Baby Lisa Irwin Missing: Attorneys Clash After Custody Motion Is Filed for Jeremy Irwin's Son
As baby Lisa Irwin's case continues on for over a month with no significant leads, attorneys have been sparring over a custody motion filed by the mother of one of the children living in the Irwin home who is also the missing baby's half-brother.
On Tuesday, the lawyer representing the Bradley/Irwin family, Joe Tacopina, lashed out at a petition statement issued by Dorothy L. Savory, the attorney for Rasleen Raim.
Raim is the mother of Jeremy Irwin’s son and baby Lisa’s 8-year-old half-brother. Courts awarded Irwin full custody of his son in Sept. 2005.
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Savory filed a motion at the Clay County Courthouse to have Raim awarded custody of the boy.
According to Tacopina, Raim has not paid child support for her son, nor has she attempted to see him in over six years.
"Of course those facts were absent from the lawyer's statement," Tacopina argued Tuesday.
Tacopina called the custody attempt "fictional," "outrageous" and "unbelievable," accusing Raim of "trying to glom on her 15 minutes."
Savory shot back in a statement Wednesday, saying that Raim’s intentions were pure, and she is simply seeking to build a healthier relationship with her estranged son.
"She knows what life is like to have her baby taken away from her," Savory wrote.
"Mrs. Raim only desires to have frequent, meaningful and continuing contact with her son," she added.
This isn't the first time Tacopina has vigorously defended the Bradley/Irwin family. In late October, local lawyer Cyndy Short, who also represented the family for a short time, bowed out of the case.
Rumors suggested New York-based Tacopina had fired Short, but Short held a news conference on Oct. 31 to clear the air.
"Tacopina and I were not able to work as a team," she said. "Our goals and our approaches are so different that one of us had to go."
This recent sparring serves as yet another tangent to the complicated mystery of missing baby Lisa Irwin, whose parents claim was reported missing from her Kansas City home in the early morning hours of Oct. 4.
The parents told police that the baby was snatched from her crib, yet the public remains critical of the young couple, especially after mother Deborah Bradley admitted to being drunk the night of her daughter’s disappearance.
Although the case has received over 1,200 tips, it entered its one month mark on Nov. 4 and continues to have no significant leads or suspects.
