- 5 days ago
20/20 - Season Episode 16 - Tracking Susana
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Short filmTranscript
00:00:00An all-new 2020 starts right now.
00:00:43When Susanna walked out the back gate of Sterling Glen apartment, there's a sidewalk there that
00:00:54would take her straight to her residence.
00:00:56Where can I see her last known location?
00:00:58I have a screenshot.
00:01:00You have a screenshot?
00:01:03They could see that she was walking back from the apartment complex down Singleton Road.
00:01:08And all of a sudden, she goes in the opposite direction in the car.
00:01:11And that's when I started panicking.
00:01:13Something happened to her on the way home.
00:01:15This case is just, it's unreal.
00:01:17She walked that way.
00:01:18Hoodock County police are hoping that you can help them find a teenager, 16-year-old Susanna
00:01:22Morales.
00:01:23Police now believe that she may have gotten into a car that night, July 26th.
00:01:27She was a young, full-of-life teenager who vanished pretty much out of thin air.
00:01:33You know why we're here?
00:01:35We just thought about the worst.
00:01:37They needed to do something.
00:01:49Ooh!
00:01:52Brushes!
00:01:53Brushes!
00:01:54Aw!
00:01:56Susanna was the baby.
00:01:58She would get everything that we wanted when we were at her age.
00:02:01Necklace, earring.
00:02:03Yes, yes.
00:02:05She was definitely spoiled.
00:02:07Y'all really went out.
00:02:09This is cute.
00:02:10I like this.
00:02:11Our best moments is laughing together as a family.
00:02:15Oh, chicle!
00:02:21Susanna Morales was very close to her family.
00:02:26They lived in Norcross here in Gwinnett County.
00:02:30We are a large county just north of Atlanta.
00:02:35And we are one of the most diverse counties in the United States.
00:02:40Where are you from originally?
00:02:42Mexico.
00:02:43What were you looking for?
00:02:45Vivir mejor, verdad?
00:02:48Three daughters?
00:02:49Tres hijas?
00:02:50Tres hijas.
00:02:51Julissa, Yasmin, and Susanna.
00:02:57Susanna.
00:02:58Her name was Susanna, but you called her?
00:03:00Susie.
00:03:03Me and Susanna had a 10 years difference.
00:03:06Me being the oldest, I used to take care of them.
00:03:11Susanna was very outgoing.
00:03:13I was a little closer to Susanna probably because three year age gap between us.
00:03:17She was always making TikTok videos.
00:03:20She loved to record music videos of herself singing.
00:03:29Susanna's best friends that I've known since like middle school, for her was Kaya and Arrada.
00:03:35Shambaya.
00:03:38They were very, very close.
00:03:40We had fun together.
00:03:42We didn't have to do much to be happy around each other.
00:03:45She was a very bubbly person.
00:03:48Remember Susanna.
00:03:50She was very sweet, very nice.
00:03:52Susanna's hair was very curly.
00:03:54She loved exploring new colors with it.
00:03:56She had dyed her hair green, red, and blot at one point.
00:04:01She worked with her mother at a local McDonald's.
00:04:05She loved music.
00:04:07She loved to play a ukulele that had been given to her.
00:04:11She loved to sing.
00:04:12So won't you save me your location that's focused on communicating.
00:04:25Take me through that day, July 26, 2022.
00:04:33Susanna didn't really like fish and didn't want to eat that, so she asked her mother if she could go
00:04:38to her friend Esmeralda's home.
00:04:42How close was that house?
00:04:45Six minutes.
00:04:47She told her mom she got to her friend's house safe, and that was around 7, 19 p.m.
00:04:51I just want to know if you got there.
00:04:53Uh-huh.
00:04:54And she responds?
00:04:55Si.
00:04:56Si.
00:04:56With a thumbs up.
00:05:03Later that night, approximately 9.40ish p.m., Susanna's mom starts calling Susanna and asking her to come home because
00:05:12it's getting late.
00:05:12You were going to go pick her up.
00:05:14I called her three times and she answered me and she always used to answer me.
00:05:21Susanna's mom reached out for Susanna to be like, hey, where are you?
00:05:24And she texts her and texts her and texts her.
00:05:26Susanna, do you want me to go for you?
00:05:28Please.
00:05:31My daughter, please answer.
00:05:34Because Susanna's mother was not able to get in touch with her, she reached out to Esmeralda and her family.
00:05:40She called me asking if Susanna was at my house.
00:05:44Susanna had actually never come over there.
00:05:47Of course, that's my best friend, so I will back her up.
00:05:50I told her that Susanna was leaving while I was able to get enough time to get a hold of
00:05:54Susanna.
00:05:55Initially, Esmeralda, being a teenage friend, was trying to cover for Susanna.
00:06:00I contacted her, calling her. No response.
00:06:03So I texted her and told her that her mother was looking for her and she better be on her
00:06:07way home before I get in trouble.
00:06:09Susanna's mother recalls talking to Esmeralda's mother who told her Susanna was never there.
00:06:17So mom at that point is worried and like, hey, why was my daughter not where she said she was?
00:06:25I remember getting a call from my mom like around 9 or 10 p.m. at night.
00:06:31And she was just asking me if I heard from Susanna or if I had talked to her because she
00:06:34wasn't answering her phone.
00:06:36Susanna's mother was continuously contacting people trying to figure out where Susanna might be.
00:06:42She had a very good relationship with her sisters and her mom, so that was not characteristic if she did
00:06:47not get in contact with her mom.
00:06:48I told my mom that maybe Susanna's phone had died or that she fell asleep.
00:06:52And I just waited till morning to hear from her.
00:06:56You realize there's something really wrong here.
00:07:06One of Susanna's friends gets a crash alert on her cell phone.
00:07:11Susanna's in a moving vehicle and there's a serious crash.
00:07:27That's Susy, huh?
00:07:28Your screenshot.
00:07:29La foto de sus quince.
00:07:30On her 15th birthday.
00:07:34For her quinceanera, what did she want more than anything?
00:07:38Mami, quiero tacos.
00:07:39Tacos?
00:07:40Tacos, Susy.
00:07:42All she wanted was a great tacos.
00:07:45She wanted us to buy her a mannequin sienna dress, a pink, sparkly, short sienna dress.
00:07:52Susanna was always hanging out with her friends.
00:07:59None of them drove, so they all were young and would walk to each other's house.
00:08:07On July 26, 2022, while Susanna's mother was attempting to locate her
00:08:13and worried about where Susanna was, Susanna's friend Kaya had gotten a notification on her phone
00:08:22through a mobile application on their phone called Live 360.
00:08:26It's an app where you can add people to your circle.
00:08:29You can add friends, family members, and it'll tell you their location.
00:08:33It also provides other safety features, like parents can track their kids.
00:08:37It shows how fast they're driving.
00:08:39It shows if the phone battery's low, things like that.
00:08:45Around 10.30 p.m., Susanna's friend Kaya had gotten a notification on her phone that Susanna's
00:08:54phone had been involved in some kind of crash.
00:08:57Kaya gets what they call a crash alert on her phone.
00:09:01To get a crash alert, there has to be serious force with that phone.
00:09:06Susanna could have potentially been involved in a car accident.
00:09:12Once Kaya got the Live 360 notification crash alert, she contacted Esmeralda.
00:09:19So her friends at that point are worried about Susanna, and Susanna didn't drive.
00:09:25After speaking with Esmeralda, she went out there and checked it out
00:09:28because we were thinking she got into a car accident.
00:09:31They had the location of where the alert was sent from.
00:09:34So they went to that location and started looking for Susanna.
00:09:38I was on the phone with Kaya.
00:09:40My sister had Susanna's phone number.
00:09:42My sister was calling her phone to see maybe we could find it
00:09:45or find any debris of any sort of car crash.
00:09:48But that road in that neighborhood was very quiet that night,
00:09:52so obviously there was no car crash.
00:09:55There's no signs at all of a vehicle crash, no signs of Susanna,
00:09:59and no signs of her phone.
00:10:00She couldn't find any debris or anything, so we just assumed
00:10:04that she was sleeping over at a friend's house, and we slept on it.
00:10:14The next day, I received a terrifying call from my mom where she was sobbing,
00:10:20and I was like, what happened?
00:10:22My mom called me and told me that she was going to call the police
00:10:24because she hasn't heard from Susanna, and I took her to wait for me,
00:10:27and I left work.
00:10:29I don't think I was really worried until I got the screenshots from the Life 360,
00:10:33and that's when I started panicking.
00:10:35And it basically showed the trip of her walking home,
00:10:38and all of a sudden, she goes in the opposite direction in the car.
00:10:42And it was like a notification of Life 360 that Susanna might have been in a crash.
00:10:48She's heading down Singleton Road in the direction of Back Home.
00:10:54Then we see about five minutes later, her direction pattern change,
00:11:01and she's going the exact opposite way away from her house.
00:11:04And here, we see she's now driving in a vehicle at a top speed of 40 miles an hour.
00:11:13Ultimately, we get the crash alert at that location.
00:11:17That's the last known location where Susanna phones pings.
00:11:23Once we got the screenshots, we realized that Susanna had gone to a different friend's house.
00:11:28She actually had gone to her friend Alyssa and Kelly's apartment complex.
00:11:36Kelly is a girl that Susanna's mom, for whatever reason, didn't like.
00:11:41She didn't want Susanna to be around certain friends
00:11:43because she believed they were a bad influence.
00:11:48Susanna knew that her mom was going to say no about her going to Kelly's house.
00:11:52So she asked, can I go to Esmeralda's house?
00:11:55So that's where Maria thought she was going to go.
00:11:58But instead, she ended up going to Kelly's house,
00:12:01which she lived in the Sterling Glen apartment.
00:12:04The Sterling Glen apartment is a fairly typical apartment complex for that area.
00:12:10A lot of different buildings that have multiple apartment units in them.
00:12:14There is a clubhouse and a pool.
00:12:17Because of the crime in the area, they also employ a courtesy officer to help patrol the area.
00:12:27The family have, at this point, reached out to all of their friends of Susanna.
00:12:32No one knows where she is, so they reach out to the Gwinnett County Police and make a report.
00:12:37My sister's been missing since yesterday.
00:12:40How old is your sister?
00:12:4216.
00:12:43Okay. Is your mom or dad there?
00:12:45Yes.
00:12:46I'll have an officer out there as soon as possible to meet with you and your mom, okay?
00:12:50Okay, thank you so much.
00:12:52Maria speaks Spanish.
00:12:54So just to have that clear communication, if we can, we send officers that speak Spanish.
00:13:00Good morning.
00:13:02Good morning.
00:13:02My daughter, yesterday at 6pm, she went to her friend and her phone is on the phone.
00:13:09Her friend has her on Life 360, you know what that is?
00:13:11Mm-hmm.
00:13:12But it's not like renewing her location.
00:13:15And once the officer arrived at the house, we were just letting them know what was going on,
00:13:19that Susanna hadn't made home since last night and she wasn't answering any calls.
00:13:22So where can I see her last known location?
00:13:27That's crucial.
00:13:29We were showing him the screenshots from the Life 360 on the messages that we had,
00:13:33and they asked us to send that to them, so we did.
00:13:39When you're looking at the 360 of her being in a car,
00:13:43it can be someone took her or it can be that she ran away.
00:13:48Whose car is she in? What happened? Is she okay?
00:14:12My name is Xavier Biggers.
00:14:14I've been in policing for 20 years.
00:14:19I've always wanted to be a police officer since I was five years old.
00:14:24At the time of Susanna Morales' disappearance,
00:14:27my title was a Sergeant over at the Special Victims Unit.
00:14:31Initially, I had nothing other than what the officers on the scene had given me.
00:14:40You showed him something on your phone?
00:14:55Jeans, a yellow tank top.
00:14:57They show Susanna's hair.
00:15:00She had black fingernails.
00:15:02That's something that stood out as something descriptive for her.
00:15:20They gave us a report number.
00:15:27They gave us a report number.
00:15:35They gave us to report her missing.
00:15:36She was put on the system by the officer that made the report as a missing person.
00:15:42On that day, I was the on-call sergeant.
00:15:45They called me and let me know that they went door to door trying to get more information about her
00:15:49disappearance.
00:15:50They went to Sterling Glen Apartments, where Kelly lives.
00:15:56Hello.
00:15:57Hello.
00:15:58They spent about a good three to four hours at that apartment complex looking for her.
00:16:02Is she here?
00:16:03She's working right now.
00:16:05And they actually spoke with Kelly and talked with her.
00:16:08You know why we're here?
00:16:13What can you tell us about her?
00:16:23What can you tell us about her?
00:16:31Susanna ended up walking over to her friend Kelly and Alyssa's home at the apartment complex.
00:16:39We were actually able to locate social media videos that were taken of Susanna and her friends that day.
00:16:46We were doing a belly piercing, just taking videos.
00:16:49We were just hanging out.
00:16:52We ended up walking to the back of the gate to the apartment, and then I just said goodbye.
00:16:57Around 10 p.m., Kelly said that she took Susanna to the exit of the Sterling Glen Apartments on Singleton
00:17:05Road.
00:17:07Singleton Road is located in a pretty populated area.
00:17:11There are residential areas as well as businesses.
00:17:14Even at night, there's a lot of foot traffic as well as vehicles.
00:17:19Susanna had walked on that road numerous times, so she was familiar with it.
00:17:24However, once you pass the businesses, it is a very dark walk back to Susanna's house.
00:17:38This is where Kelly basically walked Susanna out to the back gate, and Susanna went home this way from the
00:17:46back gate.
00:17:48From Sterling Glen Apartments to Susanna home is probably only about a 15-minute walk.
00:17:55To get home, Susanna would have exited the Sterling Glen Apartments through the back gate, taken a left on Singleton
00:18:01Road, and then traveled down Singleton Road and taken a left onto Santa Ana Drive, where her home was located.
00:18:09I was a homicide detective with Gwinnett County Police at the time of Susanna Morales' disappearance.
00:18:15I worked on the same floor as the Special Victims Unit.
00:18:18I heard them talking about it, so of course I jumped in and I was asking questions.
00:18:23There was something up with this that wasn't a typical case.
00:18:28Somewhere after she walked past this parking lot, her phone changed directions and began going back towards the Sterling Glen
00:18:38Apartments at a speed that's consistent with her being in a vehicle.
00:18:41And within less than a mile, a crasher alert was received.
00:18:48So this is the direction the 360 application was showing.
00:18:53Susanna was going in at 40 miles per hour.
00:18:57And this is the area that it pretty much crashes out and round about here.
00:19:02We checked to see if there were any accidents in that area.
00:19:06There was no accidents reported in that area.
00:19:09Given that there's no actual evidence of a car crash,
00:19:12our assumption is that her phone is thrown out the window out of a moving vehicle and that the phone
00:19:18is damaged or broken to cause the crash alert.
00:19:21When you're looking at the 360 of her being in a car, you can see it from both ways.
00:19:26And I saw it from both ways.
00:19:27It can be someone took her or it can be that she ran away.
00:19:33So.
00:19:40I knew she didn't run away.
00:19:41She was on the way home and something happened.
00:19:45Just because of the information that we had about hanging out with Kelly and the fact that she told her
00:19:52mother that she was going one place and she ended up going somewhere else.
00:19:55We was thinking maybe that she had thrown herself on the way or got rid of it because she knew
00:20:00she was going to get in trouble.
00:20:01So we linked this as possibly while she was running away.
00:20:09Even with that, we were working the case as a regular missing person by gathering the information we had far
00:20:16as her friends or social media and doing the things as our policy have stated and work it at that
00:20:24point.
00:20:24Did you ever think she would run away?
00:20:28No, no.
00:20:29I never, never, never thought she would run away.
00:20:32Never.
00:20:36She didn't take her trotter.
00:20:38She didn't take clothes.
00:20:39She didn't take anything.
00:20:41So we were really, really scared at that moment.
00:20:45And that's when we as a family start looking for her.
00:20:50They needed to do something.
00:20:52Susanna is nowhere to be found.
00:20:53They go out.
00:20:54They start canvassing.
00:20:56Then the family thinks they found something.
00:21:00That's her. That's her.
00:21:02That is her.
00:21:03That's her.
00:21:14Just be honest.
00:21:17We don't throw out search parties unless it's a critical person.
00:21:21Diabetic.
00:21:22Can't live by their own.
00:21:24Something that will have exigent circumstances for us to find this person.
00:21:29She's 16, right?
00:21:31Let me make a couple phone calls.
00:21:34After filing the police report, we said that we weren't going to wait.
00:21:37We had to do something.
00:21:39And so using the screenshots that we had, we kind of retraced her steps.
00:21:46We started looking for her in the exact point where the app shows where the incident was.
00:21:54The ping hit at this area right here.
00:21:58Her family came here and it was unfortunate that this was not the location where Susanna was at.
00:22:04It was just the last area where her cell phone pinged at.
00:22:08We tried to retrace her steps that we thought that she would take.
00:22:12So we started at Kelly's apartment.
00:22:19You were the detectives.
00:22:27They needed to do something.
00:22:29Susanna is nowhere to be found.
00:22:30They go out.
00:22:31They start canvassing as well.
00:22:33We were asking all the businesses to see if they had any cameras.
00:22:37And we got to a daycare.
00:22:41The camera system that that place had, it was super old.
00:22:44So it was like an hour ahead or behind.
00:22:47I'll tell you what time it is.
00:22:49At first we couldn't get anything until he went back to the right hour.
00:22:54And we saw Susanna.
00:22:59That is her.
00:23:02That's her.
00:23:04We were like, oh my God.
00:23:06That's her.
00:23:07That's her.
00:23:08In the video, Susanna is wearing the yellow tank top, jeans and white crocs.
00:23:14She's alone.
00:23:15There's no cars near her.
00:23:17No strangers.
00:23:18She appeared to be walking towards the direction of her home.
00:23:21And nothing was wrong at that moment.
00:23:24Susanna walked this way.
00:23:25She walked past the cameras coming right there.
00:23:28She walked down this pathway here.
00:23:33Once we saw that, our mind was thinking that maybe she got kidnapped, she's being raped, she's trafficking.
00:23:39We just thought about the worst.
00:23:47It was a bad feeling because we knew for sure something had happened.
00:23:51Because she was on the way home.
00:23:56How did you feel?
00:24:00How did you feel?
00:24:02How did you feel?
00:24:22There was?
00:24:25We have supposed to have access to 40 to 50 missing persons reports in our system a month.
00:24:31And I would say the majority of those, they come back home within the first week.
00:24:37all hands are on deck when it comes to a person that's been abducted versus someone is just being
00:24:42missing because you have to show that foul play is actually involved and at that time we didn't
00:24:49have any information that Susanna was abducted by anyone however I had taken the case as a
00:24:55personal matter and I was looking for her like someone had taken her. My daughter is 16 at the
00:25:04time when this occurred. I looked at this as if she was my daughter because every day I saw my
00:25:11daughter I saw her so I was working harder every day because
00:25:32I came over here to the extra storage space knowing that Susanna was continuing her walk
00:25:38but unfortunately the video camera only caught the brush at the bottom of here it didn't capture the
00:25:44sidewalk. We actually checked the buses cameras during that time frame when she went missing.
00:25:51We didn't see any footage of her on any of the buses.
00:25:58At Sterling Glen apartments the only cameras that they have are on top of the building those are
00:26:04considered like live feed cameras which means live feed not recording.
00:26:14Once Susanna was reported missing and nobody was able to find any location for her or any
00:26:22information about where she had gone, Susanna's family and her friends and the community began to
00:26:29launch a campaign to try and find Susanna. We decided we would make these big posters
00:26:36and say have you seen her can you please call this number and we were posting all over social media.
00:26:43I remember I got a call from this woman she was saying I have your sister I have your sister
00:26:50in that moment my heart dropped. Especially nowadays with social media people do things to make you feel
00:27:01like a moment of hope and false hope and that's what happened. It was just not messing with me.
00:27:11Unfortunately there are evil people out there and they prey on this.
00:27:20The family is begging and pleading with anyone to find Susanna.
00:27:26We just don't know what happened. We don't know if she got picked up. We don't know if she got
00:27:28lost.
00:27:29She wouldn't just go out and like not tell her. This was a case that grabbed so much attention.
00:27:34You're talking about a teenager and all of a sudden she goes missing. It blows your mind.
00:27:42We did receive a lot of tips from people who were genuine and did care and tried to give potential
00:27:49sightings of her. One tip brings her family to the brink. Someone saw Susanna's bright curly hair
00:27:58at a hotel. Police are dispatched to the scene. What do they find?
00:28:20We're going out every single day. If we would get a tip at two in the morning we would be
00:28:26out looking
00:28:26for her at two in the morning. I remember that we would get a lot of like sightings of her.
00:28:33And so we would always go and check out.
00:28:37At one point a tip comes in that someone saw Susanna's bright curly hair at a hotel.
00:28:44And when we went we were just like driving around the hotel.
00:28:51And then in one of the windows we saw like a silhouette of two women and one had super curly
00:28:58hair.
00:28:59And we were like for sure that it was Susanna. So we called the police.
00:29:04We had officers go to the hotel because they were actually in the parking lot saying that Susanna
00:29:09was actually there. They were taking forever to get there and once the police got there they went
00:29:14inside and they were able to talk to one of the women that was there. But the lady that had
00:29:19left
00:29:19was the one with curly hair. And so we were like oh my god what if that was her. So
00:29:24we were left with
00:29:24that doubt if that lady was her or not.
00:29:34They never gave up hoping. I lived off their hope. After my eight hours of work I would still spend
00:29:41two
00:29:41three more extra hours during I would call it Susanna time. Just driving around just to seeing if I could
00:29:49see
00:29:50Susanna sitting on a stoop or sitting at the playground.
00:29:58Hoping that I would possibly see her just walking down the sidewalk.
00:30:04I mean my car doesn't really look like I mean a police car.
00:30:08So I would actually go in plain clothes and just like camp out at some of these hotels.
00:30:15And after a while some of the criminals who who do a lot of prostitution started noticing who I was.
00:30:22This is their RV camp. Someone said that they had thought they saw her saw a sighting of her over
00:30:28here.
00:30:29And then I just got into a routine that I would do the exact same thing.
00:30:33And I would go from the hotels to here to the businesses to the apartment complex to Sterling Glen.
00:30:45I just kept doing the exact same thing over and over because I just felt that
00:30:50if I didn't do it that would be the day that someone saw her.
00:30:55It was a super hard time.
00:30:58I was honestly really just trying to be strong for my mom.
00:31:18The longer that Susanna remained missing, the bigger of a story this became in the local community.
00:31:26It's been more than a month since anyone in Susanna Morales' family has heard from the 16-year-old.
00:31:31This flyer is all across Norcross in Gwinnett County.
00:31:34Today, Gwinnett police said they can't find her alone.
00:31:37Honestly, we're just tired of not knowing. That's like the hardest part.
00:31:40Well, our goal was just to make sure that everybody knew her face.
00:31:43If anybody were chasing her, they would call us.
00:31:46Gwinnett police on Monday said they have exhausted all options and need the public's help to find her.
00:31:50The Meadow Creek High student is not believed to be in any danger.
00:31:54What's the evidence for them to think that? Or do they have evidence that show otherwise?
00:31:59While we're going through the fall, police don't have any updates on it.
00:32:03During that time, I was pregnant.
00:32:06I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. All I did was cry.
00:32:10I got pregnant before I couldn't do anything.
00:32:12And so mainly, I felt guilt for not being able to look for her more.
00:32:20As the investigation began to, month after month, turn up no results,
00:32:26the Special Victims Unit turned the case over to the Homicide Unit.
00:32:35What's interesting about this case is there's a team with the First 48 TV show that was embedded
00:32:43with police during this investigation into this disappearance of a teenage girl.
00:32:50STU's been working a missing juvenile case for going actually six months today.
00:32:56I was asked to come in and assist me.
00:32:59And I just got kind of pushy, I guess. Not in a bad way. I just kind of hijacked the
00:33:04case.
00:33:05Carter is just, man, she's a warrior. And she knows she just has a knack for stuff.
00:33:17There was zero communication coming from Susanna after that crash alert.
00:33:22Literally zero activity. Nothing. She's a teenager. That's unheard of.
00:33:29We did have hope that somebody new was coming to the case and hopefully they were able to
00:33:33see something that nobody else saw.
00:33:36I started from scratch. We took metal detectors where her phone was last seen on Live 360 and
00:33:46attempted to locate it. We're just going to check the center median. I really want to find this.
00:33:56We didn't find the phone. We just tried.
00:34:01I spoke to friends. I spoke to family.
00:34:05You treat this just like a real homicide case. Not just a person just walked away.
00:34:10Everyone is now considered a suspect at this point.
00:34:13Throughout those investigations, the police realized that absolutely none of them had any
00:34:17information whatsoever as to Susanna's disappearance.
00:34:21So I asked for another media release to be sent out just to keep her name relevant.
00:34:25And we had no suspects at that time. We don't know who's watching.
00:34:30This is 16-year-old Susanna Morales, a teenager who's been missing since summer.
00:34:35Cell phone data and cameras show her last known location was in Gwinnett County walking home.
00:34:40We needed either someone come forward with some information or Susanna come home.
00:34:46If you have information, please call Gwinnett County Police.
00:34:50And then within about two weeks or so, we had a break in the case.
00:34:55I received a call saying, did you hear the news? They found your sister.
00:35:24We had the meeting where it was decided like I would kind of take over the case. And then we
00:35:28just started doing all these other
00:35:30search warrants. And we got a call.
00:35:36Gwinnett County 911, what's the location of the emergency?
00:35:39He was driving. He noticed on the side of Highway 316 a trail that went into the wood line.
00:35:47He had a small kind of off-road vehicle and he liked to adventure and find different trails.
00:35:53And so he took that trail down the side of Highway 316. He ultimately said that he got a phone
00:36:00call,
00:36:01got out and began to walk around the woods as he was on the phone.
00:36:05I was just out walking through the woods off the side of 316, but I found a human skull.
00:36:11Hey, we're going to have an officer head out that way.
00:36:19A patrol officer sent to check out those remains.
00:36:27The immediate assumption is, hey, it's probably an animal. It's a skull.
00:36:31434 right here. We're about a half mile.
00:36:35Oh, it's going. How are you doing?
00:36:38I'm good. It's that way, a little walk.
00:36:40It's going 100 yards.
00:36:41Can I show us?
00:36:42Sure.
00:36:42Officers arrive and they meet the man who made the 911 call from on the side of the highway.
00:36:47And he kind of leads them into the woods where he found it.
00:36:50Is it off like this road or is it a little of the ways off?
00:36:54Right up over here.
00:36:55There's no stores. There's no real residences. It's just literally the side of a highway.
00:37:02It's not a place that people normally would pull over and just walk around.
00:37:06Or there's no reason for someone to be there.
00:37:12We see on that officer's body cam, when he gets there, the officer sees a skull.
00:37:17And the remains are too big to be a small animal. And it's clearly they are human.
00:37:23And there's more. I walked straight that way.
00:37:27Step back a little bit. We're going to see how far we got to cordon this off.
00:37:30I got some taping back in my car too.
00:37:33So the Gwinnett County Police Department confirmed that they did appear to be human remains.
00:37:38And so the Gwinnett County Medical Examiner,
00:37:41Homicide Unit, and Crime Scene Specialist responded to the area.
00:37:46We were called out because a citizen discovered skeletal remains.
00:37:50This is just all wooded. There's nothing out here.
00:37:52You want to go get your phone?
00:37:53Yeah.
00:37:54This general area right here is where the remains were located.
00:37:58This is going to be all night.
00:38:00Yeah.
00:38:01The first thing that I saw when I got here was a human skull on the ground.
00:38:05Right now, they're collecting some of the larger bones of the foot.
00:38:08We've retrieved a significant portion of the skeleton. The skull is complete.
00:38:12There's no clothing. There's no wallet. There's no, you know, possessions, no effects.
00:38:18Police look and there's absolutely nothing to identify the person.
00:38:24Not even any indication if they're male or female, adult, child, nothing.
00:38:29I have not seen any sharp force injuries to the bones.
00:38:35Right now, we don't have a cause of death. We don't have an identity.
00:38:41Looking at it, the growth points is not fused.
00:38:45He said tibia, younger, 17, 18-inch.
00:38:50The first words from the forensic pathologist when she sees what we have are,
00:38:54do you have any missing teenage girls?
00:38:56So the medical examiner, Dr. Terry, she's able to tell that they're female,
00:39:02and that is when red flags start going off in our heads. Could this be Susanna?
00:39:09As we were sifting through the topsoil and recovering some of the small bones of the hands,
00:39:15one of the medical examiner investigators, he recovered some fingernails.
00:39:20We found some fingernails.
00:39:24It was pink that was peeling off of them, right?
00:39:26Yeah, like the black.
00:39:29This started missing.
00:39:31As soon as I saw the nail polish on the fingernails, I recalled a photo that
00:39:35Detective Carter had shown me of Susanna.
00:39:38In that photograph, her nails were painted black.
00:39:42It kind of put a chill in my spine.
00:39:45Something he took note of was that the remains that we were able to actually recover
00:39:50indicated that her clothes were not with her at the time that she was killed.
00:39:55I definitely remember thinking that whoever this girl turned out to be,
00:39:59you know, it was immediately obvious that she didn't walk out into the woods.
00:40:03As thick as it was, she didn't walk out here in the nude with no shoes on.
00:40:07That was immediately suspicious.
00:40:11By the time the medical examiner processed the scene,
00:40:14it was completely dark in the middle of the woods.
00:40:18Our immediate concern at that point was trying to verify if, in fact, these were Susanna.
00:40:26Could it really be Susanna?
00:40:28All of our hearts break because, of course, we still hope she's alive.
00:40:35I made arrangements to have uniformed officers out here so that there would be
00:40:39the bodies all night guarding this perimeter, making sure that no evidence could be tampered with,
00:40:44to come back out here the next day to search for additional items just because it was too dark to
00:40:49perform that thorough of a search.
00:40:54Hey, y'all hold up.
00:40:57Recruits found a gun.
00:40:59It felt really strange that a firearm would be out here.
00:41:01Probably 30 yards past where the skeletal remains were found.
00:41:20I was just out walking through the woods off the side of 316,
00:41:25but I found a human skull.
00:41:28I walked straight that way and there were a few more over there.
00:41:33So we went that next morning out to the remains.
00:41:42So just make sure that you're scanning carefully because they're going to be small pieces that
00:41:46you're looking for in addition to clothing, shoes, something like that.
00:41:51All right, y'all go ahead and start form the line from here down to the guard rail.
00:41:55Let's fill in any gaps.
00:41:57So we line up police officers to do a grid.
00:42:01Walking through the woods near that remains to see,
00:42:04is there anything that could have been left there?
00:42:09Hey, y'all hold up.
00:42:14Dr. Crink found a gun.
00:42:17Probably 200 feet off the highway here was a black pistol, just barely covered with pine straw.
00:42:24It was a nine millimeter firearm that had a flashlight attached to the firearm as well,
00:42:31and it appeared it had been there for some time.
00:42:35Probably 30 yards past where the skeletal remains were found.
00:42:41It's definitely suspicious.
00:42:43You want to run that really quick?
00:42:45All right, 10.9.
00:42:46Locked pistol, serial Bravo, Romeo, X-ray, Patel 074.
00:42:55That means it's stolen.
00:42:59The gun was loaded, but there was no evidence to say that it had been fired.
00:43:04That's where the gun was actually found, is where that dead end was.
00:43:08Definitely the close proximity that the gun was to the remains and then the gun being listed as
00:43:13stolen it, it doesn't take a rocket science to figure out that they're probably related.
00:43:17I want to talk to the guy who reported it missing.
00:43:23Police run that serial number of the firearm.
00:43:26They find out that that gun was reported missing by someone named Miles Bryant.
00:43:32Miles Bryant actually lived in the Sterling Glen Apartments.
00:43:37I pulled the report and saw that it had been reported stolen the same day that Susanna was
00:43:44reported as missing from the same location, Sterling Glen Apartments.
00:43:50She's last seen July 26, 2022, 10 o'clock p.m.
00:43:57The next morning in the early morning hours, that gun's reported stolen from the Sterling Glen Apartments.
00:44:04Miles Bryant is the owner of that gun.
00:44:07He lives at the Sterling Glen apartment complex where Susanna was last seen.
00:44:12All of our evidence is coming back to Sterling Glen.
00:44:16Miles Bryant, the guy who reported a gun stolen the day after Susanna went missing.
00:44:23He reported from his courtesy officer job at Windskate Village.
00:44:26He was working in security.
00:44:28Yes.
00:44:28Right?
00:44:31Oh my gosh.
00:44:32He's a cop.
00:44:33Yeah.
00:44:36The moment that I found out that he was a cop, it was like, are you serious?
00:44:40What the heck?
00:44:42Like, it was kind of extremely shocking because you never think you're going to see that.
00:44:50He's like, getting crazy.
00:44:52Where is he, the officer?
00:44:54Doorville.
00:44:55I learned that the person who reported the gun as stolen was Miles Bryant.
00:45:00From there, I started doing some research on him.
00:45:04Miles Bryant was working for the Doorville Police Department.
00:45:07Doorville is between our area in Gwinnett and the city of Atlanta, not far from us.
00:45:15His side gig was to do security.
00:45:18He was a courtesy officer for the apartment complex where he lived.
00:45:22And that's typical.
00:45:23You'll see officers live in different apartment complex and they'll do security for them.
00:45:28He appears very young and he is young.
00:45:30He was in his early 20s.
00:45:34Miles grew up here.
00:45:36He went to school here in Gwinnett County.
00:45:40Me and Miles Bryant grew up since I was in elementary school.
00:45:44We were best friends.
00:45:45He was kind of nerdy.
00:45:46He wore glasses.
00:45:47He liked me.
00:45:49He wasn't my type.
00:45:51So I just kind of threw him into the friend zone.
00:45:55Miles played football at Berkmar High School.
00:45:57He was a running back.
00:45:58His number was 23.
00:46:01He would post highlight videos of himself to his huddle account.
00:46:08He's an ROTC in high school.
00:46:11He joins the Army National Guard.
00:46:13Miles was very proud of his National Guard service.
00:46:17He posted photos of himself in his uniform on social media.
00:46:20He always wanted to be a police officer.
00:46:29Detective Carter began to review that report of the missing weapon, believing that it was
00:46:34very possible somebody had stolen this gun and used it to abduct Susanna.
00:46:43What's up, man?
00:46:44Hey, Mr. Bryant.
00:46:44Y'all probably getting slammed.
00:46:45I'm sorry.
00:46:46No, you're good.
00:46:47Yeah.
00:46:47At that point, that's when we pulled that body cam video on the gun reported missing.
00:46:52So, yesterday, um, so I can't find my wallet.
00:46:57And then, this morning, I looked on my floorboard and the, um...
00:47:02My Block 19 holster?
00:47:03Right.
00:47:04Oh, I hate to say it.
00:47:05I think I looked on my...
00:47:06They didn't smash the window or nothing.
00:47:08I left my door on lock.
00:47:09Miles Bryant reports that from his personal vehicle, his own truck, his wallet is taken and his gun is taken.
00:47:15I looked down this morning and saw my holster.
00:47:17I said, I can't find my wallet.
00:47:19My holster's there.
00:47:20My gun and the holster is never separate, you know?
00:47:21Okay.
00:47:22Anyway, I'll list in the truck just to say it's down on the report.
00:47:26Yeah.
00:47:28Um, I don't really care about, you know, the detectives or something like that.
00:47:31I just want to be on the...
00:47:31We found it very odd that Mr. Bryant would not want detectives to follow up on a stolen gun report.
00:47:39Hey, I just want to document this, but you don't need to send it to detectives.
00:47:43You don't need to investigate that.
00:47:46That's unheard of.
00:47:47If you need anything, hit me up.
00:47:49I'm more than willing to talk to you.
00:47:50Cool, man.
00:47:50Appreciate it, bro.
00:47:51Hey, hopefully you find your wallet and it's not actually...
00:47:53Yeah, I know.
00:47:54When the police department discovered that he was a police officer, they didn't want to believe
00:48:01that he was necessarily involved in this. But at the same time, it was very difficult to
00:48:08figure out and think about how his gun could have ended up in the woods where Susanna was last
00:48:13located, 22 miles away from where he lived.
00:48:17I was like hardcore at that point. We need to talk to this person because they're definitely
00:48:21going to have information or some kind of involvement.
00:48:23We're literally talking to everyone here, so we got no leads, man. We're just...
00:48:40We need to talk to this person. We need to talk to this person, and we need to talk to
00:48:50this person.
00:48:56White...
00:48:56Why?
00:49:00Why?
00:49:01For about 10 minutes...
00:49:05Because we uh,
00:49:13We didn't want to believe that it was her.
00:49:18And we're about to go make death notification to the family.
00:49:23I'm not looking forward to it, but it has to be done.
00:49:34Break the horrible news.
00:49:40You guys want to go inside for a second?
00:49:45I remember going to my mom's house to wait for the police,
00:49:48so I know Bakers and Carter were coming.
00:49:50And then that's when they informed us that they had found her remains.
00:49:55And I was like, what? They found my sister.
00:50:00I remember Brandon's hearing my mom screaming.
00:50:05And I was in shock. I was like, that can't be true.
00:50:08Like, that can't be true.
00:50:10My mom literally just fell to the ground.
00:50:13Her soul just left her body.
00:50:16It was the hardest thing that I've ever done,
00:50:17and to this day, it's still, obviously, you can see that it still sticks with me.
00:50:22It's the worst news that she kills her as a mother.
00:50:43I was like, I know that I'm not afraid to say it.
00:50:46I don't feel like it's still here.
00:50:48I'm going to go to sleep every day.
00:50:48I love it.
00:50:49I love it.
00:50:50You know, I want to sit down whenever it comes to sleep.
00:50:51But I smell it.
00:50:56I never feel like I'm coming to sleep every day.
00:51:00There's no doubt in my heart.
00:51:00I love about it.
00:51:00disposed of, we have no indication of what happened to Susanna.
00:51:07But what the medical examiner also determined very quickly was that there was also absolutely
00:51:13no evidence of any clothing that had been on Susanna prior to her being left there.
00:51:19And that was significant because with an accidental death, it would be very unlikely, nearly unheard
00:51:26of for Susanna to not be dressed, to not be clothed.
00:51:29And so that immediately told us that we suspected this was a homicide.
00:51:36Investigators in Gwinnett County just told us human remains found along Highway 316, that's
00:51:41in Gwinnett County, are those of a 16-year-old girl who disappeared in July.
00:51:47I remember Carter promising me that she would find out what happened and who did it.
00:51:54Looking at Miles, we're kind of wondering, you know, what his involvement may have been.
00:51:59Is he a true victim and had his gun stolen and whoever stole it is responsible for maybe
00:52:04taking Susanna?
00:52:05Or is this a ruse to distance himself from his gun being located out in the woods where
00:52:12the remains were found?
00:52:13They then obtained a search warrant for Mr. Bryant's cellular phone records.
00:52:21We just got phone records back on our suspects.
00:52:24He is in the wood line at 1 a.m., which is three hours later after Susanna goes missing.
00:52:34Now Miles Bryant was a police officer.
00:52:36He had two phones, a personal cell phone and a work cell phone.
00:52:40Both phones put him in that location and he's in the same location at the same time as Susanna's
00:52:47remains.
00:52:48Oh, I wanted to go arrest him.
00:52:49I wanted to go arrest Miles, like, right away.
00:52:51I wanted to leave that night and go get him because it was alarming.
00:52:55I'm like, he's in a position of power.
00:52:56I'm like, we can't just leave him like this.
00:52:59But this is a cop involved in this.
00:53:00We need to make sure we handle this correctly.
00:53:03I went out there and just waited for him to walk outside and we just approached him
00:53:07asking for his help for our investigation on Susanna.
00:53:12Hey, man.
00:53:12What's up?
00:53:14You doing all right?
00:53:15We're just down here.
00:53:16We're trying to look for anybody helping us out with that missing girl.
00:53:20Oh.
00:53:21Yeah.
00:53:21You're the courtesy officer or something?
00:53:23Yes, sir.
00:53:23Cool, man.
00:53:24You know anything about that?
00:53:26Yeah.
00:53:27No, I don't.
00:53:27Miles's response to the information he had about Susanna was a little surprising.
00:53:32He should be more informed with what's going on in his complex if he's a good courtesy officer.
00:53:37You know, you got some time for us to come up to our headquarters and just talk about,
00:53:40you know, what you see on a daily basis and stuff like that.
00:53:43Yeah.
00:53:44So at that time, there was no arrest warrants for Miles.
00:53:46So he really needed to come voluntarily.
00:53:49So we kind of just urged him that we needed his help.
00:53:52Yeah.
00:53:53Is that to be today?
00:53:54Yeah.
00:53:55Yeah.
00:53:56Now?
00:53:58Uh, I have to go meet my girlfriend and I have to work with him.
00:54:02OK.
00:54:03What time is work at?
00:54:04Four.
00:54:05Yeah, it should be.
00:54:06We're literally talking to everyone here.
00:54:08We got no leads, man.
00:54:09We're just trying to document everything.
00:54:10That's all we are.
00:54:11No problem.
00:54:12OK?
00:54:12You can get up front seat, all right, ma'am?
00:54:16Yeah, we'll get you up there, knock this out.
00:54:18We don't put him in the back of a patrol car.
00:54:20We actually let him sit up front in the police car, trying to make him feel comfortable.
00:54:25Make him see, hey, we're just police officers, one-on-one friends, talking to each other.
00:54:40So we brought Miles up here, he sat in this chair here, and we interviewed him.
00:54:45Hey, how you doing?
00:54:46In the interview room, we have seats where we put certain people.
00:54:49Um, like where a detective sits, where a suspect sits.
00:54:52We let him sit in a detective seat.
00:54:54We didn't change anything.
00:54:56Um, we wanted him to be as comfortable as possible.
00:54:58Um, I'm a detective partner.
00:55:00We don't miss.
00:55:02Time to get a lot of for this case.
00:55:03So I gotta start working a little bit more.
00:55:06So Detective Carter obviously wanted to build a rapport with him.
00:55:10They're both working for the same goal, trying to accomplish the same thing, and that's
00:55:14find a missing girl.
00:55:15Have you ever seen her?
00:55:16Mm-hmm.
00:55:17She used to be older quite a bit.
00:55:18Oh, OK.
00:55:19I, I haven't recognized the picture.
00:55:22I haven't recognized it.
00:55:22So the initial plan for the interview again, just go in there, be relaxed, ask him very open,
00:55:27and did questions.
00:55:29I asked him about his gun.
00:55:30Have you heard anything about the gun?
00:55:33And I played dumb.
00:55:34I know that your, your gun was stolen.
00:55:37Do you know if it was located or anything yet?
00:55:38No, I've heard anything.
00:55:39I haven't read it yet.
00:55:40I wonder, we probably need to check that.
00:55:42And then, at one point when I think I got as much information as I probably could get
00:55:47from him with just being super casual, I dropped that one bomb.
00:55:50Basically, my sergeant did confirm, so we did find your gun.
00:55:54Actually, yeah.
00:55:55You watch the news.
00:55:56You know we found Savannah.
00:55:58Yeah.
00:55:58But there was actually a gun found out there, too.
00:56:01For real?
00:56:01Yeah.
00:56:02You been shaking?
00:56:03Yeah.
00:56:03It's crazy, you know?
00:56:05I told you you were coming up to, you know, we wanted your help and everything, and your
00:56:08hands were shaking in my car.
00:56:10All right.
00:56:11Let's look back.
00:56:27We had not disclosed prior to the interview with Mr. Bryant that we had found a firearm near
00:56:33Susana's body.
00:56:36So he learned that for the first time sitting there in the interview room.
00:56:41That's crazy, I found my gun.
00:56:43And it's the same serial number, he just verified it.
00:56:46That's crazy.
00:56:47I know.
00:56:48So help me walk through it a little bit.
00:56:50Do you know where she was found?
00:56:52Mmm, 315 somewhere.
00:56:54At that point, when I told him we found his gun, he does start shaking a little bit more.
00:56:58That's crazy, I found my gun.
00:57:00So, try to...
00:57:00Do you think it's involved?
00:57:02I mean, that's a crazy coincidence.
00:57:04Yeah.
00:57:04I think it got stolen from you the same day, so it was probably someone that was walking
00:57:07around out there.
00:57:08Yeah.
00:57:09Try to think hard with me.
00:57:10Did you know her at all?
00:57:12Around?
00:57:13Nothing?
00:57:13Nothing at all.
00:57:15Look, your gun was found there.
00:57:17Yeah.
00:57:17You know how this goes.
00:57:18We have to do, like, this, that, and a third to do everything.
00:57:21Um, which we did.
00:57:24We did our due diligence.
00:57:25So I did get your phone records.
00:57:26Mm-hmm.
00:57:27Um, so I had no...
00:57:28I know you were already up there.
00:57:30Mm-hmm.
00:57:30So, kind of tell...
00:57:32You were there for a little while.
00:57:33So, once Miles was confronted with the phone records, he changed his story to say that
00:57:37he got in this crazy chase fight with his girlfriend.
00:57:41I remember...
00:57:42God, I mean that part.
00:57:43She tried to chase me.
00:57:44My girl tried to chase me with her car.
00:57:47Yeah.
00:57:47I mean, I was driving around.
00:57:48I was driving, and I remember I was driving, and I was still in our area.
00:57:54I remember I was driving.
00:57:55She tried to chase me.
00:57:57Yeah.
00:57:57Like the Jerry Springer episode.
00:57:58Yeah.
00:57:59His story went from there's no reason I would be there, I'm never there, to, oh, yeah,
00:58:06actually I was there.
00:58:07And I stopped and pulled over, and I was on the phone.
00:58:10Going up towards the Lawrenceville area, I think...
00:58:12Oh, man, that sounds bad.
00:58:13It is over around 316.
00:58:14I mean, you're saying that's bad.
00:58:16I mean, what are...
00:58:17The Lawrenceville dig, you're saying that's bad.
00:58:19Yeah.
00:58:19I mean, the area where...
00:58:20Yeah, because...
00:58:21I'm gonna be honest.
00:58:22I'm really sorry, okay?
00:58:23So...
00:58:23Yeah.
00:58:23My gun was found in that area, you know.
00:58:26I technically was in that area, stuff like that, you know.
00:58:30So...
00:58:30I mean...
00:58:31It sounds bad, but I...
00:58:32Man, I don't know.
00:58:32Miles ultimately, you know, says that he admits that he was out there.
00:58:37He kind of has to, because his phone put him out there.
00:58:39But he said he was...
00:58:40Doesn't get out of his vehicle, doesn't do anything in the woods.
00:58:43No.
00:58:44No.
00:59:00No.
00:59:10Keep in mind.
00:59:11No.
00:59:11No.
00:59:11No.
00:59:12No.
00:59:12No.
00:59:12No, no, no, no.
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