© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 9, 2001

In an interrogation room at the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, Detective Linda Burton peppered Marlene Aisenberg with questions about her 5-month-old daughter, Sabrina.

Marlene and her husband, Steve Aisenberg, had reported that while they slept, their 16-pound infant had vanished from her crib. Besides Sabrina, all that was missing was the yellow blanket that went everywhere she did.

The deputies had been suspicious of the Aisenbergs from the first hours they arrived at the quiet cul-de-sac in the suburban eastern Hillsborough neighborhood.

Steve had passed a sheriff's polygraph exam, showing no deception when a detective asked, "Did you have any involvement in Sabrina's disappearance?" and "Do you know for sure who removed Sabrina from your residence?"

But Marlene had not passed. The sheriff's examiner said her polygraph results were inconclusive.

Now, having told and retold their story, the Aisenbergs had become the chief suspects. The detectives had the couple in for more questioning.

They put Steve in one room and had him compose a time line to account for his whereabouts leading up to Sabrina's disappearance. Marlene was next door, with Detective Burton, the two of them together at one of those institutional metal desks.

The detective bore in, her tone becoming accusatory: Had Marlene been faithful to Steve? Was Sabrina even his child?

Marlene drew her legs up in a fetal position. She looked down and closed her eyes. Her body language suggested to the detective that the mother was about to confess. Burton moved closer and leaned in, waiting for the words she wanted to hear.

But before Marlene could say more, the door opened. Another detective told Burton that the questioning had to stop.

Steve had decided that he and his wife were done answering questions. Were they being charged? he asked. If not, they wanted to leave. Like, now.

The detectives were back at square one: They strongly suspected the Aisenbergs were guilty -- but lacked anything solid to prove it.

* * *

What followed was a twisting, turning, it-has-it-all investigation in which truth was the first casualty.

More than three years after Sabrina disappeared, and 17 months after a federal grand jury indicted Steve and Marlene, the government ended up dropping all the charges. Now it's the investigators who are under investigation -- for possible crimes against the Aisenbergs.

If you are the Aisenbergs' lawyer, you are in full roar: Steve and Marlene are the victims of a frame-up, of one of the most shameful prosecutions that an untrustworthy government ever masterminded. It's a horrible black eye for American jurisprudence, a disgrace.

If you are among the disgraced, you watch, wounded, from the sidelines. A judge has called your evidence "pure fiction." Your side has admitted that it overreached, that you made mistakes, that the process was tainted.

It is a bitter pill for investigators, who still think the Aisenbergs are guilty but lack enough evidence to convince 12 jurors beyond a reasonable doubt. They believe that thanks to clever lawyering, the Aisenbergs not only got away with it, they managed to recast themselves as victims.

After nearly four years, two things are certain: Sabrina is missing, and somebody has suffered a terrible injustice.

* * *

6:42 a.m., Monday, Nov. 24, 1997.

A 911 call comes in to the Sheriff's Office. It's Marlene Aisenberg.

"I need the police! My baby has been kidnapped!"

"Alright, take a deep breath," the dispatcher said. "Why do you think your baby's been kidnapped?"

"I . . . I just got up to wake my son up," Marlene said, sobbing. "My garage door was wide open . . . and my baby's gone out of her crib."

The dispatcher asked about the baby's age and whether the house appeared broken into. She told the Aisenbergs not to touch anything.

Seventeen minutes later, Deputy Curtis Warren arrived at Springville Drive in Bloomingdale, a tree-lined subdivision about 12 miles southeast of Tampa.

Marlene already had changed out of the white T-shirt she had slept in and was wandering around the cul-de-sac.

"She wasn't screaming or hollering, "My baby's gone... I don't know where my baby's at,' " a neighbor said.

In child-abduction cases, deputies are trained to rule out the parents first. Then they focus on siblings, then people with access to the child, and finally, strangers.

For parents who had just lost a daughter, Deputy Warren noted, Marlene and Steve "did not appear very upset."

Steve was 34 and sold new homes for a living. Marlene was 35 and worked part time at her own business, a toddler/mom program called Playtime Pals.

They married in 1987 and had William, 8, and Monica, 4 -- four years apart by plan because Marlene didn't want more than one child in diapers at a time. And there was Sabrina; they had her for not quite five months.

The Aisenbergs said they had watched Disney's The Santa Clause on TV, tucked the kids in bed and turned in themselves about midnight. Sabrina was sound asleep when Marlene last checked on her at 11 p.m.

They didn't hear a peep all night, even out of Brownie, the family's 2-year-old mutt. Marlene said she woke about 6:30 a.m. because the fish tank in the living room was making a sucking noise. She went to check on it and noticed a sliver of light through the open laundry room door, leading to the open garage. With a growing sense of dread, she went directly to Sabrina's room. The crib was empty. She screamed for Steve. They called 911.

Detectives Burton and William Blake found no sign of a break-in -- no jimmied locks, no disturbed windows, no apparent struggle, no ransom note. The only things missing: Sabrina and her blanket.

Burton, an experienced child abuse investigator, studied the house. Toys were everywhere. Dirty dishes covered the kitchen counter. Photos of Monica and William were on display, but she couldn't find pictures of Sabrina.

In the master bedroom, one side of the bed was covered with clothes. No way two people could have slept there, Burton thought. Maybe one, but not two.

"It was out of control," Burton said of the house. "What I call chaos."

Burton equated the home's messy condition with possible parental neglect; she thought Sabrina could have swallowed some small object on the "dirty" floor. The lack of Sabrina photos made her wonder if the third child had been wanted, loved.

Two hours after the kidnapping call, crime-scene technicians began combing the house for clues -- blood, hair, fiber, anything that might tie a suspect to Sabrina.

They took photographs, dusted her crib for fingerprints and impounded the couple's minivan and car. They bagged a muddy shovel from the garage as possible evidence.

Treating Steve and Marlene as "grieving parents," the crime-scene technicians did not ask them to surrender their clothes to test for mud or blood. They left the crib behind.

The Aisenbergs gave detectives the names of a babysitter and two housekeepers who had contact with Sabrina; they couldn't think of any enemies who might have done such a horrible thing.

As they told and retold the story, inconsistencies emerged. Nothing dramatic, but to a detective, the little conflicts suggested people having a tough time keeping their story straight.

Marlene had told Deputy Warren that the noisy fish tank woke her up. Later she said that she woke, as usual, to the TV alarm, set to the morning news. Originally, she said she had gone to the fish tank, noticed daylight through the laundry room door, then went to Sabrina's room. Now she said she woke William first and then noticed the sliver of light. There was no mention of the fish tank.

Marlene stressed the open laundry room door; Steve told detectives the doors and windows were closed because the air conditioning was on.

Marlene said they put the baby in her crib at 6 p.m.; Steve mentioned 9 p.m. Marlene said Brownie got outside after they went to bed; Steve remembered the dog inside.

The Aisenbergs said Brownie sometimes didn't bark at strangers. Their 8-year-old told Detective John Myers that the dog barked at everyone, even his grandparents. The boy said he thought that whoever took his sister had to be someone who knew them.

Marlene told one deputy that even if Brownie had barked, they wouldn't have heard her, because they're all sound sleepers. She told another deputy she was a light sleeper.

The more time detectives spent with Steve and Marlene, the more suspicious they got.

Steve, bespectacled, with a bland poker face, seemed oddly unemotional. Marlene would go from indifferent to "hysterical." A few neighbors commented that she did not seem appropriately upset for someone whose child had just vanished. Detective Burton noted that amid all the commotion, Marlene fell asleep on the sofa.

The detectives noticed that Marlene spoke in the past tense about how she "loved" her baby, which they took as a slip that suggested she knew Sabrina was dead or how she had vanished. Marlene also said she knew "Sabrina is being taken care of" and offered: "I don't like the baby stage. I like the toddler stage."

That night, from their living room sofa, the couple pleaded on TV for Sabrina's safe return.

"This morning someone came into our home and took our baby, Sabrina Paige, out of her crib and out of our home," Marlene said. "And I'm begging that person to please bring our baby back to us."

To some people, she came off stiff, aloof even. She brought to mind Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who pleaded with a car jacker to return her children, but later confessed that she made up her story; she had drowned them in a lake.

Marlene says that she broke down right after the broadcast, that it wasn't fair for anyone to judge her.

But they did judge.

* * *

Tuesday morning, the day after Sabrina vanished.

Short of a confession, the detectives wouldn't believe Marlene. They suspected the Aisenbergs faked the kidnapping to cover up something. But they needed evidence.

At the Sheriff's Office, Maj. Gary Terry assembled a "Sabrina task force" of local and federal law officers.

The FBI focused on a possible kidnapping across state lines. The federal agents came to be as suspicious of Marlene as the sheriff's investigators.

FBI Special Agent Joe Navarro talked to Marlene about her TV appeal the night before. Why hadn't she mentioned anything about Sabrina's feeding schedule? Why hadn't she expressed any concern about the baby's clothing, or whether she was cold?

Navarro wrote: "Marlene appeared to take no interest in what I was saying and indicated that she did not want to go before the media again."

Another FBI agent noted that Marlene told him the sliding-glass doors leading to the back yard were never locked, then laughed. "That won't happen again," he quoted her.

The investigators knew cases like this could be made -- or lost -- in the first 48 hours. The clock was ticking. Nobody wanted another JonBenet Ramsey. They decided their best hope was to get Marlene to crack.

Throughout Tuesday, as bloodhounds and dive teams searched woods and ponds around the Aisenberg home, the couple came in for more questioning.

When Steve realized they were narrowing in on Marlene, he called his father and brother, both lawyers. They counseled him to get a lawyer. The Aisenbergs' rabbi recommended one, a fellow member of Congregation Rodeph Shalom: Barry Cohen.

In Tampa, Cohen had a reputation as one of the best criminal lawyers money can buy. His client roster included cops, judges and prosecutors suspected of corruption, and politicians charged with bribery. He had represented mobsters and sports heroes. When the situation called for it, he knew how to try his cases in the media.

With a criminal lawyer coming onboard, the detectives knew things would change, starting with: They would lose access to their suspects. That evening, the detectives brought Marlene and Steve back to the Sheriff's Office.

They put Steve and Marlene in separate rooms. While Steve wrote a time line of his activities for Sunday night and Monday morning, detectives Burton and Herb Metzgar grilled Marlene.

Marlene said they told her about her inconclusive polygraph test the day before and said they wanted to try again. Detective Metzgar handed her a form with her Miranda rights, then hooked her up to the polygraph. It was Metzgar who had given Steve his passing grade the day before.

Metzgar asked Marlene four key questions:

"Were you truthful in your statement to me about Sabrina's disappearance?"

"Did you have any involvement in the disappearance of Sabrina from your house?"

"Do you know for sure who took Sabrina from your house?"

"Have you withheld any information from me regarding Sabrina's disappearance?"

He concluded that Marlene failed.

Burton hammered at Marlene: Did she have an affair? Did Steve have an affair? Whose child is Sabrina? Was she really wanted?

Maybe Skinheads took Sabrina, Marlene offered.

No, Burton said, they would have left a note. Besides, what would a teenage boy want with a 5-month-old?

In one of his interviews, Steve had said he did nothing around the house. Burton suggested that Marlene was a frazzled mom, driven to the breaking point by a husband who didn't help with the parenting or the housework.

No, Marlene said, Steve helped her plenty, and she had lots of time away from the house to do her own thing.

"Asked if she knew who had the baby, Marlene stated no, but was nodding yes," Burton wrote in her report.

Why didn't they have pictures of her on the refrigerator? What about the video that Marlene took two days before the disappearance? Why was it the only video of Sabrina?

Marlene said she wasn't good about getting film developed. As for the video camera, she said, it hadn't been working.

Burton and Marlene were alone in the room. That was when Burton said Marlene curled up, looked down and blurted out: "I'm glad I took the video before I did it."

Burton says Marlene opened her eyes, looked at the detective and "slowly moved her body closer."

In the room next door, Steve says he had a "sinking feeling" in his stomach. In less than 45 minutes, he tried to call his brother, the Massachusetts lawyer, 11 times. The brother told Steve: "You've got to tell them you want to leave."

For two days, they had waived their rights to a lawyer. They had answered every question put to them. They gave permission to search their house and cars. They took polygraph tests -- three between them. They were willing to give blood, hair and fingerprint samples.

"Are you charging us with anything?" Steve says he asked. No, the detective replied.

"Then I'd like to talk to an attorney. . . . I'd like to see my wife right now and go."

Detective Metzgar walked in on Burton's interview with Marlene. He said Steve wanted to talk to his wife. The interview stopped.

Burton never got a chance to follow up on what she later presented as Marlene's slipup: "I'm glad I took the video before I did it."

The detective drove the Aisenbergs home, to where TV crews and reporters were camped out. In the back seat, Marlene wept.

* * *

With Barry Cohen on the case, the dynamics changed overnight from a high-profile missing person case into a battle royal.

He set conditions for interviews with the Aisenbergs. The rules kept changing. They could talk about leads without their lawyer, but not about their conduct the night Sabrina disappeared. He wanted the interviews tape-recorded. He wanted the police reports, especially the ones that covered what Marlene and Steve told them before Cohen entered the case.

There was no way Maj. Terry would let Cohen set the rules, and there certainly was no way he would hand over investigative notes to uncooperative suspects.

"It is not the practice of this office to be intimidated and influenced in the performance of our duties," Terry wrote to Cohen.

The two of them went way back on opposite sides of big cases, including a 1983 Terry-led bribery investigation of a Hillsborough judge whom Cohen represented.

They weren't always adversaries. The lawyer once successfully defended Terry's son, a former Hillsborough deputy, when he was accused of forcing a woman to pose for nude photos so that she and three friends could avoid arrest. With Cohen representing the deputy, prosecutors did not file charges. They passed the case to a grand jury, which chose not to indict.

In some ways, the senior Terry and Cohen were alike. Both hated bullies. Both liked hot-button cases.

Cohen, then 58, drove a gold Mercedes and wore black ostrich-skin boots given to him by a client. He cultivated the image of a lone crusader for the underdog against the all-powerful government.

Terry, then 50, a buttoned-down homicide commander, fit everyone's image of a cop's cop. His detectives solved some of Florida's most sensational crimes and put notorious murderers on death row, including serial killer Bobby Joe Long.

Now Cohen and Terry would go at it.

Cohen said he believed in the Aisenbergs' innocence from the moment he met them. He instructed his troops to knock on every door, follow every lead, do whatever it took to shift the focus away from the Aisenbergs.

His lead sleuth and media spin man was Kevin Kalwary, then 44, a tightly wound, former TV and print reporter who had joined Cohen's firm a year earlier.

Known for gulping handfuls of vitamins, Kalwary spent much of those early days choreographing media strategy. He researched libel and slander law to determine if action could be taken against sheriff's officials who were talking publicly about the case.

His time sheets also reflect that he spent 21 hours researching postpartum psychosis and filicide, clinical vernacular for baby-killing by parents. Kalwary says the defense needed information about how a mother who kills her baby behaves, to show that Marlene wasn't acting that way.

He spent far more time investigating the theme of official lawlessness. Kalwary made it his business to second-guess the detectives at every turn. He picked apart the handling of the crime scene, notably a delay in taking fingerprints from a rear sliding door, an intruder's possible point of entry.

Nine days after Sabrina vanished, the deputies came back to collect the clothes the Aisenbergs had worn that night. By then, the clothes had been laundered.

The detectives had not immediately separated the parents, per routine, to keep them from comparing stories. They interviewed 8-year-old William, a key witness, for only a few minutes. They did not immediately seal the house, allowing the Aisenbergs and family members free reign before the deputies collected evidence.

The detectives did not tape-record the Aisenbergs' interviews. Taking thorough statements in a potential homicide case would seem important, but some investigators said they didn't take notes; they reconstructed statements in reports written later.

One FBI agent didn't keep his notes. He also said sheriff's Sgt. Robert Bullara told him his office would handle the paperwork, so the agent didn't need to bother writing reports about witness statements.

Kalwary accused investigators of twisting the Aisenbergs' statements to make them look guilty while omitting comments that made them look innocent -- an allegation that may or may not be true, but an allegation easily made given the absence of tape-recordings or meaningful notes.

Marlene said she hadn't made the statement, "I'm glad I took the video before I did it." She said there were photos of Sabrina, and that detectives lied about Brownie barking at everyone and other discrepancies.

Investigating the investigators, Kalwary found that some of the deputies on the case were hardly candidates for the law enforcement dream team.

Curtis Warren, then 40, the first deputy to arrive that morning, had received multiple negative evaluations for sloppy report writing.

Detective Blake, then 49, one of the lead investigators, was an ex-banker with political connections -- but had only a year's experience as a homicide detective.

Burton, then 46, the lead investigator, had been named officer of the year in 1997. But two high-profile cases fell apart when defense attorneys accused her of embellishing evidence that hurt their clients, and withholding evidence that might have helped them.

Kalwary also discovered that she participated in a practice that was widespread at the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office in the high-crime 1980s and early 1990s: Under pressure to produce an acceptable arrest rate, she fibbed to inflate arrest statistics.

All this made fodder for Cohen, a master of legal pyrotechnics and trial by sound bite. He took a swipe in public at Terry for relying on "biased" FBI statistics showing that strangers rarely abducted babies. He sent Terry another study about infants abducted by strangers.

But most of the 119 infants in the study were taken from or near a hospital -- 112 by women, many of whom wanted a child to fill a void in their lives. Of the 30 babies taken from a home, the offender often got in by a ruse or verbal con, removing any need for forced entry. Not one of the 119 cases in the study was similar to Sabrina's situation: an infant snatched from an occupied house in the middle of the night.

Cohen inundated the detectives with names of possible abductors -- childless women, nannies, tradespeople who visited the home, present and former business associates, players on Steve's soccer team, friends of the family.

When the detectives gave only scant attention to a potential suspect, Cohen jumped on them for ignoring information that might help the Aisenbergs prove their innocence.

Cohen's lawyering didn't get the investigators to back off; it only fueled their determination.

They stepped up efforts to find something in the Aisenbergs' background to show they were capable of hurting Sabrina. They checked out the couple's marriage and issues of infidelity, as well as the way they treated their other children. They asked whether Steve flirted with girls and if he had a temper at work or was domineering at home.

FBI profilers watched the Aisenbergs, and sheriff's investigators picked through their trash. (Afraid that reporters would root through their garbage, the Aisenbergs asked deputies to take it away.)

In the refuse, they found a few sketches and scribbles, a final notice for a $154 electric bill and a stuffed yellow bunny with a missing nose.

By Week 3, the Sabrina investigation was heading toward a dead end. Investigators had crime-scene problems and unrelenting media coverage. Despite one of the largest ground, air and water searches in Florida history, they had no physical evidence, no eyewitnesses and two suspects who weren't talking. And no sign of Sabrina.

Needing a new direction, Terry's task force developed a strategy that was unorthodox and risky. It might not only bring down the Aisenbergs, but themselves.