Missing Tot's Parents Indicted

For months Steven and Marlene Aisenberg went on talk shows, including "Oprah." Their five-month-old daughter Sabrina was missing, they said, kidnapped from their suburban Tampa home. They wanted help. They begged for help. But CBS Correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports now the case has taken incredible turn.

There was an international search for Sabrina, but secretly investigators didn't buy the story. Some thought the parents lacked a certain anguish.

There was the video of Sabrina that showed a bald spot on the baby's head, police thought it looked like an injury. After waiting almost two years hoping for better evidence, a federal grand jury has decided to indict the couple not for murder or kidnapping, but for lying.

The Aisenbergs were in court Thursday when Assistant U.S. Attorney Rachelle Des Vaux Bedke told a judge, "The baby is in fact dead. They knew that and had some hand in it."

"If they have evidence to support a murder charge they should charge them with murder," said Barry Cohen, the Aisenbergs' attorney. "It's not supported by any evidence."

The bald spot on Sabrina's head is clearly visible.

The same picture was used by the Missing Child Help Center in mailings nationwide urging Americans to be on the lookout for the kidnapped baby.

Bedke also said Steve Aisenberg was heard telling his wife, "I wish I hadn't harmed her. It was the cocaine." Cohen said his client is not a drug user.

It turns out that the FBI had been taping the couple. According to the indictment, a month after reporting Sabrina missing, Marlene said to Steven, "The baby is dead and buried. It was found dead because you did it." Steven answers. "Honey, there was nothing I could do about it. We need to discuss the way that we can beat the charge."

The actual offenses in this indictment seem minor, but because police never found Sabrina's body, a horrendous case of possible child abuse and murder is now just a case of misleading the FBI.