The Megyn Kelly Show - Baby Goes Missing, Mother Questioned - Part 1 of Megyn Kelly Investigates： Baby Lisa's Disappearance ｜ Ep. 1022

00:00:00.320 I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and our special series, Megyn Kelly Investigates.

00:00:06.500 This is on the disappearance of baby Lisa.

00:00:09.940 Over the next five days, we will bring you deep into a story that captivated and horrified America, including yours truly.

00:00:18.120 It has stuck with me since I first covered it at Fox News.

00:00:22.680 Thirteen years later, it is a case that has never been solved.

00:00:26.360 It is about the mystery of baby Lisa Irwin, a beautiful, healthy baby girl who vanished in the middle of the night, never to be found, right out of her crib.

00:00:39.140 I want to start with why we're bringing you this, all right?

00:00:41.400 As you're going to see throughout this episode and the four that come after it, I covered my story this self, as I mentioned, as it happened back in 2011 and then in the many years thereafter.

00:00:50.220 I remember at the time I first got sent to Kansas City, Missouri, I had my own baby girl in a crib at home and just couldn't fathom what it would be like to go in to check on her in the middle of the night or go get her in the morning and see an empty crib.

00:01:07.860 Speaking to her parents at the time was a before and after moment for me.

00:01:14.200 It was shocking for the reasons that you will hear in this series.

00:01:19.240 And the case has never been solved.

00:01:21.960 This is not a series where at the end we're going to say this person was arrested, but you are going to have some theories.

00:01:28.380 So a couple of years ago, I began reporting this story anew.

00:01:33.400 I decided since we launched the Megyn Kelly show to take this on with my own resources and to devote countless hours to figuring out what happened to this baby with the help of some producers and very talented investigators.

00:01:48.280 The investigative team you will know from this show, Bill Stanton, former NYPD, and Phil Houston, former CIA, known as the human lie detector, that will be put to the test, that moniker, in later episodes of this series.

00:02:01.780 But I started interviewing all the key players again, and I got to some critical new ones, some of whom have never before been interviewed by anybody other than law enforcement in connection with this case.

00:02:14.900 But we tried and may have gotten to the truth of what happened here.

00:02:20.540 We uncovered quite a bit.

00:02:23.080 See for yourselves.

00:02:24.460 Here's episode one.

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00:03:17.300 We begin on North Lister Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri, a family neighborhood, quiet, working class, and on October 4th, 2011, about to become the center of the biggest crime story in America.

00:03:30.700 This one may be better than you, please, bring your home.

00:03:36.220 Ten-month-old baby Lisa Irwin disappeared in the middle of the night.

00:03:40.360 Father Jeremy came home from his night shift at 3.45 a.m. and found the lights were on.

00:03:45.720 A window was open, the screen pushed in, the front door unlocked, and his baby girl was not in her crib.

00:03:53.020 Must be a reasonable explanation, he thought.

00:03:55.300 His first instinct? Don't panic.

00:03:57.440 That's the last thing you expect, is that one of your kids is going to be missing.

00:04:02.140 So initially, when she's not in the crib, it's like, okay, well, she's in bed with Debra, she's in bed with one of the brothers, she's maybe fallen out of bed, and she's asleep under the crib.

00:04:14.000 He woke up the baby's mother, his partner, Debra Bradley, out of a sound sleep.

00:04:18.700 She appeared to have no idea why baby Lisa was not in her crib.

00:04:22.860 Jeremy ran next door to see if somehow the neighbor had the baby.

00:04:26.200 Then he called 911.

00:04:33.040 Jeremy and Debra immediately went public, begging for help.

00:04:36.900 No questions asked, just drop her off with somebody at a hospital, a church, the fire department, the police station, anywhere.

00:04:44.400 Just please bring her home. 0.88

00:04:46.600 How do you think about it today?

00:04:50.160 Jeremy Irwin.

00:04:51.140 It's still pretty similar to the way it has been.

00:04:55.520 It's a lot of frustration and some anger and mostly just feeling like you're missing a huge, giant chunk of your life.

00:05:07.220 Debra Bradley was just 25 then.

00:05:09.700 She's 38 now.

00:05:10.800 Your case is so unique because it became a huge national news story.

00:05:16.960 And you now have old interviews of yourself and press conferences.

00:05:21.900 You know, when you look back on that, what do you think?

00:05:26.360 I think I can't believe I survived.

00:05:28.420 And though so much time has passed, what happened to Lisa that night remains a mystery.

00:05:43.760 News of Lisa's disappearance traveled fast.

00:05:46.940 Search crews combed the neighborhood.

00:05:48.360 Police dogs were deployed.

00:05:50.760 And the media descended on North Lister Avenue.

00:05:53.140 Showing up here to the house with metal detectors, homing the ground, going through the yard.

00:05:57.220 A classic crescent-shaped suburban street just north of the Missouri River.

00:06:02.920 Debra's aunt, Cindy Lorette, still chokes up remembering that terrible day back in 2011. 0.99

00:06:08.300 It was crazy.

00:06:09.520 Unlike anything I've ever seen before or I've seen thus.

00:06:14.140 I mean, every which way you look, there was police officers, there was cars, there was people.

00:06:21.400 I remember the CNN band.

00:06:23.320 I remember HLN band.

00:06:25.100 I mean, you couldn't get down the streets.

00:06:26.800 There was literally reporters climbing in trees, trying to get snapshots of us.

00:06:31.720 What were your first impressions of the story and the scene?

00:06:34.260 Jim Spellman was there from the start, reporting the story for CNN and its sister channel, Headline News.

00:06:39.680 This was a neighborhood not unlike where I grew up,

00:06:42.140 a kind of a working class-ish neighborhood, well-kept homes,

00:06:45.940 but not the kind of families that would be prepared to deal with the onslaught of media, police, lawyers,

00:06:51.940 and everything else that would be involved in something like this.

00:06:55.760 It's also a neighborhood that was shocked because, you know, this was a neighborhood full of kids and families.

00:07:00.460 And one of their own was dealing with, I think, every parent's nightmare.

00:07:04.540 In those critical early hours and days, Kansas City police, the FBI, the ATF,

00:07:10.500 and a group of local volunteers searched the area.

00:07:14.100 They did not find Lisa or any hard evidence.

00:07:17.780 Within a week, a timeline of the day began to emerge.

00:07:21.680 2.30 p.m.

00:07:23.140 Debra's dad comes by with her brother, Philip Nutz.

00:07:26.260 4.45 p.m.

00:07:28.020 Debra and Philip go buy baby formula and boxed wine.

00:07:31.640 They're seen on store security video.

00:07:35.120 Around 5 o'clock p.m., next-door neighbor Samantha Brando drops by.

00:07:40.100 5.15 p.m.

00:07:41.540 Jeremy, an electrician, gets a call from his boss and soon leaves to work at a Starbucks,

00:07:47.300 unaware of the chaos and tragedy about to unfold just hours later.

00:07:52.100 6 p.m.

00:07:53.360 Debra makes dinner for Samantha, Sam's daughter, as well as Lisa and her two half-brothers,

00:07:58.240 five-year-old Michael and seven-year-old Blake.

00:08:01.640 6.30 p.m., Debra puts Lisa to bed.

00:08:05.280 By 7 p.m., Samantha's daughter and Debra's boys are inside playing.

00:08:09.800 Baby Lisa is supposed to be in her crib asleep.

00:08:12.880 Both moms sit on the front steps smoking, talking, and drinking.

00:08:16.720 Between 8 and 10 p.m., Shane Beagley, a 33-year-old landscaper who was the grandson of a neighbor,

00:08:23.700 stops by the stoop for a visit.

00:08:25.440 Sometime around 10.30 to 11 p.m., Debra said, she checked on baby Lisa,

00:08:30.980 then went down the hall and got in bed with the two boys.

00:08:34.900 Before bed, Debra leaves three cell phones on the kitchen counter,

00:08:39.140 two with restricted use because of non-payment.

00:08:41.640 It is believed only one worked normally.

00:08:45.540 They all end up missing.

00:08:47.780 10.30 p.m., Samantha Brando is back home.

00:08:51.540 She reportedly later said that she noticed the lights were turned off at Debra and Jeremy's house.

00:08:56.940 Some leads quickly emerged with possible sightings of a kidnapper.

00:09:02.080 The next morning, 7-year-old Blake tells police he heard noises during the night.

00:09:07.420 Also the next morning, the Parscals, who lived around the corner, told police what they had seen. 0.95

00:09:13.220 Husband Onesto was leaving for his overnight shift, and wife Lisa was awake and inside.

00:09:19.320 Once again, reporter Jim Spellman.

00:09:21.340 He thinks this is weird enough that he phones her in the house from the car and says,

00:09:26.520 hey, come and take a look at this.

00:09:28.180 And she sees this man walking up the street, holding a baby, not wearing clothes.

00:09:36.280 And having been in the window where she could see this happening,

00:09:40.560 and having been standing where his car was parked,

00:09:44.240 it would not be a problem to view this, even though it's past midnight.

00:09:47.500 There were plenty of streetlights.

00:09:48.860 So show me exactly what you did.

00:09:50.380 You looked out this window, tell me where your husband was, and tell me what you saw.

00:09:54.740 Nobody's mind immediately goes to, oh, somebody's kidnapping this baby.

00:09:59.320 That's what she told me.

00:10:00.240 She said, my mind did not immediately think kidnapping.

00:10:02.780 But the first thing in the morning when she saw this commotion going on

00:10:05.880 was she told the police about this.

00:10:08.260 What time of night did she say she saw the man with the baby?

00:10:11.260 I'll tell you.

00:10:11.840 And she had it exactly because she showed me the phone records from her husband calling her.

00:10:17.520 12.15.

00:10:18.540 12.15 a.m.

00:10:19.600 Stranger abductions put children in the most dire situation.

00:10:25.660 And so we know time is ticking.

00:10:27.980 Callahan Walsh of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

00:10:30.740 Those early hours are the most critical because within the first two hours, there's a 70% chance you'll recover the child deceased and about a 90% chance after 24 hours.

00:10:42.080 In a case like this where we don't know exactly who took baby Irwin and it's a possibility that it's a stranger abduction, we know times of the essence.

00:10:50.000 Was Lisa the baby in the man's arms?

00:10:52.880 More suspicious things happen in those early hours.

00:10:57.240 2.30 a.m.

00:10:58.740 There's a dumpster fire in a parking lot not too far from the Parscals' house. 1.00

00:11:03.520 Could this be related?

00:11:04.360 At 2.45 a.m., a nearby BP gas station surveillance camera shows a man in a light t-shirt emerging from the woods that bordered the neighborhood.

00:11:14.960 It's too dark and grainy to see if he's carrying anything.

00:11:20.200 And then, as I reported for Fox News at the time, Debra's first account of her timeline gets a serious revision.

00:11:27.380 Turns out she was drinking more than she originally claimed.

00:11:31.460 And she's no longer sure about when she last saw her baby girl.

00:11:35.520 When you went in at 10.30 after the neighbor left, what did you do?

00:11:40.600 Probably went right to my room.

00:11:43.340 Why do you say probably?

00:11:45.420 Because sometimes I check on her.

00:11:47.640 Well, most of the time I check on her.

00:11:49.920 And then the boys.

00:11:51.220 So I'm assuming that I went and checked on her too.

00:11:54.180 But I don't know.

00:11:57.060 You don't remember?

00:11:58.080 No.

00:11:58.700 Let's talk about the wine.

00:12:00.380 How much did you consume that day?

00:12:03.280 I had several glasses of wine.

00:12:06.980 When you say several, more than three?

00:12:09.460 Yeah.

00:12:10.300 But that has nothing to do with her.

00:12:13.500 More than five?

00:12:15.440 Probably.

00:12:16.000 Probably.

00:12:17.240 More than 10?

00:12:18.760 No.

00:12:20.240 Was it just wine or was there other alcohol?

00:12:23.360 Just wine.

00:12:23.980 Lisa was in bed and the boys were laying down watching a movie with the neighbor's daughter.

00:12:28.140 Were you drunk?

00:12:28.940 Yeah.

00:12:30.640 Yeah.

00:12:31.540 So the last time Debra is sure she saw Lisa was at 6.30 p.m. before she started drinking.

00:12:38.420 Could something have happened accidentally?

00:12:40.820 Maybe Lisa fell or was dropped.

00:12:43.160 Or Debra unknowingly rolled over on her while they slept. 0.96

00:12:46.620 Or worse, did she deliberately kill her own child? 0.98

00:12:51.020 At the very least, Debra is drunk and unreliable. 1.00

00:12:54.060 It was a tough interview.

00:12:55.720 I went pretty hard on you.

00:12:57.240 Very terrible.

00:12:58.420 You fessed up.

00:13:00.440 You said, I had a lot of drinks that night.

00:13:03.200 Someplace between 6 and 10.

00:13:05.300 And I think I blacked out.

00:13:07.640 Now, a lot of people wouldn't have admitted that.

00:13:09.580 A lot of people would not have sat down with the press and said that at all.

00:13:12.800 They would have been worried that it would have made them look some certain way.

00:13:17.580 I didn't care how I looked.

00:13:19.400 I mean, yes, Debra drank. 1.00

00:13:20.980 Debra's aunt, Cindy Lorette.

00:13:22.520 Debra probably still drinks. 1.00

00:13:24.380 It doesn't fucking matter. 0.99

00:13:26.160 It does not matter. 0.99

00:13:27.360 Sorry I said that.

00:13:29.460 We all do.

00:13:30.360 And if you're the perfect parent, then good for you.

00:13:33.420 Because this could happen to anybody.

00:13:35.180 You don't plan on things like this to happen.

00:13:37.260 You don't plan on turning the TV on and seeing one of your relatives missing, let alone a 10-month-old baby.

00:13:42.900 The door wasn't locked, right?

00:13:44.740 Reporter Jim Spellman.

00:13:45.900 The door was not locked.

00:13:47.980 But keep in mind that by her own admission, Debra Bradley was drinking that night.

00:13:53.980 I'm not sure that she could be trusted to confidently say whether she locked the door or not.

00:13:59.420 Obviously, they are our main focus.

00:14:01.220 I'm not calling them suspects.

00:14:02.800 Knowing her timeline was problematic and wanting to prove to police she had nothing to hide,

00:14:08.160 Debra volunteered to take a polygraph. 0.97

00:14:10.600 And then she took police remarks to mean she had failed it.

00:14:14.280 We were done and I was like, okay, so, you know, what happens now?

00:14:18.820 And he goes, it gets real close to me and he goes, I think that you're a very bad mother.

00:14:24.660 And I just broke down and I said that it's not possible that I failed.

00:14:30.420 And he just kept saying, I think you're a bad mother. 0.78

00:14:32.540 You need to tell us what you did.

00:14:34.480 And I just kind of fell apart.

00:14:37.740 Not going to lie, my nerves.

00:14:39.540 I actually wet myself because I couldn't believe what he was saying to me.

00:14:46.080 Exhausted and emotional, Debra and Jeremy decide they have shared everything they can think of to help the investigation and need a break.

00:14:54.180 But Kansas City police publicly criticized the couple for not continuing to talk to them.

00:14:58.740 The news coverage is wall to wall.

00:15:01.860 Just a couple hours ago at a news conference held by Kansas City police and investigators in the case.

00:15:06.980 They've always been free.

00:15:08.300 They've been cooperative up to this point.

00:15:09.660 But early this evening, they decided to stop cooperating with detectives.

00:15:12.660 Kansas City attorney Sean O'Brien.

00:15:14.880 And so the public impression was these parents had something to hide.

00:15:19.320 And that came through on the news coverage.

00:15:22.480 All along, police said Lisa's parents, Jeremy Irwin and Debra Bradley, cooperated with police until Thursday night.

00:15:29.840 Her parents are no longer cooperating with police.

00:15:33.440 I don't get it because as a parent myself, if my child was missing, I would give anything I have.

00:15:40.980 Despite the sighting of the man with the baby, one week into the case, police seem to have only one suspect, her mother.

00:15:47.840 ABC News legal correspondent Dan Abrams asked Jeremy the question on everyone's mind.

00:15:54.460 Could Debra have done something accidentally? 0.95

00:15:57.640 No.

00:15:59.200 Maybe she tried to cover it up after. 0.99

00:16:02.920 No.

00:16:03.640 The first time I even thought that was when the police had started asking us about it.

00:16:09.260 So just from the statistics standpoint, it didn't surprise me that law enforcement was really going after Debra and also Jeremy.

00:16:18.300 That's Marissa Randazzo, the former chief research psychologist at the U.S. Secret Service.

00:16:23.800 She would soon be tapped to work on this case.

00:16:26.880 From the criminal psychologist side of me, I wondered what involvement she or her husband might have had.

00:16:34.220 And so did I.

00:16:35.420 And so did lots of people.

00:16:36.600 But when Kansas City attorney Sean O'Brien started working with Debra and Jeremy, he quickly realized no one was getting the whole story.

00:16:44.700 Because the police kept saying the parents aren't cooperating.

00:16:47.860 The parents aren't cooperating.

00:16:49.260 It was like the mantra they were putting out on television.

00:16:52.320 And it wasn't until after I got into the case I realized that was totally not true.

00:16:56.860 You know, they had spent 40 hours in questioning with the police before I was brought into the case.

00:17:03.600 These were people who were trying to help the police find their baby.

00:17:07.820 So why were the police saying that?

00:17:09.320 Were they just making that up?

00:17:10.740 I think they didn't have a better suspect.

00:17:13.960 Interrogation is not investigation.

00:17:16.860 It's a strategy to get a suspect to make an incriminating statement.

00:17:21.580 Period.

00:17:22.460 That's all it is.

00:17:23.760 And so it's a really dangerous position for them to be in.

00:17:26.840 The other thing that I found out later had been done was that they pulled a strategy on them that's called the prisoner's dilemma.

00:17:36.920 And what you do when you have two suspects in a case is you tell each of them that the other one is implicating them.

00:17:45.180 And so they better start talking and get out ahead of it, or they're going to be the one left holding the bag.

00:17:51.780 And so they did that with Jeremy and Deborah.

00:17:54.980 They had each done like a 10-hour videotaped interview, and they took a little snippet out of each one.

00:18:04.260 Jeremy Irwin.

00:18:04.740 The cop comes in, and he's like, hey, I want you to see something.

00:18:11.980 So he sets his laptop down in front of me, and it's a video of Deborah.

00:18:17.740 It is Deborah's interrogation video from like day two and three.

00:18:22.540 And he scrolls, and he scrolls, and he scrolls, and he scrolls, and he scrolls, and he scrolls, and he scrolls.

00:18:26.460 Finally finds whatever he's looking for, swings the laptop back around.

00:18:30.380 And it plays me a 12-second clip of Deborah clearly frustrated, crying, and she says, well, I don't know.

00:18:42.120 I guess maybe he did it or something to that effect.

00:18:46.960 He did what?

00:18:47.860 I could have stubbed my toe on the door.

00:18:50.180 I could have spilled the cup of coffee.

00:18:51.920 He did what?

00:18:52.920 Like you literally showed me nothing.

00:18:54.660 That was just one of the little things that they'll do to you while you're in there.

00:19:01.540 And the polygraph?

00:19:02.800 According to one of Deborah's attorneys, Deborah had, in fact, passed it.

00:19:07.960 Obviously, their whole thing was it was Deborah.

00:19:10.380 Deborah did it, Deborah did it, Deborah.

00:19:11.960 So I always kept asking them, Deborah did what?

00:19:15.480 Go ahead, finish your sentence.

00:19:17.360 And there was no sentence to be finished.

00:19:20.140 Psychologist Marissa Randazzo says that's confirmation bias.

00:19:23.900 Essentially, what confirmation bias is that once you develop a theory, it's human nature to seek out information that confirms that theory and disregard information that would undercut that theory.

00:19:37.420 It appeared that they were not pursuing alternate possibilities as with as many resources or energy as they were their theory that it was Deborah and or Jeremy.

00:19:51.660 The investigators are quickly closing in on the baby's mother, Deborah.

00:19:56.660 Jeremy's sister, Ashley Irwin, thought the writing was on the wall and said so in an interview with ABC News.

00:20:02.840 Do you think Deborah may be facing an arrest?

00:20:07.300 Probably, to be real honest with you, yes.

00:20:09.940 Why?

00:20:10.800 Because it's what the police do.

00:20:12.580 They don't have any leads, so they have to pin it on somebody.

00:20:15.100 Do you think it's inevitable?

00:20:15.900 Yeah, kind of.

00:20:19.060 Captain Steve Young of the Kansas City Police Department.

00:20:22.180 You know, we're under pressure to find a child.

00:20:23.900 We're not under pressure to pin this on anybody or wrap it up or make an arrest.

00:20:27.520 Even so, the pressure on Deborah was intense.

00:20:31.100 Oh, she was just a mess. 1.00

00:20:32.780 Cindy Lorette remembers the stress of it.

00:20:34.880 She was staying with the family to help out.

00:20:36.960 She just didn't know which way was up or down her, and she would just cry, and she would nestle her head under my arm or next to me.

00:20:49.080 She just, nobody knew what to do.

00:20:51.060 And now, we can introduce you to one of the most intriguing players in this whole story.

00:21:01.340 Christy Schiller is a Houston horse breeder, socialite, one-time Playboy model, and a broadcaster.

00:21:07.980 What was the first you heard about the Lisa Irwin case?

00:21:12.040 So, I got a call from my stepson, and he said, hurry and turn on Fox News, and you were reporting.

00:21:21.160 And he said that there's a baby that's been kidnapped in Kansas City.

00:21:25.620 Then Christy got a call from a family friend, Deborah's cousin, Mike Lorette.

00:21:30.760 And he called me, and he said, I'm here in Kansas City.

00:21:34.000 I'm trying to protect my cousin and her husband.

00:21:36.960 He said, there's news people shoving cameras to the windows.

00:21:41.420 I'd like to thank all the people of Kansas City, the local, national media, for the continued support.

00:21:51.160 And coverage to keep baby Lisa's picture out there. 0.98

00:21:54.320 He said, I'm just scared.

00:21:55.860 He said, I just don't know what to do.

00:21:57.320 He said, I'm trained for DEFCON 4, and I just don't feel like anybody's coming here to help us.

00:22:03.180 And I said, help is on the way.

00:22:05.020 Christy had her own theories.

00:22:06.880 She had spent that summer glued to the trial of Casey Anthony, a mother accused of murdering her three-year-old daughter.

00:22:13.540 I thought for sure that, you know, she was going to go down.

00:22:18.080 And when the verdict came in.

00:22:20.020 We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.

00:22:23.240 I just stood there frozen.

00:22:25.260 I couldn't believe it.

00:22:26.640 And I turned around to somebody who was a complete stranger, and I said, mark my word.

00:22:31.000 The next parent that does not trim their child's nails right, they're going to serve a hard time.

00:22:38.520 Sure that Deborah was caught in this backlash, Christy swung into action, tapping into the brain trust of police and legal professionals that she met through her charity, Canines for Cops, created in tribute to a police dog killed in the line of duty.

00:22:52.800 She called Bill Stanton, a former New York City police officer, private investigator, and TV commentator who was on her canine board.

00:23:02.200 Bill assembled a team that included Phil Houston, CIA veteran of 25 years.

00:23:08.420 Phil created the deception detection method still being used by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and law enforcement agencies around the nation.

00:23:18.560 He is known as the human lie detector.

00:23:20.780 Former Secret Service psychologist Marissa Randazzo was also part of the team.

00:23:25.900 First order of business, they needed to determine what, if any, involvement Deborah may have had.

00:23:31.320 By this point, the baby's father, Jeremy, had essentially been ruled out because there's security video of him working on an electrical project at Starbucks through most of the night baby Lisa went missing.

00:23:42.680 Christy's team began to plan their own videotaped interviews with the parents.

00:23:46.840 Marissa worked with Phil on the questions for Deborah and Jeremy.

00:23:49.660 I helped really to talk through with Phil around what angle, what to think about when talking with someone who may be responsible for the disappearance or we were really concerned about possibly the death of baby Lisa.

00:24:02.280 So we know that the parents, especially the mother, was under suspicion by law enforcement and to figure out kind of what the different angles were, why parents, especially mothers, the sort of top motivations of why they do kill their children and to use those angles and perspectives to help formulate the questions that Phil would be asking them.

00:24:24.040 Now there was a plane waiting, thanks to Christy Schiller.

00:24:27.280 Bill and Phil headed to Kansas City.

00:24:30.140 Once in the Kansas City area, in a rented house at a secret location away from the throngs of media, Phil and an associate interviewed Deborah.

00:24:39.160 Phil Houston had seen their press conferences and how they answered questions.

00:24:43.160 Like so many of us, he already had his suspicions about the couple.

00:24:46.620 They've been asked, did you do it, did you do it, did you do it?

00:24:50.440 And so you have to craft an approach to the questioning that cuts through that, that minimizes all of the histronics that have led up to this meeting, if you will.

00:25:05.120 And I was convinced that they were guilty until we asked that first question.

00:25:09.940 We have it on tape, that moment where you got to ask your first question of Deborah.

00:25:14.200 Let's watch it.

00:25:15.240 Debbie, I think the first question that I need to ask you this morning, okay, is what involvement did you have in the disappearance of Lisa?

00:25:28.360 None.

00:25:30.080 The only thing I did wrong was drink that night and possibly not be alert, not here.

00:25:39.940 What did you glean from that?

00:25:52.840 What are we seeing there?

00:25:54.240 First of all, if you noticed, I didn't ask her, did you do it?

00:25:58.780 I upped the ante by asking her a presumptive question.

00:26:03.000 I'm presuming that it's quite possible, maybe even probable, that you did this, that you were involved.

00:26:10.300 What involvement did you have?

00:26:13.080 And her response to that was immediately, without hesitation, none.

00:26:19.320 But then she throws a curveball at us. 1.00

00:26:23.460 She says, the only thing I did wrong.

00:26:27.540 So she's confessing.

00:26:29.160 She's saying, look, this is what I, this is the only thing I did wrong.

00:26:33.980 Phil's reaction coming out of this was, no matter the angle that we tried, no matter the approach of the question,

00:26:41.060 she was answering them truthfully and not showing deception.

00:26:45.520 In a twist even he didn't see coming, Phil determined Debra is telling the truth,

00:26:51.140 that she had nothing to do with her daughter's disappearance.

00:26:54.140 Well, I mean, I, like you, flew out there thinking they did it.

00:26:58.740 It's always the parents.

00:26:59.980 When the wife gets killed, it's always the husband. 0.99

00:27:02.200 We all know this.

00:27:03.120 And I remember being flabbergasted.

00:27:06.980 I just couldn't believe, like, what do you mean?

00:27:08.940 Challenged all my own biases, but I think led to better reporting on my part in covering the case, right?

00:27:16.280 Just check your bias.

00:27:17.540 You could be wrong.

00:27:18.660 Have some humility.

00:27:20.020 There are people smarter than you are at detecting deception who say she's not lying and neither is Jeremy.

00:27:26.420 Armed with this knowledge, Christy Schiller anonymously offers a $100,000 reward for information leading to the return of baby Lisa.

00:27:36.260 Bill Stanton made the announcement.

00:27:39.300 There's going to be a $100,000 reward put up for the safe return and or conviction of personal persons involved in this horrible crime.

00:27:53.540 Until now, no one knew it was Christy who offered the reward, a secret she managed to keep even from her own husband.

00:28:01.460 Is it true he once said to you, hey, did you hear they posted a reward for the baby?

00:28:06.320 And you were like, yeah.

00:28:07.300 And he said, tell me it wasn't you.

00:28:09.760 And he said, what were you thinking?

00:28:12.960 And I said, we don't need our name on the side of a building.

00:28:15.460 I want to know that this mother and father are being reunited and the two little boys with their siblings.

00:28:25.160 Announcing the $100,000 reward was just one way Stanton kept the baby Lisa story in the news.

00:28:31.460 But Bill had a problem.

00:28:32.900 After the press conference and I said an anonymous benefactor, this nasty rumor of it was either NBC or ABC, and they were paying behind the scenes to get all the exclusives and attention.

00:28:47.420 And that's when he called me.

00:28:49.600 No one believes the anonymous benefactor.

00:28:52.420 I need for you to verify it to your comfort level and we'll go from there.

00:28:58.100 And I was thinking, sure, yes, I'm interested in this story at any level.

00:29:03.400 But of course, what I would ultimately like is to talk to the parents.

00:29:06.600 And that's where it landed.

00:29:08.780 And, you know, explosive details came out that day.

00:29:11.820 You know, it had its highs and lows for Debra because that's when the public learned she had between six and ten drinks. 1.00

00:29:18.680 Do you have a drinking problem?

00:29:20.500 No.

00:29:21.540 I don't think so.

00:29:24.740 Some folks are going to have an issue.

00:29:26.960 Oh, I'm sure they are.

00:29:28.700 More than five drinks while you're looking after a little baby and two little boys.

00:29:31.700 She was sleeping.

00:29:33.400 I wanted to ask, so why did you choose to share that with me?

00:29:36.520 Because it has nothing to do with Lisa's abduction.

00:29:39.860 And I want to be honest about everything so that people will look for her.

00:29:43.780 Because I feel like if they're like, oh, she's being honest about that, she's got to be telling the truth about other stuff.

00:29:49.360 And any publicity for Lisa's good, whether people like what I say or not.

00:29:54.540 That's true.

00:29:55.060 The wall-to-wall media coverage continued.

00:29:58.600 They are still searching urgently for the child, although they do say that as every hour passes, this case gets harder to solve.

00:30:06.300 And at this point, police freely admit they have no suspects and no leads.

00:30:11.540 That was always one of the biggest mysteries about this case.

00:30:13.840 Like, what kind of criminal, whether it's, you know, a parent, a family member, or an intruder, like, is so good that they don't leave behind a fingerprint, DNA, or any other really meaningful clue?

00:30:31.360 Because no matter who did this, they did escape, you know, without a trace.

00:30:36.240 Reporter Jim Spellman.

00:30:37.740 So I think there's two possible answers to that.

00:30:39.600 The first is, if it's somebody who you expect to have in the house, in any house in a crime scene, if you expect to find their DNA and their fingerprints, then that evidence is of little help to investigators.

00:30:52.180 But I think what you're asking is really an incredible question, because as you try to run through, you know, potential scenarios in your head, guessing more than anything, they just so many of them lead to dead ends.

00:31:04.420 Is there some way that Deborah Bradley or her husband, Jeremy, somehow did this themselves and were able to pull this off in a short, you know, matter of hours?

00:31:14.600 It seems incredibly unlikely, right?

00:31:17.100 But then could some stranger somehow know that this was a house that had a baby in it, where the husband was working a very rare night shift, where the, you know, the mom was perhaps not at her best ever, having, you know, done some serious drinking that night?

00:31:35.680 And then that's the night you stealthily get in and out of the house, making it through neighbors and everything else.

00:31:42.800 That seems equally as unlikely.

00:31:44.340 There's so much we don't know about the evidence because Kansas City PD won't talk to us.

00:31:50.800 They say that's because this is still an open investigation.

00:31:54.440 We have our doubts about how much investigating is really going on, and for that matter, about how they handled this case.

00:32:02.380 Now I'm joined by Phil Houston and Bill Stanton.

00:32:05.180 They will be my partners in crime on this, my go-to criminal experts as we take a hard look at the facts of this case.

00:32:12.920 Looking back now, 12 years later, is there's no Nest cameras in every door.

00:32:21.780 There's no even low-grade security cameras.

00:32:24.600 Even the, like, every gas station now has a good camera that will show you most of what happened there.

00:32:31.540 In today's day and age, they'll be able to zero right in on whoever that was that emerged.

00:32:36.860 And what a difference a decade makes.

00:32:39.460 And that's why 12 years later, we're still talking about it, trying to solve it, because it's every person's, every parent's worst nightmare.

00:32:49.640 Someone coming into your home in the middle of the night and taking the most precious thing that you'll ever have in your life, your child.

00:32:57.840 So, the police really do seem to be guilty of some tunnel vision here.

00:33:03.040 I mean, what we're learning already is that they're really interested, Phil, in Deborah and Jeremy.

00:33:10.000 And in the opening hours of an investigation, one can completely understand that.

00:33:16.560 Absolutely.

00:33:17.120 And they both look guilty as sin, if you look at it just from a global perspective.

00:33:23.680 And then you have Deborah admitting to excessive drinking, you know, to the point of possibly blacking out.

00:33:30.800 And you have cops saying that the parents stopped cooperating, which, you know, that leads everybody to be like, oh, that's it.

00:33:39.760 They're guilty.

00:33:40.220 She was done being interrogated over and over and over and over by police she definitely accurately believed had a foregone conclusion about her.

00:33:49.260 And the other part to that, too, is that Deborah is no shrinking violet.

00:33:53.400 I mean, she's not afraid, you know, when you reach a certain point to really let people know what she's thinking about, how they're behaving towards her.

00:34:02.600 And I don't know this, I'm speculating, but that she probably became fairly angry and that anger could have could have been misinterpreted in the interrogations.

00:34:14.020 Plus, just the odds, the overwhelming odds, you know, are she did it.

00:34:20.040 That's the biggest obstacle to ruling her out.

00:34:22.700 But let's spend a moment ruling her in.

00:34:24.880 How does that look?

00:34:26.140 What evidence does point to Deborah?

00:34:28.900 OK, it's a tough one.

00:34:30.040 So let's let's go with this hypothesis.

00:34:33.560 So was it intentional or unintentional?

00:34:37.240 If it was intentional, then we're going to say she didn't drink as much.

00:34:41.500 She was tossing the alcohol, making it seem like she was drunk to the friend.

00:34:46.780 Right.

00:34:47.320 Doing everything she normally does.

00:34:49.140 She knows her husband is working at least until 3, 4 a.m.

00:34:53.680 And she just doesn't want the burden of the child anymore.

00:34:57.540 Right.

00:34:57.840 So she acts like she's drunk. 0.99

00:35:00.340 She puts the kids in bed with her.

00:35:02.880 The kids fall asleep.

00:35:04.860 Then she wakes up, takes her child and either sells the baby or, you know, makes the child go away.

00:35:15.120 Right.

00:35:15.780 That would be one theory.

00:35:17.000 On that theory, she would also have to get out of the house and dispose of the remains and then get back into the bed before Jeremy gets home and sees her at what he said was sleeping.

00:35:28.120 And he believed.

00:35:28.880 And, you know, you're the spouse.

00:35:30.220 You can tell when your spouse is legit asleep and whether or not.

00:35:32.520 But keep going.

00:35:33.040 The accident theory is far harder for me to go over because, listen, we've all been in that half buzz state, you know, where you go to bed drunk and then you wake up half sober.

00:35:45.480 How do you negotiate that?

00:35:47.220 She wakes up.

00:35:48.460 She finds that she smothered her baby.

00:35:51.120 Right.

00:35:51.400 Now I have to get rid of it because I can't face reality.

00:35:55.460 How does she do that within walking distance and have the presence of mind? 1.00

00:36:00.980 Oh, let me take the phones.

00:36:02.280 Let me not be seen.

00:36:03.240 And if my kids wake up, there are so many variables to that theory.

00:36:08.160 It's very hard for me to pursue that one.

00:36:11.980 Far easier for me to go further down the road with she sold the child, which I do not believe.

00:36:18.900 You know, when every new mother knows, they know you don't take your baby in your bed with her, with you.

00:36:27.100 Like, it's very dangerous.

00:36:28.400 You can smother your baby inadvertently.

00:36:30.580 But some do it anyway.

00:36:32.420 I mean, some don't know.

00:36:33.760 And then some do know, but they take the risk anyway because they're exhausted and the child's crying a lot and they just make a mistake.

00:36:39.240 They fall asleep there and one thing leads to one other terrible thing.

00:36:43.240 But the fact that she had her two boys in the bed with her, actually, right, Bill?

00:36:49.900 I mean, that just works against that theory.

00:36:52.240 Absolutely.

00:36:53.200 Those boys were interviewed and they were old enough to know if their baby sister was in the bed with them.

00:36:59.760 Yeah.

00:37:00.180 Right?

00:37:00.800 There were just so many different ways, you know, that if she did it, she would have gotten caught.

00:37:07.700 But, again, these are simple people, and I don't mean that in a detrimental sense.

00:37:12.160 They're not master criminals.

00:37:14.360 You know, if someone planned this out, they wouldn't be able to do it.

00:37:17.440 Just too many variables.

00:37:18.960 You know, it was, in my opinion, again, the perfect storm of, you know, Jeremy being away, her being over served, the boys being in the bed.

00:37:32.200 You know, for her to roll over on a baby and then get rid of the child, you know, could have done it, but she would have got caught real quick. 1.00

00:37:40.340 And then, again, just think about the guilt.

00:37:43.400 This isn't someone that's, you know, a sociopath serial killer that could kill a person, you know, once a week and then go out in life.

00:37:51.920 To stay married with your husband, to look at your children in the eyes, to, you know, the pain that she went through, you know, behind the scenes that we've all saw just doesn't play out to me.

00:38:04.640 You know, she's not a sociopath, and she continues to talk to us, even though, you know, you guys know I've had many a very tough segment on Debra on my various shows.

00:38:14.060 I just feel like the actual murderer would not keep putting themselves in this harm's way.

00:38:20.500 Can we talk about the next door neighbor, Samantha Brando, for a minute?

00:38:23.720 Because while we have been unable to reach her, you guys did talk to her.

00:38:29.640 You also put her through the Phil Houston treatment to find out whether it was true, what, that she was sitting with Debra, that they were drinking together, that things went down the way Debra said they did?

00:38:43.460 Yeah, and most importantly, she validated the level of intoxication.

00:38:48.460 She said, I hate to say this about Debra, but I don't know if I've ever seen her, and I'm paraphrasing here, but I don't know if I've ever seen her that intoxicated before.

00:38:58.980 There was more wine there than Debra told us originally.

00:39:03.080 Well, that could explain why Debra didn't hear an intruder, for sure.

00:39:08.440 Well, to your point, Megan, when Jeremy came home, no one heard him come in.

00:39:12.980 He was walking around the house.

00:39:14.540 He shut the window.

00:39:15.880 He turned out the lights.

00:39:17.040 He went into the bedrooms.

00:39:18.660 Didn't wake them up for him either.

00:39:20.620 Mm-hmm.

00:39:21.320 That's true.

00:39:21.920 So why didn't anyone ever come forward?

00:39:26.420 If somebody stole this baby and did something with her, there's not one person who needed $100,000 enough to come forward and quietly say, I know what happened to her.

00:39:40.420 The reason why I think no one has claimed the reward, because it was a sole actor who committed this crime, and no one else knows about it.

00:39:51.260 Because to your point, Megan, that's $100,000, and they could do right, and they could have done it at that time.

00:40:00.600 Now, was the baby sold, or something more nefarious?

00:40:08.180 That would explain it, if it were a sole actor who then kept his mouth shut.

00:40:14.500 But that's one of the troubling things about this whole thing.

00:40:17.200 Like, if it was anybody who blabbed, or if it were a group, somebody would have turned on somebody else, and that just hasn't happened.

00:40:26.620 So, as it stands at this point, all eyes are on Debra.

00:40:31.720 Coming up in our next episode, police continue to bear down on Debra. 0.99

00:40:35.940 If she didn't do it, who did?

00:40:38.380 What else was going on in the neighborhood that night?

00:40:41.120 But first, if you're watching right now, please take a look at this picture of Lisa as she might look now.

00:40:46.480 If you're listening, you can see the photo on YouTube, or just go to megankelly.com.

00:40:50.820 If you see her, or think you might have any information that can help find her, please write to me.

00:40:57.480 The address is megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com.

00:41:01.560 You can also pass along tips on the baby Lisa story to the Kansas City Police Department,

00:41:06.700 or encourage them to get active on this case.

00:41:11.960 That would be very helpful.

00:41:13.980 Reach out at kccrimestoppers.com.

00:41:17.260 Or call them at 816-474-TIPS.

00:41:24.600 T-I-P-S. 1.00

00:41:25.580 That's 816-474-8477.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - March 10, 2025

Baby Goes Missing, Mother Questioned - Part 1 of Megyn Kelly Investigates： Baby Lisa's Disappearance ｜ Ep. 1022

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