Speaker 1: School of Humans. Yeah, that's the playground the park over there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: recognize the playground of Salomont Drive. Alright, you're all right,
Speaker 1: let's see so I canna pull up the picture in
Speaker 1: the day mail. I'm at Chalomont Park and West Little
Speaker 1: Rock in the parking lot. This is a tiny private park.
Speaker 1: It's on a cul de sac and meant for the
Speaker 1: exclusive use of the residents of the Channel Valley neighborhood
Speaker 1: and their guests. In the summer, it would be full
Speaker 1: of kids swimming in the pool or playing on the playground.
Speaker 1: But it's late fall now the pool is closed and
Speaker 1: the playground is deserted. That's the entrance on the other side.
Speaker 1: It was parked near here. I'm gonna try to see
Speaker 1: if I can find a picture of the car. We
Speaker 1: know what kind of car she had. It was a
Speaker 1: Volklier facade, pretty small car. Yeah. So the other voice
Speaker 1: you're hearing is Mike. He's another private investigator. A few
Speaker 1: months ago, Mike and I worked on a project together
Speaker 1: where we helped local law enforcement apprehend felons. Mike is
Speaker 1: former military. He's an expert in data technology. He actually
Speaker 1: trains FBI agents on how to use data to solve cases.
Speaker 1: I brought Mike down to Arkansas with me to help
Speaker 1: out on the case, especially on two very important aspects,
Speaker 1: social media and cellular data. These are two things that
Speaker 1: may have been initially mishandled by police. Mike is also
Speaker 1: around six foot one and weighs about two hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty pounds of solid muscle. And since everyone keeps warning
Speaker 1: me that we may have to track down some dangerous
Speaker 1: people for this case, I decided it wouldn't be a
Speaker 1: bad idea to have a little backup. Also, just a reminder,
Speaker 1: Ebby's stepdad is Michael, so we'll always refer to him
Speaker 1: as Michael and Mike as Mike. Laury Elsa says, there
Speaker 1: weren't any cameras down here even now, which doesn't look
Speaker 1: like there are no there's there's nothing out here. There's
Speaker 1: a few a few light poles. Who was dark as hell,
Speaker 1: like you couldn't see anything. There's no lighting down there
Speaker 1: at all. Actually, this spot looks almost exactly like it
Speaker 1: did back in twenty fifteen when neighbors called in an
Speaker 1: abandoned car and that car turned out to be Ebby Stepics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's beers and like somebody was like, somebody was having
Speaker 1: some beers come out here and a party A little
Speaker 1: bit looks like which is normal. Yeah, if I was
Speaker 1: in high school, this would beg Yeah. It's a big spot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a safe place. Yeah. I mean if you're
Speaker 1: having a hook up in your car or like, do
Speaker 1: whatever you're gonna do. I mean, it's even you know,
Speaker 1: there's benches down there, but if you're parked up here,
Speaker 1: you came the embankment there, so there's lots of screening
Speaker 1: and little visibility areas. We're going back to October thirtieth,
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. Ebbi Steppac has been missing for five days.
Speaker 1: Her family, including her mom Laurie, her stepdad Michael, and
Speaker 1: her brother Trevor, had been driving all over town trying
Speaker 1: to find her. Then they get a call Ebby's car
Speaker 1: has been found. Michael and Trevor rush over to Schalmont Park.
Speaker 1: It's already getting dark. They look everywhere through neighborhoods in
Speaker 1: the wooded area behind the park, but they see no
Speaker 1: sign of Ebby. Ebby's car is back into a parking
Speaker 1: space in the rear of the parking lot. Behind the car,
Speaker 1: they see a manhole cover that leads down to a
Speaker 1: storm drain. They pull off the cover and look down
Speaker 1: into the drain, but there's nothing there except a pile
Speaker 1: of leaves. As Ebby's family and the police look for
Speaker 1: her everywhere, all over the state and eventually all around
Speaker 1: the world, they don't know that she was right here,
Speaker 1: just a few feet from her car all along. I'm
Speaker 1: Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gothen. In the days following
Speaker 1: Ebbie's disappearance, the police take Ebbie's car in for processing,
Speaker 1: then they start their investi Now, Normally, early in a
Speaker 1: police investigation, detectives will look through the missing person's phone
Speaker 1: records and their social media, especially with a teenager like
Speaker 1: Ebby who uses social media and texting as the main
Speaker 1: ways to communicate with her friends. Ebbie's family has already
Speaker 1: gotten started. They scour all of her accounts, including her Facebook,
Speaker 1: her Instagram, and her Snapchat for any clues as to
Speaker 1: where she could be. JC White is the Little Rock
Speaker 1: Police Department sergeant originally assigned to the investigation. Roy Williams
Speaker 1: is the detective and Laurie starts budding heads with JC
Speaker 1: and the rest of the department very early on because
Speaker 1: she says, they don't seem to be doing anything with
Speaker 1: Ebby's social media accounts. They didn't know what they were doing.
Speaker 1: They didn't know how to get into any of her
Speaker 1: social media, any of her Facebook, Instagram. Did they try
Speaker 1: to snapchat? They didn't know how to do any of it. Nothing.
Speaker 1: So Laurie takes matters into her own hands. She hires
Speaker 1: an it guy named Matthew to get into Ebbie's accounts.
Speaker 1: The police are not happy about that, so they give
Speaker 1: Lauria warning. They tell her to make sure that Matthew
Speaker 1: doesn't change anything in Ebby's accounts, but Laurie is concerned
Speaker 1: for another reason. When she and Matthew get into Ebby's
Speaker 1: social media, it looks like someone else has already been
Speaker 1: looking through her accounts. Meanwhile, the police still haven't gotten
Speaker 1: into Ebbie's Facebook or her Instagram. Now, the process for
Speaker 1: law enforcement to get information from companies like Facebook is
Speaker 1: actually pretty straightforward. Facebook requires that a subpoena, a court order,
Speaker 1: or a search warrant be filed, but police can ask
Speaker 1: for the information they want online without ever having to
Speaker 1: serve papers in person. Police can also ask these companies
Speaker 1: to release other types of information. This information can include
Speaker 1: a person's messages, photos, videos, timeline posts, and location. These
Speaker 1: requests gets sent to a special unit in Facebook called
Speaker 1: the Law Enforcement Response Team. Their sole job is to
Speaker 1: take request for this kind of data. Facebook gets thousands
Speaker 1: of these requests every year. All this really is to
Speaker 1: say that, in this day and age, requesting information from
Speaker 1: a social media company is seen as a very routine
Speaker 1: part of any investigation. According to Laurie, the Little Rock
Speaker 1: Police department did not seem to be familiar with these procedures.
Speaker 1: She also claims the police didn't seem to have a
Speaker 1: sense of urgency. I literally copied and emailed them the
Speaker 1: instructions that are on Facebook that when you sign up
Speaker 1: for Facebook and Instagram that tell you how to contact
Speaker 1: law enforcement, to tell you how to contact them. I
Speaker 1: copied that and sent that to them. That's how little
Speaker 1: they knew. Mike and I talked about how police departments
Speaker 1: investigate social media, So let's talk about the way it's
Speaker 1: supposed to work. Something happens to a victim in this case,
Speaker 1: Ebb Ebby goes missing. Ebby's parents do not have her
Speaker 1: social media log in. The law enforcement agency in charge
Speaker 1: of the case. All they have to do is get
Speaker 1: a warrant to subpoena the social media provider ie, Facebook, Instagram, whoever,
Speaker 1: and they'll provide access to that information. And when someone
Speaker 1: goes missing, if you're looking through their social media, what
Speaker 1: are the kinds of things that you should be looking for.
Speaker 1: I would be looking for who they talked to, where
Speaker 1: they were when they were posting. A lot of these devices,
Speaker 1: when you make a post, there's duolocational data inside of
Speaker 1: the picture, so you can get that from the platform
Speaker 1: Instagram or Facebook as an example, when you request that data.
Speaker 1: If the device has its location services on, it will
Speaker 1: be sharing its location with the platform, sometimes whether they're
Speaker 1: posting or not. So if they're sharing their location with
Speaker 1: the platform, there is a potential or a possibility, you
Speaker 1: could receive their last known location, at least as far
Speaker 1: as the platform is concerned. In twenty fifteen and into
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, tensions are growing between Ebbie's family and the police.
Speaker 1: A member of Laurie's church, who used to work with
Speaker 1: the FBI offers to help. Laurie tries to get her
Speaker 1: friend involved, but the police department refused. He helped us
Speaker 1: as much as he could. He reached out to LRPD.
Speaker 1: They said, no, we don't want your help. He offered
Speaker 1: and offered, and they said, no, we do not want
Speaker 1: your help. Through her connections as a hairdresser, Laurie knows
Speaker 1: a victim's advocate that works for the prosecuting attorney Larry Juggley.
Speaker 1: This woman, Susie, is appalled by the police's treatment of Laurie.
Speaker 1: So Susie starts going with Laurie to her meetings with police.
Speaker 1: She's like, oh my gosh, Laurie, this is awful. So
Speaker 1: she went with me and took notes. So now I
Speaker 1: have someone with the prosecuting Attorney's office going with me
Speaker 1: to my meetings with little art police department, taking notes,
Speaker 1: so I have somebody by my side. It got so
Speaker 1: bad that on my emails now I was emailing the
Speaker 1: chief of police, the mayor, the sergeant, the detective. I
Speaker 1: was putting everybody on the emails. When finally I was
Speaker 1: kicked out of the meetings because she and Matthew had
Speaker 1: continued to dig into Ebbie's social media. The police department
Speaker 1: actually kicks Laurie out of their meetings. I notified him
Speaker 1: one day and said, Matthew has to change a password
Speaker 1: for a minute. We have to change it so we
Speaker 1: can figure out who is trying to get in. It's
Speaker 1: just gonna be for a minute. When I emailed and
Speaker 1: told him that, they said, we're done. We're done. Noe,
Speaker 1: Matthew is off. Off the k off, You're off. He's off.
Speaker 1: We're done. We will no longer contact you. We will
Speaker 1: not email you, contact you, we won't notify you of anything.
Speaker 1: You cannot come down here, don't show up. We're off.
Speaker 1: You're done. Laurie, with Matthew's help, downloads all of Ebby's
Speaker 1: social media messages. They find lots of messages between Ebby
Speaker 1: and her friends, but everything stops on Sunday, October twenty five,
Speaker 1: the same day that Ebbie stopped answering her phone. While
Speaker 1: Ebby's family tries to find out who she was hanging
Speaker 1: out with and where they were, the police start focusing
Speaker 1: on someone a lot closer to home, her husband. They
Speaker 1: tried to go straight for Michael having something to do
Speaker 1: with it. Angle they were already yet Michael's ready to
Speaker 1: throw him in jail. They were doing everything they could
Speaker 1: to prove some way that he had something to do
Speaker 1: with this. Since Ebbie's case is technically an open and
Speaker 1: active investigation. We have no access to police case files,
Speaker 1: so we have to start at the beginning and take
Speaker 1: a fresh look at the cell phone data. We don't
Speaker 1: have all of it, but Laurie do have some of
Speaker 1: Ebbie's phone records. She's kept them in a file for
Speaker 1: six years. I'm also trying to understand as best we
Speaker 1: can the mistakes that police may have made early on
Speaker 1: with the phone data, so that we can learn from
Speaker 1: them and move on with this investigation. When police access
Speaker 1: cell phone data and an investigation, they're looking for the
Speaker 1: record of calls and the cell phone tower data. So
Speaker 1: there are people in law enforcement who are specially trained
Speaker 1: and extracting this type of information. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: looking at the matrix and seeing pictures in the code.
Speaker 1: It's not just a science, it's an art. Mike and
Speaker 1: I also talked about this. So now that we're talking
Speaker 1: about cell phone data, where does the data actually come from.
Speaker 1: The data comes from the network provider. So let's just
Speaker 1: say at and T everything that you do, every place
Speaker 1: your cell phone goes is reporting one percent of the
Speaker 1: time while it's turned on and is attached to the tower.
Speaker 1: As you go from one tower to the next. That's
Speaker 1: also reported to the cell phone company, where whether you're
Speaker 1: actually using your phone or not. What law enforcement should
Speaker 1: do when this happens is they go get a warrant.
Speaker 1: They subpoena AT and T for example, and say, hey,
Speaker 1: can you give me the call detail record of this
Speaker 1: phone number, And in that call detail record will have
Speaker 1: every person that they've talked to, as far as called
Speaker 1: sent a text message to. It will have every tower
Speaker 1: that they've connected to and for how long. So you
Speaker 1: can actually get a geographical representation of dots on a
Speaker 1: map of where they were when they actually made those calls,
Speaker 1: where they were if they were sleeping somewhere at night,
Speaker 1: their direction of travel if they're traveling from north to south,
Speaker 1: east to west, for example. It's very very annular information
Speaker 1: and it's very easy to put together what was going
Speaker 1: on at that time. The secondary thing you do is
Speaker 1: if there are people of interest or people that you
Speaker 1: want to talk to, associates that she may have had,
Speaker 1: you can look at those phone numbers based on whom
Speaker 1: she had contact with and request the call detailed record
Speaker 1: for those and do some correlation to see if those
Speaker 1: people were in the same place at the same time.
Speaker 1: So I guess in a perfect world, law enforcement or
Speaker 1: whoever would put together all this information first and have
Speaker 1: an idea of where everyone was and then go talk
Speaker 1: to those people already knowing that absolutely you would, you know,
Speaker 1: don't don't get me wrong, there's going to be you know,
Speaker 1: detectives and investigators out there trying to do some things
Speaker 1: in real time, right because people are should be trying
Speaker 1: to solve the case as expediently as possible. But there's
Speaker 1: should would be a team or some people who are
Speaker 1: looking at this data from the moment that they receive
Speaker 1: it from the telco provider. Laurie said the police made
Speaker 1: some serious mistakes early in the investigation. First, she says,
Speaker 1: they pinged the wrong cell phone number, which meant that
Speaker 1: when Laurie and Michael go to the GPS coordinates that
Speaker 1: the police gave them, they end up in a random
Speaker 1: field miles away from home. Then, once the correct phone
Speaker 1: number was pinged, police also apparently have some of the
Speaker 1: cell phone time codes wrong, which will be a big
Speaker 1: problem later when they try to establish everyone's ALBI, including Michaels.
Speaker 1: They're tracking his movements to times that were totally incorrect. Jay,
Speaker 1: seeing them started pushing for us to do a lot
Speaker 1: of detector tests. At first they asked us, we said sure.
Speaker 1: Well then after they started pushing for us to do
Speaker 1: a lot of detector tests. When they started treating us
Speaker 1: like that, that's what Michael said. I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: talk to a lawyer. And I didn't blame him either.
Speaker 1: I did not trust them at all. In the weeks
Speaker 1: after the investigation, on November third, twenty fifteen, a woman
Speaker 1: and her daughter, who was a friend of Ebbie's, are
Speaker 1: walking through Chalmont Park. She calls nine one one, I's
Speaker 1: look as you emergency. I just came out of a
Speaker 1: meeting with Detective Williams in regard to a missing person
Speaker 1: named Ebbie. Uh. Okay. He said that the car was
Speaker 1: located in this park, and I brought my daughter to
Speaker 1: Lee Okay. She had been here with her before. True,
Speaker 1: you know, we came here gonna have her look around.
Speaker 1: And as I passed the sewer, now the composition, could
Speaker 1: you I'll send somebody here to investige. I want to
Speaker 1: see what who we need to get out there, and
Speaker 1: I will call you in just a few minutes and
Speaker 1: we'll go from there. Okay, okay, thank you, all right,
Speaker 1: thank you man. Alrighty. She says that she smells something
Speaker 1: rotting in Shalmont Park, but she says the police brushed
Speaker 1: off her concerns. In this world out here, you go
Speaker 1: into a police department, the worst thing you can do
Speaker 1: is say I'm a private investigator. This is Monty Vickers.
Speaker 1: He's a veteran and a former Little Rock police detective.
Speaker 1: While Monty was on the police force, he investigated hundreds
Speaker 1: of homicides, a lot of which he says, stay with
Speaker 1: him to this day. Just something you you can't forget.
Speaker 1: He's one of those old school former cops who could
Speaker 1: have come straight out of a movie. He really cares
Speaker 1: about his cases and about truth, justice in the American way.
Speaker 1: He retired from the force years ago and became a
Speaker 1: private investigator. I've been thrown out a more poee farmers
Speaker 1: and anyone around been thrown out. A senator told me
Speaker 1: a Mississippi Bible archer saw hot Springs two times and
Speaker 1: I had to get up in their face, and I say,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're not going to do your g
Speaker 1: D job, at least pretend you give damn you'll make
Speaker 1: these victims feel better. In early twenty sixteen, Laurie asked
Speaker 1: Money to investigate Abbie's case. I didn't want to get
Speaker 1: involved in they're saying at all, I said, I don't
Speaker 1: need to interfere with the priest department. I regret that now.
Speaker 1: Money says he was actually reluctant to get involved because
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to insert himself into an active police investigation.
Speaker 1: He is sure that the police will do a good job,
Speaker 1: but when he starts digging into Ebbie's case, he's deeply
Speaker 1: troubled by what he finds. First, he tries to get
Speaker 1: security camera footage from the time around when Ebbie went missing.
Speaker 1: Police did have some security footage of Ebby's car on
Speaker 1: Channel Parkway. This is the single image, by the way
Speaker 1: that has been released by police of Ebby. Police would
Speaker 1: not say if Ebbie was in the car alone when
Speaker 1: the footage was taken, or even which way she was traveling. Also,
Speaker 1: Laurie said that Ebby's phone needed Wi Fi to make calls,
Speaker 1: so she would often sit in the parking lot of
Speaker 1: the Walmart that was about three minutes away from Shalmont Park. Tragically,
Speaker 1: by the time Monty talked to people at Walmart. It
Speaker 1: had been several months, and Walmart says the surveillance footage
Speaker 1: had already been deleted. Five months after Ebbie went missing,
Speaker 1: Monty goes back to Shalamant Park. He starts canvassing and
Speaker 1: knocking on doors. He's looking for anyone who may have
Speaker 1: been in the area where Ebbie's car was found and
Speaker 1: he may have seen Ebbie on those crucial days. That's
Speaker 1: when he finds Guy Hooper. Guy Hooper is a security
Speaker 1: guard who patrols Shalamant Park on a regular basis, and
Speaker 1: he was on duty the night that Ebbie went missing.
Speaker 1: How did you find the security guard? Did you just
Speaker 1: think there might have been a security guard there? And Yeah,
Speaker 1: called out there and after the park area and found
Speaker 1: out as a security guard. And I called him and
Speaker 1: he told me on the phone for this and I
Speaker 1: arranged to meet him out there. That's when I took
Speaker 1: recorded statement from me about a forty five men or
Speaker 1: our statement. Monty is shocked when Guy tells him that
Speaker 1: he's the first person to show up to talk to
Speaker 1: him about this investigation. Then Guy Hooper tells Money that
Speaker 1: he actually called the police multiple times about Ebbe's car
Speaker 1: and that the police had failed to show up in
Speaker 1: the park. And then guy says that he had seen
Speaker 1: Ebby before at that park during his routine patrols. He
Speaker 1: had seen her there before with a young small black
Speaker 1: male about her size, about five foot he said, five
Speaker 1: foot three or four, and he had seen her there
Speaker 1: multiple times. And one of the things that was just
Speaker 1: gets you right in the heart that he said he
Speaker 1: had all his own video, that he had a dash
Speaker 1: camera and he videoed all of the encounters with her
Speaker 1: in the past, because he said every night when he
Speaker 1: would when he would get off shift, he would download
Speaker 1: take a chip and download it to to his computer.
Speaker 1: But then he tells us that's all gone now, this
Speaker 1: dash cam footage that he had of Ebby is gone.
Speaker 1: Guy says that he lost the footage after his computer
Speaker 1: malfunctioned one morning. He came home shot to download the
Speaker 1: dash cam and a computer said it could not read
Speaker 1: this device. So his wife worked at a company and
Speaker 1: the attic and computer tech there that she took the
Speaker 1: computer and the chip in there, and the guy told
Speaker 1: him said, computer shot, its fried. You know, it's an
Speaker 1: old and best thing. Due just get your new computer.
Speaker 1: So he did, and a computer tech guy through his
Speaker 1: other computer and everything away. Monty gives this information to
Speaker 1: the police and then stops his investigation for a few months.
Speaker 1: He still hopes the police will handle it, but then
Speaker 1: nothing happens, so he gets back on the case. Monty
Speaker 1: wants to find out who Ebby was with on Friday
Speaker 1: night and what happened to her. He goes back and
Speaker 1: finds another friend of Ebby's, a guy named Gage. Gage
Speaker 1: shares the text that Ebby had sent him on Friday
Speaker 1: night with Monty, the ones where she said she had
Speaker 1: sex with a guy who filmed her against her will.
Speaker 1: Since Ebby had sent these texts alleging sexual assault, Monty
Speaker 1: believes that police absolutely have probable cause to search the
Speaker 1: phones of the boys who were mentioned in those texts.
Speaker 1: Jac whyatt Superhu said that he had asked for their phone.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't give him their phones, so that's all they did.
Speaker 1: So after they told me that, that's when I call
Speaker 1: the prosecuting attorney. Monty calls up the prosecuting attorney, Larry Juggley,
Speaker 1: to get his insights on this. I called him with
Speaker 1: a lawyer and him there that night. I called him
Speaker 1: and told him about this, and I said they need
Speaker 1: to get these three guys cell phones, and he agreed,
Speaker 1: so he had a deputy prosecutor go to the Little
Speaker 1: Rock Police department, and from what I was told, the
Speaker 1: detective sergeant argued with the deputy prosecutor that there wasn't
Speaker 1: enough probable cause to seize these cell phones. What Money's
Speaker 1: getting out here is that this situation is getting surreal
Speaker 1: because usually it's the prosecuting attorney who's telling the detectives
Speaker 1: that they don't have enough evidence, then the detectives go
Speaker 1: out and try to get more. It's never the other
Speaker 1: way around. It's unbelievable to Money that a prosecuting attorney
Speaker 1: is recommending seizing the phones and that the police are
Speaker 1: refused to do it. So, even though she's been kicked
Speaker 1: out of the meetings, Laurie continues to email the police department.
Speaker 1: She takes it to the next level and emails the
Speaker 1: captain and finally she gets another meeting with the police.
Speaker 1: This time everyone is there, the captain, the detectives, the
Speaker 1: prosecuting attorney. Laurie wants to make sure that her voice
Speaker 1: and her complaints are heard. So I took all this
Speaker 1: to the captain and had a meeting with everybody. And
Speaker 1: the first thing was why did you have to email
Speaker 1: the chief? And I said, to get y'all's attention. I said,
Speaker 1: it got a meeting, didn't it. I got all of
Speaker 1: y'all in the room. She has a lot of grievances,
Speaker 1: the phone, the social media, the fact that it appears
Speaker 1: to her that police haven't really been doing anything, for instance,
Speaker 1: even things that would seem to be basic, like why
Speaker 1: hadn't police looked through security footage at the nearby walmart
Speaker 1: that was less than half a mile from the park.
Speaker 1: Then Laurie gets to the issue of the boy's phones,
Speaker 1: and I said, so why don't I have Why can't
Speaker 1: you get a subpoena for this? Don't have probable cause?
Speaker 1: I said, why why don't have probable cause for this?
Speaker 1: Don't have probable cause for this? And this? And I said,
Speaker 1: the prosecuting attorney says, I do. And I said, what
Speaker 1: at what level is probable cause? And the chief said,
Speaker 1: the Captain said, when I say it is just started shaking.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was just was like this, I'm never
Speaker 1: gonna I'm never gonna win, Nothing's ever gonna happen. So
Speaker 1: at that point I was so defeated. I mean I was,
Speaker 1: I was so defeated. And Monti a former police officer,
Speaker 1: someone who believed in the beginning that police were doing
Speaker 1: all they could, even he says he lost all faith
Speaker 1: in the investigation. After this meeting, the situation between Laurie
Speaker 1: and the LRPD continued to deteriorate and things were about
Speaker 1: to get a lot worse. Finally, in June twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: the case is handed over to the lrpd's Violent Crimes Unit.
Speaker 1: In a way, this is a good thing because these
Speaker 1: are the department's most experienced detectives. But Laurie and many
Speaker 1: of Ebbie's family and friends question why it took so
Speaker 1: long to happen. In November twenty sixteen, police conduct another
Speaker 1: search of Shalamant Park. This is a massive search. They're
Speaker 1: reporters there from local news stations watching the police who
Speaker 1: are working with the FBI. There's a canine team and
Speaker 1: dozens of people scouring the woods. We're out here to
Speaker 1: conducting a search of an area. It referenced to a
Speaker 1: missing person's case. That case is the Ebby Steppic case.
Speaker 1: She disappeared about well approximate last year. The lrpds Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Danny Jackson explains what they're looking for that day. We
Speaker 1: want to come out here and see if there's any
Speaker 1: evidence out here that will help us find out what
Speaker 1: happened to Abby or where she is at. We've got
Speaker 1: two canine teams that are going to search the wooded
Speaker 1: area immediately surrounding the park. It's going to be about
Speaker 1: a three day search, so it'll be pretty extensive. I
Speaker 1: just want to be very very thorough on this and
Speaker 1: check this one more time, just to be sure that's all.
Speaker 1: After the search, police reveal that they found clothes, handcuffs,
Speaker 1: a shoe, and what appears to be part of a
Speaker 1: leg bone, but hesting would reveal that the bone is
Speaker 1: an animal bone and has nothing to do with Ebbie's case.
Speaker 1: Another search, another roller coaster of heartbreak for Ebby's family.
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen, almost two years after Ebbe went missing,
Speaker 1: Laurie and Michael feel like they have nothing left to lose.
Speaker 1: They decide to go even more public and take the
Speaker 1: story to a national level. They go on Nancy Grace
Speaker 1: and Doctor Phil. They up the reward for information about
Speaker 1: Ebby's disappearance from fifteen thousand dollars to fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: The media outreach works, Ebby's story goes national and this
Speaker 1: leads to a lot more interest in her case. And
Speaker 1: Ebby's story is everywhere, and more publicity also means more
Speaker 1: people calling in from all over the world saying they've
Speaker 1: seen Ebby in different places. Police are overwhelmed at trying
Speaker 1: to track down all these Ebbe sightings. Some people even
Speaker 1: call in with fake tips. This leads to a lot
Speaker 1: of wasted time by the police and also more torment
Speaker 1: for Ebby's family. There's one caller, a person who says
Speaker 1: they're holding Ebby hostage and demands money to set her free,
Speaker 1: And even though that caller turned out to be a hoax,
Speaker 1: Laurie starts wondering if Ebbie could have been a victim
Speaker 1: of sex trafficking. Laurie says that at this point she
Speaker 1: felt trapped. She believes that the police are not investigating
Speaker 1: Ebbie's case properly. She thinks that they're anger at her
Speaker 1: and her family mean that they're not following leads. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, she's worried that if she takes
Speaker 1: her complaints farther, police might stop the investigation completely. On
Speaker 1: February twelve, twenty eighteen, Laurie files a complaint with the LRPD.
Speaker 1: In her complaint, Laurie d tells what the officers had
Speaker 1: done and what they hadn't done. She talks about how
Speaker 1: some officers sent her threatening messages and told her she
Speaker 1: would no longer be getting case updates, basically banning her
Speaker 1: from the investigation. In August of that year, Laurie gets
Speaker 1: a letter back from the LRPD. It's signed by then
Speaker 1: Chief Kent and Buckner. The letter, which does not mention
Speaker 1: any of the officers Laurie mentions by name, states that
Speaker 1: police did not have enough information quote to prove or
Speaker 1: disprove that your allegation that the sworn personnel were rude
Speaker 1: and unprofessional during your contact with them end quote. The
Speaker 1: police investigation seemed to consist solely of talking to the
Speaker 1: officers and their immediate supervisors. It was all done internally. However,
Speaker 1: after the complaint, the detective who had been assigned to
Speaker 1: the case is removed, and that's when Tommy Hudson takes over.
Speaker 1: Laurie says, at that point every thing starts to change.
Speaker 1: Hey Tommy, this is Katherine Hawnsend. How are you doing
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm good. Well, thanks for talking to us.
Speaker 1: I've been down here. I've been talking a lot to Laurie.
Speaker 1: And my colleague Mike is here too. I brought him
Speaker 1: with me. How you doing, man. Tommy Hudson has had
Speaker 1: a long career with the LRPD as a homicide detective.
Speaker 1: He'd actually retired a few months earlier, but he got
Speaker 1: pulled back in to work on Ebbie's case as part
Speaker 1: of the cold case. He other detectives that had this
Speaker 1: case prior to be investigating it, and they screwed up
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff on this case and so I
Speaker 1: got basically it just got thrown in my lapse, like
Speaker 1: fix this. When Tommy gets the case, he finds that
Speaker 1: only some superficial stuff had been done with Ebbie's phone. Also,
Speaker 1: up to the point that he gets the case, there's
Speaker 1: been little cooperation between the LRPD and the FBI. It
Speaker 1: was the supervisors involved in that case on the front
Speaker 1: end that refused to give that cooperation, to let them
Speaker 1: use that effertise do the things that we finally got.
Speaker 1: That's the first thing we did when we took over
Speaker 1: the case, because you know, I mean, Laurie, them I'll
Speaker 1: tell you that everything was kind of focused on the
Speaker 1: family on the front end of the case, and that
Speaker 1: was just, in my opinion, stupidity. And because we I
Speaker 1: want to say, we had the family pretty much eliminated
Speaker 1: at least through digital evidence within a few days, and
Speaker 1: you know, because they were real apprehensive of cooperating, which
Speaker 1: I understand, and then we we finally I had Laurie
Speaker 1: and Michael come in. I said, I'd say, new guy,
Speaker 1: you know everything happened before, it's not me, and this
Speaker 1: is what we need to do. And then they cooperated
Speaker 1: and do the things we did, like giving us new
Speaker 1: formal statements, taking polygraphs and all that good stuff. And
Speaker 1: and I kind of feel sorry for them the way
Speaker 1: they were treated on the front end the case, because
Speaker 1: it should have been treated the way they were treated.
Speaker 1: Monty Vickers says that he brought up the idea of
Speaker 1: looking again at the drainage pipe near where Ebbie's car
Speaker 1: was found. Monny had been trying to get down into
Speaker 1: that drain pipe since he started his investigation. I'd done
Speaker 1: everything I could do, try to find a robot, red robot,
Speaker 1: buy one, I said, they're especially but still I would
Speaker 1: have like to have taken a robot up in there
Speaker 1: and see you at anything. On May twenty four, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: the Cold Case Unit does another search along with the FBI.
Speaker 1: This time they use robot video cameras that Tommy gets
Speaker 1: from the city. And then the next day I got
Speaker 1: a call and there's gonna be digging the trained pipe up.
Speaker 1: I said, you mean I found something? Said, yeah, looks
Speaker 1: like it. I'm sitting there and I'm kicking myself and
Speaker 1: I'm just you know, because I just shoot. I should
Speaker 1: have kept on with that. On May twenty eight, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: Tommy Hudson makes this statement with RPD, we decided to
Speaker 1: conduct a search of the piping and drainage system close
Speaker 1: to the area where Missus Steffi's car was initially found
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen. We used robots with video cameras that
Speaker 1: we were able to send down the drains. Eventually, starting
Speaker 1: from the top drain where her car was found, we
Speaker 1: hit obstruction seventy feet down from the top part of
Speaker 1: where her car was. We then took the same robots
Speaker 1: and ran them back up the other end from the
Speaker 1: drain up another one hundred and thirty feet and located
Speaker 1: another obstruction. Neither one of those obstructions were human remains,
Speaker 1: but they picked our interest that we had an obstruction
Speaker 1: from seventy feet from the top from one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty feet from the bottom. So we made the determination
Speaker 1: that we needed to eescavate this area to see what
Speaker 1: was inside the pipe itself. At ten thirty hours on
Speaker 1: Tuesday morning, and we located the piping section that we
Speaker 1: believe we need to open up to see what the
Speaker 1: obstruction was. Upon opening that pipe, co case investigators located
Speaker 1: human rant remains inside that pipe. At that time, we
Speaker 1: shut everything down and immediately went and try to search
Speaker 1: for the family of Miss Stebbi to let them know
Speaker 1: we had found human remains. That process took several hours
Speaker 1: to recover those remains along with new evidence that we
Speaker 1: did find inside this piping system. The remains were sent
Speaker 1: to the Oursel State Crime Lack for positive dentification and
Speaker 1: we'll be waiting for the testing results on that evidence
Speaker 1: that was taken from those pipes. A few days later,
Speaker 1: those remains are positively identified. The body they found is
Speaker 1: Ebby Steppic. Ebby Steppic, two and a half years after
Speaker 1: she's disappeared is confirmed dead. Remember that search the police
Speaker 1: did back in twenty sixteen. If you hit pause during
Speaker 1: that press conference, you can actually see the manhole, the
Speaker 1: one that Ebbie's car was parked in front of, the
Speaker 1: one that leads down to that pipe where her body
Speaker 1: was found. Laurie and the rest of Ebby's family had
Speaker 1: been back to that part countless times over the years,
Speaker 1: and some interviews with Laurie you can see her standing
Speaker 1: right in front of that manhole. All this time, she
Speaker 1: was going through escort websites and chasing sightings all around
Speaker 1: the world, dealing with faked blackmail threats and living a nightmare.
Speaker 1: Ebbie was here the whole time. Now we need to
Speaker 1: find out how she got down there. I'm Katherine Townsend.
Speaker 1: This is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a production of
Speaker 1: School of Humans and iHeartRadio. It's written and hosted by
Speaker 1: me Katherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts and Michael
Speaker 1: Dowd Our executive Pretty Users or Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley,
Speaker 1: and Virginia Prescott. Mix and master is by Ryan Peoples
Speaker 1: and our music is by Bensley. If you have any
Speaker 1: information regarding the disappearance, of Epistepic. You can call our
Speaker 1: tipline at six seven eight six three two six one
Speaker 1: five nine School of Humans, School of Humans,