she had missed a meeting and then not to hear from her, this isn t right. it would have been impossible to get up every day knowing that she was gone. i had to believe we would find her alive. text her, she always got right back. i ve seen her step out of the shower to answer her phone. then one day she didn t. immediately, my spidey senses were high. where was nailah? i sent her an e-mail, all caps, are you alive? there was no sign of her. and such a confusing trail of clues, even the calls to 911 were silent. no voice, no struggles could be heard. this could be kind of eerie. yes, it is. in my heart, i knew she s not coming back. one of the suspects had an alibi, until a camera caught him in a lie. he lived a life of a lot of smoke and mirrors. and the strangest clue of all. there in an empty parking lot. six perfectly stacked cardboard boxes. why were they there? what was in them? it was right adjacent to a lagoon. wow. i watch en
full siblings, half siblings, quarter siblings once removed. that sort of thing. very blended. we share one parent. so technically half siblings, but that word is kind of offensive to me because to me it implies that it s something less. and i ve never felt that way. i ve never used that word. we re just siblings. one big, close, happy family. so said john, the youngest. it s simple for us because we grew up together from the time we were young. so for us, it s like we re one big family. not one but two ashleys. she s ashlee with an e and the other one is ashley with a y. that s this one. and imagine this. i think this is kind of unusual, kind of rare. yes. that everybody gets along. yeah, everybody gets along. it s a good thing. although when we were kids it was a lot more crazy to other people. hi. and in the middle of this big family was nailah. happy birthday. i love you.
looking for in a piece of art. obviously, i tried to engage her. suddenly, this is a different search than it was before. i mean, the artwork became of little interest, to me, at that point. just like that, it was all over. for both of them. you know, i don t want to go all hallmark card on you or anything like that. that s okay. but i mean, this was clearly kind of a transcendental moment or something. yeah, absolutely, definitely. nailah s family loved andre. what family wouldn t? she brought him to my child s first birthday party. he brought my baby a gift. i was like who does that? because he s a nice, quality person. they liked you. i think so, yeah, yeah. due to her influence, though. you started planning on moving in together, right? on being together? we did. that was happening pretty fast. it felt good, though. it just felt natural. it was long distance, he in milwaukee, she in chicago. they stayed connected by phone and e-mail and text all day
with her. maybe leah s pr campaign helped because we had some anonymous tips, people saying that they saw her at this location. but not a single one of them led to nailah. by now the detectives believed they were dealing with a serious crime, and yet she s missing. technically there hasn t been a crime committed. that makes it somewhat awkward when you re looking into it. the only one that we knew she had contact with, the boyfriend she was in wisconsin with the weekend before she went missing, they were all interviewed. that boyfriend from wisconsin, andre, had come to chicago, was helping with the search and soon was perhaps a subject of it. they came to you. they did. the perfect boyfriend. now,
the person saw a newscast and they were like that car s been on my block for a couple days. and thank god they saw that and thank god they cared enough to call it in. that call came from here. hammond, indiana, just down the road from calumet, three days after nailah vanished. a black chevy impala. we rushed out there to see it. it was hers. you open that trunk, the last thing you want to think is there s something in that trunk. and fortunately there wasn t. you obviously do a workup on the vehicle. did you find any prints, any dna? anything useful at all? i think our evidence technicians that processed it described it as it was wiped clean. including in the trunk? yes. believing somehow she might