THERESA SHANLEY, NANCY GRACE VIEWER (via telephone): Thank you, Nancy.
GRACE: Ms. Shanley, what happened? Tell me when you first spotted the little girl.
SHANLEY: When I first went into the parking lot of the Safeway store, I thought to myself, Oh, great, panhandlers, and they bring a child with them. And it was a man and her -- and I guess Easley was the man, and her. So I got out of my car...
GRACE: Ms. Shanley -- go ahead. I was just going to ask you, what were they doing when you first saw them?
SHANLEY: He was just -- she was sitting down. He was just standing there. He was kind of moving around because it was cold and wet. It wasn`t raining, but it was real misty and dewy (ph) here. It was kind of cold. Not the cold they`d know back in Virginia, but it was cold for us here, San Francisco.
GRACE: Was she sitting on the ground, the sidewalk or a chair?
SHANLEY: No, she was sitting on -- there`s a little bit of a ledge, a cement ledge that she was sitting on.
GRACE: What did you do, Ms. Shanley?
SHANLEY: I was staring at her. And usually, I can read people`s faces pretty well. I couldn`t read hers. And I knew she was young. I didn`t realize it was 12, but from the look of her, she looked under 18, anyway. And the hair on my arms stood up, and I knew something was wrong, that the situation wasn`t right. She stared at me the whole time, walking (INAUDIBLE) she spotted me and I spotted her. We never took our eyes off each other. And the stare was -- it was -- I couldn`t read it, but when the hair on my arms stood up, I was like, OK, something is wrong here. The situation isn`t right. And she didn`t look anything like him, so I knew she wasn`t his kid.
So I went in and asked the clerk to call their local police department, which would be the Richmond station, and she did. She dialed it for me. And I spoke to them and said, you know, there`s a young girl out here with a white male from 25 to 35, and she looks to be between the ages of -- I think I said 15 to 18, but she`s young. And it doesn`t look right.
And last night, I`d seen a show on CNN, and there was a woman crying to -- her aunt, asking for him to bring her home for her mother`s funeral and for Christmas. And that was first time I had seen her face. And her brown eyes is what got me. So I said -- as I`m talking with the police officer, I says, I was watching CNN, Nancy Grace, I think it was your show. I just know it was CNN, and that it may be this child from Virginia.
And the cop even said, Virginia? And I said, yes, there was a murder in Virginia, and the man killed the woman and took the child, and this might be them. I wasn`t sure, but my intuition was telling me something`s not right here. And sure enough, it was her and him. My intuition was right.
GRACE: You know, Ms. Shanley, the way you tell that story about how you came around, and your eyes locked, and that little girl just looked at you and you looked at her the whole time, and how the hair went up on your arms and you just knew, something inside of you...
SHANLEY: I knew it was wrong.
GRACE: It was meant to be. This is the way it was meant to be. Do you know what a miracle you have been part of, Ms. Shanley? I mean, when people were saying, Oh, he won`t hurt the girl, he`s infatuated with her, he loves her -- no. He is the prime suspect in her mother`s murder. And if it weren`t for you, Ms. Shanley, she could be dead today. A 12-year-old girl could be dead today, Ms. Shanley.
GRACE: With us tonight is a hero that made a miracle happen. With me is Theresa Shanley out of California. She spotted this 12-year-old girl with a grown man who turns out to be a convict, the prime suspect in the little girl`s mother`s death, 41-year-old Tina. With me tonight, taking your calls, Theresa Shanley.
Ms. Shanley, we are being flooded with calls and e-mails, some of them are, God bless her. Thank God for that lady and her courage to call and report her suspicion. Thank God she kept her eyes open. Thank god for you, Theresa Shanley. Ms. Shanley is an angel and a hero. It goes on and on and on. So Ms. Shanley, you`re pretty much a hero in our book. After you called 911, did you stick around for them to come?
SHANLEY: Yes, I stayed. They asked me to stay and (INAUDIBLE) my cell phone handy. And she had rattled me so much that I thought my cell phone was in my car, so I had to go out again past her. And again, she stared at me. And when I get to my car, my cell phone ended up being in my back pocket, but I was so rattled by her that I, you know, didn`t even realize where my cell phone was. And then I walked back in again, and we locked eyes again. We never spoke. I just kept looking, staring at her, trying to get a read on her, and I couldn`t.
GRACE: You know, it`s almost as if this little girl is pleading to you to help her.