Baby Lisa Irwin: $100,000 Reward Offered

Oct. 14, 2011 — -- Wealthy anonymous benefactors today offered a $100,000 reward for the safe return of missing Missouri infant Lisa Irwin or conviction of whoever took the little girl.

The reward was announced by private investigator Bill Stanton who said the anonymous donors have a relationship with the family and do not want to detract attention from the case with their identities.

"I hope this opens up someone's heart or someone's eyes and they realize this is serious and we can get Lisa home safe and sound," Stanton said.

The reward is for the "safe return and/or conviction of a person or persons involved in this horrible crime."

The benefactors also brought him into the case, Stanton said. He said he would be joined by Dr. Marisa Randazzo, a psychologist who specializes in threat assessment and once worked for the U.S. Secret Service.

This week, the family posted a series of videos on YouTube made by Lisa's parents of the baby girl eating cereal, gurgling at her mother and playing with a toy. The family had said they want to keep Lisa's image in the media so that attention stays on the case.

ABC's Kansas City affiliate KMBC has posted four of the videos in full on their website.

On the eleventh day of the search for Lisa, investigators are searching the woods near the Irwin's Missouri home and acknowledge that running out of places to look is "inevitable."

Exhaustive and fruitless searches have taken police and FBI investigators to the woods multiple times as well as to nearby fields, a well at an abandoned house, drainage areas and a landfill.

"We haven't really thought about shutting down," Kansas City Police Capt. Steve Young told ABCNews.com today. "I think that will come sometime, but we hope to solve this case before then."

Young said the searches are not all based on tips and that logic takes them anywhere in the area that they haven't searched.

Today, three relatives of the Irwin family emerged from the house where the family has been staying to hang "We [heart] U Lisa" signs on a tree and on the door. Lisa's parents, Deborah Bradley and Jeremy Irwin, did not come outside.

A man named Michael, identified as Bradleys' cousin from Texas, briefly spoke. He thanked law enforcement and the media for all of their work and attention to baby Lisa.

"We know this will lead to Lisa's safe return to us, to bring her home," he said.

He pleaded on the family's behalf that anyone with information call a tip line or 911. "The smallest thing can bring her home to us," Michael said. "We're just waiting for that one phone call."

Stanton, a former police officer and private investigator from New York, joined the search this week.

"I am seeing a family's heart literally torn out of its chest," Stanton told "Good Morning America" today.

When asked by ABC News if he was suspicious of Bradley's involvement in her daughter's disappearance, he answered coyly.

"Let me try not to give a politician's answer," Stanton said. "Let me just say this, she doesn't want to be discounted. She wants to be looked at, vetted and then once everyone feels she's not a suspect, let's move on."

Baby Lisa Case Attracts $100,000 Reward

Stanton spent time with Bradley and Irwin Thursday at their home and has become somewhat of an unofficial spokesman for the family. He has said he will give information to investigators, but they do not give him information.

"Anthing that I get goes directly to the Kansas City Police Department," Stanton said. "I'm not here to compete with KCPD. I'm here to compliment them. They've given me my boundaries and I will respect those boundaries."

"Clearly, if anybody has all day long to help out, then that's fantastic," Young said. "If he should develop information and he could pass it on to us, why wouldn't we accept it?"

Young emphasized that Stanton is not an official part of the investigation. "He's not law enforcement, he's not privy to investigative files," Young said.

The blonde-haired and blue-eyed baby was last seen by her mother on Oct. 3 when Bradley said she put her daughter in her crib around 10:30 p.m. When Irwin arrived home from his first overnight shift as an electrician, he said he found his home in disarray and his daughter's crib empty.

He has told police the door was unlocked, a window was busted and the lights were on in the house. The couple said they immediately called 911 and reported their daughter missing.

Eleven days of searching and dead ends have turned up no suspects and no hard leads.