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Nancy Grace
Nancy Grace Mysteries: Who Killed Chanel Petro-Nixon?
Aired February 28, 2014 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: A teen honor roll student is walking to her summer job interview at Applebee`s when she suddenly vanishes in broad daylight. She`s just blocks from her home when she`s snatched on a busy street. Days later, her body`s found stuffed in a garbage bag on the side of the road.
Tonight on NANCY GRACE MYSTERIES, what happened to Chanel Petro-Nixon? And who is behind her gruesome killing?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I look at her picture every day, and I have to break down because I feel sad. A sad moment always come about when I see her picture because it`s not fair. She didn`t do nothing to deserve this, nothing at all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Tenth-grader Chanel Petro-Nixon was last seen on Father`s Day, Sunday. That was June 18. It was about 6:45 PM when the 10th grader told her parents she was going to make the five-minute walk to the local Applebee`s to apply for a summer job there.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: All we have left tonight are these posters of another honor student, a 16-year-old girl, a very quiet girl, home a lot, never missed church, loved going to church with her family. But she went missing on her way to Applebee`s to try to put in for a job.
You know what? Most parents in this country dream of having a girl like Chanel Petro-Nixon. Her life was cut short by an unknown assailant. And several days after her body disappearance from her own home, her body was found thrown away in garbage bags like trash. And it is not OK. Silent witnesses, stone walls -- police have no clues tonight.
Straight out to Jon Lieberman with "America`s Most Wanted." Please give me some good news in the search for Chanel.
JON LIEBERMAN, "AMERICA`S MOST WANTED": Well, I`ll tell you, Nancy, there is a maniac on the loose, just like you said, a cold-blooded killer, and we don`t have many new leads tonight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: This five-minute walk turned into hours. After the very first hour of not hearing from their daughter, her mom immediately calls her cell phone. And we learned that it was Chanel`s practice to either pick the phone up immediately, or if she couldn`t get to it quickly enough, she would immediately call her parents back.
So starting one hour from the time she left, which was 6:45 PM on a Sunday, Father`s Day, the mom starts calling and calling and calling and calling. The 10th grade girl, Chanel Petro-Nixon, never picks up, never calls back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I will tell you this. Police are still combing that neighborhood. They`re meticulously going through case files to see if any case not just in Brooklyn, but all throughout New York and in New Jersey, if any case even matches up a little bit to Chanel`s so they can try to get some leads.
They`re also looking into a theory of maybe this was a gang initiation. Maybe some gang member grabbed her off of the street and did this to her as some sort of gang initiation. So there`s still a lot of scenarios but just not a lot of answers tonight, Nancy.
GRACE: Take a listen to what Senator Andrews (ph) had to say.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Someone noticed an unusual amount of garbage, what they thought was garbage in a trash bag. And when they went through the trash bag, they found the body and they contacted the police. And Chanel had been missing for two or three days. We found that -- actually, about - - yes, two or three days. The family had called the police on Father`s Day when she did not appear where she was supposed to appear.
And because of that, they, I think, classified her as a runaway first and not a missing person. And then they got some effects from the -- from her body, I guess a bracelet and some other things, and showed it to the family to indicate that they might have found their Chanel.
GRACE: Can you help us tonight? That was Senator Carl (ph) Andrews joining in.
Joining me right now, Chanel`s parents, Garvin and Lucita Nixon. Garvin, have you tried on your own to find out if your building had video monitors running?
GARVIN NIXON, FATHER: Yes, I tried. I asked the super, I asked the landlord, and they told me the camera wasn`t working. I follow up with the detectives, and they said the camera hasn`t been working for a couple months.
GRACE: You know what? Out to our Lida Rodriguez Cassef (ph), defense attorney. You know what`s a great idea? A great idea is to require buildings over occupancy of X number to have security cameras and to keep them working. I ran up against that stone wall a lot as a prosecutor. I think legislation is an excellent idea.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, you know, this is something that buildings which are privately owned can do on their own. And in fact, most buildings, a lot of expensive buildings, have those kinds of technologies. And you know, the sad thing, Nancy, is, as you say, what ends up happening is that rental buildings get short shrift and landlords don`t maintain these things, as well. But this should be standard practice in private buildings. There`s no reason for legislation, Nancy.
GRACE: Well, apparently, there is because they are not doing it. And as a result, crimes are missed, information is lost. And it`s in this case, become a matter of life and death.
This girl, Bethany Marshall, was found just a few blocks away, which leads me to believe that someone grabbed her within their building.
How big is your building? How tall is it?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON, MOTHER: Up to the sixth floor.
GRACE: Sixth floor? How many people live in it?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: I really don`t...
GRACE: Hundreds?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: Yes, hundreds. Yes.
GRACE: I believe that she was grabbed either in that building or right as she left by someone that possibly did not have a car because if they had a car, Bethany, you know they would have disposed of that body miles and miles away. Agree or disagree?
BETHANY MARSHALL, PSYCHOANALYST: Yes. Oh, I agree. I think she was taken by a sexual psychopath, honestly, somebody who likes to inflict cruelty in order to enhance his sexual arousal. These guys look normal on the surface, even though they`re not. They wear what we call the mask of sanity. Sometimes they`re married and they have kids and they drive station wagons. But these guys look normal, they don`t look crazy. But they do rely on cruelty. The fact that she was kept against her will and strangled leads me to believe that there was somebody who grabbed her who took pleasure in inflicting this upon her.
GRACE: And it`s also my understanding, Lucita, that she was not sexually molested.
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: Correct.
GRACE: You know, I want to go out to Mike Cevallo (ph), retired former NYPD detective. What do they need to be doing right now? I`ve got some ideas, but I want to hear yours.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, they need to be actually be going out and doing interview on everybody inside the building because the last place that she was seen is inside the building before she left. There`s a very short period of time here. It`s only 15 minutes before the parents started realizing that she wasn`t where she was supposed to be and meeting friends. So the investigation has to start at the building itself, and interviewing everybody in that building.
GRACE: That`s a really good point, Mike, because almost immediately, when she became late, the friends started calling her. She was gone like that.
Mike, the parents here on the set have told me that police have called them. They have faith in police. But they`re not telling the family anything that they`re doing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. In an investigation like this, a lot of the clues and a lot of the forensic evidence, I guess, would be better off with themselves.
GRACE: Well, I don`t want to know the forensic evidence, Mike, I want to know that they are doing something every day, that they are making calls, they`re going door to door. Have they gone door to door in your building, Lucita?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: In the beginning, they say they did, yes.
GRACE: Well, what about now? What about the building next door? And the building next door, Mike? I mean, what, do they just sit back and wait for the answer to fall on their head?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, they have to go -- they should be knocking on everybody`s door right now. They should have a whole task force of people. This is not just a missing person anymore, this has turned into a crime. And they need to go out to everybody in the neighborhood, everybody in the area. You`re talking about a very short period of time. And I agree with you when you said before that it started in the building. She had to be abducted right outside the building or inside the building itself.
GRACE: And you know, Jon Lieberman, don`t get me wrong. Our men and women in blue are our finest. I`m on their side. But more than that, I`m on Chanel`s side and I want to know what happened. What can they do now? What are they doing now?
LIEBERMAN: Well, let me tell you, Nancy, they`re a lot in overtime. They are. They`re recanvassing the whole neighborhood. They`re looking at -- they`re re-questioning and looking at cell phone records and doing all that.
Let me be frank, though. I don`t think this is a case that police are going to be able to solve unless they get that one phone call, that one person who says, I saw this, I saw that, whether they saw Chanel when she was still alive, or they saw something happen to Chanel, or they saw the body dumped. Somebody knows something, and that`s what`s going to crack this case because, literally, the police have done almost everything that I think they can do.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sixteen years old (INAUDIBLE) starting your life, you know? It`s unbelievable.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) the person who did it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s unbelievable. That`s even more unbelievable. Nobody saw them dump that garbage bag over there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that body was brought someplace else and put here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: She was taking the only route, really, to the local Applebee`s, again, just five minutes away by foot. And it was a very crowded thoroughfare, a lot of pedestrians, a lot of cars, commercial. So she was walking past all these cars, all these businesses to get to Applebee`s.
And that`s typical. Restaurants and fast foods are located where the people are. So she had to walk through all of that to get to Applebee`s to apply for her summer job.
The mom and the dad start calling, calling, calling. They call through the evening, and finally the next morning, they report their daughter missing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: To Garvin Petro-Nixon, if you could speak out to the public tonight, what would you say?
GARVIN PETRO-NIXON: I`m just asking for their help because it could be somebody else, could be your kid. And we all need to realize that this is a teenager that died, and you know, we do need that help to get that closure.
GRACE: Lucita, how do you get through every day, every night?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: It`s hard. To me, it`s even getting harder now. It`s been over a month that I haven`t seen my daughter. We`ll never see her again. And I think it`s -- it`s getting harder on me physically, mentally. It`s getting worse.
GRACE: Lucita, how do you get through every day and every night?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: Through prayer, prayers from my family, my co- workers. I just need that support because I need all the strength that I could go through each and every hour. My daughter is constantly on my mind. Just -- I just want -- I want closure to find out what happened to her, and most important, who did this to her.
GRACE: Lizzie (ph), can you zoom in on Lucita? She carries this around her neck every day, of her girl. And I want to ask the public one more time. Can you please help us find out what happened to this little honor student, Chanel Petro-Nixon?
Is it open season on young girls? We read about it one after the next after the next. Here`s a little girl who never missed church, honor student. She wanted to become a nurse, to help other people. Look at this girl. She was always at home, always studying. She only left that evening to go and apply for a job. She never made it to the local Applebee`s. Take a look at Chanel Petro-Nixon.
Straight out to Jon Lieberman with "America`s Most Wanted." Jon, what happened to this girl?
LIEBERMAN: Well, I`ll tell you, Nancy, there is a predator on the loose in New York, and we need to track him down. This, little girl, like you mentioned, straight-A girl, honors student, she leaves her house on Father`s Day to go meet a friend and then apply for a job. And she`s never seen. It`s almost like she vanishes. It`s a busy street. There`s a lot of foot traffic, but nobody ever sees anything happen. And then four days later, she`s found, like you said, thrown out with the trash.
GRACE: OK, wa-wa-wa-wa-wait! That`s not possible. It is not possible that nobody saw anything!
LIEBERMAN: Well, this is part of the problem, Nancy. So far, no one has come forward. No one is talking to police. There are signs up all around Brooklyn that says somebody knows something.
GRACE: This girl, a 16-year-old girl, was put in a garbage bag and left on a heavily traveled street, on the sidewalk. For those of you that are unfamiliar, here in New York, the garbage is left out on bags on the sidewalk, and they come pick it up.
Somebody wanted this child, a little girl, to be disposed of and out in some dump, some landfill by tonight. So Jon Lieberman, how was she discovered?
LIEBERMAN: Well, that`s what I was going to say. Somebody wanted her disposed of so nobody would ever know anything about this little girl. A woman looking out of her apartment window, always looks to make sure the trash men take all of her trash -- well, that morning, she was looking out the window 7:00 AM. And the trash man goes to lift up one of the garbage bags, and it`s too heavy. So the trash man leaves there.
This woman comes down from her apartment. She wanted to separate it into three separate bags to make it lighter so they would take it. And she finds this sweet little girl in this bag, stuffed in there like trash. Sickening.
GRACE: Joining us right now, one of our own producers has gone out to the scene, Rupa Mikkilineni is joining us, Crown Heights, Brooklyn. You know, Rupa, it`s hard for me to imagine somebody actually putting this girl in a garbage bag like she`s trash, a little honors student on her way to get a job for the summer, for Pete`s sake, and leaving her out there. Look that the smile.
Rupa, tell me what you see?
RUPA MIKKILINENI, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Well, I see a neighborhood and a community that`s torn, Nancy. I canvassed the area today. I actually am standing out here right now in front of the place where she was found. This is the building, 212 Kingston. It`s a brownstone building, approximately six floors high. And the trash bag, much like the one I`m holding in my hand, actually, industrial strength size, was found right here on the sidewalk, right near the post with all the pictures, as you can see.
GRACE: Wait a minute.
MIKKILINENI: A neighbor...
GRACE: Wa-wait. Wa-wait. Were the pictures up for Chanel when the bag was there?
MIKKILINENI: This I`m not sure of. I definitely know that this is the lamppost where the garbage bag was sitting.
GRACE: These are the flyers that are all over town. There was no way -- and I`m drawing on a lot of experience with murder cases and detectives working on murder cases -- that this child was there for four days.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The police have done a lot of searching. They`ve combed both districts, the apartment complex. We have a lot of flyers out, a lot of posters out. The reward is up to $20,000. And we`re glad that the media is starting to pay more attention to this situation, and hopefully, we will get the suspect or suspects arrested so that they will not be able to do any other kind of act like this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: We learn that Chanel Petro-Nixon`s family, her own family, had to create, print, circulate, post their own flyers. They had to do all their own searches for the first four days of her absence with no help from anyone.
The family kept telling police that she had gone for a job interview at Applebee`s, but they got into their heads that she was going to meet a boyfriend And assumed this was a voluntary disappearance.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have to catch who did this. She was a good person from a good family. But regardless, she`s a child, and we have to protect our children.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All the kids out there need to watch out who they talk to on the Internet or where they go. They need to keep watching around their surroundings.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Now, the medical examiner confirmed Chanel Petro-Nixon, a 10th grade girl, was strangled to death. It`s interesting there was no defensive wounds on her body, such as bruises or contusions. The medical examiner also stated with certainty that she was alive just 48 hours before her body is found. That means that this 10th grade girl disappeared and was held captive for two full days before she was killed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
To Andrea Peyser (ph), who first opened my eyes to the existence and the disappearance of Chanel Petro-Nixon. What captured your -- you see a million stories a day, Andrea? Why this girl? And why didn`t anybody know about this girl? What, is it because she`s black? Is it because her parents aren`t millionaires? Is it because she wasn`t on an expensive vacation? What? What`s the difference between this girl and everybody else?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, nobody likes to cry racism. I mean, this family, this lovely family has not said that. However, I see such a difference in the way...
GRACE: You said it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. I see such a difference in the way this case is treated from a lot of other cases, where girls disappear, and you hear about it. Within 24 hours, it`s all over the media. In this case, the parents waited 24 hours. The father was out there with pictures, with flyers. He was at subway stations, on the streets. He was, Have you seen my daughter? Do you know what happened to her? People in the streets, the gang members -- Senator Andrews told me that he -- he gave her picture to gang members, and they said, yes, we all have daughters. And it really did not capture the attention of the media.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: To this day, police are convinced Chanel Petro-Nixon was killed by someone she knew. Why? Because of the lack of defensive wounds or contusions, bruises on her body, because she was missing for two full days before she was killed.
There was a huge outcry at the time her body was found, allegations that because she was an inner-city, minority homicide victim, that her case had gotten little or no public attention.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: Four days after she goes missing, the family carrying on their own search, their own PR campaign, trying to find their girl with little or no help from anyone else. Four days later, Chanel`s body is found stuffed into a trash bag just one mile away from home.
Now, the bag containing Chanel`s body is put out on the sidewalk outside of a building for the trash people to pick up. The woman that worked at the building, the building landlady, went outside.
Now, interesting, the trash bag was there where all the other trash would have been, but the trash had already been picked up that morning, which means this body, Chanel`s body, was placed in a trash bag after the trash man came that day, which can time when the bag was disposed there.
She thinks -- the building landlady -- she thinks that it`s construction debris, that the garbage guys wouldn`t pick it up. So she opens the bag to separate the debris into several bags for them to pick up next time. Then she discovers it`s not construction debris, it`s the body of a 10th grade girl, Chanel Petro-Nixon. She immediately calls police.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Chanel`s parents, Garvin and Lucita Nixon, thank you for being with us.
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: Thank you.
GRACE: Ms. Lucita, question to you. All this business about her being investigated as a runaway -- had this child ever run away?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: Never.
GRACE: What happened that evening?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: That evening, I was on a trip on (ph) Panama (ph). I was away for three days, came back about 5:30 that evening, Father`s Day. And we spent about an hour. She just asked me if she could go out to meet her friends. I told her yes, she could. She got a call about maybe 6:18, and I heard when she said, You there already? And I guess the person must have said yes. I knew who she was talking to.
GRACE: At Applebee`s, correct?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: At Applebee`s.
GRACE: OK.
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: When I got up, because I work nights, I got...
GRACE: Where do you work?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: St. Vincent`s Hospital.
GRACE: Are you a nurse?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: No, I`m a mental health worker.
GRACE: Is that -- now, do you think you affected her decision to want to be a nurse?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: Me, my sister, my mom, we`re all in the medical field, so her family -- most of us in the family work in the medical field.
GRACE: OK, so that night, you went to work.
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: I went to work. I called before because my husband was trying to call her about 7:30. He didn`t get in touch with her. Her phone was off. When I got...
GRACE: What do you mean her phone was off?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: It was off. It went straight to the...
GRACE: Voicemail.
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: ... to the voicemail. And that`s unusual because even if her battery was low and she knew who was calling her, she would have borrowed her friend`s phone to get in touch with us.
GRACE: Now, OK, does she have a boyfriend?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: No. Friend. Friend.
GRACE: And she was going to meet this group of people at Applebee`s.
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: Right.
GRACE: And never showed up.
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: Never showed up.
GRACE: When did you report her missing?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: Monday, when I got home from work, I said, Uh-uh, this is not Chanel.
GRACE: Why did you wait so long to report?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: I -- really, I thought we had to wait 24 hours to report. That was my mentality was to wait 24 hours before you can report them missing.
GRACE: To Doug Burns. Doug, you`ve handled a lot of cases. That is a very common belief. What do so many people believe the person`s got to be gone 24 hours before you can report them?
DOUG BURNS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, unfortunately, that is promoted very often by law enforcement, Nancy, where they turn around and skeptically say, and it`s unfortunate, Look, they`re probably going to turn up, and so that`s why they go with that type of grace period.
GRACE: To Chanel`s father. Sir, had she ever left the home before and not called back?
GARVIN PETRO-NIXON: No.
GRACE: What time did she usually come home?
GARVIN PETRO-NIXON: She comes home before dark. If she`s about to stay a little longer, she will call and ask. If she`s with friends, that her family, her friends wouldn`t be bringing her home, I would go and meet her and bring her home, so...
GRACE: You would go get her and bring her home?
GARVIN PETRO-NIXON: Yes. And I started to worry 7:30 because I was out and I call and I ask -- I call the house and I ask if Chanel was home and what Chanel`s doing. And they said she went to meet her friends at Applebee`s. So I started...
GRACE: Did you call the friends?
GARVIN PETRO-NIXON: I started calling...
GRACE: Did you know who the friends were?
GARVIN PETRO-NIXON: I know who was the friends, but...
GRACE: What did they say?
GARVIN PETRO-NIXON: They said they was calling. They was calling almost every half an hour, every 40...
GRACE: She even then was already missing.
GARVIN PETRO-NIXON: Yes.
GRACE: You know, interesting. To Allison Gillman (ph), defense attorney. Let`s think about this just one moment. What do we know about Chanel missing? I can tell you she was not in that bag for four days sitting on the sidewalk, all right? Someone killed her and had her in an apartment, a car, a car trunk, something, and then in the night, put her on that sidewalk. Now, that leads me to believe it was someone in that apartment building or right around it. She never even made it to Applebee`s, Allison!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Yes. I absolutely agree with you, Nancy. I think that maybe it was someone that she knew because no one`s coming forward saying they saw something unusual. It may have been just a contact with someone and there was no screaming, no yelling, and she went with him willingly, and it turned out bad. So I agree with you. It may have been right around where she was living, and it wound up with this horrible tragedy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: When police and the medical examiners look at Chanel`s body, they notice that her Nike Air Jordan tennis shoes were missing. Also missing, her cell phone that her parents had been calling nonstop since she disappeared on Father`s Day.
We find out that she`s partially clothed, only partially clothed, but no evidence of a sex assault. She`s curled up in a fetal position, or maybe she was placed there that way.
We learned that she was strangled. She was not chopped up or stabbed. She was asphyxiated by strangulation. At first, her body was so decomposed -- it just was four days -- that cops couldn`t tell for sure if it was a male or a female body.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s so much tragedy and there`s so many young people who are at risk that unless somebody personally decides to get involved, a lot of these cases just slip under the radar.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Chanel Petro-Nixon`s body was found the morning of Thursday, June 22nd, 2006, in a trash bag.
GRACE: Police did a full forensic search. They combed over clues on her computer, what they could learn from cell phone records and pings. They also went to what was then very popular, MySpace, looked at all of her conversations, including the ones she was having just as she disappeared.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Local leaders and Chanel Petro-Nixon`s family want answers, pleading for witnesses to come forward with information on the death of their 16-year-old girl. Flyers distributed on public streets say it all, "Somebody knows something." And I couldn`t agree more.
Caryn Stark, listening to Andrea Peyser joining us -- she`s the one that broke this story in "The New York Post," where I first read about it anyway -- Caryn, listening to what she`s saying about the neighborhood and analyzing the crime scene, what do you make psychologically, Caryn, of someone putting a body of this little girl in a trash bag?
CARYN STARK, PSYCHOLOGIST: I think, Nancy, psychologically, that this is somebody that -- it`s the kind of killer who you really can`t understand what he`s doing, kind of collects people, perhaps.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Searching her MySpace page, we learn Chanel Petro-Nixon describes herself as quiet, classy, friendly, easy to talk to. She says she wants to be a nurse. In answer to a question, How do you want to die, she says, Peacefully." Another interesting note about Chanel`s MySpace, there was a posting there that says, Rest in peace, Chanel. Honey, I love you forever.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And clearly, somebody that is really, really difficult to profile.
GRACE: (INAUDIBLE) it says something on such a psychological level that you would throw a child out in a garbage bag.
Back out to Rupa, Rupa Mikkilineni joining us there at the scene. Rupa, police have tried and tried to speak to passersby, to people that live in the area. Why aren`t they speaking to police?
MIKKILINENI: Nancy, I spoke with people that actually live in the very building where her body was found, and they indicated to me -- it was a father and a daughter, actually, and they indicated to me that they were afraid. They`re terrified of retaliation. And then when I said, Look, the tip line is anonymous, the police assure us of this, they said they don`t trust the system and they`re worried that if somebody -- they think somebody -- they themselves do not know anything, but they fear that is the concern of people in the neighborhood.
GRACE: With me here on the set, her parents. What was your normal routine with her? What was your family life like with her?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: We were a happy family. We trusted each other. We respected each other. She respected us as her parents. A lot of trust was with...
GRACE: What did she like to do?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: She was quiet, very laid back person. But at the same time, she wasn`t scared or afraid to voice her opinion.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: There have been several leads in the case, tips that police have followed, have tracked down relentlessly. There was another teen murdered in the area around the same time Chanel was killed. That teen was strangled, put in a trash bag, and sex-assaulted.
Now, remember, Chanel was not sexually assaulted. Police followed through. No way, was not Chanel`s killer. Also, there was a guy -- there is a guy behind bars right now upstate. He was believed to know Chanel Petro-Nixon and possibly even meeting with her. Dead end.
Police have followed dozens of leads. The reward climbed to $30,000- plus. And as of this moment, that $30,000-plus, over $30,000 reward still intact for leads on who killed Chanel Petro-Nixon.
Now meet someone whose story will inspire you. This week`s "Hero."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This actually was an honors student. She really was a good kid, from what everybody said. She really was a very special person.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Police say they are still actively working the case of missing, now a homicide, 10th grader Chanel Petro-Nixon.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Something about this little girl, Chanel Petro-Nixon, a 16- year-old little girl, honors student, never missed church -- this is not a girl out late at night, no drugs, no boyfriends. No, she was out trying to get a job with her friends at Applebee`s in broad daylight.
Out to our producer, Rupa Mikkilineni, standing by at the location where this little girl`s body was found. Rupa, it`s my understanding, according to Andrea Peyser her with us from "The Post," that there were several bags, two or three bags, but that the little girl was in a fetal position in a bag on the sidewalk. I mean, how could you miss that?
MIKKILINENI: You know, I tell you, Nancy, it`s this. It`s apparently two or three bags, true. But these were double-bagged or triple-bagged. And I actually have in my hand right now a bag similar to what she might have been found in, a black industrial-size garbage bag. It is approximately 3 feet by 4 feet. And honestly, I could fit in this bag in fetal position. And I`m bigger than little Chanel.
GRACE: To Chanel`s mom. Was she in the fetal position?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: That`s what I was told.
GRACE: Was she tied up in any way?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: No.
GRACE: But she had on jewelry?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: She still had on her jewelry, yes.
GRACE: No sneakers, no shoes.
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: No, the sneakers was missing and her cell was missing.
GRACE: Cell missing. Fully clothed?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: Yes.
GRACE: This was not a robbery. This was not a sexual assault.
And back to "America`s Most Wanted," Jon Lieberman. The cell goes dead practically within the building. So she was grabbed almost immediately when she left the house.
LIEBERMAN: Yes, that`s what they think. The cell goes dead. It stops hitting the tower the minute she leaves. And then it`s almost like she vanished, like you said.
And yes, she was completely clothed. They`re still looking for the cell phone. Somebody has that. The Nike shoes, the Air Jordans, that`s a clue, too. Those are still missing.
GRACE: But with the cell turned off, they`re not going to be able to get a signal.
Would you have done anything differently that night?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: No, I didn`t have a reason to.
GRACE: It`s broad daylight.
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: I didn`t have a reason to tell her no, she couldn`t go.
GRACE: How far away from your apartment has Chanel been found?
LUCITA PETRO-NIXON: I would say, like, eight blocks, four blocks down, six blocks up, yes.
GRACE: Somebody in this community is responsible for this girl`s death. Will you help us?
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GRACE: I have spoken with Chanel`s parents many times, and to this day, Chanel`s mother still says it feels like it was just yesterday that her little girl went missing. It`s never been put to rest. Her heart is still broken in half.
Her parents say they don`t care what it takes, what they have to do, where they have to go, where they have to look, what they have to endure, they want justice for Chanel and they want her killer behind bars. And so do I.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s an up-and-coming neighborhood. Her body was dumped there in a garbage bag and discovered on Father`s Day 2006.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The landlady thought the bag was full of construction debris. She opened the bag at about 9:00 AM, saw the body inside and called police.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks to a lot of media pressure, which I helped provide and Nancy helped provide, as I recall, the NYPD put a lot of manpower on it. They had two detectives who for a while were working on it full-time.
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GRACE: Chanel, at the time of her disappearance, was just 16 years old, a straight-A student, a devout Christian that never missed church there at her Mt. of Olives church nearby.
This is what else we know about Chanel. She was a fixture in the school library. She was always in the library reading. As I said, straight-A student. She`d actually been bumped up a grade, she was going so fast and she studied and read so much.
Her family said she had a beautiful smile that lit up her little face. Neighbors describe her as innocent, gullible. They say they don`t recall ever seeing her out by herself. She was always with her family. She lived in an apartment with her mom and dad, two brothers, and was never seen with a frown on her face.
Those words really stands out to me, innocent, gullible. She`s just in the 10th grade. Who wouldn`t be?
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