Rhune
ForumsNet Administrator
    
 
Gender: 
Posts: 292
|
 |
FBI studies DNA in second abandoned-child case
« on: May 3rd, 2003, 12:25pm » |
 Quote  Modify
|
FBI studies DNA in second abandoned-child case
Girl said to resemble Florida baby who disappeared in 1997
Friday, May 2, 2003 Posted: 8:53 PM EDT (0053 GMT)
PONTIAC, Illinois (CNN) -- The FBI is analyzing the DNA of a second abandoned child in Illinois to see whether the 5-year-old girl could belong to a Florida couple whose baby was apparently taken from her crib in 1997.
The case mirrors one that made national headlines this week. The FBI determined through DNA that a boy abandoned in February at a hospital near Chicago, Illinois, was not a missing child from North Carolina despite numerous similarities.
In the new case, the girl in question was abandoned in 1998 at a hospital in Texas near the Mexican border. A year earlier, a 5-month-old girl was reported missing from her crib in a suburban Tampa, Florida, home.
The girl was brought to Pontiac from McAllen, Texas, in 1998, Pontiac Police Chief Donald Schlosser said.
The parents of Sabrina Aisenberg, in Tampa, noticed similarities between their missing daughter and a picture taken when the Illinois girl was 2. The pictures were posted to the Web site for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children when the foster parents of the girl, Paloma, started the adoption process.
It will take weeks for the FBI to analyze the DNA in a blood sample from Paloma to determine if she is the child taken from Tampa, Schlosser said.
The parents of the missing Florida girl said they are hopeful that Paloma is their daughter.
"I'm hopeful and excited, but I'm trying to temper that," Steven Aisenberg said.
"The hope is from the images we've seen. There's a strong resemblance," he said. "From the information concerning how she got to be where she is, this really could be Sabrina."
A relative of the foster family in Pontiac found the baby at the Texas hospital and brought her to live in Pontiac, 90 miles southwest of Chicago, Schlosser said.
Nothing is known about the girl's parents or who abandoned Paloma.
In Illinois, a Livingston County judge granted the family temporary custody of Paloma in 1998, but would not grant full custody unless a birth certificate could be found, Schlosser said.
Schlosser said Paloma's foster parents have been cooperative.
In an attempt to find the girl's birth parents, a photograph of Paloma was placed on www.missingkids.com. It was there in mid-March that a Michigan woman saw the photo and noticed a resemblance to a photo of Sabrina at five months, and called Steven Aisenberg.
"We always believed she's going to come home, we've never doubted that," said Marlene Aisenberg. "We know she'll come home, it's just a matter of when she'll come home, and this may be it."
In an interview Thursday, Steven Aisenberg said news of the Chicago boy prompted them to go public with their hope that the girl in Pontiac is their daughter.
The Aisenbergs, who have two other children, ages 13 and 9, were under suspicion when Sabrina disappeared from her crib November 24, 1997, in the family's Valrico, Florida, home.
Investigators with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department secretly recorded conversations in the couple's home. Based on the transcripts, the Aisenbergs were indicted by a grand jury for lying to investigators in 1999. But when the tapes were played in court, a judge ruled that the muffled conversations were inaudible, and the case was thrown out.
Todd Foster, the Aisenbergs' attorney, said he has advised them not to go to Illinois until more is known in the case.
"I have hopes, absolutely, that this is [Sabrina]," he said. "Nothing would please us more."
|
Sponsored by: The Fans!
Home
Help
Search
Members
Chat
Member Map
Login
Register
Reply
Add Poll
Notify of replies
Send Topic
Print