It looked like the perfect job, and the events following that frightful November 24, 1997 seemed to confirm that perception. The evidence indicated that someone had entered the house of a respectable, upscale family, lifted 5-month-old Baby Sabrina from her crib, and went slithering into the night without arousing anyone from slumber.

Dawn broke gently over Hillsborough County, Florida that Monday. Marlene Aisenberg arose around 6:30 a.m. visited the bathroom, then went directly to check on Baby Sabrina as she had done every other morning. Only this morning was different. Her blue-eyed, chubby-cheek child was not in her crib, snugly wrapped in her favorite fluffy white blanket with the purple dots.

Steve recalled Marlene's screams that aroused him from deep repose. He ran to the baby's room and found his wife standing in front of an empty crib. "Steve", Marlene said sorrowfully, "someone has stolen our baby".

Marlene frantically went through the house without success. Steve made his own agonizing search of the outside. The police were called and were at once on the alert for a suspicious car carrying a small girl in her pajamas wrapped in a white blanket with purple dots.

Hillsborough County police swung into fast and all-out action. Quick searches were made throughout the Valrico neighborhood. Roadblocks leading to escape arteries were thrown up. Details were flashed across police radios: "Aisenberg baby kidnapped from her home in Valrico. Stop and search all suspicious cars.

The alert was picked up on truck scanners and long haul drivers passed the word. At home, the strong togetherness of the community resulted in search-parties fanning out in various directions, with many individuals making their own forays into every possible nook and cranny.

By nightfall the weather had turned windy and chilly, with the threat of rain, but the searchers kept untiringly at work, the Aisenbergs trailing around the streets with friends in separate cars until they returned home, tired out and exhausted. The next day the worried parents were up bright and early and pestering the police for news. A neighbor stopped by to tell the Aisenberg's that he was taking off from work to resume searching.

Meanwhile investigators were at the Aisenberg house, pressing the distraught parents of the lost girl for more details. They learned that the kidnapper entered the house through an unlocked utility door that was made assessable through an opened garage door.

At this point, curious sleuths, who had more questions than answers, decided to rattle a few family skeletons. For openers, they wanted to know why the alarm bell had been turned off the night before for no apparent reason. Several doors and windows were left open all night although there had been reported burglaries in the area over the past few months. Brownie, the family dog didn't bark. Whoever took Baby Sabrina had to walk past the bedroom of their other two children, a girl, 6, and a boy, 9. All this struck the investigators as seeming odd.

Since the investigators reasoned that Brownie must have been familiar with whoever took the baby, and therefore did not bark, the Aisenbergs were asked to supply a list of anyone who might wag the tail of the dog.

As days went by, with still no sign of Baby Sabrina, investigators proceeded with all the implacability of a murder case. The FBI and Florida Department of Law Enforcement joined the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office in a massive search, each agency picking up the cost of its own division. Charitable people helped lawmen search fields, woods, backyards, dumpsters, and remote country roads - anywhere where a body might be concealed. Several women supplied hot coffee and baked goodies for the fatigued searchers.

Helicopters and light planes, many individually owned, swept the area, keeping contact with troops with walkie-talkies and cellular phones on the ground.

A fourth-day rendezvous found a miscellaneous collection of cadaver-sniffing dogs yelping and yowling behind an additional 50 state troopers and 16 FBI agents in a shoulder-to-shoulder human rake within 5-miles of the Aisenberg home. No empty stretch was overlooked, yet they found no sign of the dark-haired baby.

Days melted into weeks and pressed the one-month mark. The hunt for Baby Sabrina spread throughout Hillsborough County and from there across Florida. A series of household communications now began with neighboring states via Internet chat rooms and e-mails. The entire United States now shared the agony of the Aisenbergs.

Trying to arrange developments of this imbroglio into chronological order was difficult for the investigators. Marlene and Steve Aisenberg related essentially the same facts, but differed on interpretation and causation. Both versions fell under suspect and subsequently the couple were subjected to intense police grilling.

Their friends and family members were outraged. Letters and telegrams of sympathy arrived by the sackful at their home. Just like the propaganda on television and in the movies, the police became the bad guys.

Depressed and exhausted by the ordeal, they stopped talking to authorities and hired a skilled courtroom performer named Barry Cohen, of Tampa. Cohen was already fired to anger by what he called a vendetta against the Aisenbergs by the police.

From the start, Hillsborough County Sheriff's Maj. Gary Terry was skeptical. He said the couple's lack of cooperation all of sudden was "a major stumbling block in solving the puzzling case. Suddenly, there was a murmur of astonishment around the Bloomingdale area. What parent in their right mind wouldn't want to assist the police in an all-out effort to recover their lost little girl?

Terry scoffed at Marlene's remark that the air conditioning could have drowned out any noise an intruder could have made.

The Aisenberg's astute lawyer went straight to the crux of the argument: "It's scary to be interrogated, he said. "In any child abduction, parents are always among the suspects. At the same time they have a right to hire an attorney to protect their legal rights.

Admix the hubbub, detectives collected evidence in plastic bags from the Aisenberg house and took blood and hair samples from family members, which were flown to Quantico, Virginia and hand-delivered to the most proficient FBI laboratory in the country.

Meanwhile, some 150 friends and supporters gathered for a candlelight prayer vigil for the missing tot, who was presumed dead.

The command post a quarter mile from the infant's home seemed to be the eye of the storm. Inside the cramped mobile unit Hillsborough County sheriff's Lieutenant Greg Brown and other investigators congregated around a huge map of the vicinity. They productively marked off various search areas completed and those next on the agenda to be searched.

Throughout December the Aisenberg case remained firmly in the news, with defense attorney Cohen blaming a hysterical press for instigating a hate campaign against his clients. Despite the fact that the Aisenbergs appeared at a news conference appealing to "whoever took Sabrina to return her, the family allegedly suffered insults, threats, and anonymous telephone calls at all hours of the day and night from people who were angered by what they read in the newspapers and saw on television.

Oddly, in this moment of crisis, the Aisenbergs found time to appear on television talk shows and revel in the limelight, gathering supporters and confusing the trail.

In appearances on "The Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC's "Today show, Fox's "America Most Wanted and CBS's "Unsolved Mysteries, the Aisenbergs, not unlike the Ramseys, self-righteously insisted they had nothing to do with whatever happened to their daughter.

The television appearances of the Aisenbergs boomeranged and unleashed a chain reaction of vindictiveness against the couple. In a tense moment on Winfrey's show, Marc Klass, whose daughter Polly, was abducted and murdered, was asked why any parent wouldn't fully cooperate with authorities who were frantically trying to locate their daughter. Klass looked straight into the camera and blandly commented, "Innocent people don't need attorneys.

John Walsh of "America's Most Wanted, also remarked about the Aisenberg's act of defiance. He urged the couple to cooperate with the authorities in finding their daughter.

Not everyone slammed the door on the Aisenbergs. A few continued to rail at the "unfairness of the whole situation. "Unsolved Mysteries, much like "American Justice's hocus-pocus account of the Ramsey case, was guarded and often sympathetic in favor of the Aisenberg's explanation of the alleged kidnapping. Professional actors recreated Marlene Aisenberg's viewpoint while denouncing hard -working detectives as the villains and depicting the Aisenberg's as well-liked and well-thought-of people suddenly being exposed to the trauma of false accusations and a disrupted life.

Marlene appeared on WTVT Channel 13, and cried crocodile tears. She explained an inconclusive lie detector test, and why she and her husband refused to cooperate with the police. Embittered callers expressed skepticism about their decision to hire a lawyer and wanted to know why they were laughing as the cameras rolled during the outset of the massive manhunt.

Marlene settled the issue virtually beyond doubt when she obligingly answered that she was capable to remain placid only because "it took all my strength to muster out what was said, to be strong and get it out. When the camera's stopped rolling, she said, she was on the verge of collapse.

Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Brown said polygraph tests are usually taken from family members early in the investigation to help police focus their labors elsewhere.

Polygraph has played dramatic roles in major cases such as Eddie Seda, New York's Zodiac Killer, and Susan Smith, who ruthlessly drowned her two sons. But are polygraph results reliable? After Richard Rackleff, the polygraph examiner who tested Marlene Aisenberg said she wasn't involved, many arm-chair detectives had second thoughts as to whether polygraph can be trusted.

A detective working close to the case said that if a stranger took the child it was most likely a woman who wanted a baby in the worst way. "Sometimes, a baby can be used as a tool to keep a man in her life, he said, adding that such a woman would be between the ages of 15 and 45, "very manipulative, uncompromising, and deceitful.

On the heels of the Channel 13 airing, there came another bizarre development. A woman called the station with some earth-shattering news. She said she saw a white couple carrying a baby wrapped in a white blanket with purple dots. They walked down to the docks, and when they returned the baby was not with them.

And something else; they were driving a white minivan. The Aisenbergs owned a white minivan.

Swarms of police, reporters and photographers descended on the docks of the Alafia River with one thing on their minds. Was Sabrina Paige Aisenberg submerged below the greenish, murky waters? On Thursday, December 11, 1997, the entire 10-mile stretch of the river was blanketed with canoes, motor boats, fishing boats and divers, both professional and amateur. Fatigued divers who had previously searched 15 ponds in the area were searching the river with renewed vigor.

Because Hillsborough County sheriff's dogs were less experienced, Bear, a German shepherd from the Metro-Dade Police Department was flown in with her handler, Pat McAlhany. The pair manned a canoe and passed a spot in the middle of the lake some 15-feet deep, with visibility below zero. The dog whined anxiously at a certain spot and divers spent hours searching the river bottom. At sundown, the search was called off because Bear was wearied and divers had failed to locate the body of Baby Sabrina.

Residents along Alafia Boulevard adjoining the river, were questioned by police. None of them saw anything peculiar that day.

One neighbor who lived close to the boat dock told sleuths that the gates weren't locked at night and any one could have gotten in.

"Nobody would know that late at night, she commented. She said a body was dumped there in 1995.

Sabrina's Bedroom

Nevertheless, the search of the Alafia River area commenced the following day and the next with 60 divers and 80 local policemen and 21 FBI agents spread out in a tight formation, looking for clues along the muddy banks of the Alafia. They found tin cans, bottles, cast-off rubbish, an alligator carcass and the skeleton of a beaver. But no Baby Sabrina or clues leading to her whereabouts.

"Their almost a human rake down there, Bill Yamber, a dive team expert the Orange County Sheriff's Office, told reporters. "I don't think you've seen this level of divers before.

It was pointed out that 30 divers participated in the search for the bodies of 109 people when the ValuJet crashed in the Florida Everglades in 1996. There were three times as many looking for Valrico's lost child.

By Christmas, a fourth of the tactical map had been marked off, and police were no closer to finding Baby Sabrina than they were in the beginning.

Eventually and tardily, the federal government's General Services Administration, which allots 10 posters of America's missing children every year, attached pictures of Baby Sabrina in federal buildings across the nation. A photo of the Valrico toddler was hung adjacent photos of pretty, 17-year-old Erica Lee Fraysure; dark-eyed Jesus De La Cruz, 7; Kristin Hatfield of Oklahoma; and lovely Brittney Beers, age 6. They all vanished from their neighborhoods and were never seen again.

The specter of a deranged kidnapper with possibly sexual tastes for a small child was the lengthiest and cruelest torture Valrico residents could imagine, and it generated fear throughout the Bloomingdale area. While the Aisenbergs sat beneath a large poster of a beaming baby, tears streaming down their faces, pleading for her safe return, thousands of police investigative hours and resources were being spent to solve the enigma, without success.

Detectives -- active and retired -- were divided on the issue. Many were convinced the Aisenbergs, or a witting or unwitting accomplice, knew exactly where the baby was. Others weren't so sure.

While the Aisenbergs tugged on the community's compassion much the same way the Ramseys were doing, a treachery of the worst order was discovered. Police regarded the fact that the Aisenbergs had intentionally gave a bogus photo of Baby Sabrina to organizations who had distributed thousands of photos nationwide, as pure, deliberate wickedness. The photos were of Sabrina's older sister as an infant.

It was alleged that the wrong photo appeared in People magazine and was flashed on "20-20. It was also alleged that the wrong photo appeared on 2-foot by 3-foot posters carried across the country by 400 18-wheelers and that the wrong photo was plastered on billboards throughout Florida.

The authorities never doubted that his case had no other parallel in the judicial history of America. Sheriff Cal Henderson admitted that his office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI chased down over 2,000 leads, quizzed 6,000 people in 49 states and six counties, and ran up a staggering bill of $1.2 million.

But, he said, it was money well spent inasmuch as it lead to a valid indictment against the Aisenbergs.

The Aisenbergs were taken into custody in Bethesda, Maryland. where the couple had moved to in the summer of 1999 to escape media blitz. Steve was arrested at his job without incident. Marlene on the other hand, never ready to oblige misfortune, barricaded herself in her house and refused to open the door for FBI agents who knocked and persistently called her on the phone. When she hung up on them, agents crashed through the door and handcuffed her. She was taken forcibly from the house kicking and screaming whammies.

At a Maryland federal courthouse, both husband and wife sat with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Throughout the proceedings they avoided eye contact with one another. Steve sat granite-faced, caught up in a world of fantasy and terror. Attired in a navy blue shirt, khaki shorts and dark sneakers, he showed no reaction to Des Vaux Bedke's claims that the defendants lied to law enforcement agents "since the time they placed the 911 call.

Marlene, clad in blue jeans, a robin blue knit top, and open-toed sandals, no longer portrayed the bold arrogance that had forced police to drag her from her house. She sat on the edge of her seat in hushed and restrained anticipation, her face as pale as Gorgonzola cheese. U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Day released the couple on a combined $50,000 bond after they submitted to urine tests and pledged to appear for an arraignment hearing in Tampa. For nearly two years they had appeared on television and newspapers as victims. Now they were criminal defendants, bemoaning their fate.

Excerpts from the federal grand jury indictment against the Aisenbergs included: failure to provide an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with a list of names of any person who could have entered the house without disturbing the family dog; inconsistencies in the accounts of events leading up to the baby's disappearance; providing authorities with false and misleading information.

Defense attorney Cohen accused the police of baying for blood and steadfastly denied that his clients had done anything wrong. Evidence against the Aisenbergs began popping up like worms after a rain shower. Secret recordings made in their Valrico home gave telltale evidence that the couple, behind closed doors, were beginning to have pangs of conscience.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rachelle DesVaux Bedke, told a federal magistrate at a court hearing in Greenbelt, Mayland, that the tapes showed that Steve Aisenberg admitting hurting the child. "The evidence has shown, after a long and torturous investigation, that the baby was not kidnapped, said Des Vaux Bedke, adding, "The baby is, in fact, dead, and they had some hand in it.

The 27-page indictment did not include murder charges because the authorities felt they lacked sufficient evidence without a body.

U.S. Attorney Charles Wilson explained the obvious: "We have charged what we feel is sufficient to charge at this time. Obviously, the success of investigations of this nature really depends on law enforcement agents receiving honest, truthful and candid information.

The voluminous report that was to have shattering consequences, bluntly implied that the couple conspired to throw authorities off the track. The following are examples of the charges lodged against the Aisenbergs: 1 - Marlene fibbed when she said she urinated on the spot when she discovered Baby Sabrina was gone from her crib. Prosecutors claim the soiled clothes she gave them were different from the ones she was wearing that morning. 2 - Both Steve and Marlene pointed an accusing finger at a Michigan man and gave police a false list of potential suspects. 3 - Both Steve and Marlene gave inconsistent accounts of what woke them up. First they said it was a noisy fish tank. Steve later said it was his wife's screams that arouse him from slumber. Marlene changed her mind and blamed a television alarm. 4 - When FBI agents asked the Aisenbergs about an apparent injury to Baby Sabrina's head -- detected at the FBI laboratory by blown-up photos taken from a home video in the couple's back yard, their eyes swiveled from one to another and Marlene ran out of the room. Steve sat red-faced and uncomfortably annoyed.

The indictment contention included the fact that the Aisenbergs used donations that poured in from around the nation to the Baby Sabrina fund to pay off their credit cards. Borrowing a page from Johnny Cochran's book on O.J. Simpson, Cohen tried to take the heat off his clients by putting the police under the microscope.

He urged people not to rush to judgment and accused the police of trying to justify the tremendous amount of time and money they'd spent on a case that had stymied them from the start.

With cold objectivity, he said, "This prosecution is the result of the government spending months and months trying to make a case.

They were still claiming innocence, accusing the police of framing them, but the prosecuting attorneys had taped conversations to prove they were not the sensitive and victimized people who their supporters said engendered warmth, responsibility. and camaraderie.

As the tapes filtered the air, so did the release of their insufferable burden of guilt.

"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! Marlene screamed at her husband.

"We need to discuss the way we can beat the change, Steve calmly responded during the bugged conversation. "I would never break from the family pact and our story even if the police were to hold me down. We will do what we have to do. Secretly recorded, Steve admitted he harmed the child while high on cocaine and that his wife helped cover up the death of their baby.

On December 24, 1997, Steve spoke with Marlene about the possibility of neighbors being witnesses against him for abusing the child. "They can't hang me unless you attack me before the evidence, Steve said. "Oh Steve! I tried to save her, Marlene was heard to say, "she died and ah, we can't confuse them, but we'll try it Hon, you know.

A January 21, 1998 tape revealed Steve telling Marlene, "I wish I hadn't harmed her, and Marlene answering, "I can't take the rap for this.

On a January 31, 1998 audio tape, Marlene told her father, "I subconsciously did not do anything, do you understand? Right now, right now, I can't see them having any evidence strong enough to indict me.

On a February 1998 tape, Marlene was heard telling a family member that she had purposely provided police with a false photograph to be utilized on billboards and trucks requesting help to find Baby Sabrina.

On a March 1, 1998 tape, the Aisenbergs immersed themselves in a subject that prosecutors said showed them for the unscrupulous connivers that they were; a scheme that would place the blame on a Michigan man who hopefully would be executed, thus leaving the Aisenbergs to escape their atrocious crime unscathed.

Other conversations, police claim, had Steve telling Marlene she had to be extremely careful what she told people, that she shouldn't talk to anyone outside the house. "What happens in this house stays in this house, he said.

Barry Cohen immediately filed a motion to excuse his clients from their subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury. Among the precautions he took to keep them from going to jail was to placed strict conditions on interviews saying he was protecting them from being unfairly targeted. The move was to the advantage of his clients because although State grand jury witnesses are given immunity from prosecution for the testimony they give, in federal court, that's not the case. Therefore, most mouthpieces advise their clients not to cooperate with the police.

In exhausting every device to save his clients, Cohen used a hastily called news conference to vehemently blast the authorities much the same way O.J.'s so-called "dream team did, with the hopes of rallying public support and sympathy for the Aisenbergs.

Calling the investigation "unprofessional and ineffective, he said, "They're doing a half-assed job of trying to find Sabrina, and spending more time trying to build a case against Marlene and Steve.

Cohen's "character assassination of police took a denting when Lt. Greg Brown dismissed his criticisms on television. Brown told viewers that investigators had done a thorough job, but that even a masterpiece of tact and strategy could be hampered without full cooperation from the victim's family.

At this point, the Aisenbergs have some serious questions to answer: Why didn't Brownie, their dog, bark that night? Why was the only home video of Baby Sabrina taken the day before she vanished? And again, what caused them to chortle on television during the initial part of the investigation?

These theories have been lamely explained by Aisenberg's supporters who claim that Brownie wagged his tail and never barked at a reporter when he entered the house to interview the Aisenbergs. Secondly, no videos were made of Baby Sabrina earlier because the video needed batteries and they decided to wait for her birthday. As for the outburst of laughter ? A detective told a joke to break the tension on the TV show, and they responded by chuckling.

This is where the case lies at this writing. Police are well-pleased with their progress. Dissatisfied with their evasive explanations, they say it is abundantly clear by overwhelming circumstantial evidence that the Aisenbergs are guilty. Yet there is one puzzling factor about the case. Baby Sabrina's body was never found. Not the slightest trace of her was discovered in the muddy waters of the Alafia, or in the large surrounding area, in spite of the most thorough and prolonged searches.

The crime that shocked and revolted all right-minded citizens is far from over. Without a body, police say, conspiracy will be much easier to prove than calculated, cold-blooded murder. If convicted of all charges, Steve faces maximum penalties of 25 years in the penitentiary, plus $1.25 million in fines. Marlene faces 30 years in penal servitude and $1.5 million in fines.

It hardly seems enough.