The Megyn Kelly Show - August 29, 2025


Baby Lisa's Disappearance - Megyn Kelly Investigates： Answering YOUR Questions and Key Updates


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 29 minutes

Words per Minute

167.13829

Word Count

14,904

Sentence Count

1,132

Misogynist Sentences

20

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

In March, we brought you a five-part series on the disappearance of Baby Lisa Irwin, an 11-month-old who vanished from her crib in Kansas City, Missouri. It s a case that Megyn has been reporting on for years, and left us with more questions than answers. The series culminated with a bombshell interview with one of the key suspects in the case, John Jersey Tenko.


Transcript

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.
00:00:12.160 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:15.520 In March, we brought you a five-part series on the disappearance of baby Lisa Irwin,
00:00:21.620 an 11-month-old who vanished from her crib in Kansas City, Missouri.
00:00:26.340 It's a case that I've been reporting on for years.
00:00:29.260 All right, let's get moving.
00:00:30.660 All right.
00:00:31.080 We gotta go.
00:00:32.220 The series culminated with a bombshell interview with one of the key possible suspects in the case,
00:00:38.860 John Jersey Tenko.
00:00:40.840 All we're trying to do is like sketch out the story
00:00:43.280 and wondering if you can tell us what your involvement was in the disappearance of baby Lisa.
00:00:49.460 I don't have any. That's what I'm saying.
00:00:52.020 The whole thing was fascinating.
00:00:53.480 It left us with more questions than answers, and we had so much feedback from all of you,
00:01:00.420 both questions and comments, thoughts.
00:01:03.460 Loved doing the whole thing, and I loved hearing from all of you once the show was birthed.
00:01:08.800 You know, it was like just so great to hear people's reaction and the questions that you guys were asking
00:01:13.380 were so smart, and people, like so many amateur sleuths in the audience who had great observations.
00:01:19.700 And we have not lost hope that this case can be solved.
00:01:24.540 Little baby Lisa was never found.
00:01:27.120 We don't know what happened to her.
00:01:28.600 We don't know if she was killed.
00:01:30.360 We don't know if she was stolen, if she was sold, and if she could still be out there right now.
00:01:36.580 But that's, of course, her parents' hope and our hope, too.
00:01:40.040 And our main goal in launching the series was to see if we could spur a renewal of interest
00:01:47.920 by the Kansas City PD or someone else, and we'll have an update on that at the end of the show.
00:01:54.480 But joining me, our team, Phil Houston, former CIA agent, the guy who invented the CIA's
00:02:00.560 deception detection method still used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies around
00:02:06.640 the country and the world, Bill Stanton, former NYPD, and someone you don't know,
00:02:12.740 whose name is Brian O'Keefe.
00:02:14.240 He is a producer on the series.
00:02:17.120 He worked very closely with my executive producer on the series, Mary Murphy, who is a wonderful,
00:02:22.800 amazing producer, but who is camera shy.
00:02:25.780 And so Brian, very, very up to speed on everything he and Mary did together.
00:02:30.880 And one of the unsung heroes of this whole production.
00:02:33.960 So Brian, thanks for being here.
00:02:35.300 Phil and Bill, great to see you guys, too.
00:02:36.700 How's it going?
00:02:39.020 Good, Megan.
00:02:39.680 Thank you for having us again.
00:02:41.700 Awesome.
00:02:42.380 OK, so first of all, I haven't even really gotten a chance to ask you guys what you thought
00:02:47.560 of the five-part series and whether it changed your thinking at all, seeing it all strung together.
00:02:53.320 I'll start with you on it, Phil.
00:02:54.380 It hasn't changed my thinking per se, but it did spawn some thought process in reviewing, you know,
00:03:08.400 what my rationale is for thinking who is responsible for the disappearance of baby Lisa.
00:03:17.260 OK, we'll hear more on that throughout this hour.
00:03:19.880 How about you, Bill Stanton?
00:03:20.780 Well, first, Megan, let me just tell your audience that is devout and intelligent and worships you, as do I.
00:03:30.000 If not for you, we wouldn't have had this opportunity.
00:03:32.560 When I called you up on the phone all those years ago to the most recent call that started this,
00:03:39.100 when you said, let's do it, you know, hopefully this brings something to the table in furthering the investigation.
00:03:45.600 As for my opinion, if it changed at all, I would say absolutely not.
00:03:51.120 If nothing else, when you walked up on that individual in his backyard, it only galvanized my opinion.
00:04:00.180 And I'm more sure, both personally and professionally, more than ever.
00:04:03.240 That was such a crazy day.
00:04:05.780 And Brian, he knows all about it.
00:04:08.500 He's the one who really set it up.
00:04:09.960 It's really kind of thanks to Brian that it was able to happen.
00:04:13.240 How about you, Brian?
00:04:14.040 When you saw it all stitched together, you put so many hours into it.
00:04:16.860 Did it change your thinking at all?
00:04:18.320 Or talk to us about what your reaction was to the finished product.
00:04:21.600 Well, I'm still a little torn, you know, but I've had some distance now.
00:04:29.040 You know, we published a couple months back and I watched them all yesterday.
00:04:34.840 And I am really beginning to wonder what Megan has told us, Megan Wright.
00:04:43.680 And it's made me, coupled with Mr. Tanko's reaction to you and the kinds of careful answers he gave, really makes me wonder, wait a minute, come on, it's the phone call.
00:05:01.580 I mean, that phone call is everything.
00:05:04.620 Because you were not thinking that Jersey, you didn't really like Jersey for the crime.
00:05:09.580 You remember, you might recall, when you and Bill came back from the house down the street, we were listening to it.
00:05:18.040 And my first reaction, you saw my face.
00:05:20.560 I remember you looking at me and I said, I don't know, guys.
00:05:23.340 I don't know.
00:05:24.100 I'm not so sure, you know.
00:05:26.160 And so it's a fascinating mystery.
00:05:32.040 You know, we're going to get into a lot of the viewer questions, but can you just tell us, because the interview of Jersey in his backyard.
00:05:39.580 I'm called Jersey because he's from Jersey.
00:05:41.860 But John Tanko was stunning.
00:05:45.100 And we all, we planned so much for it.
00:05:46.680 We didn't know if we'd get it.
00:05:47.780 There's, but my favorite part of the whole series is when we're doing our prep for that, you know, interview.
00:05:53.800 And the three of us are sitting there talking about, like, what if you get him?
00:05:56.260 What if you don't get him?
00:05:57.040 What can we do?
00:05:57.640 What's our game plan?
00:05:58.540 And the audience loved that, too.
00:05:59.860 They felt like they were in on it right there with us.
00:06:02.980 But, Brian, you were there.
00:06:05.280 We worked on this series for years, which you can tell from the changing hairstyles of MK throughout the whole thing.
00:06:14.240 But we couldn't find him.
00:06:16.240 We hired how many private investigators?
00:06:18.740 We moved heaven and earth to find this guy.
00:06:21.860 And we were unable to.
00:06:23.020 And for most of the series, we thought it wasn't going to happen.
00:06:25.500 We were thrilled that Megan Wright agreed to sit with us.
00:06:27.680 We thought that was the best we were going to do.
00:06:29.180 So, and then maybe you could give the audience a little backstory on how we actually did wind up finding him.
00:06:35.600 Well, his mom lived in New Jersey.
00:06:39.300 She has since passed, by the way.
00:06:41.360 Several months ago, she passed away.
00:06:43.360 But we had talked to her, Mary and I, through her doorway.
00:06:48.020 She wouldn't come out and talk to us.
00:06:49.660 She was afraid of being photographed, I guess.
00:06:52.620 And she made it clear that he was somewhere in northern New Jersey.
00:06:56.000 And she kind of gave a hint at a couple of towns.
00:06:59.880 But the real humdinger was a private investigator from Kansas City, Mikkel Blund, helped find an obituary of a woman named Lisa Gallo.
00:07:12.600 So, this woman, at the bottom of the obituary, it mentions her survivors and her, you know, her mother or stepfather or what have you.
00:07:23.320 And at the bottom is her domestic partner, John Tanko.
00:07:29.220 Now, there are not that many John Tankos in New Jersey.
00:07:32.100 Frankly, in northern New Jersey, there's only one.
00:07:34.180 And I, we figured out, Mary and I figured out how did, where was this, where did this woman live?
00:07:42.760 So, we went to the house that she last lived in before she died.
00:07:47.280 And as we continued to do reporting, I met up with a man who lived in that house.
00:07:56.400 And he told me, John did live here.
00:07:59.940 We kicked him out months ago.
00:08:02.640 They kicked him out of that house for lighting fires in the backyard.
00:08:07.780 And I said, well, where, yes.
00:08:10.700 So, well, he said, yeah, this is what the man said.
00:08:14.700 The man said that he was lighting fires and it was becoming a problem.
00:08:17.600 And he was a little erratic behavior, a little erratic, is what he said.
00:08:24.180 Then, again, in this group of friends or people that lived in that house, somebody gave me a tip that they didn't have the address, but they knew that it was on a cul-de-sac.
00:08:39.840 And at the end of the cul-de-sac, not far from a diner, there'll be a couple of horses.
00:08:45.640 And so, I made, you know, of course, I made several trips out there.
00:08:50.480 And this one trip, I walked down the street, that street, the cul-de-sac, and a dog starts barking like nuts, crazy at me.
00:09:02.880 And I don't know where this dog is, but, you know, I don't like, you know, a barking dog.
00:09:06.520 It's not going to be, can be a bad thing.
00:09:09.200 But it also attracted attention to me, wandering down this street.
00:09:13.380 Well, guess who pops his head out from behind the fence, that big fence that you guys were looking through when we shot?
00:09:22.000 There he was.
00:09:23.420 And I'm thinking, oh, my God, it's him.
00:09:27.000 So, I said, he says to me, can I help you?
00:09:31.840 And I said, well, because he lives with a woman named Lisa.
00:09:35.920 I hadn't really planned on being confronted by him.
00:09:38.480 I really hadn't.
00:09:39.500 I was just scoping and seeing what cars were in the driveway, et cetera, and the neighbors and what have you.
00:09:46.120 And I said, well, you know, there's a John and Lisa on this block.
00:09:51.820 I'm trying to find John and Lisa.
00:09:54.520 And he literally looks me in the eye and immediately lies and says, oh, John and Lisa, you got to go into the block and go all the way down.
00:10:07.420 He's sending me away.
00:10:08.560 He doesn't want me to know where John and Lisa lives.
00:10:12.120 And it's him.
00:10:13.480 Now, listen, I've never heard his voice, but it was him because I've seen enough of his mug shots.
00:10:21.820 And he was wearing a little beanie.
00:10:25.960 And I'm like, oh, my God.
00:10:27.560 So then I went to the diner, which was not far away, and called our executive producer.
00:10:32.380 And I was shaking because I was like, it was him.
00:10:36.900 He's never been videotaped.
00:10:39.380 No, we had no footage of him.
00:10:41.460 That was one of our problems.
00:10:42.400 Thinking about how we were going to produce the episodes, talking about him, but not with him.
00:10:48.580 There's no B-roll.
00:10:50.040 All we had was mug shots of him over the years because he had done such a good job of staying off camera.
00:10:55.580 Keep going.
00:10:57.120 And being incarcerated for something else right after the kidnapping, a burglary, I believe.
00:11:05.700 And or absconding, what have you.
00:11:09.040 He was locked away.
00:11:11.060 You know, so and when he got out, the media was gone.
00:11:14.920 And, you know, and then he made his way back east a couple years later, I guess.
00:11:19.040 But the only video of him is basically the back of his head in a courtroom.
00:11:28.080 In court.
00:11:28.500 Yeah, it was such a big deal.
00:11:29.660 Couldn't believe it.
00:11:30.400 We really thought, all right, you know, we're just not going to get him.
00:11:33.400 And then thanks to Brian's efforts and the efforts of others we hired prior to that, we eventually got on the trail and found him.
00:11:41.700 And so that was half the battle and really led to the most interesting, I think, piece of the entire show, which is ultimately the confrontation between the two of us with Bill in the backyard.
00:11:51.740 Brian was there back in the van and just a crazy day.
00:11:56.000 I mean, Bill and I met at that diner right around the corner before we went over there.
00:12:01.380 And without getting too specific, we had a bit of a briefing from law enforcement, Bill, that had us both very worried about what we might be walking into.
00:12:13.800 And we started second guessing, like, the protocols we had settled on and whether basically you could keep me safe and whether we had done enough to make sure this could go off without a hitch.
00:12:24.880 Yeah, well, first, you know, Doug, your loving husband, he had a phone call with me and said, listen, nothing happens to my wife.
00:12:34.620 You understand? That was like a couple of nights before.
00:12:37.080 I'm like, 10 for that.
00:12:38.600 So when we were doing the pregame, if you will, in the diner, and by chance, the sergeant walked in with his driver and I got pulled to the side.
00:12:50.520 And as you, you know, described, can you handle what may come your way?
00:12:58.520 And then that made me tilt my head.
00:13:00.620 And I'm like, yeah, I got it.
00:13:02.260 Don't worry.
00:13:03.360 Don't worry.
00:13:04.080 So there was a little tension there.
00:13:05.820 We got we got a lot more concerned in a very short time about what we might be walking into.
00:13:11.560 And so when you see us there on the outside of the house, we are very much like, OK, this needs to be handled just right.
00:13:17.700 One thing we had definitely concluded was I was not going in alone.
00:13:21.240 I was going in with Bill, who knows how to handle himself in any threatening situation.
00:13:26.340 What were you going to say, Brian?
00:13:27.800 I was just going to mention that neighbors had told us that and the police backed it up.
00:13:33.140 He had exhibited some erratic behavior at different points prior to this day.
00:13:38.880 And Megan, to your credit, I said, do you want me to go first?
00:13:41.980 You're like, no, I'll go.
00:13:45.940 It's easy to be brave when you've got Bill Stanton right behind you.
00:13:49.720 No, you don't just don't feel like anybody's going to mess with you.
00:13:51.460 OK, so so let's get into it, because the listeners have a lot of a lot of questions after having watched the whole series.
00:13:57.540 And they were so great that everybody watched.
00:13:59.300 It's like you didn't get anybody who watched one.
00:14:01.280 You had all all the same people watch all five of them.
00:14:04.340 They now have their own strong opinions on it.
00:14:07.120 I'm going to start with this one from Zahn, who writes as follows.
00:14:10.700 Upon listening to your interview with John Tanko, I noticed a couple of things.
00:14:13.920 He repeatedly used present tense.
00:14:16.560 This could indicate that it is still ongoing or not over.
00:14:21.300 And here's a little montage of what he's referring to from part five of our series on Baby Lisa.
00:14:26.240 If you can tell us what your involvement was in the disappearance of Baby Lisa.
00:14:30.960 I don't have any involvement.
00:14:32.360 That's what I'm saying.
00:14:33.880 None whatsoever.
00:14:35.840 I don't have any involvement whatsoever.
00:14:39.240 Zero.
00:14:40.000 What do you really refer to me as a link to this case?
00:14:43.040 I don't want no involvement.
00:14:44.300 I'm not involved.
00:14:44.880 I feel I'm being put involved with in something that I'm not involved in.
00:14:49.300 There were some instances where he used past tense, but I take the point.
00:14:53.260 He does, like, I am not involved.
00:14:55.800 He's talking about it like it's happening right now.
00:14:59.040 What do you guys think as my law enforcement experts, Phil?
00:15:03.320 Yeah, that immediately stands out.
00:15:05.680 I mean, the incident occurred 13 years ago.
00:15:08.800 And he's referring to the present time.
00:15:13.120 And it reflects his worry that he is going to be caught.
00:15:18.800 That's his biggest fear now.
00:15:20.640 And much of the interview, the manner in which he responded is about the here and now, as opposed to what happened way back when.
00:15:32.500 And to include when he said something like, I don't want to, you know, face a death penalty case or something of that nature.
00:15:42.000 And he's, you know, truthful people don't sit around worrying about, you know, that they're going to be at a death penalty case unless they have a reason to worry about it.
00:15:51.400 And he carries that reason to worry every single day, is my opinion.
00:15:59.120 Did that jump out at you at all, Bill, the use of the present tense?
00:16:03.160 Like, I can see the point.
00:16:04.680 You know, if you're asking me, did I have something to do with, I don't know, let's say some scandal at Fox 15 years ago, I don't think I'd be sitting there saying, I have nothing to do with it.
00:16:14.380 I am not involved.
00:16:16.220 I think I probably would be using the past tense.
00:16:18.540 Yeah, I mean, it was a it was a great pickup by your viewer, but it's not that one syllable, that one statement for me.
00:16:28.000 If you look at this man's overall history, you know, Brian mentioned that he lied right to his face without blinking an eye, that he was setting fires.
00:16:38.120 The neighbor told you what happened the night of the abduction.
00:16:41.780 There was a fire.
00:16:42.640 When you look at, in aggregate, all of his past crimes, meth addict, arsonist, he was a B&E, breaking and entering specialist.
00:16:51.300 That was his thing, breaking into homes.
00:16:54.100 You know, the preponderance of evidence for me, all roads, in my opinion, lead to Jersey Joe.
00:16:59.720 Okay, so this is, which is confusing.
00:17:04.180 He also went by Jersey Joe, or his name is John, but that goes by Jersey.
00:17:08.200 Anyway, we're talking about the same man.
00:17:10.260 Yeah, I'm sorry.
00:17:10.900 On the subject of the fires, because he had a history of setting fires, our viewer, Jennifer, had a question about the fire that happened the night baby Lisa went missing.
00:17:24.880 For the audience just joining us, not up to speed, baby Lisa was stolen out of her crib in the middle of the night.
00:17:30.400 After the mother was home, the two sons were home.
00:17:32.720 They were asleep, they said.
00:17:34.220 The father was out working all night on an electrician job at Starbucks.
00:17:37.420 That was verified by cameras, so we never found out whether the baby was taken and killed, taken and sold.
00:17:46.240 We have no idea.
00:17:47.700 But the main guy we focused on in our series was this guy, John Tanko, who was a handyman in the neighborhood and had been spotted around the Irwin's house doing work.
00:18:00.540 And three cell phones were taken from the Irwin house, and the night baby Lisa went missing.
00:18:05.360 One of those phones was used to call Megan Wright.
00:18:09.680 So one of those phones was used to call somebody, and the person was Megan Wright, who was the girlfriend of John Tanko.
00:18:16.680 And there had been some reporting that she had said she wanted a baby.
00:18:20.960 She denied it when we talked to her.
00:18:23.480 She did admit she broke up with him thinking, like, whatever, he's not a family man.
00:18:28.080 And, you know, this isn't the man for me.
00:18:29.640 But the reporting at the time was much more specific that she had said, I want a baby.
00:18:34.400 And there was speculation he might have stolen one from her.
00:18:37.280 So he likes to set fires.
00:18:38.460 And that night, shortly after baby Lisa went missing, we talked in the series about how a dumpster nearby the Irwin home and near the so-called flop house where Megan Wright had been living,
00:18:50.480 which Jersey knew, and he had been there many times, was set on fire.
00:18:56.320 There was a dumpster fire that was found.
00:18:58.780 But in the series, we point out that they investigated, and they didn't, the cops did, and didn't find anything.
00:19:03.400 They did look for, you know, signs, God forbid, of a baby or any sort of incriminating remnants.
00:19:09.720 But this is what Jennifer writes.
00:19:11.100 The series was fascinating.
00:19:12.240 I'm curious if the fire that took place after the kidnapping was ever investigated.
00:19:16.520 Is it possible Jersey was totally strung out that night, took the baby, and then burned her in the dumpster?
00:19:23.000 Brian, is my information correct?
00:19:24.800 Right?
00:19:25.020 We looked into that.
00:19:26.380 It's not like the cops didn't know about that fire.
00:19:28.960 They did.
00:19:30.460 Right.
00:19:30.980 And I think Deborah told us also that that was a dead end.
00:19:34.380 There was burnt clothing in there, but it was not the baby's clothes.
00:19:38.600 And other garbage.
00:19:41.880 And by the way, that dumpster was near the flop house that she had lived in when she was dating him.
00:19:50.100 On the night of the kidnapping, she was a mile away at a different flop house.
00:19:54.480 Right, right, right, right.
00:19:55.940 Another one.
00:19:56.620 This is from Jane.
00:19:58.060 I just watched number five with Tanko.
00:20:00.000 It's obvious to me, she writes, that he is guilty due to the nature of his answers and history of this case.
00:20:05.460 Moreover, he states that he believes Lisa is living with a rich family, enjoying her life.
00:20:12.080 Why would anyone not involved say that?
00:20:14.860 I pray she is alive.
00:20:16.500 I'm wondering why this statement was not addressed.
00:20:20.320 Here he is in SOC 2.
00:20:21.900 Why would somebody take a baby?
00:20:24.780 You know what?
00:20:26.580 The FBI asked me the same question.
00:20:29.260 I'm like, all we're going to come up with is to sell it to maybe somebody that they can't have kids.
00:20:35.120 You know?
00:20:35.960 I mean, it sounds crazy.
00:20:39.680 I think out of all of this, that's the best case scenario that could have happened.
00:20:45.180 That kid is now 13 in our school, you know, has a rich family, you know, something like that.
00:20:53.940 I mean, that's the best case scenario.
00:20:56.140 Yeah.
00:20:56.700 What does that say to you guys, that he went there?
00:21:01.540 Megan, when I said at the outset of the show today that some of my views, I had been, you know,
00:21:09.020 I had to reflect on them a little bit more.
00:21:11.460 This was one of those.
00:21:12.700 I had told myself at one point in the case that I was guilty of wishful thinking when I thought that she had been sold.
00:21:23.380 When I heard him on the video the first time I heard that answer, it shocked me into thinking that what he was trying to do potentially is put a clue on the table.
00:21:37.800 That what really happened to her, that what really happened to her might have been that she had been sold.
00:21:44.520 And if you connect that with the belief that he is the guilty party here, then he would be the person that would have sold her, so to speak.
00:21:54.440 He's using, his answer is very, very deceptive.
00:22:00.640 He immediately goes to the FBI that he's talked to them.
00:22:05.900 He's trying to develop some credibilities using convincing statements.
00:22:10.900 As we know, deceptive people, when they don't, when they can't share the truth because of the consequences,
00:22:19.380 they almost immediately go into some form of convincing statements or efforts to influence us to believe them.
00:22:28.440 And that's simply what he's doing there with his statements and his discussion about the FBI and his offer to, you know, maybe put something on the table that would lead us in the right direction.
00:22:43.740 Now, what I heard today about him sending Brian down the street, he may well be using that as a way to put us in a completely different direction.
00:22:55.880 But I have to confess, as I mulled over this after episode five, I wondered more if maybe there is a chance that that little girl is still alive.
00:23:08.260 And that's, I mean, I think all the time about how, you know, remember what happened with Elizabeth Smart, that any day it's happened so many times.
00:23:18.040 We're just not necessarily that exact scenario where someone's missing and they come back.
00:23:21.300 But we're a story, you think it's over, you think you have it figured out, and then you get the news alert on your phone and your jaw drops.
00:23:28.420 Oh, my gosh, like huge development.
00:23:30.420 And I really believe in my heart of hearts, one of these days we're going to get the news alert about baby Lisa.
00:23:38.260 I admit, I don't know whether it's going to be they found remains of a baby and the testing is done and it's her.
00:23:45.020 Or if we get the more hopeful possibility, which is this young woman went to Ancestry DNA, took a test and found out she has a mother and father match who are other than the ones who raised her.
00:24:01.940 And this girl does investigation and figures out she's actually Lisa Irwin.
00:24:06.100 I mean, that's my hope.
00:24:07.220 And I really believe one way or the other, we are going to find out.
00:24:11.060 It's just a question of time.
00:24:12.360 And it's one of the reasons I wanted to do this series.
00:24:14.660 Like, let's know exactly what we know and what we don't know before that day comes, because I just feel like it will.
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00:25:26.140 Johanna.
00:25:27.340 Johanna or Johanna.
00:25:28.720 My thoughts are about Jersey.
00:25:31.480 Let's say he was paid a large sum of money for baby Lisa.
00:25:34.260 Was there any indication of that?
00:25:36.660 How did he afford to move to Jersey?
00:25:39.040 Did he buy that house in Jersey?
00:25:41.100 Do we know the answer to that, Brian?
00:25:43.000 It's not his house.
00:25:44.500 It's a woman named Lisa.
00:25:45.980 I'm not going to use her last name.
00:25:47.480 But it was owned by, I'm assuming, one of her parents.
00:25:53.560 Her father, I think.
00:25:54.240 Before her.
00:25:55.200 I think the father.
00:25:56.460 Before she owned it.
00:25:57.940 Now she owns it.
00:25:59.000 So he has no money.
00:26:00.800 He doesn't have a job, and he does not own that house.
00:26:04.000 So I really don't know what his income would be.
00:26:06.700 So you're saying that the domestic partner you found in the obit was named Lisa,
00:26:11.320 and the woman with whom he was sharing this house.
00:26:14.080 Was named Lisa.
00:26:16.100 Correct.
00:26:18.060 Yeah.
00:26:18.540 And it's that whole setup, Megan, you know, the town, the horse, the horse paddock in the back,
00:26:26.260 the claw, the clucking chicken.
00:26:28.140 The roosters.
00:26:29.260 Yeah.
00:26:29.980 I was waiting for Anthony Hopkins to come running out of the back door.
00:26:33.480 It was surreal at best.
00:26:36.940 But, you know, Tanko is not a master criminal.
00:26:40.040 He's a repetitive criminal.
00:26:41.980 He's not a mastermind.
00:26:43.380 Pardon my language.
00:26:44.100 He's a bullshit artist.
00:26:45.660 You know, if he told me the sky was blue, I'd look up before I agreed with him.
00:26:49.520 So he is so adept at doing it, you know, to the average layperson, they may, oh, he's trying
00:26:57.800 to be cooperative.
00:26:59.080 But thank God we have Phil on our team that can cut through all that BS and we get right
00:27:04.980 down to it, that just about almost on every question you asked him was a lie.
00:27:10.380 In the scenario that we're considering of he stole baby Lisa and then he sold baby Lisa,
00:27:17.780 does anyone here believe he would have received a lot of money?
00:27:22.280 Like, I think we all kind of thought maybe it was a crime of opportunity.
00:27:25.760 If he did it, it was a crime of opportunity.
00:27:27.980 There's just no way this guy who was a meth head in and out of the prison system had a
00:27:34.640 connection to somebody very wealthy.
00:27:36.660 He was going to like, I feel like, no, he didn't buy that house and he probably didn't
00:27:40.820 buy any house.
00:27:41.700 And if he stole and sold the baby, he probably got a pittance for her because he was likely
00:27:47.440 just looking for a drug hit potentially, or, you know, just something to get him through
00:27:52.580 the day.
00:27:52.960 This is the life of an addict recovering or using, but certainly using.
00:27:57.260 Without a doubt.
00:27:58.540 I mean, it was a, I wholeheartedly believe, you know, people ask the question, why would
00:28:03.860 he take the baby?
00:28:04.960 Well, how, how do any of us know what runs in the mind of a meth addict?
00:28:09.280 You know, he, if I remember correctly, he said he found the cell phones.
00:28:14.660 And in my opinion, that was to cover the tracks for the attempted call.
00:28:18.500 If we remember the phone bill wasn't paid.
00:28:21.380 So the phone call did not go through, but the phone company logged it as an attempt.
00:28:27.260 So in his mind, being from the streets and having street smarts, you know, there's a
00:28:32.180 difference.
00:28:32.760 He knew he had to cover that up.
00:28:34.800 So he told his attorney or his would be attorney that, uh, yeah, he fat.
00:28:39.680 Yeah.
00:28:39.880 Yeah.
00:28:40.060 I found the phones.
00:28:41.000 I made the call.
00:28:42.020 So if anything, what I think, I think he left the baby or to your point, Meg, maybe have
00:28:47.080 traded the baby for drugs.
00:28:49.440 And what happened from there?
00:28:50.620 Who knows?
00:28:51.100 And in the entire series, that to me was the most incriminating thing we heard from anyone.
00:28:58.020 The interview with Cindy Short, who had represented the Irwins, the mom and the dad for a short
00:29:03.940 time before being dismissed because there was sort of a turf war between her and Joe
00:29:07.400 Takapina and he won.
00:29:08.660 Um, and then on her own went and found Jersey in the jail, sat down with him, talked with him for
00:29:16.680 some 10 hours.
00:29:17.860 And in that interview, he told her, he found the three stolen cell phones that had been taken
00:29:25.820 from the Irwins house that night and then allegedly discarded them.
00:29:30.160 And then when we got him on camera, but he actually said, he said he found three phones.
00:29:35.840 He didn't know what, which he found stacked, you know, three, three phones.
00:29:40.760 Then we find three phones together in the middle of the night.
00:29:44.060 Right.
00:29:44.780 Yeah, sure.
00:29:45.860 So we actually got a question about that.
00:29:47.400 Now, this is from Rick.
00:29:48.680 He writes, when Cindy talked to John Tanko, Cindy Short, the lawyer, uh, talked to John
00:29:53.040 Tanko in prison and he said he had the phones and was with a woman.
00:29:56.820 What about that woman?
00:29:58.560 I watched the rest of the episode and you never came back to if Cindy asked who the woman was.
00:30:04.420 Isn't that a huge item to leave out?
00:30:06.840 Let's say this woman wanted a baby, this, this, this mystery woman, and John and Megan
00:30:11.240 Wright got the baby for her.
00:30:13.120 And after doing that, Megan Wright knows how bad of a thing she did.
00:30:16.580 Resulting in her getting sober.
00:30:20.360 Do we know anything, Brian, about the woman?
00:30:23.080 I mean, this was from Cindy Short, but I don't, I don't think Cindy knew anything more about
00:30:26.860 her or got anything more about her.
00:30:28.100 Correct.
00:30:28.940 That's right.
00:30:29.800 Cindy said she did not get a name.
00:30:32.160 It was like another street person, kind of, you know, and, um, she had no idea who the
00:30:39.140 woman was and he didn't have her name or offer her name.
00:30:44.060 Here is, just so people want, uh, are with us.
00:30:47.960 Here's Sot7 Tanko talking about what he said to Cindy Short when she visited him in the jail
00:30:53.020 cell.
00:30:53.260 He did tell me, though, that he had found three cell phones and he told me where he
00:31:00.480 had found them.
00:31:01.460 He also claimed to have told the police that he had found three cell phones.
00:31:04.780 And he's telling me where, which is not very far from the house.
00:31:08.660 So he's placing himself, not just the proximity of the phones, but in possession of the phones.
00:31:16.160 He's claiming that he's with another woman.
00:31:19.180 And we, we have videotape of the underpass where he claims he found the phones, thanks
00:31:23.200 to Brian, um, because this is how it works.
00:31:25.900 Like Cindy says this to me in an interview, I talked to Mary and Brian, we say we need to
00:31:30.940 figure out exactly where they, but Brian went on the ground and got you guys that footage.
00:31:34.160 All this stuff is just sort of a behind the scenes on how we produce TV, uh, for people.
00:31:38.440 And, you know, it takes a real life person to actually go and figure it out and talk to
00:31:41.560 Cindy again.
00:31:42.100 Exactly where, let me get a shot.
00:31:43.640 Is it representative?
00:31:44.620 And like, let's be careful.
00:31:45.780 So all that stuff went into it.
00:31:47.560 Um, then when we confronted him, Bill, of course I asked him about that and he claimed it was
00:31:54.380 all lies.
00:31:55.340 He told Cindy Short.
00:31:56.960 Did you have those phones?
00:31:59.280 Cause we, we understand that you told a lawyer, Cindy Short, that you found those phones.
00:32:07.180 But I'm, I'm confused here for whatever she wanted me to hear.
00:32:10.900 I didn't tell her I found those phones.
00:32:12.780 I said, I found phones that night, but I didn't find them.
00:32:15.660 No, nothing.
00:32:16.960 Oh, why?
00:32:18.380 It's because she's asking a million questions and I didn't want to make her happy, whatever.
00:32:23.940 It's kind of interesting, Phil Houston, that he didn't lie.
00:32:27.980 What, that he didn't just say, I mean, I think he did lie, but that he, that he didn't,
00:32:31.300 if he's going to lie, why didn't he just say, I never told Cindy Short that?
00:32:34.620 The lie that he's, is concealment of the fact that they're the real phones.
00:32:40.540 He, he, he, it sounds to me the way it was characterized is that it was a random finding
00:32:47.440 of some phones.
00:32:49.020 And he said, I didn't, I didn't say it was those phones.
00:32:53.100 And what I think he is covering up.
00:32:55.180 But then he also says, and I didn't tell her that.
00:32:57.460 Like, and he's like, I was, I knew he says, I told her that, but it was a lie.
00:33:00.960 So let me just be clear.
00:33:02.620 You know, I did say something to her about three phones, not the three phones, but phones.
00:33:07.700 But it was all lies that I just told her to tell her what she wanted here.
00:33:11.500 Why wouldn't he just say that never happens?
00:33:14.100 Cindy Short's a liar.
00:33:15.960 Yeah, because he has to cover up his tracks.
00:33:19.960 The original reason that he told her about finding the phones was so that if those phones were
00:33:28.560 ever recovered or found, because he got rid of them somehow, and they had his fingerprints
00:33:33.640 on them.
00:33:34.840 And is there anyone else who saw him with those phones?
00:33:39.740 For example, there was a reference to another woman.
00:33:42.900 And then you have the call to Megan Wright.
00:33:45.960 If they connected in that evening, then that means that someone else knows that he was
00:33:52.360 in possession of those phones.
00:33:54.180 So he has to cover up and, you know, come up with a reason as to why he had some phones.
00:34:01.160 Yes, exactly.
00:34:02.440 And also, Megan, he knows he made that call.
00:34:06.200 He knows it.
00:34:07.300 So it's like, you know, the planes, when they got a missile locked in, they throw up flares
00:34:12.360 to distract.
00:34:13.020 He is putting up so much distraction.
00:34:16.240 And the best liars, in my experience, they stay as close to the truth as possible and
00:34:22.700 take a baby step to the left or right.
00:34:25.240 I mean, when I go undercover, that's what I do.
00:34:27.660 Keep it simple, stupid, so you could remember your lies.
00:34:31.320 And that's what he, in my opinion, that's what he's doing here.
00:34:34.540 Oh, yeah, I told her I found the phones.
00:34:36.540 Now, he could retract that if he was ever pressed.
00:34:39.700 But in my opinion, he believes he's so far past getting convicted, that's why he felt
00:34:45.980 he can engage in and control the narrative.
00:34:48.460 Because we don't believe his denial.
00:34:50.000 We believe that he did tell Cindy Short that.
00:34:52.840 And when he did that, he probably did that because he didn't know what she knew.
00:34:58.580 He didn't know whether law enforcement had the phones.
00:35:01.780 He didn't know exactly what the evidence would be because this is right after the disappearance
00:35:05.540 about him and those phones.
00:35:07.900 And so if he had stolen them along with the baby, he had to say enough to Cindy to find
00:35:13.840 out what she knew, what does she have on the phones, but not to incriminate himself
00:35:19.280 for having stolen them.
00:35:20.920 That's our belief.
00:35:22.400 It's all so chilling.
00:35:24.980 And Phil always teaches in his deception detection class and in his books, Spy the Lie, that one
00:35:31.660 of the signs, it has to be as part of a cluster, meaning within the first five seconds after
00:35:35.380 you ask the question.
00:35:37.040 Because like, for example, looking away, that could be a sign of deception, but not if it's
00:35:42.300 by itself.
00:35:42.900 But if it's with another sign of deception and Phil outlines them all within the five second
00:35:47.720 cluster or within the five second answer, it can be a cluster, which is a deception thing.
00:35:53.120 And so one of the things Phil talks about is hands above the midline.
00:35:56.980 Because, Phil, why?
00:35:59.340 Why do your hands go above the midline sometimes when you lie?
00:36:02.700 Typically, it's a spike in anxiety, the fight or flight or freeze response.
00:36:08.800 Someone asks you a question and it puts you on the spot.
00:36:14.540 Your anxiety immediately spikes.
00:36:18.100 And that spike in anxiety causes a rerouting of your circulation.
00:36:22.540 And that circulation, as it rushes, you know, away to the muscles and the things that are
00:36:32.200 going to help you get away or get out of this, face this threat, they irritate the capillaries.
00:36:40.080 And as a result, you find yourself, you know, playing with your ears or your nose because
00:36:45.840 blood is being drawn away from those things that could be, that normally require a lot of
00:36:51.860 blood.
00:36:53.080 He's up on a ladder.
00:36:54.900 He's already got a barrier between the two of us.
00:36:57.280 But then he starts waving his arms around in this particular answer.
00:37:00.520 Let's let's watch it again.
00:37:02.020 Just with all that in mind.
00:37:04.160 Did you have those phones?
00:37:06.340 Because we we understand that you told a lawyer, Cindy Short, that you found those phones.
00:37:15.120 I'm whatever she wanted me here.
00:37:17.960 I didn't tell her I found those phones.
00:37:19.160 Waving the hands.
00:37:19.720 I found phones that night, but I didn't find them.
00:37:22.540 More waving.
00:37:23.100 No, nothing.
00:37:24.100 Oh, why?
00:37:25.420 It's because she's asking a moving question.
00:37:27.620 I don't want to.
00:37:28.120 Waving.
00:37:28.700 I just make her happy, whatever.
00:37:30.860 I mean, every second of it with the hand here and then the big, big, big and then back
00:37:34.900 here and then big, big, big.
00:37:36.340 So would you peg that as anxiety, Phil?
00:37:39.800 Yeah, absolutely.
00:37:40.820 It was a great question.
00:37:42.080 He wasn't expecting it.
00:37:43.740 And you followed up and he thought he had satisfied you, I think, in terms of your curiosity
00:37:50.740 with his answer in the previous question.
00:37:53.220 And in fact, you just kept going.
00:37:56.260 And he's getting more and more nervous, more anxious.
00:38:00.060 All right.
00:38:01.620 Sonia, have you thought at all about how quickly Tanko answered the question about whether the
00:38:07.520 ex-girlfriend, Megan Wright, wanted a baby?
00:38:10.440 The way he answered made me feel like he could have taken the baby for her.
00:38:14.800 But then when he called her and said he had a baby for them, she may have freaked out.
00:38:20.600 He said that was a lie very quickly and huffy, almost like she lied to him.
00:38:26.240 She's referring to this right here.
00:38:28.600 One of the theories is that she really wanted a family.
00:38:31.260 She wanted a kid.
00:38:32.800 Yeah, it's totally not true.
00:38:34.240 That's not true.
00:38:35.440 She never said that to you.
00:38:38.900 Totally not true.
00:38:40.180 No.
00:38:41.120 Megan Wright was defensive on this same point and that the effect of that, Phil, is to make
00:38:47.820 us believe it more, not less.
00:38:50.100 One of the things that jumps out immediately, he says it was totally not true.
00:38:54.620 Immediately, a convincing adjective, if you will, prior to making his answer or giving his
00:39:05.300 answer.
00:39:06.680 And he's giving you a denial.
00:39:10.920 But it's a little bit like in the O.J. Simpson trial.
00:39:14.760 You know, when they ask him for a plea, he said, I'm 100 percent, you know, if you believe
00:39:21.060 that he was guilty, they feel the need to to be more compelling in their response.
00:39:27.440 And that's what he was doing there.
00:39:29.480 And it was and he doesn't he doesn't realize it.
00:39:32.440 And you're asking direct questions.
00:39:34.620 And that's what's giving him real difficulty.
00:39:37.100 Because, Brian, at the time I mentioned this, when we first got on in the show, the reporting
00:39:43.200 was everywhere that she told him she wanted a baby.
00:39:51.380 And when she was younger and pink haired, she was on camera like with Jim Spellman.
00:39:57.120 But the denial she gave me on that front, the denial he gave me on that front was much
00:40:03.740 stronger than I'd ever heard from them up until this point.
00:40:07.760 Did Jersey ever offer to to get a baby for you?
00:40:12.000 No.
00:40:13.260 The denials she gave to me and he gave to me were the strongest I'd heard from either of
00:40:17.060 them on the the allegation that he might have been stealing a baby or that she might have
00:40:22.620 told him she wanted a baby.
00:40:23.860 Go ahead, Phil.
00:40:24.240 Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
00:40:26.880 At a minimum, they talked about that subject.
00:40:30.080 I truly believe that they had in perhaps the early days of their relationship before
00:40:38.600 Megan realized that this was not the guy for her.
00:40:43.280 I think there was a strong possibility that they would have talked about having a child
00:40:48.140 or wanting a child.
00:40:49.600 Kate writes in and I confess I don't know this movie, but she writes in.
00:40:53.520 I'm really enjoying your fascinating Baby Lisa series.
00:40:56.300 I'm sure you've thought of this already.
00:40:58.020 But doesn't this whole situation remind you of the Coen brothers movie Raising Arizona,
00:41:02.980 where the main character, Nicolas Cage in a small town, is a criminal who hatches a plan
00:41:08.620 with his wife to steal a baby from a family who had quintuplets.
00:41:11.860 Quote, no one will notice if we steal one in order to start a family of their own.
00:41:15.660 Could Jersey, the suspect, have watched that movie and thought it would be a good idea to
00:41:19.780 steal a baby to try to start a family with his girlfriend, Megan.
00:41:23.260 Here is a clip from the movie Raising Arizona with Nick Cage and Holly Hunter from 1987.
00:41:30.240 Which one you get?
00:41:31.440 I don't know.
00:41:32.340 Nathan Jr., I think.
00:41:33.280 Give me here.
00:41:34.660 Here's the instructions.
00:41:35.400 Oh, he's beautiful.
00:41:39.860 Yeah, he's awful damn good.
00:41:41.560 I think I got the best one.
00:41:43.140 I bet they were all beautiful.
00:41:44.320 All babies are beautiful.
00:41:46.400 This one's awful damn good, though.
00:41:48.260 Don't you cuss around him.
00:41:49.480 He's fine.
00:41:50.420 He is.
00:41:51.700 I think it's Nathan Jr.
00:41:53.220 We are doing the right thing, aren't we, High?
00:41:54.780 I mean, they had more than they could handle.
00:41:56.760 Well, now, honey, we've been over this and over this.
00:41:59.440 And there's what's right and there's what's right.
00:42:01.420 And never the twins shall meet.
00:42:02.600 Don't you think his mom will be upset?
00:42:04.420 I mean, overly?
00:42:05.680 Well, of course she'll be upset, sugar, but she'll get over it.
00:42:09.500 She's got four little babies, almost as good as this one.
00:42:13.720 It's like when I was arriving at the convenience store.
00:42:16.020 I love him so much.
00:42:19.060 Holly Hunter, she's amazing.
00:42:21.720 Now, that was 25 years before the events in question in this case, Bill.
00:42:27.060 But Jersey is of a certain age, and we cannot rule out that he saw that movie,
00:42:31.640 which was really popular.
00:42:33.420 Yeah, I could pretty much tell you my guess would be absolutely not.
00:42:37.860 You know, they couldn't afford their own phone.
00:42:41.200 They passed around a cell phone in the meth house.
00:42:43.940 I don't think they could have afforded Netflix, let alone a TV set.
00:42:48.120 That'd be more of an Amazon primer, I think.
00:42:53.720 Clever, clever viewer, though.
00:42:55.340 I love the movie references.
00:42:56.360 And one never knows, you know.
00:42:57.680 And you know what?
00:42:58.460 It just shows you, you know, you're in a meth house.
00:43:01.600 Lord knows what they were hopped up on, you know.
00:43:03.940 And they probably rambled, I want a kid.
00:43:06.240 Yes, I'll get you a kid.
00:43:07.620 And that may have been, you know, when the perpetrator went in that house,
00:43:12.520 through the front window.
00:43:14.460 I remember the police said, oh, they could not have gone in.
00:43:17.140 Meanwhile, when we went to the house, I got right in.
00:43:19.540 And pushed in that screen, and he walked through that house, which was chilling,
00:43:24.500 and probably heard the baby stirring, and he grabbed everything that he could carry.
00:43:30.660 And unfortunately, baby Lisa, in my opinion, was one of them, along with the phones.
00:43:35.400 Mm-hmm.
00:43:35.840 And we had the neighbors right around the corner say they saw a man with a baby,
00:43:42.280 both the husband and the wife, right in the relevant time frame.
00:43:46.940 And that's never been explained.
00:43:49.180 No blanket, no anything, just a baby.
00:43:50.820 That's right.
00:43:51.300 They both saw it.
00:43:51.980 They did not know that one was missing.
00:43:53.500 I mean, that's just, that's such a damning fact.
00:43:55.600 Okay, from Kathy.
00:43:56.620 Thank you for all of your hard work.
00:43:57.860 I listen to your show daily.
00:43:58.840 Thank you, Kathy.
00:43:59.660 It's my number one trusted news source.
00:44:01.160 Yes.
00:44:01.800 If you have a chance to discuss the Tanko interview with Phil Houston again,
00:44:05.680 and haven't already explored the below, I was hoping Phil would talk about this.
00:44:10.080 The question is, Tanko seemed aggressive when he was asked who Bill was,
00:44:17.820 meaning when the subject of who Bill Stanton was.
00:44:20.340 Here's what she's referring to in Sop 5.
00:44:22.540 The way I see it is we're trying to provide them with closure.
00:44:25.680 You can help us do that.
00:44:27.060 And with some comfort, you know, and just figuring out what the story is.
00:44:31.200 This is big shot lawyer.
00:44:33.400 No, he's not a lawyer.
00:44:34.660 He's my friend.
00:44:35.420 This is Bill.
00:44:36.200 Oh, yeah.
00:44:36.700 Yeah, no.
00:44:37.960 In another life, he's a lawyer.
00:44:39.420 See, they do these stories, and people just trash my name.
00:44:46.060 They totally trash my name.
00:44:47.200 Yeah.
00:44:47.760 You know what I mean?
00:44:48.720 I was involved with a lot of illegal activity about that.
00:44:51.580 What do you make of that, the focus on Bill, who he raised?
00:44:54.780 I didn't raise there, Phil.
00:44:56.960 Again, Megan, you were focusing, you opened the interview with three questions
00:45:02.300 or three focuses on involvement, and you weren't going away.
00:45:08.340 And he didn't know what to say, and he was a classic case of buying time.
00:45:16.680 And he used the aggression also just in case Bill was with law enforcement.
00:45:24.500 And he spent a lot of his life dealing with law enforcement, and I wouldn't be surprised
00:45:29.780 that if he felt that Bill looked, acted, and could be law enforcement.
00:45:37.040 But the major benefit to him was he needed to buy time.
00:45:41.840 And then, as you know, he came back and made an attempt then to answer the question.
00:45:46.060 But the questioner that raised this question was absolutely correct on the aggression
00:45:51.960 because he talked very demeaningly about in Bill's direction.
00:45:59.560 It was like a stall tactic.
00:46:00.780 That makes sense because you hadn't really come up, and he wasn't, like,
00:46:06.200 searching for more information when we first walked on, Bill.
00:46:09.200 It was kind of interesting.
00:46:09.880 And when we were walking off, remember, he said something like,
00:46:13.960 are you taping this?
00:46:15.520 And you said, like, not with this phone.
00:46:18.440 You just said something that was actually true, but not totally revealing.
00:46:22.980 Even if you don't BS right back.
00:46:24.780 Yeah, exactly.
00:46:26.820 He spent half an hour BSing us.
00:46:29.040 We got actually a lot of email about this one.
00:46:30.780 Here it is in SOT 6.
00:46:33.380 That jumped out at us, too.
00:46:52.540 I remember when Bill and I were walking off property, we were both like,
00:46:54.820 holy shit, is that the thing about the death penalty that came up?
00:46:58.780 What about that one, Phil?
00:47:00.540 Yes, the death penalty, again, is part of a convincing statement,
00:47:05.640 and it's also part of this demon that he deals with all the time
00:47:10.540 and worries about getting caught and worries that sooner or later,
00:47:15.200 all of this is going to become unraveled,
00:47:18.200 and his knowledge and our participation in it will come to light.
00:47:22.840 And he's scared to death because, you know,
00:47:26.000 he knows, having been in prison, how serious these things can get.
00:47:30.540 You know, very quickly once the truth has been uncovered.
00:47:34.680 And so he, but, and so he so, he so fears the death penalty
00:47:38.940 that he uses that as a convincing statement to enhance his answer
00:47:44.360 and saying, I would never do something like that.
00:47:46.940 I know, you know, how bad the death penalty is.
00:47:50.040 That was his underlying message.
00:47:50.900 Yeah, it makes sense.
00:47:51.940 I should state for the record, this is Phil's opinion,
00:47:54.980 his expert opinion as a deception detection expert.
00:47:58.560 Jersey denies all these claims, as you've heard.
00:48:02.180 That, it's true, because if you asked me, did you have any,
00:48:05.260 what involvement did you have in the disappearance of baby Lisa?
00:48:07.560 My answer would be none.
00:48:08.580 I came in after she was gone to report on it as a journalist, period.
00:48:13.240 And even if some people had gotten to the point of saying,
00:48:16.200 maybe Megyn Kelly did it, she was there on site in Kansas City.
00:48:19.280 I don't, I still don't think my response would be, this is a death penalty case.
00:48:23.560 I'm not talking about, like, that it's interesting that that's where his mind went
00:48:28.500 and the audience reacted strongly.
00:48:30.340 I have a question concerning part four.
00:48:32.000 You mentioned the parents finding a charge on their debit card for a name-changing service.
00:48:37.560 There's no questioning or explanation of how the charge was on their card.
00:48:41.820 Is this something I missed?
00:48:43.240 Great work on all of your presentations.
00:48:45.640 Bob is referring to this piece of part four of our baby Lisa special.
00:48:51.700 One month after Lisa went missing, Debra and Jeremy found a charge on a debit card,
00:48:57.260 $69.04, paid to a British company that called itself a name-changing service.
00:49:05.220 Bob has a point.
00:49:06.300 That one, we probably, we should have closed that loop a little tighter there,
00:49:09.120 because that is a big one.
00:49:10.280 Like, wait, what?
00:49:11.360 But we didn't, I don't think we found anything more on it, Brian, right?
00:49:14.320 Jeremy did not know, and nothing came of it.
00:49:17.280 Right.
00:49:19.200 It's debit card fraud, you know, which, you know, happens.
00:49:23.940 Whoever took the phones and the baby did not take his debit card or a statement that
00:49:29.320 had the number.
00:49:31.760 So, and also, if it were Jeremy and Debra, why would they be paying for a name-changing
00:49:38.660 service?
00:49:40.760 You know, so it's like, it really is a fuzzy, I mean, it's a dead end, and no matter which
00:49:46.260 way you could go.
00:49:47.460 Yeah, because if Jeremy or Debra stole the baby, then one would presume they'd be with
00:49:52.760 the baby.
00:49:53.200 They'd be raising the baby.
00:49:54.560 They didn't do that.
00:49:55.640 That's not true.
00:49:56.380 They were together living in the same home up until very recently.
00:49:59.720 So not, one wasn't scurrying about the world, changing the baby's name so that she couldn't
00:50:04.220 be identified as little Lisa.
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00:51:29.920 Okay, Megan Wright, OMG, a lot of feedback on the Megan Wright interview.
00:51:39.160 I think all four of us and Mary, too, are all really floored after that whole thing happened.
00:51:45.180 Phil and Bill, you watched it with me in the wings and then came up to offer instant analysis.
00:51:50.100 Brian and Mary were watching, too.
00:51:51.860 And it was a shocking exchange.
00:51:54.560 I really didn't expect it to go as it did.
00:51:58.140 The audience may remember she got very emotional.
00:52:01.480 And there was a turn in the interview where she was like, she cried a lot.
00:52:05.540 She was very emotional or like she purported to cry a lot.
00:52:08.620 And then there was this turn where I had to ask her about,
00:52:11.580 she served some time for abuse of the baby she had much later after baby Lisa.
00:52:19.240 You just have to do that as a reporter.
00:52:21.000 I can't have her on and give an interview about whether she may have been involved in the disappearance of a baby
00:52:25.560 and ignore the fact that later she was found guilty of medical neglect of her own child.
00:52:31.220 So, you know, it's one of those sensitive things where she's agreed to give me this interview,
00:52:34.340 but we both know that this thing is going to have to come up.
00:52:37.660 And boy, she wasn't happy.
00:52:40.140 Here's a little bit of that in SOT 17.
00:52:42.340 He was underweight.
00:52:43.720 Is that why he was underweight?
00:52:45.120 Severely.
00:52:47.480 Can we not talk about this?
00:52:49.100 This is the worst thing in my life.
00:52:51.260 And you're just dwelling on it.
00:52:52.580 And I really don't appreciate it.
00:52:54.200 I'm trying to participate.
00:52:55.300 We can move right past.
00:52:56.500 I'm trying to participate for the sake of baby Lisa not to focus on the worst thing in my life,
00:53:03.660 the most embarrassing thing.
00:53:05.580 So, Phil, the audience did not believe the tears.
00:53:09.260 And I think sided with you, who also very rough on Megan right after that interview.
00:53:15.380 You did not believe pretty much anything she said.
00:53:17.120 Phil was stone-faced.
00:53:18.240 He was on.
00:53:19.480 Phil was hardcore.
00:53:20.200 Yeah, I had seen other interviews with Megan.
00:53:26.260 And in my opinion, in every one of those interviews, she used her, the tough life.
00:53:35.140 In other words, I think that much of what she's saying about how tough her life was,
00:53:40.360 there's a certain amount of truth to that.
00:53:42.400 And she's using it very effectively to distract people away from, you know, what the real issue is.
00:53:51.660 In other words, it gets people, you know, take their eye off the ball and focus on this stuff.
00:53:57.760 And she's very, very good at it.
00:54:00.040 She started her answer with aggression.
00:54:05.760 And what that typically means is that when someone really doesn't want to talk about this,
00:54:11.860 they will, you know, try to shut it down right off the bat.
00:54:16.320 And she did that.
00:54:18.000 So, I also believe that there is an underlying reason, you know, some of the reasons that she gave embarrassment
00:54:25.300 and the worst moment in her life and so forth.
00:54:28.580 But I also believe she's hiding and doesn't want to talk about her role in the mistreatment of her own child.
00:54:36.620 In other words, how bad that level of mistreatment actually was.
00:54:41.680 This is what I think she was really trying to conceal there.
00:54:44.880 That's what the deception was primarily about at that moment.
00:54:50.100 So many of the audience members had the same reaction that even my family had when we watched it together at first,
00:54:56.820 which was, why would you keep that in?
00:54:59.140 When they first saw her come for me, you know, it was a very tense, awkward exchange between us.
00:55:04.360 And people were like, why would you keep that in there?
00:55:06.280 But there was a reason, you know, we wanted the audience to see how in this moment she turned on me.
00:55:12.800 She aggressively came for me and sort of tried to emotionally stand me down.
00:55:18.780 And, you know, Phil, you can see in episode four, had very strong thoughts about that
00:55:22.280 and about her use of emotion throughout the interview.
00:55:24.980 When you put her up again, she started like crying to, you know, if we're going to look at it, go down that road, like to obfuscate, you know, she had me tearing up and I bought it, you know, I bought it.
00:55:39.580 But now that we step back and we look in reflection, like a child, they don't get what they want or it's not going their way, you know, start crying to bring out the humanity in us.
00:55:50.940 One thing I struggle with, and having watched it and listened to it again repeatedly, is on October 4th, when she got back from Walmart and Waffle House, she decided to become sober.
00:56:06.560 Like, what? Because she got a call from the FBI?
00:56:10.200 She had not yet been connected in any way publicly to anything.
00:56:15.280 She, I put the TV on and I saw a kidnap, like she was connecting herself.
00:56:22.060 It's a very good point.
00:56:23.620 And so that, because, and even, even, even if she did see that a baby had been stolen, a baby she didn't know from a family she didn't know, why would that scare her sober?
00:56:36.280 Like, why would that random news item scare her sober?
00:56:41.640 And sober ever since, okay?
00:56:44.280 Like, according to court records, she violated probation or something.
00:56:49.860 It was documented that she had failed a marijuana test at least once, you know, in the years of when she was imprisoned or afterward.
00:56:59.780 And, you know, listen, that could be the Demi Lovato, California sober, right?
00:57:04.660 But back in 2012 and 2013, marijuana wasn't like the, you know, over-the-counter thing that it is now.
00:57:13.420 True.
00:57:14.780 Yeah, we got a lot of mail on people wanting to know about that, you know, how she got scared sober.
00:57:21.280 This is from M.
00:57:22.880 She goes by M, or he.
00:57:24.620 Writes as follows.
00:57:25.300 I agree with a lie detector, Phil, on Megan Wright.
00:57:28.260 She clearly says that she was only in a relationship with Sky for five months, but then she says she has post-traumatic stress disorder and cries throughout the entire interview.
00:57:39.260 And then claims to know how mean and scary he is, but can't give you an answer when you ask if she thinks he could do that to a baby.
00:57:48.820 And she says, I think Phil is spot on.
00:57:51.100 She knows more.
00:57:52.240 She just doesn't want to admit it because she's worried it will implicate her.
00:57:56.860 Here's a little bit of what she's referring to in SOT 15.
00:57:59.440 How likely is it, do you think, that Jersey, John Tinko, was involved in baby Lisa's disappearance?
00:58:09.300 It's hard to say, honestly.
00:58:11.880 I didn't know him very well.
00:58:13.700 He and I were together for less than six months, and we only lived together for a couple of months of that.
00:58:20.540 So I didn't really know him all that well.
00:58:22.760 And most of the time that we were together, you know, we were using drugs together.
00:58:28.360 It wasn't a healthy relationship where you learn what somebody is capable of.
00:58:35.420 What's that about, Phil?
00:58:36.560 It's hard to say.
00:58:37.820 It's hard for her to say after all this time whether he might have been involved.
00:58:41.580 It's a classic example of truth and the lie.
00:58:44.680 It is hard for her to say.
00:58:46.760 That's the truthful part.
00:58:48.120 But when it's followed by a convincing statement, which is honestly, now it signals right away you're looking at this small cluster, but it's immediately telling you to be careful of what comes after that because she's giving you all, you know, untruth.
00:59:09.400 All right.
00:59:10.780 Here's another piece of it that the audience member, M, referenced in SOT 16.
00:59:16.140 I have a lot of PTSD from the things that he put me through that I've tried really hard to work through over the years.
00:59:23.960 But there's a lot of it I can't, you know, I can't let go of.
00:59:28.660 I can't forget being that afraid.
00:59:32.000 Were you thinking, you know, this guy's kind of crazy.
00:59:36.480 Could have been him.
00:59:37.260 Yes.
00:59:37.540 I definitely thought this guy is crazy and that he was horrible to me, traumatized me.
00:59:44.100 But I have no idea what he's capable of.
00:59:48.260 I mean, there is.
00:59:49.180 She's right.
00:59:49.800 There's an inconsistency in her.
00:59:51.440 Like, it was so traumatic.
00:59:52.680 I have PTSD all these years later.
00:59:54.920 But, gee, I have no idea whether he could commit this crime.
00:59:59.940 These were phony tears, Megan.
01:00:02.580 And if you notice, she was trying to cry as she initially started explaining.
01:00:10.180 And then when you ask the follow-up question, immediately everything went away and her voice normalized.
01:00:17.320 And she's back to giving you an explanation as if, you know, you ask, you know, how do you bake a cake?
01:00:26.080 You know what I mean?
01:00:26.840 I mean, she's now back to talking normally.
01:00:30.560 People who are genuinely upset don't usually make that transition that smoothly.
01:00:37.280 And she's certainly not a very poised individual to begin with.
01:00:42.320 And she's, you know, she, I mean, she's using the tears to her advantage or trying hard to do that.
01:00:50.680 If Megan Wright had anything to do with the disappearance of this baby, why would she have given me the interview?
01:00:57.380 That's the thing that I can't get past.
01:00:59.620 She didn't have to sit with me.
01:01:01.320 I'm not FBI.
01:01:03.060 There's no subpoena.
01:01:04.640 She knew I wasn't going to go easy on her.
01:01:07.880 I never said this is going to be a walk in the park.
01:01:11.320 And so she knew that she'd face tough questions.
01:01:14.540 And just being questioned about it at all, if you have something to do with it, you would avoid that like the plague.
01:01:20.320 It's much more consistent, like with Jersey's behavior.
01:01:23.540 Get out of here.
01:01:24.560 He's down the street.
01:01:25.760 I'm not talking to you, random man.
01:01:27.860 Right.
01:01:28.520 She was like, I'll do it.
01:01:30.220 And she sat with me for well over an hour, Phil.
01:01:33.780 Behavioral scientists tell us, Megan, there's only a casual relationship between human behavior and logic.
01:01:43.340 If you were to ask me, do I think Megan Wright actively participated in new?
01:01:48.080 I'm going to say no.
01:01:49.140 I'll say no to that.
01:01:50.360 What I think happened was, so suppose we all knew someone that was fairly close in our life in a similar situation.
01:01:58.740 We did speak about a baby.
01:02:00.820 He's the number one guy.
01:02:02.840 The FBI did contact her because that her number was in the phone.
01:02:07.880 So my feeling is more of a guilty conscience, knowing that he very well could have done it, and she just didn't want any part of it.
01:02:18.600 That's what I think her participation was.
01:02:22.220 She didn't vigorously say, hey, listen, we spoke about that, and yes, he very well could have.
01:02:29.000 I think given her mental state at that time, she just wanted out of dodge, out of the situation, don't implicate me.
01:02:37.220 I don't know who called that phone.
01:02:39.100 I didn't know the Irwins, yada, yada, yada.
01:02:41.140 And I think now this is her feeble attempt to try to make good on it.
01:02:46.400 That was her motivation, Nicole, to do the interview with you.
01:02:50.280 At a minimum, she knows it's possible he did it, and it's possible she was the inspiration behind it.
01:02:57.280 Exactly.
01:02:57.680 Kind of the best-case scenario for Megan.
01:03:01.080 I mean, I guess the best-best is he had nothing to do with it, and she had nothing to do with it.
01:03:04.000 But then if he had something to do with it, I don't think anybody believes he just did it on his own.
01:03:09.660 The relationship with her was too significant and volatile and recent, and there was a discussion in some way, shape, or form, I'm convinced, about her wanting a family.
01:03:21.220 She kind of denied it in our interview, but I didn't believe it.
01:03:24.660 And when he went by that baby in the house that night, that was the light bulb that went off in the meth head head.
01:03:32.300 Let me grab it.
01:03:33.120 Let me get a gold star from the woman who I want to spend my life with.
01:03:36.960 Because he had a history, Cindy Short told us, of breaking into houses and committing petty crimes, taking things like cell phones.
01:03:42.920 That would be easy to resell on the market and get a price for.
01:03:46.260 And that's why we all concluded it was probably him, and he probably took the baby as a crime of opportunity.
01:03:52.120 And let's not forget, he was working on a house up the block that night.
01:03:58.040 He knew.
01:03:58.600 What were you going to say, Phil?
01:04:00.180 The one thing that links her in my mind is what she did with her phone the night before the call occurred.
01:04:10.680 In other words, she gave up her phone to other people in the house and said, here, you guys can use this tonight.
01:04:21.100 Is that just a coincidence?
01:04:23.200 You have the same question as Natasha, our producer for this segment that we're doing right now.
01:04:27.660 And she wrote her own questions down after having gone neck deep on all of this, too.
01:04:31.240 Her question is, it seems very convenient for Megan to leave her phone behind on the night of October 3rd, the morning of October 4th, when the crime took place.
01:04:38.900 Could this have been on purpose?
01:04:41.260 Did police ever check out if she actually went to the Waffle House and the Walmart like she claimed?
01:04:47.200 Do you know the answer to that last question there, Brian?
01:04:50.800 I don't know.
01:04:53.440 But they were very thorough.
01:04:55.060 One would have to presume they did.
01:04:57.920 Yeah.
01:04:58.200 She left behind this phone.
01:05:00.380 She has a phone.
01:05:01.960 She's also using drugs at this point.
01:05:04.700 And she leaves it behind for the trap house.
01:05:07.500 Now, she explained to us this is like your kind of payment.
01:05:11.060 You know, you've got to show that you're worth something in order to be allowed to live at the trap house.
01:05:15.660 And I had this phone.
01:05:16.640 It was her contribution.
01:05:17.620 Yeah.
01:05:18.020 Nobody eats for free.
01:05:19.100 You've got to pay your rent.
01:05:20.200 And that was her.
01:05:21.340 You know, like just playing devil's advocate to what Phil was saying, like to balance it out.
01:05:25.120 I'm not saying I necessarily agree.
01:05:26.580 But, you know, to me, that was a plausible answer.
01:05:29.620 You know, OK, I'm going to the Waffle House.
01:05:31.160 It's not like I have real friends in my life, except that are in this house.
01:05:34.920 Here, use the phone.
01:05:35.960 And when I get back, I claim it because she had my understanding was she had the only active phone at that time.
01:05:43.380 And they were all using it.
01:05:44.560 And we did make contact with a fellow member of the place she was living who admitted he had used her phone.
01:05:52.220 He did.
01:05:52.500 He wouldn't admit on the night in question, but admitted he'd been using her phone so that she is supported on that.
01:05:58.260 Is she not, Brian, that she did allow the members of that house to use her phone?
01:06:02.200 Two people in the house told me that.
01:06:04.780 Yeah.
01:06:04.960 OK, so on that, she may she may be telling the truth.
01:06:09.260 Then there was this that a lot of the viewers reacted to.
01:06:12.820 And Phil, you reacted to this, too.
01:06:14.400 What made her go sober on October 4th of all days?
01:06:18.200 This is how the question here.
01:06:21.460 Did Megan ever clarify what the situation what the situation was to make her quit drugs, cold turkey on the morning of October 4th?
01:06:28.460 I'd imagine it's pretty hard to quit meth, cold turkey, especially in her living arrangement.
01:06:33.400 Would the FBI calling her phone be that big of a wake up call to a meth addict?
01:06:38.260 I mean, it is true.
01:06:39.240 She I don't know that she ever fully explained that, you know, what what the trauma was.
01:06:45.540 You know, you say, Brian, was it like the FBI just randomly called?
01:06:49.580 It was just that the FBI called her phone when she wasn't even with it.
01:06:52.540 Or she saw a news item on the television with which she says to us she had absolutely no connection.
01:06:58.380 Yeah, I'm not sure we have an answer other than just the trauma of the day.
01:07:02.060 A call from the FBI news a baby had been stolen.
01:07:05.580 And soon thereafter, news to her that the cell phones had dialed her number.
01:07:10.640 And one other thing, in her 20 or 21 year old life, she already had suffered a lot of other trauma, including living in a domestic violence shelter, some other bad actor boyfriend in the months before this, before Tanko.
01:07:30.220 So here is another smart question, Natalia.
01:07:34.500 I was watching the first episode of Baby Lisa, and I was wondering, what if the neighbor that was drinking with Deborah, Samantha Brando was her name, that what if that woman got her drunk on purpose and had an arrangement or a debt with someone?
01:07:48.720 Here's a piece from episode one, SOT 18.
01:07:52.000 Samantha and James Brando.
01:07:54.740 Their family was close with the Irwins.
01:07:57.200 But that day, the Brandos were separating, something they had decided earlier that afternoon.
01:08:03.300 James moved out just hours after Deborah and Samantha started drinking.
01:08:07.380 Deborah remembers the conversation.
01:08:09.460 I was trying to help her through it and, you know, just give her the best advice I could.
01:08:14.440 And she was kind of spilling her gut, you know, what she went through, what she's hoping she will accomplish next, you know.
01:08:22.000 Custody stuff, you know, just the deep things that come with, you know, separation of family.
01:08:29.320 What about the Brandos, Brian?
01:08:30.920 We did look into them, Samantha and James.
01:08:33.420 Samantha would not talk to us.
01:08:35.060 She vociferously refused to speak to us and was very angry.
01:08:42.600 James, we had a long conversation with.
01:08:45.160 And he basically kind of said everything that Jim Spellman told us, that he told Jim Spellman.
01:08:53.320 He had quite an itinerary that night.
01:08:56.820 And a lot of it was captured on CCTV, like he went to Walmart.
01:09:01.700 And he was also over at an Air Force base where he worked in the wee hours of the morning.
01:09:10.120 So we didn't really get any red flags from him.
01:09:16.480 And the police had ruled him out.
01:09:18.320 The police ruled him out.
01:09:19.180 Of course, the police say they ruled out or that they moved on from Jersey, too.
01:09:22.860 So, I mean, I don't know how much stock we put in them.
01:09:24.740 Why would Samantha Brando be vociferously against sitting with us when both Debra and Jeremy cooperated with the piece extensively?
01:09:34.660 Well, here's an interesting.
01:09:36.620 I don't know why I never was able to.
01:09:39.100 I never asked Debra this.
01:09:41.340 But Samantha and Debra stopped speaking, you know, have not been in contact in many, many years.
01:09:47.480 Like not long after the kidnapping, they no longer talked to each other.
01:09:52.160 And so there was some so I don't know what it was, but I just thought that's some sort of negative energy that Samantha's not speaking to Debra and let alone get a phone call from someone doing a podcast.
01:10:06.700 But I mean, I mean, I get it.
01:10:08.460 That happens in relationships.
01:10:09.540 But like you're talking about a missing baby, you'd think.
01:10:11.980 And she's she's a critical witness.
01:10:14.000 I mean, she was important.
01:10:14.880 She was with Debra the whole night while they were drinking.
01:10:17.940 I don't know.
01:10:18.580 That's interesting, though.
01:10:19.280 So I will say to the extent she could say anything that would make Debra look bad, it's how much worse could it be than what Debra has told us about Debra's behavior that night?
01:10:28.900 It's not like Debra's trying to paint herself as some perfect angel.
01:10:32.620 You know, she was very open right from the get go.
01:10:35.080 Well, just about the first time, you know, well, the first time I interviewed her when she told us how much she had been drinking and, you know, how she was basically blackout drunk.
01:10:46.020 And I asked her about this when we did our interview.
01:10:48.820 Like, why, why would you why were you so honest about it?
01:10:53.800 This is actually from part one.
01:10:55.160 Watch this.
01:10:56.280 Do you have a drinking problem?
01:10:57.740 No, I don't think so.
01:11:02.020 Some folks are going to have an issue with you.
01:11:04.660 Oh, I'm sure they are.
01:11:05.860 More than five drinks while you're looking after a little baby and two little boys.
01:11:08.860 She was sleeping.
01:11:10.540 I wanted to ask.
01:11:11.260 So why did you choose to share that with me?
01:11:13.440 Because it has nothing to do with Lisa's abduction.
01:11:17.020 And I want to be honest about everything so that people will look for her.
01:11:20.920 Because I feel like if they're like, oh, she's being honest about that.
01:11:24.000 She's got to be telling the truth about other stuff.
01:11:26.040 So we certainly didn't need Sam Brando to document Debra's condition.
01:11:29.760 And I don't know that there was any reason to believe Samantha Brando had like there was no evidence whatsoever that she had anything to do with it.
01:11:38.160 We interviewed Sam and there was no deception around the, I mean, Sam told us how, and I think one of the reasons why there may be some friction that ensued after that is Samantha was the one who corroborated or told us that Debra had been stumbling drunk that night.
01:12:07.580 And she depicted how much she had to drink.
01:12:14.080 And I don't think Debra wanted that to come out, obviously.
01:12:18.880 So to me, like the question is why wouldn't she come on camera?
01:12:22.740 I don't have the answer to that.
01:12:24.400 I would lean into maybe there was some rancor between the two of them and she just wants to put it in her rear view.
01:12:31.580 But she gets a pass from me, the reason being, I was there, boots on the ground, literally days after the occurrence.
01:12:40.820 And, you know, I interviewed her.
01:12:42.880 I spent some significant time with her.
01:12:45.040 But for me, the biggest thing, why she gets the pass from me is that I asked her to be interviewed by Phil.
01:12:52.220 And she showed no trepidation and she did it.
01:12:57.280 And at that, to me, that was the most important inflection point was to get Phil and Susan to interview Samantha to remove everyone that was within touch distance that evening.
01:13:11.180 And this is right in the beginning of the case when arrests could still be made at any moment.
01:13:16.700 Like she she put herself in potential jeopardy by saying yes to that.
01:13:20.360 And she she did.
01:13:21.140 That's right.
01:13:21.840 OK.
01:13:22.360 I just want to touch base with you again on it, Phil.
01:13:24.060 So have you what where do you stand now?
01:13:26.520 Like what has your analysis changed meaningfully from when we ended the series?
01:13:30.200 Oh, not as far as John Tanko is concerned.
01:13:33.080 I have no doubts about whether he is involved in this.
01:13:36.420 As Bill noted earlier, there's so many points that of evidence and things and coincidence, alleged coincidences that it's just he is he is in my in my opinion, he is as a minimum significant guilty knowledge and and or and or direct involvement.
01:14:00.580 And I'm leaning much more towards direct involvement than just guilty knowledge.
01:14:04.980 And with respect to Megan, right?
01:14:10.240 Megan, right.
01:14:11.200 Megan knows what happened that night.
01:14:13.720 There's no doubt in my mind.
01:14:15.660 And that's the one thing I went back in.
01:14:18.400 You know, you know, I have great respect for the panel here.
01:14:22.660 And, you know, I was sort of a one off on on Megan.
01:14:28.840 And I really went back and looked at it and looked at a couple of the other interviews and so forth.
01:14:33.500 And there's a real consistency in terms of her level or volume of deception and the efforts to distance herself using that deception away from Tanko.
01:14:49.140 And and she's piling on to him.
01:14:53.160 Right. And you pointed this out when we did episode five, that he was very defensive of her, like he he'd shut it down, that she had anything to do with it over and over.
01:15:02.500 And that that to you was actually kind of a tell.
01:15:05.720 He had criminals often do that.
01:15:08.180 They protect each other to when when it's, you know, in their best interest to do so.
01:15:15.480 And yeah, and it certainly is in their best interest to do so if both of them are involved.
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01:17:19.480 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
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01:18:22.060 Now, it's not just you, Phil, or you, Bill, or you, Brian, that thinks Jersey might not have been 100% honest with us,
01:18:29.600 though Brian's probably the best person here for Jersey.
01:18:33.020 It's an incredible invention that you've come up with, Phil.
01:18:39.160 It's basically the AI version of you.
01:18:42.140 At your company, Q Verity, you've been working on an AI lie detector into which you've put all the Phil Houston magic.
01:18:51.820 Can you tell us about this?
01:18:53.960 Yes.
01:18:54.440 It is a tool that we've spent almost, we're short of three years developing.
01:18:59.400 It is an incredible lie detection system.
01:19:03.480 It's text-based.
01:19:05.220 So if you have a conversation with someone and that that conversation can be legally recorded and transcribed,
01:19:15.080 when you put it in, Q will give you the answer.
01:19:20.620 Forgive me for the genderizing of Q, but when we ask Q, you know, what did he look like?
01:19:27.200 He came back with an image and it's a male.
01:19:29.800 So we're calling him he.
01:19:31.520 So he indicated to us with a review of some of your interview with John Tanko, tremendous deception.
01:19:45.620 Now, Q is better than Phil Houston and it's better than, I believe, anyone on the planet.
01:19:51.240 And for this reason, number one, Q has no bias.
01:19:57.600 While AI has, you know, can have bias, we went through something we refer to as constructive confinement.
01:20:07.160 In other words, Q's existence has never been exposed to anyone or anything else but the deception, the job of detecting deception and the training and the concepts and so forth.
01:20:26.240 And the reason he's better than us is for three reasons.
01:20:28.940 He, the no bias, his cognitive capacity capability is far greater than certainly in mind.
01:20:39.220 But we believe, you know, just because it's AI, you know, related, it's better than in terms of detecting deception than anyone else on the planet.
01:20:48.220 His analytical processing is faster than any of our processing.
01:20:53.780 So, for example, when I'm doing an interview, I spot, you know, a deceptive behavior here, a deceptive behavior there, so on and so forth.
01:21:03.860 When Q does his job, he looks at each question and answer individually, individually.
01:21:11.440 He doesn't know what any of the other questions are or what other things at that moment in time.
01:21:17.020 He just doesn't know it.
01:21:18.380 He deals only with what's in front of him.
01:21:21.020 So, if I can interject, Megan, it's essentially Bill is Bobby Fischer and he invented the computer that could beat him in chess.
01:21:31.080 Every single time.
01:21:31.860 So, I'm just looking at, because you've shared some of this with me and on some of the items that we went through.
01:21:38.360 Like, for example, here's the, you fed into him the question of his aggression toward Bill.
01:21:44.140 Who's this big shot lawyer with you?
01:21:46.060 And my question was, we're trying, what we're trying to do is help them.
01:21:49.240 The way I see it is we're trying to provide them with closure.
01:21:51.260 You can help us do that.
01:21:52.360 And with some comfort, you know, and just figuring out what the story is.
01:21:55.680 And his answer was, who's this big shot lawyer?
01:21:58.900 Any, or he's this big shot lawyer.
01:22:00.320 Any, see that they do these stories and then people just trash my name.
01:22:04.640 They totally trash my name.
01:22:05.620 You know what I mean?
01:22:06.180 I was involved with a lot of illegal activity back then.
01:22:08.820 Here's Q.
01:22:09.420 In the speaker's reply, two key patterns emerge.
01:22:12.820 One, hostile or dismissive attack on the question itself.
01:22:16.360 Rather than answer, the speaker launches into a confrontational challenge.
01:22:19.800 He's this big shot lawyer, aren't you?
01:22:21.840 Which serves to intimidate or undermine the questioner instead of providing any direct information.
01:22:26.020 Two, off-topic commentary that avoids the question's core demand.
01:22:29.980 The speaker shifts to complaining about how they do these stories and trash my name,
01:22:34.220 introducing irrelevant detail and emotional framing rather than supplying the specific answer sought.
01:22:39.960 Conclusion, deception, deceptive behavior indicated.
01:22:44.240 Because these two tactics both divert attention and repel the direct inquiry,
01:22:47.480 the response meets the threshold for deceptive behavior.
01:22:50.720 That's so interesting, Phil.
01:22:52.420 You did this with Q time and time again on all of these questions you and I just went through with the audience.
01:22:57.740 And each time Q said, he's lying.
01:23:01.360 Yes, yes.
01:23:02.660 He can do all of that.
01:23:06.840 What he does every single question, it's segmented analysis.
01:23:13.640 He's not looking at the transcript as a whole.
01:23:17.980 It's every single question and answer he analyzes.
01:23:24.080 When he moves on to the next one, you can go back and ask the previous one a hundred times.
01:23:30.600 And each time, it will be the first time for him.
01:23:33.640 He has no memory.
01:23:35.860 So he's not like, he already lied to me five times.
01:23:38.040 I'm going to give him the likelihood of lying on time number six, question six.
01:23:41.660 Yeah.
01:23:42.660 That's not a consideration in his analysis.
01:23:45.860 It is, he's looking, you know, so we ask him, you know, look at this question, analyze it.
01:23:51.860 He analyzes it, says it's deceptive behavior.
01:23:54.520 We wipe the slate clean.
01:23:56.480 It's automatedly wiped away.
01:23:59.560 And he moves on to the next one.
01:24:01.300 He has no memory of what he just did or ever seeing that question.
01:24:05.580 And the significance of that is, is to preclude the development of bias.
01:24:12.020 And what, the other thing that, Megan, that's unbelievable and why speed is important in the analysis is that unlike myself, I might see a behavior or two.
01:24:21.460 But with him, he looks at every single possible deceptive behavior in his training and in the book that could, not in the book we wrote, but in, you know, that we've given him to look for.
01:24:39.060 You know, there's, there's a, you know, a huge number of behaviors.
01:24:42.240 He looks at every single one of those in a matter of seconds and then, and then gives you, and then puts that into his analysis and then creates the, the narrative.
01:24:56.400 Okay, here's another one.
01:24:58.040 We're going to play SOT 11, which you fed to Q.
01:25:01.660 Let's watch it.
01:25:02.240 This is of Tanko.
01:25:03.420 The other story is that some just random person came in the house and kidnapped me.
01:25:10.640 Right?
01:25:11.060 Yeah.
01:25:11.300 So now the FBI's involved, they vacuumed back the whole house.
01:25:16.180 And if my DNA was in there, like from dead skin cells, I'd be charged.
01:25:21.920 It wasn't in the house.
01:25:22.860 Did the cops talk to you?
01:25:24.500 Yeah, they told me this.
01:25:25.800 Did they ever take DNA?
01:25:27.780 Yeah.
01:25:28.340 They did?
01:25:28.920 Yeah.
01:25:29.380 Oh, what did they, like a saliva?
01:25:32.020 They did?
01:25:32.520 Yeah.
01:25:33.320 Did they tell you that you were cleared?
01:25:34.540 They said I didn't have to, but I didn't anyway.
01:25:36.260 Okay.
01:25:37.200 And did they tell you you were cleared and you were good to go?
01:25:40.500 No, they didn't say it's an open case.
01:25:44.020 The analysis.
01:25:45.020 In reviewing the speaker's answer, I identified two categories of behavior that suggest avoidance rather than a straightforward response.
01:25:50.420 One, referring back to a previous statement.
01:25:53.220 The speaker says, that's what I'm saying.
01:25:55.040 This phrase explicitly points back to an earlier remark instead of adding new information.
01:26:00.620 By implying the matter has already been settled, it discourages follow-up and shifts focus away from the core question.
01:26:06.200 Ah, so interesting.
01:26:07.940 Number two, introducing off-topic details and hypothetical scenarios.
01:26:13.200 Throughout the rest of the reply, the speaker describes how the FBI might collect DNA.
01:26:17.380 The FBI vacuumed out the house with my DNA.
01:26:19.880 Speculates about skin cell counts.
01:26:22.040 You have a million skin cells.
01:26:23.880 Outlines procedural steps.
01:26:25.360 They're going to bag it up.
01:26:26.420 They're going to DNA it to me.
01:26:27.920 And warns of hypothetical legal consequences.
01:26:30.100 And I'd be charged.
01:26:31.060 There's no doubt about it.
01:26:32.440 The conclusion is deceptive behavior indicated.
01:26:35.500 None of these clauses addresses the direct question.
01:26:38.840 What if any role they played in baby Lisa's disappearance?
01:26:41.260 Instead, they divert attention toward evidence and how it might be handled or why charges could follow.
01:26:48.420 Because the response repeatedly relies on referring back to earlier remarks and on supplying extraneous, distraction-oriented content.
01:26:57.440 Rather than clarifying involvement, it meets the threshold for indicating deceptive behavior.
01:27:03.020 Phil, it's just like you, Phil.
01:27:04.880 You're such a humble guy, despite your many accomplishments, to invent yourself right out of a job.
01:27:13.040 Yeah, well, I think it won't be long.
01:27:16.460 Wow.
01:27:16.880 That it will, you know.
01:27:18.560 Well, we'll keep the audience posted.
01:27:20.520 I think they'll definitely be, if this is commercially available in any way, shape, or form, I know many, many members of the audience will be interested.
01:27:26.920 You guys are awesome.
01:27:28.180 As you guys know, we'll stay on it.
01:27:30.340 John Tanko has never been charged with any crimes related to the disappearance of baby Lisa.
01:27:36.620 Police have never publicly considered Megan Wright a suspect in baby Lisa's disappearance.
01:27:41.720 And we can now report that as a result of our series, the FBI has looked into this case again.
01:27:49.780 The FBI has reviewed the first five episodes of our baby Lisa series, and they are ready to hear from all of you if you have relevant and credible information.
01:27:59.940 You can reach the FBI directly at tips.fbi.gov.
01:28:05.340 That's tips.fbi.gov.
01:28:08.300 They are ready to receive your inquiries.
01:28:10.320 We thank FBI Director Kash Patel and his team for taking this seriously, and we will continue to bring you information as we get it.
01:28:29.680 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
01:28:31.880 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
01:28:40.320 Thank you.