The Megyn Kelly Show - March 12, 2025


Mysterious Phone Call, New Leads - Part 3 of Megyn Kelly Investigates： Baby Lisa's Disappearance ｜ Ep. 1024


Episode Stats

Length

40 minutes

Words per Minute

160.74747

Word Count

6,489

Sentence Count

491

Misogynist Sentences

8

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary

10-month-old baby Lisa Irwin went missing in the middle of the night in the early morning hours of January 31st, 1998. After a $100,000 reward was posted and the widespread pursuit of an unknown man walking with a baby emerged, two people of interest emerged: a handyman with a history of drug abuse, arson and break-ins who was working nearby, and a woman named Megan Wright who had recently split up with Jersey Tanko.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and episode three of our special series,
00:00:05.120 Megyn Kelly Investigates on the Disappearance of Baby Lisa.
00:00:09.400 Nearly 13 years ago, in Kansas City, Missouri, Lisa Irwin, a 10-month-old baby girl,
00:00:15.440 vanished in the middle of the night. What could have possibly happened to her?
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00:01:26.520 Here's where we are. After a $100,000 reward was posted and the widespread pursuit of an unknown
00:01:34.020 man walking with a baby, two people of interest emerged. James Brando, who lived next door to
00:01:40.780 Deborah Bradley and Jeremy Irwin, and who had split up with his wife, Samantha, earlier that day.
00:01:46.500 Samantha, you may remember, was drinking with Deborah on Deborah's front stoop the night baby
00:01:52.020 Lisa went missing. Brando was investigated and ultimately ruled out. That left John Jersey
00:01:59.340 Tanko, the handyman with a history of drug abuse, arson, and break-ins, who was working nearby.
00:02:06.480 As we learned in our last episode, he had an ex-girlfriend who he may have believed wanted a baby.
00:02:12.500 Her name is Megan Wright. Was Tanko trying to bring Megan a baby in the hopes of getting back
00:02:19.160 together? And now we turn to perhaps the most crucial clue in this case. Remember those three
00:02:25.680 cell phones on the Irwin's kitchen counter taken the night that Lisa was? Two of them had restrictions
00:02:32.600 for non-payment. But right near midnight, there was an attempted phone call from the one phone that
00:02:38.660 worked. It was to a cell phone that was less than a mile away, and it lasted 50 seconds. So what did
00:02:45.460 the cops say to you about that piece of evidence? Lisa's father, Jeremy Irwin.
00:02:50.540 So they told me that there was a phone call from one of Deborah's phones, and we were able to get
00:02:56.120 the records from that phone line. Went back over three years, and I myself, hand by hand,
00:03:03.180 went over every number in the whole thing. And that was the first time in which that number had ever
00:03:09.960 popped up. I mean, and that's our best lead. Law enforcement went right to work on tracing that
00:03:16.100 call. It went to a phone that belonged to Megan Wright. Yes, the same Megan Wright who had recently
00:03:23.860 split up with Jersey, a.k.a. John Tanko. Now I'm learning that that mystery phone call
00:03:30.880 was made to the handyman's ex-girlfriend. We told you last week about that phone call. It was placed
00:03:39.000 to a phone belonging to a woman named Megan Wright. How much contact did you have with Jersey on the
00:03:45.700 day or the evening that baby Lisa went missing? Megan Wright. No, and I hadn't, he and I hadn't been
00:03:52.060 together for over a month at that point. And I had seen him and spoke to him prior to that, but nothing
00:04:00.420 on the day of. Megan was 20 at that time and had moved to Kansas City earlier that year. She told us
00:04:07.180 she had been in an abusive relationship, left it, lived for a time at a domestic violence shelter,
00:04:13.340 and after that was moving from group home to group home, temporary living situations. She says she met
00:04:20.340 Tanko at one of them. It was probably two months into to us meeting and hanging out together that I
00:04:28.520 learned that he was selling, that he was bringing drugs to that house to the other people that lived
00:04:32.680 there. And that's when I was invited to snort a line of mess for the first time. And I did, you know,
00:04:43.480 that was the first time I'd ever, ever done it. And I was at this horrible point in my life.
00:04:49.140 And drinking too much, pretty much every day. Not the best of decisions, but it wasn't a far step
00:04:58.460 from where I was at. So that was the first time I ever got high on anything. You know what I mean?
00:05:06.200 It was a life-changing experience that I never saw coming for myself.
00:05:13.660 By the time of Lisa's disappearance, Megan had become a full-on methamphetamine addict and was
00:05:20.400 trying to stay away from Tanko. The very last time she saw him, Megan says Tanko scared her.
00:05:26.160 The last time was when he had the van and almost hit the porch. He aggressively left the road, drove into
00:05:35.300 the grass of the yard and almost clipped the porch as he carped the car to, or the van, to run up the stairs
00:05:44.220 to try and get in the house to get me. That's the last time that I had any type of contact with him. And like I
00:05:50.780 said, it was from 20 feet away with four or five people in between us that we had any contact.
00:05:57.420 And this is prior to Lisa's disappearance?
00:06:00.560 Yes.
00:06:01.840 Megan moved to a house on 44th and Brighton, a little over a mile away from the Irwin house.
00:06:06.780 I had moved there in fear of John because he kept coming back to that house where I had originally met
00:06:16.180 him where I was living at the time. He would not leave me alone after I broke up with him.
00:06:20.500 By her account, it was a trap house, a drug den. And her contribution to the household was to let
00:06:25.920 people use her phone.
00:06:28.140 Living in a trap house, what you can provide is everything. Like I said, having the phone and
00:06:32.900 paying the bill every month, that was one thing I could provide to everybody in the house. Now
00:06:36.420 everybody has access to a cell phone with internet.
00:06:38.760 When you're desperate and you're 20 years old and you're just trying not to die,
00:06:42.300 you'll do anything to stay anywhere. It's not outside, which is where the only place I had to go.
00:06:50.440 Why would anyone involved in the disappearance of baby Lisa call your cell phone the night baby
00:06:57.860 Lisa went missing?
00:06:59.380 I have no idea. It's hard for me to say. I had only had that number. It was like a Verizon prepaid phone
00:07:05.660 for about six months. I still got calls for other people, whoever had had the number
00:07:12.000 prior. There were several people that used my phone in the house that I lived in on a regular
00:07:17.280 basis. So there would be calls coming in for those people.
00:07:21.000 On the night Lisa went missing, October 3rd, Megan says she left her phone on an upstairs table.
00:07:26.800 I was in that house in the basement, getting high in the very early morning hours of October 3rd
00:07:36.140 for the last time of my life. So I know exactly where I was at. After I left there, it was probably
00:07:44.360 3.30 or so in the morning. I went to the Waffle House with one of the girls that was getting high
00:07:50.980 with me at the house there.
00:07:52.880 Okay. And so you, and you left that house, but you left your cell phone behind at the drug house.
00:07:57.340 Yes. I left my phone there and there were people that were using it throughout the evening. So we
00:08:03.720 had dinner or breakfast, whatever. Went to Walmart, did our shopping, checked out after food stamps hit
00:08:11.440 at six in the morning. I probably got back to the house seven or eight in the morning. And that's when
00:08:18.240 I was handed my phone that had been cleared of texts and call logs and told, Hey, somebody said the FBI
00:08:24.660 had called her phone and I had no idea what was happening at that point. That's when I turned
00:08:30.320 the news on and was able to see the broadcast of her missing. Did you say who picked it up? Let me
00:08:38.120 talk to the person who talked to the FBI. That's what I said. I said, who had my phone? Who was using
00:08:43.240 it? Who were they talking to? At that time, Megan says she was told that Dane Greathouse, a man staying
00:08:50.400 in her same house that night, had her phone. And describe Dane for us. I didn't know him very well.
00:08:57.000 He had been, like I said, we were, I was living at a trap house. He had been in and out for about a
00:09:02.200 two week period prior to that day. So I had seen him. I had been like kind of informally introduced
00:09:08.600 to him, but we never really hung out together in the house. How old would you say? He was maybe a few
00:09:16.260 years older than me at that point, 24, 25, I think. A month after Lisa went missing, Dane had
00:09:23.080 a text exchange with a Kansas City TV reporter and denied any connection with Megan Wright or the
00:09:29.120 missing child. But he did say that he had used her phone. I used Megan's cell phone to have my phone
00:09:36.060 turned on and some rides lined up, Dane texted. When our producer talked with him, Greathouse said he did
00:09:42.000 not really know Megan Wright, but did confirm that they both stayed at the same house for a few
00:09:46.700 nights, the house on 44th and Brighton. Greathouse said Megan did indeed share her phone with everyone
00:09:52.620 there. And he told us he used her phone three times to make calls, but says he never once answered it.
00:10:00.000 The public records only tell half the story.
00:10:02.820 I tried to get all those records to be preemptive about it, because if the FBI called my phone,
00:10:06.940 I want to know why. That's not something that happens to anybody in their regular life.
00:10:12.940 Megan Wright tells us that terrible night for the Irwins was a big turning point in her life, too.
00:10:18.880 She says the very next morning, she began to get her act together.
00:10:22.820 And I decided at that moment, never getting high again.
00:10:28.000 So October 4th is my first day sober, 2011. I've been sober since.
00:10:33.440 About a week later, she says the FBI brought her in for questioning.
00:10:37.560 So when it was a couple of days later at that point, the FBI stopped me and take me in for
00:10:43.640 questioning. They connected all the dots and confirmed that they had attempted to call my
00:10:48.660 phone on the evening of because they had gotten the call records from the Irwins phone and they
00:10:55.200 were just trying to call the number back immediately. That's why my phone was called.
00:10:59.580 What was your reaction when they told you?
00:11:01.680 I was terrified. Terrified. At this point, I was a week sober.
00:11:09.560 And once they were done asking her about her own possible involvement,
00:11:13.340 they grilled her about her ex, Tanko.
00:11:16.180 He definitely knew my number by heart because he called me from multiple phones all the time.
00:11:21.000 Like I said, when we first got, when we were first talking, he didn't have a phone. He had just
00:11:25.720 gotten out of jail, was living at the honor center and was trying to get back on his feet.
00:11:29.840 And then he was so devastated when I rejected him and left him and told him why, you know,
00:11:37.600 you're not the type of man I can have family with. And that's what I want in my life.
00:11:41.440 And I don't know if the way I delivered it or the circumstances surrounding our breakup or if drugs had anything to do with it on his part at that point.
00:11:53.420 But he just revolted. Everything in him hated me after that.
00:12:00.580 And the more that I told him, I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Don't come around here.
00:12:07.180 You know, we're not getting back together. It just was so constant with him until I left the city.
00:12:15.080 Did you know that he was a burglar?
00:12:19.160 At the time, no. I've seen his arrest reports and stuff since I broke up and have learned a lot more about him.
00:12:27.800 What month was the breakup in 2011?
00:12:30.560 It was after Easter that year. I want to say it was like May or June before the 4th of July.
00:12:44.320 Because I didn't end up going to my family's 4th of July party that year because I was upset about the breakup.
00:12:50.680 Okay. And do you have any reason to believe he stopped using meth at any point in 2011?
00:12:57.260 I have no idea. Like I said, after I broke up with him, I tried my very best not to have contact with him, especially in person, because he made me incredibly nervous.
00:13:07.520 I have a lot of PTSD from the things that he put me through that I've tried really hard to work through over the years.
00:13:16.380 But there's a lot of it I can't, you know, I can't let go of. I can't forget being that afraid.
00:13:23.480 Were you thinking, you know, this guy's kind of crazy? Could have been him.
00:13:29.740 Yes, I definitely thought this guy is crazy and that he was horrible to me, traumatized me.
00:13:37.280 But I have no idea what he's capable of.
00:13:41.040 Again, reporter Jim Spellman.
00:13:42.520 I think if you start to look past the family, it's likely that it's somebody who at least knew the neighborhood to know that this baby was in this house.
00:13:51.460 And so he's somebody that absolutely is top of mind.
00:13:54.900 If not a suspect, because he's another person that the police said that they moved on from, that perhaps somebody in his world might know something more.
00:14:04.260 The phones and the phone use continued to be a mystery.
00:14:08.740 At 3.17 a.m., one of the phones tried to access voicemail.
00:14:14.180 Now, why would that be?
00:14:16.580 Five minutes later, at 3.22 a.m., there was an attempt to use the phone's web browser.
00:14:22.740 As I reported for Fox News back then, Debra's attorney said there were five attempts made to get online via the phone, and the phones never got more than a third of a mile away from the house on North Lister.
00:14:37.180 And remember this from our last episode.
00:14:39.740 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.
00:14:53.600 You would think, OK, let's see who's on the other end of that number.
00:14:57.540 And that was Megan Wright's phone.
00:14:58.900 So, OK, boom, we're off to the races.
00:15:00.780 Megan Wright knows the abductor.
00:15:02.560 Not that simple.
00:15:04.160 Reporter Jim Spellman.
00:15:05.760 Not that simple at all.
00:15:06.760 First off, I don't believe the police have released the full records of those phones involved.
00:15:12.880 And I think that that is information that they have purposely withheld to be able to use to their advantage in their investigation.
00:15:20.220 So we know that at least one of those phones was used to make at least one call to Megan Wright's phone.
00:15:26.860 You spoke with her a lot.
00:15:28.560 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?
00:15:36.760 I believe every single thing that Megan Wright told me within her ability to remember things.
00:15:44.260 But I don't think that she was making up any of it.
00:15:48.680 She was very helpful throughout the entire thing.
00:15:51.800 If she tried to help us meet people, she would give us phone numbers of people.
00:15:56.620 She never asked me for anything the whole time that we were doing this.
00:16:00.540 And I think that she is exactly who she says she is.
00:16:07.800 A troubled person, absolutely, but not somebody who had any direct involvement in this.
00:16:14.500 Meanwhile, Kansas City attorney Cindy Short was working hard to find answers, even after she was off the legal team.
00:16:21.900 After 10 days, she says she and lead attorney Joe Takapina parted company in a dispute over strategy.
00:16:28.500 But Cindy continued to look for Tanko.
00:16:31.360 And now she's going to tell us something she has never before shared publicly.
00:16:36.100 And it's fascinating.
00:16:37.900 A day or two after she left the case, Cindy found John Tanko in the Clay County Jail north of Kansas City.
00:16:46.380 And she interviewed him for 10 hours over a two-day period.
00:16:51.540 What he told her could change the entire trajectory of this investigation.
00:16:57.300 Set the scene for us.
00:16:58.600 Like, was it hard?
00:16:59.860 Did he come right out to talk to you?
00:17:01.840 He did come right out to meet with me.
00:17:03.960 And I think probably out of curiosity, I introduced myself.
00:17:09.600 And I told him who I was and what I was doing, and that I had been working on the baby Lisa case, that I was no longer representing Deborah.
00:17:22.000 And then I had some questions about him and his role in the neighborhood, and hoped that maybe he could help me if he was willing to talk about it.
00:17:33.640 And you're face-to-face.
00:17:34.860 There's no glass between you.
00:17:36.680 No glass.
00:17:37.200 And he's a small guy.
00:17:39.700 Does he look disheveled?
00:17:41.260 Is he a good-looking man?
00:17:42.720 What is he?
00:17:43.120 How would you describe?
00:17:44.720 He was tough-looking.
00:17:46.320 He looked like a sophisticated consumer of the criminal justice system.
00:17:51.560 He looked like someone who had had a rough life.
00:17:56.520 He was cautious, I think, as he should have been.
00:17:59.860 But Cindy says he was forthcoming and emotional about his troubled childhood.
00:18:04.480 It was an interesting rollercoaster of emotion, where he was sometimes stoic.
00:18:12.100 There were times, quite honestly, where he was in tears.
00:18:16.400 It was confusing in some ways.
00:18:20.340 I was trying to use my best persuasive skills to help convince him to maybe bring closure to a family, if he could.
00:18:34.420 I tried to get him to tell me where he was on October 3rd and 4th.
00:18:38.780 And he didn't think that would be in his best interest.
00:18:43.200 And then, a stunning confession.
00:18:46.960 He did tell me, though, that he had found three cell phones.
00:18:52.420 And he told me where he had found them.
00:18:54.600 He also claimed to have told the police that he had found three cell phones.
00:18:58.460 This is extraordinary.
00:18:59.460 The three cell phones went missing from baby Lisa's house on the night she was taken.
00:19:04.460 And now he's telling you.
00:19:07.620 And there's the reason we know his name to begin with is, yes, neighbors had said he was in the area.
00:19:13.280 It's kind of a sketchy character.
00:19:14.400 But the reason we know his name is because we have a phone bill that shows one of the Irwin's three cell phones called Megan Wright.
00:19:23.460 Yes.
00:19:23.800 And so, once again, it's a link, potentially, back to Jersey.
00:19:28.220 And now, he's telling you they never found the cell phones.
00:19:33.440 He's telling you he found them.
00:19:35.920 Yes.
00:19:36.800 Yes.
00:19:37.420 And he's telling me where, which is not very far from the house.
00:19:42.160 So, he's placing himself, not just the proximity of the phones, but in possession of the phones.
00:19:48.380 He's claiming that he's with another woman at the time that they find the phones.
00:19:54.540 He tells me where they are under this bridge at 210 and North Brighton.
00:20:00.740 And, in fact, this is when I employed one of my investigators with a dog to go down to that location.
00:20:08.340 And he went so far as to tell me that the car that he was in with this woman had a leak.
00:20:14.340 And then I would be able to find a stain on the road where they had stopped.
00:20:20.140 And we did find a stain.
00:20:22.280 But, you know, roads have stains.
00:20:25.740 So, we went down there with the dog.
00:20:30.060 And under this bridge, there is a culvert.
00:20:33.540 And so, there is water there.
00:20:34.940 But it's very low water.
00:20:37.600 Because at one point, he had talked about throwing the phones into a pond.
00:20:42.560 And he'd also talked about the phones being in this woman's car.
00:20:47.080 But just to back up, just to back up.
00:20:48.740 So, he's saying, there we are having some car trouble.
00:20:52.280 Get out of the car.
00:20:53.300 And boom, three cell phones.
00:20:55.540 And I was just guessing that these belong to Deborah and Jeremy.
00:21:00.000 Like, does he offer any reason why he knows it's those phones?
00:21:04.140 He just told me there were three cell phones on the side of the road.
00:21:07.540 Now, he's not telling me that they're Jeremy.
00:21:10.640 But I think the connection would be that if he...
00:21:13.380 It's three cell phones that are sitting there together.
00:21:15.460 Yes.
00:21:15.900 Three cell phones sitting there together.
00:21:17.580 Now, at some point, he tried to tell me that I don't steal cell phones.
00:21:22.360 But the thing about it is, a thief, if you're going to go into a house to steal stuff, which this guy does,
00:21:28.840 then you're going to steal things you can sell really easily.
00:21:32.640 Cell phones, guns, any kind of electronics.
00:21:37.500 Things you can pick up easily, throw them in your pockets.
00:21:40.140 These three cell phones were sitting on a counter in the kitchen.
00:21:44.940 So, it would have been very easy for a burglar coming into the home through the front door or through that window.
00:21:53.340 The phones would have been right there.
00:21:55.020 But keep in mind Jersey's drug use and his rap sheet.
00:21:59.700 How reliable was he?
00:22:02.240 Was he playing games with Cindy, trying to get information from her to see what she and investigators knew?
00:22:09.180 It's extraordinary that in his time with you, he volunteered that he spent time with these cell phones.
00:22:16.340 Yes.
00:22:16.540 That even he seems to be suggesting are related to the case.
00:22:20.880 I think Phil Houston would say, that's a liar who doesn't know what you know about what connections he has.
00:22:30.080 You know, admitting just so much, just to see, you know, but leaving himself escape routes.
00:22:35.920 So, maybe he could get some more information from you or just in case you knew more than he thought you did.
00:22:40.600 Right.
00:22:41.340 Right.
00:22:42.360 That must have been chilling.
00:22:43.860 Was that chilling, Cindy, when he admitted that?
00:22:45.920 Yes.
00:22:46.260 I take it that was the most shocking revelation that he copped to finding three mysterious cell phones shortly after baby Lisa went missing.
00:22:53.660 How close in time?
00:22:56.240 It was right in that time frame.
00:22:58.120 It was right when it happened.
00:23:00.300 But yet didn't want to give you the timeline on what he did the night she went missing, thinking that wasn't going to land in a good place.
00:23:06.420 Because she was building trust, still hoping for a confession, and because she had also offered to represent him, Cindy maintained client attorney confidentiality and did not bring this new information to police or to the new legal team representing Deborah.
00:23:22.640 John Pacerno replaced Cindy as Joe Tacopina's local counsel.
00:23:26.980 According to him, those three phones have never been found.
00:23:30.260 They were trying to locate the cell phones by the pings on the cell phone towers geographically.
00:23:36.280 You know, when they do their triangulation, it's not specific.
00:23:39.620 It came out to an area that's a large wooded area, which did receive quite a bit of interest from law enforcement.
00:23:46.740 They did a couple of searches there from Missouri Missing as well with citizens in that area.
00:23:52.240 But nothing ever really came from the cell phones.
00:23:54.860 Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller are Kansas City moms who are co-authoring a book about this case.
00:24:00.260 You know, there's been speculation that the phones maybe were discarded by the real kidnapper and then just found by somebody who then called that number.
00:24:12.400 How do you gals like that theory?
00:24:14.920 I think it's just as viable as any other theory.
00:24:19.620 The phones do not make sense.
00:24:21.540 I think it's almost impossible to make sense of the phones.
00:24:24.120 To this day, it's an open question.
00:24:26.340 Why does a one-step-above-homeless guy steal a baby?
00:24:31.380 It's not like there's some known black market for babies that, I mean, that would be something so sophisticated to get your foot into.
00:24:38.180 He wouldn't have that, right?
00:24:39.580 So it's to what end?
00:24:41.560 Again, reporter Jim Spellman.
00:24:43.180 That's what I've come back to over and over again is to what end.
00:24:46.900 And you're absolutely right.
00:24:48.020 There's no way that somebody like Jersey or this guy, Dane Greathouse, who also had a lot of legal problems as well, that these are not the kind of characters who would be likely to be involved in some sort of high dollar, you know, baby stealing ring or something like that.
00:25:05.280 But if that even exists, it's incredibly uncommon, and that these guys would somehow get involved with it seems, you know, incredibly unlikely.
00:25:15.660 Cindy Short keeps coming back to her time with Jersey.
00:25:18.880 When they talked about his childhood, he told her he was put in a boy's home at age 10 and was later institutionalized to deal, he said, with his pyromania and impulse control problems.
00:25:29.980 The other thing that was chilling for me were the tears.
00:25:34.320 It felt to me like there was this, we were right on the tip of him wanting to tell me something, but he couldn't.
00:25:49.600 And I didn't have the kind of leverage that police have.
00:25:54.460 There was nothing I could give.
00:25:56.020 You know, there was nothing I could use to, other than the goodness of his heart.
00:26:03.800 Do you think he was thinking about confessing?
00:26:07.120 It felt that way.
00:26:08.440 And I walked away from it feeling that way.
00:26:11.960 We were just almost there.
00:26:14.900 I'm joined now by my partners in crime, if you will, longtime CIA interrogator and human lie detector, Phil Houston, and ex-MYPD and security expert, Bill Stanton.
00:26:28.280 All right, guys, let's talk about Cindy Short.
00:26:30.540 We were just almost there, she said.
00:26:33.360 This information about a jailhouse meeting with John Tanko is incredible, no?
00:26:38.440 Agreed.
00:26:39.240 If that is the case, if that is a fact, that is as close to a smoking gun as this case has come to at this point.
00:26:48.060 100%.
00:26:48.540 Moving on to the call to Megan Wright's phone.
00:26:51.080 This is critical.
00:26:52.320 Phil and Bill, you watched my entire interview with Megan Wright.
00:26:55.400 It went on for much longer than the excerpts that we've put in this series.
00:27:00.300 She's had a hard life.
00:27:01.980 She was very emotional throughout the two hours.
00:27:05.300 Here she is talking about losing custody of her child.
00:27:08.440 All right, 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.
00:27:27.580 I was dealing with manic episodes of postpartum depression and still didn't have very much family support.
00:27:36.600 His father, his father, his father, his father was already out of the picture.
00:27:42.460 And in the state of Missouri, instead of getting me psychiatric help or ordering psychiatric help, they brought me into the judicial system and charged me with a felony.
00:28:01.000 And then served two years in prison.
00:28:03.760 How do you feel about it now, looking back at, you know, the way you were taking care of him?
00:28:10.020 I just regret the fact I didn't have the support that I needed.
00:28:13.200 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.
00:28:35.440 And then getting pregnant was the only reason I didn't kill myself.
00:28:42.120 And then to lose custody of him ten minutes later.
00:28:48.240 It has really affected my will to live.
00:28:51.400 He was underweight?
00:28:53.140 Is that why he was underweight?
00:28:54.560 Severely.
00:28:56.800 Can we not talk about this?
00:28:58.540 This is the worst thing in my life and you're just dwelling on it and I really don't appreciate it.
00:29:03.400 We can, we can move right past.
00:29:06.080 I'm trying to participate for the sake of maybe Lisa not to focus on the worst thing in my life, the most embarrassing thing.
00:29:15.340 She was very emotional right from the start and I was moved by it.
00:29:20.540 It seemed like real emotion to me.
00:29:22.700 Yeah, it was not, Megan.
00:29:24.340 Most of it.
00:29:25.620 It was not?
00:29:26.320 Is that what you just said?
00:29:27.400 Yeah, yeah.
00:29:28.360 She's a master at turning on and off the tears.
00:29:31.300 But she's, at some point, Phil, she was like shaking.
00:29:35.440 She was almost hyperventilating and she was like trying to get her.
00:29:39.160 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.
00:29:54.600 If you're looking at her from the deception detection standpoint, what you see is, is that she's using these trials and challenges to hide something.
00:30:09.120 You know, every time you ask a question, you see what we call the trifecta of deception, which is evasion, persuasion, and aggression.
00:30:18.360 So she doesn't give you what you ask for.
00:30:22.900 She then uses her trials and tribulations to convince you that there's no reason in the world why she should be suspected.
00:30:32.800 And then she blames somebody else.
00:30:35.180 She attacks somebody else.
00:30:36.620 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.
00:30:51.700 And, you know, that's her way of trying to get people to back off.
00:30:58.380 She wants you to feel bad about her so that by the time she's done, you don't even remember the question.
00:31:06.680 The other thing that she does that's very, very interesting is she gave us many what we call truth in the lie.
00:31:17.460 For example, when she says, what I'm really trying to do is get everyone to focus on Lisa and not me.
00:31:26.640 Now, think about that.
00:31:28.080 If you're someone that's trying to, you know, avoid disclosing something, what she's really saying is, I'm trying to, you know, keep the light off of me.
00:31:39.340 So what does that tell you?
00:31:41.800 I mean, I know the obvious one that she's lying, but I mean, what?
00:31:44.800 Yeah.
00:31:45.300 Why?
00:31:45.600 She is protecting herself from whatever she knows about Lisa's disappearance.
00:31:52.680 She is protecting Jersey in a crazy way.
00:31:58.880 And what I mean by crazy way, I don't think she has a great, any longer she has a great affinity for Jersey.
00:32:06.040 I think she fears him.
00:32:07.720 But do you, having listened to it, Phil, do you have a takeaway on whether she was the phone holder that night?
00:32:16.660 I have a strong sense that she left her phone there or gave it to someone.
00:32:24.840 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.
00:32:34.420 And so I have a feeling there was an ulterior motive for why she left the phone there and didn't need it.
00:32:42.440 And you're going like full bore against her.
00:32:45.760 So under your theory is she she wanted the baby.
00:32:50.040 She was in on the baby plot.
00:32:51.960 She gave the phone to somebody else so that it wouldn't be on her.
00:32:55.300 And she intentionally went to Waffle House, Walmart, so she wouldn't be near.
00:32:59.800 And I'm not convinced, Megan, that that that it is a baby plot for her.
00:33:05.480 I'm not convinced of that at all.
00:33:07.260 But I think she knows either beforehand or after the fact what happened.
00:33:14.380 Now, Megan, I can imagine your audience is not going to be happy with what Phil says.
00:33:20.520 But Phil is not called upon to make people happy.
00:33:24.780 Phil is called upon to detect deception.
00:33:27.700 So while people may be saying, you know, how can he talk this way?
00:33:31.600 No, no, no.
00:33:32.700 He's putting his emotion aside.
00:33:34.680 What would a truth teller have sounded like?
00:33:39.940 Megan, it's it's it's impossible to know, because what I would submit to you is the focus would be on the the I didn't do it.
00:33:51.200 In the worst case scenario, she could have been the reason the baby's missing to begin with.
00:33:55.460 If you think about Megan and trying to convince the world that she's not involved, the same coincidental nature of her saying, on that very night, I decided that I'm going to go sober.
00:34:16.960 Yes. Yes. All right. I'm going to admit that stood out at me.
00:34:21.160 Why was that night so powerful?
00:34:23.600 Why on earth was it so powerful?
00:34:26.080 OK, but I'll defend her. I'm going to defend her.
00:34:29.980 You're already unstable.
00:34:32.560 You're on drugs. Your family doesn't want anything to do with you.
00:34:35.580 You were in a domestic violence shelter, you know, from some jerk in your life.
00:34:39.880 Now you're with this other jerk who you've broken up with, who's stalking you.
00:34:43.300 You're you're traumatized.
00:34:43.960 You're traumatized. There was a lot that morning at least she found out that the FBI was calling her and she's worried.
00:34:49.560 I don't know. She's worried. So could that be, you know, like I said, scared straight.
00:34:53.520 She says she says the FBI called her. We don't know that. That's what she said.
00:34:58.920 Yeah. Also, she said, oh, I didn't know who to call back.
00:35:02.580 Google the FBI and you have a phone number.
00:35:06.640 If somebody thought I had committed a crime, I'd be on the phone with the police or with the FBI.
00:35:12.600 She's a drug addict.
00:35:13.540 She lives in a drug house. None of these people wants to voluntarily bring law enforcement into their lives.
00:35:19.660 What does she gain by telling us falsely that the FBI called her when they didn't call her?
00:35:31.400 I don't see it. See, there you go.
00:35:33.620 I've rehabilitated her on one of your key points, Phil.
00:35:37.120 Take the L.
00:35:37.920 It's very possible that she's simply trying to get everyone to believe that she's been through all the right steps and she cooperated every step along the way.
00:35:51.600 I feel bad. 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.
00:36:05.060 She's not a dope.
00:36:05.800 You guys had me crying. I was crying.
00:36:09.040 Yeah, you were crying.
00:36:10.360 I was crying.
00:36:10.900 Phil is so cynical.
00:36:12.540 That's what we pay him the big bucks for.
00:36:15.360 I apologize. I hate you.
00:36:17.520 How confident are you? Because, like, I'll say this. I love you, Phil.
00:36:20.200 But, like, are you too biased against Megan Wright and in favor of Debra?
00:36:25.420 No. She can make herself cry by thinking about all the bad and horrible things that happen.
00:36:33.760 And she turns it on and off on command.
00:36:39.420 I mean, I know you're a genius, but I still have sympathies for her.
00:36:42.400 I just.
00:36:43.100 And we're allowed to do that, Megan.
00:36:44.700 We're allowed to have that emotional response.
00:36:47.640 But to Phil's point, many a bad guy and bad woman woman will prey upon that emotional response.
00:36:56.240 The bad guys know how to manipulate.
00:36:58.420 They have sad stories, but they still may be bad guys.
00:37:02.440 Now, do I think, you know, I differ slightly than Phil.
00:37:07.360 You know, I do think it's Jersey.
00:37:10.040 I do think that.
00:37:10.920 Yeah, I don't think it was an organized thing.
00:37:13.940 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?
00:37:20.260 I think it's Jersey as well.
00:37:22.320 I'm not disagreeing with you.
00:37:24.400 I think the admission to the lawyer about finding three phones on the night that three phones were stolen is is is is ludicrous.
00:37:38.220 Wait, what do you mean to believe that that's not him doing a couple of things in what he is doing is he is trying to cover his tracks, first of all, because if those phones turn up somewhere, he thinks his fingerprints or other association, digital association will be made with him.
00:38:02.640 So he wants an explanation of why he's on there, you know, doing something.
00:38:08.800 I knew it.
00:38:09.560 I said that to Cindy Short.
00:38:11.280 I said Phil Houston's going to say he was admitting just enough to cover something he did, but not the whole thing.
00:38:17.700 Yeah.
00:38:18.820 John Jersey Tanko was questioned by the police at the time.
00:38:22.120 He denies any involvement and the case remains open.
00:38:26.260 Coming up in our next episode, new theories emerge about the disappearance that take the story in a completely new direction.
00:38:33.500 We'll see you tomorrow for episode four.
00:38:35.920 But first, if you're watching right now, please take a look at this picture of Lisa as she might look now.
00:38:41.100 If you're listening, you can see the photo on YouTube or just go to MeganKelley.com.
00:38:45.580 If you see her or think you might have any information that can help find her, please write to me.
00:38:52.260 The address is Megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at MeganKelley.com.
00:38:56.240 You can also pass along tips on the baby Lisa story to the Kansas City Police Department or encourage them to get active on this case.
00:39:06.320 That would be very helpful.
00:39:08.460 Reach out at KCCrimestoppers.com.
00:39:11.740 Visit KCCrimestoppers.com or call them at 816-474-TIPS.
00:39:19.080 T-I-P-S.
00:39:20.060 That's 816-474-8477.
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