Debbie Bradley, 25, has been separated from her husband Sean Bradley for four years. She met 29-year-old Irwin, a contract electrician, three years ago, when she was working as a cashier at a shoe store. She and her son, Michael Bradley, 5, moved in with Irwin and Blake, 8, his son from a previous relationship. Last year, Debbie got pregnant with Lisa.
“She was like, ‘Yeah, I finally get my little girl!’” says Festival Foods cashier Rebecca Guerrero, 23, who knows Bradley, a stay-at-home mom, from her frequent visits to the store. “And Baby Lisa’s just a beautiful, smiling, very happy baby. Deborah showed her off very proudly.” They are, says Bradley, “a typical American family. We have dinner together, we go to garage sales, we watch movies – all the normal stuff everybody does.”
Then came Oct. 3, a day on which several odd things happened. Though she initially told police she last checked on her daughter around 10:30pm, she says she put Lisa down around 6:40pm – slightly early because the little girl had been fussy that day. Then she and a neighbor sat and talked while the children watched a movie. Bradley admits she had several glasses of wine – enough that she felt drunk and may even have passed out. And she admits she forgot to close the window in the computer room, which she believes is the likely entry point for an intruder, and “that’s something I have to live with.”
Bradley says she volunteered to take a lie detector test but that when she took it she was “terrified and nervous and worried about my daughter. They told me I failed.”
Police aren’t commenting on the specifics of the case, including why the couple’s three cell phones, left in the kitchen, were also apparently taken that night. But they denied being close to arresting Bradley, something she says she feared was imminent. Officials have questioned a homeless man known to ride around the neighborhood on a red bicycle and also searched an abandoned house where diapers and a child’s backpack were found, but neither lead has produced a suspect. Meanwhile, an anonymous woman put up a $100,000 reward and hired a private investigator, Bill Stanton, to look into the case. “You have to expect people to have their eyes on [the parents],” says Stanton, 47, “but let’s keep one eye on the possible ‘other.’”
Most of the neighbors on the couple’s quiet, tree-lined street have been supportive, helping with searches and handing out fliers. Some, however, have their doubts. “I’m still skeptical about the couple,” says Bill Anders, 56, a neighbor and former deputy sheriff. “Why are the cell phones missing? You take the baby, and then you’re going to go over and take three cell phones? I just have this gut feeling that they’re involved,” he says. “I just hope it was someone that wanted a baby and is taking good care of her now,” says Thelma Beagley, 77, who lives two doors down. “That’s what all of us want – just to bring little Lisa home safe and sound.”
