WATERVILLE, Maine — After a nearly two-week search for a 20-month-old girl who disappeared from her home, Maine wardens on Wednesday wrapped up work that involved combing woods, fields, private properties and waterways from the ground and air, Waterville police said.
Police Chief Joseph Massey said searches of many of those areas for Ayla Reynolds, especially near Ayla’s home in a residential neighborhood, were repeated “to make sure that no evidence of Ayla’s disappearance would be missed.” The wardens have conducted the searches with help from firefighters and civilian search groups.
Massey said in a statement that wardens also have performed many targeted searches based on tips and direction from investigators. He said authorities have received about 370 tips from the public, many coming after a $30,000 privately funded reward was offered Monday for information leading to Ayla’s safe return.
Massey said the Maine Warden Service will continue to be available if necessary for future searches.
Ayla was reported missing Dec. 17 by her father, Justin DiPietro, who told police he last saw her the previous night when he put her to bed in his Waterville home. He said she was wearing polka dot pajamas with the words “Daddy’s Princess” on them and had a cast on her left arm. The child’s mother, Trista Reynolds, has been living in South Portland, about 75 miles south of Waterville.
Ayla was being cared for by her father after child welfare workers intervened while her mother checked herself into a 10-day rehabilitation program.
Police acknowledged Wednesday that they have been very selective in releasing information about the case, saying they do not want to compromise their investigation. But investigators have concluded that the toddler did not leave her house on her own.
DiPietro on Wednesday released his second public statement through the police, thanking those involved in the search and the Waterville community for citizens’ and businesses’ donations for the reward. DiPietro said he has not granted media interviews because he doesn’t want to hinder the investigation, and added, “I am not hiding.”
“I would never do anything to hurt my child,” DiPietro’s statement says.
“I have to believe that Ayla is with somebody and I just want that person to find the courage to do the right thing and find a way to return her safely. Even if that means dropping her off at a church, or hospital, or some safe place.”
okay…..still want to know if those “adults” at his house the night she disappeared were ever questioned..??!!!
You are kidding of course. I’ll leave it at that I guess
I mean, I know we are not privy to all information, and I am guessing that IF there were other adults in the same house that night she supposedly went missing (now i am thinking she could have been missing before this night…) then how could they NOT know or hear anything? It just doesn’t make any sense:( I guess I am just trying real hard to make sense of this tragic, unfortunate event…….and have this poor little girl be found.
Lori what do you think?
Do you think that the police would not interview everyone in the house?
Do you think that maybe the police do not believe that you or I are “entitled” to all the information contained in their investigative file?
You do not know much about Massey and his marauders do you? he makes his own rules…. And we are not entitled to anything before the end of the investigation. or he decides to divulge information.
It is an open and ongoing investigation. You and I are entitled to NOTHING. I can’t help it if you have an “issue” with the WPD.
So many MORONS in this country. We never had an exact count until Nov 08
November 8th and that has WHAT to do with this missing little girl?
I’ve wondered the same thing. I assume they have but strange not much mentioned about it.
Mother of Ayla on the today show just a few min.s ago asking why father is hiding and why he will not talk to her about their daughter, she ends the interview saying ‘he was the last one to see her ( Ayla) alive.
The mother said she had not spoken to the baby’s father and that she thinks police should facilitate a conversation between her and the father; in turn, the police say that any conversation between the two of them is in fact up to the two of them. She has made no attempt to contact the father.
Matt Lauer did nothing but throw this woman softballs. I’d like to know how the Today show compensated this woman for her visit to New York; whether she has been offered the opportunity to take a polygraph and what her response was; whether DHHS did in fact take Ayla away from her while leaving another child with her and, if so, why (media accounts are contradictory); what the circumstances were surrounding the “fall” that resulted in her daughter wearing a cast; and why the media says she filed for sole custody of the child, while she says she did not. Who’s right?
I wish they could make the father take a lie detector test, bet the truth will come out then
He’s already cleared. He isn’t behind the abduction. 2 guesses left.
really? hes absolutely positively cleared? just like the mom for caylee anthony was “cleared” give me a break, no one really knows at this point
Maybe David knows something we don’t.
I don’t think he is cleared. I had heard something about the police having him under “protection” and he is obviously not making public statements for a reason. There is much more to this than meets the eye but without all of the facts you just don’t know who did what.
I have no idea whether or not the father has anything to do with the disappearance but did it ever cross your mind that the police told him it would be best to not talk to the media and that it would increase the chances of finding his daughter and that is why he isn’t talking to the media. It is disgusting that if you don’t want to talk to the media every five minutes you are assumed to be guilty, ridiculous. Or maybe he is in a state of grief and doesn’t feel like talking to anyone except close friends and family, either way his lack of giving interviews in no way correlates to his innocence or guilt and anyone who says otherwise is simply misinformed and watches too much TV.
You must be responding to someone else’s comment, unless you did not read mine.
And judging by some of the comments on the various comment threads he may need that “protection” if indeed the WPD is providing it.
Don’t debate with hermonmo if you don’t agree , hermonmo will find you and post your real name.
really…well I’ll be waiting.
The investigation is still ongoing…I haven’t read any reports that he is ‘cleared’. I’ve read that both parents are talking with police — no one according to what I’ve read has been cleared. How many people were in this house that night? No one heard a thing? Someone from outside walks into the house goes to the childs room, walks out with her — taking the time to make sure all the doors are closed, why bother to close the door — your walking out with a child, would you take the chance that someone would hear the door close? Odd behavior everywhere!
Thank you i thought the same
And who told you this because he is not cleared. He is a suspect at this point, but they are keeping it quiet
Polygraph tests aren’t reliable.
better yet, have both parents take a lie detector test
Right, but everyone says the dad is cleared. It is still suspicious he never checked on her for 12 hours or more. FIshy to me if you think
12 hours? I put my son to bed at 10 and I wake up when he comes in and gets me or bangs on his door. I stay up late, so I’d still be sleeping at 10 if he didn’t come get me. So how is that suspicious?
I can say that I never did that Amanda, but many, many parents do – and that doesnt make them bad parents.
At that age my son would sleep for 12 hours or more, in fact he started sleeping this long at about 6 months old and I can understand how you could put your child to bed a few hours before you go to sleep and not check on them until you wake up. Especially if there was a baby monitor in the room and he heard nothing to make him suspicious. Are you saying that as a parent you are supposed to peek into your child’s room every few hours while they are sleeping? Also, if she was abducted during the night when the father was asleep it is very possible that he wouldn’t have woken up. Many kids will not make a peep when picked up while they are sleeping so its not like she would have been screaming for all to hear. I hope for her safe return but think that everyone needs to cut these folks some slack and figure out how they can use their efforts to be productive in aiding this little girls return.
I have 4 children and I always checked on them while they were sleeping up until they became adults, just less frequently as they got older and for different reasons. My grandson is a little older than Ayla by about 3 months. Not only do I check on him so does his mother, father and aunt. Until everyone goes to sleep, someone is constantly checking on him. The second he wakes up a little bit he starts crying for a drink. As my kids got older I would check to make sure they were actually sleeping. As they got to be teenagers I checked to make sure they were in their room and hadn’t snuck out. When you become a parent it’s your responsibility to check on your kids and make sure they are okay. That’s what you sign up for when you become a parent and it’s your job.
All that being said…I pray this little girl is found alive.
I’m sorry, but I can’t understand how a parent cannot check on their child before retiring for the night. PARENTAL INSTINCT, I think it’s called. I checked on all my children before I went to bed, if at least to make sure they were still covered up! Is a baby moniter going to inform you if your child has died of SIDS. This child had a broken arm and no one went and checked on her?? That would be ONE OF THE MOST CRUCIAL TIMES TO CHECK ON A CHILD! When a child is injured or sick, that’s the time to be checking on them MORE OFTEN THAN NORMAL!
I remember my OWN mother checking on me when I was growing up….even when I was a teenager and we didn’t get along too well, sometimes! She would come in my bedroom, cover me up and give me a kiss on the forehead. Not a hard thing to do, and it doesn’t take much time to do!
Why would you think that either of these people would exhibit good parenting skills? The crackhead mother lost the child to DHS and the father does not appear to be a whole lot better. We all make mistakes while learning to parent, but some people simply don’r want to parent responsibly.
Very true!!!
I agree I always check on my kids several times before I go to bed. I also check on them throughout the night and I’m not saying that all parents do this is just me and I don’t sleep very well. My son is 24 months old. He has a baby monitor in his bedroom but there have been times he has woke up and come into my bedroom without my hearing anything on the baby monitor. I pray for the safe return of this little girl and I pray we are all wrong and her parents had nothing to do with it. It makes it even more of a tragedy when it’s the parents who do it.
What if he went to bed RIGHT after putting her to bed. Is that considered checking on her – or must he set his alarm and wake up every 2 hours to check on his sleeping child….
Children are tested for SIDS now (not sure how long its been since you had a baby in your house) (btw, I had a cousin die of SIDS 37 years ago – before running the appropriate tests was common)… once the child tests positive for breathing activities that lead to SIDS, they are given monitors that will wake the dead if the child stops sleeping – also – SIDS is generally considered a non factor after 12 months, thus, the montitors are removed.
I’d like to see the video of him on that statement, I’m sure someone qualified could tell if he’s lying, then if they thought he was, turn towards the mother, but I”m sure people involved are doing there best and that’s all we can ask for,” second to the safety of this little baby girl.”
Sorry, but there is no course or special talent to determine whether someone is lying based on merely observing someone.
Actually, there are certain non-verbal cues a person will give off when they are lying.
please don’t say, lack of eye contact is a cue. People with autism avoid eye contact as it can be painful for them to look at people. this doesn’t mean they are lying.
And sometimes people will make too much eye contact in an effort to show they aren’t lying.
You have to consider a lot of things in the process…including medical issues AND cultural differences. It’s not just eye contact. Choice of words, certain things you do with your arms and legs, how you sit, etc. There are a lot of indicators.
And these indicators can vary by person.
Blind people, too.
True. However, you really have to know a person to be able to detect these often subtle cues. Nobody here will be able to watch a television interview and be able to detect whether the interview subject is lying — not even the FBI.
There are too many variables at play for anybody to weed out relevant and irrelevant cues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming
I was trained in this technique by a guy from the FBI academy in the 1980’s, at that time they were touting it as almost 100% successful except with the Basque people from a region in Spain (no, I cannot recall why) I never put much credence in it, and it ‘s results were not admissible in a court of law.
Actually watching people’s body language and emotions can be a fair indicator of whether someone has something to hide, not if they are guilty. When I saw the grandfather on tv with the mother, the grandfather was totally distraught, way to over emotional. The mother was showing no emotion and did not seem distressed at the time. I think the mother and grandfather know the child was abducted and it has a correlation to the mother. They must also know the reason she was taken. Just my gut instinct. Eventually it will come out and hopefully I pray Ayla is still alive.
Actually there are classes taught to law enforcement about lie detection, my husband attended one, of course nothing is a perfect science but remarkably the “signs” to look for are hard for a person who is lying not to do! (and no, I don’t mean lack of eye contact!)
There may be classes, but the reality is detecting lies is not a certainty. In most cases, law enforcement officers are not accurate in detecting lies much more than 50 percent of the time — the officer may as well have flipped a coin. One experiment found that Secret Service agents were correct 75 percent of the time in detecting lies. But that’s a percentage still far from perfect. (Most scientific research won’t even be considered without a 95 percent confidence interval.)
More than anything, classes give those who take them more confidence that they can detect lies. But that’s not a good thing.
Funny how everyone has the mother tried, convicted, and sent away for doing this based soley on her ability to articulate on national television. They pull apart every facial expression, word etc. I guess the father deserves better treatment.
My initial impulse was to blame the inept parents…they are easy to point the finger at. They were responsible for her day-to-day care and safety. Either one of them COULD have done something, but it doesn’t mean they did.
But after 11 days of intense questioning, maybe we do have a case of child abduction by a stranger or someone knowledgeable about the child and just looking for an opportunity.
We have beat up both parents for their irresponsible shortcomings. It hasn’t yet produced squat. Maybe it’s time to set them aside for the time being and focus on some of the better leads. If one of the parents is involved, we’ll still have plenty of time to rake them over the coals.
This is so sad. If this was true what the father said there were people in the house when she went missing. Would people want to be involved in this mess. Someone would of talked. A child doesn’t go missing from a bedroom. This case reminds me of Haylee Cummings down in Palaka florida. I would like to know who were these people that were in the home, any drug convictions? That would tell you if this was a drug crime.
I am thinking that the father isn’t saying much because he probably has a lawyer? He has to be a person of interest in this case since she was under his care. The mother on the other hand is doing all kinds of interviews and putting blame on the father. As a mother I seriously don’t think I could talk to the media so freely if my baby was missing. Hoping along with the whole country that there will be a good outcome and she is safe.
I just watched the Today Show and the mother just did an interview with Matt and the last thig she said was that she wanted to talk to her ex because he was the last one to see their daughter alive. Like she new she had allready passed and I must say she did not seem like a mother of a child that is missing. She reminds me of that Susan woma that was all over tv saying someome took her cildren and then surprise she killed them by driving her car in the lake.
She is correct , he was the last one to see her alive. what do you say to the press , he was the last one to see her go missing? When he had her she was alive. Same as Elizabeth Smart. What did the parents tell the press .. she was last seen alive in her bedroom, when she went to bed.
You bet I’d be blaming, hollering, yelling and everything else if the father of my 20 month old child “lost” her. Are you kidding me that you wouldn’t? He lucky that this lady is keeping her distance — I wouldn’t be able to, I’d be camped out on that lawn waiting for news, any news of my baby. This guy is a winner — his child is missing and he runs into hiding.
Please God bring this child home or if she was abused take her somewhere safe, just want her to be ok
Pleas God bring this child home or if she was abused take her somewhere safe
They’re wrapping up the search? They’re giving up??
They think someone took her. When was the Amber alert made?
From the above article – “Maine wardens on Wednesday wrapped up work that involved combing woods,
fields, private properties and waterways from the ground and air,
Waterville police said.”
Wrapping up? Does this mean there will no longer be people searching? If it was my child I would search until he or she was found!!
From the article – “Maine wardens on Wednesday wrapped up work that involved combing woods,
fields, private properties and waterways from the ground and air,
Waterville police said.”
OJ is still searching for his wife’s killer even when in jail.
Hey parents, BDN, State of Maine, human race…..whomever……it’s not “WRAPPED UP” until Ayla is found safe and sound. (Especially BDN for printing such a headline) A tabloid it has become, a tabloid it will be, until there is another alternative.
The headline was referring to the ground search, not the investigation.
All i know is i check on my 2 year old at least 3-4 times before i go to bed and even if i wake up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, i check on her again. she’s two and i still have the baby moniter on. I think either he had her taken by someone because of this custody battle or unfortunaly something bad happened to her. I feel like ever since that casey antoney trial, alot more children have been dissapearing. I just hope that this little girl is ok.
I agree…you don’t just put a 20 month old child to bed, with a cast on her arm, and not check on her!!! And, IF someone took her, it had to be someone that either knows the house very well, or it was one of the “adults” present the night she disappeared………..
It would be awful if they put her to bed, went to bed and fell asleep… that would be hideous…
I guess I am wondering why there has been no mention of the other “adults” in the house that night she disappeared being questioned..maybe that’s b/c she wasn’t there and actually went missing before that night?? How could these adults not be suspects? How could they all not hear someone coming in and taking a child away?? Lots of lying going on here. And I do hope and pray that this search is not done–“wrapped up” as Ayla has not been found. The information we are receiving is so vague and I know all details cannot be released, but there just seems to be something missing here…………..
Its amazing that the BDN just up and removes your comment because someone tells it the way they feel. So BDN shame on you for junk you post in the paper.
Every comment I’ve made has been deleted. Seems that if you say anything about the father your comment is censored and deleted. BDN seems to be a little biased in protecting the father. Where is the father? Pick the mother apart over every little piece of her speech, look, etc…mights well because the father is only speaking through his lawyer. Someone said follow the money…which parent has money for and has acquired an attorney already– Yup that would be dad.
I still think the father know everything and there is the link to the missing puzzle.
Well, if you’re right I’d try to collect the 3o grand.
I am hoping that Ayla is still alive. I have this gut instinct that she is and there is more to the story here than meets the eye. I guess I have a few questions. Where did Ayla’s arm get broken under who’s care? Did the mother drop out of rehab? The mother went to court that day to get custody back? Did she? If she didn’t get custody back, was she behind the disappearance? It seemed awfully weird to me that the grandfather of the mother was off the wall distraught on tv and the mother didn’t seem distraught at all when they first were interviewed. Obviously the police know where the father is and he is not going public for a reason. Hopefully this was not a drug related kidnapping and hopefully someone will come forward with Ayla alive and well. This is what I am praying for.
WOW!!!!! Can’t believe I just saw an interview on the today show with the mother in NEW YORK!!!!!! Didn’t seem upset whatsoever. If my baby was missing, I know I wouldn’t be in New York doing interviews. At the end she said that Justin was the last to see her alive??? Why would she say that??? I was shocked by that statement. She knows something.
I saw the same interview. When she said that…. I thought…what? what did she just say? I hope the authorities follow up on that.
This makes me sick to my stomach. I’m sure everybody has been questioned, police don’t mess around when it comes to a poor innocent little girl missing. I find it ironic that the mother doesnt seem to distressed aboutthe whole situation. It breaks my heart to see this stuff happening so often now a days.. Lets all pray Ayla returns unharmed and healthy.
I guess there is no real sense of making a truthful post on this or many other issues in the Bangor Daily News, because they delete anything that might be considered controversial, once again proving that they do not stand for FREE SPEECH at all. I will say that my prayers continue to be with this little girl, wherever she may be
Your fine as long as your bashing the mother — don’t let your post lean toward daddy or it will be deleted.
…
The mother to Ayla was just on a morning show asking Ayla’s father why he will not talk to her and come out from hiding and that he was the last one to see her alive, I am not aware of any recent news update about finding Ayla one way or another.
Why are some of you attacking the mother? Criminal cases always involve the last person to see her alive and that was the father. And the father isn’t talking. That’s a big red flag. Any normal decent caring father would be talking about his missing daughter he would be on TV and going on the Today Show, he would want her found . And… don’t forget the house is sealed off as if it is a crime scene, with the tape included. The police , CSI I believe found some evidence in the house, they need to find Ayla to put this together.
Thoughts and prayers are going out to the mom and her family. Praying she will be found alive.
They need to bring the dad into the station and do some serious questioning. Lie detector would be a good place to start. , he hired a lawyer didn’t take him long to do so either, why did he hire a lawyer so fast does he have something to hide?
If you where being questioned in a missing child case, would you not hire a lawyer?
This tragedy is none of my business, but I am glad to read so much expert testimony here on the BDN comments sewer.
I was wonder if the child was on any pain medication for her broken arm. If so perhaps they should check (if they haven’t) the pill or liquid bottle to make sure that all dosages are still there. And No BDN I’m not accusing the father here — just wondering if an accidental overdose could have happened then someone got scared. We all know what happens when any posts making even the slightest indication that daddy might know more than he’s saying — They are Deleted.
Seriously, BDN is calling that “pleading” for her return. This man’s coldness and calculatedness is astonishing.