The Disappearance of Bianca Lebron (Connecticut)

If there is any case where you wish you could turn back the clock and change just one small decision, it might be the disappearance of Bianca Lebron. There were several moments that morning in November 2001 when a question, a phone call, or one person stopping her before she walked away might have changed everything that came next.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Kylie Low?

  If there is any case where you wish you could turn back the clock and change just one small decision, it might be the disappearance of Bianca LeBron. There were several moments that morning in November 2001 when a question, a phone call, or one person stopping her before she walked away might have changed everything that came next. Now, as the 25-year mark approaches, Bianca's case needs attention more than ever. I want everyone to see her face, to study the composite sketch of the man believed to drive her away from school that day, and do everything we can to bring this child

• 1:13Kylie Low?

  home to her family and find the person who took her away. I'm Kylie Low, and this is the case of Bianca LeBron on Dark Down East.

• 1:34Kylie Low?

  On Wednesday, November 7, 2001, 10-year-old Bianca Elaine LeBron left her home on Clinton Avenue in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and walked the two blocks to school with her older sister and several cousins, just as she always did. According to Daniel Tepfer's reporting for The Connecticut Post, by around 8:30, students at Elias Howe School were gathering outside, waiting to go in for the day. A teacher saw Bianca there before the class headed inside, but as they were waiting in line to be led into the building, Bianca told her friends she had somewhere else to go. She said she needed to see her uncle because they were going to the mall, and she even asked one of her friends if she wanted to come along. The friend said no.

• 2:19Kylie Low?

  Bianca gave her teacher a similar explanation. According to later accounts, she told him, "I have to talk with my uncle," and then walked away from the line toward a van parked nearby. Witnesses described the vehicle as brown and beige with tinted windows. Later, information added that it was possibly a Ford O'Connell line van with chrome trim along the sides and several areas where the paint appeared to have been sanded down. By all accounts, Bianca got into that van voluntarily. No one reported seeing her scream, struggle, or try to get away. Whatever she believed was happening that morning, she appeared comfortable enough with the person waiting for her that she had already told other people where she thought she was

• 3:04Kylie Low?

  going. Everything played out in plain sight. Then the van left, and Bianca never entered the school building. Inside Elias Howe, though, there was no immediate alarm. Susan Silver's reports that Bianca was marked "tardy," but her teacher didn't check with the office to find out where she had gone. No one contacted her family to tell them that although Bianca had arrived at school that morning, she was not sitting in her classroom. The school day continued without her, while at home, Bianca's family had no reason to think anything was wrong. As far as they knew, she was exactly where she was supposed to be. It wasn't until around 4:30 that afternoon, when Bianca's older sister came home without

• 3:49Kylie Low?

  her, that the first real concern set in. Her sister had heard some talk at school. Rumor was that Bianca had gone to the mall. At first, the family tried to make sense of it themselves. They called around and checked with Bianca's friends and other relatives. She had a big extended family, thinking maybe she had gone home with someone and simply forgotten to tell them, but no one they reached had seen her. By about 8:30 that night, roughly 12 hours after Bianca was last seen getting into the van, her family reported her missing.

• 4:24Kylie Low?

  Bianca LeBron was just a few months into her fifth grade year at Elias Howe School. Family members told The Hartford Current that she was friendly, happy, and loved talking to people. School mattered to her, and she was the kind of kid who came home and did her homework without much fuss. Math was one of Bianca's strengths. She was good enough at it that she helped her younger cousins with their multiplication, and she liked playing teacher with the younger kids in the family. There was already a nurturing side to her at such a young age. Bianca also loved music. Destiny's Child, 3LW, and Jennifer Lopez were among her favorites, and MTV was a regular part of her afternoons.

• 5:06Kylie Low?

  From the way her family described her to Kate Remini of The Connecticut Post, Bianca was "social, curious, and comfortable making friends." But being friendly didn't mean Bianca didn't know to be wary of strangers. Her family had talked to her about those dangers, and they didn't believe she would simply get into a vehicle with someone she didn't know, which meant maybe Bianca did know the person she left with, or thought she knew them somehow.

• 5:37Kylie Low?

  Bianca's family quickly made clear that whoever Bianca left with that morning was not one of the relatives they knew as her uncles. The men in her family were accounted for, and no one close to Bianca owned a van matching the one seen outside Elias Howe. Relatives also said it wasn't normal for someone from the family to show up at school and take Bianca somewhere without anyone else knowing about it. That made Bianca's choice of words difficult to interpret. She may have been using "uncle" in the loose way some families do for a close family friend or an adult she knew well, or maybe that was simply the way Bianca understood this person's relationship to her.

• 6:19Kylie Low?

  Investigators could not assume that the word pointed to a blood relative. Witnesses had gotten a reasonably good look at the driver. He was described as a man in his 20s, possibly Hispanic, around six feet tall with a medium build and medium brown skin. He had curly brown hair and long sideburns, and some witnesses described what looked like scratches or abrasions on his face. Another description noted a prominent nose and possibly baggy pants. Within days of Bianca's disappearance, police began working with witnesses on a composite sketch of the man seen with her. The sketch was later released publicly and circulated along with Bianca's Missing Persons posters.

• 7:02Kylie Low?

  You can see it at darkdowneast.com. What's so confounding about all of this is that the driver did not appear to be trying very hard to avoid being seen. He was reportedly standing outside the van at some point that morning in view of other people. Whatever relationship existed between Bianca and the driver, the interaction suggested some level of familiarity or trust, and he didn't feel the need to hide. But there was no obvious explanation for how she could have formed a connection like that with an adult her family didn't know. This was 2001, so home internet access was fairly common, but there was no computer in Bianca's home, eliminating one of the more obvious ways a child could have been

• 7:47Kylie Low?

  communicating privately with someone. That meant the focus had to narrow to the people already somewhere in Bianca's orbit. Someone she may have seen around the neighborhood, through family, through friends, or somewhere else in her daily life? Someone who may have seemed familiar enough that Bianca did not recognize any danger in walking away from school with him? Police followed leads outside the immediate neighborhood, checking information in Waterbury, Stamford, New York City, and eventually as far away as Puerto Rico. The FBI joined the investigation too, but while investigators worked through sightings and tips, another question was becoming impossible to ignore.

• 8:31Kylie Low?

  How had a 10-year-old child arrived at school, spoken to her teacher, left school with an unknown adult, and then missed an entire school day without anyone immediately alerting her family? Bianca's teacher, Robert Memoli, was suspended with pay while the school district investigated what happened that morning. Superintendent of School Sonia Diaz Salcido acknowledged that the district hadn't been routinely checking individual absences, and said the rules around who could pick up a child varied, depending on the student's age and the family's instructions. The disappearance rattled other parents at Elias Howe, and for good reason. How could they trust that their students were safe and secure there?

• 9:14Kylie Low?

  School administrators held meetings in the days that followed intended to assure that safety was of the utmost importance, but those conversations did little to ease the concerns of parents and caregivers who wanted to know how Bianca had been able to leave the grounds so easily and why her absence had gone unnoticed for so long. The district announced several changes. Administrators said that security guards and police would be positioned around the front and back of the school, doors would be kept locked, and visitor screening would be tightened. Parents picking children up early would have to show identification and be listed on the student's emergency information. And if a child was seen at school in the morning but never showed up for class, the

• 9:58Kylie Low?

  family would be contacted. But for Bianca, it was too little, too late. Meanwhile, rumors were starting to circulate around Bridgeport about why Bianca might have gotten into the van so willingly. One suggestion was that she had left with an older "boyfriend." As a 10-year-old, she was not old enough to legally consent to that kind of relationship with a person who was an adult, or at least a person who was old enough to drive. Whatever the rumors suggested, investigators had not established who the driver was or what kind of association, if any, he had to Bianca. By mid-November, the city offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to Bianca's

• 10:43Kylie Low?

  safe return. That amount eventually climbed to $62,000, with additional money from Governor John G. Rowland and contributions from the People's Bank. Calls and possible sightings continued to come in, but none of them led police to Bianca.

• 11:01Kylie Low?

  The first few months after she disappeared, Bianca's family kept waiting for something that would finally point investigators in the right direction. But in the middle of it all, they were hit with more loss. Within three months of Bianca's disappearance, two of her great uncles died, one of undisclosed causes and another in a car accident in Puerto Rico. In February 2002, Bianca's case was featured on America's Most Wanted. The segment was brief, but it generated 19 calls from viewers who said they had information about her disappearance. And Bridgeport Police and the FBI set up a command center to receive and review the tips. Some of those calls initially caught the attention of investigators, but they didn't

• 11:45Kylie Low?

  bring Bianca home. While her family maintained their hope that she was out there alive somewhere, a probate judge declared her legally dead in April of 2002, so that her mother, Carmelita Torres, could act as administrator of her estate. That legal step did not represent a conclusion from police or her loved ones about what had happened to her. The investigation remained open, and Bianca's family continued waiting for her to come home. June 26th should have been Bianca's 11th birthday. Instead, it became another date her family had to pass without her.

• 12:24Kylie Low?

  Then, in early August, a report out of nearby Stratford raised a new possibility. Pamela McLaughlin reports for the New Haven Register that a woman told police she had seen a man carrying what appeared to be a limp body the size of a child near Holly Lane. She described the man as around 50 years old and said he was near a wooded area. Police considered the witness credible enough to take the report seriously and searched the woods, nearby roads, and surrounding neighborhood for about two hours, but they didn't find anything. No one else reported seeing the same man, and investigators could not substantiate any connection to Bianca or to another missing child.

• 13:09Kylie Low?

  Also in August of 2002, Bianca's mother Carmelita Torres was preparing to take the city of Bridgeport and the school system to court. She filed notice of her intent to sue for wrongful death and personal injuries, preserving the claim whether Bianca was later found alive or not. The lawsuit named the city, the Board of Education, Superintendent Sonia Diaz Salcedo, Assistant Principal Clifford Dudley, and Bianca's teacher, Robert Mammoli. At the center of the claim was the school's handling of the morning Bianca disappeared. The filing alleged that Mammoli allowed Bianca to leave school grounds with an adult he did not know and who had not been authorized by her family to take her.

• 13:53Kylie Low?

  The suit also argued that no one alerted security or police when Bianca failed to return, and that her family was not contacted when she never made it to class. By then, the district had already begun changing some of its security procedures, and they tried to do more before budgets got in the way. For the following school year, the Board of Education requested enough money to increase security staffing across the district, including a guard at every school. The final budget, though, did not provide enough funding to make it happen. So when students returned in 2002, the number of guards had not increased as planned. The civil case would continue for years, separate from the police investigation,

• 14:37Kylie Low?

  while Bianca's family was still waiting for the more important answer. Where was their little girl?

• 14:49Speaker 00

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• 14:55Speaker 02

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• 14:58Speaker 00

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• 15:13Speaker 02

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• 15:19Kylie Low?

  Every small town has a local legend. The house no one drives past after dark, or the woods that hold secrets. Every October, I like to add something a little more spooky to my playlist. Stories that blur the line between what's imagined and what might be waiting in the dark. Full Body Chills returns with more strange coincidences, unsettling confessions, and stories where danger may be closer than it seems. Listen to Full Body Chills all October long, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:58Kylie Low?

  By the fall of 2002, nearly a year had passed without anything that clearly moved the case forward. Then, near the end of September, a Bridgeport bus driver reported seeing a girl she believed was Bianca walking with a man near John and Middle Streets around 7:52 in the morning. According to Aaron Leo's reporting for the Connecticut Post, the bus driver said the man appeared to be shielding the girl's face before the two got into a black Chevy Blazer and drove north on Main Street. The driver apparently got enough information for police to trace the Blazer to an address on Parrott Avenue, but when officers went there, the vehicle wasn't at the home.

• 16:41Kylie Low?

  Police searched the downtown area several times and alerted officers on patrol. They couldn't find the girl or the SUV. Within days, investigators said there was no evidence the sighting had actually been Bianca. Meanwhile, Bianca's family was dealing with cruel pranks that seemed designed to exploit their fear. Carmelita told Amy Pignosi of The Hartford Current that she received phone calls where she would hear what sounded like a child crying on the other end. Another caller reportedly told her to go to a warehouse if she ever wanted to see Bianca alive again. There's no indication either call produced a legitimate lead, but for a family waiting

• 17:23Kylie Low?

  for any sign that Bianca was alive, it was another layer of trauma. Investigators kept working whatever information came in. In early 2003, two people connected to the investigation were given polygraph tests, although the reporting did not identify them or say that the results produced a break in the case. Then in March, another missing child case renewed her family's hope. Elizabeth Smart was found alive in Utah nine months after she had been abducted from her home. For Carmelita and the rest of the family, it was proof that a child could be gone for months and still come back.

• 18:04Kylie Low?

  And right around that same time, Bridgeport Police began publicly looking for someone specific in Bianca's case, a man they knew as Jason Gonzalez. Investigators said they believed Jason Gonzalez knew Bianca and might have information about where she was. They were careful not to call him a suspect, but ran his name and photo in the paper. Not long after, they got a phone call from him. Jason denied knowing anything about Bianca's disappearance. Police asked him to come on into the station so they could speak with him in person, but he never showed.

• 18:45Kylie Low?

  Turns out, Gonzalez wasn't actually Jason's legal last name. His name was Jason Lara, although he had used the name Jason Gonzalez before, when police encountered him much earlier in Bianca's investigation. According to an arrest warrant application later described by Elaine Griffin in The Hartford Current, Bridgeport Police arrested Jason on December 5th, 2001, quote, "because he was wanted for questioning in the disappearance of Bianca," end quote. On the fingerprint card from the arrest, he identified himself as Jason Gonzalez.

• 19:26Kylie Low?

  So Jason had been on police radar within a month of Bianca disappearing, even though the public focus on him would not come for almost a year and a half later. Who is this guy? Well, the reporting I'm going off creates some confusion about his age. In April 2003, Jason Gonzalez was described as being 22 years old, while later that year, Jason Lara was reported to be 20. Now, Jason was not some completely unknown person to Bianca or her family. His mother, Luz Gonzalez, had been dating Bianca's late great uncle, Jose Mousy Raboira.

• 20:07Kylie Low?

  In other words, Jason was the son of Bianca's grandma's late brother's girlfriend. Jose died on January 1st, 2002. He was one of the uncles who passed away less than two months after Bianca disappeared. According to police, Jason likely knew Bianca through his mom's boyfriend, and friends told investigators that Bianca sometimes went to her great uncle's home on East Main Street because a, quote, "boy she liked" also lived there, and they identified that person as Jason Lara. Other witnesses told police they had seen Jason kiss Bianca. Jason had a criminal record.

• 20:50Kylie Low?

  In 1998, he had been convicted of attempting to carjack two elderly women in Fairfield and was sentenced to seven years in prison, although he was released early. Contemporary reporting says Bridgeport Police had arrested him at least five times in connection with various other crimes before 2003 as well, though the specifics of those arrests aren't public. Then there's this. According to police, Jason apparently resembled the composite sketch of the man seen with Bianca that morning, and Jason reportedly had a friend who owned a van similar to the one Bianca was seen getting into outside Elias Howe. After publicizing his name and photo, investigators got another piece of information that increased

• 21:35Kylie Low?

  their interest in this guy. A woman walked into Bridgeport Police Headquarters carrying a photocopy of his birth certificate and a photograph of him. She said one of her friends had previously dated Jason, and according to that woman, that friend reportedly made a disturbing comment. If anything happened to her, Jason was responsible. The same woman also said Jason spent time near Bianca's school and sometimes drove a van similar to the one witnesses described. Reporting placed Jason in Bridgeport until shortly after Bianca disappeared, with accounts varying on whether he left about a month later or closer to six months later.

• 22:19Kylie Low?

  According to Elaine Griffin's reporting for The Hartford Current, investigators ended up tracing him through phone records to Fort Myers, Florida.

• 22:28Kylie Low?

  Around the end of October 2003, Bridgeport Police had cause to bring Jason back to Connecticut. But it didn't have anything to do with Bianca LeBron. He was arrested in Florida on a Connecticut warrant, charging him with second-degree forgery, which stemmed from him using the name Jason Gonzalez on that fingerprint card. Florida authorities went to search the home connected to Jason, but by then, he had moved. They did find Jason's fiance and their young child. Interestingly, Jason's fiance told police she had seen Bianca with Jason during the summer before Bianca disappeared, and maintained that was the last time he had seen her.

• 23:12Kylie Low?

  Jason waived extradition and returned to Connecticut, where he was held on $100,000 bond while facing the forgery charge. He pleaded not guilty, and his attorney made no secret of what the defense believed was happening. Police were pursuing a relatively minor forgery allegation aggressively because they hoped keeping Jason in custody would help them build a case or get information about Bianca. And yeah, maybe that was part of the strategy. The arrest gave investigators something they had not been able to get on their own: Jason Lara back in Connecticut. Jason's mother strongly denied that her son had anything to do with Bianca's disappearance. Outside court one day, she also made a striking comment

• 23:57Kylie Low?

  about her late boyfriend, Jose Raboira, saying, quote, "He's dead. Maybe he took the girl to the grave with him," end quote. To be so clear, there is no evidence publicly connecting Jose to Bianca's disappearance. Police had ruled out Bianca's actual uncles early on. And Sergeant Jesus Ortiz, who headed Bridgeport Police Department's Youth Bureau and was overseeing Bianca's investigation, already acknowledged that "uncle" could have meant a family friend or simply someone Bianca knew and referred to that way. Jason remained in custody for about two months. In December 2003, the forgery charge was reduced

• 24:41Kylie Low?

  to interfering with a police officer, and he received a six-month suspended sentence before being released. He continued to deny knowing what happened to Bianca. He acknowledged that he knew her because his mother was dating her great uncle, but he said that was the extent of it. What's more, Jason's public defender, Joseph Bruckman, claimed that their own defense investigation had established Jason was being driven to a painting job about five miles away from Bridgeport in Stratford at the time Bianca disappeared. That information, according to Bruckman, had been shared with prosecutors and the FBI. It certainly has the appearance of an alibi, though I haven't seen the police verify it

• 25:26Kylie Low?

  or indicate that this rules Jason out. All I can say about Lara at this point is that investigators did not develop any information from him about Bianca's disappearance at the time, and they have not publicly labeled him a suspect. The state's attorney stated essentially that authorities knew where to find Jason if they needed him again. Years later, they did try again. In July of 2010 or 2011, Jason was arrested on burglary charges in Bridgeport. The detective then assigned to Bianca's case approached him while he was in custody and asked to speak with him about Bianca, but Jason wasn't up for the chat. Bianca's family was left trying to process the fact that this man police had spent months pursuing

• 26:10Kylie Low?

  was not actually a stranger. Bianca's grandmother, Sonia Raboira, whose brother had been dating Jason's mother, acknowledged that Bianca knew Jason and that some relatives had raised his name in connection with her disappearance. But she said she herself had not known much about that connection and only learned about his role in the investigation through the newspaper. Jason Lara represented one of the first leads that seemed to fit many pieces of the puzzle: someone Bianca knew, someone connected loosely to her extended family, and someone whose appearance was said to resemble the man in the composite. But after questioning him, searching in Florida, and holding him in Connecticut for two months,

• 26:54Kylie Low?

  police still did not have evidence tying him to Bianca's disappearance. As Bianca's case remained unsolved and the Lara lead cooled off, there was another unsettling pattern developing around Bridgeport schools. Over the next year and a half, several other children reported being approached, grabbed, or taken.

• 27:22Speaker 00

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• 27:28Speaker 02

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• 27:31Speaker 00

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• 27:47Speaker 02

  Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 27:53Kylie Low?

  Every small town has a local legend: the house no one drives past after dark, or the woods that hold secrets. Every October, I like to add something a little more spooky to my playlist: stories that blur the line between what's imagined and what might be waiting in the dark. Full Body Chills returns with more strange coincidences, unsettling confessions, and stories where danger may be closer than it seems. Listen to Full Body Chills all October long, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 28:31Kylie Low?

  In June 2002, a 12-year-old girl from Roosevelt School, part of the same district as Elias Howe, was sent home to change clothes and then began walking back to school by herself. Near Park Avenue and Gregory Street, she said a man in a red Volkswagen Beetle pulled up alongside her and tried to drag her into the car. She screamed, and a man coming out of a nearby grocery store ran over and pulled her away before the driver could leave with her. The person who stepped in to help the girl left before police arrived, and although no one else witnessed the attempted abduction itself, police said they believed her account. The girl described the Beetle as older, scratched up, with damage near the right front fender,

• 29:16Kylie Low?

  and the man was described as black, slender, a little over six feet tall, with a beard and partially gray hair. Officers patrolled the area in unmarked cars and stopped several red Volkswagens, but none matched the description closely enough to connect them to what happened. Then, on the morning of February 24, 2003, a fourth grader at Longfellow School Annex reported another frightening encounter. The nine-year-old said he was walking through a hallway before 8:30 when a man grabbed him and tried to pull him toward a red car. The boy fought back, got away, and then ran all the way home to tell his parents. He described the man as a light-skinned, black male

• 30:00Kylie Low?

  wearing a red shirt, jeans, and boots. Bridgeport Police opened an investigation, and once again, the incident put school security back under scrutiny in the same district that was still dealing with the fallout from Bianca's disappearance. A few months later, in June 2003, a 12-year-old Elias Howe student told police that she had been picked up near her Fairfield Avenue home by several teenage boys in a black Lexus. According to Erin Leo's reporting, the girl was driven around, sexually assaulted, and eventually let out near Main Street and Old Town Road. She reported what happened to police that afternoon. Less than two weeks later, on June 17,

• 30:44Kylie Low?

  a 12-year-old Roosevelt School student said she was walking alone to school when a black Honda pulled up beside her. According to police, someone in the passenger seat grabbed her by the wrist and told her to get into the car. She managed to break free, and she ran into the school and told the principal what happened. Investigators were looking at whether any of these incidents might be related, and police believed at least some of the attempted abductions could be connected to each other. None, however, has ever been publicly linked to Bianca's disappearance. There were obvious differences. The vehicles didn't match. Neither did the descriptions. And the circumstances surrounding Bianca

• 31:27Kylie Low?

  were unusual enough that Sergeant Jesus Ortiz, who headed Bridgeport Police Department's Youth Bureau and was overseeing Bianca's investigation, had already questioned whether hers fit the pattern of a more typical child abduction. Bianca appeared to know or trust the person she left with. So I don't think these incidents necessarily point us toward the person who took Bianca. What they do show is the environment her disappearance became part of. Whatever was happening, Bridgeport's children seemed to be facing dangers that extended well beyond one unsolved disappearance.

• 32:06Kylie Low?

  Years passed, and Bianca's case never closed, but it did stall. The civil lawsuit her family had filed against Bridgeport and the school system eventually ended in a settlement in 2008. The city agreed to pay Bianca's family a multi-six-figure settlement, which resolved the lawsuit, but it obviously did nothing to answer the question the family had been living with since 2001. I'll bet you any parent would forgo a payout of any amount to get their child back. Then, in July 2009, the investigation was shaken awake once again. Police converged on a field at Seaside Park near Black Rock Harbor after a witness in

• 32:51Kylie Low?

  an unrelated case told investigators that Bianca's body might be buried there. Officers used backhoes to dig up an area about 50 feet by 20 feet along the shoreline facing Seabright Avenue. The search lasted two days and turned up garbage and debris, but no remains. By the 10th anniversary of Bianca's disappearance in 2011, the case had landed with Bridgeport Detective John Burke. In Daniel Tepfer's reporting for the Connecticut Post, Detective Burke described inheriting roughly 50 boxes of reports, notes, photographs, suspect sketches, and other material collected over the years. He said the case was still open and that tips continued to come in.

• 33:36Kylie Low?

  He also made another "public appeal for information," saying the department "had not forgotten Bianca." That year, a tip took investigators all the way to New Mexico. Someone there reported seeing a photo online of a person they believed might be Bianca. Police followed up but ultimately determined the person in the image was not her. Once again, public progress on the case quieted. In 2018, there was a major change inside the police department. Bridgeport PD disbanded its youth bureau, which was the unit responsible for investigating crimes against children and the unit that had carried Bianca's case for years.

• 34:20Kylie Low?

  The unit's cases, including Bianca's, were moved under the larger detective bureau. The decision came after criticism of how the youth bureau had handled other serious investigations. In one case, a sexual assault kit collected from an eight-year-old child sat for about two years before it was sent to the state laboratory for DNA testing. It was only submitted after the suspect, Derek Siberin, came under investigation in the death of his infant son. Testing later identified Siberin's DNA in the sexual assault kit of the eight-year-old that had gone untested for years.

• 35:03Kylie Low?

  He was charged, eventually entered an Alfred plea to the sexual assault, and then later pleaded guilty in connection with the death of his child. None of that necessarily means Bianca's investigation had been mishandled, but it's worth considering if the department tasked with bringing her home was actually capable of doing so. Because after nearly two decades, investigators were still trying to answer the same basic questions they had started with in 2001. Who was driving that van? Where did he take her? And where was she now? In mid-February of 2024, I spoke with one of Bianca's relatives very briefly over Facebook.

• 35:45Kylie Low?

  She didn't tell me why, but said that their family planned to be at the Bridgeport Superior Courthouse at 9:00 AM on February 22nd. After checking the daily docket, I learned that morning was a scheduled court appearance for 58-year-old Luis Rivera. Luis had been arrested in Puerto Rico as a fugitive and brought back to Connecticut after an investigation produced allegations from three family members who said Rivera sexually assaulted them when they were children in the 90s. This was not Rivera's first allegation for sexually assaulting a child. In 1997, he had actually been convicted of first-degree sexual assault involving a 13-year-old

• 36:30Kylie Low?

  girl at Seaside Park. That location should sound familiar. Seaside Park is where police dug for Bianca's remains in 2009 after receiving a tip that she might be buried there. There is no public evidence connecting those two events, and I don't want to suggest there is, but it is one of those details that's difficult to ignore. Rivera ultimately pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree sexual assault and three counts of risk of injury to a child for the assaults involving his family members. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison, suspended after he serves 25 years, followed by 35 years of probation.

• 37:12Kylie Low?

  When Rivera appeared in court again in July 2024, Bianca's family was there again, too. They came wearing shirts with Bianca's photograph on them, carrying signs with her name. And as Rivera was being led away after entering his guilty pleas, Carmelita Torres called out from the courtroom, "Tell us what you did with Bianca." At least for Bianca's family, Luis Rivera was not simply another convicted offender whose name happened to surface in Bridgeport. They believed he might know something about Bianca. Why they believe that is still not clear from the public record I've been able to find. Here's what I know.

• 37:57Kylie Low?

  According to Peter Rancowski's reporting for the Stanford Advocate, Bridgeport detectives were interviewing a woman about a "cold case" involving Luis Rivera when the conversation took an unexpected turn and she disclosed the sexual assault. The reporting does not identify the specific "cold case" detectives were asking her about, and I have not found anything confirming that the interview was connected to Bianca's disappearance. Police have drawn an important line here, too. Bridgeport investigators have said they looked into Rivera for Bianca's case, but as of 2024, they did not have probable cause linking him to what happened to her.

• 38:39Kylie Low?

  For now, Rivera is serving a lengthy prison sentence for crimes unrelated to Bianca LeBron, but her family's presence in that courtroom made one thing clear: they were not there by accident. In March of 2026, nearly 25 years after that November morning, the Bridgeport Police Department released a new age progression image of Bianca, created by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, showing what she might look like now in her mid-30s. NICMCC has produced more than 8,000 age progressions in missing child cases, and according to

• 39:18Kylie Low?

  the organization, more than 1,800 of those cases have ended in recoveries. Bridgeport homicide detective Laura Acevito Razuk had since taken over Bianca's case, and she'd already followed some remarkably specific leads. Detective Jeffrey Holtz later said in an interview with WICC's Melissa in the Morning that investigators received information suggesting Bianca might have been entombed in the basement of a home. The homeowner cooperated and police excavated part of the basement, but they did not find Bianca. Another lead took Acevito Razuk to Puerto Rico, where investigators looked into a woman

• 40:01Kylie Low?

  whose name and circumstances raised the possibility that she could be Bianca. But DNA was compared with Bianca's family and ruled that possibility out. At a March 2026 press conference, though, Detective Acevito Razuk revealed something new. Investigators had identified persons of interest in Bianca's disappearance. She also told NICMCC that there was a strong lead on the identity of the man who was driving the van that morning. What happened after she got into the van is still unknown, at least publicly, but

• 40:42Kylie Low?

  for perhaps the first time in years, investigators are signaling that they may know more about the person behind the wheel than they are ready to say.

• 40:54Kylie Low?

  After nearly 25 years, the hard part with Bianca's case is separating what feels compelling from what can actually be supported. There are names that draw attention, details that seem to line up, and theories that make intuitive sense, but there are also big gaps. A completely random abduction is possible. There were those abduction attempts around Bridgeport in the months and years after. It's tempting to try and see a pattern, but the people, vehicles, and circumstances were different, and police never connected any of them to Bianca. They may tell us something about the dangers children in Bridgeport

• 41:35Kylie Low?

  were facing at the time, without necessarily telling us who took Bianca. And it's hard to frame this as something random with what witnesses actually saw. Bianca did not appear frightened of the driver. She seemed to expect him, and she believed they were going somewhere together. Police themselves later emphasized that this did not look like the kind of encounter where a stranger suddenly grabbed a child off the street. That makes some kind of prior familiarity feel more plausible, even if we still don't know what that familiarity looked like. That is part of what made Jason Lara such an important lead. He was not a stranger

• 42:18Kylie Low?

  to Bianca, and investigators found enough around him to justify serious attention. But after questioning him, checking his background, and revisiting him years later, police never publicly established that he was the driver, or that he was responsible for Bianca's disappearance. So I think Jason remains relevant, but the evidence we have does not support going further than that at this time. Luis Rivera is even harder to assess. Bianca's family clearly believed he may have known something, and that deserves to be taken seriously. But police have said they did not have probable cause linking him to Bianca, and the unidentified

• 43:01Kylie Low?

  cold case that investigators were probing when questioning witnesses about Rivera has never been publicly confirmed as hers. After all the searches, names, and dead ends, one of the most important pieces of this case may still be the explanation Bianca gave that morning. She was going with her uncle. As far as I can tell, police have ruled out her actual uncles. So maybe she used that word because it was genuinely how she understood the man waiting for her. Or maybe she chose it because it was an explanation that wouldn't raise alarms with her teacher or friends. Either possibility leaves investigators with

• 43:43Kylie Low?

  the same question. What did Bianca believe about this man that made leaving with him feel safe? Because the real beginning of this case may not be the moment Bianca stepped into that van. It may be whatever happened before it. Whatever allowed this person to become familiar enough, trusted enough, or convincing enough, that Bianca never saw the danger coming.

• 44:12Kylie Low?

  At the one-year mark of Bianca's disappearance, her mother, Carmelita Torres, told Hartford Current writer Amy Pignosi what she'd say to the person or persons who took Bianca. Quote, "I would just tell him, 'You've had Bianca for a year. It's time to let her go home to her family. Please, my children are my life. Let Bianca have another chance to spend Christmas with her family. Please let me have another chance.'" End quote. Nearly 25 years later, Carmelita is still waiting for that chance. Bianca LeBron was 10 years old when she disappeared. She stood about four feet, 11 inches tall, and weighed around

• 44:55Kylie Low?

  115 pounds, with long brown hair, hazel eyes, and a small mark on her forehead. The morning she vanished, Bianca was wearing khaki-colored pants, a green and brown shirt, black boots, and a dark blue jean jacket. Today Bianca would be 35 years old. Photos of her then, and an age progression photo of what she may look like now, are posted at darkdowneast.com and on all Dark Down East social channels. If you have information about Bianca LeBron's disappearance, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem, contact Bridgeport Police at 203-576-7671. You can also submit a tip to the National Center

• 45:40Kylie Low?

  for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-the-Lost.

• 45:52Kylie Low?

  Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at @darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Low, and this is Dark Down East.

• 46:23Kylie Low?

  Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and AudioChuck. I think Chuck would approve.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. But soon they'll find it.

• 46:44Speaker 04

  He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly. They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff, and they said, "Maybe she'll find

• 46:54Speaker 05

  out where this girl is." I saw him violent. Backhanded her. Pow!

• 47:02Speaker 05

  Listen to The Devil's Quarry, Season Two, in the Bone Valley feed, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.