The parents of missing Missouri baby Lisa Irwin are upset with what they call "tough tactics" by the police to extract information from them about what happened to their 10-month old.
The couple was displeased with how they were treated on Thursday during a day-long interrogation. Tactics allegedly used by the police included trying to turn the parents against one another, directly accused the mother of having failed a polygraph test, and accusing her of having something to do with the disappearance of her baby girl.
The parents say they are cooperating with the investigation but a statement from the Kansas City police claims the couple "no longer want to talk to detectives."
In the three days since baby Lisa went missing her parents Jeremy Irwin and Deborah Bradley have consistently said that their daughter was taken from her crib in the middle of the night while Jeremy Irwin was working an overnight shift and Bradley was sleeping.
"From the start when they've questioned me, once I couldn't fill in gaps, it turned into 'you did it, you did it,'" Deborah Bradley told "Good Morning America" on Friday. "They took a picture down from the table and said 'look at your baby! And do what's right for her!' I kept saying I don't know ... I just sat there. I didn't even ask to leave - I just let them keep asking questions."
Jeremy Irwin said that he needed to take a break from the intensive questioning and soon saw a police press conference where they stated that the parents had ceased to work with police on the investigation.
"We were in interrogated for a really long time Tuesday there again, answering questions….I just couldn't' take it anymore," he said. "I told them I had to have a break -- no more questions today. I asked to be let go, and they let me go from police station. An hour late was when we saw the press conference from them."
Both parents vehemently denied on "GMA" that they had any involvement with their daughter's disappearance, and reiterated their willingness to cooperate.
"We continue to ask, answer all the questions the best we can and do everything they tell us to do and so I mean, we've done everything we can do," Bradley said.
That conflicted with what Kansas City, Mo., police Capt. Steve Young said earlier.
"The mother and father no longer want to talk to detectives," Young said. "From an investigative standpoint, we enjoyed their cooperation. So far, [it] has been very beneficial to the case. But yeah, you can imagine it doesn't help the case" [that the cooperation has ended].
"Like I've said before, the cooperation of the parents is -- they live in the house.
They intimately have information of what's been going on.
They know the child, they were maybe one of our best bets to help find this child," Young said. "This doesn't help the investigation."
Ashley Irwin said her brother and Bradley would release a new statement on the case on Friday.
Police have said that they are still investigating what happened at the house Monday night when the baby, who the couple nicknamed "Pumpkin Pie," disappeared from her crib. But as soon as police announced Thursday that the parents had stopped cooperating, the police mobile command center -- which was right down the road from the home -- was closed. The police also pulled down the crime scene tape at the house.
"This evening we will be shutting down the command post. We believe we have done all we can regarding geographic searches and will continue tracking leads as we get them or develop additional information," police Officer Darin Snapp said in a news release Thursday.
Still, Officer Young confirms what the police have said since their initial questioning of the parents earlier this week – that they are not suspects in their child's disappearance.
"The investigation is directed and led by hard information," Young added. "Again, we don't have any suspects. If we had enough to charge anybody with, we probably would be issuing charges."
The dispute over whether Bradley and Irwin were cooperating came after ABC News learned the couple was trying to make lists of possible suspects for police by thinking about all of the people they cross paths with on a daily basis.
That meant they were listing every grocer, utility worker who may have been in the house, former friend, classmate, neighbor or acquaintances who may have wanted a child.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-baby-lisa-parents-upset-police-tough-tactics/story?id=14688581
