Cindy Short
speaker
36 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Cindy Short’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
He was an individual who was essentially homeless at the time, but he had connections to the neighborhood and had connections to a household that was only several doors up from the Irwins' home.
What was significant for me was that he had a pretty healthy background in burglary and particularly in residential burglary.
And as we get closer and closer to the time of this abduction, His relationship with this community is significant. October 3rd in particular, which is the day of the kidnapping, he's at the Watsons' house. He turns on the sprinkler at 11 a.m. The next door neighbors see him turn the sprinkler on. The Watsons are not there. The sprinkler is still on at 9.30 p.m.
And so the next door neighbors, the Hertz, don't do anything to turn it off. But at 11 p.m., they noticed that it has been turned off, so they figured Tanko was back in the neighborhood to turn that off.
So now we've got Tanko in the neighborhood within an hour of what we believe will be the kidnapping because the Pascals are going to see this kidnapper with the baby at 12.15 p.m. He knows how people are moving in and out of this community. He knows about the pets in the neighborhood.
I think he really was one of the best suspects or persons of interest. And although the police did speak to him, they did not speak to him as a suspect. They spoke to him more as a kind of a person in the community. And You know, when you interview someone as a suspect versus someone as a witness, that interview is very different.
I think one reason they would do that is because they have one theory, and they've stuck to that theory all these years, that it was the parents. I think a second reason, and this would be a legitimate reason, that one of the witnesses in the case, the lady that was several doors up from the Irwins at 1215, who saw the man carrying the baby. She's talking there about Lisa Parscale.
And she knew Irwins. Jersey because he had done work across the street at the Watson's home. And she did not believe that the person carrying the baby was, in fact, Tanko. I don't know whether she reported that to the police, but let's assume that she did. And so that that was one way that they would have eliminated him.
I don't think that that should have been the end of the story. I think when you look at the totality of what he was doing, particularly from July through October...
He had been incarcerated in Missouri for a burglary. He had been released from his incarceration and then he had absconded, which meant that he had escaped from basically a halfway house. He was then living in an unhoused situation with a woman named Megan.
And there is a lot of disruption or arguments between Megan and Jersey. And later on in the summers, about September, he ends up getting arrested again. They break up. He wants to get back with her. She becomes homeless. He ends up setting her car on fire.
Fire is important here because we'll end up having a fire the night of the kidnapping.
Megan and Jersey are kind of an odd couple. She's much younger than he is, but they start talking about, in July, having children. Megan would like to have children. There's a theory about him wanting to get back together with her, and is this one of the reasons that he would have spontaneously taken this baby?
Again, attorney Cindy Short. In September, he's becoming more erratic. And so I think, again, this is significant. And some of the erratic behavior has to do with his drug use.
So we have an individual who's using methamphetamine, who's breaking into homes in the community, who has a history of arson in this same community. Meanwhile, he somehow ingratiated himself with a very nice couple, the Watsons, who live just several doors down from the Irwins, which means that he has an opportunity to really be watching what people are doing in this community.
He is a good little burglar getting to case the joint.
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