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Couple Seeks Lost Infant Through DNA Test
By JAN DENNIS

PONTIAC, Ill. (AP) - A couple once considered suspects in their infant daughter's disappearance six years ago asked officials for DNA testing to see if a girl now living in Illinois is theirs.

Steven and Marlene Aisenberg learned of the girl from a woman who spotted her photograph on a Web site for missing children and thought it resembled Sabrina Aisenberg.

The photograph was posted in a court-ordered search for the birth parents of the Illinois child, because the family that has been raising her for about 4 1/2 years wants to adopt her but she lacked a birth certificate.

That family is now cooperating with the investigation, and a DNA sample has been taken from the 6-year-old, known as Paloma, Pontiac Police Chief Donald Schlosser said Friday. Results are expected within two weeks.

If the test results match Steven and Marlene Aisenberg, the Illinois family will surrender the girl, Schlosser said. He declined to identify the family.

``We do very much feel that this is Sabrina,'' Steve Aisenberg told The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune for its Friday editions. ``We look forward to her coming home.''

Police in Pontiac told the Aisenbergs' lawyers that the child came to a family there in late 1998 through a woman in McAllen, Texas, who was being deported. A nurse had taken the child and given her to a sister in Pontiac, attorney Todd Foster said.

Schlosser said such off-the-books adoption is not unheard of. ``Mothers from Mexico simply bring their children across the border in hopes of a better life in the United States,'' he said.

Sabrina disappeared in November 1997, and Hillsborough County, Fla., sheriff's investigators suspected the Aisenbergs and put listening devices in the couple's home. Two years later, a grand jury indicted the couple on federal charges of conspiracy and making false statements.

But a judge found the tapes mostly inaudible, and they were thrown out as evidence when it was determined that detectives lied to get permission to bug the home.

The federal government was ordered in January to pay $2.8 million in legal fees to the Aisenbergs.

Foster said the couple, who now live in Bethesda, Md., learned of the Web site photo in mid-March.


05/02/03 12:36

© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

I hope that it's her...........

__________________
"When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably something his wife can beat him at."

odyssey

wow could it be??? that would be a miracle if it was. it was so heartbreaking at the time, my daughter and "Sabrina" are the same age and I just couldn't imagine then to have my child gone.
I pray for the best.