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Jailhouse Tales On Aisenberg Case Vary In Details

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By JOSH POLTILOVE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 30, 2008

TAMPA - The tale starts with a little white boat.

Scott D. Overbeck said he paid $1,500 in cash for the 12-footer, and that Marlene Aisenberg likely sold it to him. He speculated the boat once carried the body of Aisenberg's missing 5-month-old, Sabrina.

Dennis Byron, an informant for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, offered different details. Byron said Overbeck admitted to chopping Sabrina up after Marlene Aisenberg killed the baby in the boat. Byron helped investigators with a wiretap of Overbeck to get a reduced prison sentence.

Byron's then-girlfriend, Carrie Leece, said that Overbeck told her about the boat and chopping up the baby and said he would kill her if she told anyone.

And Barry Cohen, the lawyer who took statements from Overbeck and Byron about Sabrina's disappearance, offers an alternate version of events. He said the Aisenbergs never owned a boat.

There is no record of any watercraft being registered in the Aisenbergs' name.

Regardless, stories about the boat led Hillsborough deputies to investigate the lead into the child's 1997 disappearance. Investigators used Byron, wiretapping, and even faked identities and payoffs to try to trap Overbeck into providing information, Overbeck told Cohen.

This week, Cohen said deputies tried to use Overbeck's hunch to work the system and get information against Overbeck, the Aisenbergs, him and his investigator, Johnny Tranquillo.

Byron's attorney, John Trevena, said his client was moved Monday from a prison near Gainesville to the Columbia Correctional Institution in Lake City. Trevena said he was told the move was for Byron's protection.

Trevena also said Tuesday night he plans to ask the governor's office to appoint a special prosecutor to look into how the sheriff's office has handled its investigation of the Aisenberg case.

To date, the sheriff's office has declined comment on the specifics of the case. On Sunday, the office said, "Obviously, some of our informants are more reliable and trustworthy than others. Nonetheless, regardless of the source, we are honor bound to lawfully investigate every viable lead, no matter whose feathers it might ultimately ruffle."

Cohen spoke with Byron on Wednesday and with Overbeck on Friday. The following comes from sworn statements from the conversations:

Overbeck's Story

For $1,500 in cash, Overbeck figured, he could buy a boat worth thousands more. He never got a receipt. The woman promised him paperwork on the boat, but he never got it.

Years after buying the boat from a Valrico woman, he said, he had a hunch that the seller was Marlene Aisenberg.

"After - it took a couple, two or three years for the case to get over with, and that's when I thought, 'Wow, I wonder if this is where I bought the boat from, you know.' So it was just kind of - just a wonder thing, you know."

Overbeck said his telling people about the hunch led deputies to investigate him for a crime he had no direct knowledge of and had nothing to do with.

He said he never took the boat out with the baby inside and that Tranquillo never said to take the boat out with the baby inside. Tranquillo lived down the road from him, he said, and he once told Tranquillo he bought a boat from the Aisenbergs.

When he spoke with Tranquillo, Overbeck was told there's no way that he possibly could have bought a boat from the Aisenbergs.

Overbeck said he wound up selling the boat to a man in a white Suburban for $2,200 or $2,300. The man didn't ask for a title to the boat, which Overbeck felt was strange.

"Yeah, I know he was a cop now."

Later, Overbeck said, investigators put the informant, Dennis Byron, in his cell to snoop on him. The two knew each other, and they shared a cell for about a month.

Overbeck said Byron kept asking about Sabrina. He said Byron was "trying to get me to say that I did something, which I didn't say that, because I didn't do nothing."

Overbeck "got aggravated because Byron kept talking about it." He questioned what Bryon thought, asking whether Byron thought he killed the baby and was sleeping with Marlene Aisenberg.

He didn't know he was being recorded at the time.

"I never thought about it," Overbeck said. "I'm not too bright sometimes."

He said Byron also wrote a letter to be sent to the Aisenbergs' home in Maryland. The letter said something about a little white boat, and how if the Aisenbergs wanted it back, it would cost $500,000.

Overbeck said he thought the letter would be a good way to scare the Aisenbergs into paying up. The letter never made it to the Aisenbergs, Overbeck said, because investigators took it.

An investigator who claimed to represent the Aisenbergs met with Overbeck and asked how he knew Steve Aisenberg, Overbeck said.

The representative brought a briefcase to the meeting, and the briefcase contained a few hundred thousand dollars, Overbeck said. He said he was led to believe the money came from the Aisenbergs. He didn't take the money, he said, because he was in shock that the Aisenbergs would pay up.

"I'm thinking, 'Wow, I'm a detective here. I figured it out,' I thought."

Then investigators came.

The investigators threatened to arrest Overbeck on extortion charges because of the letter, he said. To keep from getting charged, he said, "I cooperated. I told them what I knew, which was really nothing. It's just a hunch."

Investigators tried to get him to say he bought the boat from the Aisenbergs, that he disposed of the body in a crab trap behind his house, that he had sold the Aisenbergs cocaine, he said.

They also told him he had been in a relationship with Marlene Aisenberg, he said.

Overbeck said that none of those things is true.

Another Side To The Story

On Wednesday, according to the sworn statement, Byron said Overbeck told him an entirely different story.

In 2005, Byron said, Overbeck told him he had dirt on Cohen and Tranquillo and told him of the disappearance and disposal of Sabrina.

Byron said that years ago, Overbeck showed him the boat and that it had a small area with about enough room to stash an infant.

"Anyway, at this time he showed me - he says, 'Put your nose in there and smell,' you know, which at the time I smelled it, it smelled," Byron said. "It could have possibly been anything dead in there, but you could tell at one point, yeah, there was something in there, OK. And then the rest of the boat is old except for this new part inside this bow. ... At this point is when he told me that, you know, the baby Sabrina Aisenberg was in that boat."

Byron said Overbeck told him that Marlene Aisenberg killed Sabrina.

The story Byron heard was that Marlene Aisenberg was on the boat with Sabrina, went into a "crack rage" and shook the baby.

"Somehow she killed the baby out there on that boat. She took that baby and shoved the baby inside the nose of the boat, the bow of that boat. The baby stayed in the bow of that boat until Scott Overbeck took that baby out, chopped that baby up, put that baby in crab traps and got rid of that baby in Thunder Bay. And that's basically what Scott Overbeck in the long term, over a period of a year and a half, told me.

He also said Overbeck told him in 2005 that Steve Aisenberg offered him $500,000 to get the boat back.

Overbeck's tale came up in October 2007 while Byron awaited sentencing in Orient Road Jail. He was in a cell with another person and mentioned "that I had knew that Scott got rid of the baby in crab traps in Thunder Bay."

Byron said investigators showed him a picture of his daughter and implied they could help cut his sentence.

He agreed to cooperate.

Byron said sheriff's office attorney Tony Peluso wanted him to wear a wire against Overbeck and said, "We're going to take care of you. Just as long as you ... don't lie to me."

"There's probably over a hundred hours of conversation of me and Scott on tape, OK, where he's talking to me, you know, about the Aisenbergs, of what was in the boat, the baby is in the boat."

After speaking with Overbeck and Byron, Cohen said he doesn't have any clue what stories Overbeck really told people. He said people such as Overbeck might make up tales to make themselves seem tough or important.

"You can't apply a sense of rationality to it," Cohen said. "You have to look at it from where they are and understand who they are."

Assignment editor Howard Altman and reporter Ray Reyes contributed to this report. Reporter Josh Poltilove can be reached at (813) 259-7691.

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