"Mirror mirror, on the wall, who's the most suspicious of them all?" (via YouTube)
12-year-old Charlie Bothuell went missing on June 14th. After police conducted an 11-day search, he was found alive yesterday, safe and sound in his dad's basement.
His dad found out last night in the middle of a live interview with Nancy Grace.
It's hard to watch Grace grill the father like a cartoon villain instead of congratulating him, but she clearly assumes a deception has taken place.
"How could your son be alive in your basement?"
Bothuell, speechless at first, stays on camera and searches his brain for a plausible explanation instead of, say, leaving to go to his son or demanding an opportunity to speak to him.
"I have no idea," he says.
Grace pushes him further, "Did you check your basement?"
"I checked my basement," he says. "The FBI checked my basement. The police checked my basement. My wife checked my basement. I've been down there several times. We've all been checking."
Grace isn't buying it.
"I don't know why you guys would have reported him missing," she presses. "All our viewers have been on the lookout for him."
It would never occur to me to attack a man who has clearly just been through a trauma, but it is strange that Bothuell is seemingly unsurprised at being asked to defend himself.
Detroit Police Chief James Craig finds things strange as well.
"I've never seen anything quite like this," Craig told CNN affiliate WXYZ-TV.
"We found him barricaded in the basement, behind boxes and a large five-gallon drum." said Craig. "There's no way he could have erected this makeshift area of concealment."
There are reports that the father may be investigated for child abuse, and that the boy's step-mother might have helped him hide. Certainly something very strange has happened, and Nancy Grace is not having it.
(by Myka Fox)