Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Cold Case: Missing baby Lisa Irwin

Episode Date: February 23, 2017

Lisa Irwin’s parents thought the 10-month-old was sleeping n her crib until her father checked on the infant at 4 a.m. on October 3, 2011. Lisa’s crib and baby clothes are still in place after more than five years earlier. It’s filled with wrapped gifts marking every birthday and holiday since. Jeremy Irwin and Deborah Bradley believe their daughter is still alive, perhaps being raised by a family who bought her from a kidnapper. Despite an intense probe, Kansas City, Mo., detectives have few clues about what happened to Lisa. Nancy Grace re-examine this cold case in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. returns home from work around 4 in the morning. The front door is unlocked. His daughter is missing from her crib. I went around the house and was screaming for her. I said, call 911. Call 911. They think she was kidnapped, then sold. This was not a one-person deal. There's still a $100,000 reward in the case. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Lisa's crib is still in her bedroom. It's packed with all the presents for the birthdays and the holidays that she has missed. My gut tells me that she's still in this country. My gut tells me that whoever has her is taking good care of her.

They went through an awful lot of trouble to get her and that she will come home. Every night before Jeremy Irwin goes to sleep, he looks at a photo of his little baby girl, Lisa. It's a treasured photo. He tells the photo goodnight, and he gives her a kiss through a picture frame. Lisa Irwin was just 10 months old when she disappeared from her own crib. According to reports, her parents say they believe she's still alive. Where is baby Lisa? This is Crime Stories. I'm Nancy Grace, and I want to thank you for being with us. Lisa goes missing October from her own crib just a few weeks before her first birthday. Kansas City, Missouri.

Now, police say they don't know what to believe or who to believe. And they insist it's hard to say that somebody is not a suspect when you don't have any suspects. That's a quote from the Kansas City Police Major Steve Young. He says, truly, there is no one that is or is not a suspect. I guess that translation to that is everybody's a suspect and nobody's a suspect. It all starts the night of October 3. Lisa's dad, Jeremy, was working the late shift. He's an electrical contractor, and I can verify that he was at work because we have confirmed that he was working that night,

and the baby was seen alive after dad, Jeremy Irwin, goes to work. The mom, Deborah Bradley, is at home with 10-month-old Lisa, baby Lisa, and the two older brothers. Now, she, Deborah, admits she spends the evening drinking wine outside on the front porch, I believe, with a friend. She first tells police she puts the baby to bed around 1030, but her story changed. But before you judge her for changing her story, which is something I always do if somebody changes their story, because the truth really shouldn't change. Before we go further, I want to thank our sponsor, SimpliSafe, for making our podcast today possible. SimpliSafe is so easy to install, hence the name SimpliSafe.

They've even got a video online to explain how to do it. People believe they cannot afford home security. Well, you can. Simply Safe offers round-the-clock security for $14.99 a month. And right now, if you go to simplysafe.com slash Nancy, there's an additional 10% off've got my home armed my mom has her home armed you know when you have children or anything dear to you it makes all the sense in the world so thank you simply safe alan duke investigative reporter is with me alan it's my experience from trying so many cases interviewing and direct and cross-examining so many witnesses and then guests that if your story becomes embellished or you add facts, I don't find that a problem because maybe you haven't been asked the right question. But if you change facts, that's a problem.

She initially thought that she put her to bed about 1040, but she really can't remember if she did. And it might have been 640. That's a four hour difference. And in that four hours, she was out, as you said, out front drinking wine with the neighbor. The neighbor confirms that she was there. So before we judge her for her account changing, she was drinking wine. She changed her story and later said she may have consumed enough alcohol to black out or at least not recall the exact time she put her daughter to bed. So that's a problem. But just because she got a snoot full does not mean she had anything to do with the baby's disappearance.

It doesn't look good, I can tell you that much, that you're basically drunk enough to pass out while you're supposed to be taking care of the children. But again, that does not a kidnapper or murderer make. Now, we know that Jeremy comes home, Alan, after 3 a.m., October 4, and he found the front door was unlocked, the lights were on inside, and baby Lisa was gone. Now the couple go berserk of course. They search inside and outside. He discovered a pushed in window screen at the front of the home. He also found their cell phones missing from the charger spot on the kitchen counter. Now that's a lead right? Their phones were missing. Somebody took their phones Alan. And this was in 2011. You had smartphones then that you could trace and ping and everything. Have we ever heard what the police found with that?

Well, I know that it was promising to start with, that they could trace the call from one of the missing phones. But nothing ever emerged that helped them enough to make an arrest. Now, there had been a transient in the area, and they arrested him briefly, but it didn't pan out. They also investigated reports a man on foot was seen nearby carrying an infant in the early morning cold. But that didn't pan out as well. Neither of those seemingly significant leads cracked the case and eyewitnesses they fail to agree on an id it just goes on and on it seems like it was snake bit from the get-go now one of the missing phones there was a phone call on it to the ex-girlfriend

of a person of interest to me that significant, but no arrest was ever made. I mean, if you've got the phone, maybe it's because they can't prove who had the phone or who made that phone call. To me, that's a very significant lead, right? Yeah. So what we do know is that baby Lisa is missing and she is beautiful. It's just hard to take in that nobody heard or saw anything. And the fact that one of the screens on the front porch was pushed in. Was it pushed in that night? Was it pushed in so that somebody could get into it? Was that window unlocked or open the father

still believes she's alive alan he was quoted recently as saying when we do get her back she's not going to even know me she's not going to know any of us and her brothers that was the mom saying that she's not going to know jeremy her I mean, they really seem to believe she's still alive. Alan, I mean, is that legitimate or no? They're not giving up. You know, this is one of those cases where we see that the family spends a lot of money hiring a private investigator, a psychic comes in, that kind of thing. The typical thing that I guess after a year or two years, three years, you start grasping at straws. I find it, we were talking about the mom and her story changing. She actually took a lie detector test, a polygraph test, and the police were taking her very seriously as a potential person of interest. After the polygraph test, they told her that she failed. They said, you did it, you

did it, and you failed the test. Well, she didn't fail the test, but that was a police tactic. And they were trying to get her to confess, making her think she failed the test, which she didn't. But then she even passed that test, if you will. Hey, don't start about how unfair that is, because there's nothing in the Constitution that says you can't trick a perp. I didn't say it was unfair. She doesn't think it's unfair. Have you ever seen where, I love when they do this, police send out notices to felons or wrongdoers that have jumped bail or they can't find them that they've won a prize of some sort and give them a location to come pick up the prize they show up in hordes and then they arrest them all that's a trick and there's nothing wrong with it now you can't beat a defendant you

can't you can't force them to give you a statement there's a lot of things you cannot do. You can't make them testify at trial. They have to have a lawyer if they want one, whether they can afford one or not. They have a right to cross-examine and confront witnesses against them, the right to appeal a case if they are in fact convicted. There are many, many rights under the Constitution. The right not to be tricked is not one of them. So the mom, Deborah, takes a polygraph. They tell her she flunks and try to get her to confess. She won't confess. As it turns out, she passes the polygraph and she refuses to confess. To me, passing a polygraph, when I first heard this and I heard the mom changed her story and her alibi was that she was drunk on the front porch I was not all that impressed with her and of course when you're trying to locate a suspect

you look at the family first so I was really looking at her since sibling homicide is so rare and sororicide or ferricide which is brother or sister homicide. Now, remember, Alan, the fact that she passed the polygraph is coming from her. She says that she was told she failed the polygraph, but really passed it. I don't recall the police ever saying that. Yeah, that's what she is quoted as saying in a media interview, that she passed and then was tricked. Well, let's go with that because she has stated this, and I recall that distinctly when she was questioned, and she told that to KCTV News 5. I remember it very well. So let's go with

that premise, that it was a trick by police. They gave her a poly, told her she fell when she really passed. And that she doesn't hold a grudge against the police for doing that because she understands. It says that, although I got to tell you, stranger abductions are very, very rare. It's just a handful of cases where infants are actually abducted by strangers. That's very odd, but not unheard of. The father has an airtight alibi. He was gone after she was spotted alive, so that leaves the mom. But when she passed that polygraph, Alan, that really changed things for me when baby Lisa's mom passed the polygraph, because it's kind of hard to trick a polygraph

you know that right i've taken them before did you pass yes spectacularly i passed okay you know what it's kind of a pass fail alan okay it's like when you take a an exam at school pass fail so when you say you pass spectacularly you passed passed. Okay, just leave it at that. Don't make me shame you. So the mom passes a poly. Yes, they can be tricked, but it's not that easy. So to me, that changed the scenario when I found out the mom passed a poly. And they didn't crack her.

She didn't break down and confess when they tried to trick her. So where does that leave us? I think one of the really interesting developments in this case is something that I actually wrote about back in 2013. And people who may not be familiar with this, this child's case may remember when in in 2013, I believe it was, there was word that she had been found in Greece. Remember that? Yeah, I remember. That was bizarre. Yeah, and what's so awful about it is it gets the family's hopes up, and then they are dashed. Listen to this.

Did you know that her bedroom, baby Elise's bedroom, is filled with wrapped gifts that mark every birthday and every Christmas and holiday? The two little boys, and I'm not going to say their names, are growing up. They thought of moving to a different school district and away from the house where Lisa disappeared, but the mom still has the hope that Lisa will come back. They say they can't make up for the time that was taken away but if she comes home they can spend the rest of her life getting to know her and making her life better it just makes me think of the twins alan and what this family must have gone through and the guilt this mom must feel to think, wow, why did I have a glass of wine or five glasses of wine or whatever it was?

You know, because it's called survivor's guilt. And you feel like, why not me instead of her? What did I do wrong? Could I have changed things. And just thinking of them. Wrapping those gifts. And leaving them in her room. Just waiting. For the day that she might come back. It's just.

It's just heartbreaking. To go through your life. Dreaming of them one day. Of her one day coming home. Tip line. Is 1-800-THE-LOST. There is a reward. There is a reward for information

regarding the disappearance of baby Lisa Irwin. Not only a reward, Nancy, but a $100,000 reward. You know, a lot of times we see $9,000, $10,000, $15,000, but a wealthy anonymous donor has offered $100,000 for the safe return of Lisa Irwin. Again, thank you to our sponsor who makes our podcast possible to bring it to you. It's SimpliSafe at SimpliSafe.com. So many features make SimpliSafe the most awesome home alarm system. It works. It has its own cell field, which means it's not reliant on your home landline or your cell phone. Nobody can cut your phone line and destroy or evade the system it's $14.99 a month and if you

go to simplisafe.com slash nancy get another 10% off i'm proud that there are sponsors thank you you can find us online at crimeonline.com where we have a tip line and a tip email. Or you can call us at 909-49-CRIME. 909-49-CRIME. C-R-I-M-E. For any information on the disappearance of little Lisa. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. for any information on the disappearance of little Lisa. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off.

Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.