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Couple just want baby back

By MELANIE AVE
Published December 23, 2006

FORT MYERS - Even now, the young parents smile, wide and toothy, when they talk about their baby boy with the black hair and gray eyes.

He was so cute when he twisted his mouth. And his cheeks were chubby like his mother's. Just look at his 2-day-old photo.

But their smiles disappear like flashes of light when they talk about the kidnapping.

In one of the nation's most unusual child abduction cases, they say the 7-week-old infant was taken Dec. 1 by a knife-wielding woman in a dark two-door SUV.

About 4 p.m. that day, his mother, a friend and their two babies got into the woman's car to give her directions to a nearby neighborhood. About two hours later and miles away, the driver told the mother to get out and leave the baby or she would kill her.

Police say the infant was abducted because his Brazilian parents failed to pay a debt to smugglers who brought them into the country illegally in 2005.

His parents dismiss that motive, insisting a crazy woman took their only child. A $21,000 award is being offered for information leading to the baby's safe return.

The Fort Myers Police Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs officials have investigated hundreds of leads.

An Amber Alert report has been issued. The baby's abduction has been featured on the America's Most Wanted television show and remains an almost daily story in the local newspaper.

Earlier this week, police questioned a man they said is connected to a human smuggling ring, Valter Coehlo, 45, who lives east of Fort Myers.

Coehlo, who is from the same small city as the couple, Itaipe, Brazil, was released Thursday to immigration officials for deportation.

Meanwhile, in the family's new hometown, sympathy is beginning to wither.

Sitting in the family's ramshackle mobile home, Maria Fatima Ramos Dos Santos, the boy's 23-year-old mother, rubs her hands over the baby's bright red "My First Christmas" outfit.

Her husband, Jurandir Gomes Costa, a 26-year-old tile layer, stares at the floor.

He says he just wanted to give his family a better life in America.

* * *

Many people here in this Gulf Coast city of about 50,000 people are divided over the Baby Bryan case.

Fliers showing a police sketch of the woman who drove away with the baby - a heavyset Spanish-speaking female with straight black hair - hang on some store windows and doors. But much of the initial community fervor to find the baby has been replaced with questions.

Why did Dos Ramos get into a car with a stranger? Why did the family immigrate illegally? Were they up front with investigators about being smuggled into the country?

Some residents have even called for the couple's deportation.

"Honest to God, I think it's their own fault," said Pam Davis, 39, who works at a pet store a few miles from the mobile home park where the family lives. "I feel bad for the baby, but ...

"They knew when the baby was taken the reason why."

The pet store's flier about Bryan has disappeared but another about a lost white Maltese remains.

On the other side of the issue is Fort Myers uniform shop owner Pierre Delva, 56, who feels sorry for the family.

"Losing a newborn baby, that's painful," said Delva, who immigrated to the United States from Haiti in 1976 and became a U.S. citizen in 1988. "That has nothing to do with them being here illegally.

"The baby's here. The baby's an American."

* * *

Both Gomes and Dos Santos are from large, poor families.

Gomes said he worked on a sugar cane plantation, where he earned about $5 a day. Dos Santos cleaned and babysat for a doctor, earning about $70 a month.

"The life was very hard," Gomes said in his native Portuguese, through an interpreter. He said he heard the United States "was a wonderful place" where it was "easy to make money."

They connected with smugglers and Gomes said he came to the United States in April 2005. They sold their house to come up with the money for Dos Santos to follow in September 2005.

They refused to say how much they paid to human traffickers but both said they were paying off their debt, which was a "small amount."

Once in Fort Myers, Gomes found work laying tile and Dos Santos worked in a day care. She gave birth Nov. 3 to a healthy 8-pound, 5-ounce baby.

"It was the best feeling in the world," Dos Santos said.

On Dec. 1, Dos Santos said she and her baby were with a friend and her 8-month-old child when a woman stopped and asked for directions.

They got in her SUV and showed her the way. At some point, the friend and her child got out.

But the woman drove off with Dos Santos and her baby.

Dos Santos said Bryan was sleeping in a child seat when the woman pulled out a sharp knife.

"The lady told me she had a baby," Dos Santos said. "Her mother took the baby" because she wasn't able to take care of it.

A Fort Myers grandmother told the News-Press she was pushing her grandson in a stroller the day of the kidnapping when a woman in a black truck asked for directions to a hospital.

The woman, Norma Rios, 56, told the newspaper the driver twice asked her to get into the truck but she refused.

Gomes and Dos Santos say they don't understand why it's taking so long to find their baby. They refuse to believe he is hurt in any way.

"It's very difficult for us," said Dos Santos, who says she is too depressed to eat. "We have faith in God we'll have him back."

Anyone with information about the disappearance of Baby Bryan is encouraged to call the Fort Myers Police Department at 239 338-2120.

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Melanie Ave can be reached at mave@sptimes.com or (727)893-8813.

[Last modified December 23, 2006, 00:44:17]