(dramatic music)
16 year old Hailey disappeared.
Burns missing for more than a year.
Her family told us she disappeared
from her home back on May 23rd, 2016.
CMPD and the FBI are now involved
in the effort to find Hailey.
May the 23rd, 2016 was a day that I'll never forget.
That morning I went into her room
at about 5:30 to wake her up.
And I pulled the blankets back like this.
There was stuffed animals all underneath here.
I remember waking up to my wife yelling into the door,
"Tony, I can't find Hailey."
I jumped out of the bed.
He was in a frantic state.
I looked in every room, her bedroom.
I went into our bonus room, I went into the garage.
I came straight up this hall right to this front door.
The door was ajar, kind of like this.
At that moment I knew something was wrong.
She was gone.
I was in total shock that she had left.
Went to the trash cans
and I found a stack of paper full of information.
She had printed off a list of all the states
and the age of consent for sex,
and the punishment for being caught
with a minor across the state lines.
Only an adult would be concerned about the punishment
from being found with a minor.
I read her journals and I found
a list called Daddy's Rules.
They had been given to her by an anonymous person.
She was not allowed to eat certain things,
to watch certain things,
and there was also a list of punishments.
When I read that, I knew that someone
had convinced her to go.
We put posters up.
We hired a private investigator.
Anthony and Shaunna Burns
are hard at work on a gift for their daughter,
redecorating her room.
But they have no idea when or even if she'll see it.
I started contacting every news station.
We wanted to send this signal to Hailey
that we had not stopped looking.
The FBI is now offering a reward
to find their daughter, Hailey.
As soon as the FBI got involved
they took all of our cellphones,
they scrubbed every computer.
They interviewed all these contacts that she had online,
and they were able to find nothing.
It broke him.
I would wake up in the morning and I would start crying.
And I would scream in the car
on the way to work, cry in the office.
I cried so much that I burned out my contacts for my eyes
and I had to get LASIK so that I could see again.
I'd sit outside of our garage every night for five hours
looking down the road that she walked down,
and I'd stay there until probably 3:00 a.m.
And I was just thinking maybe I'd see her
coming back and it would end.
We were broken.
We had to accept that she was gone.
Well after a year and 34 days of worry and despair,
Shaunna says she was contacted online
by a woman halfway around the world in Romania
who said Hailey had made contact with her and was alive.
(dramatic music)
Missing for more than a year,
tonight Charlotte teen, Hailey Burns has been found.
An American student studying in Romania
who met Hailey in a chatroom
realized that she was in danger.
Her family is shocked and relieved.
Neighbors say they can't believe it.
On June 23rd, 2017, my wife and I
received a message on Facebook
from someone named Kat in Romania.
They said, "I think I know where Hailey is.
"She's safe and she wants to come home."
I was very much guarded.
My wife asked Kat to send a picture of my daughter
to confirm that it was her.
We got a picture of Hailey holding a sign
that says Kit Kat, the name of the person in Romania.
At that moment I knew she was alive.
All the pain just moved away.
I contacted the FBI.
The FBI agent was on the phone with the Georgia detectives
trying to establish where Hailey was.
Talking to Hailey through the police,
the police are asking,
"What can you see outside of your window?
"Can you hear any trains in the background?"
According to Kat, Hailey was in a two story
brick building in Georgia.
That was all the information that we had.
She took a picture out of her window.
(camera clicking)
My wife zoomed in on the picture
and was able to see a sign for the street.
I could see at the very end of the street
a tiny little white for sale sign.
So then I went on Google and a house popped up
maybe four doors down to the left
of the location that she's in.
Police are talking to us and they say,
"You need to tell her to signal us."
So my daughter pieced the blind up a little bit
and then said, "hoot hoot" out of the window.
They heard it and they saw her in the window.
And then she fainted.
At that point our communication with her stopped.
I didn't know if she was alive or dead.
After the longest 45 minutes of my life,
the FBI told me that they had her safe
and that we needed to come down to Georgia and pick her up.
17 year old Burns, missing for more than a year,
was found safe early Sunday morning in Georgia.
The 31 year old arrested in the crime,
Michael Wysolovski is charged with aggravated sodomy,
false imprisonment, interference with custody,
and cruelty to children.