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

26:58Armed with this knowledge, Christy Schiller anonymously offers a$100 ,000 reward for information leading to the return of baby Lisa. Bill Stanton made the announcement. There's going to be a$100 ,000 reward put up for the safe return and or conviction of personal persons involved in this horrible crime. Until now, no one knew it was Christy who offered the reward, a secret she managed to keep even from her own husband. Is it true he once said to you, hey, did you hear they posted a reward for the baby? And you were like... And he said, tell me it wasn't you. And he said, what were you thinking?

27:44And I said, we don't need our name on the side of a building. I want to know that this mother and father are being reunited and the two little boys with their siblings. Announcing the$100 ,000 reward was just one way Stanton kept the baby Lisa story in the news. But Bill had a problem. After the press conference and I said an anonymous benefactor, this nasty rumor of it was either NBC or ABC, and they were paying behind the scenes to get all the exclusives and attention. And that's when he called me. No one believes the anonymous benefactor. I need for you to verify it to your comfort level and we'll go from there.

28:29And I was thinking, sure, yes, I'm interested in this story at any level. But of course, what I would ultimately like is to talk to the parents. And that's where it landed. And, you know, explosive details came out that day. You know, it had its highs and lows for Debra because that's when the public learned she had between six and ten drinks. Do you have a drinking problem? No, I don't think so. Some folks are going to have an issue. Oh, I'm sure they are. More than five drinks while you're looking after a little baby and two little boys. She was sleeping. I wanted to ask, so why did you choose to share that with me?

29:08Because 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. And any publicity for Lisa's good, whether people like what I say or not. That's true. The wall-to-wall media coverage continued. They are still searching urgently for the child, although they do say that as every hour passes, this case gets harder to solve. And at this point, police freely admit they have no suspects and no leads. That was always one of the biggest mysteries about this case.

29:45Like, what kind of criminal, whether it's, you know, a parent, a family member, or an intruder, like, is so good that they don't leave behind a fingerprint, DNA, or any other really meaningful clue? Because no matter who did this, they did escape, you know, without a trace. Reporter Jim Spellman. So I think there's two possible answers to that. The first is, if it's somebody who you expect to have in the house, in any house in a crime scene, if you expect to find their DNA and their fingerprints, then that evidence is of little help to investigators. But I think what you're asking is really an incredible question, because as you try to run through, you know, potential scenarios in your head, guessing more than anything, they just so many of them lead to dead ends.

30:36Is there some way that Deborah Bradley or her husband, Jeremy, somehow did this themselves and were able to pull this off in a short matter of hours? It seems incredibly unlikely. Right. But then could some stranger somehow know that this was a house that had a baby in it where the husband was working a very rare night shift where the, you know, the mom was perhaps not at her best ever having, you know, done some serious drinking that night. And then that's the night you stealthily get in and out of the house, making it through neighbors and everything else. That seems equally as unlikely. there's so much we don't know about the evidence because kansas city pd won't talk to us they say that's because this is still an open investigation we have our doubts about how much investigating is really going on and for that matter about how they handled this case now i'm joined by phil houston and bill stanton they will be my partners in crime on this my go-to criminal experts as we take a hard look at the facts of this case.

31:45Looking back now, 12 years later, is there's no Nest cameras in every door. There's no even low-grade security cameras. Even the, like, every gas station now has a good camera that will show you most of what happened there. In today's day and age, they'd be able to zero right in on whoever that was that emerged. And what a difference a decade makes. And that's why 12 years later, we're still talking about it, trying to solve it, because it's every person's, every parent's worst nightmare. Someone coming into your home in the middle of the night and taking the most precious thing that you'll ever have in your life, your child.

32:30The police really do seem to be guilty of some tunnel vision here. I mean, what we're learning already is that they're really interested, Phil, in Deborah and Jeremy. And in the opening hours of an investigation, one can completely understand that. Absolutely. And they both look guilty as sin, if you if you look at it just from a global perspective. And then you have Deborah admitting to excessive drinking, you know, to the point of possibly blacking out. And you have cops saying that the parents stopped cooperating, which, you know, that leads everybody to be like, oh, that's it. They're guilty.

33:12She was done being interrogated over and over and over and over by police. She definitely accurately believed had a foregone conclusion about her. And the other part to that, too, is, is that Deborah is no shrinking violet. I mean, she's not afraid, you know, when you reach a certain point to really let people know what she's thinking about, how they're behaving towards her. And I don't know this. I'm speculating. But she probably became fairly angry. And that anger could have been misinterpreted in the interrogations. Plus, just the odds, the overwhelming odds, you know, are she did it. That's the biggest obstacle to ruling her out.

33:54But let's spend a moment ruling her in. How does that look? What evidence does point to Deborah? OK, it's a tough one. So let's let's go with this hypothesis. So was it intentional or unintentional? If it was intentional, then we're going to say she didn't drink as much. She was tossing the alcohol, making it seem like she was drunk to the friend. Right. Doing everything she normally does. She knows her husband is working at least until 3, 4 a.m. And she just doesn't want the burden of the child anymore. Right. So she acts like she's drunk. She puts the kids in bed with her. The kids fall asleep.

34:36Then she wakes up, takes her child and either sells the baby or, you know, makes the child go away. Right. That would be one theory on that theory. She would also have to get out of the house and dispose of the remains and then get back into the bed before Jeremy gets home and sees her at what he said was sleeping. And he believed. And, you know, you're the spouse. You can tell when your spouse is legit asleep and whether or not. But keep going. The accident theory is far harder for me to go over because, listen, we've all been in that half buzz state, you know, where you go to bed drunk and then you wake up half sober.

35:17How do you negotiate that? She wakes up. She finds that she smothered her baby. Right. Now I have to get rid of it because I can't face reality. How does she do that within walking distance and have the presence of mind? Oh, let me take the phones. Let me not be seen. And if my kids wake up, there are so many variables to that theory, it's very hard for me to pursue that one. Far easier for me to go further down the road with she sold a child, which I do not believe. You know, when every new mother knows, they know you don't take your baby in your bed with her, with you. Like, it's very dangerous.

36:00You can smother your baby inadvertently. But some do it anyway. I mean, some don't know. And then some do know, but they take the risk anyway because they're exhausted and the child's crying a lot and they just make a mistake. They fall asleep there. And one thing leads to one other terrible thing. But the fact that she had her two boys in the bed with her actually, you know, right, Bill? I mean, that just works against that theory. Like, absolutely. Those boys were interviewed and they were old enough to know if their baby sister was in the bed with them. Yeah. Right. There were just just so many different ways, you know, that if she did it, she would have gotten caught again.

36:40These are simple people. And I don't mean that in a detrimental sense. They're not master criminals. You know, if someone planned this out, they wouldn't be able to do it. Just too many variables. You know, it was, in my opinion, again, the perfect storm of, you know, Jeremy being away or being over served the boys being in the bed, you know, for her to roll over on a baby and then get rid of the child, you know, could have done it, but she would have got caught real quick. And then again, just think about the guilt. This isn't someone that's, you know, a sociopath serial killer that could kill a person and, you know, once a week and then go out in life to stay married with your husband, to look at your children in the eyes, to, you know, the pain that she went through, you know, behind the scenes that we've all saw just doesn't play out to me.

37:36No, she's not a sociopath. And she continues to talk to us, even though, you know, you guys know I've had many a very tough segment on Deborah on my various shows. I just feel like the actual murderer would not keep putting themselves in this harm's way. Can we talk about the next door neighbor, Samantha Brando, for a minute? Because while we have been unable to reach her, you guys did talk to her. You also put her through the Phil Houston treatment to find out whether it was true, what, that she was sitting with Debra, that they were drinking together, that things went down the way Debra said they did?

38:15Yeah, and most importantly, she validated the level of intoxication. She said, I hate to say this about Deborah, but I don't know if I've ever seen her. And I'm paraphrasing here, but I don't know if I've ever seen her that intoxicated before. There was more wine there than Deborah told us originally. Well, that could explain why Deborah didn't hear an intruder for sure. Well, to your point, Megan, when Jeremy came home, no one heard him come in. He was walking around the house. He shut the window. He turned out the lights. He went into the bedroom. didn't wake them up for him either. That's true.

38:53So why didn't anyone ever come forward if somebody stole this baby and did something with her? There's not one person who needed$100 ,000 enough to come forward and quietly say, I know what happened to her. The reason why I think no one has claimed the reward because it was a sole actor who committed this crime and no one else knows about it. Because to your point, Megan, that's$100 ,000 and they could do right and they could have done it at that time. Now, was the baby sold or something more nefarious? that would that would explain it if it were a sole actor who then kept his mouth shut um but that's one of the troubling things about this whole thing like if if it was anybody who blabbed or if it were a group somebody would have turned on somebody else and that just hasn't happened so as it stands at this point all eyes are on deborah coming up in our next episode police continue to bear down on Deborah.

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41:15I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show and episode two of our special series, Megan Kelly Investigates on the disappearance of baby Lisa. How could a baby vanish in the middle of the night? It's a question that has lasted more than 12 years after the disappearance of then 10-month-old baby Lisa Irwin. In this episode, I will be joined just a bit later by investigators Bill Stanton and Phil Houston with their expert analysis. But first, we return to Kansas City, Missouri, where new clues emerge and police begin to look beyond Lisa's mother for some answers. Here's where we left off. After hours and hours of police interviews that felt more like an interrogation, Deborah and Jeremy decide there's nothing left to say.

42:03Deception expert Phil Houston has interviewed Debra at length, finding her credible. And I asked Debra some hard questions about her drinking that night as I was covering the story for Fox News 12 years ago. Thanks to anonymous benefactor Christy Schiller, there's now a$100 ,000 reward. And Lisa has been missing for 10 days. The scrutiny on Debra is relentless. I want to know why baby Lisa hasn't been found. The parents under suspicion. Mommy and daddy refused to talk to cops separately. In order for mommy to talk to cops, she's got to have daddy there. Why? The family just released this home video of this baby.

42:42Why would they just release this video now? Why didn't they release this video about five days ago? Bill Stanton is steering the media away from Deborah and toward the search for an intruder. I know everybody's watching this family and watching this house, and that's fair. Keep one eye on them, but also keep the other eye out. on the streets, in every place, because there is a bad guy out there or bad people with this child, and we want to get this child. But Deborah needs to be defended. I think sometimes we forget who these two people are and what they're going through. Thanks to Christy and her team, Joe Tacopina, a big gun in the world of defense attorneys, takes up Deborah's case.

43:22If that name sounds familiar to you, it may be because he has defended former President Donald Trump in New York criminal court. Someone out there obviously knows something. Takapina hired local attorney Cindy Short to handle things on the ground in Kansas City. Well, my gut tells me without any doubt that somebody unknown to the family came into this home, was in and out of the home very, very quickly. Cindy ran an all-female firm. Seventeen women went to work on this case. The women in my group and in my law firm were aching as mothers, and we wanted to be able to make a difference. We were hoping that if we were really on the ground, talking to people, spreading ourselves out, that perhaps we could do something that would find the child.

44:17Cindy Short had another reason to be so deeply committed to finding Lisa. As a young girl, Cindy was very nearly abducted by a stranger in her own home. Is it possible, Cindy? I mean, is it actually possible someone just walked in there, took no other measures besides wearing a pair of gloves, took the baby, walked in the front door, walked out the front door, and that was it? It was no more sophisticated than that? Yeah, I think so. You know, having been in the house, the house is a ranch-style house. It's very small. As I recall, there were wood floors. And so the distance between the front door and that baby's room is maybe five to seven to eight steps.

44:57It's very short. I spent many hours in that neighborhood late at night. And that neighborhood is extraordinarily quiet, very, very dark. So I do think that someone could come in and come out. Now, if she was to have been taken out of the house at night, this is almost pitch black. Reporter Jim Spellman showed viewers just how dark by turning off the camera light. And if someone got in and out, could they do it without a trace? I mean, I imagine one of the things that they were doing was taking fingerprints. I never heard anything about a recovery on any sort of a hit on the fingerprints. Nor have I.

45:40They not only took fingerprints, they were prepared to take tool marks. That would be if somebody used a screwdriver or something to claw their way into a window. It was a very active investigation center around the house. So there were searches, there were dogs, there were investigators in hazmat-type suits going in and out. They cut pieces of carpet that they took away. They took soil samples from the backyard. Investigators have been taking blankets, toys and clothing from the home. Cindy Short. I was in the case by the time the search warrant was done and they brought the dogs in. And then they made this announcement about the dog alerting in the house.

46:19Authorities seem to be scouring every inch of the home where baby Lisa Irwin disappeared. The search comes days after an FBI cadaver dog reacted to the scent of a dead person inside the house. That's according to a police affidavit. We learned Friday that cadaver dogs had a positive hit at the foot of their bed, but last night the rug was still there. Cindy Short pointed out at the time that the carpet inside the house remained intact, meaning no sample left the house, calling into question whether the cadaver alert was real. I really believed that they were creating theater to make it look as if Debra was responsible, and I felt that that was really unfair.

47:02Deborah Zant, Cindy Lorette. I remember the CIA people were taking the carpet from the garage, walking it up the driveway. This is on TV too. This makes the news. They have this carpet. They walk it up the end of the driveway. It goes right back down into the garage and everybody in the world thought that that carpet came out of Debbie's bedroom. Are you freaking kidding me? Are you kidding me? Meanwhile, what else and who else was being investigated? Remember Ernesto and Lisa Parscale, the couple who lived around the corner from Deborah and Jeremy? They both say they saw a man with a baby walking down the street just after midnight.

47:45But the fact that she and her husband verified that they were discussing a baby being carried by a man the night before, that came into their heads before they knew there was a missing baby, definitely speaks to their credibility. Absolutely. Here's Lisa Parscale talking to a local reporter. He was carrying a baby and he kind of was pushing it against his chest. And my husband kept looking at him. And then the gentleman just kind of kept walking. He wanted me to call the cops. And I hate that I didn't call him last night. There was the grainy BP gas station surveillance footage. and the suspicious dumpster fire just over a small grassy hill, several hundred yards from the Irwin home.

48:27There were reports of baby clothes turning up in the dumpster. They did not appear to be baby Lisa's, and nothing came of that. And then another person, Mike Thompson, comes forward to say that at 4 a.m., a few miles away, he saw a man carrying a baby. Can you talk about that next sighting with Mike Thompson? Again, attorney Cindy Short. Yeah, so Mike Thompson was an individual who worked for Ford Claycomo, and he was getting off work. And it was closer to, I want to say, 3.30 or so in the morning. And he was on a motorcycle, and he came to a stoplight under a bridge, and he was about to get on the highway.

49:12And so he sees a man, which he said was underdressed, with a baby that he also thought was underdressed. And he was up a few ways. And he turned and looked at me, and I looked at him. I could tell he had a baby. She had a G-shirt and either a training pants or a diaper on. It was too cold for that. He felt like it was really odd. And his first instinct was to stop and offer them a ride, except he was on a motorcycle. And so he really couldn't do that. When Mike heard about baby Lisa being missing, he told his cousin what he had seen.

50:06Now, three different people, the Parscals and Mike Thompson, say they saw a man carrying a baby in the early morning hours of October 4th, 2011. Bill Stanton on CNN back then. I think it is compelling. I think the simple fact that you have three separate witnesses all saying something to the effect of they saw someone carrying a child that wasn't wrapped up in a blanket, that wasn't necessarily wrapped up in baby clothes. So, if it was the same man who was spotted with the baby walking past the Parscals house, who may have had something to do with the dumpster fire in the nearby townhouse development, who then went through the woods to emerge near the BP gas station, and then went on to where Mike Thompson spotted him, that would mean the man spent close to four hours within a three-mile radius, which makes you wonder what else could have been happening during that time.

51:04And who is this man? Police looked at the people who got closest to Debra and Lisa that night. Reporter Jim Spellman. They were taking DNA swabs from most of the people that were in the immediate homes on either side and family members down the line. That was one of the first things they did. A family that lived directly next door. That's Samantha and James Brando. Their family was close with the Irwins. But that day, the Brandos were separating. something they had decided earlier that afternoon. James moved out just hours after Debra and Samantha started drinking. Debra remembers the conversation.

51:43I was trying to help her through it and, you know, just give her the best advice I could. And she was kind of spilling her guts, you know, what she went through, what she's hoping she will accomplish next, you know, custody stuff, you know, just the deep things that come with, you know, separation of family. Police investigated and questioned James Brando. Then there was Shane Beagley, the 33-year-old landscaper who was the grandson of a neighbor. He dropped by while Deborah was drinking with Samantha Brando. And now someone new enters into the mix. John Tanko, nicknamed Jersey, a handyman with a criminal background who had been working on a neighbor's lawn.

52:27So if you were to take Shane Beagley and James Brando and John Tanko and line them up, Tanko's about 10 years older, but they all, they look incredibly similar. Same builds, same general kind of haircut. Police immediately ruled out Shane Beagley as a suspect, while James Brando stayed on everyone's radar. When we in the media came across James Brando, when I was the first person to interview him, and there was a lot of, I don't know, perhaps excitement almost in people that were following this closely, but maybe this was a big lead. Well, some people believe he might have had something to do with it, James, her soon-to-be ex-husband, maybe because he was angry that you were there, a confidant.

53:12You know, I've heard people speculate along those lines. Deborah Bradley. I've heard that too, but we have at this point no reason to believe that. We have nothing to substantiate that at all. He was the focus of this investigation in the initial days. All of his alibi had been checked out by the police. They got surveillance camera tape from a Walmart. They interviewed people that he crossed paths with. They checked his cell phone to whatever degree for its location. They placed him on the Air Force Base where he worked, all of that stuff. That to me says this was a very thorough investigation.

53:50James Brando was ruled out. Attorney Cindy Short always had one person in mind. The primary person for me was John Tanko. He was an individual who was essentially homeless at the time, but he had connections to the neighborhood and had connections to a household that was only several doors up from the Irwin's home. The person we have to talk about is this guy, John Tanko, who's from New Jersey, known as Jersey, and people describe him as being sketchy. Soon, reporters were trying to find him. The last known sighting of Jersey the handyman that we can confirm was Saturday, October 1st, here on One Eye Jack's Tavern.

54:33The owners of the bar told us they kicked him out for being a rude drunk who was spitting on customers on the patio. What was significant for me was that he had a pretty healthy background in burglary, and particularly in residential burglary. We know that the day that Baby Luce had disappeared, he was working for this family named the Watsons around the corner, moving some sprinklers around for them. People in the neighborhood, some knew him and some had hired him to do yard work, that sort of thing. But, you know, he was a guy who was, you know, one rung above homeless. And if you got to know him a little bit more, there were some really disturbing things that come up.

55:18And as we get closer and closer to the time of this abduction, his relationship with this community is significant. October 3rd in particular, which is the day of the kidnapping, he's at the Watson's house. He turns on the sprinkler at 11 a.m. The next door neighbors see him turn the sprinkler on. The Watsons are not there. The sprinkler is still on at 9.30 p.m. And so the next door neighbors, the Hertz, don't do anything to turn it off. But at 11 p.m., they notice that it has been turned off. So they figured Tanko was back in the neighborhood to turn that off. Speculation was that Tanko might have been wearing gloves for his handyman and yard work and would not leave fingerprints or cells from the skin.

56:08So now we've got Tanko in the neighborhood within an hour of what we believe will be the kidnapping because the Pascals are going to see this kidnapper with the baby at 1215. He knows how people are moving in and out of this community. He knows about the pets in the neighborhood. There were a few dogs in the neighborhood, notably the house next door on the right side of the Irwin house. That dog was notorious for barking at strangers from a fenced-in area in its family's backyard, as reporter Jim Spellman demonstrated at the time. This is the first obstacle somebody coming this way would face, is this dog.

56:48Every time we've come back here at night or day, this dog greets us with a round of barking.

56:58This dog is in the house next door to baby Lisa's house. But the first couple of times I did this, this dog in the neighborhood went nuts, barked, you know, came after me. Very disruptive. Not just the kind of random barking, the kind of barking that a neighbor could possibly hear and say, what's going on back there? But after I did that a couple of times, this dog was, you know, actually very friendly and the dog stopped barking. So that's definitely something that I think investigators were looking at and something I think is worth looking at. But no reports, as far as we know, of people saying they did hear the dog barking?

57:35No reports said people heard a dog barking that night. So no barking could mean that somebody carrying baby Lisa was familiar to the dog or did not go through the woods behind the house at all, but instead went out the front, down North Lister, toward the corner where the Parscals would see. Along that route, there was another dog. Again, reporter Jim Spellman. One of the most troubling things that came to mind that I was aware of was, okay, so you have this Watson family that he was working for, movie sprinklers. Then you have Mary Hurt, who lives next door. I think a very reliable witness. So she had a dog that disappeared the day that baby Lisa disappeared.

58:16And her next door neighbor, I know there's a lot to keep track of, her next door neighbor says she saw John Tanko take the dog. The dog pops up a few miles later, a couple of days later. But, you know, I can't say how reliable that witness is that saw John Tanko, but the dog did disappear. The dog was not there. She, you know, reported the dog missing. The dog was found a few days later. But certainly people speculated that if anybody wanted to create an easier path for themselves to leave the neighborhood through here, getting rid of that dog would be key. And we know that police took footprints, impressions from her backyard the day after this.

59:01Here's that neighbor, Mary Hurt, explaining this back in 2011. There was a sprinkler that happened to be on in that yard that made it moist over here as the rest of the ground was dry because there hadn't been any rain. Now, this sprinkler tells these people were not home, right? Who was operating this sprinkler? Their handyman. they had that the police were actually looking for in the area of Jersey. So according to Mary Hurt, that would place John Jersey Tanko in the neighborhood that night. I think he really was one of the best suspects or persons of interest. And although the police did speak to him, they did not speak to him as a suspect.

59:43They spoke to him more as a kind of a person in the community. And when you interview someone as a suspect versus someone as a witness, that interview is very different. They've come out and said, and they said early on, that they've moved on from him. They don't believe he's their guy. Why would they do that? I think one reason they would do that is because they have one theory and they've stuck to that theory all these years, that it was the parents. I think a second reason, and this would be a legitimate reason, that one of the witnesses in the case, the lady that was several doors up from the Irwins at 12.15 who saw the man carrying the baby.

1:00:28She's talking there about Lisa Parscale. And she knew Jersey because he had done work across the street at the Watsons' home. And she did not believe that the person carrying the baby was, in fact, Tanko. I don't know whether she reported that to the police, but let's assume that she did. And so that that was one way that they would have eliminated him. In fact, Lisa Parscale told us she and her husband told police they did not think the man carrying the baby looked like John Tanko, but they couldn't be 100 percent certain. Eyewitness identification is a tricky business. And in Cindy Short's mind, this was not enough.

1:01:08I don't think that that should have been the end of the story. I think when you look at the totality of what he was doing, particularly from July through October, they should have done more to look at him. For several days, attorney Cindy Short and reporter Jim Spellman, independent of one another, searched for an elusive John Tanko, trying to get his side of the story. He was a guy who had been in and out of trouble with the law. And just a few days after the disappearance, he was arrested on outstanding felony warrants. And I've chased a lot of people around jails and police stations and stuff.

1:01:51And it definitely gave me the sense that they were trying to hide him in the jail and judicial system. nobody who gets arrested on a simple bench warrant gets moved from place to place the way that they were moving him. He had been incarcerated in Missouri for a burglary. He had been released from his incarceration and then he had absconded, which meant that he had escaped from basically a halfway house. He was then living in an unhoused situation with a woman named Megan. Megan Wright was 20 years old, new to Kansas City, and was John Tanko's girlfriend for a time. They had since broken up. Tell me about John Tanko.

1:02:37She's an ex-boyfriend of mine. We dated for about five months. So about a month, six weeks before Baby Lisa disappeared, Megan had lived for a period of time in this townhouse development that you could get to by cutting through these yards just around the corner from Baby Lisa's house. And there is a lot of disruption or arguments between Megan and Jersey. And later on in the summers about September, he ends up getting arrested again. They break up. He wants to get back with her. She becomes homeless. He ends up setting her car on fire. Her car was set on fire and she reported it and it was investigated.

1:03:19And she thought that John Tanko, Jersey, did it. but nobody was ever able, as far as I can tell, to confirm that he was the one that did it or what exactly happened there. Fire is important here because we'll end up having a fire the night of the kidnapping. That was the dumpster fire on the night of baby Lisa's disappearance. People zeroed in on this because many believed Megan Wright still lived in that townhouse near the dumpster and thought Tanko, if he had the baby, may have been trying to go see her. In fact, Megan Wright lived farther away by at least another mile. And here's one more piece of information that made for a possible motive.

1:04:00Megan and Jersey are kind of an odd couple. She's much younger than he is, but they start talking about in July having children. Megan would like to have children. There's a theory about him wanting to get back together with her. And is this one of the reasons that he would have spontaneously taken this baby? Back then, Megan Wright was a confused young woman, not completely coming clean about her own drug use. I found out that he was getting into some drug activity. Do you know what drug is? A mess, from what I understand. She's had a hard life, struggling with abuse, addiction, and mental illness.

1:04:37And so, after so much scrutiny and criticism in the months after baby Lisa went missing, Megan vowed not to talk about this case again. Last October, she decided to make an exception and spoke with me for two hours, much of it tearful. You don't have to be here. You could easily have said to me, I don't want to do it. It's traumatic for me and I don't want to go back over it. You're doing it because you want... It is. Will you tell us why you're doing it? I'm doing it because it's important to me to not participate in something that's going to be a circus. What's important to me is that the story gets told fully.

1:05:19I haven't seen that done yet. I haven't seen anybody investigate whether Jersey was actually involved or not. I wanted to participate in something that was going to light a fire under the ass of the police department and the FBI. Because Lisa deserves that. The Irwins deserve that. That's the goal. She says she has always wanted children, but that she knew she did not want them with John Tanko. Did Jersey ever offer to get a baby for you? No. You know, there were reports about whether he did this and that was his motivation. I think where that stems from is the situation leading up to him and I breaking up.

1:06:02When I broke up with him, it was because I told him he wasn't the type of man I could see myself having a family with. And I feel like it has been twisted for the last 12 years as a motivation for him or what would be his motive to take her if he did. Again, attorney Cindy Short. In September, he's becoming more erratic. And so I think, again, this is significant. And some of the erratic behavior has to do with his drug use. He would disappear for hours on end with no explanation. He was quick to anger, last to understand. And it was, I just couldn't handle it anymore. How likely is it, do you think, that Jersey, John Tanko, was involved in baby Lisa's disappearance?

1:06:50It'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. So we have an individual who's using methamphetamine, who's breaking into homes in the community, who has a history of arson in this same community. Meanwhile, he somehow ingratiated himself with a very nice couple, the Watsons, who live just several doors down from the Irwins, which means that he has an opportunity to really be watching what people are doing in this community.

1:07:44He is a good little burglar getting to case the joint. He knows who has children. John Jersey Tanko was interviewed by the police, and he denies any involvement in the disappearance of baby Lisa. The case remains open. Now I'm back with my go-to experts, Phil Houston and Bill Stanton. Let's talk about intruder. Now we have a name, potential name, maybe, maybe John Tanko, the handyman, the good little burglar across the street. The thing about the neighbors to the Irwins, the Parscals, both of them, seeing a man with a baby is huge. It's huge. Why doesn't that steer the whole investigation in a different direction when the Parscals tell both the husband and the wife, tell the cops they saw a man with a baby?

1:08:45Because it's not Jeremy and it's not Deborah. and it throws a huge monkey wrench in the narrative. Now what? Now what? Now we have to rethink everything. Who is this guy at a quarter after, you know, midnight, which lines up perfectly, you know, in the chill air without a blanket that they made such a note that it pinged on their radar where the husband calls the wife's honey, make sure you lock the doors. To your point, They should have been all over that. And that should have been the main focus of the media. But it wasn't. And then there's a third person who sees a man with a baby, this guy, Mike Thompson.

1:09:32And yet they seem to dismiss that as well. And one of the things that the police apparently did not do was to do what we call a fact pattern analysis, where they take each individual and compare that to the set of evidence and facts of the case that they have. And often when you do that very systematically, you'll see one or maybe one and a half persons jump out to the top of the list and say, wait a minute, this fits much more so than this guy that we thought. And we did that. And then we related that to the police and to the FBI agent. And they didn't want to hear it. It was their bias again.

1:10:16Can I tell you one of my main things in looking back at this is the problem of the 24-7 media requirements. The media has so much time to fill and they have no answers in a case like this. So they just sit and they speculate all day long. All the channels do it. All the anchors do it. All the shows do it. And at the same time, you've got the police who are going with the stats that the parents always do it, putting out these little nuggets like the parents have stopped cooperating. Her story changed, which is true. You know, Deborah's. The dogs alerted. Right. The cops were telling people, essentially, it was her.

1:11:05And the media checks all skepticism because that's an exciting story that they believe anyway. And it will fill the 24-7 cable news requirements. I mean, Bill, you've been part of that ecosystem, as have I. That's how it works. Yep. If it bleeds, it leads, and they want a nice, finite end to the story. And that's why they were so ravenous at getting to Deborah and Jeremy, Jeremy to interview them, to wrap this up, to see them taking out in cuffs. How about the maneuverings with the carpet? With the suits coming in after the fact. Come on, they had like the equivalent of several football teams in and out of that house, you know, after the crime occurred.

1:11:49And then they go in. I forgot how many days or weeks later after the crime occurred with the the crime scene unit. I mean, that was, you know, played out in front of the cameras. That to me was let's cover our ass. Let's show everyone that we're doing our job. And, you know, for us in the know, you know, it was pathetic. Okay, so Phil, if the Parscals really did see a man with a baby, both the husband and the wife saw a man with a baby, but did not think that man looked like anyone they knew, that's a very good fact for John Tanko. And is it the kind of fact that might lead sophisticated law enforcement or anybody to say, that's not him.

1:12:37That's not our guy. Maybe that's why they ultimately prove not so interested in TANCO. Absolutely, Megan.

1:13:12about the parents. He was the person that I would call the internal champion. And the internal champion in a case like that can make getting to the right conclusion very difficult because they not only draw evidence, but they know how to debunk other people's opinions. And the bureau guy brings a certain amount of gravitas to the situation and he just took it over. And what we also took away is that Tanko began in our minds to take on a more prominent role. And one of the, I was shocked when they said that they had cleared him. They'd move on from him. Yeah. When in fact, he was in the neighborhood or appeared to be in the neighborhood that night.

1:14:05Also, you know, from a fingerprints perspective, here's a guy that wears gloves all day long as a handyman and so forth. Here's a guy that was arrested already for breaking in people's windows in neighborhoods. And they seem, I don't want to know what, I can't read their minds, but they seem to ignore most of that. And let's not forget what Jim Spellman told us about the dog not barking and about the neighbor who's claiming she knew Jersey and she saw him take the dog. I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's exactly the kind of thing that would get a red flag going for a cop. Back to the theory of it was a planned burglary, potentially just to take the phones.

1:14:57The baby could have been an afterthought, but was that looked into? When we train investigators, Megan, there's an interesting saying that we use, and we borrowed it from the medical community. This is what they tell med students. When you hear the sound of hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. Don't make it more complicated than what it is. And I think that there was a little bit, perhaps of investigative panic. And everybody was just in scramble mode trying to get something. Because on the one hand, you have them ruling out a lot of very alarming evidence about a potential theft of a child. And on the other hand, you have them ignoring many facts about Deborah that work toward her benefit, like you interviewing her and saying what you said, like the fact that where would she have taken the baby and disposed of the baby that quickly in order to get back into her bed with no footprints or evidence that she had left the house, the boys hearing absolutely nothing, and no history of abuse.

1:16:02That's an important piece, too. It's not like Deborah was some child abuser who had been bringing the baby into the ER over and over. There's zero evidence to that effect, by all accounts, a loving mother. So this makes perfect sense that they were running the stats, the odds with her to the exclusion of all this other evidence. Coming up, remember the stolen cell phones? They could be key to this entire case. Plus, new theories emerge that we will explore for the first time. Building Better Health is a new conversation series from UnitedHealth Group that explores healthcare's most significant challenges and how we can fix them.

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1:17:36I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show. In episode three of our special series, Megan Kelly Investigates on the Disappearance of Baby Lisa. Nearly 13 years ago, in Kansas City, Missouri, Lisa Irwin, a 10-month-old baby girl, vanished in the middle of the night. What could have possibly happened to her? One man emerges who might have some answers. Here's where we are. After a$100 ,000 reward was posted and the widespread pursuit of an unknown man walking with a baby, two people of interest emerged. James Brando, who lived next door to Deborah Bradley and Jeremy Irwin, and who had split up with his wife Samantha earlier that day.

1:18:19Samantha, you may remember, was drinking with Deborah on Deborah's front stoop the night baby Lisa went missing. Brando was investigated and ultimately ruled out. That left John Jersey Tanko, the handyman with a history of drug abuse, arson, and break-ins, who was working nearby. As we learned in our last episode, he had an ex-girlfriend who he may have believed wanted a baby. Her name is Megan Wright. Was Tanko trying to bring Megan a baby in the hopes of getting back together? And now we turn to perhaps the most crucial clue in this case. Remember those three cell phones on the Irwin's kitchen counter taken the night that Lisa was?

1:19:03Two of them had restrictions for non-payment. But right near midnight, there was an attempted phone call from the one phone that worked. It was to a cell phone that was less than a mile away, and it lasted 50 seconds. So what did the cops say to you about that piece of evidence? Lisa's father, Jeremy Irwin. So they told me that there was a phone call from one of Debra's phones and we were able to get the records from that phone line. Went back over three years and I myself hand by hand went over every number in the whole the whole thing. And that was the first time in which that number had ever popped up.

1:19:44I mean, and that's our best lead. Law enforcement went right to work on tracing that call. It went to a phone that belonged to Megan Wright. Yes, the same Megan Wright who had recently split up with Jersey, a.k.a. John Tanko. Now I'm learning that that mystery phone call was made to the handyman's ex-girlfriend. We told you last week about that phone call. It was placed to a phone belonging to a woman named Megan Wright. How much contact did you have with Jersey on the day or the evening that baby Lisa went missing? Megan Wright. None. He and I hadn't been together for over a month at that point.

1:20:29And I had seen him and spoke to him prior to that, but nothing on the day of. Megan was 20 at that time and had moved to Kansas City earlier that year. She told us she had been in an abusive relationship, left it, lived for a time at a domestic violence shelter, and after that was moving from group home to group home, temporary living situations. She says she met Tanko at one of them. It was probably two months into us meeting and hanging out together that I learned that he was bringing drugs to that house to the other people that lived there. and that's when I was invited to snort a line of mess for the first time and I did you know that was the first time I'd ever ever done it and I was at this horrible point in my life and drinking too much pretty much every day um not the best of decisions but it wasn't a far step from where I was at.

1:21:33So that was the first time I ever got hot on anything. You know what I mean? It was a life-changing experience that I never saw coming for myself. By the time of Lisa's disappearance, Megan had become a full-on methamphetamine addict and was trying to stay away from Tanko. The very last time she saw him, Megan says Tanko scared her. The last time was when he had the van and almost hit the porch. He aggressively left the road, drove into the grass of the yard, and almost clipped the porch as he carped the car or the van to run up the stairs to try and get in the house to get me. That's the last time that I had any type of contact with him.

1:22:23And like I said, it was from 20 feet away with four or five people in between us that we had any contact. And this is prior to Lisa's disappearance? Yes. Megan moved to a house on 44th and Brighton, a little over a mile away from the Irwin house. I had moved there in fear of John because he kept coming back to that house where I had originally met him, where I was living at the time. He would not leave me alone after I broke up with him. By her account, it was a trap house, a drug den, and her contribution to the household was to let people use her phone. Living in a trap house, what you can provide is everything.

1:23:04Like I said, having the phone and paying the bill every month, that was one thing I could provide to everybody in the house. Now everybody has access to a cell phone with internet. When you're desperate and you're 20 years old and you're just trying not to die, you'll do anything to stay anywhere that's not outside, which is the only place I had to go. Why would anyone involved in the disappearance of baby Lisa call your cell phone the night baby Lisa went missing? I have no idea. It's hard for me to say. I had only had that number. It was like a Verizon prepaid phone for about six months. I still got calls for other people, whoever had had the number prior.

1:23:45There were several people that used my phone in the house that I lived in on a regular basis. So there would be calls coming in for those people. On the night Lisa went missing, October 3rd, Megan says she left her phone on an upstairs table. I was in that house in the basement getting high in the very early morning hours of October 3rd for the last time of my life. so I know exactly where I was at after I left there it was probably 3 30 or so in the morning I went to Waffle House with one of the girls that was getting high with me at the house there okay and so you and you left that house but you left your cell phone behind at the drug house yes I left my phone there and there were people that were using it throughout the evening so we had dinner or breakfast, whatever.

1:24:39Went to Walmart, did our shopping, checked out after food stamps hit at six in the morning. I probably got back to the house seven or eight in the morning. And that's when I was handed my phone that had been cleared of texts and call logs and told, hey, somebody said the FBI had called your phone. And I had no idea what was happening at that point. That's when I turned the news on and was able to see the broadcast of her missing. Did you say who picked it up? Let me talk to the person who talked to the FBI. That's what I said. I said, who had my phone? Who was using it? Who were they talking to?

1:25:18At that time, Megan says she was told that Dane Greathouse, a man staying in her same house that night, had her phone. And describe Dane for us. I didn't know him very well. He had been, like I I said we were, I was living at a trap house. He had been in and out for about a two week period prior to that day. So I had seen him. I had been like kind of informally introduced to him, but we never really hung out together in the house. How old would you say? He was maybe a few years older than me at that point, 24, 25, I think. A month after Lisa went missing, Dane had a text exchange with a Kansas City TV reporter and denied any connection with Megan Wright or the missing child.

1:26:02But he did say that he had used her phone. I used Megan's cell phone to have my phone turned on and some rides lined up, Dane texted. When our producer talked with him, Great House said he did not really know Megan Wright, but did confirm that they both stayed at the same house for a few nights, the house on 44th and Brighton. Greathouse said Megan did indeed share her phone with everyone there, and he told us he used her phone three times to make calls, but says he never once answered it. The public records only tell half the story. I tried to get all those records to be preemptive about it, because if the FBI called my phone, I want to know why.

1:26:41That's not something that happens to anybody in their regular life. Megan Wright tells us that terrible night for the Irwins was a big turning point in her life, too. She says the very next morning, she began to get her act together. And I decided at that moment, never getting high again. So October 4th is my first day sober, 2011. I've been sober since. About a week later, she says, the FBI brought her in for questioning. So when it was a couple of days later at that point, the FBI stopped me and take me in for questioning. they connected all the dots and confirmed that they had attempted to call my phone on the evening of because they had gotten the call records from the Irwin's phone and they were just trying to call the number back immediately.

1:27:30That's why my phone was called. What was your reaction when they told you? I was terrified. Terrified. At this point, I was a week sober. And once they were done asking her about her own possible involvement, they grilled her about her ex, Tanko. He definitely knew my number by heart because he called me from multiple phones all the time. Like I said, when we first got, when we were first talking, he didn't have a phone. He had just gotten out of jail, was living at the honor center and was trying to get back on his feet. And then he was so devastated when I rejected him and left him and told him, why?

1:28:10You know, you're not the type of man I can have family with and that's what I want in my life and I don't know if the way I delivered it or the circumstances surrounding our breakup or if drugs had anything to do with it on his part at that point but he just revolted everything in him hated me after that and the more that I told him I don't want to talk to you I don't want to see you don't come around here you know we're not getting back together it just was so constant with him until i left the city did you know that he was a burglar at the time no i've seen his arrest reports and stuff since he i broke up and have learned a lot more about him what month was the breakup What in 2011?

1:29:04It was after Easter that year. I want to say it was like May or June before the 4th of July. Because I didn't end up going to my family's 4th of July party that year because I was upset about the breakup. Okay. And do you have any reason to believe he stopped using meth at any point in 2011? I have no idea. Like I said, after I broke up with him, I tried my very best not to have contact with him, especially in person, because he made me incredibly nervous. I have a lot of PTSD from the things that he put me through that I've tried really hard to work through over the years. But there's a lot of it I can't let go of.

1:29:54I 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. Again, reporter Jim Spellman. I think if you start to look past the family, it's likely that it's somebody who at least knew the neighborhood to know that this baby was in this house. And so he's somebody that absolutely is top of mind. If not a suspect, because he's another person that the police said that they moved on from, that perhaps somebody in his in his world might know something more.

1:30:37The phones and the phone use continued to be a mystery. At 3.17 a.m., one of the phones tried to access voicemail. Now, why would that be? Five minutes later, at 3.22 a.m., there was an attempt to use the phone's web browser. As I reported for Fox News back then, Debra's attorney said there were five attempts made to get online via the phone, and the phones never got more than a third of a mile away from the house on North Lister. And remember this from our last episode. If it really was the same man with a baby that the Parscals and Mike Thompson saw that night, he would have spent nearly four hours within a three-mile radius of baby Lisa's home.

1:31:26You would think, OK, let's see who's on the other end of that number. And that was Megan Wright's phone. So, OK, boom, we're off to the races. Megan Wright knows the abductor. Not that simple. Reporter Jim Spellman. Not that simple at all. First off, I don't believe the police have released the full records of those phones involved. And I think that that is information that they have purposely withheld to be able to use to their advantage in their investigation. So we know that at least one of those phones was used to make at least one call to Megan Wright's phone. You spoke with her a lot. Do you believe her claims that she did not have the phone when that number was dialed and that she had nothing to do with this?

1:32:09I believe every single thing that Megan Wright told me within her ability to remember things. But I don't think that she was making up any of it. She was very helpful throughout the entire thing. If she tried to help us meet people, she would give us phone numbers of people. She never asked me for anything the whole time that we were doing this. And I think that she is exactly who she says she is. A troubled person, absolutely, but not somebody who had any direct involvement in this. Meanwhile, Kansas City attorney Cindy Short was working hard to find answers, even after she was off the legal team.

1:32:55After 10 days, she says she and lead attorney Joe Tacopina parted company in a dispute over strategy. But Cindy continued to look for Tenko. And now she's going to tell us something she has never before shared publicly. And it's fascinating. A day or two after she left the case, Cindy found John Tanko in the Clay County Jail north of Kansas City. And she interviewed him for 10 hours over a two-day period. What he told her could change the entire trajectory of this investigation. Set the scene for us. Was it hard? Did he come right out to talk to you? He did come right out to meet with me. And I think probably out of curiosity, I introduced myself and I told him who I was and what I was doing.

1:33:46And that I had been working on the baby Lisa case, that I was no longer representing Deborah. And then I had some questions about him and his role in the neighborhood and hope that maybe he could help me if he was willing to talk about it. And you're face to face. There's no glass between you. No glass. And he's a small guy. Does he look disheveled? Is he a good looking man? What is he? How would you describe? He was tough looking. He looked like a sophisticated consumer of the criminal justice system. He looked like someone who had had a rough life. He was cautious, I think, as he should have been.

1:34:32But Cindy says he was forthcoming and emotional about his troubled childhood. It was an interesting roller coaster of emotion where he was sometimes stoic. There were times, quite honestly, where he was in tears. It was confusing in some ways. I was trying to use my best persuasive skills to help convince him to maybe bring closure to a family if he could. I tried to get him to tell me where he was on October 3rd and 4th, and he didn't think that would be in his best interest. And then a stunning confession.

1:35:46is kind of a sketchy character. But the reason we know his name is because we have a phone bill that shows one of the Irwin's three cell phones called Megan Wright. Yes. And so once again, it's a link potentially back to Jersey. And now he's telling you they never found the cell phones. He's telling you he found them. Yes. Yes. And he's telling me where, which is not very far from the house. So he's placing himself, not just the proximity of the phones, but in possession of the phones. He's claiming that he's with another woman at the time that they find the phones. He tells me where they are under this bridge at 210 and North Brighton.

1:36:33And in fact, this is when I employed one of my investigators with a dog to go down to that location. And he went so far as to tell me that the car that he was in with this woman had a leak and that I would be able to find a stain on the road where they had stopped. And we did find a stain, but, you know, roads have stains. So we went down there with the dog and under this bridge, there is a culvert. And so there is water there, but it's very low water. because at one point he had talked about throwing the phones into a pond. He'd also talked about the phones being in this woman's car. But just to back up, just to back up.

1:37:21So he's saying, there we are having some car trouble. Get out of the car and boom, three cell phones. And I was just guessing that these belong to Deborah and Jeremy. Does he offer any reason why he knows it's those phones? He just told me there were three cell phones on the side of the road. Now, he's not telling me that they're German, but I think the connection would be that if he... It's three cell phones that are sitting there together? Yes, three cell phones sitting there together. At some point, he tried to tell me that I don't steal cell phones. But the thing about it is a thief, if you're going to go into a house to steal stuff, which this guy does, then you're going to steal things you can sell really easily.

1:38:05cell phones, guns, any kind of electronics, things you can pick up easily, throw them in your pockets. These three cell phones were sitting on a counter in the kitchen. So it would have been very easy for a burglar coming into the home through the front door or through that window. The phones would have been right there. But keep in mind Jersey's drug use and his rap sheet. How reliable was he? Was he playing games with Cindy, trying to get information from her to see what she and investigators knew? It's extraordinary that in his time with you, he volunteered that he spent time with these cell phones.

1:38:49That even he seems to be suggesting are related to the case. I think Phil Houston would say, that's a liar who doesn't know what you know about what connections he has, admitting just so much just to see, but leaving himself escape routes so maybe he could get some more information from you or just in case you knew more than he thought you did. Right. That must have been chilling. Was that chilling, Cindy, when he admitted that? Yes. I take it that was the most shocking revelation that he copped to finding three mysterious cell phones shortly after Baby Lisa went missing. How close in time? It was right in that time frame.

1:39:31It was right when it happened. And but yet didn't want to give you the timeline on what he did the night she went missing, thinking that wasn't going to land in a good place. Because she was building trust, still hoping for a confession, and because she had also offered to represent him, Cindy maintained client attorney confidentiality and did not bring this new information to police or to the new legal team representing Deborah. John Pacerno replaced Cindy as Joe Tacopina's local counsel. According to him, those three phones have never been found. They were trying to locate cell phones by the pings on the cell phone towers geographically.

1:40:09You know, when they do their triangulation, it's not specific. It came out to an area that's a large wooded area, which did receive quite a bit of interest from law enforcement. They did a couple of searches there from Missouri Missing as well with citizens in that area, but nothing ever really came from the cell phones. Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller are Kansas City moms who are co-authoring a book about this case. You know, there's been speculation that the phones maybe were discarded by the real kidnapper and then just found by somebody who then called that number. How do you gals like that theory?

1:40:47I think it's just as viable as any other theory. The phones do not make sense. I think it's almost impossible to make sense at the fund. To this day, it's an open question. Why does a one step above homeless guy steal a baby? It's not like there's some known black market for babies that, I mean, that would be something so sophisticated to get your foot into. He wouldn't have that, right? So it's to what end? Again, reporter Jim Spellman. That's what I've come back to over and over again is to what end. And you're absolutely right. There's no way that somebody like Jersey or this guy, Dane Greathouse, who also had a lot of legal problems as well, that these are not the kind of characters who would be likely to be involved in some sort of high dollar, you know, baby stealing ring or something like that.

1:41:39If that even exists, it's incredibly uncommon. And that these guys would somehow get involved with it seems, you know, incredibly unlikely. Cindy Short keeps coming back to her time with Jersey. When they talked about his childhood, he told her he was put in a boy's home at age 10 and was later institutionalized to deal, he said, with his pyromania and impulse control problems. The other thing that was chilling for me were the tears. it felt to me like there was this we were right on the tip of him wanting to tell me something but he couldn't and I didn't have the kind of leverage that police have there was nothing I could give you know there was nothing I could use to, other than the goodness of his heart.

1:42:36Do you think he was thinking about confessing? It felt that way. And I walked away from it feeling that way. You were just almost there. I'm joined now by my partners in crime, if you will. Longtime CIA interrogator and human lie detector, Phil Houston. And ex-MYPD and security expert, Bill Stanton. All right, guys, let's talk about Cindy Short. We were just almost there, she said. This information about a jailhouse meeting with John Tanko is incredible, no? Agreed. If that is the case, if that is a fact, that is as close to a smoking gun as this case has come to at this point. 100 percent. Moving on to the call to Megan Wright's phone.

1:43:24This is critical. Phil and Bill, you watched my entire interview with Megan Wright. It went on for much longer than the excerpts that we've put in this series. She's had a hard life. She was very emotional throughout the two hours. Here she is talking about losing custody of her child. All right, this is the hardest part to talk about for me because not only was my life affected, my child's life was to because I didn't have the mental capacity to care for either one of us which is why I was charged with the endangering welfare of a child was for medical neglect I was dealing with manic episodes of postpartum depression and still didn't have very much family support his father was already out of the picture and

1:44:19and the state of Missouri, instead of getting me psychiatric help or ordering psychiatric help, they brought me into the judicial system and charged me with a felony and then served two years in prison. How do you feel about it now, looking back at the way you were taking care of him i just regret the fact i didn't have the support that i needed so shortly after getting out of the middle hospital out of addiction out of an abusive relationship out of being traumatized for uh two months after being railroaded in the media questioned by the fbi dropped by your family losing everything you've ever owned in your own life.

1:45:09And then getting pregnant was the only reason I didn't kill myself. And then to lose custody of him 10 minutes later, it has really affected my will to live. He was underweight? Is that why he was underweight? Severely. Can we not talk about this? This is the worst thing in my life. And you're just dwelling on it. And I really don't appreciate it. I'm trying to participate. 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. She was very emotional right from the start. And I was moved by it. It seemed like real emotion to me.

1:45:55Yeah, it was not, Megan. Most of it. It was not? Is that what you just said? Yeah, yeah. She's a master at turning on and off the tears. At some point, Phil, she was like shaking. She was almost hyperventilating. She was like trying to get her. When you hear Megan write, it's hard to not hear and feel badly for her when she speaks about the trials and challenges that she's faced during her life. If you're looking at her from the deception detection standpoint, what you see is that she's using these trials and challenges to hide something. Every time you ask a question, you see what we call the trifecta of deception, which is evasion, persuasion, and aggression.

1:46:51So she doesn't give you what you ask for. she then uses her trials and tribulations to convince you that there's no reason in the world why she should be suspected and then she blames somebody else she attacks somebody else the number of people that she attacked she attacked um uh jersey she attacked the fbi she attacked the police, she attacked the public, she attacked friends, and she attacked you. And, you know, that's her way of trying to get people to back off. She wants you to feel bad about her, so that by the time she's done, you don't even remember the question. The other thing that she does that's very, very interesting is she gave us many what we call truth in the lie.

1:47:50For example, when she says, what I'm really trying to do is get everyone to focus on Lisa and not me. Now, think about that. If you're someone that's trying to, you know, avoid disclosing something, what she's really saying is, I'm trying to, you know, keep the light off of me. So what does that tell you? I mean, I know the obvious, well, that she's lying, But I mean, what? Yeah. Why? She is protecting herself from whatever she knows about Lisa's disappearance. She is protecting Jersey in a crazy way. And what I mean by crazy way, I don't think she has a great any longer. She has a great affinity for Jersey.

1:48:38I think she fears him. But do you, having listened to it, Phil, do you have a takeaway on whether she was the phone holder that night? I have a strong sense that she left her phone there or gave it to someone. In other interviews, she has said that she deliberately left her phone there so other people could use it that night. And I really didn't need it. And so I have a feeling there was an ulterior motive for why she left the phone there and didn't need it. You're going like full bore against her. So under your theory is she wanted the baby. She was in on the baby plot. She gave the phone to somebody else so that it wouldn't be on her.

1:49:28And she intentionally went to Waffle House, Walmart, so she wouldn't be near any. I'm not convinced, Megan, that that that it is a baby plot for her. I'm not convinced about it all. I think she knows either beforehand or after the fact what happened. Now, Megan, I can imagine your audience is not going to be happy with what Phil says. But Phil is not called upon to make people happy. Phil is called upon to detect deception. So while people may be saying, you know, how can he talk this way? No, no, no. He's putting his emotion aside. What would a truth teller have sounded like? Megan it's it's it's impossible to know because what I would submit to you is the focus would be on the the I didn't do it in the worst case scenario she could have been the reason the baby's missing to begin with if you think about Megan and trying to convince the world that she's not involved, the same coincidental nature of her saying, on that very night, I decided, it was either that very day or that very night, I decided that I'm going to go sober.

1:50:50Yes. All right. I'm going to admit that stood out at me. Why was that night so powerful? Why on earth was it so powerful? Okay, but I'll defend her. I'm going to defend her. that you're already unstable. You're on drugs. Your family doesn't want anything to do with you. You were in a domestic violence shelter, you know, from some jerk in your life. Now you're with this other jerk who you've broken up with, who's stalking you. You're you're traumatized. There was a lot that morning. At least she found out that the FBI was calling her and she's worried. I don't know. She's worried. So could that be, you know, like I said, scared straight.

1:51:26She says she says the FBI called her. We don't know that. That's what she said. Yeah. Also, she said, oh, I didn't know who to call back. Google the FBI and you have a phone number. If somebody thought I had committed a crime, I'd be on the phone with the police or with the FBI. She's a drug addict. She lives in a drug house. None of these people wants to voluntarily bring law enforcement into their lives. What does she gain by telling us falsely that the FBI called her when they didn't call her?

1:52:04I don't see it. See, there you go. I've rehabilitated her on one of your key points, Phil. Take the L. Well, it's very possible that she's simply trying to get everyone to believe that she's been through all the right steps and she cooperated every step along the way. I feel bad. Like, I don't want Megan Wright to be completely bashed here without a defense, because I thought it was very courageous for her to sit across from somebody like me, who, even though I'm sympathetic to everything she's gone through, she knows I'm not an easy interviewer. She's not a dope. so you guys had me crying i was crying yeah you were crying i was so cynical that's what we pay him the big bucks for i apologize how confident are you because like i'll say this i love you phil but like are you too biased against megan wright and in favor of deborah no she she can make herself cry by thinking about all the bad and horrible things have happened.

1:53:06And and she turns it on and off on on command. I mean, I know you're a genius, but I still have sympathies for her. I just and we're allowed to do that, Megan. We're allowed to have that emotional response. But to Phil's point, many a bad guy and bad women woman will prey upon that emotional response. The bad guys know how to manipulate. They have sad stories, but they still may be bad guys. Now, do I think, you know, I differ slightly than Phil. You know, I do think it's Jersey. I do think that. Yeah, I don't think it was an organized thing. I think it was a crime of opportunity because why would he be walking up the block, you know, with a baby in its arm?

1:53:53I think it's Jersey as well. I'm not disagreeing with you. I think the admission to the lawyer about finding three phones on the night that three phones were stolen is ludicrous. Wait, what do you mean? To believe that that's not him doing a couple of things. And what he is doing is he is trying to cover his tracks, first of all, because if those phones turn up somewhere, he thinks his fingerprints or other association, digital association will be made with him. So he wants an explanation of why he's on there, you know, doing something. I knew it. I said that to Cindy Short. I said Phil Houston's going to say he was admitting just enough to cover something he did, but not the whole thing.

1:54:50Yeah. John Jersey Tanko was questioned by the police at the time. He denies any involvement and the case remains open. Coming up in our next episode, new theories emerge about the disappearance that take the story in a completely new direction. Building Better Health is a new conversation series from UnitedHealth Group that explores healthcare's most significant challenges and how we can fix them. The people that we serve, people that this is all about, are now asking the right questions. They're pressing for answers. And quite rightly, their expectations are getting higher and higher. And that's a good thing.

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1:56:09I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show and episode four of our special series, Megan Kelly Investigates. We're tackling the disappearance of baby Lisa. She vanished from her crib in the middle of the night in October of 2011. Today, she'd be a teenager, but where is she and who took her? Someone knows. A case like this generates a ton of interest and theories, some, as we will explore in this episode, very dark and disturbing. The Kansas City police have stiff-armed the press, saying next to nothing about this case publicly. Neither Kansas City PD nor the FBI would talk to us, and philanthropist Christy Haas Schiller's offer of a$100 ,000 reward for any information that could lead to the return of Lisa remains unclaimed.

1:57:00If you could write that$100 ,000 check, it'd probably be the most delightful money you ever spent in your life. Absolutely. Still have hope. While 42-year-old John Tanko, known as Jersey, may seem to have been the best suspect given his criminal history and that mysterious call from the Irwin's stolen phone to the phone of Tanko's ex-girlfriend, Megan Wright, on the night baby Lisa went missing. No arrests were ever made. In 2011, police said they'd moved on from Tanko, and there appears to have been little to no movement on this case in the nearly 13 years since it started. Jeremy and Debra have been left in limbo.

1:57:42There were yearly vigils. Please God, keep her safe until she is home with us. And occasional interviews, including one with me that aired in January 2014. When I interviewed you a couple years ago, Deborah, you said even back then you were looking in the crowd whenever you pass a child who would be Lisa's age. Yeah, we actually, I did it all day today when we were walking around before we came here to see you. And I just said to Jeremy, I'm really tired of looking at everybody else's kid, hoping it's mine. This has to be its own form of torture. Jeremy Irwin. I think about her every day. It doesn't go away and the pain is still there and just feel like you're not complete.

1:58:31Do you ever feel bitter, Jeremy? I mean, you know, I would feel, I think I'd feel bitter, you know, that my child was taken, that I didn't get this time, that if she's still out there, I've missed so much. Yeah, there's a lot of that. And, I mean, it's pretty frustrating. And you have a lot of hate and anger on aspects like that. But there's nothing you can do about it. And that's not going to help get Lisa home any faster. So, I mean, it's frustrating that everybody's still out living their life and going to the grocery store and doing whatever they want to do. And meanwhile, we're just left to sit in the ashes.

1:59:11Deborah Bradley. You know, it's really hard as she gets older and still not having her home and thinking about all the things I continue to miss out on. And it's like all of us have been robbed of that. And that is really hard to accept. I just started reading stuff and just writing down a name here and a name here. And then I started doing my own searches. Debra's aunt, Cindy Lorette, has been relentless, constantly searching for clues, trying to piece together what may have happened. I've done my own thing because there isn't anybody to help. I have sat in courtrooms. I have done my own surveillances.

1:59:57I visited people in jail that I didn't know. I don't really want to tell you everything I did, but I did a lot of stuff. But everything that I was reading throughout the internet, it just kept leading me back to the area that I was living in. So I got a job at this little convenience store. And I didn't tell anybody who I was. I just listened. I wanted to know things. And I started to hear things. I mean, people talk. Kansas City moms Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller, who are writing a book about this case, have spent more than a decade looking for leads. Where did that take you? What did you find?

2:00:33It led us down some bad places, some bad neighborhoods, talking to some bad people. Was your theory starting to develop in a different direction from where the mainstream narrative was going, Missy? Yeah, definitely the mainstream narrative here is either Jersey or the mom. It is overwhelming how many people think that Deborah had something to do with it. Nobody in this town is looking for her because they think her mother killed her and she got away with it. Much of what they've heard is secondhand and goes to some very dark places, to drug dens, to baby brokers, to terrible conclusions. My understanding is that you guys have spoken to at least five people about this theory, that some criminal element somehow connected to the family was responsible for this, and that at least three of them mentioned the sale, the sale of a baby.

2:01:34Yeah, correct. Right. In 2021, Debra said much the same to a local reporter. What are you sure of, Debra? If the tips are right and the information we were given is right, she was sold. You believe she was sold? Absolutely. To add to that theory, one month after Lisa went missing, Debra and Jeremy found a charge on a debit card,$69.04, cents paid to a British company that called itself a name-changing service. This is one of the theories that, of course, puzzles me. How would the person wanting to steal baby Lisa... I think that they were going to get away with stealing baby Lisa on this night where the mother is at home.

2:02:24There is nothing about walking into someone's house and taking their baby that makes any sense to me. But I don't know that the person doing that was a logical, rational, you know, person the way that you and I are. So if it has to do with drugs, in other words, they might have been out of their minds. Sure. Yeah, I would I would guess for sure. If we think that there might have been a criminal drug element involved in this, and you guys have been out there investigating this for all this time, you know, pretty publicly, is there any fear on your part about your safety? Absolutely. Yes. We've had people tell us, you know, we'll tell them, you know, there's a$100 ,000 reward.

2:03:15And they say, well, what good is the reward if I'm not alive to spend it? Do you ever like do your own investigation, start talking to people about what they know, what they saw? Jeremy Irwin. Yeah, I mean, we did for a long, long time. And I mean, most of the stuff that we've gotten is stories that people have heard from other people. So it's a lot of it's third person stories. And I think there's real merit in a group of individuals that operate in that area that get rid of kids and illegally adopt or what, however you want to phrase it, but take in children that they're not supposed to have and redistribute them.

2:03:57That's definitely going on up here. And at least at the time when I was talking with the investigators about it, they laughed in my face about it. Other storylines that have circulated amongst the locals involve Deborah interacting with the drug underworld, possible urban myths with no proof, including one that baby Lisa was handed off to pay a drug debt. Was there anything that you, looking back, may have done to bring any of that cast of characters into your life? You know, certainly, certainly not us. But we had people nearby that were into that lifestyle. And you and Debra never went there, scored drugs, called for anything from anybody connected to that place?

2:04:46Oh, no, no, never. Well, not a percent. Did they ever accuse you or Jeremy of being on drugs or having a connection to this house? Debra Bradley? No, because we offered samples of our hair. So they can test hair and find out anything and everything you've done. Some drugs, including methamphetamine, can be detected this way. And so they were able to tell that I was telling the truth about that. As far as that, if there was a connection and that was it, that's null and void. That's just not even an option. So I ask you for the record, have you been on drugs? Were you on drugs around the time Lisa went missing?

2:05:23Absolutely not. And how about Jeremy? absolutely not it just wasn't your thing you were not somebody who partook no I watched in high school watched friends suffer from addiction and I didn't want to be that way I I just seen so much suffering um aside from the fact that it's just not appealing to me and as a parent that'd be the last thing on my mind you you don't do crystal meth and you didn't do crystal meth at the time she disappeared oh god no no no okay yeah because i'm sure you've heard that some people theorize you or jeremy had a connection to this drug den and brought this cast of nefarious characters into your life and one of them took her but those people should ask the cops about the dna analysis on our hair and the drug test analysis on our hair it's not there for a reason because it doesn't exist.

2:06:25So at least I have proof of that. Reporter Jim Spellman covered the case for weeks after the story broke. I have seen not one bit of information to indicate that Deborah Bradley, Jeremy Irwin, or anybody in their family was involved in some sort of drug thing. And I'll tell you, Megan, I'm a drug addict in recovery. I've been clean for 21 years now, and I'm pretty good at figuring are now drug addicts. The idea that Deborah Bradley or Jeremy Irwin were some sort of drug addicts in deep to dealers or something like that is ridiculous. I put, you know, as close to certainty that that is not the case as I can come not, you know, not blood testing people.

2:07:09And now you are going to hear the absolute worst, darkest versions. Again, these are most likely urban myths we just don't know about what may have happened to Lisa. And we do need to warn you, they come with awful, grisly details. Author Jackie Heller. And this is what really breaks my heart about this whole thing, is the one consistent narrative that we have found in this story is that Lisa is no longer with us. What you're saying is you've talked to people who think they know what happened and who say the baby was killed. Yes. We had someone tell us that Lisa is in the bottom of Smithville Lake and they put her body in a duffel bag and made sure that the blocks weighed more than she did.

2:07:57So there was no chance of her body coming up. Those are the kind of things that we've heard about this. Cindy Lorette, Deborah's aunt, heard something even darker. Somebody had Lisa, and they got scared because the media, it became such a big deal. That person got scared, and he chopped Lisa up. He took her to this house, and one of the people that was in the house told me this story, that she was brought to the house, and they were at the edge, the end of the bed, and she was crying. and they said to get the fucking baby out of the house. I still don't know what to believe. We managed to get our hands on police documents with equally dark testimonials.

2:08:50These are supplemental interview reports that police do not make public. They reflect interviews with two different men who claim to know something about the baby Lisa case. We have confirmed the case file numbers on these reports and we've spoken with both men, Chad Huber and the second man interviewed who asked us not to use his name. They confirmed their conversations with Kansas City Police Officer Michael Wells, the very same name that appears in these documents. It appears that Officer Wells was investigating a car theft ring, among other things. We discussed these police interviews with co-authors Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller.

2:09:32These are follow-up interviews with people who have been charged with unrelated, you know, petty crimes, theft crimes and so on, just a few months after baby Lisa disappeared. And this is a police interview with someone named Chad Huber. Do you guys know that name? Have you heard of Chad Huber? No. Okay. So back in 2012, Chad Huber apparently had thoughts on baby Lisa and named three new people with a possible connection to this case. Three new names we have not discussed in this series. Matt Shaver, Boris Dubinsky, and Cody Allnut. Huber also mentions one that you'll be familiar with, Dane Greathouse.

2:10:12This is complicated and a lot to follow. Bear with me. According to the interviews, Chad Huber, car thief suspect, tells cops that Cody Allnut, an 18-year-old who, according to his father was hanging out with a bad crowd, wanted to talk to Chad about baby Lisa. Chad Huber tells police, presumably based on that conversation with Cody Allnut, that baby Lisa is dead. And while the documents do not reveal anything about how, Chad Huber says several people are involved. Dane Greathouse, the same guy who allegedly had the phone, called by the Irwin's stolen cell phone the night Lisa went missing, was paid to move Lisa's deceased body, says Huber, from one grave site to another.

2:11:02Who? Who paid him? According to Huber, it was convicted criminal Boris Dubinsky. Huber tells police, as reflected in these documents, Dubinsky paid$15 ,000 for the transfer. Why would he do that? And where would this guy possibly get 15 grand. What's more, according to a 2012 police interview, Hubert tells cops that Matt Shaver, the owner of that house in which Megan Wright was doing drugs on the night Lisa went missing, had pictures, pictures the cops might want to see. First, can I just ask you for your reaction to that excerpt? Interesting. Very, very interesting. What is interesting about it to you?

2:11:45The names, the Schaefer name and Cody are names that we've heard. What is interesting to me is that it parallels an experience that we had. We spoke with someone who Cody had approached her, her story, her words. Cody had approached her, seemingly really needing to get this off his chest. And this name, Dane Greathouse, of course, is very relevant. That's who we think that call was intended for. I think it was a signal. That the baby had been taken. Right. And so if he really did move the body and was paid$15 ,000 to move the body from the original burial site, I mean, there's a lot of buzz around Dane Greathouse and a few different lines into him.

2:12:37Again, we don't know if they're true. This is just as reflected in the police report. I had someone send me a text message once, and it said, this is the person you need to talk to. This person has all your answers. And it was a photo of Dang Great House. We've tried to talk to him. He is a trip, big time trip. He wanted like thousands of dollars for us to talk to him. Oh, great. I was like, yeah, we're not entertaining this. Dane Greathouse did speak with us, telling us he was questioned by police. He told us he knew who Boris Dubinsky was, but did not actually know the man. He also said he never moved anything, nor was he paid anything.

2:13:22We found him living at home with his mother, where he was participating in drug court, an alternative to jail that offers treatment and education. Dane followed up with a text that read in part, I'm glad you guys came over and talked. Honestly, I just hope this can bring light to the case and in time things get solved. Boris Dubinsky also told us he had nothing to do with Baby Lisa's disappearance. He said he was once in the same jail with Chad Huber, that he knows what Huber said about him, but that none of it is true. Matt Shaver told us there were indeed photos of the riverbank stored on his PlayStation memory card.

2:14:01He said police confiscated that card, and when they did, they told him the photos had originated on Cody Allnut's phone. He says he has no idea if they were pictures of a gravesite. As these pictures show, there was a search done along the banks of the Missouri River. No body was found. What Cody Allnut saw or did not see, we may never know. We were not able to speak with him. We did speak with his father, Larry, who told us Cody has schizophrenia. Larry Allnut is his son's limited guardian and conservator. He told us the FBI interviewed Cody once around the time Lisa disappeared and never returned.

2:14:43As for Megan Wright, Megan, have you heard the name Cody Allnut or Boris Dubinsky? Have you heard those names? Those don't sound familiar to me. But she does remember Matt Shaver, who gave her a place to stay all those years ago. Matt was one of the people, him and his wife, owned the house I was referring to. And what was he like? He was a carpet layer, best I remember. So he was always very active, hardworking kind of guy, trying to support his family. When I moved in there, they were trying not to lose their house. So I was trying to help them get things cleaned up, kind of get everything, move people out, make it a more family appropriate environment for him and his wife and their kids.

2:15:33That's why I moved in there. And the perk of it was hiding from Jersey. He was not familiar to that house at that time. Did the Kansas City police investigate any of these claims or come to a conclusion about this cast of characters? We don't know because they won't say. When we called and asked, they again told us they will not comment on a so-called open investigation. And we are not the only ones being ignored by the Kansas City PD. According to Jeremy, they have received not a single update on their missing daughter in the last 10 years. I find it appalling that they haven't contacted you in years.

2:16:12You don't even get an annual phone call from a police officer saying, we're still looking into it. We haven't forgotten about you. Oh, no, no. I couldn't even tell you the last time we were contacted by law enforcement. It was maybe year three, maybe. Oh, wow. It's been a long time. They've moved on. For sure. I think they realized how big it was. And I think they screwed it up really badly. and I think they just want to be done with it. Author Jackie Heller. They dropped the ball. They had tunnel vision from the beginning and they've dropped the ball. They have let Lisa down. Once again, Debra's aunt, Cindy Lorette.

2:16:55I know people who have called the TikTok line that have reached out to me and to get no help. About three months ago, a guy thought he saw Lisa in Las Vegas. He ended up getting the phone number to the police department. He called there and they said, OK, thanks, and just hung up. They did not ask him any questions. He gave him the information. They don't care. They're not looking for Lisa. They don't give a shit. They think that she's dead somewhere and mom did it. And they're going to. Well, they're not even trying to prove that. I mean, they're just done. They're done with it. Author Missy Rasmussen.

2:17:31If it were me and someone told me that someone told them they saw they know that a baby was murdered, I would even three degrees removed. Triple hearsay. Yeah, I would still want to get that off my chest. So I get it. But it is really difficult to get any closer than, say, two degrees. You know, it should be easier for police. Police have all sorts of investigatory abilities and powers that we don't have to figure out who was where, when, what the phone records of that person show and what their actions were. It just lacks the right person to come in and be like, we're finally going to do what needs to be done for Lisa.

2:18:18Reporter Jim Spellman, who covered the case extensively, has a different view. Every indication that I got is that the Kansas City police and the FBI were conducting a very vigorous and thorough investigation. Every time that I would uncover some new element or another reporter would uncover some new thing, the police had already been there generally a couple of weeks before. And we saw lots of evidence that they were thoroughly tracking down people's alibis, that they were, you know, searching electronically, that they were searching surveillance cameras. That would have been an asset for the family.

2:18:56And the family ended up treating them like they were the enemy. So to those who think, oh, the Kansas City police botched this, you know, they just they fail to investigate properly. We would have found her if we had a more robust police department on the case. You don't agree with that? I don't agree with that. I think that they did a very thorough investigation. All of the key people that surfaced in the media that surfaced through my reporting had been thoroughly investigated. John Jersey Tanko was questioned by the police at the time. He denies any involvement and the case remains open. Did the FBI ever tell you, Megan, that you were cleared?

2:19:36I realize you only had that one six-hour meeting. Did they ever? Or the Kansas City PD? Megan Wright. They told me they'd be in touch if they needed anything else from me, and I haven't heard anything in 12 years. Never seen anything where they made a statement publicly, bringing up my name, saying, oh, she was cooperative. She came in for an interview and we have ruled her out as a suspect. And that'd be great to hear. But it's never happened. As for Jeremy Irwin and Deborah Bradley, it's been dark narratives, 12 years of missing their baby girl, and a struggle to stay together. It's really hard to be there for someone else that you love when you're falling apart yourself.

2:20:20And we tried to make it work for a really long time. And I think it just got to the point where, unfortunately, we fell into this statistic. Their relationship came to an end in the summer of 2022, and Debra moved out of their home on North Lister. I had hoped we would beat it, beat the odds. But it's okay, because now we have the chance to get better on our own and be better for our family and ourselves. You know, the main concern for me outside, second to Lisa, has always been the boys and making sure that they have some semblance of a normal life, even with this going on. And I feel that we have at least succeeded in that.

2:21:11And you still, notwithstanding the fact that you're separated from Deborah, you still believe in her? It hasn't caused you to doubt her? No, I mean, not at all. I mean, it doesn't change the fact. I mean, we're talking about my daughter here and we're talking about her mother. So it's the same thing I've been saying for years. You know, if you're going to tell me that Deborah did it, you better tell me what it is and you better tell me a story associated with it. Other than that, I've heard it all and you can't tell me nothing new. I think that God put us together because he knew we would be able to survive long enough to be there for each other in positive ways.

2:21:56And we may not be together now, but I still trust him and I will always love him because he has my kids. It's you look at the joy that you get from raising two boys and having them go out into the world and they're awesome young men and they're they're going to kill it. And they have their own life paths and everything's starting to work out for them. And but as a man, I was robbed my portion of that with my daughter. I hope one day that tomorrow or a year from now or whatever, I hope that Lisa's found and that she comes home and we can start over at 13 years old or 18 years old or however old she is.

2:22:43But it would be nice to start that relationship in which I haven't been able to have this whole time. what if all it takes is just the one person to watch what we're doing now and they like oh this kid looks familiar it it could happen in so many ways and we've also put our dna with ancestry.com and 23andme and i open up my email and i you know and i'll see you you have another relative and I always click on it, hoping it's her. Cindy Lorette. I've tried to convince myself that she's no longer here and to move on, but I can't. I'm going with my gut and my heart. She's out there somewhere. She's a beautiful little girl, and we're going to find her.

2:23:32This is for Lisa. We need to find what happened to Lisa. Where the hell is she? Dead or alive, we need to find out what happened. There, I said it. Like, how do you make sense of why this happened? There's a lot of tough questions, and the answer is free will. And evil men will do evil things. What's your best hope of where she's been these past 12 years? My best hope is that she's safe. And she's with people that love her and care for her and feed her well and treat her well. and she's able to go to the doctor and maybe she's able to go to school somewhere. If she just has no idea that she's actually someone else's child.

2:24:20That's what I'm hoping that she's totally ignorant to it and live in a completely normal life. That's what I really hope for. Do you ever wonder whether it would be easier if you knew, you know, one way or the other, what had happened if just even if the outcome were bad, you know, that you had a confirmation that she had passed, would that somehow be easier? Well, I think if that's my two options, if I were to know that something bad happened or to never know, then I'll just stay never knowing, I guess.

2:24:58Jeremy would rather never know, and he and Deborah didn't make it. Bill Stanton spent a lot of time with Deborah and Jeremy. He joined me along with our other go-to crime expert, Phil Houston. You know, you could feel the bond. And I saw it, and I'm sure you saw it, between the two of them. I mean, it's a nightmare. And statistically, they should have been divorced within months. But their faith in Lisa and themselves kept them together for years. You know, I know people in a lot higher tax brackets than them. you know a lot higher education than them that you know would have crumbled it says he never doubted her he never doubted it's a sad love story but when you watch her today what jumped out at you that this woman has evolved as a person how she remains resolute and i wanted her to be guilty more than anyone because statistically she was i wanted to wrap it up and get the heck home You know, they had no reason to accept me in their home.

2:26:04I told them as soon as I got there, I'm not here for you, meaning that if it's you, I'm coming for you. And I said that to them and they looked me square in the eye, help find our baby. What did you make of the fact that in my interview with Deborah, she was saying this did jump out at me. She was saying things like there's an example of a mother who found her daughter after 16 years. There's an example of a father who found his kid after X years. I went to 23andMe and I gave my DNA. I went to Ancestry.com and I gave my DNA there just in case, you know, she finds it. I realize even somebody who had done something would be smart enough to say present tense, present tense, present tense.

2:26:44So I that's OK. I'll check that to the side. But doing things like that, I believe her that she did searches for a child who came back. Why would you do that if you knew your child was no longer? No, that's why that's what gets her through the day. What did you make of that stuff, Phil? I believe that she has. But it's also her undoing, I believe. I spoke to her about a year and a half ago. and when I hung up I thought my goodness the frustration that she's feeling is going to eat her alive and you know I don't want to trivialize it in this comparison but you know think for a moment you're at your house and all of a sudden you're looking for your car keys and you can't find them and how quickly you become frustrated and you look and you start hollering at people and help me find my keys and you know, whatever.

2:27:37Think if that frustration went on for 12 years, how would you, how would you, you know, how big would that build that you're looking for this thing that you can't find? That leads me back to these police reports that you guys have seen, these interview reports that we managed to get our hands on. And they talk about how these alleged petty criminals around this case, allegedly, again, this very much could be crooks trying to lower their sentences and give police fake little gold nuggets. But they talk about having seen pictures of a grave site, pictures of a mound of dirt. Somebody allegedly brought the baby in a black garbage bag and buried it.

2:28:21Like, there's some of that out there. I mean, it's possible that she did the same thing, That that's all made up, but that she did actually bring the baby out there and that the baby was buried. And this same Keystone cop force just didn't find it. So the first thing that comes to my mind, Megan, is that if I've committed a crime as heinous as this particular crime, I find it hard to believe I'd be running around telling people that we've done this and so forth. And, you know, while one person might do it, I think if it were a group effort, that one person would be in hot water pretty quickly with the rest of the team, so to speak.

2:29:07You know, even if they were under the influence of drugs, the next morning they would probably be saying to themselves, we need to put a, you know, put a lid on this. The greatest thing I think Debra's got in her favor, you tell me if I'm wrong, Bill, is Phil Houston.

2:29:24And for that, nothing to add. Right. Absolutely. I just can't get past the fact that the human lie detector, CIA, 25 years, breaking terrorists, breaking double agents, seeing the deception where no one else could, that that guy got fooled by Deborah Bradley. I don't believe it. Thank you for the kind words, Megan. Believe me, like you, this case has haunted me. And I pray often that I'm right and that she's right, that Lisa's out there somewhere. Coming up in our next episode, Jersey John Tanko, the man everyone wants to know more about. We found him. And wait until you hear what he told me. Building Better Health is a new conversation series from UnitedHealth Group that explores healthcare's most significant challenges and how we can fix them.

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2:31:11I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show in episode five of our special series, Megan Kelly Investigates. We're tackling the disappearance of baby Lisa Irwin. John Tanko, nicknamed Jersey, the handyman in the neighborhood with a long rap sheet, the ex-boyfriend of Megan Wright, the woman whose phone was called by the Irwin's stolen phone the night their baby, little Lisa, went missing. And the guy who tantalizingly told attorney Cindy Short he just happened to find three cell phones and then toss them somewhere around the time the baby went missing. You've heard his name again and again in this series.

2:31:55Everyone wants to hear from him and find out what he knows. Well, after 12 plus years, we found him. If you're watching, that's him in the red sweatshirt on the bike. We tracked him back to New Jersey where he was arrested for shoplifting in 2022. Now that we know where he is, it's time to figure out the best way to get him to talk. Here's part of my strategy session with our go-to experts, Bill Stanton and Phil Houston. So unbelievably, we found Jersey. After all this time, nobody could find him. Cindy Short found him, but the cops apparently didn't know where he was for some time. Jim Spellman, who's been doing yeoman's work on this case, couldn't find him.

2:32:38We found him. And now we got to decide what to do with him. So got to figure out what the approach should be. I'm perfectly happy to just go knock on his door and see what happens. Well, if you go knocking on his door, it's very easy just to not even answer or just slam it on your face. What I'm thinking about doing is luring him out. And then you come between him and the door, which may give you that precious one line, that question that will hook him. And then he will want to stay outside. And then when he comes out, he doesn't even have to know we're together. I got your back. And then you confront him.

2:33:22I just want to say that the way I would normally do this is I would go, I would ring the doorbell and I would say, are you John? Hi, I'm Megan Kelly. And I'm trying to investigate what happened to this poor missing baby. You know, a lot of allegations have been made about you. Will you talk to me? I'd love to give you the chance to answer some of the things that have been said about you. It's all in the approach. You see, the way I'm proposing it, you get two bites of the apple. Megan, if we want the outcome that we can actually get him to open up even a little bit, you and Bill need to stay together.

2:33:54And with you ringing the doorbell, Bill standing slightly behind you, if he's outside, then you approach him. Megan, you would approach him first, Bill would stay back. Bill needs to keep you within near arms reach distance. If we want to get information from him, we need his resistance at the lowest level possible. And I believe, Bill, you need to give her the highest level of safety and security possible. So can you describe that, Phil? So how would that look in your scenario? Well, I loved your introduction. Hi, I'm Megan Kelly. I'd love to have a chat with you. And here's the reason I'd love to have a chat with you.

2:34:38We have been working on the disappearance of Lisa for over 10 years now. And as a result of that, we know a whole lot more than we've ever known to include the players that are involved. And that's why we're talking to you today. We want to get your side. I would not mention investigate or investigation. I wouldn't mention case, anything that has consequences associated with it. You just want to have a talk and a conversation. We call it a transition statement in the interrogation world because what it does is it signals to that individual that everything that they have done to try and pull this off, to be successful, has failed.

2:35:31And that's when you would get in with the first question. What was your role in the disappearance? So presumptive question, a question you want to make sure if you can get in on camera, is the question about the telephone. Is there any reason your fingerprints are on those telephones that went missing that night? So you know, this is a tried and true technique of Phil's. We've actually seen no evidence that Tanko's fingerprints are on any cell phones. You keep talking. John, you're a smart guy. You know that at some point this was going to come to this. You can help resolve this whole matter that has caused pain and anguish to the parents and to their family.

2:36:19You know, we're not here to argue with you or call you names or anything. And what you're doing is you're limiting or minimizing the amount of questions. Because every time he answers the lie, your job gets twice as hard to get that admission. But if you could right off the bat can get him to listen to you, you've got a shot. We could talk all about the questions, but the first phase is getting him to stay. The further way getting him outside that front door gives her more time. So time and distance give Megan options, because unless we get that engagement, all of this is for naught. I understand, Bill, but I think you may have a chance to get him to open up a little bit.

2:37:09So, Phil, psychologically at that moment, what are you trying to do? Build him up into thinking like that you actually believe he could be helpful, that he's not an adversary or a target, but that we're all in on this together? without trying to buddy up or cozy up to him. You don't want him to make a denial. Once they deny, that really makes your job difficult. And so when you see them start to make a denial, what you want to do is say their name. Whether people realize it or not, one good way to interrupt a person, stop them from talking, is to say their name. It just instinctively people shut up when they hear their name.

2:37:55It's a three-step process. You say, John, hang on. It's a control phrase. John, hang on for a minute, okay? And then I want to hear your side of it. And you've got your hand up is the third. So John, the control phrase, and the hand up. And it's not in your face. It's almost like a defensive gesture. Okay. Okay. Or trying to stop a denial because... Yes. Yes. Stop the denials at all costs, no matter what happens throughout the whole thing. Just keep saying, John, let's talk about the truth. It's not easy. I mean, if it were easy, we'd have a ton more confessions than we have. But people do break and they break at moments for reasons we don't understand.

2:38:47Sometimes this could be it. This could be the good. For the sake, for the sake, for the sake of just being taking the opposite tact, I'm going to be contrary on that. I think the last thing he's going to want to see is you, Megan. And I'm hoping he's going to get loud. And in his loud, he may say something stupid. If we can get one tenth of what Phil's putting forth, that's TV gold, because this man has never given an interview. So 30 seconds, two minutes, 10 minutes, an hour. You know, no one has ever been able to do this. I just don't see him changing now as we pull up to his home in a cul-de-sac.

2:39:32I'm going to do something I've never done. I'm happily wrong. Listen, I'm happily wrong. You're absolutely wrong. We do this all the time. I will leave my shoe on Megan's camera. I hope that happens. And be happily wrong. You're a double win. I am not anticipating a full confession by any stretch. But if if you got, for example, an acknowledgement that he had those phones and he did something with them and so forth, that's tantamount to a confession. No, I get it. But it's all about the engagement. Does he take the hook or not? You know, that's it's the opening 10 seconds. If Megan doesn't hook him in five to 10 seconds, then there's nothing.

2:40:21Bill, I talk to terrorists who are far, far more conditioned not to give up information, and they talk. They talk if you approach them in the right manner. I feel like we're formulating a plan where I kind of like, I like what Phil is saying, like, where we show up, we just, we're kind of open about it. We don't pop out with cameras. It's clearly you and me, Bill, walking to the door. You're close, but I'm like in the lead. And we ask to speak with him following, you know, loosely Phil's script. Yes. Now, what about Phil right at the top when I ask my first question and he gives me the line that my lawyer told me not to talk about this.

2:41:08I'm not talking about this. Okay. You could say, John, look, this is not about lawyers. We're not here to bring harm to anybody, including yourself. We just want the truth. and you have a very critical piece of information that will help this get resolved. So if he's talking in any way, in a confrontational way, in a confessional way, in a friendly way,

2:41:42I'm going to be wrestling with saying, would you mind if I bring my cameras in and we can have the same conversation? because I think that will shut it down. Now, I'd much rather have his agreement to doing it on camera. I understand why we have to do it with the undercover camera, and I think it's a good idea. But it would be so much nicer if we could just have his agreement to do it like that. That's your call. You'll know. You'll know. And listen, we got the hidden camera, so we got multiple options. Well, I mean, he's gone 12 years without getting caught on camera at all. It's amazing. how he's managed to dodge.

2:42:21So I have zero expectation he's going to say, yes, I'll sit down in front of your camera. Yeah, but there'll be a point if he's talking to me where I'm going to at least try. Yeah, that's how I would have done it if I were in your shoes. Okay. This scripting, this is what I and my colleagues have done for years and years and years. And it just works. It works often when nothing else does work. Wow. Well, if we manage to emerge with actually any sort of meaningful comment, never mind confession, but meaningful comment from him on this, I mean, that'll be huge. Like I say, nobody's even seen the guy.

2:43:00You know what nobody else did. You know, nobody else has. Well, and honestly, just in all fairness, we want to go to him and give him the chance to confront these allegations that have been made. His name keeps coming up. We actually do want to hear what he has to say about all of this, this is his chance. All right, let's get moving. All right. We got to go. And so on March 7th, 2024, I got rigged up with hidden cameras. I wore a shirt with a camera in one of the buttons and another hidden camera in a glasses case sticking out of my shirt pocket. New Jersey is a one party consent state, so we can record our conversation without obtaining Tanko's permission in case he declines a traditional on-camera interview.

2:43:44The crew stayed in a van nearby. And Bill Stanton and I walked down his street. This is his house right here. The garage is open. He's in the backyard, so face me. Don't turn around. Face me. He's just spotted us. His chicken's back there. He's doing his chores. He's not coming out. No, he's not coming out. So, if we want, I'll just fucking call him over. Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably where it is Because now he's seen us And he's not coming out I'm just going to ask him if I go buy those chickens You'd be amazed You want me to do that? No No, because we don't want to use subterfuge, right?

2:44:29I don't want to put him on the defensive right away Like per Phil I think we want to say I think I want to go over there and say Let's go to the fence and let's do it We're committed Okay

2:44:44You want us to do initial talk or you want me to? I do. I will. John.

2:44:56Hi. How you doing? I'm Megan Kelly.

2:45:05How's it going? Nice to see you. What's going on here? Chickens? Yeah, moosters. Awesome. Two horses?

2:45:21You've got like a whole farm going on back here. Yeah. Thanks for talking to us. I've been working for 10 years on the baby Lisa case. A lot of people have. Yeah. And it's been tireless for us. I mean, we're obsessed. I know. You know, we know a lot now. We have come to an understanding of some basics, what happened and who was involved. And we are really hoping that you can help us, that you can help us fill out some of the story. We think it's really important to get your input. And I was wondering if you would talk to me. I'd rather not because my lawyer told me not to talk to anybody. It could be a death penalty case.

2:46:08I don't want to have to sit in prison for five years and go to trial. You know, the thing is, the thing is, it's like Deborah and Jeremy have been, you know, tortured. And so all we're trying to do is like sketch out the story and wondering if you can tell us what your involvement was in the disappearance of baby Lisa. I don't have any involvement. That's what I'm saying. None whatsoever. The FBI vacuumed the house. If my DNA, you have a million skin cells that go like that, they're going to bag it off and they're going to DNA it to me. And I'd be trolled. No doubt about it. What do you mean? Their story is, well, the other story is that some random person came in the house and kidnapped a police.

2:47:02Right? Yeah. So now the FBI's involved, they vacuum bagged 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, what did they, like a saliva? They did? Yeah. Did they tell you that you were cleared? They said I didn't have to, but I didn't anyway. 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. Okay. What we're trying to do is help them because the way I see it is we're trying to provide them with closure.

2:47:43You can help us do that with some comfort, you know, and just figuring out what the story is. This is a big-shot lawyer. 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. Sure. I mean, a lot of people get mixed up in drugs and understand that. What do you think should happen to the guy? What do you think should happen to the person? I don't know what happened. So, I mean, if it's a kidnapping, or, God forget, a homicide, Motherfucker, I was sticking my nose in it.

2:48:30Do you think that the person who took the baby, did it spur the moment or that it was planned? I didn't know too. No.

2:48:45You worked in the neighborhood that night, right? Not that night, but yeah, I was working in the neighborhood. General. So why would somebody have said they saw you outside of the Irwin's house that night? And people lie a lot. And you didn't know the Irwins at all, Deborah and Jeremy? I think I'm not positive, but I think I met Deborah at a bar. One time, a local bar. Okay, okay. It used to be called BAMLs. And I know you know Megan Wright. Yeah. We've talked to her. Yeah. And you guys used to date, but did she have any involvement in this whole thing? I would doubt it. Like, I don't know. But if the police are being honest about her getting a phone call from one of the Irwin's phones, then somebody connects, she's connected.

2:49:39That just kind of makes sense. Now, did you have those phones? Because we understand that you told a lawyer, Cindy Short, that you found those phones. I'm seeing whatever she wanted me to hear. I didn't tell her I found those phones. I said I found phones that night, but I didn't find them. No? Nothing? Oh. Why? It's because she's asking a million questions, and I didn't want to just make her happy, whatever. I don't know. What do you think happened to those phones? You think the same person who has the baby has the phones? I didn't even know if the phones are missing. I don't know if that's fact or fiction.

2:50:19I have no clue. What did you hear about that? Anything? No. Did you ever hear anything about the phones and where they went or whether it was connected to the baby? No. Nothing? No. Why do you think, because you knew the neighborhood a little bit, but certainly better than we do. Why would somebody take a baby? You know what? The FBI asked me the same question. I'm like, the only thing I come up with is to sell it to maybe somebody at the 10th Hopkins. You know? I mean, it sounds crazy. And if we had a hold of this, that's the best case scenario that could happen. That kid is 11, now 13, you know, in school, you know, has a rich family, you know, something like that.

2:51:04I mean, that's the best case scenario. Yeah. But what do you think? I mean, I know that there were a lot of people in the area who were on drugs, meth, and so on. And we heard a little bit of that from Megan. Is there any chance somebody got messed up on drugs and did something to the baby?

2:51:26I don't know. People, I don't see what happened. But not anything's possible. What do you think happened? You know what? I was thinking parents have something to do with it Because they hired all these lawyers, high-priced deaf people. I think lawyers.

2:51:52What was the other thing about that? That's bad.

2:52:02You know, the story is called Salary. She got drunk and fell asleep, woke up, and the baby's lost. Isn't that the salary? Well, why would anybody say that they saw you outside of the Irwin's house that night? I don't know. I don't know, but I wasn't. You've never been in that house? Never. Never once? Never once. So, if your fingerprints are on those phones, what does that tell us? What's the telling? Yeah. Like, why would your fingerprints be on those phones? I don't know. I don't know. I'm just trying to figure it out. Okay. Well, you're telling me this is fact that I said you're on the phone.

2:52:48But I don't believe it. I don't believe I ever possessed a phone. Okay. And you heard that story. You mentioned that one of the phones called Megan Wright that night. Yeah. You believe that? I don't know. Police are wrong and lie just because they want to have a direction to go on and use something as a way of getting the information that they want. Yeah. Did she... One of the theories is that she really wanted a family. She wanted a kid. Yeah, that's totally not true. That's not true. She never said that to you? No. Why did you guys break up? You sure? Why did you two break up? Because I was, uh, scoundrel and I had a job to go do at the Watson's house.

2:53:42And she... Is that the one down the bar? Yeah. She called the police, told her I was going to be working at her. She called the police and told them you were going to be at the Watson's that night? Why? That night. Oh. The night that we broke up. Dined you out? Yeah. So we broke up and I never talked to her again after that. Maybe, I don't know, four or five months might have went by from when the baby was missing. No, no, until we broke up until the baby broke. No, bro. Never, ever talked to her again. You didn't? You didn't go to her house? I pulled up on the front lawn in a stolen van one time, but I didn't talk to her.

2:54:19Okay. Did you ever set anything on fire of hers or around her? The other investigator asked me that too. Said the car was on fire. That wasn't you. So you got questioned by the cops and the FBI. Yeah. Separate? Yeah. Two separate? Yeah. And they took your DNA? Yeah. And then how did it resolve? What did they say to you when it was all over? They didn't. Was it just two sit-downs, one with the cop, one with the FBI? No, it was FBI in a homicide interrogation room.

2:55:00Chuck, this came and see me, actually visit me in jail. Was that scary? Yeah, it was really scary. Oh my God, he's kidding me. You're thinking they're looking at you for possible kidnapping? I'm thinking that they're exploring all the animals. And was it just that one time? Yeah. For a few hours or how long?

2:55:29A few hours for me. A little over an hour. Okay. Maybe two. Okay. And uh,

2:55:39not too long, maybe an hour. Was it right after the baby went missing? No, because I was still on the run. So I have a couple other questions. I'm sorry to take up so much of your time, but do you know who Dane Greathouse is? Dane? Yeah. I believe I met him a couple of times. Maybe we got high together. I don't know. I already made up a rap. I'm so weird to it that say, I'll make you disappear like me and do something. So I don't know. That was kind of weird. Is there any reason that you would have called Dane Greathouse on the night the baby went missing? No. No, no reason. Like I said, I only met him once or twice.

2:56:31We weren't really friends. I happened to have someone. He happened to have something, and that was it. Okay. Like we exchange numbers or talk after that or anything. How about Cody Allnut? My name sounds familiar, but I can't put a face to it. What about Boris? Boris Dubinsky, do you know him? I can't put a face to it. I don't recognize the name. And I'm also wondering now, is there any way you've been very generous with your time? Can we do this with like, can I bring a camera person over here and we can do this properly? Absolutely not. Okay. Because I'd love to get your side. I hate, I hate being, what do you really refer to me as a link to this case?

2:57:22I don't want to know about me. I'm not involved. When you do a show, your viewers, you actually give any viewers an option. This person doing it, this person doing it, this person doing it, this person doing it. I don't want to be living in a person. I don't want some people to think, I don't want to do that. I don't want to be involved in it. That's not me. John, you seem like a straight up guy. First time you're in a person, I really appreciate him.

2:58:20Do you think... Taking her was planned, or do you think it was a spur-of-the-moment thing? What's your guess? I don't have a guess on it. Like, because you knew a lot of the players in the neighborhood, you know? Like, to me, it seems too sophisticated to have a baby be sold. You know, as a, like, who would be able to just steal a baby on the spur-of-the-moment and then sell it?

2:58:57Well, how can Debra, how can Debra have gotten rid of the baby's body without it being detected? You know, that's one of the things that keeps stumping me. I don't understand. Like if Deborah killed the baby inadvertently or on purpose. I don't think most people think if she killed the baby, it was on purpose. Maybe she dropped the baby, maybe whatever. If she did that, she got rid of the body in a way that she fooled even the cops. So how could that have happened? Like you knew the neighborhood. How could it happen with anybody? Like what was the backyard like? Do you know what? Describe the area a little bit.

2:59:37No. around the Irwin's house? I don't know. I've never been there. But you were, I mean, a neighborhood handyman, right? Well, it's only for the Watson. Okay. He was older. His hands were working. He had arthritis. So he needed me to do something. He gave me a cloth. That night, did you work at the Watson's, the night the baby went missing? No. You didn't turn on the sprinkler or off the sprinkler? That was those days before. He said once the grass started growing, I didn't have to do it. Oh. He said once you start growing, you've got to keep growing. So why would a neighbor say they saw you in that area?

3:00:19I don't know. It's the third time he asked me. Okay. Sorry. I'm losing my own. I don't know. People lie. I don't know. Yeah. Now I'm in the area. I'm not first decided to find out of their own house. You see? Well, I'm asking you beyond because, you know, there's the one set of neighbors that say they saw somebody who matches your description, they didn't say you, with a baby that night, like around midnight. Do you remember that? I heard that there was a witness that, oh, seeing somebody carrying a baby, I didn't get all that about fits my description type. Okay. See, this is, you know, it's just weird because it's like, like I said, it's going to put in people's minds that I couldn't possibly actually believe.

3:01:18I don't deserve it. That's, I mean, and that's not us. You know, there are witnesses in the case saying, you know, look at this guy, as you know. And that's, we have to look into that. And we're very open-minded to all the possibilities. I mean, I've said before, when I first went out there, when I arrived on scene in Kansas City, I thought 100 percent it was Deborah. A hundred percent. That's what I thought. Over the years, you know, I've considered everybody. I consider you. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is to this moment. I don't know. But I definitely wanted to talk to you to get your you you're a lot closer to it than I am.

3:01:54So you got better answers than I do. What were you doing that night?

3:02:03You know, if I was to tell you, then you'd go there. And I'm not going to be that person that sends you something. You're looking pretty healthy now. Organic eggs? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's a pretty good setup. Yeah. So, okay. So you were not in the neighborhood that night. Okay. So if anybody saw somebody looking like you, it wasn't you. Is there anyone you think we should talk to, or what can we do to help advance this? Any thoughts? I have no clue. I have no clue. Can we talk for just one more minute about Cindy Short and that visit she paid you in the jail? Cindy Short? The lawyer. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

3:02:48Yeah, because she definitely told us that you told her you found those three phones. And I told you, I told her that, but I wasn't being honest. I don't even know why I said it. Maybe I was still spun out. I don't know. I don't know why I said that. She said she thought at one point you were, like, wrestling with maybe a confession. She didn't say that you confessed anything. That's not true. That's not true. I told her I had nothing to do with it. It's like I'm telling her. I had nothing to do with it. I don't know anything. Mm-hmm. Does this case, I don't do pay attention to it, like when it hits the news.

3:03:28What does it bring up for you? You know what? There was a story about the earliest missing baby. And we went through all this thing. It was an hour long. And then I'm at the end. You know, the very last person they speak about. You know, so it kind of made me feel like that. the program was designed by somebody to make it appear that the story ends here, this guy. You see what I mean? And that bothered you. It still bothers me to this day. How do you feel like it affects you with your neighbors and your life? I haven't talked to them. If you Google my name, they can find out Yeah. That sucks, too.

3:04:24That totally sucks. Let me ask you this. How do you want, like, what do you want my viewers, my audience to know about you in this case and the things that are being said about you? I don't have anything involved in it whatsoever. Zero. Never touched that baby? No. Never saw that baby? No. Never saw it. Okay. Well, thank you for talking to us. Thank you. I appreciate it. If you could tell on me, I'm a cousin. I want to see the best policy. Look, I know you don't talk a lot, so I appreciate you letting me come on here and ask these questions. This whole shit fucks my head. I'm sure. Fucks my head.

3:05:07I'm sure. Not that I'm feeling guilty about anything, but just the fact that I feel I'm being put involved with and something that I'm not involved in. Okay. All the best to you. Thank you. Say well. I don't believe you guys don't kick too much shit on me. Well, we're going to tell a story and I'm going to tell them what you told me. They'll hear from you. Okay? Thank you. All right. Have a good day.

3:05:37Well, that was interesting. Wow. Now I got to eat my fucking chew. Oh, my God. Start with the tongue, Bill Stanton. That's what I recommend. start there oh he's got it delicious okay it's so good to have you guys here in this setting i'm so i've been looking forward to this from the moment we walked off property there bill and i'm just so the audience knows i have not spoken with phil or bill at all about this since it since the day i haven't spoken to phil at all so i have no idea what he thought of the whole exchange and yet we spent so much time preparing for it. So this is exciting. Bill, we walked out of there, we got into the van and really could not believe it.

3:06:23Like, I think you and I were both like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, you know? And then I asked him if he would sit down with our cameras. He said no. But talk about your impressions, Bill. There was so much going on in my head for your safety and our safety. And then when he started talking and he was so relaxed. So this man, what I felt he was doing was trying to sell us and you weren't having any of it. I couldn't believe how much he talked. I really thought at any second we're going to get kicked out of here. The fact that we were there that long is phenomenal to me. That was my least likely scenario to happen.

3:07:06And then, Phil, you're the human lie detector. What did you think? Megan, I thought that your interview with him was great. It elicited a lot of deceptive behavior. The overarching mistakes that he made primarily were his failure to deny definitively. I'm thrilled to hear you say deception detected because that's what I thought. I walked out of there and I was like, I've got more doubts about this guy than ever. But our whole team did not feel that way. and I just thought there were my own baby Phil lie detector abilities, right? Just because I've followed you for so long, were going off like crazy.

3:07:51I thought there were many indications of deception. He had too many explanations. And I remember asking you about Megan Wright, what would a truth teller sound like? And you said, I can't tell you that exactly, but there would have been a whole lot more. I didn't do it. You know, I didn't do it. So let's let's play the first exchange that we had with Jersey where he brings up the death penalty, which, you know, Bill and I were both like, whoa, what? Huh? Let's watch that. I was wondering if you would talk to me. I'd rather not because my lawyer told me not to talk to anybody. It could be a death penalty case.

3:08:32I don't want to have Dr. Sidney prison for five years to go to trial. You know, the thing is. You ask him a very difficult question, but in a very low-key manner. And one of the reasons that he talked to you so much, I believe, is that you didn't give him a reason to dislike you. And he let his guard down some. And in doing so, he gave some lengthier responses than he needed to. And that's where the deceptive behavior began to come to fold in. In this particular case, he said, I don't have any involvement. And he used the present tense. I don't have any involvement. That was his messaging throughout all of this.

3:09:18But in reality, the truthful person is going to focus on the crime itself and say, I didn't have any involvement in what happened that night. And it's the equivalent of saying, you know, where the truthful person says, I didn't do it versus the deceptive person says, I wouldn't do it. He's trying to impress the latter message on you. But it's clearly, clearly deceptive. But also when he said, that's what I'm saying, I didn't have any involvement or I don't have any involvement. That's what I'm saying. That doesn't mean that isn't what it is, so to speak. In other words, he's not saying I wasn't involved.

3:10:02This is just what I'm saying at this particular point. So that one was a real key right off the bat that there's probably more lies to follow. Well, we did accurately predict that his first instinct would be to say, the lawyers aren't going to let me talk. You know, didn't foresee the death penalty line, but he did try that. And thankfully, thanks to your guidance, Phil, we shut it down, got him off of that sticky place. And then I launched with the first Phil Houston question. And wondering if you can tell us what your involvement was in the disappearance of baby Lisa. I don't have any, that's what I'm saying.

3:10:45None whatsoever. The FBI vacuumed the house. It's my DNA. You have a million skin cells. Go like that. They're going to bag it off me. They're going to DNA it to me. And I'd be told. You'll die, bye. In there, the deceptive behavior that really stood out was his immediate aggression against the FBI. And the truthful person wouldn't be thinking, answering truthfully is going to land me in prison for five years, you know, or just because this is a death penalty case. Oh, OK, I got it. So whenever you say the truthful person would have said it this way, that helps because you do think about yourself wrongfully accused of being involved in something as awful as this.

3:11:35What involvement did you have? Yeah, you'd say none. And Megan, think about it. He's saying they would find my DNA at the location. I mean, why would his DNA be at the location? They've never seen him there before. He's never said he was there before. But then he seemed, Bill, to be trying to say they would have found my DNA. If I'd been involved, they would found that DNA because I was like, what? Right. I thought he was saying the same thing. Right. And he seemed to try to clarify if I were guilty, the evidence of me having been there would have been all over the place. Well, maybe maybe it would have been found if, you know, half of Kansas City and mainstream media wasn't in and out.

3:12:23Yes. Okay. But back to Phil's point, I think Phil, I mean, I don't want to put the words in your mouth, but I feel like what you usually say in this circumstance, Phil, is the truthful person doesn't engage in convincing behavior. They don't need to say, they would have found my DNA. They would have found my fingerprints. They're just kind of like, I didn't do it. I don't have to convince Megyn Kelly otherwise. Yeah. He's using the convincing statements. And then you look at how he's standing on the ladder. He's trying to look very nonchalant up there. But in fact, he's very threatened by you and very intimidated internally by the questions you're asking, Megan.

3:13:03But he doesn't really, you didn't give him an opening to, you know, criticize or accuse you or attack you. And that made it very, very difficult for him. Why was he up on the ladder? because the audience, the viewing audience will see, the listening audience needs to be told. He didn't need to be up there. His work, of course, was paused while he was talking to me and to Bill, and he easily could have stepped down and come over to us or been face to face. What did you make of his choice to stay elevated and on the ladder? If you recall, he was standing up in a straighter posture when you got there.

3:13:41He wasn't leaning on the ladder in that manner. And when you guys walked up, then he immediately leaned over and he hunched down. He was intimidated. He doesn't know who you are. He doesn't know what your intentions are. So he's a little scared. And so that anchor point movement that we saw represented a spike in his anxiety. And he'd sit tight and just look like he's not threatened. And that's a thing you'll see in prison a lot. You know, the key is, is people have to look and act as if they're not threatened by anything or anyone around them. And he's given his prison time. He's pretty good at that.

3:14:25The ladder is not only elevating him, but it's a barrier between him and me. There is that sort of defensive thing of it's in front of me. I've got my arms around it. I'm I'm safer behind this ladder. and we'll definitely get into why did he talk because that was our big debate before Bill and I went. Is he going to? But I've got to get to the phones before we do that. So that was the one thing we discussed beforehand. If he would admit to us what he told Cindy Short, that he found allegedly the three phones on the night baby Lisa went missing, that that would be a tantamount to an admission. Well, here's how that went in part.

3:15:10Now, did you have those phones? Because we understand that you told a lawyer, Cindy Short, that you found those phones. I'm feeling different for whatever she wanted me to hear. I didn't tell her I found those phones. I found phones that night, but I didn't find them. No, nothing? Oh, why? I just because she's asked me a million questions and I don't want to make her happy, whatever. So the listening audience knows one of the things he did there, Phil, which you've called attention to in the past, it can be part of a cluster of deception, is hands above the midline. He started to move his hands up like, oh, she did this, she did this.

3:15:49And you've told me in the past, and I know from your books by the lie, which everyone should read. when you're lying, the nervous energy has to shoot out of you somehow, whether it's your leg crossed and foot clicking, or you start to rock, but hands above the midline, touching your nose, touching your head, moving around, can be part of a deception cluster. So what did you make of the phone's answer? Exactly where you were going, Megan. Again, it represents a very significant and spike in his anxiety level here. And it's interesting, why on earth would someone who's telling the truth need to admit that while they weren't, didn't say they had taken the phones that were missing, but they found other phones that particular night by coincidence, so to speak, who in their right mind would do that if you're telling the truth?

3:16:42Because, and what he recognizes is that by saying that he even had phones, that he did find phones that night, is almost as equally incriminating as the fact that the phones, he had the phones that were missing. It's clearly one in the same. So that's what led him to say, in my opinion, what led him to say, oh, I was just lying to her at that particular time. I was surprised that immediately he knew who Cindy Short was and he knew about the phone conversation. He didn't stutter like, what, huh? Oh, that was nonsense. If you think about it for that one moment, let's postulate that he is guilty.

3:17:20Let's assume let's just for argument's sake, say he's guilty. Every breath, every moment is burned in his brain. Right. And to me, this question of the phones is one of the most pivotal points made, because if he found that phone, right, if he had the phone, that tells us he was in the house. I mean, it tells me he was in the house and he called Megan Wright. And that's why he was going back and forth. Is it advantageous for me to say I found the phones or, oh, no, I was just lying. He figured out to say he has the phones suggests he had the baby and he knew he didn't want us going there. but but this like phil this was the most obvious lie i would say even to the casual observer without the phil houston training because why would a guy sitting in jail talking to a lawyer make up a lie about having phones when he didn't have phones quote to make her happy i think one One of the reasons he might have been doing that as well is that between that night and today or the day that you're interviewing him, he has probably told someone, one or two people, that he did find phones that night.

3:18:45And then realized that when you ask him the question and, oh, I need to come up with a reason as to why I had phones or maybe someone saw him with phones that night. And that Megan Wright was dialed. Megan Wright's number was dialed. He had to make it, in my opinion, he had to make a story. Oh, I found the phones. And then he realized it's not his best interest to say he had. Oh, I didn't have the phones. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That was his weakest part because there were other moments where I thought, okay, you know what? He's doing better here. And one of those moments was when he tried to say he and Megan Wright broke up and he never saw her.

3:19:26And I said, you didn't stalk her at all or however I phrased it. You know, you didn't show up at her house. And he owned that one right away. I pulled up on the front lawn in a stolen van one time, but I didn't talk to her. So what was your reaction to that, Phil? Because he could have said, no, I never did. But he kind of owned her story of driving the truck onto her property and scaring her a little. I think, Megan, what he's trying to do there, going back to the concept of convincing statements or persuasion behavior, what he's trying to do is he's trying to say, hey, if I did something wrong, I'm more than willing to step up and admit it.

3:20:04And often that convinces people who aren't really attuned to the behavior and the reality of the situation and they buy into it. And that's what he's hoping would happen here. I'll tell you what, Doug Brunt, my husband, he watched this whole thing and he had one big takeaway having watched Jersey. He said, you know who he reminds me of? He said he reminds me of this guy exactly. Frank Pantangeli from The Godfather when he testified before Congress on whether Michael Corleone was in fact the Godfather and a member of the crime family. And he had now had a change of heart before the year. Here it is.

3:20:50Watch. Tell me if this looks like Jersey. I don't know nothing about that. Do you deny the confession and you realize what will happen as a result of your denial? Look, the FBI guys, they promised me a deal. So I made up a lot of stuff about Michael Corleone, because that's what they wanted. But it was all lies. It's the same sequencing of deceptive behavior that we just saw, almost identical to what we just saw with Tanko. It's amazing. Okay, so what's your takeaway now, having watched it, Phil? Like the, when it wrapped up, having watched the, you know, 25 minutes, what did you walk away saying?

3:21:32There are signs of deception and? There's no, there's no doubt in my mind, in my opinion, that he is directly involved, if not unilaterally, the person that took the baby. That's strong. Not just from this interview, but it's from the history of the evolution of the case and the things that we learned about him over the years and the connections to others and the evidence that we heard about his activities that night. All of that collectively suggests in my mind, this is our guy. So why did he talk to me, Phil? That was our big debate. That's why Bill had to eat his shoe. because he said he's not going to talk.

3:22:20And you said, he'll talk. It happens. And sure enough, he did talk. And, you know, the audience knows because they went through this with us, but like, he hasn't talked in all his time. You know, as you know, I always go by my own daughter. She's about to turn 13. That whole time, he's kept quiet. He's never made a public statement. He's never even been caught on camera in any meaningful way. So why did he talk? As I said before, Megan, And you approached him in a non-threatening manner. It's very counterintuitive in these situations. In fact, when we train law enforcement, one of the hardest habits to break is taking that immediate intimidation or intimidating posture and voice and accusations and so forth.

3:23:09You did none of that. You came up in a very polite manner, very professional manner. And you said, listen, we'd like to talk to you as if you were, you know, giving him the option. Now, he didn't know you weren't really going to give him the option that you would probably continue, you know, to ask questions and so forth. But he was willing at that point to say, OK, let me see where this goes. Right now, I'm up here on this ladder. I'm in a safe place. So what's the harm? And maybe I can gain some ground in the meantime. And because of what you ask him and how you ask them, it allowed you to gain ground.

3:23:52And he wasn't realizing that he had let his guard down. And he's now talking to you in narratives instead of one word answers or refusing to answer or whatever. He's thinking, OK, maybe I can pull off a fast one with this lady. And in retrospect, when you think about it, guys, we were literally in his backyard. He had the high ground. He felt safe. We were in his territory on in his yard while he was up. He felt he was in control. That's a good point. It was kind of ironic that he ended the exchange with honesty is the best policy. Honesty is the best policy, like touting his own honesty, which is another tell, Phil, is it not?

3:24:43Oh, absolutely. It's one of the most used convincing statements there is. But the timing of when he did it was quite interesting to me. It was interesting because it suggests that he felt he played a good role here, that he really accomplished something in the manner in which he answered your questions. He was kind of being a peacock here and saying, hey, I've been very honest with you. And in reality, he knows he's been anything but that. And then he followed it up with, this thing has been effing my head up. But I'm not guilty of anything. What did you make of that statement? It's, again, truth in the lie, as many of these other statements that he made.

3:25:29He's saying something that's truthful. It did mess up his head. But in reality, a truthful person, that's not going to happen. In other words, if they'd have gone, a truthful person 10 years later or 13 years later is not going to be terrified and fear that they're going to go to jail or they're going to get the death penalty, whatever the case may be. Yet these are all these things that he's saying, and these are the things that are worrying him. And so I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a day that goes by that he thinks about that night. What did you make up, Phil, when he said, I said, why would somebody, do you think it happened spur of the moment?

3:26:12Do you think it was planned out? And he didn't bite there at all. He's like, I don't know. And then I rounded back again and he said, I don't know. And then he's like, you already asked me this. He was pretty firm on that one. Like, I don't know and stop asking me that. That, I thought, was a point in his favor. Remember what we said earlier, how he said, I don't have any involvement. That is his agenda in his mind. And so when you ask him a question that is similar to that now, he's already got the answer framed out. And that's why it looks and sounds more truthful. Give you another example of that.

3:26:52At one point, you ask him, I think, about fingerprints or whatever on the phone. and he gave what on the surface would appear to be a truthful answer. Why would your fingerprints be on those phones? I don't know. I don't know. I'm just trying to figure it out. Okay. Well, you're telling me this is fact that my fingerprints are on the phone. But I don't believe it. I don't believe I ever possessed a phone. I suspect his by the end of the night, his fingerprints were no longer on that phone. And he knows that and he's wiped them off. And so that's something that he can say, you know, truthfully.

3:27:34Yeah, with confidence. Right. He challenged whether his fingerprints were on the phone. And the other thing he challenged with confidence was this. Why would a neighbor say they saw you in that area? You don't know. It's the third time he asked me. OK, sorry. I'm losing my own. I don't know. People lie. I don't know. Now I'm in the area. I'm not first to say it was on our own house. You see? Well, I'm asking you beyond because, you know, there's the one set of neighbors that say they saw somebody who matches your description. They didn't say you with a baby that night, like around midnight. Do you remember that?

3:28:14I heard that there was a witness that, oh, seen somebody carrying a baby. I didn't get all that about fits my description. So he did know. He knew facts about this investigation in a way that I thought was pretty telling as well. But that was a great example of deception. He didn't say I wasn't there. Oh, I failed to see the forest through the trees on that one. Oh. Whoa. Again, so that's the Phil Houston twist. The truth teller would have said, I wasn't there, so she definitely did not see me. That's the fact that is the best ally for the truthful person. Tell the truth. And in his case, the truth has consequences associated with it.

3:29:05And that's what makes it difficult for him. Now, the advantage he has a little bit is he's been asked a lot of these questions over the years. And so he has some frame of reference. But what was different this time is somebody's talking to him in almost a kind way. You weren't judgmental of him, and that was really important. So having watched Megan Wright and John Tanko talk about their relationship and their time together. What takeaways? If you assume for a moment that our assessment of John Tanko is correct, and then you look at what Megan is saying about him, she clearly is trying to distance herself from him.

3:29:57It appears likely, so much so that it appears likely to me that she knows what he's been up to. And likely she knows what happened that night. And as a result, she doesn't want to go down if he is, you know, if Tanko is finally arrested, you know, uncovered or identified as the perpetrator and is arrested, then she would then become a co-conspirator. And she realizes that. So she's trying to leave the impression in everyone's mind that she has nothing to do with him. And long before the baby went missing, she had nothing to do with him. And she's trying to create that image. That was by design.

3:30:47Well, when you ask Tanko any questions about Megan Wright, he becomes very protective of her. He immediately says, no, she's not involved and exonerates her. And I believe he's doing that because he knows that she knows. And he knows what she knows. And as a result, he has no choice but to defend her. That's very interesting. She wasn't sounding that way about him, however. Like, I don't know what he's capable of. It was more her line. Yeah, yeah. He has no choice but to defend her. She has other options. She isn't the person that actually did it. That would be so interesting, Phil. Fascinating talking to you.

3:31:35Okay, now we're going to bring in Jim Spellman. Very excited to have Jim Spellman with us, reporter of CNN at the time this story broke, now independent. And Jim, you've been watching this whole thing. You've been watching the series. You've been working with us on this. What did you make of this exchange with John Tanko? Well, first off, I want to echo the kudos to you, Bill, and your crew for getting this and going in there. That was not easy. And it definitely took guts and courage to do it. Well done. This struck me as somebody, remember, he didn't know you were recording him, who's scared that the next visitor is going to have a badge on them right after them.

3:32:13And he was working whatever he could to try to find out what you might know, and then to feed back something that's going to make him look good. I mentioned this earlier in a previous interview, Megan, But I'm in recovery. I'll use crystal meth, smoke, crack, cocaine, etc. 23 years I've been clean last year. And I work on a near daily basis with addicts in recovery. And there's a kind of person who does nothing but lie. Even when there's no reason to lie, they lie. You ask him what color a blue car is, they'll say red. And this strikes me like that kind of person who just immediately is on the hustle, immediately is trying to weave something that's going to help him come out better at the end of the day.

3:32:54And, you know, with the phones, with the phone question, this really has made me focus on the investigation back in Kansas City and by the FBI and why at this point they had not told us why they moved on from John Tango, why they have not revealed all of the details about the phone. And I think when this show comes out, it will be negligent if the chief of police there, Stacey Graves, doesn't immediately appoint a new detective that was not involved to make this a high profile cold case, release whatever information they can that doesn't jeopardize an investigation and bring this into the public eye again.

3:33:37And I would include men fences with the family. I don't know who was responsible for that division, but it wasn't Lisa. And she deserves better than that. And this investigation should be immediately reopened in a vigorous way. Well said. I couldn't agree with what you just said more. And that's really our goal is to have somebody just take a fresh look at the case, fresh eyes, new eyes, take a look at the case. he told us for the first time there that he had not been cleared by law enforcement that was an interesting admission i think he didn't know that i believed he had been cleared otherwise maybe he would have just gone with that but it's because i asked it in an open-ended way like were you cleared and he said no no one ever told me that i thought that was very interesting And the police in Kansas City and the FBI on occasion told me they used the language they had moved on from John Tango.

3:34:34Never, of course, being absolute about it. But I think it's clear they have because look where he is, you know. And I mean, none of these people have faced any kind of serious, you know, investigation that they know after those initial weeks and months. Lives have just gone on. People's lives have gone on while the family and Lisa's are in suspended animation. You know, why else, Jim, would there be a 10 year gap between the last time the Kansas City police called Jeremy or Deborah and today? It's inexcusable no matter what they did or what the police did. Somebody's got to get over this. Right.

3:35:15And I think as part of reopening the case, the Kansas City police need to deal with the media, take their lumps and get this case back out there. No one's going to come off looking great if they reopen this in a sort of more high profile way. But what other way is there to jog memories, to convince the community there in Kansas City that their children are being cared for, that they matter, than to start getting some of this stuff out there? One of the things I was really surprised to hear Deborah say was that they had taken hair from them to test for drugs. So if that's true and it was negative, then why would the police not release that at this point?

3:35:58Why not put out whatever can be put out there that can close down avenues that people are discussing and maybe just somehow jog some other memory of somebody that may know somebody who knows somebody? Maybe it's not Tanko, but someone who is tangential to Tanko. Maybe not somebody who was in the house, but someone that was near and around the house that day. Somebody knows something. There has to be a nexus to this house to know there's a baby there, to know that Jeremy's working that night. Something has to happen to change this. It's just unacceptable that it's up to people like you and people like Bill to be on this guy's lawn and not a much larger investigation.

3:36:37And you know what's really chilling is here we are all these years later, they've never found remains of any kind. And, you know, if this were a murder, an intentional murder, an accidental death, let's face it, whoever did it of the characters we're talking about, you wouldn't think that these are, you know, sophisticated criminals who actually managed to avoid the police detection and then got rid of the body in a way that very few criminals are able to, or never got dug up by a dog, never came up. If it had been put in the water, you know, like we saw with Lacey Peterson, like this is the one criminal who managed in just that short window of time to conduct the perfect crime.

3:37:16No DNA, no fingerprints, no proof of any kind, disposed of the body in the way that it never came back. So there is a real possibility, if you look at that, that she wasn't killed. we haven't really talked about it that much but that she really wasn't killed and that she was either sold or given to somebody or showed up on the doorstep of a firehouse in some other town that would make some more sense it given the absence of a body and remember the investigation in those early days and weeks the amount of searches of woods in that area when when the address came up the area of the intersection uh that cindy short says he's he reported that the phone rat, I immediately put that into Google and looked at images.

3:38:00One of the very first live shots I did, the first weekend of this case, was a big search right there that included the National Guard and the FBI of that area. And all of those similar areas that kind of are around this neighborhood that have open woods or something were heavily searched in that kind of search, that we'd find any type of remains or something. So I think that it's extremely unlikely that out in public, you know, woods or anything that, you know, there were any remains to be found within a, within a mile or two radius of the house. You're amazing. Thank you so much for the great work you've done on this.

3:38:37You've been a highlight of every episode. It's been a pleasure. And Jim, that Jim, thank you. And, you know, sharing that, you know, be once an addict, you're shown that it can be overcome and it is debilitating and you overcame it and you just add that much more character to everything you do. Thank you. Thanks, Bill. Yes, indeed, Jim. Thanks a ton. It's a pleasure to meet you. And that's the conclusion for now of our Megyn Kelly Investigates series, but it's not the end. And I thank you sincerely for joining us along this journey. We'll see you soon. If you're watching right now, please take a look at this picture of Lisa as she might look now.

3:39:15If you're listening, you can see the photo on YouTube or just go to MegynKelley.com. If you see her or think you might have any information that can help find her, please write to me. The address is Megan, M-E-G-Y-N at MeganKelley.com. You can also pass along tips on the baby Lisa story to the Kansas City Police Department or encourage them to get active on this case. That would be very helpful. Reach out at KCCrimestoppers.com, KCCrimestoppers.com, or call them at 816-474-TIPS. T-I-P-S, that's 816-474-8477.

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