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

the least.

Hey everyone I'm Megan Kelly welcome to the Megan Kelly show and today's true

crime mega podcast Sunday episode today we have a great one all five parts of our

“baby Lisa series you might remember this one but if not you are in for a treat on a”

true mystery one that has just haunted me and many others for years still unsolved to this day we dive deep into the case including yours truly going under cover enjoy happy Easter God bless you and we'll see you tomorrow we begin on north-lister Avenue in Kansas City Missouri a family neighborhood quiet working class and on October 4th 2011 about to become the center of the biggest crime

story in America 10 month old baby Lisa Irwin disappeared in the middle of the night father Jeremy came home from his night shift at 345 AM and found the lights were on a window was open the screen pushed in the front door unlocked and his baby

girl was not in her crib must be a reasonable explanation he thought his first

instinct don't panic that's the last thing you expect is that one of your kids is going to be missing so initially when she's not in the crib it's like okay well she's in bed with Deborah she's in bed with one of the brothers she's maybe fallen out of bed and she's asleep under the crib he woke up the baby's mother his partner Deborah Bradley out of a sound sleep she appeared to have no idea

why baby Lisa was not in her crib Jeremy ran next door to see if somehow the neighbor had the baby then he called nine one one Jeremy and Deborah immediately went public begging for help no questions it has to stop we're off but somebody at a hospital adjourned the fire department the police station anywhere please bring her home how do you think about it today

Jeremy Irwin it's it's still pretty similar to the way it has been it's a lot of frustration and some anger and mostly just feeling like you're missing a huge giant chunk of your life Deborah Bradley was just 25 then she's 38 now your case is so unique because it became a huge national news story and you now have old interviews of yourself and press conferences you know when you look back

“on that what do you think I think I can't believe I survived and”

though so much time has passed what happened to Lisa that night remains a mystery news of Lisa's disappearance traveled fast search crews comb the neighborhood police dogs were deployed and the media descended on North Lister ass knowing up here to the house with metal detector homing the ground going through the yard a classic with crescent shapes suburban street just

north of the Missouri River Deborah's aunt Cindy Lorette still chokes up remembering that terrible day back in 2011 it was crazy unlike anything I've ever seen before or I've seen this I mean every which way you love there was there was police officers there was cars there was people I remember the CNN band I remember HLN band I mean you couldn't get down the streets there was

literally reporters climbing in trees trying to try to get snapshots of us what were your first impressions of the story and the scene Jim Spellman was there from the start reporting the story for CNN and its sister channel had line news this was a neighborhood not unlike where I grew up a kind of a working classish neighborhood well kept homes but not the kind of families

that would be prepared to deal with the onslaught of media police lawyers and everything else that would be involved in something like this it's also a neighborhood that was shocked because you know this was a neighborhood full

“kids and families and one of their own was dealing with I think every parents”

nightmare in those critical early hours and days Kansas City police the FBI

the ATF and a group of local volunteers searched the area they did not find lease out or any hard evidence within a week a timeline of the day began to emerge to 30 p.m. Deborah's dad comes by with her brother Philip Nets 445 p.m. Deborah and Philip go by baby formula and boxed wine their scene on store

drops by 515 p.m. Jeremy and electrician gets a call from his boss and

“soon leaves to work at a Starbucks unaware of the chaos and tragedy about to”

unfold just hours later 6 p.m. Deborah makes dinner for Samantha Sam's daughter as well as Lisa and her two half brothers five-year-old Michael and seven-year-old Blake 630 p.m. Deborah puts Lisa to bed by seven p.m. Samantha's daughter and Deborah's boys are inside playing baby Lisa is supposed to be in her crib of sleep both moms sit on the front step smoking talking and drinking

between eight and 10 p.m. Shane Begley a 33-year-old landscapeer who was the grandson of a neighbor stops by the stoop for a visit. Sometime around 10 30 to 11 p.m. Deborah said she checked on baby Lisa then went down the hall and gotten bed with the two boys. Before bed Deborah leaves three cell phones on the kitchen counter two with restricted use because of non-payment. It is believed

only one worked normally. They all end up missing 10 30 p.m. Samantha Brando is back home. She reportedly later said that she noticed the lights were turned off at Deborah and Jeremy's house. Some leads quickly emerged with possible sightings of a kidnapper. The next morning seven-year-old Blake tells police he heard noises during the night. Also the next morning the parcels who lived

around the corner told police what they had seen. Has been on Nesta was leaving for his overnight shift and wife Lisa was awake and inside. Once again reporter Jim Spellman. He thinks this is weird enough that he phones her in the house from the car and says hey come and take a look at this and she sees this man walking up the street holding a baby not wearing clothes and having

been in the window where she could see this happening and having been standing where his car was parked it would not be a problem to view this even though it's past midnight there were plenty of street lights. So show me exactly what you did you looked at this window tell me where your husband was and tell me what you saw. Nobody's mind immediately goes to oh somebody's kidnapping this

“baby that's what she told she said my mind did not immediately think kidnapping”

but the first thing in the morning when she saw this commotion going on was she told the police about this. What time of night did she say she saw the man with the baby? I'll tell you and she had it exactly because she shared me the phone records from her husband falling her. 1215. 1215 a.m. Stranger of doctrines put children in the most dire situation and so we know time is

ticking. Callahan Walsh of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Those early hours are the most critical because within the first two hours there's

a 70% chance you'll recover the the child deceased and about a 90% chance after 24 hours and the case like this where we don't know exactly who took baby or when and it's a possibility that it's a stranger of duction we know times of the essence was Lisa the baby in the man's arms more suspicious things happen in those early hours. 230 a.m.

There's a dumpster fire in a parking lot not too far from the Pascal's house. Could this be related? At 245 a.m. a nearby BP gas station surveillance camera shows a man in a light t-shirt emerging from the woods that bordered the neighborhood. It's too dark and grainy to see if he's carrying anything. And then as I reported for

Fox news at the time, Deborah's first account of her timeline gets a

serious revision turns out she was drinking more than she originally claimed and she's no longer sure about when she last saw her baby girl. When you went in at 10 30 after the neighbor left, what did you do? Probably went right to my room. Why do you pay probably? Because sometimes I check on her. Well most of the time I check on her and then the boys so I'm assuming that I went and

checked on her too but I don't I don't know. You don't remember.

“Let's talk about the why. How much did you consume that day?”

I had several, several glasses of wine. When you say several, more than three. Yeah. But that has nothing to do with her. More than five. Probably. More than 10 in the hope. Was it just wine or was it just wine? Yeah, it's just wine. Just wine. Please submit and the boys were laying down watching a movie at the neighbor's daughter. Were you drunk? Yeah. So the last time Deborah is sure

Maybe Lisa fell or was dropped or Deborah unknowingly rolled over on her while they slept or

worse. Did she deliberately kill her own child? At the very least Deborah is drunk and unreliable. It was a tough interview. I went pretty hard on you. Very difficult. You messed up. You said I had a lot of drinks that night.

“Some place between 6 and 10 and I think I blacked out.”

Now a lot of people wouldn't have admitted that. A lot of people would not have sat down with the press and said that at all. They would have been worried that it would have made them look some certain way. I didn't care how I loved. I mean, yes, Debbie drank. Deborah's aunt, Cindy Lorette. Debbie probably still drinks. It doesn't fucking matter. It does not matter. Sorry. I said that we all do. And if you're the perfect parent thing

good for you. Because this could happen to anybody. You don't plan on things like this to happen. You don't plan on turning the TV on and seeing what your relatives miss and let alone a 10 month old baby. The door wasn't locked, right? Reporter Jim Spelman. The door was not locked, but keep in mind that by her own admission, Deborah Bradley was drinking that night. I'm not sure that she could be trusted to confidently say whether she locked the door or not.

Obviously, they are our main focus. I'm not calling them suspects. Knowing her timeline was problematic and wanting to prove to police she had nothing to hide. Deborah volunteered to take a polygraph. And then she took police remarks to mean she had failed it. We were done and I was like, okay, so you know what happens now. And it goes, it gets real close to me and it goes, I think that you're very bad mother.

And I just broke down. And I said that it's not possible that I failed. And you just kept saying,

“I think you're a bad mother and you need to tell us what you did. And I just kind of fell apart.”

Not going to lie. My nerves. I actually wet myself because I couldn't believe what you say into me. Exhausted and emotional. Deborah and Jeremy decide they have shared everything making think of to help the investigation and need a break. But Kansas City Police publicly criticized the couple for not continuing to talk to them. The news coverage is water all. Just a couple hours ago at a news conference held by Kansas City Police and investigators in the

case. They've always been free. They've been cooperated up to this point. But early this evening

they decided to stop cooperating with the veterans. Kansas City Attorney, Sean O'Brien. And so the public impression was these parents had something to hide. And that came through on the news coverage. All along, police said, Lisa's parents, Jeremy, Irwin, and Deborah Bradley cooperated with police until Thursday night. Her parents are no longer cooperating with police. I don't get it because as a parent myself, if my child was missing, I would give anything I have.

Despite the sighting of the man with the baby, one week into the case, police seem to have only one suspect, her mother. ABC News Legal correspondent Dan Abrams asked Jeremy the

“question on everyone's mind. Could Deborah have done something accidentally?”

No. Maybe she tried to cover it up. No. First time I even thought that was when the police

had started asking us about it. So just from the statistics standpoint, it didn't surprise me. But law enforcement was really going after Deborah and also Jeremy. That's Marissa Rendazzo. The former chief research psychologist at the U.S. Secret Service. She would soon be tapped to work on this case. From the criminal psychologist side of me, I wondered what involvement she or her husband might have had. And so did I. And so did lots of

people. But when Kansas City Attorney Sean O'Brien started working with Deborah and Jeremy, he quickly realized no one was getting the whole storm. Because the police kept saying, the parent aren't cooperating. The parent aren't cooperating. It was like the mantra they were putting out on television. And it wasn't until after I got into the case, I realized that was totally not true. You know, they had spent 40 hours in questioning with the police.

Before I was brought into the case, these were people who were trying to help the police find their baby. So why were the police saying that? Were they just making that up? I think they didn't have a better suspect. Interrogation is not investigation. It's a strategy to get a suspect to make an incriminating statement period. That's all it is. And so it's a really dangerous position for them to be in. The other thing that I found out later

had been done was that they pulled a strategy on them that's called the prisoners dilemma.

is implicating them. And so they better start talking and get out ahead of it.

“Or they're going to be the one left holding the bag. And so they did that with Jeremy and”

Deborah. They had each done like a 10 hour video taped interview. And they took a little snippet out of each one. Jeremy Irwin. The cop comes in and he's like, hey, I want you to see something. So he sets this laptop down in front of me. And it's a video of Deborah. It is Deborah's interrogation video from like day two and three. Can he scrolls and he scrolls and he scrolls and he scrolls and scrolls and he scrolls and he scrolls. Finally finds whatever he's looking for swings the laptop back

around. Plays me a 12 second clip of Deborah clearly frustrated crying and she says, well, I don't know, I guess maybe he did it or something to that effect. He did what I could have stubbed my toe on the door. I could have spilled the cup of coffee. He did what like you literally showed me nothing. That was just

“one of the little things that they'll do to you while you're in there. And the polygraph,”

according to one of Deborah's attorneys, Deborah had, in fact, passed it. Obviously, their whole

thing was it was Deborah. Deborah did it. Deborah did it. So I always kept asking them. Deborah did

what? Go ahead. Finish your sentence and there was no sentence to be finished. Psychologists Marissa Randazo says that's confirmation bias. Essentially, what confirmation bias is that once you develop a theory, it's human nature to seek out information that confirms that theory and disregard information that would undercut that theory. It appeared that they were not pursuing alternate possibilities as with as many resources or sort of energy as they were their theory that it

was Deborah and or Jeremy. Investigators are quickly closing in on the baby's mother, Deborah.

“Jeremy's sister Ashley Erwin thought the writing was on the wall and said so in an interview with ABC News.”

Do you think Deborah may be facing in an arrest? Probably to be reliance with you. Yes. Why? Because it's what the police do. They don't have any leads so they have to pick it on somebody. Do you think it's inevitable? Yeah. Kind of. We're not a captain. Steve Young of the Kansas City Police Department. You know, we're under a pressure to find a child. We're not under a pressure to pin this on anybody a wrap it up or making a arrest. Even so, the pressure on Deborah was intense.

Oh, she was just a mess. Cindy Lorette remembers the stress of it. She was staying with the family to help out. She just didn't know what she was up or down or and she would just cry and she would. That's all her head under my arm or next to me or she just nobody knew what to do. And now we can introduce you to one of the most intriguing players in this whole story. Christy Schiller is a Houston horse breeder, socialite, one-time playboy model and a broadcaster.

What was the first you heard about the Lisa Irwin case? So I got a call from my stepson and he

said hurry and turn on Fox News and you were reporting. He said that there's a baby that's been kidnapped in Kansas City. Then Christy got a call from a family friend, Deborah's cousin, Mike Lorette. And he called me and he said I'm here in Kansas City and trying to protect my cousin and her husband. He said there's news people. It's shoving cameras to the windows. I'd like to thank all the people of Kansas City, the local National Media

for the convenience of court and coverage to keep baby, Lisa's picture out there. He said I'm just scared. She said I just don't know what to do. He's some train for a deathcon for and I just don't feel like anybody's coming here to help us. And I said help is on the way. Christy had her own theories. She had spent that summer glued to the trial of Casey Anthony, a mother accused of murdering her three-year-old daughter. I thought for sure that

you know, she was going to go down. And when the verdict came in, we the jury,

finally defended not guilty. And she said they're frozen. I couldn't believe it. And I turned

around as somebody was glued to stranger and I said mark my word the next parent that does not trim their child's nails right. You're going to serve hard time. Sure, that Deborah was caught in

that she met through her charity, K9's for cops, created and tribute to a police dog killed in the line of duty. She called Bill Stanton, a former New York City police officer, private investigator, and TV commentator, who was on her K9 board. Bill assembled a team that included Phil Houston, CIA veteran of 25 years. Phil created the deception detection method, still being used by the

“CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and law enforcement agencies around the nation. He is known”

as the human lie detector. Former Secret Service psychologist Marissa Rendazo was also part of

the team. First order of business, they needed to determine what if any involvement Deborah may have

had. By this point, the baby's father Jeremy had essentially been ruled out because there's security video of him working on an electrical project at Starbucks through most of the night, Baby Lisa went missing. Christy's team began to plan their own video taped interviews with the parents. Marissa worked with Phil on the questions for Deborah and Jeremy. I helped to really to talk through with Phil around what angle, what to think about when talking with someone who

maybe responsible for the disappearance or we were really concerned about possibly the death of Baby Lisa. So we know that the parents, especially the mother, was under suspicion by law enforcement and to figure out kind of what the different angles were, why parents, especially mothers, this 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. Now there was a plane waiting,

thanks to Christy Schiller, Bill and Phil headed to Kansas City. Once in the Kansas City area, in a rented house at a secret location away from the throngs of media, Phil and an associate interviewed Deborah. Phil Houston had seen their press conferences and how they answered questions, like so many of us he already had his suspicions about the couple. They'd been asked,

“"Did you do it, did you do it, did you do it?" And so you have to craft an approach to the questioning”

that that cuts through that, that minimizes all of the hystronics that have led up to this

meeting, if you will, and I was convinced that they were guilty until we asked that first question.

We have it on tape that moment where you got to ask your first question of Deborah. Let's watch it. Debbie, I think the first question that I need to ask you this morning, okay, is what involvement did you have in the disappearance of Lisa? None. The only thing I did wrong was a drink that night and possibly not be alert, not here. I'm sorry.

What did you glean from that? What are we seeing there? First of all, if you noticed, I didn't ask her, "Did you do it?" I up the ante by asking her a presumptive question. I'm presuming that it's quite possible, maybe even probable, that you did this, that you were involved. What involvement did you have? And her response to that was immediately

“without hesitation, none. But then she throws a curve ball at us. She says the only thing I did”

wrong, so she's confessing. She's saying, "Look, this is what I, this is the only thing I did wrong." Films reaction coming out of this was, no matter the angle that we tried, no matter the approach of the question, she was answering them truthfully and not showing deception. In a twist, even he didn't see coming, Fil determined Deborah is telling the truth that she had nothing to do with her daughter's disappearance. Well, I mean, I like you flew out there thinking they did it.

It's always the parents when the wife gets killed. It's always the husband. We all know this.

And I remember being flabbergasted. It just couldn't believe, like, what do you mean, challenged all my own biases? But I think led to better reporting on my part in covering the case. Right? Just check your bias. You could be wrong. Have some humility. There are people smarter than you are at detecting deception, who say she's not lying and neither is Jeremy. Armed with this knowledge, Christy Schiller anonymously offers a $100,000 reward for

information leading to the return of Baby Lisa. Bill Stanton made the announcement. It's going to be $100,000 reward put up for the safe return and/or conviction of personal persons

A secret she managed to keep, even from her own husband, is it true? He once said to you,

"Hey, did you hear? They posted a reward for the baby," he realized. And he said, "Tell me it wasn't you. And she said, "What were you thinking?" And he said, "We don't need our name on the side of a building. I want to know that this mother and father are being reunited in the two little boys with their sibling." Announcing the $100,000 reward was just one way Stanton kept the baby Lisa story in the news,

but Bill had a problem. "After the press conference, and I said a an anonymous benefactor, this nasty rumor of it was either NBC or ABC, and they were paying behind the scenes to get all the exclusives than attention." And that's when he called me. "No one believes the anonymous benefactor. I need for you to verify it to your comfort level, and we'll go from there." And I was thinking, "Sure." Yes, I'm interested in this story at any level, but of course,

what I would ultimately like is to talk to the parents. And that's where it landed,

and you know, explosive details came out that day. You know, had a ties and lows for Deborah, because that's when the public learned she had between six and 10 drinks. Do you have a drinking problem? No. I don't think so. Some folks are going to have an issue with you. "Oh, I'm sure they are more than five drinks while you're looking after a little baby

“into a little boy. She was sleeping." I wanted to ask a why did you choose to share that with me?”

"Cause it has nothing to do with Lisa's addiction, and I want to be honest about everything so that people will look for her, because I feel like if they're like, "Oh, she's being honest about that. She's got to be telling the truth about other stuff." And any people believe for Lisa's good, whether people like what I say or not, that's true. The wall-to-wall media coverage continued. "They are still searching urgently for the child, although they do say that as every

hour passes, this case gets harder to solve. And at this point, police freely admit they

have no suspects and no leads." That was always one of the biggest mysteries about this case.

Like, what kind of criminal, whether it's a parent, a family member or an intruder, is so good that they don't leave behind a fingerprint DNA or any other really meaningful clue, because no matter who did this, they did escape without a trace, reporter Jim Spellman.

“"So I think there's two possible answers to that. The first is, if it's somebody who you expect”

to have in the house in any house in a crime scene, if you expect to find their DNA and their fingerprints, then that evidence is of little help to investigators. But I think what you're asking is a really incredible question, because as you try to run through potential scenarios in your head, guessing more than anything, is it just so many of them leads to dead ends? Is there a some way that Deborah Bradley or husband Jeremy somehow did this themselves and were able to pull this off

in a short matter of hours? It seems incredibly unlikely, right? But then could some stranger somehow know that this was a house that had a baby in it where the husband was working a very rare night shift where the mom was perhaps not at her best hour having done some serious drinking that night, and then that's the night you stealthily get in and out of the house, making it through neighbors, and everything else, that seems equally as unlikely."

"There's so much we don't know about the evidence, because Kansas City PD won't talk to us. They say that's because this is still an open investigation. We have our doubts about how much investigating is really going on. And for that matter about how they handled this case. Now I'm joined by Phil Houston and Bill Stanton. They will be my partners in crime on this. My go-to criminal experts as we take a hard look at the facts of this case.

Looking back now, 12 years later, there's no nest cameras in every door. There's no even low-grade security cameras. Even the every gas station now has a good camera that will show you most of what happened there in today's day and age they were able to zero right in on whoever

“that was that emerged, and what a difference a decade makes." And that's why 12 years later,”

we're still talking about it trying to solve it, because it's every person's every parent's worst nightmare. Someone coming into your home in the middle of the night and taking the most

of some tunnel vision here. I mean, what we're learning already is that they're really interested

“Phil in Deborah and Jeremy. And in the opening hours of an investigation, one can completely”

understand that. Absolutely. And they both look guilty as sin if you look at it just from a global perspective. And then you have Deborah admitting to excessive drinking to the point of possibly blocking out. And you have cops saying that the parent stopped cooperating, which, you know, that leads everybody to be like, "Oh, that's it, they're guilty." She was done being interrogated over and over and over and over by police. She definitely accurately believed had a foregone

conclusion about her. And the other part to that too is, is that Deborah is no shrinking

violent. I mean, she's not afraid, you know, when you reach a certain point, to really let people know

what she's thinking about, how they're behaving towards her. And I don't know this. I'm speculating, but that she probably became fairly angry. And that anger could have been misinterpreted in the interior. Plus, just the odds, the overwhelming odds, you know, are she did it. That's the biggest obstacle to ruling her out. But let's spend a moment ruling her in.

“How does that look? What evidence does point to Deborah?”

Okay, it's a tough one. So let's, let's go with this hypothesis. So was it intentional or unintentional? If it was intentional,

then we're going to say she didn't drink as much. She was tossing the alcohol,

making it seem like she was drunk to the friend, right? Doing everything she normally does. She knows her husband is working at least until three, four AM. And she just doesn't want the burden of the child anymore, right? So she acts like she's drunk. She puts the kids in bed with her. The kids fall asleep, then she wakes up, takes her child and either sells the baby or, you know, makes the child go away, right? That would be one theory. On that theory, she would also have to

get out of the house and dispose of the remains and then get back into the bed before Jeremy gets home. And sees her at what he said was sleeping. And he believed. And you know, in the spouse, you can tell when your spouse is legit asleep and whether or not, but keep going. The accident theory is far harder for me to go over because, listen, we've all been in that half-buzz state, you know, where you go to bed, drunk, and then you wake up, half sober.

“How do you negotiate that? She wakes up. She finds that she smothered her baby, right?”

Now I have to get rid of it because I can't face reality. How does she do that within walking distance and have the presence of mine? Oh, let me take the phones. Let me not be seen. And if my kids wake up, there are so many variables to that theory. It's very hard for me to pursue that one. Far easier for me to go further down the road with she sold the child, which I do not believe. You know, when every new mother knows,

they know you don't take your baby and you're bed with her with you. Like, it's very dangerous. You can smother your baby inadvertently, but some do it anyway. I mean, some don't know. And then some do know, but they take the risk anyway because they're exhausted and the child's crying a lot. And they just make a mistake. They fall asleep there. And one thing leads to one other terrible thing. But the fact that she had her two boys in the bed with her, actually,

right, Bill, I mean, that just works against that theory. Like, absolutely. Those boys were interviewed and they were old enough to know if their baby sister was in the bed with them. Yeah. Right. They were just just so many different ways, you know, that if she did it, she would have gotten caught. Again, these are simple people. And I don't mean that in the detrimental sense. They're not master criminals. You know, if someone planned this out,

they wouldn't be able to do it. Just too many variables. You know, it was, in my opinion, again, the perfect storm of, you know, Jeremy being away for being over serve, the boys being in the bed, you know, for her to roll over on a baby and then get rid of the child, you know, could have done it. But she would have got caught real quick. And then again, just think about the guilt. This isn't someone that's, you know, a sociopath, serial killer that kid, killer person,

and, you know, once a week and then go out in life to stay married with your husband to look at your

be flying the scenes that we've all saw just doesn't play out to me. You know, she's not a sociopath.

“And she continues to talk to us. You know, you know, you guys know, I've had many of very tough”

segment on Deborah on my various shows. I just feel like the actual murderer would not keep putting themselves in this harm's way. Can we talk about the next or neighbor, Samantha Brando for a minute, because while we have been unable to reach her, you guys did talk to her. You also put her through the Phil Houston treatment to find out whether it was true, what that she was sitting with Deborah, that they were drinking together, that things went down the way Deborah said they did.

And most importantly, she validated the level of intoxication. She said, I hate to say this about

Deborah, but I don't know if I've ever seen her and I'm paraphrasing here, but I don't know if I've

ever seen her that intoxicated. There was more wine there than Deborah told us originally. Well, that could explain why Deborah didn't hear an intruder for sure. What did you appoint Megan when when Jeremy came home, no one heard him come in. He was walking around the house. He shut the window. He turned out the lights. He went into the bedrooms.

“Didn't wake them up for him either. Mm-hmm. That's true. So why didn't anyone ever come forward?”

If somebody stole this baby and did something with her, there's now one person who needed $100,000 enough to come forward and quietly say, I know what happened to her. The reason why I think no one is claim to reward because it was a sole actor who committed this crime and no one else knows about it, because to your point, Megan, that's $100,000 and they could do right and they could have done it at that time. Now was the baby sold or something more nefarious? Mm-hmm. That would that would

explain it if it were a sole actor who then kept his mouth shut. But that's one of the troubling things about this whole thing. Like if it was anybody who blabbed or if it were a group, somebody would have turned on somebody else and that just hasn't happened. So as it stands at this point, all eyes are in Debra. Coming up in our next episode, police continue to bear down on Debra.

“If she didn't do it, who did? What else was going on in the neighborhood that night?”

I'm Megan Kelly, welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, and episode two of our special series, Megan Kelly investigates on the disappearance of baby Lisa. How could a baby vanish in the middle of the night? It's a question that has lasted more than 12 years after the disappearance of then 10-month-old baby Lisa Irwin. In this episode, I will be joined just a bit later

by investigators Bill Stanton and Phil Houston with their expert analysis. But first, we returned

to Kansas City, Missouri, where new clues emerge and police begin to look beyond Lisa's mother for some answers. Here's where we left off after hours and hours of police interviews that felt more like an interrogation. Debra and Jeremy decide there's nothing left to say. Deception expert Phil Houston has interviewed Debra at length finding her credible. And I asked Debra some hard questions about her drinking that night as I was covering the story for Fox News 12 years ago.

Thanks to anonymous benefactor Christy Schiller, there's now a $100,000 reward and Lisa has been missing for 10 days. The scrutiny on Debra is relentless. I want to know why baby Lisa has been found. The parents under suspicion. And mommy and daddy refuse to talk to cops separately. In order for mommy to talk to cops, she's got to have daddy there. Why? The family just released this home video of this baby.

Why would they just released this video? Now, why didn't they release this video about five days ago. Bill Stanton is steering the media away from Debra and toward the search for an intruder. I know everybody's watching this family and watching this house and that's fair. 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

but Debra needs to be defended. Thanks to Christy and her team, Joe Takapina, a big gun in the world of defense attorneys, takes up Debra's case. If that name sounds familiar to you, it may be because he has defended former president Donald Trump in New York criminal court.

things on the ground in Kansas City. 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.”

Cindy ran an all-female firm. 17 women went to work on this case. So women in my group and in my law firm were baking as mothers and we wanted to be able to make a difference. 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. Cindy Short had another reason to be so deeply committed to finding Lisa. As a young girl, Cindy was very nearly abducted by a stranger

in her own home. Is it possible Cindy? Is it actually possible someone just walked in there

to ignore their measures besides wearing a pair of gloves? Took the baby, walked in the front door,

walked out the front door and that was it. It was no more sophisticated than that.

“Yeah, I think so. You know, having been in the house, the house was a branch south house. It's very”

small. As I recall, there were wood floors. And so the distance between the front door and that baby's room is maybe five to seven to eight steps. It's very short. I spent many hours in that neighborhood late at night. And that neighborhood is extraordinarily quiet, very, very dark. So I do think that someone could come in and come out. Now, if she was to have been taken out of the house at night, this is almost hitch black. Reporter Jim Spellman showed viewers just how dark

by turning off the camera light. And if someone got in and out, could they do it without a trace?

I mean, I imagine one of the things that they were doing was taking fingerprints. I never heard

anything about a recovery on any sort of a hit on the fingerprints. Nor am I. They took, they only took fingerprints. They were prepared to take tool marks. That would be if somebody used a screwdriver or something to claw their way into a window. It was a very active investigation center around the house. So there were searches. There were dogs. There were investigators and hazmat type suits going in and out. They cut pieces of carpet that they took away. They took

soil samples from the backyard. Investigators have been taking blankets, toys, and clothing from the home Cindy Short. I was in the case by the time the search warrant was done and they brought the dogs in and then they made this announcement about the dog, the learning and the house. Authority seemed to be scouring every inch of the home where they'd be Lisa Irwin disappeared. The search comes days after an FBI cadaver dog reacted to the scent of a dead person inside

the house. That's according to a police affidavit. We learned Friday that cadaver dogs had a positive hit at the foot of their bed. But last night the rug was still there. 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. I'd really believe that they were creating theater to make it look as if Debra was responsible and I felt that that was really

“unfair. Debra's aunt Cindy Lorette. I remember the CIA people were taking the carpet from”

the garage walking it up the driveway. This is on TV too. This is on this makes the news. They have this carpet. They walk it up the end of the driveway. It goes right back down into the back into the garage and everybody in the world thought that that carpet came out of Debbie's bedroom. Are you frigging kidding me? Are you kidding me? Meanwhile, what else and who else was being investigated? Remember, Ernesto and Lisa Pascal, the couple who lived around the corner

from Debra and Jeremy, they both say they saw a man with a baby walking down the street just after midnight. But the fact that she and her husband verified that they were discussing a baby being carried by a man the night before. That came into their heads before they knew there was a missing baby. Definitely speaks to their credibility. Absolutely. Here's Lisa Pascal talking to a local reporter. He was carrying a baby and he kind of was pushing it against his chest and my husband kept looking at him

and then the gentleman just kind of kept walking. He wanted me to call the cops and I hate that I didn't call it last night. There was the grainy BP gas station surveillance footage and this suspicious dumpster fire just over a small grassy hill several hundred yards from the Irwin home. There were reports of baby clothes turning up in the dumpster. They did not appear to be baby Lisa's and nothing

away, he saw a man carrying a baby. Can you talk about that next sighting with Mike Thompson again

“attorney Cindy Short? Yeah, so Mike Thompson was an individual who worked for Ford Playromo and he”

was getting off work and it was closer to I want to say 330 or 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 and he also thought was underdressed. And he was up here ways and he turned and looked to me and I looked again I can tell you out of baby when she had and she sure and either pretty fancier like I was too cold then. He felt like it was

really odd and his first instinct was to stop and offer them a ride except he was on a motorcycle and so

he really couldn't do that. When Mike heard about baby Lisa being missing, he told his cousin what he had seen. He's what you better call a please. So he dials a please and he told them that I had witnessed a man carrying a baby and they talked to me on the phone and in the next morning they came to my house to detectives did question me and left. Now three different people the parcels and Mike Thompson say they saw a man carrying a baby in the early morning hours of October 4th, 2011.

“Bill Stanton on CNN back then. I think it is compelling. 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. So if it was the same man who was spotted with the baby walking past the parcels 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 wear

Mike Thompson spotted him. That would mean the man spent close to four hours with in a three mile radius which makes you wonder what else could have been happening during that time and who is this man? Police looked at the people who got closest to Deborah and Lisa that night.

“Reporter Jim Spellman. 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. That was one of the first things they did.

Family that lived directly next door. That's Samantha and James Brando. Their family was close with the Irwin's, but that day the Brando's were separating. Something they had decided earlier that afternoon. James moved out just hours after Deborah and Samantha started drinking. Deborah remembers the conversation. I was trying to help her through it and you know just giving the best advice I could and she was kind of spilling her gut you know what she went through when she told

what she will accomplish next. You know, custody stuff. You know just the deep things that come with you know separation of family. Police investigated and questioned James Brando. Then there was Shane Beagle, the 33-year-old landscapeer who was the grandson of a neighbor. He dropped by while Deborah was drinking with Samantha Brando. And now someone new enters into the mix. John Tanko, nicknamed Jersey, a handyman with a criminal background who had been working on a neighbor's lawn.

So if you were to take Shane Beagle and James Brando and John Tanko and line them up, Tanko's about 10 years older, but they all, they look incredibly similar. Saying it holds same general kind of haircut. Police immediately ruled out Shane Beagle as a suspect while James Brando stayed on everyone's radar. 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 falling. It's closely that maybe this was a big lead. 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. You were there, a confidant. You know, they're, I've heard people speculate along those lines. Deborah Bradley. I've heard that too, but we have at this point no reason to believe that.

We have nothing to substantiate that at all. He was the focus of this investigation in the initial days. All of his alibi had been checked out by the police. They got surveillance camera tape from Walmart. They interviewed people that he crossed paths with. They checked his cell phone

all of that stuff. That to me says this was a very thorough investigation. James Brando was ruled out.

“Attorney Cindy Short always had one person in mind. The primary person for me was John Tanko.”

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 Irwin's home. The person we have to talk about is this guy, John Tanko, who's from New Jersey, known as Jersey, and people described him as being sketchy. Soon reporters were trying to find him. The last known sighting of George of A handyman that we can confirm was Saturday October 1,

here on one eye Jack's tavern. The owners of the bar told us they kicked him out for being a

rude drunk who was speeding on customers on the patio. What was significant for me was

that he had a pretty healthy background in burglary, particularly in residential part. We know that

“the day that he was disappeared. He was working for this family in the Watson's around the corner,”

moving some sprinklers around for them. People in the neighborhood, some new him and some had hired him to yard work. That sort of thing, but he was a guy who was one wrong above homeless. And if you got to know him a little bit more, there were some really disturbing things that come up. And as we get closer and closer to the time of this production, his relationship with this community is significant. October 3rd in particular,

which is the day of the kidnapping. He's at the Watson's house. He turns on the sprinkler at 11 a.m. The next door neighbors see him turn the sprinkler on. The Watson's are not there. The sprinkler is still on at 930 p.m. And so the next door neighbors, the heards, don't do anything to turn it off, but at 11 p.m. they noticed that it has been turned off. So they figured tanko was back in the neighborhood to turn that off. Speculation was that tanko might have been wearing gloves for his

handyman and yard work and would not leave fingerprints or cells from this skin. So now we've got tanko in the neighborhood within an hour of what we believe will be the kidnapping because the the Pascal's are going to see this kidnap or with the baby at 12 15. He knows how people are moving in and out of this community. He knows about the pets in the neighborhood. There were a few dogs in the neighborhood, notably the house next door on the right side of the Erwin house.

That dog was notorious for barking at strangers from a fenced in area in its family's backyard

as reporter Jim Spellman demonstrated at the time. This is the first obstacle somebody

coming this way would face is this dog every time we've come back here late or day this dog treats us around a barking. This dog is in the house next door to baby Lisa's house. But the first couple of times I did this, this dog in the neighborhood went nuts. Bart came after me very disruptive, 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. But after I did that a

couple of times, the dog was actually very friendly and the dog stopped barking. So that's definitely

“something that I think investigators were looking at and something I think is worth looking at.”

But no reports as far as we know of people saying they did hear the dog barking? No reports said people heard a dog barking that night. 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. But instead went out the front down north lister toward the corner where the parcels would see. Along that route, there was another dog again

reporter Jim Spellman. One of the most troubling things that came to mind that I was aware of was okay so you have this Watson family that he was working from to these sprinklers then you have Mary hurt who lives next door. I think a very reliable witness so she had a dog that disappeared the day that baby Lisa disappeared and her next door neighbor I know there's a lot to keep track of her next door neighbor says she saw John tanko take the dog. The dog pops up a few

miles later a couple of days later but you know I can't say how reliable that witness is that saw John tanko but the dog just did disappear. The dog was not there. She you know

that if anybody wanted to create an an easier path for themselves to leave the neighborhood through

here again and rid of that dog would be key and we know that police took footprints impressions from her backyard the day after this. Here's that neighbor Mary hurt explaining this back in 2011. There was a sprinkler that happened to be on that yard that made it moist over here where as the rest of the ground was dry because there hadn't been any grain. Now this sprinkler uh tells these people were not home right who was operating the sprinkler. Uh hey they're handy

man they had that the police were actually looking for Mary on Jersey. So according to Mary hurt

“that would place John Jersey tanko in the neighborhood that night. I think he really was”

one of the best suspects or persons of interest and although the police did speak to him they did not speak to him as a suspect. They spoke to him more as a kind of a person in the community and you know when you interview someone as a suspect versus a someone as a witness that interview is very different. They've come out and said and they said early on that they they've moved on from him. They don't believe he's their guy. Why would they do that? I think one reason they would do

that is because they have one theory and they've stuck to that theory all these years that it was

the parents. I think a second reason and this would be a legitimate reason that one of the witnesses

in the case belated that was several doors up from the earwins at 1215 who saw the man carrying the baby she's talking there about Lisa Pascal and she knew Jersey because he had done work across the street at the Watson's home and she did not believe that the person carrying the baby was in fact uh tanko. I don't know whether she reported that to the police but let's assume that she did and so that that was one way that they would have eliminated him. In fact Lisa Pascal 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 a hundred percent certain. I witnessed identification is a tricky business and in Cindy's shorts mind this was not enough. I don't think that that should have been the end of the story.

“I think when you look at the totality of what he was doing particularly from July through October”

they should have done more to look at him. For several days attorney Cindy Shore and reported Jim Spellman independent of one another searched for an elusive John Tanko trying to get his side of the story. He was a guy who had been in an outer trouble with the law and just a few days after the disappearance he was arrested on health standing 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. Nobody who gets arrested on a simple bench warrant gets moved from place to place the way that they were moving him. He had been incarcerated in Missouri for a birthday. He had been released from his incarceration and then

he had up scondid which meant that he had escaped from basically a half-way house. He was then

living in an unhoused situation with a woman named Megan. Megan Wright was 20 years old, new to Kansas City and was John Tanko's girlfriend for a time. They had since broken up. Tell me about John Tanko. I'm just enough to go front of mine. We dated for about five slides long. So about a month, six weeks before baby Lisa disappeared, Megan had lived for a period of time in this townhouse development that you could get to by cutting through these yards

just around the corner from baby Lisa's house. And there is a lot of disruption or arguments between Megan and Jersey and later on in the summers about September he ends up getting arrested again. They break up. He wants to get back with her. She becomes homeless. He ends up setting her car on fire. Her car was set on fire and she reported it and it was investigated and she thought that John Tanko Jersey did it but nobody was ever able as far as I can tell to confirm that he was the one that

“did it or what exactly happened there. Fire is important here because we'll end up having a fire”

the night of the kidnapping. That was the dumpster fire on the night of baby Lisa's disappearance. People zeroed in on this because many believed Megan Wright still lived in that townhouse near

Megan Wright lived farther away by at least another mile. And here's one more piece of information

that made for a possible motive. Megan and Jersey are kind of an odd couple. She's much younger than he is but they start talking about in July having children. Megan would like to have children. There's a theory about him wanting to get back together with her and is this one of the reasons that he would have spontaneously taken the baby. Back then, Megan Wright was a confused young woman not completely coming clean about her own drug use. I found out that he was getting into some drug activity.

Do you know what is drug with what drug use? Mass from what I understand. She's had a hard life struggling with abuse, addiction, and mental illness. 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. Last October, she decided to make an exception and spoke with me for two hours much of it

tearful. You don't have to be here. You could basically have said to me, I don't want to do it.

It's traumatic for me and I don't want to go back over it. You're doing it because you want it. It is. But unless why you're doing it. I'm doing it because it's important to me to not participate in something. It's going to be a circus. What's important to me is that the story gets bold. Holy. I haven't seen that done yet. I haven't seen anybody investigate whether Jersey was actually involved or not. I wanted to participate in something

that was going to let a fire in the ass of the police department and the FBI because Lisa

deserved that. The Irwin's deserved that. That's the goal. She says she is always wanted children,

“but that she knew she did not want them with John Tanko. Did Jersey ever offer to get a baby for you?”

No. There were reports about whether this was, he did this and that was his motivation. I think where that stems from is the situation leading up to him and I'm breaking up. When I broke up with him, it was because I told him he wasn't the type of man I just see myself having a family with. I feel like it has been twisted for the last 12 years as an abmotivation for hand or what would be his motive to take her if he did. Again, attorney Cindy Short. In September,

he's becoming more erratic. Again, this is significant and some of the erratic behavior has to do with his drug use. He would disappear for hours on end with no explanation. He was quick to anger last to understand and it was, I just couldn't handle it anymore. How likely is it do you think that Jersey, John Tanko, was involved in baby Lisa's disappearance? It's hard to say,

“honestly, I didn't know him very well. He and I were together for less than six months and we”

know we lived together for a couple of months of that, so I didn't really know him all that well. And most of the time that we were together, you know, we were using drugs together. It wasn't a healthy relationship where you learn what somebody's capable of. So we have an individual who's using method, that I mean, who's breaking into homes in the community, who has a history of arson in this same community. Meanwhile, he somehow ingratiate himself with a very nice couple of

watts and to live just several doors down from the earwins, which means that he has an opportunity to really be watching what people are doing in this community. He is a good little burglar getting to case the joints. He knows who his children. John Jersey Tanko was interviewed by the police, and he denies any involvement in the disappearance of baby Lisa. The case remains open. Now I'm back with my go to experts Phil Houston and Bill Stanton. Let's talk about

intruder. Now we have a name, potential name, maybe, maybe John Tanko, the handyman, the good little burglar across the street. The thing about the neighbors to the earwins, the past skulls, both of them, seeing a man with a baby is huge. It's huge. Why doesn't that steer the whole

“investigation in a different direction when the Pascal's tell both the, the husband and the wife?”

Tell the cops they saw a man with a baby? Because it's not Jeremy and it's not Debra and it

everything. Who is this guy at a quarter after, you know, midnight? It which lines up perfectly,

“you know, in a chill air without a blanket that they made such a note that it pinged on their radar”

with a husband calls the wife's funny. Make sure you lock the doors. To your point, they should have been all over that and not should have been the main focus of the media, but it wasn't. And then

there's a third person who sees a man with a baby. This guy Mike Thompson and yet they seem to dismiss

that as well. And one of the things that the police apparently did not do was to do what we call a fact pattern analysis, where they take each individual and compare that to the set of evidence and facts of the case that they have. And often when you do that very systematically, you'll see one or maybe one and a half persons jump out to the top of the list and to wait a minute, this fits much more so than this guy that we thought. And we did that. And then we related that

to the police and to the FBI agent and they didn't want to hear it. It was their bias again. And I'd say one of my main things about in looking back at this is the problem of the 24/7 media requirements. The media has so much time to fail and they have no answers in a case like this. So they just sit and they speculate all day long, all the channels do it, all the anchors do it, all the shows do it. And at the same time, you've got the police who are going with the stats

that the parents always do it, putting out these little nuggets like the parents have stopped

cooperating. Her story changed, which is true, you know, Deborah's. The dogs alerted, right? The cops were telling people, essentially, it was her and the media checks all skepticism because that's an exciting story that they believe anyway. And it will fill the 24/7 people news requirements.

“I mean, Billy, you've been part of that ecosystem as have I. That's how it works.”

Yeah, if it bleeds, it leaves and they want a nice finite end to the story. And that's why they were so ravenous at getting to Deborah and and Jeremy Jeremy to interview them to wrap this up to see them taking out in cuffs. How about the maneuverings with the carpet? With the suits coming in after the fact, come on, they had like the equivalent of several football teams in and out of that house, you know, after the crime occurred, and then they go in,

I forgot how many days or weeks later after the crime occurred with the crime scene unit. I mean, that was, you know, played out in front of the cameras at to me was, let's cover our ass. Let's show everyone that we're doing our job. And, you know, for us in the know, you know, it was pathetic. Okay, so Phil, if the park scales really did see a man with a baby both the husband and the wife saw a man with a baby, but did not think that man looked like

anyone they knew. That's a very good fact for John Tanko. And is it the kind of fact that might lead sophisticated law enforcement or anybody to say, that's not him. That's not our guy. That's

“maybe that's why they ultimately proved not so interested in Tanko.”

Well, absolutely, Megan, I think a major part of the problem is the people they had on the

case were were not in alignment as to who they thought did it. And we saw this when we had a conference call with the lead detective of the sergeant who was a woman who seemed to me to be pretty level headed. But the bureau guy clearly had a very strong opinion about the parents that he was the person that I would call the internal champion. And the internal champion in a case like that can make getting to the right conclusion very difficult because they not only draw evidence,

but they know how to debunk other people's opinions. And the bureau guy brings a certain amount of gravitas to the situation and just took it over. And what we also took away is that Tanko

that they had cleared him. They'd move on from him. Yeah, when in fact he was in the neighborhood

or appeared to be in the neighborhood that night also, you know, from a fingerprints perspective, here's a guy that wears gloves all day long, you know, as a handyman and so forth. Here's a guy that was arrested already for breaking in people's windows in neighborhoods. And they've seen, I don't want to, you know, know what that can't read the minds, but they seem to ignore most of that. And let's not forget with Jim Spellman told us about

the dog not barking and about the neighbor who's claiming she knew Jersey and she saw him take the dog. I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's that's exactly the kind of thing that would get a red flag going for a cop back to the theory of it was a planned burglary, potentially, potentially just to take the phones. The baby could have been an afterthought, but was that looked into. When we train investigators, Megan, there's an interesting saying that we use and we borrowed

it from the medical community. This is what they told med students, when you hear the sound of

“hoof beats, think horses, not seabers, don't make it were complicated than what it is. And I think”

that there was a little bit perhaps of investigating panic. And everybody was just in scramble mode trying to get something. Because on the one hand, you have them ruling out a lot of very alarming evidence about a potential theft of a child. And on the other hand, you have them ignoring many facts about Deborah that worked toward her benefit, like you interviewing her and saying what you said, like the fact that where would she have taken the baby and dispose of the baby

that quickly in order to get back into her bed with no footprints or evidence that she had left the house, the boys hearing absolutely nothing. And no history of abuse, that's an important piece, too. It's not like Deborah was some child abuser who had been, you know, bringing the baby into the ER over and over, there's zero evidence to that effect by all accounts of loving mother. So, you know, this, this makes perfect sense that they were running the stats, the odds,

“with her to the exclusion of all this other evidence. Coming up, remember the stolen cell phones,”

they could be key to this entire case, plus new theories emerge that we will explore for the first time.

I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, and episode three of our special series, Megan Kelly investigates on the disappearance of Baby Lisa. Nearly 13 years ago, in Kansas City, Missouri, Lisa Irwin, a 10-month-old baby girl vanished in the middle of the night. What could have possibly happened to her? One man emerges who might have some answers. Here's where we are. After a $100,000 reward was posted, and the widespread pursuit of an unknown man walking with a

baby, two people of interest emerged. James Brando, who lived next door to Deborah Bradley in Jeremy Irwin, and who had split up with his wife Samantha earlier that day. Samantha, you may

“remember, was drinking with Deborah on Deborah's front stoop, the night baby Lisa went missing.”

Brando was investigated and ultimately ruled out. That left John Jersey Tango, the handyman with a history of drug abuse, arson, and break-ins, who was working nearby. As we learned in our last episode, he had an ex-girlfriend who he may have believed wanted a baby. Her name is Megan Wright. Was Tango trying to bring Megan a baby in the hopes of getting back together? And now we turn to

perhaps the most crucial clue in this case. Remember those three cell phones on the Irwin's

kitchen counter taken the night that Lisa was? Two of them had restrictions for non-payment, but right near midnight, there was an attempted phone call from the one phone that worked. It was to a cell phone that was less than a mile away, and it lasted 50 seconds. So what did the cops say to you about that piece of evidence? Lisa's father, Jeremy Irwin. So they told me that there was a phone call from one of Deborah's phones, and we were able to get the records

from that phone line, went back over three years, and I myself hand by hand, went over every number in the whole, the whole thing, and that was the first time in which that number had ever popped up. I mean, and that's our best lead. Law enforcement went right to work. Untracing that call. It went to a phone that belonged to Megan Wright. Yes, the same Megan

mystery phone call was made to the handyman's ex-girlfriend. We told you last week about that phone

“call. It was placed to a phone belonging to a woman named Megan Wright. How much contacted you”

have with Jersey on the day or the evening that baby Lisa went missing? Megan Wright. No, and I hadn't, he and I hadn't been together for over a month at that point. And I had seen him and spoke him prior to that, but nothing on the day. Megan was 20 at that time and had moved to Kansas City earlier that year. She told us she had been in an abusive relationship, left it, lived for a time at a domestic violence shelter. And after that was moving from group home to group

home, temporary living situations. She says she met Tango at one of them. It was probably two months into to us meeting and hanging out together that I learned that he was selling that he was bringing drugs to that house to the other people that lived there. And that's when I was invited

“to an order line of math for the first time. And I did, you know, that was the first time I'd ever”

done it. And I was at this horrible point in my life and drinking too much, pretty much every day. Not the best of decisions, but it wasn't a far step from where I was at. So that was the first time

I ever got on anything, you know what I mean? It was a life changing experience that I have never

sought coming from myself. By the time of Lisa's disappearance, Megan had become a full-on methamphetamine addict and was trying to stay away from Tango. The very last time she saw him, Megan says Tango scared her. The last time was when he had the van and almost hit the board. She aggressively left the road drove into the grass of the yard and almost clipped the porch as he carved the car to her the van to run up the stairs to try and get into the house to get me.

“That's the last time that I had any type of contact with him. And like I said, it was from”

20 feet away with four or five people in between us that we had any contact.

And this is prior to Lisa's disappearance. Yeah. Megan moved to a house on 44th and Brighton, a little over a mile away from the Erwin house. I had moved there in fear of a John with the kept coming back to that house where I had originally met him where I was living at the time he would not leave me alone after I broke up with him. By her account, it was a traphouse, a drugden, and her contribution to the household was to let people use her phone.

Living in a traphouse, what you can provide is everything. Like I said, having to stop on and paying the bill every month, that was one thing I could provide to everybody in the house. Now everybody has access to the cell phone within her. When you're desperate in your 20 years old and you're just trying not to die, you'll do anything to stay anywhere. It's not outside which is where the only place I had to go. Why would anyone involved in the disappearance of

Baby Lisa call your cell phone the night Baby Lisa went missing? I have no idea. It's hard for me to say and I had only had that number of like a Verizon pre-paid phone for about six months. I still got calls for other people who ever had the number prior. There were several people that used my phone in the house that I lived in on a regular basis, so there would be calls coming in for those people. On the night Lisa went missing October 3rd, Megan says she left her phone

on an upstairs table. I was in that house in the basement, getting high in the very early morning hours of October 3rd for the last time of my life. So I know exactly where I was at. After I left there it was probably 3.30 or so in the morning I went to walk a house with one of the girls that was getting high with me at the house there. Okay and so you and you left that house but you left yourself on behind at the drug house. Yes, I left my phone there and there were

people that were using it throughout the evening. So we had dinner for breakfast, whatever. Went to Walmart, did our shop in, checked out after food stamps hit at six in the morning. I probably got back to the house seven or eight in the morning and that's when I was handed my phone that had been cleared of checks and call logs and told hey somebody said the FBI had called your phone

to see the broad cast of her missing. Did you say who picked it up? I would let me talk to the first

“one who talked to the FBI. That's what I said. I said who had my phone. Who was using it? Who”

were they talking to? At that time Megan says she was told that Dane Greathouse, a man staying in her same house that night had her phone and described Dane for us. I didn't know him very well. He had been like I said I was living at a trap house. He had been in and out for about a two week period prior to that day. So I had seen him. I had been like kind of informally introduced

to him, but we never really hung out together in the house. How old would you say? He was maybe a

few years older than me at that point, 24, 25, I think. A month after Lisa went missing, Dane had a text exchange with the Kansas City TV reporter and denied any connection with Megan Wright or the missing child, but he did say that he had used her phone. I used Megan cell phone to have my phone turned on and some rides lined up, being texted. When our producer talked with him, Greathouse said he did not really know Megan Wright, but did confirm that they both stayed at

the same house for a few nights. The house on 44th and right now. Greathouse said Megan did indeed share her phone with everyone there and he told us he was your phone three times to make calls but says he never once answered it. The public records only tell half the story. I tried to get all those records to be preemptive about it because if the FBI called my phone, I want to know why. That's not something that happens to anybody in their regular life.

Megan Wright tells us that terrible night for the earwins was a big turning point in her life too. She says the very next morning, she began to get her act together. And I decided at that moment,

never getting hot again. So October 4th is my first day of summer, 2011. I've been so

precise about a week later. She says the FBI brought her in for questioning. So when it was a couple of days later at that point, the FBI stopped me and take me in for questioning. They connected all the dots and confirmed that they had attempted to call my phone on the evening of because they had gotten call records from the earwins phone and they were just trying to call the number back

“immediately. That's why my phone was called. What was your reaction when they told you? I was terrified”

terrified. At this point, I was a week sober. And once they were done asking her about her own possible involvement, they grilled her about her ex, Tango. We definitely knew my number by far

because he called me from multiple phones all the time. I guess when we first got, when we were first

talking, he didn't have a phone. He had just gotten out of jail was living at the honors center and was trying to get back on his feet. And then he was so devastated when I rejected him and left him and told him, "Well, why? You know, you're not the type of man I can have family with. And that's what I want my life." And I don't know if the way I delivered it or the circumstances around ing our breakup or drugs had anything to do with it on his car at that point, but he just revolted

everything in hand hated me after that. And the more that I told him, "I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to see you. Don't come around here. We're not getting back together. It just was so constant with him until I left the city. Did you know that he was a burglar? At the time, no, I've seen his arrest reports and stuff. And I broke up and had more and a lot more about.

“What month was the breakup in 2011? Was after Easter that year?”

I'm going to say it was like May or June before the 4th of July, because I didn't have going to my family's 4th of July party that year because I was upset about the breakup. Okay. And do you have any reason to believe he stopped using meth at any point in 2011? 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. I have a lot of

PTSD from the things that he put me through that I've tried really far to work through over the years. But there's a lot of that I can't let go of. I can't forget being that afraid. Were you thinking, hmm, you know, this guy's kind of crazy. Could have been him. Yes, I definitely thought

Again, reporter Jim Spellman. 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. So he's somebody that absolutely is top of mind. 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. The phones and the phone use continued to be a mystery.

“At 317 AM, one of the phones tried to access voicemail. Now why would that be?”

Five minutes later, at 322 AM, there was an attempt to use the phone's web browser. As I reported for Fox News back then, Deborah'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. And remember this from our last episode. If it really was the same man with a baby that the parcels and Mike Thompson saw that night, he would have spent nearly four hours within a three mile radius of baby Lisa's home. You would think, okay, let's see who's on the other end of that number. And that was Megan Wright's phone. So okay, boom, we're off to the races. Megan Wright knows the abductor. Not that simple. Reporter Jim Spelman. Not that simple at all.

First off, I don't believe the police have released the full records of those phones

“involved. And I think that that is information that they have purposely withheld to be able to”

use to their advantage in their investigation. So we know that at least one of those phones was used to make at least one call to Megan Wright's phone. You spoke with her a lot. 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? I believe every single thing that Megan Wright told me within her ability to remember things. But I don't think that she was making up any of it. She was very helpful

throughout the entire thing. If she tried to help us meet people, she would give us phone numbers

of people. She never asked me for anything. Oh, I'm that we were doing this. And I think that

she is exactly who she says she is. A troubled person, absolutely, but not somebody who had any direct involvement in this. Meanwhile, Kansas City Attorney Cindy Short was working hard to find answers. Even after she was off the legal team. After 10 days, she says she and lead attorney Joe Takapina part of company in a dispute over strategy. But Cindy continued to look for Tango. And now she's going to tell us something she has never before shared publicly and it's fascinating. A day or two

after she left the case. Cindy found John Tango in the Clay County Jail, North of Kansas City. And she interviewed him for 10 hours over a two-day period. What he told her could change the entire trajectory of this investigation. Asset the scene for us. Like, was it hard? Did he

“come right out to talk to you? He did come right out to meet with me. And I think, um, probably”

out of curiosity, um, I introduced myself. And I told him who I was and what I was doing. And then I had been working on the baby Lisa case. And that I was no longer representing Deborah. And then I had some questions about him and his role in the neighborhood. And, um, hope that maybe he could help me if he was willing to talk about it. And your face to face is no glass between you. No glass. And he's a small guy. Does he look disheveled? Is he a good-looking man? What is he? How would you

describe? He was tough-looking. He looked like a sophisticated consumer of the criminal justice system. He looked like someone who had had a rough life. He was cautious. I think as he should have been. But Cindy says he was forthcoming and emotional about his troubled childhood. It was an interesting roller coaster of emotion, where he was sometimes stoic. There were times quite honestly, where he was in tears. It was confusing. And in some ways, I was trying to use my

best persuasive skills to help convince him to maybe bring closure to a family if he could.

be in his best interest. And then a stunning confession. He did tell me about that he had found

“three cell phones. And he told me where he had found him. He also claimed to have told the police”

that he had found three cell phones. This is extraordinary. The three cell phones went missing from Baby Lisa's house on the night she was taken. And now he's telling you. And the reason we know his name to begin with is yes neighbors had said he was in the area. It's kind of a sketchy character. 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. Yes. And so once again, it's a link potentially

back to Jersey. And now he's telling you they never found the cell phones. He's telling you

he found them. Yes. Yes. And he's telling me where which is not very far from the house. So he's placing himself that 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. He tells me where they are under this bridge at 210 and north-brighten. And in fact, this is when I employed one of my investigators with a dog to go down to that location. And he went so far as to tell me that the

car that he was in with this woman had a leak. And then I would be able to find a stain on the road where they had stopped. And we did find a stick but you know, roads have stains. So we went down there

with the dog. And there in the under this bridge there is a culvert. And so there is water there.

But it's very low water. Because at one point he had talked about throwing the phones into a pond. He'd also talked about the phones being in this woman's car. Which is to back up just to back up. So he's saying, there we are having some car trouble. Get out of the car and boom, three cell phones. And I was just guessing that these belong to Deborah and Jeremy. Like is he, does he offer any reason why he knows it's those phones? He just told me they were three cell phones on the side of

“the road. Now he's not telling me that they're Jeremy. And but I think the connection would be”

that if he it's three cell phones that are sitting there together. Yes, three cell phones sitting there together. That's not the point he had, you know, he tried to tell me that I don't steal cell phones. But the thing about it is a thief, if you're going to go into a house to steal stuff, which this guy does, then you're going to steal things you can sell really easily. Cell phones, guns, any kind of electronics, things you can pick up easily, throw them in your pockets.

These three cell phones were sitting out of counter in the kitchen. So it would have been very easy for a burglar coming into the home through the front door or through that window. The phones went at then right there. But keep in mind, jerseys drug use and his rap sheet. How reliable was he? Was he playing games with Cindy trying to get information from her to see what she investigators knew? It is extraordinary that in his time with you, he volunteered if

he spent time with these cell phones. And even he seems to be suggesting are related to the case.

“Like the fact I think Phil Houston would say that's a liar who doesn't know what you know about”

what connections he has, you know, admitting just so much just to see, you know, but leaving himself a scape routes. So maybe he could get some more information from you or just in case you knew more than he thought you did. Right. Right. That must have been chilling. I mean was that chilling Cindy when you admitted that? Yes. I don't think that was the most shocking revelation that he coped to finding three mysterious cell phones. Yes. Shortly after, maybe Lisa, I'm missing

like how how close in time. It was it was right in that time frame. It was right. What had happened? And 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 because she was building trust still hoping for a confession and because she had also offered to represent him. Cindy maintained a client attorney confidentiality and did not bring this new information to police or to the new

legal team representing Deborah. John Peserno replaced Cindy as Joe Techopen is local counsel

according to him those three phones have never been found. They were trying to locate cell phones

by the things on the cell phone towers geographically. You know, when they do their triangulation,

bit of interest from law enforcement. They did a couple of searches there from Missouri missing as

“well with citizens in that area. But nothing ever really came from the cell phones. Missy”

Rasmussen and Jackie Heller are Kansas City moms who are co-authoring a book about this case. 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. How do you guys like that theory? I think it's just as viable as any other theory. The found to do not make sense. I think it's almost impossible to make sense at the point. To this day, it's an open question.

Why does a one step above homeless guy steal a baby? It's not like there's some known black

market for babies that, I mean, that would be something so sophisticated to get your, you know, foot into. He wouldn't have that right. So it's to what end again, reporter Jim Spelman.

“That's what I've come back to over and over again, is to what end and you're absolutely right. There's”

no way that somebody like Jersey or this guy named great house 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. If that even exists, it's incredibly uncommon and that these guys with somehow get involved with it seems, you know, incredibly likely. Cindy Short keeps coming back to her time with Jersey. When they talked about his childhood,

he told her he was putting a boy's home at age 10 and was later institutionalized to deal he said with his Pyramania and impulse control problems. The other thing that was joined for me were the

“tears. It felt to me like there was this, we were right on the tip of him wanting to tell me something,”

but he could. And I didn't have the kind of leverage that police have. There was nothing I could give. You know, there was nothing I could use to other than the goodness of his heart. Do you think he was thinking about confessing? That felt that way. And I walked away from it, feeling that way. You were just almost there. I'm joined now by my partners in crime, if you will. Long time CIA interrogator and human lie detector

Phil Houston and X and YPD and security expert Bill Stanton. All right, guys, let's talk about Cindy Short. We were just almost there. She said this information about a jailhouse meeting with John Tango is incredible. No agreed. 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. 100%. Moving on to the call to Megan Wright's phone. This is critical.

Phil and Bill, you watched my entire interview with Megan Wright. It went on from much longer than the excerpts that we've, you know, put in the series. She's had a hard life. She was very emotional throughout the two hours. Here she is talking about losing custody of her child. All right, this is the hardest part you talking about for me because not only was my life affected. My child's life was to, because I didn't have the mental capacity to care for either one

of us, which is why I was charged with the endangering welfare, which I always prefer medical neglect. I was dealing with manic episodes, and I was part of depression, and still didn't have very much family support. His father was already out of the picture. And, and 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 the felony that served two years in prison. How do you feel about it now looking

back at, you know, the way you were taking care of him? I just regretting fact I didn't have the support that I needed. 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 in railroaded in the media, questioned by the FBI, dropped by your family, losing everything you've ever owned in your own life, and then getting pregnant was the only reason why to kill myself. And then

is that what he was underweight severely? Can we not talk about this? This is the worst thing in my

life, and you're just dwelling on it. And I really don't appreciate it. I'm trying to move my

“past. I'm trying to participate for the sake of baby police said not to focus on the worst thing”

in my life, the most embarrassing thing. She was very emotional right from the start, and I was moved by it seemed like real emotion to me. Yeah, it was not Megan, most of it. It was not, is that what you just said? Yeah, yeah, she's a master at turning on and off the tears. That she's at some point, Phil, she was like shaking. She was almost hyperventilating and she was like

trying to get hurt. Megan, when you're here, Megan right, 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. 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. Every time you ask her question, you see what we call the trifecta of deception, which is evasion, persuasion, and aggression. So she doesn't give you what you ask for. She then uses her trials and tribulations to

convince you that there's no reason in the world why she should be suspected. And then she

blames somebody else. She attacks somebody else. 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. And you know, that's for a way of trying to get people to back off. She wants you to feel bad about her so that by the time she's done, you don't even remember the question. The other thing that she does that's very, very interesting is she gave us many what we call truth in the lie. For example, when she says what I'm really trying to do is get everyone to

focus on Lisa and not me. Now think about that. If you're someone that's trying to avoid disclosing something, which is really saying is I'm trying to keep the light off of me. So what does that tell you? I mean, I know the obvious, whether she's lying, but I mean, what is the FBI? Why? She is protecting herself from whatever she knows about Lisa's disappearance. She is protecting Jersey in a crazy way. And one of me by crazy way, I don't think she has a

“great, then in longer she has a great affinity for Jersey. I think she fears him.”

But do you having listened to it, Phil? Do you have a takeaway on whether she was the phone holder that night? I have a strong sense that she left her phone there or gave it to someone in another interview. 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.

You're going like full bore against her. You're so under your theory is she, she wanted the baby. She was in on the baby plot. She gave the phone to somebody else so that it wouldn't be on her and she intentionally went to Waffle House Walmart, so she wouldn't be near anything. I'm not convinced making that that it is a baby plot for her. I'm not convinced about it all.

“I think she knows either beforehand or after the fact of what happened.”

Now, Megan, I can imagine your audience is not going to be happy with what Phil says. But Phil is not called upon to make people happy. Phil is called upon to detect deception, so while people may be saying, you know, how can he talk this way? No, no, no. He's putting his emotion aside. What would a truth teller have sounded like? Megan, it's, it's impossible to know because what I would submit to you is the focus would be on the, I didn't do it. In a

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, it was a very day or that very night, I decided that I'm going to go sober.

Yes, I was admit that night. It's so powerful. Why on earth was it so powerful? Okay, but I'll

defend her. I'm, I'm going to defend her. The, you're already unstable. You're on drugs. Your family doesn't want anything to do with you. You were in a domestic violence shelter, you know, from some jerk in your life. Now you're with this other jerk who you've broken up with who's stalking you, you're, you're traumatized. There was a lot that morning, at least she found out that the FBI was calling her and she's worried, I don't know. She's worried. So could that be, you know,

“I said, she says, she says, yeah, FBI called her. We don't know that. That's what she's them.”

Yeah, also, she said, oh, I didn't know who to call back. Google the FBI and you have a phone number.

If somebody thought I had committed a crime, I'd be on the phone with the police or with the FBI or whatever. Well, she's a drug addict. She lives in a drug house, not none of these people wants to voluntarily bring law enforcement into their lives. What does she gain by telling us falsely that the FBI called her when they didn't call her? I don't see it. See, there you go. I've rehabilitated her on one of your key points, Phil. Take the out. 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. I feel bad. I don't want Megan right 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. She's not a dope. So why is it me crying? I was crying.

“Yeah, you were crying. I was so cynical. That's what we pay him the big bucks for.”

I can confidently argue because I'll say this. I love you Phil, but are you two biased against Megan right and in favor of Deborah? No, she can make herself cry by thinking about all the bad and horrible things that happened and she turned it on and off on on on command. I mean, I know you're a genius, but I still have sympathies for her. I just and we're allowed to do that, Megan. We're allowed to have that emotional response. But to Phil's

point, many of bad guy and bad women, women will prey upon that emotional response. The bad guys know how to manipulate. They have sad stories, but they still may be bad guys. Now, do I think I differ slightly than Phil? I do think it's Jersey. I don't think it was an organized

“thing. I think it was a crime of opportunity because why would he be walking up the block?”

You know, what a baby and it's on. I think it's Jersey as well. I'm not disagreeing with you. I think the admission to the lawyer about finding three phones on the night that three phones were stolen is ludicrous. Wait, what do you mean? To believe that that's not him doing a couple of

things. 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. So he wants an explanation of why he's on there doing something. I do 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. John Jersey Tango was questioned by the police at the time. He denies any involvement and the case remains open. Coming up in our next episode,

new theories emerge about the disappearance that take the story in a completely new direction. I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, an episode four of our special series Megan Kelly investigates or tackling the disappearance of Baby Lisa. She vanished from her crib in the middle of the night in October of 2011. Today she'd be a teenager, but where is she? And who took her?

in this episode, very dark and disturbing. The Kansas City Police have stiff arm the press,

“saying next to nothing about this case publicly. Neither Kansas City PD nor the FBI would talk to”

us. And Phil Amthropist, Christie Hoss Schiller's offer of a $100,000 reward for any information that could lead to the return of Lisa remains unclamed. If you could write that $100,000 check, it'd probably be the most delightful money you ever spent in your life. Absolutely. Still not. While 42-year-old John Tango, known as Jersey, may seem to have been the best suspect given his criminal history and that mysterious call from the Irwin's stolen phone to the phone of Tango's

ex-girlfriend Megan Wright on the night Baby Lisa went missing. No arrests were ever made. In 2011,

police said they'd moved on from Tango and there appears to have been little to no movement on this case in the nearly 13 years since it started. Jeremy and Deborah have been left in limbo. There were yearly vigils. Please God keep her safe until she has home with us. And occasional interviews including one with me that aired in January 2014. When I interviewed you a couple years ago, Deborah, you said even back then you were looking in the crowd whenever you

pass a child who would be Lisa's age. Yeah, we actually I did it all day today when we were walking around before we came here to see you and I just said the Jeremy really tired of looking at everybody else's kid open it's mine. This has to be its own form of torture. Jeremy Irwin.

“I think about her every day. It doesn't go away and the pain is still there and”

just feel like you're not complete. Do you ever feel bitter Jeremy? I would feel, I think I'd feel bitter. My child was taken that I didn't get this time that if she's still out there I've missed so much. Yeah, there's a lot of that and I mean it's pretty it's pretty frustrating and you have a lot of hate and anger on aspects like that. But there's nothing you can do about it and that's not going to help get Lisa home any faster. So I mean it's frustrating that everybody's

still out living their life and going to the grocery store and doing whatever they want to do and well we're just left to sit in the ashes. Deborah Bradley you know it's it's really hard as she gets older it's still not having her home and thinking about all the things I continue to miss out on. It's like all of us have been robbed of that and that is really hard to accept. I just started reading stuff and just writing down a name here and a name here and then I

started doing my own searches. Deborah's aunt Cindy Lorette has been relentless constantly searching for clues trying to piece together what may have happened. I've done my own thing because there isn't anybody to help. I have set in courtrooms. I have done my own survalences. I visited people in jail that I didn't know. I don't really want to tell you everything I did but I did a lot of stuff. But everything that I was reading throughout the internet, it just kept leading me back to the

area that I was living here. So I got a job at this little convenience store and I didn't tell anybody who I was. I just listened and I wanted to know things. I wanted to and I did. I started to hear things. I mean people talk Kansas City moms, Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller who are writing a

“book about this case have spent more than a decade looking for leads. Where did that take you?”

What did you find? It led us down some bad places, some bad neighborhoods, talking to some bad people. Was your theory starting to develop in a different direction from where the mainstream narrative was going, Missy? Yeah, definitely the mainstream narrative here is either Jersey or the mom is overwhelming how many people think that Deborah had something to do with it. Nobody in this town is looking for her because they think her mother killed her and she got away with

it. Much of what they've heard is second hand and goes to some very dark places to drug

dens to baby brokers, to terrible conclusions. My understanding is that you guys have spoken to at least five people about this theory that some criminal element somehow connected to the family was responsible for this and that at least three of them mentioned the sale, the sale of a baby. Yeah, in 2021, Deborah said

information we were given is right, she was sold. You believe she was sold? Absolutely. To add to that

theory, one month after Lisa went missing, Deborah and Jeremy found a charge on a debit card, $69 and $4, paid to a British company that called itself a name-changing service. This is one of the theories that, of course, puzzles me. How, 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?”

There is nothing about walking into someone's house and taking their baby that makes any sense to me, but I don't know that the person doing that was a logical rational person the way that you and I are.

So if it has to do with drugs, in other words, they might have been out of their minds. Sure.

Yeah, I would, I would guess for sure. If we think that there might have been a criminal drug element involved in this, and you guys have been out there investigating this for all this time, you know, pretty publicly. Is there any fear on your part about your safety? Absolutely. Yes, we've had people tell us, you know, we'll tell them, you know, there's a $100,000 reward, and they're saying, "Well, what good is the reward if I'm not alive to spend it?"

Do you ever like, do your own investigations start talking to people about what they know, what they saw Jeremy Irwin? Yeah, I mean, we did for a long, long time, and I mean, most of the stuff that we've gotten is stories that people have heard from other people.

“So it's a lot of its third person stories, and I think there's real merit in a group of individuals”

that operate in that area that get rid of kids and illegally adopt, or whatever you want to phrase it, but take in children that they're not supposed to have and redistribute them. That's definitely going on up here, and at least at the time when I was talking with the investigators about it, they laughed in my face about it. So other storylines that have circulated amongst the locals involved Deborah interacting with the drug underworld, possible urban myths with no proof,

including one that baby Lisa was handed off to pay a drug debt. Was there anything that you looking back may have done to bring any of that cast of characters into your life? You know, certainly, certainly not us, but we had people nearby that were into that lifestyle. And you and Deborah

never went there, scored drugs called for anything from anybody connected to that place. Oh, no,

never, we're not a person. Did they ever accuse you or Jeremy of being on drugs or having a connection to this house? Deborah Bradley? No, because we offered samples of our hair, so they can test hair and find out anything and everything you've done. Some drugs, including Methamphetamine, can be detected this way. And so they were able to tell that I was telling the truth about that, but that as far as that, if there was a connection, and that was it, that's

not the way. That's just not even an option. So I ask you for the record. Have you been on drugs

“where you on drugs around the time Lisa went missing? Absolutely not. And how about Jeremy?”

Absolutely not. It's just wasn't your thing. You were not somebody who partook. No, I watched in high school, watched friends suffer from addiction, and I didn't want to be that way. I, I, I just seemed so much suffering. Aside from the fact that it's just not appealing to me. And as a parent that had been lasting on my mind, you don't do crystal meth, and you didn't do crystal meth at the time. She disappeared. Oh, God, no. No. No. Okay. Yeah, because I'm sure you've

heard that some people theorize, you were Jeremy had a connection to this drug den and brought this cast of nefarious characters into your life and one of them took her. But those people should ask the cops about the DNA analysis on our hair and the drug test analysis on our hair. It's not there for a reason because it doesn't exist. So at least I have proof of that. Reporter Jim Spellman covered the case for weeks after the story broke. I have seen not one

bit of information to indicate that Deborah Bradley, Jeremy, Irwin, or anybody in their family

I've been clean for 21 years now and I'm pretty good at figuring out drug addicts. The idea that

“Deborah Bradley or Jeremy Irwin were some sort of drug addicts in deep to dealers or something like”

that is ridiculous. I put, you know, as close to certainty that that is not the case as I can come not, you know, not blood testing people. And now you are going to hear the absolute worst darkest versions. Again, these are most likely urban myths we just don't know about what may have happened to Lisa and we do need to warn you. They come with awful grizzly details, author Jackie Heller. And this is what really breaks my heart about this whole thing is the one consistent narrative

that we have found in this story is that Lisa is no longer with us. What you're saying is you've talked to people who think they know what happened and who say the baby was killed. Yes, we had someone tell us that Lisa is in the bottom of Smithfield Lake and they put her

“body in a duffel bag and made sure that the blocks weighed more than she did. So there was no chance”

of her body coming up. Those are the kind of things that we've heard about this. Cindy Lorette, Deborah's aunt, heard something even darker. Somebody had Lisa and they got scared because the media, it became such a big deal that person got scared and he chopped Lisa. He took her to this house and one of the people that was in the house told me this story that she was brought to the house and they were at the end of the bed and

she was crying and they said to get the fucking baby out of the house, I still don't know what to believe. We managed to get our hands on police documents with equally dark testimonials. These are supplemental interview reports that police do not make public. They reflect interviews

“with two different men who claimed to know something about the baby Lisa case. We have confirmed”

the case file numbers on these reports and we've spoken with both men, Chad Huber and the second

man interviewed who asked us not to use his name. They confirmed their conversations with Kansas City police officer Michael Wells, the very same name that appears in these documents. It appears that officer Wells was investigating a car theft ring among other things. We discussed these police interviews with co-authors, Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller. These are follow-up interviews with people who have been charged with unrelated petty crimes, theft crimes and so on just a few months

after baby Lisa disappeared. And this is a police interview with someone named Chad Huber. Do you guys know that name? Have you heard Chad Huber? No. Okay, so back in 2012, Chad Huber apparently had thoughts on baby Lisa and named three new people with a possible connection to this case. Three new names we have not discussed in this series. Matt Shaver Boris Dubinsky and Cody Alnut. Huber also mentions one that you'll be familiar with. Dane great house.

This is complicated and a lot to follow bear with me. According to the interviews, Chad Huber Carthief suspect tells cops that Cody Alnut and 18 year old who according to his father was hanging out with a bad crowd wanted to talk to Chad about baby Lisa. Chad Huber tells police presumably based on that conversation with Cody Alnut that baby Lisa is dead. And while the documents do not reveal anything about how Chad Huber says several people are involved.

Dane great house. The same guy who allegedly had the phone called by the Irwin's stolen cell phone the night Lisa went missing was paid to move Lisa's deceased body says Huber from one grave site to another. Who who paid him? According to Huber, it was convicted criminal Boris Dubinsky. Huber tells police as reflected in these documents. Dubinsky paid $15,000 for the transfer. Why would he do that? And where would this guy possibly get 15 grand? What's more? According to a

2012 police interview, Huber tells cops that Matt Shaver, the owner of that house in which Meghan Wright was doing drugs on the night Lisa went missing, had pictures, pictures, the cops

might want to see. First kind of just asking for your reaction to that excerpt. Interesting. Very,

that we've heard. What is interesting to me is that it parallels and experience that we had. We spoke with someone who Cody had approached her story, her words. Cody had approached her seemingly, really needing to get this office chest. And this name, Dane Greathouse, of course, is very relevant. That's who we think that call was intended for. I think it was a signal that the baby had been taken. Right. And so if he really did move the body and was paid $15,000

to move the body from the original burial site. I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot of buzz around Dane Greathouse and a few different lines into him. Again, we don't know if they're true. This is just as reflected in the police report. I had some sending a text message once and it said,

“this is the person you need to talk to. This person has all your answers. Then it was a photo”

of Dane Greathouse. We've tried to talk to him. He is, he is a trip, a big time trip. You wanted like thousands of dollars for us to talk to him. Oh, great. I was like, yeah, we're not entertained with us. Dane Greathouse did speak with us, telling us he was questioned by police. He told us he knew who Boris Dubinsky was, but did not actually know the man. He also said

he never moved anything nor was he paid anything. We found him living at home with his mother

where he was participating in drug court and alternative to jail that offers treatment and education. Dane followed up with a text that read in part, "I'm glad you guys came over and talked. Honestly, I just hope this can bring light to the case and in time things get solved." Boris Dubinsky also told us he had nothing to do with baby Lisa's disappearance. He said he was once in the same jail with Chad Huber that he knows what Huber said about him, but that none of it

is true. Matt Shaver told us there were indeed photos of the riverbank stored on his PlayStation memory card. He said police confiscated that card and when they did, they told him the photos had originated on Cody Olnutt's phone. He says he has no idea if they were pictures of a gravesite. As these pictures show, there was a search done along the banks of the Missouri

river. Nobody was found. What Cody Olnutt saw or did not see, we may never know.

We were not able to speak with him. We did speak with his father, Larry, who told us Cody has schizophrenia. Larry Olnutt is his son's limited guardian and conservator. He told us the FBI interviewed Cody once around the time Lisa disappeared and never returned. As for Megan Wright, Megan have you heard the name Cody Olnutt or Boris Dubinsky? Have you heard those names? Those don't sound familiar to me. But she does remember Matt Shaver who gave her a place to stay

all those years ago. Matt was one of the people in his life owned the house that was referring to.

And what was he like? He was a carpet layer, best I remember. So he was always very active,

hardworking kind of guy, trying to support his family. When I moved in there, they were trying not to lose their house. So I was trying to help them to get things cleaned up, kind of get everything, move people out, make it a more family appropriate environment for heaven

“his wife and their kids. That's why I moved in there. And the perk that was hiding from Jersey,”

he was not familiar to that house at that time. Did the Kansas City police investigate any of these claims or come to a conclusion about this cast of characters? We don't know because they won't say. When we called an asked, they again told us they will not comment on a so-called open investigation. And we are not the only ones being ignored by the Kansas City PD. According to Jeremy, they have received not a single update on their missing daughter in the last 10 years.

I find it a calling that they haven't contacted you in years. You don't even get an annual phone call from a police officer saying we're still looking into it. We haven't forgotten about you? Oh no, no. I couldn't even tell you the last time we were contacted by law enforcement. It was maybe year three, maybe. Oh wow. That's got a long time. They've moved on.

“For sure. I think they realized how big it was and I think they screwed it up really badly.”

And I think they just want to be done with it. Author Jackie Heller. They dropped the ball.

Once again, Deborah's aunt, Cindy LaRette. I know people who have called the text hotline

“that it reached out to me and to get no help. About three months ago, a guy thought he saw”

Lisa in Las Vegas. He ended up getting the phone number to the police department. He called there and they said, OK, thanks and just hung up. They did not ask him any questions he gave him. Definitely information. They don't care. They're not looking for Lisa. They don't give a shit. They think that she's dead somewhere. Mom did it. They're going to, well, they're not even trying to prove that. And they're just done. They're done with it. Author Missie Rasmussen.

If it were me and someone told me that someone told them they saw they know that a baby was murdered, I was even, you know, three degrees around there. Triple here say, yeah, I would still want to get that off my chest. So I get it. But it is really difficult to get any closer than they two degrees. You know, it should be easier for police. Police have all sorts of investigatory abilities and powers that we don't have to figure out who is where, when,

what the phone records of that person show and what their actions were.

It just lacks the, the person to come in and be like, we're finally going to do what

means to be done for Lisa reported Jim Spellman who covered the case extensively has a different view. Every indication that I got is that the Kansas City Police and the FBI were conducting a very vigorous and thorough investigation every time that I would uncover some new element or another reporter would uncover some new thing. The police had already been there generally a couple of weeks before and we saw lots of evidence that they were thoroughly

tracking down people's alibis that they were, you know, searching electronically that they were searching surveillance cameras. That would have been an asset for the family and the family ended up treating them like they were the enemy. So to those who think, oh, the Kansas City Police botched this, you know, they just they failed to investigate properly. We would have found her if we had a more robust police department on the case. You don't agree with that. I don't agree with

“that. I think that they did a very thorough investigation. All of the key people that surfaced”

in the media that surfaced through my reporting had been thoroughly investigated. John Jersey Tango was questioned by the police at the time. He denies any involvement in the case remains open. Did the FBI ever tell you Meghan that you were cleared? I realized you only had that one six-hour meeting. Did they ever, or the Kansas City PD, Meghan Wright? They told me they'd be in touch

if they needed anything else for me and I haven't heard anything in 12 years. Never seen anything

where they made a statement publicly, bringing up my name saying, oh, she was cooperative. She came in for an interview and we have ruled her out of success. That'd be great to hear. But it's never happened. As for Jeremy Irwin and Deborah Bradley, it's been dark narratives, 12 years of missing their baby girl and a struggle to stay together. It's really hard to be there for someone else that you love when you're falling apart yourself. And we tried to make it work for a

“really long time. And I think it just got to the point where unfortunately we fell into this”

statistic. Their relationship came to an end in the summer of 2022 and Deborah moved out of their home on north-lister. I had hoped we would beat it beat the odds. But it's okay because now we have the chance to get better on our own and be better for our family and ourselves.

You know, the main concern for me outside, second to Lisa has always been the boys and

making sure that they have some semblance of a normal life even with this going on. And I feel that we have at least succeeded in that. And you still, notwithstanding the fact that you're separated from Deborah, you still believe in her. It hasn't caused you to doubt her. No, I mean, not at all. I mean, it doesn't change the fact. I mean, we're talking about my daughter here and we're talking about her mother. So it's the same thing I've been saying for years. You know, if you're going to

tell me that Deborah did it, you better tell me what it is and you better tell me a story associated with it. Other than that, I've heard it all and you can't tell me nothing new. I think that God put us together because you know, we're going to be able to

But I still trust him. And I will always love him because they have my kids.

“You look at the joy that you get from raising two boys and having them go out into the world. And”

they're awesome young men and they're going to kill it and they have their own life paths and everything's starting to work out for them. And but as a man, I was robbed my portion of that with my daughter. You know, I hope one day that tomorrow or a year from now or whatever, I hope that Lisa's found and that she comes home and we can start over and at 13 years old or 18 years old or however old she is, but it would be nice to start that relationship and which

I haven't been able to have this whole time. What if all that takes is just the one person to watch what we're doing now. And they're like, oh, this kid looks familiar. It could happen in so many ways. And we've also put our DNA with ancestry.com in 2023 and me. And I open up my email and I, you know,

and I'll see you. You have another relative. And I always click on it. Hoping it's her.

Cinderella Red. I've tried to convince myself that she's no longer here and to move on, but I can't. I'm going with my gut and my heart. She's out there somewhere. She's a beautiful little girl. And we're going to find her. This is release that we need to find what happened to Lisa. We're in the hell, is she? We'll get her alive. We need to find out what happened there. I said it. Like, how do you make sense of why this happened? There's, there's a lot of,

a lot of tough questions and the answer is free will and evil men will do evil things. What's your best hope of where she's been these past 12 years? My best hope is that she's safe. And she's with people that love her and care for her and feed her well and treat her well and she's able to go to the doctor. And maybe she's able to go to school somewhere. If she just has no idea that she's actually someone else's child.

“That's what I'm hoping that she's totally ignorant to it and live in a completely normal life.”

That's what I really hope for. Do you ever wonder whether it would be easier if you knew, you know, one way or the other, what had happened. If just even if the outcome were bad, you know, that you had a confirmation that she had passed, would that somehow be easier? Well, I think if that's my two options, if I were to know that something bad happened or to

never know, then I'll just stay never knowing, I guess. Jeremy would rather never know

and he and Deborah didn't make it. Bill Stanton spent a lot of time with Deborah and Jeremy. He joined me along with our other go to crime expert Phil Houston. You know, you could feel the bond. And I saw it and I'm sure you saw it between the two of them. I mean, it's a nightmare. And statistically, they should have been divorced within months. But their faith in Lisa and themselves kept them together for years. You know, I know people in a lot higher tax brackets than them,

you know, a lot higher education than them that, you know, would have crumbled. It says, he never doubted her. He never doubted her. It's a sad love story. But when you watch her day, what jumped out of you, that this woman has evolved as a person, how she remains resolute. And I wanted her to be guilty more than anyone, because statistically she was, I wanted to wrap it up and get the heck on. You know, they had no reason to accept me in their home. I told them as soon as I

got there, I'm not here for you, meaning that if it's you, I'm coming for you. And I said that to them, and they, they looked me square any eye, how to find our baby.

“What did you make of the fact that in my interview with Deborah?”

She was saying this did jump out of me. She was saying things like, there's an example of a mother who found her daughter after 16 years. There's an example of a father who found his kid after X years. I went to 23 in me and I gave my DNA. I went to ancestry.com and I gave my DNA there. Just in case, you know, she finds it. I realized even somebody who had done something would be smart enough to say, present tense, present tense, present tense, present tense. So I, that's,

okay, I'll check that to the side. But doing things like that, I believe her that she did searches

No, that's what that's what gets her through the day.

“What did you make of that stuff, Phil? I believe that she has, but it's also her undoing, I believe,”

because I spoke to her about a year and a half ago. And when I hung up, I thought, my goodness, the frustration that she's feeling is going to eat her live. And, you know, I don't want to trivialize it in this comparison. But, you know, thank for a moment, you're in your house and you're also looking for your car keys and you can't find them and how quickly you become frustrated. And you look and you start, you know, you know, howling it people and you know, help me find

my keys and, you know, whatever. Think if that frustration went on for 12 years. How would you,

how would you, you know, how big would that bill that you're looking for this thing that you can't

find? That leads me back to these police reports that you guys have seen. These interview reports

“that we manage to get our hands on. And they talk about how these alleged petty criminals around”

this case allegedly, again, this very much could be crux trying to lower their sentences and give police fake little gold nuggets. But they talk about having seen pictures of a grave site, pictures of a mound of dirt. Somebody allegedly brought the baby in a black garbage bag and buried it. Like, there's some of that out there. I mean, it's possible that she did the same thing, that that's that's all made up, but that she did actually bring the baby out there and that the

baby was buried. And this same keystone cop force just didn't find it.

So the first thing that comes to my mind, maybe, 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 we, you know,

“we've done this and so forth. And, you know, while one person might do it, I think if it were”

group effort, that one person would be in a hot water pretty quickly with the rest of the team, so to speak. You know, even if they were under the influence of drugs in next morning, it would probably be saying, "Self's we need to put a, you know, put a lid on this." The greatest thing, I think Deborah's gotten her favor. You tell me if I'm wrong, Bill, is Phil Houston. And for that, nothing to add.

Right? Absolutely. I just can't get past the fact that the, the human lie detector, CAA 25 years, breaking terrorists, breaking double agents, seeing the deception were none, no one else could, that that guy got fooled by Deborah Bradley. I don't believe it. Thank you for the kind words, Megan. Believe me, like you, this case is haunted me, and I pray often that I'm right in that she's right, that Lisa's out there, someone.

Coming up in our next episode, Jersey, John Tango, the man, everyone wants to know more about. We found him and waiting till you hear what he told me. I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. In episode five of our special series, Megan Kelly investigates. We're tackling the disappearance of baby Lisa Irwin. John Tango, nicknamed Jersey, the handyman in the neighborhood with a long rap sheet,

the ex-boyfriend of Megan Wright, the woman whose phone was called by the Irwin's stolen phone, the night their baby, little Lisa went missing. And the guy who tantalizingly told attorney Cindy Short, he just happened to find three cell phones and then tossed them somewhere around the time the baby went missing. You've heard his name again and again in this series, everyone wants to hear from him and find out what he knows. Well, after 12 plus years, we found him. If you're watching,

that's him in the red sweatshirt on the bike. We tracked him back to New Jersey where he was arrested for shoplifting in 2022. Now that we know where he is, it's time to figure out the best way to get him to talk. Here's part of my strategy session with our go-to experts, Bill Stanton, and Phil Houston. So unbelievably, we found Jersey. After all this time, nobody could find him, Cindy Short found him, but the cops apparently didn't know where he was for some time. Jim Spellman,

who's been doing Yomans work on this case, couldn't find him. We found him. And now we got to decide what to do with him. So, got to figure out what the approach should be. I'm perfectly

it's very easy just to not even answer or just slam it on your face. What I'm thinking about

“doing is lowering them out, and then you come between him and the door, which will give you”

that precious one line, that question that will hook him, and then he will want to stay outside. And then when he comes out, he doesn't even have to know where to gather. I got your back and then you confront them. I just want to say, the way I would normally do this is I would go, I would ring the doorbell, and I would say, are you John? Hi, I'm Megan Kelly, and I'm trying to investigate what happened to this poor missing baby. You know, a lot of allegations have been made

about you. Will you talk to me? Would I'd love to give you the chance to answer some of the things that have been said about you? It's all in the approach. You see, the way I'm proposing it, you get two bites of the apple. Megan, if we want the outcome that we can actually get him to open up even a little bit, you and Bill need to stay together. And with you ringing the doorbell bill standing slightly behind you, if he's outside, then you approach him, Megan, you would

approach him first. Bill would stay back. Bill needs to keep you within near arms reach distance.

If we want to get information from him, we need his resistance at the lowest level possible.

“And I believe Bill, you need to give her the highest level of safety and security possible.”

So, how can you just, can you describe that, Phil? So, how would that look in your scenario? Well, I love your introduction, hi, I'm Megan Kelly. I'd love to have a chat with you. And here's the reason I'd love to have a chat with you. We have been working on the disappearance of Lisa for over 10 years now. And as a result of that, we know a whole lot more than we have ever known to include the players that are involved. And that's why we're talking to you

today. We want to get your side. I would not mention investigate or investigation. I wouldn't mention case anything that has consequences associated with it. You just want to have a talk in a conversation. We call it a transition statement in the interrogation world. Because what it causes is it signals to that individual that everything that they have done to try and pull this off

to be successful has failed. And that's when you we get in with the first question.

What was your role in the disappearance to presumptive question or question you want to make sure if you can get it on camera? Is the question about the telephone? Is there any reason your fingerprints are on those telephone that went missing night night? So, you know, this is a tried and true technique of fills. We've actually seen no evidence that tankos fingerprints are on any cell phones. You keep talking. John, you're a smart guy. You know that at some point,

this was going to come to this. You can help resolve this whole matter that is caused pain and anguish to the parents and to their family. You know, we're not here to argue with you or call your names or anything. And what you're doing is you're limiting or minimizing the amount of questions because every time he answers to the lie, your job gets twice as hard to get that admission. But if you can write off the back, can get him to listen to you. You've got a shot.

We could talk all about the questions, but the first phase is getting him to stay. The further away

getting him outside that front door gives him more time. Time and distance give make an options.

“Because unless we get that engagement, all of this is for no one. I understand Bill, but I think”

you may have a chance to get him to open up a little bit. So, Phil, psychologically at that moment, what are you trying to do? Build him up into thinking like that you actually believe he could be helpful that he's not an adversary or a target, but that we're all in on this together. Without, without trying to buddy up or cozy up to him, you don't want him to make a denial. Once they deny, that really makes your job difficult. And so, when you see them start to make a

denial with what you want to do is say their name with what people realize that are not at one good way to keep up to interrupt a person's stop there from talking is to say their name.

You say, "John, hang on. It's a control phrase. John, hang on for a minute." Okay? And then, I want to hear your side of it and you've got your hand up is the third. So, John, the control phrase, and it's not in your face. It's a defensive gesture. Okay. We're trying to stop a denial because... 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 we're easy, you know, we don't have a ton more confessions than we have, but people do break and they break at moments for reasons we don't understand sometimes. This could be it. This could be the good deal. Yeah, for the sake of just being taking the

“opposite tack, I'm going to be contrary on that. I think the last thing he's going to want to see”

is you, Megan. And I'm hoping he's going to get loud. And in his loud, he may say something stupid.

If we can get one tent of what fills putting forth, that's TV gold because this man has never

given an interview. So, 30 seconds, two minutes, 10 minutes in our, you know, no one has ever been able to do this. I just don't see him changing now as we pop, it's home. They're all the same. You know, I'm going to do something I've never been able to do. You're absolutely wrong. We do this all the time. I believe my shoe won, Megan's camera. That would be absolutely wrong. And then I'm 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,”

that's tent amount to a confession. No, I get it. But it's all about the engagement. Does he take the hook or not? That's, it's the opening 10 seconds. If Megan doesn't hook him in five to 10 seconds, then there's nothing. Bill, I talked to terrorists who are far, far, more condition, not to, not to give up information, and they talk. They talk if you approach him in the right manner. I feel like we're formulating a plan where I kind of like, I like what Phil is saying, like,

where we show up, we just, we're kind of open about it. We don't pop out with cameras, but it's clearly you and me, Bill, walking to the door. You're close, but I'm like in the lead, and we ask to speak with him, following loosely Phil script. Yes. What about Phil right at the top when I asked my first question? And he gives me the line. My lawyer told me not to talk about this. I'm not talking about this. Okay, you could say John, look, this is not about lawyers.

We're not here to bring harm to anybody, including yourself. We just want the truth.

And you have a very critical piece of information, and we'll help this get resolved.

So if he's talking in any way, in a confrontational way, in a confessional way, in a friendly way, I'm going to be wrestling with saying, would you mind if I bring my cameras in and we can have the same conversation? Because I think that will that will shut it down. Now, I'd much rather have his agreement to doing it on camera. I understand why we have to do it with the undercover camera. And I think it's a good idea, but be so much nicer if we could just have his

agreement to do it like that. That's your call. You know, you know, and listen, we got the hidden camera. So we got multiple options. Well, I mean, I think, I mean, he's gone 12 years without getting

caught on camera at all. It's amazing how he's managed to dodge. So I have zero expectation.

He's going to say, yes, I'll sit down in front of your camera. Yeah, but it's free. There'll be a

“bill be a point if he's talking to me where I'm going to at least try. Yeah, that's what I,”

that's how I would have done it if I were in your shoes. Okay. Just scripting. This is what I and my colleagues have done for years and years and years. And it just works. It works when it often when nothing else does work. Well, well, if we managed to emerge with actually any sort of meaningful comment,

nobody's even seen the guy. Well, and honestly, just in all fairness, we want to go to him and

“give him the chance to confront these allegations that have been made. His name keeps coming up.”

We actually do want to hear what he has to say about all of this. This is his chance. All right, let's get moving. All right. We got to go. And so on March 7th, 2024, I got rigged up with hidden cameras. I wore a shirt with a camera in one of the buttons and another hidden camera in a glasses case sticking out of my shirt pocket. New Jersey is a one-party consent state. So we can record our conversation without obtaining tanko's permission in case he declines

a traditional on camera interview. The crew stayed in a van nearby and Bill Stanton and I walked

down his street. This is his house right here. The garage is open. He's in the back yard. So face me. Don't turn around. Face me. He's just spotted us. Okay. She chickens back there. He's doing his chores. He's not coming out. No, he's not coming out. So if we want,

“I'll just fucking call him over. Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably because he's now”

he's seen us. Right. And he's not going out. I'm just gonna ask him if I can buy those chickens. You'd be amazed. Like, you want me to do that? No, you don't. No, because we don't want to do

subterfuge, right? Like, I don't want to put him on the defensive right away for like Perfile.

I think we want to say, I think I want to go over there and say, hey, let's go to the fence and let's do it. Okay. What committed? Okay. You want us to do initial talk or you want me to? I do. I will. Are you? John. Hi. How are you doing? I'm Megan Kelly. How's it going? Nice to see you. What's going on here? chickens? Yeah, how's this?

It's awesome. Yeah, but you want to. Two horses? We got like a whole farm going on back here. Thanks for talking to us. I've been working for 10 years on the baby Lisa case. Probably a lot of people out. Yeah. And it's been tireless for us. I mean, we're obsessed. I can't feel it on my chin. You know, we know a lot now. We have come to an understanding of some basics. What happened and who is involved? And we are really hoping that you can help us,

that you can help us fill out some of the story. We think it's really important to get your input. And I was wondering if you would talk to me. And rather not because my Lord told me not to talk to everybody, it could be a tough, healthy kid. I don't want to talk to you. I just shouldn't be prison with five years. You know, we got a trial. No, the thing is, the thing is, it's like Deborah and Jeremy have been, you know, or church. And so all we're trying to do is like

sketch out the story and wondering if you can tell us what your involvement was in the disappearance of

“baby Lisa. We're having this on. That's what I'm saying. Not at all. Yeah. I mean, the FBI”

is acting like the house. It's like DNA. You know, millions can't solve it. Go like that. They didn't bag it off. They didn't get it. They didn't get it. They didn't get it. They didn't get it. They didn't get it. They didn't get it. Yeah, and I'd be charged with your dad's body. So what do you mean? Yeah, the story is, what the story is, that some of this random potion came on and I figured that to be right. Yeah, you know, we don't have

the icing mouth, they're backing back the whole house. And the five DNA is in and from that skin cells, I'd be charged. Was it in the house? Did the cops talk to you? Do they told me that? Do they ever take DNA? Yeah, they did. Yeah. Oh, what did they like a saliva? He did. Did they tell you that you were clear? I didn't want to write DNA. Okay. And did they tell you you are cleared and you were good to go? No, I mean, it's still safe to get up in the cage. Okay.

When we're trying to do this, help them because the way I see it is, we're trying to provide them with closure. We can help us do that and with some comfort, you know, and just figuring out what the story is. This is a big shock. No, he's not a lawyer. He's my friend. This is Bill.

They told me to trash my name. Yeah, we already mean. I was involved with a lot of you who

“are telling me about this. Sure. I mean a lot of people get mixed up in drugs and look, I understand that.”

When you work, you happen to die. It's wonderful what you think should happen to the person if they got this. Why don't you know what happened? So I mean, it's such a kid not like me. Well, God forbid, I'm sure. A lot of them chose to give me loads of them. Do you think that the person who took the baby to the spur of the moment or that it was planned? I don't know. He's working in the neighborhood that night, right? No, not that night. Well, yeah, I was really working in the neighborhood.

Oh, general. So why would somebody have said they saw you outside of the Irwin's house that night?

People lie a lot. And you didn't know the Irwin's at all. Deborah and Jeremy. I think I'm not plazzy, but I think I'm a Deborah, I'm going to try and be a local part. Okay. You need to be called BAMs. And I know you know Megan Wright. We've talked to her.

“Yeah. And I think you guys are dead. But did she have any involvement in this whole thing?”

I would doubt it, but I don't know, but it gives to me some being honest about how we're getting a phone call from one of the Irwin's phones, then somebody can actually come up for a role that just kind of makes sounds. Now, did you have those phones? Because we, we understand that you told a lawyer Cindy Short that you found those phones. I'm a few of you, whatever she wanted to hear. I didn't tell her I found those phones. I saw I found phones that way, but I didn't find it.

No, nothing. Oh, why? Because she's asking the lawyer questions and I don't want it, but I just make her happy whatever. You know, you think the same person who has the baby has the phones? I mean, if you know if the phone's your mission, I don't know if that's fine. You know, cool. What is your hear about that? Anything? Do you ever hear anything about the phones and where they went or whether it was connected to the baby? No, nothing. Why do you

think is your new neighborhood a little bit? That's certainly better than we do. Why would somebody take a baby? No, I have to be honest with you. I don't like, only thing I can come up with is the shell. It may be something I have to care and have kids. You know, I mean, I have to have friends. I had a whole rush. Yeah, it's the best case scenario I've put to happen. That's a kid. It's 13, or school. You know, as a rich family, you know, something like that. I mean,

that's the best case scenario. Yeah. Well, what do you think? I mean, I know that there were a lot of people in the area who were on drugs and math and so on and we heard a little bit of that from Megan. Is there any chance somebody got messed up on drugs and did something to the baby? I can. People, I don't see you. I have to. I don't see you. I have to. I've put nothing. It's possible. What do you think happened? I knew what I was thinking

and I was supposed to do with because they hired all these these lawyers, high-trace, stuff kind of didn't want you to be on. Oh, she doesn't see what that is. You don't get a story in your school shower. You got drunk and so I'll sleep, woke up, and I'll sleep. Do you be drunk? Who's that celery? Well, why would anybody say that they saw you outside of the

Irwin's house that night? I don't know. You've never been in that house? Never. Never once.

“You have more. So if your fingerprints are on those phones, what does that tell us?”

Which phone? Yeah. Why would your fingerprints be on those phones? I don't know. I'm just trying to figure it out. I'm sorry. Well, you're not. You're telling me this is fact. I don't see it. You've friction on the phone. But I don't believe it. I don't believe I have just the phone. Okay. And you heard that story, you mentioned that one of the phones called Megan Wright that night.

Have a direction at all and use something as a way of, you know, getting the information that they want. Yeah. To two, one of the theories that she really wanted a family,

she wanted a kid. Yeah, it's telling me not to look. That's not true. She never said that to you.

Why do you guys break up? Why did you two break up? Because I was scorned on the wall and had a job to go do at the Watson's house. And she was out throwing down a bomb. Yeah. She called the police, told her I was going to be working here.

“She called the police and told them you were going to be at the Watson's that night?”

Why? Oh, you did night that we broke up. He died you out. Yeah. Uh, broke up and I never talked to her again after that. Maybe I don't know four or five months might have went by from when the baby or unless you, no, no, until we broke up to the baby or

go, never ever talked to her. You didn't even go to her house. I pulled up on the front wall

and it stole the landlord on, but I didn't talk to her. Did you ever said anything on fire? Of hers or around her? The other investigator asked me, I said the car was on fire. That wasn't you. So you got, you got questioned by the cops and the FBI. Yeah. Separate? Yeah. To separate? Yeah. And they took your DNA. Yeah. And then how did it resolve? What did they say to you? It was all over. Was it just two, six downs, one, with the cop, one,

with the FBI? No, it was FBI in the, you know, a homicide, each, a gaseol, or a whole thing. Check those. That scheme, it seemed to be, uh, actually, it doesn't mean jail. That was that scary? Yeah, it was funny. Oh, my God, it didn't mean anything. We're thinking they're looking at you for a possible kidnapping? I'm thinking, we have to explain how much time it was. And was it just that one time? Yeah.

How, if there are a few hours or how long? Yeah. I was. Okay. Maybe two. Okay.

“I know. Well, that's not too long, I mean, you know. Was it right after the baby went missing?”

No, because I'm still on the run. Okay. So I, I, I, a couple of other questions. I'm sorry to take up some of your time, but do you know who Dan Greathouse is? Yeah. I, I believe I've met him a couple times, maybe I might go, I don't know. I certainly made up a wrap. So we're going to check that, say, I'll make you the superior and be a police officer. I don't know, that's that was going to work. Is there, is there any reason that you would have called Green, Dean Greathouse on the night,

the baby went missing? No. I don't know, I think. Like I said, I only met him once or twice. And he knew that. Um, we were really friends and we just, you know, I hadn't happened to have someone, he happened to have something that was it. Okay.

“What, like, we exchange numbers or talk after that or anything. How about Cody on that?”

And being shot from up when I can't put a house. Can you still pull hold for us? Do you know him? I can't put a face to it. I don't recognize the name. And I'm also wondering now, is there any way you've been very generous at your time? Can we do this with like, can I bring a camera person over here and we can do this properly? Absolutely. Okay. I love to get your side. I'm not cheap. I'm cheap, you know.

What are you really referring to as a link to this case? I don't know how long I'm walking. I'm on walking. I'm on walking. I mean, if we, when you're doing a show, if you're viewers, that's the given in view. I was an option. This person doing this person doing, this person doing this person. Is that all I'm doing in person? Well, some people would think, I don't know how to do that. We have a really involved link. That's not me.

Yeah. God, if I can, you seem like a straight-up guy. First time related to that, I have to make a deal with

be a show. If you've often just wanted to make a show for you to have a conversation with you. Two. No. No. Like I said, I really don't want to be positive. You know, she doesn't say that,

find out what's happening. But it's quick. I don't want to be on TV. Well, I want to do all. Yep. You got to talk about that. Yeah, I've talked to you. Do you think

“taking her was planned or do you think it was a spur of the moment thing? What's your guess?”

I don't know. I'm guessing. Like, you knew a lot of the players in the neighborhood, you know, like, to me, it seems too sophisticated to have a baby be sold. You know, is that, like, who would be able to just deal with baby on this further moment and then sell it? Well, yeah, you know, it's still a month, maybe a month, or no, it's a month. Well, it's only five, a ship of long, you know, as a year old. Tell you. Well, how can Deborah, how can Deborah have gotten rid of the babies?

Body without it being detected. You know, that's one of the things that keeps stumping me. Long as she did. Like, if Deborah killed the baby inadvertently or on purpose, I don't I don't think most people think if she killed the baby, it was on purpose. Maybe she dropped the baby, maybe whatever. Yeah. If she did that, she got rid of the body in a way that she fooled even the cops. Yeah. So how could that have happened? Like, you knew the neighborhood.

“Like, what was the backyard, like, do you know, with describe the area a little bit?”

No. Around the Irwin's house. I don't know. I never been there.

But you were, I mean, a neighborhood handyman, right? Well, it's only for the Watson. Okay. You know, all the, he's, he's, his legs. We're looking over. She had all the ladies. So, you need me to do something to get me close. That night, did you work at the Watson's the night that baby went missing? No. You didn't turn on the sprinkler, or off the sprinkler?

No, I don't. I didn't. It was days before. He said once you just, when I started growing, I didn't have to do it. He said once you started growing, he got killed. So, why would a neighbor say they saw

you in the area? No, no. It's the third time, yes. Okay. Sorry. I'm, I'm losing my own.

I don't know. People will like, I don't know. Yeah. Like, yeah, I won't mean the area. I mean, I'm not forced to show you, so I'm not going to drop. I should. Well, I'm asking you beyond, because, you know, there are, there's the one set of neighbors that say they saw somebody who matches your description that didn't say you with a baby that that night,

“like around midnight. Do you remember that? I remember that. I do as a witness to that.”

Oh, seems somebody caring for you. Yeah, but I didn't get all that up. If it's my description type, you know what I'm saying? See, this is, this is, you know, it's just weird because it's like, like I said, it's going to put on people's minds that I could have passed some of the ones. That's, I mean, and that's not us, you know, that there are witnesses in the case saying, you know, look at, look at this guy as, you know, and that's, we have to look into that and we're

very open-minded to all the possibilities. I mean, I've said before, when I first went out there, when I arrived on seeing Kansas City, I thought a hundred percent it was Deborah, a hundred percent, that's what I thought. No, over the years, you know, I've considered everybody. I consider you.

I, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. To this moment, I don't know.

But I definitely wanted to talk to you, you get your, you, you're a lot closer to it than I am, so you got better answers than I do. Well, well, what were you doing that night? Well, what you're doing, what were you doing? You know, if I was to, I tell you, then you'd go there and I think they'd be that person that, that sends you something. They're looking plenty healthy now, organic eggs? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's pretty good, set up. Yeah. So, okay, so you were not in the neighborhood that night and, okay, so nobody, if anybody saw somebody looking like you, it wasn't you.

Is there any, anyone you think we should talk to, or, or what can we do to help advance this? Any thoughts? Oh, come on, I should have moved forward. Can you come and talk for just one more day about Cindy short, and that visit she paid you in the jail? She didn't be sure. Well, the lawyer. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because she definitely told us that you told her you found those three phones. And I told you, I told her that, but I wasn't, I wasn't being honest. I don't even know why I said, maybe I was still spun out. I don't know.

Well, I don't know why I said that. She said she thought at one point you were like wrestling with maybe a confession.

I don't know. I don't know. I need to go this. This case, I didn't do pay attention to it, like when it hits the news. What is it, what is it bringing up for you? Well, you know what, I told you it's so late. It's all.

I've always listened to 80 and look for all of this stand, these are the hour long.

And they come on at the end. You know, the very last person they speak about, you know, so it kind of made me feel like, yeah, but the cold ground was designed by somebody to make it appear that the story ends here.

“This guy. I mean, that's, that's what it's in that part of you. You're going to still offer some stuff.”

How do you do you feel like it affects you with your neighbors in your life? Well, I don't talk to you, I don't talk to you, I don't know what you know, I mean, if you're wrong with my name, it's trying to be like, yeah, but that's not true. But how many shots? Well, let me ask you this, how do you want, like, what do you want my viewers, my audience to know about you, in this case, and the things that are being said about you?

I mean, I don't have any involvement with you, but you never touch that baby.

That never saw that baby. Never saw it. Well, thank you for talking to us. I appreciate it. If you could tell me, actually, I am because, oh, one of these is the best for all of you. But I know you don't, I know you don't talk a lot, so I appreciate you letting me come on here and ask these questions. This won't shit, folks, I don't know. I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure.

You're not done, don't you? I'm guilty about anything, but I just think fact that, that, that, they show I'm being put involved in something that I'm not involved in. Okay, all best to you. Thank you. Say well. I look really, really nice on kicked too much shit on me. Well, we're going to tell a story and we're going to tell, I'm going to tell what you told me.

I'll hear from you. Okay. Thank you. All right. Well, that was interesting. Wow. Now, I got to eat my fucking chew.

“Oh, my God. Start with the tongue, Bill Stanton. That's what I recommend. Start there.”

Oh, he's got it. Delicious. Okay. It's so good to have you guys here in this setting. I've been looking forward to this from the moment we walk off property there, Bill. And just so the audience knows, I have not spoken with Phil or Bill at all about this since the day of Ivan's book of Phil at all. So I have no idea what he thought of the whole exchange. And yet we spent so much time preparing for it. So this is exciting. Bill, we walked out of

there. We got into the van and really could not believe it. Well, I think you and I were both like, oh, my God, my God, you know, and then I asked him if he would sit down with our cameras. He said, no, but talk about your impressions, Bill. There was so much going on in my head for your safety and our safety. And then when he started talking and he was so relaxed. So this man, what I felt he was doing was trying to sell us and you aren't having any of it.

I couldn't believe how how much he talked. I really thought at any second, we're going to get

kicked out of here. The fact that we were there, that long is phenomenal to me. That was my least likely scenario to happen. And then Phil, you're the human lie detector. What did you think? Megan, I thought that your interview with him was great. It enlisted a lot of deceptive behavior over the overarching mistakes that he made. Primarily, where his failure to deny definitively. I'm thrilled to hear you say deception detected

“because that's what I thought. I walked out of there and I was like, I've got more doubts about”

this guy than ever, but our whole team did not feel that way. And I just thought there were my own baby fill lie detector abilities to register. I've followed you for so long. We're going off like crazy. I thought there were many indications of deception. He had too many explanations. And I remember asking you about Megan Wright, what would a truth teller sound like? And you said, I can't tell you that exactly, but there would have been a whole lot more I didn't do it. I didn't do it.

So let's play the first exchange that we had with Jersey where he brings up the death penalty,

All right, so wondering if he would talk to me? I'm not because I'm not alone at all,

we're not to talk to anybody. It's a, it could be a death penalty key. So I don't want to have to sit in the prison for five years, you know, you're going to try to know the thing is. You ask him a very difficult question, but in a very low key manner. And one of the reasons

“that he taught to you so much, I believe, is that you didn't give him a reason to dislike you.”

And you let his guard down some. And in doing so, he gave some lengthy, lengthy or responses, then he needed to, and that's where the detective behavior began to go to fold in. In this particular case, you know, he said, I don't have any involvement and he used the present tense. I don't have any involvement. That was his messaging all 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. And it's the equivalent of saying, you know, where the truthful person says, I didn't do it versus the deceptive person says, I wouldn't do it. He's trying to impress the latter message on you. But it's clearly, clearly deceptive.

“And also, when you said, that's what I'm saying. I didn't have any involvement.”

All right, don't have any involvement. That's what I'm saying. That doesn't mean that's what it is. So to speak. In other words, he's not saying I wasn't involved. This is just what I'm saying at this particular point. So that one was a real key right off the bat that there's there's probably

more lies to follow. Well, we did accurately predict that his first instinct would be to say,

the lawyers aren't going to let me talk, you know, 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. And wondering, if you can tell us what your involvement was in the disappearance of baby Lisa?

“It really is. That's what I'm saying. Not at all. That's the object in the house.”

It's like DNA. You know, we know you're in skin cells. Go like that. They're going to bad it off. They're going to get to the DNA that's the next thing. And I'd be close. In there, the deceptive behavior that really stood out was his immediate aggression against the FBI. And the truthful person wouldn't be thinking answering truthfully is going to land me in prison for five years, you know, or just because this is a death penalty case.

OK, I got it. So you know, it's 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. What involvement did you have? Yeah, you'd say none. And Megan, think about it. He's saying they would find my DNA at the location. I mean,

why would his DNA be at the location? They've never seen him there before. He's never said he was

there before. But then he seemed built 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 would thought he was saying the same thing. Then he seemed to try to clarify, if I were guilty, we evidence of me having been there would have been all over the place. Well, maybe maybe it wouldn't have been found if, you know, half of Kansas City and mainstream media wasn't in an hour. Yes, OK, but back to Phil's point,

I think Phil, I mean, I don't want to put the word 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. They don't need to say they would have found my DNA. They would have found my fingerprints. They're just kind of like, I didn't do it. I don't, I don't have to convince Megan Kelly otherwise. Yeah. He's using the convincing statements and then you look at how he's

standing on the ladder. He's trying to look very natural on up there. But in fact, he's very threatened by you and very intimidated internally by the questions you're asking, Megan, but he doesn't really, you didn't give him an opening to a, you know, criticize or accuse you or attack you. And that made it very, very difficult for him. Why, why was he up on the ladder because the audience, the viewing audience will see the listening audience needs to be told he didn't need to be up there.

stepped down and come over to us or been face to face. So what did you make of his choice to stay

elevated and, you know, on the ladder? If you recall, he was standing up in a straighter posture when you got there. He wasn't leaning on the ladder in that manner. And when you guys walked up, then he immediately leaned over and he hunched down. He was intimidated. He doesn't know who you are. He doesn't know what your intentions are. So he's a little scared. And so that anchor point movement that we saw represented a spike in his anxiety. And he'd sit tight and just look like

“he's not threatened. And that's the thing you'll see in prison a lot. You know, the key is his people”

have to look and act as if they're not threatened by anything or anyone around them. And he's given

his prison time. He's pretty good at that. The ladder is not only elevating him, but it's a barrier between him and me. There is that sort of defensive thing of it's in front of me. I've got my arms around it. I'm safe for behind this ladder. And we'll definitely get into why did he talk because that was our big debate before Bill and I went. Is he going to? But I've got to get to the phones before we do that. So that was the one thing we discussed beforehand. If he would admit to us what

he told Cindy Short that he found allegedly the three phones on the night, baby Lisa went missing,

that that would be a tantamount to an admission. Well, here's how that went in part.

“Well, did you have those phones? Because we we understand that you told a lawyer Cindy Short”

that you found those phones. I don't tell what found those phones. They said I found phones that when I didn't find it. No, nothing. Why? Because she's asking me a very question and I don't want to make her happy whatever. So the listening audience knows one of the things he did there fell which you've called attention to in the past. It can be part of a cluster of deception. It's hands above the midline. He started to move his hands up like, oh, she did this. She did this.

And you've told me in the past and I know from your books by the lie, which everyone should read. When you're lying, the nervous energy has to shoot out of you somehow, whether it's your leg crossed and foot cooking, or you start to rock, but hands above the midline touching your nose, touching your head, moving around, hand be part of a deception cluster. So what did you make of the phones answer? Exactly where you were going, Megan, again, it represents a very

significant spike in his anxiety level here. And it's interesting, why on earth would someone who's telling the true 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 and their right mind would do that if you're telling the true because and when he recognizes, is that by saying that he even had followed that he did find

phones that night is almost as equally incriminating as the fact that the phones he had the

“phones that were missing. It's clearly one in the same. So that's what led him to say in my opinion,”

what led him to say, oh, I was just lying to her at that particular time. I was surprised that immediately he knew Cindy Short was and he knew about the phone conversation. He didn't start or like, what? Oh, that's nonsense. If you think about it for that one moment, let's postulate that he is guilty. Let's assume, let's just for argument say, say, he's guilty. Every breath, every moment is burned in his brain, right? And to me, this question of the phones is one of the most pivotal

points made because if he found that phone, right? If he had the phone, that tells us he was in the house. I mean, it tells me he was in the house and he called Megan Wright. And that's why he was going back and forth. Is it advantageous for me to say I found the phones? Or, oh no, I was just lying. He figured out to say he has the phones suggests he had the baby. And he knew he didn't want us going there. 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? I think

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 asked him the question, and, oh,”

I need to come up with a reason as the why I had phones, or maybe someone saw him with phones that night. And that Megan Wright was dialed. Megan Wright's number was dialed. He had to make it in my opinion. He had to make a story. Oh, I found the phones. And then he realized it's not his best interest to say he had, oh, I didn't have the phones. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That was his weakest part, because there were other moments where I thought, okay, you know what, he's he's doing better here.

And one of those moments was when he tried to say he and Megan Wright broke up and he never saw

and I said, you didn't, you didn't stalk her at all, or however I phrased it, you know, you didn't show up at her house. And he owned that one right away. I pulled up on the front one and stole the landlord's time, but I didn't talk to her. So what was your reaction in that film? Because he could have said, no, I never did, but he kind of owned her story of driving the truck onto her property and scaring her a little. I think Megan, what he's trying to do there,

going back to the concept of convincing statements or persuasion behavior, what he's trying to do is he's trying to say, hey, if I did something wrong, I'm more than willing to step up and admit it. And often that that convinces people who aren't really attuned to the behavior and the reality

“of the situation and they buy into it. And that's what he's hoping would happen here.”

I'll say 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, Frank Pan-Tangely from the Godfather when he testified before Congress on whether Michael Corleoni was in fact the Godfather and a member of the prime family and he had now had a change of heart before the, here it is, watch, tell me if this looks like Jersey. I don't understand about that.

Do you deny that confession? And you realize what will happen as a result of your denial? But the FBI guys, they promised me a deal. So I made up a lot of stuff about Michael Corleoni because that's what they wanted. But it was all lies. To same sequencing of disruptive behavior that we just saw almost identical to what we just saw

with Tanko. It's amazing. Okay, so what's your takeaway now, having watched it felt like the

when it wrapped up having watched the, you know, 25 minutes, what did you walk away saying? There are signs of deception and there's no doubt in my mind, in my opinion, that he is directly involved, if not unilaterally the person that took the baby. That's strong. Not just from this interview, but it's from the history of the evolution of the case and the things that we learned about him over the years and in the connections to others

and the evidence that we heard that, you know, about his activities that night, all of that collectively suggests in my mind that, you know, this is our, this is our guy.

“So why did he talk to me, Phil? That was our big debate. That's why Bill had to eat his shoe”

because he said he's not going to talk and you said he'll talk. It happens. And sure enough, he did talk and, you know, the audience noticed they went through this was, but like he hasn't

talked in all his time. You know, as you know, I always go by my own daughter, she's about to turn

13. That whole time, he's kept quiet. He's never made a public statement. He's never even been caught on camera in any meaningful way. So why did he talk? As I should before making you a approached him in the non-threatening manner, it's very counterintuitive in these situations. And in fact, when we train law enforcement, one of the hardest habits to break is taking that immediate intimidation or intimidating posture and voice and accusations and so forth.

You did none of that. You came up in a very polite manner, very professional manner. And you said, listen, we'd like to talk to you. As if you were, you know, giving him the option. Now, he didn't know you weren't really going to give him the option that it would probably continue, you know, to ask questions and so forth. But he was willing at that point to say, okay, let me see where this

can gain some ground in the meantime. And because of what you ask him and how you asked them,

it allowed you to gain ground. And he wasn't realizing that he'd let his guard down. And he's now talking to you in narratives instead of one word answers or refusing to answer or whatever. He's thinking, okay, maybe I can, you know, pull off a fast one, you know, with this lady. And in retrospect, when you think about it, guys, we will literally, in his backyard, he had the high ground. He felt safe. We were in his territory on in his yard while he was up. He felt he was in control.

That's a good point. It was kind of ironic that he ended the exchange with honesty as the best

“policy, honesty as the best policy, like touting his own honesty, which is another tell fill, is it not?”

Oh, absolutely. It's one of the most used convincing statements there is. And what the timing

of when he didn't 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. He was kind of, you know, being a peacock here and saying, hey, you know, I've been very honest with you. And in reality, he knows he's been anything but that. And then he followed up with this thing, has been effing my head up. But I'm not guilty of anything,

but it's been, which, what did you make of that statement? It's, again, truth in the lie, as many of these other statements that he made. He's saying something, he's telling us that's truthful. It did mess up, he said. But in reality, a truthful person, that's not going to happen. In other words, if he, if they've gone in truthful, nursing 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. 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. What did you make of Phil when he said, I said, why would somebody, do you think it happened spur the moment? Do you think it was planned out? And he didn't bite there at all. He's like, I don't know. And then I round it 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. Remember what we said earlier, how he said, I don't have any involvement. That is his agenda in his mind. And so when you asked 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. If you're another example of that,”

at one point, you ask him, I think about fingerprints or whatever on the phone. And he, he gave what on the surface would appear to be a truthful answer. Why would your fingerprints be on those phones? No. I don't know, I'm just trying to figure it out. Oh, sorry. Well, you know, you're telling me this is fact that. But I don't believe. I don't, I don't believe. I have no possession of phone. I suspect his, by the end of the night, his fingerprints were no

longer on that phone. And he knows that and he's, he's wiped them off. And so that's something that he can say, you know, truthfully. Yeah, with confidence, right? He challenged up whether his fingerprints were on the phone. And the other thing he challenged with confidence was this,

why would a neighbor say they saw you in that area? No, no, it's the third time. Yes.

Okay. Sorry. I don't, I don't lose my own. I don't know. People will like it. No, yeah. No, I mean the area. I mean, I don't know. First of all, she said, it was one of her own jobs. She said, well, I'm asking you beyond because, you know, there are, there's the one set of neighbors that say they saw somebody who matches your description that didn't say you

“with a baby that that night, like around the night. Do you remember that? I thought that”

there's a witness down. Oh, she's so pretty caring. Yeah, but I didn't even get all that off. It's my description. So he did know he knew facts about this investigation in a way that I thought was pretty telling as well. But that was a, that was a great example of deception. He didn't say I wasn't there. Oh, I'm, I failed to see the forest through the trees on that one.

So she definitely did not see me. That's, that's the fact that is the the best ally for the

truthful person told the truth. And in his case, he can't, the truth has consequences associated

“with it. And that's what makes it difficult for him. No, no, the advantage he has a little bit”

is he's been asked a lot of these questions over the years. And so he has some frame of reference, but what was different this time is somebody's talking to him in a, almost a kind way. You know, you didn't, you were judgmental of him. And that was really important. So having watched Megan Wright and John Tanko talk about their relationship and their time together. What, what takeaways? If you assume for a moment that our assessment of John Tanko is correct,

and then you look at what Megan is saying about him, she clearly is trying to distance her self from him. It, it appears likely, so much so that it appears likely to me that she knows what he's been up to. And likely, she knows what happened that night. And as result, she doesn't want to go down.

If he is, you know, but Tanko is finally arrested, you know, uncovered or identified as the perpetrator

and is arrested, then she would then become a co-conspirator. And, and she realizes that so she's trying to leave and the impression and everyone's mind that she has nothing to do with them. She, she, and, and, you know, long before, you know, the baby went missing. She had nothing to do with them. And she's trying to create that image. That was by design. Well, when you asked Tanko any questions about Megan Wright, he becomes very protective of her. The immediately said, no,

“she's not involved in, and, and exonerates her. And I believe he's doing that because he knows”

that she knows. And it was what she knows. And as a result, he has no choice but to defend her. Interesting. She wasn't sounding that way about him. However, like, I don't know what he's capable of. It was more her line. Yeah, yeah. He has no choice but to defend her. She has other options. She isn't the person that actually did it. I'm so interesting Phil. This is exciting talking to you. Okay. Now we're going to bring in Jim Spellman. Very excited to have Jim Spellman with

us a reporter of CNN at the time this story broke. And now independent. And Jim, you've been watching this whole thing. You've been watching the series. You've been working with us on this. What did you

make of this exchange with John Tinto? Well, first off, I want to echo the Kudos to you, Bill,

and your crew for getting this and going in there. That was not easy. And it definitely took guts and courage to do it. Well, gone. This struck me as somebody, remember, he didn't know you were recording him who scared that the next visitor is going to have a badge on them right after them. And he was working whatever he could to try to find out what you might know. And then to feed back something that's going to make him look good. I mentioned this earlier in a previous interview

Megan, but I'm in recovery. I used Crystal Math, Smoke, Crack, cocaine, etc. 23 years. I've been clean last year. And I work on a near daily basis with addicts in recovery. And there's a kind of person who does nothing but lie. Even when there's no reason to lie, they lie. You ask him, "What color of blue car is? They'll say red." And this strikes me like that kind of person. Who just immediately is on the hustle. Immediately is trying to weave something that's going

to help him come out better at the end of the day. And you know, with the phones with the phone question, this really is maybe focused on the investigation back in Kansas City and by the FBI. And why, at this point, they had not told us why they moved on from John Tango, why they have not

“revealed all of the details about the phone. And I think when this show comes out, it will be”

negligent if the chief of police there, Stacy Graves, doesn't immediately appoint a new detective who is not at all 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. And I would include men and fences with the family. I don't know who was responsible for that division,

immediately reopened in a vigorous way. Well said, I couldn't agree with what you just said more, and that's really our goal is to have somebody just take a fresh look at the case, fresh eyes, new eyes, take a look at the case. He told us, for the first time there, that he had not been cleared,

“by law enforcement. That was an interesting admission. I think he didn't know”

that I believed he had been cleared. Otherwise, maybe he would have just gone with that, but it's because I asked it in an open-ended way. Like, were you cleared? And he said, no, no one ever told me that. I thought that was very interesting. And the police in Kansas City and the FBI on occasion told me they used the language they had

moved on from John Tango. Never, of course, being absolute about it. But I think it's clear

that they have because look where it is, you know, and I mean, none of these people have faced any kind of serious, you know, investigation that they know after those initial weeks. And once lives have just gone on, people's lives have gone on while the family and Lisa's are in suspended animation, you know. Why else, Jim, would there be a 10-year gap between the last time the Kansas City police called Jeremy Herr Debra and today? It's inexcusable. No matter what

“they did or what the police did, somebody's got to get over this, right? And I think that's part”

of reopening the case. The Kansas City police need to deal with the media, take their lumps, and get this case, you know, back out there. No one's going to come off looking great if they reopen this in a sort of more high profile way, but what other way is there to job memories, to convince the community there in Kansas City that their children are being cared for, that they matter, then to start getting some of this stuff out there. One of the things I was

really surprised to hear Debra say was that they had taken hair from them to test for drugs. So if that's true, and it was negative, then why would the police not release that at this point? Why not put up? 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, maybe it's not tanko, but someone who is 10-genital to tanko,

maybe not somebody who was in the house, but someone that was near and around the house that day. Somebody knows something, there has to be a nexus to this house, to know there's a baby there, to know the Jeremy's working, that night, something has to happen to change this. It's just unacceptable that it's up to people like you and people like Bill to be on this guy's lawn and not a much larger investigation. And you know what's really chilling? Is here we are all these years

later. They've never found remains of any kind. And you know, if this were a murder, an intentional

murder, an accidental death, let's face it. Whoever did it of the characters we're talking about, you wouldn't think that these are, you know, sophisticated criminals who actually managed to avoid the police detection and then got rid of the body in a way that very few criminals are able to, where it never got dug up by a dog, never came up if it had been put in the water, you know, like we saw with Lacey Peterson, like this is the one criminal who managed and just that short

window of time to conduct conduct the perfect crime. No DNA, no fingerprints, no proof of any kind, dispose of the body in the way that it never came back. So there is a real possibility if you look at that that she wasn't killed. We haven't really talked about it that much, but that she really wasn't killed and that she was either sold or given to somebody or showed up on the in doorstep of a firehouse in some other town that would make some more sense to it given the absence of a body.

And remember the investigation in those early days and weeks, the amount of searches of woods in that area, when the address came up, the area of the intersection that Cindy Short says he reported that the phone grant, I immediately put that into Google and looked at images, one of the very first live shots I did when I, that the first weekend of this case was a big search right there that included the National Guard and the FBI of that area. And all of those similar areas that kind of 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. So I think that it's extremely unlikely”

that out in public, you know, woods or anything that, you know, there were any remains to be found

within a mile or two radius of the house. You're amazing. Thank you so much for the great work you've

done on this. You've been a highlight of every episode has been a pleasure. And Jim, that Jim, thank you. And you know, sharing that, you know, one synaptic, you're showing that it can be overcome

you do. Thank you. Thanks, Bill. Yes, indeed, Jim. Thanks a ton, it's a pleasure to meet you.

“And that's the conclusion for now of our Megan Kelly Investigates series, but it's not the end.”

And I thank you sincerely for joining us along this journey. We'll see you soon.

If you're watching right now, please take a look at this picture of Lisa as she might look now.

“If you're listening, you can see the photo on YouTube or just go to Megan Kelly.com.”

If you see her or think you might have any information that can help find her, please write to me.

The address is Megan, M. E. G. Y. N at Megan Kelly.com.

“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. That would be very helpful. Reach out at kccrimesstoppers.com, kccrimesstoppers.com, or call them at 816-474 tips, TIPS, that's 816-474-8477.