Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Father Of Missing Daughter Email to Media

 The father of a missing three-month-old girl wrote an email to our newsroom explaining how he placed her body in a dumpster after she died of natural causes.
It has been nearly two weeks since Janna Rivera went missing and police are still searching for her body.
Her father, Jeff Fairbanks, is the last known person to have seen her and the only person of interest named in the case.
In an email sent to our newsroom, Fairbanks said he placed Janna’s body in a dumpster.

NOTE:  We do not have the entire email to analyze. 
“Finding Janna was the most important thing, at first, because that gives us closure, a chance at a respectable burial, and exoneration,” wrote Fairbanks. ” However, I am afraid that window may have passed.  It was the hardest thing in the world to do, after the fact of Janna’s death, to take the detectives to a dumpster.”
In this we not only have passive language, but we do not have him telling us what he did, including the dumping of the body.  
He goes on to explain why he didn’t call 911.
“Believe it or not, it never even occured to me.  Once I couldn’t save her, all I could think about were the girls downstairs…  I guess, in some strange way, I was trying to protect them, because I knew she was already gone.”
When one gives you the choice to not believe, it is often wise to follow his advice.  By saying "believe it or not" he is signaling that he is a deceptive person and is attempting to get you to believe this point, but allows for you to dismiss it.  It is not a signal that this, in particular, is deceptive, but it is a signal that he is normally a deceptive person.  
I believe that he knew he should not call 911 for fear of consequence.  "It never even occurred to me" is unreliable.  
As to "protecting them", he does not say this is what he did, but "in some strange way", which is the language of fiction. 
Fairbanks said after driving “aimlessly, waiting for her to wake up, praying, thinking somehow she would,” he placed her body in a dumpster. Then he said he lied to his family and told them he had actually buried Janna, because he felt “so ashamed of what I had done.”
“He sounds guilty,” said legal expert and former prosecutor Jack Crawford. “The letter is extremely important to the prosecution of this case. It shows the thinking of Mr. Fairbanks and it shows – in my opinion – a guilty mind. When you make up a story so outlandish as this, lying to your own family about where you buried the little child, that indicates guilt.”
Forensic psychologist Dr. Margaret Ann Keaton couldn’t make sense of why Fairbanks chose not to call 911.
While admitting, people react to trauma differently, she said the act of calling 911 is something even a child knows to do in an emergency.
“As a parent and as someone who has studied violent crime for over two decades, it does not ring true to me that a loving parent with nothing to hide would willingly toss their deceased, infant child into a dumpster for whatever reason,” she told CBS4.
She was also concerned by other statements made by Fairbanks.
“The statement that ‘after the fact of Janna’s death’ taking the police to the dumpster was the hardest thing he ever did is also troubling because how could anything be harder than tossing your baby’s lifeless body into a trash dumpster in the first place?” she asked.
In the email, Fairbanks also mentions passing a polygraph test despite his nervousness. Dr. Keaton said polygraphs are not admissible in court and sometimes, people with psychopathic tendencies can easily pass polygraphs.
“Some individuals have flattened affect resulting in less strong emotions, especially less guilt/shame.   Such individuals may have a better chance of fooling a lie detector,” explained Keaton.
So why haven’t police arrested Fairbanks? Crawford believes they are trying to exhaust all their avenues of finding Janna’s body.
“Prosecutors and police want to find that body,” he said. “It helps their case tremendously. And I think by the fact they haven’t arrested Mr. Fairbanks yet, that they’re close. They have some strong leads on where the child’s body may be.”
If police cannot find the body, Crawford said they can still charge Fairbanks with murder based on what he’s said. But he believes Janna’s father has much more left to say.
“I think he wants to confess. I think he wants to tell where that child is.”

12 comments:

overland express said...

I don't want fairbanks for my neighbor,
he's one scary dude.

Anonymous said...

Freak. Somebody needs to lock him up already.

stop_playing_dumb said...

Too bad Lisa Irwin's mom couldn't do the same.

Statement Analysis Blog said...

John,

do we have the full email for analysis, anywhere?

Tania?

Peter

John Mc Gowan said...

Hi Peter,

Iv'e been searching for the full Email and at the present i'm only finding snippets. Here is how he ended it. I don't know if you want to add it to your analysis. I will keep searching.

Fairbanks ended the email saying his daughter is in a safer place.

“Despite how I reacted,” he wrote. “She is safe and sound, in a better place than all of us, who do bad things, and judge others, when they have never experienced trauma of this nature.”

http://fox59.com/2015/06/06/baby-jannas-father-on-never-calling-911-believe-it-or-not-it-never-even-occurred-to-me/

trustmeigetit said...

I hate that these poor children are born to such monsters.

I would call 911 no matter what. I would hold out hope they could safe her. I even live so close to a hospital I would probably race there calling 911 on the way.

There is no way. I would beg and plead for them to try of it was my son.

Wendy said...



John,
Here is another link to the story-The father is giving an interview on what happened, etc.

http://www.wthr.com/story/29245422/missing-babys-father-speaks-out-against-critics-who-call-him-a-monster

I hope it helps!

Katprint said...

When my mother died of a sudden brain hemorrhage due to brain cancer weakening the arteries in her brain, my brother discovered her cold, lifeless body about 7 hours later. What did he do? HE CALLED 9-1-1. Similarly, my husband's mother had been caring for my husband's aged grandmother for several years when she discovered one morning that my husband's grandmother had died in her sleep during the night. What did she do? SHE CALLED 9-1-1. Same as everyone who ever had a loved one who ACTUALLY died of natural causes. Disposing of their body in a dumpster = thinking of them as being trash.

In the law, there is a concept of conduct as speech. For example, if women in New York protest discriminatory laws that allow men but not women to expose their breasts/nipples in public by marching topless in a parade, that is an example of conduct which is making a statement. (By the way, the women were successful in getting New York to recognize that women had as much right to go topless as men do. http://gothamist.com/2014/08/25/nsfw_photos_women_bare_breasts_in_n.php#photo-1 ) There is a strong argument to be made that a criminal defendant's conduct in disposing of a corpse makes a nonverbal statement about how that criminal defendant regarded the deceased i.e. wrapped in a trash bag / thrown in a dumpster vs. carefully wrapped in blankets and stored in a secure footlocker/trunk or dresser drawer. (Some mothers of preterm miscarriages, stillbirths and SIDS deaths are unable to deal with the death of their beloved child. They tend to wrap and store their child's remains. Autopsies can be conducted on the mummified remains, which often reveal the child's/fetus' death from natural causes.)

Katprint said...

To clarify, IMO the nonverbal message of immediately calling 9-1-1 upon discovering a lifeless body is, "Maybe they're not dead! Maybe they can be saved! Come save them!" I realize that liars/murderers also call 9-1-1, but IMO the failure to call 9-1-1 is a nonverbal statement that they don't want the victim to be saved.

John Mc Gowan said...

Thanks Wendy

trustmeigetit said...

I think the comment dad made that they told the girls to "tell your mother" instead of telling them to tell "them" is because of how much the limit opposite sex contact.

So I think had it been a daughter and she had touched her brothers they would have told them to tell dad.

That to me made sense just because of the seperation.

Unknown said...

I believe that, in a case such as this, the male didn't call 911 for the same reason deceptive people often use "because, so, since" to describe why something happened when they should be explaining the what. The because, so, since etc is added because someone expects to be asked why they had done something.

In this particular case, I believe he didn't call because he may have feared he would "spill his guts" or his answers would be so outrageous as to make him sound as well as appear guilty.