Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Cold Case: Missing Isabel Celis 5 years
Transcript
- 0:07Speaker 1: It was Saturday morning when the family says they discovered
- 0:09Speaker 1: the six year old missing from her bedroom. A window
- 0:12Speaker 1: opened and screened detached. Hello, I need to record an
- 0:16Speaker 1: child atole is she was adopted from a house. The father, Sergio,
- 0:20Speaker 1: who appeared so calm on his call, told police that
- 0:24Speaker 1: he fell asleep on the couch watching a prerecorded baseball game.
- 0:28Speaker 1: This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Detectives right about
- 0:33Speaker 1: a witness telling them that a guy who was staying
- 0:35Speaker 1: with the family owes someone a lot of money and
- 0:38Speaker 1: that's why she was taken. Please please to the person
- 0:43Speaker 1: or persons who would have these other tell us your demands,
- 0:48Speaker 1: tell us what do you want. Law enforcement experts say
- 0:51Speaker 1: it is statistically likely someone known to the family is involved.
- 0:58Speaker 1: Imagine you get up first thing in the morning, get
- 1:02Speaker 1: ready and go to work. I don't want to wake
- 1:05Speaker 1: up your children, so you don't open their door. You
- 1:08Speaker 1: just get ready and go because you're working to support them.
- 1:13Speaker 1: And it always makes me feel good if I have
- 1:15Speaker 1: to get up and fly out of town or get
- 1:18Speaker 1: up and do an early early morning TV hit, it
- 1:22Speaker 1: makes me feel good to know my twins are still asleep,
- 1:26Speaker 1: snoozing away while mommy works. Well, that is what happened
- 1:33Speaker 1: the morning that Isabella Selice mom got up, she got
- 1:38Speaker 1: up and left the home around six thirty that morning.
- 1:43Speaker 1: She never saw her daughter alive again. She's never seen
- 1:48Speaker 1: her daughter alive again. Repeat, She's never seen her daughter again,
- 1:56Speaker 1: dead or alive. What happened opened to Isabel Selesse. New
- 2:04Speaker 1: video has just been released in the past months of
- 2:08Speaker 1: a camera that was trained on and around the Silese
- 2:12Speaker 1: home the night that Isabella went missing. But what if
- 2:17Speaker 1: anything doesn't prove the six year old little girl still missing?
- 2:25Speaker 1: That night, Isabel goes to bed. The father, Sergio is
- 2:30Speaker 1: His father falls asleep on the sofa watching TV. That's
- 2:34Speaker 1: at hours five a m. Sergio wakes up. He goes
- 2:40Speaker 1: from the sofa to his bedroom and go straight back
- 2:42Speaker 1: to sleep. That morning, he says, mom, Rebecca leaves for work,
- 2:47Speaker 1: doesn't want to wait the children up. She's an r
- 2:49Speaker 1: N and many people leave the home without waking their
- 2:54Speaker 1: children up. Eight oh eight hundred eight o'clock in the morning,
- 2:58Speaker 1: the father, Sergio goes Tosa's room to wake her up.
- 3:01Speaker 1: She is not there, her window open, the screen removed.
- 3:07Speaker 1: Seorgio Silise calls nine one one. Welcome to Crime Stories.
- 3:11Speaker 1: I'm Nancy Grace. The mystery surrounding the disappearance of six
- 3:16Speaker 1: year old Isabel Silise goes on joining me right now,
- 3:20Speaker 1: Alan Duke, Alan, what you and I both looked at
- 3:24Speaker 1: the new surveillance video of Isabel's home. What does it reveal?
- 3:29Speaker 1: It's ten hours of motion activated video taken from about
- 3:34Speaker 1: two hundred feet away. Fortunately, there was a security company
- 3:38Speaker 1: just down the street. Unfortunately, if you look at that,
- 3:41Speaker 1: you don't see Isabel leaving the house. You do see
- 3:46Speaker 1: activity around. You see cars pulling up, trucks, you see
- 3:49Speaker 1: some activity around, some garbage cans. But what does that mean?
- 3:53Speaker 1: Police have had this for a while. It was just
- 3:55Speaker 1: recently released because an employee of the security company had
- 3:59Speaker 1: a copy of it and decided, you know what, enough
- 4:01Speaker 1: times past the public needs to see it, so it's
- 4:04Speaker 1: there for us to look at. You mean a police
- 4:07Speaker 1: officer on their own just released it. No, this is
- 4:11Speaker 1: a security company. Thank you, Thank you for Wow. That's
- 4:16Speaker 1: really interesting that it sat there all this time. Police
- 4:21Speaker 1: had to have it. I guess that's why in my
- 4:23Speaker 1: mind I had already jumped to the next step, but
- 4:25Speaker 1: it was never released. That's a very very odd. You know,
- 4:28Speaker 1: a lot has happened since Isabella's disappearance that has not
- 4:32Speaker 1: really been made public. I know that that morning, at
- 4:36Speaker 1: eight fourteen, the father, Sergio Silice, calls N one one
- 4:40Speaker 1: to report his daughter is missing. And we're gonna play
- 4:45Speaker 1: some of that for you. Many people have found it unusual.
- 4:49Speaker 1: But just later that morning, Rebecca, the mom, comes home.
- 4:52Speaker 1: She makes a frantic nine one one call. Rebecca's other
- 4:57Speaker 1: son is his brother, Sergio Jr. Makes a nine one
- 5:00Speaker 1: one call. When I hear Rebecca's nine one one call,
- 5:05Speaker 1: it almost makes me start crying right then when I
- 5:08Speaker 1: hear that call. Now, tell me what we know about
- 5:13Speaker 1: the scene, Alan, what if anything to police find? I
- 5:17Speaker 1: know the window was open and the screen had been
- 5:21Speaker 1: knocked off. What more do we know? What they didn't
- 5:23Speaker 1: find was any sign of a struggle, which of course
- 5:27Speaker 1: leads investigators and speculators like me to think that if
- 5:32Speaker 1: there was no sign of a struggle, she might have
- 5:34Speaker 1: known who took her. Interesting because I I used to
- 5:39Speaker 1: believe that. But I could pick up my children and
- 5:43Speaker 1: still can, and move them from one bed to the next,
- 5:48Speaker 1: or one room to the next, and they never wake up.
- 5:51Speaker 1: They never wake up, So I don't know if somebody
- 5:54Speaker 1: took her and she never woke up. Interesting, right, but
- 5:59Speaker 1: you'd think me normally an adult might wake up, but
- 6:02Speaker 1: not necessarily a child. So this newly released footage, you said,
- 6:08Speaker 1: there's ten hours of it. Why did the police sit
- 6:12Speaker 1: on it all this time? Well, you know, police like
- 6:15Speaker 1: to keep their secrets and don't want everybody to know
- 6:18Speaker 1: what they see. But what's interesting to me is how
- 6:21Speaker 1: this this video came to light. It was the father Sergio,
- 6:25Speaker 1: who went to the security company apparently thinking that well,
- 6:28Speaker 1: maybe they've got some So he knocked on the door
- 6:31Speaker 1: and said, did your cameras catch anything over there? And
- 6:35Speaker 1: the security employee looked and said, what we do have
- 6:38Speaker 1: a camera pointed there. They gave him a copy. He left,
- 6:41Speaker 1: and according to the employee, the same one who finally
- 6:44Speaker 1: released this, the police were soon after. They showed up
- 6:48Speaker 1: and wanted to know why Sergio was there, so that's
- 6:51Speaker 1: how they initially found the video. You know, it's interesting, um,
- 6:56Speaker 1: A lot of people have attacked the father Sergio for
- 7:00Speaker 1: his wording when he called nine one one, He didn't
- 7:05Speaker 1: seem frantic at all, He didn't seem concerned. He says quote,
- 7:10Speaker 1: I want to report a missing person. Why don't we
- 7:13Speaker 1: play that right now? What's your emergency? I want to
- 7:19Speaker 1: report a missing person. My little girl who was six
- 7:22Speaker 1: years old. I believe she was affected from our house.
- 7:24Speaker 1: The address thee to some police, I will hello, I
- 7:36Speaker 1: need to record a missing child. I believe she was
- 7:39Speaker 1: adopted from my house six years old. Because your daughter, yes,
- 7:47Speaker 1: Why do you think she was adopted? I have no idea.
- 7:49Speaker 1: We woke up this morning. I went to go get
- 7:51Speaker 1: her for her baseball game, and she's gone. I woke
- 7:53Speaker 1: up my my son's We looked everywhere in the house,
- 7:56Speaker 1: and my oldest unnoticed that her window was wide open
- 7:58Speaker 1: and the screen was laying in the back yard. We've
- 8:01Speaker 1: looked all around the house. My sons are taking my
- 8:04Speaker 1: sons are running around the house looking for her. The
- 8:07Speaker 1: screet was on the ground outside. What's your actress? What's
- 8:17Speaker 1: your nam sure? My name is Sergio F B R
- 8:19Speaker 1: G I O middle initial D. Last name is the
- 8:22Speaker 1: E L I A S. I asked, as in camp. Okay,
- 8:30Speaker 1: what's your name? He said, I as B E L
- 8:34Speaker 1: I S A B E L M as in man
- 8:40Speaker 1: is the middle initial? Okay? Same last name. Yeah, give
- 8:43Speaker 1: a tra actual birthdate? Okay, is mom? They're also is
- 8:47Speaker 1: she just lets for work? I just called her and
- 8:49Speaker 1: I told her to give her aout homework. Okay, another
- 8:53Speaker 1: then after that kind of UM, let me just say
- 8:58Speaker 1: sterile call, I want to report a missing person. Sergio
- 9:03Speaker 1: Seals says, on one of two calls made that morning,
- 9:06Speaker 1: my little girl, who was six years old. I believe
- 9:09Speaker 1: she was abductive from our house. Now. The second recording
- 9:12Speaker 1: is a call with Isabel's fourteen year old brother, Sergio,
- 9:17Speaker 1: who later goes on to um give more information. Both
- 9:24Speaker 1: the boy and the mom are frantic the woman the
- 9:27Speaker 1: mom controlling herself a little bit more when she's asked
- 9:30Speaker 1: for a specific information. She's asked about Isabel's height, her
- 9:34Speaker 1: way which she may have been wearing, her hair, her
- 9:37Speaker 1: eyes colors. Now, many people attacked Sergio slice call to
- 9:45Speaker 1: nine one one, saying, if you realize your child is missing,
- 9:50Speaker 1: why would you say I would like to report a
- 9:52Speaker 1: missing person. I don't know. Maybe he was trying to
- 9:55Speaker 1: control himself to be more understandable to the police. But Alan,
- 10:00Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever told you about the
- 10:02Speaker 1: time John David and Lucy and I were in Babies
- 10:05Speaker 1: Are Us and I was looking for some Mom at
- 10:09Speaker 1: the pool had totally guilted me out because she said
- 10:12Speaker 1: she made her own sunscreen because she was worried about
- 10:20Speaker 1: carcinogens and the sunscreen. I felt like a piece of crap, okay,
- 10:24Speaker 1: because I'm like, I just try to get the sun
- 10:27Speaker 1: block on them and keep slattering it all over them
- 10:30Speaker 1: at the pool. I don't have time to make my
- 10:33Speaker 1: own sunscreen anyway. So I was that Babies are Us
- 10:36Speaker 1: and I was looking for some organic sunscreen, which, by
- 10:40Speaker 1: the way, I did not find. I had them with me.
- 10:44Speaker 1: I bent down to the bottom shelf to look to
- 10:48Speaker 1: see if I could find it, and I was looking
- 10:51Speaker 1: at the ingredients. I got up basically off the floor
- 10:57Speaker 1: with a bunch of tubes in my hand and turned
- 10:59Speaker 1: around and John David was gone gone. I quickly ran
- 11:05Speaker 1: to the edge of the aisle, look both ways. I
- 11:07Speaker 1: didn't see him. I screamed, locked down, my baby boy
- 11:14Speaker 1: is gone. I mean, I screamed, bloody murder, okay, because
- 11:20Speaker 1: I mean, I've covered the Adam Waltch disappearance where he
- 11:24Speaker 1: went missing from two two aisles away from his mom
- 11:28Speaker 1: right so I did not calmly walk to the front
- 11:32Speaker 1: and find a manager and go I'd like to report
- 11:35Speaker 1: my son it is not with me. Okay, into that story,
- 11:39Speaker 1: I found him like three aisles away playing with something.
- 11:43Speaker 1: I don't know what it was. By then the whole
- 11:45Speaker 1: store was in an uproar. Okay, But I get why
- 11:49Speaker 1: people are attacking him, because that seems like an unusual
- 11:53Speaker 1: response to your daughter being your baby being missing. On
- 11:57Speaker 1: the other hand, I could also seem trying to main
- 12:00Speaker 1: pain some semblance of control and getting the facts to
- 12:04Speaker 1: the police. So I don't think that's anything you can
- 12:06Speaker 1: really take to a jury or use against him. Really
- 12:10Speaker 1: in any way, what do you think. I don't know
- 12:12Speaker 1: that you can really tell a whole lot about somebody's
- 12:16Speaker 1: guilt or innocence by an initial reaction like that, because
- 12:19Speaker 1: we're all different. We're humans, but we also process things differently.
- 12:23Speaker 1: We have different personalities. Some people become more more emotional
- 12:27Speaker 1: and some people are just trained themselves to control their
- 12:30Speaker 1: response and to be logical. It depends on Sometimes it's
- 12:33Speaker 1: your profession. Me as a journalist, I think I'm probably
- 12:36Speaker 1: more controlled, says you. Another thing police haven't have not
- 12:40Speaker 1: dropped the ball on this. They have searched homes in
- 12:43Speaker 1: the family's neighborhood. They have dug through a landfill with
- 12:48Speaker 1: a fine tooth comb. They've searched multiple waterways. They've even
- 12:54Speaker 1: gone so far as to search the drainage systems in Tucson.
- 12:58Speaker 1: They've sifted through for one thousand tips regarding Isabelle's disappearance.
- 13:05Speaker 1: The parents have made public. Please, they're emotional. They're begging
- 13:10Speaker 1: for her safe return or information about her. But this
- 13:14Speaker 1: is what we do know. She was seen by more
- 13:16Speaker 1: than one person at eleven o'clock the night before April twenty,
- 13:22Speaker 1: when she was put to bed. Everybody saw her eleven o'clock.
- 13:26Speaker 1: We know she's missing the next morning, eight a m.
- 13:32Speaker 1: What happened in those nine hours. I'm not sure that
- 13:36Speaker 1: they had a home alarm system, but I know that
- 13:39Speaker 1: they heard nothing during the night to make them get up.
- 13:44Speaker 1: Nothing not a dog, dog barking, and I believe there
- 13:47Speaker 1: was a dog in the home. Nothing occurred to wake
- 13:51Speaker 1: either of them up. Alan, do you wake up all night?
- 13:53Speaker 1: You know what, Nancy, And especially since we've started doing
- 13:57Speaker 1: this podcast about missing people, I actually have several nights
- 14:02Speaker 1: awakened at two in the morning and just send a
- 14:05Speaker 1: text message to my daughter who's grown, mother and my grandchildren.
- 14:08Speaker 1: Are you okay? That's my That's been my mentality lately. Yes,
- 14:13Speaker 1: I wake up in the middle of the night and
- 14:14Speaker 1: sometimes with that on my mind. I'm just wondering if
- 14:18Speaker 1: they had security system. And I'm not calling them out
- 14:23Speaker 1: to say why didn't you. I'm just wondering if they did.
- 14:27Speaker 1: I know they did not have home cameras. I don't
- 14:30Speaker 1: think they had an alarm system. I also know that
- 14:33Speaker 1: police have taken this search all the way to Mexico.
- 14:37Speaker 1: They have searched there as well. I mean, they have
- 14:40Speaker 1: really tried. I want to take this moment to thank
- 14:45Speaker 1: the home security and alarm system making our podcast possible.
- 14:49Speaker 1: It's simply safe. Simply Safe dot com is where you
- 14:53Speaker 1: can find out all about it. It's affordable and it works.
- 14:57Speaker 1: Those are the two main factors. It's fourteen a month
- 15:01Speaker 1: and it's so easy to install. Really, a child could
- 15:07Speaker 1: actually install this system and it works. There is a
- 15:11Speaker 1: video online that explains it all. And another thing that
- 15:15Speaker 1: I really like about this system, Alan is that it's
- 15:18Speaker 1: not connected to your landline or your cell phone. It's
- 15:23Speaker 1: got its own cell system. It doesn't need you to
- 15:28Speaker 1: call anyone. It does it on its own. And also,
- 15:31Speaker 1: nobody can cut the cord or cut the wires to
- 15:35Speaker 1: your phone system and then your alarm system doesn't work.
- 15:38Speaker 1: That's one of the many good things about Simply Safe.
- 15:42Speaker 1: It's a pretty good system. I'm a tech guy, and
- 15:45Speaker 1: it's it's kind of ingenious the way that they designed it.
- 15:48Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that in this case. And I hate
- 15:51Speaker 1: to apply security systems to a particular case because you
- 15:56Speaker 1: don't know there, you know, finances, you don't know about
- 16:00Speaker 1: their family or their neighborhood. They may have felt they
- 16:02Speaker 1: didn't need one, and that's I don't want to put
- 16:05Speaker 1: another burden on a victims family. I would have, could have,
- 16:08Speaker 1: should have. I don't blame them for not having it,
- 16:11Speaker 1: you know, Alan, I've gone through all the security video
- 16:14Speaker 1: as well. There's ten hours. I've gone through everything that
- 16:17Speaker 1: we can get our mits on. She apparently was kidnapped
- 16:22Speaker 1: right through the window of her own bedroom in the
- 16:26Speaker 1: middle of the night. Still, who's to blame for this
- 16:29Speaker 1: little girl lost? And is the truth right under our noses?
- 16:35Speaker 1: Think about it, Alan, she was seeing that night at
- 16:38Speaker 1: eleven o'clock. And according to this video, you don't see
- 16:41Speaker 1: anything unusual going in or out of the house, right,
- 16:45Speaker 1: So what does that mean? No, you know, there there
- 16:48Speaker 1: is some activity around garbage cans out near the house,
- 16:52Speaker 1: which of course could be why the police later went
- 16:55Speaker 1: and searched the landfill. You know, they've spent a million
- 16:58Speaker 1: dollars on this investigation, a million dollars, so it's not
- 17:02Speaker 1: like work hasn't been done yet. The lack of evidence
- 17:06Speaker 1: around the house is striking. And another thing regarding that,
- 17:10Speaker 1: I don't know that there are any cameras that pick
- 17:13Speaker 1: up all sides of the house because they had a
- 17:16Speaker 1: gated backyard. Remember they've got a gate going all the
- 17:20Speaker 1: way around. Of course, somebody can always jump over that.
- 17:23Speaker 1: Now this is the way it reportedly went down. It
- 17:27Speaker 1: was after eleven PM on April twenty. Becky, Rebecca, the mom,
- 17:32Speaker 1: laid Outsa's softball uniform for her game. She had a
- 17:35Speaker 1: game the next morning. She kissed her daughter good night.
- 17:37Speaker 1: That's after eleven o'clock. Isabel is the the baby of
- 17:42Speaker 1: the family. Everybody loves her, so sometimes after eleven and
- 17:46Speaker 1: eight a m. Everything changes. Now Sergio goes to wake
- 17:52Speaker 1: her up, for the softball game, finds her bed empty.
- 17:55Speaker 1: Both he and the son's panic and start searching the
- 17:59Speaker 1: house in the yard. Then the little boy the sun
- 18:02Speaker 1: comes to the dad. I'm in the garage, and that's
- 18:05Speaker 1: when Sergio Jr. Comes in and says, Dad, her screen
- 18:10Speaker 1: is laying in the back. Her window is busted out. Now,
- 18:14Speaker 1: that's interesting that the window is busted out. I thought
- 18:17Speaker 1: it was just wide open. I still I'm not sure
- 18:20Speaker 1: the window was busted because according to police, it looked
- 18:23Speaker 1: like someone had just reached through the window and grabbed
- 18:26Speaker 1: her out of her bed. That's what it looks like now.
- 18:29Speaker 1: On the nine one one call Alan, the mom can
- 18:32Speaker 1: barely even speak. Police immediately go on high alert. They
- 18:37Speaker 1: start interviewing everybody. The next door neighbor tells ko l
- 18:42Speaker 1: D t V that she heard male voices at six
- 18:46Speaker 1: a m. Now that's interesting six a m. And of
- 18:51Speaker 1: course police are going to look at the family very closely.
- 18:54Speaker 1: Whenever a child goes missing missing. Did you know that
- 18:57Speaker 1: three in four cases a family member play a role
- 19:00Speaker 1: in a disappearance sale and three out of four, yes,
- 19:03Speaker 1: I'm aware of that. There's a private investigator who has
- 19:07Speaker 1: been talking a little bit about what he's been finding
- 19:10Speaker 1: over the last couple of years. He says he has
- 19:13Speaker 1: two suspects in his mind, he or persons of interest
- 19:16Speaker 1: if you will. He won't name them because of course
- 19:18Speaker 1: police haven't named them, and so he's being careful with that.
- 19:21Speaker 1: But one of them was someone who supposedly was close
- 19:25Speaker 1: to the family, and this person has hired an attorney
- 19:28Speaker 1: and so oh that raises some suspicion and everything like that.
- 19:32Speaker 1: So they're looking at that angle. At least this private
- 19:35Speaker 1: investigator says he turned his information over to the Tucson police. Right.
- 19:40Speaker 1: I understand there was a family member that had actually
- 19:43Speaker 1: lived in the home for a period of time but
- 19:45Speaker 1: no longer did and he did lawyer up. That's true.
- 19:49Speaker 1: I also know and this has no bearing as to
- 19:52Speaker 1: guilt or innocence, because police have not named a suspect.
- 19:56Speaker 1: I know that it has been reported that a month
- 20:00Speaker 1: after Isabel is kidnapped, she and Sergio break up. She
- 20:06Speaker 1: gets full custody, and I don't know if he has
- 20:10Speaker 1: visitation rights. I don't know if he is allowed to
- 20:13Speaker 1: see them without supervision or allowed to see them at all.
- 20:16Speaker 1: But I do know that the family broke up right
- 20:19Speaker 1: after this. And actually that's not uncommon alan when a
- 20:24Speaker 1: family goes through all that, the stress of this, this loss,
- 20:28Speaker 1: this mystery can if you've got cracks in your relationship,
- 20:32Speaker 1: it could cause them to even get much wider. We
- 20:34Speaker 1: probably blame each other if you had checked on her
- 20:36Speaker 1: at six thirty, well, if you hadn't gone to bed
- 20:39Speaker 1: and blah, you know, back and forth, and none of
- 20:40Speaker 1: it may amount to a hill of beans, but I
- 20:43Speaker 1: know this. Tussaw Police Detective Greg Wright made a very
- 20:46Speaker 1: interesting statement. He said, all the family members have been
- 20:50Speaker 1: interviewed and we have not ruled anybody out. I find
- 20:55Speaker 1: that really interesting. Now, when you think family, it's not
- 20:59Speaker 1: just the nuclear family. There are relatives, lots of relatives.
- 21:04Speaker 1: So who is he talking about. All the family members
- 21:07Speaker 1: have been interviewed and we have not ruled anybody out.
- 21:12Speaker 1: For any information on the whereabouts of Isabel, a silly
- 21:17Speaker 1: six year old little Isabel, please call five to zero
- 21:24Speaker 1: seven nine one six eight one three repeat five to
- 21:29Speaker 1: zero seven nine one six eight one three. There is
- 21:33Speaker 1: a nine thousand dollar reward, or you can always call
- 21:39Speaker 1: us nine oh nine four nine two seven four six
- 21:45Speaker 1: three nine oh nine four nine Crime c r I
- 21:50Speaker 1: M E. Nine oh nine four nine two seven four
- 21:55Speaker 1: six three. Again, thank you to our sponsor who makes
- 21:59Speaker 1: our podcast paw Sible to bring it to you. It's
- 22:02Speaker 1: simply Safe at simply safe dot com. So many features
- 22:07Speaker 1: make simply Safe the most awesome home alarm system. It works,
- 22:13Speaker 1: it has its own cell field, which means it's not
- 22:16Speaker 1: reliant on your home landline or your cell phone. Nobody
- 22:21Speaker 1: can cut your phone line and destroy or evade the system.
- 22:26Speaker 1: It's four nine a month, and if you go to
- 22:28Speaker 1: simply safe dot com slash Nancy get another temper cent off.
- 22:33Speaker 1: I'm proud that there are sponsors. Thank you, simply Safe,
- 22:36Speaker 1: join us and the search for Isabel Salice Nancy Grace
- 22:41Speaker 1: Crime Stories signing off, goodbye friend