Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

Indiana Murders; Ebola Patient's Fiance Cleared; Remains Found in Virginia; U.S. Drops Arms

Aired October 20, 2014 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Wolf Blitzer, thank you so much. Great to be with you on this Monday. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We have to begin with this case of a possible serial killer and the spree that could actually span two decades. This is what we're just learning today. To Indiana here where this 19-year-old woman had been found strangled to death at this hotel in Hammond and a suspect under arrest. But the discovery just started there.

While in custody, police say this 43-year-old man by the name of Darren Van told them where they could find the bodies of three other women. And then the next day police found the bodies of three more women. So total here we're talking seven bodies. Seven female bodies found over the course of three days. You see the map and the different locations in which they were found, one in Hammond and six in nearby Gary, Indiana. At least three of these locations are abandoned houses.

Now let's be clear, this man has yet to be charged, but it begs the question, are police dealing with a serial killer? Let's me bring in our correspondent here who's been working this for us, Miguel Marquez, and my fellow anchor, Ashleigh Banfield, to just sort of walk through what we know, what we don't know.

Beginning with you, sir. So it began with this woman who was found in a motel Friday night and then, like this, they find him and he starts talking.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, and police got on to him initially and very quickly when she was at -- this woman named Afrika Hardy. He's 19-year-old. He - police say that he met her through backpage.com. Sort of a Craigslist. She was listed on the backpage.com Chicago site. It has sites all over the country and all over the world.

Apparently there was a facilitator who hooked up the meeting between Mr. Van and Afrika Hardy. That facilitator started to get texts from Hardy, strange texts, concerning texts. When she stopped hearing from her, she sent a male friend over to the hotel and that's when they found Ms. Hardy there. Because of the telephone that she had been using, they got a telephone number for Mr. Van, were able to track him then to Gary and everything began to unravel. Frightening story, though, that must have been happening in that hotel room.

BALDWIN: These women, seven thus far, but to hear police say it today, I mean this could go all the way back to 1994, 1995. There could be others.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, ANCHOR, CNN'S "LEGAL VIEW": Yes. And they're already saying not only that but there could be other victims surfacing we might think even now. Interestingly enough, it's kind of all hands on deck in these two communities. I asked them if they were out looking for other abandoned structures and trying to comb these two communities. Not necessarily the case. In terms of Hammond, no. All of their officers are working currently on this particular case. In terms of Gary, interestingly, the mayor of Gary said we're looking to expedite sort of the demolition of a lot of these structures.

Here's what's so amazing. He's not lawyered up, Brooke. He's been talking freely.

BALDWIN: And going to these locations to show these law enforcement officers where they are.

BANFIELD: Taking them, yes.

MARQUEZ: Going along. Showing them exactly - describing in detail what - where these bodies are, where these victims are and then, in some cases, showing them exactly where the location is.

BALDWIN: The question is why.

BANFIELD: And perhaps still doing it - perhaps still giving them information on other locations?

BALDWIN: Why cooperating because he's hoping for a deal with prosecutors?

BANFIELD: That's what the police chief in Hammond said in his live news conference, that that's exactly what he articulated, some kind of a deal he was looking for.

BALDWIN: What about specifics? Because sometimes when you study serial killers, there are themes. There are ways in which the bodies are found. These are all thus far women, strangulation. The woman found in the hotel.

BANFIELD: I don't think it matters. I'm going to be completely honest with you. When you have somebody who confesses, strangely enough we've all covered it, some people confess to crimes they don't do, but they can't take you to the body. So at this point I don't think we even need the link of method or signatures or those kind of things.

BALDWIN: Because he's so cooperative.

BANFIELD: He's taking you to the body -

BALDWIN: Yes.

BANFIELD: And he's the only one who extensively (ph) knows where it is.

MARQUEZ: Although he was clearly targeting people who were on the margins of society. These women are 19 to 36 year old. Afrika Hardy may have been pregnant at the time that she was strangled and killed.

BANFIELD: And a first-degree murder is a first-degree murder no matter what. Again, it won't even matter that confessions can sometimes be false. He took them to the bodies. At this point I don't even think we really even need the manner of death. I mean it's so incredible.

MARQUEZ: But the fact that so many people can die without raising the red flag. One of them so far that we know, only one, was listed as a missing person since October 8th. That's a little shocking and incredibly sad if it turns out to be the only person.

BALDWIN: So then what is next as far as investigation goes? You say Hammond is working on these cases that they have under their nose right now, but they have to then start tracing back years.

BANFIELD: They've gotten a lawyer.

MARQUEZ: He may be in court today. They may charge him today very quickly in order to get at least one or two charges on so they can hold him longer. He's still talking to investigators.

BANFIELD: But I'll tell you what, as long as he's talking and doesn't ask for his lawyer and they've given him his Miranda opportunity and his invocation of the Fifth opportunity, keep him talking, keep him giving you any bit of information to track down any other of these cases they may be able to unearth. And the minute he says, I think I need a lawyer, that's when the ball start getting rolling.

BALDWIN: Ashleigh Banfield and Miguel Marquez, thank you both very, very much.

BANFIELD: You're welcome (ph).

BALDWIN: Huge developments there in that case out of Indiana today.

Let's move along and talk about Ebola. There is reason to breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief here in Dallas today where dozens of people have been under observation, quarantine, for this deadly virus. At least 43 people linked to Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan have been cleared of the virus. Let me repeat, cleared. Sunday marked the end of that 21-day incubation period. Dallas County officials confirm they do not have Ebola. They never developed symptoms. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLAY JENKINS, DALLAS COUNTY JUDGE: There's zero risk that any of those people who have been marked off the list have Ebola. They were in contact with a person who had Ebola and the time period for them to get Ebola has lapsed. It is over. So they are - they do not have Ebola.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Now, of that number, 43 individuals here, that includes Duncan's fiance, Louise Troh, and her family members. Remember, they had to evacuate that Dallas apartment and be quarantined after Duncan's diagnosis. Now, Miss Troh did not want to talk publically. She did issue this statement just yesterday. Quote, "we are so happy this is coming to an end and we are so grateful that none of us has shown any sign of illness. We have lost so much but we have our lives and we have our faith in God, which always gives us hope."

So joining me now, Kenneth Bernard, Dr. Kenneth Bernard. He's a former special assistant to the president for biodefense with the Homeland Security Council to (ph) President Bush.

Good to see you, sir. Welcome back.

KENNETH BERNARD, FORMER SPECIAL ASST. To PRESIDENT FOR BIODEFENSE: Well, glad to be back.

BALDWIN: Let's begin with that, Kenneth, that here you have this fiance who, according to this, you know, interview she had with Anderson Cooper, they were sleeping in the same bed. And so through this 21-day incubation period, thank goodness they're a-ok, but yet you have these others, you know, who have fallen victim to Ebola. Why is it that those who were so physically close to him did not get it and others did?

BERNARD: Well, I think in this case we should be pretty confident that the original medical advice was correct. That is, when you are most likely to transmit the disease is when you're actually very, very sick. Before he went into the hospital, everybody thought he just had a respiratory infection. He had close contact with over 40 people. All of those people were spared infection. And he had contact with them. Certainly more contact than people had on airplanes who flew with somebody who also perhaps had the disease.

BALDWIN: And to hear, you know, the accounts from this hospital and these nurses, it sounds like they were treating him really in the thick of it.

BERNARD: Sure.

BALDWIN: Copious amounts of fluids. And then that explains that.

You know, there was a piece in - there was a piece in "The New Yorker" and we read this account about Dr. Kent Brantly, who was, you know, in Africa, taken back to Atlanta to Emory, you know, survived this. Sort of the first to do so. We learned that he was hours from dying. He got Zmapp. What do we know about this whole vaccine testing process?

BERNARD: Well, there's both drugs. Zmapp is a drug you would treat somebody who has the disease. And then there's the vaccines which would prevent it. There's a number of terrific vaccine candidates that are out there. They're going to take a long time to actually get up and running and produced in large enough quantities to make a difference, certainly in Africa where it would be needed the most. But they're probably going to work. That's my guess.

And it's something that was prepared. You know, these vaccines were prepared following 9/11 when people were afraid of bioterrorism. So a lot of investment was done into planning for diseases that were not so - seemed to be so common even back then.

As far as Zmapp is concerned, it's a drug and it's a tough one to make and it takes a long time. And while they're trying to ramp that up, it's probably not anybody's first hope for a way to treat the disease.

BALDWIN: You know so much about this. Last time we spoke, just given your years of working with the administration at the time, you know, AIDS, SARS, anthrax, so you know how this can be. And now that we have this from the Defense Department, from the Pentagon, they've enlisted this -- what they're calling this strike team, Dr. Brantly (ph), dozens of medical professionals, you know, ready to deploy here in the states if and when another case arises. What do you make of that? How would that even work?

BERNARD: Well, this is a terrific idea. I mean, whenever you have a rapid response necessary to almost anything, the military has preplanned. They're really good at planning logistics. They built runways out in the Pacific during World War II under fire. They know how to get things done. So whenever I see the military involved in anything like this, I'm heartened. I think in this case it's going to be done by Northern Command. I visited. These are really serious professional people and I think they'd be used kind of as a backup to the primary healthcare people that would go out from CDC if we ever had a really bad outbreak of Ebola, which doesn't look likely but, you know, you have to plan in advance. You don't want to plan while in the middle of the problem.

BALDWIN: Kenneth Bernard, forgive me, I called you Brantly. I had Kent Brantly on the mind given everything happening. Forgive me, forgive me. I know exactly who you are. Thank you so much for taking the time with me again.

BERNARD: I think I'm (INAUDIBLE)E.

BALDWIN: Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it.

Just ahead here on CNN, hear directly from the police officer who found human remains in the search for Hannah Graham. Plus, is it possible given the circumstances that it could be this missing University of Virginia student?

Also ahead, a new twist in the war against ISIS. Find out what the U.S. is giving to Kurdish fighters in the battle for this key border city of Kobani.

And for the very first time, we are hearing new evidence from the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, that could give the clearest account yet of that police officer's story that day in Ferguson. Stay with me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

A skull and scattered bones found in a dried up creek bed in the Charlottesville area of Virginia. The big question, could these be from missing University of Virginia student Hannah Graham? The police deputy spotted the remains this past weekend behind this abandoned home. Now, the location is significant. Let me tell you why. This is just eight miles from where Graham was last seen. This is four miles from where suspect Jesse Matthew once lived, and five miles from where Morgan Harrington's body was found. She was the Virginia Tech student whose death is also linked to Matthew. I want you to listen to this police officer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do believe God wanted us to find what we found. I don't know how else to explain it other than something just inside me told me to just continue to look.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Here's what else Sergeant Dale Terry (ph) described what he found. No hair. No flesh. Just bones. Bones that were intact along with a pair of tight dark colored pants. Terry described the vertebrae bone as long and consistent with a tall person's body. He also said the remains were not buried and not too far from the road.

So let me bring in medical examiner and forensic pathologist Dr. William Marony (ph) here to walk me through what this could and couldn't be.

Doctor, welcome.

DR. WILLIAM MARONY, MEDICAL EXAMINER AND FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST: Thank you. Good afternoon. I appreciate you having me.

BALDWIN: I appreciate you coming on, because I have a lot of questions for you. And the big question, doctor, and let me be as delicate about this as I can because I cannot stop thinking of this family here, but, you know, this -- as we point out, this wasn't a body, this was bones. And we know Hannah Graham has been missing for some 35 days. I mean is it possible in that time frame, given the weather, the climate, et cetera, that a body could decompose so quickly?

MARONY: The answer to that is, I've seen bodies go to skeleton in three or four days. You just need the right conditions with temperature and humidity and this body wasn't buried. It was exposed. So if you want to know is this her, is this not her, there's a couple of other questions you ask. Is it a female skeleton? Is it a young adult teen skeleton? And a lot of this is also going to be confirmed on dental records because it's faster.

BALDWIN: Uh-huh.

MARONY: Skeletonization is the sixth - the final stage of decay. There are six stages of decay. Number one, fresh, two, there's early decomp, three, there's putrifaction, four, there's black putrifaction where everything turns dark, and, five, (INAUDIBLE) fermentation, and, sixth, is the dry skeletal decay. Yes, it is the final step in decomposition, but we have to work with bacteria, insects and scavenger animals and this could be, as soon as you tell me it's female, the odds go up. As soon as you tell me it's a young teen skeleton, the odds go up.

BALDWIN: I'm hearing that the vertebrae was so long. I believe Hannah Graham was -- off the top of my head, something like 5'11". You brought up a good point about the dental records. Can you explain how investigators are able to use dental records and so quickly identify who this might be?

MARONY: Dental records have two main purposes. A quick, fast analysis shows the record of fillings and how teeth x-rayed in place and spaces doesn't change over time. And they can match up those x-rays. And then secondly, there can be tooth pulp. We don't have skin. We don't have hair. But tooth pulp has a lot of cells that you can use often in DNA. That will have to go to a police crime lab and that's going to take weeks. So processing has a lot of questions too. I hope it brings closure.

BALDWIN: What about DNA? Because it's not about who this is, it's also about if there is a matter of who did this to who this is. You know, the man who's sitting behind bars is Jesse Matthew. We know that they have found a forensic link, being DNA, to the young woman from Virginia Tech. And so is it possible, doctor, to find DNA on bones or perhaps the pants nearby?

MARONY: With this much time in the elements, any of his DNA may be degraded beyond usefulness. What we would hope is that a final analysis would show us that this isn't her. And if it's not her, then it's another victim. But we want to bring closure to this. They're not going to be able to use any DNA there to say this is his DNA and it links him. So it's going to be more of an identification and not evidentiary.

BALDWIN: Got it. You know, if it's not her, it is someone else's son or daughter and hopefully they're able to identify that individual as quickly as possible.

Dr. William Marony, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate your expertise.

Just ahead here on CNN, Michael Brown's blood found inside that police patrol car of that Ferguson officer who shot him multiple times. How does this newly reported evidence line up with those multiple eyewitness accounts? We'll discuss that.

Plus, the United States making a major move in the war against ISIS. Hear who the U.S. military is now arming as the fight escalates for that key border city.

Stay here. You're watching CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Now to the war on ISIS. Kurdish fighters say they are hanging onto most of the Syrian city of Kobani with the help of those U.S. led air strikes, 60 of them over the past four days, and now new weapons. Here's what we're learning now. The U.S. military is actually dropping arms, dropping ammunition and even food to the Kurds who are taking on these ISIS militants in this ground war. Let me turn to a city in Turkey. This is just right around the Turkey-Syria border, to CNN's Nick Paton Walsh.

And, Nick, this definitely looks like a shift after Washington basically told the world that saving Kobani really maybe wasn't the top priority. Do you think the U.S. was counting on Turkey perhaps more than it should have?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Possibly and certainly they seem to have had very fruitless talks. Until recently it seemed for the Turks and trying to get Turkish - to try and get them to use their army, sat on the hills overlooking Kobani but not intervening. This air drop overnight quite remarkably how direct Washington is willing to assist the Kurds inside Kobani. Twenty-seven pallets. One, in fact, landing off course and destroyed by an air strike from the coalition to make sure it didn't fall into ISIS' hands, but delivering ammunition, AK-47s, medical supplies.

A doctor inside the city saying that now he can finally treat patients with a ton of medical supplies that arrived. So badly needed resupply, but, yes, perhaps it was the Turkish today who surprised many by saying they were willing to allow Iraqi Turkish - sorry, Iraqi Kurdish fighters, the Peshmerga, in from Iraq, to travel through Turkish territory and join those Kurds fighting in Kobani to try and hold back ISIS. Turkey suddenly changing its stance, although I'm sure they can't have been happy to have learned that U.S. aircraft dropped arms directly to those Syrian Kurds in Kobani, who they consider to be allied to terrorists here inside Turkey.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: You talk about the different Kurds. I think it's worth just reminding our American audience, you know, Turkey considers Syrian Kurds to be terrorists, but they are willing, as you talk about the Iraqi Kurds, willing to bring them in to the fight for Kobani. How exactly would that work?

WALSH: It would be very complicated, I would imagine. You would have to assemble groups of Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan, the north of Iraq, and then either let them fly or travel by land through Turkey to Kobani. Obviously you have to try and avoid whatever attention there may be there on the way. And then they would have to cross in from the Turkish side into Kobani somehow presumably with ISIS fully aware that they are en route or potentially arriving.

So, a very mess path for them certainly but potentially an enormous strategic change in the kind of help the Kurds in Kobani could get. There are a lot of Peshmerga. We heard from one Kurdish source there that actually those coming to fight may be Turkish Kurds that have gone to northern Iraq to help the fight there, in fact coming back and going into Kobani to help the fight to technically what they consider to be their - near a homeland. So, a very messy situation with the Kurds here, but they seem to be trying to unify somehow to protect Kobani.

Brooke. BALDWIN: Nick Paton Walsh, thank you. Just after 9:30 at night your time there in Turkey right along the border. Appreciate you.

Just ahead, blood reportedly found inside that police car of Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Are we hearing these leaks of new evidence so the public isn't surprised about the decision of an indictment? We're going to ask that question of our legal panel coming up. Why now is what I want to know.

Plus, as we get word of a new sighting of the fugitive who's evaded police for weeks and weeks, in the woods of Pennsylvania, how is this alleged police officer killer staying alive? How is he surviving night after night in the woods? We'll talk to a survivalist coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)