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Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and
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with me as always is a man that knows that Steve McQueen ain't got nothing on him. Here he is, the Captain.
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Yeah, it's good to be seen and good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend.
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This week we round out the great summer month of August in my running theme of Clutch 1995 album references and this
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unfortunately will be our last brewery beer for a while, but we are going out on a high note, my friends. Today we are
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very excited to be featuring Sweet Magnolias by the good folks over at the brewery.
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The one I had came in an absolutely beautiful 12.7 oz bottle. This is an Imperial style aged in bourbon barrels
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with bananas, Madagascar vanilla beans, and Nilla Wafers added. Garage Grade, sound the trumpets, please. A solid five
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out of five bottle caps. And let's sound the trumpets for our friends that helped
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us out with this week's beer fund. First up, a cheers to Alex in Orlando, Florida. And a big shout to Eric in
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Lodi, California. Here's a cheers to Hayden in Knightdale, North Carolina. And a big shout to Taylor in Old
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Waterloo. Yeah, Waterloo, Iowa. And last but certainly not least today, we have Haley
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in Tempe, Arizona. Everyone we just mentioned, they went to truecrimegarage.com and helped us out with this week's beer
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you lazy? You got your lazy pants on? Take your lazy pants off and go to truecrimegarage
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and donate to the beer fund for our weekly b w e r r u n beer run and that is enough of the
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business. All right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk
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some true crime. Five-year-old Leanna Marie Warner lived with her parents in the remote
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Iron Range area of northern Minnesota. This entire area has been mined for iron for decades
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and there are miles of abandoned ore mines, pits, and lakes created by mining. The area has mountains of iron ore
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tailings and miles and miles of undisturbed forest. It has been described by people from the
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area as a vast and endless area of nothingness. The town of Chisholm was founded as a
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mining settlement in this area the Chippewa called rough earth. It's about 3 hours north of Minneapolis.
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Leanna lived in the town of Chisholm, Minnesota, a small town of about 5,300 people.
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The Warner family home was a gray stucco duplex located in a friendly neighborhood with
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tree-lined blocks of houses in the developed residential area near the iron mines.
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The neighborhood bordered a lake, Longyear Lake, which was a recreation spot for those
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who lived in the town. According to everyone who lived there, even in 2003, Chisholm was sort of a throwback.
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It was a small community where kids played freely outside, neighbors were friendly,
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and bad stuff just didn't happen. Leanna Warner, who was 5 years old, with brown hair and brown eyes,
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was known as Beener to almost everyone. The story is that her parents nicknamed her Beener because when she was born,
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she reminded them of a little bean pod. The name stuck and family, friends, and neighbors all called her by this
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nickname. She was 3 ft 2 in tall and weighed 48 lb. Leanna had a mole on her left leg just
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above her ankle. Leanna was described as an outgoing, loving little girl who adored dolls,
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Rugrats, Barbies, and babies. There is video footage taken by her parents available online.
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She was an adorable, normal 5-year-old. Little Leanna went missing on a warm midsummer Saturday afternoon
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from an area in a neighborhood where bad stuff did not happen. The date was June 14th, 2003.
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Little Leanna walked down the street to play with her friend and is never seen again.
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For 18 years, her family has held out hope, but not a trace of her has ever been
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found. How does a child disappear into thin air, seemingly vanishing in an instant off of
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the face of the earth? This is True Crime Garage and this is the case of Leanna Warner.
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Saturday, June 14th, 2003. Leanna and her mom, Kaylin, had hit some yard sales where Leanna bought a
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heart-shaped pillow. Then they spent the rest of the summer day enjoying the lake. In early
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interviews, Leanna's mom said that they went to the lake, swam, and played with friends and relatives and returned home
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around 4:30 p.m. After the day at Longyear Lake, Leanna, like most 5-year-olds, would be
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well, she was tired from running around in the sun and fell asleep in the car on
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the way home. When they got to their house located at 19 Southwest Second Street, Leanna woke
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up. While her mom was busy unloading the stuff they had bought from the yard sales from the car and making trips in
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and out of the house, Leanna asked if she could walk around the corner to their neighbors' house. This is the
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Quirk family. Their little girls, Janine, age 4, and Melissa, age 3, were great friends of
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Leanna's. Apparently, Leanna hung out with Janine and Melissa almost every day. So, even though Leanna's mom would
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have preferred that little Beener come inside and rest for a bit, Kaylin said, "Yes, go ahead."
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It was totally standard procedure for Leanna to walk over to the Quirks to play. Kaylin did tell the media later
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that she told Leanna to come back home in a half an hour. Although how a 5-year-old would have any concept of
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half of an hour is questionable. Katie Quirk, Janine and Melissa's mother, said that Leanna was a daily
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visitor to the Quirk house. In fact, Leanna was over at their home the night before on June 13th. She had come over
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by herself around 7:15 p.m. and watched a movie with the family. In any event, on this Saturday, Leanna got out of the
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car and walked down the block and around the corner. When her mom last saw her, she was
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wearing a dark blue sleeveless denim dress with a belt, orange Hanes undies, and a flower petal earring with a red
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garnet in the middle in her pierced right ear. The reports say that she was not wearing
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any shoes, which would be in line with a little girl who just got back from a day
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of swimming. But the shoes will come up again later. Now, the Quirks lived just a few houses
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away, maybe a block to the south. Leanna would have to cross an alley to get there
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and it was around the corner. One article said that it would take an average adult walking at a normal pace
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no more than 2 minutes to get from the Warners to the Quirks. As short as the walk was though, Leanna was not in the
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sight line of her mother for the entirety of the walk and no one is really sure how long it was before
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anyone noticed that she was gone. So, Leanna walks off barefoot and Kaylin goes inside the Warners' home after she
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says watching Leanna as she walked down their street toward her friends' home until she went around the corner.
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Two neighbors report seeing Leanna walking that day. The information that one of them gave
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police tells us something important. Leanna did not go inside the Quirk's house. This neighbor, who was either
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outside doing something or looking out the window, told police that Leanna climbed the steps to the Quirk's home,
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knocked on the door. She knocked a few times, but no one answered. It was later confirmed that the Quirks
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were not home that afternoon. The neighbor reports that after no one answered the door, Leanna turned around
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and started to walk back toward her home. But at this point, the neighbor stopped watching. Presumably, there was
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nothing remarkable about this scene, since we know that Leanna was often seen walking to and from the Quirk's home. We
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know that kids were all over the neighborhood, and it seems that children were allowed
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to walk around unsupervised. The Chisholm mayor, John Shampa, lived in the neighborhood about a block
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from the Warners, and said that Leanna, quote, like to run around the neighborhood, but never went far.
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So, apparently, Leanna was known to wander around, and clearly, the Warners allowed this.
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The neighbor was in the midst of doing something while observing the door knocking and Leanna not getting admitted
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into the Quirk's house. And the neighbor turned away and didn't watch anymore. Which is such an incredible tragedy.
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If only the neighbor had watched Leanna continue on her walk, she may have never
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have vanished. With this case being set in 2003, if it was set in today's time, we would have ring cameras and and so
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many more houses have security cameras that face the street, so we would have a better
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picture or a better surveillance of what happened to Leanna. And unfortunately, if an abduction did
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take place, it may have ended up on one of those ring video footage cameras or Simply
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Safe video cam footage video camera footage. Yeah. Some news reports say that Leanna was seen in the area around
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6:00 p.m. walking west. Others say more specifically that she was seen walking west on Southwest Second or Third
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Streets. And there were also reports that one neighbor actually spoke with Leanna. And
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one article says she was seen petting a dog. But not all the reports contain all of
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this information. And as we've seen, the timeline on all of this is fuzzy. Police said later that their
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investigation was hampered by all of the wiggle room in the timeline. Kaylen reported initially that she
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started to wonder where Leanna was around 6:00 p.m. We know that Leanna's dad, Chris Warner,
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went out on an ambulance run at 6:21 p.m. He was a volunteer with the Chisholm ambulance service. And it seems
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that at that time, he did not know that his daughter was missing. So, it seems likely that Kaylen actually
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noticed Leanna being gone later than this. We're going to throw a few questions and wrenches into
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this timeline as we go, because I think it's right to do so. The first question that's probably
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spinning around in everybody's mind is, why are you letting a child this young walk to a neighbor's house?
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Right, that's the first thing I questioned as well. And it seemed odd to me that Kaylen originally says when they
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get back to their home, her daughter, Leanna, wants to go down to their friend's house, and then she tells
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originally she tells her no. Right. But then the kid does some convincing, and she says, yes, but be back in a in a
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half an hour, which seems to me like a why even bother kind of situation, but I really started thinking back to when I
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was would have been six or seven years old. Right. Maybe not five, I can't remember, but I can remember the
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distance that we're talking about traveling here. I can remember walking by myself or with a with a brother or
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with a friend, no parent, no supervision from adults, from my house down to my friend's house on the corner, Tim and
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Vince, and regularly making that trip. And it was literally passing like three houses.
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And so, I think what we have here, Captain, is a situation where I think it's right to question it. The little
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girl is 5 years old, but have her mom, her father, and the Quirk's family, the adults of that home,
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saying this was an everyday thing. This was, you know, as normal as could be. Yeah, but it it's different to allow
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your child walk down there, but just step outside, visually see them make it into the
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house. If you're a parent and you drove your kid to their friend's house, you wouldn't just go, hey, honey, thanks,
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get out of the car. And once they leave the car, you don't speed away. You you wait until you see them enter the house.
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Right. just saying that you could have done the same thing here. Agreed. It But in this
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situation, we have Kaylen who says she watched Leanna walk down the street until she could no longer see her,
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because she has to make a turn. And again, I question this too, but then I'd have
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to question my own parents, because I know I was doing about the same thing. I think what we have here, too, Captain,
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is a situation where a lot of kids in the neighborhood are going about their business and having
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fun unsupervised. It seemed to be a pretty normal thing. And then you top that off with a town of only 5,000
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people. Mhm. I think a small town sometimes it is plays a bad role in some of these cases. I think sometimes the
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small town provides a false sense of security Yeah. to parents, and to children, and to everyone involved. And
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like I try to tell other people, you know, that they say, oh, so you live in a bad neighborhood or or
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this area is terrible. And yes, that's true. You do have higher crime rates in bad areas, quote unquote bad areas, but
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again, look at Sandy Hook. That was considered one of the nicest, safest neighborhoods in America.
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Right. Not in the state, not in that county, in America. And if something bad is going to happen,
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if there's a bad person out there, it can happen anywhere. only happen in America. And like you
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were stating, Kaylen was saying, you can be gone, but for just a little while. Mhm. And so, once she noticed that she's
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hasn't come back in a little while, she starts getting a little concerned. Yeah,
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her first reaction, as soon as she notices Leanna is not home, you know, didn't return home as she should have,
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Kaylen walks down to the Quirk's home herself, but then that's when she finds out that no one is home. Right. So,
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according to Kaylen, she started canvassing the neighborhood assuming that Leanna had just wandered to someone
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else's yard or home. And again, this kind of plays into what even the mayor of Chisholm was saying, that he would
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often see the little girl hanging out, you know, going about the neighborhood looking for friends, looking for people
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to talk to and hang out and play with. I also wondered if it's a possibility that
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she got turned around and when she came back, got a little confused on which house was actually hers. Yeah, it's
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weird when kids have kind of the run of the neighborhood is what I see in this situation. Again, thinking back to my
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childhood, I lived on a court when in my younger years, and I felt like I don't know remember what the rules were laid
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down by my parents, but I know the way I behaved was kind of like, well, as long
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as I'm still somewhere in this court, I won't get in any trouble. Mhm. You know, so I would walk freely between
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front yards, backyards, and there was even a wooded area that I would often go into without permission. So, that's I
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just kind of see a very similar situation here. This is not just a small community, but this is a tight-knit
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neighborhood itself. Chris Warner joined his wife in the search for Leanna when he got home from his ambulance run. This
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is said to be around 7:40 p.m. He said that they were walking around the neighborhood calling for her, and they
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started to get scared. Kaylen returned to the Quirk's home looking for Leanna again at 8:30 p.m. This time finding
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them home. But they had not seen Leanna at this whole point. Right. The 911 call from
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Kaylen Warner came in at 8:48 p.m. By this point, Leanna was missing for more than 3 hours.
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The official search for Leanna began extremely promptly. And I think a lot of this has to do with the age of the
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child. The St. Louis County Rescue Squad set up a command center and organized searches within about an hour of
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receiving that 911 call. By late Saturday night, police sent out a helicopter that was equipped with an
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infrared tracing system that could pinpoint body heat in the night. Neighbors also pitched in. The Quirks
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reported that they all went out to help look for Leanna around 9:00 p.m. By Sunday morning, a major search was
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underway. That day, over 300 people joined in the search for Leanna, including town residents, neighbors, and
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friends of the little girl. The search started at the Warner home and worked its way outward,
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looking in all the places a child could hide or get stuck or trapped. This would
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be sheds, boat houses, boats, yards, sewers, barns, and vacant houses. Mhm. Searches were also done of some of the
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mine pits, swamps, wells, and other hazards in the Iron Range topography. Do you know if they hadn't sent dogs on
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scene? They did. Bloodhounds were sent in relatively quickly. I believe that they
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arrived either that night or the the very next morning. I have that in my notes and I promise we'll get to
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that, Captain. We did have a statewide alert that was issued on Sunday morning by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal
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Apprehension. Mhm. A BCA is their acronym. We'll we'll reference them later. And the Minnesota Crime Alert
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Network faxed information about Leanna to over 8,000 businesses and law enforcement agencies.
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However, no Amber Alert was issued and this is because uh Chisholm Police Chief Scott Erickson
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stated Amber Alerts were appropriate when there was evidence of an abduction and there wasn't here. And we've seen
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that in other cases. They have a recommended criteria for when states should use the Amber Alert
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System. They don't tell you, you know, they don't they don't box you in and say this
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is the only time you should use it. They give you recommendations for the state.
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And one of the recommendations is that you have a suspect or vehicle description. And unfortunately, in
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Leanna's case, we have people who see her knocking on the door of her friend's house. We have
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people that see her walking away from her friend's house. And then we never see anything after
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that. Mhm. We don't have a situation where we have a screaming little girl being pulled into a vehicle or somebody
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snatching her up and somebody seeing it. We just don't have that. We have no earwitnesses or eyewitnesses to what
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happened to this little girl after she's seen walking away from her friend's house.
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Yeah, and I don't know what else they would call it, but I think in this situation when you have a missing child,
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whether they're abducted or not, how can it hurt to send these alerts out to have
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people on lookout for even if it's just simply the age, hair color, the gender, that's it.
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I it couldn't hurt. Well, I agree, but I mean they did send out these alerts. It's just what title
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are you tagging this thing? Right. They I mean they issued a statewide alert by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
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And they issued a crime alert, the Minnesota Crime Alert Network issued an alert as well. I mean it this
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went out statewide. They just didn't call it an Amber Alert because it didn't meet the criteria for
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technical name like the Amber Alert requires. It seems that at least early in the
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situation, police knew that Leanna's reputation was as a wanderer, you know, as they said.
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And assumed that Leanna had just kind of wandered off or gotten lost or stuck or
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maybe had some accident befall her. Erickson said that on Sunday, this is the chief, that there was nothing
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indicating foul play. Chief Erickson held a press conference on Sunday night and described Leanna as
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an energetic, outgoing little girl. You asked about dogs, Captain. Dogs were used in the search and they tracked
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Leanna's scent to the edge of a road at Longyear Lake, about two blocks from her
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house. But then they tracked back to the Warner home. They did not track to the Quirk's house.
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Police found a partial footprint lakeside that could have been Leanna's. But we know that Leanna was at the lake
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that day and that she had ridden her two-wheel bike to the lake in the past. Later reports, this is
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bizarre to me. Later reports say police decided that the footprint was in fact from a different day. I'm not sure how
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they can tell this footprint was old or that it could have been Leanna's. different shoe.
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And then they knew what shoes she was wearing that day. Yeah, I they describe it as a footprint. Um
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Oh, not a shoe print. Yeah, I mean it could have been a shoe print. This is one of those things that
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they seem to have come to a lot of decisions and then made up, you know, they seem to have a good understanding
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of what it is that they were seeing or what they found, but they don't offer a great description to the rest of the
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world about it. Do you find it a little odd that there was no scent towards her friend's house? I do and I don't, right?
00:24:06
Because here's the problem with the with the dogs. The dogs are one only as good
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as they have been trained and their understanding of what their job is. We forgot to tell you that their handler
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showed up drunk. Well, and I was going to say they're also only as good as the handler. So you're already throwing a
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lot of variables in there. I think they're very helpful in some cases and in other cases can be a little tricky. I
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mean Mhm. The here's the problem with the dogs in this situation. Do I find it odd that
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they didn't go to the Quirk's house? 100% 1,000% But we have two eyewitnesses that saw
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the girl there. So we know she was there. So the in my opinion, the dogs are just
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not accurate in this situation. The other thing too in regards to the footprint or shoe print or what have
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you, yes, maybe there could be it rained the day before or, you know, given the weather outside, how hot it is and such,
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that would help you determine how old the footprint or shoe print is. But the other issue I take with that,
00:25:16
Captain, is this lake, as we referenced in the trailer, this lake was frequented by everybody in that
00:25:24
neighborhood. This was a Saturday in the summertime. If anybody's out there thinking that
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that Leanna and her mom and her sister were the only three people at that lake that day,
00:25:35
well, you're you can tune into another show cuz you don't belong here in the garage. There were probably dozens, if
00:25:41
not more, people at the lake that very day. On Sunday, searchers waded up to their waist in the murky lake to no
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avail. The search continued on Monday with large groups of volunteers and Leanna's parents made a televised plea
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for her to come home. Her father, Chris, said, quote, "Please, Beena, come home.
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We miss you. We're never going to stop looking for you." End quote. St. Louis County Sheriff Ross Litman
00:26:09
said there was no reason to believe acquaintances or family members would have taken the girl. He cited a
00:26:16
trouble-free home and no evidence of a stranger abduction. But law enforcement was acutely aware that the small town of
00:26:24
friendly residents had also been the site of two events that brought out-of-towners to Chisholm on that very
00:26:32
weekend in June. First, we have the Rock the Range Music Festival that had brought in lots of
00:26:38
people. And there was also the United Way Ride the Range Motorcycle Fundraiser. Reports
00:26:44
state that these events could have brought more than 1,000 people into this small town. So think about that
00:26:51
population increase just for that weekend, the weekend that this little girl goes missing. Mhm. 5,300 residents
00:26:58
in the town of Chisholm. That weekend, it's estimated that there were 6,300 and so people in the area.
00:27:08
Festival-goers were permitted to camp at the old Glenn Mine site. It would be impossible to track down
00:27:15
everyone who attended these events. Law enforcement did what they could do to track down people that may have attended
00:27:23
these events. They used motel, gas station, and campground records to get names of people who attended these
00:27:30
events and questioned them. Well, now we see this all the time in other missing cases. Look at like the Joey LaBeute
00:27:38
case. Guy goes missing when there's a huge the Arnold Classic is in town. Mhm. So
00:27:45
again, when you have those out-of-towners, it's really hard to vet every single person that was there. Mhm.
00:27:54
And if anybody was still in the area that came in for these events, the police asked to check their RVs and
00:28:01
their campsites, obviously looking for Leanna or any sign of her. Police also started looking into known sex offenders
00:28:09
in the area. On Tuesday, authorities were still treating Leanna's case as a search rather than a rescue or
00:28:17
recovery, although they hadn't ruled out abduction. Sheriff Litman said he felt it was
00:28:22
unlikely that Leanna was in the lake. And he believed Leanna could have survived 72 hours in the woods on the
00:28:30
Iron Range. She was known to be pretty adventurous, her grandfather, Butch Warner, said. That if necessary, she
00:28:38
would very likely drink from mud puddles if she had to. And she had been known to
00:28:43
eat army worms. I don't know if that was off of a dare or if this is just one really hungry
00:28:48
kid. That girl likes worms. It's been raining for days here in Columbus and it smells
00:28:54
like worms outside. The search radius like worms. Here's the other thing, too, is
00:29:01
you know, my thought goes instantly when you have a situation where she's she's seen close to the home,
00:29:08
you start then questioning the parents, right? Mhm. And now my issue with the investigation is and look,
00:29:16
we're going to argue with people to the death about polygraph tests. But to me, you bring them in for questioning and
00:29:24
you have them take a polygraph test Mhm. just to see where it stands. They didn't
00:29:29
do that here. And I know that they weren't suspect, but it's like I think you just do it to, you know, you
00:29:37
know, cross your t's and dot your i's. Well, and the other thing, Captain, is that's your best opportunity, right? If
00:29:43
you're hoping to catch somebody, even if if it is the parents that you suspect, you get really one shot at that. You
00:29:52
know, the the investigation is only in the early stages at one point in the investigation. And to me, I would think
00:29:59
that that's when whomever you sit down across the table from and who you are asking them the tough questions, that's
00:30:07
when I think they would be the most nervous. Be it parents, relative, neighborhood person, any type
00:30:14
of suspect, I would think that fresh and early, that's when they're going to be the most nervous and that's when they
00:30:20
are going to show those physical signs of deception or at least anxiety of not wanting to speak with you. So, I'm I'm
00:30:28
right with you there, Captain. I feel like that could have been While I'm not very
00:30:32
suspicious of the parents here, I feel like that was kind of a missed opportunity. We've said this in the
00:30:38
past, even if you're not suspicious, let's go ahead and cross one more thing off of our list. If we can't figure out
00:30:44
who did this, let's figure out who did not do this. And maybe we find who did this along the way.
00:31:14
All right, we're back, you filthy animals. Cheers to everybody out there. Cheers to all the post
00:31:23
workers. Cheers to all the school bus drivers that are going to be bringing the kids
00:31:28
back to school. Yeah, cheers to all the people in the back. Tall cans in the air. Now, regards to in regards to
00:31:36
Leanna's shoes, Mhm. because that's a weird part of this story. And frankly, I don't know what to make
00:31:44
of it. So, we're going to lay it out here for all of you and you can decide for yourself. But one or two articles
00:31:50
addressed the shoes being found on the stoop at the Quirk's house. And Kailyn Warner, her mother, stated to
00:31:58
the media that Leanna's shoes were in fact found there and no one could explain that or why. Well, there's
00:32:05
eyewitnesses that saw her barefoot, right? Correct. It's the shoes thing is a whole weird
00:32:12
thing to me. We don't know when these shoes were supposedly found. Mhm. All the reports say that Leanna had
00:32:19
walked away from her house barefoot. It would certainly be strange if somehow her shoes had been placed there by
00:32:26
someone else, obviously. I think it's more likely that she probably just carried them with her when she got out
00:32:32
of the car and her mother didn't notice that she was carrying her shoes. Right. And then maybe Leanna forgot them when
00:32:40
she turned away from the house. I mean, she's five. She If she set them down by herself and if
00:32:47
in fact that's where they were found, and I don't have any reason to believe that that's not the case, I just I don't
00:32:54
know why the child would set her shoes down. Yeah, let's walk through this real quick. She would Well, yeah, but she'd
00:32:59
put her shoes down so she could ring the doorbell or knock on the door. Nobody answers. When she turns back
00:33:06
around to leave, then she forgets that she simply forgot them. Right. By Wednesday, with no sign of
00:33:13
Leanna, hope was beginning to fade. For the first time, members of the public began to seriously consider the
00:33:19
abduction theory. A local daycare center owner said that in a newspaper article that she hired an extra person to help
00:33:26
watch the kids in her care and she'd like police to publicize the names of local registered sex offenders.
00:33:33
Police said that they had checked all of the known local sex offenders by this point in their search for the little
00:33:40
girl. Again, I hate to bring this up, but like you said, there's a vent that's bringing all these people in. There's a
00:33:46
percentage of those people that are pedos. Well, and this timeline is going to keep getting adjusted, especially
00:33:52
during this first week, which a timeline is very crucial to not only the search for this girl, but any type of
00:34:00
investigation. You're not just investigating if a when you know that a crime has happened.
00:34:06
Here, you're investigating if a crime occurred. Right. And so, the timeline is going to be crucial. I mean, that is
00:34:14
your Bible at this point in the case when you have no evidence and you don't really have any leads on what could have
00:34:21
happened to this girl. As an investigator, that timeline is your Bible. Now, police interviews and
00:34:28
canvassing the neighborhood did bring some new information to light to their search. The timeline was adjusted to
00:34:35
indicate that Leanna had left home closer to 5:30 on Saturday. And you say, "Well,
00:34:42
earlier you said 4:30, now the investigators are saying 5:30." Again, they said at the very beginning of this
00:34:50
case that the wiggle room in the timeline has always hampered their investigation. As we heard, someone in
00:34:56
the neighborhood said that they had seen her walking west at close to 6:00 p.m. Authorities requested that everyone in
00:35:04
the area check their own properties to make sure the little girl was not at their property.
00:35:11
The family made a public statement thanking all of the searchers, saying they were iron rangers, a strong,
00:35:17
compassionate, resourceful people who know the meaning of faith. Presumably, this means that they were drawing on
00:35:24
their strength and not giving up hope. Leanna's grandfather talked to the media, describing his granddaughter as
00:35:31
an inquisitive child who is not afraid of anything. He said her outgoing nature and free spirit could have gotten her
00:35:38
into trouble. The implication was that Leanna was trusting and friendly and might innocently be lured by the wrong
00:35:46
person. The parents of other children in the neighborhood, the grandfather, they're
00:35:50
all describing the same personality when I review this case here, Captain. A little girl that is is very friendly
00:35:59
and very talkative and not afraid of anything. Mhm. And I think the grandfather's words here are very
00:36:06
interesting to me, saying that her free spirit and her outgoing nature may have gotten her into some kind of trouble. I
00:36:13
wonder if we are looking at an abduction here. Do we have a situation where she may
00:36:19
have approached her would-be abductor? Not knowing that, oh, this this person may not be a great person. This person
00:36:27
might not be, you know, had she befriended the would-be abductor at some point earlier on before this day, you
00:36:34
know, weeks prior. Right. Investigators announced that they were further expanding the search. This would include
00:36:42
roadways and ditches throughout Chisholm and flyovers over the local lakes and mine pits. They
00:36:48
plan to retrace their steps and research all of the areas that they had already covered. There were fundraisers that
00:36:56
were held to raise money for the search efforts and hotlines were set up to field calls about any tips and potential
00:37:03
leads. But just when we think that there's nothing to go on other than probably a a few tips here
00:37:11
and there, we we have a decent break in the case. An interesting turn in the case, because
00:37:18
this is late Thursday. So, now Leanna has been missing for 6 days. And the tone of the news reports and
00:37:25
information released by investigators is clearly changing in my mind here, Captain. We have Police Chief Erickson
00:37:32
who directly asked the public to contact his department if anyone had any information on a faded light blue
00:37:41
mid-size car with an antenna mounted in the middle of the trunk. There was no make, model, or license plate that was
00:37:50
available. Erickson said he did not know whether this vehicle was actually significant,
00:37:57
but it was a lead that they were following up on. And Chief Erickson said that areas around the block where the
00:38:05
Warners' home was located had been searched anywhere from two to five times each, including homes in the vicinity.
00:38:13
It seems that most or all neighbors allowed the police to actually access and search their houses. Erickson was
00:38:21
confident that they had the area 98% covered. So, this is going to be like Erickson's legit press conference after
00:38:29
we've had several days of searching and have had no luck looking for the girl. The thing that I like here, Captain,
00:38:36
while it's not extremely specific on the details, you know, no make, model, or license plate of this vehicle,
00:38:43
it's a pretty detailed description of a very I don't want to say very unique, but it is a unique description of a car,
00:38:52
right? This light blue, faded light blue. So, very descriptive on the color, mid-size car with an
00:38:58
antenna mounted in the middle of the trunk. That's not something you see on most vehicles. Yeah, it sounds like
00:39:05
something you'd see in this late '70s, '80s. Yeah, it seems a little out of its time period. And the news reports once
00:39:13
again addressed an adjustment to the timeline. Now, Leanna was believed to have left her home at 4:35 p.m., not
00:39:21
5:00 or 5:30. Two independent witnesses saw her walking across lawns and knocking on the
00:39:26
Quirk's door at 5:15 and she was reported missing at 8:48 p.m. Now, back to the sex offenders in the
00:39:35
area. As you know, Captain, one of my favorite parts in any child abduction case or suspected child abduction case
00:39:42
is the old pervert round up. Get ready for the pervert round up. A spokesman for the Chisholm PD said
00:39:50
that there were roughly 20 to 25 classified sex offenders in Chisholm, but none that were level three. We've
00:39:57
talked about this in the past and I've come under fire for this and I don't know why. I suspect that I came under
00:40:03
fire from probably a level three sex offender. But the level three sex offenders have the highest recidivism
00:40:10
rates out of any sex offender. That's why they are considered the most dangerous. That's why they received the
00:40:15
longest prison sentences and that's why nobody wants to let them out back on the
00:40:19
street. The police are saying here in this area we had zero level three offenders and that's
00:40:25
have level one and level two. level twos. Dirty perverts. Mhm. So no level threes.
00:40:31
This is why their names and addresses were not required to be be released to the public. 30 investigators from
00:40:37
various agencies including the FBI were looking at each one of these guys as well as all of the other tips and leads
00:40:45
and so far had not been able to tie any of these perverts to Leanna's case. One thing that has been noticed since
00:40:53
Leanna's disappearance 18 years ago is that her case didn't receive the level of national attention immediately in
00:41:01
this case such as some other cases like Polly Klaas or another big case from Minnesota, Jacob
00:41:08
Wetterling. This may be because it seems that for almost the first week no one including Leanna's parents really
00:41:17
thought that she had been abducted. And both the Polly Klaas case and the Jacob Wetterling case there were witnesses to
00:41:25
these abductions. So we knew immediately in both of those cases this child has been abducted. Mhm. Leanna on the other
00:41:33
hand just vanished. A spokeswoman for the Missing Children Minnesota organization said that the delay in
00:41:40
treating these cases as abductions early on is quote the disbelief factor. No one
00:41:46
wants to believe the worst can happen in their backyard. Also there's a fear of pointing the
00:41:52
finger at an innocent person especially in a area where only have a lake. So that is going to cause a lot of
00:42:00
issues as far as searching. Also a lot of issues as far as a big hazard for a child that is wandering on their own.
00:42:10
And like they said the wooded area. I'd say that's equal problem. Now it's middle of June, right? So
00:42:19
there's you don't have to worry about the elements as far as it's snowing or being
00:42:25
too cold. But you have to worry about the elements of being in the woods as a small child. Right. And speaking of
00:42:33
own backyards, this is when we're told in our timeline here that eight square miles around the Warner home had been
00:42:42
searched by this point. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was called in to join in the
00:42:47
investigation on Friday, June 20th and spokesman Patrick Farrell said in my own personal experience I haven't
00:42:56
had a case where a child has disappeared so completely. Now Chief Erickson remained optimistic
00:43:04
saying anything is possible, but unfortunately we've found nothing so far. Yeah. And he was holding out hope
00:43:10
they were still going to find this girl, but on Saturday, June 21st the Warner family was notified that the organized
00:43:19
official searches for Leanna were coming to an end. Investigators felt that they
00:43:24
had exhaustively covered any ground where she could have where she could realistically be. The
00:43:29
family thanked all the searchers and asked that people not give up hope and said that they themselves were still
00:43:35
hoping for the best. And I think that's obvious when they point out that very quickly they
00:43:42
are putting up $10,000, a $10,000 reward for information about their daughter. This was publicized just a couple days
00:43:50
later. Like you said she was at the lake before, but there's possibility that she
00:43:54
got back to the lake. Were they searching the lake at all? They searched the lake big time.
00:44:00
They they were in the water searching for her. They were flying over the water searching for her. The lake was a big
00:44:07
focal point of their investigation especially that second day. Mhm. That Sunday morning. And they again as the
00:44:17
sheriff stated at some point after a few days of searching and we've covered all this
00:44:22
area in the beginning you're looking and you're realistically going okay, how far
00:44:26
if she got lost, we're treating this as she wandered off, she got lost, maybe an
00:44:30
accident, something happened to her. Right. How far could a five-year-old get on
00:44:34
their own given the time frame that she's been gone? And so you're using that to really focus and hone in on
00:44:40
where you should be searching and prioritizing those areas. So the lake would have been high priority on that
00:44:48
because this is a a place that not only was she there earlier that day, not only
00:44:54
was this a place that most everybody in the neighborhood went to frequently. We know that she's rode her bike there
00:45:00
at least one time on her own. So this is a place that there's nowhere in this neighborhood or down to that lake
00:45:08
to me that I can see that this girl would not have been comfortable going to by herself. I think the other issue like
00:45:15
you said is they they do a eight-mile radius from the house. That is a very large distance.
00:45:22
Yeah, eight square miles from the Warner home. Yeah, once that search happens and
00:45:27
and they not it's not just that they don't they don't find her, it's the fact that they
00:45:33
find nothing. They don't find a sock. They don't find a footprint. They don't There's nothing.
00:45:39
Well, and we needed to get the word out here, right? About this missing girl. We
00:45:43
already said that there were statewide alerts that went out immediately when she was discovered to be missing, but it
00:45:51
was the Missing Children Minnesota and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children organizations that
00:45:58
highly encouraged the Warners to go national with their daughter's case. And so they went on several national
00:46:06
televised TV shows and they were publicizing the case and a website that they created findbeener.org
00:46:15
and accompanying them on these trips and on these appearances was Chief Erickson.
00:46:22
So they are in close contact with one another. They're working arm in arm in this investigation not just to search
00:46:30
and find the child, but also to publicize the case and make everybody aware that hey, this little girl's
00:46:37
missing and we're looking for. Here's where things get a little interesting to me, Captain.
00:46:43
On June 24th a timeline of what authorities believe happened that night on June 14th, so 10 days later, appeared
00:46:51
in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. So this will be known as the quote-unquote official timeline here in this case.
00:47:00
And it's as follows. At 4:35 p.m. Leanna leaves to walk to the Quirk's home. Mom
00:47:06
tells her to be back in a half an hour. At 5:15 two neighbors see Leanna knocking on the door of the Quirk's
00:47:14
home, but no one is home and she turns around. 5:30 p.m. Kaylin notices that Leanna isn't home yet. She sends
00:47:22
Leanna's older sister over to the Quirks, but she returns and reports that they are not home.
00:47:28
6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Kaylin and Leanna's sister start walking around the neighborhood looking for Leanna.
00:47:36
At 6:21 we know that Chris Warner leaves on an ambulance run to Hibbing, Minnesota. He does not seem to know that
00:47:43
Leanna is missing at this point. At 7:30 more people join Kaylin in the search of the neighborhood. At 7:47
00:47:52
Chris Warner's ambulance run ends and he returns home. He immediately joins the search for his daughter.
00:47:59
At 8:48 Kaylin Warner places the 911 call to report Leanna missing. 9:00 p.m. 12 minutes later Chisholm police arrive
00:48:08
and start searching the neighborhood. 10:15 p.m. Rescue squad personnel and bloodhounds. So the dogs are there at
00:48:14
10:15 p.m. arriving on the scene. 4:00 a.m. Sunday a state patrol helicopter is out searching for Leanna
00:48:23
by air. They moved very quickly. We got to give props where props are due and I think to see the actions
00:48:32
and the efforts put forward immediately in this case is encouraging to me because we've we've
00:48:38
seen this in other cases well, we've not seen this in other cases. I think is the
00:48:43
best way to state that. This timeline though to me, Captain, brings up some questions. If Leanna
00:48:48
really left the Warners home at 4:35 p.m. and neighbor saw her knocking on the Quirk's door at 5:15,
00:48:56
where was she for that 40 minutes? Yeah. We said that it would take the average adult It was time. They did they did you
00:49:04
know, this is all science here, baby. They figured out that it would take the average adult two minutes to make it
00:49:10
from the Warners home to the Quirk's home. So again, that's one of those things. Yes, if you want to question
00:49:16
letting your five-year-old walk down there, go ahead. I don't blame you for questioning that.
00:49:20
Keep in mind it's like a two-minute walk. And it's a it's a walk that she's done 100 times. I question it myself,
00:49:26
not going to lie. But be that as it may, this is the situation. So let's say it takes a little girl double that time,
00:49:33
five minutes to walk down there. Mhm. still leaves 35 minutes of what what what what's going on? And, you
00:49:40
know, little kids get distracted easily. Heck, me and the captain get distracted
00:49:43
easily. Who knows? Hey, look, a squirrel. don't have anybody that's saying that well, I saw her go here or saw her go
00:49:50
there at this time. We have the witness statement of her mother saying, "I saw her walking away
00:49:57
from the house. I watched her until she had to go around the corner." And then we have these two witnesses. I like that
00:50:03
we have two independent witnesses saying that they saw her at the Quirk doorstep
00:50:08
and they believe the time to be 5:15 p.m. Well, we know with eyewitness statements that sometimes they're not
00:50:15
lying, they're just misremembering. But, I don't like her mother's statement. If there's a gap that large of a gap, to
00:50:26
me, it seems like she headed in a different direction before she headed to her friend's house. That's also what the
00:50:31
scent dogs are telling us as well. Cuz they're not following her scent to her friend's house.
00:50:38
So, I just wonder if it's one of those things where your kid's missing and now um again,
00:50:45
you should have watched her all the way. You could have walked her all the way to
00:50:49
your house. People are going to be questioning this. And so, then you make the statement that
00:50:54
you watched her walk towards the house and walk out of sight. And maybe that's not true at all. Mhm.
00:51:01
And maybe it was she's, you know, putting groceries away and she goes, "I'm going to walk down to my friend's
00:51:05
house." And she goes, "Okay, back be back in 20 minutes." And never saw her leave. I would fault her for not being
00:51:11
honest, but I could also see a situation. We've seen these situations turn against the parents very quickly.
00:51:21
And they be there becomes a wit there becomes a witch hunt against parents because they made a
00:51:29
let's say a moment of not the best judgment. Oh, yeah. They unfortunately they live
00:51:34
with that every day. Yeah. For 18 years. I mean, that is Do you want to know what
00:51:40
hell is? That's what hell is. Now, in regards to the dogs, here's the problem again with the dogs. You have to
00:51:48
either throw out the dog information or the eyewitness information that said that they saw the girl knocking on the
00:51:54
door of the Quirks home. You can't have both. Right? Because the dogs never go to the
00:52:00
Quirks house. They go and hit on a scent at the lake. They say that they trace Leanna's scent to the edge of a road
00:52:11
near the lake. We've discussed this in other cases, Captain. Usually, when they trace
00:52:16
a scent to an edge of the road, it indicates that that person got into some kind of vehicle because their scent is
00:52:23
then gone. Right. The dogs then trace the scent back to Leanna Warner's home. Again, they're
00:52:31
only as good as the handler. But, you can't have a situation where the what the dogs are telling you is that Leanna
00:52:38
did not go to the Quirks home. What the eyewitnesses are telling you is that she
00:52:42
did. So, you have to choose which one are you going to accept as something you want to put in your investigation
00:52:51
Mhm. and something that you're going to have to toss out because you might be getting bad information from someone.
00:52:56
Now, here's the thing. If the dogs never go to the Quirks home and you trust the dogs,
00:53:03
now you need to know why people would say that she went to the Quirks home and she didn't.
00:53:10
You see what I mean? It works both ways. No, I agree. And like I said, back to the eyewitnesses, we just we know for a
00:53:16
fact that eyewitnesses are not always completely accurate. So, it's not calling them liars, it's just saying
00:53:22
that maybe you're misremembering. Right. I The thing that I believe here and look, this is
00:53:31
I Yes, I'm I'm choosing. I'm I'm I'm picking one over the other. I'm choosing these eyewitnesses here because what
00:53:38
what we do know given the timeline, regardless of the shift and the change and the wiggle room in the timeline,
00:53:43
what we do know is very quickly after this girl went missing, Mhm. the mother, the daughter, and neighbors are out
00:53:53
searching for Leanna very quickly. Let's say within I think we can agree within a half an hour to an hour and a half,
00:54:02
somewhere in that time range, we have we start seeing people from the neighborhood and joining in on this
00:54:07
search. So, what I'm The reason why I'm choosing to believe the eyewitnesses here is simply that they can speak and
00:54:14
the dogs can't because we have eyewitnesses that are going This is all going to be fresh in their memory. It's
00:54:20
not like you're asking somebody 5 days later if you saw Leanna on Saturday or Friday or Sunday. Mhm. You're asking
00:54:27
them, "Did you see her an hour ago?" "Yeah. Yeah, I did." Well, a couple things. One, if you if you eat enough
00:54:36
dogs will talk to you and you'll be able to understand them. Um and normally, I always pick dogs over humans, right?
00:54:45
Cuz dogs are just better. But, I agree with you here. I I think you have to go with the eyewitness
00:54:51
report. I just I I just don't understand why there's a a gap in time between the
00:54:57
eyewitnesses and Leanna's mother. So, I'm totally with you here. And I Here's what I think
00:55:05
may be a possibility. I think that maybe this little girl was excited about seeing her friends,
00:55:13
hanging out with her two friends. We know that they hung out almost daily. I think that there's a chance that
00:55:19
they're seeing these witnesses might be seeing her later than the time that it would take her to walk from her home to
00:55:26
the Quirks home because I think there's a chance that when she knocked on the door the first
00:55:32
time and no one answered, she might have gone looking for them. And it could be a simple she went around
00:55:38
to the backyard to see if they were out back. Maybe she started to make her way toward the lake or to somebody else's
00:55:44
home that they frequented. I think there's a chance that she may have tried that front door more than
00:55:50
once and gone looking for them in the meantime, uh looking for her friends. Again, Well, now, that's a great point
00:55:59
because if you were to bike, even if it's not that far, you'd you knock on the door. Right.
00:56:06
Nobody answers, you might do the old step back, look at the windows, see if there's any lights on. You might do the
00:56:12
old, "Let me walk around the house. Maybe they're playing out back. Maybe there's a swing set that we haven't
00:56:18
talked about or a play area in the backyard that she went to go see if they're there. Oh, they're not there.
00:56:24
Okay, now I'm coming back around." And and having a second pass. And heck, there could even been a third pass. And
00:56:31
just think about how silly we are when we're all kids, right? When you When you ask, "Hey, can I go hang out with
00:56:38
Can I go hang out with my friends?" You're 5, 6 years old. "Hey, can I go hang out with my friends?" And you're
00:56:43
granted permission to do so. That becomes the most important thing in your little universe for that next
00:56:51
half an hour and hour, right? Seeing your friends and your buddies. And and as you pointed out, I'm again thinking
00:56:56
back to my own childhood. I've referenced friends Tim and Vince earlier and being about that same age and I can
00:57:03
I can recall similar situations. Granted permission, go to their home, nobody answers. Uh where would I go next? Well,
00:57:11
there was a fort that we built 2 yd away. That would be my next stop. They're probably at the fort. If they
00:57:17
weren't there, sometimes they were at Shawn's house and you would see their bikes in the driveway and you could tell
00:57:22
you could walk a few more yards and see if the bikes were in the driveway or not. And so, I worry that we have a
00:57:28
situation here, Captain, where Leanna's playing detective herself trying to figure out where her friends are and now
00:57:34
she's wandering about and maybe as said, the witnesses the eyewitnesses are getting this 5:15 time
00:57:42
from a second attempt at knocking on the door after she's gone out looking the neighborhood for her friends. Mhm. One
00:57:51
thing that's also difficult and troubling here, I mean, this is good for the parents and the people searching for
00:57:58
Leanna that night, but also might be bad because she could be wandering far further and further away from home is
00:58:06
June 14th is close to one of the longest days of the year. So, it would remain light out much longer on this day than
00:58:16
most days of the year. Sunset in Chisholm, Minnesota on June 14th of this year of 2021
00:58:23
was 9:14 p.m. So, it's one of those situations where you go, "Okay, lots of daylight hours between the time
00:58:32
of when she goes missing or when it's presumed that she she goes missing." Mhm. Uh why don't we have more
00:58:38
eyewitnesses? If something happened to her, it seemed to me like it it happened in a
00:58:43
relatively quick in a relatively short period of time. Like you said, to go back in time to
00:58:50
think about how this would play out in your own childhood. But, you know, what Normally,
00:58:56
when I'd ask my parents, like, "Hey, can I go play with my friends?" They would just turn and go,
00:59:01
"Oh, honey, you don't have any friends." On July 3rd, so weeks after Leanna went
00:59:08
missing, investigators had looked into an estimated 1,000 leads or tips. Investigators spoke with 130 sex
00:59:18
offenders who lived in northern Minnesota, calling some persons of interest. On July 9th, investigators
00:59:26
asked for the public's help in finding three men who may have information that would be helpful to this investigation.
00:59:34
They were looking for a Shawn Raymond Bertick of Hibbing, Jason Wayne Smith of Hibbing, and Justin Michael Jenkins of
00:59:43
Chisholm. The Sheriff's Office also asked for the public's help in finding an unidentified white man in his
00:59:50
mid-30s, about 5 ft 10 in tall and 155 lb with bleach blonde hair feathered over his ears and a dark tattoo of a
01:00:00
star or a sun on his right arm wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt. This man was supposedly seen on foot in the
01:00:10
Warner's neighborhood on June 14th, the day in question. They also said that they were looking for a navy blue
01:00:17
two-door Cadillac driven by a black male in his 20s or 30s that was either bald or had a shaven head and an older rusty
01:00:28
brown pickup truck with a topper driven by a white man with curly black hair. The Sheriff's Department would not say
01:00:35
why they were seeking these people, but we can presume that persons in the neighborhood reported seeing them in the
01:00:42
area. In an interesting statement though, Sheriff Litman said he believed despite public events in the area at the
01:00:50
time of Leanna's disappearance that the person who was responsible for Leanna going missing was likely from Chisholm.
01:00:59
At the same time, authorities said there was no truth to media reports that identified a 23-year-old convicted sex
01:01:07
offender as a suspect in the case. They denied that there was a suspect and stated that this man was in custody on
01:01:15
unrelated charges. Now we're really seeing the scale of this investigation here, aren't we,
01:01:21
Captain? This is something that we've seen in other cases, specifically the Delphi case, where you start seeing the
01:01:29
the long arms of the law are reaching out and they are casting a wide net on known offenders, suspects, people seen
01:01:39
in the area, questionable behavior, all of that stuff. That's what's going on here. That's what's going down at this
01:01:46
point. Mhm. And we saw at the Delphi case how many search warrants and how many arrest
01:01:52
warrants were the arrest warrants were carried out. There was like 40, 50, 60 carried out
01:01:58
within days because now all of a sudden the priority level jumps big-time to start finding people, the the bad guys.
01:02:07
Start rounding up the bad guys at this point. And that's what we're seeing an amped up, not only just amped up, but
01:02:15
here to the point where they're saying to the public, "Hey, we're looking for these people by name. We're looking for
01:02:22
people that were described to be looking like this. We're not saying any of them
01:02:26
are suspects. Any of them could have useful information to this investigation." Well, like you said, there's a bunch of
01:02:34
people visiting this town during that time period. So now as this is going out more regionally, you have
01:02:41
people coming forward and saying, "Hey, I know that this dirtbag in my family was visiting there
01:02:47
at the time. He's capable of abducting a child. So now they got to find that individual which might be living a
01:02:54
criminal life and then that criminal or that that dirtbag now has to explain to the
01:03:02
police where he was at. And where you know, what's his alibi? And sometimes they're not as cooperative
01:03:11
with police police because their alibi is that they're actually doing some other kind of criminal
01:03:17
activity. Well, and even if they weren't getting reports that people that were named specifically were in the area at
01:03:24
that time cuz we're kind of guessing here, but you also have to wonder, is that simply that these know these known
01:03:31
individuals, the ones that they're referencing by name, are these people that have outstanding warrants or are
01:03:39
sex offenders? I don't know that they are. But we weren't able to find them when we
01:03:45
started doing our roundup or we started looking for bad guys to talk to or serving these arrest warrants. These are
01:03:52
people that we could not find and we want to know why we couldn't find them. And then the people that were that
01:03:58
you're asking the public for and you're simply giving a description of them, well, that's very interesting too
01:04:03
because obviously these are not people that are they're being told their names. So if people saw them in the
01:04:10
neighborhood, you have the the neighborhood person telling police "Here's a description of the person. Why
01:04:17
is that interesting to me? Why am I bringing it up to you, Mr. Lawman? Uh that's because I'd never seen this
01:04:22
person in the neighborhood before, but I saw them on that day and that's the day
01:04:26
that we're talking about." And so now as an investigator you're going, "Okay, I want to find bleach blonde hair guy. I
01:04:34
want to find the African-American male with the shaved head. I want to find the guy driving the creepy camper pickup
01:04:41
truck. Why? Because I want to ask them what you were doing there that day and if I can
01:04:47
clear you or if I can immediately tell that there's little reason to suspect you of any wrongdoing based off of the
01:04:54
information you're able to prove to me and tell me that day then I I also want to talk to you not just to
01:05:03
clear you or check you off my list, I want to ask you, "Did you see anything that day? Did you
01:05:09
hear anything that day? Maybe you're the witness that we've been looking for that
01:05:13
can give us the clue that's going to lead us to this little girl." So much more to get to. Please join us
01:05:44
here for episode two and until tomorrow, be good, be kind. And don't litter.