00:07:23.300He 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.
00:07:29.640And she sees this man walking up the street holding a baby, not wearing clothes.
00:07:37.420And 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.
00:08:29.640Callahan Walsh of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
00:08:32.400Those 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.
00:08:43.740In 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.
00:13:59.660So maybe she tried to cover it up after.
00:14:05.280The first time I even thought that was when the police had started asking us about it.
00:14:10.920So just from the statistics standpoint, it didn't surprise me that law enforcement was really going after Debra and also Jeremy.
00:14:19.980That's Marissa Randazzo, the former chief research psychologist at the U.S. Secret Service.
00:14:25.420She would soon be tapped to work on this case.
00:14:27.740From the criminal psychologist side of me, I wondered what involvement she or her husband might have had.
00:14:35.980And so did I. And so did lots of people.
00:14:38.780But when Kansas City attorney Sean O'Brien started working with Deborah and Jeremy, he quickly realized no one was getting the whole story.
00:14:46.360Because the police kept saying the parents aren't cooperating, the parents aren't cooperating.
00:14:50.860It was like the mantra they were putting out on television.
00:14:53.380And it wasn't until after I got into the case I realized that was totally not true.
00:14:58.520You know, they had spent 40 hours in questioning with the police before I was brought into the case.
00:15:05.380These were people who were trying to help the police find their baby.
00:15:09.480So why were the police saying that? Were they just making that up?
00:15:12.360I think they didn't have a better suspect.
00:17:26.040Essentially, what confirmation bias is that once you develop a theory,
00:17:29.660It's human nature to seek out information that confirms that theory and disregard information that would undercut that theory.
00:17:39.380It 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.
00:17:53.600Investigators are quickly closing in on the baby's mother, Deborah.
00:17:58.320Jeremy's sister Ashley Irwin thought the writing was on the wall
00:18:01.340and said so in an interview with ABC News.
00:18:04.580Do you think Deborah may be facing an arrest?
00:18:08.960Probably, to be real honest with you, yes.
00:20:28.300And I turned around to somebody who was a complete stranger, and I said, mark my word,
00:20:32.740the next parent that does not trim their child's nails right, they're going to serve hard times.
00:20:40.620Sure that Debra was caught in this backlash, Christy swung into action,
00:20:45.300tapping into the brain trust of police and legal professionals that she met through her charity,
00:20:50.040Canines for Cops, created in tribute to a police dog killed in the line of duty.
00:20:55.040She called Bill Stanton, a former New York City police officer, private investigator,
00:21:00.080and TV commentator who was on her canine board.
00:21:03.860Bill assembled a team that included Phil Houston, CIA veteran of 25 years.
00:21:09.560Phil created the deception detection method still being used by the CIA, the FBI, the
00:21:16.020Secret Service and law enforcement agencies around the nation. He is known as the human
00:21:21.760lie detector. Former Secret Service psychologist Marissa Randazzo was also part of the team.
00:21:27.560First order of business, they needed to determine what, if any, involvement Debra may have had.
00:21:32.980By this point, the baby's father, Jeremy, had essentially been ruled out because there's
00:21:37.820security video of him working on an electrical project at Starbucks through most of the night
00:21:42.320baby Lisa went missing. Christy's team began to plan their own videotaped interviews with the
00:21:47.400parents. Marissa worked with Phil on the questions for Deborah and Jeremy. I helped really to talk
00:21:53.280through with Phil around what angle, what to think about when talking with someone who may
00:21:59.340be responsible for the disappearance, or we were really concerned about possibly the death of baby
00:22:03.560Lisa. So we know that the parents, especially the mother, was under suspicion by law enforcement.
00:22:09.540And 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.
00:22:25.720Now there was a plane waiting thanks to Christy Schiller. Bill and Phil headed to Kansas City.
00:22:31.780Once 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.
00:22:40.800Phil Houston had seen their press conferences and how they answered questions. Like so many of us, he already had his suspicions about the couple.
00:23:16.640Debbie, 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?
00:23:30.100None. The only thing I did wrong was drink that night and possibly not be alert, not here.
00:27:57.500The wall-to-wall media coverage continued.
00:28:00.940They are still searching urgently for the child, although they do say that as every hour passes, this case gets harder to solve.
00:28:08.000And at this point, police freely admit they have no suspects and no leads.
00:28:13.400That was always one of the biggest mysteries about this case.
00:28:15.500Like, 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?
00:28:33.240Because no matter who did this, they did escape, you know, without a trace.
00:28:39.420So I think there's two possible answers to that.
00:28:41.200The 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.
00:28:54.700But 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.
00:29:06.080Is 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?
00:29:18.760But 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.
00:29:37.200And then that's the night you stealthily get in and out of the house, making it through neighbors and everything else.
00:40:41.760I think sometimes we forget who these two people are and what they're going through.
00:40:46.660Thanks to Christy and her team, Joe Tacopina, a big gun in the world of defense attorneys, takes up Debra's case.
00:40:53.340If that name sounds familiar to you, it may be because he has defended former President Donald Trump in New York criminal court.
00:41:00.360Someone out there obviously knows something.
00:41:03.860Tacopina hired local attorney Cindy Short to handle things on the ground in Kansas City.
00:41:08.400Well, 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.
00:41:18.280Cindy ran an all-female firm. 17 women went to work on this case.
00:41:23.120The women in my group and in my law firm were aching as mothers, and we wanted to be able to make a difference.
00:41:33.060We 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.
00:41:47.500Cindy Short had another reason to be so deeply committed to finding Lisa.
00:41:51.640As a young girl, Cindy was very nearly abducted by a stranger in her own home.
00:41:57.280Is 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?
00:42:09.440It was no more sophisticated than that.
00:42:16.340As 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.
00:42:30.260I 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.
00:42:42.120now if she was to have been taken out of the house at night this is almost pitch black reporter jim
00:42:51.200spellman showed viewers just how dark by turning off the camera light and if someone got in and
00:42:57.280out could they do it without a trace i mean i imagine one of the things that they were doing
00:43:02.160was taking fingerprints i never heard anything about a recovery on any sort of a hit on the
00:43:08.440fingerprints. Nor have I. They took, they not only took fingerprints, they were prepared to take
00:43:13.060tool marks. That would be if somebody used a screwdriver or something to claw their way into
00:43:18.180a window. It was a very active investigation centered around the house. So there were searches,
00:43:24.280there were dogs, there were investigators in hazmat type suits going in and out. They cut
00:43:29.660pieces of carpet that they took away. They took soil samples from the backyard. Investigators
00:43:35.880have been taking blankets, toys, and clothing from the home.
00:46:21.520Yeah. 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.
00:46:49.540And 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.
00:47:04.780He 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.
00:47:15.600When Mike heard about baby Lisa being missing, he told his cousin what he had seen.
00:47:21.000He said, well, you better call the police.
00:47:23.140So he dialed the police and he told them that I had witnessed a man carrying a baby.
00:48:59.280Their family was close with the Irwins.
00:49:01.760But that day, the Brandos were separating.
00:49:04.320something they had decided earlier that afternoon james moved out just hours after deborah and
00:49:10.080samantha started drinking deborah remembers the conversation i was trying to help her through it
00:49:15.380and um you know just give her the best advice i could and she was kind of spilling her guts you
00:49:20.980know what she went through what she's hoping she will accomplish next you know custody stuff you
00:49:28.260You know, just the deep things that come with, you know, separation of family.
00:49:33.600Police investigated and questioned James Brando.
00:49:36.780Then there was Shane Beagley, the 33-year-old landscaper who was the grandson of a neighbor.
00:49:42.240He dropped by while Debra was drinking with Samantha Brando.
00:49:46.260And now someone new enters into the mix.
00:49:49.780John Tanko, nicknamed Jersey, a handyman with a criminal background who had been working on a neighbor's lawn.
00:49:57.260So 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.
00:50:09.240Same builds, same general kind of haircut.
00:50:13.460Police immediately ruled out Shane Beagley as a suspect, while James Brando stayed on everyone's radar.
00:50:19.600When 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.
00:50:31.100Well, 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.
00:50:42.620You know, I've heard people speculate along those lines.
00:51:23.440Attorney Cindy Short always had one person in mind.
00:51:27.280The primary person for me was John Tanko.
00:51:30.340He was an individual who was essentially homeless at the time,
00:51:35.400But he had connections to the neighborhood and had connections to a household that was only several doors up from the Irwin's home.
00:51:45.800The person we have to talk about is this guy, John Tanko, who's from New Jersey, known as Jersey.
00:51:51.840And people describe him as being sketchy.
00:51:54.620Soon, reporters were trying to find him.
00:51:56.920The last known sighting of Jersey the handyman that we can confirm was Saturday, October 1st, here at One Eye Jack's Tavern.
00:52:03.240The owners of the bar tell us they kicked him out for being a root drunk who was spitting on customers on the patio.
00:52:09.540What was significant for me was that he had a pretty healthy background in burglary, and particularly in residential burglary.
00:52:20.160We 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.
00:52:29.560People in the neighborhood, some knew him and some had hired him to do yard work, that sort of thing.
00:52:35.420But, you know, he was a guy who was, you know, one rung above homeless.
00:52:41.100And if you got to know him a little bit more, there were some really disturbing things that come up.
00:52:48.540And as we get closer and closer to the time of this abduction, his relationship with this community is significant.
00:52:59.120October 3rd in particular, which is the day of the kidnapping, he's at the Watson's house.
00:56:12.960But 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.
00:56:25.360And we know that police took footprints, impressions from her backyard the day after this.
00:56:31.200Here's that neighbor, Mary Hurt, explaining this back in 2011.
00:56:34.200There 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.
00:56:42.960Now, this sprinkler tells these people were not home, right?
00:57:37.040I 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.
00:57:46.500I 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.
00:57:58.420She's talking there about Lisa Parscale.
00:58:00.280And 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.
00:58:13.340I 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.
00:58:20.760In 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.
00:58:32.780Eyewitness identification is a tricky business. And in Cindy Short's mind, this was not enough.
00:58:38.440I 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.
00:58:55.900For 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.
00:59:05.140He 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.
00:59:28.400Nobody who gets arrested on a simple bench warrant gets moved from place to place the way that they were moving him.
00:59:36.360He had been incarcerated in Missouri for a burglary.
00:59:40.640He had been released from his incarceration and then he had absconded, which meant that he had escaped from basically a halfway house.
00:59:51.660He was then living in an unhoused situation with a woman named Megan.
00:59:57.740Megan Wright was 20 years old, new to Kansas City, and was John Tanko's girlfriend for a time they had since broken up.
01:00:07.460He's a next boyfriend of mine. We dated for about five months.
01:00:10.920So 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.
01:00:24.120And there is a lot of disruption or arguments between Megan and Jersey.
01:00:30.520And later on in the summers about September, he ends up getting arrested again.
01:00:36.240They break up. He wants to get back with her.
01:00:41.200She becomes homeless. He ends up setting her car on fire.
01:00:45.860Her car was set on fire and she reported it and it was investigated.
01:00:49.740And she thought that John Tanko, Jersey, did it.
01:00:53.060But 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.
01:01:01.360Fire is important here because we'll end up having a fire the night of the kidnapping.
01:01:06.520That was the dumpster fire on the night of baby Lisa's disappearance.
01:01:10.580People 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.
01:01:21.640In fact, Megan Wright lived farther away by at least another mile.
01:01:26.940And here's one more piece of information that made for a possible motive.
01:01:31.000Megan and Jersey are kind of an odd couple.
01:01:33.840She's much younger than he is, but they start talking about, in July, having children.
01:04:25.200He and I were together for less than six months.
01:04:28.320And we only lived together for a couple of months of that, so I didn't really know him all that well.
01:04:34.820And most of the time that we were together, you know, we were using drugs together.
01:04:39.860It wasn't a healthy relationship where you learn what somebody's capable of.
01:04:47.160So 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.
01:04:58.320Meanwhile, 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.
01:05:15.000He is a good little burglar getting to case the joint.
01:10:44.860He was the person that I would call the internal champion.
01:10:49.040And 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.
01:11:06.940and the bureau guy brings a certain amount of gravitas to the situation and he just took it
01:11:13.820over. And what we also took away is that Tanko began, in our minds, to take on a more prominent
01:11:23.920role. And I was shocked when they said that they had cleared him. They'd move on from him.
01:11:30.320Yeah. When, in fact, he was in the neighborhood or appeared to be in the neighborhood that night.
01:11:35.320Also, you know, from a fingerprints perspective, here's a guy that wears gloves all day long as a handyman and so forth.
01:11:45.780Here's a guy that was arrested already for breaking in people's windows in neighborhoods.
01:11:51.940And they seem, I don't want to know what, I can't read their minds, but they seem to ignore most of that.
01:11:59.880and let's not forget what Jim Spellman told us about the dog not barking and about the neighbor
01:12:08.600who's claiming she knew Jersey and she saw him take the dog I don't know whether that's true or
01:12:15.360not but that's that's exactly the kind of thing that would get a red flag going for a cop back
01:12:20.340to the theory of it was a planned burglary potentially potentially just to take the phones
01:12:26.940The baby could have been an afterthought, but was that looked into?
01:12:32.620When we train investigators, Megan, there's an interesting saying that we use, and we borrowed it from the medical community.
01:16:53.360No, and I hadn't, he and I hadn't been together for over a month at that point.
01:16:58.640And I had seen him and spoke to him prior to that, but nothing on the day of.
01:17:04.780Megan was 20 at that time and had moved to Kansas City earlier that year.
01:17:09.240She told us she had been in an abusive relationship, left it, lived for a time at a domestic violence shelter,
01:17:16.600and after that was moving from group home to group home, temporary living situations.
01:17:22.380She says she met Tanko at one of them.
01:17:24.440It 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.
01:17:36.700And that's when I was invited to snort a line of mess for the first time.
01:18:09.200It was a life-changing experience that I never saw coming for myself.
01:18:16.640By the time of Lisa's disappearance, Megan had become a full-on methamphetamine addict and was trying to stay away from Tanko.
01:18:25.320The very last time she saw him, Megan says Tanko scared her.
01:18:29.080The last time was when he had the van and almost hit the porch.
01:18:35.120He 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.
01:18:49.500That's the last time that I had any type of contact with him.
01:18:53.060And like I said, it was from 20 feet away with four or five people in between us that we had any contact.
01:19:00.380And this is prior to Lisa's disappearance?
01:19:04.800Megan moved to a house on 44th and Brighton, a little over a mile away from the Irwin house.
01:19:09.820I 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.
01:19:20.680He would not leave me alone after I broke up with him.
01:19:23.060By her account, it was a trap house, a drug den, and her contribution to the household was to let people use her phone.
01:19:31.100Living in a trap house, what you can provide is everything.
01:19:34.400Like I said, having the phone and paying the bill every month, that was one thing I could provide to everybody in the house.
01:19:39.260Now everybody has access to a cell phone with internet.
01:19:41.720When you're desperate and you're 20 years old and you're just trying not to die, you'll do anything to stay anywhere.
01:19:48.220It's not outside, which is the only place I had to go.
01:19:53.060Why would anyone involved in the disappearance of baby Lisa call your cell phone the night baby Lisa went missing?
01:20:02.000I 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.
01:20:11.760I still got calls for other people, whoever had had the number prior.
01:20:15.940There were several people that used my phone in the house that I lived in on a regular basis.
01:20:20.720So there would be calls coming in for those people.
01:20:23.960On the night Lisa went missing, October 3rd, Megan says she left her phone on an upstairs table.
01:20:29.780I 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.
01:24:44.400and I don't know if the way I delivered it or the circumstances surrounding our breakup or if
01:24:52.920drugs had anything to do with it on his part at that point but he just revolted everything in him
01:25:01.000hated 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
01:25:08.300don't come around here you know we're not getting back together it just was so constant with him
01:25:16.120until i left the city did you know that he was a burglar at the time no i've seen his arrest
01:25:24.820reports and stuff since he i broke up and have learned a lot more about him what month was the
01:25:31.560breakup in 2011? It was after Easter that year. I want to say it was like May or June
01:25:43.920before the 4th of July because I didn't end up going to my family's 4th of July party that year
01:25:50.720because I was upset about the breakup. Okay. And do you have any reason to believe he stopped
01:25:57.080using meth at any point in 2011? I have no idea. Like I said, after I broke up with him,
01:26:04.080I tried my very best not to have contact with him, especially in person, because he made me
01:26:08.760incredibly nervous. I have a lot of PTSD from the things that he put me through that I've tried
01:26:16.460really hard to work through over the years. But there's a lot of it I can't, you know, I can't
01:26:23.540let go of, I can't forget being that afraid. Were you thinking, you know, this guy's kind
01:26:31.160of crazy. Could have been him. Yes, I definitely thought this guy is crazy and that he was horrible
01:26:37.360to me, traumatized me. But I have no idea what he's capable of. Again, reporter Jim Spellman.
01:26:45.720I think if you start to look past the family, it's likely that it's somebody who at least
01:26:50.720knew the neighborhood to know that this baby was in this house. And so he's somebody that
01:26:55.760absolutely is top of mind, if not a suspect, because he's another person that the police
01:27:00.780said that they moved on from, that perhaps somebody in his world might know something more.
01:27:07.460The phones and the phone use continued to be a mystery. At 3.17 a.m., one of the phones tried
01:27:14.860to access voicemail. Now, why would that be? Five minutes later, at 3.22 a.m., there was an attempt
01:27:23.660to use the phone's web browser. As I reported for Fox News back then, Debra's attorney said
01:27:29.580there were five attempts made to get online via the phone, and the phones never got more than
01:27:36.260a third of a mile away from the house on North Lister. And remember this from our last episode.
01:27:42.700If 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.
01:27:56.560You would think, OK, let's see who's on the other end of that number.
01:28:31.540Do 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?
01:28:39.740I 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.
01:28:51.660She was very helpful throughout the entire thing.
01:28:54.780If she tried to help us meet people, she would give us phone numbers of people.
01:28:59.580She never asked me for anything the whole time that we were doing this.
01:29:03.520And I think that she is exactly who she says she is.
01:29:10.780A troubled person, absolutely, but not somebody who had any direct involvement in this.
01:29:17.440Meanwhile, Kansas City attorney Cindy Short was working hard to find answers, even after she was off the legal team.
01:29:25.500After 10 days, she says she and lead attorney Joe Tacopina parted company in a dispute over strategy.
01:29:31.160But Cindy continued to look for Tanko. And now she's going to tell us something she has never
01:29:37.160before shared publicly. And it's fascinating. A day or two after she left the case, Cindy found
01:29:45.360John Tanko in the Clay County Jail, north of Kansas City. And she interviewed him for 10 hours
01:29:52.380over a two-day period. What he told her could change the entire trajectory of this investigation.
01:29:59.860set the scene for us. Did he come right out to talk to you? He did come right out to meet with
01:30:06.580me. And I think probably out of curiosity, I introduced myself and I told him who I was and
01:30:15.520what I was doing. And then I had been working on the baby Lisa case, that I was no longer
01:30:22.280representing Debra. And then I had some questions about him and his role in the neighborhood and
01:30:30.560hope that maybe he could help me if he was willing to talk about it.
01:30:36.500And you're face to face. There's no glass between you.
01:30:42.500Does he look disheveled? Is he a good looking man? What is he? How would you describe?
01:30:46.780He was tough looking. He looked like a sophisticated consumer of the criminal justice system.
01:30:54.540He looked like someone who had had a rough life.
01:30:59.500He was cautious, I think, as he should have been.
01:31:02.840But Cindy says he was forthcoming and emotional about his troubled childhood.
01:31:07.440It 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.
01:31:23.320I was trying to use my best persuasive skills to help convince him to maybe bring closure to a family, if he could.
01:31:37.480I 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.
01:32:17.360but the reason we know his name is because we have a phone bill that shows one of the Irwin's
01:32:22.660three cell phones called Megan Wright. Yes. And so once again, it's a link potentially back to
01:32:30.400Jersey. And now he's telling you they never found the cell phones. He's telling you he found them.
01:32:38.640Yes. 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.
01:32:57.240He tells me where they are under this bridge at 210 and North Brighton.
01:33:03.800And in fact, this is when I employed one of my investigators with a dog to go down to that location.
01:33:11.320And 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.
01:33:22.620and we did find a state but you know roads have stains so we went down there with the dog and
01:33:33.080there under this bridge there is a culvert and so there is water there but it's very low water
01:33:39.760because at one point he had talked about throwing the phones into a pond he'd also talked about the
01:33:47.680being in this woman's car but just to back up just to back up so he's saying there we are having some
01:33:54.280car trouble get out of the car and boom three cell phones and i was just guessing that these
01:34:00.980belong to deborah and jeremy like as he does he offer any reason why he knows it's those phones
01:34:06.880he just told me there were three three cell phones on the side of the road now he's not telling me
01:34:11.720that they're jeremy and but i think the connection would be that if he it's three cell phones that
01:34:17.220are sitting there together? Yes. Three cell phones sitting there together. At some point he had,
01:34:21.860you know, he tried to tell me that I don't steal cell phones, but the thing about it is a thief,
01:34:27.520if you're going to go into a house to steal stuff, which this guy does, then you're going to steal
01:34:33.220things you can sell really easily. Cell phones, guns, any kind of electronics, things you can pick
01:34:41.280up easily, throw them in your pockets. These three cell phones were sitting on a counter
01:34:45.900in the kitchen so it would have been very easy for a burglar coming into the home through the
01:34:53.200front door or through that window the phones would have been right there but keep in mind
01:34:59.920jersey's drug use and his rap sheet how reliable was he was he playing games with cindy trying to
01:35:07.640get information from her to see what she and investigators knew it's extraordinary that in
01:35:14.060his time with you he volunteered that he spent time with these cell phones that even he is seems
01:35:21.220to be suggesting are related to the case yeah like the fact i think phil houston would say
01:35:26.620that's a liar who doesn't know what you know right about what connections he has you know
01:35:33.220admitting just so much just to see you know but leaving himself escape routes right um so maybe
01:35:39.520he could get some more information from you or just in case you knew more than he thought you did
01:35:43.340right right that must have been chilling i mean was that chilling cindy when he admitted that
01:35:48.720yes i take it that was the most shocking revelation that he copped to finding three
01:35:53.440mysterious cell phones yes shortly after baby lisa went missing like how how close in time
01:35:58.100it was it was right in that time frame it was right when it happened and but yet didn't want
01:36:04.120to give you the timeline on what he did the night she went missing thinking that wasn't going to
01:36:08.360land in a good place. Because she was building trust, still hoping for a confession, and because
01:36:13.640she had also offered to represent him, Cindy maintained client attorney confidentiality
01:36:19.080and did not bring this new information to police or to the new legal team representing Deborah.
01:36:25.600John Pacerno replaced Cindy as Joe Tacopina's local counsel. According to him, those three phones
01:36:31.680have never been found. They were trying to locate the cell phones by the pings on the cell phone
01:36:37.740towers geographically. When they do their triangulation, it's not specific. They came
01:36:42.880out to an area that's a large wooded area, which did receive quite a bit of interest from law
01:36:48.780enforcement. They did a couple of searches there from Missouri Missing as well with citizens in
01:36:54.280that area, but nothing ever really came from the cell phones. Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller
01:36:59.740are Kansas City moms who are co-authoring a book about this case. You know, there's been
01:37:04.460speculation that the phones maybe were discarded by the real kidnapper and then just found by
01:37:12.600somebody who then called that number. How do you gals like that theory? I think it's just as viable
01:37:20.480as any other theory. The phones do not make sense. I think it's almost impossible to make sense of
01:37:26.520the phone. To this day, it's an open question. Why does a one-step-above-homeless guy steal a
01:37:34.100baby. It's not like there's some known black market for babies that I mean, that would be
01:37:38.240something so sophisticated to get your foot into. He wouldn't have that. Right. So it's to what end
01:37:44.040again, reporter Jim Spellman. That's what I've come back to over and over again is to what end.
01:37:49.880And you're absolutely right. There's no way that somebody like Jersey or this guy, Dane Greathouse
01:37:54.920also had a lot of legal problems as well, that these are not the kind of characters who would
01:38:00.700be likely to be involved in some sort of high dollar, you know, baby stealing ring or something
01:38:07.720like that. If that even exists, it's incredibly uncommon and that these guys would somehow get
01:38:14.000involved with it seems, you know, incredibly unlikely. Cindy Short keeps coming back to her
01:38:20.580time with Jersey. When they talked about his childhood, he told her he was put in a boy's
01:38:25.380home at age 10 and was later institutionalized to deal, he said, with his pyromania and impulse
01:38:32.000control problems. The other thing that was chilling for me were the tears. It felt to me like
01:38:40.380there was this, we were right on the tip of him wanting to tell me something, but he couldn't.
01:38:51.500And I didn't have the kind of leverage that police had.
01:40:12.200This 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.
01:40:30.560I was dealing with manic episodes of postpartum depression and still didn't have very much family support.
01:40:40.480His father was already out of the picture.
01:40:59.900brought me into the judicial system and charged me with a felony
01:41:03.980and then served two years in prison. How do you feel about it now
01:41:08.240looking back at the way you were taking care of him?
01:41:12.980I just regret the fact I didn't have the support that I needed.
01:41:17.120So 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.
01:41:38.420and then getting pregnant was the only reason i didn't kill myself and then to lose custody of him
01:41:48.120it has really affected my will to live he was underweight is that why he was underweight
01:41:57.260severely can we not talk about this this is the worst thing in my life and you're just dwelling
01:42:04.600on it and I really don't appreciate it. We can. We can move right past. I'm trying to participate
01:42:10.440for the sake of maybe Lisa not to focus on the worst thing in my life, the most embarrassing
01:42:17.140thing. She was very emotional right from the start and I was moved by it. It seemed like
01:42:24.140real emotion to me. Yeah, it was not, Megan. Most of it. It was not? Is that what you just said?
01:42:30.020Yeah, yeah. She's a master at turning on and off the tears.
01:42:34.880At some point, Phil, she was like shaking. She was almost hyperventilating and she was like trying to get her.
01:42:41.920Megan, 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.
01:42:58.160If 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.
01:43:11.920Every time you ask a question, you see what we call the trifecta of deception, which is evasion, persuasion, and aggression.
01:43:22.100So she doesn't give you what you ask for.
01:43:25.540She then uses her trials and tribulations to convince you that there's no reason in the world why she should be suspected.
01:43:39.580The 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.
01:43:54.880And, you know, that's her way of trying to get people to back off.
01:44:01.360She wants you to feel bad about her so that by the time she's done, you don't even remember the question.
01:44:09.580The other thing that she does that's very, very interesting is she gave us many what we call truth in the lie.
01:44:20.460For example, when she says, what I'm really trying to do is get everyone to focus on Lisa and not me.
01:45:19.600I 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.
01:45:45.400you're going like full bore against her
01:48:56.200Like, 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.
01:50:42.140to believe that that's not him doing a couple of things.
01:50:47.860What he is doing is he is trying to cover his tracks, first of all,
01:50:54.720because if those phones turn up somewhere,
01:50:58.520he thinks his fingerprints or other association,
01:51:02.400digital association, will be made with him.
01:51:05.680So he wants an explanation of why he's on there, you know, doing something.
01:51:11.280I 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.
01:52:40.280While 42-year-old John Tanko, known as Jersey, may seem to have been the best suspect given his criminal history
01:52:46.760and that mysterious call from the Irwin's stolen phone to the phone of Tanko's ex-girlfriend, Megan Wright,
01:52:54.240on the night baby Lisa went missing, no arrests were ever made.
01:52:58.180In 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.
01:53:10.000Jeremy and Debra have been left in limbo.
01:53:15.000Please God, keep her safe until she is home with us.
01:53:18.920And occasional interviews, including one with me that aired in January 2014.
01:53:23.700When 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.
01:53:31.380Yeah, we actually, I did it all day today when we were walking around before we came here to see you.
01:53:37.580And I just said to Jeremy, I'm really tired of looking at everybody else's kid open. It's mine.
01:53:44.820This has to be its own form of torture.
01:55:46.180I just listened. I wanted to know things. I wanted to. And I did. I started to hear things. I mean, people talk.
01:55:53.500Kansas City moms Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller, who are writing a book about this case, have spent more than a decade looking for leads.
01:56:01.160Where did that take you? What did you find?
01:56:03.100It led us down some bad places, some bad neighborhoods, talking to some bad people.
01:56:11.140Was your theory starting to develop in a different direction from where the mainstream narrative was going?
01:56:16.180missy yeah definitely the mainstream narrative here is either jersey or the mom it is
01:56:24.560overwhelming how many people think that deborah had something to do with it nobody in this town
01:56:31.860is looking for her because they think her mother killed her and she got away with it
01:56:37.780much of what they've heard is secondhand and goes to some very dark places to drug dens to baby
01:56:45.120brokers to terrible conclusions. My understanding is that you guys have spoken to at least five
01:56:52.660people about this theory, that some criminal element somehow connected to the family was
01:56:58.120responsible for this, and that at least three of them mentioned the sale, the sale of a baby.
01:57:23.440To 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.
01:57:37.960This 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?
01:57:54.000There 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.
01:58:13.040So if it has to do with drugs, in other words, they might have been out of their minds.
01:58:16.640Sure. Yeah, I would I would guess for sure.
01:58:20.820If 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?
01:58:39.960We've had people tell us, you know, we'll tell them, you know, there's a $100,000 reward.
01:58:45.240And they say, well, what good is the reward if I'm not alive to spend it?
01:58:49.520Do you ever like do your own investigation, start talking to people about what they know, what they saw? Jeremy Irwin.
01:58:55.980Yeah, I mean, we we did for a long, long time.
01:58:59.000And I mean, most of the stuff that we've gotten is stories that people have heard from other people.
01:59:06.080So it's a lot of it's third person stories.
01:59:08.680And 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.
01:59:26.500Um, that's, that's definitely going on up here. And, um, at least at the time when I was
01:59:33.860talking with the investigators about it, um, they laughed in my face about it. So
01:59:39.960other storylines that have circulated amongst the locals involve Deborah interacting with the drug
01:59:45.480underworld, possible urban myths with no proof, including one that baby Lisa was handed off
01:59:51.860to pay a drug debt. Was there anything that you, looking back, may have done to bring any of that
01:59:57.760cast of characters into your life? You know, certainly not us, but we had people nearby
02:00:06.240that were into that lifestyle. And you and Debra never went there, scored drugs, called for anything
02:00:14.520from anybody connected to that place? Oh, no, no, never. Well, 100%.
02:00:18.400Did they ever accuse you or Jeremy of being on drugs or having a connection to this house?
02:00:26.820No, because we offered samples of our hair so they can test hair and find out anything and everything you've done.
02:00:32.620Some drugs, including methamphetamine, can be detected this way.
02:00:36.420And 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.
02:01:57.980Reporter Jim Spellman covered the case for weeks after the story broke.
02:02:01.500I 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.
02:02:13.240And I'll tell you, Megan, I'm a drug addict in recovery.
02:02:16.120I've been clean for 21 years now, and I'm pretty good at figuring out drug addicts.
02:02:21.720The idea that Debra Bradley or Jeremy Irwin were some sort of drug addicts in deep to dealers or something like that is ridiculous.
02:02:29.660I put, you know, as close to certainty that that is not the case as I can come not, you know, not blood testing people.
02:02:39.720And now you are going to hear the absolute worst, darkest versions.
02:02:44.720Again, these are most likely urban myths.
02:02:47.500We just don't know about what may have happened to Lisa.
02:02:51.500And we do need to warn you, they come with awful, grisly details.
02:02:57.680And 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.
02:03:08.140What you're saying is you've talked to people who think they know what happened and who say the baby was killed.
02:03:15.240Yes. 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.
02:03:27.680So there was no chance of her body coming up.
02:03:31.280Those are the kind of things that we've heard about this.
02:03:35.680Cindy Lorette, Deborah's aunt, heard something even darker.
02:03:40.220Somebody had Lisa and they got scared because the media, it became such a big deal.
02:03:47.540That person got scared and he chopped Lisa up.
02:03:51.700He took her to this house and one of the people that was in the house told me this story.
02:03:56.880that she was brought to the house and they were at the edge, the end of the bed and she was crying
02:04:05.060and they said to get the fucking baby out of the house. I still don't know what to believe.
02:04:15.580We managed to get our hands on police documents with equally dark testimonials.
02:04:21.040These are supplemental interview reports that police do not make public. They reflect interviews
02:04:26.820with two different men who claim to know something about the Baby Lisa case.
02:04:31.480We have confirmed the case file numbers on these reports, and we've spoken with both men,
02:04:38.100Chad Huber and the second man interviewed who asked us not to use his name.
02:04:43.520They confirmed their conversations with Kansas City Police Officer Michael Wells,
02:04:47.660the very same name that appears in these documents.
02:04:51.920It appears that Officer Wells was investigating a car theft ring, among other things.
02:04:56.820We discussed these police interviews with co-authors Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller.
02:05:02.820These 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.
02:05:10.760And this is a police interview with someone named Chad Huber. Do you guys know that name? Have you heard of Chad Huber?
02:10:36.120He was a carpet layer, best I remember.
02:10:39.080So he was always very active, hardworking kind of guy, trying to support his family.
02:10:45.360When I moved in there, they were trying not to lose their house.
02:10:49.640So 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.
02:11:03.020That'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.
02:11:11.260Did the Kansas City police investigate any of these claims or come to a conclusion about this cast of characters?
02:13:48.280Reporter Jim Spellman, who covered the case extensively, has a different view.
02:13:52.320Every indication that I got is that the Kansas City police and the FBI were conducting a
02:13:58.540very vigorous and thorough investigation.
02:14:00.880Every 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.
02:14:11.020And 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.
02:14:24.000That would have been an asset for the family.
02:14:26.300And the family ended up treating them like they were the enemy.
02:14:28.720Hmm. So to those who think, oh, the Kansas City police botched this, you know, they just they failed to investigate properly.
02:14:36.400We would have found her if we had a more robust police department on the case. You don't agree with that?
02:14:41.740I don't agree with that. I think that they did a very thorough investigation.
02:14:45.920All of the key people that surfaced in the media that surfaced through my reporting had been thoroughly investigated.
02:14:54.780John Jersey Tanko was questioned by the police at the time.
02:14:58.600He denies any involvement and the case remains open.
02:15:02.140Did the FBI ever tell you, Megan, that you were cleared?
02:15:06.000I realize you only had that one six-hour meeting.
02:20:22.220then I'll just stay never knowing, I guess.
02:20:28.920Jeremy would rather never know, and he and Debra didn't make it. Bill Stanton spent a lot of time
02:20:35.160with Debra and Jeremy. He joined me along with our other go-to crime expert, Phil Houston.
02:20:40.260You know, you could feel the bond. And I saw it, and I'm sure you saw it between the two of them.
02:20:47.320I mean, it's a nightmare. And statistically, they should have been divorced within months.
02:20:53.040But their faith in Lisa and themselves kept them together for years.
02:20:59.180You 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.
02:21:08.560It says he never doubted her. He never doubted.
02:21:12.080It's a sad love story. But when you watch her today, what jumped out at you?
02:21:17.320that this woman has evolved as a person, how she remains resolute. And I wanted her to be guilty
02:21:24.940more than anyone, because statistically she was. I wanted to wrap it up and get the heck home.
02:21:30.500You know, they had no reason to accept me in their home. I told them as soon as I got there,
02:21:36.000I'm not here for you. Meaning that if it's you, I'm coming for you. And I said that to them.
02:21:42.060And they looked me square in the eye, helped find our baby.
02:21:47.140What 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.
02:21:58.040There's an example of a father who found his kid after X years.
02:22:16.940But doing things like that, I believe her that she did searches for a child who came back.
02:22:22.480Why would you do that if you knew your child was no longer alive?
02:22:24.600No, that's what gets her through the day.
02:22:27.560What did you make of that stuff, Phil?
02:22:28.940I believe that she has, but it's also her undoing, I believe.
02:22:33.960I 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.
02:22:57.160And 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.
02:23:07.260Think 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?
02:23:19.580That leads me back to these police reports that you guys have seen, these interview reports that we managed to get our hands on.
02:23:24.980And 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.
02:23:41.380But they talk about having seen pictures of a grave site, pictures of a mound of dirt.
02:23:46.560Somebody allegedly brought the baby in a black garbage bag and buried it.
02:23:51.640Like, 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.
02:24:05.960So 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.
02:24:24.260And, 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.
02:24:37.920You 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.
02:24:46.180The greatest thing I think Debra's got in her favor, you tell me if I'm wrong, Bill, is Phil Houston.
02:24:58.020I 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.
02:30:34.060You 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.
02:30:55.080And 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.
02:31:08.460But if you could right off the bat can get him to listen to you, you've got a shot.
02:31:14.500We could talk all about the questions, but the first phase is getting him to stay.
02:31:19.600The further way getting him outside that front door gives her more time.
02:31:24.320So time and distance give Megan options, because unless we get that engagement, all of this is for naught.
02:31:33.880I understand, Bill, but I think you may have a chance to get him to open up a little bit.
02:31:39.660So, Phil, psychologically at that moment, what are you trying to do?
02:31:43.020Build 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?
02:31:54.320without trying to buddy up or cozy up to him.
02:32:48.740Okay. Or trying to stop a denial because...
02:32:54.080Yes. 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.
02:33:10.460But people do break and they break at moments for reasons we don't understand.
02:34:06.960You're absolutely wrong. We do this all the time.
02:34:12.600I will leave my shoe on Megan's camera and be happily wrong.
02:34:17.420I 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,
02:34:35.840that's tantamount to a confession no i get it but it's all about the engagement does he take the
02:34:42.620hook or not you know that's it's it's the opening 10 seconds if megan doesn't hook him in five to
02:34:49.62010 seconds then there's nothing bill i i talked to terrorists who are far far more can you know
02:34:58.940conditioned not to not to give up information. And they talk. They talk if you approach them
02:35:07.140in the right manner. I feel like we're formulating a plan where I kind of like I like what Phil is
02:35:14.000saying, like where we show up. We just we're kind of open about it. We don't pop out with cameras.
02:35:18.900It's clearly you and me, Bill, walking to the door. You're close, but I'm like in the lead.
02:35:24.600and we asked to speak with him following, you know, loosely Phil's script.
02:37:51.660And so on March 7th, 2024, I got rigged up with hidden cameras.
02:37:56.680I 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.
02:38:05.120New 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.
02:38:14.220The crew stayed in a van nearby, and Bill Stanton and I walked down his street.
02:40:38.400I don't want to have to sit in prison for five years and go to trial.
02:40:42.740You know, the thing is, the thing is, it's like Deborah and Jeremy have been, you know, tortured.
02:40:53.000And 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.
02:41:02.160I don't have any involvement. That's what I'm saying. None whatsoever.
02:41:05.740Yeah, I mean, the FBI vacuum died the house.
02:41:10.120If my DNA, you have a million skin cells.
02:41:13.100You go like that, they're going to bag it off and they're going to DNA it to me.
02:45:05.600You 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.
02:45:25.980That kid is 11, now 13, you know, in school, you know, has a rich family, you know, something like that.
02:45:34.780I mean, that's the best case scenario.
03:00:15.600start with the tongue bill stanton that's what i recommend start there
03:00:21.340oh he's got it delicious okay it's so good to have you guys here in this setting i'm so i've
03:00:31.580been looking forward to this from the moment we walked off property there bill and i'm just so
03:00:36.360the audience knows i have not spoken with phil or bill at all about this since it since the day
03:00:42.180I haven't spoken to Phil at all. So I have no idea what he thought of the whole exchange.
03:00:45.420And yet we spent so much time preparing for it. So this is exciting. Bill, we walked out of there,
03:00:50.740we got into the van and really could not believe it. Like, I think you and I were both like,
03:00:55.460oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, you know? And then I asked him if he would sit down
03:00:59.680with our cameras. He said, no, but talk about your impressions, Bill.
03:01:03.800There was so much going on in my head for your safety and our safety. And then when he started
03:01:11.160talking and he was so relaxed. So this man, what I felt he was doing was trying to sell us
03:01:18.840and you weren't having any of it. I couldn't believe how much he talked. I really thought
03:01:26.500at any second we're going to get kicked out of here. The fact that we were there that long
03:01:30.660is phenomenal to me. That was my least likely scenario to happen.
03:01:36.260And then, Phil, you're the human lie detector. What did you think?
03:01:40.060Megan, 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.
03:01:57.060definitively. I'm thrilled to hear you say deception detected because that's what I thought.
03:02:04.380I walked out of there and I was like, I've got more doubts about this guy than ever.
03:02:08.100But our whole team did not feel that way. And I just thought there were my own baby Phil lie
03:02:15.880detector abilities, right, just because I've followed you for so long, were going off like
03:02:20.920crazy. I thought there were many indications of deception. He had too many explanations.
03:02:28.000And I remember asking you about Megan Wright, what would a truth teller sound like? And you said,
03:02:34.060I can't tell you that exactly, but there would have been a whole lot more. I didn't do it.
03:02:39.780You know, I didn't do it. So let's play the first exchange that we had with Jersey,
03:03:42.080I 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.
03:03:57.780And 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.
03:04:16.240But also when he said, that's what I'm saying, I didn't have any involvement or I don't have
03:04:22.820any involvement, that's what I'm saying, that doesn't mean that isn't what it is, so to
03:04:36.040So that one was a real key right off the bat that there's probably more lies to follow.
03:04:42.960Well, 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.
03:05:06.560And wondering if you can tell us what your involvement was in the disappearance of baby Lisa.
03:05:12.280I 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.
03:05:29.500In there, the deceptive behavior that really stood out was his immediate aggression against the FBI.
03:05:40.540And 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.
03:05:54.820So 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.
03:06:24.240But 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.
03:06:44.440Well, maybe maybe it would have been found if, you know, half of Kansas City and mainstream media wasn't in and out.
03:06:53.320Yes. 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.
03:07:06.080They don't need to say, they would have found my DNA.
03:07:09.240They would have found my fingerprints.
03:07:10.600They're just kind of like, I didn't do it.
03:07:12.720I don't have to convince Megyn Kelly otherwise.
03:07:14.620Yeah, he's using the convincing statements.
03:07:18.660And then you look at how he's standing on the ladder.
03:07:21.580He's trying to look very nonchalant up there.
03:07:24.680But in fact, he's very threatened by you and very intimidated internally by the questions
03:08:26.520He doesn't know what your intentions are.
03:08:28.300so he's a little scared. And so that anchor point movement that we saw represented a spike in his
03:08:35.940anxiety. And he'd sit tight and just look like he's not threatened. And that's a thing you'll
03:08:42.800see in prison a lot. The key is people have to look and act as if they're not threatened by
03:08:49.840anything or anyone around them. And given his prison time, he's pretty good at that.
03:08:55.220the ladder is not only elevating him, but it's a barrier between him and me. There, there is that
03:09:02.100sort of defensive thing of it's in front of me. I've got my arms around it. I'm, I'm safer behind
03:09:08.500this ladder. Um, and we'll definitely get into why did he talk? Because that was our big debate
03:09:14.000before Bill and I went, is he going to, but I've got to get to the phones before we do that. So
03:09:20.280that was the one thing we discussed beforehand. If, if, if he would admit to us what he told
03:09:27.300Cindy Short, that he found allegedly the three phones on the night, uh, baby Lisa went missing
03:09:34.440that that would be a tantamount to an admission. Well, here's how that went in part.
03:09:40.640Now, did you have those phones? Cause we, we understand that you told a lawyer,
03:09:48.900cindy short that you found those phones i'm seeing her whatever she wanted me here i didn't tell her
03:09:55.760i found those phones i said i found phones that night but i didn't find them no nothing oh why
03:10:02.460it's because she's asked me a million questions and i didn't want to make her happy whatever
03:10:07.700so the listening audience knows one of the things he did there phil which you've called attention
03:10:11.920to in the past it can be part of a cluster of deception is hands above the midline he started
03:10:16.780to move his hands like, oh, she did this, she did this. And you've told me in the past, and I know
03:10:20.960from your books, By the Lie, which everyone should read, when you're lying, the nervous energy has to
03:10:26.320shoot out of you somehow, whether it's your leg crossed and foot clicking, or you start to rock,
03:10:32.600but hands above the midline, touching your nose, touching your head, moving around, can be part of
03:10:37.900a deception cluster. So what did you make of the phone's answer? Exactly where you were going,
03:10:42.740And, Megan, again, it represents a very significant spike in his anxiety level here.
03:10:49.780And 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?
03:11:11.680because and what he recognizes is that by saying that he even had phone that he did find phones
03:11:19.360that night is almost as equally incriminating as the fact that the phones he had the phones that
03:11:25.860were missing it's clearly one in the same so that's what led him to say in my opinion what
03:11:31.620led him to say oh i was just lying to her at that particular time i i was surprised that immediately
03:11:38.740He knew who Cindy Short was, and he knew about the phone conversation.
03:11:45.240If you think about it for that one moment, let's postulate that he is guilty.
03:11:50.860Let's assume, let's just for argument's sake, say he's guilty.
03:11:54.760Every breath, every moment is burned in his brain, right?
03:12:00.020And to me, this question of the phones is one of the most pivotal points made,
03:12:06.800Because if he found that phone, right, if he had the phone, that tells us he was in the house.
03:12:14.460I mean, it tells me he was in the house and he called Megan Wright.
03:12:20.320And that's why he was going back and forth.
03:12:23.540Is it advantageous for me to say I found the phones or, oh, no, I was just lying.
03:12:28.500He figured out to say he has the phones suggests he had the baby and he knew he didn't want us going there.
03:12:36.800But 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?
03:12:57.920I 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.
03:13:27.200and that Megan Wright was dialed. Megan Wright's number was dialed. He had to make it, in my
03:13:32.780opinion, he had to make a story. Oh, I found the phones. And then he realized it's not his best
03:13:38.120interest to say he had, oh, I didn't have the phones. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That was his
03:13:44.120weakest part because there were other moments where I thought, OK, you know what? He's he's
03:13:49.140doing better here. And one of those moments was when he tried to say he and Megan Wright
03:13:54.620broke up and he never saw her and i said you didn't you didn't stalk her at all or however
03:14:00.060i phrased it you know you didn't show up at her house and he owned that one right away i pulled
03:14:05.120up on the front lawn in a stolen van one time but i didn't talk to her so what was your reaction
03:14:09.980that fell because he could have said no i never did but he kind of owned her story of driving the
03:14:14.440truck onto her property and scaring her a little i i think uh megan what he's trying to do there
03:14:20.500going back to the concept of convincing statements or persuasion behavior, what he's trying to do
03:14:27.360is he's trying to say, hey, if I did something wrong, I'm more than willing to step up and admit
03:14:34.460it. And often that convinces people who aren't really attuned to the behavior and the reality
03:14:43.800of the situation and they buy into it. And that's what he's hoping would happen here.
03:14:48.740I'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.
03:15:01.760Frank 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.
03:15:15.300And he had now had a change of heart before the year. Here it is. Watch. Tell me if this looks like Jersey.
03:15:22.880I don't know nothing about that. Do you deny that confession? And do you realize what will happen as a result of your denial?
03:15:29.820Now, look, the FBI guys, they promised me a deal.
03:15:33.420So I made up a lot of stuff about Michael Corleone because that's what they wanted.
03:15:52.780Okay, so what's your takeaway now, having watched it, Phil?
03:15:56.180Like the, when it wrapped up, having watched the, you know, 25 minutes, what did you walk away saying? There are signs of deception. And?
03:16:05.580There'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.
03:16:17.800Not 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.
03:16:37.300All of that collectively suggests in my mind, this is our guy.
03:16:43.180So why did he talk to me, Phil? That was our big debate. That's why Bill had to eat his shoe.
03:16:47.800because he said he's not going to talk. And you said, he'll talk. It happens. And sure enough,
03:16:54.200he did talk. And the audience knows because they went through this with us, but he hasn't talked
03:16:58.240in all his time. As you know, I always go by my own daughter. She's about to turn 13.
03:17:04.880That whole time, he's kept quiet. He's never made a public statement. He's never even been
03:17:08.960caught on camera in any meaningful way. So why did he talk? As I said before, Megan,
03:17:15.120you approach them in a non-threatening manner. It's very counterintuitive in these situations.
03:17:22.920In fact, when we train law enforcement, one of the hardest habits to break is taking that
03:17:29.000immediate intimidation or intimidating posture and voice and accusations and so forth. You did
03:17:39.620none of that. You came up in a very polite manner, very professional manner. And you said,
03:17:46.180listen, we'd like to talk to you as if you were, you know, giving him the option. Now,
03:17:52.280he didn't know you weren't really going to give him the option that you would probably continue,
03:17:56.860you know, to ask questions and so forth. But he was willing at that point to say, okay,
03:18:03.880let me see where this goes. Right now, I'm up here on this ladder. I'm in a safe place.
03:18:09.820So what's the harm? And maybe I can gain some ground in the meantime. And because of what you
03:18:17.940ask him and how you ask them, it allowed you to gain ground. And he wasn't realizing that he'd
03:18:25.020let his guard down. And he's now talking to you in narratives instead of one word answers or
03:18:32.500refusing to answer or whatever. He's thinking, okay, maybe I can, you know, pull off a fast
03:18:40.080one, you know, with this lady. And in retrospect, when you think about it, guys,
03:18:46.320we were literally in his backyard. He had the high ground. He felt safe. We were in his territory
03:18:54.660on in his yard while he was up. He felt he was in control.
03:18:59.680That'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?
03:19:13.140Oh, 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.
03:19:36.000He was kind of, you know, being a peacock here and saying, hey, you know, I've been very honest with you.
03:19:43.660And in reality, he knows he's been anything but that.
03:19:47.240And then he followed it up with this thing has been effing my head up, but I'm not guilty of anything.
03:19:51.540But it's been which what did you make of that statement?
03:19:54.580It's it's again, truth in the lie, as many of these other statements that he made.
03:20:02.640It 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.
03:20:24.020And 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.
03:20:35.880What 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.
03:20:46.520And 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.
03:20:59.960Remember 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.
03:21:19.280um give you another example of that at one point you asked him i think about fingerprints or
03:21:24.740whatever on the phone and he he gave what on the surface would appear to be a truthful answer
03:21:30.520why would your fingerprints be on those phones
03:21:32.440i don't know i'm i'm just trying to figure it out okay well you're not you're telling me this
03:21:43.740this fact that my kid gets rich on the phone but i don't believe because i i don't i don't believe
03:21:49.580i ever possessed a phone i suspect his by the end of the night his fingerprints were no longer on
03:21:56.400that phone i and he knows that and he's he's wiped them off and so that's something that he can say
03:22:03.040you know truthfully yeah with confidence right he challenged whether his fingerprints were on the
03:22:07.520phone and the other thing he challenged with confidence was this why would a neighbor say
03:25:38.560And as a result, he has no choice but to defend her.
03:25:41.820interesting she wasn't sounding that way about him however like i don't know what he's capable
03:25:50.660of was more her line yeah yeah he has no choice but to defend her she has other options she isn't
03:25:57.280the person that actually did it you're so interesting phil this is fascinating talking
03:26:04.760to you okay now we're going to bring in jim spellman very excited to have jim spellman with
03:26:10.180reporter of CNN at the time this story broke, now independent. And Jim, you've been watching
03:26:16.580this whole thing. You've been watching the series. You've been working with us on this.
03:26:20.880What did you make of this exchange with John Tanko? Well, first off, I want to echo the kudos
03:26:25.660to you, Bill, and your crew for forgetting this and going in there. That was not easy,
03:26:29.860and it definitely took guts and courage to do it. Well done. This struck me as somebody,
03:26:36.380remember, he didn't know you were recording him, who's scared that the next visitor is going to
03:26:40.780have a badge on them right after them. And he was working whatever he could to try to find out what
03:26:46.560you might know and then to feed back something that's going to make him look good. I mentioned
03:26:51.000this earlier in a previous interview, Megan, but I'm in recovery. I've used crystal meth,
03:26:56.200smoked crack cocaine, et cetera. 23 years I've been clean last year. And I work on a near daily
03:27:01.080basis with addicts in recovery. And there's a kind of person who does nothing but lie. Even
03:27:07.620when there's no reason to lie, they lie. You ask him what color a blue car is, they'll say red.
03:27:13.600And this strikes me like that kind of person who just immediately is on the hustle, immediately is
03:27:18.860trying to weave something that's going to help him come out better at the end of the day. And
03:27:24.800You 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.
03:27:43.800And 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.
03:28:07.340And 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.
03:28:20.300Well 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.
03:28:30.980he told us for the first time there that he had not been cleared by law enforcement that was an
03:28:40.300interesting admission i think he didn't know that i believed he had been cleared otherwise maybe he
03:28:47.040would have just gone with that but it's because i asked it in an open-ended way like were you
03:28:51.160cleared and he said no no one ever told me that i thought that was very interesting
03:28:54.720and the police in kansas city and the fbi on occasion told me they used the language they
03:29:01.600had moved on right from john tango uh never of course being absolute about it but i think it's
03:29:07.280clear they have because look where he is you know and i mean none of these people have faced any kind
03:29:12.440of serious you know um uh investigation that they know after those initial weeks uh and months lives
03:29:19.820have just gone on. People's lives have gone on while the family and Lisa's are in suspended
03:29:26.500animation, you know. Why else, Jim, would there be a 10-year gap between the last time the Kansas
03:29:33.380City police called Jeremy or Deborah and today? It's inexcusable. No matter what they did or what
03:29:41.780the police did, somebody's got to get over this, right? And I think as part of reopening the case,
03:29:48.120The Kansas City police need to deal with the media, take their lumps and get this case back out there.
03:29:56.220No one's going to come off looking great if they reopen this in a sort of more high profile way.
03:30:01.580But 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?
03:30:13.540One of the things I was really surprised to hear Deborah say was that they had taken hair from them to test for for drugs.
03:30:22.280So if they if that's true and it was negative, then why would the police not release that at this point?
03:30:28.180Why 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.
03:30:39.720Maybe it's not Tanko, but someone who is tangential to Tanko.
03:30:43.700Maybe not somebody who was in the house, but someone that was near and around the house
03:30:56.600Something has to happen to change this.
03:30:58.680It's just unacceptable that it's up to people like you and people like Bill to be on this
03:31:03.940guy's lawn and not a much larger investigation.
03:31:07.260And 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.
03:31:36.300If 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.
03:31:52.260So 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.
03:32:14.360And 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.
03:32:30.440One 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.
03:32:40.720And 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.
03:32:52.760So 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.
03:33:03.860You're amazing. Thank you so much for the great work you've done on this.
03:33:07.220You've been a highlight of every episode. It's been a pleasure.
03:33:09.980And 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.
03:33:20.540And you just add that much more character to everything you do.