The Twisted Mother Who Tortured Her Own Baby | Where Is Baby Gabriel?
I’ve been doing this for about four decades, and I guess if I had a specialty, it’s cops and robbers, murder and mayhem. But I’ve covered serial killers, I’ve covered superstars, and I’ve probably covered enough homicides to fill up a big city cemetery. I can tell you I don’t remember most of them, and that’s the sad truth. But there are those stories that will stay with you forever.
A hotel worker was one of the last to see Elizabeth Johnson and her son Gabriel together. As Elizabeth fled town, she was caught on CCTV without her precious son. The question everyone wants answered: where is Baby Gabriel? We’ve had a couple of incidents during my run here in Phoenix, Arizona, where we’ve had just a beautiful child vanish in the blink of an eye. The search continues for missing Baby Gabriel. The world came to know him at 8 months old in those photographs that we’ve now all seen so many times. That is one of those stories because it’s a child, and because it’s a young victim, and because there is really no definitive answer. You know, I’ll think about this till the day I die.
On the family side, obviously, we want him back. He’s our family member. He’s our kid. He doesn’t deserve that; he had a good home. We all believe he’s still out there. If we see him, even if it’s his 18th birthday, I want to look him in the eye and tell him we never quit, so we keep going. If you somehow, someday see this, just know that we want you. You’re not forgotten. You are a huge part of this family. You’re always welcome. Don’t think that one day has gone by where not one of us has thought of you, where one of us has not cried for you, or one of us has not cared at all. We care. We love you. We want you. You’re more than anything to any of us and to all of us. So, if you’re hearing this ever, just know that you’re welcome.
This case, more than any other in my entire career, stuck with me. And it’s not that I hadn’t covered child disappearance cases where the child was never found, or child disappearance cases that had a tragic end. But in this case, I got to know the family. I spent so much time on it. In fact, it was rare in my career that I actually covered a story for as long as I did with Baby Gabriel. And so, I feel like I’m emotionally invested in this story. I feel like I know all of the players, and I want there so desperately to be a happy ending to this story. And you know, years and years and years pass, and the chances of that happening, you feel, are getting less and less with every passing year, but there’s still a chance. And that’s all it takes.
I think there’s something about missing children that the community just does not forget. It doesn’t matter how old the case is, if it’s solved or unsolved, people want to hear about those kids. And in this case, there was a huge, almost fanfare around it at the time. “One year ago, Gabriel Johnson vanished from the Homewood Suites Hotel.” “Today marks 5 years since Gabriel Johnson…” “It’s been 10 years since Gabriel Johnson went missing. Father of Gabriel Johnson still looking for answers.” But there are still so many loose ends, so many questions. So, when I knew I wanted to look into vanished children and focus on a few cases, Baby Gabriel was at the top of my list.
Gabriel was a baby. He was a happy baby. You know, he was smiling and stuff. He never really cried a lot unless he was hungry. He was just always smiling and playing, and like, that’s how I remember him. He was just, I don’t know, being Gabriel. He liked laying on the floor and playing. He had a little thing with a mat that he laid on with things hanging down over the top of him, and he loved, you know, playing with those and batting at it. That was one of the many toys that he liked the most. He was always, you know, just happy whenever you put him down there.
For Logan, I feel like around the holidays, birthdays, stuff like that, he gets more closed off, because he’s trying to be strong. He’s trying to show that it doesn’t affect him. When in all reality, it does, because when it affects him, it affects the whole family. And we can see the mood change. We can see the pain in his eyes. You want to be happy and you want to live that moment with your kids, your family, and your friends, but it’s hard whenever one person’s missing.
Gabriel was always smiling. He was just this cute little baby. He looked just like Logan. I remember he would come over and my Aunt Kathy would sit him on her lap and bounce him up and down, and he’d just giggle and laugh. He just had these stunning blue eyes that you could tell were just taking in everything. He was just a happy baby. You know, despite his mom leaving him in a crib and not taking care of him, he was still just a happy baby. And he lit up when he saw Logan. He didn’t light up when he saw Elizabeth. But he would light up when Logan would come into the room. That was just his baby. Gabe was Logan’s baby. And I think a lot of times it’s, “Oh, Elizabeth made her baby disappear.” No, she didn’t. She made Logan’s baby disappear.
Elizabeth and I, we’ve known each other for a long time. Both Elizabeth and Robert, her twin brother, grew up on the next street over from me. We have all the same friends. We grew up with all the same people. They were a grade behind me, in my brother’s grade. We hung out all the time. So, I knew them quite well, both of them. Elizabeth and my relationship was a little bit rocky. You kind of had to be careful what you said to her at certain points in time because she would get mad.
I do know that Elizabeth used to go on these rage rampages where she would just destroy things in the house. There was one time she cut up all of his clothes and poured bleach on them. She called the police and said that he did it. And when they showed up, he said, “Look at the clothes that are destroyed. These are my clothes that are destroyed. Nothing of hers is touched. I didn’t do this.” There were always examples of where she was the aggressor. She’d call the police, but they would side with her. She’d just spin this tale of what he did.
My first impression of Elizabeth Johnson was that she was someone who had gone through a lot in her life. Her mom passed away when she was young, she lived with grandparents, and she lived in foster care. She just seemed like somebody who was looking to belong, to have her own family. Then we came to find out a little bit more about how unstable she is, especially when you’re talking about Logan. We just kind of thought it was normal for her to get mad, and then we’d just get over it and be okay for another week or two, and then something else would happen.
And this was all before she was pregnant. Maybe 6 months we were together, and then she found out that she was pregnant. I asked Logan one time, “She sleeps with a knife under her pillow, why?” And he said, “Well, she had lived in foster care, so that was her protection. That’s what she got used to, having that knife under the pillow.” Most men, I think it would have scared the hell out of them and they would have run out the door. He loved her so much that he worked so hard to make this life with her. And then when they found out Gabe was coming, he got his act together. He stopped drinking, he took care of all the legal stuff he had going on, and he just really wanted to make that family work.
There were times he’d come home from work, and Gabriel would have been in the crib for hours, his diapers were soiled and dirty, and he hadn’t eaten. And that just shows that Elizabeth didn’t care how she treated Gabe and she didn’t care how she treated Logan. It was pretty apparent all through their relationship that she wanted him to do what she wanted him to do, and if it wasn’t that, then she was going to make him pay for it.
One time she got mad because he was in a bouncer. We had this little bouncer that he sat in, kind of at an angle, and he got buckled in. You could sit there bouncing him and just watch TV. It was the easiest thing in the world, you know? But if he started crying, she went over there one time, hit the back of it, and flipped him over onto his face. And he was strapped in. He was just a baby. He hit his face on the ground. I picked him up real fast because he was screaming. “Why did you do that?” “Well, I didn’t mean to. I just meant to bounce on it to shut him up.” It was just different things like that. You knew that she didn’t really like him.
Elizabeth really didn’t want to have kids. She had had a rough upbringing. There had been tragedy in her life. She had gone through foster care with her twin brother, and she had a hard time. She never wanted to have a child and have that child have the same experience.
“I was a mess then. My life was a mess then,” Elizabeth said. “I can’t be in a normal life. I couldn’t give him normal stability. I’m just up and down, with jobs, with relationships… and I realized that, and I didn’t want to put that on a baby. You know, grow up in that with my stress and my problems. I felt guilty.”
Being with Logan, she changed her mind, and they ended up having Gabriel. But after he was born, I think Elizabeth had a lot of postpartum depression. It was a very hard time for her. Sometimes rage would take over in her, and sometimes they just had a really difficult relationship.
This case is a good example of some different ways we should handle things. Let’s start with this young couple, this young woman who clearly was having issues connecting with this child. If more people had recognized that or saw it—and I believe she was actually getting some help through doctors—but if more people could recognize that she was disconnected from the child, often having Logan take him, maybe she could have gotten more help. I absolutely believe that in her own wounded way, Elizabeth Johnson loved and loves the child that she gave birth to, Gabriel Johnson. She chose the name Gabriel because it was an angel’s name. Even though by all reports she had not wanted to be a mother and had wanted to terminate the pregnancy, I think she did love her baby.
Logan had asked his father to pick Gabriel up from daycare, which was not uncommon. But then Elizabeth reported that Logan’s father had kidnapped Gabriel, and the police got involved, and they had to return Gabriel to Elizabeth. “It was just too much, like I knew that he needed a different environment, and I saw to that,” Logan decided that he was done. He had had enough of the fighting with Elizabeth, and he wanted to break up. It was his intention to break up with Elizabeth but to continue to care for Gabriel. He broke up with Elizabeth, and at the time, she was upset. She told him to leave, and she told him to take Gabriel with him.
“Gabriel was crying, and she yelled at me, ‘Shut this [__] thing up.’ And I got mad. I was like, ‘Don’t talk about him like that.’ She’s like, ‘Don’t tell me what to do.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m leaving. I’m not staying here with you screaming and yelling at me to have him be quiet when I’m trying to get him to be quiet.’ So, I said, ‘I’m going to my grandma’s.’ She knew exactly where I was going. We hung out there for like 4 hours.”
As soon as that happened, Elizabeth reported that Logan had kidnapped Gabriel. “He told me he was going to be right back, and he was mad at me, so he decided to mess with me and use the child to upset me,” Elizabeth claimed. “He disappeared for hours. I was freaking out, thinking maybe they got in a car accident. I’m calling the police, and they’re telling me there’s no car accidents anywhere. He didn’t even take the diaper bag. It’s going on 4 hours. Yes, he did, in my eyes, kidnap the baby.”
Logan explained: “I get a phone call from the police, and they say, ‘Logan, you need to listen to me very carefully. You need to bring Gabriel back home to Elizabeth, because if we have to come and find you, then you’re going to be put in handcuffs.’ I said, ‘Can I explain to you what just happened?’ He’s like, ‘No, Elizabeth called the police and said Gabriel was missing.'”
This is where the custody issues first come in. Even though Logan is listed as the birth father on the birth certificate, in Arizona, he technically didn’t have legal custody rights at that time. So, they were forced to return Gabriel back to Elizabeth. “The officer said, ‘In the state of Arizona, if you’re not married, the mother automatically has full custody of the child. You have to get your father’s rights established in court before you can do anything.'” Logan said, “We go up to the door… I went to hand him Gabriel’s car seat, and she didn’t even want him. She said, ‘Put him in his crib.’ The officer walked in with me. I gave Gabriel a kiss, put him in his crib, and that’s the last time I saw Gabriel: December 9th of 2009.”
In June of 2009, Elizabeth took Gabriel and left the state. She went to Boston to visit her grandmother, without telling Logan. On her way home, during a layover in Indianapolis, she met a woman named Tammy Smith. Tammy Smith is an intervening factor in this case that may have changed the course of the lives of all the people involved.
Tammy noticed Elizabeth with this beautiful little baby in an airport. Elizabeth was a frazzled, upset mother of an infant. Tammy, believing she was a godly woman, offered her help. Tammy thought this was a sign from God that she should raise this child, and she hatched a plan with Elizabeth. On December 9th, 2009, Elizabeth reached out to Tammy Smith for the first time since June. She gave Gabriel to Tammy Smith.
Through the investigation, we discovered that Tammy Smith had Elizabeth fill out guardianship paperwork. There was a place for the father’s signature, but Tammy deleted that section. “It seemed like she just wanted to throw him at us, like she couldn’t get rid of him fast enough,” Tammy said. “I made sure we had that paperwork signed… I wasn’t going to take my chances with her.”
Tammy and her husband Jack seemed to have their own agenda. They were an older couple with a big, nice home north of Phoenix, and they seemed very interested in adopting Baby Gabriel. Elizabeth told Tammy stories about Logan—that he was a felon, a drug addict, and abusive—which terrified Tammy. When Logan found out about the adoption plan, he refused to sign any paperwork and filed for full custody. Elizabeth exploded and attacked him, calling the police to falsely claim he kidnapped Gabriel again.
During the court hearing, the judge warned Elizabeth, Tammy, and Jack not to use the child as a pawn. The judge granted joint custody, meaning Logan was allowed to pick Gabriel up on December 20th and have him through Christmas Eve. However, Elizabeth walked out of the courthouse with a completely different plan.
When Logan went to pick up Gabriel, the home was vacant. Elizabeth had cleared out her bank accounts, met the Smiths to retrieve Gabriel, and fled the state. Elizabeth told Logan over the phone, “I’m allowed to move. I’m allowed to get a job. You don’t care about this baby… good luck, Logan, but you won’t ever see him again.”
Logan reached out to the court, but they could only schedule another court date. Tammy and Jack, pretending to help Logan, were actually researching ways to strip Logan of his custody rights in other states. They encouraged Elizabeth to go to Tennessee, where Logan wouldn’t have rights, and even suggested faking a home birth certificate. Their goal was to force Logan to sign away his rights in exchange for Gabriel’s return.
Tammy Smith had a preoccupation with adding another child to her family. The investigation documented her aggressively seeking a child online. She admitted to law enforcement that her intent was to pressure Logan into giving up his rights, fed by Elizabeth’s false stories. But Logan wanted his son.
Elizabeth eventually fled to San Antonio, Texas. On December 26th, 2009, the last known photograph of Gabriel was taken in a hotel room. Following a disturbing phone call with Logan, Elizabeth confessed to killing Gabriel.
“Where are you? Where’s Gabriel?” Logan asked. “I took him to the park,” she replied. “No, you didn’t.” “Yes, I did… He destroyed my life… He made me kill my baby boy. I killed him. I put him in the laundry basket. I put him in the clothes. I put him in the diaper bag and I put him in the trash.”
Logan contacted the Tempe Police. Elizabeth sent further texts, stating Logan wouldn’t find Gabriel’s “dead little blue body” until she was out of the country. Police tracked her taking a bus from San Antonio to Miami Beach, Florida, where she was arrested without Gabriel.
When arrested, Elizabeth completely changed her story, claiming she gave Gabriel to a couple in San Antonio. San Antonio is notorious as a hub for black-market adoptions. Investigators theorized she may have sold or traded Gabriel to an unlicensed broker. When Elizabeth was found in Florida, she possessed a highly valuable ruby ring she couldn’t afford.
“Somebody paid for this baby, and y’all are covering this up,” one investigator noted. “And now everyone wants to say the baby’s dead because the woman lies so many times. You’re going to choose the dead card? Think about that. He’s out there, and somebody gave a ring for him.”
