Baby Bryan taken as reprisal

Investigation shifts to parents' human-smuggling tie
By Ed Johnson, Jacob Ogles and Jeff Cull
Originally posted on December 10, 2006

Photos by Valerie Roche/news-press.com

If human smugglers are responsible for the abduction of baby Bryan Dos Santos Gomes, investigators are going to have to shift gears quickly and refocus the investigation, experts say.

Police had been operating on the assumption that the kidnapper was a woman who just wanted a baby, but Fort Myers police Chief Hilton Daniels said Saturday that the investigation was now focusing on a reprisal kidnapping by human smugglers whom the baby’s parents did not pay.

Daniels cited newly developed information. Police have not said how the new information came about, but it came within a day of a $21,000 reward being posted in the case.

“Trying to crack into a smuggling group is a lot different than hunting a woman who just wanted a baby,” said John Rabun, executive vice president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which has been assisting Fort Myers police. “This would be a whole new investigation.”