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Nancy Grace
16-Year-Old Disappears in Spring, Texas
Aired February 02, 2011 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Vanished into thin air.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look for her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just need to kind her.
GRACE: So many cases --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`re still looking.
GRACE: -- so few leads.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Missing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Missing.
GRACE: Missing person.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s our duty to find her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Missing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The witness had seen the suspect on NANCY GRACE.
GRACE: There is a God.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The NANCY GRACE show was out there for us.
GRACE: Found alive.
Fifty people, 50 days, 50 nights.
Let`s don`t give up.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN LOWITZER, FATHER OF MISSING GIRL SCOUT: You kind of have a connection with your loved ones and your family, and you just feel when something`s not right, when something`s wrong. And that`s the feeling I got, something was wrong.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Girl Scout Ali Lowitzer spoke with her mom by cell phone to let her know that after she got off the school bus at her bus stop, she was going to walk to her job, the Burger Barn, to pick up her very first paycheck. But after Ali exits that bus she`s never seen or heard from again.
JOANN LOWITZER, MOTHER OF MISSING GIRL SCOUT: She checked in with me to let me know that she was going to ride the bus home and she was going to walk to work and pick up her paycheck. And that was the last that I talked to her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Investigators released images from a surveillance camera showing Ali getting off the bus that day, hoping to get new leads. But many of those leads have turned up empty.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From our standpoint, the mere fact that she has had no communication with anybody that we know of makes it look like there`s a possibility of something having happened.
JOHN LOWITZER: You know, we think that there`s foul play. The unfortunate thing is that we don`t have any proof that there`s foul play, and we don`t have any proof that there`s not. Nobody has seen Ali since she got off of the bus.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now the family is offering a $10,000 reward, hoping someone will come forward with the one clue that could bring Ali home.
JOHN LOWITZER: Just pray that she`s safe, wherever she is. And that`s the best I can hope for.
GRACE: If you could speak to her now, what is your message?
JOHN LOWITZER: My message to Ali right now would be, you know, baby, if you`re safe, if you`re watching this, just give us a call. Let us know that you`re OK. Set our hearts at ease. Set our minds at ease. And we can work through everything else. So if you`re out there, we just need to know you`re OK.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: Every day 2,300 people go missing in America, disappear, vanish, their families left waiting, wondering, hoping, but never forgetting. And neither have we.
Fifty people, 50 days. For 50 nights we go live, spotlighting America`s missing children, girls, boys, mothers, fathers, grandparents. They are gone. But where?
Tonight, live to Texas.
A Girl Scout calls her mom after school to let her know she`s taking the bus to work, pick up her check, then to walk straight home. Sixteen- year-old Ali, never seen alive again, even missing an "Alice in Wonderland" birthday party she had planned.
No cell phone calls, no text messages, nothing. But can grainy surveillance video images shed light on what happened to Ali? What clues could the last known images of the girl reveal tonight? Where is missing Girl Scout Ali Lowitzer?
Jean, what happened?
JEAN CASAREZ, "IN SESSION": You know, Nancy, what happened didn`t happen that long ago. This is a very fresh case.
It was only nine months ago that Ali Lowitzer, 16 years old, braces on her top teeth and her bottom teeth, she got on the school bus April 26, 2010. She got off of the school bus. She was only 30 feet from her house, and then she was gone. She was missing. She was never seen again.
I want to go out to Joe Gomez, reporter, KTRH News Talk Radio in Houston.
When she got off the school bus on April 26th of last year, where was she going?
JOE GOMEZ, REPORTER, KTRH: Well, Jean, she was going to go to the Burger Barn, where Ali had worked to pick up her first paycheck. And between the school bus stop and the Burger Barn, something went terribly wrong because she vanished into thin air.
And police believe that perhaps Ali had run away from home, but the community and Ali`s parents can`t believe that. For one, she just vanished with the clothes on her back.
She was an avid texter. She didn`t take her phone charger from her house. She didn`t make it to the Burger Barn to pick up her paycheck. And she also left her purse at home, which contained $30. When you add all this circumstantial evidence together, it doesn`t make any sense that Ali would just run away of her own accord.
No, Jean, instead, it makes it appear that perhaps little beautiful Ali was taken.
CASAREZ: To Natisha Lance, NANCY GRACE producer.
This young 16-year-old had so much to look forward to. She was so involved in her community and her school.
What were some of the upcoming things that she was going to participate in?
NATISHA LANCE, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: She did have so much to look forward to. As we said, Jean, she was in the choir, she played flute, she liked to draw. She had a birthday party that was coming up that she helped plan for a friend which was themed in "Alice in Wonderland." She also had a softball tournament that was upcoming.
Now, also, Jean, when she got off the bus, she sent a text message to a friend. Now, this was at 2:57 that she sent this text message. And she was making plans with that friend to come over to her home.
The friend wasn`t available to come over to the house, but that also shows that this does not seem like a girl who was planning to run away, if she was making plans to have a friend come over to her house.
CASAREZ: You know, Natisha, let`s talk like two girlfriends right now. Do you remember when you were that age, maybe a little older, and you got a paycheck? Like the first paycheck of the first job you ever had? What was that like?
LANCE: I do remember that. And I was excited to go get that paycheck. There was nothing that would have stood in the way of me getting that paycheck, because you feel like you have your own independence for once and you`re making your own money.
So it does seem extremely odd that she would not have made it to go get her paycheck. And people who were at the Burger Barn, other employees, said she didn`t make it there, even though she had told her mother that is where she was going.
And like you said, Jean, this was her first paycheck.
CASAREZ: Yes. It was a big, big deal.
We have some very special guests with us tonight that have gone through so much in the last nine months.
I want to welcome the parents of Ali Lowitzer, John and JoAnn Lowitzer.
Thank you so much for joining us from the Houston area.
We can`t imagine what you`ve gone through, but what we want you to do right now initially is to take us back to April 26, 2010 in the early morning hours. You all wake up. Take us back to your home that morning.
What happened?
JOANN LOWITZER: Well, that morning was just like any other morning. You know, we wake up and I fix her breakfast, and she rushes to get dressed and rushes to the bus.
CASAREZ: What did she say to you before she left the house?
JOANN LOWITZER: And that was the last I saw her. We just do like a checklist. You know, do you have this, do you have that? And she said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
CASAREZ: And what did she have with her?
JOANN LOWITZER: Her backpack and her school supplies. And that was it.
CASAREZ: So she goes to school, and then I`ll still ask you, JoAnn, you called her or she called you when school was finished that day?
JOANN LOWITZER: I had sent her a text and asked her if she`s going to go work, and I think it was a little too early, she was still in class. So when she got out of class, she called me before she got on to the bus and said that she was going to ride the bus to her normal stop, and she was going to walk to the Burger Barn to se if she could get -- if she got paid and if she could work.
CASAREZ: And she hadn`t had that job for very long, right?
JOANN LOWITZER: No, ma`am. She had just turned 16 in February. And it had just been maybe a month that she had had that job.
CASAREZ: We want to show everybody some video surveillance photos.
And John, maybe you can work us through these photos. The school bus actually had a video surveillance camera. Now, there`s Ali right there, right?
JOHN LOWITZER: Yes, the bus actually had video surveillance from the time that she got on the bus at school to the time she got off at her normal stop.
CASAREZ: So, everybody, you`re looking at Ali minutes from when she was never seen again.
Now, John, take it up from there. Didn`t she -- after she stepped off the school bus, didn`t she actually text a friend of hers? Because you found that later.
JOHN LOWITZER: Yes. According to her phone records, she was texting the whole time that she was on the bus, and as well as soon as she got off the bus. There are a few in and outs in her phone records. And like you said earlier, the last text that she sent out was about 2:57.
CASAREZ: So that corroborates with the school bus video, that she got off the school bus around 3:00.
Did anybody see her walking down the street toward the Burger Barn?
JOHN LOWITZER: Well, there were three other boys that got off at her stop that live on the same street that she does. When we talked to them, they said that she kind of lingered behind and they continued on to their homes.
And, you know, they didn`t think much of it. And she was just kind of staying behind and sending texts. And they had said that she was walking to the corner, which would lead her out of the neighborhood to walk down to the main -- to walk down the main street to get to the Burger Barn.
But, you know, they didn`t think anything of it. You know, they just kind of thought that she was hanging behind, and they went on home.
CASAREZ: Now, your daughter, who left all of her clothes behind, who left money behind in her room, literally had the clothes on her back with a backpack of books. The Houston Harris County Sheriff`s Department determined they believed she had voluntarily left?
JOHN LOWITZER: Yes. They have her classified as a runaway, basically for the simple fact that there`s no evidence of foul play.
CASAREZ: No evidence of foul play. But there`s evidence of everything else that was left behind.
JOHN LOWITZER: Yes, there`s evidence of everything else. And common sense would tell you and us being her parents would know that it was very uncharacteristic of her. If she was planning to do something like that, she would take some of the creature comforts of home.
But obviously, you know, like you said earlier, she left her cell phone charger behind, her money. She left her purse.
JOANN LOWITZER: Makeup.
JOHN LOWITZER: Makeup. Anything that was important to her is still in her room.
CASAREZ: All right.
We are taking your calls tonight.
To Marcia in Pennsylvania.
Hi, Marcia.
MARCIA, PENNSYLVANIA: Hi, Jean. Thank you for taking my call.
CASAREZ: Thank you for calling.
MARCIA: I actually -- my question was already answered, but I do have another one. If she had her backpack and cell phone with her, did they find that anywhere? And also, if it was a stranger abduction, don`t you think the backpack would be the least of their worries? It makes you wonder if it was somebody at her work.
Do they know for -- have they talked to all the employees there?
CASAREZ: Well, let`s go out to Dawn Davis after our commercial break. She`s the senior case manager for Laura Recovery Center who came in to help these parents when law enforcement decided she was a runaway. Laura Recovery Center said no, she`s not a runaway, she was taken.
We`ll be back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOANN LOWITZER: I send her a text every night before I go to bed, just hoping that sometime I`ll get a reply.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Sixteen-year-old Ali Lowitzer was last seen getting off the school bus just three doors down from her home on April 26, 2010. While on the bus, she told her mother she was going to stop off at her job to pick up her paycheck. She never arrived at the burger joint where she worked and hasn`t been seen since.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was always that lingering fear that something`s very wrong.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ali`s family, now offering a reward for information leading to her whereabouts, say they`re desperate for more resources to find their missing daughter.
GRACE: This is a good, sweet girl. She`s a 16-year-old Girl Scout. Please help bring Ali home.
JOHN LOWITZER: And sometimes you lose a little bit of faith in the evil things that are out there. But then again, you kind of gain a sense of -- I don`t know what the word would be.
JOANN LOWITZER: Humanity.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CASAREZ: And she had planned a birthday party for her best friend that following weekend. It was the "Alice in Wonderland" theme. And she had planned it all.
And you walk away from that? You just leave?
I want to go out to Dawn Drexel (sic), who is with us. Dawn Davis. She is the senior case manager from Laura Recovery Center who stepped in because they did not believe she was a runaway.
Dawn Davis, thank you very much for joining us out of Friendswood, Texas, this afternoon.
First of all, why did you decide to get involved in this case?
DAWN DAVIS, SR. CASE MANAGER, LAURA RECOVERY CENTER: Well, after talking to JoAnn and John Lowitzer, we felt that it was very unlikely that a young lady such as Ali would leave behind everything that she knows and that she loved. She was active in her sports. She was always on the phone text messaging. You could see a dramatic, abrupt end to those text messages.
She had a paycheck waiting for her, and she didn`t pick it up. She left everything behind that she loved.
CASAREZ: And she had never run away before or tried to run away, correct?
DAVIS: Not that I`m aware of, no.
CASAREZ: Dawn, why do you think the Houston authorities, including the Harris County Sheriff`s Department, determined she was a runaway?
DAVIS: You know, I think that it was just based on lack of any other explanation. I know that when she got off that bus, all communication with her stopped, as well as did the information about any eyewitnesses to what happened next.
CASAREZ: To John and JoAnn Lowitzer, parents of Ali Lowitzer, who are joining us tonight.
John, it would be wonderful if she was a runaway because she might be alive. She would be alive if she ran away. But all of the facts here just counter against that.
What do you think happened?
JOHN LOWITZER: Well, I agree, you know, that it would be best if she was a runaway and that she was somewhere, and where she wanted to be, and that she was safe. But I just don`t see that in her.
I just don`t see her just up and leaving everything behind. She`s not that kind of person.
She`s very -- she was a very homebody person. You know, she liked her creature comforts of home.
So, you know, there`s so many things that we could speculate that happened. But, you know, I still fear that the worst has happened. But I`ve got to hope that, you know, that she`s still OK and that she`s out there somewhere.
CASAREZ: Did she have a Facebook account, a MySpace account? Did you find that she was communicating with anyone on those social networks?
JOHN LOWITZER: We did find with the help of our private investigator that she had a Facebook account and she had six different MySpace accounts, but none of them had any activity since early-to-mid-March.
JOANN LOWITZER: We didn`t have a home computer at the time.
CASAREZ: OK. How do you think she did Facebook and MySpace, then?
JOANN LOWITZER: During spring break, she stayed with a friend of mine so that she could stay home and work while I went to visit relatives out of state. So I do know for a couple of days during that week she did get on her accounts.
CASAREZ: I want to go out to Andrew Scott. He is the former chief of police of Boca Raton, Florida, currently vice president of Scott-Roberts and Associates, joining us out of Miami.
We have learned that Houston, Texas, and the Harris County Sheriff`s Department, they do not have criteria to determine who would be a runaway, a profile, and who would be someone that was abducted, taken. This is just a subjective determination, right? When you have 6,000 to 9,000 missing people in a city per year, there`s a lot of subjectivity here while a family just waits, not knowing what happened.
ANDREW SCOTT, SCOTT-ROBERTS & ASSOCIATES: You`re exactly right, Jean. And that subjectivity clearly creates a lot of problems, and it takes away from the ability of an officer who arrives on the scene of this type of a call.
And clearly, they want to make this less than what it could possibly be. And that`s where these types of cases fall into a black hole, so to speak.
It`s very troubling. Law enforcement should not take a complacent attitude toward these types of cases. Runaways are epidemic, but missing children and homicides are even more epidemic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN LOWITZER: You kind of have a connection with your loved ones and your family, and you just feel when something`s not right, when something`s wrong. And that`s the feeling I got. Something was wrong
(END VIDEO CLIP) .
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN LOWITZER: Baby, if you`re safe, if you`re watching this, just give us a call. You know, let us know that you`re OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Ali Lowitzer`s parents haven`t stopped looking for their 16-year-old daughter who went missing nine months ago after stepping off a school bus.
JOANN LOWITZER: According to the phone records, she would text about 4,000 a month.
JOHN LOWITZER: For that to just stop is baffling.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A $10,000 reward now offered. Who would want to harm a Girl Scout with so much promise?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CASAREZ: Ali Lowitzer was a catcher on her high school`s softball team. An important game was coming up. She wasn`t there because she was gone. Another reason why she wouldn`t leave on her own.
I want to go out, though, to her parents, John and JoAnn Lowitzer, who have been kind enough to join us tonight.
Police did search your daughter`s bedroom, is that correct?
JOHN LOWITZER: They did.
CASAREZ: And they found something, a journal of some of her writings. What were in those writings that may have made them believe she was a runaway?
JOHN LOWITZER: Well, she had several journals that she was writing in, and there was an old one that they found that was put up on a shelf in her bookcase, and there was a little note in there that said she was going to run away and that we wouldn`t be able to find her. I don`t remember the exact wording, but that`s pretty much the gist of it.
JOANN LOWITZER: She`d be back in a couple of days and she`d be fine.
JOHN LOWITZER: Yes.
JOANN LOWITZER: But it was in a spiral notebook. It wasn`t in one of her regular journals that she wrote in every day.
JOHN LOWITZER: Yes. It was not a current journal that she kept.
CASAREZ: Do you think that based on that one writing, that that is why they made the determination to virtually not help you in your search for your daughter?
JOHN LOWITZER: I think once they found that, they just kind of threw it up and said, well, obviously this proves right here that she ran away. And we pleaded with them and we told them that that`s an old journal, she hasn`t written in that journal, you know, for at least a year or two.
And you can tell the handwriting between that journal entry and what she was currently writing. The handwriting is completely different. Her handwriting progressed from that time.
CASAREZ: To Paula Bloom, clinical psychologist, joining us tonight out of Atlanta.
How many children have visions and fantasies that they`re going to run away from home, and how many people actually do it?
PAULA BLOOM, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: And you make such a good point, Jean. We have thoughts all the time about things. I don`t think it`s an uncommon thought at all.
What matters is what you do. Was there a plan? Really, what`s important here is our action, not so much about what we`re thinking.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOANN LOWITZER: According to the phone records, she would text about 4,000 a month.
JOHN LOWITZER: For that to just stop is baffling.
JOANN LOWITZER: I send her a text every night before I go to bed, and just hoping that some time I`ll get a reply.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: Vanished into thin air.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look for her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just need to find her.
GRACE: So many cases.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re still looking.
GRACE: So few leads.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Missing.
GRACE: Missing person.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s our duty to find her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Missing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The witness seen the suspect on Nancy Grace.
GRACE: There is a God.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nancy Grace show was out there for us.
GRACE: Found. Alive. 50 people, 50 days, 50 nights. Let`s don`t give up.
(SINGING)
JOHN LOWITZER, FATHER OF ALI LOWITZER: You kind of have a connection with your loved ones and your family, and you just feel when something`s not right, when something`s wrong. And that`s the feeling I got. Something was wrong.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Girl scout, Ali Lowitzer, spoke with her mom by cell phone to let her know that after she got off the school bus at her bus stop, she was going to walk to her job, the burger barn, to pick up her very first paycheck. But after Ali exits that bus, she`s never seen or heard from again.
JOANN LOWITZER, MOTHER OF ALI LOWITZER: She checked in with me to let me know that she was going to ride the bus home, and she was going to walk to work and pick up her paycheck. And that was the last that I talked to her.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Investigators released images from a surveillance camera showing Ali getting off the bus that day hoping to get new leads. But many of those leads have turned up empty.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From our standpoint, the mere fact that she has had no communication with anybody that we know of makes it look like there`s a possibility of something having happened.
JOHN LOWITZER: Yes, we think that there`s foul play. The unfortunate thing is we don`t have any proof that there`s foul play, and we don`t have any proof that there`s not. Nobody has seen Ali since she got off of the bus.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, the family`s offering a $10,000 reward, hoping someone will come forward with the one clue that could bring Ali home.
JOHN LOWITZER: Just pray that she`s safe, wherever she is. And that`s the best I can hope for.
(SINGING)
GRACE: If you could speak to her now, what is your message?
JOHN LOWITZER: My message to Ali right now would be, baby, if you`re safe, if you`re watching this, just give us a call, you know? Let us know that you`re OK. Set our hearts at ease, set our minds at ease, and we can work through everything else. So, if you`re out there, we just need to know you`re OK.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: Every day, 2,300 people go missing in America, disappear, vanish. Their families left waiting, wondering, hoping, but never forgetting, and neither have we. Fifty people, 50 days, for 50 nights, we go live, spotlighting America`s missing children, girls, boys, mothers, fathers, grandparents. They are gone, but where?
Tonight, live to Texas, a girl scout calls her mom after school to let her know she`s taking the bus to work, pick up her check, then to walk straight home. Sixteen-year-old Ali never seen alive again. Even missing an Alice in Wonderland birthday party she had planned. No cell phone calls, no text messages, nothing. But can grainy surveillance video images shed light on what happened to Ali? What clues could the last known images of the girl reveal tonight? Where is missing girl scout, Ali Lowitzer? Jean, what happened?
JEAN CASAREZ, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT, "IN SESSION": April 26th, 2010. It was nine months ago. She went to school, she got on the school bus to come home, and the surveillance photo showed she was on that bus. It showed she got off that bus at about 3:00 p.m. She was so close to her home, but you know what? She wanted to pick up her first paycheck. She`d even told her mother she was going to go pick up her first paycheck. I want to go out to Natisha Lance, Nancy Grace producer. Ali lived on her cell phone, right?
NATISHA LANCE, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: She did. She would send about 3,000 texts per month, Jean. So, it`s so interesting that after this day, no text, no phone calls, no correspondence on Facebook, no correspondence on MySpace. And also, Jean, when she got off of the bus, she sent another text. It was at 2:57. She sent it to a friend of hers, asking the friend to come over. The friend wasn`t able to come over to her house, but that just shows that she was making plans for after she picked up her paycheck, for a friend to come over to her house, which goes against her being a runaway.
CASAREZ: But yet, the Houston authorities determined they believed she voluntarily left. And so, it`s been the responsibility of her parents, who are with us tonight, to try to find her and locate her. John and Joann Lowitzer joining us tonight from Houston, Texas. Now, this was Spring, Texas where this all happened. Your daughter went to what high school? Spring High School?
JOANN LOWITZER: Spring High School.
CASAREZ: Right. Now, your daughter loved the phone, text constantly, 3,000 texts a month, we understand. Were you able, through your private investigator, to read some of those texts in the months before she went missing?
JOANN LOWITZER: No, ma`am. The phone provider does not back up the data to be able to store the physical messages. All we were able to retrieve was dates and times and phone numbers.
CASAREZ: Dates and times and phone numbers. Did you see anything unusual out of state? Did you call all those phone numbers?
JOANN LOWITZER: Oh, yes. With the help of Dawn from the Laura Recovery Center, we sat down an entire day and went through the phone records and made phone calls and identified a lot of the numbers and talked to a lot of her friends.
CASAREZ: Let`s go out to the callers. Jeanne in North Carolina. Hi, Jean.
JEANNE, NORTH CAROLINA: Hey, Jean. Born in Atlanta have the same passes as Nancy news told these cases (ph). Did she have a boyfriend? And did she ever make it to that burger joint?
CASAREZ: That`s a really good question. Did she have a boyfriend? To Joann Lowitzer, she actually had a little boyfriend come over to your house that weekend before she went missing, right?
JOANN LOWITZER: Yes, ma`am. He spent most of the day Sunday with us the day before she went missing. And after he left, you know, we had a little chat about him, and she did confirm that it was her new boyfriend. And he was actually the first place that I went to when we discovered that she didn`t make it to work.
CASAREZ: And what did he say?
JOANN LOWITZER: He had also been trying to reach her by calling her cell phone and texting her, and he didn`t receive a response, either.
CASAREZ: All right. And to Jeanne in North Carolina, no, she never made it to the Burger King. To Pat Brown, criminal profiler and author of "The Profiler," joining us from Washington, D.C. What are your thoughts? Is this a runaway situation? Do you somebody who voluntarily left without a dime in her pocket?
PAT BROWN, CRIMINAL PROFILER: I`ve never seen a case that looks less like a runaway situation. That the police would say because they didn`t have evidence of foul play, it didn`t happen. How many times have we seen a woman, girl just go missing off the street, somebody simply grabs her, throws her in a vehicle, she`s gone? Unless, she, like, drops her phone on the street, and it gets smashed, you won`t see that anything happened? Even if you drop the phone, somebody coming along goes oh, look, a free telephone.
They could simply take that away. So, just because there`s no evidence doesn`t mean anything. Also, she could have voluntarily gotten into somebody`s car she knew just to chat or say I`ll take you up to the burger joint and that person drove off with her. Again, no sign of foul play. So, I mean, this girl has no history in her background. She`s got a wonderful life. She`s involved in a lot of activities. Usually, when we see runaways, we see a problem with authority.
They`re having all kinds of difficulties. They`re running around with all kinds of boys. They`re into drugs. And we see that. We see that on the Facebook pages and MySpace pages. We see nothing with this girl at all.
CASAREZ: And we see none of that here. To Marc Klaas, president and founder of Klaaskids Foundation. Marc, listen to this. Let`s look at the facts. Do you know that another young girl in the same area was almost abducted shortly before Ali went missing? Someone tried to grab her from the neck. She bit the man, and she got away. Your thoughts.
MARC KLAAS, PRESIDENT & FOUNDE, KLAASKIDS FOUNDATION: Well, Jean, I think you made a very good point earlier about law enforcement having criteria to determine if a child is a runaway or not. It could be as simple as a series of questions to determine their propensity for running away. Obviously, this is a girl that most likely did not run away. But there`s another common thread. There`s another thread that we see regarding school bus stops and children disappearing from school bus stops. And I think that there are probably solutions to that problem.
CASAREZ: It`s a really good point. We`ll talk more about that tonight.
Please help us find a missing young girl named April Pennington. She is 15 years old, and she vanished on May 29th of 1996 from Montville, Connecticut. She`s 5`2", 100 pounds, with brown hair and hazel eyes. If you have any question, please call 860-848-6531.
If your loved one`s missing and you need help, go to CNN.com/nancygrace. Send us your story. We want to help find your loved ones.
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GRACE: Live to Texas. A girl scout calls her mom after school to let her know she`s taking the bus to work, pick up her check, then to walk straight home. Sixteen-year-old Ali, never seen alive again. Even missing an Alice in Wonderland birthday party she had planned. No cell phone calls. No text messages. Nothing. But can grainy surveillance video images shed light on what happened to Ali? What clues could the last known images of the girl reveal tonight? Where is missing girl scout, Ali Lowitzer?
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: More details emerge in the case of a missing Texas girl scout last seen getting off the school bus just blocks from her own home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We think there`s foul play.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: However, Ali`s family is sure that she was kidnapped or is being held against her will.
JOHN LOWITZER: The unfortunate thing is we don`t have any proof that there is foul play, and we don`t have any proof that there`s not.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The mere fact that she has had no communication with anybody that we know of makes it look like there`s a possibility of something having happened.
GRACE: No activity on her cell phone. No text messages at all. No use of a credit card or an ATM.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The video reportedly shows her leaving the bus just 30 feet from her own home. That`s the last time anyone saw Ali. Ali`s parents say they`ve had no contact with her since she was last seen, and there`s been no activity on her cell phone.
JOANN LOWITZER: She was going to walk to work and pick up her paycheck. And that was the last that I talked to her.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: I`m Jean Casarez. Marc Klaas makes a fantastic point in regard to school buses and how many children are abducted when they get off the bus so close to their homes. Let`s go out to the lawyers. Randy Kessler, defense attorney, joining us out of Atlanta tonight and Peter Elikann, defense attorney and author of "Super Predators" out of Boston.
To Randy Kessler, you know, in all the cases that I`ve covered and the cases that we`ve had here on Nancy`s show, what happens is predators watch the patterns of these children as they are walking home, as they`re walking off the bus, and it is a crime of opportunity. Your thoughts.
RANDY KESSLER, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: My thoughts are if it is a crime, if it`s not a runaway situation, it maybe the perfect crime, maybe by accident or maybe by intent. But if someone out there is watching and has anything to do with this or knows about it, things catch up with people, and there`s still a chance to save yourself and save her. But, you know, it may just very well be a unique opportunity, someone was driving by or somebody planned it out perfectly. But they will be caught sooner or later.
CASAREZ: Peter Elikann joining us tonight from Boston, defense attorney. What is ludicrous in this situation is her parents are having to finance every bit of search to find their daughter. There`s something wrong with that when she leaves with just the clothes on her back and left her life behind.
PETER ELIKANN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: That`s true. You know, if she was to -- if the police were declaring this investigation as an abduction, then all kinds of resources suddenly come in, crime stoppers and the FBI, et cetera. That said these poor people are stuck having to do their own self- financed search for her and do their own little bake sales or fund-raisers, and it really is outrageous. I don`t know why the police are so dug in on the idea that -- look, we`ve looked into the idea that she could be a runaway. That hasn`t worked. Why don`t we look into something else? Why leave any stone unturned here? I don`t know what`s going on here with this police department.
CASAREZ: You`re so right, Peter, because the FBI would have come in. The state authorities would have come in. Thank goodness for the Laura Recovery Center. With us tonight is Dawn Davis. She is the senior case manager who has been in charge of this case. Dawn, you had a search this weekend for Ali, didn`t you? Where did you go? And did you find anything that you can tell police?
VOICE OF DAWN DAVIS, SR. CASE MANGER, LAURA RECOVER CENTER: That`s correct. We went and searched again over some areas behind Ali`s house just simply to make sure that nothing had been missed on prior searches.
CASAREZ: Were you able to take scent dogs initially when you got going last April to the bus stop? And did you find anything through those scent dogs?
DAVIS: We did. We had dog teams, ATV teams, horse teams, foot searchers. We did door-to-door canvassing, flyer distribution. And the dog team did follow her scent back to the home, however, they could not tell that that wasn`t a trap that may have been laid earlier.
CASAREZ: Right. An earlier scent. Let`s go out to her parents again, John and Joann Lowitzer joining us tonight from Houston, Texas. We know that your daughter`s birthday is tomorrow. And that is going to be very, very difficult for you. We want to help find your daughter. We want everybody to look at the picture of Ali Lowitzer. Can you just describe her to us physically? Her hair color, what it might be now? Are there any birth marks on her or anything identifiable?
JOHN LOWITZER: At the time of her disappearance, her hair was died auburn. She had braces on her upper and lower teeth with pink bands. She has a small chicken pox scar between her eyes. She has a piercing in her nose. She`s about 5`2", 145 pounds. She was last seen wearing black-and- white checkered skinny jeans, a white T-shirt, dark gray hoodie, and her backpack was very brightly colored and checkered as well. And she had on black, solid black skate type shoes, kind of like Vans or DCs.
CASAREZ: Joann, if she can hear you tonight, what do you want to tell her or who she may be with?
JOANN LOWITZER: I want to tell her that I love her and miss her. And if there is somebody that took her that is watching this, then to let somebody know where she is. We just need to know that she`s OK.
CASAREZ: Ali Lowitzer, 16 years old. Her birthday is tomorrow. 5`2", 145 pounds, hazel eyes, auburn hair, and she wears braces on the top and the bottom. That`s an identifying mark right there, those braces. Want to go out to the callers. Chelsea in California. Hi, Chelsea.
CHELSEA, CALIFORNIA: Hi. How are you?
CASAREZ: Fine. Thank you for calling.
CHELSEA: Thanks. I had a question. Has her backpack or credit cards or anything, cell phone maybe, been located? And I know you said that the credit cards haven`t been used, but I just was curious if they`ve been located.
CASAREZ: OK. Good question. To John Lowitzer, she was only 16. Did she even have a credit card?
JOHN LOWITZER: She didn`t have any credit cards. There`s been no activity with her Social Security card. We have not located her cell phone. We have not located her backpack. Her cell phone does have GPS on it, and we constantly check to see if that GPS has been turned on. And the last place it`s showing is actually at the bus stop.
CASAREZ: Hmm. So, that check, she never picked up that check, and that paycheck was one of the first paychecks she`d ever gotten, right?
JOHN LOWITZER: Yes. She`d worked there for about a month, and she had been paid a couple times before, but she was going to walk up to work and see if she can collect her paycheck and work that night.
CASAREZ: What about it, Mrs. Lowitzer? No activity on her cell phone. What did she say when she spoke to you that day?
JOANN LOWITZER: She checked in with me to let me know that she was going to ride the bus home, and she was going to walk to work and pick up her paycheck. And that was the last that I talked to her.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: These are the faces of America`s missing. Every 30 seconds, another child, a sister, a brother, a father, a mother, disappears. Their families left behind, wondering, waiting, hoping. We have not forgotten.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Elissa Martin is an endangered missing adult. She was last seen at a family member`s home in Campbellton, Florida. Elissa has a medical condition and needs medication. Call 850-482-9648 if you have a tip.
Adriana Rojas disappeared from Rowland Heights, California. She has a birthmark on her left leg and a mole on her left hand.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was very happy. She was very active. She worked hard at school, at home, and she was so clean. She liked to be everything perfect. Her room, she would keep her room so nice and clean. I want her to come home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Call 1-800-the-lost with information.
Melissa Alaniz was last seen in 1987. She was leaving her home to walk to a nearby convenience store. Melissa reportedly was wearing an iron maiden T-shirt and jeans.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The police said that she went to -- to a video - - to play videos. Probably like at a 7-11. There were a lot of young girls missing from this area. You know, they found several of those girls. She was a very happy child. And, of course, you know, she was loved by everybody. And I don`t understand, you know, why she won`t call.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: I`m Nancy Grace. See you tomorrow night, 9 o`clock sharp eastern. And until then, we will be looking. Keep the faith, friend.
END
