Ten years later: Where is Relisha Rudd? | NBC4 Washington

If my daughter is watching this right now, I would say I love you and I would come home to your mother safe and sound and I love you and when you come back and if you come back unarmed you will never go with anyone else. He would be by my side at all times They say he is dangerous The FBI is looking for him Khil Tatum warned in connection with the murder of his wife He warned in The disappearance of Relisha Rud, 8

years

old, he bought a tank fish for my daughter, but I stopped him there mm- no more gifts DC General needs to be I don't know, they really need to do a very thorough background check on these workers, sources tell News4 that Risha's mother had allowed Tatum to take Relisha weeks ago without suspecting that he It would hurt her the moment people saw that girl's beautiful face.

There were people in DC who couldn't think about anything else except finding out

where

she was. Her photo was every

where

in every TV story. You already know. Telephone surveys. They knew it everywhere, everyone shared it on social media, was that the search for her was something that area Washingtonians who lived here 10

years

ago, you say her name, they immediately know what you're talking about about my relationship with she. It was good, you know, it was like even though she wasn't my biological daughter, it was like it was hard, it's very hard, but it was special in its own way, she was a real sweetheart, I couldn't bring her home, not anymore. we can go back.

A blind eye is turned to this problem of missing people of color across the country. 40% of the missing population are black and brown people. It had been almost a month since she had attended classes, but sources tell us this is not the first time officials have learned of the problems. with the girl's family, this family was under the supervision of child and family services, so this girl should not have disappeared. Dorene, why was this guy in a DC hotel and why did he have this girl with him, I think as we look at Relishia. story we can ask ourselves okay, what other delights are out there and what am I doing to prevent this from happening?

The importance of this section of the Anacosta is that we are directly downstream from Kennworth Aquatic Gardens, which is where the 8-year quest takes place. Old Relisha Rudd has been focused for days, we have to continue to keep her in our collective hearts and make sure we do everything we can to prevent another girl from going through what she went through. The search for Relisha Rudd resumes tomorrow morning. stepfather among those who speak through tears I just want my baby back yes I have hope but I'm praying for the worst but I'm praying for the best.

I have hope, my son believes he is alive and this is coming from a brother who enjoys, this is a confusing and disturbing story that spans both the district and Prince George's County and at the center is an 8 year old girl. An 8 year old girl with big, beautiful brown eyes. You can see it there. I remember they called me. a homicide scene in Prince George's County at a motel in mid-March of that year and Prince George's County police told us there was a deceased woman in there and over the next few days and weeks we learned this amazing story of The disappearance of this little 8 year old girl Alicia Rud late this morning, a distraught man seen here in a red jacket identified himself to officers as Alicia's father and spoke to them about what was going on, so when everything went crazy that's when I found out that she was really missing, you know, it was just out of disbelief at the time, like she really missed, oh my gosh, your baby, how can you go to sleep?

The charade told us that she was in Georgia with her teacher, the family says that Risha's mother always had a reason to explain why the girl was not close to her. Relisha was not reported missing until Wednesday, when Pay Elementary School alerted police. Investigators say Relisha may now be with a man named Khil Tatum who works at the shelter where Ricia and her mother lived. I want to know why Shamica told us so many different stories about the case and wasn't honest. My family had their own coopet contract and they would get jobs and we would go in and out of town in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, on a Saturday to make hotels. and people's houses and office buildings and BS, you know, we had big contracts, so it would take us weeks to do the work, so at the time these things happened in DC, I was out of town, so I really didn't know.

What was happening? Then I returned home related to the girl's disappearance. This man, Khil Tatum, 51, the homeless shelter janitor, seen here walking down a hotel hallway with Relisha on Feb. 26 after police said Risha's mother gave her daughter . To Tatum he didn't seem like that kind of person, he seemed like a good person the way he played with all the kids the way he did his job it's all in the hands of the man above us and that's something that man above us We don't play with fools and babies and my 8 year old daughter, she's a baby, first we want to tell you about a neighbor who says that if he had known that little girl shouldn't be there, he would have called the police on Tatum.

A neighbor tells news4 he saw the girl in the apartment building. I saw the girl about 3 weeks ago. You know she was leaving the apartment, entering the apartment with him and his old lady. You know, I haven't seen him since. Haven't seen him since the other day, neighbor Maurice Jackson says Tatum implied the girl was his niece and said he and his wife had just returned from some kind of resort with the girl. Relisha went to pay for primary school but she had not gone. her to school for weeks and when officials became suspicious, they said janitor Tatum became Dr.

Tatum on or around March 10 that day. Khil Tatum, posing as a doctor, tells a city official that Relish is not in school because she is sick and that she has some type of neurological disorder. and she is receiving treatment, the official says we need some documentation of that. Dr. Tatum said he would drop off the paperwork here at the shelter on March 19 while the investigation intensified. Khil Tatum and his wife checked into the Red Roof on Oxen Hill Road, sources say there is no evidence Relisha was with him at the time of March 20. Andrea Tatum is found murdered inside that motel room.

Ms. Tatum's family believed she was murdered because she tried to protect that child. At this time we do not know what type of vehicle Tatum may be. be driving, so we use all our resources. You know, we contacted our team and we were ready to help find her and bring her home and we wanted to expand on her case because we knew that someone knows something or that someone would know something and we needed to find her and bring her home. We can't ignore the possibility that he killed her. They had found a video of Tatum at a local Home Depot purchasing a shovel and bags of construction trash, which led to the search for the Kennworth Aquatic.

Gardens the man wanted for kidnapping an 8 year old girl and killing his wife is found dead police say Tatum committed suicide in the same park where they have been searching for Relisha rud for the last 5 days, you know, they subsequently dragged the Anacostia. River near DC General, when they started tearing down DC General, they started digging up parts of the building that hadn't been searched before, so there were more searches there, so months and even years after their initial disappearance, the police still They conducted active searches whenever they received a tip or had reason to believe they could find what they ultimately thought would have been her remains, but in the end they never found any sign of the young woman who remains missing to this day.

Social workers were aware. problems with Relisha Rudd and her family long before the 8-year-old girl was reported missing to police and her 28-year-old mother had been living in the homeless shelter at the former DC General Hospital for 18 months alongside with the Rudd three. younger siblings, while the 8-year-old girl stopped showing up for class at Payne Elementary last month, sources say the children had been attending school, multiple sources tell News4 DC Child and Family Services had an active case working when the girl disappeared and three previous cases dating back to 2007, previous incidents found by Children and Family Services included lack of food, insufficient shelter, medical neglect, inadequate supervision and at least one report of a mother hitting one of her children , despite all those reports over the last 7 years, the authorities never removed the children from their mother's custody until now the three children are now in the care of cfsa one of the interesting things about Relisha's story is that much of it is cyclical, so your grandmother experienced trauma your mother experienced trauma your stepfather experienced trauma you I know that when Risha's mother was growing up, she faced homelessness and lived in a shelter with her mother and her siblings.

At one point, she entered the foster care system and was separated from her mother, and you know, research shows that that has a really huge impact. Um, she dealt with behavioral issues and mental health issues and then, you know, she grew up, started her own family and experienced the same cases, you know, living in a homeless shelter, being evicted, you know, dealing with her children and try to argue with them and that. it was a lot it was a lot and this is a painting that Relisha painted in our recess program we were doing an art project and this is what she painted and I keep it on top of my desk so I can remember it and think about her every day. like she's here with me to make sure she is.

I'm fighting as hard as I can for kids like her. Relisha was in the play program for 18 months and our staff and volunteers worked closely with her during that play time. It was cool, man, you know, it took them to bond a little bit quickly too, you know, now they just bond with all my kids, you know, she likes to make bees and bee bracelets, SE to have some play time, like that. that she likes to color, draw and make things. When we found out she was gone, it was the most devastating news I think any of us had ever heard and it was a very, very scary moment.

I think we should all think of Relisha as if she were our baby and bring her along. At home, the vigil was organized by the Homeless Children's Playtime Project, we went searching as much as we could, which is never something you are willing to do as a service provider and child advocate, search for one of their own, so to speak, a kid in their program, um, combing the woods with the FBI, uh, Metropolitan Police Department volunteers with black volunteers and missing from play time and seeing our staff and volunteers who had worked with Relisha doing fun age-appropriate activities in our playrooms.

Grimly combing the Kenworth Water Garden for evidence was an experience I hope to never repeat, really please, please, we just want to bring Relisha home and Relisha, if you're watching this, we miss you and love you at the same time. This was happening, the DC police started publishing the names of missing people, missing children in a different way and made the public and the press think that there were all these children who suddenly disappeared, when in reality before Relisha Rud . Police had not been making public notifications about missing children as frequently on social media as they did after that today.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser closed the door on DC General for the last time. News4 was the only TV station there when the mayor chained the door. today Mark Seagraves is live to tell us what's next for the families who used to call that place home. Mark, yes Jim, this building has been here since 1922, served as a hospital until 2001 and was a homeless shelter ever since. Now you can see the doors are chained. locked down we as a city have said uh we don't want to lose another child DC General would have been a perfect setting for a horror movie, this is when kids didn't have a playground or a safe place to play right outside DC General in the concrete next to On the road we spent 9 years serving children there.

Different floors were opened up and randomly renovated to outfit them and turn them into a family shelter, so we did the best we could to really fill that void and fill that void of lack of children's programming all the while trying to advocate for improving conditions in the shelter, it's a huge building on a huge campus right on the Anacosta River, right across from RFK Stadium at the DC Armory and the district had a need for places to house homeless families that even Back then, the district was in a homeless crisis, homeless people and it was necessary to have a place to stayto families.

They had been housing families in hotels on New York Avenue at a cost of millions and millions of dollars a year. There were calls. To close the shelter, when Mayor Bowser became mayor, I believe it was in 2016, she announced plans to phase out DC General as a family homeless shelter and create family shelters with brand new facilities, one in each district district , and that set off a firestorm of controversy uh with many residents who just didn't want a homeless shelter in their neighborhood uh finally in 2018 uh the shelter was closed and those family shelters in the eight wards opened uh and the sky didn't open fell.

They weren't destroyed or ruined because of these shelters and are actually doing quite well today, the new Ward Bas shelters are much smaller and didn't have the same type of program space that we were used to at DC General, so We weren't able to fit most of them from A to Z on these three sheets of paper, we're definitely still worried about a lot of our families, even as we try to meet them in schools and communities and, uh, in low-income housing complexes. We are doing everything we can to pivot and serve families beyond the doors of the shelter yuh, beyond their homeless experience, so we are doing the best we can and we are honored to continue serving throughout DC and the county from Prince, where we moved two years ago.

Well, for the most part I've been homeless the entire time. You know the system didn't help me, child and family services didn't help me at all. I did everything on my own. I have been in my apartment for 2 years alone. I have been working at my job and working at for two years alone I always had a job but I never had a house now that I got my house I got my children back it is not better to be on the right path the government agencies in charge of protecting families at risk did not communicate with each other and did not report known incidents of neglect and chronic absenteeism;

Those were the findings 5 ​​years ago after Bonita Jax murdered her three children; the same government failures were discovered to have occurred in those same agencies that were supposed to be monitoring Relisha Rod. Government agencies could have done it. answered best, for example, I am concerned about mandatory reporting requirements and the fact that the report notes that there were mandatory reporters who did not report because they thought CFS already knew, do you know if those recommendations after Relisha rud's investigation in They actually know it. prevented any future Relisha ruds, we don't know what they found was, uh, when it came to Relisha rud, even if these recommendations had been in place, they may not have prevented her disappearance and they point out a lot of the misinformation that the family gave her. authorities uh before uh the investigation began when she was simply missing school uh and then after the investigation began uh that was turned over to the police so you know it was a tragic and tragic set of circumstances of consequences uh that that influenced this um if there was anything real It's hard to say reform afterwards you know there's a lot of blame to go around when it comes to Relisha R there were so many systems that not only failed her but her family and we believe Relisha Rudd may be a victim of trafficking sexual and was being groomed by khil Tatum, so again we have to do a better job and put resources in place to protect the most vulnerable.

What we are discovering is that many times children who are in foster care or who are homeless are very vulnerable and will most likely be the target of pimps and pedophiles and may become a victim of sex trafficking. When you hear Relisha's story, a lot of people blame her family and you know that's understandable, at the same time you have to take into account a lot of different things. like everyone in this family has experienced trauma, the trauma of eviction, the trauma of facing so many barriers, it can really cloud your judgment and impact your decision making and your ability to make decisions, and I think that's something that many people in the family The gap with the family may be the first stop, but there are safety nets to catch people in each of the cracks where they can fail.

Why did so many of them fail in this particular way that led to this girl's disappearance from school? Women failed, the city failed because they didn't look hard enough, they didn't investigate enough, they didn't press the issue enough, they didn't ask questions enough, but what do you say to the people who say why they did it? You all charge the family, why didn't you? I'm a stepfather, I'm not his family. I have children with his mother, but I am not his family, why didn't they accuse his family of negligence, why didn't they do it? I'm with them, I'm not their family, I was just a guy there at this time.

I'm only up front with this because I have two children with her and if they are hers, her older brother is the one who is missing, that's why. I am so faithful to my children. She's been missing for 10 years, but we haven't forgotten about her. At the intersection of New York Avenue at Bladensburg Road, Northeast volunteers handed out flyers with pictures of what Relisha Rudd looked like when she disappeared at age 8 and what she might look like now — well, 10 years

later

, we'll never stop looking for Relisha rud and we have to find her, she is a valued member of our community and we cannot lose hope that we have seen miracles where people were missing for many years, even decades, and were found and we hope the same for Relisha Rut.

I saw the FBI sign today. She's still listed as missing and you think about these cases like Elizabeth Smart and the two young women in Ohio where years. After everyone thought they were dead, they were alive, so I think it's a good thing that people are still walking around assuming that she might be alive because if she is alive, she may be somewhere where she doesn't have access to any of things. from the search for her, from the coverage, from the knowledge that people want to be found and so if that's good, I hope it's good, Relisha will always be a part of playtime, she will always be in our hearts .

I'm just worried it might happen again. She worries me that it could happen again. I see so many things happening in this city 10 years

later

. I'm still standing strong and got my kids back. I just want people to know that those who actually have cars. I appreciate it. They support and support and maintain the religious story until we get closure, not only for me but also for her, for her brothers, they need closure.