The Megyn Kelly Show - Megyn Kelly Investigates： Disappearance of ＂Baby Lisa＂ Series - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

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00:00:30.620 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:42.320 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's True Crime

00:00:46.500 Mega Podcast Sunday episode. Today we have a great one. All five parts of our Baby Lisa series.

00:00:54.580 You might remember this one, but if not, you are in for a treat on a true mystery.

00:00:59.540 one that has just haunted me and many others for years, still unsolved to this day.

00:01:06.500 We dive deep into the case, including yours truly going undercover.

00:01:11.260 Enjoy. Happy Easter. God bless you. And we'll see you tomorrow.

00:01:18.940 We begin on North Lister Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri, a family neighborhood, quiet,

00:01:24.860 working class, and on October 4th, 2011, about to become the center of the biggest crime story

00:01:31.640 in America. 10-month-old baby Lisa Irwin disappeared in the middle of the night.

00:01:42.040 Father Jeremy came home from his night shift at 3.45 a.m. and found the lights were on.

00:01:47.380 A window was open, the screen pushed in, the front door unlocked, and his baby girl was not in her

00:01:53.620 crib. Must be a reasonable explanation, he thought. His first instinct? Don't panic.

00:01:59.820 That's the last thing you expect is that one of your kids is going to be missing. So initially,

00:02:04.780 when she's not in the crib, it's like, okay, well, she's in bed with Deborah. She's in bed

00:02:09.580 with one of the brothers. She's maybe fallen out of bed and she's asleep under the crib.

00:02:15.700 He woke up the baby's mother, his partner, Deborah Bradley, out of a sound sleep.

00:02:20.360 She appeared to have no idea why baby Lisa was not in her crib.

00:02:24.520 Jeremy ran next door to see if somehow the neighbor had the baby.

00:02:28.520 Then he called 911.

00:02:34.700 Jeremy and Debra immediately went public, begging for help.

00:02:38.240 No questions asked. Just drop her off with somebody at a hospital, a church, 0.95

00:02:42.340 the fire department, the police station, anywhere.

00:02:46.060 Just please bring her home. 0.88

00:02:47.160 How do you think about it today?

00:02:51.680 Jeremy Irwin.

00:02:53.300 It's still pretty similar to the way it has been.

00:02:57.200 It's a lot of frustration and some anger and mostly just feeling like you're missing a huge, giant chunk of your life.

00:03:09.180 Deborah Bradley was just 25 then.

00:03:11.360 She's 38 now.

00:03:12.480 Your case is so unique because it became a huge national news story.

00:03:18.620 And you now have old interviews of yourself and press conferences.

00:03:23.420 You know, when you look back on that, what do you think?

00:03:27.900 I think I can't believe I survived.

00:03:30.340 and though so much time has passed what happened to lisa that night remains a mystery

00:03:43.260 news of lisa's disappearance traveled fast search crews combed the neighborhood police

00:03:50.880 dogs were deployed and the media descended on north lister avenue showing up here to the house

00:03:55.700 with metal detectors, homing the ground, going through the yard.

00:03:58.820 A classic crescent-shaped suburban street just north of the Missouri River.

00:04:04.600 Debra's aunt, Cindy Lorette, still chokes up remembering that terrible day back in 2011. 0.99

00:04:09.960 It was crazy, unlike anything I've ever seen before or I've seen thus.

00:04:15.800 I mean, every which way you look, there was police officers, there was cars, there was people.

00:04:22.480 I remember the CNN band. I remember HLN band.

00:04:26.780 I knew you couldn't get down the streets.

00:04:28.480 There was literally reporters climbing in trees, trying to get snapshots of us.

00:04:33.380 What were your first impressions of the story and the scene?

00:04:35.920 Jim Spellman was there from the start,

00:04:37.700 reporting the story for CNN and its sister channel, Headline News.

00:04:41.300 This was a neighborhood not unlike where I grew up,

00:04:43.880 but kind of a working class-ish neighborhood, well-kept homes,

00:04:47.740 but not the kind of families that would be prepared

00:04:49.900 to deal with the onslaught of media, police, lawyers,

00:04:53.960 and everything else that would be involved in something like this.

00:04:57.440 It's also a neighborhood that was shocked

00:04:59.360 because, you know, this was a neighborhood full of kids and families,

00:05:02.120 and one of their own was dealing with, I think, every parent's nightmare.

00:05:06.900 In those critical early hours and days,

00:05:09.460 Kansas City police, the FBI, the ATF,

00:05:11.980 and a group of local volunteers searched the area.

00:05:15.780 They did not find Lisa or any hard evidence.

00:05:19.900 Within a week, a timeline of the day began to emerge.

00:05:23.340 2.30 p.m., Debra's dad comes by with her brother, Philip Nutz.

00:05:28.040 4.45 p.m., Debra and Philip go buy baby formula and boxed wine.

00:05:33.840 They're seen on store security video.

00:05:36.720 Around 5 o'clock p.m., next-door neighbor Samantha Brando drops by.

00:05:41.520 5.15 p.m., Jeremy, an electrician, gets a call from his boss

00:05:45.980 and soon leaves to work at a Starbucks,

00:05:48.960 unaware of the chaos and tragedy about to unfold just hours later.

00:05:53.880 6 p.m. Debra makes dinner for Samantha, Sam's daughter,

00:05:57.720 as well as Lisa and her two half-brothers,

00:06:00.200 five-year-old Michael and seven-year-old Blake.

00:06:03.300 6.30 p.m. Debra puts Lisa to bed.

00:06:06.940 By 7 p.m., Samantha's daughter and Debra's boys are inside playing.

00:06:11.460 Baby Lisa is supposed to be in her crib asleep.

00:06:14.540 Both moms sit on the front steps smoking, talking, and drinking.

00:06:18.400 Between 8 and 10 p.m., Shane Beakley, a 33-year-old landscaper who was the grandson of a neighbor,

00:06:25.360 stops by the stoop for a visit.

00:06:27.720 Sometime around 10.30 to 11 p.m., Debra said, she checked on baby Lisa,

00:06:32.400 then went down the hall and got in bed with the two boys.

00:06:36.520 Before bed, Debra leaves three cell phones on the kitchen counter,

00:06:40.800 two with restricted use because of non-payment.

00:06:43.860 It is believed only one worked normally.

00:06:47.180 They all end up missing.

00:06:49.440 10.30 p.m.

00:06:51.020 Samantha Brando is back home.

00:06:53.200 She reportedly later said that she noticed the lights were turned off at Deborah and Jeremy's house.

00:06:59.280 Some leads quickly emerged with possible sightings of a kidnapper.

00:07:03.760 The next morning, seven-year-old Blake tells police he heard noises during the night.

00:07:09.080 Also the next morning, the Parscals, who lived around the corner, told police what they had seen. 0.95

00:07:14.900 Husband Onesto was leaving for his overnight shift, and wife Lisa was awake and inside.

00:07:21.000 Once again, reporter Jim Spellman.

00:07:23.300 He thinks this is weird enough that he phones her in the house from the car and says, hey, come and take a look at this.

00:07:29.640 And she sees this man walking up the street holding a baby, not wearing clothes.

00:07:37.420 And having been in the window where she could see this happening and having been standing where his car was parked, it would not be a problem to view this, even though it's past midnight.

00:07:49.180 There were plenty of streetlights.

00:07:50.940 So show me exactly what you did.

00:07:52.080 You looked out this window.

00:07:53.140 Tell me where your husband was and tell me what you saw.

00:07:56.380 Nobody's mind immediately goes to, oh, somebody's kidnapping this baby.

00:08:01.000 That's what she told me.

00:08:01.900 She said, my mind did not immediately think kidnapping.

00:08:04.060 But the first thing in the morning when she saw this commotion going on was she told the police about this.

00:08:10.000 What time of night did she say she saw the man with the baby?

00:08:12.980 I'll tell you. And she had it exactly because she showed me the phone records from her husband calling her.

00:08:19.180 12.15.

00:08:20.200 12.15 a.m.

00:08:21.620 Stranger abductions put children in the most dire situation.

00:08:27.300 And so we know time is ticking.

00:08:29.640 Callahan Walsh of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

00:08:32.400 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.

00:08:43.740 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.

00:08:52.480 Was Lisa the baby in the man's arms?

00:08:55.760 More suspicious things happen in those early hours.

00:08:58.900 2.30 a.m.

00:09:00.400 There's a dumpster fire in a parking lot not too far from the Parscals' house. 1.00

00:09:05.180 Could this be related?

00:09:07.040 At 2.45 a.m., a nearby BP gas station surveillance camera

00:09:12.020 shows a man in a light t-shirt emerging from the woods that bordered the neighborhood.

00:09:17.440 It's too dark and grainy to see if he's carrying anything.

00:09:21.500 And then, as I reported for Fox News at the time,

00:09:25.080 Debra's first account of her timeline gets a serious revision.

00:09:29.080 Turns out she was drinking more than she originally claimed,

00:09:32.940 and she's no longer sure about when she last saw her baby girl.

00:09:37.140 When you went in at 10.30 after the neighbor left, what did you do?

00:09:42.200 Probably went right to my room.

00:09:44.940 Why do you say probably?

00:09:47.120 Because sometimes I check on her.

00:09:49.320 Well, most of the time I check on her and then the boys.

00:09:52.620 So I'm assuming that I went and checked on her too, but I don't, I don't know.

00:09:58.820 You don't remember?

00:09:59.920 No.

00:10:00.380 Let's talk about the wine.

00:10:01.980 How much did you consume that day?

00:10:05.020 I had several, several glasses of wine.

00:10:08.600 When you say several, more than three?

00:10:11.140 Yeah, but that has nothing to do with her.

00:10:15.080 More than five?

00:10:17.400 Probably.

00:10:18.880 More than 10?

00:10:20.420 No.

00:10:20.860 Was it just wine or was there other alcohol?

00:10:25.120 Just wine. Lisa was in bed and the boys were laying down watching a movie with the neighbor's daughter.

00:10:30.080 Were you drunk?

00:10:31.940 Yeah.

00:10:33.180 So the last time Debra is sure she saw Lisa was at 6.30 p.m. before she started drinking.

00:10:40.080 Could something have happened accidentally?

00:10:42.460 Maybe Lisa fell or was dropped or Debra unknowingly rolled over on her while they slept. 0.93

00:10:47.880 or worse, did she deliberately kill her own child? 0.95

00:10:52.700 At the very least, Debra is drunk and unreliable. 1.00

00:10:56.140 It was a tough interview.

00:10:57.400 I went pretty hard on you.

00:10:58.980 Very difficult.

00:11:00.100 You fessed up.

00:11:02.120 You said, I had a lot of drinks that night,

00:11:04.480 someplace between six and 10,

00:11:06.960 and I think I blacked out.

00:11:09.180 Now, a lot of people wouldn't have admitted that.

00:11:11.300 A lot of people would not have sat down with the press

00:11:12.940 and said that at all.

00:11:14.500 They would have been worried

00:11:15.940 that it would have made them look some certain way.

00:11:19.340 I didn't care how I looked.

00:11:21.060 I mean, yes, Debbie drank. 0.99

00:11:22.660 Deborah's aunt, Cindy Lorette.

00:11:24.260 Debbie probably still drinks. 0.99

00:11:26.040 It doesn't fucking matter. 0.99

00:11:27.820 It does not matter. 0.99

00:11:29.040 Sorry, I said that.

00:11:31.100 We all do.

00:11:32.020 And if you're the perfect parent, then good for you.

00:11:35.060 Because this could happen to anybody.

00:11:36.840 You don't plan on things like this to happen.

00:11:39.240 You don't plan on turning the TV on

00:11:40.800 and seeing one of your relatives missing,

00:11:42.360 let alone a 10-month-old baby.

00:11:44.200 The door wasn't locked, right?

00:11:46.460 Reporter Jim Spellman.

00:11:48.100 The door was not locked, but keep in mind that by her own admission,

00:11:52.920 Deborah Bradley was drinking that night.

00:11:55.640 I'm not sure that she could be trusted to confidently say whether she locked the door or not.

00:12:01.020 Obviously, they are our main focus.

00:12:02.880 I'm not calling them suspects.

00:12:04.480 Knowing her timeline was problematic and wanting to prove to police she had nothing to hide,

00:12:09.820 Deborah volunteered to take a polygraph.

00:12:12.300 And then she took police remarks to mean she had failed it.

00:12:16.220 We were done and I was like, OK, so, you know, what happens now?

00:12:20.480 And he goes, it gets real close to me and he goes, I think that you're a very bad mother.

00:12:27.040 And I just broke down and I said that it's not possible that I failed.

00:12:32.100 And he just kept saying, I think you're a bad mother. 0.78

00:12:34.200 You need to tell us what you did.

00:12:36.120 And I just kind of fell apart.

00:12:39.360 Not going to lie, my nerves.

00:12:41.200 I actually wet myself because I couldn't believe what he was saying to me.

00:12:47.700 Exhausted and emotional, Deborah and Jeremy decide they have shared everything they can

00:12:52.360 think of to help the investigation and need a break. But Kansas City police publicly

00:12:57.480 criticized the couple for not continuing to talk to them. The news coverage is wall to wall.

00:13:03.480 Just a couple hours ago at a news conference held by Kansas City police and investigators in the case.

00:13:08.420 They've always been free. They've been cooperative up to this point.

00:13:11.340 But early this evening, they decided to stop cooperating with detectives.

00:13:14.380 Kansas City attorney Sean O'Brien.

00:13:16.560 And so the public impression was these parents had something to hide.

00:13:20.940 And that came through on the news coverage.

00:13:24.460 All along, police said Lisa's parents, Jeremy Irwin and Deborah Bradley, cooperated with police until Thursday night.

00:13:31.500 Her parents are no longer cooperating with police.

00:13:34.680 I don't get it, because as a parent myself, if my child was missing, I would give anything I have.

00:13:42.660 Despite the sighting of the man with the baby, one week into the case, police seem to have only one suspect, her mother.

00:13:50.520 ABC News legal correspondent Dan Abrams asked Jeremy the question on everyone's mind.

00:13:56.120 Could Debra have done something accidentally? 0.95

00:13:59.300 No.

00:13:59.660 So maybe she tried to cover it up after. 0.87

00:14:05.280 The first time I even thought that was when the police had started asking us about it.

00:14:10.920 So just from the statistics standpoint, it didn't surprise me that law enforcement was really going after Debra and also Jeremy.

00:14:19.980 That's Marissa Randazzo, the former chief research psychologist at the U.S. Secret Service.

00:14:25.420 She would soon be tapped to work on this case.

00:14:27.740 From the criminal psychologist side of me, I wondered what involvement she or her husband might have had.

00:14:35.980 And so did I. And so did lots of people.

00:14:38.780 But when Kansas City attorney Sean O'Brien started working with Deborah and Jeremy, he quickly realized no one was getting the whole story.

00:14:46.360 Because the police kept saying the parents aren't cooperating, the parents aren't cooperating.

00:14:50.860 It was like the mantra they were putting out on television.

00:14:53.380 And it wasn't until after I got into the case I realized that was totally not true.

00:14:58.520 You know, they had spent 40 hours in questioning with the police before I was brought into the case.

00:15:05.380 These were people who were trying to help the police find their baby.

00:15:09.480 So why were the police saying that? Were they just making that up?

00:15:12.360 I think they didn't have a better suspect.

00:15:15.560 Interrogation is not investigation.

00:15:17.320 it's a strategy to get a suspect to make an incriminating statement period that's all it is

00:15:24.980 and so it's a really dangerous position for them to be in the other thing that i found out later

00:15:30.540 had been done uh was that they they pulled a strategy on them that's called the prisoner's

00:15:37.040 dilemma and what you do when you have two suspects in a case is you tell each of them

00:15:43.400 that the other one is implicating them and so they better start talking and get out ahead of it

00:15:50.040 or they're going to be the one left holding the bag and and so they did that with Jeremy and

00:15:55.340 Deborah um they had each done like a 10-hour videotaped interview and they took a little

00:16:03.340 snippet out of each one Jeremy Irwin the cop comes in and he's like hey I I want you to see

00:16:12.580 something. So he sets his laptop down in front of me and it's a video of Debra. It is Debra's

00:16:20.640 interrogation video from like day two and three. And he scrolls and he scrolls and he scrolls and

00:16:26.460 he scrolls and he scrolls and he scrolls. Finally finds whatever he's looking for,

00:16:30.280 swings the laptop back around, plays me a 12 second clip of Debra clearly frustrated, 0.98

00:16:39.820 crying and she says, well, I don't know. I guess maybe he did it or something to that effect.

00:16:48.660 He did what? I could have stubbed my toe on the door. I could have spilt the cup of coffee. He

00:16:53.720 did what? Like you literally showed me nothing. That was just one of the little things that

00:17:00.640 they'll do to you while you're in there. And the polygraph, according to one of Debra's

00:17:05.480 attorneys, Debra had, in fact, passed it. Obviously, their whole thing was it was Debra. 0.68

00:17:12.060 Debra did it. Debra did it. So I always kept asking them, Debra did what? Go ahead, 0.76

00:17:17.640 finish your sentence. And there was no sentence to be finished.

00:17:21.720 Psychologist Marissa Randazzo says that's confirmation bias.

00:17:26.040 Essentially, what confirmation bias is that once you develop a theory,

00:17:29.660 It's human nature to seek out information that confirms that theory and disregard information that would undercut that theory.

00:17:39.380 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.

00:17:53.600 Investigators are quickly closing in on the baby's mother, Deborah.

00:17:58.320 Jeremy's sister Ashley Irwin thought the writing was on the wall

00:18:01.340 and said so in an interview with ABC News.

00:18:04.580 Do you think Deborah may be facing an arrest?

00:18:08.960 Probably, to be real honest with you, yes.

00:18:11.620 Why?

00:18:12.480 Because it's what the police do.

00:18:14.260 They don't have any leads, so they have to pin it on somebody.

00:18:16.800 Do you think it's inevitable?

00:18:18.920 Yeah, kind of.

00:18:20.620 Captain Steve Young of the Kansas City Police Department.

00:18:23.680 You know, we're under pressure to find a child.

00:18:25.440 We're not under pressure to pin this on anybody or wrap it up or make an arrest.

00:18:29.180 Even so, the pressure on Debra was intense.

00:18:32.700 Oh, she was just a mess. 1.00

00:18:34.440 Cindy Lorette remembers the stress of it.

00:18:36.560 She was staying with the family to help out.

00:18:38.940 She just didn't know which way was up or down her.

00:18:42.180 And she would just cry and she would...

00:18:47.140 Nestle her head under my arm or next to me.

00:18:50.760 She just, nobody knew what to do.

00:18:56.440 And now we can introduce you to one of the most intriguing players in this whole story.

00:19:03.020 Christy Schiller is a Houston horse breeder, socialite, one-time Playboy model, and a broadcaster.

00:19:09.660 What was the first you heard about the Lisa Irwin case?

00:19:13.460 So I got a call from my stepson and he said, hurry and turn on Fox News and you were reporting.

00:19:22.100 and he said that there's a baby that's been kidnapped in Kansas City.

00:19:27.240 Then Christy got a call from a family friend, Debra's cousin, Mike Lorette.

00:19:32.380 And he called me and he said, I'm here in Kansas City.

00:19:35.680 I'm trying to protect my cousin and her husband.

00:19:38.640 He said, there's news people shoving cameras to the windows.

00:19:43.840 I'd like to thank all the people of Kansas City,

00:19:46.720 the local national media for the continued support.

00:19:52.100 and coverage to keep baby Lisa's picture out there?

00:19:55.980 He said, I'm just scared.

00:19:57.520 He said, I just don't know what to do.

00:19:59.000 He said, I'm trained for DEFCON 4

00:20:00.660 and I just don't feel like anybody's coming here to help us.

00:20:04.840 And I said, help is on the way.

00:20:06.700 Christy had her own theories.

00:20:08.540 She had spent that summer glued to the trial of Casey Anthony,

00:20:12.200 a mother accused of murdering her three-year-old daughter.

00:20:15.040 I thought for sure that, you know, she was going to go down.

00:20:19.640 And when the verdict came in?

00:20:21.740 We the jury find the defendant not guilty.

00:20:24.980 I just stood there frozen.

00:20:26.920 I couldn't believe it.

00:20:28.300 And I turned around to somebody who was a complete stranger, and I said, mark my word,

00:20:32.740 the next parent that does not trim their child's nails right, they're going to serve hard times.

00:20:40.620 Sure that Debra was caught in this backlash, Christy swung into action, 0.74

00:20:45.300 tapping into the brain trust of police and legal professionals that she met through her charity,

00:20:50.040 Canines for Cops, created in tribute to a police dog killed in the line of duty.

00:20:55.040 She called Bill Stanton, a former New York City police officer, private investigator,

00:21:00.080 and TV commentator who was on her canine board.

00:21:03.860 Bill assembled a team that included Phil Houston, CIA veteran of 25 years.

00:21:09.560 Phil created the deception detection method still being used by the CIA, the FBI, the

00:21:16.020 Secret Service and law enforcement agencies around the nation. He is known as the human

00:21:21.760 lie detector. Former Secret Service psychologist Marissa Randazzo was also part of the team.

00:21:27.560 First order of business, they needed to determine what, if any, involvement Debra may have had.

00:21:32.980 By this point, the baby's father, Jeremy, had essentially been ruled out because there's

00:21:37.820 security video of him working on an electrical project at Starbucks through most of the night

00:21:42.320 baby Lisa went missing. Christy's team began to plan their own videotaped interviews with the

00:21:47.400 parents. Marissa worked with Phil on the questions for Deborah and Jeremy. I helped really to talk

00:21:53.280 through with Phil around what angle, what to think about when talking with someone who may

00:21:59.340 be responsible for the disappearance, or we were really concerned about possibly the death of baby

00:22:03.560 Lisa. So we know that the parents, especially the mother, was under suspicion by law enforcement.

00:22:09.540 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.

00:22:25.720 Now there was a plane waiting thanks to Christy Schiller. Bill and Phil headed to Kansas City.

00:22:31.780 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 Debra.

00:22:40.800 Phil Houston had seen their press conferences and how they answered questions. Like so many of us, he already had his suspicions about the couple.

00:22:48.800 They've been asked, did you do it?

00:22:50.340 Did you do it?

00:22:51.000 Did you do it?

00:22:52.100 And so you have to craft an approach to the questioning that cuts through that, that

00:23:00.120 minimizes all of the histronics that have led up to this meeting, if you will.

00:23:06.760 And I was convinced that they were guilty until we asked that first question.

00:23:11.640 We have it on tape, that moment where you got to ask your first question of Deborah.

00:23:16.040 Let's watch it.

00:23:16.640 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?

00:23:30.100 None. The only thing I did wrong was drink that night and possibly not be alert, not here.

00:23:46.640 I'm sorry.

00:23:52.880 What did you glean from that?

00:23:54.500 What are we seeing there?

00:23:55.900 First of all, if you noticed, I didn't ask her, did you do it?

00:24:00.440 I upped the ante by asking her a presumptive question.

00:24:05.280 I'm presuming that it's quite possible, maybe even probable, that you did this,

00:24:10.180 that you were involved.

00:24:12.020 What involvement did you have?

00:24:13.980 and her response to that was immediately without hesitation none but then she throws a curveball 1.00

00:24:24.240 at us she says the only thing i did wrong so she's confessing she's saying look this is what i

00:24:32.800 this is the only thing i did wrong phil's reaction coming out of this was no matter the angle that we

00:24:39.340 tried. No matter the approach of the question, she was answering them truthfully and not showing

00:24:46.200 deception. In a twist even he didn't see coming, Phil determined Deborah is telling the truth,

00:24:52.800 that she had nothing to do with her daughter's disappearance. Well, I mean, I, like you,

00:24:57.800 flew out there thinking they did it. It's always the parents. When the wife gets killed,

00:25:02.580 it's always the husband. We all know this. And I remember being flabbergasted. I just couldn't

00:25:09.240 like, what do you mean challenged all my own biases, but I think led to better reporting on

00:25:15.580 my part in covering the case, right? Just check your bias. You could be wrong. Have some humility.

00:25:21.620 There are people smarter than you are at detecting deception who say she's not lying and neither is

00:25:27.780 Jeremy. Armed with this knowledge, Christy Schiller anonymously offers a $100,000 reward for

00:25:34.540 information leading to the return of baby Lisa. Bill Stanton made the announcement.

00:25:40.600 There's going to be $100,000 reward put up for the safe return and or conviction

00:25:49.900 of personal persons involved in this horrible crime. Until now, no one knew it was Christy

00:25:58.180 who offered the reward, a secret she managed to keep even from her own husband. Is it true he

00:26:04.060 once said to you, hey, did you hear they posted a reward for the baby? And you were like, and he

00:26:09.360 said, tell me it wasn't you. And he said, what were you thinking? And I said, we don't need our

00:26:15.900 name on the side of a building. I want to know that this mother and father are being reunited

00:26:23.000 and the two little boys with their siblings. Announcing the $100,000 reward was just one way

00:26:30.020 Stanton kept the baby Lisa story in the news. But Bill had a problem. After the press conference

00:26:36.040 and I said an anonymous benefactor, this nasty rumor of it was either NBC or ABC and they were

00:26:44.780 paying behind the scenes to get all the exclusives and attention. And that's when he called me.

00:26:50.860 No one believes the anonymous benefactor. I need for you to verify it to your comfort level

00:26:57.080 and we'll go from there.

00:27:00.000 And I was thinking, sure, yes,

00:27:02.060 I'm interested in this story at any level.

00:27:05.040 But of course, what I would ultimately like

00:27:07.020 is to talk to the parents.

00:27:08.440 And that's where it landed.

00:27:10.460 And, you know, explosive details came out that day.

00:27:13.480 You know, it had its highs and lows for Debra

00:27:15.200 because that's when the public learned

00:27:17.500 she had between six and 10 drinks.

00:27:20.400 Do you have a drinking problem?

00:27:22.200 No, I don't think so.

00:27:24.280 some folks are gonna have an issue if you have i'm sure they are more than five drinks while

00:27:31.440 you're looking after a little baby and two little boys she was sleeping i wanted to ask so why did

00:27:36.560 you choose to share that with me because it has nothing to do with lisa's abduction and i want to

00:27:42.300 be honest about everything so that people will look for her because i feel like if they're like

00:27:46.880 oh she's being honest about that she's got to be telling the truth about other stuff and any

00:27:52.220 E-publicity for Lisa's good, whether people like what I say or not.

00:27:56.200 That's true.

00:27:57.500 The wall-to-wall media coverage continued.

00:28:00.940 They are still searching urgently for the child, although they do say that as every hour passes, this case gets harder to solve.

00:28:08.000 And at this point, police freely admit they have no suspects and no leads.

00:28:13.400 That was always one of the biggest mysteries about this case.

00:28:15.500 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?

00:28:33.240 Because no matter who did this, they did escape, you know, without a trace.

00:28:37.900 Reporter Jim Spellman.

00:28:39.420 So I think there's two possible answers to that.

00:28:41.200 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.

00:28:54.700 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.

00:29:06.080 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 matter of hours?

00:29:16.260 It seems incredibly unlikely. Right.

00:29:18.760 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.

00:29:37.200 And then that's the night you stealthily get in and out of the house, making it through neighbors and everything else.

00:29:44.300 That seems equally as unlikely.

00:29:46.000 there's so much we don't know about the evidence because kansas city pd won't talk to us they say

00:29:52.940 that's because this is still an open investigation we have our doubts about how much investigating

00:29:58.660 is really going on and for that matter about how they handled this case now i'm joined by phil

00:30:05.300 houston and bill stanton they will be my partners in crime on this my go-to criminal experts as we

00:30:12.260 take a hard look at the facts of this case. Looking back now, it's 12 years later, is there's

00:30:19.740 no Nest cameras in every door. There's no even low-grade security cameras. Even the, like every

00:30:28.100 gas station now has a good camera that will show you most of what happened there. In today's day

00:30:34.520 and age, they'd be able to zero right in on whoever that was that emerged. And what a difference a

00:30:40.080 decade makes and that and that's why 12 years later we're still talking about it trying to

00:30:45.640 solve it because it's every person's every parent's worst nightmare someone coming into your home in

00:30:53.220 the middle of the night and taking the most precious thing that you'll ever have in your life

00:30:58.900 your child the police really do seem to be guilty of some tunnel vision here i mean what we're

00:31:05.220 learning already is that they're really interested, Phil, in Deborah and Jeremy. And in the opening

00:31:12.500 hours of an investigation, one can completely understand that.

00:31:18.120 Absolutely. And they both look guilty as sin, if you look at it just from a global perspective.

00:31:24.880 And then you have Deborah admitting to excessive drinking, you know, to the point of possibly

00:31:30.800 blacking out and you have cops saying that the parents stopped cooperating which you know that

00:31:39.740 leads everybody to be like oh that's it they're guilty she was done being interrogated over and

00:31:44.800 over and over and over by police she definitely accurately believed had a foregone conclusion

00:31:50.380 about her and the other part to that too is is that deborah is no shrinking violet i mean she's

00:31:55.740 not afraid, you know, when you reach a certain point, to really let people know what she's

00:32:01.620 thinking about how they're behaving towards her. And I don't know this, I'm speculating,

00:32:07.560 but that she probably became fairly angry. And that anger could have could have been

00:32:12.800 misinterpreted in the interrogations. Plus, just the odds, the overwhelming odds, you know, are

00:32:20.060 she did it. That's the biggest obstacle to ruling her out. But let's spend a moment ruling her 0.76

00:32:25.700 in. How does that look? What evidence does point to Deborah? Okay, it's a tough one. So let's let's

00:32:32.820 go with this hypothesis. So was it intentional or unintentional? If it was intentional, then we're

00:32:41.780 going to say she didn't drink as much. She was tossing the alcohol, making it seem like she was

00:32:46.660 drunk to the friend, right? Doing everything she normally does. She knows her husband is working 0.51

00:32:52.920 at least until 3, 4 a.m., and she just doesn't want the burden of the child anymore, right?

00:32:59.760 So she acts like she's drunk. She puts the kids in bed with her. The kids fall asleep. 0.66

00:33:06.420 Then she wakes up, takes her child, and either sells the baby or, you know, makes the child go

00:33:15.880 away, right? That would be one theory. On that theory, she would also have to get out of the

00:33:21.160 house and dispose of the remains and then get back into the bed before Jeremy gets home and sees her 0.67

00:33:27.940 at what he said was sleeping. And he believed, and you know, and you're the spouse, you can tell

00:33:32.240 when your spouse is legit asleep and whether or not, but keep going. The accident theory is far

00:33:36.800 harder for me to go over because listen, we've all been in that half buzz state, you know, where you

00:33:43.900 go to bed drunk and then you wake up half sober. How do you negotiate that? She wakes up, she finds

00:33:50.660 that she smothered her baby right now I have to get rid of it because I can't face reality

00:33:56.680 how does she do that within walking distance and have the presence of mind oh let me take the 0.93

00:34:03.540 phones let me not be seen and if my kids wake up there are so many variables to that theory

00:34:09.600 it's very hard for me to pursue that one far easier for me to go further down the road with

00:34:17.400 she sold the child which i do not believe you know when every new mother knows they know you

00:34:26.960 don't take your baby in your bed with her with you like it's very dangerous you can smother your

00:34:31.040 baby inadvertently but some do it anyway i mean some don't know and then some do know but they

00:34:36.540 take the risk anyway because they're exhausted and the child's crying a lot and they just make

00:34:40.500 a mistake they fall asleep there and one thing leads to one other terrible thing but the fact

00:34:46.360 that she had her two boys in the bed with her actually right bill i mean that just works against 0.99

00:34:52.620 that theory like absolutely those boys were interviewed and they were old enough to know

00:34:58.220 if their baby sister was in the bed with them yeah right there were just just so many different ways

00:35:05.380 you know that if she did it she would have gotten caught again these are simple people and i don't

00:35:11.840 mean that in a detrimental sense. They're not master criminals. You know, if someone planned

00:35:17.040 this out, they wouldn't be able to do it. Just too many variables. You know, it was, in my opinion,

00:35:23.540 again, the perfect storm of, you know, Jeremy being away, her being over served, the boys being in the

00:35:32.840 bed, you know, for her to roll over on a baby and then get rid of the child, you know, could have 1.00

00:35:39.600 done it, but she would have got caught real quick. And then again, just think about the guilt. This

00:35:45.180 isn't someone that's, you know, a sociopath serial killer that could kill a person and, you know,

00:35:51.460 once a week and then go out in life to stay married with your husband, to look at your

00:35:56.280 children in the eyes, to, you know, the pain that she went through, you know, behind the scenes that

00:36:03.080 we've all saw just doesn't play out to me. No, she's not a sociopath. And she continues to talk

00:36:09.180 to us, even though, you know, you guys know I've had many a very tough segment on Deborah on my

00:36:14.480 various shows. I just feel like the actual murderer would not keep putting themselves

00:36:19.880 in this harm's way. Can we talk about the next door neighbor, Samantha Brando, for a minute?

00:36:25.500 Because while we have been unable to reach her, you guys did talk to her. You also put her through

00:36:33.300 the Phil Houston treatment to find out whether it was true, what, that she was sitting with

00:36:39.280 Debra, that they were drinking together, that things went down the way Debra said they did?

00:36:45.400 Yeah. And most importantly, she validated the level of intoxication. She said, I hate to say

00:36:51.580 this about Debra, but I don't know if I've ever seen her, and I'm paraphrasing here, but I don't

00:36:57.480 know if I've ever seen her that intoxicated before. There was more wine there than Deborah 1.00

00:37:03.220 told us originally. Well, that could explain why Deborah didn't hear an intruder, for sure. 0.52

00:37:10.100 Well, to your point, Megan, when Jeremy came home, no one heard him come in. He was walking around

00:37:15.720 the house. He shut the window. He turned out the lights. He went into the bedrooms. Didn't wake

00:37:20.900 them up for him either. That's true. So why didn't anyone ever come forward if somebody stole this

00:37:29.380 baby and did something with her? There's not one person who needed $100,000 enough to come forward

00:37:38.540 and quietly say, I know what happened to her. The reason why I think no one has claimed the reward

00:37:45.260 because it was a sole actor who committed this crime and no one else knows about it because to

00:37:53.460 your point, Megan, that's a hundred thousand dollars and they could do right. And they could

00:38:00.720 have done it at that time. Now, was the baby sold or something more nefarious?

00:38:08.180 that would that would explain it if it were a soul actor who then kept his mouth shut um

00:38:16.040 but that's one of the troubling things about this whole thing like if if it was

00:38:20.000 anybody who blabbed or if it were a group somebody would have turned on somebody else and that just

00:38:26.980 hasn't happened so as it stands at this point all eyes are on deborah

00:38:33.320 Coming up in our next episode, police continue to bear down on Debra. 0.99

00:38:37.620 If she didn't do it, who did?

00:38:40.200 What else was going on in the neighborhood that night?

00:38:46.160 I'm Megan Kelly.

00:38:47.340 Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show and episode two of our special series, Megan Kelly Investigates

00:38:52.660 on the disappearance of baby Lisa.

00:38:55.820 How could a baby vanish in the middle of the night?

00:38:59.680 It's a question that has lasted more than 12 years after the disappearance of then 10-month-old baby Lisa Irwin.

00:39:06.780 In this episode, I will be joined just a bit later by investigators Bill Stanton and Phil Houston with their expert analysis.

00:39:13.740 But first, we return to Kansas City, Missouri, where new clues emerge and police begin to look beyond Lisa's mother for some answers.

00:39:23.200 Here's where we left off.

00:39:25.000 After hours and hours of police interviews that felt more like an interrogation,

00:39:29.700 Debra and Jeremy decide there's nothing left to say.

00:39:33.040 Deception expert Phil Houston has interviewed Debra at length, finding her credible.

00:39:38.060 And I asked Debra some hard questions about her drinking that night

00:39:41.680 as I was covering the story for Fox News 12 years ago.

00:39:45.920 Thanks to anonymous benefactor Christy Schiller, there's now a $100,000 reward.

00:39:50.940 and Lisa has been missing for 10 days.

00:39:55.260 The scrutiny on Debra is relentless.

00:39:58.220 I want to know why baby Lisa hasn't been found.

00:40:01.140 The parents under suspicion.

00:40:02.700 Mommy and daddy refused to talk to cops separately.

00:40:05.540 In order for mommy to talk to cops, she's got to have daddy there. Why? 1.00

00:40:08.780 The family just released this home video of this baby.

00:40:12.800 Why would they just release this video now?

00:40:15.280 Why didn't they release this video about five days ago?

00:40:18.200 Bill Stanton is steering the media away from Debra and toward the search for an intruder.

00:40:23.680 I know everybody's watching this family and watching this house, and that's fair.

00:40:27.580 Keep one eye on them, but also keep the other eye out on the streets in every place,

00:40:34.080 because there is a bad guy out there or bad people with this child, and we want to get this child.

00:40:39.900 But Debra needs to be defended. 1.00

00:40:41.760 I think sometimes we forget who these two people are and what they're going through.

00:40:46.660 Thanks to Christy and her team, Joe Tacopina, a big gun in the world of defense attorneys, takes up Debra's case.

00:40:53.340 If that name sounds familiar to you, it may be because he has defended former President Donald Trump in New York criminal court.

00:41:00.360 Someone out there obviously knows something.

00:41:03.860 Tacopina hired local attorney Cindy Short to handle things on the ground in Kansas City.

00:41:08.400 Well, my gut tells me, without any doubt, that somebody unknown to the family came into this home, was in and out of the home very, very quickly.

00:41:18.280 Cindy ran an all-female firm. 17 women went to work on this case. 1.00

00:41:23.120 The women in my group and in my law firm were aching as mothers, and we wanted to be able to make a difference.

00:41:33.060 We were hoping that if we were really on the ground, talking to people, spreading ourselves out, that perhaps we could do something that would find the child.

00:41:47.500 Cindy Short had another reason to be so deeply committed to finding Lisa.

00:41:51.640 As a young girl, Cindy was very nearly abducted by a stranger in her own home.

00:41:57.280 Is it possible, Cindy, I mean, is it actually possible someone just walked in there, took no other measures besides wearing a pair of gloves, took the baby, walked in the front door, walked out the front door, and that was it?

00:42:09.440 It was no more sophisticated than that.

00:42:11.660 Yeah, I think so.

00:42:12.400 You know, having been in the house, the house is a ranch-style house.

00:42:15.360 It's very small.

00:42:16.340 As I recall, there were wood floors. And so the distance between the front door and that baby's room is maybe five to seven to eight steps. It's very short.

00:42:30.260 I spent many hours in that neighborhood late at night. And that neighborhood is extraordinarily quiet, very, very dark. So I do think that someone could come in and come out.

00:42:42.120 now if she was to have been taken out of the house at night this is almost pitch black reporter jim

00:42:51.200 spellman showed viewers just how dark by turning off the camera light and if someone got in and

00:42:57.280 out could they do it without a trace i mean i imagine one of the things that they were doing

00:43:02.160 was taking fingerprints i never heard anything about a recovery on any sort of a hit on the

00:43:08.440 fingerprints. Nor have I. They took, they not only took fingerprints, they were prepared to take

00:43:13.060 tool marks. That would be if somebody used a screwdriver or something to claw their way into

00:43:18.180 a window. It was a very active investigation centered around the house. So there were searches,

00:43:24.280 there were dogs, there were investigators in hazmat type suits going in and out. They cut

00:43:29.660 pieces of carpet that they took away. They took soil samples from the backyard. Investigators

00:43:35.880 have been taking blankets, toys, and clothing from the home.

00:43:39.160 Cindy Short.

00:43:40.040 I was in the case by the time the search warrant was done

00:43:43.740 and they brought the dogs in

00:43:45.080 and then they made this announcement

00:43:47.100 about the dog alerting in the house.

00:43:49.520 Authorities seem to be scouring every inch of the home

00:43:52.100 where baby Lisa Irwin disappeared.

00:43:54.320 The search comes days after an FBI cadaver dog

00:43:57.000 reacted to the scent of a dead person inside the house.

00:44:00.360 That's according to a police affidavit.

00:44:02.900 We learned Friday that cadaver dogs had a positive hit

00:44:05.800 at the foot of their bed, but last night the rug was still there.

00:44:09.240 Cindy Short pointed out at the time that the carpet inside the house remained intact,

00:44:14.800 meaning no sample left the house, calling into question whether the cadaver alert was real.

00:44:21.000 I really believed that they were creating theater to make it look as if Debra was responsible,

00:44:29.200 and I felt that that was really unfair.

00:44:32.460 Debra's aunt, Cindy Lorette.

00:44:34.020 I remember the CIA people were taking the carpet from the garage, walking it up the driveway.

00:44:41.540 This is on TV, too. This makes the news.

00:44:44.680 They have this carpet. They walk it up the end of the driveway.

00:44:48.460 It goes right back down into the garage.

00:44:52.900 And everybody in the world thought that that carpet came out of Demi's bedroom. 0.98

00:44:56.660 Are you frigging kidding me? Are you kidding me? 0.97

00:44:59.860 Meanwhile, what else and who else was being investigated?

00:45:03.600 Remember Ernesto and Lisa Parscale, the couple who lived around the corner from Deborah and Jeremy?

00:45:09.240 They both say they saw a man with a baby walking down the street just after midnight.

00:45:15.740 But the fact that she and her husband verified that they were discussing a baby being carried by a man the night before,

00:45:22.380 that came into their heads before they knew there was a missing baby, definitely speaks to their credibility.

00:45:27.580 Absolutely.

00:45:28.340 Here's Lisa Parscale talking to a local reporter.

00:45:31.440 He was carrying a baby, and he kind of was pushing it against his chest.

00:45:36.260 And my husband kept looking at him, and then the gentleman just kind of kept walking.

00:45:42.060 He wanted me to call the cops, and I hate that I didn't call him last night.

00:45:46.920 There was the grainy BP gas station surveillance footage.

00:45:50.660 And the suspicious dumpster fire just over a small grassy hill, several hundred yards from the Irwin home.

00:45:57.140 There were reports of baby clothes turning up in the dumpster.

00:46:01.700 They did not appear to be baby Lisa's and nothing came of that.

00:46:06.360 And then another person, Mike Thompson, comes forward to say that at 4 a.m. a few miles away, he saw a man carrying a baby.

00:46:16.400 Can you talk about that next sighting with Mike Thompson?

00:46:19.920 Again, attorney Cindy Short.

00:46:21.520 Yeah. So Mike Thompson was an individual who worked for Ford Claycomo and he was getting off work and it was closer to, I want to say, 3.30 or so in the morning. And he was on a motorcycle and he came to a stoplight under a bridge and he was about to get on the highway. And so he sees a man, which he said was underdressed with a baby that he also thought was underdressed.

00:46:49.540 And he was up here a ways. And he turned and looked at me and I looked at him. I could tell he had a baby. She had a t-shirt and either a training pants or a diaper on. It was too cold for them.

00:47:04.780 He felt like it was really odd. And his first instinct was to stop and offer them a ride, except he was on a motorcycle. And so he really couldn't do that.

00:47:15.600 When Mike heard about baby Lisa being missing, he told his cousin what he had seen.

00:47:21.000 He said, well, you better call the police.

00:47:23.140 So he dialed the police and he told them that I had witnessed a man carrying a baby.

00:47:28.440 And they talked to me on the phone.

00:47:30.700 And the next morning they came to my house.

00:47:32.740 Two detectives did question me and left.

00:47:36.520 Now, three different people, the Parscals and Mike Thompson, 0.98

00:47:40.780 say they saw a man carrying a baby in the early morning hours of October 4th, 2011.

00:47:47.640 Bill Stanton on CNN back then.

00:47:49.980 I think it is compelling.

00:47:51.360 I think the simple fact that you have three separate witnesses

00:47:54.920 all saying something to the effect of they saw someone carrying a child

00:48:00.660 that wasn't wrapped up in a blanket, that wasn't necessarily wrapped up in baby clothes.

00:48:05.860 So, if it was the same man who was spotted with the baby walking past the Parscals house, 0.99

00:48:12.600 who may have had something to do with the dumpster fire in the nearby townhouse development,

00:48:17.760 who then went through the woods to emerge near the BP gas station,

00:48:21.540 and then went on to where Mike Thompson spotted him,

00:48:24.940 that would mean the man spent close to four hours within a three-mile radius,

00:48:30.340 which makes you wonder what else could have been happening during that time,

00:48:34.900 And who is this man?

00:48:37.140 Police looked at the people who got closest to Debra and Lisa that night.

00:48:41.220 Reporter Jim Spellman.

00:48:42.400 They were taking DNA swabs from most of the people that were in the immediate homes on either side

00:48:49.400 and family members down the line.

00:48:51.760 That was one of the first things they did.

00:48:53.900 A family that lived directly next door.

00:48:56.600 That's Samantha and James Brando.

00:48:59.280 Their family was close with the Irwins.

00:49:01.760 But that day, the Brandos were separating.

00:49:04.320 something they had decided earlier that afternoon james moved out just hours after deborah and

00:49:10.080 samantha started drinking deborah remembers the conversation i was trying to help her through it

00:49:15.380 and um you know just give her the best advice i could and she was kind of spilling her guts you

00:49:20.980 know what she went through what she's hoping she will accomplish next you know custody stuff you

00:49:28.260 You know, just the deep things that come with, you know, separation of family.

00:49:33.600 Police investigated and questioned James Brando.

00:49:36.780 Then there was Shane Beagley, the 33-year-old landscaper who was the grandson of a neighbor.

00:49:42.240 He dropped by while Debra was drinking with Samantha Brando.

00:49:46.260 And now someone new enters into the mix.

00:49:49.780 John Tanko, nicknamed Jersey, a handyman with a criminal background who had been working on a neighbor's lawn.

00:49:57.260 So if you were to take Shane Beagley and James Brando and John Tanko and line them up, Tanko's about 10 years older, but they all, they look incredibly similar.

00:50:09.240 Same builds, same general kind of haircut.

00:50:13.460 Police immediately ruled out Shane Beagley as a suspect, while James Brando stayed on everyone's radar.

00:50:19.600 When we in the media came across James Brando, when I was the first person to interview him, and there was a lot of, I don't know, perhaps excitement almost in people that were following this closely, but maybe this was a big lead.

00:50:31.100 Well, some people believe he might have had something to do with it, James, her soon-to-be ex-husband, maybe because he was angry that you were there, a confidant.

00:50:42.620 You know, I've heard people speculate along those lines.

00:50:45.240 Deborah Bradley.

00:50:46.340 I've heard that too, but we have at this point no reason to believe that.

00:50:51.320 We have nothing to substantiate that at all.

00:50:54.440 He was the focus of this investigation in the initial days.

00:50:58.760 All of his alibi had been checked out by the police.

00:51:02.340 They got surveillance camera tape from a Walmart.

00:51:04.760 They interviewed people that he crossed paths with.

00:51:07.660 They checked his cell phone to whatever degree for its location.

00:51:11.960 They placed him on the Air Force base where he worked, all of that stuff.

00:51:18.080 That, to me, says this was a very thorough investigation.

00:51:21.160 James Brando was ruled out.

00:51:23.440 Attorney Cindy Short always had one person in mind. 1.00

00:51:27.280 The primary person for me was John Tanko.

00:51:30.340 He was an individual who was essentially homeless at the time,

00:51:35.400 But he had connections to the neighborhood and had connections to a household that was only several doors up from the Irwin's home.

00:51:45.800 The person we have to talk about is this guy, John Tanko, who's from New Jersey, known as Jersey.

00:51:51.840 And people describe him as being sketchy.

00:51:54.620 Soon, reporters were trying to find him.

00:51:56.920 The last known sighting of Jersey the handyman that we can confirm was Saturday, October 1st, here at One Eye Jack's Tavern.

00:52:03.240 The owners of the bar tell us they kicked him out for being a root drunk who was spitting on customers on the patio.

00:52:09.540 What was significant for me was that he had a pretty healthy background in burglary, and particularly in residential burglary.

00:52:20.160 We know that the day that Baby Luce had disappeared, he was working for this family named the Watsons around the corner, moving some sprinklers around for them.

00:52:29.560 People in the neighborhood, some knew him and some had hired him to do yard work, that sort of thing.

00:52:35.420 But, you know, he was a guy who was, you know, one rung above homeless.

00:52:41.100 And if you got to know him a little bit more, there were some really disturbing things that come up.

00:52:48.540 And as we get closer and closer to the time of this abduction, his relationship with this community is significant.

00:52:59.120 October 3rd in particular, which is the day of the kidnapping, he's at the Watson's house.

00:53:06.180 He turns on the sprinkler at 11 a.m.

00:53:09.300 The next door neighbors see him turn the sprinkler on.

00:53:12.740 The Watsons are not there. 0.98

00:53:14.720 The sprinkler is still on at 9.30 p.m.

00:53:17.580 And so the next door neighbors, the Hertz, don't do anything to turn it off.

00:53:22.900 But at 11 p.m., they notice that it has been turned off.

00:53:26.580 So they figured Tanko was back in the neighborhood to turn that off.

00:53:30.520 Speculation was that Tanko might have been wearing gloves for his handyman and yard work

00:53:35.420 and would not leave fingerprints or cells from the skin.

00:53:38.680 So now we've got Tanko in the neighborhood within an hour of what we believe will be the kidnapping

00:53:44.680 because the Pascals are going to see this kidnapper with the baby at 1215.

00:53:52.020 He knows how people are moving in and out of this community.

00:53:55.440 He knows about the pets in the neighborhood.

00:53:59.020 There were a few dogs in the neighborhood,

00:54:01.480 notably the house next door on the right side of the Irwin house.

00:54:05.320 That dog was notorious for barking at strangers from a fenced-in area

00:54:09.060 in its family's backyard, as reporter Jim Spellman demonstrated at the time.

00:54:13.960 This is the first obstacle somebody coming this way would face, is this dog.

00:54:18.940 Every time we've come back here, night or day,

00:54:20.980 this dog greets us with a round of barking.

00:54:29.020 This dog is in the house next door to baby Lisa's house.

00:54:33.720 But the first couple of times I did this,

00:54:36.640 this dog in the neighborhood went nuts,

00:54:39.220 barked, you know, came after me, very disruptive.

00:54:42.880 Not just the kind of random barking,

00:54:44.520 the kind of barking that a neighbor could possibly hear

00:54:47.380 and say, what's going on back there?

00:54:49.240 But after I did that a couple of times,

00:54:50.980 this dog was, you know, actually very friendly. And the dog stopped barking. So that's definitely

00:54:56.280 something that I think investigators were looking at and something I think is worth looking at.

00:55:01.960 But no reports, as far as we know, of people saying they did hear the dog barking?

00:55:05.860 No reports said people heard a dog barking that night.

00:55:08.680 So no barking could mean that somebody carrying baby Lisa was familiar to the dog

00:55:13.840 or did not go through the woods behind the house at all, but instead went out the front,

00:55:19.020 down North Lister, toward the corner where the Parscals would see. 1.00

00:55:23.160 Along that route, there was another dog, again, reporter Jim Spellman.

00:55:27.680 One of the most troubling things that came to mind that I was aware of was,

00:55:33.880 okay, so you have this Watson family that he was working for, movie sprinklers.

00:55:37.200 Then you have Mary Hurt, who lives next door. 1.00

00:55:39.620 I think a very reliable witness.

00:55:41.840 So she had a dog that disappeared the day that baby Lisa disappeared.

00:55:46.340 And her next-door neighbor, I know there's a lot to keep track of,

00:55:48.980 her next-door neighbor says she saw John Tanko take the dog.

00:55:53.180 The dog pops up a few miles later, a couple of days later.

00:55:56.940 But, you know, I can't say how reliable that witness is that saw John Tanko,

00:56:05.260 but the dog did disappear.

00:56:07.520 The dog was not there.

00:56:09.080 She, you know, reported the dog missing.

00:56:11.300 The dog was found a few days later.

00:56:12.960 But certainly people speculated that if anybody wanted to create an easier path for themselves to leave the neighborhood through here, getting rid of that dog would be key.

00:56:25.360 And we know that police took footprints, impressions from her backyard the day after this.

00:56:31.200 Here's that neighbor, Mary Hurt, explaining this back in 2011.

00:56:34.200 There was a sprinkler that happened to be on in that yard that made it moist over here as the rest of the ground was dry because there hadn't been any rain.

00:56:42.960 Now, this sprinkler tells these people were not home, right?

00:56:47.340 Who was operating this sprinkler?

00:56:49.780 Their handyman.

00:56:51.680 They had that the police were actually looking for in the area of Jersey.

00:56:55.960 So according to Mary Hurt, that would place John Jersey Tanko in the neighborhood that night.

00:57:01.100 I think he really was one of the best suspects or persons of interest.

00:57:07.320 And although the police did speak to him, they did not speak to him as a suspect.

00:57:12.960 They spoke to him more as a kind of a person in the community.

00:57:18.580 And, you know, when you interview someone as a suspect versus someone as a witness, that interview is very different.

00:57:28.800 They've come out and said, and they said early on that they've moved on from him.

00:57:34.080 They don't believe he's their guy.

00:57:36.020 Why would they do that?

00:57:37.040 I think one reason they would do that is because they have one theory, and they've stuck to that theory all these years, that it was the parents.

00:57:46.500 I think a second reason, and this would be a legitimate reason, that one of the witnesses in the case, the lady that was several doors up from the Irwins at 12.15, who saw the man carrying the baby.

00:57:58.420 She's talking there about Lisa Parscale.

00:58:00.280 And she knew Jersey because he had done work across the street at the Watsons' home and she did not believe that the person carrying the baby was, in fact, Tanko.

00:58:13.340 I don't know whether she reported that to the police, but let's assume that she did and so that that was one way that they would have eliminated him.

00:58:20.760 In fact, Lisa Parscale told us she and her husband told police they did not think the man carrying the baby looked like John Tanko, but they couldn't be 100 percent certain.

00:58:32.780 Eyewitness identification is a tricky business. And in Cindy Short's mind, this was not enough.

00:58:38.440 I don't think that that should have been the end of the story. I think when you look at the totality of what he was doing, particularly from July through October, they should have done more to look at him.

00:58:55.900 For several days, attorney Cindy Short and reporter Jim Spellman, independent of one another, searched for an elusive John Tanko, trying to get his side of the story.

00:59:05.140 He was a guy who had been in and out of trouble with the law. And just a few days after the disappearance, he was arrested on outstanding felony warrants. And I've chased a lot of people around jails and police stations and stuff. And it definitely gave me the sense that they were trying to hide him in the jail and judicial system.

00:59:28.400 Nobody who gets arrested on a simple bench warrant gets moved from place to place the way that they were moving him.

00:59:36.360 He had been incarcerated in Missouri for a burglary.

00:59:40.640 He had been released from his incarceration and then he had absconded, which meant that he had escaped from basically a halfway house.

00:59:51.660 He was then living in an unhoused situation with a woman named Megan.

00:59:57.740 Megan Wright was 20 years old, new to Kansas City, and was John Tanko's girlfriend for a time they had since broken up.

01:00:05.700 Tell me about John Tanko.

01:00:07.460 He's a next boyfriend of mine. We dated for about five months.

01:00:10.920 So about a month, six weeks before baby Lisa disappeared, Megan had lived for a period of time in this townhouse development that you could get to by cutting through these yards just around the corner from baby Lisa's house.

01:00:24.120 And there is a lot of disruption or arguments between Megan and Jersey.

01:00:30.520 And later on in the summers about September, he ends up getting arrested again.

01:00:36.240 They break up. He wants to get back with her.

01:00:41.200 She becomes homeless. He ends up setting her car on fire.

01:00:45.860 Her car was set on fire and she reported it and it was investigated.

01:00:49.740 And she thought that John Tanko, Jersey, did it.

01:00:53.060 But nobody was ever able, as far as I can tell, to confirm that he was the one that did it or what exactly happened there.

01:01:01.360 Fire is important here because we'll end up having a fire the night of the kidnapping.

01:01:06.520 That was the dumpster fire on the night of baby Lisa's disappearance.

01:01:10.580 People zeroed in on this because many believed Megan Wright still lived in that townhouse near the dumpster and thought Tanko, if he had the baby, may have been trying to go see her.

01:01:21.640 In fact, Megan Wright lived farther away by at least another mile. 1.00

01:01:26.940 And here's one more piece of information that made for a possible motive.

01:01:31.000 Megan and Jersey are kind of an odd couple.

01:01:33.840 She's much younger than he is, but they start talking about, in July, having children.

01:01:39.960 Megan would like to have children. 0.99

01:01:42.160 There's a theory about him wanting to get back together with her,

01:01:46.040 and is this one of the reasons that he would have spontaneously taken this baby?

01:01:50.520 Back then, Megan Wright was a confused young woman,

01:01:53.500 not completely coming clean about her own drug use.

01:01:56.300 I found out that he was getting innocent drug activity.

01:01:59.380 Do you know what drug is?

01:02:01.280 A mess, from what I understand.

01:02:03.240 She's had a hard life, struggling with abuse, addiction, and mental illness.

01:02:07.760 And so, after so much scrutiny and criticism in the months after baby Lisa went missing,

01:02:12.500 Megan vowed not to talk about this case again.

01:02:16.060 Last October, she decided to make an exception and spoke with me for two hours, much of it tearful.

01:02:23.160 You don't have to be here.

01:02:25.200 You could easily have said to me, I don't want to do it.

01:02:28.760 It's traumatic for me and I don't want to go back over it.

01:02:31.540 You're doing it because you want.

01:02:33.060 It is.

01:02:33.740 Will you tell us why you're doing it?

01:02:35.260 I'm doing it because it's important to me to not participate in something that's going to be a circus.

01:02:43.600 What's important to me is that the story gets told fully.

01:02:49.800 I haven't seen that done yet.

01:02:51.980 I haven't seen anybody investigate whether Jersey was actually involved or not. 0.92

01:02:58.060 I wanted to participate in something that was going to light a fire under the ass of the police department and the FBI. 0.90

01:03:04.340 Because Lisa deserves that. 0.97

01:03:06.240 The Irwins deserve that. 1.00

01:03:08.140 That's the goal.

01:03:09.420 She says she has always wanted children, but that she knew she did not want them with John Tanko.

01:03:15.300 Did Jersey ever offer to get a baby for you?

01:03:19.840 No.

01:03:21.040 You know, there were reports about whether he did this and that was his motivation.

01:03:26.020 I think where that stems from is the situation leading up to him and I breaking up.

01:03:32.120 When I broke up with him, it was because I told him he wasn't the type of man I could see myself having a family with.

01:03:39.280 And I feel like it has been twisted for the last 12 years as a motivation for him or what would be his motive to take her if he did.

01:03:50.240 Again, attorney Cindy Short.

01:03:52.120 In September, he's becoming more erratic.

01:03:55.700 And so I think, again, this is significant.

01:03:58.320 And some of the erratic behavior has to do with his drug use.

01:04:02.900 He would disappear for hours on end with no explanation.

01:04:06.420 He was quick to anger, last to understand.

01:04:09.260 And it was, I just couldn't handle it anymore.

01:04:11.880 How likely is it, do you think, that Jersey, John Tanko, was involved in baby Lisa's disappearance?

01:04:20.900 It's hard to say, honestly.

01:04:23.320 I didn't know him very well.

01:04:25.200 He and I were together for less than six months.

01:04:28.320 And we only lived together for a couple of months of that, so I didn't really know him all that well.

01:04:34.820 And most of the time that we were together, you know, we were using drugs together.

01:04:39.860 It wasn't a healthy relationship where you learn what somebody's capable of.

01:04:47.160 So we have an individual who's using methamphetamine, who's breaking into homes in the community, who has a history of arson in this same community.

01:04:58.320 Meanwhile, he somehow ingratiated himself with a very nice couple, the Watsons, who live just several doors down from the Irwins, which means that he has an opportunity to really be watching what people are doing in this community.

01:05:15.000 He is a good little burglar getting to case the joint.

01:05:18.740 He knows who has children.

01:05:21.060 John Jersey Tanko was interviewed by the police, and he denies any involvement in the disappearance of baby Lisa.

01:05:27.480 The case remains open.

01:05:30.600 Now I'm back with my go-to experts, Phil Houston and Bill Stanton.

01:05:34.920 Let's talk about Intruder.

01:05:37.460 Now we have a name, potential name.

01:05:40.360 Maybe, maybe John Tanko, the handyman, the good little burglar across the street.

01:05:47.220 The thing about the neighbors to the Irwins, the Parscals, both of them, 1.00

01:05:53.400 seeing a man with a baby is huge it's huge why doesn't that steer the whole investigation 0.90

01:06:06.820 in a different direction when the parcals tell both the husband and the wife tell the cops they

01:06:14.280 saw a man with a baby because it's not jeremy and it's not deborah and it throws a huge monkey wrench

01:06:21.480 in the narrative. Now what? Now what? Now we have to rethink everything. Who is this guy at a quarter

01:06:30.860 after, you know, midnight, which lines up perfectly, you know, in the chill air without a blanket that

01:06:39.780 they made such a note that it pinged on their radar where the husband calls the wife's honey,

01:06:45.180 make sure you lock the doors. To your point, they should have been all over that and that should

01:06:51.200 have been the main focus of the media, but it wasn't. And then there's a third person who sees

01:06:58.500 a man with a baby, this guy, Mike Thompson. And yet they seem to dismiss that as well.

01:07:06.020 And one of the things that the police apparently did not do was to do what we call a fact pattern

01:07:13.580 analysis, where they take each individual and compare that to the set of evidence and facts

01:07:20.200 of the case that they have. And often when you do that very systematically, you'll see one or

01:07:27.260 maybe one and a half persons jump out to the top of the list and say, wait a minute, this fits much

01:07:33.680 more so than this guy that we thought. And we did that. And then we related that to the police and

01:07:41.300 to the FBI agent, and they didn't want to hear it. It was their bias again. Can I tell you one of my

01:07:48.480 main things in looking back at this is the problem of the 24-7 media requirements. The media has so

01:07:56.740 much time to fill and they have no answers in a case like this. So they just sit and they speculate

01:08:03.680 all day long. All the channels do it. All the anchors do it. All the shows do it. And at the

01:08:10.440 same time, you've got the police who are going with the stats that the parents always do it,

01:08:14.860 putting out these little nuggets like the parents have stopped cooperating.

01:08:21.300 Her story changed, which is true, you know, Deborah's. The dogs alerted, right? The cops 0.99

01:08:30.420 were telling people essentially it was her. And the media checks all skepticism because that's

01:08:39.660 an exciting story that they believe anyway, and it will fill the 24-7 cable news requirements.

01:08:46.460 I mean, Bill, you've been part of that ecosystem, as have I. That's how it works.

01:08:50.380 Yep. If it bleeds, it leads, and they want a nice, finite end to the story. And that's why

01:08:55.820 they were so ravenous at getting to Deborah and Jeremy, Jeremy, to interview them, to wrap this

01:09:03.640 up to see them taking out in cuffs. How about the maneuverings with the carpet? With the suits

01:09:11.220 coming in after the fact. Come on, they had like the equivalent of several football teams in and

01:09:16.760 out of that house, you know, after the crime occurred. And then they go in. I forgot how many

01:09:22.400 days or weeks later after the crime occurred with the crime scene unit. I mean, that was,

01:09:29.320 you know played out in front of the cameras that to me was let's cover our ass let's show everyone 0.99

01:09:35.820 that we're doing our job and you know for us in the know you know it was pathetic okay so phil 0.99

01:09:44.340 if the parscals really did see a man with a baby both the husband and the wife saw a man with a

01:09:51.280 baby, but did not think that man looked like anyone they knew. That's a very good fact for 0.99

01:09:59.480 John Tanko. And is it the kind of fact that might lead sophisticated law enforcement or anybody to

01:10:05.960 say, that's not him. That's not our guy. Maybe that's why they ultimately proved not so interested

01:10:12.300 in Tanko. Absolutely, Megan. I think a major part of the problem is the people they had on the case

01:10:20.120 were not in alignment as to who they thought did it.

01:10:25.320 And we saw this when we had a conference call

01:10:28.420 with the lead detective, the sergeant,

01:10:32.020 who was a woman who seemed to me to be pretty level-headed, 1.00

01:10:36.580 but the bureau guy clearly had a very strong opinion

01:10:43.040 about the parents.

01:10:44.860 He was the person that I would call the internal champion.

01:10:49.040 And the internal champion in a case like that can make getting to the right conclusion very difficult because they not only draw evidence, but they know how to debunk other people's opinions.

01:11:06.940 and the bureau guy brings a certain amount of gravitas to the situation and he just took it

01:11:13.820 over. And what we also took away is that Tanko began, in our minds, to take on a more prominent

01:11:23.920 role. And I was shocked when they said that they had cleared him. They'd move on from him.

01:11:30.320 Yeah. When, in fact, he was in the neighborhood or appeared to be in the neighborhood that night.

01:11:35.320 Also, you know, from a fingerprints perspective, here's a guy that wears gloves all day long as a handyman and so forth.

01:11:45.780 Here's a guy that was arrested already for breaking in people's windows in neighborhoods.

01:11:51.940 And they seem, I don't want to know what, I can't read their minds, but they seem to ignore most of that.

01:11:59.880 and let's not forget what Jim Spellman told us about the dog not barking and about the neighbor

01:12:08.600 who's claiming she knew Jersey and she saw him take the dog I don't know whether that's true or

01:12:15.360 not but that's that's exactly the kind of thing that would get a red flag going for a cop back

01:12:20.340 to the theory of it was a planned burglary potentially potentially just to take the phones

01:12:26.940 The baby could have been an afterthought, but was that looked into?

01:12:32.620 When we train investigators, Megan, there's an interesting saying that we use, and we borrowed it from the medical community.

01:12:38.800 This is what they tell med students.

01:12:41.480 When you hear the sound of hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

01:12:46.920 Don't make it more complicated than what it is.

01:12:50.500 And I think that there was a little bit perhaps of investigative panic and everybody was just in scramble mode trying to get something.

01:12:59.200 because on the one hand, you have them ruling out a lot of very alarming evidence about a potential

01:13:05.700 theft of a child. And on the other hand, you have them ignoring many facts about Debra that

01:13:13.480 work toward her benefit, like you interviewing her and saying what you said, like the fact that

01:13:20.240 where would she have taken the baby and disposed of the baby that quickly in order to get back 1.00

01:13:25.540 into her bed with no footprints or evidence that she had left the house. The boys hearing absolutely

01:13:30.600 nothing and no history of abuse. That's an important piece, too. It's not like Deborah

01:13:35.340 was some child abuser who had been, you know, brought bringing the baby into the ER over and

01:13:40.280 over. There's zero evidence to that effect by all accounts, a loving mother. So, you know, this

01:13:46.360 this makes perfect sense that they were running the stats, the odds with her to the exclusion of

01:13:51.140 all this other evidence. Coming up, remember the stolen cell phones? They could be key to this

01:13:57.260 entire case. Plus, new theories emerge that we will explore for the first time.

01:14:06.280 I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show and episode three of our special series,

01:14:11.400 Megan Kelly Investigates on the Disappearance of Baby Lisa. Nearly 13 years ago, in Kansas City,

01:14:18.060 Missouri, Lisa Irwin, a 10-month-old baby girl, vanished in the middle of the night.

01:14:23.660 What could have possibly happened to her? One man emerges who might have some answers.

01:14:29.560 Here's where we are. After a $100,000 reward was posted and the widespread pursuit of an

01:14:36.480 unknown man walking with a baby, two people of interest emerged. James Brando, who lived next

01:14:43.400 door to Debra Bradley and Jeremy Irwin, and who had split up with his wife, Samantha, earlier

01:14:48.660 that day. Samantha, you may remember, was drinking with Debra on Debra's front stoop the night baby

01:14:54.980 Lisa went missing. Brando was investigated and ultimately ruled out. That left John Jersey

01:15:02.320 Tanko, the handyman with a history of drug abuse, arson, and break-ins, who was working nearby.

01:15:08.740 As we learned in our last episode, he had an ex-girlfriend who he may have believed wanted

01:15:15.020 a baby. Her name is Megan Wright. Was Tanko trying to bring Megan a baby in the hopes of

01:15:21.680 getting back together? And now we turn to perhaps the most crucial clue in this case. Remember those

01:15:28.380 three cell phones on the Irwin's kitchen counter taken the night that Lisa was? Two of them had

01:15:35.080 restrictions for non-payment. But right near midnight, there was an attempted phone call

01:15:40.380 from the one phone that worked. It was to a cell phone that was less than a mile away

01:15:45.200 and it lasted 50 seconds. So what did the cops say to you about that piece of evidence?

01:15:51.720 Lisa's father, Jeremy Irwin. So they told me that there was a phone call from

01:15:56.140 one of Debra's phones and we were able to get the records from that phone line. Went back over

01:16:03.400 three years and I myself, hand by hand, went over every number in the whole thing. And that was the

01:16:10.500 first time in which that number had ever popped up. I mean, and that's our best lead. Law enforcement

01:16:17.020 went right to work on tracing that call. It went to a phone that belonged to Megan Wright. Yes,

01:16:24.500 the same Megan Wright who had recently split up with Jersey, a.k.a. John Tanko. Now I'm learning

01:16:31.700 that that mystery phone call was made to the handyman's ex-girlfriend.

01:16:39.080 We told you last week about that phone call.

01:16:41.420 It was placed to a phone belonging to a woman named Megan Wright.

01:16:45.260 How much contact did you have with Jersey on the day or the evening that baby Lisa went missing?

01:16:52.380 Megan Wright.

01:16:53.360 No, and I hadn't, he and I hadn't been together for over a month at that point.

01:16:58.640 And I had seen him and spoke to him prior to that, but nothing on the day of.

01:17:04.780 Megan was 20 at that time and had moved to Kansas City earlier that year.

01:17:09.240 She told us she had been in an abusive relationship, left it, lived for a time at a domestic violence shelter,

01:17:16.600 and after that was moving from group home to group home, temporary living situations.

01:17:22.380 She says she met Tanko at one of them.

01:17:24.440 It was probably two months into us meeting and hanging out together that I learned that he was bringing drugs to that house to the other people that lived there.

01:17:36.700 And that's when I was invited to snort a line of mess for the first time.

01:17:44.120 And I did.

01:17:46.300 You know, that was the first time I'd ever, ever done it.

01:17:49.020 And I was at this horrible point in my life and drinking too much pretty much every day.

01:17:58.560 Not the best of decisions, but it wasn't a far step from where I was at.

01:18:02.760 So that was the first time I ever got high on anything.

01:18:08.700 You know what I mean?

01:18:09.200 It was a life-changing experience that I never saw coming for myself.

01:18:16.640 By the time of Lisa's disappearance, Megan had become a full-on methamphetamine addict and was trying to stay away from Tanko. 0.95

01:18:25.320 The very last time she saw him, Megan says Tanko scared her.

01:18:29.080 The last time was when he had the van and almost hit the porch.

01:18:35.120 He aggressively left the road, drove into the grass of the yard and almost clipped the porch as he carped the car or the van to run up the stairs to try and get in the house to get me.

01:18:49.500 That's the last time that I had any type of contact with him.

01:18:53.060 And like I said, it was from 20 feet away with four or five people in between us that we had any contact.

01:19:00.380 And this is prior to Lisa's disappearance?

01:19:03.520 Yes.

01:19:04.800 Megan moved to a house on 44th and Brighton, a little over a mile away from the Irwin house.

01:19:09.820 I had moved there in fear of John because he kept coming back to that house where I had originally met him, where I was living at the time.

01:19:20.680 He would not leave me alone after I broke up with him.

01:19:23.060 By her account, it was a trap house, a drug den, and her contribution to the household was to let people use her phone.

01:19:31.100 Living in a trap house, what you can provide is everything.

01:19:34.400 Like I said, having the phone and paying the bill every month, that was one thing I could provide to everybody in the house.

01:19:39.260 Now everybody has access to a cell phone with internet.

01:19:41.720 When you're desperate and you're 20 years old and you're just trying not to die, you'll do anything to stay anywhere.

01:19:48.220 It's not outside, which is the only place I had to go.

01:19:53.060 Why would anyone involved in the disappearance of baby Lisa call your cell phone the night baby Lisa went missing?

01:20:02.000 I have no idea. It's hard for me to say. I had only had that number. It was like a Verizon prepaid phone for about six months.

01:20:11.760 I still got calls for other people, whoever had had the number prior.

01:20:15.940 There were several people that used my phone in the house that I lived in on a regular basis.

01:20:20.720 So there would be calls coming in for those people.

01:20:23.960 On the night Lisa went missing, October 3rd, Megan says she left her phone on an upstairs table.

01:20:29.780 I was in that house in the basement getting high in the very early morning hours of October 3rd for the last time of my life.

01:20:43.320 So I know exactly where I was at.

01:20:45.160 After I left there, it was probably 3.30 or so in the morning.

01:20:49.680 I went to Waffle House with one of the girls that was getting high with me at the house there.

01:20:55.800 Okay.

01:20:56.520 And you left that house, but you left your cell phone behind at the drug house?

01:21:00.800 Yes.

01:21:01.440 I left my phone there, and there were people that were using it throughout the evening.

01:21:06.220 So we had dinner or breakfast, whatever.

01:21:08.880 went to Walmart did our shopping checked out after food stamps hit at six in the morning

01:21:15.320 I probably got back to the house uh seven or eight in the morning and that's when I was handed

01:21:21.740 my phone that had been cleared of texts and call logs and told hey somebody said the FBI had called

01:21:28.100 your phone and I had no idea what was happening at that point that's when I turned the news on

01:21:34.280 and was able to see the broadcast of her missing.

01:21:38.860 Did you say, who picked it up?

01:21:40.660 Let me talk to the person who talked to the FBI.

01:21:43.120 That's what I said.

01:21:43.980 I said, who had my phone?

01:21:45.540 Who was using it?

01:21:46.580 Who were they talking to?

01:21:48.120 At that time, Megan says she was told that Dane Greathouse,

01:21:52.480 a man staying in her same house that night, had her phone.

01:21:56.680 And describe Dane for us.

01:21:58.420 I didn't know him very well.

01:21:59.980 He had been, like I said, I was living at a trap house.

01:22:02.640 He had been in and out for about a two-week period prior to that day.

01:22:08.040 So I had seen him, I had been kind of informally introduced to him,

01:22:12.340 but we never really hung out together in the house.

01:22:15.100 How old would you say?

01:22:17.780 He was maybe a few years older than me at that point, 24, 25, I think.

01:22:23.380 A month after Lisa went missing,

01:22:25.580 Dane had a text exchange with a Kansas City TV reporter

01:22:28.540 and denied any connection with Megan Wright or the missing child.

01:22:32.980 But he did say that he had used her phone.

01:22:36.520 I used Megan's cell phone to have my phone turned on and some rides lined up, being texted.

01:22:41.720 When our producer talked with him, Great House said he did not really know Megan Wright,

01:22:46.600 but did confirm that they both stayed at the same house for a few nights, the house on 44th and Brighton.

01:22:52.460 Great House said Megan did indeed share her phone with everyone there,

01:22:55.960 And he told us he used her phone three times to make calls, but says he never once answered it.

01:23:02.940 The public records only tell half the story.

01:23:05.900 I tried to get all those records to be preemptive about it, because if the FBI called my phone, I want to know why.

01:23:11.780 That's not something that happens to anybody in their regular life.

01:23:15.900 Megan Wright tells us that terrible night for the Irwins was a big turning point in her life, too.

01:23:21.820 She says the very next morning, she began to get her act together.

01:23:25.340 And I decided at that moment, never getting high again.

01:23:31.000 So October 4th is my first day sober, 2011.

01:23:35.200 I've been sober since.

01:23:36.740 About a week later, she says, the FBI brought her in for questioning.

01:23:40.440 So when it was a couple of days later at that point,

01:23:43.700 the FBI stopped me and take me in for questioning.

01:23:47.620 They connected all the dots and confirmed that

01:23:50.060 they had attempted to call my phone on the evening of

01:23:53.480 because they had gotten the call records from the Irwin's phone

01:23:57.160 and they were just trying to call the number back immediately.

01:24:00.720 That's why my phone was called.

01:24:02.560 What was your reaction when they told you?

01:24:04.860 I was terrified.

01:24:07.740 Terrified.

01:24:08.380 At this point, I was a week sober.

01:24:12.520 And once they were done asking her about her own possible involvement,

01:24:16.320 they grilled her about her ex, Tanko.

01:24:19.160 He definitely knew my number by heart

01:24:21.300 Because he called me from multiple phones all the time.

01:24:23.980 Like I said, when we were first talking, he didn't have a phone.

01:24:28.200 He had just gotten out of jail, was living at the honor center, and was trying to get back on his feet.

01:24:32.800 And then he was so devastated when I rejected him and left him and told him,

01:24:39.860 why, you know, you're not the type of man I can have family with.

01:24:42.840 And that's what I want in my life.

01:24:44.400 and I don't know if the way I delivered it or the circumstances surrounding our breakup or if

01:24:52.920 drugs had anything to do with it on his part at that point but he just revolted everything in him

01:25:01.000 hated me after that and the more that I told him I don't want to talk to you I don't want to see you

01:25:08.300 don't come around here you know we're not getting back together it just was so constant with him

01:25:16.120 until i left the city did you know that he was a burglar at the time no i've seen his arrest

01:25:24.820 reports and stuff since he i broke up and have learned a lot more about him what month was the

01:25:31.560 breakup in 2011? It was after Easter that year. I want to say it was like May or June

01:25:43.920 before the 4th of July because I didn't end up going to my family's 4th of July party that year

01:25:50.720 because I was upset about the breakup. Okay. And do you have any reason to believe he stopped

01:25:57.080 using meth at any point in 2011? I have no idea. Like I said, after I broke up with him,

01:26:04.080 I tried my very best not to have contact with him, especially in person, because he made me

01:26:08.760 incredibly nervous. I have a lot of PTSD from the things that he put me through that I've tried

01:26:16.460 really hard to work through over the years. But there's a lot of it I can't, you know, I can't

01:26:23.540 let go of, I can't forget being that afraid. Were you thinking, you know, this guy's kind

01:26:31.160 of crazy. Could have been him. Yes, I definitely thought this guy is crazy and that he was horrible 0.91

01:26:37.360 to me, traumatized me. But I have no idea what he's capable of. Again, reporter Jim Spellman.

01:26:45.720 I think if you start to look past the family, it's likely that it's somebody who at least

01:26:50.720 knew the neighborhood to know that this baby was in this house. And so he's somebody that

01:26:55.760 absolutely is top of mind, if not a suspect, because he's another person that the police

01:27:00.780 said that they moved on from, that perhaps somebody in his world might know something more.

01:27:07.460 The phones and the phone use continued to be a mystery. At 3.17 a.m., one of the phones tried

01:27:14.860 to access voicemail. Now, why would that be? Five minutes later, at 3.22 a.m., there was an attempt

01:27:23.660 to use the phone's web browser. As I reported for Fox News back then, Debra's attorney said

01:27:29.580 there were five attempts made to get online via the phone, and the phones never got more than

01:27:36.260 a third of a mile away from the house on North Lister. And remember this from our last episode.

01:27:42.700 If it really was the same man with a baby that the Parscals and Mike Thompson saw that night, he would have spent nearly four hours within a three-mile radius of baby Lisa's home.

01:27:56.560 You would think, OK, let's see who's on the other end of that number.

01:28:00.520 And that was Megan Wright's phone.

01:28:01.860 So, OK, boom, we're off to the races.

01:28:03.760 Megan Wright knows the abductor.

01:28:05.520 Not that simple.

01:28:07.120 Reporter Jim Spellman.

01:28:08.720 Not that simple at all.

01:28:09.740 First off, I don't believe the police have released the full records of those phones involved.

01:28:15.860 And I think that that is information that they have purposely withheld to be able to use to their advantage in their investigation.

01:28:23.180 So we know that at least one of those phones was used to make at least one call to Megan Wright's phone.

01:28:29.880 You spoke with her a lot.

01:28:31.540 Do you believe her claims that she did not have the phone when that number was dialed and that she had nothing to do with this?

01:28:39.740 I believe every single thing that Megan Wright told me within her ability to remember things, but I don't think that she was making up any of it.

01:28:51.660 She was very helpful throughout the entire thing.

01:28:54.780 If she tried to help us meet people, she would give us phone numbers of people.

01:28:59.580 She never asked me for anything the whole time that we were doing this.

01:29:03.520 And I think that she is exactly who she says she is.

01:29:10.780 A troubled person, absolutely, but not somebody who had any direct involvement in this.

01:29:17.440 Meanwhile, Kansas City attorney Cindy Short was working hard to find answers, even after she was off the legal team.

01:29:25.500 After 10 days, she says she and lead attorney Joe Tacopina parted company in a dispute over strategy.

01:29:31.160 But Cindy continued to look for Tanko. And now she's going to tell us something she has never

01:29:37.160 before shared publicly. And it's fascinating. A day or two after she left the case, Cindy found

01:29:45.360 John Tanko in the Clay County Jail, north of Kansas City. And she interviewed him for 10 hours

01:29:52.380 over a two-day period. What he told her could change the entire trajectory of this investigation.

01:29:59.860 set the scene for us. Did he come right out to talk to you? He did come right out to meet with

01:30:06.580 me. And I think probably out of curiosity, I introduced myself and I told him who I was and

01:30:15.520 what I was doing. And then I had been working on the baby Lisa case, that I was no longer

01:30:22.280 representing Debra. And then I had some questions about him and his role in the neighborhood and

01:30:30.560 hope that maybe he could help me if he was willing to talk about it.

01:30:36.500 And you're face to face. There's no glass between you.

01:30:39.680 No glass. And he's a small guy.

01:30:42.500 Does he look disheveled? Is he a good looking man? What is he? How would you describe?

01:30:46.780 He was tough looking. He looked like a sophisticated consumer of the criminal justice system.

01:30:54.540 He looked like someone who had had a rough life.

01:30:59.500 He was cautious, I think, as he should have been.

01:31:02.840 But Cindy says he was forthcoming and emotional about his troubled childhood.

01:31:07.440 It was an interesting roller coaster of emotion where he was sometimes stoic. There were times, quite honestly, where he was in tears. It was confusing in some ways.

01:31:23.320 I was trying to use my best persuasive skills to help convince him to maybe bring closure to a family, if he could.

01:31:37.480 I tried to get him to tell me where he was on October 3rd and 4th, and he didn't think that would be in his best interest.

01:31:46.720 And then a stunning confession.

01:31:49.900 He did tell me, though, that he had found three cell phones.

01:31:55.200 And he told me where he had found them.

01:31:57.580 He also claimed to have told the police that he had found three cell phones.

01:32:01.440 This is extraordinary.

01:32:02.440 The three cell phones went missing from baby Lisa's house on the night she was taken.

01:32:08.180 And now he's telling you.

01:32:10.580 And there's the reason we know his name to begin with is, yes, neighbors had said he was in the area.

01:32:16.260 It's kind of a sketchy character.

01:32:17.360 but the reason we know his name is because we have a phone bill that shows one of the Irwin's

01:32:22.660 three cell phones called Megan Wright. Yes. And so once again, it's a link potentially back to

01:32:30.400 Jersey. And now he's telling you they never found the cell phones. He's telling you he found them.

01:32:38.640 Yes. Yes. And he's telling me where, which is not very far from the house. So he's placing himself, not just the proximity of the phones, but in possession of the phones. He's claiming that he's with another woman at the time that they find the phones.

01:32:57.240 He tells me where they are under this bridge at 210 and North Brighton.

01:33:03.800 And in fact, this is when I employed one of my investigators with a dog to go down to that location.

01:33:11.320 And he went so far as to tell me that the car that he was in with this woman had a leak and that I would be able to find a stain on the road where they had stopped.

01:33:22.620 and we did find a state but you know roads have stains so we went down there with the dog and

01:33:33.080 there under this bridge there is a culvert and so there is water there but it's very low water

01:33:39.760 because at one point he had talked about throwing the phones into a pond he'd also talked about the

01:33:47.680 being in this woman's car but just to back up just to back up so he's saying there we are having some

01:33:54.280 car trouble get out of the car and boom three cell phones and i was just guessing that these

01:34:00.980 belong to deborah and jeremy like as he does he offer any reason why he knows it's those phones

01:34:06.880 he just told me there were three three cell phones on the side of the road now he's not telling me

01:34:11.720 that they're jeremy and but i think the connection would be that if he it's three cell phones that

01:34:17.220 are sitting there together? Yes. Three cell phones sitting there together. At some point he had,

01:34:21.860 you know, he tried to tell me that I don't steal cell phones, but the thing about it is a thief,

01:34:27.520 if you're going to go into a house to steal stuff, which this guy does, then you're going to steal

01:34:33.220 things you can sell really easily. Cell phones, guns, any kind of electronics, things you can pick

01:34:41.280 up easily, throw them in your pockets. These three cell phones were sitting on a counter

01:34:45.900 in the kitchen so it would have been very easy for a burglar coming into the home through the

01:34:53.200 front door or through that window the phones would have been right there but keep in mind

01:34:59.920 jersey's drug use and his rap sheet how reliable was he was he playing games with cindy trying to

01:35:07.640 get information from her to see what she and investigators knew it's extraordinary that in

01:35:14.060 his time with you he volunteered that he spent time with these cell phones that even he is seems

01:35:21.220 to be suggesting are related to the case yeah like the fact i think phil houston would say

01:35:26.620 that's a liar who doesn't know what you know right about what connections he has you know 0.55

01:35:33.220 admitting just so much just to see you know but leaving himself escape routes right um so maybe 0.98

01:35:39.520 he could get some more information from you or just in case you knew more than he thought you did

01:35:43.340 right right that must have been chilling i mean was that chilling cindy when he admitted that 0.79

01:35:48.720 yes i take it that was the most shocking revelation that he copped to finding three

01:35:53.440 mysterious cell phones yes shortly after baby lisa went missing like how how close in time

01:35:58.100 it was it was right in that time frame it was right when it happened and but yet didn't want

01:36:04.120 to give you the timeline on what he did the night she went missing thinking that wasn't going to

01:36:08.360 land in a good place. Because she was building trust, still hoping for a confession, and because

01:36:13.640 she had also offered to represent him, Cindy maintained client attorney confidentiality

01:36:19.080 and did not bring this new information to police or to the new legal team representing Deborah.

01:36:25.600 John Pacerno replaced Cindy as Joe Tacopina's local counsel. According to him, those three phones

01:36:31.680 have never been found. They were trying to locate the cell phones by the pings on the cell phone

01:36:37.740 towers geographically. When they do their triangulation, it's not specific. They came

01:36:42.880 out to an area that's a large wooded area, which did receive quite a bit of interest from law

01:36:48.780 enforcement. They did a couple of searches there from Missouri Missing as well with citizens in

01:36:54.280 that area, but nothing ever really came from the cell phones. Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller

01:36:59.740 are Kansas City moms who are co-authoring a book about this case. You know, there's been

01:37:04.460 speculation that the phones maybe were discarded by the real kidnapper and then just found by

01:37:12.600 somebody who then called that number. How do you gals like that theory? I think it's just as viable

01:37:20.480 as any other theory. The phones do not make sense. I think it's almost impossible to make sense of

01:37:26.520 the phone. To this day, it's an open question. Why does a one-step-above-homeless guy steal a

01:37:34.100 baby. It's not like there's some known black market for babies that I mean, that would be

01:37:38.240 something so sophisticated to get your foot into. He wouldn't have that. Right. So it's to what end

01:37:44.040 again, reporter Jim Spellman. That's what I've come back to over and over again is to what end.

01:37:49.880 And you're absolutely right. There's no way that somebody like Jersey or this guy, Dane Greathouse

01:37:54.920 also had a lot of legal problems as well, that these are not the kind of characters who would

01:38:00.700 be likely to be involved in some sort of high dollar, you know, baby stealing ring or something

01:38:07.720 like that. If that even exists, it's incredibly uncommon and that these guys would somehow get

01:38:14.000 involved with it seems, you know, incredibly unlikely. Cindy Short keeps coming back to her

01:38:20.580 time with Jersey. When they talked about his childhood, he told her he was put in a boy's

01:38:25.380 home at age 10 and was later institutionalized to deal, he said, with his pyromania and impulse

01:38:32.000 control problems. The other thing that was chilling for me were the tears. It felt to me like

01:38:40.380 there was this, we were right on the tip of him wanting to tell me something, but he couldn't.

01:38:51.500 And I didn't have the kind of leverage that police had.

01:38:57.440 There was nothing I could give.

01:38:59.980 You know, there was nothing I could use to,

01:39:03.000 other than the goodness of his heart.

01:39:06.760 Do you think he was thinking about confessing?

01:39:10.100 It felt that way.

01:39:11.400 And I walked away from it feeling that way.

01:39:14.920 You were just almost there.

01:39:17.880 i'm joined now by my partners in crime if you will long-time cia interrogator and human lie

01:39:25.520 detector phil houston and ex-mypd and security expert bill stanton all right guys let's talk

01:39:32.220 about cindy short we were just almost there she said this information about a jailhouse meeting

01:39:38.640 with john tanko is incredible no agreed if that is the case if that is a fact that is as close

01:39:46.460 to a smoking gun, as this case has come to at this point.

01:39:51.040 100%.

01:39:51.520 Moving on to the call to Megan Wright's phone.

01:39:54.060 This is critical.

01:39:55.280 Phil and Bill, you watched my entire interview with Megan Wright.

01:39:58.360 It went on for much longer than the excerpts that we've put in this series.

01:40:03.280 She's had a hard life.

01:40:04.940 She was very emotional throughout the two hours.

01:40:08.260 Here she is talking about losing custody of her child.

01:40:11.600 All right.

01:40:12.200 This is the hardest part to talk about for me because not only was my life affected, my child's life was too because I didn't have the mental capacity to care for either one of us, which is why I was charged with the endangering the welfare of a child was for medical neglect.

01:40:30.560 I was dealing with manic episodes of postpartum depression and still didn't have very much family support.

01:40:40.480 His father was already out of the picture.

01:40:42.980 and

01:40:45.520 in the state of Missouri, instead of

01:40:52.360 getting me psychiatric help

01:40:56.140 or ordering psychiatric help, they

01:40:59.900 brought me into the judicial system and charged me with a felony

01:41:03.980 and then served two years in prison. How do you feel about it now

01:41:08.240 looking back at the way you were taking care of him?

01:41:12.980 I just regret the fact I didn't have the support that I needed.

01:41:17.120 So shortly after getting out of the mental hospital, out of addiction, out of an abusive relationship, out of being traumatized for two months after being railroaded in the media, questioned by the FBI, dropped by your family, losing everything you've ever owned in your own life.

01:41:38.420 and then getting pregnant was the only reason i didn't kill myself and then to lose custody of him

01:41:47.120 10 months later

01:41:48.120 it has really affected my will to live he was underweight is that why he was underweight

01:41:57.260 severely can we not talk about this this is the worst thing in my life and you're just dwelling

01:42:04.600 on it and I really don't appreciate it. We can. We can move right past. I'm trying to participate

01:42:10.440 for the sake of maybe Lisa not to focus on the worst thing in my life, the most embarrassing

01:42:17.140 thing. She was very emotional right from the start and I was moved by it. It seemed like

01:42:24.140 real emotion to me. Yeah, it was not, Megan. Most of it. It was not? Is that what you just said?

01:42:30.020 Yeah, yeah. She's a master at turning on and off the tears. 0.99

01:42:34.880 At some point, Phil, she was like shaking. She was almost hyperventilating and she was like trying to get her.

01:42:41.920 Megan, when you hear Megan write, it's hard to not hear and feel badly for her when she speaks about the trials and challenges that she's faced during her life.

01:42:58.160 If you're looking at her from the deception detection standpoint, what you see is that she's using these trials and challenges to hide something.

01:43:11.920 Every time you ask a question, you see what we call the trifecta of deception, which is evasion, persuasion, and aggression.

01:43:22.100 So she doesn't give you what you ask for.

01:43:25.540 She then uses her trials and tribulations to convince you that there's no reason in the world why she should be suspected.

01:43:35.960 And then she blames somebody else.

01:43:38.120 She attacks somebody else.

01:43:39.580 The number of people that she attacked, she attacked Jersey, she attacked the FBI, she attacked the police, she attacked the public, she attacked friends, and she attacked you.

01:43:54.880 And, you know, that's her way of trying to get people to back off. 1.00

01:44:01.360 She wants you to feel bad about her so that by the time she's done, you don't even remember the question.

01:44:09.580 The other thing that she does that's very, very interesting is she gave us many what we call truth in the lie.

01:44:20.460 For example, when she says, what I'm really trying to do is get everyone to focus on Lisa and not me.

01:44:29.980 Now, think about that.

01:44:31.060 if you're someone that's trying to, you know, avoid disclosing something, what she's really

01:44:36.540 saying is, I'm trying to, you know, keep the light off of me. So what does that tell you? I mean,

01:44:45.160 I know the obvious one that she's lying, but I mean, what? Yeah. Why? She is protecting herself

01:44:51.800 from whatever she knows about Lisa's disappearance.

01:44:56.820 She is protecting Jersey in a crazy way.

01:45:01.860 And what I mean by crazy way,

01:45:03.760 I don't think she has a great,

01:45:05.640 any longer she has a great affinity for Jersey.

01:45:09.020 I think she fears him.

01:45:10.680 But do you, having listened to it, Phil,

01:45:12.820 do you have a takeaway on whether

01:45:14.020 she was the phone holder that night?

01:45:19.600 I have a strong sense that she left her phone there or gave it to someone. In other interviews, she has said that she deliberately left her phone there so other people could use it that night. And I really didn't need it. And so I have a feeling there was an ulterior motive for why she left the phone there and didn't need it.

01:45:45.400 you're going like full bore against her

01:45:48.580 so under your theory is

01:45:50.240 she wanted the baby

01:45:52.920 she was in on the baby plot

01:45:54.700 she gave the phone to somebody else 0.71

01:45:56.820 so that it wouldn't be on her

01:45:58.220 and she intentionally went to Waffle House 1.00

01:46:00.560 Walmart so she wouldn't be near

01:46:02.080 I'm not convinced Megan

01:46:04.680 that it is a baby

01:46:07.000 plot for her

01:46:08.200 I'm not convinced about it at all

01:46:10.200 I think she knows

01:46:12.100 either beforehand or after

01:46:14.820 the fact of what happened. Now, Megan, I can imagine your audience is not going to be happy

01:46:21.820 with what Phil says, but Phil is not called upon to make people happy. Phil is called upon to detect

01:46:29.320 deception. So while people may be saying, you know, how can he talk this way? No, no, no. He's

01:46:36.060 putting his emotion aside. What would a truth teller have sounded like? Megan, it's impossible.

01:46:44.820 to know, because what I would submit to you is the focus would be on the, I didn't do it.

01:46:54.160 In the worst case scenario, she could have been the reason the baby's missing to begin with.

01:46:58.860 If you think about Megan and trying to convince the world that she's not involved, the same

01:47:06.340 coincidental nature of her saying, on that very night, I decided, it was either that very day or

01:47:16.640 that very night, I decided that I'm going to go sober. Yes. All right. I'm going to admit that

01:47:23.100 stood out at me. Why was that night so powerful? Why on earth was it so powerful? Okay, but I'll

01:47:29.680 Defender. I'm going to defend her. You're already unstable. You're on drugs. Your family doesn't 0.91

01:47:37.360 want anything to do with you. You were in a domestic violence shelter from some jerk in 1.00

01:47:42.160 your life. Now you're with this other jerk who you've broken up with, who's stalking you. You're 1.00

01:47:46.540 traumatized. There was a lot. That morning, at least she found out that the FBI was calling her

01:47:51.180 and she's worried. I don't know. She's worried. So could that be, like I said, scared straight?

01:47:56.480 She says, she says the FBI called her. We don't know that. That's what she said.

01:48:01.840 Yeah. Also, she said, oh, I didn't know who to call back. Google the FBI and you have a phone

01:48:08.640 number. If somebody thought I had committed a crime, I'd be on the phone with the police or

01:48:14.540 with the FBI. She's a drug addict. She lives in a drug house. None of these people wants to 1.00

01:48:19.460 voluntarily bring law enforcement into their lives. What does she gain by telling us falsely

01:48:26.440 that the FBI called her

01:48:28.960 when they didn't call her.

01:48:34.340 I don't see it.

01:48:35.700 See, there you go.

01:48:36.600 I've rehabilitated her

01:48:37.820 on one of your key points, Phil.

01:48:40.120 Take the L.

01:48:42.780 It's very possible

01:48:44.060 that she's simply trying

01:48:45.960 to get everyone to believe

01:48:48.940 that she's been through

01:48:50.040 all the right steps

01:48:51.280 and she cooperated

01:48:52.560 every step along the way.

01:48:55.240 I feel bad.

01:48:56.200 Like, I don't want Megan Wright to be completely bashed here without a defense, because I thought it was very courageous for her to sit across from somebody like me, who, even though I'm sympathetic to everything she's gone through, she knows I'm not an easy interviewer.

01:49:08.020 She's not a dope. 1.00

01:49:09.660 You guys had me crying.

01:49:11.100 I was crying.

01:49:12.000 Yeah, you were crying.

01:49:13.320 I was so cynical.

01:49:15.560 That's what we pay him the big bucks for.

01:49:18.400 I apologize.

01:49:19.780 Is there any chance you, how confident are you?

01:49:21.580 Because, like, I'll say this, I love you, Phil, but, like, are you too biased against Megan Wright and in favor of Debra?

01:49:28.380 No, she she can make herself cry by thinking about all the bad and horrible things that happen.

01:49:36.720 And and she turns it on and off on on command.

01:49:42.140 I mean, I know you're a genius, but I still have sympathies for her.

01:49:45.360 I just. And we're allowed to do that, Megan.

01:49:47.680 And we're allowed to have that emotional response.

01:49:51.240 But to Phil's point, many a bad guy and bad woman woman will prey upon that emotional response.

01:49:59.200 The bad guys know how to manipulate.

01:50:01.380 They have sad stories, but they still may be bad guys.

01:50:05.120 Now, do I think, you know, I differ slightly than Phil.

01:50:10.320 You know, I do think it's Jersey.

01:50:13.020 I do think that.

01:50:13.900 Yeah, I don't think it was an organized thing.

01:50:16.900 I think it was a crime of opportunity, because why would he be walking up the block, you know, with a baby in its arm?

01:50:23.220 I think it's Jersey as well. I'm not disagreeing with you.

01:50:27.360 I think the admission to the lawyer about finding three phones on the night that three phones were stolen is is is ludicrous.

01:50:41.500 Wait, what do you mean?

01:50:42.140 to believe that that's not him doing a couple of things.

01:50:47.860 What he is doing is he is trying to cover his tracks, first of all,

01:50:54.720 because if those phones turn up somewhere,

01:50:58.520 he thinks his fingerprints or other association,

01:51:02.400 digital association, will be made with him.

01:51:05.680 So he wants an explanation of why he's on there, you know, doing something.

01:51:11.280 I knew it. I said that to Cindy Short. I said Phil Houston's going to say he was admitting just enough to cover something he did, but not the whole thing.

01:51:20.680 Yeah.

01:51:21.800 John Jersey Tanko was questioned by the police at the time. He denies any involvement and the case remains open.

01:51:29.460 Coming up in our next episode, new theories emerge about the disappearance that take the story in a completely new direction.

01:51:36.200 i'm megan kelly welcome to the megan kelly show and episode four of our special series

01:51:45.060 megan kelly investigates we're tackling the disappearance of baby lisa she vanished from

01:51:51.240 her crib in the middle of the night in october of 2011 today she'd be a teenager but where

01:51:57.200 is she and who took her someone knows a case like this generates a ton of interest and theories

01:52:05.660 some as we will explore in this episode very dark and disturbing the kansas city police have stiff

01:52:13.380 armed the press saying next to nothing about this case publicly neither kansas city pd nor the fbi

01:52:19.440 would talk to us and philanthropist christy hoss schiller's offer of a one hundred thousand dollar

01:52:24.960 reward for any information that could lead to the return of lisa remains unclaimed if you could write

01:52:31.320 That $100,000 check, it'd probably be the most delightful money you ever spent in your life.

01:52:37.400 Absolutely.

01:52:38.720 Still have hope.

01:52:40.280 While 42-year-old John Tanko, known as Jersey, may seem to have been the best suspect given his criminal history

01:52:46.760 and that mysterious call from the Irwin's stolen phone to the phone of Tanko's ex-girlfriend, Megan Wright,

01:52:54.240 on the night baby Lisa went missing, no arrests were ever made.

01:52:58.180 In 2011, police said they'd moved on from TANCO, and there appears to have been little to no movement on this case in the nearly 13 years since it started.

01:53:10.000 Jeremy and Debra have been left in limbo.

01:53:13.260 There were yearly vigils.

01:53:15.000 Please God, keep her safe until she is home with us.

01:53:18.920 And occasional interviews, including one with me that aired in January 2014.

01:53:23.700 When I interviewed you a couple years ago, Debra, you said even back then you were looking in the crowd whenever you pass a child who would be Lisa's age.

01:53:31.380 Yeah, we actually, I did it all day today when we were walking around before we came here to see you.

01:53:37.580 And I just said to Jeremy, I'm really tired of looking at everybody else's kid open. It's mine.

01:53:44.820 This has to be its own form of torture.

01:53:48.060 Jeremy Irwin.

01:53:48.760 I think about her every day.

01:53:50.920 it doesn't go away and the pain is still there and uh just feel like you're not complete

01:54:00.240 do you ever feel bitter jeremy you know i would feel i think i'd feel bitter you know that my

01:54:06.600 child was taken that i didn't get this time that if she's still out there i've missed so much

01:54:11.680 yeah there's a lot of that and um i mean it's it's pretty it's pretty frustrating and you have

01:54:18.520 a lot of hate and anger on aspects like that. But there's nothing you can do about it. And

01:54:26.220 that's not going to help get Lisa home any faster. So, I mean, it's frustrating that

01:54:30.880 everybody's still out living their life and going to the grocery store and doing whatever

01:54:35.440 they want to do. And meanwhile, we're just left to sit in the ashes.

01:54:41.720 Deborah Bradley.

01:54:43.240 You know, it's really hard as she gets older and still not having her home.

01:54:48.520 And thinking about all the things I continue to miss out on.

01:54:53.020 And it's like all of us have been robbed of that.

01:54:57.440 And that is really hard to accept.

01:55:01.820 I just started reading stuff and just writing down a name here and a name here.

01:55:07.920 And then I started doing my own searches.

01:55:11.560 Debra's aunt, Cindy Lorette, has been relentless, constantly searching for clues,

01:55:16.180 trying to piece together what may have happened.

01:55:19.100 I've done my own thing because there isn't anybody to help.

01:55:22.160 I have sat in courtrooms.

01:55:24.820 I have done my own surveillances.

01:55:27.420 I visited people in jail that I didn't know.

01:55:30.360 I don't really want to tell you everything I did,

01:55:32.560 but I did a lot of stuff.

01:55:36.100 But everything that I was reading throughout the internet,

01:55:38.440 it just kept leading me back to the area that I was living in.

01:55:41.920 So I got a job at this little convenience store.

01:55:44.360 And I didn't tell anybody who I was.

01:55:46.180 I just listened. I wanted to know things. I wanted to. And I did. I started to hear things. I mean, people talk.

01:55:53.500 Kansas City moms Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller, who are writing a book about this case, have spent more than a decade looking for leads.

01:56:01.160 Where did that take you? What did you find?

01:56:03.100 It led us down some bad places, some bad neighborhoods, talking to some bad people.

01:56:11.140 Was your theory starting to develop in a different direction from where the mainstream narrative was going?

01:56:16.180 missy yeah definitely the mainstream narrative here is either jersey or the mom it is

01:56:24.560 overwhelming how many people think that deborah had something to do with it nobody in this town

01:56:31.860 is looking for her because they think her mother killed her and she got away with it

01:56:37.780 much of what they've heard is secondhand and goes to some very dark places to drug dens to baby

01:56:45.120 brokers to terrible conclusions. My understanding is that you guys have spoken to at least five

01:56:52.660 people about this theory, that some criminal element somehow connected to the family was

01:56:58.120 responsible for this, and that at least three of them mentioned the sale, the sale of a baby.

01:57:05.100 Yeah, correct. Right.

01:57:06.800 In 2021, Debra said much the same to a local reporter. 0.95

01:57:10.520 What are you sure of, Debra? If the tips are right and the information we were given is right, she was sold.

01:57:21.180 You believe she was sold?

01:57:22.380 Absolutely.

01:57:23.440 To add to that theory, one month after Lisa went missing, Debra and Jeremy found a charge on a debit card, $69.04, paid to a British company that called itself a name-changing service.

01:57:37.960 This is one of the theories that, of course, puzzles me. How would the person wanting to steal baby Lisa think that they were going to get away with stealing baby Lisa on this night where the mother is at home?

01:57:54.000 There is nothing about walking into someone's house and taking their baby that makes any sense to me. But I don't know that the person doing that was a logical, rational, you know, person the way that you and I are.

01:58:13.040 So if it has to do with drugs, in other words, they might have been out of their minds.

01:58:16.640 Sure. Yeah, I would I would guess for sure.

01:58:20.820 If we think that there might have been a criminal drug element involved in this, and you guys have been out there investigating this for all this time, you know, pretty publicly, is there any fear on your part about your safety?

01:58:38.180 Absolutely.

01:58:39.220 Yes.

01:58:39.960 We've had people tell us, you know, we'll tell them, you know, there's a $100,000 reward.

01:58:45.240 And they say, well, what good is the reward if I'm not alive to spend it?

01:58:49.520 Do you ever like do your own investigation, start talking to people about what they know, what they saw? Jeremy Irwin.

01:58:55.980 Yeah, I mean, we we did for a long, long time.

01:58:59.000 And I mean, most of the stuff that we've gotten is stories that people have heard from other people.

01:59:06.080 So it's a lot of it's third person stories.

01:59:08.680 And I think there's real merit in a group of individuals that operate in that area that get rid of kids and illegally adopt or what, however you want to phrase it, but take in children that they're not supposed to have and redistribute them.

01:59:26.500 Um, that's, that's definitely going on up here. And, um, at least at the time when I was

01:59:33.860 talking with the investigators about it, um, they laughed in my face about it. So

01:59:39.960 other storylines that have circulated amongst the locals involve Deborah interacting with the drug 0.96

01:59:45.480 underworld, possible urban myths with no proof, including one that baby Lisa was handed off

01:59:51.860 to pay a drug debt. Was there anything that you, looking back, may have done to bring any of that

01:59:57.760 cast of characters into your life? You know, certainly not us, but we had people nearby

02:00:06.240 that were into that lifestyle. And you and Debra never went there, scored drugs, called for anything

02:00:14.520 from anybody connected to that place? Oh, no, no, never. Well, 100%.

02:00:18.400 Did they ever accuse you or Jeremy of being on drugs or having a connection to this house?

02:00:25.800 Deborah Bradley.

02:00:26.820 No, because we offered samples of our hair so they can test hair and find out anything and everything you've done.

02:00:32.620 Some drugs, including methamphetamine, can be detected this way.

02:00:36.420 And so they were able to tell that I was telling the truth about that, that as far as that, if there was a connection and that was it, that's null and void.

02:00:44.660 That's just not even an option.

02:00:45.980 And so I ask you for the record, have you been on drugs? Were you on drugs around the time Lisa went missing?

02:00:53.480 Absolutely not.

02:00:54.920 And how about Jeremy?

02:00:57.420 Absolutely not.

02:00:59.360 It just wasn't your thing. You were not somebody who partook.

02:01:02.960 No, I watched in high school, watched friends suffer from addiction and I didn't want to be that way.

02:01:12.840 I just seen so much suffering, aside from the fact that it's just not appealing to me.

02:01:19.680 And as a parent, that would be the last thing on my mind.

02:01:23.040 You don't do crystal meth and you didn't do crystal meth at the time she disappeared.

02:01:28.580 Oh, God, no, no, no.

02:01:31.220 Okay.

02:01:31.820 Yeah, because I'm sure you've heard that some people theorize you or Jeremy had a connection to this drug den

02:01:38.900 and brought this cast of nefarious characters into your life.

02:01:42.840 And one of them took her.

02:01:44.120 But those people should ask the cops about the DNA analysis on our hair and the drug test analysis on our hair. 0.99

02:01:52.160 It's not there for a reason because it doesn't exist.

02:01:55.520 So at least I have proof of that.

02:01:57.980 Reporter Jim Spellman covered the case for weeks after the story broke.

02:02:01.500 I have seen not one bit of information to indicate that Debra Bradley, Jeremy Irwin, or anybody in their family was involved in some sort of drug thing.

02:02:13.240 And I'll tell you, Megan, I'm a drug addict in recovery.

02:02:16.120 I've been clean for 21 years now, and I'm pretty good at figuring out drug addicts. 0.73

02:02:21.720 The idea that Debra Bradley or Jeremy Irwin were some sort of drug addicts in deep to dealers or something like that is ridiculous.

02:02:29.660 I put, you know, as close to certainty that that is not the case as I can come not, you know, not blood testing people.

02:02:39.720 And now you are going to hear the absolute worst, darkest versions.

02:02:44.720 Again, these are most likely urban myths.

02:02:47.500 We just don't know about what may have happened to Lisa.

02:02:51.500 And we do need to warn you, they come with awful, grisly details.

02:02:56.660 Author Jackie Heller.

02:02:57.680 And this is what really breaks my heart about this whole thing, is the one consistent narrative that we have found in this story is that Lisa is no longer with us.

02:03:08.140 What you're saying is you've talked to people who think they know what happened and who say the baby was killed.

02:03:15.240 Yes. We had someone tell us that Lisa is in the bottom of Smithville Lake and they put her body in a duffel bag and made sure that the blocks weighed more than she did.

02:03:27.680 So there was no chance of her body coming up.

02:03:31.280 Those are the kind of things that we've heard about this.

02:03:35.680 Cindy Lorette, Deborah's aunt, heard something even darker.

02:03:40.220 Somebody had Lisa and they got scared because the media, it became such a big deal.

02:03:47.540 That person got scared and he chopped Lisa up.

02:03:51.700 He took her to this house and one of the people that was in the house told me this story.

02:03:56.880 that she was brought to the house and they were at the edge, the end of the bed and she was crying 0.99

02:04:05.060 and they said to get the fucking baby out of the house. I still don't know what to believe. 0.99

02:04:15.580 We managed to get our hands on police documents with equally dark testimonials.

02:04:21.040 These are supplemental interview reports that police do not make public. They reflect interviews

02:04:26.820 with two different men who claim to know something about the Baby Lisa case.

02:04:31.480 We have confirmed the case file numbers on these reports, and we've spoken with both men,

02:04:38.100 Chad Huber and the second man interviewed who asked us not to use his name.

02:04:43.520 They confirmed their conversations with Kansas City Police Officer Michael Wells,

02:04:47.660 the very same name that appears in these documents.

02:04:51.920 It appears that Officer Wells was investigating a car theft ring, among other things.

02:04:56.820 We discussed these police interviews with co-authors Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller.

02:05:02.820 These are follow-up interviews with people who have been charged with unrelated, you know, petty crimes, theft crimes and so on, just a few months after baby Lisa disappeared.

02:05:10.760 And this is a police interview with someone named Chad Huber. Do you guys know that name? Have you heard of Chad Huber?

02:05:16.100 No.

02:05:16.440 Okay. So back in 2012, Chad Huber apparently had thoughts on baby Lisa and named three new people

02:05:25.440 with a possible connection to this case. Three new names we have not discussed in this series.

02:05:32.560 Matt Shaver, Boris Dubinsky, and Cody Allnut. Huber also mentions one that you'll be familiar

02:05:40.300 with, Dane Greathouse. This is complicated and a lot to follow. Bear with me. According to the

02:05:46.860 interviews, Chad Huber, car thief suspect, tells cops that Cody Allnut, an 18-year-old who,

02:05:55.040 according to his father, was hanging out with a bad crowd, wanted to talk to Chad about baby Lisa.

02:06:02.080 Chad Huber tells police, presumably based on that conversation with Cody Allnut,

02:06:06.920 that baby Lisa is dead. And while the documents do not reveal anything about how, Chad Huber says

02:06:13.620 several people are involved. Dane Greathouse, the same guy who allegedly had the phone,

02:06:19.700 called by the Irwin's stolen cell phone the night Lisa went missing, was paid to move Lisa's deceased

02:06:27.280 body, says Huber, from one gravesite to another. Who? Who paid him? According to Huber,

02:06:35.980 it was convicted criminal Boris Dubinsky. Huber tells police, as reflected in these documents,

02:06:43.100 Dubinsky paid $15,000 for the transfer. Why would he do that? And where would this guy

02:06:49.100 possibly get 15 grand? What's more, according to a 2012 police interview, Huber tells cops

02:06:56.540 that Matt Shaver, the owner of that house in which Megan Wright was doing drugs on the night Lisa

02:07:02.240 went missing, had pictures, pictures the cops might want to see. First, can I just ask you for

02:07:08.020 your reaction to that excerpt? Interesting. Very, very interesting. What is interesting about it to

02:07:14.980 you? The names, the Schaefer name and Cody are names that we've heard. What is interesting to me

02:07:21.680 is that it parallels an experience that we had. We spoke with someone who Cody had approached

02:07:31.160 her story, her words. Cody had approached her, seemingly really needing to get this off his

02:07:40.660 chest. And this name, Dane Greathouse, of course, is very relevant. That's who we think that call

02:07:47.500 was intended for. I think it was a signal. That the baby had been taken. Right. And so if he

02:07:56.080 really did move the body and was paid $15,000 to move the body from the original burial site.

02:08:03.180 I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot of buzz around Dane Greathouse and a few different

02:08:06.960 lines into him. Again, we don't know if they're true. This is just as reflected in the police

02:08:11.400 report. I had someone send me a text message once and it said, this is the person you need

02:08:19.240 to talk to. This person has all your answers. Then it was a photo of Dane Greathouse.

02:08:23.580 We've tried to talk to him. He, he is, he's a trip, big time trip. He wanted like thousands

02:08:32.440 of dollars for us to talk to him. Oh, great. I was like, yeah, we're not entertaining this.

02:08:37.920 Dane Greathouse did speak with us, telling us he was questioned by police. He told us he knew

02:08:43.960 who Boris Dubinsky was, but did not actually know the man. He also said he never moved anything,

02:08:50.320 nor was he paid anything. We found him living at home with his mother, where he was participating

02:08:55.500 in drug court, an alternative to jail that offers treatment and education. Dane followed up with a

02:09:02.160 text that read in part, I'm glad you guys came over and talked. Honestly, I just hope this can

02:09:08.040 bring light to the case and in time things get solved. Boris Dubinsky also told us he had nothing

02:09:14.960 to do with Baby Lisa's disappearance. He said he was once in the same jail with Chad Huber,

02:09:20.900 that he knows what Huber said about him, but that none of it is true.

02:09:25.660 Matt Shaver told us there were indeed photos of the riverbank stored on his PlayStation memory

02:09:31.580 card. He said police confiscated that card, and when they did, they told him the photos had

02:09:38.040 originated on Cody Allnut's phone. He says he has no idea if they were pictures of a gravesite.

02:09:45.840 As these pictures show, there was a search done along the banks of the Missouri River.

02:09:50.940 No body was found. What Cody Allnut saw or did not see, we may never know. We were not able to

02:09:57.500 speak with him. We did speak with his father, Larry, who told us Cody has schizophrenia. Larry

02:10:03.460 Allnut is his son's limited guardian and conservator. He told us the FBI interviewed Cody

02:10:08.920 once around the time Lisa disappeared and never returned. As for Megan Wright, Megan, have you

02:10:15.560 heard the name Cody Allnut or Boris Dubinsky? Have you heard those names? Those don't sound

02:10:22.220 familiar to me. But she does remember Matt Shaver, who gave her a place to stay all those years ago.

02:10:28.220 Matt was one of the people, him and his wife, owned the house I was referring to.

02:10:33.800 And what was he like?

02:10:36.120 He was a carpet layer, best I remember. 0.99

02:10:39.080 So he was always very active, hardworking kind of guy, trying to support his family.

02:10:45.360 When I moved in there, they were trying not to lose their house.

02:10:49.640 So I was trying to help them get things cleaned up, kind of get everything, move people out, make it a more family appropriate environment for him and his wife and their kids.

02:11:03.020 That's why I moved in there. And the perk of it was hiding from Jersey. He was not familiar to that house at that time.

02:11:11.260 Did the Kansas City police investigate any of these claims or come to a conclusion about this cast of characters?

02:11:17.960 We don't know because they won't say.

02:11:21.080 When we called and asked, they again told us they will not comment on a so-called open investigation.

02:11:28.020 And we are not the only ones being ignored by the Kansas City PD.

02:11:32.420 According to Jeremy, they have received not a single update on their missing daughter in the last 10 years.

02:11:39.300 I find it appalling that they haven't contacted you in years.

02:11:42.240 You don't even get an annual phone call from a police officer saying, we're still looking into it.

02:11:47.340 We haven't forgotten about you.

02:11:49.180 Oh, no, no.

02:11:50.060 I couldn't even tell you the last time we were contacted by law enforcement.

02:11:55.740 It was maybe year three, maybe.

02:12:01.240 Oh, wow.

02:12:02.080 It's been a long time.

02:12:03.340 They've moved on.

02:12:04.540 For sure.

02:12:05.280 I think they realized how big it was, and I think they screwed it up really badly.

02:12:10.120 and I think they just want to be done with it.

02:12:13.840 Author Jackie Heller.

02:12:15.460 They dropped the ball.

02:12:16.620 They had tunnel vision from the beginning

02:12:18.240 and they've dropped the ball.

02:12:21.940 They have let Lisa down.

02:12:23.640 Once again, Debra's aunt, Cindy Lorette.

02:12:26.120 I know people who have called the TITS hotline 0.99

02:12:28.660 that have reached out to me

02:12:31.300 and to get no help.

02:12:35.120 About three months ago,

02:12:36.280 a guy thought he saw Lisa in Las Vegas.

02:12:38.860 he ended up getting the phone number to the police department he called there and they said okay

02:12:44.380 thanks and just hung up they did not ask him any questions he gave him them the information they 0.98

02:12:50.180 don't care they're not looking for lisa they don't give a shit they think that she's dead somewhere 0.94

02:12:54.320 mom did it and they're gonna well they're not even trying to prove that i mean they're just done 0.98

02:12:58.100 they're done with it author missy rasmussen if it were me and someone told me that someone told them

02:13:06.080 they saw they they know that a baby was murdered i would even three you know three degrees removed

02:13:15.180 triple hearsay yeah i would still want to get that off my chest so i get it but it is really

02:13:20.760 difficult to get any closer than say two degrees you know it should be easier for police police

02:13:29.260 have all sorts of investigatory abilities and powers that we don't have to figure out who was

02:13:34.700 where, when, and what the phone records of that person show and what their actions were.

02:13:40.080 It just lacks the right person to come in and be like, we're finally going to do what

02:13:46.400 needs to be done for Lisa.

02:13:48.280 Reporter Jim Spellman, who covered the case extensively, has a different view.

02:13:52.320 Every indication that I got is that the Kansas City police and the FBI were conducting a

02:13:58.540 very vigorous and thorough investigation.

02:14:00.880 Every time that I would uncover some new element or another reporter would uncover some new thing, the police had already been there generally a couple of weeks before.

02:14:11.020 And we saw lots of evidence that they were thoroughly tracking down people's alibis, that they were, you know, searching electronically, that they were searching surveillance cameras.

02:14:24.000 That would have been an asset for the family.

02:14:26.300 And the family ended up treating them like they were the enemy.

02:14:28.720 Hmm. So to those who think, oh, the Kansas City police botched this, you know, they just they failed to investigate properly.

02:14:36.400 We would have found her if we had a more robust police department on the case. You don't agree with that?

02:14:41.740 I don't agree with that. I think that they did a very thorough investigation.

02:14:45.920 All of the key people that surfaced in the media that surfaced through my reporting had been thoroughly investigated.

02:14:54.780 John Jersey Tanko was questioned by the police at the time.

02:14:58.600 He denies any involvement and the case remains open.

02:15:02.140 Did the FBI ever tell you, Megan, that you were cleared?

02:15:06.000 I realize you only had that one six-hour meeting.

02:15:08.220 Did they ever? Or the Kansas City PD?

02:15:11.140 Megan Wright.

02:15:12.700 They told me they'd be in touch if they needed anything else from me

02:15:15.180 and I haven't heard anything in 12 years.

02:15:17.860 Never seen anything where they made a statement publicly

02:15:20.820 bringing up my name saying, oh, she was cooperative.

02:15:23.940 She came in for an interview, and we have ruled her out as a suspect.

02:15:27.720 You know, that'd be great to hear.

02:15:29.600 But it's never happened.

02:15:33.380 As for Jeremy Irwin and Deborah Bradley, it's been dark narratives,

02:15:37.880 12 years of missing their baby girl, and a struggle to stay together.

02:15:43.220 It's really hard to be there for someone else that you love when you're falling apart yourself.

02:15:50.020 And we tried to make it work for a really long time.

02:15:56.600 And I think it just got to the point where, unfortunately, we fell into this statistic.

02:16:03.360 Their relationship came to an end in the summer of 2022, and Debra moved out of their home on North Lister.

02:16:10.140 I had hoped we would beat it, beat the odds.

02:16:12.660 but it's okay because now we have the chance to get better on our own and be better for our family

02:16:20.520 and ourselves you know the are the main concern for me outside second to lisa um has always been

02:16:29.660 the boys and making sure that they have some semblance of a normal life even with this going

02:16:37.140 on and i feel that we have at least succeeded in that and you still notwithstanding the fact that

02:16:43.820 you're separated from from deborah you still believe in her you still it hasn't caused you

02:16:48.200 to doubt her no no i mean not at all i mean it doesn't change the fact i mean we're talking

02:16:54.600 about my daughter here and we're talking about the her mother so it's the same thing i've been

02:17:00.660 saying for years you know if you're gonna tell me that deborah did it you better tell me what it is

02:17:07.080 and you better tell me a story associated with it.

02:17:10.680 Other than that, I've heard it all

02:17:12.580 and you can't tell me nothing new.

02:17:15.020 I think that God put us together

02:17:17.140 because he knew we would be able to survive long enough

02:17:22.620 to be there for each other in positive ways.

02:17:26.420 And we may not be together now,

02:17:28.000 but I still trust him and I will always love him

02:17:32.880 because he has my kids.

02:17:35.700 you look at the joy that you get from raising two boys and having them go out into the world and

02:17:43.060 they're awesome young men and they're they're gonna kill it and they have their own life paths

02:17:48.320 and everything's starting to work out for them and but as a man i was robbed my portion of that

02:17:55.600 with my daughter you know i hope one day that tomorrow or a year from now or whatever i hope

02:18:02.640 that lisa's found and that she comes home and we can start over and at 13 years old or 18 years

02:18:11.260 old or however old she is but it would be nice to start that relationship in which i haven't been

02:18:19.000 able to have this whole time what if all it takes is just the one person to watch what we're doing

02:18:27.380 moving now and they're like oh this kid looks familiar it it could happen in so many ways and

02:18:34.500 we've also put our dna with ancestry.com and 23andme and i open up my email and i you know

02:18:42.540 and i'll see you you have another relative and i always click on it hoping it's her

02:18:49.740 cindy laurette i've tried to convince myself that she's no longer here and to move on but i can't

02:18:56.340 I'm going with my gut and my heart.

02:18:59.000 She's out there somewhere.

02:19:00.080 She's a beautiful little girl.

02:19:01.520 And we're going to find her.

02:19:02.520 This is for Lisa.

02:19:03.660 We need to find what happened to Lisa.

02:19:05.720 Where the hell is she?

02:19:07.340 Dead or alive, we need to find out what happened.

02:19:10.460 There, I said it.

02:19:12.240 Like, how do you make sense of why this happened?

02:19:15.300 There's a lot of tough questions.

02:19:17.360 And the answer is free will.

02:19:21.060 And evil men will do evil things.

02:19:23.840 what's your best hope of where she's been these past 12 years my best hope is that she's safe

02:19:33.120 and she's with people that love her and care for her and feed her well and treat her well and she's

02:19:40.260 able to go to the doctor and maybe she's able to go to school somewhere if she just has no idea

02:19:47.300 that she's actually someone else's child that's what i'm hoping that she's totally ignorant to it 0.83

02:19:53.180 and live in a completely normal life.

02:19:55.260 That's what I really hope for.

02:19:57.720 Do you ever wonder whether it would be easier

02:20:00.380 if you knew, you know, one way or the other,

02:20:03.160 what had happened?

02:20:03.880 If just, even if the outcome were bad,

02:20:07.060 you know, that you had a confirmation that she had passed,

02:20:10.180 would that somehow be easier?

02:20:14.060 Well, I think if that's my two options,

02:20:16.380 if I were to know that something bad happened

02:20:20.000 or to never know,

02:20:22.220 then I'll just stay never knowing, I guess.

02:20:28.920 Jeremy would rather never know, and he and Debra didn't make it. Bill Stanton spent a lot of time

02:20:35.160 with Debra and Jeremy. He joined me along with our other go-to crime expert, Phil Houston.

02:20:40.260 You know, you could feel the bond. And I saw it, and I'm sure you saw it between the two of them.

02:20:47.320 I mean, it's a nightmare. And statistically, they should have been divorced within months.

02:20:53.040 But their faith in Lisa and themselves kept them together for years.

02:20:59.180 You know, I know people in a lot higher tax brackets than them, you know, a lot higher education than them that, you know, would have crumbled.

02:21:08.560 It says he never doubted her. He never doubted.

02:21:12.080 It's a sad love story. But when you watch her today, what jumped out at you?

02:21:17.320 that this woman has evolved as a person, how she remains resolute. And I wanted her to be guilty

02:21:24.940 more than anyone, because statistically she was. I wanted to wrap it up and get the heck home.

02:21:30.500 You know, they had no reason to accept me in their home. I told them as soon as I got there,

02:21:36.000 I'm not here for you. Meaning that if it's you, I'm coming for you. And I said that to them.

02:21:42.060 And they looked me square in the eye, helped find our baby.

02:21:47.140 What did you make of the fact that in my interview with Debra, she was saying, this did jump out at me, she was saying things like, there's an example of a mother who found her daughter after 16 years.

02:21:58.040 There's an example of a father who found his kid after X years.

02:22:01.480 I went to 23andMe and I gave my DNA.

02:22:04.060 I went to Ancestry.com and I gave my DNA there just in case, you know, she finds it.

02:22:07.860 I realize even somebody who had done something would be smart enough to say, present tense, present tense, present tense.

02:22:14.460 So that's okay.

02:22:15.800 I'll check that to the side.

02:22:16.940 But doing things like that, I believe her that she did searches for a child who came back.

02:22:22.480 Why would you do that if you knew your child was no longer alive?

02:22:24.600 No, that's what gets her through the day.

02:22:27.560 What did you make of that stuff, Phil?

02:22:28.940 I believe that she has, but it's also her undoing, I believe.

02:22:33.960 I spoke to her about a year and a half ago. And when I hung up, I thought, my goodness, the frustration that she's feeling is going to eat her alive. And, you know, I don't want to trivialize it in this comparison, but, you know, think for a moment, you're at your house and all of a sudden you're looking for your car keys and you can't find them.

02:22:57.160 And how quickly you become frustrated and you look and you start, you know, you know, hollering at people and, you know, help me find my keys and, you know, whatever.

02:23:07.260 Think if that frustration went on for 12 years, how would you how would you, you know, how big would that build that you're looking for this thing that you can't find?

02:23:19.580 That leads me back to these police reports that you guys have seen, these interview reports that we managed to get our hands on.

02:23:24.980 And they talk about how these alleged petty criminals around this case allegedly, again, this very much could be crooks trying to lower their sentences and give police fake little gold nuggets.

02:23:41.380 But they talk about having seen pictures of a grave site, pictures of a mound of dirt.

02:23:46.560 Somebody allegedly brought the baby in a black garbage bag and buried it.

02:23:51.640 Like, there's some of that out there. I mean, it's possible that she did the same thing, that that's that's all made up, but that she did actually bring the baby out there and that the baby was buried. And this same Keystone cop force just didn't find it.

02:24:05.960 So the first thing that comes to my mind, Megan, is that if I've committed a crime as heinous as this particular crime, I find it hard to believe I'd be running around telling people that, you know, we've done this and so forth.

02:24:24.260 And, you know, while one person might do it, I think if it were a group effort, that one person would be in hot water pretty quickly with the rest of the team, so to speak.

02:24:37.920 You know, even if they were under the influence of drugs the next morning, they would probably be saying to themselves, we need to put a, you know, put a lid on this.

02:24:46.180 The greatest thing I think Debra's got in her favor, you tell me if I'm wrong, Bill, is Phil Houston.

02:24:54.260 And for that, nothing to add.

02:24:57.260 Right. Absolutely.

02:24:58.020 I just can't get past the fact that the human lie detector, CIA, 25 years, breaking terrorists, breaking double agents, seeing the deception where none no one else could, that that guy got fooled by Deborah Bradley.

02:25:11.620 I don't believe it.

02:25:13.020 Thank you for the kind words, Megan.

02:25:14.500 And believe me, like you, this case has haunted me.

02:25:18.540 And I pray often that I'm right and that she's right, that Lisa's out there somewhere.

02:25:26.540 Coming up in our next episode, Jersey John Tanko, the man everyone wants to know more about.

02:25:33.300 We found him.

02:25:35.200 And wait until you hear what he told me.

02:25:41.880 I'm Megan Kelly.

02:25:43.140 Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show.

02:25:44.340 in episode five of our special series,

02:25:47.500 Megan Kelly Investigates.

02:25:49.300 We're tackling the disappearance of baby Lisa Irwin.

02:25:53.800 John Tanko, nicknamed Jersey,

02:25:57.420 the handyman in the neighborhood with a long rap sheet,

02:26:00.600 the ex-boyfriend of Megan Wright,

02:26:02.640 the woman whose phone was called by the Irwin's stolen phone

02:26:07.220 the night their baby, little Lisa, went missing.

02:26:10.780 And the guy who tantalizingly told attorney Cindy Short

02:26:14.260 he just happened to find three cell phones and then tossed them somewhere around the time the

02:26:21.140 baby went missing. You've heard his name again and again in this series. Everyone wants to hear

02:26:26.700 from him and find out what he knows. Well, after 12 plus years, we found him. If you're watching,

02:26:35.140 that's him in the red sweatshirt on the bike. We tracked him back to New Jersey where he was

02:26:40.160 arrested for shoplifting in 2022. Now that we know where he is, it's time to figure out the

02:26:45.700 best way to get him to talk. Here's part of my strategy session with our go-to experts,

02:26:52.260 Bill Stanton and Phil Houston. So unbelievably, we found Jersey. After all this time, nobody could

02:26:59.780 find him. Cindy Short found him, but the cops apparently didn't know where he was for some time.

02:27:04.380 Jim Spellman, who's been doing yeoman's work on this case, couldn't find him.

02:27:08.720 We found him.

02:27:10.020 And now we've got to decide what to do with him.

02:27:13.580 So got to figure out what the approach should be.

02:27:18.840 I'm perfectly happy to just go knock on his door and see what happens.

02:27:22.600 Well, if you go knocking on his door, it's very easy just to not even answer or just slam it on your face.

02:27:28.860 what i'm thinking about doing is luring him out and then you come between him and the door

02:27:36.240 which may give you that precious one line that question that will hook him and then he will want

02:27:44.300 to stay outside and then when he comes out he doesn't even have to know we're together

02:27:48.780 i got your back and then you confront him i just want to say that the way i would normally do this

02:27:54.920 is I would go, I would ring the doorbell and I would say, are you John? Hi, I'm Megan Kelly and

02:28:00.820 I'm trying to investigate what happened to this poor missing baby. You know, a lot of allegations

02:28:05.260 have been made about you. Will you talk to me? I'd love to give you the chance to answer some

02:28:09.460 of the things that have been said about you. It's all in the approach. You see, the way I'm

02:28:13.000 proposing it, you get two bites of the apple. Megan, if we want the outcome that we can actually

02:28:18.380 get him to open up even a little bit. You and Bill need to stay together. And with you ringing

02:28:25.700 the doorbell, Bill standing slightly behind you, if he's outside, then you approach him. Megan,

02:28:32.100 you would approach him first. Bill would stay back. Bill needs to keep you within near arms

02:28:40.080 reach distance. If we want to get information from him, we need his resistance at the lowest

02:28:46.120 level possible. And I believe, Bill, you need to give her the highest level of safety and security

02:28:52.680 possible. So can you describe that, Phil? So how would that look in your scenario?

02:28:59.140 Well, I loved your introduction. Hi, I'm Megan Kelly. I'd love to have a chat with you.

02:29:03.940 And here's the reason I'd love to have a chat with you. We have been working on the disappearance

02:29:12.140 of Lisa for over 10 years now. And as a result of that, we know a whole lot more than we've ever

02:29:21.900 known to include the players that are involved. And that's why we're talking to you today.

02:29:29.660 We want to get your side. I would not mention investigate or investigation. I wouldn't mention

02:29:37.520 case, anything that has consequences associated with it. You just want to have a talk and a

02:29:45.220 conversation. We call it a transition statement in the interrogation world, because what it does

02:29:51.480 is, is it signals to that individual that everything that they have done to try and pull

02:29:58.200 this off, to be successful, has failed. And that's when you would get in with the first question.

02:30:05.560 What was your role in the disappearance?

02:30:08.680 It's a presumptive question.

02:30:10.900 A question you want to make sure if you can get in on camera is the question about the

02:30:15.440 telephone.

02:30:16.700 Is there any reason your fingerprints are on those telephones that went missing that

02:30:21.000 night?

02:30:21.980 So, you know, this is a tried and true technique of Phil's.

02:30:25.340 We've actually seen no evidence that Tanko's fingerprints are on any cell phones.

02:30:30.980 You keep talking.

02:30:32.660 John, you're a smart guy.

02:30:34.060 You know that at some point, this was going to come to this. You can help resolve this whole matter that has caused pain and anguish to the parents and to their family. You know, we're not here to argue with you or call you names or anything.

02:30:55.080 And what you're doing is you're limiting or minimizing the amount of questions because every time he answers a lie, your job gets twice as hard to get that admission.

02:31:08.460 But if you could right off the bat can get him to listen to you, you've got a shot.

02:31:14.500 We could talk all about the questions, but the first phase is getting him to stay.

02:31:19.600 The further way getting him outside that front door gives her more time.

02:31:24.320 So time and distance give Megan options, because unless we get that engagement, all of this is for naught.

02:31:33.880 I understand, Bill, but I think you may have a chance to get him to open up a little bit.

02:31:39.660 So, Phil, psychologically at that moment, what are you trying to do?

02:31:43.020 Build him up into thinking like that you actually believe he could be helpful, that he's not an adversary or a target, but that we're all in on this together?

02:31:54.320 without trying to buddy up or cozy up to him.

02:31:59.260 You don't want him to make a denial.

02:32:01.560 Once they deny, that really makes your job difficult.

02:32:05.940 And so when you see them start to make a denial,

02:32:09.280 what you want to do is say their name.

02:32:15.040 Whether people realize it or not,

02:32:16.820 one good way to interrupt a person,

02:32:20.040 stop them from talking, is to say their name.

02:32:22.420 It just instinctively, people shut up when they hear their name.

02:32:26.080 It's a three-step process.

02:32:27.940 You say, John, hang on.

02:32:29.960 It's a control phrase.

02:32:31.500 John, hang on for a minute, okay?

02:32:34.700 And then I want to hear your side of it.

02:32:38.280 And you've got your hand up is the third.

02:32:40.700 So John, the control phrase, and the hand up.

02:32:43.260 And it's not in your face.

02:32:46.340 It's almost like a defensive gesture.

02:32:48.740 Okay. Or trying to stop a denial because...

02:32:54.080 Yes. Yes. Stop the denials at all costs, no matter what happens throughout the whole thing. Just keep saying, John, let's talk about the truth. It's not easy. I mean, if it were easy, we'd have a ton more confessions than we have.

02:33:10.460 But people do break and they break at moments for reasons we don't understand.

02:33:17.320 Sometimes this could be it.

02:33:19.620 This could be the good for the sake, for the sake, for the sake of just being taking the

02:33:25.380 opposite tact, I'm going to be contrary on that.

02:33:27.920 I think the last thing he's going to want to see is you, Megan, and I'm hoping he's 1.00

02:33:34.240 going to get loud and in his loud, he may say something stupid. 0.97

02:33:37.960 If we can get one tenth of what Phil's putting forth, that's TV gold, because this man has never given an interview. 0.97

02:33:47.300 So 30 seconds, two minutes, 10 minutes, an hour, you know, no one has ever been able to do this.

02:33:54.340 I just don't see him changing now as we pull up to his home in a cul-de-sac.

02:34:01.080 No, I'm going to do something I've never.

02:34:04.080 I'm happily wrong.

02:34:05.420 Listen, I'm happily wrong.

02:34:06.960 You're absolutely wrong. We do this all the time.

02:34:12.600 I will leave my shoe on Megan's camera and be happily wrong.

02:34:17.420 I am not anticipating a full confession by any stretch. But if you got, for example, an acknowledgement that he had those phones and he did something with them and so forth,

02:34:35.840 that's tantamount to a confession no i get it but it's all about the engagement does he take the

02:34:42.620 hook or not you know that's it's it's the opening 10 seconds if megan doesn't hook him in five to 1.00

02:34:49.620 10 seconds then there's nothing bill i i talked to terrorists who are far far more can you know

02:34:58.940 conditioned not to not to give up information. And they talk. They talk if you approach them

02:35:07.140 in the right manner. I feel like we're formulating a plan where I kind of like I like what Phil is

02:35:14.000 saying, like where we show up. We just we're kind of open about it. We don't pop out with cameras.

02:35:18.900 It's clearly you and me, Bill, walking to the door. You're close, but I'm like in the lead.

02:35:24.600 and we asked to speak with him following, you know, loosely Phil's script.

02:35:31.120 Yes.

02:35:31.960 Now, what about Phil right at the top when I asked my first question

02:35:35.120 and he gives me the line that my lawyer told me not to talk about this.

02:35:38.740 I'm not talking about this.

02:35:40.660 Okay.

02:35:41.400 You could say, John, look, this is not about lawyers.

02:35:45.440 We're not here to bring harm to anybody, including yourself.

02:35:49.820 We just want the truth.

02:35:51.480 And you have a very critical piece, you know, of information and, you know, that will help this get resolved.

02:36:01.500 So if he's talking in any in any way, in a confrontational way, in a confessional way, in a friendly way.

02:36:09.200 i'm gonna be wrestling with saying would you mind if i bring my cameras in and we can have

02:36:19.540 the same conversation because i think that will that will shut it down now i'd much rather have

02:36:24.720 his agreement to doing it on camera i understand why we have to do it with the undercover camera

02:36:29.500 and i think it's a good idea but it'd be so much nicer if we could just have his agreement to do

02:36:35.060 it like that's your call you'll know you'll know okay and listen we got the hidden camera so

02:36:39.880 we got multiple options well i mean i think i mean he's gone 12 years without getting caught

02:36:45.800 on camera at all it's amazing how he's managed to dodge so i have zero expectation he's gonna say

02:36:54.240 yes i'll sit down in front of your camera yeah but it's there'll be a there'll be a point if

02:36:59.340 he's talking to me where i'm gonna at least try yeah that's what i that's how i would have done

02:37:04.340 it if I were in your shoes. Okay. This scripting, this is what I and my colleagues have done for

02:37:11.160 years and years and years. And it just works. It works often when nothing else does work.

02:37:18.760 Wow. Well, if we manage to emerge with actually any sort of meaningful comment, nevermind

02:37:23.580 confession, but meaningful comment from him on this, I mean, that'll be huge. Like I say,

02:37:28.680 nobody's even seen the guy. You've gotten what nobody else did. You know, nobody else has.

02:37:34.340 Well, and honestly, just in all fairness, we want to go to him and give him the chance to confront these allegations that have been made.

02:37:42.100 His name keeps coming up.

02:37:43.440 We actually do want to hear what he has to say about all of this.

02:37:46.480 This is his chance.

02:37:48.460 All right, let's get moving.

02:37:49.620 All right.

02:37:50.080 We got to go.

02:37:51.660 And so on March 7th, 2024, I got rigged up with hidden cameras.

02:37:56.680 I wore a shirt with a camera in one of the buttons and another hidden camera in a glasses case sticking out of my shirt pocket.

02:38:05.120 New Jersey is a one-party consent state, so we can record our conversation without obtaining Tanko's permission in case he declines a traditional on-camera interview.

02:38:14.220 The crew stayed in a van nearby, and Bill Stanton and I walked down his street.

02:38:20.820 This is his house right here.

02:38:23.320 The garage is open.

02:38:24.680 he's in the backyard so face me don't don't turn around face me he's just spotted us okay

02:38:31.280 chickens back there like he's doing his chores so he's not coming out no he's not coming out 0.59

02:38:38.080 so if we want i'll just fucking call him over yeah i mean i think that's probably you know 0.85

02:38:46.340 because he's now he's seen us right and he's not coming out i'm just gonna ask him if i could buy 0.62

02:38:51.140 those chickens you'd be amazed like you want me to do that no i don't know because we don't want

02:38:58.080 to use subterfuge right like i don't want to put him on the defensive right away for like per phil

02:39:02.060 i think we want to say like i think i want to go over there and say hey let's go to the fence

02:39:07.760 and let's do it okay we're committed okay

02:39:10.960 you want us to initial talk or you want me to i do i will all right

02:39:18.200 john

02:39:24.320 hi

02:39:26.860 how you doing

02:39:29.140 i'm megan kelly

02:39:31.240 how's it going

02:39:36.280 nice to see you

02:39:39.360 what's going on here

02:39:42.320 chickens

02:39:43.020 awesome

02:39:45.460 two horses

02:39:49.920 you've got like a whole farm going on back here

02:39:53.460 yeah um thanks for uh talking to us i i've been working for 10 years on the baby lisa case

02:40:03.600 a lot of people have yeah and it's been tireless for us i mean we're obsessed

02:40:09.240 I know. You know, we know a lot now.

02:40:14.460 We have come to an understanding of some basics, what happened and who was involved.

02:40:21.100 And we are really hoping that you can help us, that you can help us fill out some of the story.

02:40:27.520 We think it's really important to get your input.

02:40:29.960 And I was wondering if you would talk to me.

02:40:32.140 I'd rather not because my lawyer told me not to talk to anybody.

02:40:34.840 It could be a death penalty case.

02:40:38.400 I don't want to have to sit in prison for five years and go to trial.

02:40:42.740 You know, the thing is, the thing is, it's like Deborah and Jeremy have been, you know, tortured.

02:40:53.000 And so all we're trying to do is like sketch out the story and wondering if you can tell us what your involvement was in the disappearance of baby Lisa.

02:41:02.160 I don't have any involvement. That's what I'm saying. None whatsoever.

02:41:05.740 Yeah, I mean, the FBI vacuum died the house.

02:41:10.120 If my DNA, you have a million skin cells.

02:41:13.100 You go like that, they're going to bag it off and they're going to DNA it to me.

02:41:17.740 And I'd be trolled.

02:41:19.280 No doubt about it.

02:41:20.820 What do you mean?

02:41:22.620 Their story is, well, the other story is that some random person came in the house and kicked out the police.

02:41:32.820 Right?

02:41:33.200 Yeah.

02:41:33.440 So now they have the eyes involved.

02:41:35.380 They vacuum bagged the whole house.

02:41:38.600 And if my DNA was in there, like from dead skin cells, I'd be charged.

02:41:44.060 It wasn't in the house.

02:41:45.020 Did the cops talk to you?

02:41:46.640 Yeah, they told me this.

02:41:47.960 Did they ever take DNA?

02:41:49.900 Yeah.

02:41:50.480 They did?

02:41:51.060 Yeah.

02:41:51.520 Oh, what did they, like a saliva?

02:41:54.100 They did?

02:41:54.660 Yeah.

02:41:55.440 Did they tell you that you were cleared?

02:41:56.680 They said I didn't have to, but I didn't anyway.

02:41:58.400 Okay.

02:41:59.340 And did they tell you you were cleared and you were good to go?

02:42:02.640 No, they didn't say, they'll say it's an open case.

02:42:06.500 Okay.

02:42:07.480 Well, what we're trying to do is help them because the way I see it is we're trying to provide them with closure.

02:42:13.780 You can help us do that and with some comfort, you know, and just figuring out what the story is.

02:42:19.280 This is a big shot lawyer.

02:42:21.500 No, he's not a lawyer.

02:42:22.780 He's my friend.

02:42:23.540 This is Bill.

02:42:24.300 Oh, okay.

02:42:24.840 Yeah, no.

02:42:26.060 In another life, he's a lawyer.

02:42:27.520 See, they do these stories, and people just trash my name.

02:42:34.180 They totally trash my name.

02:42:35.860 You know what I mean?

02:42:36.820 I was involved with a lot of illegal activity about that.

02:42:39.640 Sure.

02:42:40.060 I mean, a lot of people get mixed up in drugs and understand that.

02:42:44.040 What do you think should happen to the guy?

02:42:46.280 What?

02:42:46.580 What do you think should happen to the person?

02:42:48.740 I don't know what happened.

02:42:50.640 Do you think that the person who took the baby, did it spur the moment or that it was

02:43:07.860 planned?

02:43:12.860 Not that night, but yeah, I was in the

02:43:20.620 working in the neighborhood. General. So why would somebody have said they saw you outside of

02:43:25.520 the Irwin's house that night? People lie a lot. And you didn't know the Irwin's at all,

02:43:33.520 Deborah and Jeremy? I think I'm not positive, but I think I met Deborah at a bar one time,

02:43:39.800 a local bar. Okay. Okay. It used to be called BAMLs. And I know you know Megan Wright. Yeah.

02:43:46.940 we've talked to her yeah um and think you guys used to date but did she have any involvement

02:43:54.240 in this whole thing i i would doubt it like you know i don't know but if the police are

02:44:01.860 being honest about her getting a phone call from one of the iran's phones

02:44:05.940 then somebody connects disconnect from her that that just kind of makes sense now did you have

02:44:13.520 those phones because because we we understand that you told a lawyer cindy short that you found

02:44:22.160 those phones i'm confused whatever she wanted me here i didn't tell her i found those phones

02:44:27.960 i said i found phones that night but i didn't find them no nothing oh why just because she's

02:44:34.920 asking a million questions and i didn't want to just make her happy whatever

02:44:39.060 What do you think happened to those phones?

02:44:43.020 Do you think the same person who has the baby has the phones?

02:44:49.620 What did you hear about that? Anything?

02:44:53.940 Did you ever hear anything about the phones and where they went or whether it was connected to the baby?

02:44:59.060 Nothing?

02:45:00.000 Why do you think, because you knew the neighborhood a little bit, but certainly better than we do.

02:45:04.100 Why would somebody take a baby? 0.99

02:45:05.600 You know what? The FBI asked me the same question. I'm like, the only thing I come up with is to sell it to maybe somebody that can't have kids. You know, I mean, it sounds crazy, but if we had a hold of this, that's the best case scenario that could happen.

02:45:25.980 That kid is 11, now 13, you know, in school, you know, has a rich family, you know, something like that.

02:45:34.780 I mean, that's the best case scenario.

02:45:36.980 Yeah.

02:45:37.700 Well, what do you think?

02:45:38.660 I mean, I know that there were a lot of people in the area who were on drugs and meth and so on,

02:45:44.680 and we heard a little bit of that from Megan.

02:45:47.220 Is there any chance somebody got messed up on drugs and did something to the baby?

02:45:51.280 What do you think happened?

02:46:21.280 Well, why would anybody say that they saw you outside of the Irwin's house that night?

02:46:46.500 I don't know.

02:46:48.560 I don't know, but I wasn't.

02:46:50.120 You've never been in that house?

02:46:51.280 Never.

02:46:52.160 Never once.

02:46:53.020 Never once.

02:46:54.820 So, if your fingerprints are on those phones, what does that tell us?

02:47:01.360 What does it tell us?

02:47:02.280 Yeah.

02:47:03.160 Like, why would your fingerprints be on those phones?

02:47:06.240 I don't know.

02:47:09.280 I don't know.

02:47:10.080 I'm just trying to figure it out.

02:47:12.380 Okay.

02:47:13.520 Well, you're telling me this is fact that my fingerprints are on the phone.

02:47:18.760 But I don't believe it.

02:47:20.120 Because I don't believe I ever possessed a phone.

02:47:23.960 Okay.

02:47:25.280 And you heard that story.

02:47:26.520 You mentioned that one of the phones called Megan Wright that night.

02:47:29.640 Yeah.

02:47:30.160 You believe that?

02:47:31.820 I don't know.

02:47:33.540 Police are not going to lie just because they want to have a direction to go on

02:47:40.540 and use something as a way of getting the information that they want.

02:47:46.940 yeah did she one of the theories that she really wanted a family she wanted a kid 1.00

02:47:52.700 yeah it's totally not true that's not true she never said that to you

02:47:57.120 why'd you guys break up why did you two break up because i was uh scoundrel and i had a job

02:48:09.140 to go do it at the Watson's house.

02:48:11.880 And she... 1.00

02:48:13.100 Was that the one down the block?

02:48:14.460 Yeah.

02:48:15.380 She called the police, told her I was going to be working here.

02:48:20.300 She called the police and told them you were going to be at the Watson's that night?

02:48:23.780 Why?

02:48:24.320 Yeah, that night.

02:48:24.780 Oh.

02:48:25.240 The night that we broke up.

02:48:27.220 He dined you out?

02:48:28.200 Yeah.

02:48:28.920 Oh.

02:48:29.300 So we broke up, and I never talked to her again after that.

02:48:31.380 Maybe, I don't know, four or five months might have went by

02:48:34.540 from when the baby wasn't missing.

02:48:37.440 No, no, until we broke up to the baby mother.

02:48:41.100 Oh, bro?

02:48:41.640 Never, ever talked to her.

02:48:43.380 You didn't? You didn't go to her house?

02:48:45.540 I pulled up on the front lawn in a stolen van one time, but I didn't talk to her.

02:48:49.780 Okay.

02:48:51.080 Did you ever set anything on fire of hers or around her?

02:48:55.540 The other investigator asked me that, too.

02:48:58.120 Said the car was on fire.

02:49:00.180 That wasn't you?

02:49:01.200 Mm-hmm.

02:49:01.960 So you got questioned by the cops and the FBI?

02:49:05.240 Yeah.

02:49:06.120 Separate?

02:49:07.080 Yeah.

02:49:07.440 Two separate?

02:49:08.700 Yeah.

02:49:09.500 And they took your DNA?

02:49:10.960 Yeah.

02:49:11.540 And then how did it resolve?

02:49:13.100 What did they say to you when it was all over?

02:49:15.500 They didn't.

02:49:16.540 Was it just two sit-downs, one with the cop, one with the FBI?

02:49:21.400 No, it was FBI in a homicide interrogation room.

02:49:26.760 Uh-huh.

02:49:31.020 Chuck came and seen me, actually, to visit me in jail.

02:49:37.440 Was that scary?

02:49:39.820 Yeah, it was so scary.

02:49:41.660 Oh, my God.

02:49:42.320 You're thinking they're looking at you for a possible kidnapping?

02:49:47.200 I'm thinking that they're exploring all the communists.

02:49:51.580 And was it just that one time?

02:49:53.580 Yeah.

02:49:54.500 For a few hours or how long?

02:49:59.100 A few hours.

02:50:01.360 A little over an hour.

02:50:02.940 Okay.

02:50:03.380 Maybe so.

02:50:04.120 Okay.

02:50:04.420 Okay.

02:50:04.480 was it right after the baby went missing no because i was still on the run okay

02:50:17.880 so i have i a couple other questions i'm sorry to take up so much of your time but

02:50:24.820 do you know who dane greathouse is yeah i i believe i met him a couple of times

02:50:32.840 Maybe we got high together.

02:50:34.200 I don't know.

02:50:35.240 I already made up a rap.

02:50:38.860 Some lyrics in it that say, 0.73

02:50:40.620 I'll make you disappear like baby Lisa. 1.00

02:50:46.200 So I don't know.

02:50:47.080 That was kind of weird.

02:50:48.960 Is there any reason that you would have called Dane Greathouse

02:50:53.580 on the night the baby went missing?

02:50:55.460 No.

02:50:56.200 No, no reason.

02:50:57.160 Like I said, I only met him once or twice.

02:51:00.760 We weren't really friends.

02:51:02.520 and we just, you know, I happened to have something

02:51:06.180 or he happened to have something and that was it.

02:51:08.020 Okay.

02:51:08.620 Like we exchanged numbers or talked after that or anything.

02:51:13.040 How about Cody Allnut?

02:51:15.240 That name sounds familiar, but I can't put a face to it.

02:51:18.800 What for him?

02:51:20.860 Boris Dubinsky, do you know him?

02:51:24.240 I can't put a face to it.

02:51:26.660 I don't recognize the name.

02:51:28.100 and i'm also wondering now is there is there any way you've been very generous with your time

02:51:34.640 can we do this with like can i bring a camera person over here and we can do this properly

02:51:40.500 okay because i'd love to get your side and i hate i hate being

02:51:47.460 what do you really refer to me as a link to this case i don't want him to involve me in a mind

02:51:53.720 Well, when you do a show, your viewers, you're actually giving your viewers an option.

02:52:05.720 This person do it, this person do it.

02:52:08.040 This person do it, this person do it.

02:52:10.380 You see, I don't want to be a living person.

02:52:12.400 I don't want some people to think, I don't want to do that.

02:52:15.160 I don't want to do that.

02:52:15.420 I don't want to do that.

02:52:16.940 That's not me.

02:52:18.220 Yeah.

02:52:18.680 John, if I can, you seem like a straight up guy.

02:52:21.420 First time you're looking for that, I think I really appreciate it.

02:52:23.720 Do you keep you open?

02:52:25.400 Do you want to make them dissociate

02:52:26.680 to have a conversation with you?

02:52:30.680 To me?

02:52:31.640 No.

02:52:32.180 No.

02:52:33.680 Like I said,

02:52:34.600 I really don't want to be part of this.

02:52:35.880 If there's,

02:52:36.780 she helps me,

02:52:37.420 information I can give you,

02:52:39.260 if you can,

02:52:40.160 you know,

02:52:40.520 just run with it,

02:52:41.380 maybe,

02:52:42.220 find out what happened,

02:52:46.320 that's great.

02:52:47.380 I don't want to be empty.

02:52:48.460 I don't want to do all that.

02:52:49.560 Yeah.

02:52:50.040 You got to respect that.

02:52:51.220 Yeah.

02:52:51.480 You have to.

02:52:52.440 Do you think,

02:52:53.720 taking her was planned, or do you think it was a spur-of-the-moment thing?

02:52:58.900 What's your guess?

02:53:00.480 I don't have a guess on it.

02:53:02.700 Because you knew a lot of the players in the neighborhood.

02:53:05.900 To me, it seems too sophisticated to have a baby be sold.

02:53:12.120 Who would be able to just steal a baby on the spur-of-the-moment and then sell it?

02:53:17.280 Well, you don't know it was a spur-of-the-moment.

02:53:19.480 Maybe it was, but who knows?

02:53:21.220 I don't know.

02:53:21.780 Well, how can Debra, how can Debra have gotten rid of the baby's body without it being detected? 1.00

02:53:36.300 You know, that's one of the things that keeps stumping me.

02:53:38.620 I don't understand.

02:53:39.640 Like if Debra killed the baby inadvertently or on purpose.

02:53:43.520 I don't, I don't think most people think if she killed the baby, it was on purpose.

02:53:47.820 Maybe she dropped the baby, maybe whatever. 1.00

02:53:51.780 If she did that, she got rid of the body in a way that she fooled even the cops.

02:53:56.580 Yeah.

02:53:57.320 So how could that have happened? Like, you knew the neighborhood.

02:53:59.780 How could it happen with anybody?

02:54:02.640 Like, what was the backyard like? Do you know what... Describe the area a little bit.

02:54:07.880 No.

02:54:09.060 Around the Irwin's house?

02:54:10.860 I don't know. I've never been there.

02:54:13.400 But you were, I mean, a neighborhood handyman, right?

02:54:16.600 Well, I only should have watched him.

02:54:18.920 Okay.

02:54:19.760 He was older.

02:54:21.140 His hands were working anymore because he had arthritis.

02:54:24.460 So he needed me to do something.

02:54:25.980 He gave me a thought.

02:54:27.500 That night, did you work at the Waxons, the night the baby went missing?

02:54:31.380 No.

02:54:32.300 You didn't turn on the sprinkler or off the sprinkler?

02:54:35.760 Those days before, he said once the grass started growing, I didn't have to do it.

02:54:41.780 Oh.

02:54:42.520 He said once you start growing, you've got to keep growing.

02:54:44.920 So why would a neighbor say they saw you in that area?

02:54:49.280 i don't know it's the third time he asked me okay sorry i'm i'm losing my own i don't know

02:54:55.760 people lie i don't know yeah right now i'm in the area i'm not first decided it's on our house

02:55:01.720 well i'm asking you beyond because you know there but then there's the one set of neighbors

02:55:06.900 that say they saw somebody who matches your description they didn't say you with a baby

02:55:14.780 that night, like around midnight.

02:55:18.680 Do you remember that?

02:55:19.700 I heard that there was a witness that

02:55:22.980 seen somebody carrying a baby.

02:55:26.680 I didn't get all that about fits my description type.

02:55:31.640 See, this is, you know,

02:55:36.240 it's just weird because it's like,

02:55:40.300 like I said, it's going to put in people's minds.

02:55:44.780 That I could have possibly had to believe it.

02:55:46.960 I don't deserve it.

02:55:51.060 That's, I mean, and that's not us.

02:55:52.680 You know, there are witnesses in the case saying, you know, look at this guy, as you know.

02:55:56.840 And that's, we have to look into that.

02:55:59.120 And we're very open-minded to all the possibilities.

02:56:01.500 I mean, I've said before, when I first went out there, when I arrived on scene in Kansas City, I thought 100% it was Debra.

02:56:08.080 100%.

02:56:08.520 That's what I thought.

02:56:09.260 Over the years, you know, I've considered everybody.

02:56:13.500 I consider you.

02:56:14.320 I don't know.

02:56:15.300 I don't know what the answer is.

02:56:16.860 To this moment, I don't know.

02:56:18.460 But I definitely wanted to talk to you.

02:56:21.600 You're a lot closer to it than I am, so you got better answers than I do.

02:56:28.500 What were you doing that night?

02:56:29.860 Well, it's a lot of intimidating.

02:56:33.700 You know, if I was to tell you, then you'd go there.

02:56:37.680 And I'm going to be that person that sends you something.

02:56:42.240 Come on, come on. 0.99

02:56:42.960 And you're looking pretty healthy now.

02:56:45.220 Organic eggs?

02:56:46.660 Oh, yeah.

02:56:47.820 Yeah.

02:56:48.680 That's a pretty good setup.

02:56:49.980 Yeah.

02:56:51.300 So, okay, so you were not in the neighborhood that night.

02:56:54.260 No.

02:56:54.820 Okay.

02:56:55.400 So if anybody saw somebody looking like you, it wasn't you.

02:56:58.280 No.

02:56:59.220 Is there anyone you think we should talk to, or what can we do to help advance this?

02:57:06.500 Any thoughts?

02:57:06.980 I'm no clue.

02:57:07.980 I should have no clue.

02:57:08.980 can you can we talk for just one more minute about cindy short and that visit she paid you

02:57:14.080 in the jail cindy short the lawyer oh yeah yeah yeah yeah because she definitely told us that

02:57:21.460 you told her you found those three phones and i told you i told her that but i wasn't i wasn't

02:57:26.880 being honest i don't even know why i said maybe i was still spun out i don't know i don't know

02:57:33.680 why i said that she said she thought at one point you were like wrestling with maybe a confession

02:57:42.460 she didn't say that you confessed him that's not true i told him to tell her i had nothing

02:57:48.320 it's like i'm telling you nothing i don't know anything does this case i don't do pay attention

02:57:57.600 to it like when it hits the news what does it what does it bring up for you but you know what

02:58:02.680 There was a story about that I always miss a baby and went through all this thing, it was an hour long.

02:58:11.980 And then I'm at the end, you know, the very last person they speak about.

02:58:17.260 You know, so it kind of made me feel like that the program was designed by somebody to make it appear that the story ends here, this guy.

02:58:35.400 You see what I mean?

02:58:36.080 Yep.

02:58:36.580 That's what it, and that bothered me.

02:58:38.500 It still bothers me since then.

02:58:40.500 How do you, do you feel like it affects you with your neighbors and your life?

02:58:44.560 I haven't talked to them.

02:58:45.740 to talk to us, to know about, you know, I mean, if you Google my name, they can find out, you know.

02:58:51.460 Yeah. 0.98

02:58:52.520 And that sucks, too. That totally sucks. 0.99

02:58:55.120 Let me ask you this. How, how do you want, like, what do you want my viewers, my audience to know 0.99

02:59:01.120 about you, in this case, and the things that are being said about you?

02:59:05.960 I don't have anything wrong with it, whatsoever. Zero.

02:59:10.120 Never touched that baby?

02:59:11.900 No.

02:59:12.900 Never saw that baby?

02:59:14.520 No.

02:59:15.740 Well, thank you for talking to us.

02:59:19.960 I appreciate it.

02:59:20.940 If you could tell on me, I'm honest with you.

02:59:23.460 I really am, because honesty is the best policy.

02:59:28.640 Look, I know you don't talk a lot,

02:59:30.880 so I appreciate you letting me come on here

02:59:33.260 and ask these questions. 1.00

02:59:34.540 This whole shit fucks my head. 1.00

02:59:36.200 I'm sure. 1.00

02:59:37.080 It fucks my head. 0.99

02:59:38.020 I'm sure. 0.98

02:59:39.220 Not that I'm feeling guilty about anything,

02:59:41.220 but just the fact that I feel I'm being put involved

02:59:45.600 Okay. All the best to you.

02:59:49.780 Thank you.

02:59:50.380 Say well. 0.99

02:59:51.000 I hope you guys don't kick too much shit on me. 0.99

02:59:53.780 Well, we're going to tell a story and I'm going to tell them what you told me. 0.99

02:59:57.140 They'll hear from you.

02:59:58.060 Okay?

02:59:58.940 Thank you.

02:59:59.480 All right.

02:59:59.700 Have a good day.

03:00:05.320 Well, that was interesting.

03:00:11.300 Wow. Now I got to eat my fucking chew. 1.00

03:00:14.620 Oh, my God. 1.00

03:00:15.600 start with the tongue bill stanton that's what i recommend start there

03:00:21.340 oh he's got it delicious okay it's so good to have you guys here in this setting i'm so i've

03:00:31.580 been looking forward to this from the moment we walked off property there bill and i'm just so

03:00:36.360 the audience knows i have not spoken with phil or bill at all about this since it since the day

03:00:42.180 I haven't spoken to Phil at all. So I have no idea what he thought of the whole exchange.

03:00:45.420 And yet we spent so much time preparing for it. So this is exciting. Bill, we walked out of there,

03:00:50.740 we got into the van and really could not believe it. Like, I think you and I were both like,

03:00:55.460 oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, you know? And then I asked him if he would sit down

03:00:59.680 with our cameras. He said, no, but talk about your impressions, Bill.

03:01:03.800 There was so much going on in my head for your safety and our safety. And then when he started

03:01:11.160 talking and he was so relaxed. So this man, what I felt he was doing was trying to sell us

03:01:18.840 and you weren't having any of it. I couldn't believe how much he talked. I really thought

03:01:26.500 at any second we're going to get kicked out of here. The fact that we were there that long

03:01:30.660 is phenomenal to me. That was my least likely scenario to happen.

03:01:36.260 And then, Phil, you're the human lie detector. What did you think?

03:01:40.060 Megan, I thought that your interview with him was great. It elicited a lot of deceptive behavior. The overarching mistakes that he made primarily were his failure to deny definitively.

03:01:57.060 definitively. I'm thrilled to hear you say deception detected because that's what I thought.

03:02:04.380 I walked out of there and I was like, I've got more doubts about this guy than ever.

03:02:08.100 But our whole team did not feel that way. And I just thought there were my own baby Phil lie

03:02:15.880 detector abilities, right, just because I've followed you for so long, were going off like

03:02:20.920 crazy. I thought there were many indications of deception. He had too many explanations.

03:02:28.000 And I remember asking you about Megan Wright, what would a truth teller sound like? And you said,

03:02:34.060 I can't tell you that exactly, but there would have been a whole lot more. I didn't do it.

03:02:39.780 You know, I didn't do it. So let's play the first exchange that we had with Jersey,

03:02:46.220 where he brings up the death penalty,

03:02:49.980 which, you know, Bill and I were both like,

03:02:51.540 whoa, what, huh?

03:02:52.960 Let's watch that.

03:02:53.920 I was wondering if you would talk to me.

03:02:55.960 I'd rather not because my lawyer told me not to talk to anybody.

03:02:58.940 But it could be a death penalty case.

03:03:02.280 I don't want to have to sit in prison for five years.

03:03:05.440 You know, the thing is...

03:03:08.340 You ask him a very difficult question,

03:03:10.880 but in a very low-key manner.

03:03:13.600 And one of the reasons that he talked to you so much, I believe, is that you didn't give him a reason to dislike you.

03:03:20.960 And he let his guard down some.

03:03:22.580 And in doing so, he gave some lengthier responses than he needed to.

03:03:30.260 And that's where the deceptive behavior began to come to fold in.

03:03:34.960 In this particular case, he said, I don't have any involvement.

03:03:39.660 And he used the present tense.

03:03:42.080 I don't have any involvement. That was his messaging throughout all of this. But in reality, the truthful person is going to focus on the crime itself and say, I didn't have any involvement in what happened that night.

03:03:57.780 And it's the equivalent of saying, you know, where the truthful person says, I didn't do it, versus the deceptive person says, I wouldn't do it. He's trying to impress the latter message on you, but it's clearly, clearly deceptive.

03:04:16.240 But also when he said, that's what I'm saying, I didn't have any involvement or I don't have

03:04:22.820 any involvement, that's what I'm saying, that doesn't mean that isn't what it is, so to

03:04:28.620 speak.

03:04:29.400 In other words, he's not saying, I wasn't involved, this is just what I'm saying at

03:04:34.820 this particular point.

03:04:36.040 So that one was a real key right off the bat that there's probably more lies to follow.

03:04:42.960 Well, we did accurately predict that his first instinct would be to say, the lawyers aren't going to let me talk. You know, we didn't foresee the death penalty line, but he did try that. And thankfully, thanks to your guidance, Phil, we shut it down, got him off of that sticky place. And then I launched with the first Phil Houston question.

03:05:06.560 And wondering if you can tell us what your involvement was in the disappearance of baby Lisa.

03:05:12.280 I don't have any of them. That's what I'm saying. None whatsoever. The FBI vacuumed the house. It's my DNA. You have a million skin cells. Go like that. They're going to bag it off. They're going to DNA it to me. And I'd be told.

03:05:29.500 In there, the deceptive behavior that really stood out was his immediate aggression against the FBI.

03:05:40.540 And the truthful person wouldn't be thinking, answering truthfully is going to land me in prison for five years, you know, or just because this is a death penalty case.

03:05:52.620 Wow.

03:05:53.660 Okay, I got it.

03:05:54.820 So whenever you say the truthful person would have said it this way, that helps because you do think about yourself wrongfully accused of being involved in something as awful as this.

03:06:05.240 What involvement did you have?

03:06:07.440 Yeah, you'd say none.

03:06:09.600 And Megan, think about it.

03:06:11.100 He's saying they would find my DNA at the location.

03:06:17.600 I mean, why would his DNA be at the location?

03:06:20.600 They've never seen him there before.

03:06:22.560 He's never said he was there before.

03:06:24.240 But then he seemed, Bill, to be trying to say they would have found my DNA. If I'd been involved, they would found that DNA. Because I was like, what? Right. I thought he was saying the same thing. Then he seemed to try to clarify, if I were guilty, the evidence of me having been there would have been all over the place.

03:06:44.440 Well, maybe maybe it would have been found if, you know, half of Kansas City and mainstream media wasn't in and out.

03:06:53.320 Yes. OK, but but back to Phil's point, I think, Phil, I mean, I don't I don't want to put the words in your mouth, but I feel like what you usually say in this circumstance, Phil, is the truthful person doesn't engage in convincing behavior.

03:07:06.080 They don't need to say, they would have found my DNA.

03:07:09.240 They would have found my fingerprints.

03:07:10.600 They're just kind of like, I didn't do it.

03:07:12.720 I don't have to convince Megyn Kelly otherwise.

03:07:14.620 Yeah, he's using the convincing statements.

03:07:18.660 And then you look at how he's standing on the ladder.

03:07:21.580 He's trying to look very nonchalant up there.

03:07:24.680 But in fact, he's very threatened by you and very intimidated internally by the questions

03:07:31.200 you're asking, Megyn.

03:07:33.020 And but he doesn't really you didn't give him an opening to, you know, criticize or accuse you or attack you.

03:07:39.700 And that made it very, very difficult for him.

03:07:43.180 Why? Why was he up on the ladder?

03:07:45.100 Because the audience, the viewing audience will see the listening audience needs to be told he didn't need to be up there.

03:07:52.660 His work, of course, was paused while he was talking to me and to Bill.

03:07:56.600 And he easily could have stepped down and come over to us or been face to face.

03:08:00.220 So what did you make of his, his choice to stay elevated and, you know, on the ladder?

03:08:06.560 If you recall, he was standing up in a straighter posture when you got there.

03:08:11.860 He wasn't leaning on the ladder in that manner.

03:08:15.300 And when you guys walked up, then he immediately leaned over and he hunched down.

03:08:22.440 He was intimidated.

03:08:24.780 He doesn't know who you are.

03:08:26.520 He doesn't know what your intentions are.

03:08:28.300 so he's a little scared. And so that anchor point movement that we saw represented a spike in his

03:08:35.940 anxiety. And he'd sit tight and just look like he's not threatened. And that's a thing you'll

03:08:42.800 see in prison a lot. The key is people have to look and act as if they're not threatened by

03:08:49.840 anything or anyone around them. And given his prison time, he's pretty good at that.

03:08:55.220 the ladder is not only elevating him, but it's a barrier between him and me. There, there is that

03:09:02.100 sort of defensive thing of it's in front of me. I've got my arms around it. I'm, I'm safer behind

03:09:08.500 this ladder. Um, and we'll definitely get into why did he talk? Because that was our big debate

03:09:14.000 before Bill and I went, is he going to, but I've got to get to the phones before we do that. So

03:09:20.280 that was the one thing we discussed beforehand. If, if, if he would admit to us what he told

03:09:27.300 Cindy Short, that he found allegedly the three phones on the night, uh, baby Lisa went missing

03:09:34.440 that that would be a tantamount to an admission. Well, here's how that went in part.

03:09:40.640 Now, did you have those phones? Cause we, we understand that you told a lawyer,

03:09:48.900 cindy short that you found those phones i'm seeing her whatever she wanted me here i didn't tell her

03:09:55.760 i found those phones i said i found phones that night but i didn't find them no nothing oh why

03:10:02.460 it's because she's asked me a million questions and i didn't want to make her happy whatever

03:10:07.700 so the listening audience knows one of the things he did there phil which you've called attention

03:10:11.920 to in the past it can be part of a cluster of deception is hands above the midline he started

03:10:16.780 to move his hands like, oh, she did this, she did this. And you've told me in the past, and I know

03:10:20.960 from your books, By the Lie, which everyone should read, when you're lying, the nervous energy has to

03:10:26.320 shoot out of you somehow, whether it's your leg crossed and foot clicking, or you start to rock,

03:10:32.600 but hands above the midline, touching your nose, touching your head, moving around, can be part of

03:10:37.900 a deception cluster. So what did you make of the phone's answer? Exactly where you were going,

03:10:42.740 And, Megan, again, it represents a very significant spike in his anxiety level here.

03:10:49.780 And it's interesting, why on earth would someone who's telling the truth need to admit that while they weren't, didn't say they had taken the phones that were missing, but they found other phones that particular night by coincidence, so to speak, who in their right mind would do that if you're telling the truth?

03:11:11.680 because and what he recognizes is that by saying that he even had phone that he did find phones

03:11:19.360 that night is almost as equally incriminating as the fact that the phones he had the phones that

03:11:25.860 were missing it's clearly one in the same so that's what led him to say in my opinion what

03:11:31.620 led him to say oh i was just lying to her at that particular time i i was surprised that immediately

03:11:38.740 He knew who Cindy Short was, and he knew about the phone conversation.

03:11:41.460 He didn't stutter like, what?

03:11:43.080 Huh?

03:11:43.740 Oh, that was nonsense.

03:11:45.240 If you think about it for that one moment, let's postulate that he is guilty.

03:11:50.860 Let's assume, let's just for argument's sake, say he's guilty.

03:11:54.760 Every breath, every moment is burned in his brain, right?

03:12:00.020 And to me, this question of the phones is one of the most pivotal points made,

03:12:06.800 Because if he found that phone, right, if he had the phone, that tells us he was in the house.

03:12:14.460 I mean, it tells me he was in the house and he called Megan Wright.

03:12:20.320 And that's why he was going back and forth.

03:12:23.540 Is it advantageous for me to say I found the phones or, oh, no, I was just lying.

03:12:28.500 He figured out to say he has the phones suggests he had the baby and he knew he didn't want us going there.

03:12:36.800 But but this like Phil, this was the most obvious lie, I would say, even to the casual observer without the Phil Houston training, because why would a guy sitting in jail talking to a lawyer make up a lie about having phones when he didn't have phones, quote, to make her happy?

03:12:57.920 I think one of the reasons he might have been doing that as well is that between that night and today or the day that you're interviewing him, he has probably told someone, one or two people, that he did find phones that night and then realized that when you ask him the question and, oh, I need to come up with a reason as to why I had phones or maybe someone saw him with phones that night.

03:13:27.200 and that Megan Wright was dialed. Megan Wright's number was dialed. He had to make it, in my

03:13:32.780 opinion, he had to make a story. Oh, I found the phones. And then he realized it's not his best

03:13:38.120 interest to say he had, oh, I didn't have the phones. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That was his

03:13:44.120 weakest part because there were other moments where I thought, OK, you know what? He's he's

03:13:49.140 doing better here. And one of those moments was when he tried to say he and Megan Wright

03:13:54.620 broke up and he never saw her and i said you didn't you didn't stalk her at all or however

03:14:00.060 i phrased it you know you didn't show up at her house and he owned that one right away i pulled

03:14:05.120 up on the front lawn in a stolen van one time but i didn't talk to her so what was your reaction

03:14:09.980 that fell because he could have said no i never did but he kind of owned her story of driving the

03:14:14.440 truck onto her property and scaring her a little i i think uh megan what he's trying to do there

03:14:20.500 going back to the concept of convincing statements or persuasion behavior, what he's trying to do

03:14:27.360 is he's trying to say, hey, if I did something wrong, I'm more than willing to step up and admit

03:14:34.460 it. And often that convinces people who aren't really attuned to the behavior and the reality

03:14:43.800 of the situation and they buy into it. And that's what he's hoping would happen here.

03:14:48.740 I'll tell you what, Doug Brunt, my husband, he watched this whole thing and he had one big takeaway having watched Jersey. He said, you know who he reminds me of? He said he reminds me of this guy. Exactly.

03:15:01.760 Frank Pantangeli from The Godfather when he testified before Congress on whether Michael Corleone was in fact the Godfather and a member of the crime family.

03:15:15.300 And he had now had a change of heart before the year. Here it is. Watch. Tell me if this looks like Jersey.

03:15:22.880 I don't know nothing about that. Do you deny that confession? And do you realize what will happen as a result of your denial?

03:15:29.820 Now, look, the FBI guys, they promised me a deal.

03:15:33.420 So I made up a lot of stuff about Michael Corleone because that's what they wanted.

03:15:39.280 But it was all lies.

03:15:42.220 It's the same sequencing of deceptive behavior that we just saw, almost identical to what we just saw with Tanko.

03:15:50.720 It's amazing.

03:15:52.780 Okay, so what's your takeaway now, having watched it, Phil?

03:15:56.180 Like the, when it wrapped up, having watched the, you know, 25 minutes, what did you walk away saying? There are signs of deception. And?

03:16:05.580 There's no, there's little doubt in my mind, in my opinion, that he is directly involved, if not unilaterally, the person that took the baby.

03:16:17.060 That's strong.

03:16:17.800 Not just from this interview, but it's from the history of the evolution of the case and the things that we learned about him over the years and the connections to others and the evidence that we heard about his activities that night.

03:16:37.300 All of that collectively suggests in my mind, this is our guy.

03:16:43.180 So why did he talk to me, Phil? That was our big debate. That's why Bill had to eat his shoe.

03:16:47.800 because he said he's not going to talk. And you said, he'll talk. It happens. And sure enough,

03:16:54.200 he did talk. And the audience knows because they went through this with us, but he hasn't talked

03:16:58.240 in all his time. As you know, I always go by my own daughter. She's about to turn 13.

03:17:04.880 That whole time, he's kept quiet. He's never made a public statement. He's never even been

03:17:08.960 caught on camera in any meaningful way. So why did he talk? As I said before, Megan,

03:17:15.120 you approach them in a non-threatening manner. It's very counterintuitive in these situations.

03:17:22.920 In fact, when we train law enforcement, one of the hardest habits to break is taking that

03:17:29.000 immediate intimidation or intimidating posture and voice and accusations and so forth. You did

03:17:39.620 none of that. You came up in a very polite manner, very professional manner. And you said,

03:17:46.180 listen, we'd like to talk to you as if you were, you know, giving him the option. Now,

03:17:52.280 he didn't know you weren't really going to give him the option that you would probably continue,

03:17:56.860 you know, to ask questions and so forth. But he was willing at that point to say, okay,

03:18:03.880 let me see where this goes. Right now, I'm up here on this ladder. I'm in a safe place.

03:18:09.820 So what's the harm? And maybe I can gain some ground in the meantime. And because of what you

03:18:17.940 ask him and how you ask them, it allowed you to gain ground. And he wasn't realizing that he'd

03:18:25.020 let his guard down. And he's now talking to you in narratives instead of one word answers or

03:18:32.500 refusing to answer or whatever. He's thinking, okay, maybe I can, you know, pull off a fast

03:18:40.080 one, you know, with this lady. And in retrospect, when you think about it, guys,

03:18:46.320 we were literally in his backyard. He had the high ground. He felt safe. We were in his territory

03:18:54.660 on in his yard while he was up. He felt he was in control.

03:18:59.680 That's a good point. It was kind of ironic that he ended the exchange with honesty is the best policy. Honesty is the best policy, like touting his own honesty, which is another tell, Phil, is it not?

03:19:13.140 Oh, absolutely. It's one of the most used convincing statements there is. But the timing of when he did it was quite interesting to me. It was interesting because it suggests that he felt he played a good role here, that he really accomplished something in the manner in which he answered your questions.

03:19:36.000 He was kind of, you know, being a peacock here and saying, hey, you know, I've been very honest with you.

03:19:43.660 And in reality, he knows he's been anything but that.

03:19:47.240 And then he followed it up with this thing has been effing my head up, but I'm not guilty of anything.

03:19:51.540 But it's been which what did you make of that statement?

03:19:54.580 It's it's again, truth in the lie, as many of these other statements that he made.

03:19:59.700 He's saying something he's telling that's truthful.

03:20:02.640 It did mess up his head. But in reality, a truthful person, that's not going to happen. In other words, if they'd have gone, a truthful person 10 years later or 13 years later is not going to be terrified and fear that they're going to go to jail or they're going to get the death penalty, whatever the case may be.

03:20:24.020 And yet these are all these things that he's saying, and these are the things that are worrying him. And so I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a day that goes by that he thinks about that night.

03:20:35.880 What did you make of, Phil, when he said, I said, why would somebody, do you think it happened spur of the moment? Do you think it was planned out? And he didn't bite there at all. He's like, I don't know.

03:20:46.520 And then I rounded back again and he said, I don't know. And then he's like, you already asked me this. You know, he he did. He was pretty firm on that one. Like, I don't know. And stop asking me that. That I thought was a point in his favor.

03:20:59.960 Remember what we said earlier, how he said, I don't have any involvement. That is his agenda in his mind. And so when you ask him a question that is similar to that now, he's already got the answer framed out. And that's why it looks and sounds, you know, more truthful.

03:21:19.280 um give you another example of that at one point you asked him i think about fingerprints or

03:21:24.740 whatever on the phone and he he gave what on the surface would appear to be a truthful answer

03:21:30.520 why would your fingerprints be on those phones

03:21:32.440 i don't know i'm i'm just trying to figure it out okay well you're not you're telling me this

03:21:43.740 this fact that my kid gets rich on the phone but i don't believe because i i don't i don't believe

03:21:49.580 i ever possessed a phone i suspect his by the end of the night his fingerprints were no longer on

03:21:56.400 that phone i and he knows that and he's he's wiped them off and so that's something that he can say

03:22:03.040 you know truthfully yeah with confidence right he challenged whether his fingerprints were on the

03:22:07.520 phone and the other thing he challenged with confidence was this why would a neighbor say

03:22:11.480 they saw you in the area?

03:22:14.140 I don't know.

03:22:14.840 It's the third time they asked me.

03:22:16.180 Okay.

03:22:16.780 Sorry.

03:22:17.820 I'm losing my own.

03:22:19.540 I don't know.

03:22:20.520 People lie.

03:22:21.280 I don't know.

03:22:21.860 Yeah.

03:22:22.220 Now I'm in the area.

03:22:23.700 I'm not first to say

03:22:24.840 I was on a literal child.

03:22:26.840 You see?

03:22:27.180 Well, I'm asking you beyond

03:22:28.700 because, you know,

03:22:29.260 there's the one set of neighbors

03:22:31.300 that say they saw somebody

03:22:34.460 who matches your description.

03:22:36.580 They didn't say you

03:22:37.460 with a baby

03:22:39.180 that night.

03:22:41.280 Like around midnight.

03:22:43.460 Do you remember that?

03:22:44.740 I remember that there was a witness that, oh, I've seen somebody carrying a bait in the end.

03:22:51.300 I didn't get all that about, fits my description.

03:22:55.860 So he did know, he knew facts about this investigation in a way that I thought was pretty telling as well.

03:23:01.580 But that was a great example of deception.

03:23:04.840 He didn't say I wasn't there.

03:23:06.380 oh i'm i failed to see the forest through the trees on that one oh again so that's the phil

03:23:15.360 houston twist the truth teller would would have said i wasn't there so she definitely did not see 1.00

03:23:21.680 me that's that's the fact that is the most the best ally for the truthful person tell the truth

03:23:28.180 and and in his case he can't the truth has consequences associated with it and that's

03:23:36.360 what makes it difficult for him now now the advantage he has a little bit is he's been

03:23:41.280 asked a lot of these questions over the years and so he has some frame of reference but what

03:23:47.580 was different this time is somebody's talking to him in a almost a kind way you know you didn't

03:23:57.440 You weren't judgmental of him.

03:23:59.720 And that was really important.

03:24:01.280 So having watched Megan Wright and John Tanko talk about their relationship and their time

03:24:08.480 together, what takeaways?

03:24:11.200 If you assume for a moment that our assessment of John Tanko is correct, and then you look

03:24:18.500 at what um megan is saying about him she clearly is trying to distance herself from him it it appears

03:24:28.980 likely so much so that it appears likely to me that she knows what he's been up to and likely

03:24:36.760 she knows what happened that night and as a result she doesn't want to go down if he if he is you

03:24:45.340 know, if Tanko is finally arrested, you know, uncovered or identified as the perpetrator

03:24:52.460 and is arrested, then she would then become a co-conspirator. 0.90

03:24:58.840 And she realizes that.

03:25:00.940 So she's trying to leave the impression in everyone's mind that she has nothing to do 1.00

03:25:06.180 with him.

03:25:06.580 She, and, you know, long before, you know, the baby went missing, she had nothing to

03:25:12.340 do with him.

03:25:12.980 And she's trying to create that image. 1.00

03:25:16.040 That was by design.

03:25:17.080 Well, when you ask Tanko any questions about Megan Wright, he becomes very protective of her.

03:25:24.940 He immediately says, no, she's not involved and exonerates her.

03:25:31.020 And I believe he's doing that because he knows that she knows.

03:25:35.700 And knows what she knows.

03:25:38.560 And as a result, he has no choice but to defend her.

03:25:41.820 interesting she wasn't sounding that way about him however like i don't know what he's capable

03:25:50.660 of was more her line yeah yeah he has no choice but to defend her she has other options she isn't

03:25:57.280 the person that actually did it you're so interesting phil this is fascinating talking

03:26:04.760 to you okay now we're going to bring in jim spellman very excited to have jim spellman with

03:26:10.180 reporter of CNN at the time this story broke, now independent. And Jim, you've been watching

03:26:16.580 this whole thing. You've been watching the series. You've been working with us on this.

03:26:20.880 What did you make of this exchange with John Tanko? Well, first off, I want to echo the kudos

03:26:25.660 to you, Bill, and your crew for forgetting this and going in there. That was not easy,

03:26:29.860 and it definitely took guts and courage to do it. Well done. This struck me as somebody,

03:26:36.380 remember, he didn't know you were recording him, who's scared that the next visitor is going to

03:26:40.780 have a badge on them right after them. And he was working whatever he could to try to find out what

03:26:46.560 you might know and then to feed back something that's going to make him look good. I mentioned

03:26:51.000 this earlier in a previous interview, Megan, but I'm in recovery. I've used crystal meth,

03:26:56.200 smoked crack cocaine, et cetera. 23 years I've been clean last year. And I work on a near daily

03:27:01.080 basis with addicts in recovery. And there's a kind of person who does nothing but lie. Even

03:27:07.620 when there's no reason to lie, they lie. You ask him what color a blue car is, they'll say red.

03:27:13.600 And this strikes me like that kind of person who just immediately is on the hustle, immediately is

03:27:18.860 trying to weave something that's going to help him come out better at the end of the day. And

03:27:24.800 You know, with the phones, with the phone question, this really has made me focus on the investigation back in Kansas City and by the FBI and why at this point they have not told us why they moved on from John Tango, why they have not revealed all of the details about the phone.

03:27:43.800 And I think when this show comes out, it will be negligent if the chief of police there, Stacey Graves, doesn't immediately appoint a new detective that was not involved to make this a high profile cold case, release whatever information they can that doesn't jeopardize an investigation and bring this into the public eye again.

03:28:07.340 And I would include men fences with the family. I don't know who was responsible for that division, but it wasn't Lisa. And she deserves better than that. And this investigation should be immediately reopened in a vigorous way.

03:28:20.300 Well said. I couldn't agree with what you just said more. And that's really our goal is to have somebody just take a fresh look at the case, fresh eyes, new eyes, take a look at the case.

03:28:30.980 he told us for the first time there that he had not been cleared by law enforcement that was an

03:28:40.300 interesting admission i think he didn't know that i believed he had been cleared otherwise maybe he

03:28:47.040 would have just gone with that but it's because i asked it in an open-ended way like were you

03:28:51.160 cleared and he said no no one ever told me that i thought that was very interesting

03:28:54.720 and the police in kansas city and the fbi on occasion told me they used the language they

03:29:01.600 had moved on right from john tango uh never of course being absolute about it but i think it's

03:29:07.280 clear they have because look where he is you know and i mean none of these people have faced any kind

03:29:12.440 of serious you know um uh investigation that they know after those initial weeks uh and months lives

03:29:19.820 have just gone on. People's lives have gone on while the family and Lisa's are in suspended

03:29:26.500 animation, you know. Why else, Jim, would there be a 10-year gap between the last time the Kansas

03:29:33.380 City police called Jeremy or Deborah and today? It's inexcusable. No matter what they did or what

03:29:41.780 the police did, somebody's got to get over this, right? And I think as part of reopening the case,

03:29:48.120 The Kansas City police need to deal with the media, take their lumps and get this case back out there.

03:29:56.220 No one's going to come off looking great if they reopen this in a sort of more high profile way.

03:30:01.580 But what other way is there to jog memories, to convince the community there in Kansas City that their children are being cared for, that they matter, than to start getting some of this stuff out there?

03:30:13.540 One of the things I was really surprised to hear Deborah say was that they had taken hair from them to test for for drugs.

03:30:22.280 So if they if that's true and it was negative, then why would the police not release that at this point?

03:30:28.180 Why not put out whatever can be put out there that can close down avenues that people are discussing and maybe just somehow jog some other memory of somebody, you know, that may know somebody who knows somebody.

03:30:39.720 Maybe it's not Tanko, but someone who is tangential to Tanko.

03:30:43.700 Maybe not somebody who was in the house, but someone that was near and around the house

03:30:48.300 that day.

03:30:49.160 Somebody knows something.

03:30:50.420 There has to be a nexus to this house to know there's a baby there, to know that Jeremy's

03:30:54.760 working that night.

03:30:56.600 Something has to happen to change this.

03:30:58.680 It's just unacceptable that it's up to people like you and people like Bill to be on this

03:31:03.940 guy's lawn and not a much larger investigation.

03:31:07.260 And you know what's really chilling is here we are all these years later, they've never found remains of any kind. And, you know, if this were a murder, an intentional murder, an accidental death, let's face it, whoever did it of the characters we're talking about, you wouldn't think that these are, you know, sophisticated criminals who actually managed to avoid the police detection and then got rid of the body in a way that very few criminals are able to, or never got dug up by a dog, never came up.

03:31:36.300 If it had been put in the water, you know, like we saw with Lacey Peterson, like this is the one criminal who managed in just that short window of time to conduct conduct the perfect crime. No, no DNA, no fingerprints, no proof of any kind, dispose of the body in the way that it never came back.

03:31:52.260 So there is a real possibility if you look at that, that she wasn't killed. We haven't really talked about it that much, but that she really wasn't killed and that she was either sold or given to somebody or showed up on the doorstep of a firehouse in some other town. That would make some more sense given the absence of a body.

03:32:14.360 And remember the investigation in those early days and weeks, the amount of searches of woods in that area, when the address came up, the area, the intersection that Cindy Short says he reported that the phone was right, I immediately put that into Google and looked at images.

03:32:30.440 One of the very first live shots I did when I, the first weekend of this case was a big search right there that included the National Guard and the FBI of that area.

03:32:40.720 And all of those similar areas that kind of are, you know, around this neighborhood that have open woods or something were heavily searched in that kind of search that would find any type of remains or something.

03:32:52.760 So I think that it's extremely unlikely that, you know, out in public, you know, woods or anything that, you know, there were any remains to be found within a within a mile or two radius of the house.

03:33:03.860 You're amazing. Thank you so much for the great work you've done on this.

03:33:07.220 You've been a highlight of every episode. It's been a pleasure.

03:33:09.980 And Jim, Jim, thank you. And, you know, sharing that, you know, once an addict, you're shown that it can be overcome and it is debilitating and you overcame it.

03:33:20.540 And you just add that much more character to everything you do.

03:33:24.420 Thank you.

03:33:25.140 Thanks, Bill.

03:33:26.000 Yes, indeed, Jim.

03:33:26.980 Thanks a ton.

03:33:27.640 It's a pleasure to meet you.

03:33:29.120 And that's the conclusion for now of our Megyn Kelly Investigates series.

03:33:32.960 But it's not the end.

03:33:34.900 And I thank you sincerely for joining us along this journey.

03:33:38.700 We'll see you soon.

03:33:40.420 If you're watching right now, please take a look at this picture of Lisa as she might look now.

03:33:45.440 If you're listening, you can see the photo on YouTube or just go to MegynKelley.com.

03:33:49.900 If you see her or think you might have any information that can help find her, please write to me.

03:33:56.560 The address is megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com.

03:34:00.800 You can also pass along tips on the baby Lisa story to the Kansas City Police Department

03:34:05.760 or encourage them to get active on this case.

03:34:11.180 That would be very helpful.

03:34:13.360 Reach out at kccrimestoppers.com, kccrimestoppers.com,

03:34:18.700 or call them at 816-474-TIPS, T-I-P-S, that's 816-474-8477.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 05, 2026

Megyn Kelly Investigates： Disappearance of ＂Baby Lisa＂ Series - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

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