Opinion ID: 76461
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Missing Child Investigation

Text: 3 During the early morning of November 27, 1997, Marlene Aisenberg placed a call to 911 to report the disappearance of her five-month-old daughter, Sabrina Aisenberg. Law enforcement officials conducted an intense and exhaustive search for the child, which was ultimately unsuccessful. The child remains missing to this day. 4 Throughout their interactions with the Aisenbergs and after making no headway in their recovery efforts, law enforcement officials developed suspicions directed at the Aisenbergs. On December 12, 1997, sixteen days after the child's disappearance, the county sheriff's office successfully applied to the state circuit court for authorization to intercept oral and telephonic communications in the Aisenbergs' home. 5 The December 12, 1997, application for electronic surveillance was supported by an affidavit signed jointly by detectives Linda Sue Burton and William Blake of the county sheriff's office. The affiants claimed that probable cause existed to believe that the Aisenbergs murdered or sold their child based on certain facts. 1 The state circuit court authorized the wiretap, and on December 13, 1997, law enforcement officials placed electronic interception devices in the Aisenbergs' home. 6 On January 9, 1998, and again on February 6, 1998, the county sheriff's office applied for extensions of the wiretapping authority, relying on: (1) transcripts of the Aisenbergs' conversations obtained during the December 1997 wiretaps; (2) a pediatrician's opinion that pictures of the child indicated that hair had been pulled out of the left side of the baby's head and the area around the left eye was bruised; and (3) statements by the hair dresser of the Aisenbergs' children that she noticed hair missing from the child's head. The state circuit court granted the extension applications, and the wiretapping continued until March 2, 1998, resulting in seventy-nine days of surveillance and including 2,600 conversations recorded on fifty-five audio recordings. As discussed later, the magistrate judge ultimately found that the Aisenbergs' conversations intercepted from the December 1997 wiretaps were largely unintelligible and that the pediatrician's and the hairdresser's statements in the extension applications were misquoted or taken out of context.