New Leads Emerge in Baby Aisenberg Case
July 30, 2008 — -- The attorney who represented the parents of Sabrina Aisenberg, the 5-month-old-baby who vanished from her Florida bedroom in 1997, says that police are trying to frame him by implying he conspired to dispose of the child's body.
"[Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office attorney Tony Peluso] is trying to say things about me and put me in the middle of this conspiracy to get rid of [Sabrina's] body," lawyer Barry Cohen told ABCNews.com.
In a news conference Monday, Cohen said that detectives had used jailhouse informants to try to unfairly link him to the Aisenberg case.
According to the St. Petersburg Times, which attended the conference, Cohen referred to sworn testimonies he says he took from police informant Dennis Byron and Scott Overbeck.
Cohen declined to provide ABCNews.com with transcripts of the testimonies.
Cohen said that Byron told him that detectives placed him in a cell with Overbeck in hopes of finding out whether he or Cohen had played any part in the Aisenberg case, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
"Was there any discussion that they intended to bring me down or take me down, words to that effect?" Cohen asked, according to a transcript of the conversation obtained by the St. Petersburg Times.
"That all of you are going to go down," Byron responded, according to the paper. "That you were going to go down, that the Aisenbergs were going to go down and that Overbeck is going down."
Byron said it was clear to him that Cohen was a "prime target," according to the report.
The sheriff's office denies Cohen has ever been a target of the investigation.
Declining to comment directly to ABCNews.com, the office released a statement regarding Cohen.
"[We] feel compelled to deny the implication that our investigation has ever viewed Mr. Barry Cohen as a subject, target, suspect or person of interest," the statement reads.
Cohen's charges against the sheriff's office came after the St. Petersburg Times on Sunday obtained excerpts from the sworn testimonies of Byron and Overbeck.
