Collins's house
00:43:18
again the girls were not supposed to be riding there Misty cook said on Nancy Grace's show they are not allowed to
00:43:26
just ride freely for hours or until dark they do have a little bit of Freedom so
00:43:32
they're allowed to go you know maybe two or three blocks away and stay within those blocks an hour check back in is
00:43:41
kind of the standard that we hold with them and mostly they stick to it so it was surprising to see that they had come
00:43:50
this far if indeed they did ride this far she's obviously referring to the lake Misty also said in an interview this
00:43:59
with kwwl.com I'm surprised they rode their bikes this far but their kids and later
00:44:06
Heather and Drew Collins told the media that they did not believe the girls would have biked that far on their own
00:44:12
well this is leading to what you were saying before about maybe that the perpetrator then took their bikes and
00:44:19
and placed them in this area on purpose if in this you know these cases they're not there's all kinds of horrible
00:44:28
possibilities that we that we have to kind of talk about and and go over here and so a lot of this is not comfortable
00:44:38
to say a lot of this is not comfortable to hear but if you have a situation where the girls are incapacitated a
00:44:46
single offender would have the ability to move those bikes the other thing too is if you had
00:44:53
complete control of the victims you might have the possibility of having them move the bikes for you at your
00:45:00
direction right or if there's more than one offender one offender is staying with the girls
00:45:07
wherever that location be likely a vehicle while the other offender is moving these
00:45:14
items that they don't want to have any part of but not out of the realm of possibility that they rode their bikes
00:45:21
this far because if this eyewitness is correct they saw them a mile and a half to two miles away
00:45:27
from their home on Gilbert Drive correct and correct me if I'm wrong here Captain this reminds me a little bit of
00:45:35
the West Memphis 3 case a lot didn't we have a situation there where the bikes were concealed yes and
00:45:44
some theorize that the bikes were concealed maybe even after the boys were already attacked to later
00:45:51
kind of hinder finding the victims at all because if you find the bikes in that location then one
00:45:59
would start to go well maybe they are here somewhere or were here in this location at some
00:46:04
point yeah and in that case there there was a pipeline and that pipeline really kind of signaled to everybody that
00:46:11
that's the back half of the wood so I think having those bikes being seen at the pipeline it was like
00:46:18
the the perpetrators are leaving the crime scene they see the bikes and they go okay well we need to hide these
00:46:24
because this is basically an advertising sign to go go back there and look but not just that just uh I mean different
00:46:32
in some ways because in this case there was no school today and and they're out riding their bikes and
00:46:41
and so the timeline I think is a little more blurry because at least when you have a case where children get home from
00:46:50
school you have a definitive starting point I'm not saying that I don't believe anybody in their family but you have to
00:46:58
uh question question everything in this case well there we do have a situation in your right Captain the situation is
00:47:06
this we have Grandma who is in charge of essentially five kids at that time right
00:47:14
and so yes I don't believe that these times are spot on I do believe that they're fairly
00:47:20
accurate and I say that based off of the fact that we have such a short window of
00:47:26
time so even if the times are off they can't be off by so much because we have a lot of activity happening really
00:47:33
within the course of four and a half hours because she says that they left the house on their bikes
00:47:41
around 11 30. and then she says that she believes she saw the two kids still alive and well riding around on their
00:47:48
bikes at 12 15. we have those other possible sightings other uh sightings of the girls on their bikes we had the
00:47:56
bikes being found by family and law enforcement at 4 pm so that gives us just that little window of four and a
00:48:03
half hours now after the bikes were found fortunately the family sitting there watching as crime scene tape is being
00:48:10
put in place the officers are closing off access to this Trail so they can scour the area
00:48:17
and look for more evidence or look for anything at all any clues that might tell them where the girls could be right
00:48:24
investigators spent several hours out of sight you know they're they're in on this Trail down on the trail where the
00:48:31
bikes were but the family members cannot see them again it's about a 10 minute walk from where the bikes were to where
00:48:38
the trail kind of ends and pops out there while this is going on the family members held a vigil outside of the
00:48:46
taped off area if anything other than the bikes or lyrics purse were found and we know the
00:48:56
phone was found it has never been disclosed and just to be clear and and I I feel bad because
00:49:03
I'm jumping back in time here a little bit but when you're talking about that the grandmother's time might not be
00:49:10
completely accurate I don't think in any way I don't get the sense that it's she's not accurate because she's lying
00:49:18
or trying to cover anything up I just think it's because she's simply in charge of multiple kids and there's a
00:49:26
lot going on she's busy yeah she's busy and the other thing we need to point out
00:49:31
too those other eyewitnesses that said they saw the girls on their bikes and a little further from the home
00:49:38
at later times in 12 15. that kind of backs up Wilma's story that that what she says did in fact
00:49:47
happen and if in fact 1215 was the last time that she saw them well then Wilma couldn't have done anything to these
00:49:55
girls she's not responsible for anything here because we have other eyewitnesses
00:49:59
that see them after the fact those other eyewitnesses tell me that nothing weird
00:50:04
nothing strange went on inside the home and later somebody's trying to conceal what happened by getting rid of the
00:50:12
girls getting rid of the bikes staging some kind of scenario to look like something else took place right now
00:50:20
continuing on our timeline for Friday the 13th by 4 40 PM we have emergency calls that are going out to the
00:50:28
residents of Evansdale this is to notify them of the missing girls right we have
00:50:33
two girls that are missing we need help finding them if you see either girl call us tell us let us know officers
00:50:41
also began canvassing the lake neighborhoods and the media was notified by 5 30 PM so a lot of things are taking
00:50:49
place very rapidly here and I like to see all of this activity and all this effort we have boats that were put into
00:50:56
the water on Myers Lake that begin scanning the surface we have divers with a local search and rescue organization
00:51:03
that are called in to start searching the lake police and firefighters from the bigger city of Waterloo next door
00:51:12
they come by and they are now assisting the Blackhawk County sheriff's deputies as well as the Evansdale police
00:51:21
department and we also get the Iowa State Police that joined in on searching wooded areas so there's a lot of wooded
00:51:29
areas in this General location and many people stayed out searching all night long they even brought in some
00:51:39
Lionel Richie they brought in a plane so they could do some searches from from the air and now we have the national
00:51:45
Center for missing exploited children that were notified of the girl's disappearance by 8 pm
00:51:52
by by the next morning we have a representative from the national Center of missing and exploited
00:51:59
children on the ground in Evansdale boots on the ground in Evansdale assisting in the search for the girls
00:52:08
[Music] [Applause] [Music] thanks for joining us here in the garage we have so much more to get to tomorrow
00:52:37
so join us back here same bat Time same bat Channel that's right Captain such an
00:52:42
intriguing case such a tragic case join us back here in the garage tomorrow until then be good be kind and don't
00:52:49
live [Applause] thank you foreign