California prosecutors charge parents with murder in infant's disappearance

Nathan Solis, Los Angeles Times on Aug 26, 2025

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LOS ANGELES — Twelve days after they claimed their son vanished from a parking lot outside a sporting goods store, the parents of baby Emmanuel Haro have been charged in his death.

Emmanuel's parents, Jake Haro, 32, and Rebecca Haro, 41, are scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon in Riverside County on one count each of murder with malice. They were also charged with making a false police report, a misdemeanor. Riverside County prosecutors are asking they be held in lieu of a $1 million bail.

Authorities say the couple faked the infant's disappearance and the 7-month-old infant is presumed dead.

Rebecca Haro said she was attacked in a Yucaipa parking lot on Aug. 14 outside a Big 5 store while changing Emmanuel's diaper. But San Bernardino County Sheriff's investigators said there were inconsistencies in her initial statement and when they confronted her about those details she stopped cooperating.

Authorities arrested the parents at their Cabazon home on Friday. San Bernardino County Sheriff's investigators are now focused on finding Emmanuel's remains, which over the weekend took search teams to an isolated field in Moreno Valley. They were accompanied by Jake Haro but did not find anything, officials said.

The case has captured the fascination of true crime mystery fans, with the couple maintaining their innocence as a past criminal case against Jake Haro has resurfaced.

Jake Haro was previously convicted of child abuse in 2023 with his previous wife. A medical report showed that his daughter was seriously injured when she was examined at a Hemet hospital in 2018, according to court records. The unidentified girl suffered head trauma and had multiple fractured and signs of past bone breaks, a police said in an affidavit. He was convicted of willful cruelty to a child and was on probation in that case when he was arrested last week.

Following Emmanuel's disappearance, Riverside County child protective services removed a 2-year-old child from the Haro home. It's unclear what prompted the child's removal from the home and a county spokesperson declined to comment citing state confidentiality laws.

As the case has moved forward, Rebecca Haro has maintained the couple's innocence and pleaded for people to look for her son.

"I will not give up. I will not give up on my baby," she told a reporter from the Southern California News Group while in custody. "I want to be out looking for my baby."

During the investigation, Emmanuel's parents surrendered their phones to investigators and allowed detectives to search their Cabazon home. Their vehicle was also taken by investigators as part of the search for their son, according to attorney Vincent Hughes, who acted as a defacto spokesperson for the couple in the early days of the investigation.

After authorities said that the couple had stopped cooperating with the investigation, Hughes said that was not the case and instead, the child's mother had just refused to take a polygraph test.