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Nancy Grace
Arizona Teenager Vanishes
Aired July 23, 2013 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICK SALINAS, FATHER OF MISSING TEEN: I`m really worried about my daughter. She`s been missing since yesterday.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When Salinas went missing, she was on her way to meet her boyfriend, Francisco Ortega (ph), after the two got into an argument.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That`s what`s making this difficult, that she was doing things that she normally doesn`t do.
SALINAS: This is not like her. She would have called.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They were at a Tempe house party when Ortega says Salinas got upset with him after he was not paying enough attention to her. He later drove her home, and while stopped at a red light in Tempe, she got out and started walking.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I called her roommate and told her that she got out of my car and I told her to go out look for her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Once a home, Adrienne packed a bag and started driving back to Ortega`s home, but she crashed near her house and flattened two front tires.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They were going around the curb and hit something, and then just had two flat tires.
SALINAS: She`s not answering her texts. The phone still goes to her voicemail. Oh! I`m really (INAUDIBLE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JEAN CASAREZ, GUEST HOST: I`m Jean Casarez, in for Nancy Grace. Thank you so much for joining us.
Tonight, we take you to Tempe, Arizona. The search is on for a 19- year-old college student vanishing without a trace, Adrienne Salinas. She was driving to go meet her boyfriend. She got into a car accident. She called a taxi. Nobody -- but nobody -- has heard from her since.
Her car was found abandoned pretty nearby with two flat tires. Now mystery text messages are being released as we now obtain 911 calls. What happened to Adrienne Salinas?
Let us go straight out to Jill Ryan, news anchor with News Talk 92.3 KTAR. Jill, start from the beginning. What happened here?
JILL RYAN, 92.3 NEWS TALK KTAR: Well, it was a Friday night. And Adrienne and her two roommates, Shanie Dugan (ph) and Rebecca Flores (ph), they decided they were going to throw a party, just like a lot of college kids do. There were about 40 to 50 people there. And there was drinking going on.
Friends tell me that Adrienne began fighting with her long-time on- and-off again boyfriend, Francisco Ortega. This was nothing new. But about 2:30, the couple ended up back up at Francisco`s apartment in Scottsdale.
The fighting, though, didn`t stop there. In fact, Francisco says Adrienne stormed out of the house, saying she was going to walk home. He quickly followed in the car and he convinced her to get in, saying he would take her home. And he got her almost all the way home. About a quarter of mile away, though, she jumps out of the car, according to him, and she walks the rest of the way. So a very frustrated Francisco calls her roommates and says, Hey, you better make sure she gets home OK. And she does make it home OK...
CASAREZ: You know, Jill -- Jill, I want to stop you for a second because when I hear that somebody jumps out of a car and starts walking, that just doesn`t seem like normal behavior. When we say they are arguing, are we talking about verbal arguing? Is there anything at all to say that there was any type of physical altercation between the two?
RYAN: At this point of the investigation, we haven`t heard anything about anything physical, but there has been reports of verbal arguments, and they`ve happened before. Again, when this happened at the party, it didn`t really raise flags, red flags with her friends. This was something -- you know, this was a hot and cold kind of deal. These kids grew up together. They`re young and...
CASAREZ: And they went to elementary school together, you`re right, Jill Ryan.
Clark Goldband, take it up from there because, OK, he`s driving her back to her home that she shares with two female roommates. She decides she wants to walk home the rest of the way. He actually got her cell phone that she forget and took it to her, right, Clark?
CLARK GOLDBAND, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Right, Jean. And we`re talking about 2:00, 2:30 in the morning. So when she leaves that vehicle walking back to her house, the boyfriend chases after her and says, Hey, you forgot your cell phone. So not only does he seek her out to give her back her cell phone, he then gets back into the vehicle and calls the other roommates at the home and says, Hey, look, she`s walking home. You guys need to make sure she gets home safely.
She does get home safely, and then one of the two roommates sees her on the front lawn of the home and describes her being as, quote, "calmly upset," according the police report -- Jean.
CASAREZ: And then Jill Ryan, let`s continue with the story so everybody gets the facts because the facts in this case are extremely important. She then decides, when she gets back home with her roommates, that she`s going to go back to talk it out with the boyfriend, right? So what happens then?
RYAN: That`s right. She was actually there just long enough to pack a bag and grab her car keys and tell her roommates, Hey, I`m heading back to Francisco`s. I want to finish talking to him. They don`t really think much about this. They watch her get into her car, drive off, and that`s the last time they say they saw her.
CASAREZ: All right, we have a very special guest tonight, someone that is living a nightmare with this case. We have Rick Salinas, who is the father of Adrienne that has gone missing.
Mr. Salinas, I want to talk to you right away. We cannot imagine what you`re going through at all. What are police telling you do they believe happened to your daughter?
SALINAS: Right now, with the ongoing investigation, what they`re telling me is that they are questioning people, anybody that was around her at the time that she had disappeared, questioning the cab company, anybody that was near her.
I know they`re doing everything they can, using up all their resources that they have, and I`m confident that they`re still doing a good job. When I talked to the detective in charge of the case a few days ago, he informed me that they were not slowing down any. They`re not at all slowing down in the case. They`re completely moving forward and trying to find out exactly what happened and gathering data, you know, having polygraph testing on people. It`s just an ongoing investigation. That`s what they`re telling me. They have no solid leads, though.
CASAREZ: Mr. Salinas, I spent a lot of time in Arizona this year with the Jodi Arias case, and I really liked Tempe, Arizona, so much because it was just a really nice community. It`s a college town. Your daughter is a college student in that town. But I found it a very nice area.
But we now know that when she left the apartment that her car was speeding at very high speeds on those suburban streets of Tempe and got into a vehicular accident, a one-car accident. Do you know if she was driving the car at that point when it got into that accident?
SALINAS: Well, I`m assuming that she was. I believe she was driving the car. The -- she was heading east on Rio Salado, and that`s like a -- it`s not in the neighborhood. It just runs alongside of the river bottom. And at the end of the street, where it turns into Ash, it`s a sharp turn. You`re supposed to go 15 miles an hour. If you`re going a little bit over the speed limit, you know, you can hit the curb if you`re not -- you`re going too fast, and that`s what she did.
CASAREZ: And you know -- and we`re hearing that that car may have been going 65 miles an hour.
Everybody, we have got that 911 call of the car that is believed Adrienne was driving when she got into that accident that gave the need to call for a taxi. Let`s listen to that 911 call right now.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
911 OPERATOR: 911. What`s your emergency?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi. I just wanted to report -- I`m heading down Rio Salado in Tempe...
911 OPERATOR: Rio and what?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rio Salado in Tempe, whatever street...
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, Rio Salado. A car with a license plate...
911 OPERATOR: Rio Salado -- go ahead.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The license (DELETED) I believe were the beginning numbers in it -- just crashed into something and then had, like, two flat tires...
911 OPERATOR: OK, Rio Salado and what?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rio Salado and Ash.
911 OPERATOR: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And facing south. I can see the Ash light in front of me right now. They were going around the curb and hit something, and then just had two flat tires and then...
911 OPERATOR: Is this person still there inside the vehicle?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don`t know because they just took off.
911 OPERATOR: With the flat tires?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
911 OPERATOR: OK, what kind of vehicle was it?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s a white, like, Taurus-looking vehicle.
911 OPERATOR: In what direction did they go?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Heading south on Rio Salado.
911 OPERATOR: And the plate is (DELETED)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I believe so. I just told you (INAUDIBLE) (INAUDIBLE) like, hit something, and like, (INAUDIBLE) off. I`m trying to, like, call. Oh, yes, thank you so much for stopping, though. Someone just (INAUDIBLE)
911 OPERATOR: Did you see how many people were inside the vehicle?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It looked like two. I believe I saw somebody in the passenger, but I don`t think they could have made it very far. Like, if you have a cop on Ash and Rio Salado, they`ll probably see them. And when I was driving down the road, they sped by me, like, going 20 (ph) over the speed limit.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
CASAREZ: OK, I see a red flag right there because when Adrienne left her two female roommates, she was driving alone in her car.
I want to go out to Sergeant Michael Pooley from the Tempe Police Department, who is joining us tonight. Sergeant, thank you very much for coming on.
Do you believe two people were in the car at the time that 911 call was made?
SGT. MICHAEL POOLEY, TEMPE POLICE DEPARTMENT (via telephone): You know what we`ve done? We`ve gone out and talked to that young lady again. She said in her second interview that she`s not sure what she saw, exactly. When we found the car and we started to do a search of the car, from all indication, it looks like she was the only one in it, with things that were on the passenger seat, things that were in the back passenger seat.
If there had been somebody sitting in there, we think we would have been able to tell if somebody else had been in there. But all indication is that she was alone in that car right now.
CASAREZ: With that car driving so fast on the city streets of Tempe, do you believe that possibly she was trying to get away from anybody?
POOLEY: You know, from the timestamps of everything that we have so far, anything -- we can`t rule anything out at this point, to be honest with you. But at the same time, all indication is that she had left her apartment just minutes prior to that encounter, with that -- to her accident. So unless something happened -- and we`re talking a distance of maybe a quarter mile, half a mile from her apartment to where she hit that median, that raised median.
CASAREZ: We`re going to talk after the break about all the phone calls she made, the text messages that are coming out. But her cell phone -- have you found it, number one? And number two, were you able to use pinging at all to find out the last place that phone was before it went dead?
POOLEY: We do not have her cell phone. That is the one piece of evidence that we lack. As far as using the cell phone towers, yes, it does indicate she was in that general area the last time before it went off, before her phone went dead. It was in that same area where her apartment is and where all this transpired at.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Salinas`s father is desperate for answers.
SALINAS: One of her roommates was home, saw her. Apparently, she went to bed and went to sleep, but...
911 OPERATOR: Does she have a vehicle?
SALINAS: Yes, she has an `02 Mercury Sable.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is Adrienne Salinas`s 2002 white Mercury Sable with two flat tires.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) that curb and hit something, and then just had two flat tires.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Salinas`s cell phone was found. Police say the last call was out to a cab company at around 5:05 AM saying she needed to be picked up.
911 OPERATOR: Is the person still there inside the vehicle?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don`t know because they just took off.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) it makes you go crazy in your head. You just don`t know what to think.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: I`m Jean Casarez, in for Nancy Grace.
Adrienne Salinas -- she is a college student. She wants to make something of her life, and then she was just taken and she is gone.
I told you that cell phone calls and text messages form a lot of the investigation at this point. I want to go back out to Clark Goldband. Clark, so she gets into this accident, a one-car vehicular accident. She gets two flat tires. She takes off, apparently, keeps driving. But then she starts to use her phone, right, and she`s calling a cab company and she`s calling her boyfriend?
GOLDBAND: And not just once or twice, Jean, but based on reports and information we`ve uncovered in police reports, she called both the cab company and her boyfriend many, many times. And I`m talking 10, 20 times in about a 30-minute period.
Now, we spoke with the cab company owner and he said it`s not unusual for the driver and the passenger to call multiple times. He pegged it at about between seven and ten. And according to reports, the calls to the boyfriend number over one dozen, Jean.
CASAREZ: You know, we`ve got the cab owner that we`re going to talk to in just a second. But I want to go to Johnny in Arizona. We`re taking your calls. Hi, Johnny.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi.
CASAREZ: Hi. Thank you for calling.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, thanks for taking my call.
CASAREZ: What`s your question, your thought?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, actually, I really want to go back to the cab driver more than anything. I`m very interested in those calls. Supposedly, he called her -- well, she called for the cab at 4:23 AM and asked for a cab -- according to the cab company, asked for that cab to meet her at the AM PM (ph) store.
Now, we don`t know where she was when she made that call, but presuming she was at her apartment -- let`s say she went back there to change clothes -- I think it`s strange that she would want the cab to meet her at the AM PM store, rather than come to her apartment.
CASAREZ: You know, it`s a really good point, Johnny. Let us go out right now to the owner of the cab company joining us, Tom Simon. He`s from -- the Scottsdale cab owner of the cab company, and it`s your son that I believe was dispatched to go meet Adrienne right that night. And apparently, he is too distraught over this, over what is happening because this is big breaking news in Arizona. So you are talking on his behalf.
But how many times did she call your cab company? And start from the beginning on that. Was 4:23 AM the first call she made?
TOM SIMON, CAB COMPANY OWNER (via telephone): Yes. Our records show that 4:23 is when she first called the cab company, and that conversation lasted about three to four minutes and included (ph) that (ph) just past 4:26.
CASAREZ: That`s a long time.
TOM SIMON: So very much (ph) time to talking about...
CASAREZ: You know, let me stop you...
TOM SIMON: ... where she is...
CASAREZ: ... for a second. Three to four...
(CROSSTALK)
TOM SIMON: ... where he`s going to pick her up and things like that.
CASAREZ: OK, Tom, three to four minutes, that`s a long phone call to a cab company. Did your son say at all what her demeanor was, her state of mind as she made that three to four-minute call?
TOM SIMON: Well, he said it was certainly -- on reflection, it was uneventful. The only thing that made it eventful was the following days, when she came up missing. So initially -- we get a lot of calls from Tempe. It`s a college town. It`s a party town, where sometimes you have to ask a few questions to get the person to know where they`re at or where they want to be picked up, and to really nail down things because you`re talking about 4:00 clock in the morning.
Now we know she was obviously distraught, and so that conversation that he was having with her was to get -- to be assured that she would be there when he got there and also to nail down exactly where she wanted to meet.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SALINAS: At 2:30 in the morning, she got home and her roommates saw her gather her stuff up and get in the car and leave.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Adrienne packed a bag and started driving back to Ortega`s home, but she crashed near her house and flattened two front tires.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The car was heading very erratically around me. They were going around the curb and hit something, and then just had two flat tires and then...
911 OPERATOR: Is this person still there inside the vehicle?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don`t know because they just took off.
911 OPERATOR: With the flat tires?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
911 OPERATOR: Did you see how many people were inside the vehicle?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It looked like two. I believe I saw somebody in the passenger.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She called the cab from her cell phone and made 11 calls to her boyfriend. She`s never been seen again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: I`m Jean Casarez, in for Nancy Grace.
Where is Adrienne Salinas? Her father says she is alive. I know she is alive. She just has to be found.
Now, we are getting some new information here that a total of 32 calls Adrienne made between 4:10 in the morning and 4:50 in the morning to her boyfriend. None of them were answered. At 4:43, she sent a text saying, I am on my way to you. Of course, she never made it to him.
I want to go back out to Tom Simon, who is the owner of the Scottsdale Cab Guy. He is the owner. The first call that she made to your cab company, was that from her cell phone?
TOM SIMON: Well, you know what? Today, in looking over the records, it looks like that 4:23 call was made by our dispatch to her, which means that there was a call before that that would have come in, and we might have been busy and she left a message for us to call her back. So at 4:23, when we talked to her the first time, that call was initiated by dispatch.
CASAREZ: All right, Sergeant Michael Pooley, Tempe Police, I want to ask you very quickly, do your records show that her cell phone was always used to call the cab company?
POOLEY: Yes. According to our cell phone records that we have that we`ve gotten from her, it looks like she`s the one that initiated all the phone calls.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is Adrienne`s Salinas`s 2002 white Mercury Sable with two flat tires. Police say she crashed it just a few blocks from her home in Tempe.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They were going around the curb and hit something, and then just had two flat tires and then...
911 OPERATOR: Is the person still there inside the vehicle?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don`t know because they just took off.
911 OPERATOR: With the flat tires?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Salinas`s cell phone was found. Police say the last call went out to a cab company at around 5:05 AM saying she needed to be picked up at an AM PM.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s (INAUDIBLE) nightmare.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: I`m Jean Casarez in for Nancy Grace. Thank you so much for joining us. Adrienne Salinas, have you seen her? Do you know where she is? She`s a college girl in Tempe, Arizona, and she needs to be found.
Joining us tonight is her father, Rick Salinas. He has lived this nightmare. We all, Mr. Salinas, don`t know how we would react if suddenly one of our family members is just gone. What was the last conversation you had with your daughter? What was her state of mind? What was her demeanor like?
RICK SALINAS, FATHER: When I saw her on that Thursday before that weekend that she went missing, she was just in a good mood. I had given her and my son money to go do a little bit of shopping. I had come -- I had came from a meeting, my local union. I came home, they took off for an hour or two. They come back, and she told me that she was going to go back home. That was Thursday. I (inaudible) her home, gave her a nice long hug and I said bye, and that was the last time I had talked to her since she came up missing.
CASAREZ: We know your daughter was very frail, 5`6, a little over 100 pounds, and she had been very ill this year with valley fever, which you can get in Arizona. I learned about that when I was in Phoenix this year, and she was actually in the hospital in February?
SALINAS: Yes. She endured two basic surgeries in February a couple of days after Valentine`s Day, she had a major surgery where they had to open her chest and remove part of her lung and remove the infection. And she was in intensive care for three days and spent over a month in the hospital, and bedridden with a drain tube coming out of her chest. I spent many nights there with her by her side. She was very strong and brave, and she endured all of that. She was, you know, becoming healthy again. She was probably 90 percent well when all this had taken place. She had been given the OK to go back to work. And that`s what makes this whole thing harder, because she fought through that, she was down to 95 pounds in the hospital, and she was starting to gain weight. I could see it in her face. You know, her face was feeling fuller and she was starting to put weight on again. She had started hiking and riding her bike again, and then this takes place. So it`s a horrible nightmare.
CASAREZ: It has to be the worst, worst nightmare. Mr. Salinas, we want to do everything we can to help find your daughter. And one of that is to review the facts and look at the facts.
I want to go back out to Jill Ryan, who is a news anchor right there in Phoenix, Arizona, NewsTalk 92.3 KTAR. Jill, just give us an overview of the facts. Because she has a longtime boyfriend, who we understand has taken polygraphs and has passed them.
RYAN: That`s right. Francisco Ortega (ph) is his name, and the two have dated on and off for a very long time. Again, it did not raise any red flags when there was a little bit of a rift (inaudible) that evening. There was drinking involved, and Adrienne was a little upset she wasn`t getting the attention she felt like she wanted. At least that`s what she told her friends.
So as far as the facts of the case, it`s a case that we have just as many facts as we do holes. And we`re still trying, investigators are still trying to piece together exactly what happened after that car crash. They really don`t know. They`re depending on witness testimony. They`re depending on the cell phone records, which are really going to help them figure out the timeline of this. They`re also looking at surveillance videos, examining those closely. Nothing of any particular interest has popped up with those. But again, they`ve interviewed several hundred people at this time, and they are stopping short of saying that they`ve got a person of interest. But they do have some people that they`re looking at definitely.
CASAREZ: Sergeant Michael Pooley is joining us from the Tempe Police Department. Do you have a person of interest or even a suspect in this case?
SGT MICHAEL POOLEY, TEMPE PD: Well, we don`t have a suspect. Obviously nothing is off the table. At this point everybody and everything is on the table, and we`re just -- what we`re doing is we have to dissect all the different information that we have. We`re trying to see who was around Adrienne, who knew what, who knew where she was going. And that`s a big challenge right now. Like Jill said, there were about 40 or 50 people at this party. Any one of those people may have more information. There were other people out and about that time of day and that early morning that may have more information. This is the difficult part about this investigation, is there`s so limited information, such limited information, and such limited information has really tied her hands on saying who is a suspect and who is not.
CASAREZ: But somebody knows something, or people know something. I want to ask you, when she left her home to then drive in the car ultimately to go back to the boyfriend`s house, did she take her wallet? Did she take her house keys? Was anything left behind?
POOLEY: When she left her apartment after getting in a fight with Francisco, she -- what we know is she took a bag with her. She had packed an overnight kind of stay. She had her keys, she had certain clothing on, and she goes and she leaves. After the accident, we find out that she must have gone home, because she changed her clothes. She changed -- what she was wearing was found at her residence. Her wallet was found. Her car keys were found. That was the only set of car keys that she had, and that was located at her apartment.
CASAREZ: That doesn`t make sense. Why would you leave your wallet, which would have money in it, her father had just given her money or anything you might need, why would you leave that and go back out again? And how would you pay for a cab if you left your wallet at your apartment?
POOLEY: You know, that is a big part of the mystery that we`re trying to figure out. There is a lot of unanswered questions. That in particular exact question is something that our detectives are asking themselves, they`re asking, you know, people that know her, what, why didn`t anybody see her at the apartment? You know, what did she do that she was able to sneak in when there were still people there and to be able to find -- to leave all these items there at the apartment?
CASAREZ: Very quickly, Yolanda McClary, who is a former crime scene investigator, what do you think is the most important piece of evidence so far?
MCCLARY: Well, forensically, they need to look back at this car. They said it did not look like two people were in there. I think you need to verify that. I would still at least print the car at the least, to see if you do have someone that`s not known to her or even people that are known to her who were the last people to touch the car.
Like your detective was saying, you have a lot of holes here. What happened that night? There`s a lot of drama going on. You got a girl who`s fighting with her boyfriend, leaves, kicks him out, goes and finds him, comes home twice. I think you need to get down to the little bit of the bottom of the drama that`s happening to her, and maybe you`ll get some more answers.
CASAREZ: All right. Everybody, the family album is back, and we are showcasing your photos. Tonight, we feature a Texas family, the Ramseys. Sean and Jamie. They love watching their three children play sports and traveling. Share your photos at hlntv.com/nancygrace. Click on Nancy`s family album.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SALINAS: It`s a nightmare to have your -- not knowing where she`s at.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Once again, the 19-year-old made it back to her house where police say she called the cab from her cell phone and made 11 calls to her boyfriend.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was really emotional and that throws everything off. Just trying to see what state of mind she was.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She`s never been seen again.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The FBI has joined the search for Salinas.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: I`m Jean Casarez in for Nancy Grace. The FBI is advising and helping the Tempe police department in this case. I want to go out to the lawyers. Randy Kessler, defense attorney, joining us tonight from Atlanta, and Kelly Siegler former prosecutor, joining us out of Los Angeles. Randy, we just learned that after the accident, she gets back home, and leaves to call a cab. She doesn`t take her wallet. Something is wrong with that picture, Randy.
RANDY KESSLER, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: This case is going to take some great detective work. They`re going to have to interview a lot of people and figure out who would know anything. It`s also going to take some great forensic work. You know, are there prints somewhere, are there prints on the wallet? Did somebody else bring the wallet home to cover up some misdoing or some wrongdoing? There`s going to be a lot of good detective work needed, and it sounds like the police are on it.
CASAREZ: That`s a really good point. Kelly Siegler, what do you think about it, Kelly? The erraticness of that car going in and out and going up to 60 miles an hour in a 20 mile-per-hour zone? Does that strike you as odd?
KELLY SIEGLER, FORMER PROSECUTOR: I think what you have to start with is what you know. We have here her boyfriend on a night they`re fighting, and they are not getting along. And she`s texting him and trying to call him and he`s never answering the phone. And if I were the officer in charge, I would be wanting to know all these calls, all these texts, you never answered the phone? She ends up missing the very night you have a fight at a party full of people, and your explanation is, she was mad I wasn`t paying enough attention to her? There`s something in that that doesn`t make any sense, as well as she just hops out of a car. Had she ever done that before? And she just happened to leave her cell phone behind that he took to her? That I would work on, and I would also focus on the cab driver. You know, are you pinging his cell phone to find out if he went where he said he did that night? And finally all the cell phone pings, her phone, the boyfriend`s phone, and the cab driver`s phone. I would have a grid out trying to find out where their movements were that night, to see if it coincided with what they were telling me.
CASAREZ: And if they match exactly. Leslie Austin, psychotherapist, joining us from New York. Leslie, Rick Salinas, the father of Adrienne, obviously is going through so much. What can you say to him tonight?
LESLIE AUSTIN, PSYCHOTHERAPIST: All I can say, first of all, one human being to another, my heart goes out to you. Nobody should have to go through what you`re going through. And the other thing is you can take some comfort, however small, in the fact that the police are doing their very best, clearly committed to trying to find out what happened. And we can only hold out some slim hope that we`ll find out what happened to your daughter.
CASAREZ: And Mr. Salinas, what do you want people to know about your daughter tonight?
SALINAS: Is that there`s a beautiful young lady that`s very responsible, that, you know, she`s just full of love, and that`s her thing, love, peace, flowers, you know. She`s just a joy to be around. And she never talked bad about nobody that I can think of. Just a good-hearted person. And I believe that somebody out there knows something. Somebody out there has seen something, knows what happened that night, if they will just please come forward so I can get my baby girl back. She needs her dad, her family needs her. We`re a very close-knit family. She loves her grandma and grandpa. She was going to go move in with them in August, and that was her plan, and then to go to college and finish going to school.
But that`s what I want to say about her, is that she`s just a wonderful, beautiful person, and she`s not a runaway or she`s not a troubled teen. She didn`t have problems like that. She had plans for her future, what she`s going to name her babies, what her life is going to be like. She wanted to be a professional. She wanted to go into journalism field. She loved to read, and she was an avid movie goer. She just loved life.
CASAREZ: Sergeant Michael Pooley of the Tempe Police Department, what was Adrienne wearing the last time she was seen?
POOLEY: The last time she was seen, she was wearing a black polka dot top, some shorts with some leggings, and her shoes. But, like I said, all of that have been found and located at her apartment, so at this time we really have in idea what she was wearing. There was nobody that saw her after that point, after she had gone home and changed. So that is part of the mystery.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CASAREZ: A mother of two little girls, Amber Whited, goes missing in Brunswick, Georgia. Nancy Grace now sits down in an exclusive interview with Amber`s mother, Beth Allen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Everyone, with me tonight is Beth Allen. She is the mother of Amber Whited, mother of two young girls. Beth, thank you for being with us.
BETH ALLEN, MOTHER:
GRACE: Tell me the last time that you spoke with Amber.
ALLEN: I spoke with her Monday at 8:00 in the morning when she dropped her girls off. Then she went home to finish getting ready for work. And I haven`t seen her.
GRACE: Did you keep the girls?
ALLEN: Yes, ma`am.
GRACE: How old are they?
ALLEN: The baby Harmony, she just turned a year old yesterday. And Bailey`s four.
GRACE: You`re tearing up when you say their names. Why?
ALLEN: Because they need their mom.
GRACE: She dropped them off to you that morning, and then she went to go get ready for work. Where does she work?
ALLEN: She works at the Harley-Davidson store.
GRACE: Does she normally call you during the day at any point?
ALLEN: She calls me to see if the kids are OK, or she texts me and asks if the kids are OK, what the kids are doing, and before she comes and gets them.
GRACE: Does she normally come and get them immediately after work?
ALLEN: Yes.
GRACE: OK. That day, did she text you?
ALLEN: No.
GRACE: Call you?
ALLEN: No.
GRACE: She went to lunch as normal?
ALLEN: Yes.
GRACE: Where was her car found?
ALLEN: It was found on Second Street and Martin Luther King.
GRACE: Where is that in relation to the Harley-Davidson store?
ALLEN: It`s a good way from the Harley-Davidson store.
GRACE: Where was it, on the side of the road?
ALLEN: They said that they saw the guy, a guy that has (inaudible) tattoo sleeves on both his arms --
GRACE: Whoa, whoa, whoa. He`s got what?
ALLEN: Tattoo sleeves. They call them sleeves, but it`s tattoos all- -
GRACE: You mean your whole arm is tattooed, like a sleeve to a shirt?
ALLEN: Right, right.
GRACE: On both arms?
ALLEN: Yes.
GRACE: Who is they?
ALLEN: The person who`d seen the car being -- the lady that had seen the car being ditched over there in the neighborhood.
GRACE: OK. What did the guy look like?
ALLEN: They said he had light hair and he had sleeves on his arms.
GRACE: So I assume he was white?
ALLEN: Yes.
GRACE: White. Light colored hair?
ALLEN: Yes.
GRACE: And he had on a sleeveless shirt or short-sleeved?
ALLEN: Short sleeved shirt.
GRACE: And shorts or long pants?
ALLEN: They never said.
GRACE: White male, light colored hair, both arms fully sleeved?
ALLEN: Yes.
GRACE: They see him get out of the car?
ALLEN: They said they`d seen him get out of the car, throw the keys in the car, and talk on the cell like he`s arguing with somebody on the cell phone, and then run off.
GRACE: Run. Did he get into another vehicle?
ALLEN: They said they couldn`t -- they`d never seen him get into another vehicle.
GRACE: Where did he run to?
ALLEN: I have no idea. And nobody`s found him.
GRACE: Has she ever been gone this long?
ALLEN: No, ma`am. She did not leave her girls like that.
GRACE: Has Amber ever been gone overnight without you knowing?
ALLEN: No.
GRACE: Ever?
ALLEN: No, ma`am.
GRACE: Do you get the feeling she`s still alive?
ALLEN: I want to keep that hope, but at this point I`m really not sure.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CASAREZ: We remember American hero Army Sergeant First Class Todd Harris. 37 years old, from Tucson, Arizona. He was awarded five Army Commendation Medals. Four Army Achievement Medals. He leaves behinds his parents, his widow, and two children. Todd Harris, an American hero.
And now more of Nancy Grace`s investigation in the Amber Whited case.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: Everyone, with me tonight is the mother of Amber Whited, just 22 years old. She has two little children. One is one years old, one year old. One is four years old. And they are asking where is their mom. How are the girls doing?
ALLEN: Bailey knows now because the other day she asked me where her mother was, and I told her I didn`t know. And then my sister said yesterday she told her that she knew her mommy was missing and she wanted to know what everybody was doing. She said, ma`am -- she calls my sister ma`am, she said, ma`am and your granny has got everybody looking for her and trying to find your mommy.
GRACE: Now, one of the girls just had a birthday.
ALLEN: Yes. Yesterday.
GRACE: The 1-year-old?
ALLEN: Yes, ma`am. We had a party for that the Thursday before. And Amber was at it.
GRACE: What do you make of the fact she was not there for the one- year birthday?
ALLEN: She wouldn`t have did this. She never would have did that. She would have been there for that baby. She`s never done that. Never.
GRACE: If there is a way that she can hear you now, what would you say?
ALLEN: I would say, Amber, I love you, and we miss you. You need to come home.
GRACE: Everyone, I want to give you the tip number again. 912-554- 3645. Or you can reach silent witness at 912-264-1333. We are looking for a mother of two. Her two little girls are 1-year-old and 4-year-old. We have investigated this very carefully. This was a mother that loves her children. She`s never been away from them overnight. Her car has been found about 15 to 20 minutes from where she worked, ditched on the side of road. Please help us bring her home.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CASAREZ: And we have some very sad news to tell you tonight. Since that interview, Amber Whited`s body was found in a wooded area off the interstate. Suspect Raymond Brasel (ph) is in custody.
Before we go, we want to wish a very special happy birthday to a friend of Nancy Grace. Matthew, happy birthday, Matthew. Dr. Drew, everybody, is coming up next.
END
