Transcript of True Crime Vault: A Captive Student

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Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault, where heart-stopping headlines come to life.

My name is Sarah Beth Myers, and I'm a former Assistant United States Attorney. I became a prosecutor to help particularly vulnerable victims.

An Amber Alert was issued for a missing teenager believed to be in danger. Thomas was last seen at 7:30 AM March 13th.

A 15-year-old girl taken by a 50-year-old man.

I was the lead federal prosecutor in the Tad Cummins case, a small-town story that became a national phenomenon.

Authorities now sending out a nationwide alert. Tips coming in from dozens of states. I've been covering the story since it first broke 5 years ago. I've traveled thousands of miles, talked to dozens of people in this race against time and Tad Cummins.

He starts out with making her feel special and smart and loved. That's what really allowed him to take over her brain and her heart.

Never-before-seen video of Tad Cummins' interrogation.

I absolutely did not do it. I did not do it. I'm the nicest guy you're ever gonna encounter in every situation.

I ain't done nothing.

Nothing wrong.

But I came in here not knowing if I was going to check them.

Right.

I'm more afraid than I've ever been in my life.

We have no idea where these individuals could be right now. They threw both of their phones in the Tennessee River, then it was just completely off the grid.

Your head does go to the worst possible place, and that is that they're not going to be found alive.

I don't think anyone had really heard of Cullyoca, Tennessee until this happened.

Cullyoca is a small community. There's not a lot there.

It's a little bitty place with a school and a store and a lot of farms and, well, country people.

The railroad track runs through there.

We do have the best soil in the South. They used to say that for the same seed of corn in North Carolina grows one ear to our three.

Everybody in Kalioka knows everybody. All the kids there go to school together. You know who plays sports. You know who's in the band.

15-year-old Elizabeth Thomas is, for the most part, on the outside, a very typical teenager. She was somewhat of a tomboy. She played really rough. She could switch to being really nice and sweet.

She'd come over to my house and we would talk and watch TV and eat junk food.

Paige Griffith and her daughter Erin say they knew Elizabeth Thomas well. That's Elizabeth on the left, play fighting with Erin in the back of the car.

She was just really high energy. And when I'd come through the door, she would be the first one that would run up to me and jump in my arms.

And she'd, "Yay for Daddy!" Elizabeth was homeschooled for her entire life. And her mom was the one who was in charge of that.

When I first met her sister Sarah back in 2017, she showed me around Elizabeth's room, and there were tokens of childhood innocence all around.

This is her baby blanket.

And she still has it?

Yes, she has it in her backpack, and she cuddles with it.

There was an Xbox that she had used her money that she'd saved up from her part-time job to buy. But the toys and the blankets all of it overshadowed by a childhood that had clearly been difficult.

Her mother allegedly abused her physically.

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

Abusive?

Very.

Violent?

Very.

Physically violent? And no escape because you were homeschooled.

Elizabeth's siblings say they suffered for years, all that coming to a head when their mother hit one of them with a 2x4.

My mom hurt my sister, and we were just fed up with it. We were just done. After watching all this abuse, we couldn't stand it anymore.

Can you imagine the level of alleged abuse that the children reached out to the Department of Family Services to get help?

The children themselves secretly got together and wrote a letter to the agency. Did your mom know that was happening?

No.

Were you scared?

Really. Like, we were all having panic attacks in the middle of the night. Like, I woke up shaking sometimes. It's just fearing what she would do if she found out.

Her father, Anthony Thomas, worked long hours in pest control to support the family and says he had no idea how bad things were at home.

I'd just been basically working, basically providing.

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

There's two sheriff's deputies in my yard. To caseworkers and—

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

Yeah.

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

So I'm gonna have to take a break.

You gonna go outside and get some air?

Yeah.

You want some water? We got a bottle of water.

Their mother was charged with abuse and then removed from the home.

A judge has ordered her to stay away from her family.

She's charged with 5 counts of abuse and neglect. With her case pending, Thomas would only say—

I'm not guilty of those.

There was a plea deal bargain made, and as of now, those charges have been expunged.

There's no one to do the homeschooling because the dad is out working all the time. That forces all of the children to now enter public schools.

What was it like when you first got to school?

Kind of crowded. I didn't really like it. It was confusing. There are so many halls and so many classes. Whenever you get out, it's like walking through New York City.

It's all completely new to her. She doesn't know anything about lockers, time periods, bells to change the classroom.

Public school makes anybody that's an outsider the target, an easy target.

She went from the frying pan to the fire.

First thing they did was call me ugly once I came to school. But I just stayed to myself. I was real quiet. I just did my work.

Was it easy making friends?

I mean, they all had their little cliques. They've been together in the school since elementary. You can't really disrupt that.

A teacher steps up to help Elizabeth with this difficult transition. He can see that she's struggling.

Tad Cummins taught health science. You can see him in this YouTube video demonstrating CPR to students.

See the difference?

She was in his class, and he began to help her make this transition from home school to to public school, and when somebody would pick on her, he would take care of it.

He's popular with the other teachers, but most of all, he's really popular with the other kids.

What's his class like?

He didn't ever really care too much for as far as, like, rules went. We weren't supposed to have cell phones in there, but he never really cared. He was always one to just kind of let you do your own thing. Tells you to call him Tad. He doesn't really care, you know, for the last name basis thing.

He was kind of like the cool teacher. Everybody wanted to take that class, I guess.

Absolutely.

At what point did you meet Tad Cummins?

I was about to enter the lunchroom. I was sitting 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. And then he came to me, and he pointed at me and said, "My soul sees your soul." Kind of scary.

And how long had you been at school at this point?

I think that was not even a month. She was miserable.

She had no one in that school to talk to except for this teacher. She was so vulnerable, and she was looking for somebody.

He starts out with making her feel special and smart and loved, and that's what really allowed him to take over her brain and her heart. That was all part of his calculated, sick, twisted plan.

He had a dark side, and she was the focus of that dark side.

For most of her life, Elizabeth Thomas was homeschooled, so it wasn't until she was 15 that she went to a public school for the first time, and she meets a very popular teacher, a health sciences teacher, Tad Cummins.

I first met Tad when I was in junior high. He seemed like a popular guy. He was always kind of cutting up and clowning around a lot.

Tad is my baby brother. He's been my best friend since the day he was born. My mother was the troop leader of my Brownie troop, and we had to do something with Tad.

We didn't know what to do, so we dressed him up like Santa Claus.

And put him on the float with us.

As an adult, she says Tag went on a church mission to Panama.

I remember him talking about how awesome the pineapples were. They cut them right out of the ground and ate them.

I was 17 years old and he was 18, and we met in his high school parking lot. When you meet that right person, you just know. We just— everything clicked. Everything was perfect. All I ever wanted was to get married and find that Mr. Right and have a family.

The best word to describe Tad Cummins would be charismatic.

He had all the trimmings of a good citizen. He was part of a church.

He's never had so much as a parking ticket. I mean, he's never been in trouble.

We had everything we ever wanted— two beautiful kids and beautiful grandkids.

What was it like growing up with him?

We had a very close family, very happy upbringing.

Everything was always Perfect. He taught me everything I know about God. He's a wonderful Christian man. God is the center of our marriage, and our faith is the most important thing to us.

Teaching is actually Tad Cummins' second career. Before that, he was a respiratory therapist at a local hospital, and it's there that he worked with a man named Chandler Anderson.

Tad was kind of a bully about things. He would say things like, "You're stupid. You know, you shouldn't be in the ER." In front of other people? Oh, yeah, in front of other people. I have seen Tad be told no, and I've seen the rage and anger he gets.

He doesn't take no well.

No, absolutely.

Chandler is not surprised that Tad would leave a more lucrative job working at a hospital to be a teacher.

If money's not the central issue and feeding your ego is, that's what he chose. Who tells a teacher no? Certainly not students.

That's the first time I've seen him, you know, love a job so much. He loved helping people. Students would go to him with their problems. Teachers would bring him students who were having problems so he could talk to them because he just had that type of a personality that always knew how to help people, the right things to say.

And in the beginning, it looked like that was what he was doing for 15-year-old Elizabeth, helping her adjust to a new school where she was having a tough time.

Elizabeth, like the other students, started dropping in on Tad Cummins' free periods to have conversations with him and to seek him out for help.

Anything that's upsetting me, anyone that would tease me, I'd go down there and talk to him.

Did you feel like you had anyone else that you could possibly talk to?

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

What did you think his reason was for being around Elizabeth?

Oh, I think initially he was wanting to help her because of her past abuse.

You knew where she was coming from.

Yes.

She wanted a therapist. He dissuaded her from getting a bona fide therapist.

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.

So he convinced you not to get help?

Yes.

And it's progressed a little bit more than just a relationship at school because Tad and his wife and the extended Cummings family has really welcomed Elizabeth into their family, into their home.

It was like a father-daughter relationship. It's the way I saw it too. It's the way he would I can't explain it. In fact, I called her our third daughter sometime.

He gave me money, and he also bought food for me and put it in his classroom. He bought a microwave and put it in his room. That way I could heat up my coffee.

He also gave her a Bible, and it really illustrated, you know, the lengths that he was going to to earn her trust, and not only using his authority position as a teacher, but as a man of faith.

Our preacher's wife was going to be talking at church one Sunday morning about abuse and how to get past it, and so we talked about it and decided to invite her.

Taking someone to church doesn't seem like something that would make most people think twice.

You have to build that trust, and then once you do that, then you can just slowly and slowly get them under your wing.

Was there a point that you when did you realize he was trying to be more than a teacher to you?

Whenever he'd, like, just be staring at me all during class. He was always eyeballing me, looking at me, sitting at our table.

The relationship has gone from teacher-student mentoring relationship to something completely inappropriate. She was just a perfect storm waiting to happen.

Did he try to make a move on you?

There was one time where he told me that I looked I look nice naked. But I realize this is getting too far.

I'm Harvey Guillén, and this is Killer Stories. Every Monday, I'm cutting the lights and telling you a bedtime story, except these stories are all real. We're talking brazen heists, devastating cons, serial murders, and cases that defy tidy categories. So join me for new episodes of Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén every Monday.

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Elizabeth is now spending more and more time with her teacher, Tad Cummins. There are some dark clouds gathering here, but few seem to notice.

She needed some structure and stability in her life, and he provided that. That was a way for her to escape the kind of childhood she'd had.

He was sort of like the center of your whole world at that point.

He was.

How did you view him?

Kind of like a guardian or a mentor.

You have a person with, you know, ill intentions that takes advantage of that closeness that the student has with the teacher. And that's what happened to me. Like, I fell in love with my teacher when I was 16. I was groomed and I was abused.

Cheryl Nichols details her own traumatic experience in the docuseries "Keep This Between Us," describing an illicit relationship she says she had with her teacher when she was just 16 years old.

For years, I had convinced myself that I was making this choice. To be with him. But now, there's no doubt in my mind that he was in control of this. You can't tell somebody about this documentary without them saying, "Ugh, that happened at my high school." I started getting, like, hundreds and hundreds of DMs on Instagram from women and girls who this had happened to. So, I have over 1,000 messages at this point.

The relationship between Tad Cummins and Elizabeth starts to change. They start to communicate outside of school.

We did via Instagram. He made a fake account, and he made me make one as well.

I have a thing called a Finsta, which is a fake Instagram where you have your Instagram that everybody knows about, and then you have your fake Instagram that you can do all your, you know, your crazy stuff in.

So on these social media accounts, Cummins puts up posts like, "You're all my heart ever talks about." It was love at first sight. Elizabeth responds, "I look forward to going to school just to see you. I love you so, so much." And then Cummins starts to get graphic.

Having that secret language between each other that only they know about, well, that makes her feel special, right? And that's just grooming 101.

Grooming is manipulative behaviors that groomers use to gain access to, uh, student. Tiny little things that convince the person that they're essentially making the choice to be in this relationship. Once the boundary is crossed of I am your teacher, I am your authority figure, into I'm your friend, then anything can go.

So you were direct messaging each other?

Yes. Most of them from him would be sexual text.

He would sexually text you?

Yes.

Implicitly?

Like sexting.

Some of the phrases consist of, "Saw you standing next to the locker this morning with your backpack on.

Thought to myself, that's a nice ass right there." He said she can come into the classroom anytime she feels like it. It was her haven. It was her safe space. But quite to the contrary, it was just the opposite. It was an opportunity to get her alone in the classroom.

Did you hang out in his classroom alone often?

We just chilled out there, and then it turned into more than just hanging out there. Next thing I know, he said, "You look pretty nice naked." When did he take it to something more? Whenever he first kissed me.

How did he make that move?

He grabbed my face.

Did you tell somebody?

No, I was scared. Like, I don't want to tell my parent that a grown man kissed me, and I don't want I'm not gonna tell friends that a grown man kissed me. I felt guilty. Like, I'm not saying he started it, but I mean, I was 15, you know, he's a grown man.

It ended up progressing to more than just kissing.

Yeah.

She worked at a local fast food restaurant, and he would come and see her.

Why would he come to Chick-fil-A?

He'd want me to sit in his car.

And talk?

Not just talk.

What was he wanting you to do in his car?

Um, things that were very inappropriate.

You cannot consent to sex with an adult unless you are an adult. Anytime a kid is saying "okay" to an adult about something sexual, they're not actually consenting.

They're just saying "okay." This is no longer an innocent relationship. This relationship has taken on a whole new level It is frightening and it is criminal.

He would have sexual acts be performed on him, oral sex, in the closet, in the classroom.

And he would just pull you into his closet?

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 no matter how many times I would try to stop it, I was fearful of what he'd do if I did anything.

And Elizabeth was keeping all of of this. Everything that was happening with Cummins hidden. But that explosive secret was about to be revealed.

A 12-year-old who's just looking to get her backpack walks in, and she sees something she never expected. Tad Cummins is kissing Elizabeth Thomas. And the student freaks out. She runs to the administrators, and she tells him what she has just seen. The school starts investigating.

And they removed her from any classes, and they put what they call a no-contact order in place between the two of them.

Tad Cummins is gonna figure out a way around that. And, you know, Elizabeth, she did whatever he told her to do out of both fear, manipulation, and love.

They wouldn't let me go down to his class anymore.

Did you want to go to his class still?

Not really, but a part of me did.

This was a teacher who was loved by the students and the teachers, so a lot of people were shocked.

They felt like I ruined his life. People were telling you that? Yeah, 'cause he was a good teacher. There was a lot of names and teasing that came around and a lot of bullying outside and inside of school.

Did you want to go to school?

Not anymore. I tried to say I was sick or something, that I wanted to go home. I didn't want to be there.

It paints a very different picture than what the community knew of him.

We all have a friend facade, and behind that are some skeletons, and some things come out that the normal public don't see. Sometimes your family don't see.

Did you hesitate at all to think maybe this little girl wouldn't have come forward to say that she saw this if that didn't happen? You trusted your husband that much?

I did.

I trusted him that much. It could have just been that she thought she saw something and she didn't, or that she was just flat out lying.

And as for Tad Cummins, another student comes forward with an alarming story of her own.

Is there any moment that you look back on now and think, oh my gosh, he was definitely trying to cross the line? And as the investigation into that classroom incident heats up, Tad Cummins finds himself in the hot seat.

I absolutely I absolutely did not do that. I did not do it. I just got the impression from both of them that they were lying. I ain't done nothing wrong, but I came in here not knowing if I was going to jail.

I'm more afraid than I've ever been in my life.

Tad Cummins, who's one of the most popular teachers at school, has just been caught kissing one of his students in his classroom.

And of course, that was just a glimpse. That student just happened to walk by and saw the curtain open just a bit to see the wizard working the controls.

And it doesn't take long for rumors to start to spread about what happened in the classroom. One of Tad Cummins' former students hears about it and starts to see her own experience with him in a different light.

I was going through my parents' divorce at the time.

And did he notice, you know, that you were having a hard time?

He and I just kind of connected, you know. I'd stay late and talk to him for a minute, or, you know, go to his class before school, after school, during lunch, stuff like that, and just kind of hang out and talk. Some of the students would make jokes about us being in love or whatever, and, you know, I kind of blew it off.

Looking back now, She says there was one day where she was alone with him at a piano in the school music room where she now realizes he crossed the line.

He sat down and started playing, and I'm standing behind him and I start recording because, you know, he's doing really good.

Oh wow.

And what were the lyrics to the song?

Stuff like, I could swim a thousand miles in the oceans inside your eyes, in the oceans inside your eyes. You're the kind of woman a man could love for the rest of his life.

How old were you at that point?

I was 15. I didn't see anything wrong with it at the time.

I really didn't.

You know, I finally had come around and been like, wow, you know, this is really who he was. You know, I didn't know him at all.

Nobody wants to believe that that person, that teacher that they really like and they've grown to love, is doing something so Awful.

Destinee says Tad never touched her inappropriately, but her family moved away before she graduated. And so the question remains, could the same thing that happened to Elizabeth have happened to Destinee?

Now, in Elizabeth's case, the school district does talk to all involved. They're trying to confirm the report of that kiss.

They conclude that there is no evidence that there was a kiss. Boy, did they get that wrong.

But then the sheriff's department decides to look into the case, too. Detective Marcus Albright interviews Elizabeth.

She says she was upset after school and Tad was probably consoling her a little bit, and that's probably why Tad was in close proximity to her. Denies a kiss. Deny, deny, deny. There wasn't any physical contact between the two. Other than he grabbed her hands and told her she needed to calm down. That was her version of it.

That is very typical, wanting to protect the person who is allegedly protecting you, who has been grooming you for months on end.

20/20 obtained this never-before-seen video of Tad Cummins' interrogation.

Tad just says that he's got a good relationship with her. I'm the nicest guy you're ever going to encounter in every situation.

Tad tells investigators that Elizabeth had had an anxiety attack, a panic attack, and that she came down to see him because he's really good at calming her down.

I honestly don't remember whether I got up in trying to calm her down and put my hand on her arm or on her shoulder or something like that. It would have been my left hand doing that, and that is the closest that we got, period.

The closest? Well, detectives then confront him with Elizabeth's version, and his story suddenly evolves.

She claims that she— you grabbed her, both of her wrists, and were kind of close to her face, and you were saying, "It's going to be all right." you need to calm down. Would that be accurate to say that you possibly could have done that? Very possible.

But I—

my intention is always not to do that. But if she said that was how she remembered it, then I would— it is possible. It is absolutely possible.

Okay.

Yeah.

Tad can't seem to be able to describe clearly what happened a week ago in his classroom. He's evasive and he keeps changing the story.

This is in the heat of the moment and trying to console her.

Is it—

is it possible that you could have grabbed her and kissed her?

And it is—

it is not possible that I could have kissed her. It's possible that I could have hugged her. Did you hug her?

I don't— I wish I could tell you.

Have you hugged her? You have hugged her in the past, though, right?

In that kind of—

yeah.

Consoling her or whatever.

I probably did.

And then Tad Cummins says Elizabeth continued to text him despite the no contact order, but claims he ignored them.

Would there be an issue with you showing us texts that you got from Beth? Do you have your phone? I've got my phone with me. Oh, I don't have those texts still on my phone from yesterday.

Why not?

Because I got rid of them. Because it made me uncomfortable. Here's the thing, it looks like that, you know, you're covering something up or hiding something.

All of a sudden, Tad starts shivering, he starts shaking. I mean, he looks like he's about to cry. That's the cover-up. He is covering something up.

There has not been any kind of a physical relationship kind of thing at all, right? And by saying I've been married for 31 years, and I've never touched another woman.

Right.

And I'm not joking with you guys when I say that.

Right.

I have never touched another woman.

No.

And then as we got ready to close, he gets emotional to a point that he's almost crying and says that he really didn't know what to expect coming into the interview and that he thought that he might be arrested. And honestly— and I hadn't done anything. I ain't done nothing wrong, but I came in here not knowing if I was going to jail. I'm more afraid than I've ever been in my life. I just got the impression from both of them that, you know, they were lying. So why were they lying? I mean, why were they being so evasive with their answers if there wasn't something going on between the two of them?

Meanwhile, Elizabeth's dad hadn't been told by the school of this apparent kiss between a teacher and his daughter, and he has no idea there's an investigation underway. How did you find out?

I get this phone call, said, Anthony, I'm calling to talk to you about your daughter.

I said, you're aware the school was investigating your daughter into allegations of some inappropriate behavior with a teacher? And he says, which daughter?

He said, sir, are you trying to tell me that you don't know anything about this? I said, sir, I don't even know what you're talking about.

So he does what any dad would do. He calls his daughter.

I said, is there something you want to tell me? She said, oh yeah, oh yeah, some girl lied. It's nothing. Nothing happened. And I said, this doesn't sound like nothing happened.

He is furious. Elizabeth's father hires an attorney, Jason Watley, to write a letter to the school to put them on notice It was not a nice letter that said, "Get this man away from this child or else." The school suspends Cummins and sends him home the next day.

They say it's because he broke the no-contact order. You say you thought he was falsely accused.

Yes. 100%. We'd cry about it. Pray about it. Then I would always tell them, it's okay though, because you haven't done anything wrong. If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of.

The question that a lot of people have: how did she not know something was up?

I think a lot of people didn't know.

So you never suspected anything? Did he talk about his wife ever?

He'd tell me how perfect she was. I and how much he loved her and how terrible I was. And if it weren't for me, he wouldn't be in this.

Basically, just you existing was the problem.

Yeah, because he couldn't help himself.

How is Tad going to get out of this? He makes a really surprising decision on how to handle this problem.

And that's when the bottom fell out of our world.

People wonder why the heck would he chunk it all away this way.

I called the detective. I said, "Have you found Tad Cummins yet?" He said, "Mr.

Cummins can't be found anywhere." Thomas was last seen around 8 AM Monday.

The 15-year-old is now believed to be in the custody of 50-year-old Tad Cummins.

And they say they believe she is in danger.

There is a lot of pressure on Tad at this point. There are rumors about his behavior. His wife obviously is asking a lot more questions now because he was suspended without pay.

And suddenly Jill is starting to suspect that something is very wrong here.

He always made the coffee the night before we would go to bed, and he started telling me how to make the coffee, and I was like, why are you telling me this? And I was in tears because I thought that he was afraid he was going to go to jail. And I said, you didn't do anything "Anything wrong, but promise me you won't hurt yourself." He said, "I promise I won't." He wasn't in, under a criminal sense, big, big trouble at that point.

No, you're talking about a misdemeanor. I mean, he probably wouldn't have been able to teach anymore outside of that, but he would never really set foot in a jail cell.

Tad has now been stuck at home for 5 weeks. He's waiting to hear his fate from the police.

I questioned the sheriff about that, and he said that they had to be sure about all of it before they ruined a man's career and life, you know, because he'd never been in any trouble.

He wasn't getting paid. We were embarrassed. We wanted just to get it all over with and him to be given his job back and things to be normal again.

His opportunities to very to easily groom this child were coming to an end. For Tad, it was either move on or make a plan, and he made a plan.

It's Monday, March 13th, 2017. Tad posts on his Instagram, "Beautiful day to start." Sending a message there, maybe?

Tad tells his wife that morning, "I've got a job interview." interview with one of my old bosses.

Because he needs a job.

He needs a job. He wants to take her car. She's okay with that. He goes to the Shell station where we have him on video to fill her car up with gas.

Around the same time, Elizabeth packs her bags. Then she wakes her sister Sarah with a very ominous message.

And she said, "If I'm not back by 6, you need to come find me or call the cops." So I'm like, okay, and I went back to sleep.

The Thomas house has a security camera outside, so you can actually see Elizabeth that morning walking out of her house carrying her bags, getting into her friend's car.

She says she took her to Shoney's and dropped her off around 8-ish that morning.

Tab drives to the Shoney's. Elizabeth gets in the car, and by 9:00 a.m., those two are on the road.

Jill starts calling him around noon. She can't reach him. Calls going straight to voicemail, text messages obviously not being answered, and she starts to get a little concerned.

And that night, Elizabeth's father realizes he hasn't heard from her He spends hours searching and calling her phone.

It rang and rang and rang, and it went straight to voicemail. That was a little bit odd, so I texted her, you know, "You're in big trouble." Well, usually when I did that, I would have a call back within about 45 seconds at the most. Nothing.

So Anthony Thomas checks in with police.

Anthony mentions to the reporting deputies that we need to check to find out where Tad Cummins is. The on-call detective, he doesn't put the two together or anything, any significance.

Tad never came home. So when his wife Jill gets home from work that night, she finds a letter from Tad. Jill does not call the police that night, but by the next morning, she does.

He ran away.

Who's running away?

She tells police about that note he left behind.

It said, "Jill, I'm so sorry. I'm on my way to Virginia Beach or maybe DC just to think and clear my mind of all this crap. I'm not running away. I'll be back.

Don't call the police.

Don't think I've ran because I'm guilty and I'm not. I love you and I'll call you soon. Please forgive me." I was just in total shock. When I read it, I didn't know what to think.

I'm sorry you're going through this, but, um, you know, sometimes life throws us some curveballs. Yep.

And this is another thing we've been worried about, honey.

And he told me he had taken out a loan. I think he said $4,000. I went and looked in the lockbox and where he keeps his guns, and both of his guns are gone, and the $4,000.

In the note, he said he was going to Virginia or D.C.

If you do this long enough, you know that people try to divert attention away from something. More than likely, he's gone the opposite direction.

Meanwhile, Anthony Thomas is now worried. He still hasn't heard from his daughter Elizabeth.

The next day, I was still frantically looking for her. I called the detective back. I said, have you found Tad Cummins yet? To see if he knows anything. He said, Mr. Cummins can't be be found anywhere. He's nowhere to be found.

There was no doubt in my mind that they were together.

That was the moment that I knew. I knew that it was all a lie. You're not married to someone for 31 years and then this happened and your whole life is turned upside down. Everything that you thought was gonna be for your future is no more. First thing I did was hit my knees and pray.

The 15-year-old is now believed to be in the custody of 50-year-old Tad Cummins.

Now the TBI and FBI are on the lookout.

This now becomes a massive investigation because you've got a 50-year-old teacher who has just taken off with this 15-year-old student and and nobody knows where they are.

I was incredibly concerned.

If he's armed, there could only be one purpose, and that would be sort of the last stand.

He absolutely knew that law enforcement would be on his tail quickly.

Investigators say they have no clue where the two could be.

TBI officials fear they could be anywhere in the country.

He went to extraordinary measures to make sure he wouldn't be tracked.

There have been no credible sightings.

The TBI says it's received over 80 tips, but they still don't know where Thomas could be.

You talk about an absolute bomb going off.

Dad Cummins?

He's the one?

No one could believe it. Did you know this whole time that everyone I mean, like, all of America was looking for you.

This story could have ended with they found her body.

We wanted to take a new look at this month-long crime spree that dominated headlines and put everything we've learned together in one place.

I've been married for 31 years, and I've never touched another one.

Right.

And I'm not joking with you guys when I say that.

Right.

I have never touched another woman.

We learned that he had taken two hands handguns with him.

He threatened to kill everyone in the commune if they didn't start bending to his will, and he said, "I have enough bullets to kill them all." She looked at him as a protector.

She was in love with him, and she believed that he loved her back.

You're thinking about all the bad things that could happen.

Because you were worried he would kill her.

Correct.

He was plotting to get her out of the country.

I see. He's planning to do this by kayak.

Like, you're kidding me, right?

I ain't done anything, right? I ain't done nothing wrong.

He said, am I in trouble? And I said, Tad, you've just been arrested by the FBI.

We're going to get the latest now on that manhunt in Tennessee.

Ted Cummins, he was a teacher at this school. It's A student walked in on Cummins and Elizabeth kissing in his classroom. Cummins facing charges of sexual contact with a minor.

Accused of kidnapping his 15-year-old student. The two of them hit the road and then they vanished. There have been no credible sightings of these individuals. The FBI is now involved in the search.

I'd never worked a kidnapping case that was so immediate and that had so much media attention as this one did.

Call 911 if you see them.

The TBI issued an Amber Alert for Elizabeth Thomas.

I remember everybody's phone, everybody's lit up. I had never seen an Amber Alert that I know of. And we looked down and saw Elizabeth Thomas.

It's not every day do you have a teacher-student AMBER Alert, you know, an older gentleman and a younger girl.

Once I learned that she had been taken, I just went from 0 to 100, like, what's he going to do to her? What's he going to do with her?

My Tad that I know is not the Tad that the world is seeing now. He was a wonderful person. He was the protector of our family. He was the rock, the epitome of hero dad.

Mm-hmm.

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

He was my best friend for 31 years now.

I spoke with Tad Cummins' wife Jill back in 2017 while he was still on the run and was just struck by how blindsided she was by what she was living through.

We've never even been apart for a vacation or for any amount of time, a work trip or anything. And so when he left, I was just in total shock. He packed every coat he had. He packed all his underwear, which is like 10, 12 pairs, which is ridiculous.

The day after Tad Cummins and Elizabeth Thomas vanish, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the FBI pay his wife, Jill, a visit at their home.

She was helpful the entire time and just an amazingly strong person.

She let us go through every part of the house. You know, we were looking for clues, right? Is there anything he left behind that would point us to the right direction?

We learned that he had taken two handguns with him. That ramped up our concern.

Jill tells the police that her husband filled a prescription right before he left and that he took the medicine with him.

The only erectile dysfunction tablet clinically proven to work up to 36 hours. He had re-upped his Cialis early. He almost had like a double dose with him at the time.

There's only one reason that you would, you know, take that medicine. So, you know, we knew we had to find her.

Investigators looked into Cummins' activities in the days before he vanished.

Talking to his wife, we were able to locate him at the local Walmart here.

The day before he left, Cummins strolls the aisles looking at women's hair dye.

We learned that he had taken like a payday loan. He falsified the loan documents saying he had some assets that he did not have. They forwarded him $4,500 in cash based on that.

Knowing that that was what he had, in your mind, are you thinking he's not going to last that long out there?

It tells us that he's trying to stay off the grid because he doesn't want to use any credit cards, because then we can track it.

Tad Cummins tried to elude authorities through a variety of methods.

Cummins engaged in a daring cat-and-mouse style run to keep from getting caught.

We got his cell phone number to try to ping it to see if we could figure out where it was. The last ping was at a bridge in Alabama, and then it goes dark.

Both took their phones. He oversaw them throwing those phones into the river. He disabled the GPS on the vehicle that he was driving.

He stopped in a quick morgue in Bought a map of the United States, like a physical map to travel, and took every opportunity to stay on back roads.

He had some sleeping bags and basic camping gear.

Sometimes they even slept in the car.

He had stolen license plates off other cars and traded plates.

So the trail goes cold in Alabama.

It could be anywhere. You're a fugitive on the run with a 15-year-old.

Where can you go?

How well have you planned this?

My feeling was that he had burned every bridge he had there. He was not coming back.

You're thinking about all the bad things that could happen because you were worried he would kill her.

Correct.

On day 5, with no confirmed sightings, investigators hold a press conference.

At this time, we are going to open the floor to Jill Cummins.

The decision was made to get Jill, see if she'll be willing to go on camera and reach out to Tad.

To that end, let me speak directly to my husband. Tad, this is not you.

Was that hard? All those scrutinizing eyes?

Yeah. Live? Yeah, it was really hard. Your family— Family wants their Poppy back. Please do the right thing and turn yourself in to the police. I felt like if there was a chance that he would see it and it would make a difference, then even if it was outside my comfort zone, I had to do it anyway. So I did.

And then Elizabeth's father makes a public plea to the daughter he calls Izzy.

Izzy, please. Get away from him. Get away from him. Run somewhere. Tell somebody.

Take another look at their pictures.

The photographs that were used, and it wasn't intentional, they made her look like a mature young lady when she wasn't.

And there were questions. Some people in the community wondering if the decision to to leave was mutual.

I think that she did go willingly.

I don't think he forcefully took her. I think it was her decision, but she wasn't old enough to make that decision.

A person's search history can reveal a lot of information. Tad's searches reveal a very clear intention.

I remember one that was what states allow teenage marriage. It was fairly obvious to us that he was trying to legitimize his crime.

And not long after they disappear, the word "wife" is added to Elizabeth's Instagram profile.

I was a little bit sick when I saw that.

We're receiving tips from all across the country, which is great because, frankly, we have no idea where Tad Cummins has Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Thomas at this hour. Well, we had over 1,000 tips coming in. Every single tip that comes into our tip line, someone will call that person back and we will run it down. We never went home, only to just get a few hours of sleep each night, and then we were back in the command post the next day working on this thing.

Finally, after 16 days, there is a solid lead.

A person person working a midnight shift at a Super 8 Motel decided to type in Tad Cummins in his system, and boom, it popped up.

That slip-up gave authorities the lead they needed.

We were very excited. This was proof of life.

3 decades ago, a young woman named Angie Dodge is found brutally murdered in her bedroom in Idaho Falls.

It was probably the worst case I've ever seen.

It is the one that sticks with me.

Police zero in on a suspect and put a man behind bars.

I don't know what the hell you guys want. Do you think we'd be wasting our time and wasting your time if we didn't think you're involved?

But as the years pass, doubts emerge about whether the real killer was ever caught. That's when Angie's own mother embarks on a decades-long mission to uncover the truth.

23 years I've been trying to put this puzzle together, and the center's missing.

I've always been told the truth will come out.

You can't hide the truth.

Listen to The Snare, a new series from ABC Audio. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and ad-free on Amazon Music.

One online predator unleashed hell on his targets.

An internet terrorist.

For the young female gamers he's hunting, there's no getting away.

It was unrelenting.

The cops need to figure out who he is and stop him before it's too late.

How is he doing all of this?

From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is You Are Next, available now on The Binge. Search for You Are Next wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today.

Breaking news. A confirmed sighting of Amber Alert suspect Tad Cummins and missing child Elizabeth Thomas in Oklahoma City.

An employee at Super 8 checked the national database and soon discovered that the pair 2 weeks earlier checked into a room with a single bed in Oklahoma City. Staff here telling investigators Cummins asked for directions to the local Walmart.

We pull a video from Walmart.

Well, this new surveillance video out of a Walmart 2 days after Cummins left with Elizabeth. TBI investigators say Thomas appears to have died her hair red while Cummins darkened his hair.

But this sighting you see right here is from 2 weeks ago, meaning they could be anywhere in the country tonight.

We were consistently a week behind them. She was fine a week ago, but how is she now? Which kind of ramped up the pressure as well.

Police are wondering whether Tad likes to stay at Super 8 motels, and if perhaps there's a pattern here that might reveal where they've been and maybe where they're going.

We basically started doing some really, like, old-school gumshoe detective work.

We contacted Super 8's corporate, then we asked, I want every hotel that's a Super 8. They sent us back a list, and it's over 500 or 600 hotels.

And we just cold-called every one of them.

We called hundreds of hotels, you know, across the country, and we got a hit.

That hit came from a Super 8 in Guymon, Oklahoma. Guymon is west of Oklahoma City. Now, once again, Cummins didn't try to hide his identity when checking in.

So he used his own ID twice?

That's correct, yeah.

Were they Were they staying like one night, two night? Kind of what was the pattern that you were seeing?

Mostly one night. But then they went to the Walmart there as well.

Of course, we pull the receipt to see what they're buying. Food and snacks and stuff like that.

Some lubrication, some KY Jelly. And so that furthered our, okay, we've got to find her.

We've—

That made you worried even more.

Correct.

Friends and family members, the missing Murray County team say they hope we don't forget about Elizabeth Thomas.

We'd have all the media coverage that we could ask for, and then it did start to die off. Once her face was out of the media, there was very little chance we'd get her back. That's when I did the green ribbon campaign.

Donna Simler has been hanging those ribbons around the square. Green is Elizabeth's favorite color.

So Elizabeth could see that your town wants you to come home.

Chandler Anderson, a former co-worker of Cummins, also wanted to help bring Elizabeth home by offering a reward.

And so we're hoping that $10,000 will get someone to talk or tell us where Elizabeth is. Someone knows where she is.

But at this point, investigators don't know where Elizabeth is, but at least they have a better idea of the direction they're heading.

They went up here in the Panhandle here of Oklahoma. The trajectory that we kind of focused on was, well, they're probably going west even more.

But the problem we ran into with Tad is that he kind of looks like every man traveling with her. It almost looks like a dad traveling with his daughter.

In Nebraska, another possible sighting.

This picture is from Kearney Police Department in Nebraska. We're looking at it. I don't know about this one.

The local police quickly discover it was one of many false leads. And those false leads lead to false hopes for Jill. Despite what he's done, she wants her husband home.

Everyone makes mistakes. This was a pretty big one. And it's unexplainable. But, you know, everyone sins.

It sounds like, in some ways, you still sort of defend him. You still—

I do.

I do.

I find myself defending him.

Why, after what he did to you? Do you still love him?

Of course I love him. And I forgive him. I do love him, honestly. It took me several weeks, but I do. But it doesn't mean I could ever trust him again.

They've been gone for several weeks. When's the next time you find out some sort of clue as to where they are?

It was Cortez, Colorado. We got a hit there from Walmart. So now we're even further out. You know, it's almost this straight line across the US, which was is, you know, helping us immensely.

But authorities are still days behind them, and they don't know that Tad Cummins has already made it to San Diego and is planning to take Elizabeth out of the country by sea.

I'm Eva.

Hey, I'm Brian.

Welcome aboard.

As an experienced fisherman, is it easy to take a boat from here into Mexico?

No, it's not.

You have to have the experience. To take a boat out, you have to have the right boat. You have to have the right weather. You have to have the right skills in navigation. Otherwise, you're not going to make it.

And Cummins' plan only gets more absurd. He doesn't have an actual boat to navigate these waters. He's planning to do this by kayak.

They had used $1,000 or so of their money to buy a kayak.

I hate to use the word comical. In a case like this. Like, you're kidding me, right?

They tried to kayak out and around the border to elude law enforcement. They got out into several feet of water and whitecaps. The Pacific Ocean was too much for them.

He gets to a point like, look, if we don't turn around and go back, we're gonna die.

They also dodged another bullet. They ran into a local police officer who had no idea who they were.

The guy says, you know, sure am glad you guys made it back okay. He says, right after you left, they issued a small craft warning. I just wanted to make sure you guys got back okay. Hope you guys have a good day. And just walks on.

After such a close call, it's time for Plan B, going completely off the grid to to the peace and love of a commune. But when the whole country is looking for you, disappearing is harder than you'd think. Tad Cummins and Elizabeth Thomas have been gone for 3 weeks. They've traveled 3,000 miles through 9 states, virtually undetected.

So he decides if they hide in the wilderness and they can totally be off the grid, that's where they should go next.

One of the things they did early on is they bought a tablet, and they would connect the free Wi-Fi, and they would do searches for places to go out west in California.

They Googled, uh, The Black Bear Commune.

A documentary called Commune was made about the Black Bear Ranch.

My slogan at the time was free land for free people.

Everyone needed to come together, live together, sleep together, eat together, whatever. Everything had to be done together to unite people.

They start the long drive to Black Bear Ranch, but they get lost. They're running out of gas and money when they come to Cecilville, a tiny town of just 50 people.

Cecilville is a really remote rural community, basically in the center of the wilderness, Northern California.

It's not a good place to blend in.

Everybody knows everybody in every car here, so to think you're going to come out in the wilderness and escape is, uh, not— just not going to happen.

At that point in time, since they were going to be around people, they had to come up with a cover story.

His cover story was, yeah, they were married.

John and Joanna Castro were the names that he chose for them to go by.

He said she was 23 and he was 40. They were married, lost their house in the Denver area of from a fire they didn't have insurance on, and they were just traveling around trying to, trying to make ends meet.

It's a pretty elaborate story.

Yeah, when they make contact with anybody, that's, that's what they told them.

In Cecilville, they meet a young man, Griffin Barry. He worked at the local saloon and gas station.

Said they were from Colorado. He's like, yeah, we had a house fire. I think, say, like, lost his job. They're just trying to start a new life.

You helped him out?

Yeah, yeah, I put $15 in his tank.

Griffin also suggested they go visit his neighbor Pete, who might have work for them so they could earn money.

Griffin showed up with this gentleman. I did not ever meet, uh, his wife. She was sitting in in the car doing her makeup, but I didn't have any work at the moment.

Cummins and Elizabeth then continue on their way to Black Bear Ranch, which is another 2 hours north.

When I was covering the story in 2017, we went to Black Bear Ranch. It was very difficult to find, and when we got there, the residents didn't want us to film with our cameras. They eventually agreed agreed to allow us to film with their older phone, and one of the residents named April Showers gave us a tour.

We're an off-the-grid homesteading community. We don't have any television, radio, cell phone, internet. There's no contact with the outside world besides what comes in and out of the driveway.

The commune took the pair in But over the next 10 days, there were problems. The two didn't follow the work rules of the commune. They stayed in bed all day, and Tad insisted on carrying around a pocket knife for protection. So they didn't fit in here very well.

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

How did they leave?

It was a unanimous decision.

We didn't want them here at all. That we had to ask them to leave. He was very uncomfortable, uh, Tad Cummins, and he got very angry.

They then go back down to Cecilville and once again see Griffin Berry, the guy who helped them out.

They needed to make some money, so he said, hey, I need some help moving some rock. If you want to help, I'll pay you to do that.

But I was like, I'll help you out. I put them in the cabin.

Can you show us the cabin?

Yeah, for sure.

So this is where they stayed. So they were hungry.

The girl got excited when I gave them some food.

And her—

you didn't really get to talk to her a whole lot.

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. Griffin just came back and said that this gentleman was back with his wife and that he put him up in the cabin down here.

When Pete the neighbor finds out that they're back, he has a feeling, you know what, something's not right about this.

I had remembered this news story about, uh, younger girl running off with an older man.

Tomorrow marks 3 weeks since Thomas was last seen in Columbia.

I Googled it, and it certainly looked like the guy. Ran into Griffin and said, hey, these are people staying up in the cabin here. I saw a photo of the guy, and I was like, that's definitely him.

So then what did you guys decide to do?

We went and called the police.

You get a tip that they've been spotted in California.

It came in late one night, on like day 37.

The original call started coming in about 9 o'clock at night.

So immediately we're like, okay, this could definitely be the real deal. So we sent a SWAT team from Siskiyou County.

The SWAT team arrived in this campground about 3 o'clock in the morning. I remember radioing you that the car was here. Had Colorado plates. The plates came back stolen, but to the same make and model vehicle that Tad Cummins was driving. The team parked their vehicles a ways away so you wouldn't hear doors close. It was hard to see because it was so dark. We had a sniper to provide oversight up on the hillside. We just kind of hunkered down and waited for daylight.

The challenge for the SWAT team is police know that he's armed and they don't want to shoot out. The plan is to have Griffin lure them out of the cabin as safely as possible.

I already had people everywhere, you know, but they were hidden. I yelled over a little bit, like, hey, hey. I guess, you know, that's what ended up waking them up, and they both came out together. We sprung up from our cover positions, immediately ran down the hill real loud, Sheriff's Department, get on the ground!

The nationwide manhunt for the teacher accused of kidnapping a 15-year-old student is over.

That teacher is now under arrest tonight. The student has been found okay.

A 15-year-old Tennessee girl will be reunited with her grateful family today.

We are beyond elated. Words really can't express the feelings that we have.

How do you feel about Tad now? After being gone for more than a month, Tad Cummins is finally apprehended with Elizabeth Thomas in Northern California.

Thursday, April 20th, shortly after 9:30 AM, Mr. Cummings was taken into custody.

It was just such a relief.

Thank God she's all right.

Frankly, the fact that she was found alive is a miracle. This story could have ended with they found her body.

Elizabeth is flown back to Tennessee. Sea and taken to a safe house.

When she walked out, she was just so tiny and just so frail.

We were both utterly shocked when we saw her.

Anthony Thomas relieved to have his daughter back.

Sometimes she'll be happy and laughing and back to the same multigirl, and then she'll be sometimes just in a fetal position crying. It's been a roller coaster for her.

Donna says when Elizabeth first got home, she was still under Cummins' spell and upset about being separated from him.

She loved him. She was in love with him, and she believed that he loved her back. She is in love with a man who is threatening her.

Elizabeth was angry at us for a good while. I was the guy in her mind that was gonna put Tad away. She was still emotionally very much tied to this predator and had to be disconnected.

When you guys were talking to Elizabeth, she didn't seem cooperative at first.

No, she was not. You know, and that's understandably so. From her vantage point, Tad was something she could count on, and she lost that.

She just— was adrift. She had to be taken apart emotionally, piece by piece, and put back together right.

It was tough for her to conclude that she was a victim of Tad Cummins. Just as it took time for him to groom her for exploitation, it took time for her to realize exactly what he had done to her.

In her documentary, filmmaker Cheryl Nichols talks about her experience with her teacher Like, I fell in love with my teacher when I was 16.

None of us were so stupid to get into a relationship with our teacher. We were convinced that we were in love.

It was hard for Cheryl to process that the relationship she says she had with her teacher was actually not consensual.

When I found all this out, I felt like this person who I really trusted in my life had completely bamboozled me. Bamboozled me. I struggled with really deeply low self-esteem for a really long time in a way that it was difficult for me to function. Feeling like the entire world is looking at you in a negative light, like a homewrecker or a slut. I don't know how I would have survived if I didn't have therapy.

There's a local therapist here that deserves immense praise. For the work she did with Elizabeth.

When Elizabeth sat down with me for her first television interview, she'd already undergone months of therapy just trying to process all that she had been through. How do you feel about Tad now?

I know he's a bad man. He only used me for one thing.

Do you think he preyed on you?

He did, and he manipulated me.

Why talk about what happened?

I just think it's time to start speaking up and letting people know what to look for and letting them put down boundaries.

Do you feel like people judge you?

They do. A lot of them do. And they think that I'm a whore. They think that I like old men, and that's not the case.

A lot of people said, which infuriates me to this day, she knew what she was doing. Well, She's 15, and her 15-year-old heart is manipulated.

That is an easy way for people to put the blame back on the victim. I don't think it's the student's responsibility to be fending off, uh, sexual advances from adults.

The car ride and where you ended up— is it a trip?

Is it— it was not a trip. It was like a kidnapping, kind of.

He told you you you had to go.

He said if he couldn't have me, he'd kill himself. Anytime he threatened himself, he'd threaten my family. I couldn't leave the car. I had to stay in the car with him at all times, and I wasn't allowed to be in a store without him. 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.

He would follow you to the bathroom?

Yes.

At the hotels, I would shower every morning because I felt dirty and disgusting.

The reality of Elizabeth's life on the run was that she was a victim of sexual assault every single day.

I know we went to Aspen and then Grand Junction And then Utah.

You guys got to San Diego and he took a kayak out?

Yeah, my hands got tired not even halfway out.

So he was making you paddle as well?

Yeah, we were both paddling and he kept going and I just couldn't.

Were you scared?

I was terrified. I mean, the boat kept going down.

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

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

A manhunt is underway.

And I remember it was a nationwide AMBER Alert. I knew it was for me. He called me his wife sometimes, and he said that we were going to get married, that I was going to live with him until I died.

Was that a choice?

Not really. It was made for me.

For people who don't understand, why was it you felt like you didn't have a choice?

If I made my choice and I tried to leave, he would hurt me.

Were you afraid he would kill you?

A lot of the time.

The day that the police show up—

I came out of the cabin, and it was early morning. And then all you hear is, "Hands up, it's over." Did Tad say something to you? Yeah, he said not to tell them that we have done anything. He said, whatever I say, you go with it.

Until the very end, it seems Tad Cummins was still trying to manipulate Elizabeth. But now he was going to have to face those investigators who had tracked him clear across the country, and they had a lot of questions for him.

At one point during the interview, he said, am I in trouble? Bubble, and that's a tad— you've just been arrested by the FBI.

If you like your true crime like you like your coffee, Red Handed is the podcast for you. It's dark, intense, and might just keep you up all night. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And every week on Red Handed, we break down a different fascinating case from the most recent US trials everyone is obsessing over, like Brendan Banfield, Karen Reed, and Ellen Greenberg, To the most unbelievable stories from around the world, there's nothing we love more than digging into every detail of the cases we cover, getting beyond a basic analysis and cutting to the heart of the story. Red Handed has over 400 episodes ready to binge right now. Plus, be sure to check out our weekly sister show Shorthand, where we unpack everything from the Black Death to Area 51. If you're looking for smart, detailed true crime with personality, check out Red Handed wherever you get your podcasts.

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Tad Cummins is in federal custody in California. He was arrested there following a nationwide search.

Tad Cummins is transported to an FBI office. Now, this is going to be the first time that authorities have a chance to interrogate him.

Tyler and myself and Marcus interviewed him.

What was his demeanor?

It was almost like a relief for him. That is over with now.

Guys like him, they want to tell their story. They want to show you how smart they are and how awesome they are. Now, he didn't want to tell about the criminal acts he had committed along the way, and he walked us through the whole thing. It was like storytelling session with Tad.

He just kind of rambled on about being a father figure for her relationship.

He was a savior to her and was helping her leave a bad situation.

He tells us he just wants to go home. He wants to get this behind him. He's ready to move on.

I don't think it registered in his mind until we were halfway through the interview that, hey, you know, what you did was wrong.

Investigators already suspect that Elizabeth Thomas had been sexually assaulted by Cummins, but he refuses to say that at the beginning of the interview.

He says that things would not be sexual between us, that wouldn't happen.

The investigators questioning Tad Cummins were determined to get this admission out of him. They're telling him, look, we've got all sorts of information on you, we know exactly what you did.

He got very defensive at that time. He started kind of backing up a little bit, and he finally gets to a point where he becomes emotional.

And we asked him, did you have sex with her? And in a trembling voice, he said, of course we did.

During that interview, he did say, she's a very sexual kid. Now, just that sentence alone can tell you that he knew that she was a child, referred to her as as a kid, completely recognizing that what he was doing was sexually exploiting her.

And Elizabeth shared with us that Cummins even plied her with alcohol in order to have sex.

Once he did ultimately confess and he started crying, like, oh man, like, I'm caught, I'm busted.

You don't think he was sorry for what he did?

I think that the tears that happened in the interview was because now my life is over.

And then he automatically He had to basically start switching to, "Okay, how am I gonna rebuild my life with Jill and the girls?" Cummins called his wife from jail.

In a television interview at the time, Jill described that jailhouse call.

He, um, told me he was sorry, and then he told me he loved me and, um, please forgive him. I, of course, went into, a rage of, "Do you know what you've done to me?" Jill confronted him about his criminal behavior. I said, "Well, did you sleep with her?" And he said, "Yes, I did." So— and I didn't want any details. I knew the truth. I just wanted to hear it from him to me.

Not surprisingly, Jill ultimately divorced Tad Cummins. Another breaking news alert. A hearing just wrapped up for Tad Cummins.

Tad Cummins, he was charged with crossing state lines with a minor for the purpose of having sex.

And obstruction of justice, and that was for throwing the phones to elude law enforcement into the river. So knowingly doing that and destroying that evidence. There were numerous tries by Mr. Cummins to go to trial. Ultimately, he decided to plead guilty.

At the sentencing hearing, Elizabeth Thomas finally has her day in court.

You had to see him in court.

I did. And I made that choice. And I wanted him to know that I'm not his puppet anymore.

She was physically shaking in court. Physically shaking. We had to block her view of him. Just to look at him was more than she could take.

Elizabeth Thomas wrote an amazing victim impact statement. Mr. Cummins, what you did to me is unspeakable. All you were was a man who wanted sex, and you manipulated me and used me just for that.

Elizabeth went on to say, you saw a broken girl who was lonely, scared, and traumatized. You made her feel safe and loved because you saw what she she needed and made her believe you would be her protector.

Good evening, everyone.

It is a crime the judge called despicable, and now the man behind it will spend the next 20 years in prison.

I don't believe for a second that you could ever really do justice in this case, because Elizabeth can't go back and change her life. She'll always be known as the girl who left with her teacher.

Though Cummins admitted his guilt, he said there was also someone else to blame.

He did actually at one point blame the devil.

Elizabeth said to me, "Is he saying that I'm the devil?" That really bothered her. I said, "He's not calling you the devil, sweetheart.

He is just a coward who is blaming anybody but himself." I blame myself a lot, but now I know that he's at fault. And he can say all day long that the devil made him do it, but he is the devil.

While the scars from her ordeal may never fully heal, Elizabeth is in a very different place today.

It has been like watching a miracle take place.

In 2017, when I first started covering this story, I tried to talk to Penny Love, the principal of the Kolioka Unit School, about what happened with Tad Cummins and Elizabeth Thomas. Can you just tell us why you didn't call authorities right away when you found out about the Tad Cummins incident? Do you have any comment? Even though it took a week for the school to call police after Tad Cummins Thomas was caught kissing Elizabeth, the principal spared no time calling police on us. Off the property.

All right, we're going.

The Thomas family sued the Murray County Board of Education, and the case was settled for a reported $650,000. The Board of Education saying the settlement does not constitute an admission that it violated any duty or obligation. Obligation owed to Thomas. And remember that $10,000 reward that Tad Cummins' former colleague put up? Well, the man who called police was able to collect it. Griffin Berry accepted the $10,000 in reward money this afternoon on the steps of the courthouse.

Jason Watley and his paralegal Donna Simlar represented the Thomas family, but they had actually never met Elizabeth until after her ordeal.

It wasn't easy for Elizabeth to accept them.

She had no idea who I was. She later told me, though, that she didn't like either me or Jason.

But Donna didn't let that stop her from trying to connect with Elizabeth. Jason Watley credits Donna for stepping in and filling a void.

The child needed stability. The child needed direction. And in large part, Donna provided that. Donna showed her unconditional love. It's a mother-daughter relationship.

Donna is like a best friend.

You guys are pretty tight.

Everyone needs a Donna.

I love Elizabeth just like she were my own. She always says everybody needs a Donna in their life, but—

Well, you're gonna go with me to Georgia this year.

I don't think she realizes how much I needed her.

And when I talked to Elizabeth, I asked her what she hoped her future would look like. What are your dreams for your life?

To have a family and protect them and not let them lead down the road like I was and make them have a better life.

Elizabeth is now 21. It's been 5 years since she was taken by Tad Cummins.

She is married to the love of her life, and then she got pregnant with her son. Spencer is his name.

I thought she was lost. I thought she was gone. That turned out not to be true. It has been like watching a miracle take place.

Good girl!

These are the outcomes that we as law enforcement love to see. I'm sure she has days where she struggles, but being able to flourish through those traumas and to have a family and to have some sort of normal life, it's great to see.

For other young young girls like yourself, what advice do you have for them?

Put down boundaries. Don't let someone push you around and make you do something you don't want to do. And say something to someone if you feel like something's wrong. When you look back at everything that happened, it's a bad place, but now I'm in a better one.

We should note tonight that Ted Cummins remains in a federal prison. He isn't scheduled to be released until 2034.

And you can find all new broadcast episodes of 20/20 Friday nights at 9 on ABC.

When a charming neurosurgeon rode into western towns selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room and became sought after by patients. He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies. This is a story of greed, betrayal, and a fight for justice. Listen to Dr. Death: The Cowboy wherever you get your podcasts, or binge the entire series right now only with Audible.