A Parent's Worst Nightmare

Speaker 1 If you ever worry about how safe your home really is, you need to hear about Simply Safe's early access Black Friday sale.

Speaker 1 Old school security systems typically only react after someone breaks in, but Simply Safe is different.

Speaker 1 Simply Safe's Active Guard Outdoor Protection uses AI-powered cameras that detect threats outside your home and alert real security agents.

Speaker 1 Those agents take action while the intruder is still outside, talking to them through the camera, triggering a siren or spotlight, and letting them know police are on the way.

Speaker 1 That's how you stop a crime before it starts. There are no long-term contracts or hidden fees, plus a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Simply Safe's been named best home security system by U.S.

Speaker 1 News and World Report five years running. Don't miss out on SimplySafe's biggest sale of the year, 60% off.

Speaker 1 Right now, our listeners can save 60% off a SimplySafe home security system at simply safe.com/slash 48 hours. That's simply safe.com/slash 48 hours.
There's no safe like simply safe.

Speaker 2 Don't let the holidays derail your fitness. Stay on track with hydro.
20 minutes rowing on a hydro targets 86% of your muscles as Olympians guide you from incredible locations worldwide.

Speaker 2 Running can't compete. That's why 90% stick with hydro a year later.
GQ named the hydro arc the best rower of 2025. And every hydro comes with free shipping, a 30-day trial, and warranty.

Speaker 2 Go to hydro.com code fit and save up to 600 bucks on your next hydro. Hydro.com code fit.

Speaker 4 I don't think anyone has a conclusion to this story yet. It's about a little girl that goes missing, and I don't think anyone knows for sure what happened to her.

Speaker 5 Sabrina, come crawl to mommy. She had just started to crawl.
She could not get out of the crib herself. Come on, oh, she's getting up.
Here she goes.

Speaker 5 My baby's getting up! I mean, it's the most horrific thing you can imagine: looking into your child's crib and not seeing her there.

Speaker 3 Oh, God, my baby is coming! My baby is coming!

Speaker 5 Every night, we kick myself because we didn't use an alarm and we had one.

Speaker 3 Every night.

Speaker 3 But I'm not going to dwell on it.

Speaker 4 If the Eisenbergs are telling the truth, you have to believe that someone walked into their house in the middle of the night to where baby Sabrina was sleeping, plucked her out of a crib, and vanished forever.

Speaker 3 And we need her

Speaker 6 back in our family where she belongs.

Speaker 7 And I know she's out there.

Speaker 9 I think that Steve and Marlene know more than what they're saying.

Speaker 5 Police are like, well, we believe you know where Sabrina is or what happened to her.

Speaker 5 All of a sudden, I hear, Marlene, come downstairs.

Speaker 5 And the next thing I know is there's a gun being pointed right at my face.

Speaker 10 Well, at some point, it became just like a soap opera.

Speaker 3 Where is your daughter?

Speaker 5 Not only has our daughter been taken from us, but they tried to destroy everything about our family.

Speaker 12 Can you tell us where Sabrina is?

Speaker 5 It hurts. She's seven years old and she's not home yet.
That kills me.

Speaker 13 Where's our baby?

Speaker 13 Happy Halloween! Happy Halloween! Hey, everybody! Happy Thanksgiving!

Speaker 13 Yay!

Speaker 14 The The young bride.

Speaker 3 Oh, James.

Speaker 5 Happy birthday, I love you.

Speaker 5 Our life is like a fairy tale. We started off so happy.
Say happy honey.

Speaker 3 New Year.

Speaker 5 Monica Blow.

Speaker 5 We're very naive, young, happy-go-lucky. And I don't think we're so naive anymore.
And Zabrina's crawling and she's almost five months old. I don't think we're so happy-go-lucky anymore.

Speaker 16 Marlene and Steve Eisenberg would be the first to tell you they're just a regular family.

Speaker 14 When you encounter a stranger or someone that doesn't know you very well and they ask you how many children you have, what do you say?

Speaker 20 Three.

Speaker 7 Because that's how many children I do have.

Speaker 21 But their youngest daughter, Sabrina, has not been seen or heard from for more than 10 years.

Speaker 25 Not since November 24th, 1997, when the five-month-old seemingly vanished.

Speaker 5 I believe she's just a beautiful young lady. Seven years old, she's not a baby anymore.

Speaker 7 I have dreams often that she's coming home and that we're playing

Speaker 7 and the dreams are as vivid as they're real.

Speaker 14 Have you been able to successfully rebuild your life?

Speaker 5 We are a happy family, but we will be an ecstatic family when we're all together.

Speaker 10 like we should be.

Speaker 26 Steve and Marlene Eisenberg's ordeal began here at their home in Valrico, Florida, just outside of Tampa.

Speaker 26 It was 6:30 in the morning and Marlene was beginning her day, rising early as usual before her husband and three children.

Speaker 18 Immediately, though, she sensed that something wasn't quite right.

Speaker 26 That something had gone terribly wrong.

Speaker 3 And I remember just screaming, 511, my opinion, my baby's gone out of the crib. All right, Dan, me to calm down.
Oh, God, my baby is gone. My baby is gone.

Speaker 5 It's something I really don't like to listen to because I can't.

Speaker 5 It just brings everything back.

Speaker 24 Marlene and Steve would like to forget everything about that awful night, especially the garage door that they admit to leaving open.

Speaker 3 Yes, the garage was left open.

Speaker 14 Would you have done anything differently about securing the house?

Speaker 5 Oh my God.

Speaker 14 What would you have done differently?

Speaker 5 What we do now, I look at the doors every night and we make sure they're shut and locked and we we turn the alarm on.

Speaker 5 Every night we kick myself, ourselves, because we didn't use an alarm and we had one.

Speaker 3 Of course we would do things differently.

Speaker 22 But that night, with the door open, the Eisenbergs can only assume that someone crept quietly into the house and snatched Sabrina while they were sleeping.

Speaker 5 My baby's not in her crib. You know, where is she?

Speaker 3 All right, stay in the line. Do you have have other kids in the house? Steve, see Monica Bella.
She is.

Speaker 3 She is.

Speaker 34 I think it's just a baby. After Marlene called 911, Steve went next door to a neighbor.

Speaker 14 The doorbell rang that morning, and your wife answered the door. Yes.
What happened next?

Speaker 8 The first thing Steve had said to my wife was, She's missing.

Speaker 17 Scott Middleton is a former Tampa cop.

Speaker 31 At the time, he and his wife lived directly across the street.

Speaker 8 My wife had ran out the front door, and Marlene was waving, just, you know, hey.

Speaker 8 What do you mean? Well, it was, you know, it wasn't the panic. You know, it was not a panic parent.

Speaker 23 Immediately, his police training kicked in.

Speaker 14 What struck you as odd that morning?

Speaker 11 They're just,

Speaker 8 you know, and I'm a parent myself. There wasn't any emotion there to say, hey, my kids are gone.

Speaker 17 But this news video shows how distraught Marlene was that November morning Sabrina disappeared.

Speaker 5 I didn't understand anything that was going on. I mean it was it was just all

Speaker 5 hysterics. And I called Marlene and it was a miracle that she picked up and she was a mess.

Speaker 24 Good friend Kathy Dotson heard the panic in Marlene's voice.

Speaker 5 She was crying and I said, I just heard is it true? I mean I was just blown away and she was like, yes, yeah, I gotta go, I gotta go. I mean she was just a mess.

Speaker 17 Within minutes, deputies from the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department Department descended on the iceberg home and the media was right behind them.

Speaker 11 This was a great story. Being a parent, I hate to say that anyone's missing child is a good story.
But as time wore on, it became a very interesting story.

Speaker 17 TV reporter Bill McGuinty covered the story for WTSP, the CBS affiliate in Tampa.

Speaker 11 This was the lead story in our newscast every day for months. Because every day there was something new to tell.

Speaker 17 Sheriff's deputies began an extensive search in and around the Eisenberg home, but found nothing.

Speaker 36 Sure, there are mess witnesses at this point. We have no reason to believe that they're involved.

Speaker 33 Still, deputies were struck by the disheveled appearance of the Eisenberg home.

Speaker 28 To the cops, it spelled neglect.

Speaker 42 But to her friends, it was just the way Marlene was.

Speaker 5 She wasn't an immaculate housekeeper. Anybody would testify to that, that, you know, her house was a mess.

Speaker 18 By the end of that first horrible day.

Speaker 5 And I'm begging that person to please bring our baby back to us.

Speaker 17 Police encouraged the couple to go on TV and plead for their daughter's safe return.

Speaker 18 But to a curious public, the Eisenbergs seemed cold and aloof.

Speaker 11 Most people thought, at least the speculation on the street, is, if my baby were taken, I'd be a lot more upset than that.

Speaker 14 Some people looking at that have said that you seemed strangely unemotional.

Speaker 5 First of all, you're in shock. And my baby is gone.
I have no idea where she is. And I have to say something.
And we all miss her and love her very much. And we need her to come home to us, please.

Speaker 5 You don't know what to say. You don't know how to react.
There's not a book that you read on what to go through when you've had something horrible happen in your life.

Speaker 22 But like a lot of people, McGinty thought there was just something slightly off about their story.

Speaker 11 It's a little tough to swallow that somebody went in through a door and took a baby out of a crib right across the hallway from where they were sleeping.

Speaker 11 You know, you drive into the neighborhood, there's one way in, one way out, and they live on a cul-de-sac. There's a big wall around their neighborhood.

Speaker 43 Suspicion was growing around the Eisenbergs.

Speaker 23 Take this snippet of videotape.

Speaker 38 For a brief moment, less than a second really, Steve was recorded with a smile on his face.

Speaker 7 A lot of our behavior was what was dictated for us to do and be by the police. When When we were leaving our house one day, they made a joke and we laughed.

Speaker 11 The focus of the story shifted from Sabrina Eisenberg, five months old, missing baby, to Marlene and Steve Eisenberg.

Speaker 24 Even Brownie, the family dog, came under scrutiny.

Speaker 34 Why had she not barked at the intruder?

Speaker 8 Brownie was a nut.

Speaker 14 Would Brownie bark at his own shadow?

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Brownie was a dog that was full of all kinds of energy.

Speaker 14 Rambunctious dog?

Speaker 3 Laid back.

Speaker 5 Laid back. Laid back.

Speaker 14 Brownie did not bark.

Speaker 17 Nope.

Speaker 24 With the Eisenberg's permission, the FBI tapped their phone so that any call from a kidnapper could be traced.

Speaker 17 One of the first calls was from Steve's brother Dave, a lawyer.

Speaker 45 Well, what's going on down there? I mean, the detectives are doing their job. They're following every lead they have.

Speaker 24 When detectives listened in, they were amazed that Steve, supposedly awaiting a call from his child's kidnappers, never answers the call-waiting beep that kicks in.

Speaker 45 Every other phone call is the press.

Speaker 3 Right now,

Speaker 45 the detectives are in a meeting.

Speaker 46 To the police, this was proof the Eisenbergs knew much more about Sabrina's disappearance than they were letting on.

Speaker 28 Any concerned parent they thought would have taken that call immediately.

Speaker 26 Suspicious, the detectives confronted Marlene.

Speaker 5 We'll call them here to help us find her, or who took her, or where is she? And this person's sitting there telling me, you know, well, we think you know where Sabrina is and what happened.

Speaker 2 Don't let the holidays derail your fitness. Stay on track with hydro.
20 minutes rowing on a hydro targets 86% of your muscles as Olympians guide you from incredible locations worldwide.

Speaker 2 Running can't compete. That's why 90% stick with hydro a year later.
GQ named the hydro arc the best rower of 2025. And every hydro comes with free shipping, a 30-day trial, and warranty.

Speaker 2 Go to hydro.com code fit and save up to $600 on your next hydro. Hydro.com code fit.

Speaker 47 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here, wishing you a very happy half-off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half price, not half the service.

Speaker 47 And Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.

Speaker 2 So...

Speaker 48 That means a half day.

Speaker 47 Yeah? Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

Speaker 48 Upfront payment of $45 for a three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only.
Speed slow under 35 gigabytes of networks busy.

Speaker 48 Taxes and fees extra.

Speaker 2 See midmobile.com.

Speaker 17 24 hours after Sabrina was reported missing.

Speaker 37 The Eisenbergs were frustrated with a police response.

Speaker 5 They chose to look for a body, not a baby. Any lead that was called in for a live baby at the airport, they didn't didn't follow up on it.
911.

Speaker 5 A neighbor, a couple nights before Sabrina was taken from our house, a woman had her window of her baby's room broken into. A couple of nights before.
153 grounds.

Speaker 14 Are you telling me that the police never conducted an honest search?

Speaker 5 They tried to find a body.

Speaker 4 The investigators never really got past Mr. and Mrs.
Eisenberg.

Speaker 46 Graham Brink, a reporter for the St.

Speaker 25 Petersburg Times, has written extensively about the case.

Speaker 4 Most people, I believe, would tell you that the community thought they had done it or that it was an accident and they were covering it up.

Speaker 37 You understand that the police had to investigate you.

Speaker 5 Oh sure. Investigate us, but follow other leads.

Speaker 14 The statistics show that when a baby is abducted, there's only one chance in a thousand that someone other than a family member did it.

Speaker 11 Well guess what?

Speaker 7 You're meeting number one.

Speaker 34 Right.

Speaker 5 There she goes to William's shoes. And there's her big brother acting silly.

Speaker 17 Before Sabrina disappeared, life for the Eisenbergs largely revolved around their three children.

Speaker 34 Sabrina and her two older siblings, William, then nine, and Monica, five.

Speaker 5 You know, I love kids. I love my kids.
I love my friend's kids. And I want you to tilt your head up and blow as hard as you can.

Speaker 32 Marlene even started her own business for kids, running a baby and toddler exercise program.

Speaker 17 Steve worked real estate in Tampa's blooming economy.

Speaker 5 We're just regular people.

Speaker 33 But ugly gossip was spreading.

Speaker 14 Tell me, what kinds of things were you hearing?

Speaker 4 One of them may have been having an affair, that the baby may not have been Steve's biologically.

Speaker 28 The Eisenbergs, meanwhile, continued to cooperate with the investigation.

Speaker 46 Sheriff's detectives gave the couple lie detector tests and then reportedly leaked information that some of Marlene's answers were deceptive.

Speaker 14 The results of your first polygraph test, Marlene, was inconclusive. Correct.
And you failed the second test.

Speaker 5 I was told I was inconclusive on the second test as well.

Speaker 20 Police said that you failed it.

Speaker 5 I was told by them that I was inconclusive.

Speaker 41 The investigation was now three days old.

Speaker 17 And at the advice of his brother, Steve got a lawyer.

Speaker 36 You guys should get an attorney.

Speaker 45 You know, because these people are, you know,

Speaker 45 they're out to get you.

Speaker 24 The Eisenbergs hired Barry Cohen.

Speaker 22 one of the most high-profile and combative lawyers in Florida.

Speaker 14 What kind of lawyer are you?

Speaker 13 Good lawyer. Damn good lawyer.

Speaker 21 Cohen says there's nothing that points to his client's guilt.

Speaker 13 There was no physical evidence.

Speaker 13 This entire investigation, the FBI, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office did not produce one piece of physical evidence that even suggested that either one of them were responsible.

Speaker 13 Everybody's probably a suspect.

Speaker 45 And they've been asked the hard questions.

Speaker 17 Despite that, Cohen says sheriff's detectives had one mission, to prove the Eisenbergs were involved.

Speaker 13 When I saw the police were acting in bad faith and that they were destined to try to

Speaker 13 frame Marlene and Steve, that's where we stopped cooperating.

Speaker 30 The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office refused to talk to us about the case, but reporter Bill McGuinty says the cops definitely pursued other leads, even though the vast majority were from people who mistakenly thought they had spotted Sabrina.

Speaker 11 They were running two parallel investigations, one looking at the Eisenbergs and one looking into every other possibility.

Speaker 11 We went to the Eisenberg war room where they had volumes of information, places they'd been to, thousands of different leads.

Speaker 23 But there's no doubt the police felt stymied just when they thought they were on the verge of breaking the couple.

Speaker 13 We are not going to permit any further interviews.

Speaker 4 The case became very adversarial.

Speaker 12 Would you say that the Eisenbergs are cooperating in the search for Sabrina?

Speaker 44 Limited cooperation, very limited.

Speaker 4 It was Barry trying to defend his clients as best he could against what he saw was a horde of investigators and prosecutors trying to bring them down.

Speaker 14 Why would innocent people need to hire a lawyer?

Speaker 13 Because the law enforcement officers were not trying to find the truth.

Speaker 27 Leads were pouring in, but the police clearly thought their best suspects were sitting right in this house.

Speaker 50 In a highly unusual move reserved largely for mob bosses and drug kingpins, Hillsboro County Sheriff detectives got a warrant allowing them to secretly plant small listing devices or bugs in the Eisenbergs' kitchen and bedroom.

Speaker 14 Why did the police wiretap the home?

Speaker 12 I think they thought it was their last chance of getting the Eisenbergs.

Speaker 44 This would not be a good place for a microphone.

Speaker 24 48 Hours asked Mike Parris, a wiretap and bug detection expert, to come to the Eisenberg home to show us how the wiretapping operation worked.

Speaker 37 This is the actual bug?

Speaker 44 That's the microphone here. Yes.
It's quite sensitive to it has ability to pick up a whisper within probably about 30 or 40 feet.

Speaker 24 Paris explains that the bug is attached to a transmitter and then placed behind a wall jack to an existing telephone line.

Speaker 44 A sophisticated eavesdropper is going to want to be able to have access to wire like we have here.

Speaker 24 The sound then travels along outside phone lines to a nearby police station.

Speaker 14 And the sound quality?

Speaker 44 Excellent.

Speaker 13 Excellent.

Speaker 44 As long as it's applied correctly.

Speaker 20 Which is critical.

Speaker 44 That's correct.

Speaker 15 Every day for nearly three months from 7 a.m. to midnight, sheriff's deputies listened and recorded thousands of private conversations going on in the Eisenberg home.

Speaker 13 They had a lot of pressure on them to make a case, so they figured if they're guilty, they'll probably talk about it.

Speaker 28 Sabrina had been gone for two months when a federal grand jury was convened to examine her disappearance.

Speaker 38 Where is jury?

Speaker 15 The Eisenbergs were asked to testify, but Cohen advised them to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights.

Speaker 14 He advised you not to testify before the grand jury, looking into your daughter's disappearance. Well, why wouldn't you want to do that?

Speaker 7 We did what we felt was necessary at that time.

Speaker 35 You know how it looked, though.

Speaker 41 Your daughter...

Speaker 14 is missing and you two don't want to cooperate with the process. You don't want to testify before the grand jury.

Speaker 3 That's not true.

Speaker 7 We cooperated 100%. You didn't testify before the grand jury.
You know what? If you have any other grand jury questions, you can ask our attorneys.

Speaker 14 Why did you advise the Eisenbergs not to testify before the grand jury?

Speaker 13 I knew the reputation of Steve Koontz.

Speaker 17 Stephen Koontz was the lead federal prosecutor in the case, and to put it mildly, Cohen doesn't think much of him.

Speaker 13 He has no business in the system. If he worked for a corporation, they'd be sued for negligent hiring and/or negligent retention successfully.

Speaker 14 Is that when things got really ugly?

Speaker 7 You know, things have been ugly for so long, we don't remember when they became ugly.

Speaker 33 As the grand jury heard testimony, social workers showed up at the Eisenberg's front door to investigate whether the couple's older children, William and Monica, were being mistreated.

Speaker 14 So what did you make of this?

Speaker 42 Was this a strong arm tactic?

Speaker 5 Totally. I think they wanted to scare us and let us think that they were taking away our children.

Speaker 5 They just wanted to know because because they could talk to them all evening and the children would let them know that all we do is love them.

Speaker 13 But it's just another effort on the part of the authorities here in this case to break these people.

Speaker 49 But their ordeal was only just beginning.

Speaker 5 It was like the scariest thing to have a gun pointed at you. I mean, he was literally aiming the gun right at my face.

Speaker 23 The swamps outside Tampa keep many secrets.

Speaker 33 Do they also hold the key to solving the mystery of what happened to Sabrina Eisenberg?

Speaker 24 Searchers seemed to think so.

Speaker 38 But after a year and a half without any answers, the sheriff's office was feeling the pressure, and Barry Cohen knew it.

Speaker 13 They were embarrassed. They didn't want to have have another Ramsey case on their hands out here where the investigators were made a fool out of.

Speaker 38 Like the Ramsey case, detectives looking for Sabrina come home to us

Speaker 52 were convinced the parents were somehow involved.

Speaker 10 I think once law enforcement collectively decided that the Eisenbergs were responsible and guilty,

Speaker 10 Then whatever it took to implicate and to charge them, then that was going to be done.

Speaker 38 John Fitzgibbons, a former U.S.

Speaker 23 attorney now in private practice in Tampa, says Barry Cohn.

Speaker 13 Let me finish. Let me finish.
I don't care

Speaker 13 what they said.

Speaker 24 And his zeal to protect the Eisenbergs was aggravating investigators.

Speaker 10 Barry basically and repeatedly stabbed his finger in their eye throughout the case.

Speaker 13 We don't know if they've correctly written down what they've said. We don't know whether they've taken it out of context.
We don't know whether they've confabulated the information.

Speaker 10 He mocked the investigation. He publicly challenged the investigation.

Speaker 13 They should be apologizing, not only to the Eisenbergs, but to all of the other law enforcement officers whose integrity they have undermined.

Speaker 14 Do you think that using kinder, gentler language and being more cooperative would have helped your clients more?

Speaker 13 Well, no,

Speaker 13 I don't think this case called for any euphemisms or any kinder language.

Speaker 42 This was a war. This was a war.

Speaker 13 You don't go into a war with a BB gun.

Speaker 52 The Eisenbergs, meanwhile, were trying to keep their hopes alive.

Speaker 5 We know we didn't harm her, and I can't believe anybody else would harm her. I believe that she was taken to be loved by someone.

Speaker 7 What I think about is how can I bring my daughter home? And that's what's most important to me.

Speaker 17 By May 1999, the Eisenbergs were struggling financially.

Speaker 22 So they sold their house in Florida and moved back to Steve's childhood home in Bethesda, Maryland.

Speaker 5 I believe that the police are someone you're supposed to teach your kids to respect.

Speaker 5 And I could not do that living in Tampa.

Speaker 34 And just four months later, on September the 9th, they received some unexpected visitors.

Speaker 5 I was packing because our family was going to Boston for Rosh Hashanah.

Speaker 5 Clothes on the bed and cars pulled up

Speaker 5 and got a look and seeing people just walking around the driveway.

Speaker 5 I didn't understand who these people were, why they're all coming here.

Speaker 5 So I called Barry. I called my attorney.

Speaker 5 I'm literally on hold, you know, wanting to talk to somebody.

Speaker 5 It must have been a new secretary or something and she didn't know where anybody was.

Speaker 5 They've broken into the house.

Speaker 5 All of a sudden I hear, Marlene, come downstairs. You need to come downstairs.
And I come right here

Speaker 5 and the next thing I know is there's a gun being pointed right at my face. And he's just pointing a gun right at me.
And I'm like, just in shock, just looking at them, what's going on?

Speaker 5 And he's like, put down the phone. And I was like, put down the gun.
It was like the scariest thing to have a gun pointed at you. I mean, he was literally aiming the gun right at my face.

Speaker 52 The intruders tell Marlene who they are, the FBI.

Speaker 5 I said, did you find Sabrina? Where is she?

Speaker 5 And at that point, they said, we didn't find Sabrina. We believe that she's dead.
And I said, no, I don't believe that. I'll never believe that.
And they said, well, we're arresting you.

Speaker 38 At the same time, across town, agents are arresting Steve.

Speaker 7 They put me in a cell, strip, searched me, did the fingerprints, the photos. And the whole time, I'm just thinking, you're making a huge mistake.

Speaker 7 You didn't look for our daughter and you're making the biggest mistake right now.

Speaker 41 Prosecutors believe they have an airtight case because of the secret wire recordings.

Speaker 36 The indictment also charges the Eisenbergs, discussed on several occasions that the baby was actually dead and what story they would tell authorities concerning the disappearance of the baby.

Speaker 49 They are later released on bail using Steve's father's home as collateral.

Speaker 3 Stephen Arlene, did you kill you? No comment, daughter? Did you kill your daughter? No comment.

Speaker 43 The Eisenbergs are indicted not for murder, but for conspiracy and for lying to investigators.

Speaker 16 The charges, if proved, could send them to prison for up to 30 years.

Speaker 3 We'd like to give you a chance to respond to that indictment and say something on your behalf.

Speaker 41 The indictment was based on the police bugging operation that lasted nearly three months.

Speaker 51 More than 2,600 conversations were recorded between the Eisenbergs, in which police say they discussed killing their daughter.

Speaker 5 The indictment was horrific to read.

Speaker 7 And that they could even put a bug in our bedroom, especially the bedroom.

Speaker 11 It's just,

Speaker 7 you know,

Speaker 7 it's a sanctuary for a husband and wife.

Speaker 5 And it's scary. to sit there and say, oh my God, you know, look what they're trying to do to us.

Speaker 3 Did you kill your daughter?

Speaker 38 Prosecutors said the Eisenbergs tape conversations were devastating.

Speaker 23 Marlene reportedly said, the baby's dead and buried.

Speaker 38 It was found dead because you did it.

Speaker 17 The baby's dead no matter what you say.

Speaker 33 You just did it.

Speaker 52 Steve supposedly responded, we need to discuss the way that we can beat the charge.

Speaker 51 We will do what we have to do.

Speaker 10 I thought the government has a hell of a powerful case here.

Speaker 17 At the couple's bail hearing, a federal prosecutor tells a judge she had heard Steve Eisenberg on the tape say, I wish I hadn't harmed her.

Speaker 38 It was the cocaine.

Speaker 7 I'll do drug tests from now to eternity, and you'll never find any drugs in my system.

Speaker 13 I said, Steve, I said, look at the detail in this indictment.

Speaker 7 I never said anything that they say I said. Marlene never said anything that they say she said.

Speaker 13 And I said, Steve, I believe you.

Speaker 13 And then I went back and we finally got those tapes.

Speaker 27 But do the tapes contain a confession?

Speaker 6 Or will they just add to the confusion already surrounding the case?

Speaker 53 This episode is brought to you by Progressive Commercial Insurance. Business owners meet Progressive Insurance.

Speaker 53 They make it easy to get discounts on commercial auto insurance and find coverages to grow with your business. Quote in as little as eight minutes at progressivecommercial.com.

Speaker 53 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, coverage provided and serviced by affiliated and third-party insurers. Discounts and covered selections not available in all states or situations.

Speaker 5 Hey there, we're Corinne Vienne and Sabrina D'Anaroga here to introduce our newest podcast, Crimes of A Crime House Original.

Speaker 5 Crimes of is a weekly series that explores a new theme each season, from Crimes of the Paranormal, Unsolved Murders, and more.

Speaker 5 Our first season is Crimes of Infamy, the true crime stories behind Hollywood's most iconic horror villains. Listen to and follow Crimes of, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 38 It had been more than two years since baby Sabrina vanished from her crib.

Speaker 33 Federal prosecutors were were sure they had a case, not a murder case, but a case of conspiracy.

Speaker 13 They were determined to get a confession. I knew pretty shortly that it was going to get ugly.

Speaker 18 Barry Cohen felt prosecutor Stephen Coons was overzealous.

Speaker 13 He's totally ambitious, he's totally irresponsible, and he believes in one thing. and that is getting a conviction and getting his name in the paper.

Speaker 26 In December of 2000, the Eisenbergs, the feds, and the secret tapes were about to have their day in court.

Speaker 14 The courtroom was packed and everyone was there for one reason and one reason alone, to hear the bombshell recordings.

Speaker 11 When they told us these are the quotes, we have them on tape. Everybody thought, oh, wow, gee whiz,

Speaker 44 they're dead in the water.

Speaker 18 These tapes were the backbone of the prosecution's entire case.

Speaker 27 But can you hear what's on them?

Speaker 14 Listen closely.

Speaker 4 I later described it as it's sounding like chickens squawking with a hurricane playing in the background.

Speaker 5 Static, a lot of TV, a lot of noise.

Speaker 11 And all we could hear in the courtroom that day was mumbling. And you could hear the hum of appliances and things like that.

Speaker 22 But the prosecution heard more than just noise.

Speaker 32 They believed they heard incriminating evidence.

Speaker 11 When it was played in open court, the judge looked over at the prosecutor and he had his glasses on the end of his nose. And that look was a glare.

Speaker 11 This is the best you got?

Speaker 28 Barry Cohen hired a former analyst from the FBI to listen to the tapes.

Speaker 13 He said, well, I'm going to call it the way I see it. I said, that's great.

Speaker 10 When he submitted his affidavit that he had listened to the tapes and the tapes did not match up with the words in the transcript, I thought that was the turning point of the case.

Speaker 38 Former prosecutor John Fitzgibbons.

Speaker 10 It was just astounding. There were sentences and paragraphs that didn't connect up.

Speaker 17 To combat Cohen's expert witness, Stephen Koontz hired audio expert and private investigator to the stars Anthony Pellicano, whose clients included Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor.

Speaker 52 Pellicano had a reputation for resorting to violence to get his way.

Speaker 13 I learned that he bragged in articles that were written about him, about getting people to talk to him with a baseball bat and slicing people's faces.

Speaker 13 A real fair word would be that he was just a real scumbag.

Speaker 41 Anthony Pellicano later pled guilty in another case to possessing illegal explosives.

Speaker 13 Why would the government stoop to hiring Tony Pellicano when shortly after that he was indicted himself?

Speaker 38 And he served two and a half years in federal prison.

Speaker 17 It appeared that Pellicano and the prosecutors were the only ones in the courtroom who could hear the incriminating evidence.

Speaker 23 This came as no surprise to the Eisenberg team.

Speaker 11 One of their lawyers on their legal team sat back in his chair like this and just looked at the media and said, told you.

Speaker 10 I can't comprehend how someone with even a minimum amount of intelligence could come up with those phrases when listening to the tapes.

Speaker 20 This is the worst transcription I have ever seen.

Speaker 30 48 Hours hired our own audio expert to listen to the tapes.

Speaker 33 Jack Mitchell has worked for the U.S. Department of Justice.

Speaker 7 This entire paragraph right here

Speaker 4 is nonsense.

Speaker 36 It's almost as if it were just simply made up.

Speaker 39 There is no evidence whatsoever

Speaker 39 on any of the recordings that I have examined

Speaker 11 that will implicate the Eisenbergs in the disappearance of baby Sabrina. None.

Speaker 29 Mitchell has analyzed hundreds of tapes during his career and is convinced that some of the most incriminating quotes may not even belong to the Eisenbergs.

Speaker 40 That means to me that it's possible that this whole matter of need to have you kill me all the way down through the baby's dead and is a television program.

Speaker 44 See, we have a lot of interference here.

Speaker 17 Remember when bugging expert Mike Parris talked about the sensitivity of the microphones used to tape the Eisenbergs?

Speaker 14 Have you been able to understand

Speaker 14 any of this?

Speaker 44 No, this is very unusual. It sounds like they had some sort of technical problem with the application.

Speaker 16 The damning evidence was nowhere to be found.

Speaker 5 All lies. Just all lies.
We knew that there was nothing on those tapes.

Speaker 7 It just goes to show what a furtive imagination the

Speaker 7 police had.

Speaker 51 All of this was enough to make Barry Cohen suspect the worst.

Speaker 14 You believe that the Eisenbergs were framed.

Speaker 13 Yeah, don't you?

Speaker 35 Why would they want to frame the Eisenbergs?

Speaker 13 Why? They wanted to get a quick confession, clear this case, and look good, but the only problem was they didn't have any facts, so they had to make them.

Speaker 38 The prosecution's case against the couple began collapsing.

Speaker 6 Now it was the feds who had some tough questions to answer.

Speaker 14 Prosecutors told the judges that the bugging conformed with state and federal laws. Is that true?

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 13 They were lies.

Speaker 20 They misled the judges to get permission to bug the house.

Speaker 13 Yeah, misled is a euphemism. They lied to the judge because they didn't have any evidence.

Speaker 46 For example, police told the judge that Merlene's 911 call was, quote, unemotional. Oh, God, my baby is coming.
My baby is coming.

Speaker 10 I think at the end of the day, the police crossed the line, and whether the Eisenbergs are guilty or innocent, they were victims of police misconduct here.

Speaker 33 In fact, two judges appointed to review the case found the Eisenberg tapes were, quote, largely unintelligible.

Speaker 18 They called some of the prosecution's statements false and pure fiction.

Speaker 17 In a stunning blow to the prosecution, the recordings were ruled inadmissible.

Speaker 12 The case against Marlene and Steve Eisenberg is all but officially thrown out.

Speaker 37 One week later, all charges were dropped.

Speaker 14 Felt vindicated?

Speaker 5 It was a relief. Vindication? No.
Relief? Yes.

Speaker 41 After our repeated calls to lead prosecutor Stephen Coons were not returned, we approached him for answers.

Speaker 50 And I would be interested in speaking to you about

Speaker 14 the prosecution of this case.

Speaker 54 Stephen Coons was temporarily demoted while he was investigated by the Department of Justice. His supervisors refused to comment on the outcome, but he is still a federal prosecutor.

Speaker 38 While it was a hollow victory for the Eisenbergs, today they hope a new clue will bring their daughter home.

Speaker 9 Putting all the pieces together to come up with an age-progressed image of what we feel Sabrina will look like.

Speaker 12 The old family secret recipe.

Speaker 5 Do you want a regular spoon or do you want to use that, Monica?

Speaker 15 Today, Steve and Marlene Eisenberg are settling into a normal family routine.

Speaker 11 And a chance you get to lick, huh?

Speaker 46 Caring for their children, William and Monica.

Speaker 7 You used to love that.

Speaker 6 But Sabrina is not forgotten.

Speaker 5 Come on, you pretty girl. Come on, pretty girl.

Speaker 46 They even keep a separate bedroom in their Maryland home reserved for their missing daughter.

Speaker 5 We go to bed at night. We say goodnight to all our kids.
We go downstairs, we kiss William, we kiss Monica, and we say goodnight, Sabrina. We walk by this room.

Speaker 38 Even buying her souvenirs from their vacations.

Speaker 5 When she comes home, this is her stuff and her room and her beanie babies and she can play with them and do anything she wants with them.

Speaker 38 They believe their daughter is somewhere alive and well and is being raised by a family who desperately wanted a child.

Speaker 14 Aren't these reminders painful though? Don't you go into that room and want to cry?

Speaker 5 No, I go into that room and say, okay, when are you coming home? You know, you're going to love these things. When are you coming home?

Speaker 5 It hurts. She's seven years old and she's not home yet.
That kills me.

Speaker 41 But Marlene has good reason to never give up hope.

Speaker 5 A possible break in the case of another missing child, Sabrina Eisenberg, who was abducted from her Florida home.

Speaker 17 It was May 2003 when a couple in Illinois began adoption proceedings on a six-year-old child who did not have a birth certificate.

Speaker 5 I thought she definitely looked like Sabrina as a baby. I mean, the pictures were very similar.

Speaker 52 Pontiac Police Chief Don Schlosser began an investigation.

Speaker 40 A woman whose identity no one knew handed the child over to a second party.

Speaker 38 A lot of people, including the Eisenbergs, believed the mystery behind Sabrina's disappearance was about to be solved.

Speaker 7 Gives us optimism that she's going to be coming back home to our family.

Speaker 5 It all just seemed like it was going to fit, that this could be really her. And, you know, we were just on pins and needles and on edge, just praying that it was going to be her.

Speaker 52 For two weeks, Steve and Merlene waited for the results of a DNA analysis.

Speaker 17 But Paloma's DNA did not match.

Speaker 5 It was very difficult and very emotional for all of us.

Speaker 46 Paloma's natural mother was a Mexican woman who abandoned her baby at a clinic on the Texas border.

Speaker 30 A nurse there gave the baby to her sister in Illinois.

Speaker 40 There was no malice in what she was doing. She simply went about the process in a wrong way.

Speaker 42 Eventually, the sister did adopt Paloma legally.

Speaker 14 Are you still angry?

Speaker 5 If they bring Sabrina home, I won't be angry. You know, and I have to pray that they do the right thing, that they will look for her and bring her home.

Speaker 7 There's pictures with Monica holding Sabrina, William, and Sabrina.

Speaker 38 Today, the Eisenbergs put their hope in those who stood by them.

Speaker 40 I'm a believer, and we're going to bring Sabrina home.

Speaker 5 The National Center for Missing Children. What day did she go missing? What is the child's race? Where did she go meet someone she met online?

Speaker 23 The staff at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has been invaluable.

Speaker 19 Here in the Forensic Imaging Unit, the cases don't even come back here until they're at least two years old.

Speaker 33 Joe Mullins is a forensic artist at the center who creates age-progressed photos.

Speaker 14 Maybe he was abducted at 21 months

Speaker 17 of what children may look like years after they've gone missing.

Speaker 9 21 years later, and this is how close we got.

Speaker 14 So this composite sketch led to his recovery?

Speaker 37 Yes, it did. It did.

Speaker 17 This technology has helped in the recovery of almost 800 children.

Speaker 19 There's a split screen of her brothers and sisters at about the same age as she would be today.

Speaker 17 Using facial features from Sabrina's older brother and sister, Mullins creates this image of what Sabrina might look like at age seven.

Speaker 5 I pray to God somebody can look at her and say, That's an Eisenberg.

Speaker 17 Do you really believe

Speaker 14 she'll come back to you?

Speaker 5 I believe it.

Speaker 14 I know you're only focused on finding your daughter, but there will still be people out there that will look at the two of you and say, You know what?

Speaker 37 They got away with it.

Speaker 5 And when she comes home, everyone will know the truth.

Speaker 5 And what we ask is that you look to help bring her home so you can see the truth too.

Speaker 12 If you have any information about Sabrina Eisenberg, please call 1-800-The Lost.

Speaker 55 This is the story of the one. As head of maintenance at a concert hall, he knows the show must always go on.

Speaker 55 That's why he works behind the scenes, ensuring every light is working, the HVAC is humming, and his facility shines.

Speaker 55 With Granger's supplies and solutions for every challenge he faces, plus 24-7 customer support, his venue never misses a beat. Call quickgranger.com or just stop by.

Speaker 55 Granger, for the ones who get it done.