JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The mother of an 8-year-old Jacksonville girl who was abducted, raped and murdered in June 2013 said she has endured not only the loss of her daughter but the condemnation of the public, many of whom blame her for the girl's death.
Rayne Perrywinkle shared her heartbreaking story exclusively with Dr. Oz, including what she says everyone has gotten wrong about her.
RELATED: Cherish Perrywinkle: The case that shocked Jacksonville
“Some people say I was into human trafficking, I sold her for a gift card, I sold my daughter to (Donald Smith) for crack, I knew him, I had a relationship with him -- all these crazy stories that are not true," Perrywinkle said. “You can never stop all the hate. People are going to hate you regardless. But I want to at least clear the air. I did not know him beforehand."
To prove that she has been telling the truth about what happened to her daughter, Cherish, on that fateful night, Perrywinkle offered to submit to a drug and polygraph test for "The Dr. Oz Show."
Perrywinkle hopes the results, which showed she was not lying, change the verdict about her in the court of public opinion, now that a court of law has convicted Donald James Smith in the rape and murder of her little girl.
Smith, a registered sex offender with four decades of arrests, had been released from prison just 21 days before he met Perrywinkle and her three daughters at a dollar store in Jacksonville on June 21, 2013.
He overheard Perrywinkle say she couldn't afford dresses for her children and offered to take her to a Walmart, where his wife would meet them with a $100 gift card.
But there was no wife, and no gift card.
Perrywinkle, who now believes Smith might have been stalking her for days before the kidnapping, has admitted that she ignored her initial instincts and chose to believe Smith was a good person just trying to help her out.
It was a deadly mistake.
Video footage shows Perrywinkle and her children shopping in the Walmart, loading their cart with items as they wait for Smith's wife to show up. He stalled until the children were hungry and tired and then offered to buy them hamburgers.
Cherish went with him, and security video shows her skipping out the door of the Walmart behind Smith.
It was the last time she was seen alive.
Cherish's tortured body was found the next morning in a wooded marsh near a church.
But Perrywinkle and talk show host Nancy Grace, who joined her on "Dr. Oz," said the outcome might have been different if police had taken Perrywinkle seriously when she reported Cherish missing.
“There was time, Dr. Oz. There was time to find her," Grace said. "She endured for hours and hours before she was killed, and five hours past before they issued an Amber Alert."
Perrywinkle said the Jacksonville officer who first responded the night Cherish disappeared blamed Perrywinkle and claimed she was hiding the girl because of a custody battle.
"They didn't look for her for more than five hours, and I knew she was gone," Perrywinkle told Dr. Oz. "I felt it in my spirit. I can't feel her anymore."
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office conducted an internal investigation into the initial response to Cherish's kidnapping. Six officers were cited for failure to conform to work standards, including the lieutenant in charge of the homicide division, who no longer holds that position.
Smith has since been convicted of kidnapping Cherish, raping her and strangling her. He was sentenced to death.
Descriptions of the girl's injuries and autopsy photos left the medical examiner and jury in tears during Smith's trial. The jurors found him guilty in just minutes.
UNCUT: Medical examiner's entire testimony (Caution: Contains graphic details)
But the lives of all those impacted by Cherish before, during and after her tragic death have been forever altered.
Perhaps none more so than the mother who gave the wide-eyed, beautiful girl the name that now evokes one of the most disturbing crimes in Jacksonville history.