Sadie(63)
Kendall didn’t like her.
WEST McCRAY:
Why?
JAVI CRUZ:
Because being that crazy chick that dances alone, the one everyone’s lookin’ at? That’s Kendall’s thing. She thought Sadie was creepy, because Sadie stalked Kendall’s Instagram. Like she looked Kendall up, and came to Cooper’s because she knew we’d be there.
WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]: More and more, it seems I had reason to doubt Marlee Singer’s insistence that she never spoke to Sadie. I believe Sadie talked to Marlee, who knew Keith. She sought out Marlee’s brother, Silas Baker, and his family in Montgomery. It stands to reason Silas knew Keith too.
JAVI CRUZ:
She told us her family’d moved to town because her sister died.
WEST McCRAY:
Did she elaborate on that?
JAVI CRUZ:
No, but I could tell it really hurt her. I wasn’t surprised when you told me that part was true. Anyway … I gave her my number and she promised to call me in the morning—we were going to go over to the Bakers’ together. Then she calls me and tells me to meet her here.
WEST McCRAY: Here is Lili’s Café. It’s a small coffee shop on the corner of Montgomery’s main street, with a sweet, homey feel to it. Javi tells me it’s insane in the mornings, wall-to-wall with people lining up for Lili’s famous cold brew and sugar-glazed doughnuts. It’s quiet now.
JAVI CRUZ:
I bought her breakfast and we ate and right away, I could tell something was really wrong. It’s hard to describe, but she was quiet and looked … sick. I asked her what it was. She didn’t tell me, though.
She showed me.
WEST McCRAY:
Sadie took Javi to the house fifteen miles outside of Montgomery and showed him the photos. Javi is visibly shaking when he tells me this part.
JAVI CRUZ:
I remember I came out of that house screaming. Because I knew those—I knew those kids. And those pictures were … I … I dream about them and it makes me wanna tear my brain out and—I can’t.
I’m sorry … I’m sorry—
WEST McCRAY:
It’s okay. Take your time.
JAVI CRUZ:
[EXHALES] I asked her how she knew. How she knew that stuff was there and she told me she’d been parked outside the Bakers’ house all night and she saw Silas leave his place really early in the morning, and she thought it was weird so she followed him all the way to that house … she said she hid ’til he left and went looking and that’s what she found. I don’t know if that’s true, but she wanted me to call the cops.
I want to say I did the right thing right away, I wanna tell you that I did that but …
WEST McCRAY:
Javi was too overwhelmed, too distraught, to understand the scope of what was happening. Sadie demanded immediate action.
WEST McCRAY [TO JAVI]: Was Sadie willing to call the cops?
JAVI CRUZ:
That’s the thing! She wouldn’t do it herself. She said she was scared.
WEST McCRAY:
You didn’t think it was odd that she was parked outside the Bakers’ house all night? You didn’t ask her to explain that? It sounds like she might have had an inkling something was going on from the outset.
JAVI CRUZ:
Once I saw those pictures, I wasn’t thinking about anything but that. This fucking broke me. I’m in therapy about it. And that’s why I couldn’t call the cops at first … Kendall and Noah were my best friends, and Mr. Baker—I’d known Mr. Baker since I was a kid and it didn’t—none of it made sense. We drove back into town, and she just kept telling me I had to do this because if I didn’t …
WEST McCRAY:
If you didn’t, what?
JAVI CRUZ:
I don’t know. We got back into town. She pulled up to the Rose Mart—a convenience store down the road. It’s got a pay phone …
She said if I couldn’t do it outright, to call the cops and tell ’em I wanted to report a dead body, hang up without ID’ing myself and let the police find it all.
WEST McCRAY: You refused, initially.
JAVI CRUZ:
I was fucked up. Scared out of my mind.
WEST McCRAY:
When you told Sadie that, how did she react?
JAVI CRUZ:
She left me there.
WEST McCRAY:
But you ended up making the call right after.
911 DISPATCHER [PHONE]:
911, what is your emergency?
JAVI CRUZ [PHONE]: Uh, I want to report a dead body.
WEST McCRAY:
Javi did as Sadie suggested: he left directions to the house and hung up before he could identify himself.
After the pornography was found, the Montgomery Sheriff’s Department pulled security footage from outside the Rose Mart and identified their mystery caller. I got to look at it. Sadie isn’t with Javi as he braces himself to make the call. It was after she drove off. He stands in front of the phone, pacing back and forth for ten minutes, before finally bringing the receiver to his ear. He makes the call and he goes home, where he shuts himself in his room and won’t talk to anyone until the police knock on his door.