tonight on "nightline," missing. there is a new development in the search for a 10-month-old baby who disappeared three nights ago. police say her parents have stopped cooperating with detectives, not long after making this desperate plea. >> we just want our baby back, please. knox's father speaks. tonight, amanda's father curt talks for the first time since his daughter's release. what happened to her in that jail? and how is she picking up the pieces now that she's home? and jobs' creation. what made steve jobs a genius? he was adopted as a baby, so, was it his upbringing, or was

greatness stamped into his dna? we look for answers in his fascinating family sorry. >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with terry moran, cynthia mcfadden and bill weir in new york city, this is "nightline," october 6th, 2011. >> good evening, all, i'm bill weir. there are late developments tonight in a case of a missing baby in missouri. three days into the search to find the baby girl, a disagreement has apparently broken out between her family and police. earlier tonight, detectives said the baby's parents had suddenly quit cooperating with the investigation. but then the child's aunt called a news conference to say, quote, we have never stopped cooperating. either way, the baby girl has yet to be found. dan harris has the latest. >> reporter: her nickname is pumpkin pie. 10-month-old lisa irwin. her pictures, impossibly cute. and for the past three days, her parents have been the picture of agony.

telling the world that their baby was snatched from her crib in the middle of the night, all the while, clutching her barney doll and her photographs. throughout this ordeal, jeremy irwin and deborah bradley have been cooperating fully with the kansas city police department, sitting for hours of interviews. but tonight, police have announced that that is over. >> they've been cooperative up to this point but this evening they decided to stop. >> reporter: does that make you think, does that make the department think they had something to do with lisa's disappearance? >> everything's on the table. just like i've been saying for three days now. knock's changed. >> reporter: but if they go from cooperating to not, i would imagine that's got to raise obvious questions. >> it's a fair conclusion for you to draw. i can't say that matter of factually for the detectives, though. >> reporter: but the family rejects what the police are saying. just hours ago, the sister of the baby's father, holding a news conference of her own. >> we saw the press conference at 7:00 and want the public to

know that we have never stopped cooperating with the police. the main goal has always been to find lisa and bring her home. >> reporter: this confusing situation, an apparent break between police and the family is a major development that caps 72 hours of nonstop anguish for this community. according to the parents' version of events the nightmare starts at 10:30 monday night, when lisa's mother, deborah bradley, puts her baby in her crib. >> i made her a bottle and i laid her down. that was the last time we saw her. >> reporter: at 4:00 a.m. tuesday morning, jeremy irwin comes home from an overnight shift renovating a local starbucks and finds the door unlocked and the lights on. what kind of panic sents in when you check your infant daughter's room and find she's not there? >> running around the house, screaming, freaking out and ran all over the yard looking for

her. >> reporter: in the chaos, they say they noticed their cell phones are missing. >> i said, call 911 and he said, where are the phones? and they weren't on the counter where i left them, they were gone. >> reporter: three hours later, police issue an amber alert. do you have any sense of anybody who could have done this? >> we're trying to make lists, i mean, even out of those, i -- doesn't make sense. >> reporter: police launch a massive search with the fbi, mounted patrols, canine units and firefighters are pechling down this cliff. in the afternoon, police hold the first of many news conferences at which they admit they have no leads, no suspects and no idea where this blue-eyed baby might be. as night falls, police confront the fact they may have an extraordinarily rare crime on their hands. is it also possible that the nightmare scenario, a stranger sneaking into a random house and steaming a baby is a live possible? >> it is. we are not ruling that out.

>> reporter: according to the national center for missing and exploited children, since 1983, there have been 278 cases of babies being abducted. 46% were taken from hospitals. 40% from private homes. on wednesday, a day and a half after lisa's disappearance, her parents, acting on the advice of police, publicly plead with whoever might be holding their girl to just drop her off, no questions asked. >> we just want to have her back home. >> we just want our baby back, please. bring her home. our two other boys are waiting for her, please. just drop her off anywhere, we don't care, just somewhere safe where she can come home, please. >> reporter: but even as an fbi team descends upon the family home, paying particular attention to a window that the parents say they think may have been used by an intruder, it becomes increasingly clear that the parents themselves are apart of the investigation, too. is it delicate dealing with parents in a situation like

this? on the one hand, they are probably in anguish, but you have to look at them as potential suspects. >> sure. and our main drive is to find the child. we don't investigate based on odds. we take our leads and run with them and leave everything on the table until we find a reason to take something off. >> reporter: today, on day three of this crisis, as the search for baby lisa expands down into the sewer system, the parents say they are expanding their cooperation, providing police with a whole list of people, former friends, utility workers who have been in the home lately and people they know who have recent lip had miscarriages. but tonight, the relationship between the family and the police department is very much in question, with neither side fully explaining why, leaving an investigation in limbo with a 10-month-old nicknamed pumpkin pie still missing. for "nightline," this is dan harris in kansas city. >> and dan will be watching the case very closely.

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>> announcer: "nightline" continues from new york city with bill weir. >> walking on grass and seeing her young twin cousins. those were the two simple pleasures amanda knox was looking forward to after coming home from an italian prison. the world changed in the four years she spent inside. for her, a new appreciation of just about everything. amanda's father curt knox tells abc's elizabeth vargas about how it's going so far. >> welcome home, amanda!

>> reporter: it was a moment curt knox had imagined for four years. his 24-year-oldamanda, standing on american soil. her conviction for murder overturned. >> what's important for me to say is just thank you, to everyone, who believed in me, who defended me, who supported my family. >> reporter: amanda broke down, he says, because she was overwhelmed by the crowd that had come to greet her. >> i think up to that press conference in seattle, she really only had exposure to what took place in the first five minutes of each hearing but i think she got her first idea of that press conference when there was so many supporters there to welcome her home. >> reporter: in his first interview since his daughter came home, curt says amanda is adjusting well. >> she seems to not really have missed a beat with the family and, you know, with her sisters and stuff like that, so that's been nice to see. >> reporter: when the courtroom erupted monday with word aghan

was acquitted of the murder of her british room maim meredith kercher, curt just wanted to hold her, but he would have to wait a few hours until they got to rome. you must be so excited for that freedom hug. >> i am looking forward to it. >> reporter: a lot. >> more than you know. >> reporter: that hug was 47 months in the making. curt and amanda's mother have shuttled back and forth from seattle nearly 50 times. i firsrst sat down with them shortly after amanda's arrest. have you allowed yourself to worst case scenario this? >> no. you have to believe in the system. they are going to figure out that they've made a huge mistake. >> reporter: curt's unwavering belief paid off. though it took four years and two trials. after the verdict, curt revealed amanda and her former above ref yale soesless toe were able to share one final moment before they went free. >> the only time they really got

to talk was after the verdict when they were getting ready to be whisked away in the cars. they went back to the prison in the same car. they hold something in common that few people have to deal with. >> reporter: and the family can visit in seattle. >> i know that he's experiencing the same things amanda is experiencing and wanting to reconnect and get back to normal life. >> reporter: since arriving home, a noticeably thinner amanda has experienced her first american meal, pizza. and, there were no electronics in prison, no access to steve jobs' last dazzling creation, the ipad, no twitter account. >> reporter: somebody put on a phony tweet trying to say it was her and i don't think twitter even existed when, you know, she

was arrested. >> reporter: and there's a universe of pop culture that passed her by. teen heartthrob justin bieber? amanda had never heard of him. >> there are things that she's missed and people that she won't recognize. >> reporter: so, now, she will spend time readjusting. but nothing will ever be the same for this 24-year-old veteran of the italian legal system. >> we've talked about the trust in the police. that, i think that trust has now gone away and i think she's not going to be as trusting going forward. >> reporter: there are other things to try to absorb. for instance, why the family of meredith kercher is still questioning the verdict. >> i would like to believe they feel the truth has come out related to amanda and rafaelle. but i also -- i can never put myself in their shoes. >> reporter: and some people outside the courtroom that night were jeering. >> this particular case has

polarized people, you know, between guilty and innocent. and i think some of those people are never, ever going to change their minds. >> reporter: tonight, amanda is spending time in a secluded location away from the neighborhood where she grew up. her family hopes she can soon return to some semblance of the life she left behind. >> there are individuals that obviously want to get the first picture of her, you know, and we're being very careful about that. you know, trying to give her her space and allowing her to reconnect with people. it's a big relief. but now kind of another chapter begins. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm elizabeth vargas in new york. >> our thanks to elizabeth very that. and coming up next, steve jobs was adopted as a baby. but his biological sister is also a genius-level achiever. so, were his gifts a matter of nature or nurture? we'll tell you what he thought himself coming up. ugh my sinuses... the congestion...

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just before he passed away, steve jobs' biographer asked him a question -- why did he spend the last couple of years of his life sharing so much after staying private for so long? and jobs replied, "i wanted my kids to know me. i wasn't always there for him. i wanted them to know why and to understand what i did." well, tonight, as apple fans continue to mourn, we look at jobs' childhood, his secret fascinating family life for clues on where his drive and inspiration began.

so, which is it? nurture or nature? is a genius like jobs a product of the environment he grew up in or was greatness woven into his dna? you see, for this man, it could be either/or. because he was born to a syrian father and an american mother. she was still in college and the unwed couple placed him for adoption. >> so, my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night, asking, we've got an unexpected baby boy. do you want him? they said, "of course." my biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. she refused to sign the final adoption papers. she only releapted a few months later when my parents promised i would go to college. >> reporter: his adoptive parent s just happened to live in what

could become silicon valley. and while young jobs was a part-time troublemaker, he was dazzled by the technology boom around him. at age 12, he called the head of hue lewlett-packard at home to for spare parts. and later, he hung out with steve wozniak to found apple. >> i grew up fairly middle class, lower middle class and i never really cared much about money and apple was so successful early on in life that i was very lucky that i didn't have to care about money then. and so i've been able to focus on work and then later on, my family. >> reporter: so, as he became a multimillionaire, this man believed it was his unique environment that shaped him, right place, right time. >> the penalty for failure for going and trying to start a company in this valley is nonxis went. >> reporter: until, at age 27,

he discovered his biological sister, who just happened to be best-receiving author mona simpson. >> my mom introduced us. >> okay. >> he found his mother, so, of course, one of the first things she said was, you have a sister. >> reporter: you can spot the resemblance when she recently appeared on the show "steve bertrand on books. ". >> we became friends. that was very fortunate. and then we actually got married, we were looking for love and got married the same year. we both went on each other's honeymoons. >> reporter: mona spent her childhood with their biological parents who did eventually marry. he got to know her, just as he was growing closer to his oldest daughter lisa and after receiving the similarities in appearance and intensity, jobs told "the new york times," i used to be way over on the nurture side, but i've swung way over to the nature side. >> does he know his father? the syrian father?

>> no. >> he does not. >> reporter: while jobs did become close with his biological mother, he reportedly spurned his father, now a casino executive in nevada. we reached out to adam pertman, author of "adoption nation" and wondered could his drive come from a need to prove something to both fathers? >> there are all sorts of cases in adoption that say that some adopted people really work hard because they want to prove their worth or they want to show their adoptive parents that they with worthwhile. and there are other adopted people who go the other direction, why should i try, i was given up. clearly, in this guy's case, he was not only driven personally, presumably somewhat from his genetics but also, he really was out to achieve. >> thanks for coming this morning. >> reporter: so, was it nature, nurture? adoption? well, if the mac-daddy was still here, he would probably say "yes. all of a