The parents of 7-month-old Emmanuel Haro were formally charged in his murder Tuesday and held on $1 million bail each as a fruitless search for the baby’s body dragged on.
Jake and Rebecca Haro, ages 32 and 41 respectively, had been arrested Friday at their Southern California home, nearly two weeks after his mother said he’d been snatched. On Tuesday, investigators said definitively that Emmanuel is dead, the parents are responsible, and the kidnapping Rebecca Haro initially reported was a fiction. They were officially charged with murder with malice, along with a misdemeanor count of filing a false police report.
Cadaver dogs were brought in Monday to search for Emmanuel’s body along a freeway, the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department said. Jake Haro, clad in a bright orange prison jumpsuit, was also on hand, though investigators wouldn’t say why. By 6 p.m. they had once again come up empty.
“The search has concluded, and Emmanuel was not located,” the sheriff’s office said. “The investigation to find Emmanuel continues.”
Rebecca Haro called police on Aug. 14 to report she’d been assaulted and knocked out as she changed Emmanuel’s diaper in her car outside a Big 5 Sporting Goods store in Yucaipa. When she came to, her son was gone, presumably kidnapped, she said. Inconsistencies in her story soon landed suspicion on the couple, who then stopped cooperating with police. Their 2-year-old child has been removed from their home, the sheriff’s department said.
“The circumstances surrounding this investigation are tragic, and we will continue to search for Emmanuel,” Sheriff Shannon Dicus said Friday. “I trust our justice system will hold the parents accountable.”
With News Wire Services
