Sabrina Aisenberg

Case background and investigation

Sabrina Paige Aisenberg was a five-month-old infant who disappeared from her family's home in Valrico, a suburb east of Tampa, Florida, sometime during the night of November 23-24, 1997. According to her mother, Marlene Aisenberg, she had checked on the sleeping baby around midnight. When the parents woke around 6:30 a.m. on November 24, they found Sabrina's crib empty. Marlene and her husband, Steven Aisenberg, told investigators they discovered the door leading from the garage into the house open and the garage door itself raised, and that a handmade yellow-and-blue blanket was missing from the crib. They called 911 to report their daughter abducted. Sabrina had blue eyes, brown hair, and a distinctive Y-shaped birthmark on the back of one shoulder.

The disappearance triggered an enormous search and intense national media coverage, including a feature on 'America's Most Wanted.' No trace of the baby was ever found, and no ransom demand or credible sighting ever materialized. Suspicion soon turned toward the parents themselves. Investigators, who found no signs of a forced break-in beyond the open doors the couple described, secretly placed listening devices inside the Aisenberg home, and prosecutors later claimed the recordings captured incriminating remarks suggesting the parents knew more than they admitted. In September 1999, a federal grand jury returned a seven-count indictment against Steven and Marlene, charging them with conspiracy and making false statements to investigators and alleging they had lied about the circumstances of Sabrina's disappearance.

The criminal case against the parents collapsed. In February 2001, a federal judge ordered the charges dismissed, finding that the wiretap recordings were largely unintelligible and that investigators had misrepresented their contents when seeking permission for the surveillance and in later filings. The judge concluded the government's transcripts were faulty and that statements had been misquoted or taken out of context. An appeals court later ordered the government to reimburse the Aisenbergs roughly $1.5 million in legal fees. The couple, who always maintained their innocence, were never charged again, and no other suspect has ever been publicly identified.

More than a quarter-century later, Sabrina's fate remains unknown and the case is still classified as active and ongoing. The Aisenbergs eventually moved to Maryland and have continued to hope their daughter is alive and may be located through DNA and genealogy. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has periodically released updated age-progression images, most recently depicting Sabrina as a woman in her late twenties approaching a birthday in June, in hopes that someone who knows her, or knows what became of her, will come forward. Her father has said that even after nearly three decades the family still believes answers are possible and has urged the public to look closely at the images and share them. Investigators ask anyone with information to contact the FBI, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, or NCMEC. Whether Sabrina was taken by a stranger or met some other fate has never been resolved, leaving one of Florida's most enduring missing-infant mysteries unanswered.