Rebecca Haro appeared hysterical.
“Oh, God, Emmanuel!” she cried out.
Haro’s answers were sometimes unintelligible amid her screams as she told San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies that her 7-month-old son, Emmanuel, was violently kidnapped out of her arms as she changed his diaper in the parking lot of the Big 5 Sporting Goods in Yucaipa.
“Someone said, ‘Hola’ — I just turned and I fell (after getting slugged),” she told the deputies in the parking lot that Aug. 14, 2025 night, while recorded by at least one body-worn camera. “I just woke up on the ground,” Haro continued between sobs. “I went to Big 5 and asked if anybody seen anything. …
“Oh, my baby. … So I ran around and I got over here and I can’t find Emmanuel. I looked everywhere … He hurt me so bad. … Can I please go (search), please?”
Away from her, a deputy said on camera: “There are no (surveillance) cameras.”
The next day, Rebecca Haro and her husband, Jake, who lived in Cabazon, doubled down on their story, holding a news conference that prompted a galvanized community to join the search and hold vigils for the little boy, and a nationwide organization that assists families in crisis to offer a $5,000 reward for information on his disappearance.
But quickly, as detectives found evidence at a taco shop and couldn’t find it in the couple’s home, the Haros’ tale crumbled.
The detectives who investigated Emmanuel’s disappearance, the prosecutor, and a thrift store manager disclosed to The Press-Enterprise never-before-revealed details of the case. Those included how a video shredded Rebecca Haro’s story, Jake Haro’s puzzling donation of baby items, and how authorities tracked Jake Haro zig-zagging across Riverside County, perhaps, they figured, looking for a place to dump a tiny body.
What wasn’t found during the investigation, detectives said, was as damning for the Haros as what was.
And so just two months after Emmanuel’s disappearance, on Oct. 16, 2025, Jake Haro, 33, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, assault on a child under age 8 causing death and filing a false police report in a deal arranged with a judge. He received more than 30 years in state prison.
And on May 29, Rebecca Haro, 42, pleaded guilty to child endangerment causing great bodily injury, involuntary manslaughter and accessory after the fact in a deal with the District Attorney’s Office. Charges of murder and filing a false police report were dropped, and Haro got almost 13 years in state prison.
Riverside County Assistant District Attorney Brandon Smith said he did not believe that Rebecca Haro knew where her son was, so he didn’t make revealing the location a condition of her plea.
“The tenor of that trial would have been set at the beginning when they (those in the courtroom) saw the body-worn camera (video) of Rebecca reporting her son missing, knowing that he had been dead for days,” Smith said. “I think the entire understanding of who these people are starts with viewing their ability to divorce themselves from the truth and divorce themselves from reality.
“And focus entirely on themselves and portraying themselves as victims,” the assistant district attorney said. “She victimized everybody who really wanted to believe her.”
Smith’s job usually confines him to an office. But District Attorney Mike Hestrin tapped him for this case: Because the murder was believed to have occurred at the Cabazon home, Riverside County’s DA’s Office took the court case.
“If Mike hadn’t asked me, I would have asked for it,” Smith said. “Because I joined this office to be in a courtroom and to try cases like this and hold people like the Haros responsible.”
The Parking Lot Videos
Because the crime was reported in San Bernardino County, that jurisdiction’s Sheriff’s Department took the case.
Sgt. Nicholas Clark, 46, a 24-year veteran, and Detective Shane Crowl, 33, on the force for 11 years, were next up in the rotation for a case.
They, along with some 50 other investigators and search dogs, swarmed the Big 5 lot on Yucaipa Boulevard that August night.
“We went through every dumpster,” Clark said. “We went through every bush. We went through everything that morning.”
Rebecca could not describe her assailant or his vehicle.
“It was just odd, how limited the info she had,” Crowl said.
Crowl also found it odd that Rebecca parked her white, double-cab pickup in a corner spot in front of the sporting goods store “with no camera nearby” when stalls closer to the entrance were vacant.
Detectives interviewed Rebecca Haro again that night, and her husband as well.
The next day, on Aug. 15, investigators visited B&C Taco Bar & Burger, a restaurant across the street that has two tiny cameras affixed to the eaves. Owner Carlos Torres told The Press-Enterprise that detectives plugged a flash drive into his system. They pulled out some video.
“It’s not the clearest video,” Clark said. “But it was enough for us to see that there was nothing unusual that occurred.”
The video shows her backing into a spot. Rebecca had told deputies she had been there only moments when she was attacked.
“(But) it was about 10 minutes that she was in that parking lot prior to getting out,” Clark said. “More importantly, from what you do see, is what you don’t see.
“You don’t see anybody running from the vehicle. You don’t see any vehicles storming out of the parking lot fast. So that was the first real piece of evidence that we had that made us believe that this was not a kidnapping.”
The video did not show Emmanuel.
Haros Speak Out
That same day, the Haros held their press conference. Rebecca, without tears, recounted her supposed ordeal.
“What stood out for me,” Crowl said, “Jake was referring to Emmanuel completely in past tense. I thought that was odd, considering this had just been reported.”
Said Clark: “The other thing that I found weird about the press conference is they created their own missing flyer. The wording on it was odd to me: Missing kid. And then they put their personal phone numbers. They never put anything for the Sheriff’s Department, contact the police or anything like that.”
The next day, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department went public and announced it had found “inconsistencies” in Rebecca Haro’s story. That prompted the Uvalde Foundation for Kids to rescind its offers of a reward and search teams.
Detectives would conclude that Emmanuel could have died nearly two weeks before his mom said he was kidnapped, from assaults that caused alarming symptoms that were revealed in photos and videos culled from the Haros’ electronic devices. A photo of Emmanuel timestamped on Aug. 1 was the last date there was evidence he was alive.
Although investigators believe Emmanuel died at Jake’s hand from repeated blows to the head, the prosecutor said, Rebecca had a moral responsibility to intervene and failed to do so.
After the news conference, detectives again questioned the Haros.
Sgt. Clark confronted Rebecca Haro with the video contradicting her story. A search of the couple’s home found no diapers the size that Emmanuel might wear. There was no crib and almost no baby clothing. Detectives could find only one or two baby bottles. (The couple also had a 3-year-old daughter.)
“She locked up and she no longer wanted to proceed with the interview,” Clark said.
Jake Haro was defensive.
“When he was confronted, (he said) something to the effect of, ‘I believe my wife. Whatever she says is what happened,’ ” Detective Crowl recalled.
Rebecca Haro had told investigators that her husband never struck her, a claim she repeated in a jailhouse interview with a Press-Enterprise reporter — she said her black eye came from the kidnapper. But Jake Haro later admitted to detectives he was abusive to her and controlling, Smith said.
The father, in a separate jailhouse interview, said he loved Emmanuel.
The Thrift Store Donation
Word of the missing baby rattled the employees of the Oasis Thrift Store in Beaumont.
Jake Haro had helped out there for about two years, sorting merchandise and assisting customers, to fill a community-service requirement for his probation following his 2023 conviction after he pleaded guilty to willful child cruelty. He said the injuries were caused by an “accident.” Riverside County DA Hestrin said they permanently disabled a 10-week-old daughter he fathered with a previous wife.
The manager at Oasis, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of aggressive internet posters, said she was not told he had abused a child and that Jake Haro was an excellent worker.
On Aug. 8, six days before his wife told deputies Emmanuel had been kidnapped, Jake returned to the Oasis, a 15-minute drive from the Haros’ home.
“Can I make a donation?” Jake inquired.
He had a high chair that appeared unused, baby clothing that still had price tags on them, and toys, the manager said.
“I thought, ‘Hmm, the baby must have outgrown it fast,’ ” said the manager, who was aware Rebecca Haro had been pregnant. “We put it out the next day, and it started selling.”
That night, Jake Haro called the manager and asked whether he could use the store’s trash bin. The couple was doing “deep cleaning” at home. The next day, a Saturday, he returned with five black bags of trash that appeared lightweight and flung them into the bin, the manager said.
(Three days after Jake Haro had donated baby items to the thrift store, Smith said, Rebecca Haro made another apparent attempt to cover their tracks by logging onto the Kaiser app and making a doctor’s appointment for her now-dead son.)
When the case began unfolding in headlines and newscasts, a suspicious Oasis employee urged the manager to call authorities. But the manager hesitated, unconvinced her information would help detectives.
Still, news of the missing baby worried her.
On Aug. 18, four days after Rebecca Haro first talked with law enforcement in the Big 5 parking lot, a deputy who checked on probationers working at the store walked in.
“And he’s seen my face white,” the manager said.
“He goes, ‘Do you need to talk to me?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do, and I’m scared.’ … I was shaking.”
The manager confided to the deputy that Jake Haro donated pristine baby items days before the reported disappearance.
“I said no normal person would donate brand new, never sat in, perfectly good, expensive baby stuff,” the manager said. “It’s just so weird, the timing. Nobody can foresee the future that the baby wouldn’t need that high chair, but they already knew the baby was never going to sit in that high chair.”
Two hours later, detectives descended on the thrift store.
The date of Jake Haro’s donation helped detectives narrow down when Emmanuel may have died. It also sent them scurrying to search every trash bin in the area and to go on recovery missions to the Lambs Canyon Landfill near Beaumont and the El Sobrante Landfill near Corona, where the bins’ contents would end up.
They were trying to find Emmanuel’s body.
“By the time we got there, the trash (from) that day was so far below ground, it would have taken months and millions of dollars on a chance,” Assistant District Attorney Smith said.
The arrest, and the search
In Cabazon on Ramona Street on Aug. 22 — just eight days after Rebecca Haro’s report of a kidnapping — the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department launched drones that went above the couple’s home. They videotaped as the husband burned items, Smith DA said, including his wife’s handwritten notes about what she planned to tell detectives if she were arrested.
Later that day, she and her husband were escorted away in handcuffs.
Smith said the decision to file charges against the couple came from the totality of the evidence, which included:
• On Aug. 7, the day before Jake Haro donated the baby items, surveillance video shows him driving from the house with a mop bucket, a mop, and a wet vacuum in the bed of his pickup. “Within about 10 minutes, those things have disappeared,” Smith said. “And then the next day, he’s driving around, and he has a brand new mop bucket and wet vac in the back of his truck.”
• Cameras and license-plate readers recorded him driving to various spots around Riverside County on Aug. 11, among them the Cabazon Outlets.
“He’ll stop, back up, read every sign,” the deputy DA says. “And those signs all say, ‘Monitored by cameras.’ He’s basically driving around looking for places with no cameras.
“And that’s the same day that they disconnected all of their Ring cameras and deleted all their Ring-camera footage. So Aug. 11 seems to be sort of the day they’ve committed to having to do something to acknowledge Emmanuel was dead and find a way out of it.”
• Two days later, surveillance cameras recorded Jake driving through Moreno Valley and Perris around midnight.
“I think that’s when he got rid of the body,” Smith said.
The day of his arrest, Jake Haro told detectives he was responsible for Emmanuel’s death and had buried him, Smith said. The father called his 7-month-old son’s death an “accident,” invoking the same explanation he made for his daughter’s injuries.
The community organized search parties, erected a makeshift memorial outside the Haros’ home and discussed the case in Facebook groups and in TikTok videos. So-called citizen journalists started posting online facts that hadn’t surfaced to the public as well as errors and opinions.
Two days later, on Aug. 24, 2025, Sgt. Clark, Detective Crowl, Detective Levi Kerr and Sgt. Brandon Becker, as well as some 30 more investigators and 50 search-and-rescue volunteers, accompanied Jake Haro to the Moreno Valley Badlands. He had told investigators he buried Emmanuel there, although the prosecutor said cellular data showed he had driven through the area in August, and he never went below 70 mph after it was believed the boy was dead.
“We wanted to do whatever we could to find Emmanuel, and to give him a proper burial,” said Clark, who drove Jake Haro to the rural hillside along the 60 Freeway.
But Jake was evasive.
“He just (said), ‘You know, oh, I don’t know, maybe we could be here, might be over there,’ ” Clark said. ” ‘Well, yeah, I walked, you know, a few minutes this way. Well, actually, it might have been more close to half an hour to an hour. I remember a tree,’ or ‘I remember a fence.’ “
Emmanuel’s body remains missing. The prosecutor believes it will never be found.
