The Megyn Kelly Show - March 11, 2025


Police Narratives, Mystery Man Holding Baby - Part 2 of Megyn Kelly Investigates： Baby Lisa's Disappearance ｜ Ep. 1023


Episode Stats

Length

39 minutes

Words per Minute

161.59505

Word Count

6,392

Sentence Count

452

Misogynist Sentences

13

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

In the middle of the night, 10-month-old baby Lisa Irwin disappeared from her Kansas City, Missouri, home. Her mother, Debra, and her husband, Jeremy, initially blame each other for her daughter's disappearance. But new evidence points to someone else.


Transcript

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00:00:30.660 I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show.
00:00:33.160 In episode two of our special series, Megan Kelly Investigates on the disappearance of baby Lisa.
00:00:40.320 How could a baby vanish in the middle of the night?
00:00:44.180 It's a question that has lasted more than 12 years after the disappearance of then 10-month-old baby Lisa Irwin.
00:00:50.800 In this episode, I will be joined just a bit later by investigators Bill Stanton and Phil Houston with their expert analysis.
00:00:58.280 But first, we return to Kansas City, Missouri, where new clues emerge and police begin to look beyond Lisa's mother for some answers.
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00:02:25.660 Here's where we left off.
00:02:27.440 After hours and hours of police interviews that felt more like an interrogation,
00:02:32.160 Debra and Jeremy decide there's nothing left to say.
00:02:35.500 Deception expert Phil Houston has interviewed Debra at length, finding her credible.
00:02:40.020 And I asked Debra some hard questions about her drinking that night as I was covering the story for Fox News 12 years ago.
00:02:48.420 Thanks to anonymous benefactor Christy Schiller, there's now a $100,000 reward.
00:02:54.160 And Lisa has been missing for 10 days.
00:02:57.680 The scrutiny on Debra is relentless.
00:03:00.660 I want to know why baby Lisa hasn't been found.
00:03:03.560 The parents under suspicion.
00:03:05.160 Mommy and Daddy refuse to talk to cops separately.
00:03:07.800 In order for Mommy to talk to cops, she's got to have Daddy there.
00:03:10.940 Why?
00:03:11.260 The family just released this home video of this baby.
00:03:15.260 Why would they just release this video now?
00:03:17.740 Why didn't they release this video about five days ago?
00:03:21.020 Bill Stanton is steering the media away from Debra and toward the search for an intruder.
00:03:26.040 I know everybody's watching this family and watching this house, and that's fair.
00:03:29.560 Keep one eye on them, but also keep the other eye out on the streets, in every place, because there is a bad guy out there or bad people with this child, and we want to get this child.
00:03:42.360 But Debra needs to be defended.
00:03:44.200 I think sometimes we forget who these two people are and what they're going through.
00:03:49.140 Thanks to Christy and her team, Joe Tacopina, a big gun in the world of defense attorneys, takes up Debra's case.
00:03:55.780 If that name sounds familiar to you, it may be because he has defended former President Donald Trump in New York criminal court.
00:04:02.860 Someone out there obviously knows something.
00:04:06.280 Tacopina hired local attorney Cindy Short to handle things on the ground in Kansas City.
00:04:10.860 Well, my gut tells me, without any doubt, that somebody unknown to the family came into this home, was in and out of the home very, very quickly.
00:04:20.740 Cindy ran an all-female firm.
00:04:23.320 Seventeen women went to work on this case.
00:04:25.580 The women in my group and in my law firm were aching as mothers, and we wanted to be able to make a difference.
00:04:35.520 We were hoping that if we were really on the ground, talking to people, spreading ourselves out, that perhaps we could do something that would find the child.
00:04:49.940 Cindy Short had another reason to be so deeply committed to finding Lisa.
00:04:54.100 As a young girl, Cindy was very nearly abducted by a stranger in her own home.
00:04:59.040 Is it possible, Cindy, I mean, is it actually possible someone just walked in there, took no other measures besides wearing a pair of gloves, took the baby, walked in the front door, walked out the front door, and that was it?
00:05:11.900 It was no more sophisticated than that.
00:05:14.120 Yeah, I think so.
00:05:14.860 You know, having been in the house, the house is a ranch-style house.
00:05:17.820 It's very small.
00:05:19.200 As I recall, there were wood floors.
00:05:21.440 And so the distance between the front door and that baby's room is maybe five to seven to eight steps.
00:05:29.980 It's very short.
00:05:32.620 I spent many hours in that neighborhood late at night.
00:05:36.340 And that neighborhood is extraordinarily quiet, very, very dark.
00:05:41.420 So I do think that someone could come in and come out.
00:05:44.560 Now, if she was to have been taken out of the house at night, this is almost pitch black.
00:05:53.060 Reporter Jim Spellman showed viewers just how dark by turning off the camera light.
00:05:58.400 And if someone got in and out, could they do it without a trace?
00:06:02.960 I mean, I imagine one of the things that they were doing was taking fingerprints.
00:06:06.100 I never heard anything about a recovery on any sort of a hit on the fingerprints.
00:06:11.800 Nor have I.
00:06:12.620 They not only took fingerprints, they were prepared to take tool marks.
00:06:16.640 That would be if somebody used a screwdriver or something to claw their way into a window.
00:06:21.620 It was a very active investigation center around the house.
00:06:25.040 So there were searches, there were dogs, there were investigators in hazmat-type suits going in and out.
00:06:31.760 They cut pieces of carpet that they took away.
00:06:34.560 They took soil samples from the backyard.
00:06:37.880 Investigators have been taking blankets, toys, and clothing from the home.
00:06:41.400 Cindy Short.
00:06:42.320 I was in the case by the time the search warrant was done and they brought the dogs in.
00:06:47.640 And then they made this announcement about the dog alerting in the house.
00:06:51.980 Authorities seem to be scouring every inch of the home where baby Lisa Irwin disappeared.
00:06:56.800 The search comes days after an FBI cadaver dog reacted to the scent of a dead person inside the house.
00:07:02.840 That's according to a police affidavit.
00:07:04.700 We learned Friday that cadaver dogs had a positive hit at the foot of their bed, but last night the rug was still there.
00:07:11.480 Cindy Short pointed out at the time that the carpet inside the house remained intact, meaning no sample left the house, calling into question whether the cadaver alert was real.
00:07:23.460 I really believed that they were creating theater to make it look as if Debra was responsible.
00:07:31.680 And I felt that that was really unfair.
00:07:34.920 Debra's aunt, Cindy Lorette.
00:07:36.480 I remember the CIA people were taking the carpet from the garage, walking it up the driveway.
00:07:44.000 This is on TV, too.
00:07:45.260 This makes the news.
00:07:47.140 They have this carpet.
00:07:48.260 They walk it up the end of the driveway.
00:07:50.900 It goes right back down into the garage.
00:07:54.540 And everybody in the world thought that that carpet came out of Demi's bedroom.
00:07:59.120 Are you frigging kidding me?
00:08:00.700 Are you kidding me?
00:08:02.340 Meanwhile, what else and who else was being investigated?
00:08:06.060 Remember Onesto and Lisa Parscale, the couple who lived around the corner from Debra and Jeremy?
00:08:11.980 They both say they saw a man with a baby walking down the street just after midnight.
00:08:17.560 But the fact that she and her husband verified that they were discussing a baby being carried by a man the night before,
00:08:24.840 that came into their heads before they knew there was a missing baby, definitely speaks to their credibility.
00:08:30.040 Absolutely.
00:08:30.800 Here's Lisa Parscale talking to a local reporter.
00:08:33.900 He was carrying a baby and he kind of was pushing it against his chest.
00:08:38.780 And my husband kept looking at him.
00:08:42.100 And then the gentleman just kind of kept walking.
00:08:44.200 And he wanted me to call the cops.
00:08:46.360 And I hate that I didn't call him last night.
00:08:49.480 There was the grainy BP gas station surveillance footage.
00:08:53.500 And the suspicious dumpster fire just over a small grassy hill, several hundred yards from the Irwin home.
00:09:00.220 There were reports of baby clothes turning up in the dumpster.
00:09:04.100 They did not appear to be baby Lisa's.
00:09:06.600 And nothing came of that.
00:09:07.760 And then another person, Mike Thompson, comes forward to say that at 4 a.m., a few miles away, he saw a man carrying a baby.
00:09:18.860 Can you talk about that next sighting with Mike Thompson?
00:09:22.380 Again, attorney Cindy Short.
00:09:23.960 Mike Thompson was an individual who worked for Ford Claycomo and he was getting off work.
00:09:31.280 And it was closer to, I want to say, 3.30 or so in the morning.
00:09:37.220 And he was on a motorcycle and he came to a stoplight under a bridge and he was about to get on the highway.
00:09:45.380 And so he sees a man, which he said was underdressed, with a baby that he also thought was underdressed.
00:09:52.000 And he was up here a ways.
00:09:55.120 And he turned and looked at me and I looked at him.
00:09:57.900 I could tell he had a baby.
00:09:59.880 She had a t-shirt and either a training pants or a diaper on.
00:10:05.740 It was too cold for that.
00:10:07.240 He felt like it was really odd.
00:10:09.680 And his first instinct was to stop and offer them a ride, except he was on a motorcycle.
00:10:15.880 And so he really couldn't do that.
00:10:18.060 When Mike heard about baby Lisa being missing, he told his cousin what he had seen.
00:10:23.460 He said, well, you better call the police.
00:10:25.600 So he dialed the police and he told them that I had witnessed a man carrying a baby.
00:10:30.900 And they talked to me on the phone.
00:10:33.160 And the next morning they came to my house.
00:10:35.180 Two detectives did question me and left.
00:10:38.660 Now, three different people, the Parscals and Mike Thompson, say they saw a man carrying a baby in the early morning hours of October 4th, 2011.
00:10:50.160 Bill Stanton on CNN back then.
00:10:52.300 I think it is compelling.
00:10:54.400 I think the simple fact that you have three separate witnesses all saying something to the effect of they saw someone carrying a child that wasn't wrapped up in a blanket, that wasn't necessarily wrapped up in baby clothes.
00:11:07.760 So, if it was the same man who was spotted with the baby walking past the Parscals house, who may have had something to do with the dumpster fire in the nearby townhouse development, who then went through the woods to emerge near the BP gas station, and then went on to where Mike Thompson spotted him,
00:11:26.940 that would mean the man spent close to four hours within a three-mile radius, which makes you wonder what else could have been happening during that time.
00:11:37.360 And who is this man?
00:11:39.580 Police looked at the people who got closest to Debra and Lisa that night.
00:11:43.600 Reporter Jim Spellman.
00:11:45.100 They were taking DNA swabs from most of the people that were in the immediate homes on either side and family members down the line.
00:11:54.140 That was one of the first things they did, a family that lived directly next door.
00:11:59.040 That's Samantha and James Brando.
00:12:01.740 Their family was close with the Irwins, but that day the Brandos were separating, something they had decided earlier that afternoon.
00:12:10.300 James moved out just hours after Debra and Samantha started drinking.
00:12:14.380 Debra remembers the conversation.
00:12:16.460 I was trying to help her through it and, you know, just give her the best advice I could, and she was kind of spilling her guts, you know.
00:12:23.640 What she went through, what she's hoping she will accomplish next, you know, custody stuff, you know, just the deep things that come with, you know, separation of family.
00:12:36.040 Police investigated and questioned James Brando.
00:12:39.240 Then there was Shane Beagley, the 33-year-old landscaper who was the grandson of a neighbor.
00:12:44.700 He dropped by while Debra was drinking with Samantha Brando.
00:12:47.820 And now someone new enters into the mix.
00:12:52.240 John Tanko, nicknamed Jersey, a handyman with a criminal background who had been working on a neighbor's lawn.
00:12:59.720 So if you were to take Shane Beagley and James Brando and John Tanko and line them up, Tanko's about 10 years older, but they all, they look incredibly similar.
00:13:11.700 Same builds, same general kind of haircut.
00:13:16.040 Police immediately ruled out Shane Beagley as a suspect, while James Brando stayed on everyone's radar.
00:13:22.060 When we in the media came across James Brando, when I was the first person to interview him, and there was a lot of, I don't know, perhaps excitement almost in people that were following this closely that maybe this was a big lead.
00:13:33.560 Well, some people believe he might have had something to do with it, James, her soon-to-be ex-husband, maybe because he was angry that you were there, a confidant.
00:13:44.060 You know, I've heard people speculate along those lines.
00:13:47.700 Debra Bradley.
00:13:48.800 I've heard that too, but we have at this point no reason to believe that.
00:13:53.520 We have nothing to substantiate that at all.
00:13:56.900 He was the focus of this investigation in the initial days.
00:14:01.220 All of his alibi had been checked out by the police.
00:14:04.800 They got surveillance camera tape from a Walmart.
00:14:07.220 They interviewed people that he crossed paths with.
00:14:10.120 They checked his cell phone to whatever degree for its location.
00:14:14.980 They placed him on the Air Force Base where he worked.
00:14:19.080 All of that stuff.
00:14:20.600 That, to me, says this was a very thorough investigation.
00:14:23.620 James Brando was ruled out.
00:14:25.880 Attorney Cindy Short always had one person in mind.
00:14:29.740 The primary person for me was John Tanko.
00:14:32.560 He was an individual who was essentially homeless at the time, but he had connections to the neighborhood and had connections to a household that was only several doors up from the Irwins' home.
00:14:48.200 The person we have to talk about is this guy, John Tanko, who's from New Jersey, known as Jersey.
00:14:54.360 And people described him as being sketchy.
00:14:57.080 Soon, reporters were trying to find him.
00:14:58.920 The last known sighting of Jersey the handyman that we can confirm was Saturday, October 1st here at One-Eyed Jack's Tavern.
00:15:06.200 The owners of the bar told us they kicked him out for being a rude drunk who was spitting on customers on the patio.
00:15:12.420 What was significant for me was that he had a pretty healthy background in burglary and particularly in residential burglary.
00:15:22.440 We know that the day that baby was disappeared, he was working for this family named the Watsons around the corner, moving some sprinklers around for them.
00:15:32.060 People in the neighborhood, some knew him and some had hired him to do yard work, that sort of thing.
00:15:37.900 But, you know, he was a guy who was, you know, one rung above homeless.
00:15:42.380 And if you got to know him a little bit more, there were some really disturbing things that come up.
00:15:51.380 And as we get closer and closer to the time of this abduction, his relationship with this community is significant.
00:16:00.860 October 3rd in particular, which is the day of the kidnapping, he's at the Watsons' house.
00:16:08.620 He turns on the sprinkler at 11 a.m.
00:16:11.760 The next door neighbors see him turn the sprinkler on.
00:16:15.200 The Watsons are not there.
00:16:17.180 The sprinkler is still on at 9.30 p.m.
00:16:20.040 And so the next door neighbors, the Hertz, don't do anything to turn it off.
00:16:24.820 But at 11 p.m., they notice that it has been turned off, so they figure Tanko is back in the neighborhood to turn that off.
00:16:32.980 Speculation was that Tanko might have been wearing gloves for his handyman and yard work and would not leave fingerprints or cells from the skin.
00:16:41.520 So now we've got Tanko in the neighborhood within an hour of what we believe will be the kidnapping,
00:16:47.700 because the Pascals are going to see this kidnapper with the baby at 12.15.
00:16:54.820 He knows how people are moving in and out of this community.
00:16:58.300 He knows about the pets in the neighborhood.
00:17:01.020 There were a few dogs in the neighborhood, notably the house next door on the right side of the Irwin house.
00:17:07.860 That dog was notorious for barking at strangers from a fenced-in area in its family's backyard,
00:17:13.100 as reporter Jim Spellman demonstrated at the time.
00:17:16.400 This is the first obstacle somebody coming this way would face, is this dog.
00:17:21.260 Every time we've come back here at night or day, this dog greets us with a round of barking.
00:17:31.460 This dog is in the house next door to baby Lisa's house.
00:17:35.780 But the first couple of times I did this, this dog in the neighborhood went nuts, barked, you know, came after me, very disruptive.
00:17:45.340 Not just the kind of random barking, the kind of barking that a neighbor could possibly hear and say, what's going on back there?
00:17:51.720 But after I did that a couple of times, this dog was, you know, actually very friendly and the dog stopped barking.
00:17:57.520 So that's definitely something that I think investigators were looking at and something I think is worth looking at.
00:18:04.420 But no reports, as far as we know, of people saying they did hear the dog barking?
00:18:08.120 No reports said people heard a dog barking that night.
00:18:10.840 So no barking could mean that somebody carrying baby Lisa was familiar to the dog or did not go through the woods behind the house at all,
00:18:19.760 but instead went out the front, down North Lister, toward the corner where the Parscals would see.
00:18:25.620 Along that route, there was another dog.
00:18:28.620 Again, reporter Jim Spellman.
00:18:30.360 One of the most troubling things that came to mind that I was aware of was,
00:18:35.920 okay, so you have this Watson family that he was working for moving sprinklers.
00:18:39.660 Then you have Mary Hurt, who lives next door.
00:18:42.080 I think a very reliable witness.
00:18:44.260 So she had a dog that disappeared the day that baby Lisa disappeared.
00:18:48.720 And her next door neighbor, I know there's a lot to keep track of,
00:18:51.440 her next door neighbor says she saw John Tanko take the dog.
00:18:55.640 The dog pops up a few miles later, a couple of days later.
00:18:59.280 But, you know, I can't say how reliable that witness is.
00:19:06.400 That saw John Tanko.
00:19:07.820 But the dog did disappear.
00:19:10.060 The dog was not there.
00:19:11.540 She, you know, reported the dog missing.
00:19:13.760 The dog was found a few days later.
00:19:15.980 But certainly people speculated that if anybody wanted to create an easier path for themselves
00:19:22.560 to leave the neighborhood through here, getting rid of that dog would be key.
00:19:27.820 And we know that police took footprints, impressions from her backyard the day after this.
00:19:33.280 Here's that neighbor, Mary Hurt, explaining this back in 2011.
00:19:37.060 There was a sprinkler that happened to be on in that yard that made it moist over here
00:19:41.540 where as the rest of the ground was dry because there hadn't been any rain.
00:19:45.680 Now, this sprinkler tells these people were not home, right?
00:19:49.800 Who was operating this sprinkler?
00:19:51.900 Hey, their handyman.
00:19:54.160 They had that the police were actually looking for in the area, Jersey.
00:19:57.520 So according to Mary Hurt, that would place John Jersey Tanko in the neighborhood that night.
00:20:03.220 I think he really was one of the best suspects or persons of interest.
00:20:10.240 And although the police did speak to him, they did not speak to him as a suspect.
00:20:15.020 They spoke to him more as a kind of a person in the community.
00:20:20.980 And, you know, when you interview someone as a suspect versus someone as a witness,
00:20:27.700 that interview is very different.
00:20:31.260 They've come out and said, and they said early on that they've moved on from him.
00:20:36.540 They don't believe he's their guy.
00:20:38.480 Why would they do that?
00:20:39.500 I think one reason they would do that is because they have one theory
00:20:43.400 and they've stuck to that theory all these years, that it was the parents.
00:20:48.940 I think a second reason, and this would be a legitimate reason,
00:20:52.120 that one of the witnesses in the case, the lady that was several doors up from the Irwins at 12.15
00:20:58.760 who saw the man carrying the baby.
00:21:00.880 She's talking there about Lisa Parscale.
00:21:02.740 And she knew Jersey because he had done work across the street at the Watsons' home.
00:21:10.660 And she did not believe that the person carrying the baby was, in fact, Tanko.
00:21:15.800 I don't know whether she reported that to the police, but let's assume that she did.
00:21:20.140 And so that that was one way that they would have eliminated him.
00:21:23.520 In fact, Lisa Parscale told us she and her husband told police
00:21:28.140 they did not think the man carrying the baby looked like John Tanko.
00:21:31.920 But they couldn't be 100% certain.
00:21:35.240 Eyewitness identification is a tricky business.
00:21:38.120 And in Cindy Short's mind, this was not enough.
00:21:41.360 I don't think that that should have been the end of the story.
00:21:45.900 I think when you look at the totality of what he was doing,
00:21:49.760 particularly from July through October,
00:21:52.860 they should have done more to look at him.
00:21:58.000 For several days, attorney Cindy Short and reporter Jim Spellman
00:22:01.620 independent of one another, searched for an elusive John Tanko,
00:22:06.000 trying to get his side of the story.
00:22:07.980 He was a guy who had been in and out of trouble with the law.
00:22:10.920 And just a few days after the disappearance,
00:22:13.740 he was arrested on outstanding felony warrants.
00:22:17.640 And I've chased a lot of people around jails and police stations and stuff.
00:22:23.300 And it definitely gave me the sense that they were trying to hide him in the jail and judicial system.
00:22:30.920 Nobody who gets arrested on a simple bench warrant gets moved from place to place the way that they were moving him.
00:22:38.680 He had been incarcerated in Missouri for a burglary.
00:22:43.640 He had been released from his incarceration and then he had absconded,
00:22:48.860 which meant that he had escaped from basically a halfway house.
00:22:54.120 He was then living in an unhoused situation with a woman named Megan.
00:23:00.100 Megan Wright was 20 years old, new to Kansas City,
00:23:03.220 and was John Tanko's girlfriend for a time they had since broken up.
00:23:08.160 Tell me about John Tanko.
00:23:09.920 He's a next boyfriend of mine.
00:23:11.440 We dated for about five months.
00:23:13.320 So about a month, six weeks before Baby Lisa disappeared,
00:23:18.080 Megan had lived for a period of time in this townhouse development
00:23:21.760 that you could get to by cutting through these yards just around the corner from Baby Lisa's house.
00:23:26.600 And there is a lot of disruption or arguments between Megan and Jersey.
00:23:32.960 And later on in the summers about September, he ends up getting arrested again.
00:23:38.700 They break up.
00:23:40.900 He wants to get back with her.
00:23:43.660 She becomes homeless.
00:23:45.260 He ends up setting her car on fire.
00:23:48.320 Her car was set on fire and she reported it and it was investigated.
00:23:52.440 And she thought that John Tanko, Jersey, did it.
00:23:55.520 But nobody was ever able, as far as I can tell,
00:23:59.440 to confirm that he was the one that did it or what exactly happened there.
00:24:03.820 Fire is important here because we'll end up having a fire the night of the kidnapping.
00:24:08.960 That was the dumpster fire on the night of Baby Lisa's disappearance.
00:24:13.040 People zeroed in on this because many believed Megan Wright still lived in that townhouse near the dumpster
00:24:19.560 and thought Tanko, if he had the baby, may have been trying to go see her.
00:24:24.100 In fact, Megan Wright lived farther away by at least another mile.
00:24:29.400 And here's one more piece of information that made for a possible motive.
00:24:33.460 Megan and Jersey are kind of an odd couple.
00:24:36.280 She's much younger than he is.
00:24:38.020 But they start talking about, in July, having children.
00:24:42.420 Megan would like to have children.
00:24:44.600 There's a theory about him wanting to get back together with her.
00:24:48.540 And is this one of the reasons that he would have spontaneously taken this baby?
00:24:52.560 Back then, Megan Wright was a confused young woman, not completely coming clean about her own drug use.
00:24:58.860 I found out that he was getting innocent drug activity.
00:25:01.860 Do you know what drug is?
00:25:03.720 A mess, from what I understand.
00:25:05.680 She's had a hard life, struggling with abuse, addiction, and mental illness.
00:25:09.720 And so, after so much scrutiny and criticism in the months after baby Lisa went missing, Megan vowed not to talk about this case again.
00:25:18.480 Last October, she decided to make an exception and spoke with me for two hours, much of it tearful.
00:25:24.860 You don't have to be here.
00:25:27.580 You could easily have said to me, I don't want to do it.
00:25:30.760 It's traumatic for me and I don't want to go back over it.
00:25:34.000 You're doing it because you want...
00:25:35.300 It is.
00:25:36.120 Will you tell us why you're doing it?
00:25:37.860 I'm doing it because it's important to me to not participate in something that's going to be a circus.
00:25:45.120 What's important to me is that the story gets told fully.
00:25:52.380 I haven't seen that done yet.
00:25:54.440 I haven't seen anybody investigate whether Jersey was actually involved or not.
00:26:00.520 I wanted to participate in something that was going to light a fire under the ass of the police department and the FBI.
00:26:06.800 Because Lisa deserves that.
00:26:08.700 The Irwins deserve that.
00:26:10.580 That's the goal.
00:26:11.260 She says she has always wanted children, but that she knew she did not want them with John Tanko.
00:26:17.740 Did Jersey ever offer to get a baby for you?
00:26:22.300 No.
00:26:23.560 You know, there were reports about whether he did this and that was his motivation.
00:26:28.480 I think where that stems from is the situation leading up to him and I breaking up.
00:26:34.580 When I broke up with him, it was because I told him he wasn't the type of man I could see myself having a family with.
00:26:41.860 And I feel like it has been twisted for the last 12 years as a motivation for him or what would be his motive to take her if he did.
00:26:52.660 Again, attorney Cindy Short.
00:26:54.140 In September, he's becoming more erratic.
00:26:58.260 And so I think, again, this is significant.
00:27:00.980 And some of the erratic behavior has to do with his drug use.
00:27:05.360 He would disappear for hours on end with no explanation.
00:27:08.920 He was quick to anger, last to understand.
00:27:11.720 And it was, I just couldn't handle it anymore.
00:27:13.800 How likely is it, do you think, that Jersey, John Tanko, was involved in baby Lisa's disappearance?
00:27:23.400 It's hard to say, honestly.
00:27:25.820 I didn't know him very well.
00:27:27.660 He and I were together for less than six months.
00:27:30.800 And we only lived together for a couple of months of that.
00:27:34.540 So I didn't really know him all that well.
00:27:37.280 And most of the time that we were together, you know, we were using drugs together.
00:27:42.180 It wasn't a healthy relationship where you learned what somebody's capable of.
00:27:49.780 So we have an individual who's using methamphetamine, who's breaking into homes in the community,
00:27:55.840 who has a history of arson in this same community.
00:28:01.000 Meanwhile, he somehow ingratiated himself with a very nice couple, the Watsons,
00:28:07.060 who live just several doors down from the Irwins,
00:28:10.120 which means that he has an opportunity to really be watching what people are doing in this community.
00:28:17.480 He is a good little burglar getting to case the joint.
00:28:21.220 He knows who has children.
00:28:23.740 John Jersey Tanko was interviewed by the police,
00:28:26.760 and he denies any involvement in the disappearance of baby Lisa.
00:28:30.400 The case remains open.
00:28:31.560 Now I'm back with my go-to experts, Phil Houston and Bill Stanton.
00:28:37.540 Let's talk about intruder.
00:28:39.920 Now we have a name, potential name.
00:28:42.820 Maybe, maybe John Tanko, the handyman, the good little burglar across the street.
00:28:49.180 The thing about the neighbors to the Irwins, the Parscals, both of them,
00:28:56.520 seeing a man with a baby is huge.
00:29:02.940 It's huge.
00:29:05.220 Why doesn't that steer the whole investigation in a different direction
00:29:11.860 when the Parscals tell both the husband and the wife,
00:29:15.920 tell the cops they saw a man with a baby?
00:29:18.460 Because it's not Jeremy and it's not Deborah.
00:29:21.880 And it throws a huge monkey wrench in the narrative.
00:29:25.280 Now what?
00:29:27.480 Now what?
00:29:28.340 Now we have to rethink everything.
00:29:30.600 Who is this guy at a quarter after, you know, midnight,
00:29:36.200 which lines up perfectly, you know, in the chill air,
00:29:40.560 without a blanket, that they made such a note that it pinged on their radar
00:29:45.260 where the husband calls the wife funny, make sure you lock the doors.
00:29:49.580 To your point, they should have been all over that,
00:29:52.760 and that should have been the main focus of the media.
00:29:55.400 But it wasn't.
00:29:56.300 And then there's a third person who sees a man with a baby.
00:30:03.180 This guy, Mike Thompson.
00:30:05.280 And yet they seem to dismiss that as well.
00:30:08.720 And one of the things that the police apparently did not do
00:30:13.300 was to do what we call a fact pattern analysis,
00:30:16.680 where they take each individual and compare that to the set of evidence
00:30:21.940 and facts of the case that they have.
00:30:24.240 And often when you do that very systematically,
00:30:27.160 you'll see one or maybe one and a half persons jump out to the top of the list
00:30:34.000 and say, wait a minute, this fits much more so than this guy that we thought.
00:30:38.460 And we did that.
00:30:40.200 And then we related that to the police and to the FBI agent,
00:30:45.280 and they didn't want to hear it.
00:30:47.220 It was their bias again.
00:30:49.300 Can I tell you one of my main things about in looking back at this
00:30:53.140 is the problem of the 24-7 media requirements.
00:30:58.060 The media has so much time to fill,
00:31:00.360 and they have no answers in a case like this.
00:31:03.900 So they just sit and they speculate all day long.
00:31:07.580 All the channels do it.
00:31:08.740 All the anchors do it.
00:31:09.820 All the shows do it.
00:31:10.940 And at the same time, you've got the police who are going with the stats
00:31:16.140 that the parents always do it, putting out these little nuggets
00:31:19.820 like the parents have stopped cooperating.
00:31:24.060 Her story changed, which is true.
00:31:26.540 You know, Deborah's.
00:31:28.860 The dogs alerted, right?
00:31:31.980 The cops were telling people, essentially, it was her.
00:31:37.740 And the media checks all skepticism because that's an exciting story
00:31:42.980 that they believe anyway.
00:31:44.600 And it will fill the 24-7 cable news requirements.
00:31:48.920 I mean, Bill, you've been part of that ecosystem, as have I.
00:31:51.280 That's how it works.
00:31:52.840 Yep.
00:31:53.080 If it bleeds, it leads.
00:31:54.300 And they want a nice, finite end to the story.
00:31:57.200 And that's why they were so ravenous at getting to Deborah and Jeremy.
00:32:03.600 Jeremy, to interview them, to wrap this up, to see them taking out in cuffs.
00:32:09.880 How about the maneuverings with the carpet?
00:32:12.840 With the suits coming in after the fact.
00:32:15.660 Come on.
00:32:16.080 They had like the equivalent of several football teams in and out of that house,
00:32:20.320 you know, after the crime occurred.
00:32:22.200 And then they go in.
00:32:23.080 I forgot how many days or weeks later after the crime occurred with the crime scene unit.
00:32:30.780 I mean, that was, you know, played out in front of the cameras.
00:32:33.760 That, to me, was let's cover our ass.
00:32:36.820 Let's show everyone that we're doing our job.
00:32:40.740 And, you know, for us in the know, you know, it was pathetic.
00:32:46.180 Okay.
00:32:46.400 So, Phil, if the Parscals really did see a man with a baby,
00:32:50.180 both the husband and the wife, saw a man with a baby,
00:32:54.720 but did not think that man looked like anyone they knew.
00:33:00.480 That's a very good fact for John Tanko.
00:33:03.080 And is it the kind of fact that might lead sophisticated law enforcement or anybody to say,
00:33:08.880 that's not him.
00:33:10.260 That's not our guy.
00:33:11.080 That's maybe that's why they ultimately proved not so interested in Tanko.
00:33:15.340 Absolutely, Megan.
00:33:17.960 I think a major part of the problem is the people they had on the case were not in alignment
00:33:25.660 as to who they thought did it.
00:33:27.540 And we saw this when we had a conference call with the lead detective, the sergeant,
00:33:34.480 who was a woman who seemed to me to be pretty level-headed.
00:33:39.040 But the bureau guy clearly had a very strong opinion about the parents.
00:33:47.300 He was the person that I would call the internal champion.
00:33:52.100 And the internal champion in a case like that can make getting to the right conclusion very difficult
00:33:59.420 because they not only draw evidence, but they know how to debunk other people's opinions.
00:34:10.140 And the bureau guy brings a certain amount of gravitas to the situation.
00:34:14.700 And he just took it over.
00:34:17.440 And what we also took away is that Tanko began, in our minds, to take on a more prominent role.
00:34:27.000 And I was shocked when they said that they had cleared him.
00:34:31.460 They'd move on from him.
00:34:32.760 Yeah.
00:34:33.220 When, in fact, he was in the neighborhood or appeared to be in the neighborhood that night.
00:34:38.280 Also, you know, from a fingerprints perspective, here's a guy that wears gloves all day long
00:34:44.800 as a handyman and so forth.
00:34:48.220 Here's a guy that was arrested already for breaking in people's windows in neighborhoods.
00:34:53.400 And they seem, I don't want to, you know, know what, I can't read their minds, but they
00:35:00.780 seem to ignore most of that.
00:35:03.160 And let's not forget what Jim Spellman told us about the dog not barking and about the
00:35:10.620 neighbor who's claiming she knew Jersey and she saw him take the dog.
00:35:15.960 I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's exactly the kind of thing that would
00:35:20.880 get a red flag going for a cop.
00:35:22.540 Back to the theory of it was a planned burglary, potentially just to take the phones.
00:35:29.860 The baby could have been an afterthought.
00:35:32.600 But was that looked into?
00:35:35.080 When we train investigators, Megan, there's an interesting saying that we use, and we borrowed
00:35:39.760 it from the medical community.
00:35:41.120 This is what they tell med students, when you hear the sound of hoofbeats, think horses,
00:35:47.660 not zebras.
00:35:49.440 Don't make it more complicated than what it is.
00:35:53.340 And I think that there was a little bit, perhaps, of investigative panic.
00:35:57.780 And everybody was just in scramble mode trying to get something.
00:36:02.600 Because on the one hand, you have them ruling out a lot of very alarming evidence about a potential
00:36:08.160 theft of a child.
00:36:10.880 And on the other hand, you have them ignoring many facts about Debra that work toward her
00:36:17.120 benefit, like you interviewing her and saying what you said, like the fact that where would
00:36:24.000 she have taken the baby and disposed of the baby that quickly in order to get back into
00:36:28.160 her bed with no footprints or evidence that she had left the house, the boys hearing absolutely
00:36:33.060 nothing and no history of abuse.
00:36:35.380 That's an important piece, too.
00:36:36.640 You know, it's not like Debra was some child abuser who had been, you know, bringing the
00:36:40.980 baby into the ER over and over.
00:36:43.020 There's zero evidence to that effect, by all accounts, a loving mother.
00:36:46.580 So, you know, this makes perfect sense that they were running the stats, the odds with
00:36:52.020 her to the exclusion of all this other evidence.
00:36:54.340 Coming up, remember the stolen cell phones?
00:36:58.120 They could be key to this entire case.
00:37:00.920 Plus, new theories emerge that we will explore for the first time tomorrow, episode three.
00:37:07.180 But first, if you're watching right now, please take a look at this picture of Lisa as she
00:37:11.200 might look now.
00:37:12.360 If you're listening, you can see the photo on YouTube or just go to MeganKelley.com.
00:37:16.860 If you see her or think you might have any information that can help find her, please write to me.
00:37:23.540 The address is Megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at MeganKelley.com.
00:37:27.500 You can also pass along tips on the baby Lisa story to the Kansas City Police Department or
00:37:33.020 encourage them to get active on this case.
00:37:37.540 That would be very helpful.
00:37:39.080 Reach out at KCCrimestoppers.com, KCCrimestoppers.com, or call them at 816-474-TIPS, T-I-P-S.
00:37:51.300 That's 816-474-8477.
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