Pod Insights Crime Weekly S3 Ep331: The Baby Emmanuel Investigation | Conflicting Stories & Criminal Pasts About this episode 7-month-old Emmanuel Haro vanished on August 14 after his mother, Rebecca Haro, reported being attacked while outside a Big 5 Sporting Goods store. Despite extensive searches, no trace of Emmanuel has been found. Authorities have reported inconsistencies in Rebecca's statements and have not ruled out foul play. We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets! https://www.crimecon.com/CC25Try our coffee!! - www. CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > ｿ https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> ｿ https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:13 Derrick Levasseur? Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derrick Levasseur.
0:17 Stephanie Harlowe? And I'm Stephanie Harlow.
0:19 Derrick Levasseur? And tonight, we're going to be looking into a case that has shaken a California community and raised more questions than answers. A young mother claims her infant son was taken outside a retail store, but as investigators dug a little deeper, the story began to unravel. Conflicting accounts, an abrupt end to cooperation with law enforcement, and a father with a troubling past has all led to one haunting question: What happened to baby Emmanuel? And this is something that came across my X page, and I know a lot of people are talking about it online. So even though there's not a ton of information out there yet, we wanted to cover it here for anybody who hasn't heard about it and kind of talk a little bit about where we are as of right now.
1:02 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, I think there's enough information that things are looking a little strange. And at first-
1:07 Derrick Levasseur? I think most people would agree.
1:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, it's all over TikTok. And when it first happened, people were saying, kind of right off the bat, something doesn't sound right about this. And I kind of held back. I was like, let me keep an eye on this. Let me, let me wait and see. What's going to sell it for me is if there's some sort of concrete evidence that comes out where these parents have a past with child abuse or something like that, where it doesn't really make a lot of sense. And that is what happened. So this all centers around seven-month-old Emmanuel Harrow. And according to a press release from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, on August 14th, before 8:00 PM local time, Rebecca Harrow said her infant
1:50 Stephanie Harlowe? son was kidnapped outside a retail store on Yucapá Boulevard in Yucapá, California, which is 10 miles east of San Bernardino. Police have since interviewed multiple people, including both of Emmanuel's parents, Rebecca and Jacob. However-
2:05 Stephanie Harlowe? According to the police, during those interviews, when Rebecca was confronted with inconsistencies in her story, she declined to continue the interview. Now Emanuel's grandmother, who she's recently come out, she's, she says she believes the couple is innocent, that these parents, Rebecca and Jacob, loved their son. They would never do anything to him. She claims that law enforcement asked Rebecca and Jacob to take lie detector tests, but Jacob refused to do so without a lawyer present. That's not what the police are saying. The police are saying that when there was inconsistencies they found in Rebecca's initial story, they kind of pressed her on this. And that's when she pulled back and she was like, no, I'm all set, I'm not cooperating anymore and cut all contact. It was also reported that this past Saturday,
2:49 Stephanie Harlowe? the authorities searched the family's home with cadaver dogs. And law enforcement has also announced that they cannot rule out foul play. So what I'm going to do here, I don't think Derek has seen this yet. I'm going to play the interview with Rebecca and Jacob that they kind of gave in the early days after Emanuel went missing or was kidnapped, depending on who you believe and what you believe. And then we're going to kind of talk about it and discuss just the things she said. How plausible is this story? What if you're, what are you doing if you're law enforcement in this situation? It's 2025, there's cameras everywhere, there's cell phones everywhere. What, what are we going to do as law enforcement
3:32 Stephanie Harlowe? to kind of go forward and find these inconsistencies that they claim they have found in Rebecca's story?
3:38 Speaker 02 No, he's gone, I can't find him. If you know anything, please come and bring my son back. Please, I'm begging you.
3:46 Speaker 03 It's a mother's desperate plea for help in finding her seven-month-old baby boy Emanuel. Rebecca Harrow says it all happened Thursday evening around seven. She, her husband, and their two other children were at a nearby park for their older son's football practice. She says she drove over to this Big Five store to buy a mouthguard for her older son.
4:07 Speaker 02 I came over here, parked right here in this edge. When I was coming over here, I smelled the baby went to the restroom. I said, "Okay, Papa, don't worry, we're gonna change you."
4:19 Speaker 03 Rebecca says she took out a diaper and laid the baby down next to the car seat. She only remembers a voice she heard.
4:26 Speaker 02 I was gonna get the diaper and somebody said, "Hola." And I didn't see nothing since. I woke up right here on the floor.
4:36 Speaker 02 And I didn't see Emmanuel.
4:38 Speaker 03 Rebecca says she woke up with a black eye and her baby gone. She searched around the car, ran into the store, then called 911.
4:46 Speaker 02 Everybody came, the dogs, helicopters.
4:50 Speaker 03 But no sign of Emmanuel and no witness to what may have happened.
4:55 Speaker 04 Whoever took my son, please return him. We just want him back. We won't do anything to you. Just give us our son. Just keep him safe, don't hurt him.
5:06 Speaker 04 Make sure you feed him, change him.
5:08 Speaker 03 Emmanuel's father Jake says his family does not have any enemies and can't imagine who or why anyone would take their baby.
5:16 Speaker 02 If you know anything, please come forward. Or take him to the cops. Or please let us know anything, please.
5:25 Derrick Levasseur? Hmm, okay. All right. I've listened, I've watched.
5:31 Stephanie Harlowe? So what do you think of the story? They're at a game for one of their older children. She's gotta get a mouthguard for this kid.
5:38 Derrick Levasseur? Yep, which is reasonable so far.
5:42 Stephanie Harlowe? Goes to the store, she can tell Emmanuel needs a diaper change. She lays him down on the car seat, which, you know, we've all done a million times. You have small children, you change your kids. Where you gotta change your kids? Even though I will say, usually bathrooms inside these stores do have an actual dedicated changing station. So if you're gonna go inside the store anyways, why wouldn't you have just brought him in with you? Changed the diaper there where you can dispose of it? Have like a sanitary kind of location to do that? But... Regardless, then she hears what she says is a voice who says, "Hola." And then she gets punched in the face, black eye. She doesn't see anything.
6:19 Derrick Levasseur? Yep.
6:20 Stephanie Harlowe? And she falls down on the ground. And then when she wakes up, as some undetermined amount of time later, Emmanuel is gone. She runs in the store. They haven't seen him. And she mentions during her interview a few times. Um, I don't know if I got that part, but she keeps saying there's no cameras. It was a really dark area, things like that. So personally, I, I don't know how you could get punched in the face and get a black eye without turning and seeing something, but maybe it was so fast. She doesn't know what happened. But once again, law enforcement is saying there's inconsistencies in the story. I just want to get an, an opinion from you. What do you make of this?
7:03 Stephanie Harlowe? You know, I found it very Chris Watts-y when the father was like, "Just bring, we just want him back. We just want him back. Make sure you're feeding him and changing him. We won't do anything to you." Very odd. Without knowing any further information about this case or about these people, as a former investigator, what do you make of their mannerisms, the story itself, all of it?
7:25 Derrick Levasseur? This might be surprising to some of you, but without any other details, without the conflicting accounts, without the lack of cooperation with law enforcement, just watching that video, I find it believable, right? But that's a surface level approach. I'm only looking at a minute footage. But when you dig a little deeper, there are some questions that I have. As far as what you said, not seeing anything, that could be explained by two ways. Basically, she, she hears "Hola" and the person sucker punches her in the side of the face. The second explanation would be as soon as she turned her head, she got punched and she doesn't, she lost a little bit of her memory. She doesn't remember maybe 30 seconds, you know, right before that. But she definitely has a black eye.
8:06 Stephanie Harlowe? She does. For those listening, not watching.
8:09 Derrick Levasseur? She definitely has a black eye, which is consistent with the story. She definitely got punched in the face by someone.
8:14 Stephanie Harlowe? Something, yeah.
8:15 Derrick Levasseur? Who that is. It, it does look like a... A black eye that you would get from getting punched is consistent with that. So if it wasn't a fist, it was something that was round in shape to kind of replicate a fist. It's either in an unfortunate set of circumstances that the big five doesn't have cameras. Or it was, you know, on the other hand, premeditated where this was a place that was chosen because it doesn't have cameras. Although I always get a little apprehensive about saying it's premeditated because that person would have to have some knowledge of the security system because just because you don't see the cameras, it doesn't mean they don't exist. So to take that risk, not knowing 100% whether they have cameras or not is a big, is a big chance. So the fact that they don't have cameras there.
9:00 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, we don't know. She said they don't have cameras there. But I find it hard to believe in 2025 that any establishment, especially because I think with a lot of like insurance policies and stuff with stores like this, having cameras, monitoring like the parking lot and the inside of the store. I think a lot of insurance companies.
9:20 Derrick Levasseur? Like require it at this point?
9:21 Stephanie Harlowe? That, yeah.
9:22 Derrick Levasseur? I would agree. And if not that store, you know, they could have been out or whatever. But from just a little bit of footage we had, you had a jack in the box right there. You have some other businesses.
9:32 Stephanie Harlowe? That's what I'm saying. So I'm wondering if her inconsistent stories.
9:35 Derrick Levasseur? Somebody's got a camera.
9:36 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, her inconsistent stories are police saying, oh, actually the big, the big M does have cameras. But you happen to park in an area of the parking lot where they couldn't see you. However, a business across the road does have a good view of that part of the parking lot and we don't see you there at all. So where were you? And then that's when she's in her interview and she's like, you know what? I don't want to talk about this anymore. That's what I'm thinking.
10:00 Derrick Levasseur? Are you seeing the big M or big five? I think it was big five.
10:03 Stephanie Harlowe? It was big five, sorry.
10:04 Derrick Levasseur? Big five sporting goods stores. So yeah, I'm with you. I think that there's probably going to be some other cameras there. Maybe some witness testimony from other people who were in the parking lot at that time who may know something. Cause the store was open. She was going in for a mouthpiece. I have to imagine she wasn't the only person there. So did anybody else see anything? And if they saw something, was it consistent with her story as far as where she parked?
10:26 Stephanie Harlowe? I think we've seen this a lot in cases where people say, oh yeah, I pulled up to the gas station and then I did this, this and this. And then my girlfriend got out of the car and gotten another car with some strange people and drove off. And then they'll review surveillance footage, whether from that store or surrounding businesses and be like, actually that didn't happen. You got there alone. And I'm wondering if that's what they're saying. Like actually you did pull up to the big five, but you just rushed out of the car and ran right into the store. It doesn't look like you're changing any baby or nothing's happening here.
10:54 Derrick Levasseur? The biggest issue for me is not what we're seeing in the video. It's something completely different because we always talk about windows of opportunity, right? And how sometimes you can put yourself in a position where you become a victim. And that is more in line with like walking out of the gym and having your headphones in. Think about the window of opportunity that would have taken place here. It would have been very small where she pulls into the parking lot. She gets out of the car. She doesn't even take the baby out of the vehicle. She leans in and was about to change his diaper. So ask yourself this. If there is a suspect, this suspect literally would have had to have been walking out of the store
11:33 Derrick Levasseur? or in a vehicle very close by, just waiting for this opportunity to happen within this 30 to 45 second window of opportunity, knowing that there's a baby in the backseat and that there's nobody else in the car who could defend her if they decided to attack her. So.
11:48 Stephanie Harlowe? Or they were following her with the intent of waiting for her to be alone, I guess.
11:54 Derrick Levasseur? But how do they know that she was going to need to get a mouthpiece to be alone? I mean, these are things that, yes, I can't say 100% it didn't happen, but it would have to be the perfect set of circumstances for this to go down the way she's describing it, which is why I think law enforcement was a little skeptical at first. Because what we would have to believe is that this woman pulls into the lot and gets out of the car, jumps out and immediately this person's right there, ready to attack her. And then the question becomes why? Why this baby? Why Emmanuel?
12:25 Stephanie Harlowe? Why would you say hola when you're walking up if you're trying to catch her unaware?
12:29 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, just punch her and just go. Not to be crass, but just punch her and go, or just throw her to the ground, whatever you gotta do, get the, you know, get that element of surprise. So there is definitely some questions here. It's hard because this could be the worst moment of their lives.
12:41 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
12:42 Derrick Levasseur? Now, can we talk about something else? Because the conflicting accounts, that could mean a lot of things. I would guess that that means there's witnesses who saw something different. If there's no cameras.
12:52 Stephanie Harlowe? Or like I said, surveillance, or even cellphone coordinates, who knows?
12:56 Derrick Levasseur? Something. There's something there that's not lining up.
12:58 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
12:59 Derrick Levasseur? I want to ask you, and I want to ask our audience about the abrupt end to the cooperation with law enforcement, because I do think there may be two sides of this coin, and people may feel differently about it. For me, I've always told you guys, if you find yourself in a predicament where you're being questioned by law enforcement, have a lawyer present. I don't find any issue with it. Having someone there while you're cooperating with law enforcement to make sure that you don't say anything that could get yourself in trouble when you didn't do anything wrong. I would tell that to my best friends and my family members. I would do it for myself.
13:32 Stephanie Harlowe? In this situation with your child being missing?
13:34 Derrick Levasseur? I would probably, yeah. I probably would, but what I wouldn't do, which is where I was going with this, is stop cooperating with them.
13:42 Stephanie Harlowe? Stop contacting altogether, yeah.
13:43 Derrick Levasseur? I would not do that. I would have my lawyer present if I felt like you guys are kind of looking at me a little bit here, and we, you know, we're gonna talk about Amy Bradley again this week.
13:52 Stephanie Harlowe? But they do, they do this with, with families and parents of missing children. This is, they're supposed to do this, yeah.
13:59 Derrick Levasseur? And I was just gonna say, you know, we're talking about Amy Bradley, and there are some people there who are like, oh, why would you even, you know, suggest that the family could be involved? Hate to tell you guys, but if you had someone work in your case, if you had a detective work in your case, do you want the guy who's going to look under every stone? Or do you want the guy who's only gonna look under the stones where he's not gonna offend anybody? You want the person who's gonna vet everything. And so, part of it is the last person to be with the baby, and any family members or friends who could be connected to it. That's part of the process, but there is a way to do it respectfully.
14:32 Stephanie Harlowe? And it's just statistics.
14:33 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
14:33 Stephanie Harlowe? It's statistics as well, right? I mean, most children that go missing, stranger abduction is not the most common reason a child goes missing. So the statistics show, and not only in this case, but even with Amy Bradley, the statistics show that when a crime happens against someone, it is usually or often somebody who knows them, somebody who's close to them. It's very rare, not rare, but more rare statistically, that this is just some random act of violence or random abduction by a stranger. Those are just the statistics. So of course, law enforcement has to explore that option and rule those people out first before even going
15:15 Stephanie Harlowe? further. So if they're not cooperating with police and they're preventing them from ruling the parents out as suspects, how can they even go further? And on that note, they don't really have a lot that they can do here because an Amber Alert can't be issued.
15:27 Derrick Levasseur? That's right.
15:28 Stephanie Harlowe? There's no suspect or vehicle description, so they can't even put on an Amber Alert for Emmanuel. And officials with the Uvalde Foundation for Kids, they were initially offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to Emmanuel's recovery. Well, they called off their independent search less than a day after they announced it, with the foundation's founder, Daniel Chapin, saying, quote, "We cannot in good conscience utilize our team and resources when so much is missing in this case. Of particular concern to us lies with the inconsistencies in the details and the sudden decision by the mother to end communication with law enforcement and our team. Something is not right in this whole picture." End quote.
16:06 Derrick Levasseur? I think that's the best way to put it. Something is not right.
16:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
16:09 Derrick Levasseur? We don't know what it is yet. Can't put our finger on it. Law enforcement probably already has a pretty good clue, but just from the outside looking in, something is not right. Something is not adding up here.
16:22 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, this is where it comes in now that the father Jake Mitchell Harrow has a past. So Riverside County Superior Court records show that Jake Harrow has a June 2023 felony conviction for child cruelty from a 2018 arrest. And he was sentenced to 180 days in jail and 48 months of probation. He's also scheduled to appear in court on this matter in early September for an alleged probation violation. So we have a history of maybe, maybe Jake not being so great with kids, to put it mildly.
17:01 Derrick Levasseur? That's a big red flag. And you know what that's going to do? When you see something like that, law enforcement naturally is going to ask, did the father do something to Emmanuel? And if that's the case, there's a real possibility that Emmanuel was never in the Big Five parking lot and he was never at the sporting event. So they're going to go back to that sporting event where the other child was and say, hey, listen, did you see Rebecca? Did you see Jake? And did you happen to see them with Emmanuel at any point? Did you physically see them out of the car with Emmanuel at any point? Because there is a possibility that if Jake did something to Emmanuel earlier in the day, maybe he's the one who gave Rebecca the black eye.
17:40 Stephanie Harlowe? That's what I was thinking, yeah.
17:41 Derrick Levasseur? This could have been all kind of set up to look like this, to explain why Emmanuel is no longer with us. Either way, there's a baby missing and it doesn't look good. It does not look good because on one hand, if the parents are lying, that that's probably not a good outcome coming from this, if we find out what happened to Emmanuel. On the other hand, if it is exactly the way Rebecca's describing it, also not a good outcome that usually comes from this. So this is, this is a dire situation. We have to find him as soon as possible because minutes or hours or days in this situation, it's, the more time that passes, the less likely we are to find Emmanuel in, in good condition.
18:26 Stephanie Harlowe? And it's already been way too many days.
18:28 Derrick Levasseur? That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. So it's not looking good. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think most of you who are astute to true crime at this point have been around with us for a while know that at this point, there's a reason that all of these people are backing away from this. A lot of what they know probably hasn't even been publicly disseminated. They're just hearing from their colleagues and their sources that this is bad, and that's why they're backing away from it. So, not, not a good situation. There's not much we can learn from this one. We have to wait and see what happens and then report it to you guys because I don't want to cast judgment on the family until I know definitively that they were involved. You know, and there's another side to this that we're not really talking about right now, but there obviously
19:11 Derrick Levasseur? is a distrust with law enforcement in certain communities and maybe that's their apprehension for wanting to work with law enforcement. I don't know. But again, just to quote that individual who said it earlier, it does not look good. And we don't have the whole picture.
19:24 Stephanie Harlowe? It doesn't, and something feels very, very off to me, just in general. I was also thinking that this could have been a domestic violence issue, which is where the black eye came from.
19:35 Derrick Levasseur? Yep.
19:36 Stephanie Harlowe? That led, I mean, possibly, maybe, maybe Jacob was attacking Emmanuel and she tried to interfere, or maybe he, I don't, I don't know. It's just, it doesn't really make sense the way she said it. And I think a lot of people agree, and hopefully this ends with Emmanuel being recovered and brought, brought back safely regardless of where he is or who he's brought back to. But as Derek said, it's not looking good for that. And the police have visited their home with get ever dogs. So clearly, law enforcement does believe there's some suspicion to be held with these two parents. But that's, let us know what you think about the interview, what they said, the story, what is your take on it?
20:20 Stephanie Harlowe? I know a lot of people have strong opinions on this right now. In fact, I was a little surprised to see how strong the opinions were coming out the gate because I think people usually try to reserve that when it's a situation like this. You just don't know. You don't want to accuse parents who just lost their child of anything. And so usually you don't see that kind of coming out until a little bit later when more information has, has surfaced. But a lot of people right now are kind of coming out and saying, hey, I watched enough true crime to know this is not, this is not setting right with anyone. So let us know what you think in the comments about the interviews, about what they said, about the whole story in general. Uh, yeah, that's all we have for now, but we are hoping and praying that Emmanuel is okay.
21:05 Derrick Levasseur? One hundred percent. That's, that's what's most important right now. Emmanuel, we want to find him as soon as possible. Make sure that he's okay. Make sure that this story isn't as bad as it looks. So until next time ever, obviously everyone stays safe out there. We will see you later this week with the final part of the Amy Bradley series. And I have to tell you, we have a crazy update for you because the director of the Netflix series, Amy Bradley is missing, reached out to us and we're going to tell you what he had to say in this final episode. So we'll see you later this week and we're also going to be announcing the winner for the crime con tickets as well. So until then, have a good night. We'll see you soon.
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