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Nancy Grace
Update on the Adji Desir Disappearance
Aired March 11, 2011 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
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 FEMALE: Missing.
GRACE: Missing person.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s our duty to find her.
GRACE: 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)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: God will give him back to me again. I think he will come home.
GRACE (voice-over): It`s been two years since the disappearance of 6-year-old Adji Desir. The young boy with little verbal skills and the mental capacity of a 2-year-old turned up missing doing what his family says he loved -- to play.
While his mother was at work on January 10th, 2009, Adji stayed with his grandmother. He played with other children in her yard, but when it came time to go home, Adji was nowhere to be found.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was one of those cases where she says she saw him, she checked on him out the window in one minute, and then the next time she looked out he was gone.
GRACE: Massive searches of thousands of acres of the Immokalee village community where the grandmother lives has yielded little clues to finding the developmentally disabled boy who understands a few words but does not speak.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`ve done five searches in some of these areas. This search is not over, and it`s `s just changing its method of operation. We searched the ground. Now, we need to search information.
GRACE: Police have not ruled out an abduction or the possibility that Adji wandered off. Twenty-five hundred tips have been investigated and completed, but none have led to little Adji.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Don`t dismiss anything that you may think you know, because we would rather go on a hunch than not be able to follow up on it at all.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We really need to know where he`s at. We`re at a point of desperation.
GRACE: Police knocked on doors with updated flyers donning the smiling face of 6-year-old Adji Desir on the two-year anniversary of his disappearance. They hope the flyers will aid in achieving a triangle of trust between residents, law enforcement, and Adji`s parents to ultimately bring the boy home.
(on camera): Take a look at Adji. He has the mind of a 2-year-old little boy, he understands only Creole. He can`t speak at all. He cannot communicate verbally.
Please help us find this boy.
(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, 50 nights we go live, spotlighting America`s missing children -- boys, girls, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandparents. They`re gone. But where?
Tonight, a 6-year-old Florida boy spends his day playing at grandmother`s while both of his parents go to work. Hours later, when his dad comes to get him, the 6-year-old boy is gone.
Tonight, where is 6-year-old little Adji?
Straight out to Rory O`Neill, Westwood One Radio.
Rory, what do we know about the search for Adji?
RORY O`NEILL, REPORTER, WESTWOOD ONE RADIO: Well, they`ve tried again, Nancy, as we`ve reached this two-year anniversary. Just a couple weeks ago, they put out a new effort to try to find the boy. Several hundred more flyers were distributed.
And as the preview piece set up, they are trying to establish this triangle of trust to get the Immokalee farm worker community more trusting of the Collier County sheriff and of the Desir family so that they can bring everyone together and hopefully find Adji.
GRACE: Let`s go over what happened that day, Rory O`Neill. Take it from the top.
O`NEILL: Well, as was mentioned earlier, Adji was just staying with his grandmother, as was pretty typical, running in and out of the house throughout the day.
She had fed him lunch as normal. And he was just, you know, back and forth inside the house as a 6-year-old boy playing. And she looked out the window one minute and didn`t see him again.
And then they really noticed he was missing once his stepfather came to pick him up around 5:00 on that Saturday afternoon, and they couldn`t find Adji. And then the search -- and then the Collier County sheriff was notified a couple hours later, and the search started from there.
GRACE: Weigh in, Marc Klaas.
MARC KLAAS, KLAAS KIDS FOUNDATION: Well, you know, it was a similar cul-de-sac, although in a much different place, that little Samantha Runnion disappeared from. And in that case, somebody just pulled in, in a car, grabbed her and took off. And if there hadn`t been witnesses there looking, seeing what happened, that case may, too, have gone unsolved.
So, I think it`s entirely possible that somebody snatched him. I also think we have to go back to the family and look to the family for the simple reason that he was a developmentally disabled child. And as I stated on a previous program, developmentally challenged children are 1.5 to 10 times more likely to be victimized -- be victims of maltreatment.
GRACE: We are taking your calls.
Out to Nicole in Oregon. Hi, Nicole.
NICOLE, CALLER FROM OREGON: Hello, Nancy. It`s so nice to talk to you.
GRACE: Likewise.
NICOLE: I had a comment for you. My comment was that you`re my hero. I watch you every night. You give me a lot of strength to post everything on Facebook every day about to help find these missing children.
And my comment about this little boy which I`m trying to compose myself is, have all the family members been excluded, or have any of them had any prior criminal history with anything, from small petty things, to large things that would lead to anything in this case?
GRACE: Let`s go out to Naples, Florida.
Joining us is Sergeant Ken Becker, the Collier County Sheriff`s Office.
Sergeant, I really appreciate you coming on tonight.
What can you tell us about the family? I mean, I believe the mother and father were at work that day. The mom is a nurse, I believe -- works in a nursing capacity; and the father, a dishwasher. Both very hard workers, I think.
They were not even on the scene, were they?
SGT. KEN BECKER, COLLIER COUNTY SHERIFF`S OFFICE: The stepfather was there that evening, Nancy. The mother was at work.
He was there for a lot of the day because Adji wanted to go to Farm Workers Village, where his grandmother`s house was, because that`s where all his kids were at. So, he was there most of the day, but he did leave for a short period of time to return back to his residence, where he got some laundry and things along those lines, and came back to do that. And then as he returned back, that`s when they realized that Adji was gone.
GRACE: Now, Sergeant, let me clarify something -- a question in my own mind. When he left the premises to go get laundry, did he take Adji with him, or was Adji spotted after the stepfather left?
BECKER: No, Adji was spotted after the stepfather left. He left about the time that Adji was in eating, and then after he got done with his dinner, Adji went back out into the front yard, in the cul-de-sac area, and was playing out there with some kids for about 15 to 20 minutes, where grandma would check on him. And then when she checked on him a second time, Adji wasn`t around anywhere.
GRACE: Fifteen to 20 minutes -- that`s all it took for little Adji Desir, just 6 years old, to disappear.
I`m showing footage, Sergeant Becker, of law enforcement searching through dumps, searching the water.
What have you guys done to find little Adji?
BECKER: It`s been a constant search. And the night of the incident, we had a number of law enforcement officers, detectives on scene. We also had FBI members on scene.
Did an extensive search that evening in dark, going house to house in Farm Workers Village, checking all the houses, checks all the garbage cans, any vehicles, anywhere a child could hide -- because early on, we got information that when Adji got scared, he would tend to hide. So, you know, we were looking anywhere that a small child could possibly hide.
We had the grandmother out there on the P.A. system calling Adji, thinking that, well, maybe if he`s scared and hears his grandmother`s voice, he`ll come out. But the search went on for a week and we were never able to find him.
GRACE: Why the grandmother and not his mother?
BECKER: Well, his mother was at work. She didn`t get home until about 11:00 that evening. So, it was a choice of the stepfather or the grandmother, and we felt that with the grandmother calling him, that there was a better chance that he`d come out.
GRACE: We are taking your calls.
Back to Jean Casarez, legal correspondent, "In Session."
Jean, I want to just go through the timeline one more time. Tell me how it went down that day.
JEAN CASAREZ, "IN SESSION": Well, it sounds like around 5:00 in the evening, the stepfather came back to the home, realized that little Adji was gone, and decided to search for a couple of hours with the family right there before they notified law enforcement around 7:00 in the evening. And that`s when the forces came in.
And Nancy, with all of the searching entities, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, FBI, by land, by air, by water, there has never been a trace of this little boy, just like he evaporated from the face of the earth.
GRACE: Back to Sergeant Ken Becker, Collier County Sheriff`s Office.
Other than the grandmother seeing him playing out in, I guess the front yard, who else was out there? Were there other children out there with him?
BECKER: Yes, there was other children that were out there. She went to them, asked where Adji was at. They said he was there just a few minutes prior and they don`t know where he went. So, that`s when they started looking for him.
GRACE: So they didn`t see a car pull up? They saw nothing of that sort?
BECKER: No. They gave us no indication that any vehicles had pulled or up or anything like that.
GRACE: To Sergeant Scott Haines, sheriff`s officer, Santa Rosa County, Florida.
Sergeant, can you describe the area, the terrain there?
SGT. SCOTT HAINES, SHERIFF`S OFFICER, SANTA ROSA COUNTY, FLORIDA: The terrain down there is actually a lot different than up here. However, any large, vast area like that, when you have palmetto bushes, things of that nature -- it`s so thick, you have a hard time looking from the air, you have a lot of swampy areas that are hard to get to. It`s just very treacherous and tedious terrain to cover when you`re conducting any type of a search, and it makes it very difficult for law enforcement officers to do that.
GRACE: You know, Dr. Paula Bloom, clinical psychologist, so innocent. This little 6-year-old boy was developmentally disabled. He has the mind of a 2-year-old.
He cannot communicate. He understands a few words. He understands Creole. He`s nonverbal.
Who would take this little boy that can`t even speak or understand?
DR. PAULA BLOOM, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: You know, Nancy, I`m trying to be really professional here, but I have a 6-year-old son who has speech issues, and it`s just hitting very close to home -- the idea of somebody being so helpless and not being able to ask for help.
One of the lessons here for people is that if you have a child who has speech problems, get him an ID bracelet with the basic information, because they can`t get the help if somebody wanted to give it to them.
GRACE: This little boy is just 6 years old. He cannot verbally communicate. He has the mental capacity of a 2-year-old child. He can only understand Creole.
And the fear is he may actually try to hide from searchers, not understanding what`s going on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hello? I`m going to leave a flyer here about a missing child.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Adji Desir is 6 years of age.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was playing in the yard.
GRACE: He cannot communicate verbally.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Outside his grandmother`s home.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where she says she saw him, she checked on him out the window.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s three feet tall, 45 pounds --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And then the next time she looked out, he was gone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- with black hair and brown eyes.
GRACE: Vanishes into thin air.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`re isolating all the trash that was collected.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I feel like my life is almost over.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`re searching the sexual offender database.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I`m sure she feels a lot of guilt.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`re making sure we don`t leave any stone unturned.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Marie Neida says she believes her little Adji is still alive.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would give him hugs.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: More than 200 tips have come in.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would kiss him. I`d say, "I love you."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: None turning into significant leads for investigators.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I put my hands in the air, and I`d say, "Thank you, Jesus."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: We are taking your calls tonight. We are focusing in honing on in on a 6-year-old little boy, Adji Desir.
Both of his parents work hard. He`s staying with his grandmother. She looks out, checks on him, he`s in her yard.
Fifteen to 20 minutes later, she checks again. He`s gone. He is developmentally disabled. He has the mind of a 2-year-old child.
He cannot speak English. He understands some words. He speaks broken Creole. He cannot communicate verbally.
Where is Adji? And what does it mean that your child is in your yard, 15 minutes pass, they`re gone?
What does that mean, Marc Klaas?
KLAAS: Well, it could mean any of a number of things. You see, there are so many scenarios that are possible in a situation like this, that it just leads law enforcement in so many different directions.
What they need to do with this case -- and I have to say, Nancy, with a difficult child, I just can`t see somebody taking this child and continuing to raise him. My suspicion is that probably, Adji is no longer with us. But law enforcement has to go in so many different directions.
There`s family to look at. There are neighbors to look at. There is the terrain, itself.
My goodness, what a difficult and rough terrain that is -- difficult even for law enforcement, not to mention a little boy.
There`s the possibility, certainly, of somebody just coming and snatching him. It`s an extremely difficult case, an extremely difficult case.
And I`ll tell you, the triangle of trust is a hugely important concept in missing person cases. And it`s beautiful in its simplicity.
It was first coined by the Laura Recovery Center in honor of their own daughter, Laura Smither, who -- died excuse me -- disappeared some years ago. And it simply means that law enforcement, the community, and the family all trust in each other to do the right thing.
GRACE: Let me go back to you, Sergeant Ken Becker, Collier County Sheriff`s Office.
Where exactly where both parents when Adji went missing?
I`m sorry, I can`t hear him. I`m trying to go to Sergeant Ken Becker.
Sergeant, can you hear me?
OK. We`ll get that straight.
Jean, do we know where both parents were?
CASAREZ: The mother worked as a nursing assistant in an assisted living facility. And she was working.
Now, we know the stepfather worked at a pizza parlor as a dishwasher. But according to the sergeant, it appears as though he wasn`t working that day, was at the home periodically, but had gone home, to his home, for a few minutes, to only return and find Adji gone.
GRACE: Unleash the lawyers, Kirby Clements and Raymond Giudice, both defense attorneys out of Atlanta.
Kirby Clements, you`re a former prosecutor. Where do you advise police go from here?
KIRBY CLEMENTS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, I would recommend that they actually start looking at some of the schools. Only off chance that -- you know, that a third party took him. And schools that specialize with kids with his type of disability, is there some child being educated right now that doesn`t have a birth certificate?
If we assume that someone took him, although we also have to consider the possibility that it could have been wildlife -- I wasn`t sure about what type of wildlife was in that area. Are they near alligators? Are they near some sort of big cats out there? What`s that about?
Because that also is a real concern. And if that`s the case, law enforcement is not going to find anything, sadly.
GRACE: What about it, Sergeant Ken Becker? What is the wildlife possibilities that he could have been attacked by an animal, alligator, crocodile? What can you tell us?
BECKER: Well, Farm Workers Village in Immokalee is right on the northern edge of the Everglades. So there is a lot of swampy area, there`s a lot of alligators in the area.
There were alligators in ponds around Farm Workers Village when we were doing the search. There was a panther that was hit by a vehicle just south of Farm Workers Village about a week after the search was completed. So there`s a lot of wildlife in the area.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: His name is Adji.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Adji. Six-year-old Adji Desir --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- went missing playing with other kids outside his grandma`s home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Helicopters, bloodhounds.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`re searching the sexual offender database.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s extremely nonverbal. He couldn`t speak up and say, "Help me."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`re making sure we don`t leave any stone unturned.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s three feet tall, 45 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Despite a massive search, Adji never seen again.
GRACE: How far could a child with a mental capacity of a 2-year-old get on his own?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: We are taking your calls.
Straight out to Lynn in Ohio. Hi, Lynn.
LYNN, CALLER FROM OHIO: Hi. How are you, Nancy?
GRACE: I`m good, dear. What`s your question?
LYNN: Yes, I was wondering, where is his biological father at?
GRACE: Good question.
What do we know about that, Sergeant Becker? Where is the bio dad?
BECKER: The biological father is living in Haiti, Nancy.
GRACE: Excuse me? In Haiti?
BECKER: He`s living in Haiti. Yes.
GRACE: OK. Number one, that rules him out as a possibility.
And, you know, that`s not -- not said sarcastically, because the first place you look -- isn`t this true, Sergeant Becker, is at the family? The first place you would look is at the father, the bio dad, the stepfather, the mother, the grandmother. That rules him out.
BECKER: Well, it does, but we also had some leads that early on that maybe somebody had assisted him in getting Adji to him, but we looked into that lead and there wasn`t any merit to that.
GRACE: Another question I`ve got about the response. Did the parents go straight to police, Rory O`Neill?
O`NEILL: They searched on their own for about two hours, Nancy, and then they notified the sheriff`s office, especially when the father came home -- the stepfather, that is -- came back to the grandmother`s home, found out that Adji wasn`t around. And then they looked for him for about two hours, and then the sheriff`s office was called.
GRACE: Jean Casarez, why?
CASAREZ: Nancy, everything I have read up until tonight, when we heard the sergeant speaking, was that the stepfather was working that day. Now, we`ve heard tonight he wasn`t.
And they were cleared early on in the investigation -- both the mother and the stepfather completely cleared. But I don`t know why, number one, they waited two hours to call. And number two, why the mother wasn`t informed and stayed at work until around 11:00 or so at night?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Marie Neida says she believes her little Adji is still alive. All she thinks about is having her only child back in his arms.
MARIE NEIDA, MOTHER (through translator): I would give him hugs, I would kiss him. I would say, "I love you." I`d put my hands in the air, and I`d say, "Thank you, Jesus."
(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 had seen the suspect on NANCY GRACE.
GRACE: There is a God.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 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)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: God will give him back to me again. I think he will come home.
GRACE (voice-over): It`s been two years since the disappearance of 6-year-old Adji Desir. The young boy with little verbal skills and the mental capacity of a 2-year-old turned up missing doing what his family says he loved -- to play.
While his mother was at work on January 10th, 2009, Adji stayed with his grandmother. He played with other children in her yard, but when it came time to go home, Adji was nowhere to be found.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was one of those cases where she says she saw him, she checked on him out the window in one minute, and then the next time she looked out he was gone.
GRACE: Massive searches of thousands of acres of the Immokalee village community where the grandmother lives has yielded little clues to finding the developmentally disabled boy who understands a few words but does not speak.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`ve done five searches in some of these areas. This search is not over, and it`s `s just changing its method of operation. We searched the ground. Now, we need to search information.
GRACE: Police have not ruled out an abduction or the possibility that Adji wandered off. Twenty-five hundred tips have been investigated and completed, but none have led to little Adji.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Don`t dismiss anything that you may think you know, because we would rather go on a hunch than not be able to follow up on it at all.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We really need to know where he`s at. We`re at a point of desperation.
GRACE: Police knocked on doors with updated flyers donning the smiling face of 6-year-old Adji Desir on the two-year anniversary of his disappearance. They hope the flyers will aid in achieving a triangle of trust between residents, law enforcement, and Adji`s parents to ultimately bring the boy home.
(on-camera): He has the mind of a 2-year-old little boy. He understands only Creole. He can`t speak at all. He cannot communicate verbally. Please, help us find this boy.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: Everyone, this little boy cannot verbally communicate. He has the mind of a 2-year-old little child. Therefore, he can`t even explain to anyone that he is lost.
Joining me right now, special guest, Lieutenant Tom Smith, with the Special Crimes Bureau, Collier County Sheriff`s Office. He`s the lead investigative into Adji`s disappearance.
Lieutenant, thank you for being with us.
It`s stunning to me that this little boy disappears out of his own yard -- his grandmother there in the home taking care of him. Tell us, again, about the circumstances surrounding Adji`s disappearance.
LT. TOM SMITH, COLLIER COUNTY SHERIFF`S OFFICE (via telephone): Well, Adji was out in front of his home in a community housing authority project that consists of about 611 homes, and within about just a 15-minute timeframe, around 5:30 p.m., he disappeared.
GRACE: What do you mean by a 15-minute window?
SMITH: Well, you know, he was seen around 5:30 and around 5:45, he was not there where he could be called back to the house and they began searching. And it took about two hours of their own searches before they realized that they couldn`t find them then they called the sheriffs office.
GRACE: Rory O`Neill, are police now accepting that this is not a case of the child wandering off? That this is a kidnap?
O`NEILL: They say if a boy this age, developmentally disabled, as you say, really couldn`t walk away too far on his own. They feel secure in the search that they mounted on the ground. They think someone else was involved in his disappearance.
GRACE: Lieutenant Smith, who saw him at 5:30?
SMITH: He was playing football, tossing a football with a child about his own age and then the older brother to that friend came over said, time to come home for dinner and they left him standing 100 feet from him. But we`ve interviewed all the children that play in the community. It`s a very close-knit community because of the type of development that it is. We`ve interviewed his classmates and all the children that he`s played with that whole evening from the time he woke up to the time he disappeared and he just -- just vanished.
GRACE: So, at around 5:30, the neighbor friend comes to get the little brother. It`s time to come in for dinner. They leave Adji 100 feet from his own home. And then 15 minutes later, what happens?
SMITH: Grandmother comes out to tell him to come into the house and he`s obviously not out front. And the stepfather had been in the same neighborhood doing laundry at the local wash house and walked up to the house. So, I mean, it even makes it a little bit more difficult to know that he was right there and nobody saw anything.
GRACE: Rupa, what can you tell me?
RUPA MIKKILINENI, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Well, you know, police have a couple of real theories here. The real theory is that he was abducted. I mean, they`re leaning towards this mostly because they have done extensive searches in the area, almost immediately, as soon as he disappeared, Nancy. So they`re thinking somebody in this Haitian community might know something.
GRACE: To Dr. Marty Makary, physician and professor of public health at Johns Hopkins, joining us from Washington, D.C.
Dr. Makary, what is your take on the special needs of little Adji?
DR. MARTY MAKARY, PHYSICIAN, JOHNS HOPKINS: Well, it really all comes down to water. You know, from a developmental perspective, a child like this, with the mental age of 2, does not have the mental construct to put the logic together that water that they see is what would satisfy their thirst, and they`re at high risk for dehydration. Also because of their stranger anxiety, they may hide from people actually looking for them.
GRACE: What do you mean, "stranger anxiety"?
MAKARY: Well, they can actually detach from their environment because they become lonely and scared at an early age when they`re not around their typical environment. So, they detach and can really burrow into their surroundings.
GRACE: Lieutenant Smith, this is a very low-crime area?
SMITH: Well, it`s a typical housing authority unit where people are screened very closely before they move in. You know, it`s a zero-tolerance type of, you know, crime community, so if you commit a crime or have associates that come in that commit crimes, you run the risk of being kicked out. So, yes, it is a -- it is a good-natured community.
GRACE: And tonight, please help us find Kenny Gerald. 41 years old, vanishes December 28th, 2010. He`s diabetic, 5`5", 175 pounds, blue eyes. Last seen before moving from Michigan to Dawson Springs, Kentucky, driving a red 2001 Ford F-150. If you have info, please call 270-676-3313.
If your loved one is missing and you need help, go to CNN.com/NancyGrace. Send us your story. We want to help.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jesse Ross, sophomore at the University of Missouri, disappeared in November of 2006, following a school trip to Chicago. His parents will not rest until they find him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jesse`s a very adventurous individual, fearless, always involved with something. His school, he was involved in several organizations, political organization. He was manager for a band called the Dead Giveaway. They`d have an annual event, provide food and music and literature and posters and so on, about missing persons families that we`ve come to know through other organizations.
Jesse was majoring in communications and minoring in politics. He just had a whole world waiting for him out there for him to just kind of get what he wanted.
We always told our son anything he wanted to do that wasn`t destructive, we would support him in any way we could. So just, you know, real potential for just about anything he wanted to do.
He was very much into practical jokes. He was -- he had this very serious side, this very committed side, but he also just could not resist a practical joke.
We get up each day, a day of hope. I think for us now we just, we focus ourselves more on positive and what we can do, knowing there are other people out there where we are and they`re dealing like we are each day. They`re there for us. We`re there for them.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: The Collier County Sheriff`s Office has received over 200 tips in the search for missing 6-year-old Adji. A task force of investigators from the local sheriff`s office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI are all assisting in the investigation into what happened to the little boy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One is hastily (ph), the second time is good, the third time you`re probably done. But we`ve done five searches in some of these areas.
GRACE: The parents have totally been cleared. How are they holding up?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nancy, the family, obviously, is devastated, as any family would be. The grandmother was the one actually looking after the boy when he was playing out in the front yard.
GRACE: Nearly 1,500 people have searched 216 square miles for the boy who`s last seen playing with friends just outside his grandmother`s home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The search is not over, and it`s just changing its method of operation. We searched the ground. Now, we need to search information.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: Back to the lines. Nicole in New York. Hi, Nicole.
NICOLE, CALLER FROM NEW YORK: Hi. How are you?
GRACE: I`m good, dear. What`s your question?
NICOLE: Well, I`m just wondering, since there are absolutely no leads to go on in this case, have -- is this a cesspool area and given the location, has anybody checked the neighboring land to see if anybody had recent cesspool work? Could he have sunk into the ground? Because I know it does happen. I mean, I just can`t imagine how he could just disappear and have no leads. Has that been looked at or surveyed?
GRACE: Good question. What do we know, Jean Casarez?
CASAREZ: Pools, well, we know there`s a lot of agriculture, as we talked about, the alligators, the panthers, the warthogs that are there. Remember, this is an agricultural community. It is a lot of immigrants that are in this community. And the triangle of trust is so important because they believe someone may be a documented or undocumented immigrant that knows information but doesn`t have the trust to come forward to law enforcement.
GRACE: You know, that`s a good point. What about it, Sgt. Becker?
BECKER: It is a migrant area. You know, we, as the sheriff`s office, have been working for a number of years to convey to the community that we can be trusted and that they can trust law enforcement. But obviously, if people from different countries in communities grow up with a lack of trust for law enforcement, it`s going to take a number of years to build that trust, but we are continuing to do it in hopes that it`ll pay off in the long run.
GRACE: Kim in Florida. Hi, Kim. What`s your question, dear?
KIM, CALLER FROM FLORIDA: Hi, Nancy.
My question actually has been answered by the sergeant. Specifically, I live in a small town 30 miles from Immokalee, in a town, Everglade City. And this is the first that I`m hearing of this little boy missing, and I`m only 30 miles from there. But hearing -- you know, the sergeant talk about all the flyers that have been sent out, my question is: why are there no flyers on Alligator Alley now which is really the only road from Immokalee from 29 that they can get on?
I have never seen a flyer about the boy missing, and I`m just trying to understand why.
GRACE: Good question. Sgt. Ken Becker, what about Alligator Alley?
BECKER: Well, we -- early on in the investigation, we had flyers made up. We distributed them on the East Coast, all areas around South Florida. So, obviously, on Alligator Alley, the only things along there would be the facilities where someone can stop at the rest areas, and all those areas were posted with flyers.
GRACE: We are taking your calls live.
I want to go back to Rory O`Neill with Westwood One Radio.
The area there, how close is his home, his grandmother`s home, anyway, to, for instance, swampy area with possibly crocodiles or gators in it?
RORY O`NEILL, REPORTER, WESTWOOD ONE RADIO: Well, right. It is -- as the sergeant mentioned a short time ago, it is just along side the Everglades. There is all sorts of wildlife that could be in that area, and that`s really one of the things that complicates this case. You were talking a few minutes ago about the California case.
Look at what one piece of evidence, a tire track, can do, and what law enforcement can do with a simple tire track. In this case, they don`t even have that one kind of clue to go on.
This really is the case of a child literally disappearing. And they don`t know if he wandered off into the swamp. They don`t know if someone came along and abducted him. So, they really are -- we`re working from ground zero and have not been able to make a lot of traction except for perhaps eliminating members of the family as a suspect in the case.
GRACE: Out to the lines. Florence in Louisiana. Hi, Florence.
FLORENCE, CALLER FROM LOUISIANA: Hello. How are you?
GRACE: I`m good, dear. Thank you for calling in. What`s your question?\
FLORENCE: Listen, Nancy, I watch you all the time, and I`ve never heard this question asked. He is out there playing with a group of children. What is the ages of the boys or girls, if they were 10, 11 and 12? Because we`ve heard of older children hurting younger children that are disabled. And I was wondering if any of those children have been interviewed or lie detector taken.
GRACE: You know, Florence in Louisiana, that`s an excellent question. What about it, Sgt. Becker?
BECKER: The time after dinner when Adji was out playing, we were informed that the kids he was playing with was around the age of about 7 to 9 years old. But during the day, there were a number of kids in Farm Workers Village that were hanging around with each other and playing.
Down here, we have a children`s advocacy center, so we had a child specialist come out to Immokalee with us. We set up an interview room and we used the child specialist to interview all of the children that had any contact with Adji that day to find out what details and what information that they had in the case on Adji and different areas he had been throughout the day.
GRACE: I know, Sgt. Becker, that your force does not want to give up on Adji. What, if any, are the plans to go forward at this juncture -- in the search for Adji?
BECKER: Well, like I said, it`s a continuous investigation. We`re constantly brainstorming of new ways to generate new leads like had been mentioned earlier. We came up with a triangle of trust poster to distribute through Farm Workers Village and throughout the businesses in Immokalee on the two-year anniversary hoping that people in Farm Workers Village would come forward or somebody in the Immokalee area --
GRACE: Right.
BECKER: -- would come forward.
GRACE: What about it, Marc Klaas, what can they do now?
KLAAS: Well, you know, the posters that they distributed are in multiple languages. They`re in Creole, they`re in Spanish, they`re in English. They`ve also produced a video that`s gone on to the various social networking sites.
And I think with 500 profiles on Facebook alone, that can reach an awful lot of people. Hopefully, it could make a difference.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And now "CNN heroes."
ROBIN LIM, COMMUNITY CRUSADER: The moment that a woman falls pregnant in Indonesia, she is 300 times more likely to die in the next 12 months than if she was not pregnant. If you have money, you can get excellent medical services. The poorest people don`t always get the services they need.
In the hospital here, you cannot take your baby home until you paid your bill. Sometimes the mothers wait outside the hospital all day wait to get in to feed their baby and change their baby`s diaper.
My name is Robin Lim. I`m a midwife. Most people call me Ebu Robin because Ebu means mother.
I learned about the dangers of motherhood, when my own sister, she died as a complication of her third pregnancy. I was just really crushed.
I came to Bali to reinvent my life.
Hi, baby. Hi.
We started the clinic run by Indonesian midwives. We offer prenatal care, birth services.
No matter how poor they are, no matter their race or religion, we teach new graduating classes of midwives how do to a more natural, gentle birth. The women can stay as long as they want.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Robin helps poor people. She cares about me very much. Like my own mother. I`m extremely grateful.
LIM: Each baby, each adult deserves a clean, healthy, loving environment. Those are a human right.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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 VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happened to beautiful 2-year-old girl Tangena Hussain? Tangena put in the car by her mother`s boyfriend. The two head to pick up Tangena`s mom from work at a Michigan mall. The boyfriend says he stops at the gas station to quickly pick up some gum from a store, but when he comes back, Tangena is gone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I go back to the car, like I`m inside the gas station like three, four minutes. When I go back to the car, I didn`t see her. (INAUDIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We talked to a man at the gas station who said he helped Tangena`s mother and boyfriend search the area.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I took them around, you know, we`re trying to walk around with about, I would say a good eight, nine-block radius.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Police say surveillance video captures Hussain going into the gas station and coming back out but does not show his car or Tangena.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I came back to the gas station.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you actually left the gas station to get her mother before you called the police?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Reports say the boyfriend proceeds to pick up Tangena`s mom at the mall, drive back to the gas station and then calls police.
Cops say there`s no sign of forced entry in the locked car. Who took beautiful 2-year-old Tangena?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn`t get in trouble like that before. I didn`t lose anybody before.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Authorities, including the FBI, have searched day and night for any sign of Tangena and say the case still remains active and open. A $20,000 reward is still being offered for any information leading to the 2-year-old`s whereabouts.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jamrul says he left the little girl inside his car while he went into a Detroit gas station.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I go back to the gas station, asking people, nobody see her. Then I go to, like, the mall and pick up her mom.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So how does a toddler simply vanish into thin air? What happened to Tangena Hussain?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Action News talked to a woman who says she was in the gas station at the same time.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I`ve seen an Indian guy. He`d come in and he goes to the juice department in the back. He never purchases juice. He walks around, takes his time walking around, comes to the front.
He tried to purchase two packs of Juicy Fruit gum and to use his debit card and then it didn`t go through. The lady that was behind the counter told him that he didn`t have any funds on it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I love her. I love her like my own daughter. Yes.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: I`m Nancy Grace. See you tomorrow night, 9:00 sharp Eastern. And until then, we will be looking. Keep the faith, friend.
END
