Nevaeh Buchanan /// Part 1 /// 613 | Forensic Files

[Music] do [Music] welcome to true crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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and that is enough for the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
crime [Music] [Music] sunday night may 24th 2009 monroe county michigan authorities issued an amber alert for
five-year-old nevaeh buchanan that night the alert indicated that she was last seen at the charlotte arms apartment
complex in the parking lot area around 6 30 pm she was 3 feet 10 inches tall and about
45 pounds was wearing a light blue sleeveless shirt with red and white horizontal stripes
and a white v-neck collar and knee-length jeans she was barefoot when she left her
mother's apartment police swarmed the large apartment complex and started talking to the
residents search parties comprising of 100 law enforcement personnel and 500 volunteers
fanned out from the complex and checked everywhere they could think of helicopters scanned the area from
overhead divers plumbed the depths of local quarries her mother jennifer said she spent all
day and all night looking everywhere for her little girl people searched frantically for days to
no avail within five days it was reported that the local sheriff's department had
talked to 250 people the michigan state police and fbi helped out making up a task force with the
local police all the tactics and strategies for locating someone were deployed but nevaeh was gone
this is true crime garage [Music] five-year-old nevaeh buchanan loved her scooter and neighbors were accustomed to
seeing the little girls zipping around in their charlotte arms apartment complex parking lot
the apartment complex is located on north malcolm street in monroe michigan it was may 24 2009
this is the day before memorial day it's a sunny day and a great time for children to be outside playing with
friends nevaeh and other kids from the complex like to cut through a hole in the fence
and play at a playground that abutted to the complex's grounds sometimes they stuck to the parking lot
some kids saw nevaeh here that day on her scooter speeding around and then she was gone nevaeh's mother jennifer was
used to her daughter running around the complex with the other kids it's unclear whether nevaeh had rules in
place about being allowed to go outside on her own after all she was only five years old
jennifer was home sitting on the couch in their apartment around 6 30 p.m watching the tv show john and kate plus
eight nivea was bored and tells her mom mom i'm going upstairs to austin's austin was an eight-year-old boy that
lived in the apartment one floor up from nevaeh and jennifer nevaeh and austin were buddies and his apartment
was somewhere where she hung out regularly we will go through the events as they
have been reported that led up to the disappearance of nevaeh but it is important to note
that at the time five-year-old nevaeh her mother jennifer are living with jennifer's mother sherry
the apartment is technically the grandmother's apartment so sherry's apartment and on this memorial day weekend
jennifer had a friend of hers and the friend's little daughter staying with them in the apartment as well so
it's a little cramped nevaeh's mother says around the 6 30 time period she comes in to change her clothes yeah she
changes her clothes she grabs a popsicle and then jennifer says that nevaeh went
back outside jennifer would later say that she assumed that her daughter went to
eight-year-old austin's apartment unit to play there she assumed the two friends were playing with toys or
watching tv now jennifer says that about 30 minutes later or so jennifer's friend's daughter which is a
little girl as well she came into the apartment said nevaeh is riding her scooter in the road you
know one little kid tattling on another little kid jennifer spent some time looking for her
shoes because she wanted to go outside and confront her daughter and let her know you can't be riding your scooter in
the road right so she spent some time looking for her shoes we don't know exactly how much time and this is kind
of key because this is something we will circle back to around in a little bit but
she makes her way outside and she's looking in all the normal spots and cannot find her daughter
jennifer checked at other units in the apartment complex as well where she knew that nevaeh had some friends this
including the little boy austin's apartment she could not locate her daughter well
and at this point you're looking around this complex you know where she plays you can't find her obviously some panic
is going to start setting in with her mother so she calls the apartment manager to help her look for her
daughter and jennifer does a lap around the building and around the other side and this is where she finds
a big major red flag here because leaning up against the back of the building jennifer found her daughter's purple and
green scooter abandoned it seems that jennifer may have underestimated how long nevaeh was
gone we have to note here that she told many people this included reporters and this included true crime tv personality
nancy grace that it was only about 30 minutes that her little girl was gone but in
reality all the news outlets later have reported that she didn't actually start looking
for her daughter until closer to 8 p.m right so we have a bit of a time discrepancy there and it could just be
you know a mother's panicking she's nervous she gets her times wrong or as we will see there are reasons later
to call into question jennifer's behaviors and her words yeah or she doesn't want to look like a
horrible individual so she's going to tell everybody that she's been searching all day
when really she didn't pay much attention to her daughter that's a very good possibility and often i find when
my mind is racing my times are a little off because things seem to be happening rather quickly when you're in that panic
state right so jennifer calls her mother sheri whom she and nevaeh are living with
sherry was at work she's finishing up her shift at a food town grocery store in monroe
with this news sherry puts down what she's doing she leaves work and raced home to help look for
nevaeh well let's give a little bit of background on nevaeh there is a justice for nevaeh website so we gathered a lot
of the following information from that website and the site says that nevaeh buchanan
was a typical five-year-old girl she loved stuffed animals and like most little girls she named them all
her favorite was a stuffed beagle that she named harley now she named him harley because in
addition to stuffed animals nevaeh loved motorcycles she was born february 3rd 2004
people that knew nevaeh described her as shy adorable a little girl who liked to wear her hair
in a ponytail neighbors described her as timid with a soft voice real fragile and then someone said nevaeh had a smile
that could melt a glacier her mother jennifer told the media that her daughter loved motorcycles and
trucks she was a tomboy and was obsessed with the movie jungle book well who isn't now a more complete history
of nevaeh is that she had just graduated from preschool and was heading off to kindergarten in
the fall she lived in the charlotte arms apartment complex with her maternal grandmother sherry
now one detail here captain is that sherry actually had legal guardianship of nevaeh had legal guardianship of her for
some time this was because jennifer nevaeh's mom at one time was a drug addict and was
sent to prison when this went down sherry had taken her granddaughter in and nevaeh had lived
with sherry in that apartment under sherry's care for several years jennifer serves her time in prison and
then when she's released in early 2009 she moved in with her mom and her daughter so this has been her home for
quite some time yes it has been and one thing that is kind of clear here is that
as far as being taken care of and being raised it looked like nevaeh considered sherry
more of her mother because that's what she knew for most of her life well and nevaeh goes missing in may 2009
and so her mom gets out of prison early 2009 so she's really not back in her child's
life for that long until she goes missing i think that might be kind of key here as well now
we also we also should note that jennifer nevaeh's mom was only 24 years of age when her
five-year-old daughter nevaeh went missing the father shane honan jose was only 22 at the time when nevaeh went
missing so he was 17-ish when nevaeh was conceived he wasn't really in her life um according to medium.com
shane the father had not spoken to his daughter nevaeh in three years but when she went missing
he traveled to monroe he lived in ohio so monroe is very close to monroe michigan is very close to the
ohio border and shane from my understanding lives in toledo ohio which is the northern part of our state
he travels to monroe to help look for his daughter even though he's not spoken to her in quite some time
this i i think we need to commend him a little bit we we don't want to applaud him for not being a part of her life but
at the same time he actually risked being arrested going to monroe he had recently not been
able to pay his child support since losing his job so he goes in there with the intention
of of helping now what we can see here captain very quickly in this case and we're going to
fan out quite a bit ourselves in our search looking for actual suspects but we need to paint this the picture for
what it is this other than sherry the grandmother this is not a great situation for young nevaeh
her father's absent he's he's a boy pretty much when she's born mother's absent because she's got drug
addiction problems and then commits crimes i mean she's she was in prison for actual crimes not drug related
crimes from my understanding so not a great situation as far as mom and dad goes
sherry the grandmothers stepping up stepping in and trying to help and trying to raise this this beautiful
little girl well it's so sad because it's like the odds are stacked against her and that's sad
so where we stand now captain we have a little girl missing from her apartment complex in monroe michigan
let's look at the earliest stages of this investigation first someone and this is a little weird but it's
never been reported exactly who this could have been jennifer her mom could have been grandma sherry
could have been the apartment manager could be somebody else entirely somebody called 9-1-1 at 8 15 p.m
and police issued the amber alert for five-year-old nevaeh that same night now nevaeh was gone
monroe county sheriff tillman crutchfield announced that they were looking for two witnesses this is very
early on in their investigation announces to the public we're looking for two witnesses and he states that
these are elementary age boys who were seen playing on the playground at the hollywood elementary school that
backed up to the charlotte arms apartment complex and he said that this would have been
around the last time that nevaeh was seen they were also seeking a green boxy minivan
that was seen parked at the playground between 6 and 7 pm on the evening that nevaeh disappeared
he said that they thought that the van driver might be a witness but of course an unknown van in the area
where a child went missing was cause for raised eyebrows banned the green minivan well like you said this
case is going to be tough because we know that she's outside playing but we don't know
how long she was gone once she was reported gone again for those not familiar monroe michigan it's a small
town about 20 000 people somewhat near the ohio line the river raisin runs through the middle
of town the apartment complex itself the charlotte arms is located between north
malcolm street and riverview avenue next to that hollywood elementary school reportedly this apartment complex has
180 units so this is a rather large apartment complex in my opinion and it's made up of a number of
buildings these buildings captain are only three stories high i've seen it reported that the residents
were on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum as with most neighborhoods some of these
residents have a somewhat checkered past now nevaeh sherry and jennifer's unit was on the ground level this is
important to me when we're looking at this case so for anyone or in this case nevaeh to get
from the apartment where we know she was safe well and fine to the parking lot area where it's
suspected that she was would have been last seen or went missing from this based off of the scooter where the
scooters later located all the little girl had to do was walk out the front door
which is what jennifer seemingly allowed her to do the other thing too we got a note this is a five-year-old
girl yes she's probably used to playing outside with other kids but we get the jennifer's friend's daughter who seems
to be keeping an eye on nevaeh but not jennifer herself so it would be a tough situation because
essentially your daughter's being raised by your mother you then come into the picture
there is some kind of routine there's some kind of familiarity already happening with discipline and
who's telling you what to do and and all that stuff that you almost have to take a back seat
as a as a parent and these cases are incredibly difficult to report and it's not just because we're talking
about a little girl that's missing but it's also because when you have a situation like this it's easy to
blame the parent or the parents and you also have to keep in mind that they if they're innocent if they did nothing
wrong here you know maybe they could have been a little more strict or kept in better a better eye on nevaeh or
obviously put her in a better situation in her young life as far as being a father or mother goes but
if neither of them did anything wrong well then they're very much victims too so these are difficult to to try to walk
that fine line of telling not just what we think and what we see but also trying to
stay keep an open heart to to these victims it's absolutely irresponsible and unimaginable to
spend years not talking with your daughter not being involved in your daughter's life
it's ridiculous now we will fast forward to june 4th 2009 by this time nevaeh has been
missing for almost two weeks now in many of these true crime stories we hear about fishermen finding bodies
in the water unaware that a person is actually missing they catch a glimpse of something unusual
maybe bobbing in the river or stream as they cast in their line but fishermen don't usually find bodies by
stepping on them like we have here in this week's case but here in the garage captain there's a
first time for everything right so now we introduce guy bickley his 15 year old son ryan and guy's
father lol so we have three generations of the bickley family setting out to spend some
time fishing on the river raisin near dixon road in rozenville township this part of the river is roughly about
30 or so feet across this particular spot is about 10 miles away from the charlotte arms apartment
complex they the bickleys had never fished this part of the river before they said that they parked off of dixon
road inside the guard rail on the edge of a steep slope that led down to the river
the trio followed an overgrown path down through brushy terrain leading to a good spot
along the riverbank at this spot there were some rocks which is typically ideal for fishermen in this
situation because you can stand or perch up on these rocks while casting another group of rocks was easily
accessible by walking across a small patch of concrete that looked as though it may
have tumbled there from the roadway above so guy bickley is standing on that concrete patch
and he says a chunk of it broke off he noted that the concrete was thinly spread
so when what we would later find out would be an eight inch by six inch chunk of this concrete
breaks off he says right away he smelled and saw that something was not right he said
flies were buzzing around in the area guy chipped off a little more of the concrete to see
what was going on then he stops because he does see something under the concrete was what looked like
human skin and hair and he said it smelled like death so they called the authorities
excavation of that concrete revealed a shallow grave containing an intact corpse of a child
everyone knew who it was that kind of situation even before nevaeh was formally id'd
the shirt on the little body fit the description of the one nevaeh was last seen wearing
it was not immediately apparent what the cause of death was very sad scene per abc news monroe county sheriff tillman
crutchfield said shortly after the discovery of nevaeh's body that there were no visible
signs of abuse and that she had been buried along the river raisin for quote a while
he declined to comment specifically about how the body was buried only that it had some type of concrete or cement
on top he also would not say what else investigators recovered from the grave obviously somebody that's trying to
conceal her her body yes very much so and went to some great lengths to do so now
you know the sheriff himself is probably in a bit of a state of shock as well they've spent almost two weeks now
looking for this little girl this is how she's found nobody wanted to find her this way he does throw in the
comment when he's being asked about what they found he says authorities are looking for a disturbed
individual which i i feel like that's kind of a throw your hands in the air kind of sit
not in a good way you know throw your hands in the air like i don't know i i'm kind of at a loss here for words
i don't know exactly who we are looking for at this point to go back to the day she went missing like you said there's
over 180 units so that's a lot of individuals in this town looking for this little girl
and talking and spreading the word that this little girl is missing so this is going to be big news
when they end up finding her in the concrete yeah and from my experience following
these cases and from what we've covered here in the garage captain we know that these stranger
child abductions are rather rare now i'm not saying that that's an impossibility here it certainly could be
the situation but oftentimes it's somebody somewhat close to the child that is responsible either somebody that
is known to the family or in this case and what i think you're circling around here is that
the possibility is that the threat or or or whoever is responsible could be somebody that
that lived in that apartment complex or had reason to be there for any number of reasons well also like
you said there's a this playground that's abutting the property that's beside the apartment property
creeps are going to find out about that pretty quickly yeah that's that's the thing for me that i kept
i can't shake off is this idea that if you were somewhat local stranger to the family
stranger to people from that apartment complex we've always said this with when it comes to especially serial offenders
right serial offenders typically have a victim type and they know where to go looking for their
victim that they prefer it's almost like you and i going to the grocery store we i don't go out and hunt
my own meat because there's a store right down the street where it will have plenty of it there and i do
i hunt my own meat all the time but here here's the thing though too is what do we know
so far this girl is taken from an apartment complex she has now found the same town
right about 10 miles away from the apartment complex but before we move on to something else what i wanted to point
out was if if a predator was looking for this type of victim a younger child boy or girl
unfortunately this is an ideal place to find said victim because as you pointed out
the playground the elementary school the apartment complex where there's kids outside buzzing and zipping around and
playing all day long and there's a pool there as well i mean that's that's some of the key
locations for these types of creeps to find this type of victim and this is all smashed together all in one locale right
and what the point i was trying to get at before rudely being cut off no is this to me
seems like a location that you'd have to know by being a local and being where her body was found yes
no no i'm talking about the apartment complex but look if you if you're not a local
you're just going to drive to the next part of town and go all this here's this playground that's connected to
this uh apartment complex which is connected to a pool which is connected to this elementary school like you said
this is probably somebody that lives in the area or knows the area is familiar with the area and then she's found 10
miles away so to me this evidence is saying that this person is local you know and when we mean when we say
local you know 20 30 mile radius from the abduction point or the the point where um her body was
found now i want to hit on some things before we move on to our next items here in this investigation and this is in
regards to the body being found so we we should note here that the police have never
said what state of undress or dress that nevaeh was in but there was a now deleted fox detroit news piece that
said she was in the hole without clothing and her clothing and a bush beer can were thrown in the hole
with her fbi have traced the beer can to a highlight market in monroe so they were able to trace where this
beer can came from or at least where it was purchased from the thing here is it what's not clear
is this beer can being found it's actually not clear whether it was found in the hole or just nearby that
makes sense but one thing that kind of confirms the clothing being tossed in on top of the
girl was that one of the guys guy bickley who found her confirmed that he could see her bare
back when the concrete broke apart so that gives a little more some of that speculation some of that's
rumor again a lot of those details coming from what is a now deleted article news article
about uh this case but if those if that information is in fact true it gives a little more insight to the scene
but just to be clear this this is a hole that was covered by concrete to describe it as plain and
simple as i can it appears that somebody dug a somewhat shallow grave placed items in there and then
created this concrete slab there likely there or brought it with them right and placed it over top whoever did
this was really hoping that she would never be found [Music] [Music] all right we are back cheers mates
cheers captain to the windows to the walls cheers to everybody in the front and back let's get back into it so
police searched the river area near where the body was found they spent two days there pouring over
the area looking for any footprints any possible debris that they could find in the area and see if it's connected to
their case they did take dna from the three bickley boys so they could eliminate anything with their dna on it
they issued a press release asking all who may have fished in that area to call the
police call the sheriff's department if they had seen anything at all during their time spent there because keep in
mind at this point as far as what the public knows is this girl goes missing and then
just a little under two weeks later her body is found in this location 10 miles away
we don't know us the public we don't know when she was placed there was it the same day she was abducted
was it a day before she was found i mean there's a there's a considerable gap of time there my guess is that she
was kidnapped and taken somewhere else but this location's weird to me because it would be somewhat remote because it's
for fishermen but it would seem like maybe that this spot would be known by fishermen
almost like the person would want to put her oh well this is a secluded area but
i'm going to cover up so well that like this dark secret is going to be right underneath everybody's feet
while they're fishing yeah i can't speak as to how popular this fishing spot was
because we have kind of conflicting thoughts when you want to create an educated guess on that one we have the
bickleys who say they fished often and had never fished that spot before but at the same time
we have guy bickley who says that he was told of the spot from other fishermen so
it is somewhat known this particular spot anyway even though investigators wouldn't address it they clearly did
find something else at the grave maybe it was the clothing maybe it was the beer can as we mentioned earlier but we
do know that they did find something else at this site where her body was recovered from because in mid-june
articles said that investigators were awaiting results of forensic testing on items recovered with nevaeh's body at
the riverfront sheriff crutchfield told the detroit free press quote we have specific information that is known to
the perpetrator and we are going to hold that near and dear to us end quote the police have never discussed what
else was found in the area and never really gave details about the concrete that was
found on top of nevada we should note here that this particular area was a fishing spot known to some locals like
we just said but the detroit free press reported that on the day after the body was found investigators were contacting
area home improvement and hardware stores this is because they were trying to track down purchases of quick setting
concrete mixes reportedly specifically 90 pound bags so this is from medium and it says only a few stores in the
area sold such large bags one of them being coleman cement company now this could be
this is likely unrelated but it's interesting to note that the fence outside of the coleman cement
company had recently been cut now there's no report of if anything was stolen and if it if
things were stolen what they would have been did they find something at the scene that indicated to them that they
are looking for a 90 pound bag search because uh sorry a 90 pound bag purchase because that's what they were
specifically asking for when they were calling all these different places and medium is saying that coleman cement
company was one of the few places that sold bags that size and it was also reported that it that
sometime around this time frame that a fence outside of the company had been cut outside of their
building had been cut right so i'm saying that we have that report that there's damage
to the fence which would indicate to me or most people that someone was trying to steal
something however that report does not tell us that one that anything was stolen and
two if anything was stolen what it was yeah they probably did some kind of measurement of the concrete and maybe
that's how they got to the 90 pounds possibly i mean you could buy two bags of a smaller size yeah no very
good point and maybe like you said there's a a flap from from the concrete because you know these bags
when you go to make the concrete you just rip them open and and toss them to the side so
heck maybe there there was the bag there well that's what i'm saying i you know they spent two days at that crime scene
looking over all of the debris in the area maybe they came across a 90-pound bag of concrete mix
and i say that because guy bickley who found the grave just so happened to be familiar with
concrete and the general workings of concrete he tells the news that in his opinion whoever buried
nevada probably used river water to mix the concrete he said it looked to him as
though someone had dug a hole put the girl in poured a bag of concrete mix on top
and poured water over the whole thing so not actually mixing it up in a proper way
kind of hastily doing it there on the scene so not a professional job not really the proper
method for for making the concrete right but maybe that's you know good because the concrete cracked and we were able to
see that she was buried if they would have done a better job maybe that concrete never cracks and we we
never find her there was a reward for finding nevaeh at the time of discovering her body so after the body
was positively identified using dna the bickleys split twenty thousand dollars this was reward money that was being
offered by the fbi now reportedly guy bickley the bickleys were a little they accepted the money begrudgingly
right they guy bickley says on record if the reward money came from the community he would
have declined it but since it was funds from the federal government he accepted it and he told the news screw
the money it has released a lot of emotions that i don't like what he meant was he hated being the one
finding nevaeh's body he said he would have preferred that someone else had found her he found himself breaking down
at the memory of seeing her little body in the concrete grave and said that the emotional impact was wreaking havoc on
his daily life well that's something he's never gonna forget and how could you i mean that would be devastating for
anybody i feel compelled to give a warning here i know that a lot of shows give you a
warning at the top of the show saying that some of the information discussed here might be
graphic in nature or disturbing to hear we here at the garage don't feel the need to to always give those warnings at
the top of the show because it's a true crime show it's dark material you should expect to hear
something that's uncomfortable maybe even something that you don't want to hear but
you know i've i've become a little thick skinned when it comes to a lot of this stuff
and this part still bothered me a little bit so i feel compelled to give a little
bit of a warning here because we are going to go very briefly through the autopsy not not the entire
thing an autopsy on the remains was performed by dr carl schmidt of the wayne county medical examiner's office
the next part that i'm going to read is directly from the autopsy report it says
quote this child was found in a shallow grave part of the body was interred was found face down and the back was covered
by a layer of cement-like material the body showed moderate signs of decomposition
dr schmidt's opinion was that the death was caused by aspiration of fine particulate material
here he means dirt her death was caused by her not being able to breathe and she couldn't breathe
because of dirt the particulate material was found in the upper airway the trachea and the medium of the small
caliber airways this means that the child's face was forcibly maintained or embedded into a
dirt surface now whether this resulted from another person forcibly pressing the child's face into dirt or whether
she was buried alive cannot be determined by this autopsy but the manner of death of
course was ruled a homicide well this is difficult too because you don't know if
the killer put her in there knowing that she was dead or not you know what i mean like exactly
he could have put her in there assuming at that point she was dead then obviously we now know
um the cause of death yes and again there was a certain level of decomposition that had already taken
place this to me indicates that she was likely there for a considerable amount of time
likely shortly after the abduction or closer to the time of and date of the abduction and you're exactly right
captain we've seen plenty of cases where someone attempts to smother or strangle
a victim and they come to and maybe this monster thought that she was already dead before placing her in
in the ground and then leaving her there but the again it's it's the autopsy gives us some insights but
not a whole lot as far as figuring some things out right because we don't know the facts of it is that she was still
breathing when she was either buried alive under this concrete or suffocated by someone holding her face into the
dirt those are pretty much the two options that we're left with but there was no visible trauma to her
body such as blows to the head or sharp force injuries seems like we have no puncture wounds we don't have any
bruising around the neck or even around our arms that the autopsy tells us about
nothing that came up in the autopsy it doesn't mean that it didn't happen it just means that the state that her body
was found in those things could not be determined but yes there's no what is clear in the autopsy is there's
no visible signs of trauma to her body such as blows to the head or sharp force injuries so
that clears up that in my opinion now sheriff crutchfield is on record saying that the body had
evidently been there for quite some time those were his words this leading many to conclude that nevaeh was killed
shortly after she was last seen yeah it's a tough one because if i'm playing detective here
again 10 mile gap between where she is abducted and where she is found so i'm thinking local
both spots i think you could argue that you need to be local to know them well or feel safe around
because again if you're not from that area and you go to that apartment complex with the the play area and the pool and
everything you might not feel as brazen to to try to take a victim if you know the area better if you study
the area better you're going to feel more inclined and feel safer as the killer to to try to take a victim
but then we have this half-assed shallow grave with some concrete that we don't even think that the
individual took the time to mix so that so that means on some level this guy is half hazard
i i think that could play into the you know the the psyche of this individual well i'm going to take the
time to bury her to make this grave but i'm not going to do a good job doing it if that makes any
sense so when i look at this spot where the body's recovered from it's remote you're getting there by one of two
methods boat or vehicle and i purposely described how the bickleys had to park and where they
chose to park their vehicle to go fishing in the spot to demonstrate what it would take somebody to get
from the road to this spot where nevaeh is found and what i see here what what i tend to believe
is that the perpetrator is haphazardly putting together this air quote's grave to
conceal the body but does not feel comfortable and does not have a lot of time to do this
if a body's going to be discovered there you really don't want your car your vehicle your truck your license plate
being spotted parked on the side of this country road right you know the the bickley said that they
parked on the other side of the guard rail i live near water i live near an area that that a lot of people fish and
a lot of people park like that they park off of the side of the road uh off of the guard you know behind the
guard rails so some drunk doesn't come along and accidentally crash into their car
and it has nothing to do with true crime it has nothing to do with the our job here
in the garage but for whatever reason i take mental note when i'm driving and see somebody parked
especially at night even though they're all fishermen you know what i mean like this is an area
where people fish but it's it's easy to spot a vehicle when it's parked there by itself when you don't
see anything in the immediate area it's easy to go oh i saw a green bronco there
or a red s10 pickup truck right well it sticks out because it sticks out yeah and if
the other method would be for somebody to use a boat or some kind of watercraft to get there
i don't know a lot about this this water way here um so i i i can't really speculate on that
angle too much but i see somebody that's hastily putting together and trying to conceal the body that to
me would indicate or i would lean toward the opinion of they probably drove to this location
now it's also important to note here captain that the autopsy report did not even address
the following items so we don't know one way or the other what the conclusion was but it did not
address whether the victim was sexually assaulted now per fox news jennifer buchanan the
mother said that police told her that nevaeh was not sexually assaulted and that no drugs
were found in her system again on record police would not discuss whether the child was sexually abused
but there was a detective on record stating that the toxicology reports came back negative
here i want to point out something and be perfectly clear jennifer buchanan says that police told her that she was
not the victim was not sexually assaulted i don't have a strong belief that they would tell her
i agree factual information about the case especially given the the living situation and given
jennifer her situation her past her police record i don't know that they're going to be
giving mom all of the facts here in this case and when we get when we get eyeballs deep into this investigation
you will see why it's it's normal it's perfectly normal for these types of investigations to
have hold back information and what the public doesn't always understand is that
whole bank information is not just hold back information from the general public
it's oftentimes hold back information from the persons closest to the victim and closest to the investigation itself
meaning mom likely does not know much more about this investigation than the public does once we get eyeballs deep in
this we will see and you will understand very quickly why police would be hesitant to discuss particular details
about this case evidentiary details about this case with jennifer for a second here let's pretend that
there was no sexual assault right right that makes me go well what the hell's going on here why would someone kidnap
and murder a child if not to sexually assault them typically unfortunately that is
the motive in a lot of these cases so to offer up an educated guess here we have a couple of options in my opinion
captain one nevaeh could have been a source of some type of sexual pleasure for the abductor without any actual
contact taking place two perhaps her abductor had every intention of sexually assaulting the victim but
something happened she fought back he panicked and killed her before going through with it
three maybe the abduction in the murder was the goal the entire time and was the only goal perhaps to
i don't know silence her over previous abuse send a message to someone get back at someone or
even potentially set someone up and again to be clear that the body being found in a state of undress
is from one source that source has deleted the article we do not know why they deleted the
article so something could be wrong could be factually incorrect that was in that
article and the the factually incorrect item could be that she was in fact clothed when she
was found but there seems to be a lot indicating that that she was in some form of undress when she was discovered
now the community really pulled together here they went all out they donated for
nevaeh's funeral services the funeral was attended by a thousand people there were funeral homes that offered to
donate their services to the family so kudos to the community for for pulling together to help this this young girl
and to help out uh her family in this worst of situations now everyone described monroe as a quiet
little town a tranquil community where things like this don't happen that's what we hear so
often when things like this do happen is this is an area where these things don't
happen but her horrific murder was absolutely devastating and terrifying to the residents
nevaeh's headstone which she was buried in st joseph cemetery in monroe michigan it reads
monroe's little angel the entrance to the steep rocky path leading to the riverbank where her body
was found was marked by a cross and rock sculptures and mementos of things like stuffed animals were
placed there by people in the community now before nevaeh was found of course police were focusing in on
finding her and the investigation centered on interviewing residents of the apartment complex
following leads generated from eyewitness statements and interviewing those residents
and also tracking down registered sex offenders and so on but of course after she was found the
investigation went down a little bit of a different avenue they started following up on
the 1200 tips that they had received remember they were very quickly and actively
asking the public for help right from jump street on this case and it appears that the public responded
in the form of over 1200 tips that were received by law enforcement well that's a lot of tips
but what a devastating situation for the the parents in that community you'd be afraid that this could happen to your
child and if you're a child in this community you're afraid that this could happen to you next but as
said in the early stages of the investigation they focused on sketchy people in the
apartment complex and of course they visited the apartment where nevaeh's little friend austin
baker lived with his parents she had played there with austin earlier that day this fills out the timeline a little bit
more so at some point she's at austin's house or apartment earlier that day and then jennifer comes to the apartment
to collect nevaeh and the two of them walk to kmart now austin is also the same boy whose apartment
jennifer said that she assumed nevaeh was heading to when she left the apartment later around 6 30 and then
vanished police took carpet samples this was a little confusing to me here captain
when they visited austin's place and interviewed his parents and interviewed him they took carpet samples from the
apartment i guess they're trying to match fibers uh it's been reported that possibly fibers were found under
nevaeh's fingernails but what's been reported is that all most if not all of the apartment units
were believed to have the same carpeting so it's not really clear to me how matching the fibers
from austin's apartment or really any other apartment at charlotte arms would help them focus in on a specific suspect
and keep in mind nevaeh lived in an apartment complex in another unit so right the carpeting in her own apartment
could be identical to those in the other apartments unless it's one of those situations i actually used to work for a
company that would when the people would move out we'd go in and we'd change the carpet
and when paint and so is it possible that they changed the carpet and so they know that some of
the buildings have older carpets some of the buildings have newer carpet and that
would give us some kind of look if we have 180 units then maybe that divides that in half
right and so now now i'm looking at 90 some people that could be involved and not
180. one thing that we weren't able to find was the surveillance situation if there
were any type of security cameras at this apartment complex it's hard to believe that in 2009 that there would be
none at all but if there had been in this case to me it seems very likely that at least there were no cameras on the
back of the building where her scooter was later found because if we had that information if we
had surveillance from that area i feel like we're not sitting here over a decade later with an unsolved
case now i mentioned earlier that we are going to call in a question a lot of jennifer's behaviors and to me it's not
so much about the time frame in which her daughter goes missing it's more about her actions leading up
to her daughter's disappearance so even before nevaeh's body was found police already had suspects
and these were publicly named suspects before the body was even found in fact this was within 24 hours of the
little girl missing police were already honing in on a couple of potential suspects
it was two guys and these two guys were both exes ex-boyfriends of jennifer's and they were both immediately picked up
on probation violations as soon as investigators got their names from jennifer so what probation violations were they
picked up on they're picked up because they were both registered sex offenders who had
victimized children in the past oh creepos so after it came out that they were each
hanging out with jennifer each of these and kudos to the police for doing this they get these guys names and they're
like you know what it's a probation violation for each one of these guys to be associated with the
child a parole violation so let's go find these guys pick them up arrest them and throw their asses in
some jail cells and we can interview them talk to them see if we can get them to talk
because we're interested in what these guys have to say and what they may know because of for so many obvious reasons
this is a very cold cold world we live in i mean go take a look at her and to imagine that somebody would want to
harm her just makes no sense so technically captain both of these guys are arrested
for quote simply being associated with a child this per abc news their parole conditions require that
they have no association with children and that they not even have romantic relationships with women who have
children the sheriff publicly named both of them as persons of interest and threw them in
cells while the investigators did their thing [Music] all right thank you so much for joining
us here in the garage make sure you sign up on our mailing list at truecrimegarage.com so you are
in the know and you can get all the promo codes i got i got a promo code coming at you next week
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be kind and don't litter [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Nevaeh Buchanan /// Part 1 /// 613

Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

On a Sunday night in May, 2009 in Monroe County Michigan an Amber Alert was issued for a little girl. Nevaeh Buchanan was last seen in the 6PM hour riding her scooter near her home. This very quickly was believed to be a child abduction. Local authorities were seeking the public's help looking for several witnesses and the driver of a green minivan. Oddly enough, within forty eight hours of the girl going missing the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office publicly announced two persons of interest. This is a case with no shortage of viable suspects and as you will see this may have helped or it may have hurt the investigation.

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Brief Summary

The episode details the abduction and murder of Nevaeh Buchanan, focusing on the investigation and community response.

Key points

The Disappearance of Nevaeh Buchanan. Five-year-old Nevaeh Buchanan goes missing from her apartment complex in Monroe, Michigan.
A Gruesome Discovery. Fishermen stumble upon a shallow grave containing the body of Nevaeh Buchanan.
Search for the Missing Girl. Authorities are searching for a disturbed individual connected to a missing girl case.
Discovery of the Body. The body of the missing girl was found in concrete, raising many questions.
Local Connection to the Crime. Investigators suspect the perpetrator is local, familiar with the area.
Emotional Impact of Discovery. Guy Bickley expresses regret about finding the girl's body, revealing emotional turmoil.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

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0:54WatchSep 16, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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