Wild Crime: Ain't She Purty? | S4 Ep. 1

Summary

Wild Crime: Ain't She Purty? | Season 4, Episode 1 - Detailed Summary

Released on February 11, 2025, ABC News' "20/20" delves into the mysterious disappearance of Samantha Koenig, an 18-year-old barista from Anchorage, Alaska. Titled "Ain't She Purty?", this episode unravels the complexities of the case, exploring the investigation’s progression, the impact on Samantha’s family, and the challenges faced by law enforcement in the rugged Alaskan wilderness.

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Introduction

The episode opens with Deborah Roberts, co-anchor of "20/20," introducing the new season of "Wild Crime." This series focuses on perplexing disappearances and murders in remote locales, with the first episode spotlighting Samantha Koenig’s vanishing act from her workplace in Anchorage.

Deborah Roberts [00:00]: "We're back with a new season of wild crime... about a disappearance in the Alaskan wilderness and a hunt for a killer that leads investigators across the country."

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Background

Samantha Koenig, an 18-year-old employed at Common Grounds Espresso in Anchorage, was last seen on the night of February 11, 2025. Alaska’s harsh winters and vast, treacherous landscapes add layers of difficulty to the search, as highlighted by the episode.

Deborah Roberts [02:30]: "Alaska is huge. Samantha could absolutely have been anywhere."

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The Disappearance

Samantha was last working her shift at the coffee stand, closing up for the night. Her father, James Koenig, reported her missing when she failed to return home. Suspicious circumstances arose when someone was seen rummaging through her truck early the next morning but escaped before the family could report it.

Deborah Roberts [04:27]: "In her truck? Yes, sir. At home?"

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Initial Investigation

Retired Anchorage Police Department Sergeant Slavomir Markowitz takes the listeners through the early stages of the investigation. Initial suspicions pointed towards a possible abduction, but conflicting behaviors from Samantha’s father and boyfriend introduced doubt.

Slavomir Markowitz [05:00]: "I learned a long time ago in my career, be careful of your opinions and stick to facts."

Markowitz highlights the complexities of missing person cases in Anchorage, where the wilderness often plays a significant role.

Slavomir Markowitz [10:13]: "We searched the coffee stand, collecting evidence."

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Family and Community Response

James Koenig, Samantha’s father, is depicted as a loving and devoted parent. The community rallied around the Koenigs, distributing flyers and leveraging social media to aid the search. Despite public support, skepticism arose regarding the delay in reporting the disappearance.

Deborah Roberts [24:53]: "There's people putting flyers up that knew her and there was just tons of them."

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Breakthroughs in the Case

The investigation remained stagnant until a crucial ransom note surfaced. A Ziploc bag containing a typed ransom demand and a disturbing photo suggested that Samantha was alive but held captive. This evidence was pivotal in steering the investigation away from initial suspects.

Deborah Roberts [38:42]: "It was a ransom Note typed on an actual typewriter... The note suggests that Samantha is alive."

Slavomir Markowitz [39:30]: "There was a photo of a young woman... Yes, it is Samantha in the photo."

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Law Enforcement Strategies

To lure the suspect, law enforcement collaborated with Samantha’s father to deposit a reward fund. This strategy aimed to track any ATM withdrawals made using Samantha’s debit card, providing potential leads on the suspect’s whereabouts.

Slavomir Markowitz [41:30]: "Police departments don't have ransom funds. Maybe we could use the money from the reward fund."

Deborah Roberts [42:14]: "We have the bank set to be able to track her ATM card."

Despite a few leads, including suspicious ATM withdrawals across multiple states, the case remained intricate, with the suspect utilizing different vehicles to evade capture.

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Current Status and Ongoing Investigation

As the investigation spans multiple states, coordination with various law enforcement agencies intensified. A significant development occurred when an ATM withdrawal in Wilcox, Arizona, matched the suspect’s profile, suggesting the case had extended far beyond Alaska’s borders.

Deborah Roberts [46:01]: "It shocked all of us that now this case had clearly left all of Alaska behind."

Efforts to identify and apprehend the suspect continued, with law enforcement leveraging surveillance footage and inter-agency cooperation. However, the relentless movement of the suspect across different states compounded the challenges of the investigation.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with an air of suspense, highlighting the relentless pursuit by law enforcement to uncover Samantha Koenig’s fate. The narrative underscores the emotional toll on her family and the dedication of investigators striving to solve this perplexing case.

Deborah Roberts [47:58]: "How did we get to Wilcox, Arizona? And is Samantha alive?"

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Key Takeaways

• Challenging Environment: Alaska’s vast wilderness and extreme weather conditions significantly impede search and rescue operations.

• Family Dynamics: Initial skepticism towards the family's delayed reporting adds complexity to the investigation.

• Evidence and Breakthroughs: The discovery of a ransom note and subsequent financial transactions were crucial in advancing the case.

• Multi-State Coordination: The suspect’s movements across different states necessitate extensive collaboration between local and federal agencies.

• Emotional Impact: The disappearance profoundly affects Samantha’s family and the community, emphasizing the human element behind true crime stories.

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Notable Quotes:

• Deborah Roberts [14:17]: "I'm thinking, I don't know if this is truly an abduction, but we still have to investigate it as if it was."

• Slavomir Markowitz [37:24]: "As we're analyzing the video, we focused on the moment that she walked out with somebody."

• Deborah Roberts [33:32]: "Police say it will not help them solve the crime. If we were to present them now, it would have the effect of tainting a jury."

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This detailed exploration in "Ain't She Purty?" sets the stage for ongoing investigations, revealing the intricate dance between law enforcement strategies and the relentless pursuit of truth in the face of adversity.

Transcript

[Deborah Roberts]

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[Slavomir Markowitz]

Get off to send you a.

[Deborah Roberts]

Got a call towards the end of shift about a possible abduction. A barista at a coffee shop. I get there and talk to the barista's father and her boyfriend. What they told me was Mr. Koenig's daughter worked at the coffee shop. She didn't come home last night. I was concerned when he showed up at 8:15 to pick her up and she wasn't here. And I think at 11:55 he got a text message on his phone. They received a text from her saying she was angry at her boyfriend and wasn't going to be home. I saw someone in her truck 3:00 this morning. In her truck? Yes, sir. At home? Yeah. Sometime in the night they found somebody rummaging through Samantha's truck that was parked out in front of their house and chased after him. But the guy got away. The only reason we didn't report it, I just figured that she just had something to go get something out of your truck. So I'm trying to put all this together. I have a father and boyfriend who say that a girl didn't come home, somebody broke into a car, but they didn't call the police. That would be the most logical thing in my mind. Your girlfriend's missing, you get this weird text, and now somebody's rummaging through her truck. Why didn't you call the police? I don't know. See, some guy kind of raises red flags like, what is going on here? Why are you reporting this? And then getting mad at me for asking you questions. So in my mind I'm thinking maybe she's got another boyfriend somewhere and she didn't want to come home. And I'm leaning more towards that than I am an abduction. But I learned a long time ago in my career, be careful of your opinions and stick to facts. I'm thinking, I don't know if this is truly an abduction, but we still have to investigate it as if it was. So at that point, I called Sergeant Markowitz.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

My name is Slavomir Markowitz. I'm a retired sergeant with the Anchorage Police Department. I am originally from Poland and I have an engineering degree. But the police work was something that always fascinated me. So I applied to the Anchorage Police Department and I was hired. That was one of the happiest days in my life. I was at my desk in the homicide unit. The officer told me that we have a case of a missing person. Samantha Koenig. She was supposed to get her eye coma from her boyfriend. When he arrived, she wasn't there. At the Anchorage Police Department worked closely with the FBI and they offered dark help.

[Deborah Roberts]

I'm Kat Nelson and I'm a special agent with FBI. Samantha was kind of your typical teenager to me. She seemed to have a close knit group of friends that cared A lot about her. Samantha was living at her father's house. Her boyfriend would also stay there as well. James Coning is Samantha Coning's father. He's also known as Sonny by his closest friends. And he's a really sweet person, a biker type fellow, loves his Harley. In a lot of people's minds, if you're a biker guy, of course you're a bad person. Samantha was his only biological child. Samantha was his world. I've got 100% custody of Samantha and I have had since she was about 2 years old. Her mother's around. She is worried for Samantha's safety. My name is Kaylee and Samantha is my younger sister. We have the same mom. When we were younger, we did live together. She wanted to make everyone laugh. I was always like the shy one. Samantha has the confidence. So it's almost like she got me out of my bubble. She would like to write music, write poems. She was really good at it. Samantha and her dad were very close.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

James Koenig said that it would be totally out of her character to just walk away and not inform him. But on the other hand, it's a coffee stand right in the center of a big commercial area. It would be very unusual for someone to, you know, disappear without anybody noticing.

[Deborah Roberts]

From the very beginning, the police are wondering, well, how true can this be? If you're that frantic about this missing 18 year old, you don't call the cops. Like, what is going on here?

[Slavomir Markowitz]

Several officers were at the scene. We searched the coffee stand, collecting evidence.

[Deborah Roberts]

I worked and worked and worked trying to find evidence of any kind inside that coffee hut. I threw fingerprint powder everywhere. And I was looking for anything and everything, not just fingerprints. I was looking for items a suspect may have left behind, items she may have left behind. And I couldn't find anything. Not only did I not find anything, there was no sign of struggle. Now, there was another barista who was supposed to come in and open up that morning, which she did, but cash was missing out of the cash drawer. It's really abnormal to walk in and find everything, you know, not taken care of, not closed up. You know, Sammy was a diligent worker. There was talk about whether it was really an abduction or was it a boyfriend or was it somebody that she knew and they were just stealing the money to go away somewhere.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

It seems like Alaska has more than its share of missing persons cases, and a lot of that is not crime related, but just the wilderness.

[Deborah Roberts]

Anchorage is a city, but we're surrounded by mountains and forests and there's still very much a kind of remote feeling to can be very difficult to find somebody who goes missing in Alaska because it is such a massive wilderness. There are bears and moose. There are huge parts of the state that are not even on a road system that you can only access by plane.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

During the winter. There are people that fall through ice on snow machines.

[Deborah Roberts]

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[Slavomir Markowitz]

Text said something to the effect of I'm going to spend a couple of days with friends. Let dad know. Twain tried to call Her. He sent texts back to her. He was totally confused.

[Deborah Roberts]

So we're wondering, who are these friends? What's her circle look like? Is there any truth to that text message? Samantha's dad certainly was suspicious of that text message.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

The way the text was written didn't sound like Samantha Dawton.

[Deborah Roberts]

Things just didn't seem to add up. And a little bit later, in the process of talking to everybody in this investigation, I asked about video because I saw there was video cameras there.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

It's 2012. It's not like 80s or 90s where you build your cases only by fingerprints and witnesses, you know, now you look for video evidence. That's the first thing you do. Later in the afternoon, when we finally had the video, we played it in the cyber crimes unit office. We all wanted to see that video. The lieutenant, the captain, patrol officers, and some detectives from my unit. We played it time and time again.

[Deborah Roberts]

In the video, you can see. See, Samantha is closing up for the night in the coffee stand, cleaning and wiping things down. It's late at night, so there aren't many coffee drinkers that are driving up to the stand. And then you can see somebody walking up. You don't see a lot of people just walk up. Most people are driving a vehicle. Samantha goes to the window. So she starts making coffee, and she appears to be engaging with the person.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

At one point, she turns towards the window and she reacts.

[Deborah Roberts]

I vividly remember Samantha doing this and putting her hands up.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

She then walks across the coffee stand and turns the lights off. Samantha took the money from the cash register. Then Samantha puts her coat on. That was the moment where a lot of detectives focused on. She casually pulled her hair from behind the coat and spread it around the coat. Some detectives are saying, well, look, you know, she just behaves normally now. There is no fear. She's just, like, getting ready to go out.

[Deborah Roberts]

And then this individual just jumped straight into the coffee hut. The windows on the coffee huts are usually pretty high up off the ground. So this individual just leapt into the coffee hut through the window, just very effortlessly. It had to be somebody that was taller and definitely very physically fit to be able to do it with such ease. There's no audio to the video. What is he telling her? What is she saying back to him?

[Slavomir Markowitz]

And then they both leave. They walk side by side through the parking lot. It looked like they both walked out peacefully. There's no struggle. We didn't know what to make of it.

[Deborah Roberts]

There are police watching this, some of whom are theorizing that this is planned and staged and that Samantha is in on it.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

The officers thought that, you know, there was no resistance, there was no fight.

[Deborah Roberts]

He seems calm and she seems calm. Do they know each other?

[Slavomir Markowitz]

Maybe she took the money and just wanted to have a good time somewhere.

[Deborah Roberts]

Did she leave willingly? Did she not leave willingly?

[Slavomir Markowitz]

Also? Right next to the light switch, there's an alarm. If she was in danger, why didn't she hit the alarm? She had a perfect chance to press the alarm button. She didn't do that.

[Deborah Roberts]

All of the investigators, both APD and FBI, were trying to really understand what the circumstances were of that video. The text message from Samantha's phone saying that she was not going to be coming home. Between that text message and the video where you can see Samantha walking out, she's not being dragged. This is a well traveled, well lit area. Who would do this in the wide open stretches of, you know, Anchorage? There was definitely debate. Did Samantha leave willingly or was this a situation where she was being forced out? My background is in psychology and forensic psychology. I applied to the Bureau and got in in 2004 and was fortunate enough to get assigned to Alaska, and I've been here ever since. When I first started in the Bureau, Jolene was already an agent at the office. She was obviously a phenomenal agent. It was always my dream and my goal to work a case with her. I was very happy that Katherine was going to be involved in. She's just kind of got a brain and a knack for picking things up and putting pieces together. Working in Alaska. We're working with our local and state partners all the time. My name is Jeffrey Bell. I came up here in 1984. I worked in Prudhoe Bay in the oil fields as a operator in a refinery up there. And then I applied to be an Anchorage police officer. I worked for the Anchorage Police Department, but I was also sworn as a U.S. marshal, FBI investigator. We rely on each other a lot. We work together a lot. It's a very, very close working relationship. And that really is what solves these cases.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

As we're analyzing the video, we focused on the moment that she walked out with somebody.

[Deborah Roberts]

Initially. We're focused on the very first part of it. When we first see this person coming into contact with Samantha when they're initially.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

Leaving, and that was about 8:20pm we're.

[Deborah Roberts]

Able to see her leave the scene. So looking at the rest of that video would not have been necessarily the highest of priorities early on.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

But when we looked at that video for longer time, we noticed that there was like A light showing up on the counter. The light would come on and then it would disappear. So we thought that in it could be a phone. And then we looked further at video and to our surprise, we saw that after 11pm the person came to the coffee stand. That person was wearing a headlight, you know, like right in the center of the head. He spent some time in the coffee stand looking for Safi.

[Deborah Roberts]

Samantha left her cell phone at the coffee stand, and so it appeared that the individual went back to the coffee stand to retrieve her phone.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

That also coincided with the fact that the first texts from Samantha's phone came at 11.30pm so we have that person entering the coffee stand after 11pm and then 11:30pm a text comes from Samantha's phone.

[Deborah Roberts]

Once we found that, somebody returned to the coffee shop and took her cell phone, obviously we became very concerned that something bad had happened to her. Someone has clearly abducted Samantha and the clock is tick. We're hoping to find Samantha. We believe that we, we may will be able to find her alive, and we carry that hope within us. First 48 hours or so, in any case, is important to try to develop as many leads as you can. Because James Koenig and Wayne didn't report her missing the night before. We are already way behind the power curve in Samantha's disappearance. Friends and family describe Samantha as someone who makes you feel like a best friend. She's funny, she's out there. I was surprised on how many people actually knew her. The city of Anchorage was on heightened alert. I can't believe this happened here in Anchorage. For it to actually happen so out of the blue, I mean, it's, it's scary. Not as a barista, just as a young lady. Samantha was last wearing a pair of furry black boots. If we can cover 2 mile square radius from Fireweed, it's important for people to see that she's still out there and we still need to keep looking. The response from the public was overwhelmingly supportive of the Koenig family and trying to do anything that they could to help. Samantha's mother, Darlene, was part indigenous, and that made Samantha Koenig part indigenous. And so that rallied a lot of the community and the indigenous community here in Anchorage.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

The family, James Koenig and some volunteers started to distribute flyers about her being missing.

[Deborah Roberts]

There's people putting flyers up that knew her and there was just tons of them. We haven't heard anything. And my stepdad saying that he knew something was wrong, like he had that passion to get the word out there quickly. I spent a lot of time putting flyers on cars. You couldn't go around a street corner and not see a business that had freed up their space on their billboard to show her missing picture and information. It was everywhere. Co workers worked to cover every inch of town with this poster.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

At that point in the investigation, we learned that Samantha Koenig and Duane Tortolani had a joint bank account, and they both had debit cards for that bank account. And on the night of Samantha's disappearance, Duane saw a man in Samantha's truck. It looks like he was searching the vehicle looking for something. Dwayne told us that nothing appeared to be missing, but we looked at the bank records and we saw that Samantha Kennick's debit card was used. We realized that it was Samantha's debit card that was missing a few minutes.

[Deborah Roberts]

After was taken from the truck. The debit card was used to check the balance. The account was accessed, but no money was taken. Taken.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

That was interesting. Someone had to know the PIN number. Why not take the money from the account?

[Deborah Roberts]

The person was in a mask, had a big puffy jacket on, so you really couldn't tell how big that person was. It wasn't exactly clear that it was the same individual from the coffee hut, but there weren't enough things different between them that would completely exclude that as being a possibility. But there was another key detail that really raised red flags for the investigators. Some of them felt that James was a truth teller, that he loved his daughter, that he would never have harmed her, While the other half thinks something isn't right here, please look into him. As a matter of routine, we would want to investigate James Koenig's home, where Samantha lived, to look for any information on her computers or tablets, which is pretty standard in a missing person's case, especially with younger kids. And he refused to let the police department do the initial search. He came to the door, opened it, shimmied himself through a little crack, and then closed it behind him. And then when they asked to speak to Dwayne, it was the same thing. Do they have something to hide? I'm still suspicious. If you are an investigator who, from day one has found this guy suspicious, this looks really bad and is reinforcing your theory of the case that James was somehow involved.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

Statistically, when a young woman is going missing, 80 or 90% of the time it's a boyfriend or husband or someone very close to her. So we had to look at Duane. Duane told us that he had called Samantha right before the end of her shift and told her he was going to to pick her up. We saw in that video. That's what happened. He came to the coffee stand about 8:30pm and he walked around the coffee stand.

[Deborah Roberts]

I called her phone a couple times. I was looking to see if she left it at work.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

Dwayne worked at a restaurant and he had an alibi for that day. Fairly quickly, I realized it was very unlikely that he had anything to do with it.

[Deborah Roberts]

Ultimately, investigators got a search Warrant to search Mr. Koenig's house. @ the time, we thought maybe he was hiding a marijuana grow or something, but that turned out to be nothing. I think that James Koenig, he's having a really tough time trusting the cops. I don't know if my daughter's being fed, taken care of, if she's still alive, if she's getting any sleep. Please help find my daughter. It was just so obvious how much her father cared about Samantha and what a close relationship they had. James was devastated that his daughter was missing and he had no idea where she was or what had happened to her. And he wanted her to come home. I also grew up in this area. I know what it was like being a teenager in Alaska. You know, the reaction that her dad would have at her not coming home is the reaction my dad would have at me for not coming home. Curiosity Weekly, it's a podcast from Discovery and they help you make sense of some of the biggest questions and ideas shaping our world. Each week they unpack breaking science and tech news with expert guests who make it all make sense. And it's great and it's so fascinating. They've got great topics like how neuroscientists are studying TikTok and all your social media habits to see which chemicals are being released in your brain that make you so obsessed. Or did you know you can fly from Florida to England on a plane using recycled plastic jet fuel? Or that how AI can now read hieroglyphs from Egyptian pyramids, or even how there are robots that can appear to feel pain. And if you're listening to our show, I know you're curious about the world. So I think you're gonna like this show and you should check it out. And each episode is the perfect length. It's around 11:12 minutes or so. And it's just like a nice little knowledge snack. It's like a knowledge canape. So check it out and listen to Curiosity Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

It's been three days since 18 year.

[Deborah Roberts]

Old Samantha Koening disappeared from her Job at Common Grounds Espresso in midtown Anchorage.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

It wasn't like a normal missing person case. We are becoming more and more concerned, so we started to expand our investigation.

[Deborah Roberts]

One of the normal protocols would be to go and canvass the area, look for other surveillance videos. We ultimately recovered video from the Home Depot store, which is across the street from where the kiosk was.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

You could see a couple walking through the parking lot near a busy restaurant and go into a vehicle, a white, savvy pickup truck.

[Deborah Roberts]

Samantha and the suspect got in that vehicle and then drove from the Home Depot parking lot onto the road. Once Samantha leaves with this unknown individual, we start picking up the surveillance from the street cameras. There was a really great image of this white pickup truck. However, the license plate was unreadable on the video, so we knew it was.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

A white Chevy pickup truck that the suspect was using.

[Deborah Roberts]

The traffic unit was meant vehicle by vehicle, trying to identify all the white trucks in the city that you're making model.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

There are 700 white Chevrolet pickup trucks in Anchorage and the area. So, of course, when you have that many vehicles, it takes a long time.

[Deborah Roberts]

Investigators say surveillance footage shows a stranger dressed in a black hoodie.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

It was a stranger abduction during that time period. We told the media we have a video, and it's apparent from the video that it's kidnapping.

[Deborah Roberts]

Anchorage police are not sharing what they say is proof Samantha was kidnapped, not even with her family. We have not seen any surveillance. This is just unbelievable.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

And there was a lot of public demand. You know, we want to see the video. Why doesn't police department want to release the video?

[Deborah Roberts]

Police say it will not help them solve the crime. If we were to present them now, it would have the effect of tainting a jury. Samantha Koenig's mother says she is living a nightmare. They have detectives on it, but to me, they're not working fast enough.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

We keep waiting for some good news.

[Deborah Roberts]

I feel like the whole time, I was wanting to stay as positive as possible. We're gonna find Samantha. She's gonna come home to us. James asked me if I would build a Facebook for Samantha. There were, of course, trolls, like there is in any social media. And people can be so cruel. There were people that had their own view that she wasn't actually missing. It's not easy when people are telling you, oh, this is fake. This isn't real. For someone to fake this would be messed up. Police continue to search for clues on why Samantha was taken from common grounds. The family says they're optimistic she'll be found alive. I gotta keep my spirits up and know that my heart still feels her and she's okay. Corey Allen Young, CBS 11 News. I would say with James, he was definitely frustrated. I know as the days went on, there was more law enforcement added to the case. James Koenig did what I think anybody would do. He went online, he went to the Internet. He used it to publicize his daughter's disappearance. Right now, we're probably getting two or three tips a day. Whenever we got what we thought might be evidence, we forward it on over to the police department. Whether they're helpful or not, I really can't decide. I don't know what avenue the police are taking in the investigation.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

James Koenig established a reward fan.

[Deborah Roberts]

There was a lot of people that knew the Koenigs, and so a lot of money started rolling in to Mr. Koenig's account. There is a $41,000 reward for her safe return.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

James Kenneth pretty much called me daily Slav. Do you have anything new for me, Slav? Is there anything we could do? He would tell me about his fundraising efforts. Of course, I had a lot of sympathy for him. My daughter at the time was working in a coffee stand. So, you know, I'm a police officer, but I'm also a father, and my daughter is in a very similar situation. You know, if it happened to Samantha, it could happen to somebody else. As days pass by, we are following up the leads and we are hitting the wall everywhere.

[Deborah Roberts]

Where is Samantha? I mean, that is still the big question. Where is she this entire time? Ever since the night of Samantha's abduction, we were monitoring activity on her phone at the FBI. We had gone three weeks without anything.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

And sadly, we get this big break.

[Deborah Roberts]

Samantha's boyfriend got a text message from Samantha's phone. The direction that this text message gave was to go to Connor Park. Connor park is a dog park in Anchorage. And it said Connor park sign under Pick of Albert. Ain't she purty? Nobody knew what that meant. We believed that it was in fact from the person who had taken Samantha or at least had her phone at this point. Finally, something has happened. Anchorage Police Department responds, and we're asking ourselves, is Samantha alive? Is she dead? There's a bulletin board that's near the dog park under a sign of a golden doodle named Albert. There was a Ziploc bag that had a white piece of paper folded over.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

It's the first big break that happened in the case since obtaining some video evidence three weeks earlier.

[Deborah Roberts]

It was a ransom Note typed on an actual typewriter. The note suggests that Samantha is alive. 30k to be deposited to CU1, which is credit union one account has the full card number, expiration first 2015. There is a credit card number that is attributed to Samantha's account. In the note he is telling us that once he collects 30 in six months to a year, then he will give information potentially where Samantha's at. Along with the ransom note, there was a photo, potentially a proof of life photo. It was one single piece of paper. On the first side, it had the actual typed ransom note. And then on the second side was the actual picture.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

There was a photo of. Of a young woman. She's naked, she's bound, her hair is braided, she's got duct tape over her mouth. The photo was very disturbing. It was a thumbnail size image. The more we enlarged it, the more grainy it was becoming.

[Deborah Roberts]

Is this young woman alive in the photo or is she not? You certainly could not say with certainty one way or another.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

I contacted James Koenig. If it was really his daughter, I knew that it was going to be heartbreaking for him to see that photo. It was just me and James Koenig in the interview room and I put a photo in front of him. He stirred a bit for a long time and then he said, yes, it is Samantha in the photo. I saw him as a grieving father. He was 42nd. It was genuine and I knew that at that moment I had no doubt that James Koenig was not involved.

[Deborah Roberts]

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[Slavomir Markowitz]

Now we knew what the suspect was doing. The suspect wanted us to put the money in Samantha's account. He had Samantha's debit card and he would be able to withdraw the money from ATM machines.

[Deborah Roberts]

Now we have something that we could potentially use to try to lure the subject out.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

Police departments don't have ransom funds. Maybe we could use the money from the reward fund. So I talked to James Canick about it and he agreed to put $5,000 into the account.

[Deborah Roberts]

We have the bank set to be able to track her ATM card. So we will know at any institution that it's used within about 10 minutes of it being Used. So having a deposit is what we wanted.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

On February 29, the money was depositing.

[Deborah Roberts]

And within six hours, just before midnight, the debit card is used.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

He withdrew $500. Anchorage had about 500 ATM machines. We needed to be there within minutes, if not seconds after using the ATM card, our officers rather to the scene, but the suspect is gone. But we are able to access the video.

[Deborah Roberts]

The individual is covered in masked, so you can't see any real facial features. The eyes are covered. There's some type of hat or hood on and a big puffy jacket. It says Marine Corps on the back. It does appear to be male. Does appear to be taller, which is consistent with the height of the individual that walks up to the coffee stand. Appears to be thin. Not somebody who's out of shape. We were able to get video of a vehicle departing. There was a silver Nissan Xterra suv. We believe the person that used the car had gotten out of that vehicle, walked over to the ATM and then came back and got in that vehicle and left the area. The FBI were looking for that white pickup truck. This vehicle is a completely different vehicle. Seeing the silver Exterra come into play just added one more confusing element to this case. For the next several days, we're constantly doing surveillance on the ATM machines in hopes that we can be present for the next withdrawal. But right after the ATM withdrawals, we weren't getting any new information in. Once again, we had no additional clues. No ATM withdrawals, no leads. Everything goes cold. Our hope to find Samantha is still strong, but it is very discouraging when you're not having strong leads to work off of. As the search for Samantha Koenig goes into month number two, detectives and officers working around the clock to figure out who took her and why. Time is obviously of the essence. As time goes on, things get cold. People's memories fade. You are not sleeping, you're not eating, because you're too focused on the bigger picture of finding Samantha. And it affected me tremendously. The more time that went by, the more concerned everybody was for Samantha Koenig. And then Samantha's card lights up.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

It came as a total surprise.

[Deborah Roberts]

We get an alert in the middle of the night that Samantha's debit card was used at an ATM in Wilcox, Arizona. It shocked all of us that now this case had clearly left all of Alaska behind. And now we're in the lower 48 in a completely different state that we never had on our radar. How did we get to Wilcox, Arizona? And is Samantha alive?

[Slavomir Markowitz]

Wilcox is a Little town on the highway I10, the highway that connects California to Texas.

[Deborah Roberts]

We were able to get video from Wilcox, Arizona. And based on size and height and that type of thing, it appeared to be the same person, but again, fully disguised. So no real distinct identifying features of the individual. You can see in the distance a small white car. That photograph was sent back to our lab in Quantico. They were able to tell us it was a white Fort Focus. Our belief is at this point that if the individual was from Alaska and is now down there, that it's probably a rental car. So that ATM withdrawal happens on March 7th. There's another one that day in Lordsburg, New Mexico. And then on March 10, there is an ATM withdrawal that's made in Umbrella, Texas. So once again, things have continued to move east.

[Slavomir Markowitz]

And then the next day, there's another withdrawal in Shepherd, Texas.

[Deborah Roberts]

So, in coordination with the Texas Rangers and FBI in Texas, we put out a BOLO of be on the lookout for the information that we had recovered from each ATM that he had used along the way. That has detailed information about the white Ford Focus. I mean, couldn't find a more common vehicle, and we didn't have a license plate on it, so we didn't even know what state it was registered in. It's an absolute needle in a haystack. During this whole time, we're asking ourselves, is Samantha with this individual? Is she in the vehicle? It's still a mystery to us. My name is Brian Henry, and I'm a retired Texas Highway Patrol sergeant. I happened to be in the office, and Ranger Rayburn caught me in the hallway and started telling me about this case. He showed me this bolo. He tells me about Samantha and that it's a kidnapping and that the ATM card had been used. Starting out west, all the way to a small town south of us, which I believe was Shepherd. The person had a hoodie on glasses, something covering his face. I could kind of tell it was a white male. And I remember it had a fuzzy white vehicle in it. Ranger Rayburn said that that FBI believes it's a Ford Focus. I get in my patrol car, just take off patrolling, just kind of doing my job. And now the BOLO is kind of the back of my mind. Just as I drove around. I look to my right, and the first thing I look at is a white Ford Focus. So I called the Ranger, and the FBI was in his office. We dropped everything we were doing then, and we told Ryan, do not lose that car. Blood starts pumping because you're thinking, wow, Is this even possible? We may have found the person that abducted Samantha. This has to be the guy. Let this be the guy. This is Deborah Roberts. You can catch episode two of Wild Crime in our feed next week. The series was produced by Lone Wolf Media for ABC News Studios. You can stream all four seasons of Wild Crime on Hulu. And while you're there, of course, you can always find more from 2020.