CBS 5 Investigates With Anna Werner

(CBS 5) It's every parent's nightmare: Getting a call that tells you your child has been killed. A South Bay family asked CBS 5 to investigate this: Why the justice system wasn't able to save their daughter from being murdered in Oakland?

At the Mount Olive Church in Menlo Park the services go on and the children sing. But one member of the choir is missing.

17-year-old Tamara Thompson grew up in this church and brought her mother joy. "She was bubbly, friendly. She was just a fun child," said her mother Deborah Thompson. But her life came to a violent end three months ago when someone killed her, and dumped her body in a park Oakland. Police say she was strangled.

How did a sheltered church-going girl wind up dead, a world away from home? Her family said the case raises questions about whether the system does enough to protect young girls from falling into the wrong hands.

Tamara's mother said it all began when Tamara met a new young man. "I would ask Tamara you know why do you like this person? Does he work? What does he do," Deborah Thompson recalled. The more time Tamara spent with him, the more uneasy her mother became.

"You know, mother's intuition. I kind of had some ideas. But I just really didn't want to believe it," she said.

Now she knows that Tamara had fallen into the hands of a pimp. Police say San Pablo Avenue in West Oakland is where Tamara ended up. It's an area known for prostitution. One undercover vice detective who works the area said many of the girls are underage, some as young as 11. "They are commodity to the pimps, they are property, they are not people," the detective said.

As for the pimps, he said "They are master manipulators, they are predators. The girl that blows them off, they know she is too strong willed. But the girl that kind of blushes and looks down like 'Wow someone is paying attention to me,' that is who they will start targeting."

Such as Tamara. Her uncle Bryan Artadi said: "He had made threats to Tamara that he would hurt her family, that he would hurt her, if she didn't do what he told her to."

But Tamara had a chance. After police arrested her for prostitution, juvenile authorities sent her to a rehab facility near her home in Santa Clara County. "She wanted to get help she wanted to get off the streets," Artadi said.

And it seemed to be working. But two weeks before her death, during a weekend visit to the family, Tamara ran away again. Police found her back in Oakland. The family says they asked police to arrest Tamara and hold her at Alameda County Juvenile Hall for her own protection, but despite a warrant for her arrest they say they were told that Juvenile Hall would not take her in.

Days later, Tamara's body was found in the park. "All these questions started coming up, Why Why Why?," said her uncle. "One of the main goals we want to accomplish right now is to find out why Tamara fell through the cracks."

CBS 5 Investigates went to ask the man in charge of Alameda County's juvenile hall, Chief probation officer Don Blevins. "Typically if it's an out of county warrant we would book the girl into juvenile hall," he said.

So why didn't that happen in Tamara's case? "I don't have any information that she was brought to juvenile hall," said Blevins.

His response to the family's concerns that the system failed her? "I don't know. You would want to hope that everybody did everything they possibly can. It didn't seem like she fell through the cracks, just it seems like everybody's attempt to change this girl's life still wasn't successful," he said.

Blevins promised to look into the circumstances of that night to try to give Tamara's family answers and some peace. Police meanwhile say they are investigating the murder, which they say is very unusual.

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