A Texas teen abducted from an NBA game, sex trafficked and held against her will at a hotel 200 miles away has opened up about the horrific week of abuse she endured before investigators traced her photo in an online sex ad back to her captors.
Natalee Cramer, now 18, was just 15 years old when she and her father attended a Mavericks game at American Airlines Center in Dallas April 8, 2022.
Cramer, who is now sober and pursuing a GED, said she was dependent on marijuana and alcohol to cope with her anxiety at the time, and when the game started, she began to feel anxious, she told WFAA.
“I was feeling good and just ready to hang out with [my dad],” Cramer told the outlet. “We got there, sat down in our seats. … First quarter happened, and I started getting this anxious feeling. This craving for like getting high or drunk.”
Cramer told her father she was going to the bathroom, but she left her phone at her seat and did not return.
On the arena’s concourse, Cramer made eye contact with her alleged abductor, 33-year-old Emanuel Cartagena.
“I’m just walking around, and that’s when I caught that guy’s eye,” Cramer recalled. “I told him, ‘I’m just really looking to smoke. Do you smoke?”
Cramer said she walked with Cartagena back to his car, where he said he had marijuana for them to smoke. A second person met them in the parking garage, and the three drove to a house in North Texas.
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“He didn’t tell me there was anyone else there with him,” Cramer said. “It was just him. He told me we would walk back to his car that was parked in the parking lot … in the garage … and that’s when the second guy came. They told me the weed was just in the car.
“They did give me weed,” she told WFAA. “But there was more that they had in mind.”
Cramer was kept at the house against her will for several days before she was sold to a sex trafficking ring in Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, her father, Kyle Morris, reported his daughter missing at the arena when she never returned to her seat. But he was told he would need to report her as a runaway at their home police department 30 miles away. Cramer had previously left her parents’ home several times and had been reported as a runaway before.
Desperate for answers, the family hired a private investigator in Houston who specializes in these types of cases. Within minutes, he was able to find photos of Cramer posted in an online sex ad and trace her location to Oklahoma City.
Kenneth Levan Nelson, one of eight suspects arrested by Oklahoma City authorities in Cramer’s kidnapping, allegedly posted the nude photos online.
Nelson, a convicted sex offender, “rented at least two hotel rooms” at the Extended Stay America Oklahoma City Airport Hotel “and was associated with at least two other hotel rooms” under a false name, according to a lawsuit filed against the hotel by Cramer’s parents.
Cramer was plied with “alcohol and numerous narcotics, including methamphetamines,” according to the lawsuit. She recalled seeing a family in the hotel as she walked intoxicated through the hall, flanked by men carrying assault rifles.
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“I was more surprised to see a family with small children there, and they looked me in the eyes and could see that all of these people were older than me and still not say anything,” Cramer said. “The dad of these little children looked at me, and he couldn’t tell at the hotel. [The man who trafficked her] had a whole rifle by his side, and the family just walked on like nothing happened.”
On April 18, a police officer noticed the teen walking outside an apartment complex and asked if she was Natalee Cramer. She told the officer she had been raped and was rescued.
She described her rescue as an answered prayer.
“I was just praying to God,” she said. “‘I’m tired. I can’t do this anymore. I need someone. Please send someone.'”
The officer snapped an unrecognizable photo of her in the back of his cruiser.
“I had braces at the time, and I was punched in the mouth by one of the guys,” Cramer told CBS News of the picture. “My whole cheek was just scratched. My braces were like inside my cheek.”
Cramer said it was a matter of minutes after she talked to the officer before eight people — Saniya Alexander, Melissa Wheeler, Chevaun Gibson, Kenneth Nelson, Sarah Hayes, Karen Gonzales, Thalia Gibson and Steven Hill — were arrested.
Cartagena, the man who allegedly initially led Cramer back to his car before she was trafficked, was arrested by U.S. Marshals in January 2023 and charged with sexual assault of a child, according to WFAA. But a Dallas County grand jury decided there was not enough evidence to prosecute him.
“I know that there are things I could have done to prevent this, but I know not all of the choices that were made were my choices,” Cramer told WFAA. “Part of me felt guilty, but I had to come to the fact that this is my life, and they have ruined my life. I cannot feel sorry for them because they did not feel sorry for me.”
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Cramer said she didn’t realize anything was wrong until she was being raped and that her kidnapping wasn’t the typical “guy with candy in the back of his van.”
“It looks like a normal conversation until it’s not. You don’t know you’re in danger until you’re in the middle of it. And you don’t know what to do, and you can’t get out,” Cramer said. “There’s no room to judge people because they can’t get out. If they could leave, they would.
“I did not know how to leave because I was scared,” she continued. “I could have asked for the phone, but they would have been right there. What was I supposed to do? Even if I had run, where would I go? I didn’t know where I was.”
Cramer’s family has since started an organization called Aisling to help survivors of sexual assault and human trafficking.
