Victims or suspects?

When a child disappears, the police begin with the parents. It's a difficult but necessary starting point for the investigation.

By JEANNE MALMGREN

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 18, 2000

A child, suddenly, is missing. The frantic parents call 911. Police arrive. The questions begin.

When did you last see your child? How did you discover she was gone? Were the doors locked? Where have you looked for her? Did you check with neighbors? Friends? The child's grandparents? What does your child look like? What was she wearing?

Subtly, carefully, the police dig deeper.

Has your child had problems in school lately? Problems at home? Are you and your child getting along? Where were you when she disappeared?

Maybe the child simply wandered off and got lost. Maybe she ran away. Maybe someone snatched her, a non-custodial parent or a stranger.

Or maybe the parents had something to do with the child's disappearance.

The disappearance last week of 8-year-old Zachary Bernhardt of Clearwater is a confounding and heart-rending case. Investigators from Clearwater, Tampa and the FBI spent days searching near the family's apartment complex.

They say they have uncovered no evidence of a crime and don't know what happened to Zach, who disappeared Sept 11.

Still, the case brings to light a difficult aspect of police work. Investigators called in to question parents of any missing child must walk a fine line. Are the parents victims of a crime? Or might they be suspects? And how do police cope with those vastly different possibilities?

"It has to be handled with a lot of care and diplomacy," said St. Petersburg police Sgt. Mike Puetz, a homicide investigator who has worked on child disappearance cases. "You have to be extremely sensitive to the situation the parent is going through and be understanding of that."

But eventually investigators must ask certain questions, Puetz said.

"Parents need to understand that when law enforcement seems to turn a suspicious eye on them, it's a routine part of the investigation. We need to get that out of the way early, so we can get on to other parts of the investigation. We simply explain that we have to ask these questions, so please be cooperative and we'll get through this as quickly as possible."

Sometimes it is clear that the family has nothing to do with the disappearance of a child. In 1993, 12-year-old Polly Klaas was abducted from the bedroom where she and two friends were having a slumber party. A man who had spent most of his life behind bars was later convicted of her killing.

"This doesn't make up for the past, but our thoughts are with you," President Clinton told the family after the trial.

Other cases are far murkier. Police in Boulder, Colo., didn't follow some basic procedures, such as securing the crime scene, when they investigated the disappearance of JonBenet Ramsey several years ago, Puetz said.

"They looked at it as strictly an abduction, and it ended up being a homicide. So some of the initial steps that should have been taken weren't. They missed some vital evidence," he said. They also were criticized for their initial failure to question John and Patsy Ramsey separately and compare their stories.

Investigators did better in another famous case, that of Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who claimed her two boys were abducted by a carjacker. Eventually Smith confessed to drowning the toddlers, then concocting the carjacking story to cover up the crime.

"That was a case where all possibilities were considered (by investigators) and it eventually went back to the mother," Puetz said.

Detective Pat Galligan of the Riviera Beach police department in Palm Beach County was one of the lead investigators in the 1994 disappearance of 7-year-old Christina Holt. The girl's mother, Pauline Zile, told police she lost Christina in the restroom of a Fort Lauderdale flea market.

A massive search was launched. Zile went on television, as Susan Smith had, and tearfully pleaded for her daughter's return. Actually the child was already dead, and Zile knew it. Her husband had killed Christina and buried her in a shallow grave.

The case unraveled step by step. First, investigators noticed that Zile referred to her daughter in the past tense. A stuffed animal she clutched in that televised press conference, saying it was Christina's favorite, turned out to be brand-new. Security tapes from the flea market showed that Christina was never there. Finally, Zile failed a polygraph test.

Galligan has since investigated several other missing child cases. The polygraph is one of his best tools, he said, even before he turns the machine on.

"The first thing I like to do is either rule the parents in or out (as suspects). So I ask them to take a polygraph. If they don't want to do that, that's a red flag right there."

A parent who is innocent often will be eager to take a lie detector test, Galligan said. "They want to know where their child is at. Their number one thing is to help us find that child, as quickly as possible."

Galligan said his department organizes a search and asks other law enforcement agencies such as the sheriff's office and FBI to help "if we feel the child is in danger, or possibly murdered, in which case we'd also bring in the cadaver dogs."

If Galligan has a hunch the parents are somehow involved in their child's disappearance, he employs another technique: relentless interrogation.

"If I think they're lying to me or deceiving me, I'm going to stay with them and work on them until we get to the truth of the matter," he said.

Figuring out if someone is lying often is not difficult. Warren Holmes, a Miami polygraph examiner, has spent 45 years administering lie detector tests for law enforcement agencies, lawyers and corporate clients. He has assisted in several child abduction cases.

"People all lie the same way," Holmes said. "They think they're so individual, so clever, but they betray themselves in predictable ways."

The first, most obvious, clue is their emotions.

"People who are telling the truth display their feelings," Holmes said. "Other people, you have to ask them, "How do you feel about this?' "

Sometimes people show emotions that seem incongruous. Marlene Aisenberg, the Brandon mother who said her baby, Sabrina, was taken from her crib three years ago, wept when she appeared on TV to talk about the disappearance. But she later aroused suspicion by smiling as she and her husband left their house to be questioned by police. The Aisenbergs' attorney, Barry Cohen, said the smile was misconstrued: "People react to stress differently."

Sabrina has not been found. Federal authorities suspect the Aisenbergs but have charged them only with lying to investigators. The family moved out of the Tampa Bay area last year.

Holmes, the Miami investigator, said he becomes suspicious that someone is lying when he or she becomes defensive under questioning.

"The minute you challenge them, or question the validity of their story, they blow up. And they tend to project their guilt. They say, "The cops screwed me.' or "The prosecutor screwed me.' They blame everybody and everything but themselves."

The ultimate litmus test, Holmes said, is to ask a simple question: What is your theory of what happened? An innocent person, someone who is truly looking for an answer, will suggest numerous possibilities. A guilty person won't.

"Guilty people don't have to theorize because they already know the answer," Holmes said.

Lillian McCabe, a former child protective investigator for the Department of Children and Families, always started by asking parents for their version of events.

McCabe, now a family services counselor for the agency, spent nearly nine years investigating allegations of child abuse. She was often the first person to question parents who were under suspicion of harming their children. The atmosphere usually was tense.

"Before you even started questioning them, you had to deal with the emotions they were having," McCabe said. "Then I'd ask them to tell me what happened. I'd let them tell their story first."

Listening carefully to that story usually tells you where to look next, said Puetz, the St. Petersburg homicide investigator.

"You scan the horizon for smoke, and then you go to those areas where you see a little plume."

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