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

Summary

The Megyn Kelly Show: Megyn Kelly Investigates – The Disappearance of "Baby Lisa" (Full Series Mega-Episode)

Date: April 5, 2026
Host: Megyn Kelly (SiriusXM)
Theme: A deep-dive, five-part true crime investigation into the 2011 unsolved disappearance of 10-month-old Lisa Irwin from Kansas City, Missouri.

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Episode Overview

This "mega-episode" compiles all five parts of Megyn Kelly’s series on the case of missing baby Lisa Irwin. Kelly takes listeners through the events of October 4, 2011, unpacks the initial investigation, scrutinizes alternative suspects, reveals never-before-shared confessions, and conducts an undercover confrontation with the leading person of interest. Joined by experts in criminal psychology, deception detection, and investigative reporting, Kelly’s team attempts to cut through years of confusion, local rumor, and media bias to clarify what’s known and what is speculation. The series concludes with an exclusive, undercover interview with John “Jersey” Tanko, the enigmatic handyman whose name hovers over the case.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Night Lisa Went Missing: Timeline & Immediate Response

• Setting the Scene ([02:34])

  • Lisa’s father, Jeremy Irwin, returns from a nightshift at 3:45am to find the house lights on, a window open and the front door unlocked; Lisa is missing from her crib.
  • Quote: “That’s the last thing you expect is that one of your kids is going to be missing.” — Jeremy Irwin [03:14]

• Search Efforts & Neighborhood Reaction ([05:09]; [05:55])

  • Massive search involving police, FBI, ATF, and local volunteers.
  • The media descend on North Lister Ave.; family immediately pleads for her return.

• Detailed Timeline of October 3, 2011 ([06:21])

  • Debra Bradley’s afternoon/evening: shopping with her brother, visits by the neighbor, dinner, drinking wine with neighbor Samantha Brando, last memory (possibly) of checking on Lisa.
  • Key Witness: The Parscals, local couple, see a man carrying a baby at 12:15am ([09:27]).

2. The Investigation Focuses on Lisa’s Parents

• Skepticism Toward Deborah Bradley ([09:48]; [10:56])

  • Deborah’s drinking is scrutinized; her timeline becomes uncertain.
  • Polygraph results are ambiguous but interpreted by police and media as damning.
  • Quote: “It was a tough interview. I went pretty hard on you. Very difficult. You fessed up…” — Megyn Kelly to Deborah [11:46]

• Media Rush and Confirmation Bias ([14:23]; [19:08])

  • Police publicly say parents stopped cooperating (under debate by their lawyers); public perceives guilt.
  • Confirmation Bias: Once the “parents did it” theory sets in, alternatives are ignored ([18:36]).
  • Quote: “Interrogation is not investigation. It’s a strategy to get a suspect to make an incriminating statement.” — Jeremy’s attorney [16:27]

3. Alternative Suspects & Theories

• Introduction of Key Figures ([20:11]; [50:56])

  • Attention shifts to local handyman John “Jersey” Tanko, neighbor James Brando, and Shane Beagley.
  • Tanko's criminal background: burglary, arson, drug use; he worked in the area on the day of Lisa’s disappearance.

• The Cell Phone Mystery ([77:06]; [78:53])

  • Three Irwin family cell phones go missing; one makes a mysterious 50-second call near midnight to Megan Wright, Tanko’s ex-girlfriend.
  • Megan Wright lived nearby in a drug house, where many people had access to her phone.
  • Both Megan and other residents (including Dane Greathouse) deny knowing anything about Lisa’s disappearance.

• Witness Testimonies ([48:21]; [49:49])

  • Three independent sightings of a man carrying a baby on the night she disappeared.

4. Investigative and Legal Teams' Work

• Private Team Steps In ([21:10])

  • Phil Houston (CIA deception expert), Bill Stanton (ex-NYPD/TV PI), and Marisa Randazzo (psychologist) analyze parents and witnesses.
  • Quote: “We have it on tape, that moment where you got to ask your first question of Deborah. Let’s watch it.” — Megyn Kelly [24:26]
  • Phil Houston determines parents, particularly Deborah, do not exhibit signs of deception ([25:50]; [146:29]).

• Criticism of Police Tunnel Vision ([32:14]; [70:49])

  • Experts believe police fixated on the parents due to statistical probability, ignoring evidence pointing elsewhere.

5. Evidence, Red Herrings, and Dead Ends

• Cadaver Dog Alert ([45:49])

  • Police claim a scent of decomposition in the house, but defense notes the carpet was not removed; raises suspicion the police were performing for the cameras rather than following actual leads.

• Tanko’s Timeline and Alibis ([54:19]; [62:05])

  • Tanko is in the area the day of the disappearance; odd links include a missing neighbor’s dog and another suspicious fire.

• Megan Wright’s Perspective ([64:34]; [105:00])

  • Megan denies ever asking Tanko to procure a child for her, admits to past drug problems, and expresses regret but professes ignorance about Lisa’s fate.

6. Exclusive Jailhouse Confession and Confrontation with Tanko

• Jailhouse Admission ([94:49])

  • Attorney Cindy Short reveals that Tanko, in jailhouse meetings, claimed to “find” three cell phones right after Lisa vanished — adding to suspicions he was the intruder.

• The Showdown: Meeting with John “Jersey” Tanko ([150:41] onward)

  • Megyn Kelly and Bill Stanton track him to New Jersey; Kelly, undercover with a hidden camera, attempts a “cold door” interview, following Phil Houston's interrogative strategy.
  • Tanko denies involvement, claims to have never been in the house, hedges on details about the phones, and repeatedly reframes his statements.
  • Quote: “I don’t have any involvement. That’s what I’m saying. None whatsoever.” — John Tanko (Jersey) [166:01]
  • Experts dissect Tanko’s body language/answers, unanimously agreeing deception behaviors are present ([186:40]; [192:14]).
  • Quote: “His failure to deny definitively… the truthful person is going to focus on the crime itself and say I didn't have any involvement in what happened that night.” — Phil Houston [188:08]; [190:52]

7. Exploration of Other Theories

• Was Lisa Sold? ([121:22]; [125:24])

  • Various local rumors: baby being sold, connections to meth houses, etc.
  • Deborah and Jeremy vigorously deny any involvement with drugs, point to clean hair samples, and negative DNA results.

• Witnesses & Informants ([127:00]; [131:15])

  • Police interviews with criminal informants yield elaborate rumors (body moved, river dumping, paid transfers), though none are substantiated.

  • Quote: “If I've committed a crime as heinous as this…I find it hard to believe I'd be running around telling people we’ve done this…” — Phil Houston [148:07]

8. Aftermath, Legacy, and New Hope

• Toll on the Family ([117:31]; [140:03])

  • Jeremy and Deborah split after years of strain, but both remain hopeful, regularly check DNA databases, and continue to search for Lisa.
  • Quote: “My best hope is that she’s safe and she’s with people that love her… and she just has no idea that she’s actually someone else’s child.” — Deborah Bradley [143:30]
  • Annual police contact with family stopped after 3 years ([135:49]; [214:27]).

• Call for New Investigation ([211:23]; [213:20])

  • Experts and reporters urge Kansas City PD to assign a new team, release withheld details, and re-engage with the family and public.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (With Timestamps)

• “That’s the last thing you expect is that one of your kids is going to be missing.” — Jeremy Irwin [03:14]
• “I had several… [glasses of wine]… but that has nothing to do with her.” — Deborah Bradley [11:19]
• “Interrogation is not investigation. It’s a strategy to get a suspect to make an incriminating statement. Period.” — Jeremy’s attorney [16:27]
• “What involvement did you have in the disappearance of Lisa?” — “None. The only thing I did wrong was drink that night.” — Phil Houston & Deborah Bradley [24:31]
• “If you’re the perfect parent, good for you, because this could happen to anybody.” — Cindy Lorette, Deborah's Aunt [12:38]
• “I think the last thing [John Tanko] is 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…” — Bill Stanton [158:22]
• “There’s little doubt in my mind, in my opinion, that he [Tanko] is directly involved… if not unilaterally, the person that took the baby.” — Phil Houston [201:16]
• “I haven’t talked to nobody… if you Google my name you’ll find out. That sucks too.” — John Tanko (Jersey) [183:44]

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Important Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------|------------| | Lisa Disappears—Setting the Scene | [02:34] | | Witness Sightings (Man w/Baby at Night) | [09:27] | | Deborah’s Interview & Drinking | [10:56] | | Timeline of Events | [06:21] | | Private Investigation Team Begins | [20:11] | | Cadaver Dog Alert/Police Search | [45:49] | | Focus Shifts to John “Jersey” Tanko | [54:19] | | The Cell Phone Call to Megan Wright | [78:53] | | Jailhouse Confession About Phones | [94:49] | | Undercover Interview with John Tanko | [165:03] | | Expert Debrief on Jersey Interview | [186:40] | | Calls for New Investigation | [213:20] |

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Tone and Analysis

Throughout, Kelly employs an investigative but skeptical tone, challenging both police and popular opinion. The approach with witnesses and suspects is direct but balanced between empathy (e.g., with Deborah Bradley and Megan Wright) and hard-nosed inquiry (especially with Tanko). The series weaves together a human story of suffering, systemic failure, and ongoing hope, while remaining anchored in evidence, expert analysis, and the need for humility in unsolved cases.

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Conclusion: Where Does This Leave the Case?

• Parents largely cleared by independent deception experts and through lack of hard evidence.
• Strong suspicion remains around John “Jersey” Tanko, though police, bewilderingly, “moved on” from him early.
• Critical physical evidence—the missing cell phones—has never been recovered; their movement (including the call to Megan Wright’s phone) remains unexplained.
• Police and media handling of the case, particularly their “parent did it” bias, are sharply criticized.
• Rumors of baby-selling, dark criminal theories, and the possibility Lisa is still alive circulate, but lack proof.
• Family and supporters urge Kansas City PD to hand the case to new eyes, release more info, and rekindle public attention.

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Final Note & Call to Action

• If you have any information on Lisa Irwin, tip lines remain open at kccrimestoppers.com or 816-474-TIPS.
• DNA sample comparisons are being monitored by Lisa’s family, hoping for a break.
• A $100,000 reward for actionable information is unclaimed.

“This case has haunted me. And I pray often that I’m right—that Lisa’s out there somewhere.” — Phil Houston [149:13]

“We need to find what happened to Lisa. Where the hell is she? Dead or alive, we need to find out what happened there.” — Cindy Lorette [142:52]

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For additional updates, pictures of Lisa as she might appear today, and episode archives, visit MegynKelly.com

Transcript

[Deborah Bradley]

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[Megan Wright]

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[Megyn Kelly]

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[Megyn Kelly]

Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at Noon East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and today's True Crime Mega Podcast Sunday Episode Today we have a great one all five parts of our Baby Lisa series. You might remember this one, but if not, you are in for a treat on a true mystery, one that has just haunted me and many others for years. Still unsolved to this day. We dive deep into the case, including yours truly going undercover. Enjoy. Happy Easter, God bless you and we'll see you tomorrow.

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[Deborah Bradley]

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[Megyn Kelly]

We begin on North Lister Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. A family neighborhood, quiet, working class and on October 4, 2011, about to become the center of the biggest crime story in America. This one may be Leave break your home. 10 month old baby Lisa Irwin disappeared in the middle of the night Father Jeremy came home from his night shift at 3:45am and found the lights were on, a window was open, the screen pushed in, the front door unlocked, and his baby girl was not in her crib. Must be a reasonable explanation, he thought. His first instinct, don't panic.

[Jeremy Irwin]

That's the last thing you expect is that one of your kids is going to be missing. So initially when she's not in the crib, it's like, okay, well, she's in bed with Deborah, she's in bed with one of the brothers. She's maybe falling out of bed and she's asleep under the crib.

[Megyn Kelly]

He woke up the baby's mother, his partner Deborah Bradley, out of a sound sleep. She appeared to have no idea why baby Lisa was not in her crib. Jeremy ran next door to see if somehow the neighbor had the baby. Then he called 911. Jeremy and Deborah immediately went public begging for help. No questions.

[Deborah Bradley]

It has just drop her off with somebody at a hospital, a church, the

[Megyn Kelly]

fire department, the police station, anywhere. Just please bring her home. How do you think about it today? Jeremy Irwin.

[Jeremy Irwin]

It's still pretty similar to the way it has been. It's a lot of frustration and some anger and mostly just feeling like you're missing a huge giant chunk of your life.

[Megyn Kelly]

Deborah Bradley was just 25 then. She's 38 now. Your case is so unique because it became a huge national news story and you now have old interviews of yourself and press conferences. You know, when you look back on that, what do you think?

[Deborah Bradley]

I think I can't believe I survived.

[Megyn Kelly]

And though so much time has passed, what happened to Lisa that night remains a mystery. News of Lisa's disappearance traveled fast. Search crews combed the neighborhood, police dogs were deployed and the media descended on North Lister Avenue.

[Bill Stanton]

Showing up here to the house with metal detectors homing the ground, going through the yard.

[Megyn Kelly]

A classic crescent shaped suburban street just north of the Missouri River. Deborah's aunt, Cindy Lorette still chokes up remembering that terrible day back in 2011.

[Cindy Lorette]

It was crazy, unlike anything I've ever seen before or I've seen. Thus. I mean, every which way you look, there was police officers, there was cars, there was people. I remember the CNN van. I remember HLN van. I mean, you couldn't get down the streets. There was literally reporters climbing in trees trying to get snapshots of us.

[Megyn Kelly]

What were your first impressions of the story and the scene? Jim Spellman was there from the start reporting the story for CNN and its sister channel, Headline News.

[Jim Spellman]

This was a neighborhood not unlike where I grew up. A kind of a working class ish neighborhood, well kept homes, but not the kind of families that would be prepared to deal with the onslaught of media, police, lawyers and everything else that would be involved in something like this. It's also a neighborhood that was shocked because you know, this was a neighborhood full of kids and families and one of their own was dealing with every parent's nightmare.

[Megyn Kelly]

In those critical early hours and days, Kansas City police, the FBI, the ATF and a group of local volunteers searched the area. They did not find Lisa or any hard evidence. Within a week, a timeline of the day began to emerge. 2.30pm Deborah's dad comes by with her brother Philip Knutz. 4.45pm Deborah and Philip go by baby formula and boxed wine. They're seen on store security video. Around 5:00pm, next door neighbor Samantha Brando drops by. 5:15pm Jeremy, an electrician, gets a call from his boss and soon leaves to work at a Starbucks, unaware of the chaos and tragedy about to unfold just hours later. 6pm Debra makes dinner for Samantha, Sam's daughter as well as Lisa and her two half brothers, five year old Michael and seven year old Blake. 6:30pm Debra puts Lisa to bed. By 7:00pm, Samantha's daughter and Deborah's boys are inside playing. Baby Lisa is supposed to be in her crib, asleep. Both moms sit on the front step smoking, talking and drinking. Between 8 and 10pm, Shane Beagley, a 33 year old landscaper who was the grandson of a neighbor, stops by the stoop for a Visit. Sometime around 10:30 to 11pm Debra said she checked on baby Lisa, then went down the hall and got in bed with the two boys. Before bed, Deborah leaves three cell phones on the kitchen counter. Two with restricted use because of non payment. It is believed only one worked. Normally they all end up missing. 10:30pm Samantha Brando is back home. She reportedly later said that she noticed the lights were turned off at Debra and Jeremy's house. Some leads quickly emerged with possible sightings of a kidnapper. The next morning, seven year old Blake tells police he heard noises during the night. Also the next morning, the Parscals who lived around the corner told police what they had seen. Husband Honesto was leaving for his overnight shift and wife Lisa was awake and inside. Once again, reporter Jim Spellman.

[Jim Spellman]

He thinks this is weird enough that he phones her in the house from the car and says hey, come and take a look at this. And she sees this man walking up the street holding a baby, not wearing clothes and having Been in the window where she could see this happening. And having been standing where his car was parked, it would not be a problem to view this. Even though it's past midnight, there were plenty of street lights. So show me exactly what you did. You looked out this window. Tell me where your husband was and tell me what you saw.

[Megyn Kelly]

My husband?

[Jim Spellman]

Nobody's mind immediately goes to, oh, somebody's kidnapping this baby. That's what she told me. She said my mind did not immediately think kidnapping, but the first thing in the morning when she saw this commotion going on was she told the police about this.

[Megyn Kelly]

What time of night did she say she saw the man with the baby?

[Jim Spellman]

I'll tell you. And she had it exactly because she showed me the phone records from her husband calling her. 12:15.

[Megyn Kelly]

12:15am Stranger abductions put children in the most dire situation. And so we know time is ticking. Callahan Walsh of the center for Missing and Exploited Children, those early hours are

[Jim Spellman]

the most critical because within the first

[Megyn Kelly]

two hours, there's a 70% chance you'll recover the child deceased and about a 90% chance after 24 hours.

[Jeremy Irwin]

In a case like this, where we

[Megan Wright]

don't know exactly who took baby Irwin,

[Megyn Kelly]

and it's a possibility that it's a

[Megan Wright]

stranger abduction, we know time is of the essence.

[Megyn Kelly]

Was Lisa the baby in the man's arms? More suspicious things happen in those early hours. 2:30am There's a dumpster fire in a parking lot not too far from the Parscales house. Could this be related? At 2:45am a nearby BP gas station surveillance camera shows a man in a light T shirt and emerging from the woods that bordered the neighborhood. It's too dark and grainy to see if he's carrying anything. And then, as I reported for Fox News at the time, Deborah's first account of her timeline gets a serious revision. Turns out she was drinking more than she originally claimed, and she's no longer sure about when she last saw her baby girl. When you went in at 10:30 after the neighbor left, what did you do?

[Deborah Bradley]

Probably went right to my room.

[Megyn Kelly]

Why do you say probably?

[Deborah Bradley]

Because sometimes I check on her. Well, most of the time I check on her and then the boys. So I'm assuming that I went and checked on her, too, but I don't. I don't know.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

You don't remember?

[Deborah Bradley]

No.

[Megyn Kelly]

Let's talk about the wine. How much did you consume that day?

[Deborah Bradley]

I had several.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Several glasses of wine.

[Megyn Kelly]

When you say several.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

More than three?

[Deborah Bradley]

Yeah, but that has nothing to do with her.

[Megyn Kelly]

More than five. Probably more than 10.

[Deborah Bradley]

No.

[Megyn Kelly]

Was it just wine or was there other alcohol?

[Deborah Bradley]

Just wine. Lisa was in bed and the boys were laying down watching a movie with the neighbor's daughter.

[Megyn Kelly]

Were you drunk?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

So the last time Debra is sure she saw Lisa was at 6:30pm before she started drinking. Could something have happened accidentally? Maybe Lisa fell or was dropped, or Deborah unknowingly rolled over on her while they slept. Or worse, did she deliberately kill her own child? At the very least, Deborah is drunk and unreliable. It was a tough interview. I went pretty hard on you. Very difficult. You fessed up. You said, I had a lot of drinks that night, someplace between 6 and 10. And I, I think I blacked out. Now, a lot of people wouldn't have admitted that. A lot of people would not have sat down with the press and said that at all. They would have been worried that it would have made them look some certain way.

[Deborah Bradley]

I didn't care how I looked.

[Cindy Lorette]

I mean, yes, Debbie drank.

[Megyn Kelly]

Deborah's aunt Cindy, Lorette.

[Cindy Lorette]

Debbie probably still drinks. It doesn't fucking matter. It does not matter. Sorry I said that. We all do. And if you're the perfect parent, then good for you because this could happen to anybody. You don't plan on things like this to happen. You don't plan on turning the TV on and seeing one of your relatives missing, let alone a 10 month old baby.

[Megyn Kelly]

The door wasn't locked, right? Reporter Jim Spellman.

[Jim Spellman]

The door was not locked. But keep in mind that by her own admission, Deborah Bradley was drinking that night. I'm not sure that she could be trusted to confidently say whether she locked the door or not.

[Megyn Kelly]

Obviously, they are our main focus. I'm not calling them suspects. Knowing her timeline was problematic and wanting to prove to police she had nothing to hide, Debra volunteered to take a polygraph. And then she took police remarks to mean she had failed it.

[Deborah Bradley]

We were done. And I was like, okay, so you know what happens now? And he goes, he gets real close to me and he goes, I think that you're very bad mother. And I just broke down and I said that it's not possible that I failed. And he just kept saying, I think you're a bad mother. You need to tell us what you did. And I just kind of fell apart. Not gonna lie. My nerves. I actually wet myself because I couldn't believe what he was saying to me.

[Megyn Kelly]

Exhausted and emotional, Deborah and Jeremy decide they have shared everything they can think of to help the investigation and need a break. But Kansas City police publicly criticized the couple for not continuing to talk to them. The news coverage is wall to wall. Just a couple hours ago, at a news conference held by Kansas City police and investigators in the case.

[Phil Houston]

They've always been free. They've been cooperative up to this point.

[Megyn Kelly]

But early this evening, they decided to stop cooperating with detectives. Kansas City attorney Sean o'. Brien.

[Jeremy Irwin]

And so the public impression was these parents had something to. And that came through on the news coverage all along.

[Megyn Kelly]

Police said Lisa's parents, Jeremy Irwin and

[Bill Stanton]

Deborah Bradley, cooperated with police until Thursday night.

[Megyn Kelly]

Her parents are no longer cooperating with police. I don't get it, because as a parent myself, if my child was missing, I would give anything I have. Despite the sighting of the man with the baby one week into the case, police seem to have only one suspect, her mother. ABC News legal correspondent Dan Abrams asked Jeremy the question on everyone's mind, could Deborah have done something accidentally?

[Phil Houston]

No.

[Megyn Kelly]

Maybe she tried to cover it up.

[Phil Houston]

After the first time, I even thought that was when the police had started asking us about it.

[Megyn Kelly]

So just from the statistics standpoint, it didn't surprise me that law enforcement was really going after Deborah. And also Jeremy, that's Marissa Randazzo, the former chief research psychologist at the US Secret Service. She would soon be tapped to work on this case. From the criminal psychologist side of me, I wondered what involvement she or her husband might have had. And so did I, and so did lots of people. But when Kansas City attorney Sean o' Brien started working with Deborah and Jeremy, he quickly realized no one was getting

[Jeremy Irwin]

the whole story because the police kept saying, the parents aren't cooperating. The parents aren't cooperating. It was like the mantra they were putting out on television. And it wasn't until after I got into the case I realized that was totally not true. You know, they had spent 40 hours in questioning with the police before I was brought into the case. These were people who were trying to help the police find their baby.

[Megyn Kelly]

So why were the police saying that? Were they just making that up?

[Jeremy Irwin]

I think they didn't have a better suspect. Interrogation is not investigation. It's a strategy to get a suspect to make an incriminating statement, Period. That's all it is. And so it's a really dangerous position for them to be in. The other thing that I found out later had been done was that they, they pulled a strategy on them that's called the prisoner's dilemma. And what you do when you have two suspects in a case is you tell each of them that the other one is implicating Them. And so they better start talking and get out ahead of it or they're going to be the one left holding the bag. And, and so they did that with Jeremy and Deborah. They had each done like a 10 hour videotaped interview and they took a little snippet out of each one. Jeremy Irwin, the cop, comes in and he's like, hey, I, I want you to see something. So he sets his laptop down in front of me and it's a video of Deborah. It is Deborah's interrogation video from like day two and three. And he scrolls and he scrolls and he scrolls and he scrolls and he scrolls and he scrolls. Finally finds whatever he's looking for. Swings the laptop back around, plays me a 12 second clip of Deborah clearly frustrated, crying. And she says, well, I don't know, I guess maybe he did it or something to that effect. He did what? I could have stubbed my toe on the door. I could have spilled the cup of coffee. He did what? Like, you literally showed me nothing. That was just one of the, the little things that they'll do to you while you're in there.

[Megyn Kelly]

And the polygraph, according to one of Deborah's attorneys, Deborah had in fact passed it.

[Jeremy Irwin]

Obviously their whole thing was, it was Deborah, Deborah did it, Deborah did it. So I always kept asking them, deborah did what? Go ahead, finish your sentence. And there was no sentence to be finished.

[Megyn Kelly]

Psychologist Marissa Randazzo says that's confirmation bias, essentially what confirmation bias is that once you develop a theory, it's human nature to seek out information that confirms that theory and disregard information that would undercut that theory. It appeared that they were not pursuing alternate possibilities as with as many resources or sort of energy as they were. Their theory that it was Deborah and or Jeremy.

[Bill Stanton]

Investigators are quickly closing in on the baby's mother, Deborah.

[Megyn Kelly]

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

[Phil Houston]

Do you think Deborah may be facing an arrest?

[Megyn Kelly]

Probably, to be real honest with you, yes.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Why?

[Megyn Kelly]

Because it's what the police do. They don't have any leads, so they have to pin it on somebody. Do you think it's inevitable? Yeah, kind of. Captain Steve Young of the Kansas City Police Department. You know, we're under pressure to find a child. We're not under pressure to pin this on anybody or wrap it up or make an arrest even. So the pressure on Deborah was intense.

[Cindy Lorette]

Oh, she was just a mess.

[Megyn Kelly]

Cindy. Lorette remembers the stress of it. She was staying with the family to help out.

[Cindy Lorette]

She just didn't know which way was up or down or. And she would just cry and she would nestle her head under my arm

[Phil Houston]

or next to me or she just. Nobody knew what to do.

[Megyn Kelly]

And now we can introduce you to one of the most intriguing players in this whole story. Christy Schiller is a Houston horse breeder, socialite, one time Playboy model and a broadcaster. What was the first you heard about the Lisa Irwin case? So I got a call from my stepson and he said, hurry and turn on Fox News.

[Cindy Lorette]

And you were reporting, and he said

[Megyn Kelly]

that there's a baby that's been kidnapped in Kansas City. Then Christy got a call from a family friend, Deborah's cousin, Mike Lorett. And he called me and he said, I'm here in Kansas City. I'm trying to protect my cousin and her husband. He said, there's news people shoving cameras to the windows, the bank, the bank,

[Jim Spellman]

all the people of Kansas City, the

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

local national media for the continued support

[Phil Houston]

and coverage to keep baby Lisa's picture out there.

[Megyn Kelly]

He said, I'm just scared. He said, I just don't know what to do. He said, I'm trained for DEFCON 4 and I just don't feel like anybody's coming here to help us. And I said, help is on the way. Christy had her own theories. She had spent that summer glued to the trial of Casey Anthony, a mother accused of murdering her three year old daughter. I thought for sure that, you know, she was going to go down. And when the verdict came in, we the jury find the defendant not guilty. And just stood there frozen.

[Cindy Lorette]

I couldn't believe it.

[Megyn Kelly]

And I turned around to somebody who

[Cindy Lorette]

was a complete stranger and I said,

[Megyn Kelly]

mark my word, the next parent that

[Cindy Lorette]

does not trim their child's nails right, they're gonna serve hard times.

[Megyn Kelly]

Sure that Deborah was caught in this backlash, Christy swung into action, tapping into the brain trust of police and legal professionals that she met through her charity Canines for Cops, created in tribute to a police dog killed in the line of duty. She called Bill Stanton, a former New York City police officer, private investigator and TV commentator who was on her canine board. Bill assembled a team that included Phil Houston, CIA veteran of 25 years. Phil created the deception detection method still being used by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and law enforcement agencies around the nation. He is known as the human lie Detector. Former Secret Service psychologist Marisa Randazzo was also part of the team. First order of business, they needed to determine what, if any, involvement Debra may have had. By this point, the baby's Father Jeremy had essentially been ruled out because there's security video of him working on an electrical project at Starbucks. Through most of the night, Baby Lisa went missing. Kristi's team began to plan their own videotaped interviews with the parents. Marissa worked with Phil on the questions for Debra and Jeremy. I helped really, to talk through with Phil around what angle, what to do, think about when talking with someone who may be responsible for the disappearance or. We were really concerned about possibly the death of baby Lisa. So we know that the parents, especially the mother, was under suspicion by law enforcement. And to figure out kind of what the different angles were, why parents, especially mothers, the sort of top motivations of why they do kill their children, and to use those angles and perspectives and to help formulate the questions that film would be asking them. Now there was a plane waiting. Thanks to Kristi Schiller, Bill and Phil headed to Kansas City. Once in the Kansas City area, in a rented house at a secret location, away from the throngs of media, Phil and an associate interviewed Deborah. Phil Houston had seen their press conferences and how they answered questions. Like so many of us, he already had his suspicions about the couple.

[Phil Houston]

They've been asked, did you do it? Did you do it? Did you do it? And so you have to craft an approach to the questioning that cuts through that, that minimizes all of the histronics that have led up to this meeting, if you will. And I was convinced that they were guilty until we asked that first question.

[Megyn Kelly]

We have it on tape, that moment where you got to ask your first question of Deborah. Let's watch it.

[Phil Houston]

Debbie, I think the first question that I need to ask you this morning. Okay. Is what involvement did you have in the disappearance of Lisa?

[Megan Wright]

None.

[Deborah Bradley]

The only thing I did wrong was

[Megyn Kelly]

drink that night and

[Deborah Bradley]

possibly not be alert. Not here.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Sorry.

[Megyn Kelly]

What did you glean from that? What are we seeing there?

[Phil Houston]

First of all, if you noticed, I didn't ask her, did you do it? I upped the ante by asking her a presumptive question. I'm presuming that it's quite possible, maybe even probable, that you did this, that you were involved. What involvement did you have? And her response to that was immediately, without hesitation, none. But then she throws a curveball at us. She says, the only thing I did wrong. So she's confessing. She's saying, look, this is what I. This is the only thing I did wrong.

[Megyn Kelly]

Phil's reaction coming out of this was, no matter the angle that we tried, no matter the approach of the question, she was answering them truthfully and not showing deception. In a twist even he didn't see coming, Phil determined Deborah is telling the truth, that she had nothing to do with her daughter's disappearance. Well, I mean, I, like you, flew out there thinking they did it. It's always the parents when the wife gets killed, it's always the husband. We all know this. And I remember being flabbergasted, just couldn't believe. Like, what do you mean? Challenged all my own biases, but I think led to better reporting on my part in covering the case. Right. Just check your bias. You could be wrong. Have some humility. There are people smarter than you are at detecting deception who say she's not lying, and neither is Jeremy. Armed with this knowledge, Kristi Schiller anonymously offers a $100,000 reward for information leading to the return of baby Lisa. Bill Stanton made the announcement.

[Bill Stanton]

There's going to be $100,000 reward put up for the safe return and or conviction of personal persons involved in this horrible crime.

[Megyn Kelly]

Until now, no one knew it was Christy who offered the reward, a secret she managed to 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.

[Cindy Lorette]

And he said, tell me it wasn't you.

[Megyn Kelly]

And he said, what were you thinking? And I said, we don't need our name on the side of a building.

[Cindy Lorette]

I want to know that this mother and father are being reunited.

[Megyn Kelly]

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. But Bill had a problem after the press conference.

[Bill Stanton]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

And that's when he called me.

[Bill Stanton]

No one believes the anonymous benefactor. I need for you to verify it to your comfort level, and we'll go from there.

[Megyn Kelly]

And I was thinking, sure, yes, I'm interested in this story at any level. But of course, what I would ultimately like is to talk to the parents. And that's where it landed. And, you know, explosive details came out that day, you know, had its highs and lows for Deborah, because that's when the public learned she had between six and 10 drinks. Do you have a drinking problem?

[Deborah Bradley]

No, I don't think so.

[Megyn Kelly]

Some folks are gonna have an issue with you having.

[Deborah Bradley]

Oh, I'm sure they are.

[Megyn Kelly]

More than five drinks while you're looking after a little baby and two little boys.

[Deborah Bradley]

She was sleeping.

[Megyn Kelly]

I wanted to ask, why did you choose to share that with me?

[Deborah Bradley]

Because it has nothing to do with Lisa's abduction. And I want to be honest about everything so that people will look for her because I feel like if they're like, oh, she's being honest about that, she's got to be telling the truth about other stuff. And any publicity for Lisa is good, whether people like what I say or not.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's true. The wall to wall media coverage continued.

[Bill Stanton]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

That was always one of the biggest mysteries about this case, like 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.

[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, I think what you're asking is, 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. Is there some way that Deborah Bradley or her husband Jeremy somehow did this themselves and were able to pull this off in a short, you know, 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

There's so much we don't know about the evidence because Kansas City PD won't talk to us. They say that's because this is still an open investigation. We have our doubts about how much investigating is really going on and for that matter, about how they handled this case. Now I'm joined by Phil Houston and Bill Stanton. They will be my partners in crime on this. My go to criminal experts as we take a hard look at the facts of this Case Looking back now, 12 years later 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.

[Bill Stanton]

And that. 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

The 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.

[Phil Houston]

Absolutely. And they both look guilty as sin if you look at it just from a global perspective.

[Megyn Kelly]

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. She was done being interrogated over and over and over and over by police. She definitely, accurately believed had a foregone conclusion about her.

[Phil Houston]

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 that she probably became fairly angry. And that anger could have, could have been misinterpreted in the interrogations.

[Megyn Kelly]

Plus just the odds, the overwhelming odds, you know, are she did it. That's the biggest obstacle to ruling her out. But let's spend a moment ruling her in. How does that look? What evidence does point to Deborah.

[Bill Stanton]

Okay. It's a tough one. So 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, husband is working at least until 3, 4am and she just doesn't want the burden of the child anymore. Right? So she acts like she's drunk, she puts the kids in bed with her, the kids fall asleep, then she wakes up, takes her child, and either sells the baby or, you know, makes the child go away. Right. That would be one theory.

[Megyn Kelly]

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, the spouse. You can tell when your spouse is legit asleep and when they're not. But keep going.

[Bill Stanton]

The accident theory is far harder for me to go over because, listen, we've all been in that half buzz state, you know, where you go to bed drunk and then you wake up half sober. How do you negotiate that? She wakes up, she finds that she smothered her baby, right? Now I have to get rid of it because I can't face reality. How does she do that? Within walking distance and have the presence of 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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

[Bill Stanton]

Absolutely. Those boys were interviewed and they were old enough to know if their baby sister was in the bed with them.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, right.

[Bill Stanton]

There were just. Just so many different ways, you know, that if she did it, she would have gotten caught. Again, these are simple people, and I don't mean that in 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 overserved, 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, 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

No, 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 Deborah, that they were drinking together, that things went down the way Deborah said they did?

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yeah.

[Phil Houston]

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. But I don't know if I've ever seen her that. That intoxicated before. There was more wine there than Deborah told us originally.

[Megyn Kelly]

Well, that could explain why Deborah didn't hear an intruder for sure.

[Bill Stanton]

Well, to your point, Megan, when. When Jeremy came home, no one heard him come in. He was walking around the house. He shut the window, he turned out the lights, he went into the bedrooms. Didn't wake them up for him either.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's true. So why didn't anyone ever come forward? If somebody stole this baby and did something with her, there's not one person who needed a hundred thousand dollars enough to come forward and quietly say, I know what happened to her.

[Bill Stanton]

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

[Megyn Kelly]

that would explain it if it were a sole actor who then kept his mouth shut. But that's one of the troubling things about this whole thing. Like if. 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. If she didn't do it, who did? What else was going on in the neighborhood that night?

[Bill Stanton]

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[Megyn Kelly]

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[Megyn Kelly]

Megan I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and episode two of our special series, Megyn 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. Deception expert Phil Houston has interviewed Deborah 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.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Hi.

[Megyn Kelly]

The scrutiny on Debra is relentless.

[Jim Spellman]

I want to know why baby Lisa hasn't been found.

[Phil Houston]

The parents under suspicion.

[Megyn Kelly]

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?

[Bill Stanton]

The family just released this home video of this baby. Why would they just release this video now? Why didn't they release this video about five days ago?

[Megyn Kelly]

Bill Stanton is steering the media away from Deborah and toward the search for an intruder.

[Bill Stanton]

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

[Megyn Kelly]

we want to get this child. But Deborah needs to be defended.

[Bill Stanton]

I think sometimes we forget who these two people are and what they're going through.

[Megyn Kelly]

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

[Bill Stanton]

Someone out there obviously knows something.

[Megyn Kelly]

Tacopina hired local attorney Cindy Short to handle things on the ground in Kansas City.

[Cindy Short]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Cindy ran an all female firm. 17 women went to work on this case.

[Cindy Short]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Cindy Short had another reason to be so deeply committed to finding Lisa. As a young girl, Cindy was very nearly abducted by a stranger in her own home. Is it possible, Cindy, 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?

[Cindy Short]

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. It's very short. I spent many hours in that neighborhood late at night. And that neighborhood is extraordinarily quiet. Very, very dark. So I do think that someone could come in and come out.

[Jim Spellman]

Now, if she was to have been taken out of the house at night, this is almost pitch black.

[Megyn Kelly]

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

[Jim Spellman]

the fingerprints, nor have I. They took. They 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 very active Investigation centered 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Investigators have been taking blankets, toys and clothing from the home. CINDY short I was in the case

[Cindy Short]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Authorities 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.

[Jim Spellman]

We learned Friday that cadaver dogs had a police positive hit at the foot of their bed.

[Megyn Kelly]

But last night the ruck 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.

[Cindy Short]

I really believe that they were creating theater to make it look as if Deborah was responsible. And I felt that that was really unfair.

[Megyn Kelly]

Deborah's aunt, Cindy Lorett I remember the

[Cindy Lorette]

CIA people were taking the carpet from the garage, walking it up the driveway. This is on tv, too. This is on the, this makes the news. They have this carpet. They walk it up the end of the driveway. It goes right back down into the, back into the garage. And everybody in the world thought that that carpet came out of Debbie's bedroom. Are you freaking kidding me? Are you kidding me?

[Megyn Kelly]

Meanwhile, what else and who else was being investigated? Remember Honesto and Lisa Pascal, 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. But the fact that she and her husband verified that they were discussing a baby being carried by a man the night before that, that came into their heads before they knew there was a missing baby. Definitely speaks to their credibility.

[Jim Spellman]

Absolutely.

[Megyn Kelly]

Here's Lisa Parscale talking to a local reporter.

[Cindy Short]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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. There 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 4am 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.

[Cindy Short]

Yeah, so Mike Thompson was an individual who worked for Ford, Clay Como, and he was getting off work and it was closer to, I want to say, 3:30 or or so in the morning. And he was on a motorcycle and he came to a stoplight under a bridge and he was about to get on the highway. And so he sees a man which he said was underdressed, with a bab, he also thought was underdressed.

[Phil Houston]

And he was up here ways. And he turned and looked at me and I looked at him. I could tell he had a baby.

[Megyn Kelly]

She had a T shirt and either

[Phil Houston]

training pants or a diaper.

[Jim Spellman]

It was too cold for that.

[Cindy Short]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

When Mike heard about baby Lisa being missing, he told his cousin what he had seen.

[Bill Stanton]

He said, well, you better call the police. So he dials the police and he

[Megyn Kelly]

told them that I had witnessed a

[Jim Spellman]

man carrying a baby.

[Megyn Kelly]

And they talked to me on the phone and the next morning they came to my house.

[Jim Spellman]

Two detectives did, questioned me and left.

[Megyn Kelly]

Now, three different people, the Parscals and Mike Thompson say they saw a man carrying a baby in the early morning hours of October 4, 2011. Bill Stanton on CNN Back then, I

[Bill Stanton]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

So if it was the same man who was spotted with the baby walking past the Parscal's 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. And who is this man? Police looked at the people who got closest to Deborah and Lisa that night. Reporter Jim Spellman.

[Jim Spellman]

They were taking DNA swabs from most of the people that were in the immediate homes on either side and family members down the line. That was one of the first things they did. Family that lived directly next door.

[Megyn Kelly]

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 Deborah and Samantha started drinking. Deborah remembers the conversation.

[Deborah Bradley]

I was trying to help her through it and you know, just give her the best advice I could. And she was kind of spilling her gut, you know, what she went through, 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Jim Spellman]

So 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Police immediately ruled out Shane Beagley as a suspect while James Brando stayed on everyone's radar.

[Jim Spellman]

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 that maybe this was a big lead.

[Megyn Kelly]

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, you know, there. I've heard people speculate along those lines.

[Deborah Bradley]

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.

[Jim Spellman]

He was the focus of this investigation in the initial days. All of his alibi had been checked out by the police. They got surveillance camera tape from Walmart. They interviewed people that he crossed paths with. They checked his cell phone 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

James Brando was ruled out. Attorney Cindy Short always had one person in mind.

[Cindy Short]

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.

[Jim Spellman]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Soon reporters were trying to find him. The last known sighting of Jersey, the

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

handyman that we can confirm was Saturday, October 1st, here in one Eyed Jack's Tavern.

[Megyn Kelly]

The owners of the bar tell us

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

they kicked him out for being a rude drunk who was spitting on customers on the patio.

[Cindy Short]

What was significant for me was that he had a pretty healthy background in burglary and particularly in residential park.

[Deborah Bradley]

Right.

[Jim Spellman]

We know that the day that baby Lisa 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, that, that, that come up.

[Cindy Short]

And 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 Watsons house. He turns on the sprinkler at 11am the next door neighbors see him turn the sprinkler on. The Watsons are not there. The sprinkler is still on at 9:30pm and so the next door neighbors, the hearts don't do anything to turn it off. But at 11pm they notice that it has been turned off. So they figured Tanko was back in the neighborhood to turn that off.

[Megyn Kelly]

Speculation was that Tanko might have been wearing gloves for his handyman and yard work and would not leave fingerprints or cells from his skin.

[Cindy Short]

So 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 12:15. He knows how people are moving in and out of this community. He knows about the pets in the neighborhood.

[Megyn Kelly]

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

[Jim Spellman]

time, this is the first obstacle somebody coming this way would face is this dog. Every time we've come back here, night or day, this dog greets us with a round of barking. This dog is in the house next door to baby Lisa's house. But the first couple of times I did this, this dog in the neighborhood went nuts, 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

But no reports as far as we know, of people saying they did hear the dog barking.

[Jim Spellman]

No report said people heard a dog barking that night.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Jim Spellman]

One of the most troubling things that came to my that, that I was aware of was, okay, so you have this Watson family that he was working for movie sprinklers. Then you have Mary her who lives next door, I think a very reliable witness. So she had a dog that disappeared the day that baby Lisa disappeared. And her next door neighbor, I know there's a lot to keep track of. Her next door neighbor says she saw John Tanko take the dog. The dog pops up a few miles later, a couple of days later.

[Jeremy Irwin]

But.

[Jim Spellman]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Here'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

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

where as the rest of the ground

[Megyn Kelly]

was dry because there hadn't been any rain.

[Jim Spellman]

Now, this sprinkler tells these people were not home.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Right.

[Jim Spellman]

Who was operating the sprinkler?

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Sprinkler A.

[Deborah Bradley]

Their handyman they had that the police were actually looking for in the area, Jersey.

[Megyn Kelly]

So according to Mary Hurt, that would place John Jersey Tanko in the neighborhood that night.

[Cindy Short]

I think he really was one of the best suspects or persons of interest. And although the police did speak to him, they did not speak to him as a suspect. They spoke to him more as a kind of a person in the community. And you Know when you interview someone as a suspect versus a someone as a witness, that interview is very different.

[Megyn Kelly]

They've come out and said, and they said early on that they. They've moved on from him. They don't believe he's their guy. Why would they do that?

[Cindy Short]

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

[Megyn Kelly]

man carrying the baby, she's talking there about Lisa Pascal, and she knew Jersey

[Cindy Short]

because he had done work across the street at the Watson's home. And she did not believe that the police 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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% certain. Eyewitness identification is a tricky business, and in Cindy Short's mind, this was not enough.

[Cindy Short]

I don't think that that should have been the end of the story. I think when you look at the totality of what he was doing, particularly from July through October, they should have done more to look at him.

[Megyn Kelly]

For several days, attorney Cindy Shore and reporter Jim Spellman, independent of one another, searched for an elusive John Tanko, trying to get his side of the story.

[Jim Spellman]

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, and it definitely gave me the sense that they were trying to hide him in the jail and judicial system. Nobody who gets arrested on a simple bench warrant gets moved from place to place the way that they were moving him.

[Cindy Short]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Megan Wright was 20 years old, New to Kansas City, and was John Tanko's girlfriend for a time. They had since broken up.

[Jim Spellman]

Tell me about John Tanko.

[Megyn Kelly]

He's an ex boyfriend of mine, we

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

dated for about five months.

[Jim Spellman]

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.

[Cindy Short]

And there is a lot of disruption or arguments between Megan and Jersey. And later on in the summer, 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.

[Jim Spellman]

Her car was set on fire, and she reported it, and it was investigated. And she thought that John Tanko, Jersey, did it. But nobody was ever able, as far as I can tell, to confirm that he was the one that did it or what exactly happened there.

[Cindy Short]

Fire is important here because we'll end up having a fire. The night of the kidnapping.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Cindy Short]

Megan and Jersey are kind of an odd couple. She's much younger than he is, but they start talking about in July, having children. Megan would like to have children. There's a theory about him wanting to get back together with her. And is this one of the reasons that he would have spontaneously taken this baby back then?

[Megyn Kelly]

Megan Wright was a confused young woman, not completely coming clean about her own drug use.

[Megan Wright]

I found out that he was getting into some drug activity.

[Jim Spellman]

Do you know what his drug of what drug is?

[Megan Wright]

Meth.

[Megyn Kelly]

From what I understand, she's had a hard life, struggling with abuse, addiction, and mental illness. And so after so much scrutiny and criticism in the months after Baby leaves, 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?

[Megan Wright]

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. I haven't seen that done yet. I haven't seen anybody investigate whether Jersey was actually involved or not. I wanted to participate in something that was going to light a fire under the ass of the police department and the FBI because Lisa deserves that. The Irwins deserve that.

[Megyn Kelly]

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?

[Megan Wright]

No.

[Megyn Kelly]

You know, there were reports about, you know, whether this was he did this and that was his motivation.

[Megan Wright]

I think where that stems from is the situation leading up to him and I breaking up. When 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?

[Megyn Kelly]

Again, attorney Cindy Short in September.

[Cindy Short]

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.

[Megan Wright]

But 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

And how likely is it, do you think, that Jersey John Tanko was involved in Baby Lisa's disappearance?

[Megan Wright]

It's hard to say. Honestly, I didn't know him very well. He and I were together for less than six months and we only lived together for a couple of months of that. So I didn't really know him all that well. And most of the time that we were together, you know, we were using drugs together. It wasn't a healthy relationship where you learn what somebody's capable of.

[Cindy Short]

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. He is a good little burglar getting to case the joints. He knows who can has children.

[Megyn Kelly]

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 Pascals, 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?

[Bill Stanton]

Because 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 midnight, which lines up perfectly 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, 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

And then there's a third person who sees a man with a baby, this guy Mike Thompson. And yet they seem to dismiss that as well.

[Phil Houston]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

And I tell you, one of my main things about in looking back at this is the problem of the 247 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. And the media checks all skepticism because that's an exciting story that they believe anyway, and it will fill the 247 cable news requirements. I mean, Bill, you've been part of that ecosystem, as have I. That's how it works.

[Bill Stanton]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

How about the maneuverings with the carpet

[Bill Stanton]

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 after the crime occurred. And then they go in, I forgot how many days or weeks later after the crime occurred, with the crime scene unit. I mean, that was 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 for us in the know, it was pathetic.

[Megyn Kelly]

Okay, so, Phil, if the Parscales really did see a man with a baby, both the husband and the wife saw a man with a baby, but did not think that man looked like anyone they knew. That's a very good fact for John Tanko. And is it the kind of fact that might lead sophisticated law enforcement or anybody to say, that's not him, that's not our guy. That's maybe that's why they ultimately proved not so interested in Tanko?

[Phil Houston]

Well, absolutely, Megan. I think a major part of the problem is the people they had on the case were not in alignment as to who they thought did it. And we saw this when we had a conference call with the lead detective, the sergeant, who was a woman who seemed to me to be pretty level headed, but the bureau guy clearly had a very strong opinion about the parents. 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. They know how to debunk other people's opinions. And the bureau guide brings a certain amount of gravitas to the situation. And. 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

[Megyn Kelly]

they had cleared him, they'd move on from him.

[Phil Houston]

Yeah. When. When in fact, he was in the neighborhood or appeared to be in the neighborhood that night. Also, you know, from a fingerprints perspective, here's a guy that wears gloves all day long as a handyman and so forth. There's a guy that was arrested already for breaking in people's windows in neighborhoods. And they seem seen. I don't want to know what, I can't read their minds. But they seem to ignore most of

[Megyn Kelly]

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, that's exactly the kind of thing that would get a red flag going for a cop. Back to the theory of it was a planned burglary, potentially, potentially just to take the phones. The baby could have been an afterthought. But was that looked into?

[Phil Houston]

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 me. Med students, when you hear the sound of hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. Don't make it more complicated than what it, 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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. That's an important piece, too. It's not like Deborah was some child abuser who had been, you know, brought bringing the baby into the ER over and over. There's zero evidence to that effect. By all accounts, a loving mother. So you know, this, this makes perfect sense that they were running the stats, the odds with her to the exclusion of all this other evidence coming up. Remember the stolen cell phones? They could be key to this entire case. Plus new theories emerge that we will explore for the first time

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[Megyn Kelly]

I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and episode three of our special series Megyn 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. Samantha, you may remember, was drinking with Deborah on Deborah's front stoop. The night baby Lisa went missing. Brando was investigated and ultimately ruled out. That left John Jersey 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 example girlfriend who he may have believed wanted a baby. Her name is Megan Wright. Was Tenko trying to bring Megan a baby in the hopes of getting back together? And now we turn to perhaps the most crucial clue in this case. Remember those three cell phones on the Irwin's kitchen counter taken the night that Lisa was. Two of them had restrictions for non payment. But right near midnight there was an attempted phone call from the one phone that worked. It was to a cell phone that was less than a mile away and it lasted 50 seconds. So what did the cops say to you about that piece of evidence, Lisa's father, Jeremy Irwin?

[Jeremy Irwin]

So they told me that there was a phone call from one of Deborah's phones and we were able to get the records from that phone line went back over three years and I myself hand by hand went over every number in the whole, the whole thing. And that was the first time in which that number had ever popped up.

[Megyn Kelly]

I 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, AKA John Tanko. Now I'm learning that that mystery phone call was made to the handyman's ex girlfriend.

[Jim Spellman]

We told you last week about that phone call. It was placed to a phone belonging to a woman named Megan Wright.

[Megyn Kelly]

How much contact did you have with Jersey on the day or the evening that baby Lisa went missing? Megan Wright None.

[Megan Wright]

I hadn't. He and I hadn't been together for over a month at that point and I had seen him and spoke to him prior to that, but nothing on the day of.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Megan Wright]

It was probably two months into to us meeting and hanging out together that I learned that he was selling, that he was bringing drugs to that house to the other people that lived there. And that's when I was invited to snort a line of meth for the first time. And I did. That was the first time I'd ever done it and was at this horrible point in my life and drinking too much pretty much every day. Not the best of decisions, but it wasn't a far step from where I was at. So that was the first time I ever got hot on anything, you know what I mean? It was a life changing experience that I never saw coming for myself.

[Megyn Kelly]

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 Tenko scared her.

[Megan Wright]

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 parked the car to the 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. And like I said, it was from 20ft away with four or five people in between us that we had any contact.

[Megyn Kelly]

And this is prior to. To Lisa's disappearance?

[Megan Wright]

Yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

Megan moved to a house on 44th in Brighton, a little over a mile away from the Irwin house.

[Megan Wright]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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

[Megan Wright]

house, what you can provide is everything. Like 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 their. 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 where the only place I had to go.

[Megyn Kelly]

Why would anyone involved in the disappearance of baby Lisa call your cell phone the night baby Lisa went missing?

[Megan Wright]

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. And I still got calls for other people, whoever had had the number prior. There were several people that used my phone in the house that I lived in on a regular basis so there would be calls coming in for those people.

[Megyn Kelly]

On the night Lisa went missing, October 3, Megan says she left her phone on an upstairs table.

[Megan Wright]

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 the Waffle House with one of the girls that was getting high with me at the, at the house there.

[Megyn Kelly]

Okay, and so you, and you left that house, but you left your cell phone behind at the drug house?

[Megan Wright]

Yes, I left my phone there and there were people that were using it throughout the evening. So we had dinner or breakfast, whatever, went to Walmart, did our shopping, checked out after food stamps hit at 6 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 her 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Did you say who picked it up? Let me talk to the person who talked to the FBI.

[Megan Wright]

That's what I said. I said, who? Who had my phone? Who was using it?

[Megyn Kelly]

Who were they talking to at that time? Megan says she was told that Dane Great house, a man staying in her same house that night had her phone and describe Dane for us.

[Megan Wright]

I didn't know him very well. He had been like 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

How old would you say he was?

[Megan Wright]

Maybe a few years older than me at that point. 24, 25, I think.

[Megyn Kelly]

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. But he did say that he had used her phone.

[Bill Stanton]

I used Megan's cell phone to have my phone turned on and some rides lined up being texted when our producer

[Megyn Kelly]

talked about with him. Greathouse said he did not really know Megan Wright, but did confirm that they both stayed at the same house for a few nights. The house on 44th and 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.

[Megan Wright]

I tried to get all those records to be preemptive about it because if the FBI called my phone, I want to know why. That's not something that happens to anybody in their regular life.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Megan Wright]

And I decided in that moment never getting high again. So October 4th is my first day sober. 2011. I've been sober since.

[Megyn Kelly]

About a week later, she says the FBI brought her in for questioning.

[Megan Wright]

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. That's why my phone was called.

[Megyn Kelly]

What was your reaction when they told you?

[Megan Wright]

I was terrified, Terrified. At this point I was a week sober.

[Megyn Kelly]

And once they were done asking her about her own possible involvement, they grilled her about her ex, Tenko.

[Megan Wright]

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, you 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Did you know that he was a

[Megan Wright]

burglar at the time? No. I seen his arrest reports and stuff since he and I broke up and have learned a lot more about him.

[Megyn Kelly]

What month was the breakup in 2011?

[Megan Wright]

Was after Easter that year. I want to say it was like

[Megyn Kelly]

May or June

[Cindy Short]

before the 4th of

[Megan Wright]

July because I didn't end up going to my family's Fourth of July party that year because I was upset about the breakup.

[Megyn Kelly]

Okay. And do you have any reason to believe he stopped using meth at any point in 2011?

[Megan Wright]

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.

[Jim Spellman]

But

[Megan Wright]

there's a lot of it I can't. I, you know, I can't let go of. I can't forget being that afraid.

[Megyn Kelly]

Were you thinking, you know, this guy's kind of crazy, could have been him?

[Megan Wright]

Yes. I definitely thought this guy is crazy and that he was horrible to me, traumatized me, but I have no idea

[Megyn Kelly]

what he's capable of Again, reporter Jim Spelman.

[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 world might know something more.

[Megyn Kelly]

The phones and the phone use continued to be a mystery. At 3:17am one of the phones tried to access voicemail. Now, why would that be five minutes later? At 3:22am there was an attempt to use the phone's web browser. As I reported for Fox News back then, Deborah's attorney said there were five attempts made to get online via the phone, and the phones never got more than a third of a mile away from the house on North Lister. And remember this from our last episode. If it really was the same man with a baby that the Parscals and Mike Thompson saw that night, he would have spent nearly four hours within a three mile radius of Baby Lisa's home. You would think, okay, let's see who's on the other end of that number. And that was Megan Wright's phone. So, okay, boom, we're off to the races. Megan Wright knows the abductor. Not that simple. Reporter Jim Spellman.

[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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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?

[Jim Spellman]

I believe every single thing that Megan Wright told me within her ability to remember things, but I don't think that she was making up any of it. She was very helpful throughout the entire thing. If she tried to help us meet people, she would give us phone numbers of people. She never asked me for anything 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Meanwhile, Kansas City attorney Cindy Short was working hard to find answers. Even after she was off the legal team. After 10 days, she says she, she and lead attorney Joe Tacopina parted company in a dispute over strategy. But Cindy continued to look for Tanko. 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. Like, was it hard? Did he, did he come right out to talk to you?

[Cindy Short]

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 and 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Are you face to face? There's no. There's no glass between you. No glass.

[Cindy Short]

And he's a small guy.

[Megyn Kelly]

Does he look disheveled? Is he a good looking man? What is he? How would you describe.

[Cindy Short]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

But Cindy says he was forthcoming and emotional about his troubled childhood.

[Cindy Short]

It was an interesting roller coaster of emotion. Where he was, 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 to tell me where he was on October 3rd and 4th and he didn't think that would be in his best interest.

[Megyn Kelly]

And then a stunning confession.

[Cindy Short]

He did tell me though that he had found three cell phones. And he told me where he had found them. He also claimed to have told the police that he had found three cell phones.

[Megyn Kelly]

This is extraordinary. The three cell phones went missing from baby Lisa's house on the night she was taken. And now he's telling you. And there's. The reason we know his name to begin with is. Yes. Neighbors had said he was in the area. It's kind of a sketchy character. But the reason we know his name is because we have a phone bill that shows one of the Irwin's three cell phones called Megan Wright.

[Cindy Short]

Yes.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Cindy Short]

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 funds. 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. And in fact, this is when I employed one of my investigators with a dog to go down to that location. And he went so far as to tell me that the car that he was in with this woman had a leak and that I would be able to find a stain on the road where they had stopped.

[Megyn Kelly]

Stopped.

[Cindy Short]

And we did find a. But you know, roads have stains. So we went down there with the dog and there 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

But just to back up, just to back up. So he's saying, there we are having some car trouble, get out of the car, and boom, three cell phones. And I was just guessing that these belong to Deborah and Jeremy. Like, is he. Does he offer any reason why he knows it's those phones?

[Cindy Short]

He just told me there were three cell phones on the side of the road. Now, he's not telling me that they're Jeremy and. But I think the connection would be that if he.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's three cell phones that are sitting there together.

[Megan Wright]

Yes.

[Cindy Short]

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

[Megyn Kelly]

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 is extraordinary that in his time with you, he volunteered that he spent time with these cell phones that even he is. Seems to be suggesting are related to the case.

[Cindy Short]

Yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

Like the fact. I think Phil Houston would say that's a liar who doesn't know what you know about what connections he has. You know, admitting just so much just to see, you know, believing himself. Escape routes.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Right.

[Megyn Kelly]

So maybe he could get some more information from you or just in case you knew more than he thought you did. Right, right. That must have been chilling. I mean, was that chilling, Cindy, when he admitted that.

[Cindy Short]

Yes.

[Megyn Kelly]

I take it that was the most shocking revelation that he copped to finding three mysterious cell phones.

[Phil Houston]

Yes.

[Megyn Kelly]

Shortly after Baby Lisa, I'm missing. How. How close in time it was.

[Cindy Short]

It was right in that timeframe.

[Megyn Kelly]

It was right when it happened.

[Cindy Short]

And.

[Megyn Kelly]

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 Picerno replaced Cindy as Joe Tacopina's local council. According to him, those three phones have never been found.

[Jim Spellman]

They were trying to locate the cell phones by the pings on the cell phone towers geographically. And, you 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, couple of searches there for Missouri missing as well with citizens in that area, but nothing ever really came from the cell phones.

[Megyn Kelly]

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? I. I think it's just as viable

[Deborah Bradley]

as any other theory.

[Megyn Kelly]

The phones do not make sense. I think it's almost impossible to make sense of the phone to this day. It's an open question. Why does a one step above homeless guy steal a baby? It's not like there's some known black market for babies that, I mean, that would be something so sophisticated to get your, you know, foot into. He wouldn't have that.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Right.

[Megyn Kelly]

So it's to what end, again, reporter Jim Spellman.

[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, if that even exists. It's incredibly uncommon. And that these guys would somehow get involved with it seems, you know, incredibly unlikely.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Cindy Short]

The other thing that was chilling for me were the tears. It felt to me like there was this.

[Megyn Kelly]

We were right on the tip of

[Cindy Short]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Do you think he was thinking about confessing?

[Cindy Short]

It felt that way, and I walked away from it feeling that way. You were just almost there.

[Megyn Kelly]

I'm joined now by my partners in crime, if you will, Longtime CIA interrogator and human lie detector Phil Houston and ex NYPD 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?

[Bill Stanton]

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%.

[Megyn Kelly]

Moving on to the call to Megan Wright's phone. This is critical, Phil. And Bill, you watched my entire interview with Megan Wright. It went on for much longer than the excerpts that we've, you know, 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.

[Megan Wright]

All right, this is the hardest part to talk about for me because not only was my life affected, my child's life was too, because I didn't have the mental capacity to care for either one of us, which is why I was charged with the endangering the welfare of a child, was for medical neglect. I was dealing with manic episodes and postpartum depression and still didn't have very much family support. His father was already out of the picture, and. In 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, then served two years in prison.

[Megyn Kelly]

How do you feel about it now, looking back at, you know, the way you were taking care of him?

[Megan Wright]

I just regret the fact I didn't have the support that I needed. So shortly after getting out of the mental hospital, out of addiction, out of an abusive relationship, out of being traumatized for two months after being railroaded in the media, questioned by the FBI, dropped by your family, losing everything you've ever owned in your own life, and then getting pregnant was the only reason I didn't kill myself. And then to lose custody of him 10 months later, it has really affected my will to live.

[Megyn Kelly]

He was underweight. Is that why he was underweight? Severely.

[Megan Wright]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

We can move right Past.

[Megan Wright]

I'm trying to participate for the sake of baby Lisa, not to focus on the worst of thing in my life. The most embarrassing thing.

[Megyn Kelly]

She was very emotional right from the start, and I was moved by it. It seemed like real emotion to me.

[Phil Houston]

Yeah. It was not. Megan. Most of was not.

[Megyn Kelly]

Is that what you just said?

[Phil Houston]

Yeah. Yeah. She's a master at turning on and off the tears.

[Megyn Kelly]

At some point, Phil, she was, like, shaking. She was almost hyperventilating. You know, she was, like, trying to get her Megan.

[Phil Houston]

When you hear Megan Wright, it's hard to not hear and feel badly for her. When you. When she speaks about the trials and challenges that she's faced during her life, if you're looking at her from the deception detection standpoint, what you see is. Is that she's using these trials and challenges to hide something. You know, every time you ask a question, you see what we call the trifecta of deception, which is evasion, persuasion, and aggression. So she doesn't give you what you ask for. She then uses her trials and tribulations to convince you that there's no reason in the world why she should be suspected. And then she blames somebody else. She attacked somebody else. The number of people that she attacked. She attacked Jersey. She attacked the FBI. She attacked the police, she attacked the public, she attacked friends, and she attacked you. And. 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. That she does that's very, very interesting is she gave us many. What we call truth in the lie. For example, when she says. What I'm really trying to do is get everyone to focus on Lisa and not me. Now, think about that. If you're someone that's trying to, you know, avoid disclosing something, which he's really saying is, I'm trying to, you know, keep the light off of me.

[Megyn Kelly]

So what does that tell you? I mean, I know the obvious. Well, that she's lying, but I mean, what.

[Phil Houston]

Yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

Why?

[Phil Houston]

She is protecting herself from whatever she knows about Lisa's, you know, disappearance. She is protecting Jersey in a crazy way. And what I mean by crazy way, I don't think she has a great. That any longer. She has a great affinity for Jersey. I think she fears him.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

But do you.

[Megyn Kelly]

Having listened to it, Phil, do you have a takeaway on whether she was the phone holder that night?

[Phil Houston]

I. I have a. A strong sense that she left her phone there or gave it to somebody. 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

And you're going, like, full bore against her. You're so. Under your theory is she. She wanted the baby. She was in on the baby plot. She gave the phone to somebody else so that she wouldn't be on her. And she intentionally went to Waffle House, Walmart so she wouldn't be near.

[Phil Houston]

I'm not. I'm not convinced, Megan, that. That. That it is a baby plot for her. I'm not convinced of that at all. I think she knows either beforehand or after the fact what happened.

[Bill Stanton]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

What would a truth teller have sounded like?

[Phil Houston]

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

[Megyn Kelly]

Yes. All right, I'm gonna admit that stood out at me.

[Phil Houston]

Night. So powerful. Why on earth was it so powerful?

[Megyn Kelly]

Okay, but I'll defend her. I'm gonna defend her.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

The.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Bill Stanton]

She says. She says the FBI called her. We don't know that that's what she said.

[Phil Houston]

Yeah. Also, she said, oh, I didn't know who to call back. Google the FBI. And you have a phone number. If somebody thought I had committed a crime, I'd be on the phone with the police or with the FBI or.

[Megyn Kelly]

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? I don't see it. See, there you go. I've rehabilitated her on one of your key points, Phil. Take the L.

[Phil Houston]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Bill Stanton]

You guys had me crying. I was crying.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, you were crying. I was so cynical.

[Bill Stanton]

That's what we pay him the big bucks for.

[Phil Houston]

I apologize. I hate.

[Megyn Kelly]

Like, 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?

[Phil Houston]

No, she. She can make herself cry by thinking about all the bad and horrible things that happen, and. And she turns it on and off on. On command.

[Megyn Kelly]

I mean, I know you're a genius, but I still have sympathies for her. I just.

[Bill Stanton]

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 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?

[Phil Houston]

I think it's Jersey as well. I'm not disagreeing with you. I think the admission to the lawyer about finding three phones on the night that three phones were stolen is. Is. Is ludicrous.

[Megyn Kelly]

Wait, what do you mean?

[Phil Houston]

To believe that that's not him doing a couple of things. It. 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

I do it. I said that to Cindy Short. I said, phil Houston's going to say he was admitting just enough to cover something he did, but not the whole thing. Yeah, John Jersey Tanko was questioned by the police at the time. He denies any involvement and the case remains open. Coming up up in our next episode, new theories emerge about the disappearance that take the story in a completely new direction.

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[Megyn Kelly]

I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and episode four of our special series Megyn 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 can Kansas City PD nor the FBI would talk to us. And philanthropist Christy Hoss Schiller's offer of a $100,000 reward for any information that could lead to the return of Lisa remains unclaimed. If you could write that hundred thousand dollar 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 Deborah have been left in limbo. There were yearly vigils.

[Deborah Bradley]

Please, God, keep her safe until she

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Deborah Bradley]

Yeah, we actually, I did it all day today when we were walking around before we came here to see you, and, and I just, I said to Jeremy, I'm really tired of looking at

[Megan Wright]

everybody else's kid open. It's mine.

[Megyn Kelly]

This has to be its own form of torture. Jeremy Irwin.

[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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Do you ever feel bitter, Jeremy? You know, I would feel. I think I'd feel bitter, you know, that, that my child was taken, that I didn't get this time, that if she's still out there, I've missed so much.

[Jeremy Irwin]

Yeah, there's a lot of that. And I mean, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty frustrating. And you have a lot of hate and anger on aspects like that, but there's nothing you can do about it, and that's not going to help get Lisa home any faster. So, I mean, it's frustrating that everybody's still out living their life and going to the grocery store and doing whatever they want to do, and meanwhile, we're just left to sit in the ashes.

[Megyn Kelly]

Deborah Bradley.

[Deborah Bradley]

You know, it's. 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.

[Cindy Lorette]

I just started reading stuff and just writing down a name here and a name here. And then I started doing my own searches.

[Megyn Kelly]

Deborah's aunt, Cindy Lorette, has been relentless, constantly searching for clues, trying to piece together what may have happened.

[Cindy Lorette]

I've done my own thing because there isn't anybody to help. I have sat in courtrooms. I have done my own surveillances. I visited people in jail that I didn't know. I don't really want to tell you everything I did, but I did a lot of stuff. But everything that I was reading throughout the Internet, it just kept leading me back to the area that I was living at. 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. I wanted to, and. And I did. I started to hear things. I mean, people talk.

[Megyn Kelly]

Kansas City moms Missy Rasmussen and Jackie Heller, who are writing a book about this case, have spent more than a decade looking for leads. Where did that take you? What did you find? It led us down some bad places, some bad neighborhoods, talking to some bad people. Was your theory starting to develop in a different direction from where the mainstream narrative was going, Missy? Yeah, definitely. The mainstream narrative here is either Jersey or the mom. It is overwhelming how many people think that Deborah had something to do with it.

[Cindy Lorette]

Nobody in this town is looking for her because they think her mother killed

[Megyn Kelly]

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. 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?

[Cindy Lorette]

Yeah.

[Bill Stanton]

Correct.

[Megyn Kelly]

Right. In 2021, Deborah said much the same to a local reporter. What are you sure of, Debra?

[Deborah Bradley]

If the tips are right and the information we were given is right, she was sold.

[Megyn Kelly]

You believe she was sold?

[Deborah Bradley]

Absolutely.

[Megyn Kelly]

To add to that theory, one month after Lisa went missing, Debra and Jeremy found a charge on a debit card. $69.04, paid to a British company that called itself a name changing service. This is one of the theories that of course, puzzles me. How? How would the person wanting to steal baby Lisa think that they were going to get away with stealing baby Lisa on this night where the mother is at home? There is nothing about walking into someone's house and taking their baby that makes any sense. 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 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,

[Cindy Lorette]

we'll tell them, you know, there's a hundred thousand dollar reward and they're saying,

[Megyn Kelly]

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?

[Jeremy Irwin]

Yeah, mean, we, 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. That's, that's definitely going on up here. And at least at the time when I was talking with the investigators about it, they laughed in my face about it, so.

[Megyn Kelly]

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?

[Jeremy Irwin]

You know, certainly, certainly not us, but we had people nearby that were into that lifestyle.

[Megyn Kelly]

And you and Deborah never went there, scored drugs, called for anything from anybody connected to that place?

[Jeremy Irwin]

Oh, no, no, never. 100%.

[Megyn Kelly]

Did they ever accuse you or Jeremy of being on drugs or having a connection to this house, Deborah Bradley?

[Deborah Bradley]

No, because we offered samples of our hair so they can test hair and find out anything and everything you've done.

[Megyn Kelly]

Some drugs, including methamphetamine, can be detected this way and so they, they were

[Deborah Bradley]

able to tell that I was telling the truth about that, that as far as that if there was a connection and that was it there, but that's null and void. That's just not even an option.

[Megyn Kelly]

So I ask you for the record, have you been on drugs? Were you on drugs around the time Lisa went missing?

[Deborah Bradley]

Absolutely not.

[Megyn Kelly]

And how about Jeremy?

[Deborah Bradley]

Absolutely not.

[Megyn Kelly]

It just wasn't your thing. You were not somebody who partook? No.

[Deborah Bradley]

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, 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

You don't do crystal meth and you didn't do crystal meth at the time she disappeared.

[Megan Wright]

Oh, God.

[Deborah Bradley]

No, no, no.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Deborah Bradley]

But those people should ask the cops about the DNA analysis on our hair and the drug test analysis on her hair. It's not there for a reason because it doesn't exist. So at least I have proof of that.

[Megyn Kelly]

Reporter Jim Spellman covered the case for weeks after the story broke.

[Jim Spellman]

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 out drug addicts. The idea that Deborah Bradley or Jeremy Irwin were some sort of drug addicts in deep to dealers or something like that is ridiculous. I put. But, you know, as close to certainty that that is not the case as, as. As I can come not, you know, not blood testing people.

[Megyn Kelly]

And now you are going to hear the absolute worst, darkest versions. Again, these are most likely urban myths. We just don't know about what may have happened to Lisa. And we do need to warn you, they come with awful, grisly details. Author Jackie Heller.

[Cindy Lorette]

And this is what really breaks my

[Megyn Kelly]

heart about this whole thing is the

[Cindy Lorette]

one consistent narrative that we have found

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Cindy Lorette]

Yes. We had someone tell us that Lisa

[Megyn Kelly]

is in the bottom of Smithville Lake. And they put her body in a

[Cindy Lorette]

duffel bag and made sure that the

[Megyn Kelly]

blocks weighed more than she did so

[Cindy Lorette]

there was no chance of her body coming up.

[Megyn Kelly]

Those are the kind of things that

[Cindy Lorette]

we've, that we've heard about this.

[Megyn Kelly]

Cindy Lorette, Deborah's aunt, heard something even darker.

[Cindy Lorette]

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 the per. 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 baby

[Megyn Kelly]

out of the house.

[Cindy Lorette]

I still don't know what to believe.

[Megyn Kelly]

We managed to get our hands on police documents with equally dark testimonials. These are supplemental interview reports that police do not make public. They reflect interviews with two different men who 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. These 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 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. This 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. Who? Who paid him? According to Huber, it was convicted criminal Boris Dubinsky. Huber tells police, as reflected in these documents, Dubinsky paid $15,000 for the transfer. Why would he do that? And where would this guy possibly get 15 grand? What's more, according to a 2012 police interview, 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, what is interesting about it to you?

[Cindy Lorette]

The names the Shaffer Name and Kody are names that we've heard.

[Megyn Kelly]

What is interesting to me is that it parallels an experience that we had. We spoke with someone who Kody had approached her.

[Megan Wright]

Her story, her words.

[Megyn Kelly]

Kody had approached her, seeming 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.

[Megan Wright]

I think it was a signal that

[Megyn Kelly]

the baby had been taken. Right. And so if he really did move the body and was paid $15,000 to move the body from the original burial site, I mean, there's a lot. There's a lot of buzz around Dane Greathouse and a few different lines into him. Again, we don't know if they're true. This is just as reflected in the police report. I had 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. Then it was a photo of dang great House.

[Cindy Lorette]

We've tried to talk to him.

[Megyn Kelly]

He's a trip, big time trip.

[Megan Wright]

He wanted, like thousands of dollars for us. Us to talk to him.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, great.

[Megan Wright]

I was like, yeah, we're not entertaining this.

[Megyn Kelly]

Dane Greathouse did speak with us, telling us he was questioned by police. He told us he knew who Boris Dubinsky was, but did not actually know the man. He also said he never moved anything, nor was he paid anything. We found him living at home with his mother, where he was participating in drug court, an alternative to jail that offers treatment in education. Dane followed up with a text that read in part, I'm glad you guys came over and talked. Honestly, I just hope this can bring light to the case and in time, things get solved. Boris Dubinsky also told us he had nothing to do with baby Lisa's disappearance. He said he was once in the same jail with Chad Huber, that he knows what Huber said about him, but that none of it is true. Matt Shaver told us there were indeed photos of the riverbank stored on his PlayStation memory card. He said police confiscated that card, and when they did, they told him the photos had originated on Cody 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. As for Megan Wright, Megan, have you heard the name Cody Allnut or Boris Dubinsky? Have you heard those names?

[Megan Wright]

Those don't sound familiar to me.

[Megyn Kelly]

But she does remember Matt Shaver who gave her a place to stay all those years ago.

[Megan Wright]

Matt was one of the people. Him and his wife owned the house I was referring to.

[Megyn Kelly]

And what was he like?

[Megan Wright]

He was a carpet layer, best I remember. So he was always very active, hard working 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. That's why I moved in there. And the Kirk of it was hiding from Jersey. He was not familiar to that house at that time.

[Megyn Kelly]

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. You don't even get an annual phone call from a police officer saying, we're still looking into it. We haven't forgotten about you.

[Jeremy Irwin]

Oh no, no. I, I couldn't even tell you the last time we were contacted by law enforcement of any kind. It was maybe year three, maybe.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh wow.

[Jeremy Irwin]

It's been a long time.

[Megyn Kelly]

They've moved on for sure.

[Jeremy Irwin]

I think, 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Author Jackie Heller they dropped the ball. They had tunnel vision from the beginning and they, they've dropped the ball.

[Cindy Lorette]

They have let Lisa down once again.

[Megyn Kelly]

Deborah's aunt Cindy Lorette I know people

[Cindy Lorette]

who have called the tips hotline that 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 okay, thanks and just hung up. They did not ask him any questions. He gave him them the information.

[Deborah Bradley]

They don't care.

[Cindy Lorette]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Author Missy Rasmussen. If it were me and someone told me that someone told them they saw, they, they know that a baby was murdered, I would even three, you know, three degrees removed, triple hearsay. Yeah, I would still want to get that off my chest.

[Cindy Short]

So I get it.

[Megyn Kelly]

But it is really difficult to get any closer than say 2 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, their actions were. It just lacks the, the person, the right person to come in and be

[Cindy Lorette]

like, we're finally going to do what needs to be done.

[Megyn Kelly]

For Lisa, reporter Jim Spellman, who covered the case extensively, has a different view.

[Jim Spellman]

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 was. That would have been an asset for the family. And the family ended up treating them like they were the enemy.

[Megyn Kelly]

So to those who think, oh, the Kansas City police botched this, you know, they just, they failed to investigate properly. We would have found her if we had a more robust police department on the case. You don't agree with that?

[Jim Spellman]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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? I realized you only had that one six hour meeting. Did they ever. Or the Kansas City pd, Megan Wright.

[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. You know, that'd be great to hear,

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Deborah Bradley]

It's really hard to be there for someone else that you love when you're falling apart yourself. And we tried to make it work for a really long time, and I think it just got to the point where, unfortunately, we fell into this statistic.

[Megyn Kelly]

Their relationship came to an end in the summer of 2022, and Debra moved out of their home on North Lister.

[Deborah Bradley]

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

[Megan Wright]

for our family and ourselves.

[Jeremy Irwin]

You know, the. 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

And you still, notwithstanding the fact that you're separated from. From Deborah, you still believe in her? You still. It hasn't caused you to doubt her?

[Jeremy Irwin]

No, 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 the. 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.

[Megan Wright]

I think that God put us together because he knew we would be able

[Cindy Short]

to

[Deborah Bradley]

survive long enough to be there for each other in positive ways. And we may not be together now, but. But I still trust him and I will always love him because he has my kids.

[Jeremy Irwin]

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 gonna 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. That with my daughter. You know, I hope one day that tomorrow or a year from now or whatever, I hope that Lisa's found and that she comes home and we can start over. And at 13 years old or 18 years old or however old she is. But it would be nice to start that relationship in which I haven't been able to have this whole time.

[Deborah Bradley]

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.

[Megan Wright]

It.

[Deborah Bradley]

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 have another relative. And I always click on it. You it hoping it's her.

[Megyn Kelly]

Cindy Lorette.

[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 gonna find her. This 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Like, how do you make sense of it, of why this happened?

[Jeremy Irwin]

There's. There's a lot of. A lot of tough questions. And the answer is free will and evil men will do evil things.

[Megyn Kelly]

What's your best hope of where she's been these past 12 years?

[Deborah Bradley]

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 the doctor and maybe she's able to go to school somewhere,

[Megyn Kelly]

and she just has no idea that she's actually someone else's child.

[Deborah Bradley]

That's what I. I'm hoping that she's totally ignorant to it and living a completely normal life. That's what I really hope for.

[Megyn Kelly]

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. Were bad, you know, that you had a confirmation that she had passed, would that somehow be easier?

[Jeremy Irwin]

Well, I think if that's my two options, if I would were to know that something bad happened or to never know, then I'll just stay never knowing. I guess.

[Megyn Kelly]

Jeremy would rather never know. And he and Deborah didn't make it. Bill Stanton spent a lot of time with Deborah and Jeremy. He joined me along with our other go to crime expert, Phil Houston.

[Bill Stanton]

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. Tax brackets than them, you know, a lot higher education than them that, you know, would have crumbled.

[Megyn Kelly]

It says he Never doubted her. He never doubted about her.

[Bill Stanton]

It's a sad love story, but when

[Megyn Kelly]

you watch her today, what jumped out at you?

[Bill Stanton]

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. I told them as soon as I got there, I'm not here for you. Meaning that if it's you, I'm coming for you. And I said that to them, and they. They looked me square in the eye. Help find our baby.

[Megyn Kelly]

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. 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. So I. That's okay. 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.

[Phil Houston]

No, that's what.

[Bill Stanton]

That's what gets her through the day.

[Megyn Kelly]

What did you make of that stuff, Phil?

[Phil Houston]

I believe that she has, but it's. It's also her undoing. I believe, since 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. And, you know, I. I don't want to trivialize it in this comparison, but, you know, think for a moment. You're at your house and you. All 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, you know, you know, hollering at people and, you know, help me find my keys. And, you know, whatever. Think if that frustration went on for 12 years, how would you. How would you, you know, how big would that build that you're looking for this thing that you can't find?

[Megyn Kelly]

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 gravesite, pictures of a mound of dirt. Somebody allegedly brought the baby in a black garbage bag and buried it. Like there's some of that out there. I mean, it's possible that she did the same thing, that that's, that's all made up, but that she did actually bring the baby out there and that the baby was buried and this same Keystone cup force just didn't find it.

[Phil Houston]

See, the first thing that comes to my mind, Megan, is that if I've committed a crime as heinous as this, this particular crime, I find it hard to believe I'd be running around telling people that we, you know, we've done this and, and so forth, and, 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. You 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

The greatest thing I think Deborah's got in her favor. You tell me if I'm wrong. Bill is Phil Houston.

[Bill Stanton]

And for that, nothing to add, right? Absolutely.

[Megyn Kelly]

I just can't get past the fact that the, the human lie detector. CIA, 25 years, breaking terrorists, breaking double agents, seeing the deception where none, no one else could. That that guy got fooled by Deborah Bradley. I don't believe it.

[Phil Houston]

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 that Lisa's out there somewhere.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

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[Megyn Kelly]

I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show, an episode of episode five of our special series Megyn Kelly Investigates. We're tackling the disappearance of baby Lisa Irwin. John Tenko, nicknamed Jersey, the handyman in the neighborhood with a long rap sheet. The ex boyfriend of Megan Wright, the woman whose phone was called by the Irwin's stolen phone the night their baby little Lisa went missing. And the guy who tantalizingly told attorney Cindy Short he just happened to find three cell phones and then tossed them somewhere around the time the baby went missing. You've heard his name again and again in this series. Everyone wants to hear from him and find out what he knows. Well, after 12 plus years, we found him. If you're watching, that's him in the red sweatshirt on the bike. We tracked him back to New Jersey where he was arrested for shoplifting in 2022. Now that we know where he is, it's time to figure out the best way to get him to talk. Here's part of my strategy session with our go to experts Bill Stanton and Phil Houston. So unbelievably we found Jersey after all this time, nobody could find him. Cindy Short found him, but the cops apparently didn't know where he was for some time. Jim Spellman, who's been doing yeoman's work on this case, couldn't find him. Him. We found him and now we got to decide what to do with him. So got to figure out what the approach should be. I'm perfectly happy to just go knock on his door and see what happens.

[Bill Stanton]

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 where together I got your back. And then you confront him.

[Megyn Kelly]

I just want to say the way I would normally do this is I would go, I would ring the doorbell and I would Say, are you John? Hi, I'm Megyn 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.

[Bill Stanton]

It's all in the approach. You see the way I'm proposing it, you get two bites of the apple.

[Phil Houston]

Megan, if we want the outcome that we can actually get him to open up even a little bit, you and Bill need to stay together. And with you ringing the doorbell, Bill standing slightly behind you, if he's outside, then you approach him. Megan, you would approach him first. Bill would stay, would stay back. Bill needs to keep you within near arm's 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

So how can you just. Can you describe that, Phil? So how. How would that look in your scenario?

[Phil Houston]

Well, I loved your introduction. Hi, I'm Megyn Kelly. I'd love to have a chat with you. And here's the reason. I'd love to have a chat with you. We have been working on the disappearance of Lisa for over 10 years now. And as a result of that, we know a whole lot more than we 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, is it signals to that individual that everything that they have done to try and pull this off, to be successful, has failed. And that's when you would get in with the first question. What was your role in the disappearance? It's a presumptive question, a question. You want to make sure if you can get in on camera. Is the question about the telephones. Is there any reason your fingerprints are on those telephones that went missing that night?

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Phil Houston]

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. And anguish to the parents and to their families. You know, we're not here to, to argue with you or call you names or anything. And what you're doing is you're, 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.

[Bill Stanton]

We could talk all about the questions, but the first phase is getting him to stay the further away. Getting him outside that front door gives her more time and distance. Give Megan options. Because unless we get that engagement, all of this is for naught.

[Phil Houston]

I understand, Bill, but I think you may have a chance to get him to open up a little bit.

[Megyn Kelly]

So, Phil, psychologically at that moment, what are you trying to do? Build him up into thinking like that you actually believe he could be helpful, that he's not an adversary or a target, but that we're all in on

[Phil Houston]

this together without, without trying to buddy up or cozy up to him. You don't want him to make a denial. Once they deny, that really makes your job difficult. And so when you see them start to make a denial, what the, what the. What you want to do is say their name. Whether people realize it or not, one good way to keep up, to interrupt a person, stop them from talking, is to say their name. It just. Instinctively, people shut up when they hear their name. It's a three step process. You say, john, hang on. It's a control phrase. John, hang on for a minute. Okay? And then, 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 in the handle, and it's not, it's not in your face. It's. It's almost like a defensive gesture.

[Megyn Kelly]

Okay. We're trying to, to stop a denial because.

[Phil Houston]

Yes, yes, stop the denials at all costs. No matter what happens throughout the, the whole thing, just keep saying, john, let's talk about the truth. It's not easy. I mean it, I mean, if it was, if it were easy, you know, we'd all, 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 sometimes. This could be it. This could be the good.

[Bill Stanton]

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, 2 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 the cul de sac.

[Phil Houston]

No, I, I, I, You're. I'm gonna do something I've never. Listen, I'm happily wrong. You're absolutely wrong. We do this all the time.

[Bill Stanton]

I will leave my shoe on Megan's camera. I hope that'd be happily wrong and be happily wrong.

[Phil Houston]

I, I am not him not anticipating a full confession by any stretch, but if, if you got, for example, an acknowledgment that he had those phones and he did something with them and so forth, that's tantamount to a confession.

[Bill Stanton]

No, I get it, but it's all about the engagement. Does he take the hook or not? That's, it's, it's the opening. 10 seconds. If Megan doesn't hook him in five to 10 seconds, then there's nothing.

[Phil Houston]

Bill, I, I've talked to terrorists who are far, far more con, you know, condition not to. Not to give up information. And they talk. They talk. If you approach them in the right manner.

[Megyn Kelly]

I feel like we're formulating a plan where I, 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 asked to speak with him, following, you know, loosely, Phil's script.

[Phil Houston]

Yes.

[Megyn Kelly]

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. I'm not talking about this.

[Phil Houston]

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, you know, of information that will help this get resolved.

[Megyn Kelly]

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

[Bill Stanton]

That's your call. You'll know. You'll know. And listen, we got the hidden camera, so you got multiple options.

[Megyn Kelly]

Well, I mean, I. I mean, he's gone 12 years without getting caught on camera at all. It's amazing how he's managed to dodge. So I have zero expectation he's going to say, yes, I'll sit down in front of your camera. Yeah, but it's. There'll be a. There'll be a point if he's talking to me where I'm going to at least try.

[Phil Houston]

Yeah, yeah, that's what I. That's how I would have done it if I were in your shoes.

[Megyn Kelly]

Okay.

[Phil Houston]

This scripting, this is what I and my colleagues have done for years and years and years. And it just works. It works when often when nothing else does work.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Wow.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Phil Houston]

You have got what nobody else did. You know, nobody else has.

[Megyn Kelly]

Well, and honestly, just in all fairness, you, 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.

[Bill Stanton]

All right, let's get moving. All right, we gotta go.

[Megyn Kelly]

And so on March 7, 2020, 2024, I got rigged up with hidden cameras. I wore a shirt with a camera in one of the buttons and another hidden camera in a glasses case sticking out of my shirt pocket. New Jersey is a one party consent state, so we can record our conversation without obtaining Tanko's permission in case he declines a traditional on camera interview. The crew stayed in a van nearby. And Bill Stanton and I walked down here, his street.

[Bill Stanton]

This is his house right here. The garage is open. He's in the backyard. So face me.

[Jim Spellman]

Don't.

[Bill Stanton]

Don't turn around. Face me. He's just spotted us.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay, there chickens back there like trying.

[Bill Stanton]

He's doing his chores.

[Megyn Kelly]

So he's not coming out? No, he's not coming out.

[Bill Stanton]

So if we want, I'll just call him over.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably because he's.

[Megyn Kelly]

Now he's seen us, right? And he's not coming Out.

[Bill Stanton]

I'm just gonna ask him if I

[Megyn Kelly]

can buy those chickens.

[Bill Stanton]

You'd be amazed. You want me to do that?

[Megyn Kelly]

No, no, because we don't want to use subterfuge. Right. Like, I don't want to put him on the defensive right away. Like per Phil, I think we want to say, like, I think I want

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

to go over there and say, hey,

[Bill Stanton]

let's go to the fence and let's do it.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay.

[Bill Stanton]

We're to going committed.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay.

[Bill Stanton]

You want us to do initial talk or you want me to.

[Megyn Kelly]

I do. I will.

[Bill Stanton]

All right.

[Megyn Kelly]

John.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Hi, how you doing? I'm megan. Kelly. How's it going?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I'm good.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Nice to see you.

[Megyn Kelly]

What's going on here?

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Chickens.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah. Roosters.

[Megyn Kelly]

Awesome.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Two horses.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Two horses? You got like a whole farm going on back here.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Thanks for talking to us. I. I've been working for 10 years on the Baby Lisa case.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

A lot of people have.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yeah. And it's been tireless for us. I mean, we're obsessed.

[Megyn Kelly]

I know.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

You know, we. 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. Of the story. We think it's really important to get your input. And I was wondering if you would talk to me.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I'd rather not, cuz my lawyer told me not to talk to anybody. It's a. It could be a death penalty case and I don't want to have to sit in prison for five years to go to trial.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

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.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I don't have any involvement. That's what I'm saying. None whatsoever. Yeah, I mean the FBI vacuum died the house. If my DNA. You have a million skin cells go like that, they're going to bag it up and they're going to put in a DNA. It's a mix. And I'd be charged with no doubt about it.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

So what do you mean

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

their story is. Well, devil's story is that some just random person came in the house and kidnapped a police. Right.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yeah.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

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 choking. It wasn't in the house.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Did the cops talk to you?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah, they told me this.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Did they ever take DNA?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah, they did, yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Oh, what did they like a saliva?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

They did, yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Did they tell you that you were clear?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I said I didn't have to, but I didn't anyway.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay. And did they tell you you were cleared and you were good to go?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

No, they didn't say. It's an open case.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay, well, what we're trying to do is help. Help them because the way I see it is we're trying to provide them with closure. You can help us do that and with some comfort, you know, and just figuring out what the story is. No, he's not a lawyer. He's my friend. This is Bill. Yeah, no, in another life. He's a lawyer.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

They do these stories and people just trash my name. They twist. Totally trash money.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yeah.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

You know what I mean? I was involved with a lot of illegal activity. About that, sure.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

I mean a lot of people get mixed up in drugs and understand that

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

happened to the guy. Huh.

[Bill Stanton]

What do you think should happen to the person if they had?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I don't know what happened. So. I mean, if it's a kidnapping or. God, forget a homicide. A lot of foam trail sticking in your owners room.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Do you think that the person who took the baby, did it spur the moment or that it was planned? Do you.

[Megyn Kelly]

You worked in the.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

In the neighborhood that night, right?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Like not that night, but yeah, I was in work in the neighborhood in general.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

So why would somebody have said they saw you outside of the Irwin's house that night. And you didn't know the Irwins at all? Deborah and Jeremy, I think.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I'm not positive, but I think I met Deborah at a bar one time in a local park.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay. Okay.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

It used to be called Bam.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

And I know you know Megan Wright. Yeah, we talked to her.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

And think you guys used to date. But did she have any involvement in this whole thing?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I. I would doubt it. Like again, I don't know. But if the police are being honest about her getting a phone call from one of the Earl's phones, then somebody connects. She's connected from her. That. That just kind of makes sense.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Now. Did you have those phones? Cuz we. We understand that you told a lawyer, Cindy Short, that you found those phones.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I'm f. Whatever she wanted to hear. I didn't tell. I found those phones. I said I found phones that night, but I didn't find them.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

No Nothing. Oh, why?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

It's because she's asked me a million questions and I didn't want to make her happy. Whatever.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Well think happened to those phones? You think the same person who has the baby has the phones?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I need to know if the phones are missing. I don't know if that's factory fix. No clue.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

What did you hear about that? Anything? No. Did you, did you ever hear anything about the phones and where they went or whether it was connected to the baby? No, nothing.

[Cindy Short]

Why do you think?

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Cuz you knew the neighborhood a little bit. Certainly better than we do. Why would somebody take a baby?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

You know what? FBI asked me the same question and I'm like only thing I come up with is to sell it to maybe somebody at the can't have kids. You know. I mean it sounds crazy. I think at all this that's the best case scenario that couldn't happen. That kid is 11 now. Thirteen or school, you know, has a rich family, you know, something like that. I mean that's the best case scenario.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yeah. Well, what do you think? I mean I know that there were. 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?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Hey, Jim. People pain up people. I, I don't see a happening. I, I. But it's, but not anything's possible.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

What do you think happened?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

You know what I was thinking? The parents have something to do with it. Cuz they hired all these, these lawyers. High price death penalty lawyers. And. You know the story. Just don't show her. She got drunk and fell asleep. Woke up baby's mom. Is that sound right?

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Well, why would anybody say that they saw you outside of the Irwin's house that night?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I don't know. I don't know. But I was pleasure.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

You've never been in that house?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Never.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Never once.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Never once.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

So if your fingerprints are on those phones, what does that tell us?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

What's the tone?

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yeah, like why would your fingerprints be on those phones?

[Megan Wright]

I don't know.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

I'm. I'm just trying to figure it out.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Okay.

[Deborah Bradley]

Wow.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

You're not. You're telling me this is fact that my kid get Fritz on the phone. But I don't believe it. I don't believe I ever possessed the phone.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay. And you heard that story you mentioned that one of the phones called Megan, right? That night?

[Bill Stanton]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

You believe that?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Well, no police are known to lie just because they want to have a direction to go in and use. Use something as a. As a way of you know, getting the information that they want.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yeah.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Did she?

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

One of the theories that she really wanted a family, she wanted a kid.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah. It's totally not true.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

That's not true. She never said that to you. Why'd you guys break up? Why did you two break up?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Because I was absconded on parole and I had a job to go do at the Watson's house and she was that throwing down.

[Bill Stanton]

The blonde?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah, she called the police, told her I was going to be working here.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

She called the police and told them you were going to be at the Watsons that night.

[Megyn Kelly]

Why that night?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Oh, the night that we broke up.

[Bill Stanton]

She dined you out?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah, we broke up. And I never talked to her again after that. I'm waiting. I don't know. Four or five months might have went by from when the baby went missing. No. No. Till we broke up. Till the baby left. Never ever talked to her again.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

You didn't, you didn't go to her house?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I pulled up on the front lawn in the stall and ran one time, but I didn't talk to her.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Did you ever set anything on fire of hers or around her?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

No. There goes to be so said the car was on fire.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

That wasn't you. So you got. You got questioned by the cops and the FBI?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Separate.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Two separate.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

And they took your DNA?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

And then how did it resolve? What did they say to you? It was all over. Was it just two sit downs? One with the cop, one with the FBI?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

No, it was FBI and in a homicide interrogation room. Chapters just came and see me actually visit me in jail.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

That was that scary?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah, it was very scary. Oh my God. Ain't Jeremy.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

You're thinking they're looking at you for possible kidnapping?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I'm thinking that they're exploring all the

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

communist and was it just that one time?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

How? For a few hours or how long?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

A few hours? A little over an hour.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Maybe two.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

And. It's not too long. Maybe an hour.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Was it right after the baby went missing? Missing?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

No, because I was still on the run.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay. So I have I a couple other questions. I'm sorry to take up so much of your time, but do you know who Dane Great House is?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Me.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yeah.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Hey. Hey. I believe I met him a couple of times. Maybe we got high together. I don't know. I already made up a rap so there to it that said I'll make you disappear like baby Lisa. So I don't know. That was kind of weird.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Is there. Is there any reason that you would have called G.R. dane great house on the night the baby went missing?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

No, like I said, I only met him once or twice and we weren't really friends. We were just, you know, I happened to have something or he happened to have something.

[Phil Houston]

That was it.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

What like we exchanged numbers or talked after that or anything.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

How about Cody Allnut?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

That name sounds familiar, but I can't put a.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Boris Dubinski, do you know him?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I. I can't put a face to it. I don't recognize the name.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

And I'm also wondering now is there. 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?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Absolutely not.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay. Cuz I love to get your side.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I hate. I hate being. What do you. They refer to me as a link to this case. I don't want no involvement. I'm not involved know. And if. When you do a show your viewers, you actually giving your viewers an option. This person doing this person doing this person doing this person. You said I don't want to be one of the person. I don't want some people to think that I might have did that. That's not me.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yeah.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

John, if I can.

[Bill Stanton]

You seem like a straight up guy. First time I really appreciate.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Would you be open to one of

[Bill Stanton]

Megan's associates to have a conversation with you to. No, no.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Like I said, I really don't want to be part of this.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

If there's.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

She has some information I can give you that you can, you know, just run with it, maybe find out what happened. But it's great. I don't want to be unseat you. I don't want to do all that.

[Deborah Bradley]

Yep.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

You got to respect that.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

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

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I don't have a guess.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

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 veal just steal a baby on this for the moment and then sell it?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Well, you don't know. I was spared moment. Maybe it was, but who knows?

[Deborah Bradley]

I don't know.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

You know,

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

how can Deborah. How can Deborah have gotten rid of the baby's body without it being detected? You know, that's one of the things that keeps stumping me wrong still. Like if Deborah killed the baby inadvertently or on purpose. I don't I don't think most people think if she killed the baby, it was on purpose. Maybe she dropped the baby, maybe whatever. If she did that, she got rid of the body in a way that she fooled even the cops.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

So how could that have happened? Like, you knew the neighborhood.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

How could it happen with anybody?

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Like, what was the back backyard like? Do you know what? Describe the area a little bit around the Irwin's house. I don't know.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I've never been there.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

But you were. I mean, a neighborhood handyman, right?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Well, it's only for the Watson.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

His hands wouldn't work anymore because he had arthritis, so he needed me to do something to get me a cloth.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

That night. Did you work at the Watson the night the baby went missing?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

No.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

You didn't turn on the sprinkler or off the sprinkler?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

That there was days before. He said once the grass started growing, I didn't have to do anything.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Oh.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

He said once you start worrying, you got to keep moving.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

So if. Why would a neighbor say they saw you in that area?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I don't know. It's the third time he asked me.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay, sorry, I'm. I'm losing my own.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I don't know. People lie. I don't know. Yeah, right now I'm in the area now. At first he said I didn't swallow.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Well, I'm asking you beyond because, you know, there are. There's the one set of neighbors that say they saw somebody who matches your description. They didn't say you with a baby. That. That night, like around midnight, do you remember that I heard that there was

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

a witness that seen somebody carrying. I didn't get all that about fits my description type. See, this is, this is. It's just weird because it's like,

[Jeremy Irwin]

like

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I said, it's going to put in people's minds that I couldn't possibly. I don't deserve it.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

That's. I mean, and that's not us. You know, there are witnesses in the case saying, you know, look at, look at this guy. As you know, and that's. We have to look into that. And we're very open minded to all the possibilities. I mean, I've said before when I first went out there, when I arrived on scene in Kansas city, I thought

[Megyn Kelly]

100 it was Deborah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

100. That's what I thought over the years. You know, I've considered everybody.

[Megyn Kelly]

I consider you.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

I. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is to this moment. I don't know. But I definitely Wanted to talk to you to get your.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

You.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

You're a lot closer to it than I am. So you got better answers than I do. Where. What were you doing that night?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

You know, if I was to. I tell you then you go there and I can be that person. That's.

[Bill Stanton]

That.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

That sends you something. You're looking pretty healthy now.

[Bill Stanton]

Organic eggs.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

That's a pretty good setup.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

So, okay, so you were not in

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

the neighborhood that night and. Okay, so nobody. If anybody saw somebody looking like you, it wasn't you. Is there any. Anyone you think we should talk to or what can we do to help advance this? Any thoughts? Can you. 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, yeah. Because she definitely told us that you told her you found those three phones.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

And I told you I told her that, but I wasn't. I wasn't being honest. I don't even know why I said maybe I was still spun out. I don't know. I don't know why I said.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

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.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

It's like I'm telling you, I don't know anything.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Does this case. I don't. Do you pay attention to it? Like when it hits the news, what is it? What does it bring up for you?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

You know what, There was a story about the orange missing baby and went through all this stuff, things of hour long. And then I'm. I'm at the end, you know, the very last person they speak about, you know, so it comes. Kind of made me feel like that the program was designed by somebody to make it appear that the story ends here with this guy. See what I mean?

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yep.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

That's. That's what it. And that bothered me. Great. It still bothers me to this day.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

How do you. Do you feel like it affects you with your neighbors in your life?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I. I haven't talked to. Talk to nobody. You know, I mean, if you Google my name makes you find out. Yeah, that sucks too. That totally sucks.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Let me ask you this. How. 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?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I don't have any involvement whatsoever.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Zealand never touched that baby. Never saw that baby. Well, thank you for talking to us. I appreciate it.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

If you could tell and be honest with you because honesty is the best policy.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Look, I know you don't. I know you don't talk a lot, so I appreciate you letting me come on here and ask these questions.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

It's home shit, trucks and.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Not that I'm feeling guilty about anything, but just the fact that I feel I'm being put involved within something that I'm not involved in.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay. All the best to you.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Thank you.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Say.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Well, I hope you guys don't kick too much on me.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Well, we're gonna tell a story, and we're gonna. I'm gonna tell them what you told me. They'll hear from you. Okay.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Thank you.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

All right.

[Phil Houston]

You have a good day.

[Megyn Kelly]

Well, that was interesting. Wow.

[Bill Stanton]

Now I gotta eat my chill.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Oh, my God.

[Megyn Kelly]

Start with the tongue. Bill Stanton. That's what I recommend. Start there. Ah, 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 off. 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. Like, 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.

[Bill Stanton]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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

[Bill Stanton]

The fact that we were there that long is phenomenal to me. That was my least likely scenario to happen.

[Megyn Kelly]

And then. Phil, you're the human lie detector. What did you think, Megan?

[Phil Houston]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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.

[Megan Wright]

Right.

[Megyn Kelly]

Just because I've followed you for so long were going off like crazy. I thought there were many indicate 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?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Huh?

[Megyn Kelly]

Let's watch that.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

I was wondering if you would talk to me.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I'd rather not because my lawyer told me not to talk to anybody. It could be a death penalty case and I don't want to have to sit in prison who found five years,

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

you know, you know, the thing is,

[Phil Houston]

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 lengthy, lengthier responses than, than he needed to. And that's where the deceptive behavior began to come to fold in, in that in this particular case, he, you know, he said I don't have any involvement. And he used the present tense, I don't have any involvement. That was his messaging all throughout all of this. But in reality, the truthful person is going to focus on the crime itself and say I didn't have any involvement in what happened that night. And it's the equivalent of saying, you know that 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 this, the latter message on you. And, but it's clearly, clearly deceptive when he 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's what, that isn't what it is, so to speak. In other words, he's not saying I, I wasn't involved. This is just what I'm saying at this particular point. So that one was a real key right off the bat that there's, there's probably more lies to follow well, we

[Megyn Kelly]

did accurately predict that his first instinct would, to be, 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

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

can tell us what your involvement was in the disappearance of baby Lisa.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I don't have any involvement. That's what I'm saying. None whatsoever. The FBI vacuum died the house with my DNA. You have a million skin cells go like that. They're going to bag it up and they're going to, they're going to DNA it to me and I'd be trolled

[Phil Houston]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Ah, okay, I got it. So you, it's, whenever you say the truthful person would have said it this way, that helps because you do think about yourself. Wrongfully accused of being involved in something as awful as this. What involvement did, did you have? Yeah, you'd say none.

[Bill Stanton]

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.

[Megyn Kelly]

But then he seemed billed to be trying to say they would have found my DNA if I'd been involved. They would have found that DNA because I was like, what? Right. I thought he was saying the same thing.

[Bill Stanton]

Right.

[Megyn Kelly]

Then he seemed to try to clarify if I were guilty, my, the evidence of me having been there would have been all over the place.

[Bill Stanton]

Well, maybe, maybe it would have been found if, you know, half of Kansas City and mainstream media wasn't in and out.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yes, okay, but, but back to Phil's point, I think Phil, I mean, I don't, 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, I don't have to convince Megyn Kelly otherwise.

[Phil Houston]

Yeah, he's using the, 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. But 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

Why. Why was he up on the ladder? Because the audience, the viewing audience will see, the listening audience needs to be told. He didn't need to be up there. 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. So what did you make of his.

[Deborah Bradley]

His.

[Megyn Kelly]

His choice to stay elevated and, you know, on the ladder?

[Phil Houston]

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

[Megyn Kelly]

The latter is not only elevating him, but it's a barrier between him and me. There, There is that sort of. 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, if, 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.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Now, did you have those phones? Because we, we understand that you told a lawyer, Cindy Short, that you found those phones.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I'm huger with whatever she wanted to hear. I didn't tell her I found those phones. I said I found Phones that night, but I didn't find them.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

No, nothing. Oh, why?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

It's because she's asking a million questions and I didn't want to make her happy. Whatever.

[Megyn Kelly]

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. And you've told me in the past, and I know from your books by the lie, which everyone should read. When you're lying, the nervous energy has to shoot out of you somehow, whether it's your leg crossed and foot kicking 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?

[Phil Houston]

Exactly where you were going, Megan? Again, it represents a very significant spike in his anxiety level here. And it's interesting. Why on earth would someone who's telling the 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 on that, that particular night by coincidence, so to speak? Who in their right mind would do that if you're telling the truth? Because. And what he recognizes is that by saying that he even had phone, that he flying 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

I. I was surprised that immediately he knew who Cindy Short was and he knew about the phone conversation. He didn't stutter like, what?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Huh?

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, nonsense.

[Bill Stanton]

If you think about it for that one moment, let's postulate that he is guilty. Let'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?

[Megyn Kelly]

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?

[Phil Houston]

I think one of the reasons he might have been doing that as well is that. 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. He did find phones that night and 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

[Bill Stanton]

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.

[Phil Houston]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Megyn Kelly]

That was his weakest part, because there were other moments where I thought, okay, you know what?

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

He's.

[Megyn Kelly]

He's doing better here. And one of those moments was when he tried to say, he and Megan Wright, I broke up, and he never saw her. And I said, you didn't. You didn't stalk her at all, or however I phrased it, you know, you didn't show up at her house. And he owned that one right away.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I pulled up on the front lawn in a stolen grand one time, but I didn't talk to her.

[Megyn Kelly]

So what was your reaction to that? Fell. 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.

[Phil Houston]

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

[Bill Stanton]

It.

[Phil Houston]

And that's what he's hoping would happen here.

[Megyn Kelly]

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 a the Godfather and a member of the crime family. And he had now had a change of heart before the. Here, here it is.

[Deborah Bradley]

Watch.

[Megyn Kelly]

Tell me if this looks like Jersey.

[Bill Stanton]

I don't know nothing about that.

[Jim Spellman]

Do you deny this confession and you realize what will happen as a result of your denial?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Look, the FBI guys, they promised me a deal.

[Megyn Kelly]

So I, so I made up a

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

lot of stuff about Michael Corleone because

[Megyn Kelly]

that's what they want it. But, but it was all lies.

[Phil Houston]

It's the same sequencing of deceptive behavior that we, we just saw. Almost identical to what we just saw with, with Tanko.

[Megyn Kelly]

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?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

He.

[Megyn Kelly]

There are signs of deception and there's

[Phil Houston]

no, there's little doubt in my mind, in my opinion that he is directly involved if, if not unilaterally, the person that took the baby.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's strong not just from this interview,

[Phil Houston]

but it's, it's from the history of the evolution of the case and the things that we learned about him over the years and, and in the connections to others and the evidence that, that we, we heard that, you know, about his activities that night. All of that collectively suggests in my mind that, you know, this is our, this is our guy.

[Megyn Kelly]

So why did he talk to me, Phil? That was our big debate. That's why Bill had to eat his shoe, because he said he's not going to talk. And you said he'll talk. It happens. And sure enough, he did talk. And you know, the audience knows. They went through this with his Bill, like he hasn't talked in all this 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?

[Phil Houston]

As I said before, Megan, 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. You did none of that. You came up in a very polite manner, very professional manner and you said, listen, we'd like to talk to you as if you were, you know, giving him the option. Now, he didn't know you weren't really going to give him the option. That you would probably continue, you know, to ask questions and so forth. But. But he, he was willing at that point to say, okay, 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. Him. And because of the. What you asked him and how you asked them, it. It allowed you to gain ground, and 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, okay, maybe I can, you know, pull off a fast one, you know, with this late.

[Bill Stanton]

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 in his yard while he was up. He felt he was in control.

[Megyn Kelly]

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, which is another tell, Phil, is it not.

[Phil Houston]

Oh, absolutely. It's. It's one of the most used, convincing statements there is. And, 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, he was kind of, you know, being a peacock here and saying, hey, you know, I've been very honest with you. And in reality, he knows he's been anything but that.

[Megyn Kelly]

And then he followed it up with, this thing has been effing my head up, but I'm not guilty of anything. But it's been. Which. What did you make of that statement?

[Phil Houston]

It's. It's again, truth in the lie, as many of these other statements that he made. He's saying something he's telling that's truthful. It did mess up his. But in, in, in reality, a truthful person, that's not going to happen. In other words, if they'd have gone in, 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 it's. 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

[Megyn Kelly]

did you make of Phil when he said. I said, why would somebody. Do you think it happened spur of the moment? Do you think it was planned out? And he didn't bite there at all. He's like, I don't know. And then I rounded back again, and he said, I don't know. And then he's like, you already asked me this. You know, he. He did. He was pretty firm on that one. Like, I don't know. And stop asking me that. That I thought was a point in his favor.

[Phil Houston]

Remember what we said earlier, how he said I don't have any involvement moment? 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, you know, more truthful. Give you another example of that. At one point, you asked him, I think, about fingerprints or whatever on the phone, and he gave what on the surface would appear to be a truthful answer.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Why would your fingerprints be on those phones?

[Megyn Kelly]

I don't know.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I'm.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

I'm just trying to figure it out.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Okay, well, you're not. You're telling me this is fact that my dick Rich on the phone. But I don't believe. Because I. I don't. I don't believe I ever possessed a phone.

[Phil Houston]

I suspect his. By the end of the night, his fingerprints were no longer on that phone. I. And he knows that, and he's. He's wiped them off.

[Megan Wright]

Off.

[Phil Houston]

And so that's something that he can say, you know, truthfully.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, with confidence. Right. He challenged whether his fingerprints were on the phone. And the other thing he challenged with confidence was this.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Why would a neighbor say they saw you in that area?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I don't know. It's the third time he asked me.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Okay, sorry. I'm. I'm losing my own.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

I don't know. People lie.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

I don't know. Yeah.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Right now I'm in the area. I'm not first decided.

[Interviewer (Megyn Kelly)]

Well, I'm asking you beyond because, you know, there. 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. That night, like around midnight, do you remember that?

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

That there was a witness that seen somebody carrying. And they didn't. I didn't get all that about. Fits my description.

[Megyn Kelly]

So he did know. He knew facts about this investigation in a way that I thought was pretty telling as well.

[Phil Houston]

But that was a. That was a. A great example of deception. He didn't say, I wasn't there.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, I'm, I failed to see the forest through the trees on that one. Oh, again. So that's the Phil Houston twist. The truth teller would, would have said, I wasn't there. So she definitely did not see me.

[Phil Houston]

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, and 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 a, almost a kind way. You weren't judgmental of him, and that was really important.

[Megyn Kelly]

So having watched Megan Wright and John Tanko talk about their relationship and their time together, what takeaways?

[Phil Houston]

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

[Megyn Kelly]

that was by design.

[Phil Houston]

Well, when you asked Tanko any questions about Megan Wright, he becomes very protective of her. It immediately says, no, she's not involved. And, and exonerates her.

[John Tanko (Jersey)]

Her.

[Phil Houston]

And I believe he's doing that because he knows that she knows and knows what she knows. And as a result, he has no choice but to defend her.

[Megyn Kelly]

She wasn't sounding that way about him, however, like, I don't know what he's capable of was more her line.

[Phil Houston]

Yeah, yeah. He has no choice but to defend her. She has other options. She isn't the person that actually did it.

[Megyn Kelly]

You're so interesting, Phil. Fascinating talking to you. Okay, 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?

[Jim Spellman]

Well, first off, I want to echo the kudos to you, Bill, and your crew for, for getting this and going in there. That was not eas. Definitely took guts, encouraged 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. And he was working whatever he could to try to find out what you might know and then to feed back something that's going to make him look good. I mentioned this earlier in a previous interview, Megan, but I'm in recovery. I use crystal meth, smoked crack cocaine, et cetera. 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. And 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 have 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 who is not involved to, to make this a high profile cold case. Release whatever information they can that doesn't jeopardize an investigation and bring this into the public eye again. And I would include men, 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

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, 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.

[Jim Spellman]

And the police in Kansas City and the FBI on occasion told me they used the language. They had moved on, right, from John Tango. Never, 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, are in suspended animation.

[Megyn Kelly]

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?

[Jim Spellman]

It's inexcusable. No matter what they did or what the police did, somebody's got to get over this, right? And 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, you know, back out there. No one's going to come off looking great if they reopen this in a sort of more high profile way. But what other way is there to 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? Why 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

And you know, what's really chilling is here we are all these years later, they've never found remains of any kind. And, you know, if this were a murder, an intentional murder, an accidental death, let's face it, the whoever did it of the characters we're talking about, you wouldn't think that these are, you know, sophisticated criminals who actually managed to avoid the police detection and then got rid of the body in a way that very few criminals are able to. Where it never got dug up by a dog, never came up if it had been put in the water, you know, like we saw with Lacy Peterson, like this is the one criminal who managed in just that short window of time to conduct, Conduct the perfect crime. No, no 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 given the absence of a body.

[Jim Spellman]

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, the intersection that Cindy Short says he reported the. At the phone threat. I immediately put that into Google and looked at images. One of the very first live shots I did when I. That the first weekend of this case was a big search right there that included the National Guard and the FBI of that. Of that area and all of those similar areas that kind of are, you know, around this neighborhood that have open woods or something were heavily searched in that kind of search that would find any type of remains or something. So I think that it's extremely unlikely that, you know, out in public in the woods or anything that, you know, there were any remains to be found within. Within a mile or two radius of the house.

[Megyn Kelly]

You're amazing. Thank you so much for the great work you've done on this. You've been a highlight of every episode. It's been a pleasure.

[Bill Stanton]

And Jim, that. Jim, thank you. And you know, sharing that, you know, 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.

[Megyn Kelly]

You.

[Jim Spellman]

Thanks, Bill.

[Phil Houston]

Yes, indeed, Jim, thanks a ton. It's a pleasure to meet you.

[Megyn Kelly]

And that's the conclusion for now of our Megan Kelly Investigates series. But it's not the end. And I thank you sincerely for joining us along this journey. We'll see you soon. If you're watching right now, please take a look at this picture of Lisa as she might look now. If you're listening, you can see the photo on YouTube or just go to Megan Kelly.com if you see her or think you might have any information that can help find her, please write to me. The address is Megan M e g y nagyankelly.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@kccrimestock kccrimestoppers.com or call them at 816-474-TIPS TIPS. That's 816-474-8477.

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[Cindy Short]

Did you say $300?

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