Docuseries on the disappearance of Relisha Rudd hopes to generate new tips on the 11-year-old case

WTOP
Alan Etter
October 13, 2025

Relisha Rudd, an 8-year-old girl who went missing in D.C. in 2014, is the subject of a new docuseries by the national nonprofit organization Black and Missing Foundation.

The trailer for the upcoming docuseries shows Rudd in a home movie spelling her name for her grandmother. Rudd, smiling with a missing front tooth, would vanish not long after the movie was made.

Black and Missing Foundation is hoping the docuseries will generate new leads for police. The group raises awareness for missing people of color by creating public awareness campaigns, providing resources and tools to families and educating the community on personal safety.

“We know that by bringing awareness to Relisha’s case, we can bring about answers as to what happened to her,” Black and Missing co-founder Natalie Wilson told WTOP. “We will never stop searching for her.”

Rudd was a second grader at Payne Elementary School when she went missing March 1, 2014. She was last seen on surveillance video at the Holiday Inn Express motel in the company of Kahlil Tatum, a janitor for a D.C. General Family Shelter where Rudd had been living with her mother, Shamika Young.

The motel in Northeast was known for criminal activities, including drug use and prostitution.

A month after Rudd was last seen, Tatum was found dead in a shed in Kenilworth Park in an apparent suicide.

Though more than 11 years have passed, Wilson hopes the film will spark new interest in the investigation.

“She’s really D.C.’s baby that’s missing. We want to know what happened to Relisha,” Wilson said. “The community deserves to know what happened to Relisha, and it takes all of us — that’s the media, law enforcement, but most importantly our community — to get involved to help find and bring our missing home.”

Officially, Rudd’s disappearance is unsolved, but police continue to ask the public for information about the case. The FBI is offering a $25,000 reward for information.

The two-part docuseries will be released on Oct. 29, Rudd’s 20th birthday.

Photo credit: Black and Missing Foundation and BAMFI Enterprises