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5-month-old disappears from crib

By Darlene McCormick
The Tampa Tribune
November 25, 1997

VALRICO - The baby's mother issues a public plea for the safe return of her daughter. Deputies say they have a couple of leads.

Police dogs searched the neighborhood and nearby woods. Helicopters hovered overhead. But by the end of the day Monday, 5-month-old baby Sabrina remained missing without a trace from her quiet suburban home.

Late Monday, the child's mother, Marlene Aisenberg, issued a public plea for the safe return of her daughter.

""This morning, someone came into our house and took our baby, Sabrina Paige, out of her crib, out of our home,'' Aisenberg said with a trembling voice and tears in her eyes.

""I'm begging that person to please bring our baby back to us. We miss her and love her very much,'' she said. ""Please bring her home to her family.''

Meanwhile, Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies late Monday said they were following a couple of leads in the case that is being treated as a kidnapping.

""We are continuing the investigation,'' said sheriff's Sgt. Rob Bullara at a news conference Monday night in front of the family's upscale home.

He said the probe has been joined by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI.

""Any time we have a small child missing, we pull together all our resources and work as a team,'' Bullara said.

He would not release any details of the investigation or shed any light on the leads developed throughout the day.

What investigators are saying is that sometime between midnight and 6:42 a.m. Monday, Sabrina Paige Aisenberg and her yellow baby blanket were taken from her crib.

The child's mother checked on the baby at midnight and she was fine, said sheriff's spokesman Lt. Greg Brown. When she got up in the morning to get her other two children … William, 8, and Monica, 4 … ready, she found her baby missing.

Whoever took the child didn't leave a note, Brown said. Authorities wouldn't say if there were signs of forced entry. The family left the garage door open overnight, Brown said. It's unclear as to whether the entrance door was locked, he added.

Brown wouldn't say if there were any signs of foul play or if the child's window had been open. The family has an alarm system, but neighbors said they never used it.

Marlene Aisenberg and her husband, Steve, were routinely questioned by investigators Monday, authorities said. Family vehicles were taken in for inspection.

The couple are the child's biological parents, Brown said, adding he knows of no custody disputes. The missing child's maternal grandfather has offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the child's safe return.

People living around the cul-de-sac near the Aisenberg's home said they never witnessed any problems with the family. They spoke highly of the couple who bought the home at 3632 Springville Drive in 1993 for $117,000. The family is from Maryland, neighbors said.

Marlene Aisenberg runs Play Time Pals, a play program for children, from her home, and her husband is a licensed real estate agent, according to neighbors and records.

Next-door neighbor Martha Jones said her dogs never bark, but they woke up her husband, Charles, between 3 and 4 a.m. He looked outside but didn't see anything unusual, she said.

An upset Marlene Aisenberg came to her door around 7 a.m., Jones said.

""The first thing out of her mouth was, "My baby's gone,' '' she said. ""Somebody came in and got Sabrina.''

Neighbors reported the Aisenberg dog, Brownie, was inside the house Sunday night but had been found outside that morning.

"They're a normal family, just too trusting,'' said neighbor Paula Rowland, who said she warned them to keep their garage door closed at night.

"I'm sure she didn't realize it was open,'' Rowland said. "It was accidental. I don't leave my doors open, especially at night.

"They are trusting people, but they won't trust anyone again,'' Rowland said.

The Aisenbergs have lived in their house for four years, Rowland said. "They are normal folks,'' she said. "It is not fair that this happened."

Rowland said there had been several break-in attempts in the neighborhood recently … including one at her home two weeks ago. Sometime after dark, someone tried to break through their screen door, she said, but apparently got scared when their dog barked.

Aisenberg family members had little to say.

"We just want her back,'' said a woman who identified herself as the baby's aunt before leaving the scene.

The child's paternal grandfather in Maryland, Irwin Aisenberg, said Monday evening that his daughter-in-law is beset with grief.

"She is taking it very hard,'' he said. "How does a parent take something like a missing child? It's the only thing they can think about.''

Family members believe that whoever snatched Sabrina was acquainted with the household, he said, at least "somebody who was familiar with the house.''

Authorities are asking for the public's help in solving the case. Baby Sabrina was last seen wearing a lavender, one-piece outfit with a floral pattern.

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Search for infant continues

By Darlene McCormick
The Tampa Tribune
November 26, 1997

VALRICO - Sheriff's deputies continue to look for clues in the puzzling case of a missing infant girl.

Friends and neighbors Tuesday visited the home of Steve and Marlene Aisenberg, bringing with them cards, food and hope that the couple's 5-month-old daughter will be found unharmed.

"We just keep praying,'' said John Martin, who works with Steve Aisenberg at MI Homes. He saw Aisenberg Sunday night, he said, just hours before baby Sabrina disappeared from her crib without a trace.

Marlene Aisenberg discovered Sabrina missing at 6:42 a.m. She told authorities she had last checked on her at midnight.

Martin and his family delivered a handmade card reading, "We are praying for her protection and safe return, we care for your family.'' Inside were angels drawn by children.

Sheriff's office divers searched shoulder-to-shoulder at two small lakes near the family's home at 3632 Springville Drive. Dogs combed nearby woods.

Sheriff's investigators said little about the puzzling case they are working as a kidnapping.

The infant's parents were questioned in a routine interview Monday, said sheriff's spokesman Lt. Greg Brown. Family vehicles were impounded for tests, but he wouldn't say if anything significant was found.

No note was found at the scene. And Brown said investigators aren't "working anything like that'' when asked if the family received any calls demanding a ransom.

"We don't know where the child is,'' Brown said, adding the searches were a way for authorities to cover all their bases.

Family members say they believe someone familiar with the house snatched the little girl.

Neighbors in the area reported several attempted break-ins recently. Community Resource Deputy Peter Maurer said the area had also experienced several day burglaries, including one where a thief kicked in the front door.

Statistics show abductions of infants by someone other than family members are rare.

Since 1983, only 170 such cases have been reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. More than half of those were taken from health care facilities, spokeswoman D'Ann Taflin said. Fifty-six disappeared from their homes.

All but four of the 56 were found later, the center's statistics show. The Aisenbergs spent Monday night in their home after authorities cleared the scene. Family members stayed behind closed doors all day Tuesday in the company of FBI agents and other law enforcement officers.

Rabbi Marc Sack visited the house Tuesday, but declined to comment on the family's well being. Other visitors reported the couple was struggling with the situation.

The parents issued a plea for Sabrina's return and the infant's grandfather offered a $5,000 reward for her safe return.

[Admin]

POLICE GRILLING SPURS PARENTS OF MISSING TOT TO HIRE
LAWYER

Pat Leisner
The Buffalo News
November 27, 1997

The parents of a 5-month-old baby who disappeared from her crib three days ago hired an attorney Wednesday after intense questioning by police detectives, despite reassurances that the parents were not suspects.

Investigators have found no trace of Sabrina Aisenberg since she allegedly was snatched from her crib before dawn Monday while the family slept.

Steven and Marlene Aisenberg, surrounded by family members, faced reporters Wednesday at the office of their attorney, but the lawyer did all the talking.

"If the person who did this is listening to this, we would ask that you bring Sabrina back, accept the responsibility and deal with it the way it needs to be dealt with," Barry Cohen said. "The family would do everything they could to minimize the punishment if you would bring Sabrina back."

Detectives questioned the couple for three hours Tuesday night. They hired Cohen Wednesday on the advice of their rabbi.

Without elaborating, Cohen said the questioning was "aggressive enough to cause them concern to hire an attorney to find out why someone would question them like that."

Lt. Greg Brown, spokesman for the sheriff's office, said as leads are developed from the hundreds of interviews being conducted, investigators return to the parents for help in determining whether to pursue them or not. Brown said the Aisenbergs were not considered suspects.

The couple will continue to cooperate in the investigation, said Cohen, adding he would accompany them when questioned.

Neither Brown nor Cohen would comment on whether the parents took lie detector tests.

For the second day, divers Wednesday searched the murky waters of ponds near the family's subdivision in Brandon, 15 miles east of Tampa. Friends distributed fliers with a picture of the baby.

Mrs. Aisenberg, 35, operates Play Time Pals, which caters to mothers and their children, 3 months to 5 years old, offering organized games and stories. Aisenberg works in sales at M/I Homes in Tampa.

Joan Sadowsky, Mrs. Aisenberg's mother, told reporters she believes in psychics and one told her a man in a red pickup truck with a skinny blond girlfriend abducted Sabrina.

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PARENTS PRAY FOR THEIR MISSING BABY

The Miami Herald
November 28, 1997

Investigators looking for a 5-month-old girl missing from her crib since Monday spent Thanksgiving Day spreading the search and checking out tips fed in by an anxious public.

"We have investigators who are working on it today,'' Debbie Carter, spokeswoman for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, said Thursday.

She said people were still trying to help the search, but that so far nothing had helped find Sabrina Aisenberg.

"We are still receiving calls from the public that we are checking out,'' she said.

Sabrina's parents, Steve and Marlene Aisenberg, had said they would be spending Thanksgiving Day in prayer as police and volunteers pressed their search in the suburban area southeast of Tampa. They asked others to pray, too.

"I'm sure there will be a lot of prayers for the person who has this baby to please get the faith and courage to bring this baby back,'' Tampa attorney Barry Cohen said Wednesday after being hired by the Aisenbergs.

Police have said the parents are not suspects in the disappearance of Sabrina, who they reported missing from her crib early Monday, but they hired the prominent Tampa defense attorney after tough questioning by authorities Tuesday evening.

Cohen characterized the Aisenbergs' three-hour session with investigators as scary to a couple unfamiliar with police.

"They were asked some pretty tough questions and they were worried.'' They were concerned about the attitude of some of the investigators. Their rabbi suggested they get an attorney, he said.

He said the Aisenbergs will continue to cooperate in the investigation.

The family lives in a subdivision in Brandon, a fast-growing community 15 miles east of Tampa.

[Admin]

GRANDFATHER: RETURN BABY

The Miami Herald
November 29, 1997

The grandfather of a 5-month-old baby taken from her crib made an emotional public appeal Friday, four days after Sabrina Aisenberg's disappearance, pleading through tears for her safe return.

"I'm begging you, please, if there's anybody out there that may know where Sabrina is, please bring her to the closest safe house, police station, fire house, hospital, anyplace,'' said Stan Sadowsky.

"She's only 5 months old,'' he added, holding up a picture of the chubby, dark-haired baby. Sadowsky broke down in sobs, asking help to find her.

"She was just starting to recognize her brother and sister.''

Sadowsky spoke outside the four-bedroom home of parents Steve and Marlene Aisenberg in Brandon. Sadowsky also has offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to Sabrina's return.

Meanwhile, authorities continued to search for clues, using a bloodhound to search the shoreline of ponds in a Brandon subdivision, some 15 miles east of Tampa.

Steve and Marlene Aisenberg told Hillsborough Sheriff's deputies their daughter was abducted from her crib in the predawn hours Monday as the family slept.

A team of federal, state and county law enforcement officials made public appeals, conducted countless interviews, issued picture fliers, brought in divers to comb neighborhood ponds, employed tracking dogs, searched the house and waited for a ransom demand. But still, they say, they have no substantial leads in the case.

The Aisenbergs on Wednesday hired prominent criminal defense attorney Barry Cohen. Cohen said the couple turned to him on the advice of Rabbi Marc Sack from Congregation Rodeph Shalom after some tough questioning by investigators Tuesday night left them frightened.

"When you have a high profile case, people want to bring it to a conclusion,'' Cohen said.

"When you're innocent, and you're not used to dealing with people like that, it's a little scary.''

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DETECTIVES FOLLOW UP TIPS AS POLICE END SEARCH FOR BABY

The Miami Herald
December 19, 1997

An exhaustive search of neighborhood lakes and woods by scores of law enforcement officers ended Thursday with no trace of a 5-month-old baby missing for three weeks. Detectives will continue to follow up on hundreds of tips that have poured in since little Sabrina Aisenberg disappeared from her crib Nov. 24.

Since then, nearly 250 law enforcement officers from 22 agencies combed 14 lakes and ponds, battling weeds and snakes and walked shoulder-to-shoulder through scrub and woods hunting for leads.

Neither the woods nor the water gave up any clues, and authorities packed up a command post in Brandon, a suburb about 15 miles east of Tampa.

Meanwhile, a giant billboard which asks ``Have you seen this child?'' and displays a picture of Sabrina and a telephone number to call went up where heavily traveled Interstates 275 and 4 meet near downtown Tampa.

Family friends and volunteers have placed fliers in shopping malls and convenience stores, hoping it will spark a lead.

Parents Marlene and Steve Aisenberg said the baby was snatched from her crib in the early morning hours as the family, including two other children, slept.

The Aisenbergs live on a cul-de-sac in a quiet subdivision in Brandon. The parents have been questioned by authorities, but on advice of their attorney, they have remained silent.

FBI agents took items from the Aisenberg home to be analyzed at the agency's national crime laboratory. Investigators would not disclose what was taken.

During the 24 days Sabrina has been missing, Hillsborough County sheriff's detectives, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI have urged the public to call in any leads -- no matter how insignificant.

The baby's grandfather has offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to her safe return.

The story of the mysterious disappearance has been aired on national television. The exposure -- locally and nationally -- brought 500 tips.

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'BRING SABRINA HOME,' PLEADS SOBBING MOM OF KIDNAPPED BABY

Pat Leisner
The Miami Herald
December 24, 1997

Parents of a 5-month-old girl snatched from her crib a month ago went public Tuesday with a plea to her abductor that in "this time of miracles you grant us our wish and bring Sabrina home.''

On the eve of Hanukkah and two days before Christmas, Steven and Marlene Aisenberg broke their silence about the dark-haired, cherub-faced daughter who disappeared Nov. 24 while the family slept.

"We're here to talk to one person and that's the person who took our baby,'' said Steven Aisenberg, who appeared with his wife, Marlene, at the office of the couple's attorney.

"We don't care who you are. We just want you to do the right thing,'' said Mrs. Aisenberg, speaking haltingly through sobs. "Look inside yourself, please, and drop her some place safe and call someone and tell them to come and get her.''

Attorney Barry Cohen said the couple's long silence was his idea until police completed an intensive search for the infant. Police said the parents are not suspects.

The search ended Thursday after hundreds of law enforcement officers scoured the Aisenberg's suburban Brandon neighborhood about 15 miles east of Tampa. They used divers and tracking dogs to comb murky lakes and ponds and wooded areas five to seven miles around the Aisenberg's home, a well-kept, single-story house on a dead-end street.

The effort turned up no leads in the baby's disappearance.

Neither did a grandfather's offer of a $5,000 reward nor the fliers with the child's photograph distributed throughout the state by family, friends and volunteers.

The family has received no ransom demand and no contact from an abductor.

Cohen said Tuesday he believes a woman took Sabrina just to have a baby of her own. "So many women came in contact with Marlene in the course of her work,'' he said.

Mrs. Aisenberg, 35, is an early childhood educator. She operates Play Time Pals, which caters to mothers and their children 3 months to 5 years old, offering organized games and stories. Steven Aisenberg, 42, works in sales at M/I Homes in Tampa.

Mrs. Aisenberg told police she checked Sabrina at midnight and the child was fine. Hillsborough County Sheriff's Lt. Greg Brown said when she got up in the morning to ready her other children -- William, 8, and Monica, 4, -- she discovered Sabrina was missing.

Statistics from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children count 171 infant abductions in the United States since 1983, 57 of them kidnapped from home.

All but 11 of the 171 infant abduction cases were solved. Of the 57 babies taken from their homes, only five were never found. The center said in abduction cases the probability of the infant being safe and nearby is high.

Last week, deputies scaled back their physical search and are focusing on some 500 tips phoned in locally and from around the country following two national television appearances by Aisenberg relatives.

On Monday evening -- one month to the day after the baby vanished -- about 40 friends and family gathered by candlelight in prayer in the Aisenberg's neighborhood.

At Tuesday's news conference, a framed photograph of Sabrina sat on a table in front of her parents. The wait has been traumatic for the family, Steven Aisenberg said.

"When your 4-year-old comes up to you and tells you her heart is breaking, how do you comfort her?'' he asked. "When your 8-year-old son asks when is the next time he can see his little sister smile as she calls to him, what do you say?''

Aisenberg said he would help seek leniency if the abductor returned Sabrina.

"The hole in our family right now is very large and only you can fill it.''

"Please don't destroy our family,'' said Mrs. Aisenberg, clinging to her husband's arm. "We love her very much. We know what a joy and what a love she is. We need her back in our family where she belongs. Please bring her home.''

[Admin]

NO TESTIMONY ON MISSING BABY \ PARENTS WERE SUMMONED TO GRAND JURY HEARING

Lisa Holewa
The Miami Herald
February 5, 1998

The parents of missing baby Sabrina Aisenberg came to federal court in response to a grand jury subpoena Wednesday, but left a few hours later without appearing before the panel.

Steve and Marlene Aisenberg haven't been ruled out as suspects in the disappearance of their daughter, who was 5 months old when she vanished from her crib in November. They walked arm in arm to the courthouse with their lawyer, ignoring a swarm of reporters.

"Marlene and Steve Aisenberg are very, very frustrated because they really believe that the law enforcement agencies are looking for a body and not looking for Sabrina,'' their lawyer Barry Cohen said at a news conference. "We don't know what to do.''

Cohen said the couple had volunteered this week to talk again with investigators, whom they had avoided since hiring Cohen several days after Sabrina's disappearance, but their offer was refused.

The Aisenbergs sat beside him, clutching hands. They occasionally whispered and nodded as Cohen spoke, but did not make their own statements.

In the search for Sabrina, scores of police divers searched nearly 20 ponds and lakes within five miles of the family home in suburban Brandon. Ground searchers trekked through wooded areas.

State and federal authorities interviewed neighbors, friends and relatives of the Aisenbergs in Florida, Maryland and Virginia.

The couple embraced and kissed in the courthouse lobby Wednesday morning, then went directly to the court clerk's office where Cohen filed a document that was immediately sealed. He would not comment on its contents.

The couple went upstairs to wait outside the grand jury room. They left without going into the room after Cohen and U.S. Attorney Stephen Kunz were handed envelopes, WTVT-Channel 13 reported.

The television station said a federal judge delayed their testimony for seven days while both sides prepare arguments on whether they should appear.

The subject of the grand jury proceedings is not known. The Aisenbergs have the right to refuse to testify and could invoke that right or have their attorney do so.

Cohen refused to answer any questions about the grand jury proceedings. But he said police rejected an offer Monday for a formal interview.

"I told them, "We will meet you anywhere, any time and they will talk to you without limitation,'' Cohen said. "They called me back and said, "No.''

The couple have said Sabrina was fine when they and their two older children went to bed shortly before midnight Nov. 23. Marlene Aisenberg said she discovered Sabrina missing from her crib the next morning.

At first, the parents remained in seclusion and refused requests for interviews. At the time, sheriff's officials said they were not considered suspects.

But the couple later hired Cohen and refused to talk any more with investigators unless they were given access to interview notes.

In January, the Aisenbergs went on a media blitz, appearing on national television shows including NBC's Dateline and Oprah Winfrey's talk show. The sheriff's department later said the parents had not been ruled out as suspects and failed to cooperate with police.

[Admin]

MISSING BABY'S PARENTS FACE CHARGES INDICTMENT SAYS COUPLE LIED TO INVESTIGATORS

The Miami Herald
September 10, 1999

The parents of a 5-month-old baby reported missing from their Brandon home nearly two years ago were charged Thursday with lying to investigators.

Marlene and Steve Aisenberg reported the cherub-faced, dark-haired Sabrina was taken from her crib Nov. 24, 1997.

Although the case officially remains an unsolved missing-person report, the seven-count federal indictment detailed a conversation in which Marlene Aisenberg blamed her husband for the baby's death.

Less than a month after the reported disappearance, she told him: ``The baby's dead and buried. It was found dead because you did it. The baby's dead no matter what you say - you just did it.''

Steve replied, "Honey, there was nothing I could do about it. We need to discuss the way that we can beat the charge.''

The couple was arrested Thursday near Baltimore, where they had recently moved.

They made an initial appearance before a federal magistrate in Greenbelt, Md. When federal agents showed up to arrest her, she refused to open the door and they broke it down.

Hillsborough County Sheriff Cal Henderson, whose office led the kidnapping investigation, said: "The information in the indictment would indicate the child is not alive. But we just don't know.''

Both parents are charged with conspiracy and making false statements to investigators.

The indictment charged the parents lied about the baby's physical condition, what she was wearing, the circumstances surrounding the reported kidnapping, and Marlene Aisenberg's emotional and physical reaction.

Federal agents did not disclose the source of the parents' conversation Dec. 23, 1997 and refused to say whether it was obtained on a wiretap.

When reporting the disappearance, Marlene Aisenberg said she last saw her baby daughter around midnight when she went into her room to check on her and the crib was empty when she returned at 6:30 a.m.

[Admin]

Detectives Suspicious Of Parents From Start
Missing Infant's Home Was Bugged by Police

Angela Paik
Washington Post
September 12, 1999

Eighteen days after infant Sabrina Aisenberg disappeared--even as neighbors held candlelight prayer vigils and her mother went on television to plead for her safe return--suspicious investigators secretly sought a judge's permission to eavesdrop on her parents, court records show.

Even before the appeals of Steven B. and Marlene J. Aisenberg grew from a local plea for help into a national crusade that played on prime-time television, detectives from the Hillsborough County sheriff's office had slipped into the four-bedroom stucco house on Springville Drive to plant an electronic bug.

They listened in for three months, ending in March 1998, records show. But the first indication of what authorities say they heard became public only this week after FBI agents battered through the front door of the Montgomery County house where they had lived since May.

The indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt on Thursday charges them with conspiracy and with lying to investigators--but not with killing Sabrina. It quotes Marlene, 36, as saying the baby was "dead and buried" and Steven, 35, stressing the need to "beat the charge."

In one moment of remorse, according to prosecutor Rachelle Des Vaux Bedke, Steven said: "I wish I hadn't harmed her. It was the cocaine." At another point, Marlene apparently became upset that frames from a family video--made two days before Sabrina disappeared--had been blown up by police to show bruises on the child's face. The indictment said she told her husband they would need a lawyer to help them explain the injuries.

Though prosecutors say they believe the child is dead, her body has not been found. The couple's attorneys say authorities lack the evidence to bring murder charges, so they hope to pressure one parent into implicating the other. The Aisenbergs each posted $25,000 bail in Maryland and are expected to return to Florida to be arraigned.

The quiet cul-de-sac east of Tampa in a subdivision called Bloomingdale drew the curious today, with cars creeping along the narrow street lined with stately brick homes and bright stucco houses graced with crape myrtles and mailbox flower planters. They slowed in front of the house at 3632 Springville Dr., which the Aisenbergs bought for $117,600 in 1993 and have had on the market since moving into his boyhood home in Montgomery.

"Another sightseer, I guess," said Martha Jones, who lives next door to the Aisenberg house, as a couple in a passing car peered first at the house and then at her. "It was nice, because the neighborhood got back to normal in the past year, and now this . . . "

Today, "I think we all feel used and lied to," she said.

Marlene Aisenberg showed up on Jones's doorstep with another neighbor Nov. 24, 1997, 10 minutes after reporting 5-month-old Sabrina missing.

"Her demeanor was just not consistent with what you'd expect," Jones said. "She was weird, unemotional and detached."

That was in sharp contrast, Jones said, to Aisenberg's behavior about a year earlier when she knocked on her door in a frantic search for her other daughter, Monica, who had wandered off.

"She was hysterical," Jones said. Monica was found a few minutes later, but the memory nags at Jones because Aisenberg's reaction to Sabrina's disappearance was so sedate in comparison.

Still, she initially accepted the couple's report that someone had abducted the child, and she joined in the massive effort to find the infant.

"I called up radio stations to defend her, to say that she did often leave the garage door open and it was possible that someone could have gotten in," Jones said.

Not long after that, however, the Aisenbergs took their attorney's advice to make television appeals for their daughter's return. Jones said she began to feel that everything they said didn't add up.

For example, they said that the child disappeared between midnight and dawn on a night when they had left the garage door open and the front door unlocked, and that their dog, a mixed breed named Brownie, didn't alert them to an intruder.

"They said their dog wasn't a barker. She was a barker," Jones said today. "We'd pull up in the driveway, and she'd bark."

Jones discounts the contention of the Aisenbergs' attorneys, who say the conversations authorities say they overheard are being quoted out of context. She described Steven Aisenberg as "the yeller" of the family.

"People don't talk about dead babies," she said. "If there isn't something to it, if it isn't true, it wouldn't be on the tape."

"If she's not guilty of murder, she should come forward and say what needs to be said," Jones said of Marlene Aisenberg. "Tell the truth."

The neighbor who first heard from Marlene Aisenberg on the morning of the baby's disappearance, and who accompanied Marlene to Martha Jones's house, has moved away from Springville Drive and asked not to be identified.

The woman, who works in a local grocery store that donated Thanksgiving dinner to the Aisenbergs in the days after Sabrina's disappearance, said the indictment has left her with a sense of betrayal, because she and so many others in the community rallied to support the family.

"I'm really glad that it's coming to an end, but I'm just really sad for the baby," she said.

In a town that residents describe as close-knit, several people said they were not shocked at news of the indictment.

"It wasn't a surprise," said Kevin Mulholland, manager of an Albertsons grocery store near the Bloomingdale subdivision. "Not after all this time."

[Admin]

PROSECUTION FALTERS IN DISAPPEARANCE OF BABY IN TAMPA

Pat Leisner
The Miami Herald
December 24, 2000

Secretly recorded conversations are the core of the government's case against a couple who say their 5-month-old daughter was snatched from her crib three years ago while the family slept.

There has been no trace of Sabrina Aisenberg despite an exhaustive local search and leads that covered 49 states. Authorities reject the intruder theory and believe the parents may have sold or killed the baby.

No murder or kidnapping charges have been brought against Steve and Marlene Aisenberg. They are charged with conspiracy and lying when they told investigators they didn't know what happened to their infant. The disputed tapes were the basis for the charges.

Now, after a two-week court battle that concluded Friday, the tapes are in jeopardy - and so is the government's case.

Prosecutors say the recordings prove the Aisenbergs lied, that in private conversations in their bedroom they talked about the baby's death and pointed blame. The couple's lawyers say the tapes prove nothing - that they were illegally obtained and of such poor quality, the conversations are garbled and unintelligible.

A federal judge could toss them or portions of them out. U.S. Magistrate Mark A. Pizzo is not expected to rule for several weeks.

The Aisenbergs, who have maintained their innocence all along, moved from suburban Tampa to Bethesda, Md., last year with their other two children, William and Monica.

OFFICERS' CONDUCT

At the hearing, pivotal issues were the conduct of law enforcement officers in getting approval to extend the wiretap which lasted 82 days, clarity of the tapes and whether a homemade videotape of Sabrina days before she vanished showed signs of abuse.

If the tapes stand, another judge will preside at the Aisenbergs' trial and will rule on admissibility. The earliest a trial would begin is next spring.

Aisenbergs' lawyers claim investigators lied or manipulated the truth in documents to get permission to continue bugging the Aisenberg home. The hearing focused on 12 taped conversations mentioned in two applications to extend the eavesdropping. Listening devices were hidden in the bedroom and kitchen after Sabrina vanished on Nov. 24, 1997.

Muffled speech, lots of static and ringing phones were heard when portions of the tapes were played in open court.

A parade of witnesses - including case detectives, audiotape experts and doctors - poked holes in the prosecution's case, admitting there were misrepresentations, discrepancies and omissions in sworn statements to bug the house.

Case detectives said the Aisenbergs hired an attorney two days after the baby disappeared and refused to cooperate. The agents defended their actions, saying documents used to apply for two 30-day wiretap extensions were a summary, not a transcript.

Hillsborough County Sheriff's Sgt. Donald Roman, a supervisor, testified on Thursday he knew the application he wrote seeking to extend the court-ordered surveillance did not comply with the law but he did not tell superiors.

CRIMES TARGETED

Investigators said the crimes being investigated were homicide, sale of a minor child, child neglect and aggravated child abuse.

Only suspected homicide is legally permissible grounds for court-ordered surveillance in Florida. Roman said administrators had reviewed the documents and he did not think it was his place to override them.

Opposing attorneys summoned audio experts as witnesses and they differed dramatically on the audio quality of the tapes.

Government witness Anthony Pellicano testified he was able to clean up the noise and, after playing and replaying the tapes, could hear incriminating statements by the Aisenbergs.

POOR-QUALITY TAPES

Defense witness Bruce Koenig said the tapes were of such poor quality that enhancement didn't help. Voices could be heard but not what the people were saying.

The tapes - recorded in late 1997 and early 1998 - formed the foundation of a seven-count federal indictment against the Aisenbergs in September 1999.

Prosecutors alleged a conversation in which Marlene Aisenberg blamed her husband for the baby's death, saying: ``The baby's dead and buried. It was found dead because you did it. The baby's dead no matter what you say - you just did it.''

Steve Aisenberg replied: ``Honey, there was nothing I could do about it. We need to discuss the way that we can beat the charge. I would never break from the family pact and our story even if the police were to hold me down. We will do what we have to do.''

According to the indictment, during a Jan. 21 conversation, Aisenberg was quoted as telling his wife: ``I wish I hadn't harmed her,'' with Marlene replying: ``I just can't take the rap for this.''

The indictment alleges that Sabrina was not kidnapped as the couple reported, that they lied to investigators about circumstances surrounding the baby's disappearance and lied about the baby's condition before her disappearance.

The indictment also alleges the Aisenbergs discussed several times that the baby was actually dead and what story they would tell officials about her disappearance.

Prosecutors gave no indication whether the alleged conversations came from the tapes or from law enforcement personnel who monitored the tapes.

BABY'S CONDITION

Opposing attorneys homed in on Sabrina's condition - whether the videotape showed facial bruising and a bald spot where a patch of hair had been pulled from her head, indicating possible child abuse.

Detectives acknowledged in seeking the wiretap extensions they did not include comments from friends and family who said the baby was fine and healthy. And two doctors testified they told investigators the videotape raised suspicions - not conclusions - of bruising and hair forcibly removed.

[Admin]

Sabrina case collapses

PAULA CHRISTIAN
The Tampa Tribune
2/22/01


The news came in a phone call from their lawyer Wednesday afternoon.
"How are you?'' defense attorney Barry Cohen asked Steve Aisenberg.

"Fine,'' Aisenberg replied.

"The government has dismissed the case against you and Marlene,'' Cohen said.

There was silence at the other end of the line.

"How do you feel?'' Cohen asked.

"Well, I'm happy,'' Aisenberg answered, though his voice lacked surprise, Cohen recounted later. "But I'm not going to be completely happy until our baby's back.''

Steve and his wife, Marlene, passed the phone back and forth for several minutes, asking questions, getting more details. They seemed "a little numb,'' Cohen said.

But within hours they had recovered enough to talk to reporters outside their home in Bethesda, Md., where they now live. Their message was simple: Find their missing daughter.

More than three years after the Aisenbergs reported 5-month-old Sabrina missing from her crib, her parents are finally free of the glare of law enforcement investigation.

In a stunning move, the U.S. attorney's office quietly filed court papers seeking permission to drop the seven-count indictment against the couple just after 1 p.m. Wednesday.

Prosecutors did not explain the decision, in sharp contrast to the day they announced the indictment against the Aisenbergs accusing them of conspiracy and lying to investigators.

That news was delivered at a press conference held Sept. 9, 1999, by then-U.S. Attorney Charles Wilson and Hillsborough Sheriff Cal Henderson, complete with charts and a copy of the indictment enlarged so it could be picked up by television cameras.

"I think their silence is deafening,'' Cohen angrily said Wednesday. "They should be apologizing.''

And the two lead Hillsborough County sheriff's detectives in the case, Linda Burton and William Blake, should be in jail, Cohen said.

"This is not over, not by a long shot,'' Cohen said.

He also sharply criticized the lead prosecutors, Stephen Kunz and Rachelle DesVaux Bedke, accusing them of lying in court and trying to convict innocent people.

The government's move must still be approved by U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday. Merryday has been voicing growing skepticism about the government's case for months, and on Friday asked a federal magistrate, Mark Pizzo, to consider whether the case should be dismissed.

Two days before, Pizzo had recommended that the government's most damaging evidence against the Aisenbergs, audiotapes of more than 2,600 conversations they had in the months immediately following Sabrina's disappearance, be thrown out. Pizzo found that in seeking judicial permission to bug the Aisenbergs' bedroom and kitchen, Burton and Blake had told lies and half-truths.

Without the tapes, "there is no longer a reasonable probability of conviction against the defendants,'' prosecutors wrote in their dismissal request.

At almost the same time the government paperwork was being filed, Cohen sent a letter urging State Attorney Mark Ober to investigate the sheriff's office. Cohen said he also would ask U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate the conduct of the federal prosecutors, Kunz and Bedke.

"This was a bad-faith prosecution from the beginning, a bad-faith investigation from the beginning,'' Cohen said. "When they couldn't find any evidence, they tried to make it up.''

Steve Aisenberg was more circumspect.

"We need their help to bring home our daughter,'' Aisenberg said. "They're the ones getting the leads.''

The case began on the morning of Nov. 24, 1997, when the Aisenbergs made a frantic 911 call to report Sabrina missing. Marlene Aisenberg said Sabrina had been kidnapped.

A massive search by local, state and federal officers followed. They scoured a 4-mile radius and searched ponds around the family's then-home in Valrico. They kept a 24-hour vigil for two weeks awaiting a ransom demand.

No one called. Sabrina has never been found. Investigators suspected the Aisenbergs from the beginning.

"If they were looking for an infant instead of a body, she would have been home a long time ago,'' Steve Aisenberg said.

The case has taken an enormous toll on the Aisenbergs, Cohen said. They couldn't find work and were turned away from job interviews with comments such as, "We don't want your kind of people here,'' Cohen added. They struggled even to pay for food, he said. Their two other children were teased at school.

"The enormity of what happened to these people from the beginning is not relieved with one phone call'' reporting the prosecution's move to dismiss, said Todd Foster, another of the Aisenbergs' attorneys. "It takes a little time for these things to sink in.''

Burton and Blake went to Hillsborough Chief Judge F. Dennis Alvarez for permission to bug the Aisenbergs' home within weeks of Sabrina's disappearance.

Alvarez agreed and extended the eavesdropping twice, allowing them to record the couple's conversations for almost three months.

In his ruling, Pizzo said detectives "deliberately misled'' Alvarez. They left out information, distorted conversations and said they heard things no "reasonable'' person could.

His scathing 63-page order all but forced the government to drop its case. He accused detectives of lying and said the audiotapes should be thrown out.

Experts were not surprised by the government's decision.

"I think they knew after Judge Pizzo's report that the government's case was dead in the water,'' said former federal prosecutor John Fitzgibbons. "This is something the government should have done a long time ago and spared themselves a lot of embarrassment.''

U.S. Attorney Donna Bucella probably had to consult with the Department of Justice before she dropped the case, Fitzgibbons said, "primarily because of the huge potential financial liability that the United States is going to face under the Hyde Amendment.''

Fitzgibbons was referring to a new law that allows defendants to recoup attorneys' fees in cases of malicious prosecution.

"The government's dismissal virtually concedes that the prosecution was vexatious, frivolous and in bad faith,'' Fitzgibbons said.

The Aisenbergs also could seek damages in state and federal court against the sheriff's office, the Justice Department and individual detectives and prosecutors for violating their civil rights, among other things.

Cohen refused to discuss whether the Aisenbergs will sue, saying only: "We will do whatever we have to do to hold accountable whoever needs to be held accountable.''

Regardless of lawsuits, there will be additional investigations.

Ober, the Hillsborough state attorney, asked Gov. Jeb Bush late Wednesday for an outside investigation of how the Aisenberg case was handled.

"It is obvious that this matter should be investigated by an independent agency,'' Ober said.

And a task force is still in place to investigate Sabrina's disappearance, Henderson said.

"We'll continue to follow up on any leads,'' the sheriff said. "We are continuing to look for the baby.''

That is what the Aisenbergs say they want.

"Just dropping the case isn't going to do anything,'' said Irwin Aisenberg, Steve Aisenberg's father. "Reuniting Sabrina with her family - that would be the ultimate thing.''

But assuming Merryday agrees with the government's move to dismiss, the case against the Aisenbergs is closed.

[Admin]

Major developments in the Aisenberg investigation

Tampa Bays 10 News
July 26, 2008

Valrico, Fla. - A person of interest has rekindled the Aisenberg investigation, sending Hillsborough County Sheriff's detectives back into the Valrico neighborhood where Sabrina dissappeared back in November 1997.

"The detectives showed me some pictures of individuals and I didn’t recognize any of the people in the pictures," said Charles Jones, who lives right next door to the Aisenberg home.

One of the pictures detectives showed him was that of convicted felon Scott Overbeck, who is serving time for a host of charges involving drugs, weapons and battery against a law enforcement officer. One neighbor, who did not want to be identified, said that police officers were always outside of Overbeck's home in Dana Shores.

“He really didn’t have much of a chance because he grew up in that environment,” she said.

She described Overbeck as a biker whose home was always surrounded by drugs and violence.

“Scott would have women into that house. It was quite obvious to me that they were prostitutes,” she added.

However, detectives were interested in something else Overbeck had at that home - a boat.


“I remember seeing two types of boats, those cigarette boats. His father owned a great big cigarette boat which came in and out,” said Overbeck's neighbor.

Jones said detectives also questioned him about a boat.

“They asked me if the Aisenberg’s ever had a boat and I said no, they never did,” he said.

Investigators reportedly wired an informant named Dennis Byron, who was behind bars in Hillsborough County for a hit-and-run DUI case. Byron was using Overbeck's vehicle at the time of that crash the two served jail time together. Detectives hoped Byron would be the key to helping them link Overbeck to the Aisenberg case.

Meanwhile, a cloud of suspicion has always surrounded Sabrina's parents, Steve and Marlene Aisenberg. The couple now lives in Maryland. They say Sabrina could still be alive. Their attorney, Barry Cohen, is expected to make a statement about these latest developments on Monday. Those in the Bay area who have followed the case for the past ten years are hoping to finally get some closure.

"I definitely want an answer as to what happened," said Jones.

[Admin]

Aisenberg Case Has New Leads

Steven Girardi
The Tampa Tribune
July 27, 2008

VALRICO - Hillsborough County sheriff's investigators have been following new leads in the disappearance of Sabrina Aisenberg, whose parents reported her missing from her crib nearly 11 years ago.

Neighbors who lived near Steve and Marlene Aisenberg at the time of their 5-month-old's November 1997 disappearance said sheriff's detectives were in the neighborhood about one or two months ago. Charles Jones, who lived next to the couple on Springville Drive, said the detectives showed him a sheet of mug shots and asked whether he recognized anyone. He says he didn't.

"They didn't tell me very much. They did tell me they might solve the case in a couple months," Jones said. "I'm very skeptical about them solving the case. I mean, I hope they do, but it's been a long time."

The sheriff's office was generally tight-lipped about the case but said leads were being followed, including some generated by a Dennis Byron, who was once jailed with Scott D. Overbeck, 44. Overbeck is in custody on charges that include cocaine possession, obstructing an officer and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

"This is an active, ongoing investigation," said Tony Peluso, deputy chief legal adviser to Sheriff David Gee and the primary legal adviser in this case.

Peluso would not elaborate on the leads.

"I am not authorized to give any timelines or hints about when this investigation might conclude," Peluso said.

According to court transcripts, Byron said two detectives approached him at a Lake Butler prison processing center and asked about Sabrina's disappearance. He said he told them what he knew.

He said, transcripts say, that Hillsborough sheriff's deputies brought him to jail in December 2007. He wore a wire and got information from Overbeck, he said. He said he passed a polygraph test about what he knew. By helping, he said, he was supposed to be allowed to stay out of prison. The transcript did not say what information he obtained from Overbeck.

Byron was arrested in December 2006, deputies say, after he intentionally tried to hit a deputy's vehicle with his vehicle. After wearing the wire, he was taken out of jail and placed in a drug program.

He left the program, telling law enforcement he fled because Overbeck was a motorcycle gang member and that he was scared that news had spread that he had served as an informant. He was arrested in Lee County and sentenced to nearly 70 months in prison because he violated terms of his release.

The Aisenbergs could not be reached for comment Saturday. The couple, who now live in Maryland, were once arrested on charges that they lied to investigators about their daughter's disappearance.

The charges were dropped after U.S. Magistrate Mark Pizzo threw out key evidence - audiotapes of bugged conversations - because, he said, investigators had lied to get permission for the bugs and then lied about the conversations they captured.

The Aisenbergs' attorney, Barry Cohen of Tampa, declined to comment Saturday but said he might issue a statement Monday.

Overbeck's attorney, Dino Michaels, said he did not want to comment in depth, but he did not foresee Overbeck being charged in Sabrina's disappearance.

"Right now, Scott is not charged in relation to that," he said. "This is more baseless speculation."

Overbeck is in the U.S. Marshals Service's custody because of a pending federal charge, Michaels said.

[Admin]

Informant: Aisenberg baby was dumped in bay

Colleen Jenkins
St. Peterburg Times
Jul 27, 2008

TAMPA — For 34 days, two old friends shared unit 5-C, cell room 9 at the Orient Road Jail. One man thought he had lucked into a familiar roommate. The other man, equipped by detectives with a wired Walkman radio, knew better.

That informant, Dennis Byron, had a mission. During hundreds of hours of secretly recorded conversations starting in late December, he attempted to get his cell mate, Scott D. Overbeck, to tell what he knew about the 1997 disappearance of baby Sabrina Aisenberg.

Overbeck told Byron he was asked to dispose of the 5-month-old’s body, which he chopped up and dumped in crab traps in waters near the Courtney Campbell Parkway, according to a sworn statement to investigators from Byron obtained Saturday by the St. Petersburg Times.

Overbeck said he had retrieved a boat with the dead baby inside from the Aisenbergs’ home in Valrico before Sabrina was reported missing, Byron claimed in the statement. Byron said he was under the impression that Overbeck had done so at the behest of a longtime investigator for the law firm that would soon represent the baby’s parents.

These jailhouse chats appear to play into a new line of questioning in the decade-old investigation into Sabrina’s disappearance. Byron’s attorney, John Trevena, said Saturday that the Hillsborough sheriff’s attorney spearheading the investigation told him there were independent sources who corroborated the information gleaned by Byron.

Sheriff’s attorney Tony Peluso said “he had a rock solid case,” Trevena told the Times. Barry Cohen, the attorney for Steve and Marlene Aisenberg who has long feuded with the Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office over the case, blasted the current focus of the investigation as a misguided attempt to implicate him in Sabrina’s disappearance.

On Saturday, he gave the St. Petersburg Times copies of sworn statements he took last week from Overbeck and Byron, in which both men said they had no proof that Cohen or an investigator from his firm had orchestrated the removal of Sabrina’s body but that detectives had tried to get them to say as much. Byron said detectives told him that Cohen was “a prime target in their investigation.”

“That is the most ridiculous, absurd thing,” Cohen said. “What facts after 11 years of investigating support any such nonsense?”

Peluso and Sheriff David Gee did not return calls for comment Saturday.

• • •

Byron says his and Overbeck’s lives were a revolving party. Living in the waterfront Dana Shores home that had belonged to Overbeck’s father, they spent Overbeck’s inheritance on cocaine and sex. Both men have long rap sheets.

“If Scott was breathing awake, he was under the influence of cocaine,” Byron, 33, told Cohen last week. They spoke at the Gainesville Correctional Institution, where Byron is serving a nearly six-year sentence for violating his community control.

One night in 2005 when they were both high, Byron said, Overbeck showed him a small ski boat, maybe 12 or 14 feet long with two seats, in the driveway. The boat was old except for new black carpeting at the bow. Overbeck told Byron to smell the small space in the front that had “probably about enough room in that area for a small infant child,” Byron said in the statement.

Byron said it smelled like there possibly had once been something dead there. “At this point is when he told me that, you know, the baby Sabrina Aisenberg was in that boat,” he said in the statement.

Overbeck also said that he had “some dirt” on Cohen and a man named John E. Tranquillo. Known as Johnny T, Tranquillo worked for Cohen’s law firm and lived a few houses from Overbeck. Tranquillo died in 2006; his obituary mentions his work on the Aisenberg case.

Overbeck “had told me that, that, you know, that he had went out and picked the boat up out there at the house, the same house that was in the newspaper, on the TV,” Byron said in his statement. “He had led me to believe that he was basically operating under the instructions of his father for Johnny T.”

Tranquillo was an acquaintance of Overbeck’s father.

Detectives caught wind of these claims just last year. They enlisted Byron’s help as an informant in exchange for getting a judge to reduce his three-year prison sentence for battery on a law enforcement officer to 24 months of community control.

• • •

At a meeting in May, detectives showed the Aisenbergs a pack of mug shots. They asked whether the couple had ever owned a boat and whether Marlene Aisenberg had had an affair with a man featured in the photos. The couple answered no to both questions, Cohen said.

Investigators told Marlene that they might have discovered what happened to her baby and that the outcome wasn’t good, Cohen recalled.

“They were full of s---,” he said Saturday.

Cohen was incensed when he got hints this month of the investigation’s new direction. He launched his own investigation, believing that Peluso, the sheriff’s attorney, has a vendetta against him and is building a case based on the allegations of felons.

Cohen is used to being on the attack, not under it. For more than three decades, the defense attorney has battled prosecutors in high-profile criminal cases. His legal machine kept teacher Jennifer Porter out of prison after two children died in a hit-and-run accident in 2004 and won an acquittal for William LaTorre, the Pinellas chiropractor accused in the deaths of four teenagers in a 1989 boating accident.

Cohen has a history of bad blood with the Sheriff’s Office over the Aisenberg case. He mounted a vigorous defense when federal prosecutors indicted Steve and Marlene Aisenberg in 1999, accusing them of lying about their daughter’s disappearance. The charges were dropped after a judge questioned the way law enforcement officials went about collecting evidence, particularly secret recordings from the couple’s home that prosecutors said were incriminating but that turned out to be largely unintelligible.

A federal judge ordered the government to pay the Aisenbergs $2.87-million in legal fees. At the time, Peluso was a federal prosecutor who argued that Cohen’s firm should get only $250,000.

Ironically, secret recordings may once again be playing a key role in the Aisenberg case, this time from Byron’s conversations with Overbeck. The details of the tapes have not been made public, making it impossible to know whether they back up Byron’s sworn statement.

Cohen’s take?

“It’s called confabulation,” he said. “It’s putting facts in the story to make it fit.” He says the Aisenbergs never owned a boat.

Friday evening at the Pinellas County Jail, where he is being held on unrelated federal charges, Overbeck, 44, told Cohen he played no role in the baby’s disappearance, Cohen said. Overbeck said he had followed the Aisenberg case when it first broke. As years passed without any answers regarding Sabrina’s whereabouts, Overbeck said he began to wonder if a boat he had purchased without official paperwork from a woman in Valrico the week before the baby vanished might have played a role in the case.

The boat seemed like it had gotten an overhaul, Overbeck told Cohen. And he thought it had space enough at the front to hide a baby’s body.

“Just a hunch,” he said in his statement. “There’s no fact to it.”

Overbeck said he mentioned the possibility once to Tranquillo, Cohen’s investigator. “He told me I was crazy,” Overbeck recalled.

Overbeck said in his statement that neither Tranquillo nor Cohen asked him to get rid of the body. He said he was “100,000 percent sure” that he never had anything to do with the baby at all. When Byron tried to imply those things in their cell, Overbeck said he mocked his suggestions.

Byron admitted during his statement Wednesday to Cohen that he had made assumptions regarding Cohen’s and Tranquillo’s involvement because of their later roles in the case.

Byron and Overbeck said detectives and Peluso seemed to have it out for Cohen and tried to put words in their mouths to support their theories.

Overbeck’s attorney, Dino Michaels, could not be reached for comment Saturday. Cohen doesn’t believe the claims that the Sheriff’s Office may be close to breaking the case. He thinks authorities are ignoring obvious flaws in Byron’s account in their eagerness to focus suspicion toward him.

“They’re very hurt,” he said of the Aisenbergs, “because they thought these people were really trying to find out what happened with the baby.”