TRAVIS BLACKWELL CALLS on a higher power to prove he had nothing to do with his girlfriend’s disappearance.
“As God is my witness, I had nothing to do with it. Nothing,” the rural Hannibal resident says.
Blackwell’s girlfriend, Christina Whittaker, disappeared a few months ago after being kicked out of a downtown Hannibal bar. Blackwell, Whittaker’s parents and others were on the syndicated Steve Wilkos TV talk show Monday, and it wasn’t pretty.
The show was ominously titled “Did You Kill Christina?” Read my H-W column on Page 2A today, and click here for the TV show’s video recap.
Blackwell was accused on the show of having something to do with Whittaker’s disappearance. He repeatedly denied it. Urged by a raucous studio audience, Wilkos got in his face and suggested Blackwell may have dumped Whittaker’s body in the Mississippi River.
The basis was Blackwell failing to pass two lie detector tests, administered by the show’s own “polygraph expert.” The show ended with Wilkos yelling at Blackwell to “get off my stage” and Christina’s parents, Cindy and Alex Young, crying while staring at Blackwell in disbelief.
During an interview Monday, Blackwell said he did the show to help in the search for Christina, not knowing he’d be ambushed. But he felt the show “was rigged” and Wilkos was planning to set him up all along.
“After the show, I was afraid of my life. It ain’t good, I can tell you that,” said Blackwell, who claims he was at Whittaker’s parent’s home the night she disappeared, taking care of Whittaker’s young daughter. “I was hoping some good would come out of it, but more evil came out than good.”
The show was taped about a month ago in Connecticut. Cindy Young says she has since made peace with Blackwell and says she does not suspect him of having anything to do with her daughter’s disappearance.
Blackwell went to the Hannibal Police Department and took another lie detector test a few days after the taping. He says he passed and is not a suspect in the disappearance.
HPD, in its usual cryptic mode, said only through a press release it was aware of the show and what transpired.
When Blackwell came home to Hannibal, he was afraid to go to his own house, so he stayed with a family member.
“Right before the show it felt bad. I wished I hadn’t done it,” he says now. “By the same token, it got her picture out there, so maybe it’s worth that little bit of stupidness …. The bottom line is to just get her back home.”
Like Whittaker’s parents, Blackwell says he believes Whittaker is still alive.
“I think she was at the wrong spot at the wrong time, and somebody grabbed her,” he says. “But I believe she is alive. I can’t think no other way on that.”
