A subdued Rebecca Haro sat hunched over in a seventh-floor inmate visiting area of the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside on Sunday morning and said she wished she were out searching for her missing 7-month-old son, Emmanuel.
“I will not give up. I will not give up on my baby,” Haro said Aug. 24 in a jailhouse interview with a Southern California News Group reporter, during which she maintained that Emmanuel was kidnapped.
Law enforcement authorities believe the baby is dead, and on Friday arrested Haro and her husband Jake Haro at their home in Cabazon on suspicion of murder.
Haro, 41, sat separated from a reporter by a glass window and communicated through a telephone hookup on Sunday. She wore a blue jail jumpsuit. Her hair, up in a bun as she was led away in handcuffs Friday, was now down to her shoulders. The once-prominent bruise around her right eye has faded but was still noticeable.
Haro, and her husband Jake, 32, were arrested eight days after the baby’s mother reported that Emmanuel had been stolen from her after a kidnapper knocked her out while she changed the baby’s diaper outside a Big 5 in Yucaipa.
Though the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department says her story was a lie, she stuck by it on Sunday.
Haro shook her head side to side when asked about widely circulating rumors that days before she reported the kidnapping, she went to the Big 5, told employees that her car had been burglarized and asked whether the business had surveillance cameras. The sheriff’s department did not respond to questions about the claims.
“I want to be out looking for my baby,” Haro said, appearing to cry.
The crying, the commitment to finding Emmanuel and her account of the boy’s disappearance, however, have all been called into question by investigators and the public.
Over and over, people have noted Haro’s composed, tearless crying during media interviews. The Uvalde Foundation for Kids, which offered to help the Haros hunt for Emmanuel on foot, withdrew its support when the parents stopped searching and failed to respond to subsequent reach-outs. And San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators said unspecified “inconsistencies” in Haro’s statements raised their suspicions.
Investigators searched the Haros’ home and seized electronics belonging to Jake.
Haro said Sunday that she married Jake Haro in 2021, aware of his previous child cruelty case, and that their relationship has been “wonderful.”
He treats her well, she said, and the same goes for her 16-year-old child — a stepchild to Jake — and the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, and Emmanuel.
“He’s a good dad,” Rebecca Haro said. “He would never hurt a baby.”
She said she retained an attorney but declined to provide that person’s name.
The Haros have not been charged. A tentative court date of Aug. 26 has been set. Jake Haro, initially booked into the Riverside jail, is now incarcerated at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning.
Both are being held without the possibility of bail.
As of Sunday morning, Emmanuel was still missing, said Mara Rodriguez, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.