LITTLE SISTERS LURED BY KIDNAPPER ON ROBLOX
Two Florida sisters, aged 12 and 15, safely rescued by law enforcement in Georgia after a 19-year-old Nebraska man kidnapped them. The suspect allegedly drove nearly 1,500 miles from Omaha to Indiantown, Florida, after the three months they spent communicating on Roblox and Snapchat. Police tracked the suspect’s car and safely intercepted them in Georgia
Incidents like this have sparked national outrage and major legal battles. States including Florida, Iowa, and Kentucky have filed lawsuits against Roblox Corporation, alleging that the platform operates as a "hunting ground" for predators and fails to protect children from online grooming.
Joining Nancy Grace today:
- Ben Powers - Criminal Defense Attorney, Facebook: Legal Powers PLLC, www.legalpowers.com
- Dr. Janie Lacy - Licensed Psychotherapist and CEO of Life Counseling Solutions, Author of "How To Heal From A Toxic Relationship: A Guide To Reclaiming Your Mental Health and Happiness", Host of “The Resilient Professional” Podcast onYouTube, janielacy.com, Instagram & Facebook: @JanieLacy
- Sheriff John Budensiek - Sheriff of Martin County, FL; career law enforcement officer and lifetime resident of Martin County
- Titania Jordan - Chief Parent Officer, Bark Parental Controls, Author: "Parenting In A Tech World", www.Bark.us, Instagram/Twitter: @TitaniaJordan
- Alexis Tereszcuk - Investigative Reporter, 'Crime Stories'
- Sydney Sumner - Investigative Reporter, ‘Crime Stories’
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Speaker 1: Breaking news.
Speaker 2: Two little sisters lured by a kidnapper on roadblocks? Is
Speaker 2: your child or your team on roadblocks? If so, listen up,
Speaker 2: good evening. I mean to see grace.
Speaker 1: This is crime stories. I want to thank you for
Speaker 1: being with us.
Speaker 3: Two young teen sisters in Florida playing video games together,
Speaker 3: completely unaware that predators are watching from the shadows of
Speaker 3: online gaming platforms.
Speaker 2: Watching from the shadows. That's the one good way to
Speaker 2: put it. Do you know that predators spend twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven praying on our teens and our children, and
Speaker 2: they do it so easily, you might as well just
Speaker 2: hand them the key to the front door, because that's
Speaker 2: what they've got online.
Speaker 1: Straight out to special guests joining us.
Speaker 2: Sheriff John Buddenseik he is the I'm like to Sheriff
Speaker 2: of Martin County, Florida, share thank you for being with us.
Speaker 2: Would you say that's an accurate description that we might
Speaker 2: as well hand out of the keys to the front door,
Speaker 2: because these predators have a key right into your child's
Speaker 2: bedroom where they're playing roadblocks.
Speaker 4: Well, Nancy, you're one hundred percent right. We just experienced
Speaker 4: that nightmare story that we tell parents over and over
Speaker 4: and over to try to avoid, but it happened right
Speaker 4: here in our county, right under their parents nose, And
Speaker 4: thankfully we're able to get these girls back safely.
Speaker 5: An Indiantown family desperately searches for missing twelve and fifteen
Speaker 5: year old sisters they believe leeward out of their home
Speaker 5: by a stranger on roadblocks nearly six months ago. Family
Speaker 5: members learned the girls communicating with the stranger via Snapchat
Speaker 5: and believe they have the situation handled. They never expected
Speaker 5: the stranger to travel across the country in the midst
Speaker 5: of winter storm Gianna and take them.
Speaker 2: Worst a nightmare, worst a nightmare, back to the sheriff. Sheriff,
Speaker 2: how are the little girls?
Speaker 4: So one was a fifteen year old and the other
Speaker 4: one was a twelve year old, and they started on roadblocks,
Speaker 4: just playing games, something benign and innocent, and then this
Speaker 4: predator latched onto them and eventually moved them over to
Speaker 4: Snapchat and started doing the grooming that we talk about, often,
Speaker 4: complimenting them, telling him that he loved them, sending gifts,
Speaker 4: and before long he's driving fifteen hundred miles all the
Speaker 4: way across the country to pick them up here in
Speaker 4: Martin County and take them back to Omaha, Nebraska.
Speaker 2: Good Lord in Heaven, I am going to go to
Speaker 2: our investigative reporter in just one moment, a lexis Treshchak
Speaker 2: Sidney Summers standing by, but now to Titania Jordan joining us.
Speaker 2: She is the chief parent Officer at Bark Parental Controls,
Speaker 2: author of Parenting in a Tech World. To Tanya, explain
Speaker 2: for everybody that doesn't know what is Roadblocks and.
Speaker 1: My children, especially my son loves roadblocks a lot as
Speaker 1: a little boy.
Speaker 6: What isn't Yeah, my son loves Roadblocks as well. It
Speaker 6: is a bunch of games, a bunch of games that
Speaker 6: are user generated, meaning you, Nancy or I could create
Speaker 6: a digital game and anyone in the world could join
Speaker 6: that game. We create the design, we create the communications.
Speaker 6: It's a free for all and there's a lot of
Speaker 6: fun there, but there's also a lot of bad. In fact,
Speaker 6: at Bark, we analyzed eleven point one billion data points
Speaker 6: over twenty twenty five across children's text, email, social media, search,
Speaker 6: et cetera. And what we found was that Roadblocks was
Speaker 6: the number two highest ranked platform for confirmed risky contact,
Speaker 6: and the only platform that beat that was Snapchat.
Speaker 2: Okay, I need you to repeat that to Tanya Jordan
Speaker 2: to Tania joining us, chief parenting officer at BARK, which
Speaker 2: I have. I'm not an ambassador, I'm not a paid spokesperson.
Speaker 2: I have it, and it's very very sensitive. I've given
Speaker 2: a million examples before about how I would get an alarm,
Speaker 2: typically to my son, and then when I would I
Speaker 2: got one the other.
Speaker 1: Day it said sex content. I'm like what. I went
Speaker 1: and looked at it and it was the Nancy Grace.
Speaker 2: Show on EPSTEIN And he's a subscriber. He didn't watch
Speaker 2: the program, but the title came up and it flagged.
Speaker 1: Bart flagged. That's what Bart is.
Speaker 2: But Bart aside, that stat you just gave about roadblocks
Speaker 2: is scary?
Speaker 1: Explain yes.
Speaker 6: So at BARK we send alerts over a variety of
Speaker 6: different categories, one of which is risky contact. If there
Speaker 6: is somebody contacting your child that you should know about,
Speaker 6: we will send you an alert. And the top platforms
Speaker 6: that we confirmed over eleven point one billion data points
Speaker 6: number one Snapchat, number two, roadblocks, followed by Instagram, TikTok
Speaker 6: and discord. This is happening at scale.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: Back to you Sheriff John Budenseik joining US. He is
Speaker 2: the elected sheriff Martin County in Florida. You know, suddenly
Speaker 2: you seem you know, you look like a big husky guy.
Speaker 2: Suddenly you and your people, your men and women, seem
Speaker 2: mighty small. When there are eighty three million, eighty three
Speaker 2: million confirmed users on roadblocks, how many.
Speaker 1: Of them do you think?
Speaker 2: All of them are children and teens playing no and
Speaker 2: you got you and your sheriff's force to fight them.
Speaker 2: When did you first learn about the two little girls missing?
Speaker 4: We learned that the two girls were gone, and within
Speaker 4: an hour we knew we were in trouble. We had
Speaker 4: everyone out. It was a full core press. We had
Speaker 4: the FBI out with this. We had our analysts, our
Speaker 4: dispatchers or detectives. We knew time was of the essence,
Speaker 4: as it always is in these cases, and thankfully, through
Speaker 4: some really smart quick thinking by our deputies, we're able
Speaker 4: to start getting leads.
Speaker 2: Straight out to Alexis Tereschuk joining US Crime Stories investigative reporter.
Speaker 1: Let's start at the beginning. What happened?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 8: These two sisters, twelve and fifteen, spent the summer playing
Speaker 8: video games online. They played on roadblocks. They have a
Speaker 8: great time, lots of different things. The thing is you
Speaker 8: can talk to strangers if you have it set up
Speaker 8: that way. So they start talking to a guy, he
Speaker 8: is really nice to them. He's first they just talk
Speaker 8: about the.
Speaker 1: Alexis.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to stop you because I want to hear
Speaker 2: every fact. But right there, I've got a question for
Speaker 2: Titania Jordan. She Alexis just said you can play with
Speaker 2: strangers if you have it set up like that. Now
Speaker 2: because of you, Titanya, I had heard about dangers online
Speaker 2: and whenever I would walk in, it's usually my son,
Speaker 2: not my daughter as much, but often my son would
Speaker 2: be playing.
Speaker 1: I'm like, who are you playing with?
Speaker 2: And he would go, you know this one and that
Speaker 2: one from school and some other dude.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what other dude?
Speaker 2: It's probably like a sixty five year old guy in
Speaker 2: his basement all alone in his underwear. Is that who
Speaker 2: you want to be playing with Fortnite or whatever? And
Speaker 2: you go ew And that is where we started playing
Speaker 2: only with people you know in real life.
Speaker 1: So Alexis Tereschuk is absolutely correct.
Speaker 2: You can have it set up a certain way so
Speaker 2: you don't play with strangers. You only play with people
Speaker 2: you know in real life. But if you don't know that,
Speaker 2: you know, very subtle but critical differentiation, you may be
Speaker 2: playing with some PERV halfway around the world and not
Speaker 2: even know it. How do you set it up so
Speaker 2: you're not playing with strangers, Titanya.
Speaker 6: Any parent who allows their child to play Roadblocks needs
Speaker 6: to google three words roadblocks. Parental controls. Take the time
Speaker 6: five to twenty minutes to set those up. Limit who
Speaker 6: your child can communicate with. Make sure Roadblocks knows your
Speaker 6: child's real age so it can at least do with
Speaker 6: the very bare minimum of putting it into what they
Speaker 6: think is an age appropriate experience.
Speaker 2: Well, isn't it true to Tanya that the pervs can
Speaker 2: put in I'm ten years old too.
Speaker 6: Well, what's interesting, Nancy is because of the fire Roadblocks
Speaker 6: has been under, they've rolled out facial recognition and identification,
Speaker 6: and some of the time they get it right. But
Speaker 6: there have been multiple reports of people, adults and children
Speaker 6: letting roeblocks scan their face and Roadblocks says you're a
Speaker 6: certain age and it's not the real age. In fact,
Speaker 6: my son's girlfriend did it and it said she was
Speaker 6: eighteen and she is fifteen, and so there are problems there.
Speaker 1: Back to you, Alexis, Terreschik, I just wanted to clear
Speaker 1: that up.
Speaker 2: Alexis, you have a little boy too, right, so perk
Speaker 2: up your ears so you can set it too. Not
Speaker 2: playing with strangers Okay, now you said they were playing
Speaker 2: over the summer, would you pick it up right there?
Speaker 1: Please? Thank you.
Speaker 8: They were, they're playing on the summer. They start up
Speaker 8: there strictly on roadblocks. They're not on any other side.
Speaker 8: They're playing games. They start talking with a guy. He
Speaker 8: starts complimenting them. He says, Wow, you're really good at
Speaker 8: playing this, and then he tells them to switch over
Speaker 8: to Snapchat, which is another app that kids can have,
Speaker 8: anybody can have on their phone, and that's where he
Speaker 8: starts grooming them. He starts saying thing calling them like baby,
Speaker 8: and then he starts getting really aggressive. He sends them
Speaker 8: gifts to their home. He sends them food sort of
Speaker 8: like you know, you'd get ice cream delivered or lunch
Speaker 8: or snacks delivered, something that he's paying money for. So
Speaker 8: he knows their home address and he is now sending
Speaker 8: them gifts to their home. So they built up this
Speaker 8: whole relationship all over the Internet, and they are actively
Speaker 8: talking back and forth with him, and they have shared
Speaker 8: this private information with him, so he knows exactly where
Speaker 8: they live.
Speaker 2: I was just about to say, Alexis, if he's sending
Speaker 2: ice cream, sandwiches and cookies and so forth to their home.
Speaker 1: He has their home address. Okay.
Speaker 2: Doctor Janey Lacey is joining us a license psychotherapist, CEO
Speaker 2: of Life Counseling Solutions, author of How to Heal from
Speaker 2: a Toxic Relationship, host of The Resilient Professional, and you
Speaker 2: can find her at Janey Lacy dot com. Doctor Janey,
Speaker 2: you got to wade into the fray.
Speaker 1: What do you have to say about this?
Speaker 9: Nancy? My heart breaks for these families. You know, as
Speaker 9: I just heard my cold panelistm want me. What we're
Speaker 9: watching is the grooming behavior that's just in the digital world,
Speaker 9: right these predators, and this predator, I should say, he
Speaker 9: just didn't just randomly message these these girls. He strategically
Speaker 9: build trust over time through this platform that from and
Speaker 9: my son plays Roadblocks as well. That as parents sometimes
Speaker 9: we just think is just the game. But that transition
Speaker 9: that we know from road Blocks snapshot, it shows that
Speaker 9: there was calculated escalation. You know, he was isolating them.
Speaker 9: He built that foss sense of intimacy as we just
Speaker 9: hurtzenthing them gifts, and then he exploited that. He exploited that.
Speaker 9: And this is exactly how predators operate, whether it's online
Speaker 9: or in person.
Speaker 2: Nancy, I'm looking at the screens. Our control room is
Speaker 2: playing again. Remember Tatania said that you create your own game.
Speaker 2: You can have football players, you could have a girls
Speaker 2: soccer team. It could be in a dance class, it
Speaker 2: could be on Broadway. You create the game you want
Speaker 2: to play, and you're seeing a lot of those choices.
Speaker 2: It's whatever you can imagine. You create that game. Oh,
Speaker 2: there you go. There's a race car gonna be Formula one,
Speaker 2: it gonna be Nascar, all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: And doesn't it look fun? Sidney Sumner joining us crime stories?
Speaker 1: Don't they look fun?
Speaker 2: All these scenarios, the football zone, the merch this that
Speaker 2: it's a Pretein, a Twain or.
Speaker 1: A Tane's dream.
Speaker 10: Absolutely, you can be anything you want. You can go
Speaker 10: anywhere you want and use correctly, well correctly as a
Speaker 10: vague term. But I see my nieces and nephews all
Speaker 10: the time playing together they can meet up in this
Speaker 10: video game world and go play these games together even
Speaker 10: when they're not sitting together in the same home. So
Speaker 10: it really is supposed to be this wonderful tool, this
Speaker 10: online gaming experience, for young children to be able to
Speaker 10: enjoy this together. But you have all of these predators,
Speaker 10: all of these grown adults using this as a hunting ground.
Speaker 11: Bright in Ely Saturday morning, two Indian town sisters head
Speaker 11: to a park near their home. When their grandparents find
Speaker 11: out they may be meeting an online friend at the park,
Speaker 11: the girls are picked up and grounded, not allowed to
Speaker 11: leave home or have access to their phones. But when
Speaker 11: they're called out of their rooms for dinner around six pm,
Speaker 11: the girls are nowhere to be found.
Speaker 2: Just hearing that run puts a chill down my spine.
Speaker 2: Joining me is an acclaimed lawyer, Ben Powers, criminal defense attorney,
Speaker 2: and you can find him on Facebook at Legal Powers.
Speaker 1: Ben. Thank you for being with us.
Speaker 2: This reminds me so much of Abby and Libby, the
Speaker 2: two beautiful little girls in Delphi who went out to
Speaker 2: a public park and they never came home. Ben, they
Speaker 2: never came home.
Speaker 12: It is a concerning issue with roadblocks, because what roadblocks
Speaker 12: really is at its core is the Internet with a
Speaker 12: candy shop kind of been near to it. It's like
Speaker 12: cartoony characters, a lot of child friendly type images as
Speaker 12: far as the types of games you can make and
Speaker 12: the character types and things like that. It's definitely geared
Speaker 12: towards children. But what we're really talking about is the
Speaker 12: Internet with messaging capabilities that anyone can access. And it's
Speaker 12: just got a real flowery, nice kind of image to it.
Speaker 12: But it really is the Internet in the most broadest form,
Speaker 12: with adults and children alike on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guarantee you be in powers.
Speaker 2: If all the adults knew how many pervs, how many
Speaker 2: it's typically men playing with the children, they wouldn't let
Speaker 2: their child touch it with a ten foot pole. Back
Speaker 2: to special Guests joining us. Sheriff John Budenzik. He is
Speaker 2: the elected sheriff Martin County. So when you first got
Speaker 2: the call, who called?
Speaker 4: The grandparents called the Sheriff's office, at which point our
Speaker 4: rope patrow, our first responders went out to the house
Speaker 4: and they just started a conversation. Try. We thought initially
Speaker 4: that the girls were just simply out for the night
Speaker 4: around town. They started looking in the area they were
Speaker 4: in as a small.
Speaker 1: Town out for the night, around town. One of them
Speaker 1: is twelve years old. What do you mean, man around town, out.
Speaker 4: For the nine evening, out for the evening.
Speaker 1: Twelve years old, the town.
Speaker 4: Go back to that. It's six o'clock at night. It's
Speaker 4: a small community, tight knit community. And they thought the
Speaker 4: girls had walked to a convenience store right by their
Speaker 4: house or they were close by.
Speaker 1: Okay, So so, okay, that's a.
Speaker 2: Lot more acceptable than two little girls out on the town. Yes,
Speaker 2: got it. We did that many time, sheriff. In the
Speaker 2: little community where I grew up, nothing but pine trees
Speaker 2: and soybean fields as far as you could see. And
Speaker 2: the big, the big thrill was to walk to the
Speaker 2: convenience store.
Speaker 1: That was a good two miles one way. Okay, back
Speaker 1: to your story.
Speaker 4: So that convenience store, by the way, is only about
Speaker 4: two hundred yards from their house. They exhausted those resources
Speaker 4: immediately figured out the girls were in fact gone. The
Speaker 4: family was instrumental in this. They had been diligent, like
Speaker 4: our co panelist said and noted that they were in
Speaker 4: midsummer on chats on roadblocks and snapchat, and our detectives
Speaker 4: at that point are starting to enter into this scene
Speaker 4: and trying to figure out who any of these individuals
Speaker 4: were on social media.
Speaker 2: Sure, if I don't want to interrupt, but you said
Speaker 2: something about the family had ferreted out that they did
Speaker 2: not go to the convenience store. What had the family
Speaker 2: done to find them before they called you?
Speaker 4: The family and friends had done their own neighborhood search
Speaker 4: around the close knit community and realized that the girls
Speaker 4: were not there. They caught our deputies. Our deputies started
Speaker 4: asking the questions. Of course, they realized that the girls
Speaker 4: were not in the immediate area, and then they started
Speaker 4: asking are there any other options here? Is there any
Speaker 4: anything else that it could have taken place? And the
Speaker 4: family said, well, back in the middle of the summer
Speaker 4: months ago, we caught the girls on roadblocks and then
Speaker 4: on Snapchat communicating with an individual. They didn't know who
Speaker 4: the individual was, they didn't know where they were from,
Speaker 4: but they knew they were communicating, and the family actually
Speaker 4: shut that down. Unbeknownst to them, the girls reignited that
Speaker 4: conversation on Snapchat and continued that conversation.
Speaker 1: Well, go on just a.
Speaker 2: Moment, Sheriff, I got another question for you. I got
Speaker 2: a question for you. You got me drinking from the
Speaker 2: fire hydrant. Here so many facts at once. First of all,
Speaker 2: I know you've heard this too. People second guess the family,
Speaker 2: such as why did it take so long to call.
Speaker 1: Nine one one?
Speaker 2: Well, when your child is not in their room, you
Speaker 2: don't pick up your cell phone out of your pocket
Speaker 2: and call nine one one. You go look in the kitchen,
Speaker 2: you go, look in the basement, you look everywhere else.
Speaker 2: You go in the front yard. You go in the backyard,
Speaker 2: you try to call their cell phone. You might call
Speaker 2: a friend, you might look around the neighborhood before you go, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is bad.
Speaker 1: I got to call nine one one. The family did that.
Speaker 2: Then the family says that there had been a roadblocks
Speaker 2: problem over the summer, and they shut it down. I
Speaker 2: guarantee you, Sheriff, the first time they realized there's a
Speaker 2: problem was probably when ice cream or some sort of
Speaker 2: treat arrived at a door at the door from somebody
Speaker 2: they've never heard of.
Speaker 1: That's a real wake up. And the way you.
Speaker 2: Said it was absolutely accurate. But it makes the girls
Speaker 2: sound sneaky.
Speaker 1: All children think they know more than all parents.
Speaker 2: So the children think that they know this person, and
Speaker 2: they're like, there's nothing wrong with him, so we're going
Speaker 2: to do it in secret.
Speaker 1: Mom and dad.
Speaker 2: They just don't understand. So they're not horrible, sneaky and
Speaker 2: ruly children. They just thought they knew better, but they didn't. Okay,
Speaker 2: back to you were saying, the family told you about
Speaker 2: the communications over the summer.
Speaker 1: Then what happened.
Speaker 4: Our detectives asked to see the devices. They look nothing
Speaker 4: on the devices, gaming app, no Snapchat, nothing on there.
Speaker 4: And then one of our detectives actually had the thought,
Speaker 4: maybe I can re download Snapchat and just see what's
Speaker 4: on there, and he did, and immediately after re downloading
Speaker 4: that app, this long thread of communication popped up. In
Speaker 4: that threat of communication was an individual's face who was
Speaker 4: communicating with them and telling them be careful. I can
Speaker 4: get in trouble for this communication. I'm coming to get you.
Speaker 4: Don't stand me up. I love you, and just a
Speaker 4: long thread and in that thankfully get taken.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I just just got up off the floor.
Speaker 1: I fell off my chair.
Speaker 2: I cannot imagine sheriff looking at my daughter's or my
Speaker 2: son's cell phone and finding out that she has been
Speaker 2: back and forth with a grown man. And I see
Speaker 2: his face looking right at me, I would fall over
Speaker 2: and this Sydney Center, this was the grandparents.
Speaker 10: Correct, Yes, the grandparents were taking care of these sisters
Speaker 10: that day.
Speaker 4: At approximate eight pm on Saturday night, our Roe Patrol
Speaker 4: deputies in Indian Town responded to a call for service
Speaker 4: and learned that there were two missing females, a twelve
Speaker 4: year old and a fifteen year old. They had gone
Speaker 4: missing a few hours earlier, they believed the same day,
Speaker 4: at about nine in the morning, these same two girls
Speaker 4: had gone to a local park there in Indiantown, had
Speaker 4: been found by a family member, brought back to their home, punished,
Speaker 4: and part of that punishment was having two of their
Speaker 4: cellular devices removed from their person.
Speaker 3: What starts as an innocent connection on roadblocks quickly deepens.
Speaker 3: A new friend gains their trust through games and chats,
Speaker 3: then pushes the relationship onto more private forms of communication.
Speaker 4: There was a potential suspect already in this case, and
Speaker 4: that suspect had been identified through a snapchat at back
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty five. In the middle of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 4: and the family members suggested to our deputies that an
Speaker 4: individual on that app may be involved in these girls disappearing.
Speaker 2: Holy moly, no, I want to see the bookend photo please,
Speaker 2: because there he looks very Yeah, Alexis Tereschuk. What if
Speaker 2: you go on and find out this is who your daughter?
Speaker 2: I want to see him again, please, is chatting with
Speaker 2: It's a grown man.
Speaker 1: That's not a ten year old boy. That's not a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old boy. That's a grown man.
Speaker 8: It is not a classmate at all. It is somebody
Speaker 8: that lived thousands of miles away. He is a full
Speaker 8: adult and he is chatting with not one, but two
Speaker 8: both of these sisters, telling them he loves them, love
Speaker 8: them really, you know, with gifts and but sneaky, being
Speaker 8: really sneaky and telling them to switch over to a
Speaker 8: different app because Rollbucks. You know, the parents could stop
Speaker 8: at Snapchat. It's a little bit harder, and in fact,
Speaker 8: you know, the parent the grandparents took what they thought
Speaker 8: was every step of protection. After they got the girls
Speaker 8: out of the park and brought them home, said you're
Speaker 8: in trouble. Your grounded standing room. They took away their phones,
Speaker 8: but there was a tablet in the house, you know,
Speaker 8: like an iPad or something and that way they were
Speaker 8: able to then access it and they told him, they said, oh,
Speaker 8: we can't come, we can't meet, and he insisted. He
Speaker 8: continued to say, I miss you, I love you. You
Speaker 8: have to come with me. He would not give up.
Speaker 1: God, girls don't know how to respond to that.
Speaker 2: Doctor, James Lacy, you tell a little twelve year old girl,
Speaker 2: I love you, I love you.
Speaker 1: You know I could get in trouble for meeting you.
Speaker 2: Very Romeo Juliet type scenario. The family can't find out.
Speaker 2: That is extremely sneaky, and it is a ploy used
Speaker 2: by sex predators online.
Speaker 9: All the time. Nancy, You know what happens is those
Speaker 9: predators they lurk in these spaces where children congregate, and
Speaker 9: these platforms are so sophisticated. You know, we think about
Speaker 9: what we're talking about, roadblocks and the chat platform, social media.
Speaker 9: They look for those vulnerabilities, kids who seem lonely, that
Speaker 9: are seeking attention or going through some type of family structure,
Speaker 9: and then they'll present themselves as either a peer, a friend,
Speaker 9: someone who gets them, and they'll shower them with that attention,
Speaker 9: those compliments, that validation, and in this case, he likely
Speaker 9: positioned himself as someone cool, understanding and maybe even a
Speaker 9: romantic interest. And then what we'll see is then they
Speaker 9: move those conversations exactly what happened off the original platform,
Speaker 9: to more private spaces where there's less monitoring, and the
Speaker 9: messages in this case disappear, and this creates that secrecy,
Speaker 9: and then we'll see they'll gradually introduce curious content.
Speaker 2: Mm hm, Alexis Terresta. You stated that he began love
Speaker 2: bombing them. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 8: It is like an obsessive, relentless telling you I love you,
Speaker 8: telling you how great you are, And you called them baby,
Speaker 8: called them sweet, sending gifts to the house. That is
Speaker 8: really just crossing the line again because these girls are
Speaker 8: twelve and fifteen. These are little children. They cannot drive yet,
Speaker 8: as you see in the pictures where they're not showing
Speaker 8: their face, they're wearing like Christmas light necklaces. They're very young,
Speaker 8: little children. But love bombing is just a consistent of
Speaker 8: just relentlessly telling you how much they love you. And
Speaker 8: it's not even a sincere love thing, it's just an
Speaker 8: obsessive statement.
Speaker 2: Sendey Sumner, what type of things did he send to
Speaker 2: the home?
Speaker 10: Understanding? It was mostly food items like sweet treats or snacks,
Speaker 10: things of that nature.
Speaker 1: Wow, just what a teen girl would like.
Speaker 2: So, Sheriff, when you began, how did you manage to
Speaker 2: go back in time on the device to find this
Speaker 2: man's picture?
Speaker 4: Is the thinking of one of our deputies that just
Speaker 4: they understand apps, they realize there's a potential if we
Speaker 4: re download the app that the thread may still be there.
Speaker 4: And that's exactly what happened. The deputies got a hold
Speaker 4: of the digital device that these girls were using to
Speaker 4: communicate with that individual, saw that the Snapcha Snapchat app
Speaker 4: was deleted holistically from the device, had the thought process
Speaker 4: to reload the device, and when they did, they could
Speaker 4: see a constant threat of communication between this individual and
Speaker 4: these two young girls, to include the suspect who you
Speaker 4: see behind me driving to Indiantown, Florida to pick these
Speaker 4: girls up and leave.
Speaker 2: Sheriff, what went through your mind when you saw this
Speaker 2: face appear in the history.
Speaker 4: That we're dealing with nothing but trouble here. Nothing good
Speaker 4: is going to come out of this incident.
Speaker 3: The conversations quickly moved to Snapchat, daily messages, growing emotional bonds,
Speaker 3: and even food deliveries sent to the girls home, blurring
Speaker 3: the lines between online friend and predator.
Speaker 4: So this individual lived in Omaha, Nebraska and was potentially
Speaker 4: just giving them little things that they that they needed
Speaker 4: and just making them feel good about themselves. He complimented
Speaker 4: them through the app, called the older girl baby, referred
Speaker 4: to her romantically, and then sent her things. So that's
Speaker 4: all addicative of what we see in some of.
Speaker 2: These Sheriff, you stated that this guy lives in Omaha, Nebraska.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be what a fifteen and to twenty hour drive.
Speaker 4: It's one five hundred miles away. It's a twenty three
Speaker 4: hour drive.
Speaker 2: Good gravy too, Ben Powers, joining US veteran criminal defense attorney.
Speaker 1: Ben, if you're.
Speaker 2: The defense attorney here, you got a lot of explaining
Speaker 2: to do. He had twenty three hours to plot and
Speaker 2: plan the kidnap of two little girls, one twelve years old.
Speaker 12: Well, so it's an interesting legal argument or situation with
Speaker 12: this story, because one, I would want to know more
Speaker 12: specifically what the communications were. If they're just saying positive
Speaker 12: things and suggesting or even sending that I'll buy you
Speaker 12: food or sending ice cream sandwiches. As unnerving as that is,
Speaker 12: there's technically not anything illegal in something like that, but
Speaker 12: if the communication is more sexual, then there are criminal
Speaker 12: code violations for that. But then also with a kidnapping,
Speaker 12: I mean if they go volunteerily voluntarily, you know, kidnapping
Speaker 12: is against someone's will, not with their will. And so
Speaker 12: if he's been love bombing on to where they go voluntarily,
Speaker 12: it's all going to come back to the communications, because
Speaker 12: communications are where his criminal exposure is the actual riding
Speaker 12: at car with them, short of something more. Since it
Speaker 12: does seem that they went voluntarily with them, I'm not
Speaker 12: sure there's a criminal offense that's been a luge been Powers.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you a question. Do you think I
Speaker 2: just fell off the turnip truck? No, ma'am okay, you
Speaker 2: do know that I practiced criminal law as a prosecutor
Speaker 2: for over ten years as a FED and a state
Speaker 2: violent crimes prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, ma'am okay, mister Powers.
Speaker 2: Isn't it true that someone under the age of consent
Speaker 2: cannot give consent?
Speaker 1: That's why they call it the age.
Speaker 2: Of consent, right, So, if you're twelve years old or
Speaker 2: even fifteen years old in most jurisdictions, you cannot consent.
Speaker 1: To You can't. Let's see, you can't enter into.
Speaker 2: A contract, you can't go buy a car, you can't
Speaker 2: buy a house, even if you have a million dollars.
Speaker 1: You can't even buy a pack of cigarette. Isn't that true?
Speaker 12: Being powers, it is an age of consent would be
Speaker 12: for like some type of sexual contact, but just getting
Speaker 12: in a vehicle is something that they can consent to doing.
Speaker 12: And especially when we're talking about falseham prisoning or kidnapping,
Speaker 12: inherently requires without their consent. I think that's going to
Speaker 12: be a problem for the prosecutor with that type of
Speaker 12: charge under these facts. But I'm sure those communications will well.
Speaker 2: If he didn't, if he thought there wasn't something wrong
Speaker 2: with it. When they had to come home from their
Speaker 2: first aborted meeting with him that morning and he was saying,
Speaker 2: don't let your family find out, that would suggest to
Speaker 2: me that he knew what he was doing was wrong.
Speaker 2: So I think I've got someone that's going to disagree
Speaker 2: with you. Being powers, Sheriff, is it okay to lure
Speaker 2: little girls into your car and drive away.
Speaker 4: It absolutely is not, And of course this case will
Speaker 4: be litigated. But no twelve or fifteen years old, there
Speaker 4: is a reason why we have an age of consent
Speaker 4: for other things, and you hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 4: These girls were not mature enough and old enough to
Speaker 4: make that decision. The girls initially appeared to have intended
Speaker 4: to hook up with him in the morning at the park.
Speaker 4: That did not happen. They were disciplined broad home, their
Speaker 4: devices were taken away, and our suspect was then milling
Speaker 4: around any in town for a period of time.
Speaker 1: Isn't it true?
Speaker 2: Sheriff John biddenseiek that he the purp. Excuse me, The
Speaker 2: alleged purp was saying comments like I drove all this way,
Speaker 2: Please don't leave me hanging.
Speaker 1: Come on, I've driven twenty x hours to see you.
Speaker 1: You gotta come back.
Speaker 2: I mean, he was really pressuring a twelve and fifteen
Speaker 2: year old little girl.
Speaker 4: Not only that, nance, he also reminded them of the
Speaker 4: severity of what he was getting them into. He knew
Speaker 4: he could get in trouble for this, so he pressured
Speaker 4: them and reminded them that what he was doing was
Speaker 4: illegal and he could get in trouble, saying Sheriff, he
Speaker 4: was just saying, if anybody finds out, I could get arrested.
Speaker 4: If anybody finds out, I could get in trouble. So
Speaker 4: he was warning them. He was trying to recruit them
Speaker 4: to be secretive so they could carry out their plot
Speaker 4: of him picking them up and leaving our area.
Speaker 2: And isn't it true, Sheriff, he actually took a picture
Speaker 2: of himself at the Indian Town Circle K and send
Speaker 2: it to the girls.
Speaker 4: He did, and that was an important piece of our puzzle.
Speaker 4: Thankfully he did, because it put him at our gas station.
Speaker 4: We're able to get a tag number from being at
Speaker 4: that gas station, so it was a critical piece of
Speaker 4: evidence for us. And then what happened, So again we
Speaker 4: called everybody out. We knew, as in any of these
Speaker 4: missing persons cases, time is of the essence, and we
Speaker 4: called our analyst out. We were able to do some
Speaker 4: orders to the to snapchat specifically and get some IP
Speaker 4: addresses and really start tracking back devices. Keep in mind,
Speaker 4: the girls didn't have devices, so the only one that
Speaker 4: had devices was this mysterious that we had a picture of,
Speaker 4: but we had no idea what it was. So we
Speaker 4: were able to start getting some device information and then
Speaker 4: start nearing in on our suspect through the tag number
Speaker 4: and that device he was possessing.
Speaker 2: Now, isn't it true he was communicating with your detectives
Speaker 2: but didn't realize it, or did he realize it.
Speaker 4: The family, unbeknownst to us at that time, reached out
Speaker 4: to him on Snapchat and was asking him about the girls.
Speaker 4: So he did what you see a lot of these
Speaker 4: criminals doing. He started feigning his concern. Oh, please, I'm
Speaker 4: worried about them. Please let me know that they're okay.
Speaker 4: So he starts this conversation. All the while he's driving
Speaker 4: northbound on I seventy five with these girls in his custody,
Speaker 4: and he's feigning that he cares about their safety. He's
Speaker 4: acting that he's worried that something bad is going to
Speaker 4: happen to him and he's the problem. He's driving him
Speaker 4: down the road.
Speaker 2: So wait, let me understand this year Sheriff John Budenseig, he's.
Speaker 1: Writing, where are the girls? Where are they? What happened
Speaker 1: to them? I'm worrying. I want to help you find them.
Speaker 2: And all the time they're in the car and they've
Speaker 2: got the pedal to the middle up seventy five, which
Speaker 2: goes all the way from Florida, all the way to
Speaker 2: New York City, right.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Yes, what happened then, Sheriff.
Speaker 4: Well, we knew we had to reach out to other jurisdictions.
Speaker 4: We started in the state of Florida. Florida Higher Patrol
Speaker 4: was contacted, they could not quite catch him before he
Speaker 4: exited the state. He exits our state in the Georgia,
Speaker 4: and thankfully the Georgia Higher Patrol was contacted by us,
Speaker 4: and we're able to make a traffic stop on that
Speaker 4: vehicle and take our suspect in the custody and most importantly,
Speaker 4: recover those girls for us safely. Six forty five, he's
Speaker 4: leaving any in town and right around one am in
Speaker 4: the morning on Sunday morning, the Georgia State Patrol was
Speaker 4: able to stop that vehicle just inside of the state
Speaker 4: of Georgia. So I'm trying to do the math that
Speaker 4: fast five or six hours.
Speaker 1: Sheareff.
Speaker 2: You acted, you acted quickly, you acted decisively, and you
Speaker 2: saved the girls' lives. What happened when you finally saw
Speaker 2: the girls and saw the alleged purp.
Speaker 4: We had a collective sigh of relief amongst us. The
Speaker 4: family came out, they were crying, They realized what could
Speaker 4: have happened. They were thanking us profusely, and we just
Speaker 4: felt that elated feeling of doing our job, doing it effectively,
Speaker 4: and we knew what we'd accomplished.
Speaker 2: You know, Sheriff, if you never do another good thing,
Speaker 2: which I doubt, you have done this, and you have
Speaker 2: saved two girls from we don't know from what, got
Speaker 2: a pretty good idea, and you definitely got your angel's wings.
Speaker 2: Finally I get to report a story with a happy ending.
Speaker 1: But it it's not always that way, is it.
Speaker 4: Sheriff, They really are. We're still reeling from a missing
Speaker 4: girl in nineteen ninety three from our area. That's thirty
Speaker 4: plus years ago. We're still feeling the effects of that.
Speaker 4: There is no application online that's safe, No application online
Speaker 4: that's safe, be it a gaming ad, be it Snapchat,
Speaker 4: being it something as user friendly as Instagram or any
Speaker 4: social media application. If you can communicate with somebody away
Speaker 4: from your house, in the quiet of your own room,
Speaker 4: it can be a problem.
Speaker 2: Straight out to Titanya Jordan joining US chief parent Officer
Speaker 2: bart Parental Controls. She is the author of Parenting in
Speaker 2: a Tech World. To Tanya again, thank you for being
Speaker 2: with us to Tanya. We have to explain how to
Speaker 2: help students' children Twains. But before you start, I want
Speaker 2: you to hear this story. And it's not just a story.
Speaker 2: This is real. Parents believe their little boy met someone
Speaker 2: on roadblocks, left to go meet with them. The next
Speaker 2: thing we know, he's dead. He committed suicide. He jumped
Speaker 2: from a bridge. Now Roadblocks are saying we're not involved.
Speaker 2: There are claims Roadblocks not involved. The parents say yes
Speaker 2: they are. We don't know the truth yet, Dave Matt.
Speaker 1: What happened, Nancy.
Speaker 11: What we have is we've got a little boy who
Speaker 11: is using, is on roadblocks, and he meets somebody, you know,
Speaker 11: by using on roadblocks and is communicating with this individual
Speaker 11: and gets lured away. He's last seen leaving. Are actually
Speaker 11: last seen at a train station with his backpack on
Speaker 11: and carrying something. That's the last thing that we know,
Speaker 11: and roadblocks's there he is.
Speaker 1: That's Thomas Medline.
Speaker 11: He's fifteen years old. And it's one of those shocking things, Nancy,
Speaker 11: that we've been talking about for years about young people
Speaker 11: being lured away from the safety of their homes and
Speaker 11: with parents who are actively involved, and still predators have
Speaker 11: a way of getting to our young kids, and that's
Speaker 11: what apparently happened here with Thomas Medline. He's fifteen when
Speaker 11: he leaves school, you know, he left like at three
Speaker 11: thirty in the afternoon, right for school, gets off and
Speaker 11: he's last seen crossing the bridge, the pedestrian walk on
Speaker 11: the bridge, and that's it. That's the last photos we
Speaker 11: have of him, and then he's gone, which leads.
Speaker 2: Me to my friend Alisha Koleskevich, who actually survived a
Speaker 2: horrific kidnap and a brutal torture.
Speaker 7: I spent a lot of time online talking to my
Speaker 7: friends from school, and at the time, it felt like
Speaker 7: it was a clubhouse. Three woitd calling was still a thing,
Speaker 7: and I remember explaining it to my mom and it
Speaker 7: was like three way calling with as many people as
Speaker 7: you want, and it was in the family room, and
Speaker 7: it it should have been safe, but I didn't have
Speaker 7: the tools to keep myself safe, and neither did my family.
Speaker 7: And there I was in a chat room and somebody
Speaker 7: messaged me, and I thought that it was a boy
Speaker 7: around my own age, so I trusted that this person
Speaker 7: was who they said they were. I was who I
Speaker 7: said I was. Why would somebody lie That never came
Speaker 7: up in my mind, and he immediately began to groom me,
Speaker 7: And of course I didn't know it at the time.
Speaker 7: There were no red flags, and none that I could
Speaker 7: be aware of. He began acting as though he was
Speaker 7: my friend. We sat around the dinner table, We laughed.
Speaker 7: It was the holiday. We had a family meal, which
Speaker 7: we would.
Speaker 1: Have every year.
Speaker 7: It was a good buck meal, and my mom and
Speaker 7: dad were there, my brother and his girlfriend, and my grandma.
Speaker 7: So it's a really beautiful evening. The snow was falling,
Speaker 7: and I asked my mother if I could be excused
Speaker 7: from the table, and instead of going upstairs to lie down,
Speaker 7: I slipped out of the front door, past the Christmas
Speaker 7: tree that was up, and into the coldest, darkest, iciest
Speaker 7: night of the year. And to tell you how effective
Speaker 7: grooming is, I was a child who was really quite
Speaker 7: scared of the dark, hated the cold with a passion,
Speaker 7: and never went outside alone after dark. Yet completely out
Speaker 7: of my character, I walked out of that front door
Speaker 7: and didn't take my coat. I left the door open
Speaker 7: just a little bit because I was planning on coming
Speaker 7: right back through it and out into my neighborhood, and
Speaker 7: this is my neighborhood and it should be safe. And
Speaker 7: again it was beautiful. The snow was untouched, and there
Speaker 7: were Christmas lights in the windows, and it was a
Speaker 7: really beautiful, quiet, peaceful night, which soon became my hell.
Speaker 7: I walked up the street just about a block or so,
Speaker 7: and if I turned around, I could still.
Speaker 8: See my house.
Speaker 7: So I thought, okay, well there's my house. I must
Speaker 7: be safe again. Neighborhood, this is my familiar. Finally, this
Speaker 7: little voice spoke up in my head, my intuition, which
Speaker 7: I ask everybody to listen to and to teach your
Speaker 7: children to listen, to pay attention to it, because it
Speaker 7: is there for a reason. I heard this little boy say, Alicia,
Speaker 7: this is dangerous. Go home now. And I turned around
Speaker 7: and next thing I know is in a car, and
Speaker 7: this man was squeezing my hand so tightly that I
Speaker 7: thought he had broken it, and he was barking commands
Speaker 7: at me, be good, be quiet. The trunks cleaned out
Speaker 7: for you. He showed me that he had handcuffs. And
Speaker 7: people ask me, when did you know that you were
Speaker 7: in danger? When did you become afraid? And it was
Speaker 7: absolutely immediately I knew that I was no longer in
Speaker 7: control of my life.
Speaker 1: And then the story, believe it or not, gets worse.
Speaker 7: He just continued to drive, and there were told booth
Speaker 7: after told booth, and I can remember the sound of
Speaker 7: the car stopping at this house, and the car stopped,
Speaker 7: and he rushed out of the car, came to the
Speaker 7: other side and dragged me out into this house down
Speaker 7: a flight of stairs which felt like they went on
Speaker 7: forever and ever and ever, and that they were descent
Speaker 7: into hell, and that's exactly what they were. He got
Speaker 7: to the bottom of the stairs and there was a
Speaker 7: door with a padlock on it. He unlocked the door,
Speaker 7: pushed me inside, picked me up like I weighed absolutely nothing,
Speaker 7: propped me up on this table, forced me to look
Speaker 7: at him, and said this is going to be really
Speaker 7: hard for you. It's okay to cry. And then he
Speaker 7: turned on the lights and this room was blanketed. These
Speaker 7: walls were blanketed with these devices that I certainly couldn't understand,
Speaker 7: but that they were there to torture somebody, and that
Speaker 7: somebody was me. And this has been called by the
Speaker 7: media a dungeon, and again that's what it was. After that,
Speaker 7: he removed my clothing and placed a locking dog collar
Speaker 7: around my neck with another padlock. And then that was
Speaker 7: the first night that he roused me. After he read me,
Speaker 7: he reached down, grabbed a chain attached to the collar,
Speaker 7: and then fell asleep.
Speaker 2: Back to Titanya Jordan joining US Chief Parent Officer Bart
Speaker 2: Parental Controls, I've got so many more true life narratives
Speaker 2: about children being lured online. Please help us, Titania. What
Speaker 2: can we as parents do?
Speaker 6: The first thing you can do, the best free tip
Speaker 6: I have for anybody, is to keep connected tech out
Speaker 6: of your children's bedrooms, out from behind closed doors. The
Speaker 6: second thing I would say is, please do not assume
Speaker 6: not my child. It could happen to any child, the
Speaker 6: smartest children, the most loved children. It can happen to
Speaker 6: any child. So your child needs to know they can
Speaker 6: come to you with anything dangerous or confusing online and
Speaker 6: you're not going to freak out, but you will help
Speaker 6: them navigate the landscape. That is the axis you have
Speaker 6: given them, which is the entire world. Now you don't
Speaker 6: have to give them access to the entire world. There
Speaker 6: are safer pieces of tech out there. There are parental
Speaker 6: controls like bark. You don't have to give your child
Speaker 6: an open iPhone. For example, you can go with a
Speaker 6: safer smartphone for a child that lets you set parental
Speaker 6: controls and time limits. And please, please please do not
Speaker 6: just hand over tech to your child and think they'll
Speaker 6: be okay. You have to do the work. You have
Speaker 6: to be the parent when.
Speaker 2: You're talking about parental controls. Believe it or not, a
Speaker 2: lot of people don't know how to find them.
Speaker 1: They're not tech savvy, nor should they be. Why should
Speaker 1: they be.
Speaker 2: You know, Titanya, Moms and dads all over the country,
Speaker 2: all over the world are working all day. They're coming home,
Speaker 2: they're trying to put a meal on the table or yeah,
Speaker 2: and just holding it together. If you say find the
Speaker 2: parental controls, are like, what what is she saying?
Speaker 1: Explain it?
Speaker 6: Yes, okay. So, thankfully, because of AI, the ability to
Speaker 6: turn on parental controls is much easier. So go to Google,
Speaker 6: go to chat, GPT, go to Claude and say, hey,
Speaker 6: my child has this type of phone, uses this app,
Speaker 6: or wants to has this gaming console. We have this
Speaker 6: home in our net service provider. Help me give me
Speaker 6: a step by step guide for how to turn on
Speaker 6: the parental controls from my household, and it should give
Speaker 6: you step by step by step by step. Now it
Speaker 6: won't always be one hundred percent accurate, but the bottom
Speaker 6: line is ask your preferred search engine how to turn
Speaker 6: on the perntal controls for the things your child actually uses,
Speaker 6: and before that, don't be afraid to delay. Delay is
Speaker 6: the way. They don't have to have Snapchat in sixth grade.
Speaker 6: They don't have to have a smartphone in eighth grade.
Speaker 6: You are the parent. You are in control and if
Speaker 6: and when it's time for your child to access certain things,
Speaker 6: look up what is the safest way for my child
Speaker 6: to use xyz? The safest way for my child to text?
Speaker 6: The best way to track their location? Use search to
Speaker 6: your advantage and be empowered that you are not alone
Speaker 6: and making safer choices.
Speaker 1: Titania Jordan, You're amazing. Thank you for any and all advice. Guys.
Speaker 2: Also, we are releasing a one on one with Titania
Speaker 2: for she gives us a tutorial going through all the
Speaker 2: ways you can keep your children safe online. And now
Speaker 2: we remember an American hero, Deputy Sheriff Adam Davis Bell
Speaker 2: County Sheriffs, Texas. He passed away in the line of
Speaker 2: duty and leaves behind grieving parents Carlos and Guadalupe, and
Speaker 2: son Lance, American hero Sheriff Adam Davis. Thank you to
Speaker 2: our guests, but especially to you for being with us tonight.
Speaker 2: Nancy Gray signing off, but I'll see you tomorrow night,
Speaker 2: and until then, good night friend,