>> we don't eat till midnight. the 28th. like it's terrible. s. so you got it. so everybody rushing the pies first. >> this is delicious. sweet potatoes. wonderful. >> like it's rich. >> it's flavorful. >> did you try with whipped cream. oh that's my fat i forgot that i'm gonna just pour some eggnog on my delicious. >> yeah. shout out to my mom. she made this. >> my mom. oh, my god. >> homemade sweet potato. >> mama made sweet potato pie. oh my gosh. >> delicious. now, hannibal thompson greg lee happy holidays everyone. >> happy holidays. happy holidays. >> thanks foratchin i'm anna garcia right now on true crime news. an 11 year old girl goes to sleep and is stolen from her bed. >> sarah is not in her room. her shoes are here. we don't know where she's at. >> nothing makes sense. the doors and windows are all locked. the dog didn't even bark until her six year old sister drops a bombshell secret. >> emma's telling them somebody

took her. she knew him. >> he was obsessed with sarah as his target. >> and the family realizes they let a monster into their house. >> worst nightmare literally come true. >> your daily source for true crime starts right now. for one maryland family holiday, joy turned into absolute dread. one moment little sarah foxwell was asleep in her room and the next she was gone. a beautiful 11 year old girl snatched from her own bed in the middle of the night. >> worst nightmare. literally just come true. >> just two days before christmas. >> it's a case that that shocked all of us to our core. >> ripped out from under the covers in her pajamas. >> that was our christmas. it was tough. >> by a monster from within. >> he was obsessed with sarah as

his target. >> sweet sarah haley foxwell, nicknamed by her family haley bug. >> she hated it when she hit that age, 11. she was like, my name is sarah, not haley bag. >> she's outspoken. a shining star in her sixth grade class in salisbury, maryland. >> she comes from a family of nine children, and she was right there smack in the middle. and she was the one that was the referee, the lover, the hugger, the one that always had a smile. no matter how bad her day was, she always had a smile. >> and many days were rough for the foxwell family. as a single parent, jennifer was struggling to make it so sarah and her siblings were temporarily staying with jennifer's dad and sister amy at this converted barn house. >> it's been a hard road for all of us, but jennifer was working overtime, determined to make this the perfect christmas for

all her kids. >> december 22nd. as the sun goes down, the temperature dips below freezing and snow falling outside guarantees a perfect white christmas. >> they were running around the house goofing off. they had had pizza the night before. >> around nine, sarah and her six year old sister emma playfully skip off to bed. the girls share a room at the end of a long hall right next to the back door. that sweet moment, shared by sisters now haunts jennifer. >> everybody was just being silly because it was literally like two days away from christmas. >> just ten hours later, jennifer gets a disturbing call from her sister amy. >> she said sarah's not in her room. her shoes are here. her jacket is here. we don't know where she's at. we can't find her. she's not in the house. she's not outside the house. we don't know where she's at. there was snow on the ground. it was

25 degrees outside. i knew immediately something was wrong. >> sarah's family immediately calls the sheriff's department. what they hear gives them a sinking feeling. >> it wasn't just a simple missing person call. there was more to this one than than others. >> sergeant david owens, sheriff mike lewis, and the entire wicomico sheriff's department descend on the old barn house terrified. they have a kidnaping on their hands. >> every sheriff's deputy at this office came back to work. they did not want to spend christmas with their families. while this little girl was still missing. >> in the chaos, sheriff lewis makes a promise to the distraught mom. >> he puts his arm around me and says, me, i want you to know that i will do everything in my power to bring her home to you. and i looked at him and i said, i'm going to hold you to that. >> with less than 48 hours before christmas, they begin desperately searching for sarah. >> they were looking inside the

house and outside the house for like, whether or not somebody broke in. >> there was no sign of forced entry. the front door and all the windows were locked up tight. but when cops checked the back door next to the girl's room, they turned the handle and walked right in. strangely, they also noticed sarah's green toothbrush was missing from the bathroom. and there was one thing no one could explain. >> the dog didn't even bark. >> then sarah's aunt amy suddenly remembers a key hidden outside for emergencies. >> she kept the spare key under like this little ceramic frog on the front porch. >> but when she looks for that key, it's missing. and little sarah's family now knows she's in big trouble. the sheriff's office immediately issues a statewide amber alert. sarah has, without a doubt been abducted. >> i felt like my whole world had crashed. >> then it hits everyone.

whoever took sarah knew about the key. the kidnaper was someone who must know the family and where sarah was sleeping. >> this is as bad as it can be. >> out of the shadows, a frightened little voice confirms their nightmare. sarah's six year old sister, emma, says she has a secret to tell. >> emma's telling them somebody took her. she knew him. >> when we come back, emma names the man that took her sister, and cops already know him. >> it shook us all to our core. it really did. >> that's next. >> at this very moment, children at saint jude are fighting to survive with a gift. right now, you can join the battle to save lives without saint jude. >> i don't know where we would be. weeksy. they have given

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>> we're back with the abduction of sarah foxwell just two days before christmas eve. her case might still be a mystery if it weren't for her brave six year old sister, who witnessed the entire thing. >> this little girl was kidnaped from her bed in the middle of the night while wearing her pajamas. >> was 11 year old sarah foxwell snatched by a stranger? that's what cops first believed. then clues tell them something they can barely stomach. the family dog never barked, and the 11 year old's green toothbrush is

missing. >> it shook us all to our core. it really did. >> their worst fears are confirmed by sarah's terrified little sister, emma. the heroic six year old tugs on her grandma's nightgown, looks up, and begins providing crucial clues about who took her sister, what he was wearing, what he looked like, everything. >> she knew him. emma pulled my mother aside and told my mother that tommy took her. >> tommy is tommy junior. he's and amy's former boyfriend, and he's no stranger to the wicomico sheriff's department either. >> tomás legs is a predator, a predator of young girls. >> cops pull up his rap sheet and their heart sinks. the 30 year old has a long history of molesting girls. >> he defines the worst of a sex offender. >> and for his crimes, he had already done hard time. thomas

legs junior had been sentenced to five years in prison for the fourth degree rape of a teenager, and served six months for a third degree sex offense involving a child. and just a few months before kidnaping, sarah legs was arrested again, this time for assaulting a young woman, an attack eerily similar to sarah's. >> he crawled through her window in the middle of the night, and she woke up and saw him standing there with his clothing on the floor, committing a sexual act while watching her sleep. this is the kind of guy we were dealing with, the sheriff says. >> legs was out on bond when he met sarah's aunt amy. although she had no idea she was opening the family door to a monster. >> sometime early in that relationship, she had recognized that he was a registered sex offender. he was able to convince her that he wasn't a bad guy. there came a point in time that that he was in the house on a regular basis. >> cops say the predator started

planning his sick attack. >> absolutely. think he was plotting. he knew how to access the house. he knew where the hidden key was. this night in question just became the night that i guess he was ready. he went straight to her bedroom. he escorted her. sarah knew him, and he had become, unfortunately, a trusted person in the home. he was obsessed with sarah as his target. >> frantic deputies tracked down legs to this shed where he lived on his parents property. >> we searched his shed. it was full of pornographic magazines and pornographic videos. it just makes your skin crawl. >> but there was no sign of sarah. so based on her six year old sister's positive id and his extensive rap sheet, sheriff hall in for a disturbing interview. >> he never showed any emotion. >> for the next several hours, we interrogated him. >> i'm being suspected of kidnaping 11 year old girl of my ex-girlfriend. who knew i was a registered sex offender with a

six year old girl saying that she supposedly saw me there. >> denial. denial. denial. >> what was your relationship with the girls? i mean, did they like you? did you? >> i mean, i mean, we all seem to got along great. i try to be very cautious around the younger girls because of my past and everything else. just so there's no mistakes. i don't be alone with them or anything like that. okay. and which, if you talk to amy, she should be able to confirm i was never alone with him whenever we were together. so. >> do you still have contact with the girls at all? so once you guys were done, that was it, right? >> i would have no reason to contact with them. >> when asked why emma would point the finger at him, legs actually claims the six year old was a troublemaker. >> amy said she was a little handful and stuff, and she said a couple of things she'd done, but. >> but despite the attempts at gaslighting, sheriff mike lewis knew in his heart they had their man. >> i knew within a few minutes that he had definitely committed the crime. the way he snickered and smiled at my detectives, it was clear that he thought that he had committed the perfect crime.

>> there's just one problem. legs tells detectives he has an ironclad alibi. >> you went into bryse home last night with kevin, right? yes. and just him? just you two? yes. okay. >> police verify legs was indeed with a friend at a local bar. but there's a gaping hole in his story. no one, including his parents, can confirm his whereabouts. between 1 and 7:00 that morning, the time sarah went missing. >> we had our man. we were just going to have to prove it. >> and they are about to. proof was in legs. gold pickup truck right there on the floorboard. sarah's green toothbrush. but where was sarah? >> everyone hung on to hope that we could save her life. >> coming up, it is literally a race against time as cops vow to work straight through christmas. can they find sarah alive?

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>> we're back with the christmas time disappearance of sarah foxwell. cops are questioning her aunt's former boyfriend, but they are still desperate to find the missing girl, 11 year old sarah foxwell thought tomás junior was someone she could trust, someone who would protect her. sweet sarah had no idea legs was really a serial predator with a fetish for young girls, and when he appeared in sarah's bedroom just two nights before christmas, she was his target. >> santa claus is supposed to be the one coming in and out of the chimney for young children. instead, it was tomás legs sneaking through the house and taking sarah from her bedroom. >> what legs didn't know was sarah's little sister. emma pretended to be asleep, but emma saw everything. wicomico county investigators immediately hunt down tomás legs, but when they haul him in for questioning, he

denies taking sarah. >> the last time you were there. same thing like month, month and a half. >> but deputies don't believe a word of it. then evidence starts piling up. sarah's missing green toothbrush is found in legg's pickup truck. the tire marks in the snow near the family house from that night match his truck. and then cops make a discovery so vile it makes prosecutor abby marsh's blood boil. >> they still had on the same underwear, and there was dna evidence that was retrieved from the underwear that link to sarah. >> now, authorities know without a doubt, they have their man. but still, there's no sign of sarah. >> i was really just trying to think, you know, she's out there somewhere. what is she going through? you know. is she still alive? how are we going to find her? >> investigators still had hope of finding sarah alive. even though tomás legs had a history of assaulting and molesting young girls, he had always stopped short of murder. >> i had hope, but i just didn't

see a good outcome. >> still, cops are holding on for a christmas miracle. dedicated officers from all over the state working straight through the holiday. >> we're working feverishly through cell phone records to try to determine path of travel, and then they get it in the wee hours of the morning when sarah disappeared, legg's phone pinged off three different cell towers. >> because there were three towers, they actually were able to do an intersection of those towers and triangulate an area. >> authorities believe sarah is located somewhere in that triangle shaped piece of land. >> we knew what the cell phone data was telling us. >> as the sun rises christmas morning, cops zero in on that slice of land with a sliver of hope in their hearts. >> we all tried to have christmas morning. i remember being told you're not worth anything to us, and you'd go

back to work. >> and law enforcement is not searching alone. on that christmas day, everyone from homeowners to hunters joined the search for sarah foxwell with the hope that she was still alive. >> it was a lot of people. it literally took my breath away. they didn't care that it was freezing. they didn't care that they had christmas with their families and their numbers swelled quickly. >> a 3000 person civilian search party so big the sheriff had to use the local baseball stadium as a command post. >> i pleaded to everyone, once you went out and searched your property, just tie a yellow ribbon around your mailbox. and when i went on another helicopter flight after i did that, our community was littered with yellow ribbons everywhere. >> tragically, there would be no christmas miracle. >> she was lying on her back with her little arms reached out. to the sky to heaven. we

found her. but when i saw her and what he had done to her. and when i saw what what was left of her, it was. it just hurt us all. and i, i felt like we had failed. it was christmas day. that was our christmas. it was tough. >> mike and david lohin. pretty much told me what happened. they found her body. >> he sexually attacked her. what that child went through in the last hours of her life or horrific. >> thomas leggs jr is charged with the kidnaping, sexual assault and murder of sarah foxwell. >> if there was ever a case that screamed for the death penalty, it was this case. it was the brutal kidnaping and brutal murder and brutal destruction of

this little girl's body that screamed for the death penalty. this man deserved to die for. >> prosecutor abby marsh lake's case was also personal. >> when he was 18 years old, i was the prosecutor. in his first adult sex offense that was charged. >> marsh wanted to make sure this would never happen again. in sarah's case, the state of maryland would seek the death penalty, but before the case would go to trial, legg's court cederlind in exchange for his life, leggs pled guilty to every charge and w sentenced to life behind bars. >> he will never be able to hurt another child again. >> i know she's at peace and emma, the brave little six year old who helped cops catch her sister's killer, still watches over her big sister at her grave, still processing the loss in her own way. >> the little girl, once

nicknamed haley bug, is now considered a christmas angel. here, her legacy will serve to protect other children through sarah's law. it mandates all child sex offenders in maryland serve a minimum of 15 years without the possibility of parole. >> she's everywhere. i don't think anybody will forget her. >> just days after entering prison, legs was slashed by a fellow inmate. he idn't sustain any serious injuries. we'll be right back.

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>> on the next true crime news. a peaceful christmas eve takes a tragic turn when a beautiful cop is gunned down. >> she was ambushed from behind, took her gun right out of her holster and shot her three times. that's personal. that means something. >> her distraught husband, a decorated former marine, breaks down. and her fellow officers

close in on the killer. >> one of the things that no one knew was that he had been stalking her on the next true crime news. >> for the latest breaking crime news, go to true crime news.com. watch more exclusive content on our youtube channel, listen to our podcast and follow us at my true crime news. that's it for today's true crime news. i'm an garcia. see you next time, - was cori reported missing before her remains were found? - no, she had not been reported missing. (suspenseful music) - her hyoid bone was broken, which is consistent with strangulation. (suspenseful music) - we just all sat there in shock. - everyone knew her. she was very gregarious, outgoing. - she's the most beautiful person i've ever come across. - a young 28-year-old who just had her whole life ahead of her.