Where Is Baby Lisa Irwin?

[Music] [Music] hello everybody welcome back to my channel and thank you for joining me for another true crime deep dive today we are talking about the disappearance of 10 month old baby lisa irwin she was taken from her kansas city home in october of 2011. now this case is compelling it's complicated and it remains unsolved so i can't wait to discuss it with you in the comments section and hear your thoughts and theories because there's a lot to go over and talk about here so get your coffee get your tea get a snack you know get get a turkey sandwich whatever it is that you feel you're gonna need because i think this is gonna be a long one but before we get started let's have a word from the sponsor of today's video ray khan i love my raycon earbuds and this is 100 the truth right i'm not just trying to sell you something they are the best sounding most easy to use earbuds i've ever owned and they are without a doubt the most comfortable as well and that's important to me raycon is 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each other talking at the same time drinking wine getting rowdy and my mom was just like cooking and smiling serenely instead of yelling at us every time we said something she didn't like which is usually the case so i walk over to her to find out what's going on and come to find that she's wearing her raycons and she's jamming out to the beatles and she said it was so nice because she could see our mouths moving she knew that we were talking but she couldn't hear us thanks mom if you would like to get yourself or someone you love a pair of raycon earbuds go to buy harlow raycon.com click the link in the description box to get 15 percent off your first order that's by raycon dot com stephanie harlow for 15 off your first order and don't forget there's an e on the end of stephanie and on the end of harlow thank you so much to raycon for sponsoring today's video and for giving my mother the opportunity to tune all of her children out let's jump in so to begin we need to have an overview of baby lisa's family situation her mother was 27 year old deborah bradley her father was 29 year old jeremy irwin the couple were engaged to be married and each of them had brought an existing child into the relationship at the time of lisa's disappearance deborah's son michael who she shared with her ex-husband sean bradley was six debra and sean had met in high school and it seemed as if from a young age deborah had faced issues with her own family deborah had met shawn in 2002 when she was a sophomore in high school and he was a junior they both worked at the quik trip which is a convenience store deborah was the oldest child of david and lisa nets who had divorced in 1992 after the divorce lisa nets took deborah and her two brothers east with her to the delaware area where she had family david also moved to the east coast to be closer to his kids and it appears that for some time they all lived together in the same house with lisa and deborah occupying the basement and david and their sons living on the first floor sadly lisa passed away unexpectedly in 2001 from heart trouble and she died on the birthday of deborah's then-ten-year-old brother deborah herself was only 15. according to the obituary of lisa nets she'd been a member of alcoholics anonymous for eight years when she died and her ex-husband david told the wichita eagle that lisa had struggled with her drinking for years and sometimes it would get so bad that her sisters would have to come over to step in and take care of lisa's children while she was sleeping it off after lisa's death the family moved back to missouri where they had initially lived and david felt that his children blamed him for their mother's drinking and even for her death but he was working 60 hours as a single father trying to provide for his family keep his family afloat and he wasn't able to offer them a lot in the way of emotional support when lisa turned 16 her relationship with her father went downhill further and they began arguing constantly and when she met sean she moved out of her dad's house and moved in with shawn's stepmother hazel whose own husband had just died of a heart attack at the age of 42 leaving hazel alone to raise four kids she had a four-month-old daughter that she and her husband shared a young son from a previous relationship and her late husband michael's two teenagers sean and his sister at first having deborah in the house was actually helpful to hazel because deborah assisted with the baby it was reported that deborah even from a young age was very much a mother hen type and she cared for her younger brothers after their mother died and when she moved in with shawn and his stepmother hazel she started helping hazel with this little baby this arrangement didn't last long however as hazel caught deborah and sean in bed together one day and when she'd agreed to let deborah come and live with them that had been the one ruled that they wouldn't have sex under her roof and so she told them that if they were going to act like adults they could leave her house and live like adults and within weeks shawn had enlisted in the army and he and deborah started planning their wedding debra's father gave her permission to get married at the age of 17. she and sean got married and then they moved to north carolina while shawn was stationed at fort bragg and this is where she gave birth to her first son michael in november of 2005. in 2007 when sean's service was up the couple and their son moved back to missouri and lived with david debra's father but sean was having a hard time finding work and within no time due to stress of unpaid bills and financial problems shawn and deborah separated but remained married because they could not afford a divorce somehow debra and her son ended up back at hazel's sean's stepmother where debra claimed she wanted to return to school and get her ged because she dropped out of high school when she'd moved away from home but that never ended up happening instead debra began sneaking around kind of she started taking hazel's truck at night when everyone was sleeping without asking and although hazel claims she never knew where deborah was going or what she was doing she viewed this as a break and trust a betrayal almost and she asked deborah to leave the house again deborah got a job working at a payless shoes store and it was here she met jeremy irwin a young electrician who also had a son from a previous relationship i don't know much about jeremy irwin's past but i do know that he had a son who was eight i believe at the time of baby lisa's disappearance and this boy's mother is a woman named raslin rayam and apparently jeremy was granted sole custody of his son in 2008 and razzline would only be allowed to have supervised visits that would have to be arranged through jeremy but it does not seem that razzline took advantage of this opportunity and sources claim she had not seen her son since he was 2 with the exception of one visit so we have this little blended family deborah and her son jeremy and his son and together they welcomed their daughter lisa into the world on november 11 2010. deborah was a stay-at-home mother jeremy worked as an electrician and they all lived together at 3600 north lister avenue in kansas city okay so like i said jeremy was an electrician and on october 3rd 2011 he worked during the day like he normally would and then he got out of work and returned home at about 2 30 in the afternoon but that evening jeremy had to go to work again because it was the first day of a new job and this new job was remodeling a local starbucks previous to this jeremy had never worked a night before so this wasn't the family's usual routine while jeremy was home deborah and her brother phillip went to the grocery store where they were seen on surveillance purchasing some items including diapers baby wipes and a box of wine and this was at about 4 30 in the afternoon deborah and philip her brother got back to the house at around five philip left shortly after this and then a half an hour later jeremy left to go to the starbucks where he was working now he knew he was going to be working late but he felt that he would be back around 11 that evening according to deborah she was busy also that evening getting her kids fed and ready for bed she put 10 month old lisa to bed at around 6 40 in the evening and at that time her next-door neighbor a woman named samantha brando who had a four-year-old daughter stopped over and samantha's daughter played with deborah's sons while samantha ran to the store to pick up some wine for herself at around 7pm deborah got all the kids saddled on the couch so they could watch a movie with the exception of baby lisa who's in bed at this time and when they were taken care of and settled she and samantha took their wine to the front porch where they could drink smoke cigarettes and chat shortly before this debra had peeked into lisa's room to check on her and she'd found the baby standing up in her crib and this would be the last time that deborah saw her daughter now i don't want anyone to immediately come out of the gate judging this woman deborah for drinking that evening i know that we've all been there right like i know i've been there you run after your kids all day you spend hours attending to everyone else's needs and by the end of the day you know you're ready for a glass of wine and some you time in fact i would say that wine night with the girls is essential to being a good mother because if you don't take time for yourself you're going to be a pretty mean mommy the older kids were settled in the living room watching a movie the baby was asleep it was a weekend so deborah didn't have to worry about the boys getting to bed early so they could wake up for school there was no immediate concerns that needed debra's attention so she could have a couple glasses of wine and there's nothing wrong with that but as we will come to find and discuss deborah ended up having a little bit more than a couple glasses of wine so deborah and her neighbor samantha they're sitting outside and at around 7 30 that evening a teenager named shane who was staying with his grandmother who lived just a few doors down from deborah he was outside his grandmother's house smoking a cigarette when deborah and samantha called him over to talk he was pretty new to the neighborhood he'd never met either of these women so he walked over and they all chatted for about an hour and a half before he went back home shane claimed that he did not see the two women actively drinking at this time like pouring wine into glasses but he could tell that they had been drinking because of the way they were acting they were very chatty they were kind of loud giggly you know how people act when they've had something to drink a little after 10 debra told samantha that she was going in for the night so samantha and her daughter went home and deborah and the boys went to bed in the master bedroom and then they went to sleep samantha from next door did not go right inside however or if she did she soon returned to the outside of her own home for another cigarette now samantha claims that at this time she saw the lights in deborah's house turn off and while she was outside shane the teenager who lived with his grandmother he also went back outside for another cigarette shane claimed that he and samantha chatted from their respective homes they didn't go to each other's houses he didn't go to her she didn't go to him but they kind of just like shouted down the street he also says he did not see debra outside at this point and he had not seen any children at this time or when he'd been there previously samantha ended up going inside for the evening at around 11 30 pm several hours later at 3 45 in the morning a tired jeremy arrived back home he'd been working much later than he'd expected and he was annoyed to find the front door of his house unlocked and all the lights blazing inside although he worked hard it seemed like there was never enough money you know this is a household with three children and only one income so you've gotta pinch pennies you gotta save where you can and he'd always been very clear with deborah that she should turn the lights off when they went to bed or they weren't in the room to make sure that they didn't have a super high utility bill as he was walking through the house turning the lights off jeremy noticed that there was a window open in the computer room and when he went over to close it he noticed that the screen had been pushed in and come with me through here this is a room they call the spare living room he also noticed that this window which faces the front side of the house had been tampered with jeremy then walked into his bedroom where debra was fast asleep with one of the boys apparently the other one had gotten up at some point during the night and returned to his own bedroom jeremy next went to his son's room and saw him sleeping peacefully but when he opened the door to baby lisa's room she was not in her crib puzzled jeremy returned to his bedroom and woke debra up asking her where the baby was at that point chaos ensued jeremy and deborah began searching all over the house for lisa screaming her name and deborah at one point fell to the floor and began sobbing uncontrollably even though they were looking for a 10 month old baby and it would be pretty much impossible that such a young child would have been able to get herself out of a crib and then you know walk around the house or move around the house the terrified parents ran all over this place they were looking into closets cabinets calling her name jeremy took a flashlight and looked outside he even went next door to samantha's house woke her up and asked if lisa was there but baby lisa was nowhere to be found so some people online find it suspicious that jeremy and debra were like looking outside or looking all over their house and they spent you know some time looking before they called the police i personally don't find this suspicious they didn't look for that long only about 15-20 minutes before calling the police and as a parent when you don't see your child in their crib you don't immediately assume that they're missing now lisa was 10 months old so she most likely couldn't even walk by herself yet and she's tiny so it would have been very hard for her to get out of the crib but it's happened i've seen videos where smaller children than lisa just somehow managed to like use some crazy advanced gymnastics moves and get out of their crib it's insane what babies can do so it's not impossible right and as a parent you're gonna think it's more possible that my child might have found a way to get out of her crib than it would be for someone to come into my house which is my safe place where i feel safe and steal her and obviously if your child is someplace in the house just hiding from you or you haven't found her yet you don't want to call the police too prematurely because then by the time they get there maybe you found her and then you're embarrassed and you know you've wasted the police time and you look like a bad parent because you lost your 10 month old baby so i understand the small delay in calling the police and like i said they only looked for about 15 minutes before jeremy went inside to call the police but inside he encountered a problem apparently this family had three cell phones jeremy's personal phone debra's personal phone which at that time was broken and not working and another phone that debra's grandfather had given her to use until her phone was fixed and working and these phones were always in the same place being charged on the kitchen counter but when jeremy went to grab his all three phones were missing just like lisa whenever i was we woke up and i woke up and he came home and i was he said she's not in a crib and i said what do you mean she's not in a crib and i just knew you know something was really wrong and we're running around the house and we're screaming for her and she was nowhere and then i said calm i would want to go on my own and he said where are the phones and they weren't on the counter where i left and they were gone luckily jeremy did have his work cell phone on him and he was able to call the police telling the 911 operator that he'd just gotten home to find his daughter missing and what he noticed was that the window of his computer room had been tampered with when i came home from work the front door was unlocked most of the lights were on in the house and the window was in the front was open obviously all very unusual and then i started checking on the kids checked on the boys first and then we checked on her that's when we realized she was gone the only thing i could think of is you know maybe somebody wanted a baby and she i hope that's what it is she's she's everything she's she's our little girl she's completed our family and she's she does everything to my boys and we we we need her home i can't i can't be without her how are you explaining to the to the two boys what has happened how are they taking all this in um i just try to tell them you know we're gonna stay strong we're family we're gonna pray and uh she's gonna come home this is her barney that she sleeps with every night she sometimes she won't go to sleep without it so i'd like to have her back so she can have her barney and her family the brothers just we need her home now i will say there was one area where i found that the stories were a little inconsistent so jeremy and debra both have given a lot of media interviews and they've both at one point or another said that the window being open wasn't odd they often left windows open in the house what was odd was that the screen was tampered with but what we're dealing with here is it's october right so it's not warm outside i believe when i checked the weather report for this specific week it was low 40s it was chilly so i'm not sure why jeremy would be concerned about having lights on in the house but not with having windows open especially if the heat was turned on so that just kind of didn't make sense to me and deborah has also said in these interviews that earlier in that day she had also noticed that the computer room window was open but she hadn't noticed if the screen was tampered with but she also said that yeah it was completely normal for us to leave windows open so maybe they hadn't turned the heat on yet for the season although october usually my heat's definitely on by october depending on how cold it gets but maybe they hadn't turned the heat on because they were trying to be frugal but then why would you have the windows open i guess i just you know that was a little bit of an inconsistency for me and this case everybody has an opinion about it and there's two major camps of people and we'll discuss that in a moment but i really want to try to be as unbiased as possible and just call it out if something looks suspicious to me even if i don't necessarily believe in that theory or am not a part of that camp by 4 10 in the morning police had arrived at the house an amber alert was sent out for lisa and the investigation began strangely enough however the amber alert was canceled the next day october 4. abc's dan harris is in kansas city for us and dan lisa's been missing about a day now so police have now canceled the amber alert that's right george police say that is a bit of a technicality though and they are still searching urgently for the child although they do say that as every hour passes this case gets harder to solve behind me is the house where the parents of little lisa irwin say she was snatched in the middle of the night out of her crib it is a waking nightmare and at this point police freely admit they have no suspects and you've got a five and a half window during which this child could have been taken that's a pretty big window that's right yeah from an investigative standpoint that's a big challenge it is the police immediately issued an amber alert and launched a massive search with the fbi the atf the marshall service mounted patrols and k-9 units and this could have been for several reasons usually for an amber alert to be issued authorities need some sort of descriptive characteristics of the person suspected of taking a child what does he or she look like what does their car look like what direction were they headed in etc so it's possible that because they didn't have this information the police felt the amber alert would not be helpful although i disagree because you can still show a picture of lisa you can still put a description of lisa you know when she was taken what time and then if there's somebody out there who sees her with somebody else again a store or on the street or something they can call it in but that's just my opinion don't come for me another theory is that this amber alert was cancelled due to the fact that the police did not believe lisa had been abducted according to deborah bradley from the moment they questioned her about her missing daughter which happened for the first time on october 4th police were accusing her of being responsible for whatever had happened to baby lisa um it turned into you did it and they uh they put the picture down of her on the table and they said um look at your baby and um do what's right for her and just tell everybody where she is so she can come home and i kept saying i don't know i don't know i don't know and it i 11 hours of it and i just sat there and i mean i don't i didn't even ask i didn't even ask to leave i didn't i didn't ask for it to stop it i wanted it to but i didn't ask deborah was interrogated for that first time for 12 hours and she volunteered to take a polygraph test to prove that she was telling the truth but she claims that once the test was finished the fbi agent who'd given the test to her or administered the test to her he looked at her and he said you know i think you're a terrible mother and you failed the test so we know you're lying and basically then the other police officers came in and they were like you need to tell us what happened you need to be honest with us what happened to your baby did you do something to hurt her you know etc although debra insisted over and over that she didn't know anything more than she'd already told them even after she failed the polygraph she kept to the story the police kept hammering on her and used her failed polygraph to attempt to get a confession from her deborah claims that she understands why they did it right it's the jab of the police to try and solve a case wherever the investigation takes you you've got to go but she was worried that if they were so sure that she was responsible the police wouldn't be out there looking for her daughter they wouldn't be exploring other avenues we just we just want to be sure that no matter what's going on today or yesterday or the other day that people are still out there people are still looking for she's still missing she's still not home where she's supposed to be i just thank everybody that's helped us so far and we're just we're just trying to we need to find her and get her home we don't we don't want anybody to feel like we um were angry or were ungrateful um we we appreciate everything that everybody has done to try to bring her home and um that's our main goal i don't i don't care what they've done to me i don't care what they say about me i don't care what anybody says about me i just want her to come home our our focus is lisa is our lisa coming home to be with us where she belongs and whatever i've got to do to get her home we'll do it now there are many sources that say deborah did not fail her polygraph test including her lawyer who wasn't her lawyer at the point that she took the polygraph test but later she did get a lawyer and he said on national television that she had not failed her polygraph test that she'd been lied to and the police did not discount this statement so they didn't challenge it and the general belief is that the police lied to her said she failed so that they could extract a confession and legally the police are allowed to do this right there's four specific instances where law enforcement is legally allowed to lie to you they can lie about having your fingerprints at the scene of a crime they can lie about having an eyewitness they can lie to you about their ability to obtain a search warrant so for instance let's say the police don't have enough evidence to get a judge to sign off on a search warrant but you as the suspect you don't know that so they'll tell you like listen the judge is in the process of signing the warrant and we're gonna go into your house and we're gonna find out what you did so you should just save us and yourself from all this trouble just fess up and we'll go easy on you if you confess police can also lie to you about the severity of your sentence if you're charged with whatever crime they're accusing you of so they can tell you that if you cooperate with them you'll get off easy they'll give you a deal but if you don't you'll be behind bars for like 50 years even if the crime you committed doesn't necessarily call for a 50-year sentence so it's scare tactics we know what happens we see it happens and that's why you should never go and talk to the police without a lawyer and you should definitely not ever take a polygraph without talking to your lawyer first because even if you're 100 innocent especially if you're a hundred percent innocent you are going to need that lawyer you're entitled to it nobody should make you feel that it makes you look more guilty it's your right and is to protect you and if the police are going hard on you and you know you didn't do anything 100 million percent get your lawyer asap because these police officers will use whatever tools they can in order to get you to confess and make their jobs easier and solve the crime and i understand it i'm not mad at them for it but it does occur to me that there's a lot of people out there who don't know that the police are allowed to lie to you in certain situations so now you do and if you're ever in this situation you know you should call a lawyer so after this interview or interrogation with the police and deborah the relationship between the police and baby lisa's parents became a little bit strained on october 6th jeremy and deborah gave a press conference begging for the safe return of their daughter the same day that jeremy and deborah gave their press conference the kansas city police chief steve young also spoke to the media and he made a shocking statement that the parents of lisa had stopped cooperating with the police so early on in the day steve young said that deborah and jeremy were cooperating so you haven't found any holes in the story can you describe what the role of the parents is at this time are they being held just for answering questions or is it more than that well i you could say that we're holding but i would also say that they're being cooperative so they're the s obviously an essential part of the investigation and we're continuing to talk to them and they're continuing to be cooperative but later that night he said they no longer were cooperating one of the things the parents have been saying is that they are taking issue with police in the way they say that officers are trying to turn the parents against each other also they're saying that they are being accused of failing a polygraph at least the mother saying that what do you have to say to that well like it's been since the very first day i can't get into the details of the investigation however the statement that i made last night was was accurate it was clear that they were through speaking to us but uh our detectives have been available 24 7 we we had staffing all night long last night and since i made the statement up until now we still haven't heard from them so there you hear still that discrepancy between police and between the parents of 10 month old baby lisa police still maintaining that if the parents wanted to be cooperative they could have reached detectives in the overnight hours as they continue working this case the parents maintaining they just needed a break from the interrogations and that they are still being cooperative so again this is a story we will continue to follow and this was the start of the public being suspicious of both parents but especially deborah and this would go on for a while and continues to go on today now here's my theory according to a later statement from deborah's lawyer deborah was questioned by police on multiple occasions the first time was october 4th we've already talked about this she got a polygraph she was interrogated for 12 hours she was brought in again on october 6th she would go back in four more times on the 8th the 9th the 11th and the 13th steve young the chief of police talks to the media early on october 6th before deborah had gone in for her second interview and he says that they're cooperating deborah and jeremy but then debra goes into the police station and she gets interrogated she gets told she failed her lie detector test she gets accused of doing something to her daughter and she gets the impression that she's still their number one suspect so she and jeremy decide to pull back from law enforcement which prompts steve young to make another statement that night that they were no longer being cooperative but this is understandable right from deborah's position if you were truly innocent and had nothing to do with your missing child but every time you talk to the police they make you feel as if they believe you did have something to do with it you might not be very interested in continuing to speak with them since every minute they're grilling you is another minute that they're not out there looking for your child early on in the investigation just hours after baby lisa was reported missing police searched a nearby landfill which i believe is known as the johnson county landfill and on october 7th the police returned to the same landfill to search some more they came with a purpose pinpointing an area of about 20 to 30 acres about noon today a team of federal agents came and they were entered the landfill searching for a missing person and it has to do with lisa irwin yes it has to do with the lisa irwin fbi agents today donned protective clothing and spent about two hours at the landfill they were here on tuesday as well and they specifically said they were looking for a body the trash they searched came from the area of the irwin home around here there is frustration but still hope friends family and neighbors are passing out kidnapped flyers making sure everyone knows about lisa and knows what to do if they have information police announced last night that lisa's parents were no longer cooperating with them the parents say that's not true that they want to do anything they can to find lisa investigators say that's their goal as well our main objective is to find this little girl and we strongly believe that the parents involvement in the investigation is our best bet to make that happen so our door is wide open and always has been and this spoke volumes to the public especially paired with the police claiming lisa's parents were not being cooperative because if you think about the facts family abduction is the most prevalent form of abduction at least in the united states and each year over 200 000 children become victims of child abduction being taken by a parent or another family member so usually when a child is taken it's at the hands of someone they know usually when a child is killed it's at the hands of someone they know and those are just the statistics additionally the police had already discounted the possibility that an intruder could have entered the house through that open window in the computer room like i said according to jeremy it was not uncommon for them to leave windows open in the house and debra had noticed that that window was open earlier that day but neither of them remembered the screen being damaged so jeremy didn't necessarily tell the police that somebody had come through that window he just reported his daughter missing and then mentioned something that was out of the ordinary which was that window screen being damaged and pushed in now the police said that there was a few reasons why they didn't believe an adult could have gotten into the house through that window for one it was pretty small also it was pretty far off the ground so getting leverage to hoist yourself into the window would have been tough unless you had like a box or something to stand on and the intruder would have made a lot of noise doing it which would have alerted someone inside the house lastly and perhaps most important police claimed the dust on the windowsill had not been disturbed it seemed like the focus on the landfill that they kept searching was almost the police saying to the public without saying it outright that baby lisa had not been kidnapped that she was no longer alive and that someone had tried to hide her body in this landfill but they didn't find anything in the landfill another issue was that debra bradley had changed her story a little bit when lisa had first gone missing debra claimed that she'd put lisa to bed at around 10 in the evening which would make that window of when a possible abduction could happen only four hours right but when she was interrogated by the police debra admitted that baby lisa had been put to bed much earlier at around 6 40 in the evening and she couldn't remember if she checked on her before going to bed herself later that evening which now makes that window much larger and that wasn't the only thing debra hadn't been completely honest about her story of how much wine she'd consumed that evening also changed initially she claimed she'd had a glass maybe two but when she was interviewed by the today show debra admitted that she'd had substantially more when asked how much more deborah responded that she'd had enough to be drunk and later on american life with mike and kelly deborah could not put a number on how many glasses she'd had but she did say she was drunk lisa's mother admitting in an interview with america live that she was drunk the night of her daughter's disappearance that she blacked out and that she has no memory of checking on her little baby at any point after 6 30 pm let's talk about the wine how much did you consume that day i had several several glasses of wine when you say several more than three yeah but that has nothing to do with her more than five probably more than ten no was it just wine or was it yeah just one just one lisa was in bed and the boys were laying down watching a movie with a neighbor's daughter were you drunk yeah do you have a drinking problem no i don't think so some folks are gonna have an issue with you oh i'm sure they are more than five drinks while you're looking after a little baby and two little boys she was sleeping you know i don't see the problem in me having my grown-up time i take good care of my kids i keep my house clean i do the laundry i kiss their booboos i fix some food i'm involved in their school stuff i mean to me there's nothing wrong with me doing what i want to do after dark as soon as i'm done drinking i go right to bed is that what happened which is right which is why i don't do it till my kids are in bed does it happen every night no no how many times a week would you say maybe a couple times a week how drunk were you just drunk i mean were you were you slurring your words were you stumbling i don't think so no is it possible you had a blackout it's a pot it's a possibility i mean just like anybody else when you drink you don't remember the things that happened and stuff like that but um yeah it's a possibility but it once again has nothing to do with my daughter is it possible you blacked out and something happened to lisa during that time no why i go to sleep every single time and everybody knows me every time i drink anything i have actually we've had get-togethers with family over the house and everybody will be drinking and hanging out playing pool and stuff and um i will once i've had enough to drink i just get really tired i go right upstairs and great to be honest even say bye to people not only does debra bradley admit that she was drunk on the night in question she also told america live that she was taking prescription medication at the time did you take any drugs no are you a drug user no are you on any drugs no i think i take anxiety medication but i mean it's not narcotic no even before this episode this event yeah okay and were you taking it that night yeah i take it every morning and in a bombshell development deborah is now changing her story about the critical night in question about last seeing her daughter at 10 30 p.m that evening deborah now claims for the first time that in fact the last time she saw her child alive that night was four hours earlier than she has been telling police when you went in at 10 30 after the neighbor left what did you do probably went right to my room why do you say probably because um sometimes i check on her well most of the time i check on her and then the boys the room is right next to each other and i sneak in and make sure the boys had been awake and i had went um in there and told them they could come sleep in my bed and so i'm assuming that i went and checked on her too but i don't i don't know you don't remember no so it's possible you did not check on her before you went to bed at 10 30. yeah but there's no way that anybody could have got in so the last time you saw your daughter alive in your home was when you put her down at 6 40. when i put her down yeah so i do know and i understand that it's not looking great for deborah right now she wasn't completely up front with the police initially she'd had a lot to drink that night and she couldn't remember the last time she checked on lisa but there is some evidence to the intruder theory and there's a figure at the center of this theory that definitely needs to be discussed his name is john tanko but he was known around the area simply as jersey he was apparently a homeless drifter of sorts and on october 3rd the same day that baby lisa was kidnapped jersey was staying in the home of a family who lived in the irwin's neighborhood this family had a next door neighbor and this woman's name is mary hurt and mary was familiar with jersey because he did odd jobs for this family who lived next door to her and he'd worked as a handyman for them this family happened to be out of town on this day and jersey was staying at their house while they were gone to tend to their yard to turn the sprinklers on and off and you know just keep a watch on things mary said that jersey was around a lot and she'd gotten to know him and she'd talk to him several times mary said quote he definitely was suspicious and shady i would say he kind of comes out of nowhere he's never specific about where he's been or where he's going you kind of just see him around the neighborhood and just pop in and talk to you he was always friendly but he definitely let us know in the week before all this happened that he was wanted for an outstanding warrant that he had for his arrest which was kind of a shock to us end quote but jersey wasn't the only shady character that mary had run into she'd also seen and spoken to jersey's girlfriend a woman named megan wright mary said that megan would sometimes hang out at her neighbor's house the neighbors had even driven her home a few times but they didn't have to go far because megan lived in a townhouse complex that was right behind mary hertz house and her neighbor's house where jersey was staying and working and when these neighbors didn't drive megan home she and jersey would often cut through the neighbor's backyard and go up a hill to where the north brighton town homes were located so this is like a neighborhood and then behind some of the houses there aren't any more houses there's just this hill that you would walk up and then on the other side of that hill are the townhouses where megan lived earlier in the day on october 3rd mary had seen jersey at her neighbor's house at about 1pm when she went out to run some errands he was doing yard work at this time mary got home at around 9 30 that evening and she noticed that her neighbor's sprinklers were still on but when she stepped outside a few hours later at around 11 pm the sprinklers had been turned off so mary just assumed jersey who was living and working there while the family was out of town he'd been the one to turn them off since the family wasn't there at around 11 30 that same evening a man was leaving for work in this same neighborhood when he saw something that made him do a double take like i said it was october and in the low 40s but he saw a man walking in the road carrying a baby who was not dressed for the weather so show me exactly what you did you looked out this window tell me where your husband was and tell me what you saw my husband was standing right next to our we had another vehicle out there and he was standing at that vehicle and he was looking first he was looking down the street and then all of a sudden he turned and started he was looking at the gentleman because he was walking up that way so the man was walking up this hill and what did what was he wearing just tell me describe everything that you saw describe the baby tell me what you saw at that time he was wearing like a dark colored pants and what we believe was a t-shirt like a white t-shirt and then he had the baby in his arms and he had the baby's head kind of like this so we just kind of seen the baby's arm and then the leg was down here and he was kind of just like i don't know if he was trying to protect it from the cold or if he just you know he was just holding the baby uh you're a mom so tell me did it look like somebody that was accustomed to carrying a baby yes it did it did and uh did it stick out to you that on this chilly evening in the 40s that somebody had a baby himself wearing a t-shirt and the baby not clothed yes it was pretty odd and that's why my husband kind of waited a few minutes before he actually left for work so then when he drove the gentleman was still kind of walking the gentleman wasn't actually like acting like suspicious or anything he was just kind of walking at a steady pace not in a hurry then the gentleman actually turned like he was going to go in the grass to go into one of the houses up the street so that's why at that time we did not think anything of it at 2 30 a.m just a few hours later a clerk working at a gas station on the corner of north brighton and parvin road witnessed a man walking out of the woods wearing what looked to be a white shirt there is corresponding surveillance footage of this so we know it happened but the video is very blurry and it's impossible to tell whether the man was carrying anything or not carrying anything like a baby but the clerk did find it odd not only that someone was coming out of these woods at this late or early hour depending on the way you look at it it's 2 30 in the morning but the clerk was surprised that someone was walking out of these woods at all because apparently those woods don't have groomed trails or anything they're pretty wild and overgrown and people usually just don't go walking around in there it is this surveillance video obtained exclusively by gma that is giving the family new hope look at the top left corner a person dressed in white leaving a wooded area at 2 30 a.m the night of baby lisa's disappearance you cannot tell if they are carrying anything but here's why it's so important the family claims baby lisa was abducted they point to key witnesses who saw a suspicious man that night carrying a baby one spotted the man here just after midnight three houses away from the baby's home and the location of the surveillance footage here along the route between the two at 2 15 a.m so the clerk and the surveillance cameras captures this man in a white t-shirt walking out of these woods at around 2 30. but not long before this a dumpster fire was reported to the police at 2 27 a.m and gma has learned that police are investigating a fire that took place at this dumpster at that same time in that same area that dumpster fire could explain not only why burned clothes were shown to lisa's parents during interrogation but also why authorities searched an area landfill as part of the investigation the dumpsters emptied at that landfill the man who reported the fire tells gma flames were shooting several feet into the air and he believes some kind of accelerant was used now here's what's important about this fire first it was located in the parking lot of the same condo complex that megan wright lived in and if you remember megan wright was the girlfriend of this drifter jersey tanko and interestingly enough just the month before this megan's car had been set on fire in the same parking lot and the dumpster fire was not far from where the man would be seen walking out of the woods by the clerk of the convenience store i think i have a picture to show where all of these things happened and i'll put it up for you if i do not long after at roughly 4 10 a.m a man named mike thompson was driving his motorcycle on his way home when he saw something strange he was at an intersection about three miles from the irwin home where baby lisa was taken when he saw a man wearing a t-shirt carrying a baby thompson said quote it's 4 a.m 45 degrees baby don't have a coat or nothing and this guy is walking down the street and i thought it was kind of weird end quote thompson said that he asked the man if he needed anything you know it's cold this baby doesn't have clothes on she's just wearing a diaper you know do you need a ride can i do something for you but the man just shook his head when baby lisa was put to bed that night her mother had dressed her in purple shorts and a purple t-shirt with cats on it but all the eyewitnesses who saw this man carrying a baby claimed that the baby was not dressed and appeared to be just wearing a diaper which brings us back to this dumpster fire because when police arrived to put the fire out and to investigate they found the burnt remains of baby clothes in the dumpster it's also reported that john jersey tanko was really into setting fires megan wright had called him a firebug and he'd previously served five years in a new jersey prison for arson additionally at around 12 15 the morning that baby lisa was taken a neighbor in that neighborhood saw a man walking through one of the yards and the yard that he was seen walking through was the neighbor of mary hurt so remember mary hurt lives in the same neighborhood as his baby lisa did her next-door neighbors hired jersey tanko to do handyman work and to watch their house while they were out of town and this is the yard that this man was seen walking through and this was the same yard that both the jersey and megan were known to cut through often on their way to megan's townhouse and right at the edge of that yard was that dumpster the one that someone had lit a fire in the one that had burnt baby clothes in it so with this information it's looking a lot less like family abduction and more like an actual intruder and in my opinion if there was an actual intruder that intruder would be john jersey tanko allegedly but wait there's more remember that the irwins had three cell phones that they'd found missing from their kitchen counter just after discovering their baby was gone at 11 57 pm the night baby lisa went missing someone made a call from one of those phones a call that lasted roughly 50 seconds so this is allegedly a call that had not gone to voicemail but had been answered because of how long it was and the number that this phone called was the cell phone of john jersey tanko's girlfriend megan wright megan told police that she and jersey had broken up just 10 days prior but she also claimed that she was not the one who'd gotten the call according to megan she lived with seven other people roommates and her cell phone was the only one in the home so they all used it it was kind of like this community cell phone megan believes that when this call came in her phone was in the possession of a man named dane greathouse also known as dj digler another one of her roommates had told megan that on the night of the third dane was getting a lot of calls a lot of communications and he basically commandeered the cell phone to the point where no one else was able to use it that evening his words came in texts i have no connection with megan wright or the missing child he said wright is the woman who identified the man dane as having the phone that received the mystery call a call sent by one of three phones missing from the irwin home october 4th the day baby lisa disappeared police say dane is not a suspect so we're only identifying the man who texted by his first name i used megan's cell phone to have my phone turned on and some rides lined up being texted in a september restraining order a woman told a clay county judge dane said he had quote nothing to lose and he would be satisfied quote once i'm dead and he would kill me in his text to nbc action news he didn't answer our follow-up question specifically about the phone missing from the irwin home and whether he answered an 1157 call but did say the police have contact with me and have so the whole past month police found no connection between deborah bradley and jeremy irwin and megan wright there was also no connection between deborah jeremy and dane or dj digler just there's been a lot of allegations online people assuming that i'm hiding things that i appear nervous on camera which is true but it's just because i'm camera shy um and when you put a camera section just in front of my face i'm gonna look nervous um there's just that i'm there was people saying that i was uh still with jersey when all this happened that i'm still with him today that i've been with him for two years all of that is totally untrue um i met him six months ago we dated for five months obviously didn't end up working out um i absolutely have nothing to do with this i'm just the whole reason i'm involved with this case is because i was trying to be nice and let people use my phone people use it as a contact number for them as a way for their friends to get a hold of them since i didn't have a phone at the time did have someone get your phone um i just set it down on the table i told everybody that i was going downstairs with my boyfriend at the time and some friends just to watch movies and hang out told them if they needed it go ahead feel free and i was downstairs probably from five o'clock that night until midnight when i was looking for my phone again you believe your boyfriend had the phone no no my friend or my friend acquaintance dane from what i'm told is the one that had the phone the majority of the evening so okay so at the time the mystery call came what happened um i'm not sure from what i was told from people that were upstairs at the time said that dane had the phone all night i don't know if it was answered if it went to voicemail if he was on the phone at the time honestly i have no clue i don't know if he answered and talked to somebody and tried to leave or what the deal is but you believe that this person had the phone all night from what i was told yes so but without me actually being upstairs and seeing who had my phone it's hard for me to say and where is this person now i have absolutely no idea he fell off the face of the earth from what i from what i've been told just about six months after baby lisa went missing in february of 2012 dane greathouse was arrested for stabbing 31-year-old greg may now this apparently happened at the vienna square apartments and greg may was found in the parking lot of a nearby amf bowling alley luckily he was able to receive emergency medical attention and he survived so we've got a couple sketchy characters here right we've got megan who lives with seven roommates and they all share her phone we've got uh jersey tanko this drifter who likes to set fires he's also well known for breaking and entering in the area and we've got dane greathouse dj digler and he allegedly was in possession of this phone when the call would have come through now this case would attract its fair share of private investigators but we're only going to talk about two of them in this video and right now i want to talk about ron rugen who was conducting an independent investigation into the whereabouts of lisa and he'd tried to talk to dane about the mysterious phone call that night but dane said he would only talk to rugen for a full tank of gas every day in 100 000 benjamins very specific requests but okay private investigator rugen also revealed that he had gained access to mary wright's phone records and he claimed that he'd discovered that call had never gone through that even though it had been placed from the stolen phone it never reached mary's phone so we have conflicting information did the call go through or did it not according to deborah and jeremy they aren't even sure how a call would have been placed because their cell service had been disrupted due to non-payment of their bill so even if someone had attempted to place a call it probably wouldn't have gone through but we do have confirmation from police that megan wright's number was dialed from one of the stolen cell phones that night which makes me wonder if the person who had the phones had maybe used debra's grandfather's phone the one he'd given her to use until her phone was fixed right so if debra's grandfather had given her a phone that was active possibly on his cell phone plan a call would have gone through but regardless of those details which only the police know for sure we do now have a concrete connection to john jersey tanko but we also have an updated window of when the abduction happened the call to megan was placed just before midnight the web browser on the phone was also used or attempted to be used several times after this and whoever had the phone also attempted to check the phone's voicemail more than once if debra went to sleep around 10 30 and she had had enough drink to the point where she probably wouldn't be getting up to make phone calls or check voicemails once she was asleep that means that someone went into that house before midnight to take those phones and possibly baby lisa as well which adds up with the time that the neighbors saw a man walking around with a baby in the neighborhood as well as the time after 11 pm when mary hurt noticed that her neighbor's sprinklers had been turned off meaning that jersey tanko was in the neighborhood at that time of night and it cannot be a coincidence that the number called from the stolen cell phone was the number of jersey's ex-girlfriend who said she didn't know any of the irwin's but she did know tanko is it possible that jersey tanko who like i said was known for breaking and entering into homes in the kansas city area is it possible he went into the irwin's home and just took the cell phones of course it's possible right but what are the odds that on the same night he does this someone else breaks in and kidnaps a 10 month old baby megan wright also revealed that before she and jersey had broken up she'd told him she wanted to become a mother is it possible that jersey in an effort to win megan back had stolen a baby to give to her thinking it would make her happy and they could be reunited now megan claims to know nothing about what jersey was doing or thinking that night she says she didn't talk to him she didn't see him but even if jersey hadn't had the chance to present the baby to megan it doesn't mean that he didn't take the baby and that's assuming we even believe megan didn't see him or talk to him that night and i'm not believing anything that these people say right now jersey was living in that neighborhood right he'd been around a lot in the previous months the people in the neighborhood knew him by sight they'd talked to him so he'd been around long enough to know his way around the neighborhood right so maybe before he shut the sprinklers off for the evening he started strolling around the neighborhood because he didn't have anything else to do right and he'd come across the irwin home maybe it was a house he'd walked by and seen before maybe he'd seen deborah or jeremy outside with their little daughter so beautiful and so new and pink and chubby such a happy baby her parents said she never cried maybe he thought you know megan would love this little baby maybe he'd been by the irwin house enough to know that when jeremy's work truck wasn't in the driveway jeremy wasn't home maybe that night as he was strolling around jersey saw deborah and samantha sitting outside sipping wine and talking to the teenage neighbor and they were so wrapped up in their conversation that they didn't see him watching but he was maybe he heard enough of their conversation to know how intoxicated deborah bradley was so he went back to his employer's house shut off the sprinklers and returned to the irwin house to watch for deborah to go to bed now remember debra's neighbor samantha had claimed that she'd seen the lights in deborah's house get turned off maybe jersey saw the lights go off as well and that was his cue to go in so jersey's walking around the house right he's casing it out he's sniffing out possible entry points you know he's not a a new criminal he's pretty experienced when it comes to breaking and entering and so he sees this open computer room window so he walks up to the window he's kind of like just trying things out he pushes the screen in but then he realized you know how hard it would be to enter that way so he went to the front door because like i said he's experienced at breaking and entering so he's like whatever i'll just go inside the old fashioned way and just break in through the front door and that's when he found the front door was unlocked jersey walked inside flipped on some lights so he wouldn't be stumbling around in the dark and risk waking someone up and he began peeking into the rooms to find the one baby lisa was sleeping in it's possible that his presence in the house woke up one of the boys who was sleeping in debra's bed maybe when jersey picked up baby lisa out of her crib she woke up and started to cry and fuss a little bit but since deborah had drank so much that evening she didn't hear it but one of the boys did you know sometimes you get woken up out of a dead sleep in the middle of the night and you don't know why well this small noise of baby lisa fussing a little bit it could have been just enough to pull the boy from sleep but he wouldn't remember exactly what it was that had woken him and then jersey just walked right back out the unlocked front door leaving the lights on and then he walked down the street where he was spotted by this man leaving for work and then he went back to his employer's house where he used the backyard as a shortcut to head up to megan's town house at some point he apparently used one of the cell phones that he'd just taken from the house to call megan and let her know the good news but maybe the call didn't go through because they weren't activated or maybe he used a phone that did work but megan didn't answer because dane greathouse had the phone which is why he was going to find her and tell her in person can't really speculate on what happened next but let's say jersey did find megan and he presented baby lisa to her and she was like get the hell out of here man you're crazy you can't just give me a stolen baby bring her back where she came from so a dejected jersey with baby lisa in his arms walks away realizing that his plan has failed but now he's upset you know and remember megan's car had been set on fire in september the month before this had jersey been upset then as well megan said they'd broken up ten days before october third that would put it right around the time where her car was set on fire so maybe when megan broke up with him jersey got mad and he uh he set her car on fire was jersey the kind of guy who got an impulse to destroy things when he was grappling with emotions that he was not mentally mature or capable enough to handle did he think that setting a fire in the dumpster at the townhouse would make him feel better or show megan that he was pissed and maybe as he stood there watching the fire that he'd built feeling the warmth from its flames maybe he looked down at this baby he was holding and he was like what am i going to do with this baby well for starters it would probably be a good idea to get her clothes off and get rid of them so if i'm seen with her no one will know that it's lisa and they can't identify her maybe at that point he removed her clothing leaving her in only her diaper and he threw the clothes into the fire before continuing to walk but with nowhere to go right he couldn't very well go back to his employer's house they lived in the same neighborhood as the house he'd just taken this baby from megan had made it very clear that he wasn't welcome with her maybe jersey started to walk aimlessly at this point trying to figure out what to do and that's when he was seen by mike on his motorcycle after this though it's anyone's guess where he might have gone and what happened to baby lisa as i said this is just a theory i'm not saying this is what happened but i'm saying that based on the evidence and the eyewitnesses is possible that something like this happened the fact that someone tried to check the voicemail on the phone is puzzling but it could have been jersey himself attempting to see if there had been any calls from family members asking about lisa so basically he would be trying to figure out if anyone had noticed baby lisa was missing yet which would have then prompted her parents to call someone for help maybe they'd notified family and maybe jersey wanted to see if any family members were calling back or leaving messages of support or offering help and then he would know that baby lisa had already been reported missing he could have been trying to see if it was safe to return baby lisa to her crib or if he would be walking up with a kidnapped baby in his arms and find a house surrounded by police now five months after lisa went missing john jersey tanko was arrested and charged with vehicle tampering but here's the oddest thing although police questioned jersey in relation to baby lisa's disappearance they claimed he was very cooperative and that he's never been considered a suspect in her case and this just blows my mind apparently um he had an alibi and i'm not sure what that alibi could have been that could be proven because this man didn't have a cell phone so you wouldn't be able to prove with gps coordinates that he was where he said he was and we know that friends lie for friends to give them an alibi so i'm not sure that him having an alibi that couldn't definitely be verified was enough but maybe they had more maybe they weren't sure of the timeline that they were working in also apparently the police showed the eyewitnesses pictures of jersey tanko and they asked you know is this the same man that you've seen carrying a baby the night that baby lisa went missing and out of the four of them only one witness confirmed that john jersey tanko was the same man he saw walking with a baby and i believe that the man who confirmed this was the man on his motorcycle mike thomas which i feel like his account should be taken more seriously than the others because a lot of the others saw this man walking from a distance but according to mike he was kind of up close and personal with him and he would have gotten a better look at him and as i was pulling up to the 48th street i seen a man walking carrying something and when i got closer i seen it with a baby and i stopped about 30 40 foot from him he was going down randolph and i stopped and he turned around looked at me and i looked at him and i just went on but i was thinking what an idiot out there with a baby with no blanket no coat and diapers and a t-shirt as cold as it was did they seem shocked by that that they are the ones who gave you a photograph of this man so in other words they were aware of this individual the cops yeah no they didn't they wasn't shocked at all they just thank you so it just blows my mind that with all of this evidence and all of these coincidences that police kind of were like well he was cooperative and he says he didn't do it so he's not a suspect on october 12th private investigator bill stanton arrived in kansas city also known as wild bill stanton was a licensed private investigator in the state of new york but not in missouri so he let the press and everybody know that he was working on this case strictly as a consultant he also said that deborah and jeremy had not hired him but he would not give the name of the person who did claiming only that he'd been sent there by a wealthy benefactor from out of the state it's important that we use the media to help find lisa we know she's out there and we know where the obvious focus is we want to extend that focus we are here to cooperate with anyone and everyone that will help us find the guilty party and return visa home safely i know everybody's watching this family and watching this house and that's fair keep one eye on them but also keep the other eye out on the streets in every place because there is a bad guy out there or bad people with this child and we want to get this child home safe and sound and that's the ultimate goal for everyone so bill says he's going to follow the evidence no matter where it takes them he says he's not there to exonerate the parents but he also requested that those who are interested in the case and worried about baby lisa should also explore all possibilities and not just automatically assume that the parents had something to do with her disappearance now before this debra and jeremy had been attempting to scrape to gather some money so that they could offer a reward for baby lisa being found and on october 14th bill stanton announced that this same wealthy benefactor who'd sent him there was also offering a 100 000 reward for the safe return of baby lisa irwin or at least for information that will lead to the capture of her abductor and while all of this is going on the kansas city police are still searching for any sign of baby lisa they brought out helicopters all-terrain vehicles they did door-to-door interviews they did follow everybody's lead including this vision of a psychic who'd claimed that she believed lisa had died accidentally at home and that her body had been placed at the site of a closed casino so they actually did go and search the casino at first it was you know a bunch of volunteers and then a couple of days later the police went and they searched the casino and before all of this time and effort all the hundreds of police officers and the thousands of volunteers in these searches for baby lisa they found nothing and i mean nothing it was literally as if she'd disappeared without a trace now deborah and jeremy at this point already had local council in the form of a kansas city lawyer named cindy short but on october 18th debra and jeremy hired or retained a lawyer and this is a man that the new york post claimed was probably the most hated lawyer in new york joe takopina is a well-known and high-profile criminal defense attorney who's defended the likes of michael jackson on his molestation charges he's also defended jordan vanderslut in relation to the disappearance of natalie holloway his clients range from meek mills jay-z alex rodriguez sean hannity from fox news rap artists politicians police officers athletes journalists joe tacopina has defended them all and he's been very successful with this joe takapina is a criminal defense attorney joe takapina joe tacopena joining me now joe takapina he's the attorney for alex rodriguez ace criminal defense lawyer you're someone who virtually never loses a case i want to bring joe takapina into this conversation my guess my very very dear friend and one of the great trial lawyers in america who wins cases that nobody else could win in one corner high-profile high-powered new york defense attorney joe takapina she doesn't come across as a killer when you look at her she's diminutive she's sweet looking you hired joe tacupina it's over but you know i mean michael lynn who's i've followed his advice for 40 years he said let's get him oh man no that's it's over i guess he's been defined as michael's personal assistant they didn't get a big time new york criminal defense attorney for the fun of it i i've tried a lot of cases some high profile cases my formula has been based on passion for what i do and loving what i do and working hard and really hard while john edwards does not want any popularity contest for sure this prosecution and these charges they're clearly expanding um the scope of the definition of campaign contributions it was a combination of i love debate speaking up um to make sure that the system of justice is fair that the system does not get oppressive in this case the guesses and assumptions have been unbelievable so it was obviously jarring to a lot of people when this man was hired by the parents of a missing baby and many people wondered who was paying him right because the parents didn't have that kind of money and he was not cheap i tend to believe it was this same wealthy benefactor that had sent a wild bill to missouri right bill the private investigator was from new york joe tacopina was from new york this wealthy benefactor was from out of state probably also from new york i just wish i knew this person was and what was their end game well joe takapina's first order of business was to reduce the amount of media appearances that deborah and jeremy were doing and they'd already run the gamba like i said they did a lot of media appearances they did dr phil the today show good morning america america's most wanted with john walsh and i this was kind of in the future i don't think they met with john walsh until the following december but john was kind of harsh with lisa's parents and he was like you guys should be cooperating with the police and doing everything you can right you should be getting as much national exposure as you can you can't let anyone the police or the public forget lisa's name or face on october 19th due to deborah's changing story police were able to get a warrant for the irwin home and yard now the original search that they'd done initially in the days following lisa's disappearance it had focused mainly on baby lisa's room and then possible points of entry and the police made it sound as if that initial search had been restricted by the family of baby lisa because the warrant for the new search claimed quote the extent of the search had been limited in nature with consent a more extensive and intrusive search needs to be completed at the property where the baby was last accounted end quote like i said law enforcement had already been through the house before they'd removed some things they lifted some prints etc etc but this time they were doing it without the consent of deborah and jeremy and they brought in a full forensics team including a cadaver dog and this dog who was obviously trained to pick up the scent of human decomposition signaled in an area of the master bedroom next to deborah and jeremy's bed in addition to this the police found a garden area in the backyard with portions of dirt that appeared to have been recently disturbed or turned over the search warrant document also revealed a strange comment made by baby lisa's mother deborah when asked if she'd already searched the backyard deborah replied that she hadn't because she was afraid of what she might find there and once again the media and the public went crazy with this statement i i don't find it that odd i guess you know jeremy was outside with a flashlight looking debra didn't need to do it as well and of course when you're this stressed out and scared and you think something's happened to your kid especially after you know you can't find her and you've already called the police yeah you're probably gonna be afraid to even look around because what if baby lisa had gotten out of the house and she'd ended up outside and you know something happened to her out there you don't want to walk into the yard and see that the affidavit stated that items removed from the house included a multi-colored comforter purple shorts a disney character shirt a glow worm toy a car themed blanket rolls of tape and a tape dispenser so remember that when baby lisa had been put to bed on the night she went missing she was wearing purple shorts and a purple shirt with cartoon cats on it is this the disney shirt and the purple shorts that they took in for the search warrant because if they are the very same clothes then we do have another issue here because why was baby lisa not wearing her clothes when she was taken why would they still be at the house unless when she was taken by maybe john jersey tanko he'd removed her clothes before they even left and left them at the house and on the subject of the cadaver dog picking up on the scent of human decomposition local lawyer cindy short who was representing jeremy irwin and his wife told good morning america quote my understanding is there are cold cases where dogs have hit on the scent of decomposition that have been in the home for as long as 28 years this is an old home 63 years old there could be a lot of explanations for that end quote we learned friday that cadaver dogs had a positive hit at the foot of their bed but last night the rug was still there intact i thought the dog alerted on one side or the other of the bed but as you notice as you walk around all the carpeting is intact that is it was not cut out to preserve whatever it was that the dog allegedly hit on and i personally find that surprising debra and jeremy's other lawyer from new york joe tacupina claimed that he found the report meaningless since these dogs are trained to detect decomposing flesh and even if baby lisa had died in that house decomposition could not have possibly happened so quickly and that's kind of where i'm at right even if we suspect deborah bradley of doing something to her daughter purposely or accidentally whatever even if we can't trust the time that she last saw baby lisa alive we know that baby lisa's father jeremy saw her before he left for work that evening at around 5 30 and police were in that house by 4 10 the next morning there was no body in the bedroom when the police were there and a body doesn't start to decompose until 24 to 72 hours after death so if the dog did smell something it's hard to believe that it was the scent of baby lisa's decomposing body because she wouldn't have been in that house long and i mean as much as i respect the work that cadaver dogs do we are also understanding that they make mistakes sometimes of course on october 23rd in response to the police telling the public that jeremy and debra were not being cooperative joe tacopina put out a press release that said quote in an effort to bring their little girl lisa renee home after being kidnapped on october 4th 2011 debbie and jeremy have given law enforcement officers in kansas city their complete cooperation in all matters since the beginning of the investigation debbie and jeremy want one thing the safe return of their little girl jeremy irwin and debra bradley had no role in the disappearance of their daughter they are praying for her safe return they need the public to look for their little girl and the public to report anything they think might help bring lisa renee home on october 4th 2011 at around 4 am jeremy and debbie discovered that their 10 month old daughter lisa renee was missing from her crib within minutes of this discovery jeremy called the police from that moment forward they have had one goal which is to do whatever they can do to help the police find their daughter to that end lisa's parents have signed consent forms for searches of their home shed cars work van and computer they have given police full and unfettered access to their property the latest release for a search of their home was signed on monday october 17 2011. in addition lisa's parents gave permission to the police to issue an amber alert they agreed to have their little sons taken for interviews in a place that is specially trained for interviewing children they have allowed the police to collect hair samples from their heads they have given ink and graphite elimination prints when requested they've consented to bugle swaps for themselves and their kids they've allowed police to collect elimination smell swabs to use with the dogs who are specially trained for searches they've given police releases for lisa's pediatricians records lisa's uncle has allowed searches of his home and property where the family is currently living lisa's uncle has consented to smell swaps for the dogs lisa's parents have consented to interviews at the police station on october 4th 6th 8th 9th 11th and 13th they met with detectives in their home and reviewed mugshots together in a part they have spent approximately 40 hours answering police questions they have taken all calls from detectives and answered the same questions again and again in the initial hours of the investigation they tolerated accusations volunteered to take polygraph exams continue to work with detectives even after the interviewers turned to pointed accusations lisa's parents resisted the idea of working with lawyers because as innocent parents they didn't believe that they needed any legal help family and friends were able to convince them otherwise the police however have starved these parents by withholding information about the investigation the police have isolated the parents and repeatedly told the press that they're not cooperating lisa's parents are cooperating with the investigation and will continue to offer their help in the search for their beautiful little girl end quote so i guess the question is whether or not jeremy and deborah were cooperative if all that joe takapina claimed is true and the police department never has disputed those claims it certainly seems to me as if they were cooperating at least in the beginning i think it's probably an innocent parent's worst nightmare to have a child go missing and then to go to the police for help only to find that you are at the top of their suspect list and this isn't me saying that the police should not consider the parents of a missing child suspects but i can also put myself in the shoes of the parents and understand how after several interviews several accusations and several attempts to pressure or bully me into confessing to something that i didn't do i might feel less than warm towards the police i might not want to cooperate as much now i saw a documentary about this case and in it jeremy irwin also mentions feeling as if the police had tunnel vision on deborah bradley during the early days of the investigation and he himself was never considered a suspect since his alibi had checked out fairly quickly but he did feel that they weren't really listening to him when he mentioned the computer room windows open it was as if he'd told them about that window and they'd assumed that he was trying to suggest that he knew this was the point of entry for the intruder and they'd already figured out that it couldn't have been the point of entry so they were like why do you keep trying to push us towards this window you know it wasn't the window but jeremy claims all he did was mention the window to the 911 operator and then again to the police when they got there and it wasn't him trying to set a narrative he just noticed that the window screen was pushed in and it wasn't normally like that and he'd also mentioned that the front door was unlocked during the series of media interviews that they were doing deborah bradley mentioned that one or both of their sons may have heard something in the night that their sister was taken and the police had already talked to the boys using a professional who was trained to work with children but another interview had been scheduled with them for friday october 28th but the night before that joe takapina called the interviews off saying that he'd still allow the police to take dna swabs from the kids and he'd call the police the next week to reschedule but at this point he felt everyone needed a little break on november 6th debra's father david nets spoke out about how hard the public scrutiny of his daughter had been for their family saying quote my god debbie and jeremy can't even relax and smoke on the back porch without seeing hidden cameras pop out of the brush it's horrible end quote so at this time deborah jeremy and their two sons were living with debra's brother since the police still had control of their home and they would have control of the home until the family moved back in on november 15th and also at this time especially in online forums people were comparing debra to other infamous mothers like casey anthony and susan smith david nutz claimed that his daughter would never hurt baby lisa on purpose and if the baby had been hurt accidentally she would never have tried to cover it up even hazel bradley debra's mother-in-law from her first marriage she didn't believe debra was capable of doing this saying quote she's not smart enough not that she's dumb but she couldn't cover up something like this so well end quote and remember hazel is not the biggest fan of deborah's she had to kick her out of her house twice you know so i'm sure they're not super close but she still didn't believe that the deborah bradley would be able to do this now also remember that deborah's mother had family in delaware and in delaware deborah had an uncle johnny who told the wichita eagle that he'd called his niece deborah twice and the second time he had outright asked her to just confess to this at which point she'd hung up on him uncle johnny said that their family was dysfunctional and that the tragedy of alcoholism had woven its way through their family causing drama and feuds for years and he didn't believe that with this kind of family history of alcoholism that deborah should be drinking at all and he said quote i don't think she'd do something on purpose but i can see her hiding something after that end quote he went on to say quote look i hope they find a baby lisa with a clean diaper and a full tummy but with my family it'll probably end worse end quote several years after baby lisa's disappearance a woman named shirley faff opened up to the huffington post in an article titled deborah bradley lisa irwin's mom has a dark side says former best friend according to this article shirley met debra when they were both living with their husbands who were in the military stationed at fort bragg in north carolina and this was in 2002. they lived across the street from each other their husbands worked together their kids played together so shirley and debra quickly became friends now shirley didn't get specific about what had happened between the two of them that caused a falling out but she did say quote she was my friend at one time and i loved being around her but when i saw the other side of her and get to know the true debbie i couldn't even believe i had trusted her with anything end quote shirley also went on to say that she was not shocked debra's story had changed like the wind since that was typical for deborah apparently shirley was completely shocked that there was people out there vouching for deborah and she said quote i was friends with debbie for some time then the friend i once grew fond of became a problem i had to deal with on a daily basis end quote when shirley's husband got transferred from north carolina to europe she was relieved and she considered it a fresh start away from all the drama that deborah had created and brought to her life so i don't know what's going on with deborah and shirley to me it sounds a little bit more personal you know i've had friends and acquaintances in my life who i've wronged right i'm not perfect in my 20s i was a lot more stubborn reckless more casual with people's feelings and i've grown up since then but i can't even imagine what some of those people who i knew and dealt with then would have to say about me now so this seems more of a personal thing like these two women did not get along or they did get along and then shirley felt betrayed and and you know she's kind of holding on to that it doesn't really give us much evidence or insight into deborah's actual personality especially because shirley won't say what happened so we can't really judge whether it's something that makes deborah a bad person or just something that makes deborah a bad person too surely so since the abduction or the disappearance the community had been holding a nightly prayer vigil outside the irwin home but jeremy and deborah asked the group who called themselves lisa's angels to kind of move the vigil elsewhere this happened on december 1st so this vigil's been going on you know for quite some time every night outside of the irwin home and deborah and jeremy felt that it was a little disruptive to their everyday life as well as to their neighbors lives and it was also scaring their sons and stressing the kids out the group holding the vigil said that although they understood they were hurt and felt that lisa's parents didn't want them there and although i'm sure their intentions were completely noble and good what is this entitlement like you are outside someone's house where they are living now every single night you know with candles and praying and singing and you've got two little kids in there who don't even understand what what happened with their baby sister yet they don't understand what's going on and and you've got this going on every night so there's no sense of normalcy there with debbie and jeremy trying to you know kind of move on and and do what's best for their two remaining children they can't really move on they can't even have a moment where they forget that their daughter's missing because these people are outside their house every night and it's nice and i'm sure for a long time it was appreciated and there's footage of jeremy and deborah joining in on the vigil you know sometimes but it's not your house it's not your daughter the family doesn't want you there and i get that you were offended by that but you know you're not entitled to camp outside of their house and and have a prayer vigil every night if they don't want you to do it and it doesn't make them bad it just means that they don't want to constantly be reminded of the worst tragedy that ever happened to them so after this baby lisa's case went cold for quite some time until two years later in 2013 a small blonde blonde-haired blue-eyed girl was found during a drug raid in a romani camp in greece the man and the woman who were claiming to be this girl's parents and who had named her maria claimed she'd been legally adopted from bulgaria but it did end up making national news because of the resemblance between lisa and maria and i also think because there's a little bit of prejudice happening like i'm going to play a clip for you a news clip where these two women anchors are discussing um you know baby maria and baby lisa and i want to apologize in advance because this happened you know several years ago and at this time they were still referring to the romani people as gypsies so you'll see that in the news clip but it was the best news clip i could find that kind of explained the situation the way that they talk about the romani people in a lot of these news clips i found which is why i didn't use those news clips it was kind of bad i think that people just couldn't wrap their heads around how this little blonde hair blue eyed girl was with these romani people who you know have darker hair and darker skin and they couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that this girl could be with these people in you know a legal or legitimate way like she had to have been taken she had to have been kidnapped news from overnight could the young mystery girl found in greece actually be from the united states well authorities are trying to identify the girl known as maria i mean as you look at this little face here and in the eyes it's haunting to to know that maybe she did not come from where everyone thought her parents say that she was adopted illegally from bulgaria but one link investigators are looking into is that she could be an american child who disappeared about two years ago kyra phillips is joining us now with more on that now she's called maria but they think that she could be lisa irwin remind us of that case yeah and can i tell you when you brought it when you look at that little face and she looks dirty in her little braids and just like oh my god as a mom what do we know as far as the story i already said that the parents say she was adopted legally from bulgaria now do authorities suspect that the parents are travelers so to speak yeah exactly it's that gypsy culture and you know when we think of the gypsy culture you think of okay big hoop earrings and lots of you know fancy dresses right that's how we we see it but actually there is a huge community of gypsies in the united states about a million gypsies here in the u.s and you know they operate by their own rules i mean they have their own language their own court system their own laws their home school in the end however the ages did not match up maria was four years old and baby lisa would have been only three additionally authorities did end up locating maria's birth mother greek police interpol and charity organizations have confirmed the parents of a mysterious blonde girl known as maria who was found during a roma drug raid bulgarian police now confirmed to nbc that dna of a couple in that country matches the four-year-old girls prosecutors in bulgaria are investigating the 38-year-old mother for allegedly selling her child the parents are also roma this is her mother sasha rusev is her name she said she gave birth to a baby girl in greece four years ago while she was working as an olive picker the 35 year old bulgarian woman says she gave the child away because she was too poor to care for her but now the question is how the transfer of the little girl took place it seems that there was a consensual transfer it's just a question now i suppose of whether there was money involved the transfer of a child from one family to another let alone one country to another of course is not a legal thing so clearly there were rules and some laws that were infringed the greek couple who insisted maria was given to them to care for were arrested on charges of abducting a minor and forging official documents upon the child's discovery so let's discuss this from all angles is it possible that debra bradley took the life of her own daughter and then covered it up honestly and personally i don't believe so in my humble opinion john jersey tanko seems like a much more plausible suspect and if there's one thing that surprises me about this case more than anything else it's the fact that the police have claimed he's never even been a suspect and they don't believe he was involved so they either know so much more than anybody else knows which i'm sure they do but like very specific things that would completely eliminate him or the majority of the information that's been released to the public is incorrect so it has to be one of those two things because in my opinion i don't see how it could be anybody else now is there a chance that deborah bradley accidentally hurt her daughter she had had a lot to drink right we know that she did she bought a box of wine i think there's like three or four bottles in a box of wine and in these many media interviews that deborah did she couldn't remember exactly how much she'd had to drink but she knew that it was you know i think she said more than five less than ten but like she said enough to be drunk and to not really remember a lot about that evening so she didn't remember if she checked on lisa beforehand she didn't remember if she locked the door behind her she didn't remember these things and so it's possible that maybe baby lisa woke up in the middle of the night and was crying maybe she was crying so much and so loud that it woke debra up and debra stumbled in picked the baby up stumbled back into her bed and fell asleep with the baby in her bed and we've all done this a million times you know i probably wouldn't do it if i had a last drink that evening but if i had had a lot to drink that evening a baby crying probably wouldn't have woken me up but i i wouldn't have done it if i'd had a lot to drink that evening but i've had three children they were all babies once and sometimes it's easier to just bring the baby in bed with you so that you can both get some sleep rather than continuing to go in every five minutes every time they wake up and maybe while they were sleeping debra rolled over onto baby lisa and because she'd had so much to drink she didn't feel or hear baby lisa crying or struggling and you know she suffocated her this is possible and if that happened do i think she would have tried to cover it up well i don't know her so i don't know if that's the type of person that she is but there are people out there like that right that even if the child's killed accidentally they'll still cover it up or try to hide it because it's just going to be your word it's just going to be your word saying that you did this accidentally and if she was very intoxicated then they might actually you know press more charges or bring more charges up against her so this isn't going to be a thing where she's just like oops i accidentally rolled over on my baby at night when i was drunk and i smothered her but i'm going to go home now it wouldn't be one of those things there would be a little bit more um involved with it and she has her other son to worry about right um and she has you know jeremy and jeremy's son and this is her family and she doesn't want to run the risk of losing their children because of a mistake she made now jeremy had gotten full custody of his son from the boy's mother and it's very likely that if this had happened cps would have been in that home they would have removed the other kids put them in foster care so yeah it's possible to avoid the backlash to avoid any further trauma to your family maybe she would have covered it up but i also don't think she would have been really lucid enough to do that because when did she wake up you know when would she have woken up out of a drunken stupor to notice that this had happened unless we're now suggesting that jeremy was involved in the cover-up and looking at them both and listening to them cry and talk about their daughter i don't feel that either of them were involved in anything happening to that baby but i am going to hand it off to you what do you guys think now the two camps i was talking about earlier the two beliefs about this case are the people who believe without a shadow of a doubt that deborah bradley was responsible and she's lying and she's a horrible person because she drinks when she's with her kids she was very harshly judged on many of these shows and i have to give her a lot of credit actually because she sat there and tolerated these questions especially from someone like megan kelly who i mean whatever you believe or whatever networks you watch she's she's a judgy [ __ ] sometimes okay but she had to tolerate these questions from reporter after reporter after reporter like grilling her on how much she had to drink and does she often drink and is she on drugs and stuff like this i would have lost it i would have snapped so i have to give her credit for keeping the composure that she did keep and allowing herself to be run through this gambit but looking at them listening to them and i watched a ton of interviews like i said these people did a lot of media spots i just don't feel that they're being dishonest i feel that they truly crushed truly crushed i don't have that gut instinct like i do with casey anthony with chris watts with t stock dr t stock i don't have the same gut instinct where i'm like these people are lying something's going on like my spidey senses aren't tingling my nose isn't like twitching at the smell of something suspicious so that's just me though but what do you guys think based on what we know based on the video based on any further research or information you've picked up from this case in your own time what do you think and i want to you know take a poll and kind of see what people think because everybody looks at the same information and can come back with completely different perception of it so i'm definitely interested to talk with you guys in the comment section about this case now don't forget to check my description box in there you'll find my links to social media twitter and instagram i'm even on tic tac now so i might put my link to tic tac in there even though i just do it for fun and i don't know what i'm doing and i just play around but i like being on tick tock now it's a big time waste but i love it so i'll put those links in there also put my link to our podcast crime weekly that i co-host with retired police detective derek levasser we put new episodes out every friday as always don't forget to like the video if you liked it share it if you think it's worth sharing don't forget to subscribe if you haven't subscribed already i should say that at the beginning of the video sometimes because i feel like not enough people make it this far and then they don't subscribe but yeah subscribe if you're not already make sure you still are subscribed if you were because youtube unsubscribes people for my channel all the time but make sure you're still subscribed that would be great leave me a comment let me know what you think and i will see you very soon stay kind stay beautiful [Music] [Music] [Music] you don't know how deep it goes until it's getting you slowly so you got to let it go i got blood blood on the streams

Channel: Stephanie Harlowe

Views: 589,380

Rating: 4.8904791 out of 5

Keywords: Lisa Irwin, Baby Lisa, Baby LIsa Irwin, Deborah Bradley, Jeremy Irwin, true crime, unsolved mystery, unsolved disappearance, john jersey tanko, megan wright, stephanie harlowe

Id: dd-w7rkUdsg

Length: 100min 13sec (6013 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/lilB1rdee]

9 times out of 10, whenever I hear about a child disappearing from the home in the middle of the night, I’m looking at the parents sideways until proven innocent. But this is one of the few where I think the parents may actually be innocent.

[u/[deleted]]

This case breaks my heart.