By GREG ANSLEY
Melbourne detectives were last night questioning a couple who turned themselves in after kidnapped 3-week-old Montana Barbaro was found with her head shaved in an abandoned house used by drug addicts.
A man and a woman walked into a police station at Ballarat, a regional centre west of Melbourne,
hours after Montana was placed back in the arms of her mother, Anita Ciancio.
In the climax of a nightmare that gripped Australia, paramedics and police acting on a call from a jogger broke into the derelict north Melbourne property and found the infant, who was snatched from her mother on Saturday afternoon.
Montana was returned to Ms Ciancio, whose distraught appeal for help after collapsing into the arms of a friend clutched hearts nationwide.
"It's as if your heart is put back in your body and you're a mum once again," she said at Melbourne Royal Children's Hospital after being reunited with her baby.
She said she had believed Montana would be found safe.
"My heart told me all along that she was going to be fine. I think a mum knows these things."
Police were overwhelmed by the response from the public after security camera footage of the couple believed to be the kidnappers was shown on nationwide television and splashed on newspaper front pages.
The film showed a dark-haired man in a check shirt pushing a shopping cart, accompanied by a fair, shaven-haired woman in black.
They struck as Ms Ciancio put shopping into the boot of her car in the underground carpark of the Brimbank Central mall in Deer Park.
Just after Ms Ciancio put Montana in her baby capsule, the man struck her and sprayed capsicum spray into her face while the woman snatched the baby and ran off.
For 40 tense hours police appealed to the kidnappers to return a child that had known nothing but her mother's breast.
"Please, please, just take her somewhere safe and call the police," Ms Ciancio said in a heart-rending public appeal. "Just bring my baby back."
Yesterday morning a woman jogger who heard a baby crying in a derelict house in Erskine St, north Melbourne, called police. The jogger, known only as Lesley, said: "I've seen the house in the area, yes, and it's derelict. I knew there shouldn't have been anyone in the house at all. I'm just pleased I went for a run a little bit later than I usually do."
Neighbour Anthony Bishop said he had seen "a couple of deros, obviously on drugs" at the house on Friday night.
Paramedics rushed to the scene with police and found Montana in good health, but with her head shaved.
She was taken to the children's hospital, where she was reunited with her mother. "She's very tired and I think a little distressed, so we have to get her used to being back with us again," Ms Ciancio said, adding: "She has been fed and she's just beautiful."
Montana's grandfather, Nick Ciancio, had a message for the kidnappers: "Justice will prevail".
He added: "Obviously they need medical attention. What can I say? The quicker they get it, the better it is for them, I think."
Montana's father, Joe Barbaro, is the brother of Pasquale Barbaro, who was shot with mobster Jason Moran last year in the gangland war that has racked Melbourne for twoyears.
But Inspector Tony Cecchin believes the Barbaro-Ciancio family were not specifically targeted by the kidnappers.
"At this stage ... we feel ... it was a random attack."
By GREG ANSLEY
Melbourne detectives were last night questioning a couple who turned themselves in after kidnapped 3-week-old Montana Barbaro was found with her head shaved in an abandoned house used by drug addicts.
A man and a woman walked into a police station at Ballarat, a regional centre west of Melbourne,
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