Www.lobbyistsofficesofgrw.com has learned that the baby lisa Irwin-Bradley legal team’s Friday allegations claiming John Tanko bragged of involvement in baby Lisa’s disappearance have backfired. This is the second time in a week the legal team took an unsubstantiated or improbable claim public and hit a wall. Lawyer John Picerno broadcast a claim that Tanko had allegedly told someone he helped get baby Lisa for $300. Now it appears the legal team never talked to the teen boyalleged to have heard and repeated this comment. Russ Ptacek of Fox News talked to the teen boy, whose name has not been made public. The boy told Ptacek he never heard or said any such thing.
Various media sources pointed out the multilevel hearsay nature of the claim. And the problem played itself out when, during the weekend, Ptacek met with the boy who was alleged to have fingered Tanko and the claim fell apart.
The boy said:
* He has not seen Tanko since weeks before the kidnapping.
* He did not overhear Tanko say he was paid $300 to help get baby Lisa.
* He never said he overhead Tanko say he was paid $300 to help get baby Lisa.
What the boy says he did say to a friend was this: “(Tanko) was the kind of person where you could say here’s $300, take care of this baby and he would have done it.”
Recall the Phones
The haste with which the Bradley-Irwin legal team broadcast the rumor is reminiscent of its failed effort last week to recast potentially damning evidence against Deborah Bradley, baby Lisa’s mother, as proof of innocence. The evidence showed Bradley’s phone was accessed for various purposes from 10:57 p.m. Oct. 3 to 3:22 a.m. Oct. 4 — at or in close proximity to the Irwin-Bradley home. These times fall within the window when Bradley says baby Lisa was kidnapped. Two of those calls were efforts, whose success or failure has not been made public, to access Bradley’s voicemail.
How could this evidence prove Bradley innocent? Picerno said she would not have attempted to use the phone — even in blackout drunk condition, apparently — because she knew service had been cut for nonpayment. But the alternative was less plausible, that a kidnapper took the 10-month-old baby and the phones and spent the next few hours in close proximity to the scene trying to make a phone call, conduct Internet searches and access Bradley’s phone messages.
Jumping on the Tanko Rumor
Jumping on the Tanko rumor and publishing it offered a potential scenario slightly more believable. If there were two people involved in the crime, one could have taken baby Lisa while the other continuously sought to use a phone allegedly incapable of making outgoing calls. The scenario still lacks certain coherence. How much time would hypothetical kidnapper No. 2 have spent trying to use a nonfunctioning phone? What interest would he have in accessing Bradley’s messages? And why would he have selectively chosen to keep trying to use Bradley’s phone, when there were three phones to choose from?
Picerno could have made a reasonable effort to confirm what the teenage boy said by doing what Ptacek did, talking to the boy. Instead, he chose to spread a rumor that implicated Tanko, the homeless handyman, in a kidnapping. If Tanko was not some homeless guy but instead ran a multinational corporation, would Picerno have taken such a brazen risk? How many such risks can he afford to take without losing all credibility in the eyes of the public?
