JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The man police call a suspect in the disappearance of 21-month-old Lonzie Barton told a local weekly newspaper, "I told them everything I know," and says investigators are trying to make him sound like a monster.
In the only media interview Ruben Ebron has granted in the week that he has been in police custody, he told The Florida Star, which bills itself as North Florida's oldest African-American news source, that he thinks Lonzie's father should be a suspect in the case.
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On the night Lonzie disappeared, Ebron was babysitting his girlfriend's two children -- Lonzie and his 5-year-old sister -- and there was another adult in the apartment.
Ebron told The Star that Lonzie was asleep when he put the boy in his car as he got ready to go pick up his girlfriend from work about 2 a.m. last Friday. He said Lonzie's 5-year-old sister was awake in the car playing on his cellphone when he "remembered an item and decided to go back into the house to get it." He said the girl followed him, leaving Lonzie alone in the car.
Police said that Ebron (pictured in a first appearance or an arrest a week ago on two counts of child neglect) went back into the apartment to do cocaine.
When Ebron was asked if he is withholding information from police, he said he's told investigators everything he knows.
"They want to talk about drugs and other things other than finding Lonzie," the paper quoted Ebron as saying. "I did some things in the past that does not look good, and I did not want to talk about them. I answered all their questions about Lonzie. I want Lonzie to be found. He needs to be with his mother."
Asked why he left Lonzie and the boy's sister in a running car, he saidthat the car has to be started each time by opening the hood. Once you turn it off, you have to open the hood again, he explained.
Ebron suggested during the interview that he has cooperated with officers from the start, saying he has allowed him to check his Honda Civic, which was found four blocks from the apartment where he said it was stolen. He said he gave immediately police access to his cellphone, which is where they found the picture that was used in the initial Amber Alert.
Ebron said he stopped talking to investigators because they are, "Trying to make him look like a monster and he had to start looking at his defense."
When asked if there's somebody else who investigators should be looking at to information about Lonzie's whereabouts, he said, "We had been warned to watch out for Lonzie's father as he may try to follow us to find out where we lived."
Investigators continue to say Friday that they don't believe Ebron is telling the truth.
"I have not read the Florida Star article yet, and I love fiction like the next guy, but his efforts to tell his story have been manipulative at best, and if he's telling them that he's cooperative, his definition of cooperative and mine, it's two different things," said Tom Hackney, chief of investigations for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. "With the fingers that he's pointing at these other people, he needs to be careful about the nine that are pointing back at him, because we're looking there."
The owner and publisher of the Star, who conducted the interview with Ebron along with reporter Dan Evans, said: "He said he doesn't even want to think about it being a murder."
McLaughlin said the publication called the jail requesting to speak with Ebron, and he agreed. McLaughlin said Ebron opened up to The Florida Star because the African-American community respects the publication.
"He's not feeling well because he's saying he wants Lonzie found and he would like to talk to his girlfriend. He's not allowed to talk with her," McLaughlin said.
Criminal defense attorney Gene Nichols, who is not affiliated with this case, said a defendant giving a jailhouse interview "is not a good idea."
"The biggest problem with giving a statement like this is one is that I'm sure he did not have his lawyer there," Nichols said. "Even if he did have his lawyer there, he would not have been able to stop certain questions."