Missing Baby Gabriel Johnson: Police Focus on Landfill, Do They Believe 8-Month-Old is Dead?

by Carlin DeGuerin Miller

PHOENIX (CBS/AP) A San Antonio landfill might be the next place police search for Gabriel Johnson, an Arizona baby who disappeared shortly before his mother, Elizabeth Johnson, told the boy's father she killed the child, and told police she gave him away to strangers during a Texas road trip.

"At this point, we're looking seriously into the possibility that she killed Gabriel like she said she did," Tempe police Sgt. Steve Carbajal said.

San Antonio police won't confirm that they are searching landfills for the 8-month-old, but a spokeswoman for the Tessman Road Landfill owner says that managers have cordoned off areas of their landfill to facilitate a search.

"We're able to say trash from this particular neighborhood on this particular date is probably in this area (of the landfill)," Peg Malloy said. "We stopped placing waste in an area they may want to search, and we're waiting for them to tell us what they would like to do."

Gabriel was last seen Dec. 26, 2009. Elizabeth Johnson, 23, was picked up by police Dec. 30 in Miami. She had left her car in San Antonio and eventually told police she gave her baby to strangers there.

But she also allegedly sent a text message to the baby's father, Logan McQueary, saying that she killed Gabriel, stuffed him in a diaper bag and threw it in a dumpster.

"You will never see Gabriel again. I made sure of that," read a text McQueary showed CBS affiliate KPHO. "When I'm safe, I'll email you the exact location of dead Gabriel's little blue body, if the garbage don't come first."

Still McQueary hopes Gabriel will be found alive. He plans to use a GPS to retrace the route his former girlfriend, Elizabeth Johnson, took from Tempe to San Antonio.

McQueary hopes to get lucky along the way and find someone who saw his son alive.