The parents of Lisa Irwin appeared this morning on national news shows and said they were frustrated with the tactics of Kansas City police investigators.
Local police representatives, meanwhile, insisted Friday that the search continues for the missing 10-month-old girl despite the parents’ decision to stop talking with police.
“Our main focus is finding Lisa Irwin, and we hope to continue the cooperative communication that we have had with the parents,” said Sgt. Stacey Graves, a Kansas City police spokeswoman.
Early Thursday evening, a police spokesman announced that Jeremy Irwin and Deborah Bradley, the parents of Lisa, no longer were cooperating with the police. Later that night, Ashley Irwin, an aunt of Lisa, told reporters that Lisa’s parents were, in fact, continuing to assist authorities.
Friday morning, appearing on “Good Morning America” and the “Today” show, Lisa’s parents said they had been upset Thursday by how they were treated during long interrogations.
“From the start, when they’ve questioned me, once I couldn’t fill in gaps, it turned into ‘You did it, you did it,’ ” Bradley said. “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.”
Irwin said he told authorities Thursday that he needed a break from their questions.
“I told them I had to have a break — no more questions today,” Irwin said. “I asked to be let go, and they let me go from (the) police station.
“An hour later was when we saw the press conference from them.”
Also on Friday, Bradley said she voluntarily had taken a polygraph test this week. During a subsequent police interview, she added, detectives told her that she had failed the test. She couldn’t recall, she said, which questions she apparently had failed to answer correctly.
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