Wild Crime: Ain't She Purty? | S4 Ep. 1

Speaker 1 Hi 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 2 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland, Ohio, into a crime scene.

Speaker 3 We've got something big going on here.

Speaker 5 The first thing that hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 2 A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, The Hand in the Window.

Speaker 2 Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 7 Hey there, 2020 podcast listeners. This is Deborah Roberts, co-anchor of 2020.

Speaker 7 We're back with a new season of Wild Crime, a thrilling series from ABC News Studios about a disappearance in the Alaskan wilderness and a hunt for a killer that leads investigators across the country.

Speaker 7 Here's 11 Skulls, Episode 1. Ain't She Pretty?

Speaker 7 Alaska, a teenager vanished from her job serving coffee.

Speaker 6 I don't know if my daughter's being fed, taken care of her, if she's still alive, if she's getting eaten.

Speaker 6 Alaska is huge.

Speaker 10 Samantha could absolutely have been it.

Speaker 10 I want her home.

Speaker 1 Keep my sister alive.

Speaker 11 Please help find my daughter.

Speaker 12 Secrets in the wilderness. Beautiful yet treacherous landscapes.
These are the stories of investigators who solve murders in wild places.

Speaker 15 Inkward hit a new record. The most snowfall for this time of year.

Speaker 16 Some folks haven't been able to get their cars out.

Speaker 15 Working for days to remove all of the snow.

Speaker 17 February in Alaska.

Speaker 18 It's dark most of the time.

Speaker 17 You wake up, it's dark, and you get off work, it's dark.

Speaker 10 There's a lot of things people do to get through our long winters.

Speaker 19 A lot of people, like myself, drink a lot of coffee.

Speaker 17 Coffee's an important element for the Alaskan. You'll see coffee stands and coffee shops almost on every corner.

Speaker 6 They're usually being run by young women.

Speaker 17 A lot of times they are working alone.

Speaker 20 Samantha Coney was working in a coffee stand.

Speaker 21 She's an 18-year-old girl,

Speaker 20 mostly interested in her friends, you know,

Speaker 10 prom,

Speaker 10 school.

Speaker 15 She had a boyfriend

Speaker 20 doing things that most teenagers do, you know, with her future and her dreams,

Speaker 21 you know, and her mind.

Speaker 16 911, what is the location of the emergency?

Speaker 16 I am at Common Grounds Espresso on Old Stewart and Sutherland.

Speaker 1 My daughter works at the Common Grounds Espresso, and she's been missing since she got off work last night.

Speaker 22 What's your daughter's name?

Speaker 22 Samantha. That's what it co-name.

Speaker 16 Get officers in your way.

Speaker 17 I got a call towards the end of the shift about a possible abduction from Barista at a coffee shop.

Speaker 17 I get there and talk to the barista's father and her boyfriend.

Speaker 23 What they told me was Mr.

Speaker 17 Koenig's daughter worked at the coffee shop. She didn't come home last night.

Speaker 24 I was concerned when he showed up at 8:15 to pick her up, and she wasn't here. And I think at 11:55, he got a text message on his phone for her.

Speaker 9 They received a text from her saying she was angry at her boyfriend and wasn't going to be home.

Speaker 24 I saw someone in her truck at 3 o'clock this morning.

Speaker 7 In her truck? Yes, sir.

Speaker 27 At home?

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Sometime in the night, they found somebody rummaging through Samantha's truck that was parked out in front of their house and chased after him.

Speaker 28 But the guy got away.

Speaker 9 Any reason we didn't report it?

Speaker 29 I just figured that she just had someone to get something out of her truck.

Speaker 17 So I'm trying to put all this together. I have a father and boyfriend who say that a girl didn't come home.
Somebody broke into a car,

Speaker 17 but they didn't call the police. That would be the most logical thing in my mind.
Your girlfriend's missing. You get this weird text, and now somebody's rummaging through her truck.

Speaker 17 Why didn't you call the police?

Speaker 23 I don't know.

Speaker 17 She some guy Kind of raises red flags, like, what is going on here? Why are you reporting this? And then getting mad at me for asking you questions.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 17 So in my mind, I'm thinking, maybe she's got another boyfriend somewhere and she didn't want to come home. And I'm leaning more towards that than I am an abduction.

Speaker 17 But I learned a long time ago in my career, be careful of your opinions and stick to facts.

Speaker 17 I'm thinking, I don't know if this is truly an abduction, but we still have to investigate it as if it was.

Speaker 17 So at that point, I called Sergeant Markowicz.

Speaker 30 My name is Slavomir Markowicz.

Speaker 31 I'm a retired sergeant with the Jankric Police Department.

Speaker 31 I am originally from Poland and I have an engineering degree, but the police work was something that always fascinated me.

Speaker 19 So I applied to the Anchorage Police Department and I was hired.

Speaker 30 That was one of the happiest days in my life.

Speaker 30 I was at my desk in the homicide unit.

Speaker 19 The officer told me that we have a case of a missing person, Samantha Koenig.

Speaker 35 She was supposed to get a ride home from her boyfriend.

Speaker 36 When he arrived, she wasn't there.

Speaker 30 At the Anchorage Police Department, we were closely with the FBI and they offered their help.

Speaker 27 I'm Kat Nelson and I'm a special agent with the FBI.

Speaker 27 Samantha was kind of your typical teenager to me.

Speaker 27 She seemed to have a close-knit group of friends that cared a lot about her.

Speaker 27 Samantha was living at her father's house.

Speaker 27 Her boyfriend would also stay there as well.

Speaker 20 James Coning is Samantha Coening's father.

Speaker 20 He's also known as Sonny by his closest friends.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 20 he's a really sweet person.

Speaker 28 A biker type fellow.

Speaker 39 Loves his Harley.

Speaker 20 In a lot of people's minds, if you're a biker guy, of course you're a bad person.

Speaker 20 Samantha was his only biological child.

Speaker 20 Samantha was his world.

Speaker 8 I've got 100% custody of Samantha and I have had since she was about two years old. Her mother is around.
She is worried for Samantha's safety.

Speaker 40 My name is Kayleigh and Samantha is my younger sister.

Speaker 40 We have the same mom.

Speaker 40 When we were younger, we did live together. She wanted to make everyone laugh.
I was always like the shy one.

Speaker 40 Samantha has the confidence.

Speaker 40 So it's almost like she got me out of my bubble.

Speaker 39 She would like to write music, write poems.

Speaker 40 She was really good at it.

Speaker 10 Samantha and her dad were very close.

Speaker 19 James Koenig said that it would be totally out of her character to just walk away and not inform him.

Speaker 30 But on the other hand, it's a coffee stand right in the center of a big commercial area.

Speaker 34 It would be very unusual for someone to, you know, disappear without anybody noticing.

Speaker 43 From the very beginning, the police are wondering: well, how true can this be?

Speaker 43 If you're that frantic about this missing 18-year-old, you don't call the cops, like,

Speaker 43 what is going on here?

Speaker 19 Several officers were at the scene.

Speaker 30 We searched the coffee stand collecting evidence.

Speaker 17 I worked and worked and worked, trying to find evidence of any kind inside that coffee hut. I threw fingerprint powder everywhere, and I was looking for anything and everything, not just fingerprints.

Speaker 17 I was looking for items a suspect may have left behind, items she may have left behind, and I couldn't find anything. Not only did I not find anything, there was no sign of struggle.

Speaker 17 Now there was another aristo who was supposed to come in and open up that morning, which she did, but cash was missing out of the cash drawer.

Speaker 44 It's really abnormal to walk in and find everything, you know, not taken care of, not closed up. You know, Sammy was a diligent worker.

Speaker 26 There was talk about whether it was really an abduction or was it a boyfriend or was it somebody that she knew and they were just stealing the money to go away somewhere.

Speaker 30 It seems like Alaska has more than its share of missing persons cases.

Speaker 32 And a lot of that is not crime related, but just a wilderness.

Speaker 15 Anchorage is a city, but we're surrounded by mountains and forests, and there's still very much a kind of remote feeling to it.

Speaker 15 It can be very difficult to find somebody who goes missing in Alaska because it is such a massive wilderness.

Speaker 11 There are bears and moose.

Speaker 15 There are huge parts of the state that are not even on a road system that you can only access by plane.

Speaker 19 During the winter, there are people that fall through ice on snow machines.

Speaker 26 A lot of people go missing and are never found.

Speaker 15 There was no idea where Samantha was.

Speaker 15 She disappeared from Anchorage,

Speaker 15 but Samantha could absolutely have been anywhere.

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Speaker 15 The night that Samantha disappeared, Samantha's boyfriend got a text message on his phone from Samantha's phone.

Speaker 30 Text said something to the effect of, I'm going to spend a couple of days with friends. Let dad know.

Speaker 30 Dwayne tried to call her. He sent texts back to her.

Speaker 46 He was totally confused.

Speaker 10 So we're wondering who are these friends?

Speaker 11 What's her circle look like?

Speaker 27 Is there any truth to that text message?

Speaker 15 Samantha's dad certainly was suspicious of that text message.

Speaker 30 The way the text was written didn't sound like Samantha at all.

Speaker 8 Things just didn't seem to add up.

Speaker 17 And a little bit later, in the process of talking to everybody in this investigation, I asked about video because I saw there was video cameras there.

Speaker 46 It's 2012.

Speaker 42 It's not like 80s or 90s where you build your cases only by fingerprints and witnesses.

Speaker 22 You know, now you look for the video evidence.

Speaker 51 That's the first thing you do.

Speaker 35 Later in the afternoon, when we finally had the video, We played it in the Cyber Crimes Unit office.

Speaker 41 We all wanted to see that video.

Speaker 30 The lieutenant, the captain, patrol officers, and some detectives from my unit.

Speaker 30 We played it time and time again.

Speaker 15 In the video, you can see Samantha is closing up for the night in the coffee stand, cleaning and wiping things down.

Speaker 15 It's late at night, so there aren't many coffee drinkers that are driving up to the stand.

Speaker 15 And then you can see somebody walking up.

Speaker 27 You don't see a lot of people just walk up as people are driving a vehicle.

Speaker 15 Samantha goes to the window,

Speaker 15 so she starts making coffee.

Speaker 18 And she appears to be engaging with the person.

Speaker 35 At one point, she turns towards the window and she reacts.

Speaker 15 I vividly remember Samantha doing this and putting her hands up.

Speaker 30 She then walks across the coffee stand and turns the lights off.

Speaker 30 Samantha took the money from the cash register.

Speaker 35 Then Samantha puts her coat on.

Speaker 35 That was the moment where a lot of detectives focused on

Speaker 34 she casually pulled her hair from behind the coat and spread it around the coat

Speaker 47 some detectives were saying well look you know she's just behaves normally you know there is no fear she's you know just like getting ready to go out

Speaker 27 And then this individual just jumped straight into the coffee hut.

Speaker 27 The windows on the coffee huts are usually pretty high up off the ground. So this individual just leapt into the coffee hut through the window just very effortlessly.

Speaker 15 It had to be somebody that was taller and definitely very physically fit to be able to do it with such ease.

Speaker 27 There's no audio to the video. What is he telling her? What is she saying back to him?

Speaker 22 And then they both leave.

Speaker 41 They walk side by side through the parking lot.

Speaker 41 It looked like they both walked out peacefully.

Speaker 35 There's no struggle.

Speaker 42 We didn't know what to make of it.

Speaker 43 There are police watching this, some of whom are theorizing that this is planned and staged and that Samantha is in on it.

Speaker 22 Them officers thought that there was no resistance, there was no fight.

Speaker 43 He seems calm, and she seems calm.

Speaker 27 Do they know each other?

Speaker 51 Maybe she took the money and just wanted to have a good time somewhere.

Speaker 15 Did she leave willingly? Did she not leave willingly?

Speaker 36 Also, right next to the light switch, there's an alarm.

Speaker 30 If she was in danger, why didn't she hit the alarm?

Speaker 36 She had a perfect chance to press the alarm button.

Speaker 4 She didn't do that.

Speaker 15 All of the investigators, both APD and FBI, were trying to really understand what the circumstances were of that video.

Speaker 15 The text message from Samantha's phone saying that she was not going to be coming home.

Speaker 15 Between that text message and the video, where you can see Samantha walking out, she's not being dragged.

Speaker 45 This is a well-traveled, well-lit area.

Speaker 43 Who Who would do this in the wide open stretches of, you know, Anchorage?

Speaker 15 There was definitely debate.

Speaker 15 Did Samantha leave willingly or was this a situation where she was being forced out?

Speaker 15 My background is in psychology and forensic psychology. I applied to the Bureau and got in in 2004 and was fortunate enough to get assigned to Alaska and I've been here ever since.

Speaker 27 When I first started in the Bureau, Jolene was already an agent at the office. She was obviously a phenomenal agent.
It was always my dream and my goal to work a case with her.

Speaker 15 I was very happy that Catherine was going to be involved. She's just kind of got a brain and a knack for picking things up and putting pieces together.

Speaker 27 Working in Alaska, we're working with our local and state partners all the time.

Speaker 26 My name is Jeffrey Bell.

Speaker 26 I came up here in 1984.

Speaker 26 I worked in Prudhoe Bay and the oil fields as an operator in a refinery up there. And then I applied to be an Anchorage Police Officer.

Speaker 26 I worked for the Anchorage Police Department, but I was also sworn as a U.S. Marshal/slash FBI investigator.

Speaker 15 We rely on each other a lot, we work together a lot. It's a very, very close working relationship.
And that really is what solves these cases.

Speaker 30 As we're analyzing the video, we focused on the moment that she walked out with somebody.

Speaker 27 Initially, we're focused on the very first part of it.

Speaker 27 When we first see this person coming into contact with Samantha, when they're initially leaving.

Speaker 41 And that was about 8.20 p.m.

Speaker 50 We were able to see her leave the scene, so looking at the rest of that video would not have been necessarily the highest of priorities early on.

Speaker 53 But when we looked at that video for a longer time,

Speaker 22 We noticed that there was like a light showing up on the counter.

Speaker 54 The light would come on and then it would disappear.

Speaker 53 So we thought that it could be a phone.

Speaker 46 And then we looked further at the video and to our surprise we saw that after 11 p.m.

Speaker 31 the person came to the coffee stand.

Speaker 33 That person was wearing a

Speaker 30 headlight, you know, like right in the center of the head.

Speaker 31 he spent some time in the coffee stand looking for something

Speaker 15 Samantha left her cell phone at the coffee stand and so it appeared that the individual went back to the coffee stand to retrieve her phone

Speaker 30 that also coincided with the fact that the first texts from Samantha's phone came at 11 30 p.m.

Speaker 22 So we have that person entering the coffee stand after 11 p.m.

Speaker 30 and then 11 30 p.m.

Speaker 31 a text comes from Samantha's farm.

Speaker 26 Once we found that somebody returned to the coffee shop and took her cell phone, obviously we became very concerned that something bad had happened to her.

Speaker 43 Someone has clearly abducted Samantha, and

Speaker 15 the clock is ticking.

Speaker 16 We're hoping to find Samantha.

Speaker 45 We believe that we will be able to find her alive.

Speaker 8 And we carry that hope within us.

Speaker 26 The first 48 hours or so, in any case, is important. Try to develop as many leads as you can.

Speaker 26 Because James Koenig and Dwayne didn't report her missing the night before, we were already way behind the power curve in Samantha's disappearance.

Speaker 25 Friends and family described Samantha as someone who makes you feel like a best friend.

Speaker 27 She's funny, she's out there.

Speaker 15 I was surprised on how many people actually knew her.

Speaker 26 The city of Anchorage was on heightened alert.

Speaker 15 I can't believe this happened here in Anchorage.

Speaker 37 For it to actually happen so out of the blue, I mean, it's scary. Not as a priest or just as a young lady.

Speaker 23 Samantha was last wearing a pair of furry black boots. If we can cover two miles square radius from fireweed.

Speaker 37 It's important for people to see that she's still out there and we still need to keep looking.

Speaker 26 The response from the public was overwhelmingly supportive of the Koenig family and trying to do anything that they could to help.

Speaker 55 Samantha's mother Darlene was part indigenous and that made Samantha Koenig part indigenous and so that rallied a lot of the community and the indigenous community here in Anchorage.

Speaker 52 The family, James Koenig, and some volunteers started to distribute flyers about her being missing.

Speaker 15 There was people putting flyers up that knew her and there there was just tons of them.

Speaker 40 We haven't heard anything and my stepdad saying that he knew something was wrong. Like he had that passion to get the word out there quickly.

Speaker 40 I spent a lot of time putting flyers on cars.

Speaker 27 You couldn't go around a street corner and not see a business that had freed up their space on their billboard to show her missing picture and information.

Speaker 10 It was everywhere.

Speaker 15 Co-workers worked to cover every inch of town with this poster.

Speaker 54 At that point in the investigation, we learned that Samantha Koenig and Duane Tortolani had a joint bank account and they both had debit cards for that bank account.

Speaker 35 And on the night of Samantha's disappearance, Duane saw a man in Samantha's truck.

Speaker 46 It It looks like he was searching the vehicle, looking for something.

Speaker 30 Dwayne told us that nothing appeared to be missing.

Speaker 19 But we looked at the bank records and we saw that Samantha Koenig's debit card was used.

Speaker 35 We realized that it was Samantha's debit card that was missing.

Speaker 26 A few minutes after it was taken from the truck, the debit card was used to check the balance. The account was accessed, but no money was taken.

Speaker 46 That was interesting.

Speaker 31 Someone had to know the FIN number.

Speaker 42 Why not take the money from the account?

Speaker 26 The person was in a mask, had a big puffy jacket on, so you really couldn't tell how big that person was.

Speaker 27 It wasn't exactly clear that it was the same individual from the coffee hut, but there weren't enough things different between them that would completely exclude that as being a possibility.

Speaker 43 But there was another key detail that really raised red flags for the investigators. Some of them felt that James was a truth teller, that he loved his daughter, that he would never have harmed her,

Speaker 43 while the other half think something isn't right here. Please look into him.

Speaker 26 As a matter of routine, we would want to investigate James Koenig's home, where Samantha lived, to look for any information on her computers or tablets, which is pretty standard in a missing person's case, especially with younger kids.

Speaker 10 And he refused to let the police department do the initial search.

Speaker 43 He came to the door, opened it, shimmied himself through a little crack, and then closed it behind him.

Speaker 43 And then, when they asked to speak to Dwayne,

Speaker 43 it was the same thing.

Speaker 17 Do they have something to hide? I'm still suspicious.

Speaker 43 If you are an investigator who from day one has found this guy suspicious, this looks really bad and is reinforcing your theory of the case that James was somehow involved.

Speaker 30 Statistically, when a young woman is going missing, 80 or 90% of the time, it's a boyfriend or husband or someone very close to her.

Speaker 19 So we had had to look at Dwayne.

Speaker 35 Dwayne told us that he had called Samantha right before the end of her shift and told her he was going to pick her up.

Speaker 41 We saw in that video that's what happened.

Speaker 30 He came to the coffee stamp about 8.30 p.m. and he walked around the coffee stand.

Speaker 28 I called her phone a couple times.

Speaker 29 I was looking to see if she left it at work.

Speaker 19 Dwayne worked at a restaurant and he had an alibi for that day.

Speaker 32 Very quickly, I realized it was very unlikely that he had anything to do with it.

Speaker 26 Ultimately, investigators got a search warrant to search Mr.

Speaker 8 Koenig's house.

Speaker 26 At the time, we thought maybe he was hiding a marijuana grow or something.

Speaker 10 But that turned out to be nothing.

Speaker 43 I think that James Koenig is having a really tough time trusting the cops.

Speaker 23 I don't know if my daughter's being fed, taken care of, if she's still alive, if she's getting any sleep.

Speaker 41 Please help find my daughter.

Speaker 27 It was just so obvious how much her father cared about Samantha and what a close relationship they had.

Speaker 20 James was devastated that his daughter was missing and he had no idea where she was or what had happened to her.

Speaker 21 And he wanted her to come home.

Speaker 27 I also grew up in this area. I know what it was like being a teenager in Alaska.

Speaker 27 You know, the reaction that her dad would have at her not coming home is the reaction my dad would have at me for not coming home.

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Speaker 15 It's been three days since 18-year-old Samantha Coating disappeared from her job at Common Grounds Espresso in Midtown Anchorage.

Speaker 35 It wasn't like a normal missing person case.

Speaker 42 We are becoming more and more concerned.

Speaker 35 So we started to expand our investigation.

Speaker 50 One of the normal protocols would be to go and canvass the area, look for other surveillance videos.

Speaker 26 We ultimately recovered video from the Home Depot store, which is across the street, from where the kiosk was.

Speaker 34 You could see a couple walking from the parking lot near a busy restaurant and go into a vehicle, a white shavy pickup truck.

Speaker 50 Samantha and the suspect got in that vehicle and then drove from the Home Depot parking lot onto the road.

Speaker 27 Once Samantha leaves with this unknown individual, we start picking up the surveillance from the street cameras.

Speaker 27 There was a really great image of this white pickup truck.

Speaker 27 However, the license plate was unreadable on the video.

Speaker 19 So we knew it was a white Chevy pickup truck that the suspect was using.

Speaker 50 The traffic unit was then vehicle by vehicle trying to identify all the white trucks in the city that you're making model.

Speaker 31 There are 700 white Chevrolet pickup trucks in Enkridge and the area.

Speaker 22 So of course when when you have that many vehicles, it takes a long time.

Speaker 15 Investigators say surveillance footage shows a stranger dressed in a black hoodie.

Speaker 35 It was a stranger from Dachshund.

Speaker 22 During that time period, we told the media we have a video, and it's apparent from the video that it's kidnapping.

Speaker 57 The Anchorage Police are not sharing what they say is proof. Samantha Cooning was kidnapped, not even with her family.

Speaker 58 We have not seen any surveillance. This is just unbelievable.

Speaker 45 And there was was a lot of public demand.

Speaker 4 You know, we want to see the video. Why doesn't the police department want to release the video?

Speaker 57 Police say it will not help them solve the crime.

Speaker 11 If we were to present them now, it would have the effect of tainting a jury.

Speaker 37 Samantha Koenig's mother says she is living a nightmare.

Speaker 58 They have detectives on it, but to me, they're not working fast enough.

Speaker 11 We keep waiting for some good news.

Speaker 40 I feel like the whole time I was wanting to stay as positive as possible. We're gonna find Samantha.
She's gonna come home to us.

Speaker 20 James asked me if I would build a Facebook page for Samantha.

Speaker 11 There were, of course, trolls like there is in any social media.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 20 people can be so cruel.

Speaker 20 There were people that had their own view that she wasn't actually missing.

Speaker 40 It's not easy when people are telling you, oh, this is fake, this isn't real.

Speaker 40 For someone to fake this

Speaker 40 would be messed up.

Speaker 16 As police continue to search for clues on why Samantha was taken from common grounds, the family says they're optimistic she'll be found alive.

Speaker 8 I got to keep my spirits up and

Speaker 8 know that my heart still feels her and she's okay.

Speaker 57 Corey Allen Young, CBS 11 News.

Speaker 55 I would say with James, he was definitely frustrated. I know as the days went on, there was more law enforcement added to the case.

Speaker 43 James Koenig did what I think anybody would do.

Speaker 43 He went online. He went to the internet.
He used it to publicize his daughter's disappearance.

Speaker 8 Right now, we're probably getting two or three tips a day.

Speaker 20 Whenever we got what we thought might be evidence, we'd forward it on over to the police department.

Speaker 8 Whether whether they're helpful or not I really can't decide I don't know what avenue the police are taking in the investigation

Speaker 52 James Koenig established a reward fund

Speaker 26 there was a lot of people that knew the Koenigs and so a lot of money started rolling into mr.

Speaker 39 Koenig's account There is a $41,000 reward for her safe return.

Speaker 30 James Koenig pretty much called me daily.

Speaker 4 Slav, do you have anything new for me?

Speaker 33 Slav, is there anything we could do?

Speaker 51 He would tell me about his fundraising efforts.

Speaker 4 Of course, I had a lot of sympathy for him.

Speaker 38 My daughter at the time was working in a coffee stand.

Speaker 51 So, you know, I'm a police officer, but I'm also a father, and my daughter is in a very similar situation.

Speaker 22 You know, if it happened to Samantha, it could happen to somebody else.

Speaker 41 As days pass by, we are following up the leads and we are hitting a wall everywhere.

Speaker 15 Where is Samantha? I mean, that is still the big question.

Speaker 45 Where is she?

Speaker 27 This entire time, ever since the night of Samantha's abduction, we were monitoring activity on her phone at the FBI.

Speaker 15 We had gone three weeks without anything.

Speaker 32 And suddenly we get this big break.

Speaker 15 Samantha's boyfriend got a text message from Samantha's phone.

Speaker 27 The direction that this text message gave was to go to Connor Park.

Speaker 15 Connor Park is a dog park in Anchorage and it said, Connor Park, sign underpick of Albert, Ain't She Purdy.

Speaker 6 Nobody knew what that meant.

Speaker 26 We believed that it was, in fact, from the person who had taken Samantha or at least had her phone at this point.

Speaker 27 Finally, something has happened. Anchorage Police Department responds.

Speaker 27 And we're asking ourselves, is Samantha alive?

Speaker 27 Is she dead?

Speaker 27 There's a bulletin board that's near the dog park.

Speaker 15 Under a sign of a golden doodle named Elbert,

Speaker 15 there was a Ziploc bag that had a white piece of paper folded over.

Speaker 18 It's the first big break that happened in the case since obtaining some video evidence three weeks earlier.

Speaker 15 It was a ransom note typed on an actual typewriter. The note suggests that Samantha is alive.

Speaker 15 30K to be deposited to CU1, which is Credit Union 1 account. It has the full card number.
Expiration 1-2015.

Speaker 27 There is a credit card number that is attributed to Samantha's account.

Speaker 26 In the note, he is telling us that once he collects $30,000 in six months to a year, then he will give information potentially where Samantha's at.

Speaker 26 Along with the ransom note, there was a photo, potentially a proof of life

Speaker 10 photo.

Speaker 15 It was one single piece of paper. On the first side, it had the actual typed ransom note, and then on the second side was the actual picture.

Speaker 13 There was a photo of a young woman.

Speaker 52 She's naked, she's

Speaker 32 bound, her hair is braided, she's got duct tape over her mouth.

Speaker 41 The photo was very disturbing.

Speaker 32 It was a thumbnail-size image.

Speaker 30 The more we enlarged it, the more grainy it was becoming.

Speaker 15 Is this young woman alive in the photo or is she not? You certainly could not say with certainty one way or another.

Speaker 30 I contacted James Koenig if it was really his daughter. I knew that it was going to be heartbreaking for him to see that photo.

Speaker 33 It was just me and James Koenig in the interview room.

Speaker 53 And I put the photo in front of him.

Speaker 32 He stared at it for a long time.

Speaker 22 And then he said,

Speaker 33 Yes, it is Samantha in the photo.

Speaker 30 I saw him as a grieving father.

Speaker 30 He was for it sick and it was

Speaker 51 genuine.

Speaker 38 I knew that.

Speaker 35 At that moment, I had no doubt that James Koenig was not involved.

Speaker 12 Audiences and top critics are celebrating. Rental Family is the perfect feel-good movie of the year.

Speaker 10 What do you need me for? We need a talking white guy.

Speaker 12 Academy Award winner Brendan Fraser delivers a masterful performance.

Speaker 50 This girl needs a father.

Speaker 49 I hate you. She hates me.

Speaker 3 It's with being a parent. Yes.

Speaker 12 In this tender and funny film about the importance of connection.

Speaker 13 This is amazing. It's cool, but it's fake.
Sometimes it's okay to pretend.

Speaker 12 Rental Family, only in theaters Friday. Ready to PG-13.
May be inappropriate for children under 13.

Speaker 12 Two rings, surrounded by a steel cage.

Speaker 59 Stream Survivor Series War Games, November 29th at 7 Eastern on the ESPNA.

Speaker 18 Now we knew what the suspect was doing.

Speaker 30 The suspect wanted us to put the money in Samantha's account.

Speaker 51 He had Samantha's debit card and he would be able to withdraw the money from ATM machines.

Speaker 15 Now we have something that we could potentially use to try to lure the subject out.

Speaker 35 Police departments don't have ransom funds.

Speaker 4 Maybe we could use the money from the reward fund.

Speaker 52 So I talked to James Koenig about it and he agreed to put $5,000 into the account.

Speaker 50 We have the bank set to be able to track her ATM card so we will know at any institution that it's used within about 10 minutes of it being used.

Speaker 50 So having a deposit is what we wanted.

Speaker 30 On February 29th, the money was deposited

Speaker 26 and within six hours just before midnight the debit card is used.

Speaker 35 He withdrew $500.

Speaker 52 Bankrich had about 500 ATM machines.

Speaker 4 We needed to be there within minutes, if not seconds, after using the ATM card.

Speaker 52 Our officers rush to the scene.

Speaker 41 But the suspect is gone.

Speaker 38 But we are able to access the video.

Speaker 15 The individual is covered in masks, so you can't see any real facial features. The eyes are covered.
There's some type of hat or hood on and a big puffy jacket.

Speaker 39 It says Marine Corps on the back.

Speaker 15 It does appear to be male. It does appear to be taller, which is consistent with the height of the individual that walks up to the coffee stand.

Speaker 15 Appears to be thin, not somebody who's out of shape.

Speaker 27 We were able to get video of a vehicle to party.

Speaker 26 There was a Silver Nissan Extera SUV.

Speaker 26 We believe the person that used the card had gotten out of that vehicle, walked over to the ATM, and then came back and got in that vehicle and left the area.

Speaker 43 The FBI were looking for that white pickup truck. This vehicle is a completely different vehicle.

Speaker 27 Seeing the silver extera come into play just added one more confusing element to this case.

Speaker 26 For the next several days, we were constantly doing surveillance on the ATM machines in hopes that we can be present for the next withdrawal.

Speaker 27 But right after the ATM withdrawals, we weren't getting any new information in once again.

Speaker 15 We had no additional clues, no ATM withdrawals, no leads.

Speaker 39 Everything goes cold.

Speaker 27 Our hope to find Samantha is still strong.

Speaker 27 But it is very discouraging when you're not having strong leads to work off of.

Speaker 25 The search for Samantha Koenig goes into month number two.

Speaker 16 Detectives and officer working around the clock to figure out who took her and why.

Speaker 50 Time is obviously of the essence.

Speaker 50 As time goes on, things get cold. People's memories fade.

Speaker 40 You are not sleeping. You're not eating because you're too focused on the bigger picture of finding Samantha and it affected me

Speaker 40 tremendously.

Speaker 26 The more time that went by, the more concerned everybody was for Samantha Koenig.

Speaker 43 And then Samantha's card lights up.

Speaker 4 It came as a total surprise.

Speaker 15 We get an alert in the middle of the night that Samantha's debit card was used at an ATM in Wilcox, Arizona.

Speaker 27 It shocked all of us that now this case had clearly left all of Alaska behind, and now we're in the lower 48 in a completely different state that we never had on our radar.

Speaker 15 How did we get to Wilcox, Arizona?

Speaker 15 And is Samantha alive?

Speaker 45 Wilcox is a little town on the highway I-10,

Speaker 52 the highway that connects California to Texas.

Speaker 37 We were able to get video from Wilcox, Arizona.

Speaker 15 And based on size and height and that type of thing,

Speaker 15 it appeared to be the same person, but again, fully disguised. So no real distinct identifying features of the individual.

Speaker 15 You can see in a distance a small white car. That photograph was sent back to our lab in Quantico.

Speaker 15 They were able to tell us it was a white Ford focus.

Speaker 15 Our belief is at this point that if the individual was from Alaska and is now down there that it's probably a rental car.

Speaker 15 So that ATM withdrawal happens on March 7th. There's another one that day in Lordsburg, New Mexico.

Speaker 27 And then on March 10th, there is an ATM withdrawal that's made in Humboldt, Texas.

Speaker 27 So once again, things have continued to move east.

Speaker 45 And then the next day, there's another withdrawal in Shepherd, Texas.

Speaker 26 So in coordination with the Texas Rangers and the FBI in Texas, we put out a bolo of be on the lookout for the information that we had recovered from each ATM that he had used along the way.

Speaker 15 It has some detailed information about the White Ford focus.

Speaker 50 I mean, couldn't find a more common vehicle, and we didn't have a license plate on it, so we didn't even know what state it was registered in. It's an absolute need on a haystack.

Speaker 27 During this whole time, we're asking ourselves, is Samantha with this individual?

Speaker 11 Is she in the vehicle?

Speaker 27 It's still a mystery to us.

Speaker 14 My name is Brian Henry,

Speaker 60 and I'm a retired Texas Highway Patrol Sergeant.

Speaker 60 I happened to be in the office and Rajor Ravern caught me in the hallway and started telling me about this case.

Speaker 60 And he showed me this bolo.

Speaker 60 He tells me about Samantha and that it's a kidnapping and that the ATM card had been used starting out west all the way to a small town south of us, which I believe was Shepard.

Speaker 60 The person had a hoodie on, glasses, something covering his face. I could kind of tell it was a white male.

Speaker 60 And I remember it had a fuzzy white vehicle in it. Roger Rayburn said that FBI believes it's a Ford Focus.

Speaker 14 I get in my patrol car,

Speaker 60 just take off patrol and just kind of doing my job and now the bolo is kind of the back of my mind.

Speaker 60 Just as I drove around, I look to my right and the first thing I look at is a white Ford Focus.

Speaker 60 So I called the Ranger and the FBI was in his office.

Speaker 48 We dropped everything we were doing then, and we told Ryan, do not lose that car.

Speaker 10 Blood starts pumping

Speaker 15 because you're thinking, Wow, is this even possible?

Speaker 50 We may have found the person that abducted Samantha.

Speaker 10 This has to be the guy. Let this be the guy.

Speaker 7 This is Deborah Roberts. You can catch episode two of Wild Crime in our feed next week.
The series was produced by Lone Wolf Media for ABC News Studios.

Speaker 7 You can stream all four seasons of Wild Crime on Hulu. And while you're there, of course, you can always find more from 2020.