Baby Gabriel Was 'Acting Scared'

The babysitter says something wasn't right as new photos are released.

ByABC News via logo
January 6, 2010, 7:56 AM

Jan. 18, 2010— -- Eight-month-old Gabriel Johnson's babysitter, Analisa Urias, one of the last-known people to see the missing baby, said he seemed sad and frightened the night she took care of him.

The baby's mother, Elizabeth Johnson, 23, hired Urias through a Craig's List ad to babysit Gabriel in a Texas hotel room while she was in the midst of a cross-country trip to escape a custody dispute with the boy's biological father.

"Elizabeth told me if anyone came knocking on the door not to answer it," Urias told ABC News.

Tempe, Ariz., police Friday released the photographs of Gabriel taken by Johnson in the same Texas hotel room in hopes it would help them find the missing baby.

Although Gabriel appears to be healthy and active, lying on a bed with toys and a pacifier, investigators fear that Gabriel is holding a medicine dropper in two of the photos .

"Elizabeth told me to give him a bottle in about an hour and then her exact words were to, 'Give him more medicine if he started crying to shut him up,'" Urias said.

"Gabriel wasn't acting like a normal baby," she said. "He was acting scared, he didn't want to play. He acted like he was sad."

The photographs were discovered on Johnson's camera following her arrest Dec. 29 in Miami.

In another disturbing claim, Urias said she found a large knife next to the bed in the motel room.

"It looked like a butcher type of knife and, you know, I thought that was weird because why would she have it next to her bed? It's something that would belong in the kitchen," Urias said.

The photographs were date-stamped Dec. 26, the last day Gabriel was seen.

Johnson is now in a Tempe, Ariz., jail and faces kidnapping, child abuse, custodial interference and conspiracy to commit custodial interference charges after she allegedly sent text messages to the boy's biological father, Logan McQueary, that she had killed their son and left his body in a dumpster.

Johnson later changed her story and said she gave the baby to a random couple she met in a San Antonio, Texas, park.