Latest / Least of These / 250. "The House Party" - The Case of Alexis Camry Scott - Peoria, Illinois

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250. "The House Party" - The Case of Alexis Camry Scott - Peoria, Illinois · Least of These

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to least of these where I cover the cases and need it most because every life matters and everyone deserves justice.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Leah D. Today I'll be covering the case of Alexis Scott and Peoria, Illinois.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's get right to it.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis Camry Scott was born and raised in Peoria, Illinois.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was close with her siblings and her mom, April.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis was described as vibrant, happy, someone who was always looking for the good in life.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: In July of 2015, when Alexis was around 18 years old, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis and her son lived with April, who was always nearby to help her daughter care for her new baby.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward two years to July of 2017, by this time Alexis was 20.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to her mother April, who spoke about the case on an episode of the missing, Alexis told her that she was planning to take a trip to Las Vegas for the weekend.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: She asked her mom as she thought it was a good idea to go.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: April told her no.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: She really didn't think she should.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Alexis explained that the tickets had already been paid for, and she promised that she'd be back by Monday.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis left Illinois for Vegas, but Monday came and went and Alexis wasn't home.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis had left with a man and another woman.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Detective Matt Rogers with the Pioria Police Department,
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis had actually gone to Las Vegas to work at a party.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, the man and woman returned to Illinois, but Alexis wasn't with them.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Days later, according to the Charlie project, Alexis was found naked and disoriented in the street, but she wasn't in Las Vegas.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was more than 500 miles away in Sacramento, California.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Detective Rogers, Alexis had traveled from Las Vegas to California with someone she had met while she was in Vegas.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: After she was found, Alexis called her mother, eventually she was able to make her way back home to Pioria.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when she returned, Alexis told her family that she had been kidnapped and sex traffic, she was afraid.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis told April that someone was looking for her and that they knew where she lived.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just three weeks later, Alexis got disappeared.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was Friday, September 22, 2017.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: That evening Alexis was home with her two-year-old son, her mom and her brother.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to April as she recalled on investigation discovery, sometime between 9 and 10 pm she told Alexis that she was getting tired and going to get her grandson ready for bed.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: April then took Alexis's son with her and laid down with him for the night.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The next morning so that brings us to Saturday, September 23rd.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: When April woke up that morning, Alexis wasn't home.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: April asked her son where Alexis was and he told her that Alexis had gone out the night before.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to her brother, sometime between 11pm and midnight, a car pulled up and picked Alexis up.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: After she left, he got up and locked the door behind her and he hadn't seen her since.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, that wasn't necessarily unusual for Alexis.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was young and according to April, she did occasionally go out.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Alexis always came home by morning.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course this morning, she hadn't.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: April began calling Alexis.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: When she couldn't reach her daughter, she started calling Alexis's friends.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when she still couldn't find her, April began posting on social media, asking anyone and everyone if they had heard from her.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But no one seemed to know where Alexis was, or at least no one was willing to admit that they did.
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Days passed with no word from Alexis.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: April continued reaching out to her daughter's friends and posting on social media desperately searching for information, but she got nothing.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis hadn't contacted anyone and all of her social media accounts had suddenly gone dark,
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Five days after Alexis was last seen, April officially reported her daughter missing to the Peoria Police Department.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Investigators got right to work.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Detective Rogers, police were able to determine that the night Alexis Vanish she had been outwriting around in a car with a friend.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then, during the early morning hours of September 23, Alexis reportedly ended up at a house party at 125 West Richmond Avenue.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Detectives tracked down that location and began identifying the people who had attended the party that night.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: They interviewed everyone they could locate.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a couple of people told investigators that they had seen Alexis leave the party shortly after she arrived.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, police needed to verify those accounts.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So investigators obtained surveillance footage from nearby businesses, but the video told a different story.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Detective Rogers a later told investigation discovery that the surveillance footage did not match the story police had initially been told.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Cook County Sheriff's Office also reported that one witness claimed Alexis had left the area on foot sometime after 5.30 that morning, but investigators were unable to confirm that account.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: On October 1, Pioria Police performed a consent search of the home.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: A consent search is conducted with permission from the property owner or someone with authority to allow police inside, because permission is voluntarily given, police don't have the first obtain of search warrant.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: While the scope of a consent search can vary, depending on what permission is given, it can be different from a more extensive and detailed search concluded under the authority of a warrant.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: After the search and after investigators reviewed the surveillance
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the days and weeks passed with no sign of Alexis, investigators were still trying to answer one fundamental question.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: What exactly happened at that house party?
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Special investigations detective Captain Michael Mushinski told NBC News that investigators had received information indicating Alexis may have been at the party, but they were still working to verify whether or not she'd actually been there.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those who attended the party believed Alexis was there, but the people hosting the party said they didn't know her particularly well.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as investigators continued to dig into the events of that night, at least one person story began to change.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to detective Rogers, at least one of the women who had been at the party with Alexis initially told investigators that she had seen Alexis leave shortly after arriving.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when investigators confronted her with surveillance video that contradicted that account, she changed her story.
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: When she was re-interviewed, the woman reportedly said she may have been mistaken, because she had been under the influence that night.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly what else she may have told investigators has not been made public.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as the investigation continued, it became clear that they were conflicting accounts of what happened in those last hours before Alexis went missing.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Police chief at the time Lauren Marion told WCBU News that nine people had been questioned and 19 search warrants had been issued.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lieutenant Mike Morlin went on to say that the people who attended the party at the house at night were key witnesses.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: He stated, We have the players involved in the case, and we're pretty confident that the people that are involved in her disappearance, whether she is still alive or she isn't, is stemming from that party and the people involved.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to the Charlie project, the person who invited Alexis to the house party said that she had left the house on multiple occasions throughout the night.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: He reportedly told investigators that the last time he saw Alexis, she was standing in the backyard as he was leaving the party.
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, investigators were also trying to track Alexis's phone.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of her friends told her mom that Alexis had her phone with her the night she disappeared.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: But investigators were unable to ping the phone or determine its location.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were, however, able to pinpoint when it was last used.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to police, Alexis's phone was last active at 5.08 a.m. on September 23rd.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: At that time, Alexis was reportedly messaging one of the individuals connected to the party shortly before she arrived there.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: After that, there was nothing.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: No more messages, no calls, no activity on social media.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: The phone went completely dark.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Police continued to follow every
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, Alexis's family, friends, and members of the Peoria community organized searches of their own.
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as the days turned into weeks and the weeks and a months, the tips began to slow.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then investigators received information that led them approximately 30 miles outside of Peoria.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The tip concerned items allegedly taken from the home on Richmond Avenue and transported
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Detective Rogers, investigators received information from a witness that several items had been removed from the residents and taken outside the city to a field near Canton where they were burned.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those items included a mattress and carpet from inside the house at 125 West Richmond Avenue.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And those items had been burned the day after Alexis disappeared.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: The witness who came forward told police he was asked by someone, someone obviously
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But he was asked to drive a U-Haul truck to help get rid of several items.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: According again to this witness, when he opened the door to the U-Haul, there was a large amount of blood.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: April Scott later spoke about the witness's account on an episode of the missing on investigation discovery.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to April, the witness described the amount of blood as more than he had ever seen in his life.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: That you hauled with the items was allegedly driven to Fulton County.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: After an extensive search of that area, the Illinois State Police forensic team located a burn pile with box springs and other material.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: This set up all kinds of alarm bells, investigators had located evidence that backed up this witness's story, and if not nefarious, why would someone go through all the trouble of driving that far to burn a mattress?
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where did all that blood come from, and most importantly, where was Alexis Scott?
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: As investigators continue to search for Alexis, her family couldn't help but wonder whether the events that had taken place just weeks before her disappearance could somehow be connected.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis had gone to Vegas in July of 2017.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: She had later been found naked and disoriented hundreds of miles away in Sacramento, California.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when she returned Alexis's total family that she had been kidnapped and was sex-trafficked, she was afraid that someone was looking for her, and she believed those people knew where she lived.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Three weeks later, she was gone, and there does appear to be at least one connection between the people surrounding Alexis and Las Vegas and the people connected to the house party.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to the Charlie project, the owner of the home or the house party took place,
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether that connection has anything to do with Alexis's disappearance has not been publicly established.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But for her family, it remains impossible to ignore.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis loved one's fear it's possible that she may have once again became a victim of sex trafficking.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when we hear the word sex trafficking, it's easy to picture something very specific, a stranger violently kidnapping someone and forcing them into a life of exploitation.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But trafficking doesn't always look like that.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to the Polaris Project, one of the most common misconceptions about human trafficking is that it usually involves kidnapping or physical force.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: In reality, traffickers can use manipulation, threats, fraud, and coercion to control their victims.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And trafficking doesn't even require someone to be transported from one place to another.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 2024 alone, the National Human Trafficking Hotline identified more than 6,600 situations involving sex trafficking in the United States, and among the sex trafficking cases reported to the hotline 242 of them involved in online ad venue.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: We also know these numbers are grossly under-reported and not a complete count of every trafficking case in the country.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: That brings us back to Alexis.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: An August of 2018, Peoria Public Radio reported that Alexis had appeared in postings on both back page and Craigslist prior to her disappearance.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, that does improve Alexis was being trafficked through those sites, and police have said it's unclear whether those postings were directly connected to her disappearance.
• 14:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it is another piece of evidence that is difficult to ignore when you consider everything Alexis had been through, and the weeks before she disappeared.
• 14:30
  [UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Years have passed, but Alexis's family and friends have never stopped looking for answers.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her best friend Thalia has created the Alexis Camry Scott campaign on Facebook to help keep Alexis's name in her case in the public eye.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Family Spokesperson Dusty Maltry, there is a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence pointing investigators back towards the last place Alexis was known to have been alive.
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The House Party on Richmond Avenue.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maltry told the Peoria Journal star that police and independent search groups have searched the area surrounding the home multiple times.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: During those searches, electronic devices and blood were reportedly located.
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the passage of time has made the search for evidence increasingly difficult.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: The home also suffered a fire in the years following Alexis's disappearance for the complicating the possibility that investigators might find additional evidence there.
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maltry said that while the evidence points toward the house party as the last place Alexis was known to have been alive, she wasn't confident that continuing to focus solely on that immediate area, would solve the case.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: There may be other places investigators need to look.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the evidence she said gives recent to believe Alexis may not still be in that area, and that she may not have simply walked away from that home on her own.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is one of the most troubling aspects of Alexis's disappearance.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is no confirmed evidence showing her walking away.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is no surveillance footage showing her leaving on her own.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis has never been seen walking away from that house party on her own to feet.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: For her mother April, the pain of not knowing what happened to her daughter has only grown more difficult with time.
• 16:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: She told investigation discovery that it doesn't get easier.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It gets harder.
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: She worries about Alexis when the weather turns cold,
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And while April continues searching for her daughter, Alexis's son has grown up without his mother.
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dusty Maltry once asked him what he would wish for if he could have just one wish.
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: His answer was simple, he just wants his mom back.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today, Alexis Camry Scott remains missing.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was 20 years old when she disappeared.
• 16:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis is described as a black female with black hair and brown eyes.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: She is five-one and approximately 140 pounds.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Police have said Alexis was lasting wearing light-colored jeans, a black Victoria secret zip-up hoodie with pink designs and a crop shirt.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: She also has several identifying tattoos and piercings, including piercings in both ears, her nose and below her lower lip.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alexis has tattoos including paw prints on her right shoulder, the word royalty and cursive on her left and her arm, Trevon and cursive on her right wrist, an additional tattoos on her shoulders.
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her mother also told police that Alexis had removed
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyone with information about the disappearance of Alexis Scott is urged to contact the Pioria Police Department at 309-673-4521.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tips can also be submitted anonymously through tip 411 or by calling crime stoppers at 309-673-9000.
• 18:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a reward of up to $2,500 for information that leads to answers in Alexis's case.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Someone out there knows exactly what happened to Alexis Scott, and after nearly nine years, her family is still waiting for that person, those people to come forward.
• 18:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that my friends is all I've got for this week.
• 18:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Be sure to join me next Thursday, same time, same place for an all new episode.
• 18:31
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• 18:38
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• 18:42
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• 18:47
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• 18:54
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• 18:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for caring.
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you know something, say something.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And until next time, be good to each other.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's so frustrating when a case is absolutely solvable.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have no doubt that police have a pretty solid idea as to who is responsible for Alexis's disappearance.
• 20:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: They probably have a pretty good idea as to exactly what happened as do the people at that party.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: As far as police go, they're just waiting on more evidence.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: and one article I did read that it appeared as though investigators had been in talks with a state attorney's office.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that means they're pretty sure.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's entirely possible that the police are ready to move forward with prosecution, but the prosecutors aren't.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if Alexis is no longer alive, they're probably just waiting to find her.
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: because no body cases are a little harder to prove but that doesn't mean they're impossible because it can and has been done and convictions have been secured despite the fact that nobody was found.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I was at that house party, I'd be sweating bullets because it sure sounds like police know what happened and it's only a matter of time.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: There aren't nine people in nobody
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: At some point, someone is gonna get hemmed up on an unrelated charge and talk to try and get out of it.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: That happens all the time.
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I were at that party and I knew something, anything, I'd be the first to throw everybody under that bus, because with people capable of making a 20-year-old woman disappear, your silence does not buy your protection.
• 21:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: You might think it does, but you're wrong.
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And besides all that, protecting a monster makes you a monster, too.
• 21:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: someone out there knows exactly what happened to Alexis Scott.
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's time to stop being a coward and come forward and tell what you know.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or you could be next.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And not only will you be dead, you'll be remembered as a monster.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's about all I got to say about that.
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: You all know I love you more in my luggage, and I can't wait to talk at you next week.
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But until then, bye, boo thing!