[water gurgling]
[Copelia]
Christina would never have
walked away from her family.
She knew she was loved.
[Eric]
Whoever did this really knew
what they were doing and did
not want her found.
[George]
It seemed like during this
entire process, we were
chasing her ghost.
The person responsible for what
happened was calling
trick plays.
We just needed a few trick
plays of our own.
And as soon as we saw that
opening, we thought, man,
if we were going to get rid of
a body, this would be
a great place.
[suspenseful music playing]
[dreary tones playing]
[Andrew]
On January 12, 1995,
at approximately 12:55
in the afternoon,
the Cleveland Division of
Police got a missing person
report from Jose Rivera.
Jose was reporting
the disappearance
of his girlfriend,
Christina Adkins.
She was 18 years old,
about five months pregnant,
and lived with Jose.
He was 20 years old
at the time.
Jose indicated that he was at
work, and when he came home
that night, she was missing,
that nothing unusual
had been happening at home,
that she had disappeared,
and that was not something
she had done before.
[soft piano playing]
[Copelia]
Christina was gentle.
She was almost angelic.
When she first told me that
she was expecting,
she had a big smile
on her face.
She was happy about it.
She was looking forward to it.
So, when you don't see
a person, like, for three days,
and you don't know what's going
on, you don't hear anything,
I was really concerned
and really worried.
Any missing persons case is,
just on face value,
a traumatic and often
potentially horrific scenario.
But when a young woman like
Christina Adkins,
who happens to be five months
pregnant, goes missing,
that sets off some serious
alarm bells with police.
Jose and Christina lived
approximately two blocks away
from Christina's family, so one
of the first things we did was
go to her family and see if
anybody had any information
where she might have gone.
[Eric]
Police found out on
the day she disappeared,
the family was preparing for
another joyful milestone in
Christina's pregnancy.
They were making plans to go to
the hospital and find out
the sex of her baby.
[Mark]
But Christina's family told us
Christina was fighting with
her boyfriend, Jose,
recently, and was considering
breaking up with him.
[Andrew]
We learned that she had a very
tumultuous relationship.
He was extremely controlling.
[George]
Her parents also told us, when
Christina went missing
on that day,
her and Jose were involved in
some type of altercation.
[Copelia]
I know their relationship was
not perfect, but she loved Jose
because she told me that
she loved him.
I did tell her, "Christina,
let me tell you something,
"if there's one thing that
I believe in, is that a man
"should never mistreat a woman,
so if you ever feel that he is
"mistreating you in any way,
shape, or form, let me know.
Just don't put up with it."
What we learned about
the relationship led us
to the conclusion,
there was much more
to the story.
Jose was showing all
the indicators of somebody
who was willing to commit
violence against Christina.
[George]
The only problem was, what if
he did do something to
Christina, and where did
he put her?
[Eric]
Investigators also found out
that night when Christina
disappeared, Christina had
plans, in fact, to meet up with
a friend a block away to
the home she shared
with her boyfriend.
[George]
So we needed to see if
Christina did, in fact, spend
the night at
her friend's house.
There's the possibility maybe
she was gonna lay low for
a couple days.
[Andrew]
We talked to the friend
and Christina was over at
her house that night.
[faint giggling]
The two were playing cards,
talking, watching TV.
Christina was planning on
spending the night
at that house,
but she knew that Jose would
expect her to be home.
So around 1:00, 1:30
in the morning,
she made the decision that
she would walk just a few
houses up the street
back to the home that
she shared with her boyfriend.
[Eric]
As Christina was leaving,
her friend did notice that
a car had pulled up,
and Christina was speaking
with the driver.
The friend didn't make much of
this, and nor did she see
Christina walk away
from that car.
Nobody really knew if Christina
had gotten into this car,
and if she did,
where did she go?
[heavy stone scraping]
[ominous tones]
[George]
The investigation in
the beginning took two avenues.
First of all, Jose wasn't too
upfront about the argument that
they had had when he reported
her missing, which sort of shed
a little bit of suspicion
upon him.
And then second of all, is
the mystery car that nobody
seemed to know anything about.
[Andrew]
We needed to talk to Jose.
[Eric]
Christina's boyfriend
repeatedly told detectives that
he would never have hurt her.
Again, she was the mother of
his unborn child.
He loved her.
[George]
But based upon his lack of
truthfulness about
the fighting, he was considered
a main suspect, even though
there was no hard evidence.
So, as the investigation
turned on, there was still
the question of
that suspicious vehicle.
The focus was then directed to
finding that vehicle.
There was door-to-door
canvassing to see if anybody
had any recollection or
any knowledge of
this suspicious car, or had seen
anything that had happened
that night with Christina.
[Andrew]
We interviewed a neighbor of
Jose, named Elias Rivera.
He told us at the time,
"Yeah, I saw her.
"She was crying, and she was
upset, and she was saying that
she didn't want to go home."
[George]
But he didn't remember
or recall that suspicious
mystery car that Christina
was seen talking to.
He had no knowledge of
that vehicle.
[Andrew]
It was super frustrating.
There was the fear of
being defeated.
That is what keeps
me up at night.
[distant siren wailing]
[Eric]
In a city as large as
Cleveland, it's not out of
the question for cars
to go unnoticed
or be difficult to find.
How do you go about looking for
a single car in a city
like Cleveland?
[George]
It was just, like, Christina had
vanished off the planet.
It was sort of like watching
a movie where, you know,
scenes disappear and, you know,
there's a lot of like unknowns.
This was like one of those
kinds of cases.
It was just a lot of
missing parts.
But unfortunately,
it's not a movie.
Christina was five and a half
months pregnant at the time.
We were working tirelessly to
try to find her,
but we were left with nothing,
like we were chasing a ghost.
We were working hard
to unravel
whatever mystery happened
to her.
But it appeared that somebody
had gone to great lengths to
make sure that Christina was
never found, and just had some
type of joy in
befuddling the police.
She looked like such
an innocent person.
Things like that,
they haunt you
when you're a policeman.
It's like some type of game,
some type of sick game.
And there's a lot
we didn't know at that time.
But we did know that we'd have
to get into a mind of a k*ller.
[Eric]
The night 18-year-old Christina
Adkins went missing,
detectives didn't really have
much information to go off of.
Christina Adkins just
simply disappeared.
[distant dog barking]
[low, pensive music playing]
[Andrew]
Her family, told us Jose,
Christina's boyfriend,
had put all of her belongings
out on the curb,
ready to be disposed of
in the garbage.
He couldn't have been more
suspicious if he tried.
[Eric]
Could you imagine to just
carelessly toss her things out?
That was a very strange
thing to do
when it's done by the victim's
boyfriend, and the father of
this unborn child.
But on face value, that's not
evidence of a crime that
doesn't necessarily point to
any culpability on the part
of her boyfriend.
So the question becomes,
you know, like,
was he trying to just erase her
out of his life?
Was he not being forthcoming
about what the type of
relationship that
he really had with her?
Was he really
the love of her life?
Did with Jose have something
to do with her disappearance?
We didn't really know.
[Copelia]
It was really sad when
I heard on the news.
The family was
really heartbroken.
Nobody knew exactly where
Christina was, and we were
actually hanging up posters.
We were looking for her.
[Eric]
Then, in an incredibly bizarre
turn of events, as the family
spent time putting up
these flyers,
they were coming down
right away.
They were being removed right
away, almost as fast as
they were being put up.
The family would walk down West
25th Street, plastering these
flyers on streetlights
and windows and walls.
And the next day, walk back
down 25th again and those
flyers would all be gone.
It makes you wonder, was there
someone in the community
who really didn't want
Christina to be found?
You know, somebody went to
great lengths to try to hide
the fact that Christina was
missing, and to do things like
tearing down the posters.
That really
complicated the investigation.
[Eric]
As the '90s ticked
into the 2000s,
into the 2010s.
2013,
Christina had been missing
longer than she had been alive.
[George]
After time goes on,
you know, there's a pretty good
indication that,
you know, Christina
was deceased.
And whoever was responsible for
her abduction and m*rder was
going through great lengths to
try to hide her body,
you know, from the police
and give the family closure.
[Andrew]
Christina's family during that
time that she's missing,
they never lost hope that
they would see Christina again,
that the case would be solved.
-Who do we want?
-[crowd] Christina!
-When do we want her?
-Now!
[news broadcast]
Today, family and friends
marched side by side
down Clark Avenue to the corner
of West 25th and Kinkle Avenue,
the place where Christina Adkins
was last seen.
[Andrew]
We had always hoped, of course,
to bring Christina home to
her family alive and unharmed,
and unravel whatever mystery
happened to her, and it's a very
difficult thing to do as
an investigator
after years and years
of not finding somebody.
It is very easy to
start thinking,
well, we'll never
find her.
After so many years you have no
choice but to think the worst.
We all had hopes that Christina
was gonna be found,
but it was hard.
[birds chirping]
May 6, 2013 is a very important
date in the recent history of
Cleveland and certainly in
the story of Christina Adkins.
It was a day that
changed me forever.
[Mark]
There was an incident where
neighbors heard screaming
coming from an address on
Seymour Avenue in Cleveland.
One neighbor discovered a girl
that was trying to kick
and punch her way out of
a door of the house.
The neighbors helped her pull
the door open, and she ran
across the street to get away
from the house and ask somebody
for a phone or to call 911.
At the time, the FBI was
involved in the investigation.
The two missing persons,
Amanda Berry,
and another missing Cleveland
teenager, Gina DeJesus.
When I responded to
Seymour Avenue that day,
the ambulance was still there.
I immediately recognized
the missing teenage girls,
Amanda and Gina, and there was
another adult woman there.
There's a picture circulating
right now, a picture of
Amanda and a young girl.
That girl was in the house with
her, but as of yet,
we don't know who that girl is.
You know, outside of
the news media frenzy,
alarm bells were going off,
and one of the things that
family and police were thinking
was, could this third woman be
Christina Adkins?
[news broadcast]
Three missing women, gone since
they were girls, found alive
together a decade later.
[Mark]
The rescued victims from that
house were Gina DeJesus
and Amanda Berry.
The name of the third female
inside the house was not
immediately released
to the media.
After all these years of
waiting and hoping and praying,
here was some sort of break
and a chance to
finally get some news.
Christina's family hightailed
it over to the hospital to
hopefully find some
information, to hopefully
encounter Christina there,
just waiting for some
information about who was
in the hospital.
Could this third woman be
Christina Adkins?
As the night wore on,
the third woman was identified
as Michelle Knight,
who had been missing for
the last 10 years.
And while Christina's family
were incredibly thankful for
that young woman being safe,
they were also heartbroken that
this one slim chance had been
taken away, that it was
not Christina.
Even though we learned
the identity of the third woman
was not Christina Adkins,
we still thought
her disappearance
was connected.
[Eric]
Detectives find out the man
named Ariel Castro was
responsible for kidnapping
and holding those three women
in his home for years.
[George]
When the girls were abducted,
witnesses would say that
they were talking
to somebody in a car.
If we go back, the last time
anybody saw Christina alive,
she was talking to somebody
in a car.
So, same MO.
This is all the same
neighborhood that we're talking
about, this near West
Side neighborhood.
Everything involved here is
within a square mile of itself.
So Ariel Castro's house
and Christina's
disappearance, everything,
it's all just right there.
And the timeline was right.
Could Castro have done
something with her in 1995
and then reset, and started
doing it again in
the early 2000s?
[Copelia]
Ariel Castro was somebody that
we all actually, in a way,
grew up with, because we grew
up in a close area where
the Castros were.
We knew that he was scary.
I mean, he was creepy looking.
He would, like, look at you,
and you could see it
in his eyes.
You could see
the creepiness in him.
I mean, he just wasn't right.
[heavy stone scraping]
[distant, busy chatter]
[Andrew]
I don't think I went home for
days after May 6th.
We spent nights and weekends in
the office poring over every
piece of evidence
that we collected.
We thought of dozens of
different theories that would
have involved Ariel Castro
and Christina's disappearance.
We ex*cuted 19 or 20 separate
search warrants at his house.
There was not a stone unturned
in that house or on
that property.
You know, we looked in
every corner.
We searched that house with
multiple teams of
forensic experts.
[news broadcast]
In addition to DNA, firearms,
and fingerprint testing,
we're told BCI is also looking
at other evidence to determine
if there are any
additional victims.
[Andrew]
But there was no evidence in
that house that
Christina Adkins
had ever been there.
[keys clicking]
[distant office chatter]
[Andrew]
But then we learned that
Christina's boyfriend,
Jose, knew Ariel Castro.
[George]
So there was that thought that
maybe Ariel Castro, in company
with Jose Rivera,
were responsible for what
happened to Christina Adkins.
[Andrew]
We said, Jose has been
a suspect in this case
for 18 years.
Jose was still living in
the same house.
He was living there
with his mother.
[George]
We went back, grabbed Jose
one more time,
and was brought in for
questioning in Christina's
disappearance once again.
[Mark]
He was asked a lot of questions
about his connection to
Ariel Castro.
He was very uncomfortable,
sweating,
I mean, there was a lot of
signs that showed,
like, you know, he pretty much
looks like he could be
responsible for this.
He was denying all allegations
that we were thrown at him with
his involvement with
Christina's disappearance.
[Andrew]
We felt that Jose was not
telling the truth.
And so we ex*cuted searches of
his house and we brought
cadaver dogs in.
We thought that whatever
happened to Christina
was well-planned out.
We all thought for sure that
he had buried
her in the backyard.
We figured that would explain
why her body had not
been recovered.
[Eric]
What better place to hide
a body than a backyard?
That way,
no one's gonna see someone
carting a body out of the house
and being taken elsewhere.
[Andrew]
It was not a light touch.
We dug the backyard.
You know, we looked in
every corner,
but we found nothing.
That was beyond frustrating.
Without a body, we didn't even
have a crime.
[Andrew]
At this point, there was no way
to connect her boyfriend,
Jose Rivera, with Christina
Adkins' disappearance.
I keep telling everybody,
"I'm an innocent man.
"I'm not a k*ller.
That's my girlfriend,
that's my everything."
I wish she was right here
right now.
The way I feel right now,
I lost everything.
We know now, of course, that no
evidence pointed to Christina's
boyfriend as being
involved here.
And so detectives questioned,
Was law enforcement even
looking in the right direction?
Ariel Castro was still on
the radar of investigators.
Did Ariel Castro have some sort
of involvement with Christina
Adkins' disappearance?
Whoever did this
was diabolical,
a criminal mastermind.
But in a case like this,
there are a lot of
unanswered questions.
All of our investigative focus
and attention was still on
Ariel Castro.
So we focused on Christina's
case with a completely
fresh perspective.
That was the first time that
we said, "What are we missing?"
Law enforcement very quickly
began interviewing neighbors,
trying to figure out
who Ariel Castro was.
One of those neighbors was
a man named Elias Acevedo.
And in speaking with Elias,
law enforcement described him
as generally nervous
and fidgety, even.
He appeared very uneasy.
That stood out
to investigators.
Then you start looking,
OK, well, who is Elias Acevedo?
And we start looking at
his history,
and his history was shocking.
We found a report from 2004
where he was involved in
the abduction and sexual
as*ault of a 14-year-old girl.
And that that as*ault had
occurred at his home.
We found that it had been pled
to a felony of the third
degree, and that he had served
a very light sentence
on the case.
[Mark]
Elias Acevedo lived a few
streets away from Christina
Adkins, was a sex offender.
So that became
a major red flag for us.
[George]
I just had the feeling that
there had to be something here.
I just had a feeling that
they were somehow connected.
[Andrew]
We start looking at Christina's
report again, and one of
the things that jumped off
the page was the original
investigators interviewed
a neighbor named Elias Rivera,
and he told police at the time,
"Yeah, I saw Christina on
the night she disappeared,
and I saw her, she was crying."
But he didn't know
what happened to her.
At the time, there was no
reason to connect him with
Christina Adkins'
disappearance, but by comparing
photos now, we discovered that
was actually Elias Acevedo.
Back in 1995,
he very intentionally gave
police a false identity.
Why would you do that?
Why would you do that?
Those are the things that make
you say, now we actually have
the right guy.
We had a new suspect
to investigate.
We learned through interviews
with multiple members of
his own family that Elias
Acevedo, he was committing
these atrocities in
his own home.
He was preying on
his own children.
He was tormenting,
torturing, sexually assaulting
his own family on
a daily basis and exerting just
an unbelievable amount of
control and power over his wife
at the time,
and each of these kids.
So the stuff he did,
it's just like,
it's -- it was mind blowing.
It took a lot of courage for
Acevedo's family to
come forward.
They had been victimized,
they had been beaten to a pulp
by this guy, and in so many
ways they lived in fear.
He was a brutal guy.
[Andrew]
When you finally click into
the right track in
an investigation,
it feels right.
And after 18 years,
this finally felt right.
We had a feeling, we knew,
I guess it was instincts,
that we were close to the end
to knowing what had taken place
with Christina.
[George]
We all believed the key to
the crack in this case was
Elias' family
and the cooperation,
given what he did to them.
And then as time went on,
you know, Elias' wife was
willing to speak on
what she knew.
[Andrew]
She sat down and talked to us
for a couple of hours.
One of the things that made it
so remarkable is that
her memory was so clear.
She told us that she vividly
recalled the day of
January 10, 1995.
When Christina disappeared,
she remembered Christina Adkins
coming to her house.
Then Elias left to go to a bar.
She told us that he didn't come
home until early that morning.
He went into the bathroom,
and he smoked a cigarette,
and she braced herself for
the as*ault that she knew
she was gonna get,
And it didn't happen.
And that stood out to her.
[water gurgling]
After talking to Elias' wife
and poring over the timeline,
we believe that this is when
he k*lled Christina.
One of our original theories
was that he must have committed
this crime inside his house.
It was cold outside.
It was dark.
So we wanted to search that.
We noticed there was
an entrance and exit through
a trap door
to the outside.
So you could have got in
and out of that house without
going through a front door.
His wife would not have
heard anything.
[Mark]
There was a spot in
the basement that kind of
opened up a gate.
And you accessed, like,
an area under the porch that
was all dirt.
I describe Elias' house as
a haunted house that didn't
charge for admission.
[Andrew]
As soon as we saw that opening
in the basement,
we thought, man, if we were
going to get rid of a body,
this would be a great place.
We tore the house up
pretty good,
but we didn't find anything.
[Andrew]
It did not deter us in any way
in our belief that we were
finally on the right track.
Not finding human remains did
not mean that we didn't have
the right guy.
[suspenseful tones building]
[Mark]
Everything was pointing
towards Elias.
He must have thought of every
possible way to dispose of
her and then pick
the perfect place.
We just needed a little bit
more time and a few trick plays
of our own.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Andrew]
The job for any investigator is
to move the ball down
the field, and we set out very
early in this investigation to
move this ball, even if
it's inch by inch, day by day.
And we knew that if we could
just keep getting first downs,
we were going to
solve the case.
It was at that point that
we made a decision to make
our move, to talk to
Elias Acevedo himself.
[Tim]
Acevedo r*ped his family daily,
intimidated everybody,
threatened to k*ll other family
members if they ratted him out.
We knew he would be hard
to break.
[Mark]
We took him to the Cleveland
FBI headquarters
and really sat down
with him.
In the beginning, Elias did not
want to talk with us.
He didn't feel comfortable with
us, and he was denying all
allegations that we were
throwing at him with
his involvement with Christina.
When we gave Elias
the opportunity to take
a polygraph, he accepted.
And there's only one reason
that somebody in his position
would do that.
He thought he could beat us.
When he was confronted with
his failures on those two
facts, I think really
that's the straw that broke
the camel's back and convinced
him that he wasn't gonna get
out of it this time.
[Tim]
We told Acevedo that we were
gonna give him
a limited opportunity to admit
to us that he k*lled Christina.
And if he did it, then we would
not seek the death penalty.
We called it a "blue light
special," that the deal ends
when the light goes off.
[Mark]
But he was hesitating.
[suspenseful music playing]
And still wasn't 100% sure
he was going to confess
and tell us what
we wanted to know.
Elias finally broke.
He confessed to murdering
Christina Adkins.
Yeah, I choked her.
[heavy metal scraping]
We don't solve every case with
a confession, but the ones that
we do are special.
But we needed proof.
We needed to bring
Christina Adkins' body home
to her family.
So we asked Acevedo to
take us to her.
And he agreed.
So we leg shackled him
and belly chained him and put
him in the car, and he took us
turn by turn.
And he said,
"Pull over here."
[Andrew]
And he said, "Just on the other
side of this Jersey barrier,
you'll go down a hill,
and there'll be a sewer drain."
And I put her in
the sewer drain.
So we walked down this hill,
and we came to the sewer drain.
And we lifted this top up
and looked down in there.
[heavy metal scraping]
And I mean, I was shocked.
As clear as day,
there were her remains
at the bottom of this hole.
18 years later, and I could see
them by standing at the top of
this hole and just
looking down.
It was unreal.
[siren wailing]
[Andrew]
And when we exhumed Christina's
body from the bottom of
the hole, we found an ID card
with her name on it.
[Copelia]
When they said that they found
Christina's body, I remember
breaking down, crying,
and my mother, too.
You know, all of us,
we were emotional.
You know, we didn't expect for
her to go through that,
especially the way
she was taken.
It was
and to throw her in a sewer,
and a baby?
I mean, what kind of monster
does that?
He's a monster.
He's Satan.
It was like a game of cat
and mouse, where the mouse was
running law enforcement
in circles.
Elias Acevedo thought
he was clever.
He hid Christina's body in
a place that was almost in --
in plain sight.
And, in fact, had used new
construction and highway
infrastructure to hide
Christina's body.
I mean, it was
a absolutely diabolical
thing to do.
And then to have 18 years
pass by,
it's astonishing to think about.
The odds of solving this
case was like the kid who walks
up to his baseball coach
and says, "Coach I'm gonna hit
a grand slam today."
You say, "Good,
kid, first you got to set up
"the bases, you got to
load the bases, right, then
you got to have the power to
hit it over that fence."
And Agent Burke did both,
he set up the bases and he hit
that ball right over the fence
for the grand slam.
It was a heck of a day.
[Andrew]
And we were able to prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that
Elias Acevedo and Elias Acevedo
alone was responsible for
the m*rder of Christina Adkins.
[Tim]
On December 30, 2013,
Acevedo was sentenced to
prison for life on over 100
counts, without
possibility of parole,
with an additional
445 years to serve.
He took my life, my love,
my pride, my wife, my child.
But you know what?
There's a guy up there,
and she's in good hands.
[Copelia]
I hope Elias thinks about what
he's done for the rest
of his life.
I hope he's tormented every
day, every moment,
every second.
It's not only by what he did to
Christina and that baby,
but also, you know, the grief
that he caused.
I hope he's tormented.
I hope that he doesn't live
in peace.
It really was a needle
in a haystack.
Had the teens gone off the road
and they were stranded
somewhere?
Why would someone do that
to two teenagers?
It unleashed something
we never even fathomed.
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