Tad Cummins was spotted kissing 15-year-old Elizabeth Thomas on the lips in January 2017.
Confronted with what was then an alleged sighting, both Thomas and her married 50-year-old health teacher denied it. But when another teacher observed that the two seemed to be spending too much time together, Thomas was barred from Cummins' class, according to school records obtained by NBC News.
Thomas was then seen in Cummins' classroom on Feb. 3, per the records, and three days later the teacher was suspended without pay.
And on March 13, 2017, Thomas' family reported her missing.
The Culleoka, Tenn., high school freshman was found safe a month later and Cummins was arrested for allegedly kidnapping her. But then Thomas ran right into another nightmare as skeptics accused her of, at the very least, being a willing participant in a relationship with Cummins, who's now in prison for transporting a minor across state lines to engage in criminal sexual conduct.
"I'm still facing backlash," Thomas, now 22, told E! News' Francesca Amiker in an exclusive interview ahead of the Aug. 12 premiere of Lifetime's Abducted By My Teacher: The Elizabeth Thomas Story, starring Summer Howell and Michael Fishman. "Little snippets, like with the movie's premiere, there was a lot of backlash in this community. But I don't look at the comments. If it doesn't have to do with helping other people, I don't try to give them any power."
Fellow kidnapping survivor and activist Elizabeth Smart, an executive producer on the film, called Thomas "one of the kindest, most lovely people you could ever hope to meet."
"Even though people have been awful to her," added Smart, who faced her own gauntlet of questions ranging from insensitive to absurd when she was found in 2003 after being held captive for nine months, "she still wants to be there for her community, to make a difference."
Thomas said Smart has inspired her in a number of ways. "Just the way she holds herself is something that I look up to," Thomas explained. "She has been through a lot, but seeing her on the other side of it years later and knowing I can be in that same place and look forward to a life of no fear."
What happened to Elizabeth Thomas?
On the day she went missing, Thomas told her older sister that she'd be home by 6 p.m., and "'if I'm not back by 6, call the police," Sarah Thomas, then 17, recalled to NBC affiliate WSMV.
Between 7:30 and 7:45 a.m. that morning, a friend dropped Thomas off at Shoney's restaurant in Columbia, Tenn., according to a timeline compiled by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Security footage showed Cummins gassing up his Nissan Rogue at a nearby Shell station at 8:32 a.m.
Thomas' family reported her missing later that day, after which the Maury County Sheriff's Department entered her name into the online National Crime Information Center at 12:31 p.m., per the TBI timeline.
After receiving an official request from the Maury County sheriff, the TBI issued an endangered child alert at 4:18 p.m. on March 14 and within the hour an arrest warrant had been issued for Cummins on one count of sexual contact with a minor.
The TBI followed with a multi-state Amber Alert at 5:53 p.m.
On March 16, TBI spokesman Josh DeVine told reporters the bureau had only received 125 tips—an "alarmingly low" number, he said, the lowest they'd seen during that amount of time for an open alert. By then, a charge of aggravated kidnapping had been added to the warrant, per a TBI news release.
The most likely conclusion, the public information officer explained, was that Thomas and Cummins were "out of the view of the general public" or had traveled past the geographical net cast by authorities. In turn, he added, they'd issued a second BOLO (be on the lookout) alert, this one nationwide.
"It's absolutely important that everyone in this nation know about these individuals," DeVine said, "because, frankly, they could be anywhere by now."
Hundreds of more leads came in as the days ticked by, but no credible sightings, according to TBI news releases. The first solid tip came in at the end of the month, leading investigators to surveillance video showing Thomas with Cummins at a Walmart in Oklahoma City on March 15.
But a clearer picture of Cummins had already come into focus.
What did Tad Cummins do to Elizabeth Thomas?
"Investigative efforts have revealed a troubling pattern of behavior by Tad Cummins," read a March 16 TBI news release, "suggesting the 50-year-old may have been abusing his role as a teacher to groom this vulnerable young girl for some time in an effort to lure and potentially sexually exploit her."
Maury County Public Schools said in a statement at the time, per WZTV, that the teacher was suspended as soon as the district was notified of the allegations. "Since then," the statement continued, "the teacher has been dismissed as a result of the investigation. The district does not tolerate any manner of behavior that is alleged in this incident and will take swift action to remove parties from school campuses who are involved with investigations of this type."
Cummins researched teen marriage online on March 5, 2017, according to the TBI, and watched a YouTube video on how to dismantle his vehicle's GPS.
"The more we're learning about him and the more we're learning about this situation indicates that he pre-planned this," DeVine told NBC News on March 21. "That he groomed this young girl for all of this."
Thomas' father, Anthony Thomas, told NBC News that once word got around about Cummins kissing his daughter, the teacher told her "she would never be able to attend college, never be accepted at any college, and wouldn't be able to pursue a career after that."
Thomas' older sister, who said she spent time in Cummins' classroom with her sibling and other students during lunchtime, called the teacher "a weirdo." Kids started bullying Thomas about the kiss, her sister told WSMV, and she "would say, like, 'I gotta to get out of here, we've got to leave.'"
Authorities stressed that there was nothing consensual about what had occurred between Cummins and Thomas. "This is not a romance," Maury County District Attorney Brent Cooper told NBC News. "There's nothing pretty about this. This is a crime, and it's a serious crime."
How was Elizabeth Thomas eventually found?
In the end, more than 1,500 tips came in, but all it took was one.
Thomas and Cummins were tracked to a remote cabin in Cecilville, Calif., on April 20, 2017, where Siskiyou County Sheriff's deputies rescued the girl and arrested Cummins, the TBI announced that day.
Michael O'Hare, the owner of a stretch of property that included the cabin, told The Tennessean that Cummins had come into a local saloon and asked O'Hare's caretaker, Griffin Barry, for help finding work and a place to stay, claiming he and his daughter had lost everything in a fire.
A week later, neighbor Pete Cafferata noticed that Cummins' car didn't have a license plate and remembered hearing about a missing girl.
"I had remembered this news story about a younger girl running off with an older man," Cafferata told ABC News. "I googled it, and it certainly looked like the guy."
Cafferata and Barry called the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office. Once Barry had obtained the Nissan's VIN for authorities and they confirmed it was Cummins' Nissan, deputies closed in and arrested Cummins early the next morning.
"I would like to commend the citizens that played a role in bringing Mr. Cummins' activities to our attention," Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey said after the arrest, "which led to a response by members of the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office."
Thomas family attorney Jason Whately confirmed April 22 that the teen had been reunited with her family. "There is no doubt that she suffered severe emotional trauma," he said, "and that her process of recovery is only just beginning."
The lawyer also noted that seeing Thomas in person was a reminder that she was a kid, and that a more mature-looking photo that was widely disseminated was "very inaccurate."
"She is a little girl in every sense of the word," he said. "This was the abduction of an impressionable, little child."
What happened while Elizabeth Thomas was held captive by Tad Cummins?
During a May 13, 2017, court hearing in Nashville, FBI Special Agent Utley Noble detailed the findings of their investigation.
Before he abducted Thomas, Noble testified, Cummins took $4,500 in cash and two guns from his home and left his then-wife a note, which was entered into the court record, saying he was going to Virginia Beach or D.C. "just to think and clear my mind of all this crap." He wrote not to call the police because "they'll think I ran 'cause I'm guilty & I'm not!"
Cummins devised a plan to pose as a married couple under the names John and Joanne Castro, ages 40 and 24, and take Thomas to Mexico, the agent testified. They eventually ended up in San Diego, Calif., where Cummins bought a kayak with the idea that they would go by water, Noble said.
Realizing that was too dangerous, the agent continued, they headed north, stopping in Los Angeles to sell the kayak, and ending up in Cecilville.
What happened to Tad Cummins?
After his arrest, Cummins initially pleaded not guilty to charges of transporting a minor across state lines for the purpose of engaging in criminal sexual conduct and obstruction of justice, but in April 2018 he pleaded guilty to both counts.
Whately, the Thomases' lawyer, said the family was "very relieved that Mr. Cummins decided to do the right thing by pleading guilty. We see this as one more step toward justice."
In January 2019, Cummins was sentenced to 20 years in prison. "Today we got justice for a brave victim," U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Don Cochran told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Nashville. "We feel good about it."
Cummins, a father of two daughters, read from a statement in court, "As a father and as a parent, to the family of the victim, I'm so sorry. If someone had done this to my girls I would want to hurt them. I wish I could go back in time. To the victim, I want you to know: I agree. This was not your fault. You were a kid. My misguided attempt to help you went sideways. Anything I can do to give you closure, I stand ready."
Thomas was in court to read a victim impact statement, but reportedly got so emotional a prosecutor ended up reading it for her.
"What you did to me was unspeakable," the statement read, per NBC News. "You saw a broken girl, who was lonely, scared and traumatized. You made her feel safe and loved because you saw what she needed and made her believe you would be her protector. All you were was a man who just wanted sex, and you used me and manipulated me. Tad Cummins is a sick, disgusting criminal."
Where is Elizabeth Thomas now?
Thomas, 22, got married in 2019 and now she has joined forces with Elizabeth Smart to tell her story in a Lifetime movie and companion documentary, trusting she was in good hands.
"I'm tired of hiding," Thomas told E! of her decision to reopen her life to scrutiny. "The fear of the community bashing me, they've done it for so long and I've just kind of hid in my own little corner. I'm tired of letting those people get to me, and I want other people to see that I'm not scared of them."
Smart, who served as an executive producer on her own 2017 Lifetime biopic and the recent The Girl Who Escaped: The Kara Robinson Story, said that helping to tell true stories about fellow survivors remained a very personal mission for her.
"I have been the recipient of many misportrayals myself," Smart told E!, "and it's always been important to me that, if there's any way I can help and allow them to portray their story in a way that's going to be true to them…then I want to give that to them."
Thomas said that she's feeling stronger than ever now, but it admittedly took a long time, and her recovery is still a work in progress.
"I used to be scared to go into stores," she shared. "I used to not want to leave my house, close the blinds, you know, have someone else go grocery shopping for me—and I don't do that anymore. I just walk as if nothing bothers me, or at least I try to. Even if it does, I try not to let other people know about it."
Asked if there was anything she would tell Cummins now, Thomas said, point blank, "I hope he rots and dies in there."
Smart said she seconded that, adding, "But I'd also say, 'You did not break her. You did not destroy her. She is stronger than you ever thought she was.'"
Thomas agreed. "I'm not scared," she said. "Nothing he can do is ever going to hurt me anymore."
Abducted By My Teacher: The Elizabeth Thomas Story premieres Saturday, Aug. 12, at 8 p.m. on Lifetime, followed at 10 p.m. by Beyond the Headlines: The Elizabeth Thomas Story With Elizabeth Smart
(E! and NBC News are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)