Every time you count to 40,
a child goes missing or gets abducted.
Many of those kids never come back home.
600,000 adults go missing each year.
That, according to the National missing
and Unidentified Persons Database,
Texas is second only to California for having
the most missing persons in the nation.
Welcome to unsolved San Antonio.
This series will examine
the missing their families,
talk to advocates and ask law enforcement
about bringing your loved ones home.
Let's start with the last
executive director of the now
defunct Heidi Search Center.
It closed for financial reasons,
but its impact on the missing may be lasting.
The walls don't exist. There's
no boundary when someone goes missing.
That's why it's so difficult
when it comes to the missing. We
had cases that took us all over the
US cases. It stayed here local. The
road to getting found can be
endless with few signs revealing
one way towards closure. I
treated it as if it were
my child missing. Dottie
Laster was the last executive director of
the Heidi Search Center in San Antonio.
It was a nonprofit at the nucleus of
trying to bring the missing home. Every
phone call was an urgent matter.
Every phone call was some parent
begging for help for their child's lack
of funding. Opposed the center down
in 2018, but lasters passion for the
search remains alive. Our children
aren't safe and we need
organizations like this.
It's something that you don't know
you need until you don't have it. She
recalls loved ones, desperate to get the
faces of the missing up
in effective locations.
The center would provide
hundreds of Flyers at no cost,
trying to make the unseen visible.
I think people don't often understand that
when your child is missing, that's not
Oh well, at least they're not dead.
Some people will actually
say that that's
it's actually worse.
Because there is no peace.
No child is immune.
It doesn't just apply to low income
people or high income people,
or educated or uneducated.
Westside Northside,
our cases came from everywhere.
The grounds, skate, parks and
especially on cell phones
and the Internet. I still
spend a lot of time rescuing teens
and young adults who had started
with someone that said hi online
and now they're gone. Master
says parents have to be intrusive.
You cannot parent with privacy.
You cannot say my kid
will tell me about this.
You cannot trust your parenting.
To save them, she
says, you fence yourself in
by not knowing
if you don't see who they're talking to.
If you don't have at least
their usernames, then.
And where they're exploring
what games they're playing,
anything that's interactive.
You need to know, because that
interaction connects them visually.
Auto audibly.
And through any type of communication
to every bad guy in the world.
Sadly, your child could become one
of the many cases in her file.
We're like the golden girl who became
symbolic of missing kids. It's the
hardest work I've ever done.
So she is offering these tips
if someone goes missing,
don't wait 24 hours to report
that person has disappeared to the
authorities and we confirm that with
police that is a complete myth.
Something that came along in the
television age last year says to be
sure to get a case number from police.
You are going to need it, she says.
Rally those around you to help you
search and make sure you have a current
picture of the person who is missing.
We have.
Other tips in her story on kids5.com,
including how to get a free digital DNA kit.
And one more thing we're going to show you
these phone numbers throughout the show.
If you know anything about any
of the faces that we're showing
you at the bottom of your screen,
you can call the San Antonio Police
Department's missing person unit at
210-207-7660 or call the Bear County
Sheriff's Criminal Investigations Division at
210-335-6070.
Speaking of the San Antonio police,
they have more than 20 people
who make up their missing person
unit while their county has one
deputy working their cases.
So we asked the sheriff
to explain the power of 1.
The fact is, any one of our
children could fall victim to
something like this at any given time.
We're County Sheriff Javier Salazar,
but leaves his missing person unit
is effective enough to make the case.
How do you all tackle these cases to try
to solve them in
your department?
Well, the minute you start assuming.
Well, he's with his biological mom.
It's a parental kidnapping up.
He's with relatives up.
He ran away with a girlfriend the
minute you start assuming too much.
That may not be the case and
and and it could be a true
stranger abduction case.
Deputy Raul Arevalo is the missing
person unit. He's the only deputy
assigned to the cases in the county
at any given time.
I can I can go up there and
ask him what's going on
with this case right here,
and he can tell me up-to-the-minute
literally what we're doing
with with each particular case,
Salazar says.
Arevalo is housed in criminal
investigations because a missing.
Person case sometimes evolves
into other crimes like in the
murder of Andreen McDonald.
He'll grab ahold of people from
street crimes or from the gang unit,
or from homicide or from the score unit.
And then we'll we'll task them with
with helping him out with whatever
he may need on any particular case.
Even with the support staff in place,
these missing person cases
can become complicated.
Let's just say they find the kids
in another country or out of state.
The Bear County Sheriff's
Office has leads on missing.
Kids in Colorado, Mexico,
Nicaragua, Honduras and because
of the limited staff and sometimes
because of international laws,
they can't go after them.
San Antonio police have 3 shifts
of 20 civilians who worked
their cases around the clock.
Under supervisors. You
don't think you need anymore?
I mean, it would be great if
we had 10 people to to assign to this issue,
but you know, at this point that's
just not a luxury that we have with.
With we have an agency with finite
resources we make do with what we've got.
Salazar hopes to expand whenever he
gets the money he just asked Bear County
commissioners to find more deputies.
To focus on violent crimes,
some of those positions, he says,
would end up in the group of
investigators that support the single
deputy assigned to find the missing.
Well, I've had our our investigator
that's assigned to missing persons cases.
Physically looking through barns,
physically looking through closets,
and he's found some of these kiddos.
To ensure the missing are
found and not forgotten.
Before we move on,
here are some missing person facts from
the San Antonio Police Department.
Officers say you do not.
They want to emphasize you do
not have to wait 24 hours before
reporting someone missing.
They say report that victim
as soon as you have confirmed
that they cannot be found.
Police say that they investigate more
missing person cases on the city's
South side than anywhere else in San
Antonio and underage girls are more
likely to disappear than anyone else.
So far this year,
police have received 18161 missing
cases and 16 remain unsolved.
That number, though,
changes daily their oldest unsolved
case on the books dates back to 1973.
By the way,
we have information on all of
these missing people on our
website and it's all in one place.
Just visit keenspot.com,
back slash, unsolved essay.
Now 2 cold cases, two families
suffering the same pain.
David Hopper says his daughter,
Ava Grace Baldwin was a dream come true,
but his relationship with
her mother, Catherine,
Katie and I were only married for 34 days was
a nightmare. She left him and
reconnected after Ava was born
four or five months later,
she calls me and says, you know,
I have a little girl and could
I help her out financially
so began the.
Custodial and relationship chase
on till he gained partial custody.
Even though he lived in Oklahoma,
Hopper would come to San Antonio
to make fatherhood work on this
visit he took his daughter swimming
Mr. Opera to tell you this, but your
daughter's been missing for 21 days.
That's the message he got from Ava's
former principal life went from
pictures of baking with his baby girl
to seeing her face on a missing person
flyer in September 2015. She was six.
What if the past seven years been like?
Hell, I have one daughter
and as fate would have it,
she's been robbed from me.
Take it from me however
you want to put it. She
remains missing her mother, a fugitive.
Imagine somebody stealing that child
from me. It's hell. It's a living hell.
100 miles away in Fort Worth
and he was my Mother's Day gift.
He was born the day before. Mother's Day.
Jennifer Green grapples with the same pain.
Her first point Jordan came to
San Antonio to work and live with
relatives. Jordan Green was 23.
He went down there the weekend of July
4th and November 7th. He went missing.
She got to see him on her
birthday with no idea.
That's the last hug. I got from
him the last kiss I got from him.
The last time I physically.
Saw and held my baby because in a few.
Weeks later, he was gone.
Her hugs would disappear.
She believes he's alive,
possibly being held.
Someone's not telling the story
for me and the thousands of people that
have missing individuals in their life.
We're on a constant Ferris wheel and every
day brings something different, but yet.
The door doesn't unlatch for us to
get up, two families searching and aching
at the same time seven years later.
You wake up every day and you
don't know if she's alive,
but you don't know if if she's safe.
A loving son vanished within months
of each other in the same city.
If I could just say one thing to him,
yes, ma'am. Leaving
a connection to pain and
unconditional faith, Jordan.
Happy birthday We've never given up.
The hope. That you will come home.
And we will never give up the
fight in the search for you.
So don't you give up.
The disappearance of Lena Cedar
Kill has baffled investigators
and shocked this community.
San Antonio Police agreed to
answer some questions about
where this investigation stands.
The supervisor of SAP's Special Victims
Unit says the four year olds case
is still a missing person's case.
Lieutenant Bill Grayson says that's
all investigators can prove.
Right now, even though the initial
fear was Stranger abduction,
he says that drove SA PD and the FBI
to expand the scope of their search,
where they collected large amounts of
data through interviews and security footage.
Grayson says that SAPD has two
dedicated detectives in addition
to the FBI and support staff
still working on Lena's case.
He says they won't suspend
this investigation until all
workable leads get exhausted.
For 21 years, the disappearance
of Nicholas Plaza has come with
more probability than conclusion.
Investigators have long believed
the five year old is dead.
His family and others still hold out
hope that he is a 26 year old man
alive and well for the first time.
The investigator who helped send
Plaza's mother and her boyfriend to
prison is granting us an interview.
He takes us behind the missing
person flyer to the facts about
the boy they called Nikki.
There is no way Nicholas Plaza
vanished into thin air on October 23rd,
2001, but it sure felt like it.
His case got reported to San Antonio
police nearly a month later.
The frenzy to find the five year old
with the innocent eyes whose ears framed
his face had fuel but was fruitless.
I had a hard time understanding why
we couldn't get this before jury.
There was so much there already
retired San Antonio Police
Detective Joyce sailor got the case
a year after Plaza went missing.
He's interviewing about the
case for the first time.
What stood out to you about this case?
There was no doubt in my mind
that this young child was
dead and people knew about it.
People saw just the atrocity of
injuries that that happened to him.
Plaza's mother Priscilla got
romantically involved with.
High school acquaintance Rubens
Avala junior in March 2001.
Five months later she was living
with Zavalla and his parents.
It was not like she was an
innocent bystander in all this.
She certainly had plenty of
time to do something about
it. Investigators say Nicholas
would go from a vibrant, healthy
child to torture and sexual abuse.
They talked about. He couldn't walk.
There was blood in the urine.
There was blood in his stools.
He was losing his hair,
ultimately disappearing.
Sailor says he couldn't understand the
balance spell over the people around
him as he made his case on Zavalla.
The suspect had already been convicted
for kidnapping a woman's 18 month old son
before I got an arrest warrant for him.
He was already writing other than
females who had young children.
So that was one of the things
that scared me the most.
If I couldn't get this man off
the streets that we were going
to have another victim, he
said on that list.
Mothers with boys like Nicholas Sadler
worked on the case for three years,
knowing there were no medical records.
Nobody and only word of
mouth from suspicious people,
one of whom was the boy's
mother under Zavala's power. I
think he was using the
children to control the women.
In partnership with then Medical Director
of Child Safe Doctor Nancy Kellogg,
the two got Priscilla and Zavala's
mother to verify injuries about
Nicholas five times a day.
That should have been reported to a doctor,
but were not that led to Priscilla's
plea deal for omission to serious
bodily child injury charges.
Davala faced the same child
injury charge and murder. He
told us where he had buried the
clothes and we went out and dug it up.
Zavala claimed the boy died with his mother.
I never said I killed anybody.
It's almost like he was kept
sending us on a wild goose chase
even though he made a different
statement to police in writing
and he and two of his letters that
he sent to us was called, he called
himself the murder of Nicholas Plaza.
Prosecutors took the child injury
charges to court something they could.
Prove with a prison penalty similar
to murder is the order of this court.
In 2007, Zavala got 67 years.
Priscilla got 18.
Did you serve 18 years confinement?
How do you all think he he died?
There's no way of knowing,
and then there's Nicholas.
He will remain in a database
until his body gets found.
Some believe he still may be alive,
Saylor says.
A cadaver dog got a light hit on
garbage bags and zavala's garage.
Zavala told investigators he put the boys.
Body and the South side dumpster.
It would take a miracle to find
anybody that's been buried out there.
When the dumpster went to the landfill.
Saylor believed Nicholas
vanished among the garbage.
Why would it be honest with you?
Authorities do have some success
and missing person cases.
Missing people are found,
but in many cases they are not.
Unless people like you say something
we want to leave you with the phone
numbers that could change everything.
Turning the unsolved into closure for
those waiting on their loved ones
to come home.