When considering the abduction story, since I’ve watched a lot of SVU over the years, I could think of a reason that could cause a man to take a baby on impulse, so I couldn’t dismiss it as completely implausible.
But MOO, LE has now all but confirmed the baby was not abducted by a stranger. Earlier I laid out my reasons for believing they were not treating this as a kidnapping, and now we know (generally) why.
Speaking of SVU, I recall there was an old episode where a parent called in a kidnapping to cover up what turned out to be a death that did not result from foul play, but especially with the information about the charges against the father, foul play seems most likely. And while I will still generally not judge the sincerity of a parent’s reaction from a television appearance, I think if LE had detected any normal grief from the mother, which you would see even with a negligent death, the statement might have read differently. So, MOO we’re looking at foul play.
I think domestic violence by the father against both the baby and mother could explain a lot of the weirdness. I think that’s actually most likely. The theory then would be that the mother has her reasons for not wanting to leave him or have him go to jail, and has been complicit. And that could be the cause of the black eye (the consensus seems to be that the bruise looks old, which would rule out the possibility of a self-inflicted bruise to support the story).
When you frame the task as, “what’s a story that could explain this black eye and a missing baby that won’t have authorities looking in Cabazon?”, then I think you’re getting closer to something that makes some sense. If there is abuse in that house, I would assume they have a long history of their children not telling on them, which would explain why they didn’t consider that to be a flaw in their story.
So given what we now know, I expect we will learn that the baby was not seen alive by any witnesses or cameras in Yucaipa that day.
Still curious about why she wasn’t worried about cameras quickly disproving her story. I have no theory there.