Through The Cracks | Episode 7: "No Good Mother" (Transcript) 

Jonquilyn Hill: I​ 'm Jonquilyn Hill and from WAMU and PRX, this is Through The 
Cracks, a podcast about the gaps in our society and the people who fall through 
them.  

Relisha Rudd: R
​ -E-L-I-S-H-A. 

Jonquilyn Hill: T
​ his season on Through The Cracks, we're investigating the 
disappearance of Relisha Rudd. 

Relisha disappeared when she was eight years old and her family was living in a 
homeless shelter in southeast D.C. It took 18 days for anyone to realize she was 
missing. 

Jackie Benson, NBC4: ​Oh, we had no idea she was missing. We had no idea this 
child had been missing since February, nor apparently did a lot of other people, 
including people who were responsible for her. 

Jonquilyn Hill: W
​ e've looked at Relisha's school, her family, the shelter where she 
lived and the investigation into her disappearance. 

Derrica Wilson: ​Time is of the essence, you know? If someone is missing, it needs to 
be reported immediately. Again, Relisha's case is one of those anomalies where so 
many people failed her. 

Jonathan Rosnick:​ I would say that every system in place that could or should have 
protected Relisha Rudd essentially failed her. 

Jonquilyn Hill: W
​ as Relisha's disappearance really, as the city claimed, 
unpreventable? On this episode, how has the media portrayed Relisha's mother, 
Shamika? And what can we find out about her? 

– 

Jonquilyn Hill: I​ n every missing person's case, the media plays an important role in 
trying to figure out where the missing person is. In Relisha's case, there was a lot of 
local media. TV, newspapers, radio...everyone here covered her disappearance. 

Even our station got in on it. 

Elliot Francis: ​Investigators also followed other leads, including the search of a 
Days Inn motel where Tatum stayed, which is located just a mile and a half from 

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the homeless shelter, and across the street from the store where the trash bags 
were purchased. I'm Elliot Francis. 

Jonquilyn Hill: B​ ut then, a few weeks after the story broke, it petered out.. The news 
cycle did what it always does. It cycled the story in and then it cycled the story out. 
No one found Relisha Rudd. They only found Khalil Tatum, the man she was last seen 
with, and he was dead. And there were no other leads. So, even though the case was 
open, it was also cold. The community didn't forget Relisha, though. They kept 
posting fliers, organizing searches, forming groups on social media and posting, 
trying to find her. And then, a couple of years later, other parts of the media picked 
up on the story. 

TV Announcer: ​An all new Wilkos..."You got an eight-year-old child missing...I've 

never seen you cry...She's missing!...The FBI comes to you...they conduct a 
manhunt...". 

Jonquilyn Hill: I​ f you're a certain age, staying home from school sick meant 
bundling up in blankets on the couch, being plied with either orange juice or warm 
ginger ale and watching lots of daytime TV. Divorce Court. Maury, Jerry Springer. 
One of the newer additions to this lineup is Steve Wilkos. 

Steve Wilkos is a Marine Corps veteran. He was working as a police officer in Chicago 
when the Jerry Springer Show began hiring off-duty cops to work security. 

Wilkos eventually became head of security for Springer, and then his career took an 
unusual turn. He started guest hosting the show in 2007. He got his own show with 
Springer as co-executive producer. 

I consider myself a trashy television connoisseur. I mean, there are next to no limits. I 
like everything from "Selling Sunset" to "Flavor of Love" to "Maury." Name a Real 
Housewife, and I know the latest drama. I wasn't a Steve Wilkos fan. I hadn't really 
heard of him, but I have to admit his show is entertainingly chaotic. There's lots of 
yelling and screaming, lots of family confrontations, and there's this true crime 
aspect to the show. In any case, I was surprised that The Steve Wilkos Show was one 
of the first things that popped up when I initially began researching this podcast. It's 
a strange experience as a reporter to see a story you're covering and the people you 
hope to interview let it all hang out in a tabloid-style daytime TV show. 

Steve Wilkos: ​Three years ago, Shamila's eight-year-old daughter vanished without 
a trace. And Shamika had no idea that her daughter was even missing until she, 
and her ex-boyfriend, Antonio, were questioned by the FBI. 

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Jonquilyn Hill: R
​ elisha's family had gone through a lot in the wake of her 
disappearance. There were family fights, a lot of finger-pointing regarding who was 
to blame. And loyalties changed over and over again. In 2017, three years after 
everything happened, Antonio Wheeler, Relisha's stepdad, and Melissa Young, her 
grandmother, were in agreement that Shamika was to blame. These were the 
alliances when they were invited to Stamford, Connecticut, to go on the Steve Wilkos 
Show. The episode began with a five-minute video of the story of Relisha's 
disappearance. 

Taped interview with Shamika Young: "​ It was the day of March 19, 2014. I was 
coming from a doctor's appointment with my youngest son. We lived in the 
shelter..." 

Jonquilyn Hill: S​ hamika looks different on Wilkos than she does in any other video 
I've seen of her. Her hair is long and loosely curled rather than the short locs she 
usually has. She's wearing a teal dress and a black blazer. 

Taped interview with Shamika Young: "​ This is hard, y'all. They told me that my 
daughter was missing and they asked me where was she at? I gave them a family 
member's address to where I had left my child last. And they came back and they 
told me that she wasn't there. I was questioned...". 

Jonquilyn Hill: T ​ he segment after the video is in front of a live studio audience. 
There's a stage with a blue rug on it. Melissa stands up stage, leaned against a 
wooden pillar with her arms folded across her chest. Her hair is done longer than it 
usually is, like Shamika's. And she's wearing a collared shirt and a pair of heeled 
boots. Antonio stands on another edge of the carpet and he also looks dressed up in 
a bright red button-down shirt. Steve Wilkos stands downstage, his back to the 
audience. 

Taped interview with Shamika Young:​ "I didn't have any contact with her in 18 
days because she was with my family and I thought she was safe. But the 
authorities said she was with Kahlil. Everyone presumes that I had given my 
daughter to this janitor who had killed himself. I never gave my daughter to Kahlil. 

Jonquilyn Hill: T
​ he video does not make Shamika look good. And when she walks 
out onto the stage, the studio audience boos, as if on cue. Someone swears, there's a 
beep and the sound cuts off. This is daytime television, after all. Before the show, 
everyone was supposed to have taken a lie detector test with the results revealed 
during the show.  

Shamika Young: ​Come on with these results. Come on with 'em. 

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Jonquilyn Hill: S
​ hamika stands on the fourth edge of the carpet. It almost looks like 
the four of them –Antonio, Melissa, Shamika and Steve Wilkos– are standing at the 
edges of a boxing ring, about to face off. 

Steve Wilkos: ​Antonio, you came here, you took a lie detector test.  

Antonio Wheeler: ​Steve, can I say something? 

Jonquilyn Hill: W​ ilkos begins talking, but immediately he gets interrupted, and the 
conversation falls apart. Antonio asks to say something, but when he starts, Shamika 
tries to interrupt him and the two of them end up shouting at each other across the 
carpet, motioning to the other to quiet down. After about a minute, Steve Wilkos 
regains control of the conversation. He starts with Antonio and his lie detector test. I 
don't know what it says about the amount of research done, but Wilkos 
mispronounces Relisha's name. 

Steve Wilkos: ​Did you participate in any way in the disappearance of Relisha? You 
answer no. Have you ever had any sexual physical contact with Relisha? You 
answered no. Did you ever strike any of your children leaving marks or bruises? You 
answered no. The results came back the same to each and every question, and they 
came back that Antonio told the truth. 

Jonquilyn Hill: M​ elissa's questions are pretty similar. She says she did not play a role 
in Relisha's disappearance, and the lie detector says she's telling the truth. 

Then, there's Shamika. 

Shamika Young: ​I ain't gotta take no test. 

Steve Wilkos: ​Well, she's right, she doesn't have to take a test. 

Jonquilyn Hill: S
​ he refused to take one and things get worse for her. 

Steve Wilkos: ​Someday, hopefully, hopefully that little girl is found. 

Shamika Young: ​Oh, she will be.  

Steve Wilkos: ​And when she's found, then hopefully you'll go away. 

Shamika Young: ​No. 

Steve Wilkos: ​You, I believe, had something to do with her disappearance.  

Shamika Young: ​Okay, that's what you believe! 

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Steve Wilkos: ​You don't believe the janitor didn't have anything to do--- [crosstalk] 
You had an inappropriate relationship with that man. 

Shamika Young: ​I didn't. 

Steve Wilkos: ​You're lucky. You're lucky. 

Shamika Young:​ I'm lucky, what? 

Steve Wilkos: ​You don't believe that he killed himself? 

Shamika Young: ​I don't, you can't shoot yourself two times in the head. 

Steve Wilkos: ​That's right, maybe someone else did it for him, huh? 

Jonquilyn Hill: Q
​ uick fact check, here. This is the first instance where someone says 
Kahlil Tatum had two bullet wounds in his head. I've been unable to verify this claim. 

Shamika Young: ​So who did? I ain't no murderer. 

Steve Wilkos: ​You ain't no murderer, huh? 

Shamika Young: ​Nope, my prints ain't on nothin'. 

Steve Wilkos: ​You ain't no murderer, you say, and you know what? You're no good 
mother, either! Get the f--- off my stage! 

Jonquilyn Hill: I​ t was difficult to watch when I first saw it, and it's even harder now 
after spending so much time with Relisha's story. The studio audience clearly felt 
that Shamika was implicated in Relisha's disappearance. But, I just felt bad. It felt 
gross to watch and like people were more interested in simple blame rather than a 
complicated truth. 

The Wilkos Show also had an effect on me that I don't think they intended. It made 
me reflect on Black motherhood and how Black mothers are so often gleefully 
blamed when things go wrong for their children. I also wondered: The Wilkos Show 
was three years after Relisha went missing. Why did the family agree to go on the 
show? And did they walk away with the same feelings I did –that it made them look 
bad? I was surprised when Antonio told me he actually welcomed the chance to go 
on Steve Wilkos. He saw it as an opportunity to clear his name back in D.C. 

Antonio Wheeler: ​They wasn't listening, was pointing fingers, trying to put me with 
what happened with Relisha. Until I went to The Steve Wilkos Show. You know, my 
life was a living hell up until I went to The Steve Wilkos show. The citizen of D.C., the 
residents of D.C., they was pulling up on cars, trying to fight me, my inbox, calling 

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the phone, on Facebook. I'm changing my number. And somehow people go gettin' 
your number, your new number. So, I'm just like...none of these people know you!  

Jonquilyn Hill: S
​ hamika hasn't sat down for an interview with me, so I don't know 
why she agreed to go on a show that seemed like it was designed to frame her in a 
bad light. In any case, Melissa says that was one of the last times Shamika was 
interviewed.  

Melissa Young: [​ Relisha's] mother has not talked to nobody since we went on Steve 
Wilkos.  

All of our supporters can tell you, if anybody talks to anybody in the family, always 
talk to grandma...Grandma good. Grandma can handle it. 

Jonquilyn Hill: T
​ his tracks. After a very emotional moment in this interview with her, 
I asked Melissa if she would like to take a break. She told me she was good. She'd 
already done three radio interviews on the topic in the past. She was fine.  

Melissa Young: O ​ h, I love the media. Because if it wasn't for the media, keeping her 
name out there, even when the authorities are not? I don't know where we'd be at. 
So I love them because they do what they can do to, you know, keep her name out 
there. And then some of the media people, they still be in touch with me from the 
beginning of the case. A lot of them from Channel 7, Channel 9, even come and pick 
me up for lunch. I'm not tryna get fat no more. I don't do Denny's no more. We done 
did Denny's for five years. Find me somewhere else to go. So, yeah. You know, they 
still check up on us. But, I'm getting through. We gon' get through this.  

Jonquilyn Hill: A
​ nd we did get through our interview. Some people have accused 
the family –Melissa, in particular– of enjoying the media attention and the things 
that come with it, like grabbing coffees or lunch over an interview with reporters. 

When I first started reporting, I wanted to take Melissa and Shamika to lunch. To 
introduce myself and tell them about the podcast. I wanted to develop a relationship 
with them in order to tell this story. That's the way journalism sometimes works. So, I 
asked if they wanted to meet up at Busboys and Poets, a local restaurant near them. 
Personally, I think it's much better than Denny's. They declined. 

But in my experience, yes, I think Melissa liked talking to me, sharing her story. One 
thing I've learned through the years is that everyone loves talking about themselves, 
and Melissa was no exception. And she was clear about what she was doing. She 
goes back and forth, but usually she believes Relisha is still alive and she needs the 
media, including me, to keep talking about her. 

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So, the media brings public attention to missing persons cases, but it can be a deal 
with the devil. 

The attention helped keep Relisha's name out there, but it also led to the 
scapegoating of Shamika. 

And, Wilkos was a big deal. A national show. Definitely the largest audience that 
Relisha's family reached. So how did they get on there? Who suggested that the 
family go on Steve Wilkos in the first place? That would be this woman. 

Rose Brown: M​ y name is Rose Brown. I was born and raised in Washington, D.C. 
Southeast. Back in the 70s. 

I am an advocate for the missing and murdered. I do a radio show. 

Jonquilyn Hill: R
​ ose Brown, also known as Blaq Rose, hosts an online community 
radio show that gets into a lot of local issues, especially missing people. 

Rose Brown on her show: ​"And our baby, our baby, –Relisha Rudd– missing five 
years." 

Jonquilyn Hill: I​ wanted to talk to Rose because she's been paying attention to 
Relisha's case for years and she regularly voices an opinion that a lot of people in D.C. 
share. 

Rose Brown on her show: ​"Nobody did anything. People sat up and they actually 
watched this man, watch a grown-ass man fraternize with this baby, okay? Even 
when they knew that it wasn't even supposed to be done. He had no business even 
fraternizing with this baby, or the family."  

Rose Brown: I​ 'd never heard of cases of Black people going missing or any of that. 
So, as I got older, I learned that Black people do, in fact, go missing. I always say 
that if I got a platform, I was going to be an advocate for missing persons.  

Jonquilyn Hill: B​ laq Rose has spent a lot of time with the family. And even now, 
years later, she was one of the first people Antonio suggested I talk to. Rose got in 
touch with the family. After talking with them and getting them comfortable, she 
asked them to come on her show. Eventually, they agreed. 

Rose Brown: T ​ hat was one of the first interviews that I did on my radio show, was 
the family of Relisha Red, the stepfather, the grandmother. I had set up an interview 
with her mom, and of course, the day of, she backed out of it. 

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Jonquilyn Hill: S
​ o just like us, Blaq Rose couldn't get Shamika on her program. It's 
something that understandably frustrated her. Even now, you can still hear the 
cynicism in Rose's voice. 

Rose Brown: Y ​ ou know, you have to siphon through some of the stuff, you know 
what I'm saying, that was out there. And I had to separate myself from that and do 
my own little investigation, meaning talking to people who were there, like the 
security guards and caseworkers that worked at the family shelter at the time. 

Jonquilyn Hill: R
​ ose and I basically are on the same beat. We both have a lot of the 
same questions, especially for Shamika, but my feelings about Shamika's role in all 
of this are much less definitive. Rose has come to certain conclusions, and she came 
to them before she called The Steve Wilkos Show and told them that they should 
cover Relisha's case. 

Rose Brown: M
​ r. Tatum ended up with Relisha. It wasn't that he had basically, you 
know, came and abducted her. He was given access to that child. 

Jonquilyn Hill: S
​ he's implying Shamika let Tatum harm Relisha. And, I'm not sure. 
Rose offered me a lot of information from years of conversations that she's had, and I 
haven't been able to fact check everything she told me. Rose doesn't believe that 
Shamika trafficked Relisha. One of the theories quite a few people online have put 
forward. What she does believe is that Shamika knew Kahlil Tatum was a pedophile 
and she entrusted Relisha to him anyway. 

Rose Brown: S ​ he knows what's going on with her daughter still today. You know, 
the stories, you know. It is just...The ball has been dropped, I feel. You know, the 
family has not been questioned in six years. We've been pushing for the last couple 
of years for that to happen. You know, for them to be brought back into 
questioning, because I believe that they should be brought back into questioning. I 
believe that they should be arrested. 

That was criminal neglect that happened with Relisha. 

Jonquilyn Hill: R
​ ose is not alone in her opinion. A lot of people blame Relisha's 
disappearance on the family and especially on Shamika. Rose also says that 
Shamika's responsibility to her children was in question long before Relisha went 
missing. Rose thinks that someone should have intervened years before. Social 
workers, for example. 

Rose Brown: ​There are people out here with jobs that they get paid, you know, a lot 
of money to help these families. Do your job! What should have been important is 
Relisha and her brothers' well-being. Like, when Child Protective Services came to 

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their house in 2007 and when they came to their house again three years later with 
worser circumstances going on in 2010. And nobody did nothing about it. 2013, 
situation is going on right there in that shelter. Nobody did nothing about it. Months 
later, she's gone. 

Why should nobody feel some kind of way about that? That was a little child. That 
was a baby. 

Jonquilyn Hill: R
​ ose has her facts right. Shamika was reported three separate times 
to the Child and Family Services Agency in 2007, 2010 and 2013. Each time someone 
investigated the situation and each time they decided to keep Relisha and her 
brothers with Shamika.  

It's clear: Relisha's case really speaks to Rose. And I get it. People feel a connection 
with Relisha. One community activist I spoke with talked about this feeling of Relisha 
being everyone's daughter. 

I feel that connection. That's why I wanted to do this podcast in the first place. But, 
that connection is also the reason so many people are critical of Shamika. If they feel 
this way about Relisha, then how could her mother have let her out of her sight? 
That's where we really get into tricky territory. 

After the break, what can we know about what was going on with Shamika? 

– 

Jonquilyn Hill: O
​ ne of my goals in making Through The Cracks was to put a 
spotlight on the disappearance of young Black girls. These stories very rarely appear 
in news coverage, and when they do, they’re oversimplified. Because this kind of 
nuanced story resonates with you, the best way to show us (and our bosses) that you 
value this work is to donate (if you can). Your support of the show right now really 
makes a difference. Give at wamu.org/SupportThroughTheCracks. And thanks! 

– 

Jonquilyn Hill: S
​ o, before Relisha went missing, Shamika had several encounters 
with the Child and Family Services Agency. In other places, it's usually called Child 
Protective Services. In any case, CFSA gets involved when someone makes a 
complaint about a parent's behavior. 

I spoke with an official at CFSA. They can't comment specifically on Relisha's case 
because it would violate her family's privacy. So, most of our conversation was about 
their policies. They talked me through the process for deciding whether or not a 
child should stay with their family. Safety assessments, interviews with the children, 

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and an entire training process for the people making those assessments and doing 
those interviews. I wanted to get another perspective of the choice the agency made 
not to remove Relisha and her brothers from Shamika. So, I called the Children's Law 
Center, which advocates for the children who experience abuse or neglect. 

I spoke with Judith Sandalow, the executive director. I wanted to know: What does it 
take to remove a child from a parent? 

Judith Sandalow: I​ f the government, if the city gets a call saying that a child might 
be abused or neglected, they are legally required to go investigate.  

And the questions that they ask are: How safe will this child be staying in the home? 
So, for example, you might have a mother who's suffering from depression. If we 
provide some support to that mother, the child can safely stay in that home. But if 
you go into a home and find out that a child is being sexually molested by a parent, 
of course, you need to immediately remove that parent. 

Jonquilyn Hill: S ​ o in that initial call, the social worker makes an emergency decision: 
whether to remove a child immediately. But CFSA has to make other decisions even 
if a child is not removed. For example, if the child is unsupervised because their 
mother doesn't have access to safe and affordable childcare and has to work. 

Judith Sandalow: W ​ ell, that's a solvable problem, right? We can help that mother 
find a affordable place for the child to be after school. Then we don't have to 
remove the child. However, if there are much more serious issues and a child is 
being left alone for 24 hours or 48 hours because a parent is out using drugs, at 
least in the near term, we know that child can't stay at home. And so the child will 
be removed.  

Jonquilyn Hill: I​ f a child is removed, they're assigned their own lawyer and enter a 
longer term process where the city figures out if they need to enter the foster 
system. Judith says D.C. social workers try to keep the child with family and out of 
foster care as often as they possibly can and for good reason. 

Judith Sandalow: A ​ psychiatrist once explained it this way: Children are like tape, 
scotch tape. They stick really well the first time, that is, to their birth parent. And 
they have the potential to attach again to a new person. But every time you ask a 
child to build a parenting relationship with a new person, it's harder. And the 
trauma of breaking that separation is bigger. And a child who has to rebuild that 
and that entire relationship is just less likely to stick in that relationship. 

Jonquilyn Hill: T
​ he whole child welfare system is designed to err on the side of 
keeping kids with their families because removing a child from the home is so 

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deeply linked to problems later in life. I can't know what was said about Shamika in 
the reports to CFSA. But because Relisha wasn't taken away, I can infer that social 
workers didn't find enough evidence of abuse or neglect, or I can infer that they 
believed they could solve whatever the issues were by offering solutions like 
affordable child care or parenting classes. 

And if that's the case, I'm not sure what kind of follow-up there would have been. But 
of course, what Judith is saying doesn't apply only to Relisha. 

Judith Sandalow: T ​ o figure out how we could prevent a child like Relisha from 
going missing really requires us to go back in time to the experience that their 
parents had growing up and their grandparents. Growing up in foster care and 
being bounced around from home to home is a highly traumatic experience for a 
parent and thus being able to then be a good parent can be difficult if you've never 
experienced it, but also if you've experienced trauma. 

Jonquilyn Hill: J​ udith wasn't talking specifically about Shamika here, but it sounded 
awfully similar to what we know about her childhood. Remember, Shamika spent 
years in foster care and what Judith said next matched what I've heard about 
Shamika as well. 

Judith Sandalow: S ​ o, there's an entire field of study around the health problems 
created by the trauma children suffer. When they’re abused and neglected as well 
as evicted or having a parent incarcerated, the more of those traumas you have, it 
actually disrupts the brain's capacity for learning. So you're more likely to have a 
learning disability, less likely to succeed at school. The less likely you are to succeed 
at school, the harder it is to get a job. So, all of those things snowball and one that I 
see quite often is: parents who don't get mental health treatment, for quite 
treatable mental health problems like depression, turn to alcohol or other forms of 
treatment that they can find themselves and then that impairs their parenting. 

Jonquilyn Hill: A
​ ccording to an article in The Washington Post, Shamika was 
diagnosed with mild intellectual and developmental disabilities as a kid. While she 
was in foster care, she dealt with depression and other mental health and behavioral 
issues. Sometimes, she was heavily medicated. Several people have told me that 
Shamika used alcohol and other drugs before and after Relisha disappeared. I don't 
have any evidence that any substance use got in the way of her parenting. I can't 
even verify how much or which drugs she may have used. 

Judith Sandalow: I​ f we go back in time and think, how could we prevent a child like 
Relisha from going missing, I think we want to ask: Were we providing mental 
health support to her parents or her grandparents? 

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Jonquilyn Hill: I​ 've been thinking a lot about how the media has portrayed Shamika 
–as a bad mother, as complicit if not guilty. But I think I know how the media got 
here. 

Shamika hasn't been interviewed in years. And even just after Relisha's 
disappearance, she said very little. It's possible that she didn't know how to 
communicate well. And when Shamika didn't communicate her side of the story, the 
media filled the void. Shamika is kind of a blank canvas for TV shows and print 
reporters and yes, podcast hosts like me. Because of her silence, we can paint almost 
any picture we want of her – a conniving and irresponsible woman who neglected 
her child, a person who was failed by a racist and sexist and classist system, or 
someone occupying a space in between. But Shamika is the only one still alive who 
can tell us if she's culpable or not. 

And so far, Shamika's not talking. I've tried many times. The hole in this investigation, 
in every investigation into Relisha Rudd's disappearance is Shamika. 

The media aren't the only ones who were concerned that Shamika was withholding 
information. In 2014, the year Relisha went missing, a grand jury was convened to 
investigate Shamika Yang for obstruction of justice. 

We've heard from sources and read in other reporting that Shamika allegedly 
withheld information during the investigation and gave conflicting accounts of what 
happened. The grand jury had to decide if there was enough evidence of obstruction 
to bring her to trial. The grand jury proceedings are still sealed. So we don't know 
what went on in that room. What evidence might have been presented and what 
testimony was given. All we know is that the grand jury decided not to indict 
Shamika on the charge of obstruction of justice. 

Here's what I think about Shamika. I simply don't know enough to make any firm 
judgments. I don't have any more information than that grand jury did. In fact, I likely 
have less and I can't know more because Kahlil Tatum is gone and Shamika won't 
share more. Shamika is the easy answer to the question of why Relisha disappeared. 
We'd like to believe we have safety nets in place when families fall short, but how do 
you make sure they catch everyone? If her mother is solely to blame, if the only 
institution addressed and held accountable is Relisha's family, we don't have to ask 
the harder question: Why the dire circumstances of the lives of Relisha's family –the 
poverty, the homelessness and the trauma each of them experienced growing up– 
even existed in the first place? 

Maybe what we think of Shamika says a lot more about us than it does about her.  

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On the next episode, the season finale, of Through The Cracks, how has the city 
changed in response to Relisha's disappearance? 

Patrick Madden, WAMU:​ I mean, was anyone actually held accountable for what 
happened? I mean, it doesn't appear to be. 

Melissa Young: I​ just don't like the picture they got on there. To me, it don't 
resemble her at all. Not what I think she would look like. 

Jonquilyn Hill: T
​ hrough The Cracks is a production of WAMU and PRX. This podcast 
was made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private 
corporation funded by the American people and also by the Fund for Investigative 
Journalism. Patrick Fort is our producer, Ruth Tam is our digital editor, and Poncie 
Rutsch is our senior producer. 

Our editor is Curtis Fox. Mike Kidd mixed this episode. Osei Hill designed our logo. 
Monna Kashfi oversees all the content we make here at WAMU. You can find out 
more about the show, look at photos of Relisha and read transcripts of our episodes 
at WAMU.org/ThroughTheCracks. You can also sign up for email updates. That way, 
you'll be the first to know when we drop a new episode or bonus content. 

This podcast would not be possible without the generosity of listeners like you. To 
support the investigative reporting that powers Through The Cracks, give at 
wamu.org/SupportThroughTheCracks. 

I'm Jonquilyn Hill. We'll be back next Thursday with our final episode this season. 
Thanks for listening. 

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