Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Kids on Kik: Kidnappings, killings linked to teen chat app

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Kids on Kik: Kidnappings, killings linked to teen chat app · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It all started with a conversation on the messaging app Kick.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: A fifteen year old girl from the Comb town to
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: have arranged to meet with a thirty one year old man.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: A man she met turned out to be a convicted
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: sex offender. He raped her in his car. She managed
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: to get away. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Sixteen year old from Algan County is missing and considered
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: in danger after meeting someone on the messaging app Kick.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Let me say, sixteen year old Joy Martin left her
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: home in Saga, Tuk Saturday night. They say she might
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: have taken a Greyhound bus out of state. If you
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: have a teenager, there's a good chance they use it.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: According to its maker, of all teenagers are on Kick
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: one potentially dangerous aspect of kick it is completely anonymous.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: You have no way of knowing who you're speaking with.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: No matter where you go, everybody do you see has
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: their cell phone either stuck to their ear or they're
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: walking around staring at it or their iPad or their device.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: But now there is no doubt left that the kick
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: k I k app is leading to not only kidnaps, disappearances,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: but worse. The Kick app k I K police believe
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: and missing girl is in danger now after she spoke
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: with someone on the messaging app and left home. I'm
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: talking about Joy Dean Martin of Sago Tak. She leaves
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: her home and we believe at this hour boarded a
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Greyhound bus to travel out of the state after she
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: chats with a person on the kick app. And this
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: is according to Michigan State Police. She is now considered
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: an endangered child and a desperate search has ensued. She's
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: a little over five feet Police say she has blonde hair.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Anyone with info on her whereabouts, I'm talking about Joy
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Dean Martin, please call one one or State Police at
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: two six nine seven nine to two to one three.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: And this is the tip of the iceberg. I Nancy Grace.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: This is Crime Stories, and right now we're talking about
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: the messaging app kick K I K. It's been around,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: but now it seems to be leading to more and
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: more disappearances, missing children and related to other crimes. With
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: me right now, Investigative Reporter Alan Duke, Alan, what do
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: you know? Kick is just the latest in a series
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: of these apps that are increasingly adopted by teenagers and
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: in fact people younger than that the preteens. It loads
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: onto an iPhone or your Android phone. It basically creates
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: your own Internet world. Remember the old A O L.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I know, you've got mail. We had that back in
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the nineties where it was sort of a walled community.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: You had the chat rooms, you had the games, and
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: you had various things like that. We thought that that
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: is the Internet. Well, now what Kick has done is
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: they've taken all of these apps that they targeted young
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: people and they've created that kind of world on steroids
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: for them. The scary thing about it is similar to
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: what A O L was for us back in the day,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: is there's anonymity. It has become sort of a let's say,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: a killing field for bad predators because of the anonymity.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: As I said earlier, alan Kick has been around for
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: a while, but it's now authorities are focusing more and
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: more on it as a tool for predators. I mean,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: it's reared it's ugly head on several occasions. Do you
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: recall the little girl that was approached by two Virginia
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Tech students. She was murdered. Not only that, the whole
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: thing started because the little girl had began a relationship
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: with a grown man that was a Virginia Tech star,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I sorry, Carley was an engineering student, played sports and
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: he had targeted this little twelve or thirteen year old
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: girl on Kick. That's how the whole thing happened. Then
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: the federal authorities and parents began scrutinizing the Kick messaging
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: app after the murder of this little Virginia girl and
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: they still to this day as its head of her trial,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: believe she met her killer via this anonymous chat system recalled.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: They arrested the two Virginia Tech students in connection with
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: the death of the little girl in the cold level.
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  Speaker 1: I remember her name very well. Her body was found
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  Speaker 1: three days after she after her home one cold evening
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: on January because she thought this Virginia text student was
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: going to marry her and brag to her little friends
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: they were going to have a family. All this went
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: down on Kick K I K remember that case, Allen.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: She was using one of the aspects, allegedly using the
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: flirt aspect. There are several of these applications within the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: application internal apps. One is called flirt and that's with
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: an exclamation point. It allows you to see a list
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  Speaker 1: of users who are supposedly in your age range so
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  Speaker 1: that you can flirt with. And there's another one called
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Match and Chat, which is basically a tender for kick
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  Speaker 1: and of the teenagers, according to the company, about of
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the teenage population uses this. Now you've got to be
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: thirteen in order to download it, according to their rules.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: But who follows those anything? Please? My little boy. As
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: of now he asks me to download things I still
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: have held out. He doesn't have my Apple Itune password,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: and he doesn't have my Amazon password. He'll he'll call
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: a Russian and he'll hack it. Believe me, Hey, he
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't need a Russian. He can do it himself. This
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: little he goes wild over. My daughter not interested at all.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: She'd rather have her nose in a traditional book, an
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: actual book, not a kindle book. A real book not
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: John David h. So why do teens preteens love kit? Well?
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: It offers almost no effective parental monitoring, and it lacks
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: controls to prevent children from using it. Messages cannot be
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  Speaker 1: automatically duplicated or mirrored in another device. And not only that,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: it turns out only the authorized You user has access.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: And what that means is there's no way for a
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: parent to see the message exchanges without getting the password
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: from the child. Now, while the app, as you just
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: pointed out, accurately claims it's limited to thirteen or older,
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  Speaker 1: there is no age verification. Users only have to give
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: an email address and they can pick whatever birthday they
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: want to doesn't matter. Now, the company says it uses
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: typical industry standards for age of verification. I don't like it.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: It's just it's like the wild wild West. There's no
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: control on it, alan and thirteen is still too young.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: It's not just kicked the situation with Elizabeth Thomas in
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Tennessee and went off with her teacher, somebody she knew
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and her family knew. That's dangerous enough. But these are
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: totally anonymous people, and it's got these matching applications on.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Let's say that there is a predator and they're wanting
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: to find somebody of an age thirteen in a certain area.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: They just gotta go in there and punch a few
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: buttons and they get a whole list of them and
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: their immediate contact with them, and they can start flirting
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: with them and grooming them. Pretty soon, these kids are
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: on a Greyhound bus go into nowhere. Another thing unlike
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of phone based messaging apps. Kick does not
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: require a phone number, just a user selected name. You
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: don't even have to put a phone number in. You
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: don't even have to have a phone. This means my
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: nine year old could do it. That means it can
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: be used on non phone devices like uh kindles, iPads,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: iPod touches. You don't have to have a phone to
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: do it. Like my children have iPads. That darned Santa
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: gave them to him at Christmas. I don't know what
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: he was thinking. If I had had anything to do
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: with what Santa brought, they would not have gotten iPads.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I can tell you that much. At least that's what
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  Speaker 1: I tell the children. But now now I find out
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: they can get on Kick from their iPad. They don't
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: have a cell phone, but they can still get on
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: this this app, this kick app. What about that? Did
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: you know that? Yeah? This is just a sign of things.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: If you didn't, I just taught you something brand new.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: You did not know. I can just tell the way
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: you answered you didn't know that it's not phone based.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: You know it makes sense that it wouldn't be. I
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: can tell why don't you go ahead and break down
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: and tell the truth. You did not know you don't
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: need a phone. I've never I never thought about it.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: And you're right, Nancy, you taught me something technical. I've
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: so busted you. And I'm not even in the room
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: with you. I can tell, I can tell your voice.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: You were lying everything. Now, now you know, that's not
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: the only I've already listed to two crimes related to Kick,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: and that's not all. That's not all of them. There
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: was the teenager in McComb Township, Michigan. I don't think
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: you mentioned that one. McComb County Sheriff's office says that
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: a fifteen year old girl started chatting with a man
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  Speaker 1: on Kick. She arranged to meet him his we know
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: his name is Nicholas Scott Reynolds in the area of
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: twenty one mile in Romeo Plank Road. She later she
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: survived this told investigators that when she showed up, it
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: was a thirty one year old man and he raped
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: her in his car. She escaped and they finally did
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: identify the attackers Reynolds. He was a registered sex offender.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: There is now another story of an eleven year old
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  Speaker 1: girl who got on the phone app Kick and the
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: stranger she was talking to convinced her to meet, and
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the mom says, quote, I just feel like I'm hurting
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: more than her now because my daughter has been put
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: into a situation. I feel like there was nothing I
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: could do to protect her now. That is the Detroit mom.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: She does not want to be identified. The other person
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: on the other end posed as a team and prayed
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  Speaker 1: on her eleven year old daughter, got her to take
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: her clothes off and do sex acts and recorded. The
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: mom had no idea what was going on, and it
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: all was connected on kick K I K. Right now,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: my thoughts are on this little girl that we believe
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: got on a Greyhound bus after talking with clearly an
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: unknown male on kick. Now she's considered in danger and
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: there is a desperate search for her. I'm really distraught
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: about it. She may have the best parents in the world,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: but they had no idea what was going on. Allan, Allan.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Before I give her information again, I want to thank
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: crime Con for sponsoring our podcast today so we can
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: tell parents out there about kick K I K. And
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I keep spelling it every time because it's not the
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: traditional spelling of the word. The verb kick crime con
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: is when all amateur and professional crime sleuths and crime
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: fighters joined together for the first time. I'm going to
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: be there. Alan is going to be there. Were going
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: to be podcasting live and want you to join in
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: with us. It's in Indianapolis, Allen tell him. The rest
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Crime Con is June night through Sunday, June leven at
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: the J. Doble Marriott in Indianapolis. Roster of speakers and
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: experts include Aphrodite Jones from Investigation Discovery, Cheryl McCullum from
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, and I'm looking forward
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: to hanging out with Payne Lindsay from the Up and
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Vanished podcast. Register with the code Nancy and you'll save
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: off whatever package you choose, learn about the weekend, and
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: see all of the guests at crime con dot com.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Don't forget to use the code Nancy for off guys.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: I'll see you at crime Con. I'm really looking forward
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: to that. Now, back to this missing girl. Before I
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: go to back to Joy Martin. There is the other
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: incident that you just reminded me of, Alan, John Crew,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: tell me about it. About the three little boys. This
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: is a thirty one year old teacher. He was a
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: debate coach at Bronk Science High School in New York.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: It was a year ago he was arrested after he
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: allegedly persuaded three teenage boys to send him nude photos
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: in exchange for gift cards. He's been charged now with possessing, receiving,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: and producing child pornography. So this is just a predator's
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: field day out here on these apps. Kick is only
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the latest. It's so upsetting. It is so upsetting because
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: say you carry on a conversation with this person for
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: a year, six months, you feel like you know them,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: and then when you meet them, they're not who they
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: said they were, and it's too late. Right now, the
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: search going on for a teen girl, Joy Martin from
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Saga Chuck, left home after messaging an unknown person on
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the Kick messenger app. If you have any information, please
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: call nine one one or the local police. She has
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: a blonde hair and blue eyes. She has a diamond
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: stud last seeing, we think they're in Sagachuck and we
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: believe she may be traveling by greyhound bus right now.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Joy Martin, a beautiful little girl missing. For all of
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: your parents out there, beware, be on the lookout. Let's
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: do what we can to protect our children. Nancy Grace
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Crime Stories, signing off goodbye friend,