Original subtitles

At the tone, please record your message.

Yummy!

Elise is cooking the bread

because me and mom don't know how.

Last time she made bread,

it had flames on it about yay high.

I don't believe it.

It was November 13th, 2009,

when 21-year-old Christina Whittaker disappeared.

Eight months later, I met her mother, Cindy,

while I was filming a documentary

about families of the missing

and I was really inspired by her determination

to find her daughter.

So on the one year anniversary of Christina's disappearance,

I started filming the search.

I had no idea what I was stepping into at the time.

There's this air of suspicion

and danger that hang over everyone

and everything connected to this case.

In Hannibal, Missouri,

it seems like everyone's got something to hide.

This isn't just a story about a girl gone missing.

It's a story about a town filled with lies

and corruption and violence

and a decade-long journey

that became an obsession to find the truth.

Someone knows something.

I think a lot of someones know something.

- Come on. - Oh, no.

You just relax or whatever.

Come over here.

He always makes me do all the family... -

No, he won't do it.

You'll get him today though, aren't you a girly girl?

You'll get him today?

Yeah, I mean, by the... You're not even going to notice me.

This don't seem like a year she's been gone.

There's pictures of her.

Let her say I'm looking through pictures of my mommy.

- Who is this? - My mommy there.

Is that your mommy?

Who's this? Who's that?

Is that mommy too?

My mommy.

There's mommy getting baptized and you and mommy.

Look, there's mommy's school pictures.

There you are on mommy's lap.

There's papa.

Yes, give him kisses. Give papa kisses.

Yay! Yay!

Alexandria was six months old when she went missing

and Alexandria was her life.

This is Alexandria's birthday picture

when she was just turning her first birthday.

How old is she now?

18 months.

The first three months I'd say when Christina went missing

she'd just cry herself to sleep every night

and you couldn't even touch her.

She was just inconsolable.

We got a lot of pictures of Christina.

She's always been a really pretty girl.

That was me and her last summer acting goofy.

She had the phone to her ear there.

She never let go of her phone

and always had her little phone up her ear

almost all of her pictures.

This is her getting baptized.

This was two months, see August the 30th.

That was two months before she went missing.

So I know God's with her.

I know what, you know, she just got baptized

and, you know, renewed her, you know, self with God

and I know, I know God's watching over her.

My mom, my mama is there.

Christina, smile!

For Christina, I was her rock.

No matter what, I was always there for her

and she knew that.

So, I mean, you know, we were always close.

I was on the phone with her, I mean, constantly.

Being in constant contact with me, she had to have that.

The first boy, I wanted a little girl so bad

and both times I was pregnant,

the ultrasounds had said I was going to have a little girl,

so they'd come out as boys.

And the third time I was pregnant we'd done the ultrasound,

they're like, "Do you want to know?"

I was like, "No, y'all missed it."

You was wrong the last two times.

"I'm just going to know when it's born."

She was two weeks overdue.

I didn't think she was ever going to come.

She just, in her own time

and Dr. Olim delivered all three of my kids.

She's like, "Oh, you got your little girl, Cindy."

Just this precious.

Whole great big head full of red hair.

Alex and I got together when Christina was two.

In her eyes that was her dad.

She was crazy about him and he's crazy about her, you know.

That was her dad in her eyes.

Her and her brother, Brian, probably was a little more closer

because Jeremy was older and he had left home.

Brian and her were closer in age

and they would go out together sometimes or just play together even.

You know, they, they was pretty close.

She was a good kid.

Always been a good kid, you know, just a joy.

Everybody, you know, in the family just close to her

and she just won all of our hearts.

- I am... - You are pregnant, you said.

I'm five and a half months right here.

Amanda, let's see your belly.

Christina and I, we had met in our early,

probably pre-teen years.

We hung out together every day.

We lived with each other virtually.

Her personality was beyond anything.

Like, she could make a whole room light up.

She was a major rock, like, a positive rock, you know.

She loved her little nephew, Brian...

You've fallen down little man!

...and her world kind of stemmed around him.

One, two, come here Come on, gimme a countdown.

I got him down. One, two, three, whoa.

She was just, she was an amazing aunt.

She wanted to do a million different things.

Love the camera. Love the camera.

She wanted to sing. She wanted to dance.

She wanted to be a veterinarian.

She wanted, she wanted to be this big star.

She wanted to be on Broadway.

She wanted, she wanted to do so much,

she, couldn't pinpoint it.

She was an amazing person, beautiful soul.

Hold her head up, I can't see her face. There you go.

We lived in Hannibal there.

We've lived there all of our lives,

both of us and our kids are born and raised, all of us there.

Are you counting your eggs before they're hatched, Christina?

Yeah.

It was safe. I mean, you didn't hear of bad things so much happening.

We didn't lock doors.

I mean, you really didn't even need a lock for your door.

It always has been like that.

This is a tourist town, Mark Twain tourist town.

This is America's hometown.

Everybody always tells me I'm so strong, and I'm really not.

You want to protect your kids from everything and I can't protect her from anything.

The night Christina went missing,

we went out of town and she was staying at our house

actually helping take care of my mom.

Her boyfriend, Travis, was there.

And so was my son, and his wife taking care of her.

She was just going to go out for a couple hours

and then come right back home.

I had a bad feeling.

You know, just some other thing, I'm sure,

but I said, "We'll be home tomorrow night, you know.

We can go out then." And I said, "Just stay home tonight."

She said, "Mom, you worry too much."

She said, "I'll be fine. Just going out for a few hours."

She'd been talking about wanting to go out to the bar that night.

I said, "I'll stay in. You want to go out, go out."

I'm not going." And I told her I'd never stop her, you know.

Got the baby all washed up and laid her down for bed

and took her to the bar,

you know, kissed her and she got out of the car, went inside.

We had a band playing that night

and she came in about 8:45

and sat at the bar on the corner.

And there was a guy down there

that bought her and her friends shots all night.

See, Christina wasn't really a heavy drinker,

so, I mean, she was pretty intoxicated.

She started getting belligerent towards me

and I told her, I said, "Well, we're going to ask you to leave."

My boss went over there with me

and we both asked her real nice to leave.

She wanted to fight, so he grabbed her on one side,

I grabbed her on the other side and we just walked her to the back door.

And then when I turned back around

to come back up to the front, she came back in.

So I asked her to leave again.

And I don't remember if there was one or two guys,

but one guy came in and grabbed her

and then they actually left.

- And then... - Could you describe them at all?

Uh, were they white guys, black guys?

He was a black male, I remember that

and I don't really remember what he looked like too much.

She was in here really wasted.

You know, we've kicked so many drunk people out of here

and we can't really worry that are they going to have a cab,

or are they going to have a ride or, because if this,

especially if it's not closing yet.

- Right. - Just get out of our bar

as we know they'll end up

in another one down the street.

It was about 10:30,

Brian brought the phone in and said Christina's on the phone.

I talked to her for a little bit.

Touched base, you know.

See how everybody's doing at the house, how her kid's doing, you know.

She did love her daughter.

She didn't give no designated time

what time she was coming home.

She come in about the time we's getting ready to close up.

She said that she got kicked out of Rookies,

she got kicked out of Billiards

and she was on the phone to this guy and then they kept arguing back and forth.

And finally she just put her phone down

and I said, "Well, let me, I'll call you a cab

and you can go home to your mom's."

Because I've known her all my life.

And next thing I know, she darted out the back door

and that's the last time we all seen her.

I woke up the next morning, she wasn't there.

I was like, "What in the world's going on?"

Her boyfriend called us at seven o'clock in the morning

and said she didn't come home

and he had to be at work and he had the baby.

So, I mean, you know, we knew right then something,

you know, wasn't right because, I mean, Christina always called.

She always checked in and that's was just a thing with us.

I mean, she's just...

We really knew when, when she didn't call by noon,

you know, we knew something was wrong.

We started panicking.

We called the police and made a report over the phone.

I mean, we were just trying to get home as fast as we could.

The next morning,

her phone was found on the ground a block from the bar

and a man named Danny Baker had found it.

And he knew Christina. She had known him for quite a few years.

He said it was about 7, 7:30,

he was walking up to his mom's house

and he said he seen it on the ground and picked it up

and was looking through it.

He'd recognized Christina's aunt's name in the phone

and he took it to her aunt.

Her aunt had called Travis because it was in,

his number was in there and she knew Travis.

When he got off work, he come got the phone.

I got the phone from him, I went in there

and looked at who all she called and the times

and I wrote them all down.

She didn't have any out of the ordinary texts.

Anybody she called was family.

I don't think the police requested it until that Monday.

After she had been missing, the detectives come in and they wanted her phone.

So I gave it back to Travis and that Monday he took it down to 'em.

As far as the police, they don't know how to handle it, you know.

Hannibal is so small, I mean, if it's not a speeding ticket,

DWI, or loud music, or running a stop light,

they don't want nothing to do with it.

There was signs of foul play and they wouldn't say it.

They said, no sign of foul play, you know.

Her phone was found two blocks down the street,

there was a hit-and-run at that house.

KHQA's Late News.

Christina Whittaker was last seen

in this area along Broadway and Hannibal.

Christina's cell phone was found a few blocks from the bar.

There was also a hit and run reported

where her cell phone was found,

where someone hit a parked vehicle and then just left.

The owner said their vehicle was parked in front of their house.

Someone had hit the front of their vehicle.

The Hannibal police department didn't really take it seriously

that whole first weekend and in Hannibal,

I mean, you don't even have detectives that work on the weekend.

So I'm getting leads. People are calling me.

I talked to seven different police officers

and I'd have to explain the whole thing over

every single time I called about her missing.

It was crazy.

The police would say, "Oh, we got it handled."

And I called the detective and said,

"You ain't got nothing handled until you find my daughter."

I went down into our drug neighborhood, a bad neighborhood

and I was giving flyers at every single door

and it was on the streets that a guy named Bookie took her to Peoria.

Darcy Morris also known as Bookie,

multiple women have accused Morris of physical abuse and sexual assault,

including several who have come forward

since Christina Whittaker's disappearance.

There were several times I got beat up by him.

Bookie, he was beating on my friend, Sharelle, one day

and no one was saying anything.

And I stood up and he knocked me out for it.

There was a girl in Hannibal, she used to date this Bookie guy

and she'd gotten a call from one of his friends down there in Peoria.

"He was saying, "Well, I was sitting in Bookie's kitchen

and Christina come up from the basement covered in blood

because he beat her because she begged him to let her come home."

According to the FBI,

Peoria, Illinois, is one of the most dangerous cities in the United States.

It has more violent crime per capita than Chicago and Washington, DC.

In recent years, it's reportedly become a hub for human trafficking.

Less than a month after Christina disappeared,

Hannibal police tracked Darcy Morris

to a Peoria county jail.

When questioned about his whereabouts on the night of Christina's disappearance,

he answered that he was with his wife celebrating their anniversary.

His wife supported this alibi when she was questioned.

There have been unconfirmed reports

and sightings of Whittaker last Sunday morning in a cafe in Creve Coeur, Illinois,

which is across the Illinois River from Peoria.

She came in the morning.

She was kind of upset

and she asked to use our phone and I said, "Do you need a ride somewhere?

Do you want to call taxi?" "No, I'm good. I'm fine."

And she sat the table for a minute.

She didn't get anything, no drink, no food, no nothing

and then she just got out and started walking.

I got to looking at the picture

and I said, "That's that girl from this morning."

And they're like, "Are you sure?" I'm like, "Yeah, that's her."

She was in the, you know, wrong place at the wrong time,

needed a ride and, you know, she was vulnerable.

A lady that I had been friends with for many years calls me up,

said, "Hey, my son was in Billiards."

The bar next to the one she'd gotten kicked out of

and she said that they seen her arguing with two black guys.

So, I mean, it could have been this Bookie guy.

I do believe Bookie took her to Peoria.

Got her on some drugs right away,

put her into prostitution, you know, to make money off of her.

There's not a lot of help out there for the missing and their families.

You have reached the Hannibal police department non-emergency line.

If you know your party's extension, you may enter it now or...

Lieutenant Kathy Davis.

Is not available at the moment.

At the tone, record your message.

Hi there. My name is Christina Fontana.

I believe I spoke with you last week.

I would really love to talk to anybody, um,

at your department, uh, about Christina's case.

And, yeah, just give me a call back whenever you can.

Thank you. Bye.

Phew!

So, no dice again.

To understand how Christina Whittaker came into my life,

I need to take you back to where this journey all began for me, in 2007.

I was living in New York City and I was on a rooftop with my friend, Elisa,

and she was telling me the story of her brother's disappearance.

Jeffery Ben went missing from Antlers, Oklahoma, in 2001.

He left a party

and the next morning Jeffrey was nowhere to be found.

My friend was telling me she didn't really feel like

the police were taking it seriously.

They said that, "Well, he's 18. He's an adult.

He has a right to go missing."

So Elisa basically had to take control of her brother's investigation.

In 2006,

some loggers reported that they spotted what looked like human remains.

Police allowed the family to go to see if they could find something.

And Elisa described to me, being in the area

and noticing something on the ground.

I'll never forget...

her...

describing to me...

what it was like

to hold in her hand her brother's rib bone.

Why was she there? Where was law enforcement?

I began to research what it was like

for families of the missing to shine a light on what they go through

and found that there was a commonality of families feeling

abandoned by law enforcement, feeling like they had to do their own investigating.

I connected with a nonprofit called Project Jason.

It was run by a mother named Kelly out of her kitchen in Omaha, Nebraska,

after her son, Jason, went missing in 2001.

Welcome, welcome, everyone.

It is so great to see you and I'm just so glad to have you here.

I met like a good 20 families and they all struggled with law enforcement,

struggled looking for their loved one,

they all didn't have their answer

and it really just affected me.

Like, I don't have a loved one that's missing.

I don't know what it's like to be in these people's shoes.

But listening to their stories I really just, man, wanted to help in any way that I could.

I'm Cindy Young.

My daughter Christina's been missing nine months today.

I met Cindy and Alex in the summer of 2010.

Cindy came up to me and we got into a discussion

and told me that Christina was alive

and they tracked her to a 20 block radius in Peoria.

All of a sudden, I felt hope.

Finally, there might be something I can do here.

And if I could just go out there with them

and I could just help a little bit and pay for some searches

and get some resources in for them,

maybe, just maybe one of these endings can be a happy ending.

And that's why I joined the search for Christina.

I've had leads that Christina comes up here and eats lunch sometimes.

We'll just sit here and watch.

Look, he's right up in her face.

Oh, my God!

This reminds me of my daughter.

If I seen somebody cussing her like that,

I'd probably go and jump on his back.

Good afternoon, FBI.

Hi, I was calling to see if agent is in today.

One moment.

Hi,.

This is Cindy Young, Christina Whittaker's mom, um...

I was just calling to see if you ever did hear anything

about Christina or find out anything on her case.

I hadn't heard back from you.

How many times have you called him?

Oh, I'd say that's probably the fourth, maybe fifth time.

And he won't return any of your calls?

He hasn't so far.

You know, I went through the same thing with the police,

the sheriff's department and, you know, now this FBI.

I have went through it with all of them

and they just completely cut me out or cut me off

and don't respond at all to me.

I just can't help but think they know something

that they don't want me to know about.

God's going to put the right people in the right place

to help us, I know He is. I just know He is.

He's going to end this.

We're going to get our little miracle

and we're going to be able to go on start living our life again, finally.

I'm just tired.

This gotta end, it has to.

Well, we've about lost everything a couple times, though.

Had a guy ask me last night, how we financially deal with this daughter missing.

I said, "Look, we went from a new home to this."

I mean, we used to be all right in money

because that's, that's actually what they, we thought they took her for at first.

People thought we had money.

When she went missing, I mean, we just ended up,

you know, just we was just selling, you know, everything.

Like, you know, we had our WaveRunners.

I mean, I sold my tanning bed, just anything we had of value we would sell

because, you know, we needed that money to go search on for her.

Do a wheelie, honey.

I mean, we borrowed money.

We had things donated, money donated, fundraisers,

everything we could to be able to search.

We had a benefit, and had a fundraiser

and raised money to hire a private investigator

and we hired Bill Rinehart from Quincy, Illinois.

When I was contacted,

all the information I have came from the parents.

I met with the lieutenant in charge of their investigations, the detective.

He didn't really release any information to me

but wanted to know everything I knew, which to me is not a...

This type of work is not a one-way street,

it's supposed to be two-ways so that we cooperate and share

and that didn't seem to be happening.

You really don't know how much you're on your own out here.

Or even family can be about things like,

like it ain't no big deal.

Like, she, well, she just run off.

Well, we know she didn't just run off.

I mean, you know your kids. And she was close to us.

I mean, she treated us like she was still a baby, you know.

She'd jump up in the bed with us and...

Because she's got the bipolar,

I think it's part of her bipolar though, you know.

- Yeah. - She's very kid.

Christina is childlike. She's very childlike.

She was diagnosed at the age of 17 with bipolar disorder.

She called me 10, 15 times every day.

I mean, it was a part of her bipolar.

Both of us, yeah, especially mom.

She had to be in contact with us at all times. Yeah.

She loves computers. She's fascinated.

And Christina, she named her after Alex.

Her name's Alexandria.

She asked me one day, she said, "Mom," she said, "I want to ask you something."

She said, "This is really, really serious."

She said, "If anything happens to me,"

she said, "I want you to promise me,

you and dad will raise Alexandria."

I said, "Well, honey, there's nothing going to happen to you."

And she said, "You never know, Mom."

I said, "Well, Dustin's her daddy."

And she said, "Mom," she said, "He don't do a good job

with the two girls he's got and I do not want him raising my baby."

And now, I mean, if he was to try to take her from us,

we wouldn't, we wouldn't probably be able to stop him.

He's her dad.

We're just grandparents.

And that worries me.

I'm always scared he's going to try to take her and we're not going to have her anymore.

She's the only thing pretty much that keeps me going.

I don't think he's brave enough to try take her baby from us

because he knows that, that baby's my life.

Yeah.

Telephone, Mama.

Hello?

Yes, sir, I'm. My daughter, Christina, is missing.

She's 22.

It's a lead.

And she does go by Christina.

I just don't know what she's like now, honey.

I've not seen her in a year, so I can't, you know what I mean, I can't really say.

She'd never done drugs in her life.

Supposedly they had her out there on drugs.

Yeah, I'll know if it's her.

Oh, I won't, I won't say a word.

Okay. Well, thank you so much for calling me. Bye.

He said he thinks that

his girlfriend's best friend is friends with this other girl

and this other girl's best friend,

he said he think they think it's Christina.

She lives around Chillicothe.

That's a little town close to here.

So they're going to call on three-way

and I have to be quiet, not say a word

and listen to the conversation to see if it's her.

He said if it's her, they'll get her down over their house

and he said he'll help us.

Cross our fingers.

Try not to get my hopes up really high,

but sometimes it's hard not to.

Here, don't say a word. Put her in the back and shut that door.

Sit down.

I'm shaking.

The call ended. We got cut off.

Let's see if he'll call me right back.

Yeah, it's unknown.

Hello..

Okay, it's on mute now.

Alex. Alex.

It's not her.

Listen to this. It's not Christina.

No.

Yeah, that wasn't her, honey.

No. But...

Oh, and her name's Christina too, isn't that something?

Oh, hon, I just never thought I'd see this one year date without her, you know,

and it just, it's been, been hard,

you know, been a hard year, you know.

And she's not in trouble or anything like that.

Well, I appreciate you calling me.

Okay, bye.

What are you doing,?

Enjoying my 18th birthday.

- It's your birthday again? - 18.

Is it recharging?

Smilin'. Cheese!

There's the back of my mom's head.

Turn around, say hi to the camera.

Show me love, people. Talk to me.

Wouldn't it be nice for us to find something out today, though?

Yesterday was the 12th.

My dad was dead ten years, uh, on the 12th, ten years ago yesterday.

So, I thought, well, maybe it would be nice to hear something on that day.

And we've got flyers at most of the businesses up there.

There's several liquor stores and...

So, why do you think like what could be some of the reasons

why if she sees these missing posters

and she hears that, you know, obviously that means some families in the area, like,

why do you think that what is scaring her?

Well, I think, like I said, with this Bookie guy,

when she first was taken,

she was beaten for wanting to come home to her family for Christmas.

I think she's just brainwashed by now and she's scared.

And Darcy's out of jail right now.

So do you think he could be threatening her?

Yeah. I believe she calls me 'cause I get restricted calls.

And they just hang up?

And they sometimes are on there for a couple minutes or five...

I've had them up for three, four minutes and then they'll hang up.

Even my voicemail, I said, "If this is Christina,"

I said, "We love you, we miss you and we need you home."

We could go down to that street, Frank Street.

Frank is where my friend's niece seen her at in June,

they seen her down on this street here.

And my friend's niece lived right next door and she talked to her.

She said, uh, that, she spoke to Christina, you know,

and that's what she told her that she's never allowed to come back to Hannibal again.

Cindy Young, growing up, man,

we were real good friends, man.

Yeah, I know Cindy real well.

She had this private investigator get a hold of me, Bill Rinehart.

He said go to Peoria with me.

I said, yeah, I'll go to Peoria with you.

So me and her nephew, Henry, went up there.

So I went down through handing out flyers and stuff.

And one of my nieces lived next door.

She said, "Yeah, uncle, I seen this girl next door."

I said, "Are you sure it's this girl here?"

She said, "Yeah, this that girl missing from Hannibal."

I said, "So where is she?"

She said she's over there with Bookie.

Somebody was next door.

So we walked down through there and we seen this little blue car pull up.

I think it was a little Honda, maybe a Toyota.

And Henry looked right away,

he said, "Man, there's Christina right there in that car."

Did she see you guys? Did she see...

She'd seen Henry and just started backing the car up real fast.

So I told Bill, I said, "Man, block his car out, Christina's in his car."

But he let the car get away.

I see how they block these streets off,

and that's because of gang activity.

They kind of keep them sectioned off

and it's easier for the police to control them.

What's up with the FBI?

This seems like a big enough situation where if there's a sex trafficking lead...

My investigator did when, after he seen her up here,

my investigator did contact the Illinois FBI

and he said they didn't, he said they didn't seem like he got very far with them.

And the Missouri, FBI,

they've worked with the Hannibal police on this case ever since day one.

But, um, they say this,

they just say the same as the Hannibal police,

there's no signs of foul play, which hurts us.

You know what I mean?

Find our daughter and get our lives back together.

Say where's mommy. Say where's my mom.

My momma.

Where's my mom?

Where's she at?

Yeah, it's a Saturday night, you don't get to stay at home

and night and watch TV or any, relax or anything like that,

you know, when you have to be out here looking.

When you're riding around, you just look up all the alleys

and all the side streets and see somebody that looks like her.

Yeah, I put a flyer in this little grocery store here.

Well, they said they had seen her before.

Both the men that worked in there,

they said a girl come in there and ripped it down, took it with her.

We've dealt with that though where we have,

we even in Hannibal ever since she's been missing,

there's so many people that just rip our flyer down.

Yeah, buried up by a pond, floating in the river,

fed to the hogs, we've heard it all.

I had been told that she was dead.

And I believe it was some of the guys who took her.

You know, they got word out on the street that she'd been killed

and, you know, we'd never find the body.

And, you know, and that's their way of getting word to me to back off.

They think it's going to make me stop. I'm never going to stop.

They took the wrong daughter.

Hey, how's it going?

What happened?

Cindy calls me every time she gets a new lead, which's a lot.

I had a couple of people tell me, you know, she's here and she's pregnant.

Son. I thought she had a girl.

I mean, if she didn't tell you about July

because she didn't know, how come now that she knows that you're looking for her

and she's seen her lately, they didn't call you?

Every time I fly out to Peoria to chase down these leads,

her sources disappear before I even get a chance to meet them.

There's a restaurant, so she comes in there about twice a week and eats.

Got my fingers crossed.

We got the call from a couple guys

and said they had seen Christina.

It's tough because I feel like...

I mean, every time there's always somebody who's like,

"Oh, yeah, yeah, she's with this person,"

or "She's at this house, come right now,"

and every time you guys show up.

- Oh, yeah. - They're like...

- Yeah, and I think what it... - We just missed her.

Yeah, and it's frustrating because, you know, here these people are, they know her,

they see her, you know, but yet they're lying to us.

And we're here, we're here to help her.

We're not here, you know, she's not in any trouble.

But the information they're giving us is from people

that we can't even find out who they are.

They're not credible sources.

My brother, Mike, just said that, you know, he talked to a girl

that said that she had seen Christina

walking down there around Western just a couple days ago.

Man, why can't we see her walking and run into her?

Jeez.

Alexandria's all we got left of Christina right now.

So we cling to her a lot.

And she does us too.

She'd come up to me and ask me,

didn't she a couple weeks ago, "Where's my mom at?"

I didn't think, I thought we'd have a while before she asked that question.

She's only three. She asks for her mom a lot.

What honey?

Who?

Devin?

No, I never heard of... Is it a guy?

Never heard? Yeah.

Does he live there in Hannibal?

What?

Said what?

So did he text it to... Did you see the text?

Somebody in, in Teddy's family got it, probably one of his kids or something.

Yeah, yeah.

How did they know and they know that,

that Devin Crockett is the one who sent the message?

Do they know that for sure it was from him?

I wonder if that was from where she first went missing because I know...

I mean, I wonder how old the text was

or when it was sent because... I mean...

- I don't know. - Because I know she was...

I had been told she'd been held in a basement when she was first taken.

- Yeah. - I knew that.

That Bookie, that Christina, she was at his house

and Christina come up from the basement covered in blood where he beat her because...

- Yeah. - ...she begged,

didn't let her come home to her family for Christmas.

Oh, my gosh!

Can you forward the text to me to my phone?

- All right. - Thanks, hon.

- Bye. - Bye.

Somehow or another my cousin, Teddy,

got a hold of a cell phone that said Christina's been in the basement long enough,

we need to get her out of there.

And they took, took it to my cousin, Teddy,

took the phone to the Hannibal police station

and they took pictures of it, the text.

- I don't know. - That might be a good thing

because now maybe they take this serious instead of she just run off.

That's my cousin in Hannibal.

I appreciated them doing that, taking that down to the police station.

This Devin Crockett, I don't know who this is.

It's his old phone.

You know, people give, I figured when you sell your phone,

when they get a new one and somebody needs one or something like that...

- Pass it along. - ...or pass it along.

And somebody maybe locked that text in there,

you know, and just, you know, they didn't want to go to the police themselves.

A lot of people know what happened to Christina

and a lot of people there in Hannibal know about her case but they just won't talk.

You know, a lot of people knows who, who done what and, you know.

Well, I mean, yeah, our people lives down there in our hood.

I mean, every Hannibal's got a drug area and a bad area.

We call it the hood, I mean,

but it's the type of people who are not going to come forward.

I got the text forwarded to me.

It says hide the body in the basement.

Christina basement.

What are the odds of somebody in my family

getting a hold of that text,

getting hold of that phone, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, that is... I mean, Hannibal's not a big town,

grant you, but, I mean, you know, it's big enough.

I don't know, something just don't sit right with it.

So I am in a hotel.

It is July 17th, 2012.

I've been on this case for about two and a half years

and, uh, things are starting to get a little bit bizarre.

It actually seems that

Cindy's just believing anything people are telling her.

Now I'm getting all of these stories filtered through her

that people have seen her, they've seen her pregnant,

they've seen her prostituting, they've seen her running drugs,

they've seen her on this end of town,

they've seen her on other end of town.

A lot of these rumors seem fantastical

and I'm starting to believe that none of them are true.

Are we to believe that somebody way back when had Christina's body

in their basement and they needed to get rid of it

because they murdered her

and sent a text to somebody about it,

didn't delete the text, gave their phone up,

that phone then got recycled

and just landed in the hands of Cindy's family?

Doesn't make sense.

We're about to go and interview her private investigator

and see what his take is on things.

But I just wanted to start pointing out that...

I don't really know what's going on here.

And hopefully we can try to find out.

Yesterday, we were in Peoria with Cindy.

She got a text message.

Somebody from Hannibal received a text message

that apparently got into Cindy's cousin's hand

and the text message said "We need to move the body from the basement."

Christina's body.

And apparently they brought this cell phone to the Hannibal police.

I don't know if anybody's looking into tracing this.

Yeah, I mean, when that was just like these rumors,

now where is the cell phone just popping up out of nowhere, you know?

- I... - Yeah.

I've not heard any of this.

I know nothing about this.

Yeah, yesterday she got it, yeah.

Cindy's not said anything to me, uh...

I don't know anything about it.

The police supposedly took a picture of the text

and hopefully are looking into it.

I find that, I find that real suspicious.

If that had any evidentiary value, why didn't they seize it?

The way you're describing the text message is describing a murder.

- Yeah. - And the destruction of evidence.

Yeah.

A police department should seize that automatically

until they can verify it.

I'm real concerned and real interested in why Cindy hadn't called me.

I would think I would certainly be involved or should be involved.

But it seems just too unbelievable

that this text message would just be...

just happen to end up in your family, you know, so...

You know, what, you know...

This is bizarre.

Have you ever considered the fact that message may be meant to you?

No, I never considered that at all.

Because if the police don't have it,

and I don't think they do,

then the only person it was directed to was you.

Okay, uh...

So if we're going to go with that, that person wants attention.

So, like why wouldn't that person...

That means that Cindy and Alex would be involved in it.

Oh, my God.

- No, I'm serious. I'm serious now. - Okay.

- The only thing that I'm aware of... - I'm gonna sit down.

...that's going on right now in this case is you.

You're the one that's seen it. They never sent it to me.

Yeah.

That would be really kind of messed up if...

That would make this story completely different.

I'm like, okay, well, what else isn't, isn't adding up?

And that was one of the reasons

I really wanted to talk to the police and to you

because I wasn't,

and I still can't imagine that I'm being played by the family.

That's the text message I got from Cindy

right before you talked to me this morning.

Whether we want to be or not, we are players in this big game.

But I don't take kindly to being played.

When she interviews you,

please don't tell her that somebody took Christina for a drug debt.

I appreciate it. So Christina has a history of drugs?

Yes.

And somebody took her for a drug debt.

Whose drug debt? Christina's drug debt? Or someone in the family?

And they knew about that the whole time?

That's what she don't want me to tell you about.

She was in the, you know, wrong place at the wrong time.

Needed a ride and, you know, she was vulnerable.

Okay, I'm sorry I'm asking you to repeat it again

because this is like a lot for me to take in, that I'm being used.

When did Cindy find out? How long has she known?

A couple of years.

Probably like months after Christina went missing?

Yes.

And I always heard rumors that she was taken into sex trafficking.

My daughter is missing.

She went out with friends there one night

and a couple guys brought her down here to Peoria

and they've drugged her and prostituted her.

If you're a drug user and you're trying to pay off drug debt,

how do you pay off that debt?

- Sex work. - Right.

And Christina had a drug problem?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

She's never done drugs in her life.

Supposedly they had her out there on drugs.

Now that's a whole different story

from what Cindy and Alex is going to want you to know.

I got to, I got to come fix.

This isn't your typical family.

This family had serious problems.

It's a real dysfunctional family all together.

- Got anything for me? - Uh-huh.

I'll have something for you later.

You're going to be home?

It's not a clean, neat package.

There's a whole lot more to this story than just that.

Yeah, I turned your world upside down. I'm sorry.