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NANCY GRACE

Missing Baby`s Mother Says She Was Drunk

Aired October 17, 2011 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL, GUEST HOST: Bombshell developments tonight out of America`s heartland in the search for a 10-month-old girl who vanishes from her own crib in the dead of night. Her father works the night shift, then comes home to find baby Lisa gone. The last person to see her alive, her own mother.

In a shocking twist tonight, baby Lisa`s mom takes to the airwaves, admitting she was drunk the night baby Lisa disappears. Then another shocker. Mommy changes her story, now saying she last sees the baby at 6:40 PM, not 10:30 PM, a huge four-hour time difference.

And it`s all as investigators recover soiled diapers and baby wipes near the crime scene. As cops search a creek bed and the mother opens up about failing a polygraph, tonight, what happened to 10-month-old baby Lisa?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Little Lisa Irwin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Draining part of a creek to look for new clues.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The National Guard is also joining the search.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The baby`s mother, Deborah Bradley -- she admits she was drinking that night.

NANCY GRACE, HOST: She`s at the grocery store buying wine at about 5:00 PM.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I came home from work...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dad comes home at 4:00 AM.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... most of the lights were on in the house.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He advised that he didn`t witness anything and didn`t know how long she`s been gone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were you drinking that night?

DEBORAH BRADLEY, MOTHER: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How much?

BRADLEY: Enough to be drunk.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you were drunk?

BRADLEY: Uh-huh.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people are going to say, Deborah, you were drunk that night. Is there any chance you did anything that hurt your daughter that you`re just not telling us?

BRADLEY: No. No. No. And if I thought there was a chance, I`d say it. No. No. I don`t think that alcohol changes a person enough to do something like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, if you`re in a blackout, you don`t know what happened. Good evening. I`m Jane Velez-Mitchell, in tonight for Nancy Grace.

You just heard it, baby Lisa`s mom on NBC`s "Today" show, as stunning new developments emerge in the search for the missing 10-month-old snatched from her own crib.

Straight out to CNN correspondent Jim Spellman, live on the scene. Jim, what is the latest?

JIM SPELLMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That`s right, she came out this morning on the "Today" show, admitted that she was drunk the night that baby Lisa disappeared. Later that afternoon, a high-powered New York attorney, Joe Tacopina, shows up on the scene to take over handling the story and immediately lays out two possible scenarios of how her being drunk could affect it.

One, she`s too blacked out, doesn`t hear somebody breaking into the house. And two, if she was so drunk, could she pull off something like this? He`s trying to hit the reset button on this story and change public perceptions -- Jane.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes, well, I got to tell you, "People" magazine had an astounding article where they interviewed the mother and she said some things that are actually quite disturbing to me. Steve Helling, you`re staff writer with "People" magazine, give us the lowdown on your article, which really is filled, riddled with bombshells.

STEVE HELLING, "PEOPLE" (via telephone): Well, yes. Actually, we asked, you know, How much had you drank (SIC), and she didn`t know. She couldn`t tell us. And so we said, Was it more than five glasses of wine? She said yes, it was. And so the reporter said, you know, Is that a problem? I mean, you were drunk. And her answer was, Well, you know, I don`t have any problem with having alone adult time. My baby was sleeping. So it was a really weird answer to give.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Does she admit having any kind of drinking problem? Because my understanding is from some published reports that this wasn`t a one-time-only occurrence, that this has happened before, possibly on a regular basis.

HELLING: Well, no. She was more just trying to explain it away, saying, you know, It was my own time. It didn`t have anything to do with anything, and you know, I don`t remember what happened, but I didn`t do anything wrong. That`s basically her take on the whole thing.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, I find that kind of shocking, Pat Brown, criminal profiler, the lack of remorse. I`m not saying she did anything untoward to her child, but if she`s had more than five drinks -- she said it`s quite possible, probable that she had more than five drinks -- that she has no recall of whether she turned the lights off or not or whether she went back to the baby`s room. And yet she defends this as saying, Oh, there`s nothing wrong with that. I`m having some adult time.

Hello? She`s got three kids, including a helpless baby, a 6-year-old boy and an 8-year-old boy under her care. Look at this baby! We`re looking at video of this baby. This baby is completely, utterly helpless, dependent on an adult caregiver.

How can she say that she doesn`t see anything wrong with getting essentially wasted?

PAT BROWN, CRIMINAL PROFILER: Well, Jane, that is -- that is concerning that she has no remorse or thinking that she`s done something wrong. And she also has no remorse over the fact that she clearly is telling a different story now. That means she`s either lying before or she`s lying now.

There`s another possibility, that she didn`t get drunk and she`s using this as a defense. And I`d like to know when that 911 call was made and when the police moved in, was she, you know, trash drunk when they showed up or was she really not that drunk? And is this just something new that is going to be the cover for whatever happened?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, you know what? You raise an astounding point that I never thought of until just this second. I wonder if when the 911 call was made, she got on it at all. And was she slurring her words?

Do you know anything about that, Alexis Tereszcuk, senior reporter, Radaronline? We know that a 911 call was ultimately made, but we do not know, to my understanding, whether she was on the call herself or whether it her husband who had come home from work on the night shift at about 4:00 in the morning?

ALEXIS TERESZCUK, RADARONLINE.COM: So what we understand, that it was her husband who made the phone call. It wasn`t her. And he, in fact, woke her up, according to everything that we learned. He went in the house. He saw the lights were on. He noticed the baby`s door was open. The baby wasn`t there. That`s when he went in and woke her up.

She didn`t even notice this. But from what we heard, it was the husband that called. They`re not going release the 911 call, I guess, until there`s a resolution to this case. But from all reports, he is the only one on the call.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: All right. We have more of the mother`s sound, the mother talking, the mother of this missing child. Let`s hear what she has to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were you drinking that night?

BRADLEY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How much?

BRADLEY: Enough to be drunk.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you were drunk?

BRADLEY: Uh-huh.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people are going to say, Deborah, you were drunk that night. Is there any chance you did anything that hurt your daughter that you`re just not telling us?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. No. No. And if I thought there was a chance, I`d say it. No. No. I don`t think that alcohol changes a person enough to do something like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, that`s baby Lisa`s mother on NBC`s "Today" show. And again, I want to stress that the police are saying they have no suspects in this case and no persons of interest, so this mother is not a suspect. And we do not want to in any way point the finger at her. We are simply analyzing her words.

And I have to say, as a recovering alcoholic with 16 years of sobriety myself -- and hopefully, knock on wood, if I get to April, I`ll have 17 -- I know what blackouts are like. I`ve experienced them. And you do not remember what happened after a certain time.

Oh, I remember I was at the party at 9:30, and I remember dancing, but I don`t remember how I got home. That`s how it works when you`re in a blackout. And I explain that to people because not everybody knows.

Dr. Helen Morrison, forensic psychiatrist and author of "My Life Among the Serial Killers," not everybody knows what a blackout even means. What it means is you`re there but you`re really not there. So when she says, Well, I don`t think alcohol makes you do anything different, it doesn`t change your personality, the fact is, if you`re in a blackout, you don`t know what`s happening, correct?

DR. HELEN MORRISON, FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST: Absolutely. And what happens is, a blackout basically means that you don`t form memories. You don`t wake up after you`ve had a blackout and say, Oh, I remember what I did. But the people around you will tell you everything that you did. You looked normal. You can act normal. You can do very complex things. And you can also say to yourself, Well, gee, I just don`t remember, and that`s absolutely true. And that memory does not come back.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes. And I`ll give you a perfect example, and thank God I never did this. But sometimes we get these stories of people driving the wrong way down the freeway. Nobody in their right mind, for their own safety, much less the safety of people around them, would ever drive the wrong way down a freeway.

But when somebody is in a blackout, that`s often when they drive the wrong way down the freeway. And they have no idea what they`re doing because they`re in a blackout. They`re there, but don`t know they`re there.

Woodrow Tripp, former police commander, polygraph expert, one of the reasons why the fixation or the focus, I should say, in the public, anyway, has been on the mother is not because the police have called her a suspect. They have not. She is not considered a suspect. It`s her own words. She has gone out and said that cops told her she failed a polygraph. She`s also said various things about what may have occurred in the interrogation, essentially saying that she was told that she failed when they asked her, Where is your baby? Do you know where your baby is?

So could the blackout issue factor into what she`s saying?

WOODROW TRIP, FMR. POLICE COMMANDER, POLYGRAPH EXPERT: It possibly could. But it wouldn`t cause her to fail a polygraph test. In order to fail it, you have to have memory of what you did. It`s your conscience. And if you can`t remember, then you have no conscience. You have no ability to feel guilty if you`re in this so-called blackout.

So failing a polygraph has to do with the fact that your conscience is bothering you. There is a pathway there in your brain that`s saying, you know, you`re guilty. You`re feeling guilty if you`re failing that test. So blackouts don`t cause that.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, let me just ask you a follow-up on that because she`s not in a blackout at the time she`s taking the polygraph test. She was in a blackout possibly -- well, she says she has no recollection she was drinking. To me, that`s a blackout. But that was the day, the night her child disappeared.

So sometimes, it is possible with a blackout -- and I say I have the dubious honor of being an expert on this issue -- where fragments of information come back to you or you even remember completely what happened several days later. So is that possible? Could that factor in? Shards of memory?

TRIPP: Jane, keep in mind that in her statement or words, she failed the polygraph, meaning that there was deception indicated, in our parlance. That is saying then that she is not telling the truth, or there`s a significant reaction to the questions that are being posed to her.

So if she`s remembering -- well, there`s a contradiction because the whole thing with a blackout is you`re not remembering. So if she is remembering, then that`s what`s causing her to fail in this case.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, I`m just wondering if the reason why she changed her timeline from saying that she last saw the child at 10:30 to saying she last put the child to bed at 6:40, a difference of approximately four hours, is connected somehow to the blackout, and maybe some memory came back, or maybe she`s now realizing, Maybe I didn`t see the child at 10:30. Maybe that`s actually when my friend left. And we`re going to get into that on the other side of the break, what she was doing while she was drinking.

Meantime, on a much happier note, it is week five of season 13 of "Dancing With the Stars," and our very own Nancy Grace is dancing for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. You go, Nancy! Look at her moves! Tonight, she`s doing the rumba. So be sure to vote. You can vote multiple times for Nancy and her dancing partner, Tristan MacManus. And everybody here at the NANCY GRACE show says, Good luck, Nancy! You can win this thing! We know you can. That`s what we`re voting for, Nancy Grace!

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If something happened in the home and you were responsible, then you do know more.

BRADLEY: He said, She`s not in her crib, and I said, What do you mean, she`s not in her crib?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dad comes home at 4:00 AM.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The front door was unlocked.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mom told the police that she had gone to that supermarket and made those purchases. There`s nothing strange about that at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She dropped a couple of bombshells.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She expects to be arrested because she was the last one with her daughter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The lights in the house, most of them, are on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She admits she was drinking that night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The front window is open and the screen to the window is pushed in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And in fact, that she was drunk when baby Lisa went missing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He comes home at 4:00 AM. He notices that the door is unlocked.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She changed her story a bit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He goes to the back room to talk to the mother about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Originally, she had said the last time she had seen baby Lisa was at 10:30 at night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that`s when he notices that the baby`s room is open.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now she says about 6:30 that same night, creating a four-hour gap.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Goes into the room, notices the baby is missing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He advised that he didn`t witness anything and doesn`t know how long she`s been gone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And frantically calls 911.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were you drinking that night?

BRADLEY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How much?

BRADLEY: Enough to be drunk.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you were drunk?

BRADLEY: Uh-huh.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people are going to say, Deborah, you were drunk that night. Is there any chance you didn`t anything that you hurt your daughter that you`re just not telling us?

BRADLEY: No. No. No. And if I thought there was a chance, I`d say it. No. No. I don`t think that alcohol changes a person enough to do something like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Jane Velez-Mitchell, in for Nancy Grace. You were just hearing from the mother of the missing baby, baby Lisa. Where is she? The mother now admitting she was drunk that night. We caught her on surveillance video buying a box of wine. She admits she probably had more than five drinks and says she has no recall of key events that night. But she is not considered a suspect and not even a person of interest. She maintains that she is completely innocent, although she has lawyered up with a top lawyer, Joe Tacopina.

Let`s go out to the phone lines. Beverly, New York, your question or thought, Beverly?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Hi, Jane.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Hi.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I agree with you. Drinking does make you change. I`ve been there. I`ve done it. But I`m also wondering, the father -- do they know that he stayed at work all night, or could he have left work?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, actually, Jim Spellman, CNN correspondent, I understand that there is surveillance video of the dad actually doing construction work, or electrical work on a construction project. Tell us about that.

SPELLMAN: We haven`t seen that surveillance tape yet. He was working a night shift, and it was the first time he had ever worked a night shift, renovating a Starbucks overnight. He`s an electrician. So on a normal night, he would have been home here with the children and with the wife. Tonight -- it was Lisa`s mom, Deborah, home alone the night that Lisa disappeared.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: And they are maintaining a united front, both baby Lisa`s mother and father. I had read a published report that said that there was surveillance video that provided an alibi for him, showing him doing that electrical work on the Starbucks that was in the process of being renovated that night.

Alexis Tereszcuk, senior reporter, Radaronline. What do you know about the dog?

TERESZCUK: Well, the family had a dog. The next-door neighbors had a dog. These are big dogs that bark very loudly. But nobody anywhere heard the dogs barking that night. So if there was a stranger that had climbed into the front of the house -- it`s not a very far distance between the front yard and the back yard -- these dogs definitely would have heard this noise. So that sort of raises some suspicion about the story that`s been told.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: What about what the mother was doing? Apparently, she was out, Alexis, on the stoop, drinking with her neighbor while the kids were doing what? Tell us all about it.

TERESZCUK: The kids were playing. They were watching movies. And she and her friend were just sitting on the front porch, as you said. They were having drinks.

And where the discrepancy comes in is now the mom is saying maybe the friend left at 10:30 and that`s not really when she checked on the baby. She just doesn`t know. But she says she went inside. She can`t remember if she turned the lights off or not. The friend actually said she noticed the lights in the house go off. So there are a lot of different stories floating around about this family.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes, especially because when the dad comes home after working the night shift, the lights are on, one of the reasons that he becomes alarmed and wakes up his wife and they have a brief conversation.

And when we come back, we`re going to talk about how she jumps out of bed when he wonders what`s going on.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Ten-month-old baby Lisa allegedly snatched out of her own crib just feet away from her mother as they lay sleeping. Mommy caught on surveillance video just hours before baby Lisa goes missing buying baby food, baby wipes and a box of wine. My question is, where was the baby at that time?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He knows his screen is busted and his 10-month- old daughter is missing.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: I`m always concerned when someone comes into the home and takes the baby while one of the parents or caregivers are there.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where is the baby?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are FBI agents walking up and down the neighborhood here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Maybe there`s something we didn`t see the first time we searched it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They`ve been going literally inch by inch down here amongst these plants and vines.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The more time that goes by, the outcome is just not going to be good.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Who last saw the baby alive?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Lisa, we love you!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Love you!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELEZ-MITCHELL: It`s Jane Velez-Mitchell, filling in for Nancy Grace tonight. We`ve breaking news in the case of this beautiful child, missing since early October, the mother now changing her story and saying she last saw the child at about 6:40 PM. She had originally said she last saw the child at about 10:30 PM.

She is also admitting that she was drunk that night, drinking probably more than five glasses of wine as she sat out on the stoop with her neighbor with her child inside in the crib, purportedly, as well as a 6- year-old boy and an 8-year-old boy inside the house, watching a movie, is what some published reports say.

I want to go out to Dr. Tamara Kuittinen (ph), an emergency room physician. What are the dangers of drinking that much alcohol while you have three kids, one of whom is only 10 months old?

DR. TAMARA KUITTINEN, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN: Hi. Good evening, Jane. You know, we all have a glass of wine from time to time just to relax at the end of the day.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Not me.

KUITTINEN: Well, most of us do, or some of us do -- and just as a way to unwind. And alcohol is a depressant and a sedative. And as such, it has activity on the neurological system. So it can be relaxing, but it also -- with that, you get slurred speech, you get impaired walking ability, impaired judgment, slowed responses, and at extreme, you can have impaired memory, as in this case, as well as impaired neurologic function.

So you know, it`s interesting to me that someone with three small children in the house would drink so much where it could affect them.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes. And it`s interesting because she says -- the mother -- it doesn`t explain anything because they had nothing to do or that had nothing to do with anything. And when asked if she was concerned she might be drunk with her infant daughter inside, she reportedly said, Oh, the child was sleeping. I don`t have a problem with me having adult time. Now, is that adult time, drinking, chug-a-lugging alcohol, when you`ve got this precious helpless child in a crib inside?

More when we come right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The only thing we know is that this 10-month-old belongs in this house.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the baby`s mother, Deborah Bradley, was the last person to see Lisa.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Someone suggested they check the old well or cistern. Firefighters went down into the well about 30 feet deep. No sign of 11-month-old Lisa Irwin.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The Lisa Irwin story.

BRADLEY: Please, please, please.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The baby`s mother Deborah Bradley dropped a couple of bombshells.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s zero, zero doubt in Deborah.

BRADLEY: Call the tips hotline.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: She admits she was drinking that night.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: She is admitting she was drunk.

BRADLEY: If you know where she`s at.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The night her daughter disappeared.

BRADLEY: I can`t live without her.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What she`s revealing could change some things.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: She changed her story a bit.

BRADLEY: Please bring her home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Originally she had said the last time she had seen baby Lisa was at 10:30 at night.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: When she put her daughter to bed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now she says 6:30 that same night.

BRADLEY: I`m terrified but I`m trying to be hopeful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Creating a four-hour gap.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The main priority is finding this child.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She expects to be arrested.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it`s a bit of a stretch right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So still a mystery two weeks after baby Lisa`s disappearance.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Were you drinking that night?

BRADLEY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: How much?

BRADLEY: Enough to be drunk.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: So you were drunk?

BRADLEY: Mm-hmm.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: A lot of people are going to say, Deborah, you were drunk that night, is there any chance you did anything that hurt your daughter that you`re just not telling us?

BRADLEY: No, no, no. And if I thought there was a chance I`d say it. No, no. I don`t think that alcohol changes a person enough to do something like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Good evening, Jane Velez-Mitchell in for Nancy Grace.

What happened to this precious child? You`re looking at right there. Where is baby Lisa? She disappeared, simply vanished out of her Kansas City, Missouri home. The mother was there but now she admits she was drunk. That she had at least five glasses of wine. She has also changed her timeline, saying that she last checked on the child at 6:40 p.m. not 10:30 p.m.

I want to bring in the lawyers, Bradford Cohen and Lauren Lake.

Lauren, the mother says she doesn`t want to allow cops to re-interview the two older children who were in the house when this all happened. The 6-year-old boy and the 8-year-old boy, and says she`s never even talked to them about what happened.

What do you make of that?

LAUREN LAKE, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, of course -- of course, the young boys are traumatized, I`m sure and she`s protecting her children as she rightfully should and now that they have a lawyer they need to discuss those kinds of things with the lawyer and make sure that those children are not brought under the same type of premature scrutiny that these parents have been brought under. They are not suspects. None of them at this time.

BRADFORD COHEN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: The bigger issue that you have when you interview --

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes, they`re not suspects, but, but, but, but there`s a missing child.

LAKE: We understand that.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: There`s a missing baby. And this mother says she wants to do everything in her power to find the child. So why not allow the cops to talk to the 6-year-old boy and the 8-year-old boy who apparently heard noise but they are not sure whether it was before or after they all went to sleep -- Brad.

COHEN: The problem that you have when you interview -- when you interview young children is they`re very impressionable. So their story could change over time not purposefully but accidentally if they listen to the TV, if they listen to other adults. So the first interview that you get is usually the most reliable interview, interviews that follow after that you don`t want them to be influenced by outside factors.

So I think it`s extremely smart of the lawyer not to have them re- interviewed and extremely smart of the mother not have them re-interviewed so that their story doesn`t get mixed up and they actually hurt the case rather than help finding this baby Lisa.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Do you find, Lauren, it odd that at the very same time that the lawyer, Joe Tacopina, a very high-profile lawyer, enters the case now the mother is changing her timeline. The child disappeared in early October. And now at the same time as she`s lawyered up, she is changing her timeline.

LAKE: I know people want to completely villainize this woman because she did things that we think are irresponsible, maybe immoral. Drinking too much while you have small children in the house. However, I feel like once you get an attorney, this is what attorneys are for. We give voice to those people that cannot speak for themselves or speak for themselves in a manner that harms themselves more than help them.

Now that she has a lawyer she can tell her full story. She can say what she was scared to say in the beginning, which she might have been too drunk to remember in the beginning, she can lay it all out with her lawyer and her lawyer can then represent her. It doesn`t surprise me nor worry me. This woman is under a lot of stress.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes. And again, police are not calling her a suspect and neither are we. We just want to find this child and we`re asking some tough questions but we`re not presuming anything. We hope that this child is found safe and sound. And when you see the video of the little girl it just breaks your heart.

I mean look at this precious, adorable, adorable child so helpless and so trusting.

Charmaine, Mississippi. We`re going to go to the phone lines now.

Charmaine, your question or thought.

CHARMAINE, CALLER FROM MISSISSIPPI: Hi.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: From Mississippi. Hi.

CHARMAINE: Hi. Well, in the beginning none of the family members reported that the mother was a drinker. The father appears to be numbed. Now that she has an attorney all of a sudden there`s this hastily prepared statement about her drinking. It just doesn`t seem to add up. And when she cries, I don`t see any tears, it remind me of Susan Smith. It just --

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, wait, wait, wait. I`ve got -- I`ve got to disagree with you right there. We`re looking at video of her right there and I`m saying her face wet with tears. Wet with tears.

Steve Helling, staff writer for "People" magazine, your magazine interviewed this woman. One thing I will say when she`s crying it looks for real.

STEVE HELLING, STAFF WRITER, PEOPLE MAGAZINE: It does. And you know we always have to be careful about pointing the finger too quickly because, you know, back a few years ago when Jessica Lunsford disappeared from her bed, you know, people pointed the finger at her family and come to find out that a psychopath from across the street had done it. So we`ve always got to be careful about it. But the fact does remain --

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Absolutely.

HELLING: -- that there are some things that just don`t add up.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes. There are some things that just don`t add up and maybe it`s because she was drunk, when you`re drunk you don`t remember and you can actually do things to implicate yourself even if you`re innocent.

I mean, she may have simply had too much to drink and passed out, and as she and her husband maintained somebody did possibly break in through that window, turn on all the lights and take the child and walk out the front door, which is why when this guy came home and he sees the lights on, and everything is sort of in a bizarre state, he talks to his wife, wakes her up, and at one point, Jim Spellman, the way it`s described she literally -- she`s having a conversation with her husband and then he says something and she jumps out of the bed like realizing something is wrong.

What can you tell us about that, Jim?

JIM SPELLMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That`s right. The father comes home after working this unusual midnight, finds lights on, some cell phones missing, wakes her up and suddenly she`s alarmed. They check and they immediately call the police.

But you know I wanted to touch on something that I thought was really interesting. If now it`s 6:40 is the last time she saw baby Lisa we`re not sure what time the father went to work. If he worked an eight-hour shift he could well have been home the last time she saw him which could really change the complexity of the investigation. That`s something we`re going to track down here in (INAUDIBLE), something investigators are working on here, too, Jane.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: And Jim, wasn`t this the very first time, the very first time he worked that overnight shift? It wasn`t like a normal thing for him to do that, right?

SPELLMAN: Correct. This is the very first time. It was a special overnight renovation of a Starbucks. He`s an electrician. Not the usual norm here at the house.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes. And I want to go back to this whole drinking issue. And again, I`m not pointing the finger as much as sharing my experience and what I know about it as a recovering alcoholic with 16-plus years of sobriety, 17 hopefully if I make it to April one day at a time.

When asked if she has a drinking problem the mother says she doesn`t think so. She says she takes care of her kids, she keeps her house clean, does the laundry, kisses their boo-boos. She doesn`t see what`s wrong with her doing what she wants to do after they`re in bed. Well, if this doesn`t show you that that`s a very simplistic attitude, I don`t know what does.

Just out of curiosity I picked up the 20 questions that they have in 12 step to try to determine whether or not you have a problem and here`s just a couple that might apply.

Is drinking making your home life unhappy? Well, I would certainly say in that -- in this case that might be a yes. Is drinking affecting your reputation? Have you ever felt remorse after drinking? Does your drinking make you careless of your family`s welfare? Do you crave a drink at a definite time daily? Have you ever had a complete loss of memory as a result of your drinking?

Helen Morrison, forensic psychiatrist, your thoughts?

HELEN MORRISON, FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST: Well, I think basically that there is a myth that if you have blackouts you are an alcoholic. Often blackouts come with binge drinking. But there`s a very interesting point to this. There have been cases in which people have claimed because they`ve had a blackout that they are not responsible for the crimes that they commit.

Blackouts don`t mean that your stumbling around, slurring your speech. You can appear completely normal.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Wow. Well, thank you for that analysis, forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Morrison.

Meantime, it`s week five of season 13 of "Dancing with the Stars" and our very own Nancy Grace is dancing for an amazing cause, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Tonight Nancy is doing the rumba. So be sure to vote. You can vote multiple times for Nancy and her amazing dancing partner Tristan MacManus. You see them there. What a great couple they make.

Everybody here at the NANCY GRACE SHOW says Nancy, you can win this thing. We know you can win it. So vote for Nancy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Two weeks now. No one knows where baby Lisa is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where is the baby? Seriously where is the baby?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One person that was there that night, the last person to see her --

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The baby`s mother.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: She is admitting she was drunk the night her daughter disappears.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: She also says she expects to be arrested.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If something happened in the home and you were responsible then you do know more.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Did she or did she not fail a polygraph?

NANCY GRACE, HLN HOST: Mommy says she`s taking a polygraph and she`s afraid she failed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This whole focus is about her.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The FBI and police are stumped on this one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Going in all directions, no doubt about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody is sleeping.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These folks have been up around the clock.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The main priority is finding this child.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: But no sign of Lisa was found.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Still a mystery two weeks after baby Lisa disappeared.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Jane Velez-Mitchell in for Nancy Grace.

Where is baby Lisa? The mystery complicated tonight by shocking new revelations that the mother admits she was drunk the night her child simply vanished into thin air. She doesn`t recall. A lot of key aspects of what happened that night.

Did she turn off the lights? Did she check on her baby? She doesn`t remember. She was quite possibly and I would say definitely if she`s saying she was drinking and doesn`t remember, let`s say possibly. In a blackout.

All right. So, again, we`re not saying she`s a suspect, cops are not calling her a suspect, maybe that she just drank too much and passed out and somebody else took the child. We`re trying to figure it out.

I want to discuss with Woodrow Tripp, former police commander and polygraph expert, the mother says during questioning by cops they showed her burnt clothes and they also showed her a, quote, "Doppler things with pings from my cell phone," which of course her cell phones disappeared in the midst of all this.

What do you make of that? Because she later said that she learned that all of that stuff was fake.

WOODY TRIPP, FORMER POLICE COMMANDER, POLYGRAPH EXPERT: Well, certainly, Jane, you know, the courts have said, we can use lying, trickery when it comes to interviewing suspects. In this case you use extraordinary circumstances because of the fact that we`re talking about a baby here.

That`s -- again, that`s her side saying that it was all a hoax or all made up. I haven`t heard anyone from law enforcement say that.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, law enforcement isn`t saying anything. And I want to go back to the lawyers, Brad Cohen and Lauren Lake.

Brad, we`re not pointing the finger at the mother. We don`t know what happened. But the mother seems to be bringing focus on herself by saying things like cops told me I failed the polygraph. I fear that`s I`m going to be arrested. She seems to be kind of putting the focus on herself.

COHEN: Yes, I agree with that. I really think that she lawyered up at the right time. I mean people really don`t understand how things work when it comes to the press and high-profile cases and the things that you say that can be turned around or the things that you say that may be used against you later on.

It`s very, very important, even when you have no conscience whatsoever about any kind of guilt, you get a lawyer. Everyone thinks that you hire a lawyer it makes you look guilty. No. You hire a lawyer because it helps you along your case. It may help the investigation. He`ll be able to sort through the facts and the information that`s there to issue a more coherent statement to the police.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Carol -- we`re going to go to the phone lines. Carol in California -- your question or thought, Carol.

CAROL, CALLER FROM CALIFORNIA: Hi, Jane.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Hi.

CAROL: I was wondering, do you think that the mother could now be saying she was drunk just to give herself a little more leeway after all because she was the mother in the home? You mentioned all the bizarre things that took place that night, and, Jane, just think about either a homeless man or a kidnapper going into that house, taking baby Lisa, looking around for the cell phones, actually finding cell phones, and walking out the front door with the baby and their cell phones. That does not make sense.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: And Alexis Tereszcuk, senior reporter, RadarOnline, they actually interviewed a homeless man who I believe goes by the name Jersey and I understand that they`ve eliminated him as a suspect.

ALEXIS TERESZCUK, REPORTER, RADAROLINE.COM: They were looking for the man named Jersey as the nickname for almost two weeks. He`s somebody who`s been spotted around neighborhood. He was riding a bike. They were thinking that perhaps he would have seen something. So they finally arrested him. It was on outstanding warrants. Nothing to do with this case. The police spoke with him and they have ruled him out as having to anything to do with this.

They were hoping that he would know something especially because he`d been spotted in abandoned houses around the house that Lisa lived in and in these houses one other thing that was found recently was a backpack that had dirty diapers in it. So the police were thinking perhaps this would be something else.

But they said they haven`t tested it yet but they don`t expect it has something to do with this, which seems a little strange but they say that that not unusual to find dirty diapers in abandoned houses. Seems a little bit too close to home but that`s what the police say.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes, it does seem odd but that they tested it and found out that this was very old stuff.

I want to go back to our doctor, Tamara Kuittinen. You`re an emergency room physician. What do you know about blackouts and how they lasted? Again, I`ve experienced it where I remember things days or even weeks later. What is that when shards of memory come back? And could that be operative in this case?

DR. TAMARA KUITTINEN, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN: You know, that`s really interesting. And as you pointed out we typically think about blackouts occurring with alcoholics. When in fact, we -- as someone mentioned before, we actually see them with binge drinkers. And binge drinking is when you have -- for a man -- five drinks within two hours, or a woman, four drinks within two hours.

You get your alcohol level really high and you have -- some people have a blackout. So you don`t remember what you did and as it`s been stated before, you may behave normally, respond normally but have no recollection. Now some people remember later some details. Other people will remember nothing. And there`s no predicting who`s going to remember what.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Jim Spellman, police according to some published reports have removed bags of evidence from the home of the neighbor who was allegedly drinking with the mother at the time that the child disappeared or around the time that night. What do you know?

SPELLMAN: Yes, this afternoon they did another search of the home here and the area. They had dogs out. And the dogs were in that area, police tell us that was in evidence, that what they were bringing out was materials related to the dog search. We understand that sometimes they take materials that have scents out of -- out of homes or something that they fear may be a crime scene so that the dogs can use that on later searches.

We`re not sure that that`s exactly what it was but police tells us it was something related to the dog search, not evidence, Jane.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Lauren Lake, defense attorney. Do you think the cops should be more talkative at this point? They have not said very much of anything except at one point to accuse the parents of not cooperating, which was retracted after the parents came back in and started talking again, they said they were just burnt out from the whole thing.

LAKE: You know what, I appreciate the fact that they`re keeping quiet and not getting on television every other day and just increasing the scrutiny against these parents. It started off all ramped up in terms of who are these parents, the mother is drinking. We need to calm things down and focus on the fact that there`s a young baby missing and there are people all over that neighborhood that could have maybe come into that house and dogs would not have barked because they may have been familiar.

Get to the crux of the case, find evidence, find the suspect and leave these parents alone to find their child until you have evidence against them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The police dispatch tapes from the moment police first got a call about Lisa disappearing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Report of a residential burglary in progress.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And his 10-month-old daughter is missing.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: That call initiates the intense search for Lisa Irwin.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Tonight our very own Nancy Grace is dancing the rumba on -- on season 13 of "Dancing with the Stars." Now be sure to vote. You can vote multiple times for Nancy and her amazing dancing partner Tristan MacManus.

Good luck, Nancy. We`re rooting for you.

All right. And again, we are rooting for Nancy Grace. She can win this thing.

Before we go, I do feel it is important to discuss the bigger issue of what is going on with the baby Lisa case. This is a tragedy. We pray and hope to find this precious child alive and well. But it is a reminder to all of us, and I say this as a recovering alcoholic, thank god I didn`t have any children.

When you have children, the equation changes and you can`t just have, quote-unquote, "adult time" when you`ve got kids under your watch. They are helpless and they cannot defend themselves from the forces out there. They need parents who are vigilant, and vigilant means sober.

Tonight, let`s stop to remember Marine Lance Corporal Fernando Tamayo, just 19 years old, from Fontana, California. Killed in Iraq. He was awarded the Purple Heart, the National Defense Service medal, the Rifle Expert Badge. He loved the L.A. Lakers, he loved the L.A. Dodgers. His favorite foods, his mother`s spaghetti. He leaves behind grieving parents, Mario Sr. and Martha, his siblings Adrianna, Alejandro and Mario Jr.

Fernando Tamayo, a true American hero.

Thank you to all our guests and thanks to you at home. See you tomorrow night 8:00 sharp Eastern. Until then, have a safe evening and of course vote for Nancy.

You can win this thing, Nancy. We know you can.

END