KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Isabelle Zehnder reporting) -- Gil Abeyta, whose infant son was abducted from his crib 25 years ago, and who has made it his mission to assist other families in finding their missing children, said Friday that he and his team prepared and submitted to local police and the FBI a report on a potential suspect in the case of missing Missouri baby Lisa Irwin.
Abeyta came to Kansas City soon after Baby Lisa went missing to offer his assistance and support.
Kansas City Police spokesman Steve Young said early on that he believes people in the community know what happened to Baby Lisa and hopes someone will come forward.
Abeyta said Friday, “I believe the answer is right before us, it’s all around us. We just have to find it.”
News reports emerged over the past couple of days that a potential suspect claims to have passed a lie detector test and claims he was cleared by police, though police will not confirm this. Abeyta said some truthful people fail lie detector tests, and some untruthful people pass. He also said police don't clear suspects until the case is solved.
"That doesn’t matter to me," Abeyta said during a phone interview Saturday. "My wife took a lie detector test and supposedly failed, and of course she was not guilty."
Abeyta said Friday, "A person's background can provide them enough training that they can pass a polygraph test even when they are being untruthful." Conversely, he said, "There are cases where people have failed polygraph tests while they were being truthful."
A Google search on the validity of polygraph testing supports Abeyta's assertions that they are not always accurate, including: What is polygraphy and do lie detectors work? and Scientific validity of polygraph testing.
"So I’m not excited if he passed a lie detector test because of the lack of past credibility of lie detector tests. They are a great investigative tool for the police, combined with interviews, but they are most often not admissible in a court of law. They can work great in some cases, but again, there are people who can falsely pass lie detector tests," he said.
Abeyta said, "Police don't clear anybody in an ongoing missing persons' investigation. Once they're a potential suspect they should never be cleared until the case is solved.”
"I would hope that the authorities would continue following closely on this individual as we feel strongly he had not only the motive - revenge - but also the ability to pull this off," Abeyta said.
Abeyta believes events that occurred the afternoon of Oct. 3, and that appear to have escalated throughout the evening and into the early morning hours of Oct. 4, could have caused the potential suspect to “snap” and act on impulse. He surmises the abduction of Baby Lisa was not planned prior to that day.
He also believes the man has the ability, through his extensive training and professional experience, to not only kidnap the baby but to evade and elude police. “This man is by no means an amateur,” Abeyta said Friday.
Abeyta's daughter, Denise Alves, who is part of his team that assists in finding missing children, said Friday, "We want police to go the extra mile with this potential suspect. We don't want, however, the suspect to be accused of something he might not have done."
"The goal here," she said, "is to be sure police are not missing anything and that they won't stop looking into the possibility a potential suspect might be guilty because he may have passed a lie detector test."
“Having worked on so many missing children's cases and solving some, not all,” Abeyta said Saturday. “I can say that this is a very unusual case."
Abeyta says he doesn't understand why Baby Lisa's parents, Deborah Bradley and Jeremy Irwin, have refused to fully cooperate with police. Abeyta goes into more detail here: Father of abducted baby reaches out, questions actions of Baby Lisa's parents.
In missing children's cases police must quickly work to rule out the family, including the child's parents because statistics show that in most cases they are responsible for the child's disappearance. They also must work to rule out people close to the family, including friends and relatives.
The process of elimininating those close to the missing child can be accomplished in a shorter amount of time if police have the cooperation of everyone involved.
This would include family members granting requested interviews, including anyone present at the time of the abduction, including young siblings. In this case, Lisa's 5 and 8-year-old half-brothers were there and, according to their mother, heard something the night Baby Lisa went missing.
Police say the children are potential witnesses and that they have repeately asked Baby Lisa's parents to allow them to be re-interviewed to assist in their investigation. The boys' parents have repeatedly refused.
The boys would be interviewed by specialists trained in working with children while causing the least amount of trauma. They provide a safe, non-threatening, child-friendly environment to allow the child a safe place to tell what they might have seen or heard. Children's testimony have proven beneficial in helping solve crime and missing persons' cases.
Withholding these interviews, as is the case here, only delays the process and makes the work of police that much more difficult.
In the potential suspect's case Abeyta said, "We're not trying to ruin a guy's life, we're trying to be sure that no stone is left unturned and that people remember one thing - a baby's life is still at stake. We believe this baby is still alive, that much time has been wasted, and that the clock keeps on ticking," he said.
"We have a potential suspect, we have an eyewitness who positively identified the suspect in a lineup of photos," Abeyta said. "We don't say we have a guilty person. It's not our job to investigate and solve these cases - it's the job of police and the FBI."
While Abeyta believes Baby Lisa is still alive and was abducted, as the family claims, there are those who would disagree.
Statement Analyst Peter Hyatt believes baby Lisa died the night she disappeared. He said on his Statement Analysis blog Sunday, “We will eventually learn that 10:30 p.m. was a key time in the life, and death, of baby Lisa Irwin, from the sensitivity of this time as pointed out by Deborah Bradley.”
He says that from the earliest media appearances where her pronoun usage showed deception, to the lies about the cell phones, Deborah Bradley has told the nation that her child was kidnapped by a stranger, but “linguistics point to a homicide in the home itself, at the hands of the mother, with possible assistance from the brother, or “Jersey” the ex boyfriend of fame-seeking Megan Wright,” Hyatt said.
He says both parents, Deborah and the baby’s father Jeremy Irwin, have indicated their baby is dead. They have spoken about her in the past tense.
He made a profound statement that indicates how strongly he believes his assessments of this case are correct when he said, “Bradley knows how Lisa can be found, but in the coldness of self-preservation, she will not tell, and her lawyer will keep her quiet. This will force law enforcement's hand to go the route of a Grand Jury. It delays and it costs, but it will not succeed in her quest to cover this crime. She and Tacopina will make tax payers pay, and pay dearly, as well as pay via emotions and effort, both the searchers and the public, as the nation hurts for this child of Neglect.”
Criminal Profiler Pat Brown wrote on the Women in Crime Ink blog, “Once upon a time we believed parents of missing children: we never doubted that the people standing in front of the camera, crying and begging for their child's return, were playing us. But after we got burnt by the performance of Susan Smith and a number of others, we have become more skeptical. “
Brown said experts now replay videos to see if a parent is crying real tears, they watch their body language. They examine every bit of evidence because they don’t want to be duped again into expending emotion on a parent who will turn out to be a killer.
It’s frustrating, she points out, when valuable time is spent searching for a child when the parents know exactly where she is.
“Baby Lisa is missing and many people are not accepting the parents' story at face value and throwing them their unconditional support. They are searching for inconsistencies in their story, for proof that the baby was abducted, for alibis that are supportable, and for behaviors that don't seem right,” Brown said.
“And, unfortunately, for Deborah Bradley and Jeremy Irwin, they are not faring well in the analysis.”
Brown points out that the parents have not fared well going over hurdles that parents must go over to prove to the public their innocence. “If I add up this list, I have to say the parents haven’t done so well going over these hurdles.”
Public suspicion is likely increasing, rather than decreasing, she said.
Brown said, “I would say as a criminal profiler, the evidence and behaviors indicate the parents are more likely to have involvement in the disappearance of Baby Lisa than a stranger to have abducted her. But, without proof or solid evidence, this set of inputs could be misinterpreted - an abductor might have managed to sneak in and out without detection; maybe he did turn on the lights and steal phones because he is a major weirdo.”
She says the parents may have odd behaviors, even personality disorders, which cause them to act in a manner that arouses suspicion but they still didn’t do anything criminal.
“But,” Brown said, “Because they are not passing the ‘hurdle’ test very well, the police are going to be all over them, people are going to stop looking for the baby, and, if no abductor is ever caught (and the parents aren't found guilty), then, like the Eisenburgs and the McCanns, a cloud of suspicion will always hang over their heads.”
Going back to what Abeyta said, he doesn’t understand, if these parents are innocent, why they won’t fully cooperate with police.
He’s been through this himself. Though police accused his wife, though they looked at her under a fine microscope, though they said she failed two polygraph tests, Abeyta said he had no need to hire a defense lawyer, or any lawyer for that matter.
His wife was never named a suspect in their baby’s case. Deborah has never been named a suspect either. If she has nothing to hide, the general consensus is talk to police, let the children who were in the house and say they heard a noise the night Baby Lisa went missing be interviewed, let police get the DNA cheek tests done so they can rule out DNA samples sitting in a lab that have yet to be identified.
Cooperate with police. If there’s nothing to hide, if these parents are innocent of any wrongdoing, there’s no reason, Abeyta said, that they should not fully cooperate with police.
It’s been just over 25 years since Abeyta's own baby, Christopher, was abducted from his crib. He was never found and Abeyta has made it his mission to not only find his own son, but to assist others in finding their missing children.
His daughter, Denise, said, "He takes the knowledge he's gained over the past 25 years to help other families of missing children.
"I was chosen for this," Abeyta said. "I had education and training to help me before I started my search for Christopher, and then countless other people's children. But would I have chosen this life?" he asked. "No, I would have chosen a normal life," he said.
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Baby Lisa Irwin was reported missing Oct. 4, 2011, at around 4 a.m. Her parents, Deborah Bradley and Jeremy Irwin, say she was abducted from her crib. Their repeated inconsistent stories and refusal to cooperate with police have placed them under a cloud of suspicion by police and the public.
An anonymous donor has offered a $100,000 reward for the safe return of Baby Lisa or for information that leads to a conviction of her abductor.
Anyone with information about this case is asked to contact the TIP Hotline at (816) 474-TIPS.
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