Her name was Sabrina Aisenberg. She was five months old. And her disappearance would become one of the most haunting, most unjust, and most heartbreaking cold cases in American history.
November 24, 1997. 11:59 p.m.
In a quiet neighborhood in Valrico, Florida—a small community nestled between Tampa and the rural swamps of central Florida—Marlene and Steve Aisenberg tucked their three children into bed. William was eight years old, Monica was four, and baby Sabrina had just turned five months old two weeks earlier, a milestone the family had celebrated with the kind of joy that only new parents know.
Marlene checked on Sabrina around midnight, peering into the crib where her youngest slept peacefully, wrapped in a handmade blue and yellow blanket. Everything was perfect. Everything was safe. Everything was exactly as it should be.
Marlene went to bed knowing her baby was home. Safe. Protected.
But by morning, Sabrina Aisenberg had ceased to exist in her parents’ arms. By the time the sun rose over Valrico, she would exist only in photographs, in memories, and in the worst suspicions that law enforcement could manufacture against innocent people.
The Morning Everything Changed
Marlene woke on the morning of November 25, 1997, to a morning like any other—until it wasn’t.
She walked toward Sabrina’s crib to check on her daughter. The routine of motherhood. The small benediction of seeing a child still sleeping peacefully. Except when Marlene looked into that crib, her breath stopped.
Sabrina was gone.
The blue and yellow blanket lay crumpled in the empty crib. The baby wasn’t there. Sabrina—five months old, completely dependent, unable to crawl or roll herself, unable to cry out for help in any way that mattered—had vanished.
Marlene’s first instinct was to search the house. Maybe—just maybe—Steve had taken her to let Marlene sleep. Maybe one of the older children had gone to check on her and brought her to their room. Maybe there was an explanation so simple and mundane that panic wouldn’t be necessary.
There was no explanation.
Then Marlene noticed something else that made her stomach drop. The garage door was open. The door connecting the garage to the house—the interior door that should have been locked—was also open, hanging loose on its hinges like an invitation.
Someone had been in her house. Someone had walked past her bedroom. Someone had reached into her baby’s crib and taken her daughter.
Marlene’s scream brought Steve running. The phone call to 911 came at 6:42 a.m. on November 25, 1997.
The nightmare had begun.
The Search That Mobilized A Region
What happened next was the kind of massive law enforcement response that communities usually only see in cases where a child has been taken by a stranger across state lines, or where multiple children have gone missing.
The FBI arrived quickly. Police descended on Valrico in waves. Search and rescue teams fanned out through the neighborhoods, the swamps, the dense Florida wilderness that could swallow a five-month-old baby and keep her hidden forever.
The investigation would eventually touch 49 states and extend to countries across the world. Over 4,000 interviews would be conducted. Over 2,600 leads would be followed, investigated, documented, analyzed, and ultimately dead-ended.
In a neighborhood where homes with small children had experienced attempted break-ins around the same time, the theory that made the most sense was chillingly straightforward: someone had targeted the Aisenberg home specifically. Someone who wanted a baby. Someone who’d cased the neighborhood, found a window of opportunity, and seized it.
That theory was supported by physical evidence discovered at the scene. Seven unidentified fingerprints. An unidentified blonde hair. A shoe print near Sabrina’s crib that didn’t match anyone in the family.
Someone else had been in that room. The evidence said so. The science said so. The facts on the ground supported it.
But the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office was operating from a different theory. And that theory would become a weapon aimed not at finding Sabrina, but at destroying her parents.
When Suspicion Becomes Obsession
The first officer to arrive at the Aisenberg home on the morning of November 25, 1997, filed a report that would become the unofficial blueprint for everything that followed. He noted, with professional neutrality, that Marlene and Steve Aisenberg “did not appear very upset” for parents who had just discovered their baby was missing.
This observation—this moment of judgment by one officer deciding how grief should look on a parent’s face—became the foundation for an investigation that would soon turn entirely inward.
“The police told me that very first day that they thought I had done it,” Marlene would later recall, her voice still carrying the shock of that betrayal all these years later. “A policeman looked me right in the eye and said, ‘We think you know what happened’”.
Within days, the investigation shifted. The search for Sabrina continued, but increasingly it became a search for evidence against her mother and father.
Steve and Marlene were asked to take polygraph tests. Steve took his test and passed. He was cleared to continue with his life, largely removed from suspicion.
Marlene took her first test. The results came back inconclusive.
Instead of accepting the inconclusive result—which is what polygraph procedure dictates—investigators brought her back for a second test. And on that second test, they said she failed.
The message was clear: Marlene Aisenberg was lying about her daughter’s disappearance. Marlene Aisenberg had something to hide.
And if the mother had something to hide, then perhaps—just perhaps—the parents had conspired together to harm their own child.
The Decision That Would Change Everything
On December 13, 1997—just 18 days after Sabrina disappeared—the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office applied for a wiretap warrant.
They wanted permission to secretly record Marlene and Steve Aisenberg. To listen to their phone calls. To bug their home. To capture every private conversation between a husband and wife, every whispered word spoken behind closed doors, every moment of grief and confusion and fear.
The warrant was approved based on probable cause that Steve and Marlene Aisenberg had murdered their own infant daughter.
Think about that for a moment. The parents of a missing baby. The couple that had just lost their daughter—whether to kidnapping, to accident, to tragedy—were now the subjects of a federal investigation that treated them as murder suspects.
For 79 days, that wiretap remained active. The surveillance was extended twice—in January and February of 1998—based on supposed “probable cause” that Steve and Marlene were murderers.
During those 79 days, federal investigators recorded 2,600 conversations spread across 55 audio recordings. They captured every late-night argument between exhausted parents. Every moment of doubt and recrimination. Every whispered fear that their baby might be dead. Every anguished question about “what if” and “why”.
The FBI was listening to grief. And they were determined to misinterpret it as confession.
The Tapes That Would Convict The Innocent
Here’s what federal investigators claimed they heard on those tapes:
On one recording, they alleged Marlene said: “The baby’s dead and buried. It was found dead because you did it! The baby’s dead no matter what you say—you just did it!”
The prosecutors claimed Steve responded: “Honey, there was nothing I could do about it. We need to discuss the way that we can beat the charge. I would never break away from the family pact and our story, even if the police were to hold me down. We will do what we have to do.”
On December 24, investigators alleged Marlene said: “Oh, Steve! I tried to save her, and she died and as we can’t confuse them, but we’ll try it, Hon, you know.”
And most damningly, on January 21, 1998, prosecutors claimed to have heard Steven Aisenberg say: “I wish I hadn’t harmed her.”
These were the smoking guns. These were the confessions. This was the evidence that would prove that Marlene and Steve Aisenberg had killed their own infant daughter and covered it up.
The tapes were presented to a federal grand jury. Sabrina’s parents were arrested. They were charged with making false statements to law enforcement—charges that were rooted entirely in the allegedly incriminating conversations captured on wiretap.
A jury would have to believe the interpretation of those 2,600 conversations. A jury would have to believe that these recordings proved murder and conspiracy. A jury would have to believe that the parents standing before them had plotted to harm their own child.
But there was one problem: Nobody could actually hear what was on those tapes.
The Moment Everything Fell Apart
When the case finally went to trial, prosecutors attempted to present the wiretap recordings as evidence. The jury needed to hear what Marlene and Steve allegedly said. The jury needed to listen to the words that would prove them guilty.
The recordings were played in court. And the moment those tapes played, something unexpected happened.
Nobody could understand what was being said.
The audio was inaudible. The quality was so poor, the voices so garbled, that what prosecutors claimed was a smoking gun was revealed to be nothing more than electronic noise. Static and distortion and the ghost of words that may or may not have been spoken.
The federal judge listened to the tapes—the tapes that the entire case depended on—and issued a ruling that would later be cited in investigations of FBI overreach and prosecutorial misconduct:
The recordings were inaudible. The transcriptions provided by federal investigators were faulty. The evidence that had formed the foundation of an entire criminal case against two parents searching desperately for their missing daughter could not be used in court because nobody could verify that the recorded words matched the written transcriptions.
In other words, the FBI had listened to static for 79 days and heard a confession.
But it gets worse.
The Cover-Up Within The Cover-Up
To extend the wiretap warrant in January and February of 1998, prosecutors needed to provide judges with additional probable cause. Simply saying “we think the parents did it” wasn’t enough. They needed evidence. They needed corroboration.
So investigators cited statements from two professionals who supposedly supported the theory that Sabrina had been abused: a pediatrician who claimed that photographs showed evidence of hair loss and a bruised eye, and a hairdresser who claimed she’d noticed hair missing from Sabrina’s head prior to her disappearance.
These professionals’ statements were presented to judges as independent evidence that supported the theory of child abuse and murder. And based on these statements, the judges agreed to extend the wiretap.
But when the case went to trial and the defense had opportunity to examine these statements, something shocking was revealed:
The pediatrician and the hairdresser were taken out of context. Their words were misquoted. Their observations—which were normal observations of normal childhood (children lose hair, children get bumps and bruises)—had been deliberately twisted to support a narrative of abuse.
The judge in the case made an official finding: prosecutors had misrepresented the statements of the pediatrician and hairdresser in order to obtain judicial approval to continue the wiretap.
In simpler terms: federal prosecutors had lied to judges in order to continue surveilling a couple they suspected of murdering their own child.
The Evidence They Ignored
While federal investigators were spending 79 days listening to the private grief of parents separated from their baby, real evidence was sitting in the sheriff’s office gathering dust.
Seven unidentified fingerprints recovered from Sabrina’s crib. A blonde hair that didn’t match anyone in the Aisenberg family. A shoe print near the crib that didn’t match Steve or Marlene or either of the older children.
These weren’t circumstantial pieces of evidence. These were physical facts. Someone else had been in that room. Someone else had stood near Sabrina’s crib.
But instead of pursuing these leads—instead of running the fingerprints through databases, instead of testing the hair against known profiles, instead of investigating the shoe print—the investigation narrowed its focus exclusively to the parents.
Physical evidence pointing to an intruder was filed away. The fingerprints were never properly analyzed. The hair was never DNA tested with the technology that was becoming available in 1997-1998.
Why? Because investigators had already decided who was guilty. And in criminal investigations, once that decision is made, everything becomes evidence that the guilty party did it, and everything that contradicts that conclusion becomes irrelevant.
A detective with tunnel vision is more dangerous than a criminal who never committed a crime.
The Neighbor Who Heard A Baby Crying
Then there was the neighbor.
Sometime in the early morning hours of November 25, 1997—around 1 a.m., roughly six hours before Marlene discovered Sabrina’s crib empty—a neighbor heard their dog barking persistently.
The neighbor, disturbed by the unusual noise, got up and listened more carefully. In the distance, beyond the sound of the dog, the neighbor heard something else: a baby crying. A distant, muffled sound of an infant in distress.
The neighbor described the sound as coming from somewhere beyond their property—not from the immediate neighborhood, but from further away, in the direction of the woods or perhaps another home at a distance.
The neighbor never saw anything. Didn’t witness a vehicle. Didn’t see anyone moving through the neighborhood. But heard, distinctly, a baby crying at 1 a.m. when no babies should be crying in that neighborhood—a baby in distress, separated from its mother.
This testimony pointed to a troubling but clear possibility: Someone had taken Sabrina from her crib. Someone had carried her out of the house and through the neighborhood. Someone had a screaming, terrified infant in their possession at 1 a.m..
It was the testimony of someone who had listened to a baby in danger. A neighbor trying to do the right thing by coming forward with information that might help find a missing child.
But the investigation didn’t pursue it. Because the theory didn’t fit. If Marlene and Steve had killed Sabrina and hidden her body in or near the home—as investigators believed—then there should be no baby crying in the night. There should be silence.
The neighbor’s testimony was filed away. Not investigated. Not followed up. Not explored.
Physical evidence of intrusion: ignored. An eyewitness account of a baby in distress: ignored. Everything that pointed to an abduction was systematically disregarded in favor of a murder theory supported by inaudible wiretap recordings and misrepresented medical observations.
2003: A False Hope
Six years after Sabrina vanished, investigators received a tip that would send Marlene and Steve’s hearts racing and then shatter them all over again.
A young girl had been found in Illinois. She matched Sabrina’s description. She was the right age. She had no known parents, no record of her origins. Could this be her? Could Sabrina have been taken across state lines and raised by someone else? Could this nightmare finally end with a child found alive?.
The Aisenbergs traveled to Illinois filled with a hope so fragile it was almost unbearable. They brought photographs. They brought medical records. They prepared themselves to hold their daughter again after six years of not knowing if she was alive or dead.
DNA testing was performed. The results came back negative. The girl in Illinois was not Sabrina.
The hope evaporated. The waiting continued. The not knowing remained the cruelest punishment of all.
When The System Turned Against The System
In March 1999, the federal prosecution case against Steve and Marlene Aisenberg collapsed.
Judge Susan Bucklew, who had presided over the trial, issued a scathing ruling on the wiretap evidence. She found that the prosecutors had misrepresented the medical professionals’ statements in order to obtain warrants. She found that the transcriptions of the recordings did not match what could actually be heard on the tapes. She found, in effect, that the entire case was built on a foundation of prosecutorial misconduct.
The charges against Steve and Marlene were dismissed.
They were free to go. But they were not exonerated in the way that matters. They were not declared innocent. They were simply released because the government couldn’t prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.
Marlene Aisenberg later described what that moment felt like: “The judge basically said that the prosecution had built their case on quicksand. But that didn’t bring Sabrina home. That didn’t find our daughter. That just meant they couldn’t prove we killed her. It didn’t mean we were innocent. It meant they failed to prove their theory”.
Years would pass before Steve and Marlene were fully exonerated—before the government officially acknowledged that it had no evidence they had committed any crime. Years would pass before they received a formal apology. Years would pass before the full scope of the FBI’s overreach became public knowledge.
But by then, the damage was irreversible.
The investigation into the actual kidnapping—the abduction theory supported by physical evidence, by witness accounts, by forensic findings—had been shut down. For years, while prosecutors pursued murder charges against innocent parents, the trail of whoever actually took Sabrina had grown cold.
The Media Circus And The Collateral Damage
The Aisenberg case became national news. Not because of the disappearance of an infant—though that alone would be compelling enough—but because of the dramatic prosecution of the parents.
Tabloid headlines screamed: “Did These Parents Kill Their Baby?”. News programs debated the wiretap evidence. The public, from the comfort of their living rooms, decided whether Steve and Marlene Aisenberg were murderers or victims.
When the charges were dropped, the media coverage was minimal. The retraction was buried in back pages. The world had already decided its narrative, and changing that narrative doesn’t sell newspapers or drive cable news viewership.
For Steve and Marlene, the consequences were permanent. They were the parents who police thought killed their baby. That image, once implanted in the public consciousness, never fully disappears.
Their oldest son, William, was ostracized at school. Other children’s parents didn’t want William playing with their kids. His best friend was forbidden from talking to him. A child was being punished for the accusation made against his parents—an accusation that was later proven to be unfounded.
Monica, their middle child, grew up carrying the knowledge that investigators thought her parents were murderers. Monica grew up watching her parents interrogated, surveilled, arrested, prosecuted. Monica grew up understanding, at an age far too young, that the system is not designed to protect the innocent—it’s designed to win cases.
And Sabrina remained gone. Vanished. Missing. The baby who had become a bargaining chip in a prosecution that was never about finding her—it was about winning a conviction.
The Physical Evidence That Should Have Been Primary
For decades, the seven unidentified fingerprints remained just that: unidentified.
But technology advanced. DNA analysis became more sophisticated. Fingerprint databases expanded. In 2025—28 years after Sabrina vanished—investigators finally had the tools to do what should have been done in 1997.
Judge Marlene Gonzalez-Collazo issued an order requiring the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office to release public records related to the case. In October 2025, the judge found the sheriff’s office in contempt of court for delaying the release of those records.
“This is completely unacceptable,” the judge stated, ordering the immediate release of documents and evidence files that have been locked away from public scrutiny for nearly three decades.
Why would records be delayed? Why would evidence be protected? What is law enforcement hiding about the case of a missing five-month-old baby?
The answer may lie in what those seven fingerprints reveal. The answer may lie in what the blonde hair might show if properly tested. The answer may lie in the evidence that was ignored, mishandled, or deliberately suppressed while investigators pursued the wrong suspects.
A Family That Never Stopped Believing
For 28 years, Marlene and Steve Aisenberg have lived in a state that most people cannot comprehend: uncertainty without closure.
Is Sabrina alive? Is she alive somewhere, raised by someone else, believing different people are her parents, living a life completely disconnected from the family that gave her birth?.
Or is she gone? Did someone harm her? Is she buried somewhere in the Florida swamps, in the woods beyond that neighborhood in Valrico, in an unmarked grave that holds the remains of a child nobody ever found?.
The Aisenbergs have refused to stop believing. When other families might have given up hope after 5 years, or 10 years, or 20 years, Marlene and Steve continued.
They created the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s case file for Sabrina. They cooperated with investigators when investigators changed their theories. They supported other families facing accusations and prosecution, knowing what it feels like to be accused of murdering your own child.
They have watched their other children grow up in the shadow of this case. William is now in his mid-thirties. Monica is in her early thirties. Both grew up knowing that their baby sister was gone and that society had briefly suspected their parents of killing her.
The Aisenberg family has continued to live because continuing is what you do when you’re a parent and your child is missing. You don’t have the luxury of giving up. You don’t have the option of accepting defeat.
The Shoe Print That Haunts The Investigation
Of all the physical evidence left at the scene, the shoe print may be the most haunting.
A size that doesn’t match Steve or Marlene Aisenberg. A pattern that doesn’t match any shoes in the home. An impression left near Sabrina’s crib by someone who stood there while the baby slept—someone who was close enough to take her.
In 1997 and 1998, forensic shoe analysis was still developing. The databases were smaller. The technology was less sophisticated.
But in 2025, that shoe print could potentially be matched to modern forensic databases. That sole pattern could potentially identify a brand, a model, a size that would narrow down who was in that house on November 24, 1997.
Instead, the shoe print sits in an evidence locker. The records are being withheld. And a judge is ordering their release because the public—Sabrina’s family included—has a right to know what investigators found.
The system failed Sabrina Aisenberg in 1997. The question is whether it will fail her again in 2025.
What The Wiretap Actually Revealed
The prosecutors and investigators who authorized 79 days of wiretap surveillance of Steve and Marlene Aisenberg insisted they heard confessions on those tapes. They insisted that parents discussing the worst nightmare imaginable—losing a child—were actually confessing to harming that child.
But consider for a moment what they actually heard, if the audio quality had been clear enough to hear anything at all:
A couple grieving. A couple questioning what happened. A couple wondering if they should have done something differently. A couple trying to support each other through the most traumatic event possible. A couple experiencing what the American Psychological Association identifies as acute stress disorder and trauma-induced grief.
If someone’s child went missing, and investigators listened to your private conversations with your spouse in the middle of the night, what would they hear?
They would hear doubt. They would hear guilt—not the guilt of having committed a crime, but the existential guilt that every parent feels when something bad happens to their child: “If only I had checked sooner. If only I had locked the door. If only I had stayed awake”.
The FBI confused natural guilt with criminal guilt. The FBI heard grief and interpreted it as confession. The FBI listened to a family falling apart and saw conspiracy.
This is what happens when investigators start with a conclusion and then listen selectively to all evidence that confirms that conclusion. Everything becomes proof. Every word becomes an admission. Every moment of despair becomes an incriminating statement.
The Unidentified Blonde Hair
“A blonde hair found near Sabrina’s crib.” That’s what the evidence report said.
Marlene and Steve both have dark brown hair. Their other two children have dark brown hair. Nobody in the immediate family has blonde hair.
In 1997, DNA testing of hair was possible but not routine. The technology existed but wasn’t as sophisticated as it would become in the decades that followed.
In 2025, that hair could be tested. That strand could reveal a profile. That microscopic piece of evidence could potentially identify who was in Sabrina’s crib.
But the hair sits in an evidence locker. The records are sealed. And the public is left to wonder: Why would investigators drag their feet on this case for 28 years? Why would basic forensic work not have been done decades ago?
Unless—and this is the uncomfortable question that haunts the Aisenberg case—law enforcement decided long ago who was guilty and stopped looking for anyone else.
October 2025: The Case Returns From The Shadows
Twenty-eight years. That’s how long Sabrina Aisenberg has been missing.
Two decades and eight years of waiting. Two decades and eight years of a mother checking her phone for messages. Two decades and eight years of a father wondering if he should have locked the garage door. Two decades and eight years of siblings growing up under the shadow of a sister who was taken before they really knew her.
And then, in October 2025, something unexpected happened.
A Tampa attorney named Mike Trentalange filed a public records request to examine the case files. Not to prosecute anyone. Not to accuse anyone. Just to look at what evidence had been gathered, what leads had been followed, what physical evidence had been preserved or lost over nearly three decades.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office delayed producing the records.
They delayed in 2019 when Trentalange first requested them, claiming the case was “still an ongoing investigation”. They delayed again in 2021 for the same reason. And they delayed again in 2025, even though nearly 30 years had passed and no arrests had been made.
Finally, a judge had had enough.
On October 22, 2025, Judge Cheryl Thomas of the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit Court issued a ruling: The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office was in contempt of court for failing to comply with the order to produce the public records.
“I’m finding the sheriff’s office in contempt because they didn’t comply with the mandate,” Judge Thomas stated from the bench.
The judge noted that while the delay may not have been “willful,” it was still contempt—a message that some institutions seem to believe they can operate indefinitely in the shadows, hiding evidence and information from the public.
Trentalange was finally granted access to the case files on October 28-29, 2025. Eight hours total to examine what investigators had gathered over 28 years.
The question everyone asked that week: What would those files reveal?
The Lawyer Who Became A Target
The Sabrina Aisenberg case has a twist within the twist—a subplot so disturbing that it reveals the full scope of prosecutorial overreach.
Barry Cohen was the prominent Tampa attorney who represented Steve and Marlene Aisenberg during their prosecution. He was the lawyer who fought the wiretap charges. He was the attorney who helped prove the recordings were inaudible. He was the advocate who exposed prosecutorial misconduct and got the charges dismissed.
For his efforts, he became a target.
In 2008, police informants claimed that a jailhouse cellmate had told them that Cohen was somehow involved in a conspiracy to dispose of Sabrina’s body. The informants alleged the cellmate discussed buying a boat from Marlene and Steve as part of a plan to dump Sabrina’s remains in Tampa Bay.
The accusation was extraordinary. The evidence was nonexistent.
Cohen held a press conference to publicly defend himself against these insinuations. He pointed out that public records would show whether he—or the Aisenbergs—had ever owned a boat. They had not.
“All you have to do is check public records for boat ownership and see that we never owned a boat. So, I mean, the whole story was another one of these fabricated stories to try and disparage Marlene and myself,” Steve Aisenberg explained.
But the accusation did its job. It tainted Cohen further. It suggested that if the attorney who defended the parents was somehow connected to the case, then maybe the parents were guilty after all.
Barry Cohen passed away from cancer in 2018. He never lived to see his clients’ full exoneration, never lived to see the full scope of the injustice exposed, never lived to see the day when the case might finally be solved through means other than the persecution of innocent people.
And now, Mike Trentalange—another attorney, another advocate for truth—is trying to finish the work that Barry Cohen started.
The Age-Progressed Face Of A Missing Child
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children maintains a file on Sabrina Aisenberg. They have photographs. They have information. And they have something haunting: an age-progressed photo showing what Sabrina might look like if she were alive today.
Sabrina Aisenberg would be 27 years old now. If she was kidnapped and raised by someone else, she might be living somewhere in America right now, completely unaware that she has a family searching for her.
She might be working a job, going to school, falling in love, living a life that belongs to someone else’s family. She might see herself in a mirror and never know that the family she’s looking for has been looking for her.
Marlene and Steve have placed their DNA on genealogy websites like 23andMe and Ancestry. They’ve uploaded their genetic profiles to every database they can find, hoping that someday, somehow, a match will appear—a relative of Sabrina’s who will take a DNA test and unlock the mystery.
“That’s how we’re going to get her home,” Marlene said, her voice still carrying the hope that sustains parents who refuse to accept permanent loss. “Anybody who thinks they see somebody that looks like they could be our family, looks like Sabrina, looks like William and Monica, please have your friends take a DNA test. That’s how it’s going to happen”.
It’s a desperate plea. But it’s also a scientific reality: DNA doesn’t lie. Genealogy doesn’t lie. If Sabrina is alive somewhere, if she was raised by a family with whom she shares no genetic connection, eventually the DNA will reveal the truth.
The Seven Fingerprints
In 2025, with advances in fingerprint analysis that didn’t exist in 1997, those seven unidentified fingerprints could potentially be identified.
They sit in an evidence locker. They wait. They represent seven opportunities to identify who was in Sabrina’s room that night.
But to run those fingerprints through modern databases, someone has to do the work. Someone has to care enough to pursue the leads that were ignored in 1997.
Will the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office finally run those prints in 2025 or 2026? Will they analyze them with technology that didn’t exist when Sabrina disappeared?
Or will those seven fingerprints remain just another piece of evidence gathering dust, another reminder of a system that chose prosecution over investigation, chose winning over truth.
The Blonde Hair
“A blonde hair found near Sabrina’s crib.”
Modern DNA analysis could identify that hair. Could reveal whether it belonged to someone in a national database. Could connect that hair to a person, a family, a history.
But the hair hasn’t been tested. Not in 1997. Not in 2005. Not in 2015. Not even in 2025.
Why? That’s the question that screams across nearly three decades: Why haven’t the most basic forensic procedures been performed on the physical evidence that was collected?
Unless the answer is that investigators never wanted to know. Unless the answer is that law enforcement made a decision in 1997 that the parents were guilty, and from that moment forward, every other investigation—every other suspect—became irrelevant.
The Attempted Break-Ins
Before Sabrina vanished, homes in the Aisenberg neighborhood with small children experienced attempted break-ins.
Someone was casing homes. Someone was looking for access points. Someone was identifying houses where families with young children lived.
Then Sabrina disappeared.
The pattern suggested a predator—someone who had identified a target, had prepared, and had struck.
But instead of investigating this pattern, instead of interviewing suspects who might have been involved in the attempted break-ins, instead of tracking this clear thread of criminal activity, investigators narrowed their focus to the parents.
The attempted break-ins became background noise. The pattern became irrelevant. The predator—if there was a predator—remained free while investigators pursued innocent people.
When A System Fails, It Fails Completely
The case of Sabrina Aisenberg is a perfect storm of governmental failure.
It reveals how confirmation bias corrupts investigation. It shows how prosecutors can misrepresent evidence to judges. It demonstrates how wiretap technology can be misused against citizens. It exposes how law enforcement can pursue the wrong suspects with such tunnel vision that actual leads are ignored.
It is, in many ways, a blueprint for everything that can go wrong in a criminal justice system.
And after all of that failure—after all of that injustice—Sabrina is still missing.
The system couldn’t find her when it should have been looking for a kidnapper. The system won’t find her now by using DNA and genealogy unless someone finally decides to do the basic forensic work that should have been done in 1997.
Marlene and Steve Aisenberg were exonerated in 2001. They were paid $1.5 million by the federal government for their defense fees in 2004. They were officially cleared of all charges.
But that doesn’t bring Sabrina home. That doesn’t solve the mystery. That doesn’t identify who took their daughter.
The Question That Never Gets Answered
Is Sabrina alive?
If she was kidnapped and taken across state lines, if she was given to a family that wanted a child, if she was raised with a false name and a false history—she could be alive somewhere right now.
She could be living in California or New York or Texas or Florida. She could be a college student or a young professional or a mother herself. She could be anyone.
Except she can’t be the person she should have been: a daughter reunited with her family, a sister reconnected with her siblings, a woman who knows her own story.
Or is Sabrina gone?
Did someone harm her that night? Did someone panic after taking her from her crib and realize they couldn’t keep her? Did someone bury her in the Florida swamps, in the places that swallow evidence and hide bodies?
Is Sabrina’s remains somewhere waiting to be found? Is there a physical location where the truth is buried—literally buried—waiting for someone with the will to dig.
Marlene and Steve don’t know. After 28 years, they still don’t know if their daughter is alive or dead.
And that uncertainty—that ambiguity without resolution—is perhaps the cruelest punishment of all.
The Bedroom That Waits
In Maryland, in the home where Marlene and Steve now live as real estate agents, there is a bedroom.
The bedroom belongs to Sabrina.
It sits empty. It waits. It has waited for 28 years.
Every night, Marlene and Steve pass that bedroom door. Every morning, they wake knowing their youngest daughter is not in that room. Every holiday, they set a place for Sabrina at the table—a place that remains empty year after year after year.
This is what it means to have a child vanish: You don’t move on. You don’t close that bedroom door. You don’t pack away the clothes or donate the toys or accept that the waiting is over.
Instead, you live in a state of perpetual suspension—not grieving because your child might still be alive, not hoping because your child might be dead, just existing in a liminal space where neither past nor present nor future can be fully claimed.
“It’s a process, it’s something we live through every day still, and we will continue to live through it until she’s home with us,” Marlene told an interviewer in 2022.
Not “until we find out what happened.” Not “until she’s found.” Not “until we have closure.”
Until she’s home.
October 28-29, 2025: The Files Are Finally Opened
Mike Trentalange got eight hours. Eight hours to examine 28 years of investigation files.
What will he find? What secrets are those files hiding?
Will there be evidence of investigation into the attempted break-ins? Will there be forensic reports on the blonde hair? Will there be analysis of the seven fingerprints? Will there be proof that law enforcement pursued real leads before narrowing their focus to the parents?
Or will the files reveal what many suspect—that the investigation was corrupted from the start, that evidence was ignored or destroyed, that the search for Sabrina was sacrificed on the altar of prosecutorial ambition?
The public has a right to know. Sabrina’s family has a right to know. The community that was lied to about this case has a right to know.
In October 2025, the files are being opened. The truth—whatever it is—is finally being dragged into the light.
Where Sabrina’s Family Stands Today
William Aisenberg is now in his mid-thirties. Monica Aisenberg is in her early thirties. Both grew up knowing that their baby sister vanished, that their parents were wrongly accused, that the system failed their family in every conceivable way.
And still, they hold onto hope.
Steve Aisenberg has said, with a conviction born of 28 years of certainty: “I know [there are] always going to be people who think Marlene and I had something to do with Sabrina’s disappearance. We did not. We did not”.
Marlene continues to reach out to women who message her on Facebook claiming they might be Sabrina. She compares photographs. She asks about family memories. She holds onto every possibility, no matter how remote.
And they wait.
They wait for DNA to match. They wait for genealogy to reveal a connection. They wait for someone—anyone—to remember something, to come forward with information, to help solve the mystery of where their baby went on that night in November 1997.
Twenty-eight years of waiting.
But parents don’t stop. Parents don’t give up. Parents hold that empty bedroom waiting, because the alternative—accepting that your child is truly gone—is something the human heart cannot bear.
The True Crime Of The Sabrina Aisenberg Case
The crime wasn’t just the disappearance.
The crime was the investigation that pursued innocent people. The crime was the wiretap surveillance of grieving parents. The crime was the prosecutors who misrepresented evidence to judges. The crime was the system that chose winning over truth.
The crime was that while law enforcement was destroying a family, the person who actually took Sabrina was getting away.
The crime was that nearly 30 years later, the real perpetrator may never be found because the investigation was so thoroughly corrupted that the physical evidence—the fingerprints, the hair, the shoe print, the witnesses—was buried under prosecutorial misconduct and bureaucratic cover-ups.
The crime was what happened to Steve and Marlene and William and Monica.
And the crime that continues is that Sabrina Aisenberg remains missing, waiting in that empty bedroom in Maryland, waiting to be found, waiting to come home.
Epilogue: A Message From The Past To The Present
In 1997, Marlene Aisenberg was a mother who checked on her baby at midnight and found her safe.
By morning, everything had changed.
For 28 years, she has lived knowing that she didn’t have the answer to the most basic question a mother can face: Where is my child?
She has lived knowing that the people who should have been looking for Sabrina were instead building a case against her. She has lived knowing that while the investigation was focused on her and her husband, the real perpetrator remained free, unpursued, unconvicted.
She has lived knowing that a bedroom in her house—a room with toys and clothes and the memory of a five-month-old baby—sits empty and waiting.
And in October 2025, nearly 28 years later, she is still waiting.
Still hoping that those seven fingerprints will finally be analyzed. Still praying that the blonde hair will reveal a match. Still believing that genealogy and DNA will do what law enforcement couldn’t: bring her daughter home.
Sabrina Aisenberg disappeared on November 24, 1997.
She would be 27 years old today.
Somewhere in America, Sabrina—whether she’s alive or dead—remains a mystery.
But she is not forgotten.
The empty crib remembers her. The empty bedroom remembers her. The parents who love her remember her.
And now, in 2025, the case returns to the light—not to prosecute the innocent, but finally, after 28 years, to search for the truth.
