The Megyn Kelly Show - Baby Lisa's Disappearance - Megyn Kelly Investigates: Answering YOUR Questions and Key Updates

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Megyn Kelly follows up on her five-part series "Megyn Kelly Investigates: Baby Lisa's Disappearance" with an all-new episode, featuring answers to YOUR questions after watching and listening, key updates in the case, and more. Breaking down the explosive hidden camera interview with Tanko, Phil Houston's "human lie detector" expertise, and behind-the-scenes details about the making of the series, plus an update on the FBI and how it relates to the case.Lean: Visit https://brickhousenutrition.com use code LABORDAY25 for 25% off!DailyLook: https://dailylook.com to take your style quiz and use code MEGYN for 50% off your first order.Kars4Kids: Call 1-877-kars4kids or visit https://kars4kids.org/MKGrand Canyon University: https://GCU.eduFollow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. In March, we brought you a five-part series on the disappearance of baby Lisa Irwin, an 11-month-old who vanished from her crib in Kansas City, Missouri. It's a case that I've been reporting on for years. All right, let's get moving. All right. We've got to go. The series culminated with a bombshell interview with one of the key possible suspects in the case, John, Jersey, Tenko. 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. I don't have any. That's what I'm saying. The whole thing was fascinating. It left us with more questions than answers, and we had so much feedback from my. all of you, both questions and comments, thoughts, loved doing the whole thing. And I loved

hearing from all of you once the show was birthed. You know, it was like, just so great to hear people's reaction and the questions that you guys were asking were so smart. And people, like so many amateur sleuths in the audience who had great observations. And we have not lost hope that this case can be solved. Little baby Lisa was never found. We don't know what happened to her. We don't know if she was killed. We don't know if she was stolen, if she was sold, and if she could still be out there right now. But that's, of course, her parents' hope and our hope, too. And our main goal in launching the series was to see if we could spur a renewal of interest by the Kansas City PD or someone else. And we'll have an update on that at the end

of the show. But joining me our team, Phil Houston, former CIA, agent, the guy who invented the CIA's deception detection method still used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the country and the world, Bill Stanton, former NYPD, and someone you don't know whose name is Brian O'Keefe. He is a producer on the series. He worked very closely with my executive producer on the series, Mary Murphy, who is a wonderful, amazing producer, but who is camera shy. And so Brian, very, very. up to speed on everything he and Mary did together and one of the unsung heroes of this whole production. So Brian, thanks for being here. Phil and Bill, great to see you guys too. How's it going?

Good, Megan. Thank you for having us again. Awesome. Okay. So first of all, I haven't even really gotten a chance to ask you guys what you thought of the five-part series and whether it changed your thinking at all, seeing it all strung together. I'll start with you on it, Phil. It hasn't changed my thinking per se, but it did spawn some thought process in reviewing what my rationale is for thinking who is responsible for the disappearance of baby Lisa. Okay, we'll hear more on that throughout this hour. How about you, Bill Stanton? Well, first, Megan, let me just tell you.

your audience that is devout and intelligent and worships you, as do I. If not for you, we wouldn't have had this opportunity. When I called you up on the phone all those years ago to the most recent call that started this when you said let's do it, you know, hopefully this brings something to the table in furthering the investigation. As for my opinion, if it changed it all, I would say absolutely not. If nothing else, when you walked up, On that individual, in his backyard, it only galvanized my opinion, and I'm more sure, both personally and professionally, more than ever. That was such a crazy day, and Brian, he knows all about it. He's the one who really set it up. It's really kind of thanks to Brian that it was able to happen. How about you, Brian? When you saw it all stitched together, you put so many hours into it. Did it change your thinking at all?

Or talk to us about what your reaction was to the finished product? Well, I'm still a little torn, you know, but I've had some distance now, you know, we published a couple months back, and I watched them all yesterday, and I am really beginning to wonder what Megan has told us, Megan Wright. and it's made me coupled with Mr. Tchenko's reaction to you and the kinds of careful answers he gave really makes me wonder, wait a minute, come on, it's the phone call. I mean, that phone call is everything. Because you were not thinking that Jersey, you didn't really like Jersey for the crime.

You remember, you might recall when you and, Bill came back from the house down the street, we were listening to it. And my first reaction, you saw my face. I remember you looking at me and I said, I don't know, guys. I don't know. I'm not so sure, you know. And so it's a fascinating mystery. You know, we're going to get into a lot of the viewer questions, but can you just tell us? Because that, the interview of Jersey in his backyard called Jersey, because he's from Jersey, but John Tanko was stunning. And we all, we planned so much for it.

We didn't know if we'd get it. My favorite part of the whole series is when we're doing our prep for that, you know, interview. And the three of us are sitting there talking about like, what if you get them? What if you don't get them? What can we do? What's our game plan? And the audience loved that too. They felt like they were in on it right there with us.

But, Brian, you were there. We worked on this series for years, which you can tell from the changing hairstyle. of MK throughout the whole thing. But we couldn't find him. We hired how many private investigators. We moved heaven and earth to find this guy. And we were unable to. And for most of the series,

we thought it wasn't going to happen. We were thrilled that Megan Wright agreed to sit with us. We thought that was the best we were going to do. And then maybe you could give the audience a little backstory on how we actually did wind up finding him. Well, his mom lived in New Jersey. She has since passed, by the way.

And several months ago, she passed away. But we had talked to her, Mary and I, through her doorway. She wouldn't come out and talk to us. She was afraid of being photographed, I guess. And she made it clear that he was somewhere in northern New Jersey. And she kind of gave a hint at a couple of towns. But the real humdinger was a private investigator from Kansas City, Mikhail Lund, helped find an obituary of a woman named

Lisa Gallo. This woman, at the bottom of the obituary, it mentions her survivors and her mother or stepfather or what have you, and at the bottom is that, and her domestic partner, John Tanko. Now, there are not that many John Tankos in New Jersey, frankly, in northern New Jersey, there's only one. And I, we figured out, Mary and I figured out, how to, where was this? where did this woman live?

So we went to the house that she last lived in before she died. And as we continued due to reporting, I met up with a man who lived in that house and he told me, John did live here. We kicked him out months ago. They kicked him out of that house for lighting fires in the backyard. And I said, well, we're, yes. So they're.

Well, he said, yeah, this is what the man said. The man said that he was lighting fires and it was becoming a problem. And he was a little erratic behavior, a little erratic is what he said. Then, again, in this group of friends or people that lived in that house, somebody gave me a tip that they didn't have the address, but they knew that it was on a cul-de-sac. And at the end of the cul-de-sac, not far from a diner, there'll be a couple of horses. And so I made, you know, of course, I made several trips out there. And this one trip, I walked down the street, that street, the cul-de-sac, and a dog starts barking like nuts crazy at me. And I don't know where this dog is, but, you know, I don't like, you know, a barking dog is not going to be, can be a bad thing.

but it also attracted attention to me, wandering down the street. Well, guess who pops his head out from behind the fence, that big fence that you guys were looking through when we shot? There he was. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, it's him. So I said, he says to me, can I help you? And I said, well, because he lives with a woman named Lisa. I hadn't really planned on being confronted by him.

I really had it. I was just scoping and seeing what cars were in the driveway, et cetera, and the neighbors and what have you. And I said, well, you know, there's a John and Lisa on this block. I'm trying to find John and Lisa, and he literally looks me in the eye and immediately lies and says, oh, John and Lisa, you got to go into the block and go all the way down. He's sending me away. He doesn't want me to know where John Lisa lives. And it's him. Now, listen.

I've never heard his voice, but it was him because I've seen enough of his mugshots. And he was wearing a little beanie. And I'm like, oh, my God. So then I went to the diner, which wasn't that far away, and called our executive producer. And I was shaking because I was like, it was him. he's never been videotaped or even the video video we had no footage of him that was one of our problems thinking about how we were going to produce the episodes talking about him but not with him

there's no B-roll all we had was mugshots of him over the years because he had done such a good job of staying off camera keep going and being incarcerated for something else right after the kidnapping a burglary i believe and or absconding, what have you, he was locked away, you know, so, and when he got out, the media was gone, and, you know, and then he made his way back east a couple years later, I guess. But the only video of him is basically the back of his head in a courtroom. In court, yeah, it was such a big deal.

Couldn't believe it. We really thought, all right, you know, we're just not going to get him. And then thanks to Brian's efforts and the efforts of others we hired prior to that, we eventually got on the trail and found him. And so that was half the battle and really led to the most interesting, I think, piece of the entire show, which is ultimately the confrontation between the two of us with Bill in the backyard. Brian was there back in the van and just a crazy day. I mean, Bill and I met at that diner right around the corner before we went over there. and without getting too specific, we had a bit of a briefing from law enforcement bill that had us both very worried about what we might be walking into.

And we started second guessing, like, the protocols we had settled on and whether basically you could keep me safe and whether we had done enough to make sure this could go off without a hitch. Yeah, well, first, you know, Doug, your loving husband, he had a phone call with me. and said, listen, nothing happens to my wife. You understand? That was like a couple of nights before. I'm like, 10 for that. So when we were doing the pregame, if you will, in the diner,

and by chance the sergeant walked in with his driver, and I got pulled to the side, and as you, you know, described, can you handle what may come your way? And then that made me tilt my head. And I'm like, yeah, I got it. Don't worry. Don't worry. So, yeah, there was a little tension there. We got a lot more concerned in a very short time about what we might be walking into.

And so when you see us there on the outside of the house, we are very much like, okay, this needs to be handled just right. One thing we had definitely concluded was I was not going in alone. I was going in with Bill, who knows how to handle himself in any threatening situation. What were you going to say, Brian? I was just going to mention that neighbors had told us that, and the police backed it up, he had exhibited some erratic behavior at different points prior to this day. And, Megan, to your credit, I said, do you want me to go first? You're like, no, I'll go.

Well, I have you. It's easy to be brave when you've got Bill Stanton right behind you. You just don't feel like anybody's going to mess with you. Okay, so let's get into it because the listeners have a lot of questions after having watched the whole series and they were so great. Everybody watched it. It's like you didn't get anybody who watched one. You had all the same people watch all five of them. They now have their own strong opinions on it. I'm going to start with this one from Zon, who writes as follows. Upon listening to your interview with John Tanko, I noticed a couple of things. He repeatedly used present tense.

This could indicate that it is still ongoing or not over. And here's a little montage of what he's referring to from part five of our series on Baby Lisa. If you can tell us what your involvement was in the disappearance of baby Lisa? I don't have any involved. That's what I'm saying. None whatsoever. I don't have any involvement in it. What you know really referring me as a link to this case? I don't want to know involvement. I'm not involved. They're sure I'm being put involved in something that I'm not involved. There were some instances where he used past tense, but I take the point. He does, like, I am not involved. He's talking about it like, it's

like it's happening right now. What do you guys think is my law enforcement experts, Phil? Yeah, that immediately stands out. I mean, the incident occurred 13 years ago. And he's referring to the present time. And it reflects his worry that he is going to be caught. That's his biggest fear now. And much of your, of the interview, the manner in which he responded is a It's about the here and now as opposed to what happened way back when. And to include when he said something like, I don't want to face a death penalty case or something of that nature. And truthful people don't sit around worrying about that they're going to be

a death penalty case unless they have a reason to worry about it. And he carries that reason to worry every single day. is my opinion. Did that jump out at you to all, Bill, the use of the present tense? Like, I can see the point. You know, if you're asking me, did I have something to do with,

I don't know, let's say some scandal at Fox 15 years ago, I don't think I'd be sitting there saying, I have nothing to do with it. I am not involved. I think I probably would be using the past tense. Yeah, I mean, it was a great pickup by your viewer, but it's not that one syllable, that one statement.

for me, if you look at this man's overall history, you know, Brian mentioned that he lied right to his face without blinking an eye, that he was setting fires, the neighbor told you. What happened the night of the abduction? There was a fire. When you look at in aggregate, all of his past crimes, meth addict, arsonist, he was a B&E, breaking an entering specialist. That was his thing, breaking into homes. You know, the preponderance of evidence for me, All roads, in my opinion, lead to Jersey Joe. Okay. So this is, which is confusing.

He also went by Jersey Joe, or his name is John, but it goes by Jersey. Anyway, we're talking about the same man. Yeah, I'm sorry. On the subject of the fires, because he had in history of setting fires, our viewer, Jennifer, had a question about the fire that happened the night Baby Lisa went missing for the audience just joining us and not up to speed baby lisa was stolen out of her crib in the middle of the night after the mother was home the two sons were home they were asleep they said the father was out working all night on an electrician job at starbucks that was verified by cameras so we never found out

whether the baby was taken and killed taken and sold we have no idea um but the main guy we focused on in our in our series was this guy john tanko who was a handyman in the neighbor and had been spotted around the Irwin's house doing work and three cell phones were taken from the Irwin house and the baby Lisa went missing. One of those phones was used to call Megan Wright. So one of those phones was used to call somebody and the person was Megan Wright who was the girlfriend of John Tanko. And there had been some reporting that she had said she wanted a baby. She denied it when we talked to her. She did admit she broke up. up with him thinking like whatever he's not a family man i you know this isn't the man for me but the

reporting at the time was much of a specific that she had said i want a baby and there was speculation he might have stolen one from her so he likes to set fires and that night shortly after baby lisa went missing we talked in the series about how a dumpster nearby the irwin home and near the so-called flop house where megan wright had been living um which jersey knew and he had been there many times was set on fire. There was a dumpster fire that was found. But in the series, we point out that they investigated and they didn't, the cops did and didn't find anything. They did look for, you know, signs, God forbid, of a baby or any sort of incriminating remnants. But this is what Jennifer writes. The series was fascinating. I'm curious if the fire that took place after the kidnapping was ever

investigated. Is it possible Jersey was totally strung out that night, took the baby, and then burned her in the dumpster? Brian, is my information correct? Right. We looked into that. It's not like the cops didn't know about that fire. They did. Right. And I think Deborah told us also that that was a dead end. There was there was burnt clothing in there, but it was not the baby's clothes and other garbage. By the way, that dumpster was near the flop house that she had lived in when she was dating him. On the night of the kidnapping, she was a mile away at a different plot house. Right, right, right. Right. Another one. This is from Jane. I just watched number five with Tanco. It's obvious to me,

she writes, that he is guilty due to the nature of his answers and history of this case. Moreover, he states that he believes Lisa is living with a rich family enjoying her life. Why would anyone not involved say that? I pray she is alive. I'm wondering why this statement was not addressed. Here he is in SOT, too. why would somebody take a baby you know what the FBI asked me the same question I'm like only thing I come up was to sell it to maybe somebody that they can't have kids you know I mean it sounds crazy at all of this that's the best case scenario that couldn't happen that kid is every now 13 or school you know has a rich family

and we, you know, something like that. I mean, that's the best case. Yeah. What does that say to you guys, that he went there? Megan, when I said at the outset of the show today that some of my views I had been, you know, I had to reflect on them a little bit more, this was one of those.

I had told myself at one point in the case that I was guilty of wishful thinking when I would, when I thought, she had been sold. When I heard him on the video, the first time I heard that answer, it shocked me into thinking that what he was trying to do potentially is put a clue on the table, that what really happened to her might have been that she had been sold. And if you connect that with the belief that he is the guilty party here, then he would

be the person that would have sold her, so to speak. He's using, his answer is very, very deceptive. He immediately goes to the FBI that he's talked to them. He's trying to develop some credibility using convincing statements. As we know, deceptive people, when they can't share the truth because of the consequences, they almost immediately go into some form of convincing statements or efforts to influence us to believe them. And that's simply what he's doing there with his statements and his discussion about the FBI

and his offer to, you know, maybe put something on the table that would lead us in the right direction. Now, what I heard today about him sending Brian down the street, he may be able to, he may may well be using that as a way to put us in a completely different direction. But I have to confess, as I mold over this after, after, uh, uh, episode five, I, I wondered more if, if maybe there is a chance that that little girl is still alive. That's, I mean, I, I, I think all the time about how, you know, remember what happened with Elizabeth Smart, that any day, it's happened so many times. We're just not necessarily that exact scenario where someone, is missing and they come back. But we're a story. You think it's over. You think you have it figured

out. And then you get the news alert on your phone and your jaw drops. Oh my gosh. Like huge development. And I really believe in my heart of hearts one of these days we're going to get the news alert about baby Lisa. I admit, I don't know whether it's going to be they found remains of a baby and the testing is done and it's her. Or if we get the more hopeful possibility, which is this young woman went to ancestry DNA, took a test, and found out she has a mother and father match who are other than the ones who raised her. And this girl does investigation and figures out she's actually Lisa Irwin. I mean, that's my hope. And I really believe one way or the other we are going to find out it's just a question of time. And it's one of the reasons I wanted

to do this series. Like let's know exactly what we know and what we don't know. before that day comes because I just feel like it will. Listen to this. Brickhouse Nutrition's Labor Day sale just went live. For a few days only, you can save 25% on everything with code Labor Day 25. Start fall off strong, reboot your health, and save big. And this massive sale includes their best-selling weight loss formula, lean. Brickhouse Nutrition says, doctor formulated lean, helps turn excess fat into energy, reduces appetite and curbs craving.

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code Labor Day 25 for 25% off. Brickhouse Nutrition.com code Labor Day 2.5. Joanna. Joanna or Johanna. My thoughts are about Jersey. Let's say he was paid a large sum of money for baby Lisa. Was there any indication of that? How did he afford to move to Jersey? Did he buy that house in Jersey? Do we know the answer to that, Brian? It's not his house. It's a woman named Lisa. I'm not going to use her last name, but it was owned by, I'm assuming, one of her parents before her, I think the father, before she owned, now she owns it. So he has no money? He doesn't have a job, and he does not own that house.

So I really don't know what his income would be. So you're saying that the domestic partner you found in the obit was named Lisa, and the woman with whom he was sharing this house was named Lisa. Correct. yeah it's that whole setup uh megan you know the town the horse the horse paddock in the back the clucking the roosters yeah i was waiting for anthony hopkins to come running out of the back door it was uh it was surreal at best but you know tanko is not a a master criminal he's a repetitive criminal he's not a mastermind part of my language he's a bullshit honest you know if he told me the sky was blue, I'd look up before I agreed with him. So he is so adept at doing it, you know, to the

average layperson, they may, oh, he's trying to be cooperative. But thank God we have Phil on our team that can cut through all that BS and we get right down to it that just about almost on every question you asked him was a lie. In the scenario that we're considering of he stole baby Lisa and then he sold baby Lisa. Does anyone here believe he would have received a lot of money? Like, I think we all kind of thought maybe it was a crime of opportunity. If he did it, it was a crime of opportunity. There's just no way this guy who was a meth head, in and out of the prison system, had a connection to somebody very wealthy. He was going to, like, I feel like, no, he didn't buy that house. And he probably didn't buy any house. And if he stole and sold the baby, he probably got a

pittance for her because he was likely just looking for a drug hit potentially or, you know, just something to get him through the day. This is the life of an addict recovering or using, but certainly using. Without a doubt, I mean, it was a, I wholeheartedly believe, you know, people ask the question, why would he take the baby? Well, how do any of us know what runs in a mind of a meth addict? You know, he, if I remember correctly, he said he found the cell phone. and in my opinion, that was to cover the tracks for the attempted call. If we remember, the phone bill wasn't paid, so the phone call did not go through, but the phone company logged it as an attempt.

So in his mind, being from the streets and having street smarts, you know, there's a difference. He knew he had to cover that up. So he told his attorney, or his would-be attorney, that, yeah, he found, yeah, yeah, I found the phones. I made the call. So if anything, what I think, I think he left the baby, or to your point, Meg, maybe you've traded the baby for drugs. And what happened from there, who knows? And in the entire series, that to me was the most incriminating thing we heard from anyone. The interview with Cindy Short, who had represented the Irwins, the mom and the dad, for a short time before being dismissed because there was sort of a turf war between her and Joe Takapina and he won. And then on her own went and found Jersey in the jail, sat down with him, talked with him for some 10 hours.

And in that interview, he told her he found the three stolen cell phones that had been taken from the Irwin's house that night and then allegedly discarded them. And then when we got him on camera, but it actually said he said he found three phones. He didn't know what he found stacked, you know, three phones. We find three phones together. In the middle of the night. Right. Yeah. Sure.

So we actually got a question about that. Now, this is from Rick. He writes, when Cindy talked to John Tanko, Cindy Short, the lawyer, talked to John Tanko in prison, and he said he had the phones and was with a woman. What about that woman? I watched the rest of the episode, and you never came back to if Cindy asked who the woman was. Isn't that a huge item to leave out? Let's say this woman wanted a baby, this mystery woman, and John and Megan Wright got the baby for her. And after doing that, Megan Wright knows how bad of a thing she did, resulting in her getting sober. Do we know anything, Brian, about the woman?

I mean, this was from Cindy Short, but I don't think Cindy knew anything more about her or got anything more about her. Correct. That's right. Cindy said she did not get a name. It was like another street person, kind of, you know, and she had no idea who the woman was, and he didn't have her name or offer her name.

Here is, just so people are with us, here's Sotsaventenko talking about what he said to Cindy Short when she visited him in the jail cell. He did tell me, though, that he had found three cell phones. And he told me where he had found them. He also claimed to have told the police that he had found three cell phones. And he's telling me where, which is not very far from the house. So he's placing himself not just the proximity of it. of the phones, but in possession of the phones. He's claiming that he's with another woman. And we have videotape of the underpass where he claims he found the phones, thanks to Brian, because this is how it works. Like, Cindy says this to me in an interview. I talk to Mary and Brian.

We say we need to figure out exactly where they met. Brian went on the ground and got you guys that footage. All this stuff is just sort of a behind the scenes on how we produce TV for people. And, you know, takes a real life person to actually go and figure it out and talk to Cindy again exactly where let me get a shot is it representative and like let's be careful so all that stuff went into it um then when we confronted him bill of course i asked him about that and he claimed it was all lies he told cindy short did you have those phones because we we understand that you told a lawyer cindy short that you found those phones i'm confused you're whatever she wanted to

I didn't tell her I found those phones. I said I found phones that but I didn't find him. No, nothing? Oh, why? It's because she's asked me a million questions and I didn't want to make her happy, whatever. It's kind of interesting, Phil Houston, that he didn't lie,

that he didn't just say, I mean, I think he did lie, but that he didn't, if he's going to lie, why didn't he just say, I never told Cindy Short that? The lie that he's, is concealment of the fact that they're the real phones. He, he, he, it sounds to me the way it was characterized is that it was a random finding of some phones. And he said, I didn't, I didn't say it was those phones. And what I think he is covering up. But then he also says, and I didn't tell her that. Like, he's like, I was, I know he says, I told her that,

but it was a lie. So let me just be clear, you know, I did say something to her about three phones, not the three phones, but phones. But it was all lies that I just told her to. tell her what she wanted here. Why wouldn't he just say that never happens? Cindy Short's a liar. Yeah, because he has to cover up his tracks. The original reason that he told her about finding the phones was so that if those phones were ever recovered or found, because he got rid of them somehow and they had his fingerprints on them, and is there anyone else who saw him with those phones? For example, there was a reference to another woman, and then you have the call to Megan Wright. If they connected in that evening, then that means that someone else knows that he was in possession of those phones.

So he has to cover up and, you know, come up with a reason as to why he had some phones. Yes, exactly. And also, Megan, he knows he made that call. He knows it. So it's like, you know, the planes, when they got a missile locked in, they throw up flares to distract. He is putting up so much distraction. And the best liars, in my experience, they stay as close to the truth as possible and take a baby step to the left or right. I mean, when I go undercover, that's what I do.

Keep it simple, stupid so you could remember your lies. And that's what he, in my opinion, that's what he's doing here. Oh, yeah. I told her I found the phones. Now, he could retract that if he was ever pressed. But in my opinion, he believes he's so far past getting convicted. That's why he felt he can engage and control the narrative. Because we don't believe his denial. We believe that he did tell Cindy Short that. And when he did that, he probably did that because he didn't know what she knew. He didn't know whether law enforcement had the phones. He didn't know exactly what the evidence would be. Because this was right. right after the disappearance about him and those phones. And so if he had stolen them along with the baby, he had to say enough to Cindy to find out what she knew, what does she have on the phones, but not to incriminate himself for having stolen them.

That's our belief. It's all so chilling. And Phil always teaches in his deception detection class and in his books, spy the lie, that one of the signs, it has to be as part of a cluster, meaning within the first five seconds after you ask the question, because, like, for example, looking away, that could be a sign of deception, but not if it's by itself, but if it's with another

sign of deception and Phil outlines them all, within the five second cluster, or within the five second answer, it can be a cluster, which is a deception thing. And so one of the things Phil talks about is hands above the midline. Because, Phil, why? Why do your hands go above the midline sometimes when you lie. Typically, it's a spike in anxiety, the fight or flight or freeze response. Someone asks you a question and it puts you on the spot. Your anxiety immediately spikes. And that spike in anxiety causes a rerouting of your circulation. And that circulation as it rushes, you know, away to the muscles and the things that are going to help you get away or get out of this, face this threat,

they irritate the capillaries. And as a result, you find yourself, you know, playing with your ears or your nose because blood is being drawn away from those things that could be that normally require a lot of blood. He's up on a ladder. He's already got a barrier between the two of us, but then he starts waving his arms around

in this particular answer. Let's watch it again, just with all that in mind. Did you have those phones? Because we understand that you told a lawyer, Cindy, Short, that you found those phones. I'm seeing you're whatever she wanted to hear. I didn't tell her I found those phones. Wave in the hands. I found phones that, but I didn't find it.

More waving. No, nothing? Oh, why? Just because she's asked me a million questions. I didn't want to. Waving. Just make her happy, whatever. I mean, every second of it with the hand here and then the big, big, big, and then back here and then big, big, big.

So would you peg that as anxiety, Phil? Yeah, absolutely. It was a great question. He wasn't expecting it. And you followed up. And he thought he had satisfied you, I think, in terms of your curiosity with his answer in the previous question. And in fact, you just kept going. And he's getting more and more nervous, more anxious.

All right. Sonia. Have you thought at all about how quickly Tanco answered the question about whether the ex-girlfriend, Megan Wright, wanted a baby? The way he answered made me feel like he could have taken the baby for her. But then when he called her and said he had a baby for them, she may have freaked out. He said that was a lie very quickly and Huffy, almost like she lied to him. She's referring to this right here. one of the theories that she really wanted a family she wanted a kid yeah it's totally not true that's not true she never said that to you totally not true no megan wright was defensive on this same point and that the effect of that phil is to make us believe it more not less one of the things it jumps out immediately, he says it was totally not true, immediately a convincing adjective, if you will, prior to making his answer, giving his answer. And he's giving you a denial, but it's a little bit like in the O.J. Simpson trial, you know, when they ask him, you know, for a plea, he said, I'm 100%, you know, if you believe that

was guilty. They feel the need to be more compelling in their response. And that's what he was doing there. And he doesn't realize it. And you're asking direct questions. And that's what's giving him real difficulty. Because Brian, at the time, I mentioned this when we first got on in the show, the reporting was everywhere that she told him she wanted a baby. And when she was younger and pink-haired, she was on camera, like with Jim Spellman. But the denial she gave me on that front, the denial he gave me on that front was much stronger than I'd ever heard from them up until this point. Did Jersey ever offer to get a baby for you? No.

The denials she gave to me and he gave to me were the strongest I'd heard from either of them on the allegation that he might have been stealing a baby. Or that she might have told him she wanted a baby. Go ahead, Phil. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. At a minimum, they talked about that subject. I truly believe that they had in perhaps the early days of their relationship before Megan realized that this was not the guy for her, I think there was a strong possibility that they would have talked about having a child or wanting a child.

Kate writes in, and I confess I don't know this movie, but she writes in, I'm really enjoying your fascinating baby Lisa series. I'm sure you've thought of us already. But doesn't this whole situation remind you of the Cohen Brothers movie Raising Arizona, where the main character, Nicholas Cage in a small town, is a criminal who hatches a plan with his wife to steal a baby from a family who had quintuplets? Quote, no one will notice if we steal one in order to start a family of their own. Could Jersey the suspect have watched that movie and thought it would be a good idea to steal a baby to try to start a family with his girlfriend, Megan. Here is a clip from the movie Raising Arizona with Nick Cage and Holly Hunter from 1987. Which one you get? I don't know. Nathan Jr., I think. Give me here. There's the instructions. Oh, he's beautiful.

Yeah, he's awful damn good. I think I got the best one. I bet they were all beautiful. All babies are beautiful. This one's awful damn good, though. Don't you cuss around him. He's fine, he is. I think it's Nathan Jr. We are doing the right thing, aren't we?

I mean, they had more than they could handle. Well, now, honey, we've been over this and over this, and there's what's right, and there's what's right, and never the twins she'll meet. Don't you think his mom will be upset? I mean, overly? Well, of course she'll be upset, sugar, but she'll get over it.

She's got four little babies almost as good as this one. It's like when I was right in convenience store. I love him so much. Holly hunters. She's amazing. Now, that was 25 years before the events in question in this case, Bill. But Jersey is of a certain age, and we cannot rule out that he saw that movie, which was really popular. Yeah, I could pretty much tell you, my guess would be absolutely not. You know, they couldn't afford, they couldn't afford their own phone. They passed around a cell phone in the meth house. I don't think they could have afforded Netflix, let alone a TV set. That'd be more of an Amazon primer, I think.

Clever, clever viewer, though. I love the movie references, and one never knows. And you know what? It just shows you, you know, you're in a meth house. Lord knows what they were hopped up on, you know, and they probably rambled. I want a kid. Yes, I'll get you a kid. And that may have been, you know, when the perpetrator went in that house through the front window,

I remember the police said, oh, they couldn't not have gone in. while when we went to the house, I got right in, pushed in that screen, and he walked through that house, which was chilling, and probably heard the baby stirring, and he grabbed everything that he could carry. And unfortunately, baby Lisa, in my opinion, was one of them along with the phones. We had the neighbors right around the corner say they saw a man with a baby, both the husband and the wife, right in the relevant time frame. And no blanket, no anything, just a baby. That's right.

They both saw it. They did not know that one was missing. I mean, that's just such a damning fact. Okay, from Kathy. Thank you for all of your hard work. I listen to your show daily. Thank you, Kathy. It's my number one trusted news source.

Yes. If you have a chance to discuss the Tanko interview with Phil Houston again and haven't already explored the blow, I was hoping Phil would talk about this. The question is, Tanko seemed aggressive when he was asked who Bill was. meaning when the subject of who Bill Stanton was, here's what she's referring to in SOP 5. The way I see it is we're trying to provide them with closure. You can help us do that and with some comfort, you know,

and just figuring out what the story is. This is big shot lawyer here, isn't it? No, he's not a lawyer. He's my friend. This is Bill. Yeah, no. In another life, he's a lawyer. They do these stories, and people just trash my name.

They totally trash my name. You know what I mean? I was involved with a lot of illegal activity about that. Why did you make of that, the focus on Bill, who he raised, I didn't raise there, Phil. Again, Megan, you were focusing, you opened the interview with three questions or three focuses on involvement, and you weren't going away. And he didn't know what to say, and he was a classic case of buying time. and he used the aggression also just in the in taste Bill was with when law enforcement and he spent a lot of his life dealing with law enforcement and I wouldn't be surprised

that if he felt that Bill looked, acted and could be, you know, law enforcement. But the major benefit to him was he needed to buy time and then as you know he came back and made an attempt then to answer the question. But the questioner that raised this question was absolutely correct on the aggression because he talked very demeaningly about in Bill's direction. It was like a stall tactic.

That makes sense because you hadn't really come up and he wasn't like searching for more information when we first walked on, Bill. It was kind of interesting. And when we were walking off, remember he said something like, are you taping this? And you said, like, not with this phone.

You just said something that was actually true, but not totally revealing us. Even if you don't BS right back. Yeah, exactly. He spent half an hour BSing us. We got actually a lot of email about this one. Here it is in SOT 6. What do you think happened to the guy? What do you think should happen to the person if they had this?

I don't know what happened. So, I mean, If it's a kidnapping or, God forget, a homicide. Oh, that's going to stick in the nose. That jumped out at us, too. I remember when Bill and I were walking off property, we were both like, holy shit, is that the thing about the death penalty that came up?

What about that one, Phil? Yes, the death penalty, again, is part of a convincing statement, and it's also part of this demon that he deals with all the time and worries about getting caught and worries that sooner or later all of this is going to become unraveled and his knowledge and our participation in it will come to light and he's scared to death because you know he knows having been in prison how serious these things can get you know very quickly once the truth has been uncovered and so he but and so he so fears the death penalty that he uses that as a convincing

statement to enhance his answer and saying, I would never do something like that. I know how bad the death penalty is. That was his... Yeah, it makes sense. I should state, for the record, this is Phil's opinion, his expert opinion, as a deception detection expert, Jersey denies all these claims, as you've heard. That it's true, because if you asked me, what involvement did you have in the disappearance of baby Lisa? My answer would be none. I came in after she was gone to report on it as a journalist, period. And even if people had gotten to the point of saying, maybe Megan Kelly did it, she was there on site in Kansas City.

I still don't think my response would be, this is a death penalty case. I'm not talking about it. It's interesting that that's where his mind went and the audience reacted strongly. I have a question concerning part four. You mentioned the parents finding a charge on their debit card for a name-changing service. there's no questioning or explanation of how the charge was on their card. Is this something I missed? Great work on all of your presentations.

Bob is referring to this piece of part four of our baby Lisa special. 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. Bob has a point. that one would probably we should have closed that loop a little tighter there because that is a big one like wait what but we didn't I don't think we found anything more on it Brian right Jeremy did not know and nothing came of it right it's it's a debit card fraud you know which you know happens um it's an I said whoever took the phones and the baby did not take his debit card or a statement that she had the number so and also if it were Jeremy and Deborah Why would they be paying for a name changing service? You know, so it's like it really is a fuzzy, I mean, it's a dead end and no matter which way you could go. Yeah, because if Jeremy or Deborah stole the baby, then one would presume they'd be with the baby.

They'd be raising the baby. They didn't do that. That's not true. They were together living in the same home up until very recently. So one wasn't scurrying about the world changing the baby's name so that she couldn't be identified as little, Lisa. I want to tell you about daily look. This is a very cool idea. Their mission is simple. Elevate your style. They work with top brands and emerging designers alike, like Kate Spade, AG, good American, girlfriend, collective, and more. Their sizes range from

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It's time to get your own personal stylist with Daily Look. Head to DailyLook.com to take your style quiz and use code Megan for 50% off your first order. Once again, that's DailyLook.com for 50% off and make sure you use my promo code Megan so they know I sent you and they give you your discount. Okay, Megan Wright. A lot of feedback on the Megan Wright interview. I think all four of us and Mary too were all really floored after that whole thing happened. Phil and Bill, you watched it with me in the wings and then came up to offer instant analysis. Brian and Mary were watching too. And it was a shocking exchange. I really didn't expect it to go as it did. The audience may

remember she got very emotional and there was a turn in the interview where she was like, she cried a lot. She was very emotional or like she purported to cry a lot. And then there was this turn where I had to ask her about she, she served some time for abuse of the baby she had much later after baby Lisa, that you just have to do that as a reporter. I can't have her on and give an interview about whether she may have been involved in the disappearance of a baby and ignore the fact that later she was found guilty of medical neglect of her own child. So it's one of those sensitive things where she's agreed to give me this interview, but we both know that this thing is going to have to come up. And boy, she wasn't happy. Here's a little bit of that

in SOT 17. He was underweight. 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. We can. We can move right past. I'm trying to participate for the sake of maybe Lisa not to focus on the worst thing in my life, the most embarrassing thing. So, Phil, the audience did not believe the tears. And I think sided with you, who also very rough on Megan right after that interview, you did not believe pretty much anything she said. Phil was Stoneface.

He was hard. Phil was hardcore. Yeah, I had seen other interviews with Megan. And in my opinion, in every one of those interviews, she used. her the tough life. In other words, I think that much of what she's saying about how tough her life was, there's a certain amount of truth to that.

And she's using it very effectively to distract people away from what the real issue is. In other words, it gets people to take their eye off the ball and focus on this stuff. And she's very, very good at it. She started her answer with aggression. And what that typically means is that when someone really doesn't want to talk about this, they will try to shut it down right off the bat.

And she did that. So I also believe that there is an underlying reason, some of the reasons that she gave embarrassment and the worst moment in her life and so forth. but I also believe she's hiding and doesn't want to talk about her role in the mistreatment of her own child. In other words, how bad that level of mistreatment actually was is what I think she was really trying to conceal there. That's what the deception was primarily about at that moment. So many of the audience members had the same reaction that even my family had when we watched it together at first, which was, why would you keep that in?

When they first saw her come from me, it was a very tense, awkward exchange between us, and people were like, why would you keep that in there? My God, but there was a reason. You know, we wanted the audience to see how in this moment she turned on me. She aggressively came from me

and sort of tried to emotionally stand me down. And, you know, Phil, you can see in episode four, had very strong thoughts about that and about her use of emotion throughout the interview. almost like a child, Megan. When you put her up against, she started, like, crying to, and, you know, if we're going to look at it, go down that road, like, to obisgate, you know, she had me tearing up, and I bought it, you know, I bought it. You know, I bought it. But now that we step back and we look in reflection, like a child, they don't get what they want, or it's not going their way, you know, start crying to bring out the humanity in us. One thing I struggle with, and having watched it and listen to it again repeatedly, is on October 4th, when she got back from Walmart and Waffle House, she decided to become sober.

Like, what? Because she got a call from the FBI. She had not yet been connected in any way publicly to anything. I put the TV on and I saw a kidnap. Like, she was connecting herself. it's a very good point because and even even even if she did see that a baby had been stolen a baby she didn't know from a family she didn't know why would that scare her sober like why would that random news item scare her sober and sober ever since okay according to court records she violated probation or something it was documented and

that she had failed a marijuana test at least once, you know, in the years of when she was imprisoned or afterward. And, you know, listen, that could be the Demi-Lovato, California sober, right? But back in 2012 and 2013, marijuana wasn't like the, you know, over-the-counter thing that it is now. So. True. Yeah, we got a lot of mail on people wanting to know about that, you know, how she got scared.

This is from M. She goes by M or he, writes as follows, I agree with the lie detector, Phil, on Megan Wright. She clearly says that she was only in a relationship with Sky for five months, but then she says she has post-traumatic stress disorder and cries throughout the entire interview

and then claims to know how mean and scary he is, but can't give you an answer when you ask if she thinks he could do that to a baby. And she says, I think Phil is spot on. She knows more. She just doesn't want to admit it because she's worried it will implicate her. Here's a little bit of what she's referring to in SOT 15.

How likely is it, do you think, that Jersey, John Tinko, 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 only 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.

What's that about, Phil? It's hard to say. It's hard for her to say after all this time, whether he might have been involved. It's a classic example of truth in the lie. It is hard for her to say. That's the truthful part. But when it's followed by a convincing statement, which is honestly, now it signals right away, you're looking at this small cluster, but it's immediately telling you to be careful of what comes after that because she's giving you all, you know, untruth. All right.

Here's another piece of it that the audience member, M, referenced in SOT 16. I have a lot of PTSD from the things that he put me through that I've tried really hard to work through over the years but there's a lot of it I can't let go I can't forget being that afraid. Were you thinking, you know, this guy's kind of crazy. Could have been him. Yes, I definitely thought this guy is crazy

and that he was horrible to me, traumatized me. But I have no idea what he's capable of. I mean, there is, she's right. There's an inconsistency in her. Like, it was so traumatic. I have PTSD all these years later. But gee, I have no idea whether he could commit this crime. These were phony tears, Megan.

If you notice, she was trying to cry as she initially started explaining. And then when you ask the follow-up question, immediately, everything went away and her voice normalized and she's back to giving you an explanation as if you know you ask you know how do you bake a cake you know what I mean I mean she's she's now back to talking normally people who are genuinely upset don't usually make that transition that smoothly and she's certainly not a very poised individual to begin with and and she's certainly not a very poised individual to begin with and she's, you know, she, I mean, she's using the tears to her advantage or trying hard to do that. If Megan Wright had anything to do with the disappearance of this baby, why would she have given me the interview?

That's the thing that I can't get past. She didn't have to sit with me. I'm not FBI. There's no subpoena. She knew I wasn't going to go easy on her. I never said this is going to be a walk in the park. And so she knew that she'd face tough questions and just being questioned about it at all, if you have something to do with it, you would avoid that like the plague.

It's much more consistent like with Jersey's behavior. Get out of here. He's down the street. I'm not talking to you, random man, right? She was like, I'll do it. And she sat with me for well over an hour, Phil. Behavioral scientists tell us, Megan, there's only a casual relationship between humans. behavior and logic.

If you were to ask me, do I think Megan Wright actively participate in New? I'm going to say no. I'll say no to that. What I think happened was, so suppose we all knew someone that was fairly close in our life in a similar situation, we did speak about a baby. He's the number one guy. The FBI did contact her because that her number was in the phone. So my feeling is more of a guilty conscience knowing that he very well could have done it and she just didn't want any part of it.

That's what I think, you know, her participation was. She didn't, you know, vigorously say, hey, listen, we spoke about that and yes, he very well could have. I think given her mental state at that time, he just wanted out of Dodge, out of the situation, don't implicate me. I don't know who called that phone. I didn't know the Irwin's, yada, yada, yada. And I think now this is her feeble attempt to try to make good on it. That was her motivation to call you to do the interview with you. At a minimum, she knows it's possible he did it, and it's possible she was the inspiration behind it.

Exactly. Kind of the best case scenario for Megan. I mean, I guess the best best is he had nothing to do with it and she had nothing to do with it. But then if he had something to do with it, I don't think anything. anybody believes he just did it for on his own. Like the relationship with her with her was too significant and volatile and recent. And there was a discussion in some way, shape, or form I'm convinced about her wanting a family. She kind of denied it in our interview, but I didn't believe it.

And when he went by that baby in the house that night, that was the light bulb that went off in the meth head head. Let me grab it. Let me get a gold star from the woman who I want to spend my life with. Because he had a history, Cindy Short told us, of breaking into houses and committing petty crimes, taking things like cell phones. That would be easy to resell on the market and get a price for. And that's why we all concluded it was probably him and he probably took the baby as a crime of opportunity. And let's not forget, he was working on a house up the block that night. He knew.

What were you going to say, Phil? The one thing that links her in my mind is how what she did with her phone, the night before the call occurred. In other words, she gave up her phone to other people in the house and said, here, you guys can use this tonight. Is that just a coincidence? You have the same question as Natasha,

our producer for this segment that we're doing right now. And she wrote her own questions down after having gone neck deep on all of this too. Her question is, it seems very convenient for Megan to leave her phone behind on the night of October 3rd,

the morning of October 4th when the crime took place. Could this have been on purpose? Did police ever check out if she actually went to the Waffle House and the Walmart like she claimed? Do you know the answer to that last question there, Brian? I don't know. But they were very thorough. One would have to presume they did. Yeah.

She left behind this phone. She has a phone. She's also using drugs at this point. and she leaves it behind for the trap house. Now, she explained to us this is like your kind of payment. You know, you got to show that you're worth something in order to be allowed to live at the trap house. And I had this phone.

It was her contribution, yeah. Nobody eats for free. You got to pay your rent. And that was her, you know, like just playing devil's advocate to what Phil was saying, like to balance it out. I'm not saying I necessarily agree. But, you know, to me, that was a plausible answer. You know, okay, I'm going to the Waffle House.

It's not like I have real friends in my life, except that are in this house, here, use the phone, and when I get back, I claim it. Because she had, my understanding was she had the only active phone at that time, and they were all using it. And we did make contact with a fellow member of the place she was living who admitted he had used her phone. He wouldn't admit on the night in question, but admitted he'd been using her phone. So she is supported on that.

Is she not, Brian, that she did allow the members of that house to use her phone? Two people in the house told me that. Yep. Okay. So on that, she may be telling the truth. Then there was this that a lot of the viewers reacted to, and Phil, you reacted to this to what made her go sober on October 4th of all days. This is how the question here, did Megan never clarify what the situation was to make her quit drugs, cold turkey on the morning of October 4th? I'd imagine it's pretty hard to quit meth, cold turkey.

especially in her living arrangement, would the FBI calling her phone be that big of a wake-up call to a meth addict? I mean, it is true. She, I don't know that she ever fully explained that, you know, what the trauma was. You know, you say, Brian, was it like the FBI just randomly called? It was just that. The FBI called her phone and she wasn't even with it. Or she saw a news item on the television with which she says to us, she had absolutely no connection. Yeah, I'm not sure we have an answer other than just the trauma of the day. A call from the FBI, news a baby had been stolen, and soon thereafter, news to her that the cell phones had dialed her number. And one other thing, in her 20 or 21-year-old life, she already had suffered a lot of other trauma,

including living in a domestic violence shelter, some other bad actor boyfriend in the months before this, before a tanker. Here is another smart question, Natalia. I was watching the first episode of Baby Lisa, and I was wondering, what if the neighbor that was drinking with Deborah, Samantha Brando, was her name, that what if that woman got her drunk on purpose and had an arrangement or a debt with someone? Here's a piece from episode one, SOT 18. Samantha and James Brando, their family was close with the Irwins.

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 give her the best advice I could. And she was kind of spilling her gut, you know, what she went through, when she's hoping she will accomplish next, you know. Custody stuff, you know, just the deep things that come with, you know, separation of family. What about the Brandos, Brian?

We did look into them, Samantha and James. Samantha would not talk to us. She vociferously refused to speak to us and was very angry. James, we had a long conversation with. And he basically kind of said everything that Jim Spellman told that he told Jim Spellman. He had quite an itinerary that night. And a lot of it was captured on CCTV, like he went to Walmart. And he was also over at an Air Force base where he worked in the wee hours of the morning.

So we didn't really get any red flags from him. And the police had ruled him out. The police said they rolled out or that they moved on from Jersey, too. So, I mean, I don't know how much stock we put in them. Why would Samantha Brando be vociferously against sitting with us when both Deborah and Jeremy cooperated with the piece extensively? Well, here's an interesting. I don't know why I never was able to.

I never asked Deborah this. But Samantha and Deborah stopped speaking, you know, have not been in contact in many, many years. Not long after the kidnapping, they no longer talk to each other. And so there was some, so I don't know what it was. but I just thought that's some sort of negative energy that Samantha's not speaking to Deborah

and let alone get a phone call from someone doing a podcast but I mean I get it that happens in relationships but like you're talking about a missing baby you'd think and she's she's a critical witness I mean she was important she was with Deborah the whole night while they were drinking

I don't know that's interesting though I will say to the extent she could say anything that would make Deborah look bad it's how much worse could it be than what Deborah has told us about Debra's behavior that night. It's not like Debra's trying to paint herself as some perfect angel. You know, she was very open right from the get-go just about the first time, you know, well, the first time I interviewed her when she told us how much she had been drinking and, you know, how she was basically blackout drunk.

And I asked her about this when we did our interview. Like, why? Why would you, why were you so honest about it? This is actually from part one. Watch this. Do you have a drinking problem? No. I don't think so.

Some folks are going to have an issue if you have more than five drinks while you're looking after a little baby and two little boys. She was sleeping. I wanted to ask her, why did you choose to share that with me? Because it has nothing to do with Lisa's abduction. 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. So we certainly didn't need Sam Brando to document Deborah's condition.

And I don't know that there was any reason to believe Samantha Brando had, like, there was no evidence whatsoever that she had anything to do with it. We interviewed Sam and there was no deception around the, I mean, Sam told us how, and I think one of the reasons why there may be some friction. that ensued after that is Samantha was the one who corroborated or told us that Deborah had been stumbling drunk that night and had and how and she she depicted how much she had to drink and I don't think Deborah wanted that to come out obviously so to me like the question is why wouldn't she come on camera I don't have the answer to that. I would lean into maybe there was some rancor between the two of them and she just wants to put it in her rear view. But she gets a pass from me. The reason being, I was there boots on the

ground literally days after the occurrence. And, you know, I interviewed her. I spent some significant time with her. But for me, the biggest thing, why she gets the pass for me is that I asked her to be interviewed by Phil. And she showed no trepidation and she did it. And at that, to me, that was the most important inflection point was to get Phil and Susan to interview Samantha, to remove everyone that was within touch distance that evening. And this is right in the beginning of the case when arrests could still be made at any moment. Like she put herself in potential jeopardy by saying as to that and she did it. That's right. Okay. I just want to touch base with you again on it, Phil. So have you, what, where do you stand now? Like, has your analysis changed meaningfully from when

we ended the series? Oh, not as far as John Tanko is concerned. I have no doubts about whether he is involved in this. As Bill noted earlier, there's so many points that, uh, of evidence and things and coincidence, alleged coincidences that it's, it's just he is, he is, in my In my opinion, he has at a minimum significant guilty knowledge and or direct involvement. And I'm leaning much more towards direct involvement than just guilty knowledge. And with respect to Megan Wright? Megan Wright knows what happened that night. There's no doubt in my mind.

And that's the one thing I went back in, you know, I have great respect for the panel here. And, you know, I was sort of a one-off on Megan. And I really went back and looked at it and looked at a couple of the other interviews and so forth. And there's a real consistency in terms of her level or volume of deception and the efforts to distance herself using that deception away from TANCO. and she's piling on to him. Right, and you pointed this out when we did episode five that he was very defensive of her.

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Visit gCU.edu. I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Serious XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch the Megan Kelly Show on Triumph, a Sirius XM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love.

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Subscribe now, get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MK Show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com. slash mk show and get three months free offer details apply now it's not just you phil or you bill or you brian that thinks jersey might not have been 100% honest with us though brian's probably the best person here for jersey um it's an incredible invention that you've come up with phil it's basically the AI version of you. At your company, QVarity, you've been working on an AI lie detector into which you've put all the Phil Houston magic. Can you tell us about this?

Yes, it is a tool that we've spent almost, we're short of three years developing. It is an incredible lie detection system. It's text-based. So if you have a conversation with someone and that that conversation can be legally recorded and transcribed. When you put it in, Q will give you the answer. Forgive me for the genderizing of Q, but when we ask Q, you know, what did he look like? He came back with an image and it's a male, so we're calling him he. So he indicated to us with a review of some of your interview with John Tanko, a tremendous deception. Now, Q is better than Phil Houston, and it's better than, I believe, anyone on the planet and for this reason.

Number one, Q has no bias. While AI can have bias, we went through something we refer to as constructive. confinement. In other words, Q's existence has never been exposed to anyone or anything else, but the deception, the job of detecting deception and the training and the concepts and so forth. And the reason he's better than us is for three reasons. He, the no bias, his cognitive capacity capability is far greater. than certainly mine, but we believe, you know, just because it's AI related, it's better than in terms of detecting deception than anyone else on the planet. His analytical processing is

faster than any of our processing. So, for example, when I'm doing an interview, I spot a deceptive behavior here, a deceptive behavior there, so on and so forth. When Q does his job, He looks at each question and answer individually, individually. He doesn't know what any of the other questions are or what other things at that moment in time. He just doesn't know it. He deals only with what's in front of him. So if I can interject, Megan, it's essentially Bill is Bobby Fisher and he invented the computer

that could beat him a chess. Every single time. So I'm just looking at, because you've shared some of this with me, and I, and on some of the items that we went through. Like, for example, here's the, the, you fed into him, the question of his aggression toward Bill. Who's this big shot lawyer with you? And my, my question was, we're trying, what we're trying to do is help them.

The way I see it is we're trying to provide them with closure. You can help us do that. And with some comfort, you know, and just figuring out what the story is. And his answer was, who's this big shot lawyer, Annie? Or he's his big shot lawyer. Annie, see that they do these stories and then people just trash my name. They totally trash my name. I was involved with a lot of illegal activity back then. Here's cue.

In the speaker's reply, two key patterns emerge. One, hostile or dismissive attack on the question itself. Rather than answer, the speaker launches into a confrontational challenge. He's this big shot lawyer, aren't you? Which serves to intimidate or undermine the questioner instead of providing any direct information. Two, off-topic commentary that avoids the question's core demand. The speaker shifts to complaining about how they do these stories and trash my name,

introducing irrelevant detail and emotional framing rather than supplying the specific answer sought. Conclusion, deception, deceptive behavior indicated because these two tactics both divert attention and repel the direct inquiry, the response meets the threshold for deceptive behavior. That's so interesting, Phil. You did this with Q time and time again on all of these questions you and I just went through with the audience and each time Q said he's lying. Yes, yes. He is. He can do all of that. What he does every single question, it's segmented analysis.

He's not looking at the transcript as a whole. It's every single question and answer is he analyzes. When he moves on to the next one, you can go back and ask the previous one a hundred times, and each time it will be the first time for him. has no memory of what he's not like he already lied to me five times i'm going to give him the likelihood of lying on time number six question six yeah it's that's not it's not a consideration in his analysis it is he's looking you know so so we ask him you know look at this question analyzing he analyzes it says it's deceptive behavior we wipe the slate clean it's automatically wiped

away and he moves on to the next one he has no memory of what he just did or or ever seeing that question. And the significance of that is to preclude the development of bias. And the other thing that, Megan, that's unbelievable and why speed is important in the analysis is that unlike myself, I might see a behavior or two, but with him, he looks at every single possible deceptive behavior in his training and in the book that could, not in the the book we wrote but in in you know that that we've given him to look for you know there's there's a you know a huge number of behaviors he looks at every single one of those in a matter of seconds

and then and then gives you and then puts that into his analysis and then creates the um the narrative hmm okay here's another one um we're going to play sot 11 which you fed to cue let's watch it This is of TANCO. The other story is that some just random portion came in a house and kicked out to bleed. Yeah. So now on the FBI involved, they vacuum back the whole house. And if my DNA was in there, like from dead skin cells, I'd be charged. It wasn't in the house.

Did the cops talk to you? Yeah, they told me this. Did they ever take DNA? Yeah. They did? Yeah. Oh, where did they, like a saliva? You did?

Yeah. Did they tell you that you were cleared? I said I didn't have to, but I didn't want to. Okay. And did they tell you you were cleared and you were good to go? No, they didn't say it's an open case. The analysis. In reviewing the speaker's answer, I identify two categories of behavior that suggest avoidance

rather than a straightforward response. One, referring back to a previous statement. The speaker says, that's what I'm saying. This phrase explicitly points back to an earlier remark instead of adding new information By implying the matter has already been settled, it discourages follow-up and shifts focus away from the core question. Ah, so interesting. Number two, introducing off-topic details and hypothetical scenarios. Throughout the rest of the reply, the speaker describes how the FBI might collect DNA.

The FBI vacuumed out the house with my DNA. Speculates about skin cell counts. You have a million skin cells. Outlines procedural steps. They're going to bag it up. They're going to DNA it to me. And warns of hypothetical legal consequences. and I'd be charged. There's no doubt about it. The conclusion is deceptive behavior indicated.

None of these clauses addresses the direct question. What if any role they played in baby Lisa's disappearance? Instead, they divert attention toward evidence and how it might be handled or why charges could follow because the response repeatedly relies on referring back to earlier remarks and on supplying extraneous distraction-oriented content rather than clarifying involvement it meets the threshold for indicating deceptive behavior. Phil, it's just like you, Phil, you're such a humble guy, despite your many accomplishments, to invent yourself right out of a job.

Yeah, well, I think it won't be long. Wow. That it will, you know, when we'll keep the audience posted. I think they'll definitely be, if this is commercially available in any way, shape, or form, I know many, many members of the audience will be interested. You guys are awesome, as you guys know, We'll stay on it. John Tanko has never been charged with any crimes related to the disappearance of baby Lisa.

Police have never publicly considered Megan Wright a suspect in baby Lisa's disappearance. And we can now report that as a result of our series, the FBI has looked into this case again. The FBI has reviewed the first five episodes of our Baby Lisa series, and they are ready to hear from all of you if you have relevant and credible information. information. You can reach the FBI directly at tips.fbi.gov. That's tips.fbi.gov. They are ready to receive your inquiries. We thank FBI Director Cash Patel and his team for taking this seriously, and we will continue to bring you information as we get it. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show, no BS, no agenda, and no fear.