True Crime Vault: From Classroom to Captive

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Speaker 3 This is the 2020 True Crime Vault.

Speaker 5 He told you you had to go.

Speaker 6 He said if he couldn't have me, he'd kill himself.

Speaker 7 Were you afraid he would kill you?

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 They talked about hiding bodies and killing other people.

Speaker 7 And you knew then.

Speaker 6 I wasn't getting out of this.

Speaker 8 There are new clues tonight about that Tennessee

Speaker 9 kidnapping a 15-year-old girl.

Speaker 11 Tonight, on 2020, the nationwide manhunt and girl hunt that transfixed the country. That 15-year-old Tennessee student on the run with her 50-year-old teacher, a married father with children.

Speaker 7 Did you know this whole time all this is going on that everyone, I mean like all of America, was looking for you?

Speaker 6 She's like, if I've got back by six, call the cops.

Speaker 12 But tonight, what you've never heard before, her story.

Speaker 6 He can say all day long that the devil made him do it, but he is the devil. He himself made him do it.

Speaker 8 The interview her school may not want you to hear.

Speaker 6 They knew and they know that they knew and I really hope they feel guilty about it.

Speaker 15 You don't have to be a rocket scientist to go, there's trouble brewing in Ted Cummins' classroom.

Speaker 8 Now she's revealing all new details from those 38 days on the road.

Speaker 6 He called me his wife sometimes, but I was going to live with him until I died.

Speaker 8 Creating new identities as John and Joanna living, hiding hiding in a commune.

Speaker 16 He got very angry. That is the unanimous decision.
We didn't want them here.

Speaker 11 And then, the end of the road in a deserted cabin.

Speaker 6 I thought this was going to be the end. He's going to shoot somebody.

Speaker 11 Now, fighting him is over. She's still fighting the town that doubts her.

Speaker 7 Some people question whether or not you went willingly.

Speaker 8 Good evening, and thanks for joining us. I'm David Muir.

Speaker 11 And I'm Amy Robach, and this is 2020. It was one of the biggest stories of the year.
The girl who went from classroom to captive.

Speaker 8 And until now, we have not heard from the young woman who went missing. But that all changes right here tonight.
Here's ABC's Eva Pilgrim on this story from the start.

Speaker 10 Tonight, we are heading to rural Collioca, Tennessee, where this strange and heart-wrenching story begins.

Speaker 13 Most people know everyone else who lives there. If there are six degrees of separation in the world, there's only about one degree of separation here.

Speaker 10 In this farming community of about 5,000, you'll find a post office, gas station, and not much else.

Speaker 17 It's very small, very small there. Nothing ever happens there.
I don't know.

Speaker 13 New tonight.

Speaker 10 Until, of course, it does.

Speaker 18 15-year-old girl and 50-year-old man.

Speaker 10 It's been a year and a half now since 50-year-old high school teacher Tad Cummins ran off with his 15-year-old student. Today, some squarely blame him.

Speaker 19 The guy's burger should be drug out in the streets streets and beat.

Speaker 5 Others aren't so sure.

Speaker 6 I think they took advantage of each other in a way, a weird way.

Speaker 7 We've heard a lot of people say, well, she went willingly.

Speaker 6 She probably did.

Speaker 5 He got 40 in just as well.

Speaker 20 She got 40 in.

Speaker 10 Many have made up their minds both in this small town and across the country. And it's to them that Elizabeth Thomas, now 17, wants to speak to directly tonight.

Speaker 7 Why talk now about what happened?

Speaker 6 Because I think it's time to. It's a year later.

Speaker 7 People saw the story play out.

Speaker 6 They think they know what happened and they think that I'm a whore.

Speaker 6 They think that I like old men and that's not the case.

Speaker 10 Before fate brought Elizabeth into Tad Cummins class, she had been homeschooled her whole life.

Speaker 3 She was somewhat of a tomboy, played really rough.

Speaker 11 She could switch to being really nice and sweet.

Speaker 10 Paige Griffith told us at the time of Elizabeth's disappearance that she had been a kind of surrogate mom, and her daughter Erin was Elizabeth's close friend.

Speaker 5 She'd come to my house and we would talk and watch TV and eat junk food and we just hung out together.

Speaker 10 That's Elizabeth on the left play fighting with Aaron in the back of a car.

Speaker 6 Where you were. No, I where you were.
Wasn't his name just no?

Speaker 10 Her sister Sarah gave me a tour of Elizabeth's bedroom. That's what I sister.

Speaker 10 During the day she went missing. It told its own story of an adolescent caught between two ages.

Speaker 7 Oh, that's her Xbox?

Speaker 10 Yes. On the one hand, the teen who bought herself an Xbox with money from her after-school job.

Speaker 13 She just stayed up playing games for her.

Speaker 10 On the other, a child.

Speaker 21 She made this babe.

Speaker 10 Still enchanted by princesses and ponies.

Speaker 10 Yet the home movie smiles mask what Elizabeth says is a dark reality.

Speaker 6 We had a lot of stuff go on behind closed doors that shouldn't have.

Speaker 7 Abusive?

Speaker 6 Very. Violent? Very.

Speaker 7 Physically violent?

Speaker 7 And no escape because you were homeschooled.

Speaker 10 The abuse so severe, she says, the kids finally report their own mother to child protective services. Kimberly Thomas is removed from the home and is facing multiple counts of child abuse and neglect.

Speaker 10 She denies the charges, telling a local TV station, I'm not guilty of those.

Speaker 7 How did you find out what was going on at home?

Speaker 22 There's two sheriff's deputies in my yard.

Speaker 10 Their father, Anthony Thomas, often working around the clock as an exterminator to support his five children, insisting when we spoke to him last year that he didn't know how bad things had gotten at home.

Speaker 7 It's hard for you to talk about, isn't it?

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 10 You don't like to think about what was happening.

Speaker 15 So I'm going to have to take a break.

Speaker 10 Their mother's removal is a welcome relief, but soon Elizabeth is pushed into the teenage shark tank known as high school.

Speaker 6 First thing they did was call me ugly once I came to school.

Speaker 6 I mean, it's just boys being stupid, but

Speaker 6 I just saved myself.

Speaker 7 Was it easy making friends?

Speaker 6 I mean, they all had their little clicks. Can't really disrupt that.

Speaker 10 Elizabeth eventually finds one person she thinks she can trust.

Speaker 10 A popular and friendly health teacher, Tad Cummins.

Speaker 23 And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how adults.

Speaker 22 She was in his class, health, and he began to help her make this transition from homeschool to public school.

Speaker 10 50-year-old Tad Cummins is quite the charmer. Murray County District Attorney Brett Cooper went to high school with him.

Speaker 24 It's kind of funny, kind of a cut-up, pretty outgoing guy.

Speaker 20 So you knew him, you saw him around?

Speaker 24 He and Jill,

Speaker 24 his wife, they were high school sweethearts and married year they graduated high school.

Speaker 10 And they've been together the 31 years since. His wife, Jill, spoke to us when this first happened.

Speaker 21 God is the center of our marriage and our life and our faith is the most important thing to us. And I think it was to him too and still is.

Speaker 10 Cummins had even done mission work in the rainforest of Panama. He teaches Sunday school and sings in the church choir.

Speaker 7 What was it like growing up with him?

Speaker 6 He was your all-American dad.

Speaker 21 No matter what we were going through, he was the one you could call and fix it.

Speaker 10 Tad Cummins flourishes in the classroom.

Speaker 26 The difference in it.

Speaker 10 Watch this YouTube video of him teaching how to perform CPR.

Speaker 26 See the difference so that I'm actually taking my weight off of it.

Speaker 6 He was the cool teacher.

Speaker 25 Like, everybody loved him. He was everyone's friend, everyone's mentor, helped so many people through so many things.

Speaker 10 And for Elizabeth, he's an encouraging adult role model, showering her with attention, even gifts.

Speaker 6 He gave me a Bible and

Speaker 6 it was just something from him.

Speaker 10 That kindness even extending outside the classroom, taking Elizabeth to church on Sundays with his wife. Why did he decide to take her to church?

Speaker 21 Our preacher's wife was going to be talking about abuse and how to get past it, get over it, and decided to invite Beth.

Speaker 6 We were helping her, I thought.

Speaker 7 Did you ever think anything of their interactions together?

Speaker 21 It was like a father-daughter relationship. It's the way I saw it too.
It's the way he would explain it.

Speaker 6 In fact, I called her our third daughter sometime.

Speaker 10 It all seems benign until that one day in the school cafeteria.

Speaker 6 I was standing there with a few friends and then they said, are you hungry? And I went, I don't have a soul or if I did, like I'd be hungry or something like that.

Speaker 6 And then he came to me and he pointed at me and said, My soul sees your soul.

Speaker 10 Was he trying to scare her or seduce her?

Speaker 10 Coming up, a health teacher grooming a young student, what would be his next move?

Speaker 7 Did you tell somebody?

Speaker 6 No. Why? I don't want to tell my parents that a grown man kissed me, and I don't want to tell friends that a grown man kissed me.

Speaker 10 Stay with us.

Speaker 10 Two rings surrounded by a steel cage.

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Speaker 10 Church-going family man Tad Cummins seemed like like a model citizen, but look closer and you'll find some cracks in that wholesome and happy facade.

Speaker 9 Tad was kind of a bully about things.

Speaker 10 Chandler Anderson worked with Cummins back when Cummins worked as a respiratory therapist at a local hospital.

Speaker 9 He would say things like, you're stupid. You know, you shouldn't be in the ER.

Speaker 10 In front of other people?

Speaker 9 Oh, yeah, in front of other people. I have seen Tad be told no

Speaker 9 previously, and I've seen the rage and anger he gets.

Speaker 10 Anderson says Cummins had a problem with authority. He didn't have enough of it.
He says that's why Cummins switched careers and took a big pay cut.

Speaker 9 If money's not the central issue and feeding your ego is,

Speaker 9 that's what he chose.

Speaker 8 That's why he became a teacher.

Speaker 9 Who tells a teacher no?

Speaker 9 Certainly not students.

Speaker 10 And certainly not a student like Elizabeth Thomas, still reeling from the abuse she says she suffered at home, and who believes she's finally found an adult she can trust.

Speaker 6 He made me feel like I didn't have anyone else and no one really cared about me like he did.

Speaker 10 Jason Watley, the Thomas family attorney, spoke to us after Elizabeth went missing.

Speaker 28 He was specifically grooming this child for a very specific purpose and that was a relationship. He chose a girl that was clearly having issues because she went to him for quote-unquote counseling.

Speaker 28 She was the perfect victim.

Speaker 6 I was feeling real low and I was wanting to get on antidepressants and try to go to a therapist and he told me no and not to do it because it'd change who I was.

Speaker 7 So he convinced you not to get help? Yes. What did he suggest you do instead?

Speaker 6 Come to him.

Speaker 15 I think it's another example of showing sort of to the community, to his wife, to everyone else, I'm trying to help this child. She comes to me at school.
I counsel her.

Speaker 15 I'm going to make her a better person. We know that's all phony.

Speaker 10 As part of the seduction, Cummins portrayed himself as an international man of mystery.

Speaker 24 Apparently he told a lot of tales about his fictional background. He's a CIA operative, he's an FBI agent, he's a millionaire.

Speaker 6 He would describe it as he went in and he killed people and he saved people and he killed

Speaker 6 Bin Laden.

Speaker 7 He was telling you he did all of these crazy things.

Speaker 6 And I knew that it wasn't real.

Speaker 7 How did you view him at that point?

Speaker 6 Kind of like a guardian or

Speaker 6 a mentor.

Speaker 10 But Tad Cummins seems bent on bulldozing the boundaries of appropriate behavior.

Speaker 7 How were you guys communicating?

Speaker 6 We did via Instagram.

Speaker 10 Cummins posts, you're all my heart ever talks about. It was love at first sight, at last sight.
Then there's Elizabeth's response. I look forward to going to school just to see you.
I love you.

Speaker 6 Most of them from him would be sexual text.

Speaker 7 He would sexually text you like. Yes.

Speaker 6 Like sexting.

Speaker 10 But their verbal communication is just as cringeworthy, especially when they're alone in his classroom, which is becoming an alarmingly regular occurrence.

Speaker 6 I can't remember the conversation, and then next thing I know, he said, you look pretty nice naked.

Speaker 7 When did he take it from saying things like that to you to something more?

Speaker 6 Whenever he first kissed me, that was

Speaker 6 whenever I realized this is getting too far.

Speaker 7 In his classroom?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 7 Did you tell somebody?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 6 Like I didn't want anyone to really know. I was scared of what would happen if anyone did know.

Speaker 10 From there, she says, it would escalate to unspeakable things that would take place in his classroom closet.

Speaker 6 He'd open up the closet door and he'd look at me a certain way and I knew if I didn't go that he'd be upset. And I was afraid to see him angry and I've seen him angry since then, but

Speaker 6 he doesn't take no will.

Speaker 10 At least one other student is afraid too.

Speaker 13 A student reported seeing Elizabeth Thomas kissing Ted Cummins inside of his classroom. This student was very disturbed by what she saw and she immediately went to report it to school officials.

Speaker 10 The school investigates, but Elizabeth denies everything.

Speaker 15 The reason that children that are being abused by teachers will not admit that something happened is fear. Because he's now guilt-tripping her regularly.
You can't tell anybody.

Speaker 15 You know, you'll be ruined. Your reputation in school will be ruined.

Speaker 17 I'll be fired.

Speaker 10 Curiously, the school takes an entire week to alert police. And during that investigation, for some reason, Elizabeth says the school allowed her to go on a class field trip.
unprotected.

Speaker 6 He was the only chaperone there. He was the only chaperone.

Speaker 7 There were no other adults there. No other adult.

Speaker 6 Other than the bus driver, but he was on the bus at all times.

Speaker 10 Elizabeth says he took the opportunity to proposition her for sex, but she refused. The school finally tells Cummins and Elizabeth not to contact each other.

Speaker 10 Cummins then tells detectives their relationship is that of a father figure at school and denies ever kissing her.

Speaker 10 Five days later, after the school reprimands him for allowing Elizabeth to come back to his classroom, Cummins is suspended.

Speaker 7 How did he explain it to you?

Speaker 21 That he was,

Speaker 21 it was either someone telling a lie or thought they saw something that they didn't and then it absolutely did not happen. I had no reason not to believe him.

Speaker 21 31 years of marriage, you know, with no problems. Why would you not believe him?

Speaker 7 And when all the students found out this was happening?

Speaker 6 There was a lot of names and teasing that came around and a lot of bullying outside and inside of school.

Speaker 7 How did they they feel towards Tad as all this was happening?

Speaker 6 They felt like I ruined his life.

Speaker 7 Did the teachers know about what was going on?

Speaker 6 A lot of them were made aware and they also did a lot of the teasing and a lot of the name-calling.

Speaker 7 The teachers were doing the teasing?

Speaker 6 A lot of them were.

Speaker 10 Meanwhile, Cummins, now in exile from the school, begins acting strangely at home.

Speaker 21 He always made the coffee the night before we would go to bed and he started telling me how to make the coffee.

Speaker 21 And I was like, why are you telling me this? And I was in tears because I thought

Speaker 21 that he was afraid he was going to go to jail.

Speaker 10 He was planning to go somewhere. Apparently, the teacher had convinced himself and his favorite student that there was only one way out with each other on the open road.

Speaker 5 He told you you had to go.

Speaker 6 He said, if he couldn't have me, he'd kill himself. Anytime he threatened himself, he'd threaten my family.

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Speaker 10 It is a quiet Monday morning near Columbia, Tennessee, and Jill Cummins says she and her husband Tad spent an otherwise uneventful weekend. Out to eat, a trip to the movies, church on Sunday.

Speaker 21 We were together all the time. We spent lots and lots of time together.
But everything was normal between this.

Speaker 10 But of course, everything is not normal. Cummins has been suspended from the Collioca Unit School for inappropriate conduct with 15-year-old Elizabeth Thomas.

Speaker 10 You could cut the tension in their home with a Tennessee steak knife.

Speaker 21 We were both so stressed during those five weeks. We would cry about it, pray about it.

Speaker 10 But as hard as he prays, Cummins still can't shake the obsession with his young student, even forcing her to send him secret messages through social media.

Speaker 6 Anytime that I wouldn't post for a few hours, he would go crazy and say that I was cheating on him, saying if he found out that I was with another boy, he'd kill them.

Speaker 15 And so he cobbles together this plan to run off.

Speaker 10 He borrows Jill's car a silver Nissan rogue saying he needs it to go to an out-of-town job interview.

Speaker 7 He took your car.

Speaker 21 He did

Speaker 21 because he was going out of town. Not far, but far enough that he didn't want to drive the Jeep and he took the rogue.

Speaker 10 Back at the Collioca Unit School, Elizabeth says she is under siege. Her fellow students are blaming her for Cummins' suspension.
Turns out Cummins is blaming her too. No longer Mr.

Speaker 10 Nice Guy, the teacher issues a deadly ultimatum. Go on the run with me or else.

Speaker 6 So he started calling my phone. Sometimes I'd be threatening to kill himself or ending someone else's life if I didn't go.

Speaker 7 Did you feel trapped?

Speaker 6 I did. He threatened to shoot himself or use the guns.

Speaker 10 Elizabeth says she reluctantly agrees to leave with Cummins on a ride to nowhere. In this surveillance video obtained by 2020, Elizabeth can be seen leaving her home.

Speaker 7 You meet him at the Shoni's.

Speaker 6 Yes. I felt really bad about leaving and I didn't want to leave, but I knew if I didn't, something would happen.
So

Speaker 6 I went to Shawnee's at 8 o'clock. He was supposed to be there and he was late.
I left a bag on the ground.

Speaker 10 The student is smarter than the teacher thinks she is because in the bag is a small clue.

Speaker 10 Elizabeth says Cummins tells her to write a note, a note she writes writes in a way she hopes will tip off authorities.

Speaker 6 He told me to write that I was going to New York. That way it seemed like the police would go up there.
He thought they were dumb, but they weren't.

Speaker 7 And that was his plan. That was his plan.

Speaker 6 But I wrote that I was going to New York City and I made it sound unbelievable. So they knew I was going the opposite way.

Speaker 10 And she's got another shrewd move up her sleeve, signposting her precarious predicament. for her sister Sarah.

Speaker 6 I just told Sarah that call the police if I'm not home by six.

Speaker 7 That was another clue.

Speaker 6 I just wanted the police to be called because I knew once I got in that car I wasn't getting out.

Speaker 10 At 8.32 Cummins stops at a local gas station and fills up his tank. He then picks up Elizabeth at the Shoni's restaurant.

Speaker 6 But as soon as we went to go leave he set a gun in the middle console and I knew that I wasn't getting out of the car.

Speaker 7 He immediately pulled the gun out.

Speaker 6 The gun set in the middle console.

Speaker 7 And you knew then.

Speaker 6 I wasn't getting out of this.

Speaker 10 It's around 10 p.m. that night.
Elizabeth's frantic father has spent hours searching for his missing daughter, and he calls the local sheriff as thoughts of the kissing incident race through his head.

Speaker 22 I said, you know, you guys need to hunt down Ted Cummins and see if he's in town, see where he is.

Speaker 10 Cummins' wife, Jill, has also called the sheriff.

Speaker 10 An arrest warrant is issued, and Cummins officially becomes a wanted man.

Speaker 18 The TBI issued issued an amber alert for Mary Catherine Elizabeth Thomas.

Speaker 10 Their disappearance and ensuing cross-country track would flummox authorities for well over a month.

Speaker 10 The details and the direction their journey took being told by Elizabeth for the first time here tonight.

Speaker 7 So there's Nashville.

Speaker 6 I think we took 65 down. Okay.
Columbia's right here. I think.
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 You made me throw my phone off a bridge and his phone as well. That way the police couldn't track us.

Speaker 6 And then he disconnected the GPS by a screwdriver in the glove compartment and he broke off the front and then he unhooked the radio.

Speaker 6 It was like a kidnapping.

Speaker 6 I had to stay in the car with him at all times.

Speaker 6 In Decatur, I'm pretty sure, is where we stopped by this big hotel and there was an abandoned van and he took their license plate. And then we began driving to Mississippi.

Speaker 7 Do you stay in Mississippi? Yes.

Speaker 6 One night.

Speaker 7 One night. Just a hotel.
Two beds, one bed?

Speaker 6 One bed.

Speaker 7 And did you have to sleep next to him? Yes.

Speaker 6 At the hotel, I would shower every morning because I felt dirty and disgusting every morning.

Speaker 6 And he didn't help that at all.

Speaker 7 When you say he didn't help that, what do you mean?

Speaker 6 The things he would make you do. It wouldn't help the way that I was feeling.
And I'd just try to shower to get away from him, but sometimes he wouldn't let me shower alone.

Speaker 6 It's hard to be in the same space with him at the exact same time.

Speaker 7 Was there any moment that you thought maybe I can run out of this room while he's sleeping?

Speaker 6 He made me sleep naked and my clothes would be put somewhere else and he was a light sleeper so if I moved he'd be awake and I couldn't even use the bathroom at night without him having to stand right there.

Speaker 7 And this whole time as this is all happening, how was he treating you?

Speaker 6 He was really mean and said hurtful things a lot of the time. He called me his wife sometimes and he said that we were going to get married and that I was going to live with him until I died.

Speaker 10 Day after day, night after helpless night, Elizabeth says Cummins is in complete control. The threat of his firearms ever-present.
He's even controlling what Elizabeth can eat.

Speaker 6 I wasn't allowed to eat hamburger buns or

Speaker 6 things that had like high calories or something that was too much.

Speaker 6 I mostly was allowed to eat salad.

Speaker 7 So why was he making you eat this way?

Speaker 6 So I'd stay small. He told me that he likes skinny skinny girls and I ate what he told me to because if I didn't I wouldn't get it at all.

Speaker 7 Did you ever stay more than one night anywhere?

Speaker 6 Well so I'm just gonna dot each place that we stayed the night.

Speaker 6 I know I think we stayed three nights in Colorado.

Speaker 6 So I'm gonna say right here

Speaker 6 right here. I know we went to Aspen and then Utah, that's where he started buying alcohol.
He started buying alcohol? Yeah for me because I was having problems and he was done dealing with them.

Speaker 6 Like, I don't want to do stuff with them anymore. I just didn't.

Speaker 6 I was just done, and he didn't want that.

Speaker 10 Their journey takes them across nine states all the way to California.

Speaker 6 From each state that I took, I had rocks, and I'd write what county or wherever we were, and then what state. That way, if Night got rescued, he could be charged for each one that he was in.

Speaker 10 When we come back, authorities are closing in, and Cummins hatches yet another insane plan.

Speaker 10 A plan to paddle south of the border.

Speaker 6 The waves were getting really bad. The boat would nearly go under.

Speaker 7 Were you scared? I was terrified too.

Speaker 6 The boat kept going down.

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Speaker 6 He gave me a calendar and I used it to mark down where we were and where we were at

Speaker 6 and I used it every day.

Speaker 6 And I just stopped marking because I didn't think we were ever going to leave.

Speaker 10 No longer counting the days until she is found, Elizabeth Thomas is losing hope of ever seeing her family again.

Speaker 7 Did you know that this whole time all this is going on that everyone, I mean like all of America was looking for you?

Speaker 6 I saw it on Fox News one time in the hotel.

Speaker 11 A manhunt is underway.

Speaker 6 And I remember it was a girl announcing it, a nationwide Ambler alert. I knew it was for me.

Speaker 10 Meanwhile, back in Tennessee, Tad's abandoned wife, Jill, is quickly coming undone.

Speaker 6 Please do the right thing and turn yourself into the police and bring Beth home.

Speaker 10 With the entire country on high alert, Tad Cummins, now perhaps the most wanted man in America, panics and decides to go to a place many a fugitive have gone before.

Speaker 10 Mexico.

Speaker 6 He wanted to go to Mexico because apparently that's free land. And he wanted to go to try to go to Panama because that's where he was before on mission trips.

Speaker 20 Yeah, this is, as you can see, we're coming out here. There's good waves.
This is an easy four to eight foot swell real close together.

Speaker 10 Brian Zulka is the owner and captain of Elgato Sports Fishing, a charter boat company located about 20 miles from the Mexican border.

Speaker 7 Is it easy to take a boat from here into Mexico?

Speaker 8 No, it's not. You have to have the right boat.
You have to have the right weather. You have to have the right skills in navigation.

Speaker 23 Otherwise, you're not going to make it.

Speaker 10 Turns out, Tad Cummins would have none of those things.

Speaker 6 So he got a kayak and he wanted to kayak all the way to Panama.

Speaker 10 Yep, you heard correctly. He takes a humble man-powered kayak.
Clearly, not a geography teacher. Elizabeth says Cummins devises a plot to paddle some 3,000 nautical miles to Panama.

Speaker 5 You were in the kayak yesterday.

Speaker 6 The waves were getting really bad to where like once they'd hit the bottom of the boat the boat would nearly go under. Whichever way you tried to go it'd pull you the other direction.

Speaker 7 Were you scared? I was terrified

Speaker 6 because the boat kept going down.

Speaker 7 At what point did you decide okay this is a bad idea I'm turning around?

Speaker 6 Whenever one wave nearly killed us like took us over.

Speaker 6 Once we finally got out of it I was so happy.

Speaker 5 What did he do then?

Speaker 6 He decided we were going to go to a commune.

Speaker 7 So which commune did you go to then?

Speaker 6 Black Bear.

Speaker 6 Because nobody would recognize us.

Speaker 6 It was the last like free place on earth

Speaker 6 or where people come to be free or something like that.

Speaker 7 How did he know about that?

Speaker 6 He looked it up and it said Black Bear Ranch was the closest one in California.

Speaker 10 Black Bear Ranch, a remote commune deep in the woods of Northern California, is located so far off the grid, it feels like another world.

Speaker 16 We're an off-the-grid homesteading community. We don't have any television, radio, cell phone, internet.

Speaker 16 There's no newspaper delivery or other contact with the outside world besides what comes in and out of the driveway.

Speaker 10 The reclusive residents are reluctant to let us use our cameras, only allowing us to shoot this video on their older model iPhone.

Speaker 7 Are those for chickens up there?

Speaker 16 Yeah, chickens and ducks.

Speaker 10 Our guide, who goes by the name April Showers, gives us a tour and talks all about the peculiar couple who introduced themselves as John and Joanna. They tell everyone they are 44 and 24 years old.

Speaker 16 Several weeks ago this couple arrived and they failed to identify their true selves and identities.

Speaker 6 I knew that once I was at Black Bear Ranch I couldn't go anywhere. There was literally nobody out there.

Speaker 10 They take the pair in, giving them a bed here in the main house and sharing their food.

Speaker 6 They liked me a lot. A lot of them did.

Speaker 6 It was kind of because I didn't argue, I'd clean up after myself, I didn't make too much noise, I was quiet.

Speaker 10 And while Tad Cummins has left so much behind him, one thing he hasn't shed is his hot temper.

Speaker 16 He brought that into our secret space, this terrible behavior and acting on the wrong impulse and

Speaker 16 perverted, a perverted instinct, I would say.

Speaker 4 So they didn't fit in here very well.

Speaker 16 No, they didn't fit in here very well.

Speaker 10 Very quickly, things go south at Black Bear. Elizabeth and Cummins are kicked out.
Turns out Cummins didn't have much of a communal spirit.

Speaker 16 He got very angry and almost blew a gasket.

Speaker 7 That's pretty scary.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 He blew a fuse right there.

Speaker 6 He got mad and took out his knife and then dropped it on the ground, started screaming at April. I thought this was going to be the end.
This is where he's going to shoot somebody.

Speaker 10 It's a risky proposition, alienating the peaceful residents of this commune with so little to their name and so much at stake.

Speaker 7 Do you have food?

Speaker 6 Eggs and two oranges, actually.

Speaker 7 You had eggs and two oranges. Yeah.

Speaker 10 And $10.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Nothing in sight.

Speaker 10 Out of hope and full of desperation.

Speaker 6 Who's gonna find me?

Speaker 10 Elizabeth heads back down that hellish hill, never in a million years expecting to meet her unlikely hero.

Speaker 14 I saw a photo of the guy and I was like, that's definitely him.

Speaker 10 When 2020 continues.

Speaker 6 He told me to stay in the car and put sunglasses on to keep my head down.

Speaker 10 It's now 36 days since Tad Cummins and Elizabeth Thomas disappeared from Tennessee.

Speaker 6 He didn't want people to be able to recognize me.

Speaker 6 And he would wear sunglasses, try to do the same.

Speaker 10 Cast out of paradise, aka the black bear commune in northern california running out of options a desperate cummins sets off for the nearby village of cecilville

Speaker 10 said they were from colorado cummins sees a familiar face griffin berry

Speaker 10 It turns out Griffin had given Cummins gas and directions to the Black Bear Commune a week earlier.

Speaker 7 Did you remember them?

Speaker 14 No, I couldn't remember his name. I was like, what's your name again? You know what I'm saying? He's like, yeah, we had a house fire.
I think so, he likes to lost his job.

Speaker 14 They're just trying to start a new life.

Speaker 14 But I was like, I'll help you out. I put him in the cabin.

Speaker 10 Griffin, ironically, a native of Nashville, Tennessee, is the caretaker of this forested California property and gives the couple he thinks is just down on their luck a place to stay.

Speaker 7 Can you show us the cabin there?

Speaker 28 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 10 It's at the end.

Speaker 10 So, this is where they stayed.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And those bottles.

Speaker 14 Those are the black straw bottles.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 10 So that's what they were using to have clean water.

Speaker 6 We had a little foam kind of mattress thing that he laid on. And then we had this thing that we grabbed from Blackberry Range, which is kind of like a seat padding that I laid on.

Speaker 6 And he pushed them together and we had a little comforter.

Speaker 10 The wood cabin is unfinished and has no heat or insulation. It does little to keep out the cold.

Speaker 6 It was really cold in California. It got real cold at night, especially.

Speaker 10 To make some extra money, Griffin Berry puts them to work collecting river rocks for a masonry project.

Speaker 14 When I was trying to strike up a conversation, I picked them up in the morning. I was like, what's your name? And she was like, Joanna.
It was almost with like an accent.

Speaker 10 The quiet girl and weird accent seem odd, so strange that Griffin tells a neighbor nearby something seems off.

Speaker 14 I was like

Speaker 14 that girl won't talk you know to me really or anything.

Speaker 10 That night the same neighbor makes a startling discovery finding this amber alert.

Speaker 14 I saw a photo of the guy and I was like, that's definitely him.

Speaker 7 Then what did you guys decide to do?

Speaker 14 We went and called the police.

Speaker 10 Finally, police have the tip they've been hoping for.

Speaker 10 Authorities race to that small town in Northern California and a SWAT team surrounds the cabin.

Speaker 6 I came out of the cabin and it was the early morning. I think he went to go wash out our dishes from the night before, but then I saw someone up on the hill.

Speaker 10 As the sun is rising, Elizabeth spots a camouflage hat.

Speaker 6 I knew it was the police. And as soon as he walked over there, he walked around that bush.
And then all you hear is

Speaker 6 hands up, it's over.

Speaker 7 That's what they said to you.

Speaker 6 They said, put your hands up, get on the ground.

Speaker 10 38 days after Elizabeth left her home in Tennessee, she is finally rescued.

Speaker 7 The day that the police show up.

Speaker 6 That was the best day of my life.

Speaker 10 The police pounce on Cummins, but before he's led away, he whispers to Elizabeth, still trying to exert control over his would-be teenage bride.

Speaker 6 He said not to tell them that we have done anything, that he forced me to go, say that I went willingly,

Speaker 6 say that he was trying to protect me.

Speaker 7 That was his story. He was trying to protect you.

Speaker 6 He was, and he told me to go along with it.

Speaker 19 I could tell you that her mood kind of was escalated. You know, it was a very traumatic experience for her.

Speaker 12 It was kind of a roller coaster of emotions for her.

Speaker 10 Elizabeth says it's important for her to now reveal what she endured, no longer afraid of what her teacher can do to her.

Speaker 6 I know he's a bad man, and I blame myself a lot, but now I know that he's at fault. He himself made him do it.
Other people don't choose your actions, you do.

Speaker 10 Less than 24 hours after being found, the already well-traveled Elizabeth is on a plane for the very first time, heading home to Tennessee.

Speaker 7 What was that like?

Speaker 6 Overwhelming. A lot to take in, and so many people bombarding you with so many questions.

Speaker 7 They have perceptions of what they think you're like and what you've done.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Elizabeth enters inpatient counseling and for her family, relief is replaced with anger at the adults who they say let her down.

Speaker 10 Still to come, the tables have turned, silenced no more. Elizabeth takes aim at her school.

Speaker 6 Why didn't they notice?

Speaker 6 They knew, and they know that they knew.

Speaker 7 Can you just tell us why you didn't call authorities authorities right away when you found out about the Tad Cubbings incident?

Speaker 5 Do you have any comment?

Speaker 10 What that school is telling 2020 tonight.

Speaker 10 Next.

Speaker 6 Came back to Tennessee and the FBI and the TBI were there and they were trying to joke around with me, making things a lot easier for the transition home.

Speaker 10 April 21st, 2017, after 38 days on the run, Elizabeth Thomas safely back in Tennessee. Her family begins to demand answers.
How could this have happened at their daughter's own school?

Speaker 23 Did the school drop the ball?

Speaker 28 That's an understatement, in my opinion.

Speaker 10 And they're now suing the school board for failing to protect her from Tad Cummins.

Speaker 22 To this day, the school board nor the school has not even apologized for not even letting me know.

Speaker 10 Last year, we tried to get some answers of our own from school principal Penny Love. Here she is on her Twitter page, that big smile front and center.

Speaker 10 But we find someone not so willing to smile for the camera or even get out of her car.

Speaker 7 Can you just tell us why you didn't call authorities right away when you found out about the Tad Cummings incident?

Speaker 10 Do you have any comment?

Speaker 10 And even though her school took a full week to call police after Tad Cummins was seen kissing his 15-year-old student in his classroom, Principal Love spared no time calling the cops on us.

Speaker 31 Off the property. All right, we're going.

Speaker 10 As for that lawsuit, the school board referred us to the response it filed in court that it denies it failed any of its obligations or permitted conditions to empower a predator and blamed what happened to Elizabeth solely on Tad Cummins.

Speaker 6 Why didn't they notice?

Speaker 10 Elizabeth insists adults around her could have saved her from those 38 days of horror.

Speaker 6 They knew, and they know that they knew and I really hope they feel guilty about it.

Speaker 6 And I pray that one day they might say something and speak up that they knew and if they don't that's great shame on them.

Speaker 10 As for Cummins wife Jill, some question whether she could have done more.

Speaker 31 They see that you knew her.

Speaker 5 that you interacted with them and they say, how did she not know something was up?

Speaker 6 No one knew.

Speaker 7 So you never suspected anything? No. Not once.

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 10 Tad Cummins pleaded guilty earlier this year to transporting a minor across state lines for sex and faces at least 10 years in prison.

Speaker 6 He can say all day long that the devil made him do it, but he is the devil.

Speaker 7 You had to see him in court. I did.

Speaker 6 And I made that choice. And I wanted him to know that I'm stronger than what he thinks I am, that I'm not his puppet anymore.

Speaker 10 Today, Elizabeth is 17 back in her hometown in Tennessee and still living under that small town microscope.

Speaker 7 Do you feel like people judge you?

Speaker 6 They do. A lot of them do.

Speaker 31 We tend to sometimes blame victims. When something as horrible as this happens, the person that it happens to is not the shameful one.

Speaker 10 Elizabeth is focusing on what she can. Moving on, which for her means being like any other teenager.
She works at a coffee shop, has a boyfriend and a new puppy,

Speaker 10 spends her free time at the local Sonic, and is working towards her GED.

Speaker 7 What are your dreams for your life?

Speaker 6 To have a family and protect them, make them have a better life. I'm a stronger person than I was.

Speaker 6 And I'm not afraid.

Speaker 11 Strong and not afraid. 2020 reached out to Tad Cummins' attorney to comment about tonight's interview.
They declined to comment. Tad Cummins and his wife are now divorced.

Speaker 8 And we do know know that his sentencing is later this fall. In the meantime, that is 2020 for tonight.
Thanks for watching. I'm David Moore.

Speaker 11 And I'm Amy Robuck. For all of us here at 2020 at ABC News, have a great night.

Speaker 3 You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. You can find all new broadcast episodes of 2020 Friday nights at 9 on ABC.

Speaker 4 Coming to Disney Plus in Hulu. Cassidy, get us home.

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