An Illinois Teen Leading A Double Life Was Murdered By An Older Man

Diamond Bradley, 16, of Spring Valley, Illinois, dreamed of getting her GED and becoming a nurse, but her life was tragically cut short after a rendezvous with a 26-year-old man from a neighboring town.

On Jan. 24, 2018, Diamond’s mother, Doris, knocked on her daughter’s bedroom door but the teen wasn’t there. Doris didn't worry at first since she knew that Diamond sometimes walked to a nearby gas station for coffee.

Doris tried to call her daughter, but the phone went to voicemail. Diamond didn’t answer any calls from her brother either. Diamond’s friends all said they hadn’t seen her, and she wasn’t at any of her usual hangouts.

As the day stretched into the afternoon, Doris grew more frantic. It wasn’t like her daughter to go more than a few hours without responding to her.

A Double Life

An officer came to Doris’s home that evening after she called to report Diamond missing. Doris told the officer that Diamond had two phones — one for calls and one for texts — and that she’d left one at home.

The phone was locked, but the message previews sent a chill down the officer’s spine — Diamond was in communication with multiple men, and the context of the messages made the officer believe the teen was in immediate danger.

Finding Diamond

Diamond’s body was found on Jan. 27, 2018, in a ditch about 10 miles south of Spring Valley. A passerby called 911 with the discovery. She’d been stabbed multiple times before being dumped.

Officers were desperate to find the killer, and they started with Diamond’s cell phone records. She left her home around 6 a.m. the day she went missing, and the police could see as she made her way out of town. The gas station was definitely within walking distance, but the teen didn’t have a car, so she was likely riding with someone else as her phone pinged off different towers.

Police pulled surveillance footage from inside the gas station. While Diamond did not enter the store the day her mother reported her missing, there was a man in a long-sleeved pullover who went into the store alone at about 6:30 a.m. The footage was grainy, but it appeared the man had arrived in a black Jeep.

Find out how police used surveillance and stake-outs to track down the Jeep and Diamond’s killer on See No Evil May 11 at 9/8c. on ID or stream on discovery+.