(classical music playing)
♪ ♪
(line ringing)
(Caller speaking)
Hey, how are you?
I'm good, I'm good. I've wanted to check in
to see how things are going.
Okay.
Right, do, do you think they were sex trafficking kids out of that house?
Natalie Wilson: When we first started the organization,
I think I cried every day.
I am very emotional, and very sensitive.
I still have a hard time
dealin' with a lot of these stories.
And the cases that disturb me the most
are cases of missing children.
(somber music playing)
♪ ♪
Thank you. Relisha Rudd is still missing.
Derrica Wilson: Can I share this with you?
Relisha disappeared from this hotel right here.
Person in car: Oh.
Derrica Wilson: Thank you.
Natalie Wilson: Relisha is a child missing from our community.
And there are so many unanswered questions
about her disappearance.
Relisha is D.C.'s heartbeat, D.C.'s baby.
Producer: Can I ask you a question or two?
-How old are you-- -How did this get in front of me?
Producer: Oh, that's recording your sound.
It's gonna put it up on there?
R-E-L-I-S-H-A.
Producer: That's a nice name.
Derrica Wilson: Relisha was a homeless kid
livin' in a homeless shelter,
you know, with her mom and her stepfather.
Cut.
Antonio Wheeler: Okay, well, my name is Antonio Wheeler.
I'm 33 years old.
I'm from and born in Washington D.C.,
and Relisha is my stepdaughter.
♪ ♪
It's your dance!
Shamika Young: Do your dance, Relisha, keep on.
Go ahead and do your dance, uh-huh.
Go ahead and do your dance.
(indistinct)
Wheeler: Relisha was very smart, energetic,
full of life.
Her smile can brighten your day up.
And she don't like when people mispronounce her name.
My little joke with her,
it was always be "Ralisha."
And, you know, she be like, "No, Daddy. It's Relisha."
I said, "Ralisha."
I met Shamika on Facebook.
I got close with her.
She was a good mom,
and she was lovin', she was carin'.
She did for her kids the best she could.
We eventually got together,
and I met Relisha when she was two.
The first time she called me Dad,
I fixed her a bowl of Oodles of Noodles,
and she acted like that was the best bowl of noodles she ever had.
I'll never forget that.
I had a bit of a rough childhood myself, um,
I was in the foster care system.
I guess Relisha seen somethin' in me
that I didn't know that was there.
You know, I can be a father.
I took pride at that, at that moment.
Shamika, she was in a program.
They provided her housing,
but she was losin' her voucher,
not obeyin' by the program rules,
so they kicked her out the program,
so we had to move to the shelter, D.C. General.
Producer: If I say a couple sentences to you,
can you say them back?
-Huh? -Producer: So, you say, "We live with our families."
We live with our families.
Producer: Okay, then look right over here and say,
"The D.C. General Family Shelter."
The D.C. Family Gen-- Uh, D.C. General Family Shelter.
Wheeler: You know, that was my first time, actually, in a shelter.
It was scary for me and my kids.
We had mold, we had lice,
you know, we had some, you know,
staff monitors not abidin' by the rules,
had staff monitors havin' sex with the residents,
havin' babies, so we're just like, it was just, it was awful.
Derrica Wilson: Relisha and her family were caught in a cycle
of poverty and homelessness.
There is a lot of people out here one paycheck from being homeless.
But Black folks are far more vulnerable.
Forty percent of homeless people are Black,
yet Black people make up only 13% of the population.
That number is alarming.
Wheeler: I was tryin' to save up money
so we could move out on our own,
so I was always out of town working,
you know, at weeks and months at a time.
One day, I get back in town, and Relisha wasn't around.
I asked Shamika, "Where's Relisha?"
And, you know, she say, "Oh, she's at Ashley's house,"
which is Shamika's sister.
But, as time went on,
I went to go get my kids and Relisha from school,
and the school councilman, Mr. Workman,
he told me Relisha's absent.
Laboné Workman: Here's the thing, I would see
the family constantly,
I saw 'em every day,
and I saw the siblings every day.
I just didn't see Relisha.
I had a conversation with the mom,
and if I'm not mistaken, the grandmother, too,
and they told me that she was
having these migraines.
Wheeler: I didn't know nothin' about her gettin' headaches,
so I didn't know she was out of school.
Workman: When they gave me the handwritten note
that she was getting looked at by a doctor...
I knew there were doctors at the shelter,
but I needed official documentation,
so I told the family,
"Let me get the doctor's information."
And then maybe a couple days later,
they provided me with the scrap of piece of paper that said
that this is Dr. Tatum
along with Dr. Tatum's phone number.
I called this Dr. Tatum, I introduced myself,
and told him
that I was trying to get documentation to excuse
Relisha's absences from school as they were amassing.
So, it was a back and forth with him
on the phone trying to get him to fax it.
The Principal at the time, Visom, said, she goes,
"Just go down there and get the letters."
So, I hop in my truck, and I go down.
And this is where it got...
(sighs)
it just got crazy real quick.
I'd called the counselor,
they said that they wouldn't be around,
but I could leave the letter with the dates missed
with the security guard.
I walk into the building, and I ask for a security guard.
I said, "This letter is for Dr. Tatum."
And she took the letter, like it was poison.
Took it like that. And I'm still like, "What's going on?"
And I walked away, but somethin' told me
to turn around and come back.
And lo and behold, the counselor was right there.
So, I said, "Listen,
"I'm here to pick up some excuse letters from Dr. Tatum
for this girl, Relisha Rudd."
And she, again, looked at me, like I had two heads.
And then, next thing I know, she picked up the phone,
and she says, "Hello, Tatum,
"uh, Mr. Workman's here to pick up some letters from you.
Are you a doctor?"
You ever heard that thing where they say,
all the blood rushes to you--
I never had that experience before,
but when I tell you I couldn't hear anything,
I couldn't hear anything.
(imitates static)
All I could see was that lady on the phone,
and I sw-- It was like a tunnel.
Jennifer Donelan: Dr. Tatum.
He was, actually, Kahlil Tatum,
the janitor at the shelter.
(tense music playing)
It's the school social worker that noticed that
there was no Dr. Tatum,
that Tatum was actually a janitor.
That's when it all breaks loose.
Throughout that time,
Shamika... and her family,
and I have to say Shamika, mainly, 'cause she's the mother,
allowed Tatum to take Relisha
off of the premises.
He did that for a long time.
He was buying her gifts, and giving her things,
and allowing her to come and spend the night
at his house and with his wife.
Relisha's mother was vulnerable to grooming
living in a homeless shelter.
He built trust with her,
and she basically turned her daughter over to him.
Wheeler: I didn't get a bad vibe from Kahlil, you know,
but I didn't never approve of him spending time with Shamika
or my kids.
She said, "Oh, he givin' us money,
"and he helpin', helpin' us
look out for the kids." I said, "We don't need no help.
"So, why's you, you know,
spendin' so much time with this guy?"
Then come to find out
Kahlil got a long criminal record:
home invasions, all types of criminal charges.
He wasn't supposed to be around kids or nothin'.
So, how did he get a job there?
Chanel Dickers: The faculty at the school contacted
our Child and Family Services Agency,
and that's when we were first alerted that, um,
Relisha had been missing
for like a month.
(sirens wailing)
Wheeler: So, the same day that
Relisha's reported missin',
I see a bunch of police officer cars
at the shelter.
So, I'm askin' Shamika, you know,
"What happened? What's goin' on?
Why these people sayin' Relisha missin'?"
She's still nonchalant about it, not showin' no emotion.
And come to find out,
they found Kahlil's wife dead at the Red Roof Inn Hotel.
♪ ♪
Donelan: Relisha, she's announced as missing,
and then, that same day,
the janitor that she was allowed to leave the shelter with,
his wife is murdered in a hotel.
And Mr. Kahlil Tatum...
is the suspect.
That's when the coverage begins.
News Announcer 1: Tonight, an AMBER alert has been issued
for 8-year-old Relisha Rudd
and her possibly armed captor.
News Announcer 2: Police are now intensely searching
for a 1976 white GMC truck,
the little girl, and Kahlil Tatum.
Donelan: Then we find out that she hasn't been to school in weeks.
We find out the length of time that she was last seen.
How was a janitor able to walk out of a shelter
with an 8-year-old girl?
Reporter: Why did you trust him?
He didn't look like that type of person.
He looked like a good person.
The way he played with everybody kids,
the way he did his job,
when he needed to do his job buffin' them floors.
He didn't look like an intimidizin' person. He really didn't.
Reporter: Some people would say,
"Why didn't you call police
if your daughter was missing?"
I ain't wanna lose my other three kids.
That's why I didn't call the police.
There is no lack in coverage, locally.
Nationally, she, she didn't get enough.
News Announcer: Police issued the AMBER alert for Relisha...
When this information came out,
there was so many people that was reaching out,
you know, to let us know about her disappearance.
And I couldn't understand why
it wasn't a national AMBER alert.
It was really targeted, specifically,
to the Washington area...
but she can be anywhere.
She can be in Atlanta, she can be in Florida,
she can be in California, Texas, she can absolutely be anywhere,
and if we're not putting that information out there,
people outside of this area wouldn't know that she's missing.
Chief Cathy Lanier: I actually looked into that when I got that allegation.
The AMBER alert was issued, uh, as far north as
Pennsylvania and Delaware, and as far south as Florida.
News Announcer: We asked state police in Pennsylvania,
Delaware and Florida,
North Carolina, South Carolina,
New York, Maryland, and Virginia, too.
No AMBER alerts issued there for Relisha Rudd.
Natalie Wilson: On March the 25th,
the FBI issued a press release,
and they showed surveillance of 8-year-old Relisha...
with Tatum
walking down the hallway
at the Holiday Inn Express on New York Avenue,
and this footage is from
February 26th, a month earlier.
Workman: One of the worst images...
is seeing her walk down that nasty motel hallway.
You know, it just-- It looks like one of those
"No Tell" Motels, you know, on the side of the road
where people just go for little trysts, or... whatever.
It just looked so nasty and dank and dark.
She's in that space as a, as a little girl
with a grown man that has nothin' to do with her.
There's, there's nothin' good that can happen.
Wheeler: So the next few days,
they go on searches,
lookin' in woods.
They looked in Kenilworth Park.
News Announcer: Police initially began searching that park
after they found out Tatum had spent time there
in early March after buying large
industrial-sized trash bags.
Kenilworth Park Aquatic Gardens,
it's 700 acres.
It's huge.
Derrick Butler: The Metropolitan Police Department,
they called the community out
to help them find this little girl.
News Announcer: Black and Missing Foundation
was one of the few local organizations
selected to help D.C. police in their massive search effort
at Kenilworth Park.
Derrica Wilson: So many people have failed her,
this system failed her,
and we need people looking for her.
Natalie Wilson: We show up at Kenilworth Park,
MPD is leading,
they've broken us off into groups.
There were 50 people that were a part of the search,
and it was just a surreal moment.
We weren't sure what we would find.
Derrica Wilson: The goal was to try to canvass as much ground as possible.
Derrick Butler: We're lookin' for any children's articles,
shovel, bags,
just about anything that, you know, that we thought
might've been connected to the, uh, case.
Derrica Wilson: And then all of a sudden...
(radio chatter)
on the radio,
there was a call that came out.
Natalie Wilson: We all needed to step away.
(sirens wailing)
Derrica Wilson: A body was found in a park.
Donelan: I'm thinking...
"I don't want it to be her. Please don't let it be her."
Chief Lanier: In the course of our search today,
we did discover the body of an adult male,
uh, that is deceased.
It's Kahlil Tatum.
Butler: The area that we were searching,
they found Kahlil's body
where he had actually killed himself.
Donelan: And the anger that I felt
because he was the one,
he's the one who knew.
Natalie Wilson: He is the missing piece to Relisha.
Donelan: And now, he's taken that away from everyone.
It's selfish and a coward.
That's what I think, and I'm not supposed to have
personal feelings because I'm a reporter,
but I can say that now.
Wheeler: There's no sign or trace of Relisha.
And this is a child that calls me Daddy,
and the thing that I could think about the most,
even to this day, she was scared, she would--
Every time Relisha gets scared, she would call out for me.
So, that replays in my head, too.
News Announcer: The search for 8-year-old Relisha Rudd will wrap up
here today at Kenilworth Park in Northeast Washington.
We're all a bit relieved that we did not find Relisha here
the way we anticipated we would find her.
Um, it's heart-wrenchingly frustrating that we don't have
answers as to where she is right now.
Brenda Brown: There are politics on the police force,
in the mayor's office, there are politics everywhere.
They were horrified that it happened under their watch.
They were horrified that they hadn't found her.
They were horrified that the school didn't know,
or didn't report
that she'd been out of school for almost 30 days.
So, what did they do?
They shut down to the community.
That's what fired the community up.
Crowd (chanting): Rally for respect!
Rally for respect!
News Announcer: Dozens rallied outside the D.C. General Shelter,
activists from community and faith-based groups,
along with families who live there,
many of whom told us conditions are less than ideal.
Some rooms don't have no electric.
Um, we had a flood.
You only have six counselors helpin' a whole big buildin'.
News Announcer: The city has announced a plan to move
500 families out of the deteriorating shelter.
Jim Graham: This place just doesn't work,
and we could spend tens of millions of dollars
trying to make it work, and it still wouldn't work.
Vince Warren: If we were to strip away
all of the...
other things that contribute
to the challenges that we're facing with missing children,
it comes down to poverty.
We have generations and generations
in this country of Black families
that are deeply poor,
and they're making decisions
about survival.
They're not making decisions about strategic ways
to get their kid from elementary school
into the college of their choice,
but getting today to tomorrow,
keeping the family going until the next paycheck.
And those are the families that are the most vulnerable.
Natalie Wilson: There's just a vicious cycle
surrounding Relisha and her family.
Starting with her mother being in foster care.
As well as her stepfather, Antonio.
Callahan Walsh: It makes it much more difficult
for those children of these families to succeed.
When a child is removed from the home, and goin' to foster care,
63% of the time, it's because of neglect,
and that neglect oftentimes stems
from those lack of resources,
uh, that those communities can't provide to the children,
and then, they're taken away from these families,
and it's punishment for being poor.
My life been...
it been hard... and different.
When they couldn't decide on what happened with Relisha,
they took all the kids to foster care.
They destroyed my family.
They destroyed my life.
Blaq Rose: Relisha was 8 years old.
Everybody was supposed to have been protectin' her.
She was in a place where people are getting paid,
okay, salaries to watch out for the well-beings of families.
They failed her.
Natalie Wilson: The city ultimately conducted an investigation
on what happened to Relisha.
Their report indicated that there were some policies and processes
that should have been followed.
Tatum, he was a felon,
and he was allowed to work at the shelter.
But despite all of that,
the review found that her disappearance was nobody's fault.
All of these
agencies and processes that have been put in place
to protect these children, and to protect Relisha...
and it, it meant nothing.
So that family is victimized once again.
And Relisha remains missing,
and her brothers are now in the foster care system.
Relisha's mother, Shamika,
she believes that her daughter is still alive,
and she says, she'd never allowed Tatum
to take Relisha from the shelter.
Relisha deserved a life without poverty,
and inequality,
and she deserved to be protected from Kahlil Tatum.
Derrica Wilson: I have a picture,
and every time I look at this picture,
it makes me emotional.
Of this little girl,
who had just gotten off the Metro with her mom,
and, you know, we were passin' out flyers,
and she just stopped.
She was staring at the flyer.
I ask her, I said, "Do you know her?"
She looks up at me, and she says,
"She looks just like me."
(somber music playing)
Donelan: I'm so overwhelmingly jaded at this point...
that if you were to ask me, "Could that happen again?"
Hands down, yes.
Even after having gone through all that, hands down, yes.
It can and, unfortunately, it will happen again.
♪ ♪
Chantice Cotten: We're prayin' right now
as children are disappearin'...
we're prayin' right now to an end to the violence,
we're prayin' right now for the deception to be uncovered.
We're prayin' right now for those that are taken,
we're prayin' for everyone to be found.
We're praying that people will no longer be comfortable
with looking the other way.
We're praying right now for witnesses to come forth.
We're praying right now that people will not just be
complacent or, or just content.
Hi there. Can I give you a flyer?
This young girl has been missing for six years.
Would this be a picture that--
-This is a age progression picture... -Oh, okay, okay.
...so she would look like this.
-And you're Relisha's grandmother? -Melissa Young: Yes, ma'am.
Hi, I'm Natalie with the Black and Missing Foundation.
Nice to meet you. How have you been?
-Good. -Good.
Derrica Wilson: Not givin' up on your baby.
-Oh no. -Derrica Wilson: At all.
No ache, no pain ain't goin' to keep me out here.
That's right, that's right.
You know, we continue to hold on to hope that
missing persons can be found after many years.
We have seen stories.
Stories like Monique Smith.
When I first met Monique, she said,
"I, too, am missing.
"I don't know my family, and I've been searching for them
for many, many years."
Monique Smith: There's a population of missing children
that no one's thinkin' of,
stories like Relisha's, stories like mine
with the long-term missin'.
She's been missin' for five years,
I've, probably, been missin' for...
55 years, or 45 years.
I really-- I honestly don't know.
I'm standing here live today to tell people
to have hope...
don't stop looking...
to never give up looking for us
because we're here.
I grew up in Baltimore City.
There was, um, an elderly lady who
I considered my grandmother,
um, that I kinda bonded with, you know, over the years,
and, um, the woman who raised me,
we never had a connection.
Little did I know
why there was never, um, a bond or a connection.
I was at the assumed age of 28 or 29.
I wanted to be a daycare provider.
But here was the problem,
you have to be licensed and bonded
to be a daycare director.
You cannot do it without havin' a birth certificate,
and I've never seen my birth certificate.
The woman who raised me never present it to me.
So, I checked all the municipals,
I had a social security number,
um, I went to school, so I said,
"Well, the Board of Education."
The mail all came in,
and opened up the first document,
and I'm readin' it, I'm like, "Hmm...
that's not my birth date."
You know, so I'm like lookin' at it, lookin' at it,
and I go open up the next document.
Well, that's not my name,
well, that's not my, my birth date.
That's not her name.
Doesn't match on that, neither one of these names are her name.
And I open up the third document...
all three documents are inconsistent with each other.
The first thing I did was I picked up the phone,
and I called the grandmother.
I said, um, "I'm lookin' at this paperwork, and it's all inconsistent.
There's no consistency with it whatsoever."
And I said, "What happened?"
And she goes, "Oh, she didn't tell you?"
I said, "What? Tell me what?"
"Well, she just showed up with you one day,
and I'm pretty sure it's somethin', I, I don't know."
The woman who raised me,
stole me from my mother.
The year that I found that out
is the year that I confronted her about it.
And she said she would go to her grave
before she says anything to me.
I was spiralin' out of control because, at that very minute,
all of the abuse populated in my head again.
She would just pick up a can of hairspray,
and lung it across the room.
You basically sit there, and embrace it
because, if not, it could lead to somethin'
more dramatic.
It was so tormenting that I was determined
to figure out who I was, like, "Who am I?"
So, I tried every avenue. I, I left no stone unturned.
I made my very first missin' person flyer in 1984.
Over the years,
I took every financial penny I had,
and I looked at those documents, and I tried to trace back.
I went to the National Educational Centers,
I went to the National Crime and Information Center.
I contacted the National Center of Missing/Exploited Children,
"Unsolved Mysteries," nothin'.
The Salvation Army sent me a letter saying, basically,
"You're a Jane Doe.
♪ ♪
No one will ever be able to help you."
I can just imagine her emotions
not knowing who she is.
I mean, you're walking down the street,
and you may see someone that looks like you.
You don't know if you're related to that person,
and the unknown has to be... heartbreaking.
Smith: As time went on, I'm thinkin' to myself,
I need to get a, an active police report, period.
One of the organizations that I contacted,
they notified the state police.
Deborah Flory: The director came across the hall and she said,
(sighs) "I have this lady on the line,
"and... she's saying she doesn't know who she is...
and that she was abducted."
And I was like, "Oh, boy, okay."
We don't get too many adults that don't know who they are.
This is the original FedEx envelope she sent me.
This is every little article, highlighted, that she sent.
I knew she wasn't playin' around,
and I'm-- I said, "Oh, I gotta help her."
But it was a very slow process to get anything done
because there wasn't a crime involved that we could show.
So, we had to go other routes.
Smith: Ancestry.com and 23andMe was an avenue.
Got the kits, did the saliva, nothin' happened,
so, in frustration, the detective said,
"I'm gonna reach out to Cece Moore."
It was back in September 2019,
so I was digging through my messages
trying to figure out how she contacted me.
Flory: Actually, went through my Facebook,
and, and just messaged her.
She was, like, completely willing to help.
This was kind of a mixture of my two different careers.
My first career, which was helping
people find their biological families,
and then my work with law enforcement
where I started focusing on identifying deceased people or violent criminals.
She had a fair amount of information.
She thought she might know her birth parents' names.
She knew that one of her sisters had a scar on her face.
And there's about 35 million people
that have taken consumer DNA tests now,
and so, we were able to compare Monique's DNA
against all of those millions of people.
She had a number of people that were sharing DNA with her
who descended from a couple in the 1850s.
And we built forward from that couple, saying,
"Okay, well, who are their other descendants?"
And we found a daughter named Margaret,
and then, as we researched Margaret,
we found she had a daughter with a scar on her face.
I cannot tell you how excited we were.
She called me, and she said, "I got it."
And I was like, "What?" She's like, "Yeah."
I said, "It's only been like two days," you know?
She's like, "I got it." She goes I--
She said there was ties to New York,
there was, uh, six, seven siblings,
or somethin' to that effect.
We, actually, have a policy where we don't interfere in
biological families' reunions,
so we tend to give the information
to Monique, in this case,
to do the outreach.
So, I pick up the phone,
and I call the number, and I said, "Hi, um...
I'm lookin' for Veronica Conyers."
And she goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, what, what?"
(mutters indistinctly)
Veronica Conyers: She called my cellphone,
and, um, she was hesitatin',
but she got it out fast.
She, she, she was scared. She was-- She babbled it.
I said, "Oh, I'm sorry, um, I'm workin' with a detective,
and, um, they gave me your information."
"What do you mean? Detective? What is this? This better not be a game."
I said, "No, it's not a game. It's not a game."
"No, I'm serious. This better not be a game.
I'm from New York. I don't play games like this."
I said, "No ma'am, no ma'am, no ma'am."
She called it out the way I would call her.
If it was me callin' her, I would say,
"I think you're my sister,"
you know, "I have some information here." It was that simple.
And I said, "I'm workin' with the police department,
"I'm workin' with a DNA detective,
"my ancestry information came through,
I was-- They said that we are a match."
And she goes, "Well, what do you look like?"
I said, "I don't know who I look like."
But I say,
I said, "Send me somethin'."
I said, "Don't even tell me your name,
just send me a picture, just send me somethin'."
And I said, "Let's get off this phone."
I said, "'Cause, obviously, you must be some kin to me,"
I said, "Because you're super excited and so am I."
So, and next thing you know, she hung up on me.
I just started uploadin' my missin' person flyer
that had all the pictures of me as a child
in hopes that someone would recognize me.
Conyers: We just had that face of when she was still a baby.
We didn't even know who she looked like.
Which one of us that she was gonna take after
until we seen her, and it's like, "Oh, it's me."
So, she took the shot of her...
and the shot of me side-by-side...
and we look like identical twins.
And next thing you know...
my phone rings...
and she said...
"I've been lookin' for my sister...
ever since I was a little girl."
And she said what she thought my name was,
which it was Symbolie Conyers.
And, of course, you know, a moment of...
I couldn't believe it, you know, I was still in awe.
My children took me there.
So, they said, "Mom, go to the Washington area,
go do it, you know, you've been lookin' for this all your life."
(indistinct chatter)
Mom, Mom.
(cries)
Oh my god!
(sobbing)
She look like me! She look like me!
No, you look like me.
-(laughing) -(indistinct chatter)
You look like me.
We got the same skirt on!
Look!
Smith (on phone): I'm amazed that I get to act like this.
Conyers (on phone): You wanna see how I act.
-It was really incredible. -Yeah.
(laughs)
Smith: Looking at... each other side-by-side
is just really wild, and just to hear, um...
that I look like my mother.
-Like, that is-- -Yeah.
Smith: Because I was not around when our mother passed,
I had been missin' for so long,
and, you know, Veronica validated,
in a lot of ways, my story.
I know people thought you was crazy,
-they didn't believe you. -(Smith laughs)
That's the first thing I said to you when I met you,
they probably thought you was crazy, you know,
and, um, you were somewhere where you wasn't supposed to be.
You had to identify yourself as who you are,
a person, a human being on this Earth.
-And I'm proud of you. -You got me. I got you.
-Okay, mm-hm. -We got us. (laughs)
Smith: Since that time... I still campaign,
I lobby, I press forward with the advocacy work.
She's a great resource. She's a big advocate for missing kids.
Somebody goes missin' in the city or somethin',
she would call me, "Do I know about this?"
News Announcer 1: Monique Smith is a local missing children's advocate
who helped lobby for the passing of the state's missing children's act.
News Announcer 2: She wrote a book, and donated all proceeds
to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
and holds workshops in schools to teach kids how to protect themselves.
Natalie Wilson: I'm sure within our communities
there are hundreds of Monique Smiths.
And it doesn't matter if it's
one year, five, 10, 20, we have seen miracles happen.
Derrica Wilson: We don't want families to ever give up on hope.
We want people to know that they're not in this by themselves.
Here it is. I was missin' for 50 years.
Don't give up hope. Hope lives.
♪ ♪
Butler: There's thousands of people of color that's missing.
Hope keeps people goin'.
My mother, actually, held on to the hope that
Pam was alive...
almost up until the very end.
I miss all the gatherings that we would have together,
the things that she would put together for the family
to try to make sure that we stayed together,
and... had good times together.
Someday we'll meet again...
in heaven.
I look at your picture...
every day.
Mike Fulton: When Jose was locked up...
Derrick and I had this very brutally honest conversation,
and I said to him,
"What is the most important
thing about this case?"
He said, "Bring Pam home."
Butler: It was very important to my mother...
that we recover Pam's body,
and give her a proper resting place.
And we knew that we were not gonna get a body,
or find out where she was
without Jose givin' us some kind of assistance.
Glenn Kirschner: Ultimately, we agreed to give him a sentence
of 12 years in prison,
if and only if...
he took us to Pam's body.
And that was an agreement
that Pam's family was very supportive of.
If she's layin' out somewhere, she's still missing to us.
We wanna bring her home, and know exactly where she is.
(Detective speaking)
Jose Rodriguez-Cruz: Um...
(Jose speaking)
(Detective speaking)
(Jose speaking)
(Detective speaking)
(Jose speaking)
(Detective speaking)
(Jose speaking)
(Detective speaking)
(Jose speaking)
News Announcer 1: Prosecutors say the process
to recover Pam's body is now already underway.
News Announcer 2: The victim's brother, Derrick Butler,
was among those watching the cadaver dogs search.
He buried her in a shallow grave.
This is supposed to be the spot here.
Kirschner: Even though Jose could take us to the spot...
everything had changed
because the ground had been dug up,
and high-occupancy vehicle lanes
had been put in and paved.
News Announcer: We have disappointing news tonight.
I just spoke with Derrick Butler.
He just met with the homicide division office
here in Southwest D.C.,
and he was told that, uh,
Pam's body is unrecoverable.
Butler: We know that a body was there,
the cadaver dogs are tellin' us that.
But where she's at in some parts of that strip of highway,
they put up to 30 feet of dirt.
Kirschner: The remains weren't found, but we decided Jose made
all reasonable efforts to try to take us to the remains.
Butler: So, in the end, we didn't get a body,
and he got 12 years for
the murder of my sister.
And I told him, I said,
"Well, I'm mad as hell about this."
But Michael Fulton, he assured me,
this guy's not gonna come home.
He's gonna do life...
um, 'cause Virginia's gonna get him...
for the murder of his first wife.
Back up the story just a little bit.
We're out there, and we're searching,
and, at some point durin' that thing,
somebody out there says, "You know...
"there was a body recovered,
"you know, about a mile up this road,
you know, way back when."
(tense music playing)
Kirschner: In the early '90s...
the Virginia law enforcement authorities
had found human remains
in between the southbound lanes,
and the northbound lanes of 95.
But those human remains were never identified.
When Hansel, who's Jose's son,
decided that he would cooperate with the police
in the murder of my sister,
they got Hansel's DNA.
The DNA from Hansel comes back to a match
for the bones that were found
about a mile up the road from where Pam was found.
And sure enough, that was Marta...
Jose's first wife.
♪ ♪
Hansel Rodriguez: It's a mixed bag.
You know, on one hand,
you think, "Finally," you know,
"Another piece of the puzzle," you know?
At least she can be, you know, laid to rest.
But on the other hand, it confirmed something horrible.
About six months go by,
and I'm not hearin' anything from Virginia.
Fulton: Virginia gets all the information we have,
and then, everything kinda grinded to a halt.
Why it grinded to a halt? I don't know.
Were we frustrated? Absolutely.
Butler: I was startin' to think,
"Here we go again, it's a person of color.
They're just marginalizing us."
Derrick started fighting in Virginia for Jose's
first wife, Marta's case.
Rodriguez: He reached out to me.
I think part of me was just, uh, kinda just beaten down,
and, and cynical like, "Oh, you know, it's been 30 years, what's the point?"
I, um, started makin' inquiries
about, you know, what's happening with this case,
and nobody would talk to me.
So, I told all the major news stations
that I wanted to go down there and confront
this Commonwealth's attorney about it.
News Announcer: We followed Derrick Butler on his journey for justice,
hoping to meet with the Commonwealth's attorney,
Eric Olsen.
Butler: One of the things that I really
wanted him to know that, you know,
this is a person of color that went missing,
and, too often, we don't do anything about it.
I was able to get Virginia to proceed with Marta's case
because of what I learned from workin' with Black and Missing.
Eric Olsen: Today, Jose Rodriguez pleaded guilty to second degree murder.
The range of punishment for that is five years to 40 years.
There's no agreement as to his punishment.
It'll be up to the judge to decide
when he returns for sentencing.
Butler: I am sure without me pushing Marta's case
it would've never went forward.
I really believe had Virginia police done
their due diligence at the very beginning...
my sister would be alive today.
That's what really affects me.
I will not get excited until we hear the sentencing.
We're hoping he will spend the rest of his life in jail.
Natalie Wilson (on phone): Hey, Derrick. Mornin'.
Butler: Good morning, how are you?
Natalie Wilson: Good, how are you?
Butler: Fantastic, thanks for asking.
Natalie Wilson: I wanted to go over
the statement that I sent with you.
Do you wanna go over it one time,
or do you wanna go through it one time?
Butler (on phone): Yes, I do.
Okay.
It's hard to believe
that my family lived
the nightmare of my sister's disappearance for 12 years.
It's even harder to believe
the pain that Hansel has been living with
about his mother's disappearance.
Gamini Felder: Father, as we join hands today with Hansel,
we offer this prayer to you
asking that Jose receive the maximum time
that the law will allow.
Rodriguez: I wasn't too happy about the lowest number that I heard.
But if it's in the upper range,
that would, essentially, be a life sentence.
I don't want my mother's death,
all of this time and pain and suffering
to be in vain.
News Announcer: Her death was a mystery.
Thirty-two years later, the killer brought to justice.
Rodriguez-Cruz is 56 years old,
and is now sentenced to serve 40 years in prison.
Um, I'm definitely satisfied with the sentencing,
um...
now nobody else will have to worry about,
uh, meeting the same fate.
I couldn't have done it without Derrick,
right here, Mr. Derrick Butler.
He was very much my voice.
Butler: Forty years was what I expected,
however, nobody should have to go through
what I went through, what Hansel went through.
We cannot continue to be marginalized,
and looked at, like we're just trash
when these things happen.
People of authority, people that have power
need to listen.
I tried and I tried
to do it the nice way with them,
nobody wanted to hear it.
Rodriguez: We did it, man. We did it.
(line ringing)
Hello. How are you all?
(Natalie Wilson speaking)
I'm better, I'm better than I have been in a long time.
We got his ass. We got it...
-Yes. -I feel good.
One of the things that I'm lookin' forward to is that
I'm gonna get married.
You know, I'm able to, actually, enjoy life,
and not have to
worry about wrestling with this
horrific situation that I've been dealin' with for the last 12 years.
(Derrica Wilson speaking)
Well, thank you. Thank you.
(Natalie Wilson speaking)
Yeah, well, that's what it's all about.
No. I'm, I'm in this for life now.
I know that Derrica and Natalie
have the same commitment that I have.
Both of them are still working
eight-hour jobs, five days a week.
I know that they're lookin' forward to retiring,
and comin' home and,
actually, workin' full-time for Black and Missing.
(doorbell rings)
-Hey! -Natalie Wilson: Hey, good mornin'!
Hi! Hi, man.
(laughs)
(overlapping greetings)
Somebody's swingin' golf clubs, huh?
Look at you.
Come here, EJ!
Black and Missing Foundation, it's a full-time job,
and so many people depend on us,
and, and, sometimes, it's hard, you know, to balance, you know, with
our personal lives, and working full-time,
and doin' the organization.
I mean, this is our mission, our passion
to be able to help these people,
-and to be able to do this full-time... -Mm-hm.
you know, without the other distractions
-will, will benefit so many other people. -Natalie Wilson: Right.
We're working on these cases in the morning,
and then, you have to put that face on,
and go into the office, and be cordial and happy,
and then, you come home, and you're...
going through it again. It becomes a lot.
Derrica Wilson: Some cases rock me to the core where I can't even sleep.
Natalie Wilson: You see these young girls
as young as 5 years old
-being kidnapped and raped. -Derrica Wilson: Yeah.
I mean, it, it does a lot to you.
Sometimes, Natalie get phone calls,
and you can hear these people cryin'
on the other end of the phone.
I don't even know how they sleep at night.
You know, sometimes, helping families,
because we're so passionate about it,
it does take a toll on you.
Um, we have our own families,
and our own lives that we are dealing with,
and we're not immune to,
you know, a trauma and tragedy,
and just life itself.
Mom: Call who?
Mom: You call him "Daddy."
EJ: Daddy! Daddy!
Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!
Our son, Elon, has been incarcerated,
so our family is going through it.
News Announcer: Elon Wilson served nearly two years
in jail after a traffic stop,
and now, a Fairfax County judge
says the officer who arrested him
lied on the police report.
Walter Royster: We found out that the prosecutor's begun
reviewing 400 cases linked to Freitag.
News Announcer: Prosecutors say former Officer Freitag
pilfered evidence from the property room,
and stopped dozens of people
because of the color of their skin.
Natalie Wilson: Freitag was never charged with any crime,
and he maintains he has done nothing wrong,
but according to the Fairfax County
Commonwealth Attorney's office,
this investigation is currently ongoing.
With Elon's case,
Elon never crossed the double lines.
(sirens wailing)
And that was his reason for stopping him.
News Announcer: Freitag says while on patrol,
he would camp out across the street
from a music recording studio,
and stop anyone who behaved out of the ordinary.
(Officer Freitag speaking)
(Officer Freitag and person speaking)
News Announcer: This can be considered a pre-textual traffic stop,
stopping someone for one reason
in order to conduct an unrelated search.
He profiled him, and he stopped him,
and he routinely did this.
Official: This was a bad stop,
a bad prosecution that never should've happened,
and that's why we're movin' heaven and Earth
to get Elon Wilson out of prison.
I think it was three days later,
I get a call from the correctional facility,
and the correctional officer said, "Hold on...
um, your son needs to speak with you."
And I heard Elon say, "Mom, come get me now."
And I'm-- I am just crying and panicking,
and I call Walter and I'm like,
"I don't know where you are,
you need to go and get Elon now."
The press was still at our house,
and we wanted to make sure that Elon didn't run into that
because he wasn't ready for that.
He wasn't prepped for it.
He does not like speaking to the media,
so he did go immediately to
see EJ.
-Mom: Hi. -Elon: EJ!
-Mom: Look, who's that? Who's that? -Elon: Hey!
-Mom: Who's that, Boo? -What's up, baby?
What you up to?
You got so big, little boy.
Mom: Who is that? Say, "Daddy, look."
-What's up? -Mom: Is that your Daddy?
EJ: Hi.
Natalie Wilson: We felt a sense of relief,
like, "Oh my god, he's really, really home."
It was like all of our hard work and efforts had paid off.
I know you gave a lot,
we spent a lot of money that we didn't have...
and we have suffered PTSD. I'm still trying to...
you know, get myself together.
It, it's been a tough--
It was a tough, and has been a tough
not only 20 months, when he was incarcerated,
but everything leading up to it.
We know what these families are going through, it's--
and it's-- it's a lot.
(line ringing)
Hey, lady. How are you?
(Person on phone speaking)
You still don't know where your daughter is, right?
Person (on phone): No.
So, what is law enforcement saying?
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Thank you, and that's the power of the media.
So, I'm getting emotional now,
but that's what we've been tryin' to do.
(sighs)
See? This is what we do, how we do it.
Okay.
We've done some great things,
made great strides,
but we still have a lot of work to do.
Derrica Wilson: When Natalie and I started the organization,
30% of missing persons in the United States
were persons of color.
That number has since increased
to nearly 40%.
Natalie Wilson: There are a lot of issues in the African-American
community that we need to tackle
because they result in people going missing.
Mental health,
domestic violence,
poverty, police misconduct.
Vince Warren: If we were to ask Black people
what's the solution to the problem
for keeping their kids safe,
we would have the answers to the questions.
The problem is, is that because Black people are saying them,
we're not listening.
We have developed entire structures
around the concept of missing white people.
And we have virtually nothing except for the spit and grit
of Black folks who are determined
that our people matter, too,
that our bodies are not disposable,
that our families deserve to be together.
Butler: My hope for Black and Missing,
is that we die a natural death.
That there will be a time that we don't need Black and Missing.
So, you and I, we've talked about
you know, doin' this full-time.
-Mm-hm. -And I just want us to be able to do more.
I want what we do to be meaningful and impactful,
and I want God to continue to use us to be able to do this.
There are times when it feels like we are against the world,
that there is no one coming to our aid to help us fight this.
But then, you look at those small moments
where you can rejoice
in knowing that you helped bring closure to this family.
And that, right there, fuels us to keep going.
Natalie Wilson: There is a case that came in yesterday,
and when I reached out to law enforcement,
and they, they were givin' me the run-around,
and I called back, and I said, well, you know...
(classical music playing)
♪ ♪