TALE OF BABY-BUYER WAS A LIE.

Byline: RICK COCA

Staff Writer

ENCINO -- The white, bald, blue-eyed man in his 40s who approached a nanny last week in a local park offering to buy the baby in her care doesn't exist.

It was all a lie.

The woman who first reported that a man approached her at Genesta Park wanting to buy a baby confessed Thursday that she made up the whole story, police said.

She was concerned the child she was watching would get hurt on the playground, she told police, and she hoped the story would convince the child's mother to demand that she not return to the park.

The woman came clean during a follow-up interview Thursday with investigators, said Los Angeles police Deputy Chief Michel Moore during a news conference at the park. She has not been charged with a crime.

"She was having trouble sleeping," he said. "She had a guilty conscience."

Moore said the woman, whose name has not been released, initially told her tale to the child's mother, who then relayed the information to other people. The news then got back to the park's director, who called police April 11.

Officers interviewed the nanny the same day, and she apparently told them that a man approached her and another nanny at the park on consecutive days.

The report of a potential baby-buyer, which police called "highly unusual," strained both the nerves of San Fernando Valley parents and the resources of the Los Angeles Police Department, which wasted hundreds of hours searching for the suspect, Moore said.

"Lying, filing a false police report, is a serious matter and it's a criminal offense, and can result not only in criminal prosecution, but imprisonment," Moore said, adding that police will present evidence to prosecutors for possible charges.

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