New year and nothing new in month-old case of missing Baby Bryan

Nothing is new. That's the word from the Fort Myers Police Department one month into the search for Baby Bryan. That's the word from the missing baby's parents and their friends.

Nothing is new, and it's difficult, very difficult for the infant's father, Jurandir Gomes Costa.

It's difficult to comfort the baby's mother, Maria de Fatima Ramos Dos Santos.

It's difficult to watch the kidnapping — an event which still fills the couple's life and thoughts — fade away from notice somewhat. It's difficult not to count the days, not to think about their son.

"E muito dificil," the father says again and again in Portuguese.

He has been going over all the "what ifs" and possibilities of the Dec. 1 kidnapping, wishing the police would search every sport utility vehicle in the country, wishing that something had gone differently.

He dwells on this so much, talking rapidly and with a pained look, that Silvana Franca, a minister at a Brazilian church in Naples who translated his words in an interview at his home in Fort Myers last week, simply said: "He's repeating the same things."

As for hope, Gomes Costa said, yes, he has some. "Part of it comes from the police. They say not to give up. The other part comes from God," he said. "But it is too difficult for us. I thought it would be easier, and that the baby would be with us by now."

What happened Dec. 1, police say, was that Bryan Dos Santos Gomes, just shy of 1 month at the time, was taken from his mother at knifepoint by a short, Hispanic woman driving a dark SUV in Fort Myers.

As for why Bryan was kidnapped, investigators have said they believe he was taken because his parents failed to keep up with payments to human smugglers after those smugglers had helped the couple enter the United States illegally from Brazil.

Gomes Costa confirmed that he paid to come to Florida, as did Bryan's mother, but while he said he trusts police, he is frustrated they continue to say that has anything to do with why his son is missing.

"I don't know the reason that it happened," he said.

Whatever led to the kidnapping, he hopes more can be done to find woman who took Bryan.

"We can't understand why it's taking the police so long to get this person," Gomes Costa said. "This lady has to be somewhere, and they need to catch her."

Fliers with an artist's depiction of the suspect's face still hung on telephone poles and homes in the trailer park off Linhart Avenue where Bryan's parents live last week. The paper fliers were puckered, as they've had time to get wet and dry out again many times since they were posted.

As the search for Bryan neared a month, Shelly Flynn, spokeswoman for the Fort Myers Police Department, the lead law enforcement agency in the investigation, said the department has not let up in the search.

Six people at the department continue to be dedicated to working on the case, she said, along with people from other law enforcement agencies. Police have more than 400 leads now, but Flynn declined to discuss specifics of the investigation.

"It's pretty much status quo," she said

Gomes Costa arrived in Florida on April 1, 2005. He landed work putting in tile floors for about $400 a week, and Ramos Dos Santos joined him five months later.

There are no formal papers to show they are married, but Ramos Dos Santos gave this reason for making a long trip from Brazil, in which she passed through Mexico, then Dallas, making the last leg of the journey to Florida in a van: "I came to join my husband."

After living so far apart for six months, they were reunited at a gas station in Fort Myers. Eventually, she found work at a day care, earning about $800 a month, but quit the job when she found out she was about to have her first child.

"I liked the life here before everything happened with Bryan," Ramos Dos Santos said. What was most important was that they had a way to support a family here and were still able to send money to their family in Brazil on occasion, as she did the week before Bryan was kidnapped.

Things were different in the part of Brazil where she grew up, she said, a small town of about 15,000 people. "It's a poor place. They have no jobs. Just sugar cane. That's what Jurandir did. He spent the whole day to earn $5, working from morning to evening. A very small town," she said.

Franca, the Naples minister who has visited Bryan's parents regularly since the kidnapping and now describes them as friends, has heard the negative comments about the couple. She has heard people suggest that because they came here illegally and dealt with human smugglers, the kidnapping was something they may have brought on themselves.

"When I hear that, I feel sick," Franca said.

For Bryan's mother, her being an immigrant has nothing to do with the situation. "What I want people to understand is that Bryan is a human being," she said.

"I spend the day waiting for the baby. There is no sense doing anything else," Ramos Dos Santos said.

Sometimes she spends the mornings crying. Sometimes she pulls out Bryan's clothes, just to look at them. Other times, investigators — usually Portuguese-speaking officers with the FBI — come to ask her questions, as she said they did twice this past week. Usually they ask if there have been any calls from people they knew in Brazil or from the smugglers.

There haven't been, she said. She still thinks "a crazy woman" has Bryan.

Mostly, she feels very alone right now, though many people have tried to help, she said. Neither Ramos Dos Santos nor Gomes Costa are working, and friends, mostly other Brazilians in the area, are helping them get by. Still, she feels set aside.

"Christmas was very strange this year. I went to church, but I felt like God had abandoned me," she said.

Like Gomes Costa, every day she wakes up hoping to see Bryan by evening. When he comes home, he will have several Christmas presents waiting for him: toys, a crib, a plate, a spoon.

Their son was very much wanted when he first came into their lives, Gomes Costa said, adding he was excited for the boy's future: here he could study and learn English.

But even more, they want him back in their lives. Now, Gomes Costa's plans are for what he would do if Bryan was brought home to him tomorrow.

"Oh, we'd have a party. I'd call all my friends and invite all of them to come. I would thank God for that. I hope that day will come soon."

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