LIVINGSTON, Texas — Texas EquuSearch founder Tim Miller revealed that searchers found a pair of pants belonging to 11-year-old Audrii Cunningham along the bank of the Trinity River near the location where the body was recovered on Tuesday. Miller revealed details of the recovery effort during an interview on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Thursday.
Miller told Nancy Grace his teams found “something right along the shoreline which ended up being evidence.” Grace pushed back for more details, leading to the revelation that a pair of girl’s pants were found by the Trinity River under the U.S. 59 and rail bridges.
“Was it clothing,” Grace asked.
“It was clothing,” Miller responded.
“Was it pants,” Graced asked, pushing harder. “Yes,” Miller said.
Grace then asked rhetorically, “Why does an eleven-year-old girl not have her pants on?”
“He raped her; he raped her,” Grace said, responding to her own question. “This animal raped this eleven-year-old girl.”
Law enforcement officials in Polk County have not charged the suspected killer, Don Steven McDougal, with raping Audrii Cunningham at this time. McDougal is being held without bond in the Polk County jail on a charge of Capital Murder in connection to Audrii’s death. He also is charged with an unrelated crime of Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon.
In addition to Miller, Nancy Grace with joined on the show by Breitbart Texas associate editor Bob Price, Breitbart Texas legal analyst and Livingston attorney Lana Shadwick, Cold Case Foundation Director Chris McDonough, Jacksonville State University professor of forensics Joe Scott Morgan, Oxygen Forensics CEO and mobile device forensics expert Lee Reiber, Crime Stoppers of Houston director of victim services and advocacy Andy Kahan, and Leslie Gaskins, a convenience store employee who saw McDougal on the day of the alleged murder of Audrii Cunningham.
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Miller also described how he and his team used sophisticated SONAR technology to locate Audrii’s body. He said the search was very frustrating because he would find an image he believed to be her body but couldn’t find it again.
He said he first spotted the image on Sunday but the high river level and swift currents prevented his getting a conclusive identification. On Monday, he returned to the same area couldn’t find her.
” I literally went through that area more than eighty times,” Miller explained. “And then I got another image, and I said, oh my God, I said, I could make out legs and arms.”
At this point, police officials contacted the Trinity River Authority and got them to reduce water flow from the Lake Livingston Dam. This effort eventually lowered the level of the river near the bridges and slowed the currents allowing Texas Department of Public Safety dive teams to locate and recover Audrii’s body on Tuesday.
An Arrest Affidavit from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office states that Audrii’s body was “discovered with a large rock tied to the child victim’s body. The rope was consistent with rope that was observed in McDougal’s vehicle on a traffic stop two days prior.”
Editor’s Note: This is a developing story. Additional information will be added.
