Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
The mother of Breasia Terrell panicked when her daughter was nowhere to be found after spending the night at her “stepdad’s” home in 2021. The 10-year-old went missing in the middle of the night after spending the evening playing video games with her half-brother.
a 10 year old girl vanished without a trace
there are jus an outpour people that are instantly troubled by her absence can
it is a paren’ts worst nightmare a child disappears sendind the world completely upsidedown
and july 10th 2020 in davenport Iowa that is exactly what happened.
a 10 year old girl suddenly goes missing in the middle of the night .
frantic mom aishia lankford calls 911 to report her daughter Breasia Terrell has disappeared .
she had spending the night with her half brother 8 year old DL
and his father 51 year old henry dinkins.
at the apartment of dinkins girlfriend andrea culberson.
aisha arrives she still has her name tag on her, her work uniform so she was coming from her job to come up and deal with this really troubling phone call she received from henry dinkins saying breasia is gone.
when investigators are first called to the scene they view this as missing child they ‘ve hot henri dinkins and aisha sayin we don’t know where she is .
and through the body camera we can see thse two people outside kind of yelling at each other and the officer there trying to keep the peace but also gather information
the most troubling component to this was the unknown- law enforcement wuckly learned that she was a small child, she was somewhat hearing impaired and vision imaired
this was one of the first times that Breasia stayed in this location, where could she have gone if she doesn’t know the area
aisha’s emotional response is very typical my child was under your supervision and she’s come up missing.her anger at him for how he’s handling this situation was very warranted
as a mother you’re feeling your child’s missing, for his attitude is kind of like why are you made at m I’m trying my best.
mr dinkins sets forth the notion that she wandered off so then law enforcement familiarized themselfs ,is this the type of child who’s prone to do this
is this a child who has a tendency to run off.miss langford talked about relative to Breasia that is not my child my chld doesn’t wander off the middle of the night .
she scared of the dark ad she won’t go out in the dark
but then let say that the child came out and maybe there was a third party who might taken that child
it’s a very methodical processs where they’re ruling out one possiblilty after anotherand every time they took steps to explore a possibility nothing deveolped
they were doing a massive canvas in that whole area around that apartment complex ,ideally you will find sombebody who witnessed or observed something .
and nobody saw anything
she was a very inspirational person within her groups of people around this community from balloon launches to people assembling thousands of flyers.
with brasgia nowhere to be found investigators need to sit down with the last known person who saw her henry dinkins.but he’s fallen off the mapp
after several stressfull hours police finally catch up wirg dinkins and he shows up at the station.
the only reason he presentes was because he knew that if he didn’t go down there it would be extremely suspicious.
the clock is ticking, detectives need to go tothe bottom of Breasia Terrell’ disappearance.
july 10th 2020 davenport Iowa investigators are desperately searching for 10 year old Breasia Terrell.
Breasia and her half brother DL had been staying with the boy’s father , henry dinkins at his girlfriend andrea culberson’s apartment when breasia vanished
aishia lankford is in hysteric over her daughters dissapearance the detectecive
detective are questioning the last person believed to see breasia henry dinkins.
he’s not what anyone probably want to recognize as their acive father ,a provider but henry dinkins was somebody that has been in their life since breasia was a little child.
henry dinkins is someone transient he doesn’t really have a home in which he stays permanently he spends sometimes as his girlfriends apartment and he also has a trailer close by in devenport
he also has a criminal hisory concvicted of sexual assault of a 5-years old for wgen he was 17 year old
he said he then jumped in the car of expanded his search around the neghborhood he comes back tho the apartment goes back out searching.
if he’s saying that he woke up and the childs gone what is any normal human being going to do? ther’re goinf ro call that child’s morther right away what else are they going to do?
they’re going to call law enforcement right away so when he’s not reaching out that rigth there raises a big red flag.
we now know that everybody knows that henry was the last person with her and she’s nowhere to be found.
investigators seem to be underwhelmed by dinkins story but his strange reaction to this next question onlt casts more doubts
he seems to be very concerned about what do you want to look into my phone for? why do you want to find out where the car is that i was driving .
he seems to be both willing to give information deflecting when they get to certain points but also trying to befriend the officer.
it boils down to, is this a man who’s had a number of run-ins with the law and just doesn’t trust them?
completely understandable or is he hiding the truth?
we learned through this early season that cell phone data is not an immediate help to law enforcement.they don’t have any good information for those overnight hours and was going on.
a patrol officer had located the vehicle that was known to bedriven by henry dinkins that vechicle was located in front the library.
he parked two blocks away from from the police station and police have parking right in front of the building,that seems like a concerted effort to coceal your vehicle.
authority speaks with another key witness DL Breasia half brother
could he be the key to cracking this whole case?
july 2020 davenport Iowa 10 years old breasia terrell disappears from a sleepover with her half -brother DL at the apartment his father 51 year old henry dinkins
shared with with his then girlfriend andrea cuberson
after the girl’s mother calls police to report her missing
authortities set their sights on dinkins
and they feel he knows more than he’s letting on so the investigators need to speak with someone else who was there the night Breasia dissapeared .DL.
DL he’s very energetic he has a wonderful mind and he remembers things from talking to his mom police know that he really icolized his father but DL also understands that his sister’s missing and he is hurt by that .
his father was in the bedroom sitting with his sister
rather spending time with him in the living room, the observation had a lot of significance to what was going on.
to explaine to a little kid that’s got a million question probably about wgere we going where are we going what we doing if your henry dinkins you know you you’re going back to a body of water that’s at least a logical thing.
but DL never talks about seeing fishing poles, he never talks about going fishing ,he just was told he was going fishing.
that’s when DL shares a shocking detail that sends detectives into a tail spin.
when detectives find the motor home and search it
they do find a squirt bottle of cleaner that contains bleach.
they find a machete and
that seems to bolster the credibility od DLs memory
this got to be red flags just flampping in the air,for investigators to sayhe must have stabbed her to death and he must have dumped her body by some body of water
detectives loaded DL with miss langford and said let’s go for a drive , the child ‘s like oh yeah this business here , yeah we passed by this fast food place oh yeah no back up no we turned here.
as investigators continue to search for Breasia
the paine of of her disapearance is felt most by her friends and family.
the moment you see the breakdown of this mother whos is completely torn by the fact that she will not able to see her daughter before she lays her head down at night.
over a period of time it started to set in that this might not be a missing child case and so investigators have to reposition the way they’re thinking.
the case goes from where could have Breasia have gone to where is her body
detectives still need more evidence to tie dinkins to Breasia disappearance
nearly two weeks after DLs sister went missing investigators meet with the 8 year old once again.
an eye witness to mr dinkins responsible for moving Breasia from the apartment
which would counter mr dinkins statements to law enforcement.
they started pulling video surveillance footage
he lives at 3:30 ,he stops at the quick shop to get gas in the early morning hours he parks further gas pump.
we see him go into convenience store and he kept looking back out into the parking lot as if he’s monitoring what’s going on in the car .
he arrives back at the apartment right after sunrise.
he geathers DL and he leaves.
DL talks about some fisherman had helped his father push him out of the mud
law enforcement find the location of henry dikins motor home, it is by the credit island park.
it has a causeway that goes out to the island. there is also an overflow lagoon area
law enforcement get limited phone ping from the commanche Iowa cell phone tower in relation to davenport Iowa it’s an whole another county.
keep in mind during that time henry dinkins was out looking everywhere for her.
with that cell phone hitting there that took law enforcement to the store where a video where him buying clorox at the clinton walmart, he gets there a little bit before 7:00 a.m in the morning.
what really happened to Breasia Terrell
Iowa investigators suspect sex offender henry dinkins had something to do with the
july 2020 disapppearance of 10 year old brasia terell, his son DL’s half sister.
but a discovery 8 months into the investigation will change everything.
the davenport police departement was contacted by the clinton county sheriff’s departement in regarding to the discovert of human remains near dwit.
in march of 2021 a group of fishermen stubmpled across a skull
there would have been so much overgrowth that no one could barely even see the pond yet alone a body .
but after the winter that’s when this very horrific discovery was made
an autopsy on the remains wa conductedconfirmation that the remains are those of Breasia Terrell
DL had ralked about how his father had gone to an area where it was wooed and there was water
there’s a place called kunau implement that’s out by the area of this pond and that child described it and he was right on the money.
she shot in her lower part of her jaw and the bullet traveled down a couple of her vertebrea and her spine .
and then a bullet went through her right shoulder and then another bullet likely grazed off of it .
and then you can picture what you think a monster looks like
because a monster shot this little girl in the face.
after they found her body miss lankford said that she went out there and she just felt the presence of her daughter putting her arms around her and saying mommy you found me.I’ m here , everything’s okay now.
now detectives need to put the rest of the pieces of the puzzle together
they had surveillance t of him at different location in his car ,one of which was the quick stop gas station that puts him in a certain location with Breasia because they believe her to be inside the car at the time.
almost simutaneously investigators get another huge break.
law enforcement does find one witness
they believe can place henry dinkins in the area of the murder
the witness guarantee it was an Impala.
the witness said a black man jumped out the road in front of him and waved his arms
and he said he was stuck in a ditch and asked if the witness could pull him out so henry got in the witnes truck,the witness drove him down about another half mile
and there the witness see thiscar in a ditch and it was towards the south end of that pond.
.his trunk was facing ,he was skewedd just a little bit off the edge of the ditch.
that was a critical piece of evidence because police had the chunks of mud that got caught undereath the undercarriage of the vehichle.
that later then identified as being inclusive to soil samples that were colleceted from that area.
after her body was discovered
henry dinkins was charged in thedeath of 11 year old Breasia Terrell
murder first degree,kidnapping first degree
all the evidence seems to add up to the chilling conclusion henry dinkins killed Breasia Terrell but why?
there was the belief that she was sexually abused and that’s why she was murdered but the sex abuse offense was not charged because of the state of decomposition there was noability to be able to to recover anty type of DNA evidence.
in august 2023 henry dinkins is set to go to trial in front of a jury ,but instead he makes a suprising move.
mr dinkins wants to wave jury trial .
every person facing a criminal charge has the right to be tried by a jury of their peers but that right can also be waved and they can ask for a bench trial .
a jury would probably hear that sex offender status and not think of anything else
now being decided by the judge the trial of henry dinkins begins …..
there was so much detail in this investigaton and everything was about timelines and videos and stuff.
the conclusons are clear ,the child was taken from that apartment by a man who was not her father .
she was sexually assaulted and then that child was murdered.
nearly two weeks after the trial the judge issues his verdict.
guilty on all counts
“ mr dinkins it’s unconscionable that you would take such actions to murder a 10 year old child who was entrusted to you care,it was very clear to this court that you have no conscience or remorse for your actions
this history coupled with the horrific nature of these offenses against his own child’s sister requires that this defendant be removed from society for the protection of society
it is the judgement and sentence of this court that you be committed to the custody of Iowa departement corrections for rest of your natural life without possibility of parole “