Rev. Al Sharpton Turns Up The Heat

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Rev. Al Sharpton is teaming up with AMW to help find who killed 16-year-old Chanel Petro-Nixon.

A studious and popular Brooklyn teenager left her apartment to walk down the street to meet a friend, and then pick up an application for a summer job. 

She never showed up to meet her friend or get the application, and four days later, her body was found strangled and stuffed into a garbage bag. 

The flyers around New York say it all: "Somebody Knows Something." But so far, no one is talking, and that is what has Rev. Al Sharpton so worked up.

Rev. Sharpton says someone in his community knows what happened. That's why he's teaming up with AMW to urge his community to step up and say what they know. 

He is even telling the community that, if they don't feel comfortable talking to police, they can talk directly to him through America's Most Wanted. 

"It's personal to me 'cause it happened where I grew up," Rev. Sharpton said. "I mean, this is the neighborhood I started preaching in. This is the neighborhood my mother raised me in."

Reverend Sharpton canvassed Brooklyn streets with AMW producers, working to get people to come forward and say what they know. 

"This is the neighborhood where I know everybody," he said. "We can't just allow our children to be murdered and thrown out like trash."

He also aired an extended segment about this case on his nationally syndicated radio program, "Keepin' It Real with Rev. Al Sharpton."

Chanel: "The Perfect Kid"

Friends and family call Chanel Petro-Nixon the "perfect" kid. She got straight A's, went to church every Sunday, and lit up a room with her smile. The question detectives now have is, who would want to see her dead?

The last time anybody would see her alive was on Father's Day weekend 2006, Chanel left her home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to walk down the street to meet a friend, and then go to a job interview at Applebees.

The startling and downright scary part for investigators: no one is telling them anything.

Chanel went missing on an extremely busy stretch of road in Brooklyn in broad daylight. Dozens of people were most likely sitting on stoops in front of their homes or shopping across the street at a line of stores. 

But so far, no witnesses can be found. And it's not for lack of trying.  Detectives have put in thousands of hours searching for whoever killed Chanel. 

Police haven't been able to find a motive for the crime.  They haven't even been able to find anyone who disliked Chanel.

Mystery: Three Days, No Chanel

Another puzzling part for detectives: the timeline of this case. Chanel left her home around 6:00 pm on Sunday June 18, 2006.  Her body was found on June 22, 2006 around 8:30am. 

The Medical Examiner puts her time of death at less than 24 hours before she was found.  But where was she between the time she left her home and the time she was killed?

That's more than 48 hours unaccounted for. Was Chanel kidnapped and taken somewhere and tortured? 

The torture part is unlikely because when Chanel was found she wasn't sexually assaulted and had no marks on her body.  Was she taken somewhere and locked in a room for two days before she was killed? And, where was she strangled?

These are all questions NYPD detectives are struggling to answer. 

You can't go anywhere in Brooklyn without seeing posters that scream "Somebody Knows Something." But so far, people are silent. 

On the one year anniversary of the case, members of the NYPD held a charity basketball game to raise more money for Chanel's reward fund. 

The reward is now up to $34,000. 

If you know anything about the case, call our hotline at 1-800-CRIME-TV. You can remain anonymous.