Original subtitles

No one had seen her.

No one had heard from her.

We didn't know where she was.

And then I really started to think,

"what's going on here?"

We understood that statistically she was less and less likely

to be found alive.

I never thought that anyone would do something like this.

Alexandria's in the west-central part of Minnesota

on the i-94 corridor,

approximately halfway between St. Paul, Minneapolis,

and Fargo, north Dakota.

Alexandria's about 13,000 people.

There's a massive amount of lakes around here,

and it's pretty much

a summertime lake home municipality.

It's a nice rural community.

Alexandria's supposed to be this really safe place,

and your kids should be able to play outside,

and you don't need to worry about it.

I've always known there's bad people in the world.

But I never thought that anyone would do something like this.

I was a single mom, and I have three daughters,

Jasmine is the youngest.

Jasmine is always very outgoing.

She loved music and drawing.

She liked to go on the trail with her friends,

and they would ride bikes.

At the time, Jasmine was 15.

She was going into the 9th grade, I believe.

John was Jasmine's best friend at this time.

John and Jasmine hung out almost every day in the summer.

Aah!

Jas!

I'm fine, I'm fine.

Are you sure?

Yes. Don't -- don't move.

John's dad, Thomas, was a friend of ours,

and we had known him since my kids were just little.

Let me see it.

That is a nasty road rash.

Do you need to go to the hospital?

No, no, I'm fine. Are you sure?

Yes, really. I'm fine.

Thanks.

So, you're good?

Yes, I said I'm fine.

All right.

She had fallen off her bike,

and the handlebar went into her ribs,

and she got a bruise from that,

but it didn't stop her from biking.

They kept on biking around.

When Jasmine got home that night,

she had been pretty much out almost all day.

She had a migraine,

so she took a bath

and then she laid on the couch with a heating pad

to see if that would help her migraine.

Remember what the doctor said.

You to need to drink lots of water.

Something wrong?

I have to go to Jake's, it'll just be a minute.

Sure you'll be okay?

Yeah, I told Andrew I'd video chat with him.

Okay. Be back in a little bit.

Bye. Bye.

I had a friend who needed me,

and he was messaging me,

so I told jas I was gonna go and talk to him.

And she was fine with it,

'cause she knew him and where he lived.

It was only about a mile away.

When I left that night,

my daughter Paige and her fiance, Eric,

were in the bedroom sleeping,

and Jasmine was laying on the couch

talking to her friend, Andrew, on video chat.

I figured she'd go to sleep shortly.

When I came back, it was about an hour later,

and the first thing I did was check on Jasmine.

I looked on the couch, and she wasn't there.

The heating pad was still on,

her phone was there.

When she does get really bad migraines,

sometimes she'll go and lay on the bathroom floor.

So I went in the bathroom and looked,

she wasn't there.

I looked in the tub, she wasn't there.

And I went back to Paige and Eric's room,

and I asked them where Jasmine was,

and the first thing Paige said was,

"she was sleeping on the couch."

And I explained to her that she is not.

Jasmine's phone is pretty much her lifeline.

She never leaves without her phone.

I knew that something didn't seem right,

and I needed the police involved.

B.o.l., Caucasian female, 15 years old, brown hair,

last seen about an hour ago.

10-4.

So you didn't hear or see anything unusual?

No. No.

And where were you two?

We were asleep.

Now, you said that she had a headache.

Could she have possibly went to one of the neighbors for help?

No, it's not like her.

The police officer and I went to all the neighbors' houses

that we're friends with,

and at first, I was feeling bad,

because at this point, it was like midnight, 12:30...

...and the police officers banging on these doors

until people actually answered.

And the neighbors that we went to had no idea

where Jasmine was.

I received a phone call at home on the morning of August 9th,

Jasmine's maybe been gone for six to seven hours

at that point.

And we've all, as patrol officers,

worked enough juvenile runaway cases

that a lot of times these juveniles will return home

in six hours, eight hours, you know, less than 24.

Did you notice or, hear or see anything unusual last night?

No.

Any friends she may have contacted or be visiting?

I don't know.

And did she take anything with her?

Clothing, a bag, her phone?

Yeah. Here.

But this one, right from the outset

just felt differently

because of the time that she went missing

and the fact that she hadn't taken anything with her.

The cell phone, for US,

became a very crucial piece of evidence.

It didn't make sense, for US, that she would leave it behind,

given how connected we are to all of our phones,

and especially, you know,

teenagers aren't likely to leave the house

for any period of time without a cellphone.

Any chance you know the password to this?

There wasn't anybody other than Jasmine

that knew the passcode for the phone.

We couldn't get into the device itself if the phone was locked.

Maybe she was messaging

with somebody through Facebook or Instagram

or one of these other social media accounts

of which she had several.

We were able to access social media

through search warrants,

and we were able to determine she'd been speaking

with another juvenile in a community

in northern Minnesota.

Sure you're okay?

Yeah, I told Andrew I'd video chat with him.

Okay. Be back in a little bit.

We believe that Andrew was the last person

to have contact with her before Jasmine went missing

and so we certainly needed to figure out

what he knew about her

on the night that she went missing.

There's an FBI agent, as well as my partner at the time

that drove up to northern Minnesota

to speak with him about what they had been talking about

the night she went missing.

Jasmine and Andrew were kind of casual friends,

I think they may have met through social media

or maybe friends of friends.

Andrew didn't have any real worthwhile information

and very quickly we're able to establish

that Andrew didn't have anything to do

with Jasmine's disappearance.

I knew she wouldn't run away.

She would always leave me a note if she was going somewhere

and I wasn't home,

and there was no note.

Her phone was there.

Nothing was adding up.

I had so many fears going through my mind.

Who could have taken her?

What could have happened?

After Jasmine went missing, we got a crime alert done.

We listed her as a missing person,

did what we could to speak with friends and neighbors

and people that she might be associated with.

My biggest fear is someone came by the house and kidnapped her,

or maybe she was talking to someone online

and was gonna go with them, and they kidnapped her.

Those were my worries,

'cause I knew she didn't run away.

Had a little trouble finding a mug.

Thank you.

So, what do you got for me?

Well, that's her last entry.

Well, could there be anyone else?

Dan.

And who's Dan?

He's, we dated for a little while after my husband died.

Um.

It ended badly.

I had to get a restraining order.

Here.

That was back in June.

Dan had sent Sarah a message

something to the effect of "I just walked past your kid."

He had made some suspicious comments about Sarah's children,

not rising to the level of criminal behavior

but certainly suspicious.

He was watching the girls.

I don't even know what he meant by that, but it --

it felt like a threat, you know?

And do you know where he is now?

We figured out where Dan was living,

went and knocked on that door,

Dan wasn't home

and so we went and phoned Dan at work.

We were able to interview him.

He had an alibi.

There were several people that were able to put him

at his house when Jasmine went missing.

That fizzled out relatively quickly.

Sometimes a juvenile will go missing,

and a lot of times, they've checked in with a friend,

they've been active on a social media account,

they've given some indication that they're alive and well

and just don't want to be found.

We didn't have that with Jasmine.

All of the social media was shut down.

No one had seen from her, no one had heard from her,

and we frankly didn't know where she was.

Let me out.

My house had turned into some type of investigation center.

I mean, the second you walk in,

all you see on my table is flyers.

And we put them on our car windows,

we even mailed them out. I mean, they were everywhere.

I kept on talking to the media about it.

I've been hearing about a girl missing.

It was on billboards, it was all over the place.

There was a lot of things going on here in Alexandria

where everybody was looking for her.

I did make a Facebook page called

"help find Jasmine block."

The police were on there, as well,

so they could monitor it

so if anyone seemed out-of-the-ordinary,

they could go and question them.

We had agencies really from all over --

we had the bureau of criminal apprehension,

the department of corrections has a fugitive task force,

and those folks are fantastic at finding people.

We had our sister agency,

the Douglas county sheriff's office, helping,

and we had the FBI.

And, you know, leave no stone unturned

trying to find a 15 year old

and get her back with her family.

There were a number of times throughout this investigation

where we thought we had a very strong lead,

and we would do the work only to kind of be disappointed

when we found out that it was a dead end.

But then Sarah received some social media message

from a rasheed Smith,

and this individual said that he was involved in sex trafficking

and that he had taken Jasmine to a city in Montana

and left her there.

And this person was feeling remorse,

because he doesn't feel it's right to traffic children.

The individual actually provided an address in Montana.

I reached out to the FBI,

and we quickly determined it might be faster

if I just reach out to the local agency.

I remember having a phone conversation

with an officer from that department.

He agreed to go knock on the door.

Yeah?

Are you rasheed Smith?

Who?

I'm looking for rasheed Smith.

Do I look like a rasheed to you?

Can I come in?

What's this all about?

There's a missing girl out of Minnesota,

and we have reason to believe she may have been brought

to this address.

You got a warrant?

I can get one.

Come on in.

You live alone?

I wish.

Can't get the bitch to move out.

Can I help you?

No, just looking.

What's in there?

Linen closet.

You always lock your linen closet?

I think it's time for you to go.

Come back when you have a warrant.

Thanks for your time.

Have a nice day, officer.

Golden.

It's officer Johnson in Montana.

Just left the address you gave me.

Guy didn't flinch when I mentioned rasheed,

but there was a locked closet

at the end of the hall.

I was getting excited, because there's a locked room,

and we've got maybe credible information that she's there.

And I said, "I really need you to see what's in that room."

This lead in Montana with the possible sex trafficker

looked very promising,

and we worked as quickly as we could to try

to either prove or disprove that.

Way to go, Colombo.

Solved the case.

Turns out there was nothing suspicious

in that house at all.

I quickly drafted a search warrant

for that social media account,

and it looked like rasheed Smith was a fake name.

Somebody just created it quickly, send a few messages,

and then ultimately deleted it.

It was just somebody having fun

at Sarah's expense, unfortunately.

That was a low point in the case,

the case was getting long.

We understood that statistically she was less and less likely

to be found alive,

but it was still important that we find her.

Jasmine's mother has organized another search

for this Saturday at three o'clock

meeting here at the big ole statue in Alexandria.

If you have any information on where Jasmine block could be,

call police.

In Alexandria, Katherine Johnson,

5 eyewitness news.

As time went further and further on,

I was feeling more frustrated.

Every day I was doing what I needed to do,

thinking of new things I needed to do to find Jasmine.

Everybody's life kind of went on, but mine was on hold.

And anyone I came into contact with,

I kind of questioned them in my mind most of the time,

what if they did it? Are they hiding something?

Do they know something

or are they just not telling me something?

I was going through what every parent fears.

I was crying.

I was emotional.

I was lost.

My world, it just stopped.

It was the second day of school,

and the first and second day of school were very hard on me

just 'cause I was sending two daughters, not three.

I called up my best friend, and we went out to lunch.

And I remember talking to her, and I'm like,

"Heidi," I'm like, "Jasmine's gonna be found.

She's gonna, like, be found any day now."

And I was like, "you know, I really feel it."

And as she was dropping me off,

the police officer's car pulled up behind me,

and I didn't think anything of it

just because they were at my house,

you know, three, four times a day.

Hey, Sarah.

The police officer asked if I could come in his car

to talk to him,

and I knew at that point,

it was either really bad news or really good news.

I live on a 160-acre farm

three miles east of Barrett, Minnesota.

I have a lake right across the road from me.

And I lived in this area my whole life.

I managed a fertilizer plant for about 40 years.

And I went to work that morning and did my usual things,

and I got a call from a farmer that wanted me to go look

at a couple fields of his

that were right close to my farm site.

So I jumped in the company pickup,

went down and looked at them,

was about a half a mile from my place,

I decided to go home and pick up a diesel can

that I had forgotten the morning before.

Went in the shed,

stepped outside, got in the pickup...

...and was just looking across my grassland,

and I saw something out there that I couldn't identify.

It was close to half a mile from me,

and I kept watching it for just I suppose maybe just a minute,

and then it disappeared and I thought, "it's gone.

It went in some brush or went in the grass."

I thought, "it's got to be a deer,"

so I decided to leave.

I started the pickup up and looked out there again,

there it was again and I thought,

"well, I'd like to see what this is,

'cause I've never seen this out there before."

Eventually, I noticed it was walking towards me,

then I noticed it was a person, and I thought,

"what's a person doing way out half a mile from everything

out in my grass?"

I noticed it was a female,

and then I really started to think,

"what's going on here," you know?

"Why is this female out in my field?"

I decided to go out and get her with my pickup.

When she saw the pickup moving, she started running towards me.

And when she got a little bit closer, I recognized her face.

She was wearing a t-shirt and some shorts, summer shorts.

She was all wet, she was cold, and then she started sobbing

and, of course, that made her shake more, but.

My god.

You are the girl.

Th-they're after me.

We're gonna get you some help.

Everything's gonna be okay.

You come on me.

I made her get in the pickup,

and she just started babbling about everything that went on,

that she had been kidnapped,

she had been abused, and she needed help.

And I said, "I'll get you help. I'll call 911 right now."

911. What's your emergency?

I've got the block girl.

She's safe with me here in my pickup.

I got Douglas county dispatch at Alexandria,

and I said, "I've got the block girl,"

which I couldn't think of her first name at the time,

"I got the block girl in the pickup with me,

and she's okay," and silence.

Sir, would you repeat that?

And I said, "aren't you recording this?"

And he goes, "yes, we are. Just repeat it."

And so I repeated the whole works.

My captain came in and said, "get in the car

and go to Grant county. They have her."

I get goose bumps today.

I will always remember where I was standing

the first time I said,

"Jasmine block walked from the Grant county squad

to the ambulance."

Just a huge, huge sense of relief she's found.

We're gonna get her back with her mom.

Jasmine, I'm detective Tony golden.

Do you mind if I talk to you for a few minutes?

They're taking me to the hospital.

Can I ride with you?

Okay.

I conducted a short interview with her in the ambulance

just because we needed to know

were we looking for suspects, where had she been?

Nobody knew.

She starts to tell me the story.

It was incredible.

It was hard-to-believe incredible.

I was video chatting Andrew,

and then I heard a super-loud car pull up.

Andrew.

Yeah, that was yeah, that was a pretty --

pretty long, long drive that time.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that would be good.

Um.

I got to go. Talk to you later. Bye.

It was Thomas.

Hey, Jasmine.

Hey, what's going on?

It's John.

He was saying that he needed my help,

because John was having a breakdown.

I got in the car, and we drove.

John?

He's just down the hallway, jas.

John?

He's not here.

Jasmine asked, "well, where is John?"

And that's when Thomas said that John wasn't there

and that Jasmine wasn't gonna be going back home either.

Please, don't.

Thomas took Jasmine to his residence

where he lived with Josh holby.

And approximately two weeks after Jasmine went missing,

Steven powers enters the mix.

She was kept in a closet for most of that month.

She was forced to ingest methamphetamine.

She had been sexually assaulted on multiple occasions.

Please, please, no, please.

Get up. Get up!

No, no.

Please, no.

No help me, please.

Please! Let me go.

I was always picturing in my mind, like,

how would I escape,

but Thomas told me

if I do anything dumb, that he'd shoot me.

She was scared all the time,

you know, never knowing what's gonna happen today

or when she's gonna be able to come home

or someone's gonna find her.

Mr. Barker.

All three suspects did have contact

with law enforcement prior.

Mr. Barker. Alexandria police department.

And after Jasmine was reported missing,

there was a Douglas county deputy

that was following up on some stolen property

and believed that Thomas barker might be responsible

for the stolen property.

Yeah, area seems to be clear.

Copy that. 10-4.

We believe that the deputy knocking on the door

spurred them to flee.

Please. Please, please, no.

Please. Please! Shut up. Get in.

Now is my time to go if I ever want to get out.

The area that Jasmine was in when she escaped,

it was in the country.

It was hard for her to run through that,

but she knew she had to.

She was scared for her life.

I was afraid they were gonna find me.

I started going down by the lake and then I seen Earl's house.

I'm not a good swimmer at all,

but I just wanted to get home to my family.

As chance would have it, Mr. Melchert was stopping home

for something and comes across her and calls law enforcement.

I decided that I wasn't gonna let the police officer

tell me my daughter was dead.

Do you mind if we, um, step in the car and talk for a second?

So I looked over at him, and I'm like,

"please tell me you found Jasmine."

Is she okay?

She's okay.

We got her.

And I started, like, crying and, you know, everything.

I'm sorry.

I always cry at this part.

And he said that he just found out they found her.

He doesn't know any information, all he knows is that she's safe

and that she's okay.

On the ride in to the hospital,

Jasmine told me that the suspects were working out

of two vehicles.

There was a green pickup truck

and a small, black four-door car.

There was a statewide alert. We're looking for this vehicle,

it has these occupants,

and the Alexandria police department

has probable cause to believe that they were involved

in this missing juvenile.

They brought jas to the Alexandria hospital.

We get there, and I get to the door.

I gave her a big hug,

a big kiss, told her I loved her.

And the first thing she said to me

was it Thomas kidnapped her.

She told me it was Thomas barker.

I was very shocked.

I never thought that he would do something like this.

I'm fine, I'm fine.

Whoa. Don't -- don't move.

Stay still.

Let me see it.

That is a nasty road rash.

Do we need to get you to hospital?

No, no. I'm fine. Are you sure?

Yes. I said I'm okay.

Help me up. Thank you.

When Jasmine was showing John the bruise on her ribs,

Thomas was attracted to that

and that's why he wanted to take Jasmine.

So it was all planned out.

Get your hands where I can see them.

The police ended up conducting a traffic stop,

and they were able to help take them into custody.

I had a big bonfire with some of my neighbors,

and we burned all my fliers.

And that felt super good.

Jasmine is an incredibly resilient young woman.

I wish I could have met her on more pleasant circumstances,

but she's truly an incredible individual.

Knowing that this happened to my daughter is very hard,

but Jasmine just impresses me, because she's a strong hero,

and no matter what, she's gonna put up a fight,

and she's gonna make sure everybody knows

that she's worth it.

We're proud of her.

We all are.