- 2 days ago
The Real Murders on Elm Street S2E01
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Short filmTranscript
00:00My daughter, Cindy, likes to ride bikes and go to the park.
00:30She's playing with her friends.
00:36She always made it home.
00:41One day I called Cindy and I said, I'm bringing dinner home.
00:47Cindy was 20, but she had a mind of a 12 year old.
00:53So when I got off work at 4 o'clock, I told her, you come home.
00:57She said, OK.
01:00I said, mommy loves baby.
01:02And she said, baby loves mommy.
01:04That was our saying.
01:05So when I got off work, I come home.
01:13I thought Cindy was in the kitchen getting some milk or in her bedroom playing her games.
01:21But she was not there.
01:33And she was nowhere to be found.
01:36That's when it hit.
01:40I was scared, like butterflies in my stomach.
01:46I have this instinct that something really bad happened.
01:53Because she's my little girl.
01:58But her, she was.
02:03I wish I could find her girl.
02:05But her, she will be dating anyone.
02:07She was mad at her.
02:08But she's a little girl.
02:10She was mad when she heard.
02:11She was mad when she was mad.
02:12I was mad when she was mad.
02:14I felt so.
02:15She was mad when she was mad.
02:15I didn't know the rest of it.
02:17She was mad now, so I got her.
02:18No, I have a baby about her.
02:21I was so mad.
02:21She's a little girl.
02:23She's a little girl.
02:24I don't know.
02:54I remember when we got the call, I was a detective with the Talil Police Department in the Missing Persons Unit.
03:09We had a 20-year-old female missing. Her name was Cindy Sumner.
03:13I remember walking up to the house to meet her parents.
03:18I could see that Mary was very afraid for their daughter's safety.
03:21When she didn't come home that night, I didn't eat, I didn't sleep.
03:29So I said, I know you've got to wait 24 hours for a missing person, but my daughter has muscular dysphagia and cerebral palsy.
03:39She walked good. She ran good, too.
03:42But if she fell, she couldn't get up because her muscles were brittle.
03:49I knew right away that this was out of the ordinary.
03:53Cindy couldn't defend herself if she was attacked.
03:56That heightened our sense of urgency.
03:59This wasn't just a normal runaway.
04:01Every minute that went by, her vulnerability makes it even more remote that she's going to come home.
04:09I was going crazy.
04:12But where's my baby? Where's my baby?
04:16Mary had mentioned that Cindy had a bike, and her bicycle was basically her freedom from her home.
04:22Cindy would always come back home and check in.
04:30She was very good at that.
04:31I said, OK, be careful.
04:36No one had a bike like Cindy's.
04:39She had a teddy bear and a rose on it.
04:43And she just put it on her handlebars, and the bear was holding it in rose.
04:46Time is of the essence right off the bat.
05:00And so we started driving around that end of town.
05:05We went to the parks.
05:07We went to the stores that were around there looking for Cindy, and we were looking for her bike.
05:12We went up Elm Street, which is a pretty long street in the North End.
05:19It had some residential houses.
05:22It had some businesses.
05:23And it also had some abandoned structures.
05:29The parents had given us different friends' addresses and the places she would go.
05:36I talked to the police.
05:37Cindy's best friend was Lisa.
05:39When I met her, I was 12, and she didn't have many friends because of her mindset.
05:47You know, nobody wanted to hang out with a 19-, 20-year-old that acts like a kid.
05:55But I had so much love in my heart for her.
05:58Cindy was 20, but she acted like a 12-year-old because of her disability.
06:04She would ride her bike by her house every single day, just waving.
06:10And she was the nicest girl ever.
06:13When the detectives came to my house, I knew in my heart that something bad had happened to her.
06:20She was an easy target because she was so innocent.
06:23The day Cindy went missing, she came to my house on her bike, and she was asking me to go on a bike ride with her.
06:32And then I told her that I couldn't go.
06:37And I remember waving to her by.
06:41And that was the last time I'd seen her.
06:42Mary also said that Cindy had seen somebody driving by the house on a bicycle going back and forth.
06:55Mary also said that Cindy had seen somebody driving by the house on a bicycle going back and forth.
07:25Cindy had that gut feeling as someone was watching her.
07:32That raised the hair on the back of my neck a little bit, thinking this person's brazen enough to go by the house without worrying about being caught,
07:40and he's brazen enough to try and snatch her.
07:45I came home.
07:47Lisa was frantically saying, Cindy's missing, Cindy's missing.
07:50She's gone.
07:52I was like, no.
07:53Now I find out that somebody was watching Cindy.
07:59And knowing that Cindy had been over my house that day,
08:03the fear started setting in on me.
08:06Like, thank God that I have Lisa.
08:10Stalkers are particularly dangerous because they won't give up.
08:14They lurk in the shadows until the right opportunity, and then they pounce.
08:26The police reached out, said, hey, we have a missing girl.
08:29We want to get this on the news.
08:30As a mom, I knew that this was an urgent situation.
08:35Cindy was just 20 when she vanished.
08:37Last seen in a fluorescent green shirt.
08:40Her mother is certain this wasn't a runaway.
08:42We got it on the air within hours of her being reported missing.
08:46Cindy, if you're out there watching me, I love you very much.
08:50Come home, Mia.
08:50I just want her home.
09:05The next day, the panic and the fear started setting in really bad with Lisa.
09:10Her mind was racing, where is she, Mom?
09:14Let's go find her.
09:16Her mom was gathering people, searching the streets.
09:24It's nerve-wracking.
09:27Trying to find a needle in a haystack.
09:31We were breaking down doors to abandoned buildings, just searching for her.
09:40I remember clearly, I was walking home from school with my friends.
09:55And we would walk through a graveyard that went into the back of this warehouse.
10:04It was on Elm Street.
10:06It was like the shortcut, walking home.
10:10We were talking about Cindy, and we thought maybe she's in the warehouse.
10:22So then we were like, let's check it out.
10:40On the side of the warehouse, we found a stairwell.
11:08And we were like, I wonder what's down here.
11:20So we opened the door.
11:21And it smelled like stale water.
11:33It was really dark going down, so you couldn't really see anything.
11:36And it was really creepy.
11:39And then it happened.
11:55Walking home from school, we thought it would be a good idea to go in this abandoned warehouse, searching for Cindy.
12:10But it turned out, it wasn't.
12:21But it turned out, it wasn't.
12:21All the way down the stairwell, the whole basement was just flooded of the building.
12:50It's like knee-deep water.
12:53And I was like, nope.
13:10My mom was on edge at that point because she didn't want any chance of this happening to me.
13:20So I didn't tell her we went through the warehouse.
13:24When Cindy went missing, I was assigned to the Investigative Services Bureau.
13:33And the entire department was aware that Cindy Sumner was missing.
13:36As an investigator, you know she's at risk.
13:41It tugs at your heart.
13:43Everybody wants to find that girl.
13:45Because she has the mental capacity of a 12-year-old, they don't think she just took off, which leaves only a few scary possibilities.
13:50The news spread fast, so we received tons of information that was coming from the community, so we followed up on hundreds of tips.
14:04There were a lot of leads that turned out to not bear fruit, so we went back to people that were close to Cindy, and her mother mentioned to us that Cindy had a boyfriend-like young man, Derek Marks, that she was close to in the neighborhood.
14:24When we started really digging into him, Derek wasn't exactly squeaky clean, so we brought Derek Marks in.
14:34Immediately, I noticed that he was wearing an ankle monitor.
14:38Whoever let him out felt that he still needed to be monitored, so that brings up a red flag.
14:45We were able to get the records relative to his ankle monitor.
14:51Which established an alibi and eliminated him from consideration.
14:58However, Derek told us that the day she vanished, Cindy rode by his house, and he basically ignored her.
15:06And as she was riding on, he noticed that she was with an older, maybe man in his 30s, with blonde hair.
15:14We thought, why would that person be with her?
15:17Who was he?
15:18And was that the last person that was with her?
15:22Police interviewed dozens and dozens of people in this case, trying to track down this blonde gentleman.
15:30The urgency was, if anybody harmed Cindy, such a pure, innocent young lady, they could do it to anybody.
15:38In the neighborhood, there's a lot of families, there are a lot of children, and that could happen in someone's backyard.
15:45Missing posters like this one hang outside, and a week later, her mom just wants to have her home.
15:51And we kept looking and looking.
15:58I was like, what's going on with my baby?
16:00I'm not my baby home.
16:05I kept praying, please, Lord, let me find my baby alive.
16:10And then we got some important information.
16:17We had subpoenaed Cindy's cell phone records.
16:21Once we were able to get the records to Cindy's phone, there was one particular text message that was sent to her the day she was reported missing that was particularly concerning to me.
16:32It said, you coming to Jamie Farr, and that's the part that Cindy would frequent, God bear for you.
16:42Cindy was very fond of teddy bears.
16:47If you're thinking like a 12-year-old, you're going to want to meet him.
16:51You're going to want to get your bear.
16:54The person who sent that was close enough to her to know that she loved teddy bears.
16:59Unfortunately, these text messages came from a burner phone, and we didn't know who the number was connected back to.
17:09We hit a wall.
17:14After all the leagues were exhausted, it started becoming frustrating.
17:19Investigation was dragging on, and you start questioning yourself if you're ever going to find Cindy or not.
17:28And then several weeks into the investigation, a lady named Marissa called the detective bureau and said she had recognized Cindy from her picture, but she knew her as Sissy from being around the neighborhood.
17:43Marissa stated that she had seen Sissy at a warehouse over on Elm Street one time.
17:49And something might have happened, and the warehouse itself was huge.
17:56Earlier on in the investigation, a uniformed crew was sent to investigate it.
18:03They couldn't find anything.
18:07This old, decrepit, abandoned warehouse on Elm Street was just not a good place.
18:19People were going in and out.
18:21Homeless people were living in there.
18:22People were doing drugs.
18:24It was almost like it breathed evil.
18:29This building, because of the sheer size of it, you could very easily hide there, and no one would ever know you were there.
18:40And there was an element of dangerous people living there that you didn't know what you were walking into.
18:53So when we walked in, we had flashlights, we had each other, and we were going to check every room on every floor.
19:10And right away, there was two people there that took off running.
19:19We weren't sure what they were up to.
19:23It just felt like a trap.
19:28I was frightened, and I had a flashlight and a gun.
19:32But we were going to go through every floor to rule out if she was there or not.
19:40Approximately six weeks after Cindy Sumner went missing, the call came in and she was in an abandoned warehouse on Elm Street.
19:50This warehouse was dangerous because of the circle of people living there.
19:55Several of them had violent criminal histories, as well as sexually related crimes.
20:03Just knowing the nature of the people that had been in and out just gave you pause.
20:10Our concern was that there was somebody there.
20:16We didn't know what their intentions were. Were they watching us?
20:19There was the scent of stale beer, urine.
20:28There were a lot of crack pipes bedding.
20:34It was obviously an encampment for people that were using it as a short-term living space.
20:47When my partner and I went down into the basement, you could tell there was some type of standing water because it just had that something's wrong here smell.
21:05So you just get a sick feeling.
21:17When we got into the basement, I got the feeling that somebody was watching.
21:21It's complete darkness and you didn't really know what else was down there.
21:38Definitely the stuff of nightmares.
21:44My partner went to the left, stumbles upon the boiler room.
21:49And then the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
22:17My partner called out.
22:20I looked over and he said, I found something in the water.
22:26I don't know if it's her, but it might be a body.
22:30But it was submerged.
22:33And then suddenly we smelled something different.
22:37We smelled smoke.
22:38There was a fire and whoever started that fire obviously didn't want us there.
22:47But anybody that would set a place on fire while we were in there, we didn't know how far they would go.
22:53And so we cordoned off the area and called in the troops.
23:01The fire department came and put it out.
23:04We called in for more officers.
23:07Because at that point we didn't know what we were dealing with or what we were going to find.
23:11Our concern first was were they still in the building because there was many rooms they could have been hiding in.
23:21They also requested to have the Department of Water come out to help drain some of the water so that the basement would be more accessible.
23:30I was working for the city of Toledo in the sewer and drain services.
23:37The warehouse on Elm was a place that I kind of grew up around.
23:42I know that it's not a good place to be.
23:45It's kind of scary the things that go on in there.
23:48Had I known that we were going to be pumping that place out, I don't know that I would have volunteered to go.
23:54The smell was, uh, you never forget it. It permeates everything.
24:04You're breathing it. It's in your clothing. It's on you.
24:09And you get this sick feeling.
24:17You'd feel like something was watching you.
24:19The water was so dark, you couldn't take a flashlight and look into it.
24:32It's like you don't know what's underneath it.
24:41And then as the water started to drain down, I could start to see the body in the water.
24:46I thought, oh man, this is horrible. This is something I'm just not going to be able to forget.
25:00Once they had the water pretty much pumped out, the victim was laying on her side.
25:07And we were unable to determine who it was.
25:12The victim's wrists were bound behind her.
25:17There was a marble-type slab that was laid partially across the victim's body.
25:23Whoever had done this to this poor young lady was a vile, evil soul.
25:33The body was closed in, closed inconsistent with what had been reported that Cindy was last seen in.
25:39And we did not know who this was.
25:42Our immediate reaction was, oh crap, is this really Cindy? Or was this another victim?
25:50And we still have no one in custody.
25:53You had this sense of urgency that potentially other young women or girls are at risk.
26:02So if she was a second victim, you're going to immediately think, maybe we got a serial killer.
26:09Now, Cindy had reported someone that she found suspicious around her house.
26:14And she also had been seen with the blonde man that we weren't able to identify it.
26:21And now we're worried, do we have somebody out there doing this on a serial basis?
26:35We knew that a young lady had been brutally murdered and left in the basement of a warehouse on Elm Street.
26:41And we needed to confirm the identity of the body.
26:47Due to the serious decomposition of the body, visual identification was impossible.
26:55But she was wearing a pendant around her neck.
27:06I gave her the necklace on her birthday.
27:09And she never took it off.
27:12That's when I broke down.
27:15I couldn't breathe.
27:19It just gave me chills up and down my spine.
27:23I was hoping that she would come home.
27:28Celebrate her birthday.
27:31Christmas.
27:33And I was just so angry, I just wanted to hurt something.
27:39When we got the clothes from the coroner's office, we weren't sure if it actually matched the clothing description that we were given initially.
27:55We weren't sure what it meant.
27:56And so the question was, was someone dressing her up? Was she their human doll?
28:02When I got home from work, Lisa started screaming to me, mom, mom, mom. They found her, they found her.
28:21When I got home from work, Lisa started screaming to me,
28:29Mom, Mom, Mom, they found her, they found her.
28:33She's crying and crying.
28:34I started crying.
28:38The detectives told me that if your daughter, Lisa,
28:42would have went with her that day, she would have not survived.
28:46We knew if somebody was watching Cindy,
28:52and if he's watching Cindy, he's watching Lisa, too.
28:59I was actually terrified when I found out that that's where they found her,
29:02because I was like, oh, my God, we were right there,
29:05and we just did not know that she was there.
29:10Like, could we have saved her?
29:12I was scared all the time because they didn't find the guy who did this yet.
29:20I didn't know if there was someone in the bushes.
29:24I didn't know what to do at that point.
29:26I didn't even want to walk home from school anymore.
29:30I was just feeling kind of like Cindy, like someone's watching me.
29:37If they can get her, why can't they get me?
29:42I started carrying a knife with me everywhere.
29:51It was a very short time later.
29:53I got a phone call.
29:55Your daughter has a big butcher knife at school.
29:58What?
29:59A butcher knife?
30:01I went into full panic.
30:03As a mom, I was thinking, don't carry a knife to school.
30:06But this person's still out there.
30:09I don't know who they are.
30:10They're not getting you, though.
30:11I'm going to make sure of it.
30:16In the warehouse, we found some important evidence.
30:20There was a water heater.
30:22Taps emerged in the water next to the body.
30:25And there was a shoe print on the covering.
30:29It was identifiable.
30:30If we were able to match that shoe print to the shoe being worn by a person, then we may have our suspect.
30:41And at this point, the scope of who we were interviewing narrowed to the circle of people that were associated with the warehouse.
30:47After talking to more people, they indicated that there was a blonde man living at the warehouse where we found Cindy on Elm Street.
30:58It raised our suspicion, because we had gotten information that Cindy was with a blonde man on the same day she went missing.
31:10They described him as being a creep job because of his behavior with Cindy.
31:17A lot of people didn't care for him.
31:21People reported that this man would ride his bike methodically back and forth in front of Cindy's house.
31:34He would often stop and stare.
31:41Just standing, motionless, just watching.
31:57So Cindy was right.
31:59Someone was watching her.
32:00And it was probably this evil creep who killed Cindy.
32:13Cindy had been missing for approximately six weeks when her remains were found.
32:18We tried to interview everybody that was associated with the warehouse where Cindy Sumner's body had been recovered.
32:24And when we found out that Cindy was the focus of someone's overzealous attention, certainly that helped narrow our focus as to who the suspect might be.
32:35One person described running into the same guy, the creep job, by the name of Elhadi Robbins.
32:41We realized that he was incarcerated.
32:44So locating him was a pretty easy step.
32:47Elhadi Robbins was a middle-aged male who was homeless, who would travel the north side of Toledo on his bicycle.
32:58He didn't have blonde hair.
32:59But we found out that Elhadi Robbins had recently dyed his hair.
33:05I'm Detective Morrow.
33:07This is Detective Gass.
33:09How you doing?
33:10The morning we started digging into him, we found out that he had had a very checkered past.
33:17How much time did you do for the robbery?
33:19Nine and a half years.
33:20Are you on parole now?
33:22No.
33:22Okay.
33:23For what?
33:23For domestic violence and some other stuff.
33:25Robbins was a registered sex defender.
33:29Child pornography.
33:30And he'd been involved with some other women that had some mental and physical challenges.
33:37This was obviously the type of person that he was attracted to.
33:41He had a lot of ex-girlfriends.
33:43I noticed he did have some injuries to his arms, some scratches that he alleged came from a bicycling accident from when he hit a car.
33:50So that definitely threw up red flags.
33:52What kind of relationship would you say you had with?
33:56Just fronts.
33:56Riding around.
33:58Riding around.
33:59Riding on the bikes, yeah.
34:00With bikes.
34:01Now, were you and Cindy romantically blank?
34:06Did you be like boyfriend, girlfriend, kissing and stuff?
34:09No.
34:10They knew I wanted to get with Cindy, but she was talking about her boyfriend and all that.
34:15Robbins was very interested in developing a relationship and becoming close to Cindy Sumner.
34:20So she said you were too old?
34:23Yeah, she said at first too old.
34:25Yeah.
34:26How old did you say you were?
34:2744.
34:29He talked about they weren't in love, but they were hopefully going to get there.
34:32The LACA technical coups, though, is with the Scientific Investigations Unit.
34:43What this is, is a search warrant for your shoes, so we need you to take the shoes off.
34:48Are these your shoes?
34:49Yeah.
34:54Just looking at your shoe, it's an exact match.
34:56There's not going to be any denying the shoe print found next to where the body was.
35:03You don't seem like a bad guy.
35:06Okay?
35:06I can pretty comfortably say that.
35:08And I think that you really, you want to shed that light for us, but you're gun shy.
35:13And I'm telling you, as we stand here today, there is an out.
35:16He talked about having blackouts, that he just would lose it and then wake up and not
35:26know what he'd done.
35:27I got blacked out for like 13 hours, I think it was.
35:30And when I thought I woke up, you're telling me, no, you've been up all night.
35:35I was certain that he was the man that killed Cindy Sumner.
35:37At this point, you invoked your right to an attorney, which means by law, the officer
35:44can't ask you any more questions.
35:46But Elhadi Robbins refused to give us all the specifics.
35:52Ultimately, some of the other inmates gave that information to law enforcement.
35:58Even with criminals, there is a code of conduct.
36:02They just said, this is a bad guy.
36:04He got into an argument with a cellmate about what happened to Cindy, and he wanted to correct
36:13the record, the narcissism in him.
36:16He wanted that recognition.
36:19He thought he was among like-minded people, and it was okay for him to brag.
36:24Yeah, I did that, and this is the way it happened.
36:27When we talk about Predator, he had a plan.
36:30We believe he lured her to the warehouse with the promise of a teddy bear.
36:48Once Cindy went into that warehouse, because of the sheer size of it, you could very easily
36:55avoid discovery.
36:56When Elhadi Robbins tried to have his way with her, I think she threatened to tell people
37:17what he had done to her, and he was fearful of being discovered.
37:19He ultimately killed her to avoid discovery.
37:33I think Cindy fought as best she could.
37:35Unfortunately, her ability to fight was obviously very restricted because of her disabilities.
37:41He tied her hands behind her back, carried her to the basement, and hid her body in a back
37:49boiler room in a bunch of water.
37:52Then he threw her bike down an elevator shaft so no one would ever find it.
37:55The idea that this could happen to such a pure, innocent young lady was something that was just
38:04pure evil.
38:11The man accused of taking Cindy Sumner's life was arraigned in court today.
38:16Elhadi Robbins pleaded not guilty.
38:18Prior to being able to go to trial, Elhadi Robbins was found dead in the shower in the Lucas
38:26County Jail, and ultimately died of a heart attack.
38:33I wanted him to be in prison the rest of his life.
38:38Doing that to my baby girl.
38:39I was angry because Cindy was such a beautiful person.
38:50She always seen the good in people, even when they weren't good.
38:56It was kind of bittersweet.
38:58I wanted him to pay for his crime, but it also ended the story.
39:04He wasn't going to be able to do this to anybody else.
39:07I don't know if karma is the right word, but certainly the circumstances around him dying
39:14in water the way he left her, that's for a bigger power than mine to figure out.
39:23Fast forward to 2023.
39:25This bad, evil warehouse on Elm Street continued to be a nuisance.
39:34I just wanted to tear it down.
39:37If it was torn down a long time ago, Cindy would be right here.
39:46Cindy's family fought really hard, really hard to get that building torn down.
39:52And finally, 15 years after Cindy took her last breath there, that warehouse was finally torn down.
40:00Every time I passed it, I just don't look over there.
40:06I know it's gone, but it still brings me some bad days.
40:13I don't know, there's something about that street that just has always scared people.
40:18And to this day, I find it's still creepy.
40:21We didn't even lock our door.
40:34That's how safe we thought we were.
40:37Whatever sense of safety that this tight-knit Elm Street community had felt,
40:42that was over forever.
40:49This is 911. Is there a problem there?
40:51Somebody died in my house.
40:53What's the address?
40:55That house on Elm Street was a horror scene.
41:01When I walked in, you can smell the blood.
41:04This was Elm Street.
41:09It happened on Elm Street.
41:14It's still like a dream.
41:18That monster was deep inside, and that all came out.
41:22You're thinking, could this happen to me?
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