Elisa Roberson Part 2

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2:00have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney and this is Voices for Justice.

2:16Today, I'm back to finish my coverage of the disappearance of Elisa Roberson from Aransas Pass, Texas. Last week, with the help of Elisa's sister Ruby, we learned about their family structure, the day Elisa went missing, and we touched on who the police began speaking to in the early days of the investigation. This week, we're diving right back into the investigation, persons of interest, and of course, how you can help. This is part two of The Disappearance of Elisa Roberson. If you haven't listened to part one of Elisa's story, I highly recommend going back and listening to that before listening to this.

2:55Otherwise, you'll be missing a lot of context. But as a very brief refresher, on August 6, 1989, 13-year-old Elisa Roberson vanished from Moransas Pass, Texas after leaving her home around 5.45 p.m. to meet her friend Debbie Green. They planned to meet halfway and then go back to Debbie's house to play with Barbies. The plan was for Debbie's dad, 59-year-old Bob Green to later drive Elisa home. But Elisa never made it to the meeting spot. She was last seen by a few people in her neighborhood walking to the school before getting into a red or maroon car. While police and her friends and family searched for Elisa, nothing was found.

3:36Her family immediately feared that she may have been taken by her mother's ex-boyfriend, Ralph Gonzalez, who Ruby says was a very dangerous and abusive man, who'd also threatened their mother shortly before Elisa went missing. It seemed that everything was pointing to Ralph Gonzalez, but when Elisa went missing, he was MIA, so while the Aransas Pass PD was tracking him down, they asked Bob Green to come down to the station to speak with them about Elisa, which is exactly where we'll pick up. The Roberson family considered Bob Green to be a good family friend. The two families had a long history of their kids being friends, and Bob was even their landlord for a period of time.

4:16Doing things like offering Elisa a ride home was a very normal occurrence and getting involved in the search for Elisa seemed completely in character. So it makes sense that the Aransas past PD was interested in speaking with him for these reasons and for others that I'll go into in just a minute. First, let's talk about what Bob told the police about the day Elisa went missing. As we know, Bob says that he did not see Elisa that day and talked to his daughter Debbie after Elisa went missing. That's when he seemingly jumped into action looking for Elisa. Bob worked as a handyman, and that day it was confirmed that he had done some work mowing lawns.

4:55He told investigators that after that, he began working in his shop, and around the time Debbie was supposed to meet Elisa, he'd fallen asleep in his car, and had been asleep for some time. But the Aransas past PD had a hard time believing this. Ruby told me that Bob Green's shop was really more like a shed. So basically, you have a car inside of a building in the middle of the Texas summer. If Bob Green fell asleep inside of his car in these conditions, it would have been like an oven in there. This was confirmed by investigators as well. They consulted with experts who confirmed that if Bob's story of falling asleep in his car were true, he would have been dead in about an hour due to the heat.

5:37So investigators just weren't buying his story. But you may be asking, why would Bob Green want to hurt Elisa? Well, unfortunately, Bob Green has a history of being accused of crimes like sexual assault and indecency with a minor, which he was formally charged with in 1991. He pled no contest and was given six years of community supervision probation. But he was released from this early after 42 months. Ruby also told me that one of her friends told her a story about her and her sisters. She said that they were playing in their driveway when their father caught Bob Green masturbating in his car nearby.

6:17During our interview, she also recounted a chilling encounter her mom had with Bob Green. I can see my mom vividly, like her hands are up, like pushing him off of her, and he's trying to force himself on her. And so as soon as I got up there, he, you know, let my mom go. So my mom said he would grab her every time when no one was looking. and I would ask her, I'm like, mom, you know, why would you want to be, why would you even want to be around him? And why would you think he's nice when he's doing these things? And she goes, well, in those days, the way we were taught is, you know, it's a woman's fault.

6:52And it was instilled. It's like in the fiber of our beings, you know, how she grew up. It's a woman's fault when a man, you know, rapes you, beats you. You've done something wrong to deserve this kind of treatment. So she said, in my mind, this is how men are. Sergeant Linda Thompson with the Aransas Pass PD has been quite open that Bob Green was their number one suspect in Elisa's case. And for her, he still is to this day. It seemed like he had the means, motive, and opportunity. And while Ruby has no doubt that Elisa trusted Bob Green enough to get in a vehicle with him, there was a problem.

7:30Elisa was last seen getting into a red or maroon car, and Bob Green didn't own any vehicle matching that description.

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9:19While investigators from the Aransas Pass PD were looking into Bob Green, They were also trying to figure out where Elisa's mother's ex-boyfriend Ralph Gonzalez was when Elisa went missing. In part one of my coverage of Elisa's case, I told you that Ralph and Elisa's mom Marina had broken up not long before Elisa went missing. And after, he was seemingly MIA. But Ruby and her mom remember seeing Ralph in town that summer before Elisa went missing. They couldn't pinpoint exactly when. They just remember seeing him and being scared. So they were pretty surprised when investigators told them that Ralph had been located, and his whereabouts when Elisa went missing had been verified.

10:00It turns out that Ralph was arrested in Mexico in May 1989, about three months before Elisa went missing. He was caught in a Ford pickup truck smuggling weapons across the border. He was still in prison when investigators found him. And after investigators found this out and interviewed him, they told Elisa's family that there was no way he could have abducted Elisa. But Ruby and her mother weren't entirely convinced. Ralph had threatened them before he left, and he always told them that he had friends in high places and knew a lot of bad people. They did confirm he was there. You know, Linda Thompson mentioned that they went, they talked to him and that there, you know, that there was no way that he could have been in, that he could have done it.

10:50The one thing that we struggle with is that we had actually seen him during that summer of 1989. So that's why there's always been a question in our mind. I'm not saying that, you know, I believe them when they say they went and talked to him, that he was there. But how do you make sense out of us, all of us, between all of us, seeing Ralph that summer kind of lurking around, letting us know he was there, just trying to instill fear in us. So that's what we struggle with. And we know that Ralph had connections. We know that he He had a brother who was either, you know, either a prison guard or a police officer, but I think it might have been a prison guard.

11:40So who worked at that prison. So that's always been a question in our mind that, of course, when there's that, and that prison was also known to be the most corrupt in Mexico at the time. So that's just something that's always been in our minds, that maybe someone got paid off to make it look like he was there to kind of distance himself from the situation. Ralph's abuse towards Marina was documented in a protective order. She explained that after she kicked him out of the house for selling drugs, he broke her arm and kicked her in the stomach while she was four months pregnant with their son, Alex, Elisa's youngest brother, the one they all assumed Ralph would target if he sought the revenge he'd threatened.

12:26So while it may seem a little far-fetched to believe that Ralph Gonzalez may have somehow fudged the dates of his arrest to clear him of any involvement, I'd say stranger things have happened in true crime. I also don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that he may have commissioned someone else to do his dirty work for him while behind bars. But of course, that is 100 % speculation at this point. As far as the Aransas past PD was concerned, Ralph wasn't involved in Elisa's disappearance. And this is really when Elisa's case comes to a standstill. Despite extensive searches for her and even asking the local Boy Scout explorers to go door-to-door asking about Elisa, nothing has ever been found pointing investigators to her whereabouts.

13:13Not a shoe, a scrap of clothing, a piece of hair. Elisa and every trace of her was just gone. At this point, really all they have are those canine units hitting on her scent just past the school. So they think she likely got into a car, which would correlate with the witness statements of her doing exactly that. They have something. They just can't match the car to anyone. They don't find a red or maroon car registered to either Bob Green or Ralph Gonzalez. So again, the case begins to slow down. But over the years, her case was still getting some attention. In 1994, now five years since Elisa went missing, postcards with information about her case were mailed to over 57 million addresses across the country, including 7.3 million in Texas alone.

14:05It included a new age-progressed photo of what she may look like at age 18. So it's huge exposure for her case. Her mother Marina was interviewed by the Corpus Christi Caller Times about the initiative, as was Detective Mike Thompson from the Aransas Past PD, who yes, is related to Linda Thompson. They're married. When speaking with journalist Dan Parker, he said he believes Elisa was abducted, but that they had no suspects and the case remained open. He also said that he had hope Elisa was alive, and that these cards were the biggest thing they've had happen in the case yet. Basically, this corporation, Advo, which specializes in direct mail ad campaigns, partnered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to highlight cases like Elisa's.

14:53At this point in 1994, they'd sent out about 20 billion pictures of missing kids through the mail, and the recovery rate of these kids is astounding. One in seven are brought home safe. 68 kids had already been found. So you can imagine the excitement law enforcement and Elisa's family must have felt, and the letdown when it didn't bring her home. There were many tips and sightings reported as a result of these mailers, but nothing panned out.

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16:09Good help. Get out! Is hard to find. You need me to do this. A Hulu original, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Reddit R. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. For bundled subscribers, terms apply. The next major development in Elisa's case doesn't really come until 2001. This is when news station Chris TV in Corpus Christi receives a very different piece of mail regarding Elisa Roberson. It was a map, supposedly leading to Elisa's body. The Aransas Pass PD has never revealed exactly what was written. We just know that it was sent anonymously, and whatever this map contained wasn't specific enough for police to do anything.

16:56Captain Mike Thompson told the Corpus Christi Caller Times that he knew the area this person was describing, but they hadn't been able to narrow it down to a specific enough location. He even says that he wished whoever drew it would be more specific, like please write back. But it never panned out. It was another dead end. Marina has been open with the media that she blamed herself for Elisa's disappearance, and after years without her daughter, she moved her family away from Maranza's Pass. In an interview with Andrew Christensen for ChrisTV, Marina explained that after Elisa went missing, she was terrified for her children and slept with a knife under her pillow.

17:38She took the kids and left in the middle of the night to relocate them to Idaho and eventually she took down Elisa's photos, saying they were too painful to look at every day. Still, the community in Aransas Pass remembered Elisa. In 2009, a tree was planted in her honor at Keyberger Elementary School with a plaque that reads, quote, In memory of Elisa Roberson, and for all the lost children, may they find their way home, end quote. Her family traveled back to Texas for the ceremony.

18:14Not much happened in Elisa's case until we fast forward a bit to 2016. This is when Captain Kyle Rhodes took over the case. Like the investigators before him, he decided to focus on Bob Green. That summer, the Aransas PD, with the help of Texas EquiSearch, searched using ground-penetrating radar on his properties. They also cleared a field during the search, but at this point, nothing was found. Around this same time, Ruby and Marina planned to travel back to Aransas Pass to fix up Elisa's memorial. After posting about it on Facebook, she was connected to the organization Lowe's Heroes, an offshoot of the home improvement store Lowe's.

18:53They wanted to help. They donated and installed a bench, flowers, plants, and some hummingbird feeders. The trip was a success. Ruby told me that while they were in town, they also connected with Texas EquiSearch, who explained what they'd done while searching Bob Green's properties and their plans for future searches. And they even took us to his properties. They showed us where they had cleared the brush away and that they were going to start digging and looking in certain spots. And we thought, great, you know, finally. So they asked us, are there any other properties that you know of that Bob Green owned?

19:27What they didn't tell Ruby and Marina was that they also planned to search Elisa's childhood home. For Ruby, this was extremely painful. She'd connected with a volunteer in the organization and fielded a lot of their questions about the case. She felt completely blindsided and really betrayed. I think that's how we found out. It was on the news and social media that they were searching our childhood home. So it hit us like a freight train from, we don't even know where it came from. We were shocked. Captain Rhodes told 3 News that construction on the home was concerning to him. Quote, There used to be an open carport there, and it had since been walled in and taken into part of the house.

20:08we thought that maybe the slab that had been poured in there may be covering something up, end quote. But for the record, Ruby denies this. She told me that they never had an open carport, and she has no idea what he's talking about. Captain Rhodes also got in contact with Ruby and Marina, asking if they'd be willing to come to the police station to talk. they asked if we would come in and talk to them and we absolutely and we we we talked to them and it was just something when I had my interview it seemed to go on forever and and I kept feeling like they're asking the same questions over and over and over again and it's all about my mom you know did your mom abuse you did she hit you did she beat you did she did something happen did she beat Alisa you know it just in in any different way they could ask they were asking Yeah, we got a spank.

21:00Yeah, we got a hit with the switch. You know, yeah. You know, so trying to explain to them this without saying, you know, but I knew what they were getting at. They're trying to find out if my mom killed Elisa. And I kept telling them nothing happened in that home that day. There was no fight. They also told Ruby that her mom failed a polygraph test. They told me she failed the polygraph, that I knew what happened to my sister, that I witnessed it, and that I'm covering for my mom, and that I need to come clean with what I know. And I was crying, and I was upset, and I was like, no, no, no. I just couldn't understand what had happened.

21:38I know what they were trying to do. They were trying to pit us against each other. They were trying to make us fight. And it worked, because I asked my mom what happened. Like, what did you say, Mom? Like, what happened? And, you know, how did this thing turn around? And she goes, well, what would you expect me? I asked, I answered the questions they asked me. What more can I give? What more can I do?

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23:25Rumors swirled that maybe Elisa didn't make it out of her home that day at all. Captain Rhodes told Ruby that bone fragments were found during the search, that they were being sent off for testing, and that they'd be making an arrest within days. But seven years later, no arrests have been made in Elisa's case, and 3 News reported that rumors of sonar equipment finding something in the ground were false. So take that for what you will. And it seems that Captain Rhodes wasn't just concerned about Elisa's mother possibly being involved, but also Elisa's brother Tony, who was 10 years old at the time she went missing.

24:01He told 3 News, quote, There was a person of interest that I really wanted to speak with. That was a brother of Elisa, but he was in prison in Alaska, and he committed suicide. So that is an area I can't explore right now. I miss that opportunity." I told you in part one that the reason Linda Thompson was so familiar with Elisa's family was because her younger brother Tony often got into trouble. This unfortunately continued throughout his entire life. In 2002, he pled no contest to the second-degree murder of a man named Ronald Stevens after stabbing him to death. In my interview with Ruby, she reflected on her brother's life.

24:42She told me that he'd been born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. He stopped breathing for a few minutes before the doctors revived him. She says that back in the 70s, they just weren't fully aware of the impact this type of traumatic event could have on someone. But now they know. She says he was impulsive and hyperactive, always getting into trouble, getting into fights, stealing, and spray-painting people's garages. But she maintains that at age 10, he was their protector. When my mom was being hurt, or any of us kids, because sometimes he would come after us too, Tony would jump out that window onto that mattress, and he would take off to the police department.

25:24And it was really close to us. So Tony was the one that our protector, our little brother was our protector. And so it really hurts. You know, Tony got into some trouble. He ended up in prison in Alaska. And he just, the system failed him. We failed him. There was just a lot that we just, we couldn't do to help him. And it just kept getting worse. I'm not at all excusing any of it, but that's the last thing that Tony would have ever done was hurt my mom. And so, yes, the police knew my mom because of that, because of Tony. They knew my mom because of Ralph. And my dad got into trouble, so they knew us because of that.