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Nancy Grace

NANCY GRACE for March 2, 2005, CNNHN

Aired March 02, 2005 - 20:00   ET

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


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


NANCY GRACE, CNN HOST: Tonight, a violent assault on the justice system itself. I thought I lived in America, not Colombia where judges are targets for retribution, even murder.
Tonight, was a federal judge the target of a Chicago double murder? We go live for the latest.

And closing arguments in the Robert Blake case. "Beretta" talks tough on TV, but he didn`t have the guts to take the stand. Then we go to California and the Jackson child sex trial.

Good evening, everybody. I`m Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with us tonight.

Is that former little rascal Robert Blake headed to the big house? Closing arguments are under way. Blake on trial for the murder of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.

Is the state off to a bumpy start in the Jackson child molestation trial? It`s kind of hard to believe that a superstar like Michael Jackson is on trial facing felony charges. Can the prosecution make a come back?

And a high profile double murder: In Chicago, federal judge Joan Lefkow came home to find her 89-year-old mother and the judge`s husband murdered. Both of them were shot to death execution-style.

With us tonight, Michael Lefkow`s friend and co-worker, Bill Spielberger, and friend and colleague of Judge Lefkow, Ken Cunniff, both from Chicago.

But first, Frank Main is from "The Chicago Sun-Times" with all the latest.

Hi, Frank. Welcome. What can you tell us tonight, friend?

FRANK MAIN, "THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES": Well, I can tell you that the police are looking at a lot of leads but they are honing on the white supremacy angle. As you may know, Judge Lefkow had presided over a case involving Matthew Hale, who is a white supremacist.

Hale was convicted of soliciting her murder and faces sentencing next month. And so there is a lot of concern that somebody might have been trying to get back at the judge because of a ruling that she made against him.

GRACE: Well, OK. Let me ask you this: Isn`t Hale behind -- I know Hale. Isn`t Hale behind bars right now for soliciting a hit on this judge?

MAIN: Hale is behind bars. He`s downtown Chicago right now. There`s a lot of security on him. His communications are highly restricted. So it`s a -- it would be a mystery to learn that he somehow put out a hit on this judge. But there is a lot of evidence that`s coming out that kind of leans toward the fact that her family might have been killed in an assassination-style hit.

GRACE: Well, let me ask you this: Was there any evidence of a robbery or sex attack in any way?

MAIN: No. The police tell us that there was no evidence of a robbery. Nothing seemed to be taken from the home. Judge Lefkow`s mother is 89 years old, and it doesn`t appear that there was any kind of sexual assault or anything like that.

GRACE: Oh, gosh.

Hey, guys. I interviewed Matthew Hale a couple of years ago. I interviewed him three times.

Hey, Elizabeth, can you roll that footage?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: What`s your plan for retaliation, Matt Hale?

MATTHEW HALE, WHITE SUPREMACIST: We will organize the white people of Decatur the same way Jesse Jackson has organized people he has bussed in from other cities. We will organize white people to stand up for their interests and not be pushed around.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Frank, clearly, he`s a nut, not insanity, in a legal sense of the word. But this guy, I mean, he`s behind bars for trying to order a hit on this judge.

MAIN: Well, I mean, is that there might be somebody out there who believes in the same things that he does and may have been involved in this. I mean, one thing we do know, we talked to Judge Lefkow today. A colleague of mine at the "Chicago Sun-Times" talked to her. She was tearful. She was somewhat angry, I mean, very angry, actually, about this.

She said that, quote, "If somebody was angry at me, they should have come after me." And what she also told us is that she received telephone calls on Sunday night. And on those calls, it indicated that the call was coming in from a correctional center somewhere in this country, not here in Chicago, but somewhere else. She wouldn`t talk anymore about the case because she didn`t want to jeopardize the investigation.

GRACE: Let me go to Ken Cunniff, a friend and colleague of the judge`s family.

Ken, excuse my voice. Can you tell me about the judge`s family?

KEN CUNNIFF, COLLEAGUE & FRIEND OF JUDGE`S SLAIN HUSBAND: The judge`s family was Michael and her four daughters. Michael was very close to the judge and to the four daughters. Michael was a very strong believer in his faith, his family and his friends. As you probably have heard by now, Michael was a Lay Minister in his church.

Nothing more was more important to Michael than hi relationship with his wife and with his daughters. Michael was very active in his community. He had friends which he had made over many, many years in this community. He also had numerous friends in his legal community. All are very saddened, obviously, by this very tragic, tragic incident.

GRACE: Gosh. You know, Bill Spielberger, when judges become targets and their families become targets, we`re in a lot of trouble.

WILLIAM SPIELBERGER, FRIEND & CO-WORKER OF JUDGE`S SLAIN HUSBAND: We are. In some ways, an assault on a judge and a judge`s family is an assault on our judicial system. In a way, it`s an assault on our entire democratic system. I just hope that this doesn`t have a carry-over effect on the way that justices administer in our federal and state courts throughout the country.

GRACE: Well, already people at the courthouse are afraid they`ll become targets.

SPIELBERGER: They are. I hope that that fear doesn`t extend to their life outside the bench.

GRACE: Back to you, Ken. Isn`t it true that the victim was very involved in indigent rights work, civil rights work?

CUNNIFF: Actually, he devoted his entire life to working with indigent people. I first met Michael when I was a freshman in law school and he was a staff attorney for the Legal Assistance Foundation.

He was working on making sure that people who were going to be moved in an urban renewal project for a college to be placed in a local neighborhood were getting the proper kinds of reimbursement that the law provided. And I watched Mike firsthand going out and talking to people, long into the night, and working with these people. Everything he`s done has always been for the betterment of the people with whom he was with.

GRACE: And you know what else, Ken? So many lawyers are just out for money. That`s all they care about is making more money. But this guy, her husband, was so different. He worked for the poor and the indigent. And she was a judge. Judges don`t make a lot of money. They`re public servants.

CUNNIFF: I agree with that. And, in fact, Michael not only worked with indigents but he really cared about what he did. I mean, two of Michael`s cases for his indigent clients he ended up arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court. That virtually never happens to any attorneys to have one case, much less two cases, heard by the Supreme Court.

Mike was tenacious. Once he started working on something, he continued until he got the results he wanted or until he could take no further action on behalf of the client.

GRACE: And very quickly to Frank Main.

Frank, you know, you have got one guy that ordered a hit on this judge, Matt Hale. He is an extremist. He is a bigot, a racist. He hated this judge. Do you think he is a lead suspect tonight?

MAIN: I can`t say that he himself is the lead suspect. In fact, the police, who are not releasing a lot of information about what they know so far, are saying they`re looking at all sorts of things. They are, of course, looking at the Hale connection. But like I said before, it would be very difficult for him to get communication out of the federal lock-up that he`s in at this moment. So I can`t say that.

GRACE: But Frank, Frank, he had an organization. Don`t you remember the World Church of the Creator?

MAIN: That`s what started this whole thing. And what`s really interesting about this is that it`s essentially a case of misplaced anger. Actually, Judge Lefkow ruled in his favor in a civil case in which the World Church of the Creator was being sued for using another organization`s name. The appeals court overturned her. She had to come back and rule against him. So, if this is because the judge had ruled against Matthew Hale, you know, she had initially found for him.

GRACE: Well, I can tell you this much: I have interviewed Hale many times and he is full of hate.

Gentlemen, thank you for being with us.

Quick break. We`ll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LESLIE CROCKER SNYDER, FMR. N.Y. STATE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: The only way you can expect judges, whether it`s in Iraq, Chicago or New York, to be able to do their jobs if they`re dealing with extreme roots or violent groups is to provide them the kind of protection I`ve provided by the New York City Police Department, because they take their job very seriously.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNYDER: And other than domestic disputes in which there are occasional violent outbreaks, I think that criminals who belong to lawless and extreme groups have absolutely no codes. And unlike the old "La Cosa Nostra," where, you know, they knew enough not to kill judges or cops because the full force of the law would come upon them, extreme hate groups don`t feel that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Welcome back everybody.

A federal judge, was her family targeted because of some of her rulings? This judge came home to find her mother and her husband murdered, execution -style. Not only what does it mean for her family, but what does it mean for our justice system?

Let me go straight back out to Frank Main with "The Chicago Sun- Times." Are there any clues, Frank, at all? What do we know tonight?

MAIN: There are a handful of clues, and nobody is sure they`re directly connected. One of the things that yesterday morning there were two guys that were parked in a red car nearby her house across the street from a church. Both had military-style hair cuts. They were smoking cigarettes. It`s about 8:00 a.m. And the administrator for the church came out and said, "You guys have got to leave. You`re in a no-parking zone."

He said it was really kind of unusual for somebody to be parked there, you know. Looking in hindsight at what happened to the Judge Lefkow`s family, you have got to wonder who these people were. That was also in the police report that was taken after the murder.

GRACE: What times were the shootings?

MAIN: The police believe that the shootings were sometime between 10:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. yesterday. The reason they believe that is that Judge Lefkow`s mother had spoken on the phone to her granddaughter about 10:30 a.m. And Judge Lefkow came home from work to find this horrific sight at about 5:30 p.m. yesterday. So, that`s the time frame that they`re working in.

GRACE: And another issue, Ken Cunniff, wasn`t her husband in a cast?

CUNNIFF: Right. Michael had injured his Achilles` tendon playing tennis and was walking around on crutches. That`s the only reason he was home. It was a total fluke that he was there, and as you`re aware...

GRACE: Oh, man.

CUNNIFF: ... the mother had just come to visit and had been staying there for a while. And nobody who would have been casing the house probably would have realized that Michael and his mother-in-law were present in the house when whoever it was broke in.

GRACE: But, Bill Spielberger, I don`t think anybody was casing the house to burgle it because burglars very rarely march two victims downstairs in the basement, make them lay down, face down, then execute them. I mean, can you imagine the scene? This is a 89-year-old lady, her mother and her husband in a cast, his leg in a cast.

Can you imagine these two hobbling down the stairs of the basement, then being forced to lay face down to be murdered? And you know the husband had to know what was about to happen.

SPIELBERGER: Yes. You think about the fear and dread that must have gone through both their minds before this terrible thing happened. Also, I think about Judge Lefkow coming home.

GRACE: Oh.

SPIELBERGER: And it must be everyone`s worst nightmare to come into a home, find it quiet, and then come upon that scene that she did. It`s just tragic.

GRACE: Can you imagine? I mean, just think about it. We talk about these cases like they`re just stories. But can you imagine coming to your home, calling out. Nobody answers. You start looking around. Finally, you have to go down to the basement to see your mom and your husband face down murdered like this.

This was not a burglary. This was not a sex attack. And it happened in broad daylight, between 10:30 and 5:00 in the afternoon.

Were there any other big cases, Ken Cunniff, that the judge was working on?

CUNNIFF: Not that I`m aware of. I mean, every federal judge handles a number of cases in which somebody`s going to walk away unhappy. And every federal judge...

GRACE: Yes.

CUNNIFF: ... has to sentence defendants to substantial jail times. And, obviously, those defenders were not happy. But the thing to keep in mind which is -- this is the first time to my knowledge we have ever had a situation in which the family of a sitting federal judge was ever murdered. There have been a few instances in which city and federal judges were murdered, but there never was an incident in which it reached the family. This is truly unusual. It`s truly horrific.

GRACE: Well, I know you guys don`t want to rush to judgment, but let`s get real for a moment, Frank Main, OK? You got Matt Hale, an admitted racist, an extremist full of hate. And he just tried to order a hit on this judge. And now, a hit takes place in the judge`s home.

MAIN: What I can tell you is that the authorities are looking at Hale and his family. I know they have spoken to his brother who is recently out of jail. They are, you know, they`re not leaving that angle uncovered. But I have no idea if he had anything to do with it. They`re not sharing that information with me. But, obviously, because he was convicted of soliciting her murder, it is something that they`re taking very seriously.

GRACE: And very quickly, Ken Cunniff, they have four daughters, right, and one is still in high school?

CUNNIFF: Correct. And, in fact, she was the one that came home in the midday to pick up some gym clothes. Thank god she didn`t stay around.

GRACE: And she didn`t see either her father or her grandmother?

CUNNIFF: It certainly would appear as though she didn`t.

GRACE: Man, what a story. And what this means to the rest of the judicial system, to our justice system, is overwhelming. When judges, and prosecutors, and public defenders quit doing their job because they`re afraid, this could be the death knell to our justice system until this killer is caught.

Gentlemen, thank you again for speaking out.

Let`s quickly go to "Trial Tracking." The prosecution rests in the Sarah Johnson trial. Remember the 16-year-old Idaho girl on trial for the murders of both parents? Her lawyers have now put on their own team of blood experts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL HOWARD, FORENSIC SCIENTIST: There was an extremely thorough examination done by several laboratories of Sarah Johnson`s clothing and absolutely no blood was detected. Reports indicated that there was absolutely no blood on Sarah, her hair. Swabbings were taken, the top of her socks. You simply cannot be in that shooting environment and not get blood on you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: No blood, no guilt, says her defense attorney, Bob Pangburn. I guess he hopes the jury`s going to forget about his client`s pink bath robe, remember that? The cops found her bath robe in the trash can covered in blood.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because that`s what this case is all about, the defendant getting what he wants. And if he can`t get someone else to do it, he`ll do it himself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: In L.A. today, closing arguments in the Robert Blake murder trial. Blake is facing life behind bars for the murder of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.

Tonight, from Atlanta, defense attorney Chris Pixley, in Charlotte, North Carolina, defense lawyer John Mobley, here in New York, psychologist Anne Renee Testa.

And Chris Pixley, I`ve got a little hint for you. I`m ready for you, buddy. I`ve got my Sudafed spray. I`m high on that. I`ve got my Tylenol Flu A.M. I`ve got my Halls cough drops. There`s no stopping me, buddy. So don`t think you`re getting anything over on me.

CHRIS PIXLEY, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I`ve been watching for the last 10 minutes thinking I might actually get a word in tonight.

GRACE: Just because I`m sick, forget about it.

ANNE RENEE TESTA, PSYCHOLOGIST: She`s a wild woman.

GRACE: Hey, Chris, what do you think about the closing arguments today? Did you see Blake sitting there looking all pitiful?

PIXLEY: Yes, I did see Blake. Actually, you know, Blake`s doing a good job as far as I`m concerned. He hasn`t jumped up and had anything to say. They didn`t put him on the stand. He certainly the most damage to the case in talking to Barbara Walters.

So, you know, I think strangely the closing argument for the prosecution takes four and a half hours in a case where they haven`t been able to tie Robert Blake in any way physically to the crime. I think they probably should have tried to get in and get out.

GRACE: Oh, I`m sorry. What about the gunshot powder?

PIXLEY: I`m sorry, the gunshot residue? The five particles found on his hand? Well, you know, when the defense ran a simulation using the actual murder weapon, the shooter had 2,400 particles of gunshot residue on his hand. I think that that strongly refutes the idea that Robert Blake was the shooter in this case unless he was wearing, you know, one of those suits that they wear down to the CDC to keep germs away. You know, it just isn`t possible.

GRACE: OK, good call, Chris Pixley.

But let me go to you, John Mobley. I think you can be a little bit more reasonable than Pixley. John, I bet if I did a gunshot residue on your hands right now, there wouldn`t be a speck of residue on them. Why? Because you haven`t fired a gun.

You and I both know that, with residue tests, if you shoot a gun and you do this, you can get rid of almost all of it. What was this man doing with gunshot residue on his hands?

JOHN MOBLEY, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, Nancy, you have to keep in mind, number one, he does own a gun which presumes at some point either, a, he plans on firing the gun or has fired it in the past. I think it`s probably...

GRACE: In the past? In the past? John, please. I respect you. You know darn well he wouldn`t have gunshot residue on his hands unless he had just fired a gun.

MOBLEY: Well, the problem is, you know, as Chris indicated, it`s not a significant amount. And I don`t think what the prosecution has done is exclude any other reasonable hypothesis for how that small amount of gun powder residue got on the hands. And I think that`s a problem for them. It`s not strong enough.

GRACE: Well, I think between that and the time line -- he claims that a gun that he had in his pants went from his crotch to his ankle in the restaurant and he didn`t feel anything, then had to go back in to get the gun.

OK, Dr. Anne Renee Testa, help me out here. Dr. Anne Renee Testa is a psychologist. And, boy, do we need a shrink tonight. What do you make of it? And what about this crucifying Bonny Lee Bakley because she is a bad girl? She`s getting crucified in that court because they`re making her out to be some kind of a tramp and her life is somehow not as valuable as yours or mine.

ANNE RENEE TESTA, PSYCHOLOGIST: And you know what? What difference does it make? Suppose she is a tramp. Suppose it`s all of those things. She doesn`t deserve to be shot. She doesn`t deserve that. And they`re deflecting it.

GRACE: What about the time line?

TESTA: So what about the time line?

GRACE: Well, I think the time line is very damning for him. Because he is with her, he goes in the restaurant to get his gun, and he comes back in five minutes and she`s dead. That is a hell of a marksman.

TESTA: Yes, right. Well, but he is a marksman, isn`t he? Wasn`t he a marksman? Insofar as the gunshot stuff, I mean, that`s proof. That`s a big deal. That is a big deal.

GRACE: What about him not taking the stand?

TESTA: Taking the stand -- I think, frankly, if he took the stand, he would fry himself. I really do. And you know, if you notice, if you watch him, in the courtroom, he was sort of masturbating his hair. He was sitting there, and he was doing this constantly. He wanted to make sure...

GRACE: I did not say that. She said that.

TESTA: Well, look, you know, I`m a psychologist. He wanted to make sure that he was there and he was alive. He just kept on stroking his hair. Imagine putting him up on the stand.

GRACE: You know, you use different words than I would have used.

We`re taking a quick break. We`re going to look at not only Robert Blake but Michael Jackson, as well.

As you know, here on our show, we desperately want to help find missing people. Tonight, take a look at Rodrigo Rios. Nine-years-old, abducted June 2003, Carpinteria, California. If you have any information on Rodrigo Rios, please call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 1-800-THE-LOST.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everybody. I`m Christi Paul. Let`s get you your "Headline Prime Newsbreak" right now.

Kobe Bryant and the woman who accused him of rape have agreed to a settlement in the civil suit against him. No financial terms of that settlement have been released. But you might recall last year the woman dropped plans to pursue criminal charges against Bryant.

Well, he`s only been the job for two weeks, but new Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff says the threat of terror is very real. Today on Capitol Hill, Chertoff announced plans to review what works and what doesn`t in his department. Chertoff says terrorists think outside the box, and that`s what he wants his staffers to do.

And if you have not filed your taxes yet, here is something that may inspire you. The Internal Revenue Service reports that federal tax refunds have jumped an average of $200 for early filers. The IRS has also seen more returns filed electronically this year with e-filing. You can get your return in half the time.

That`s the news for now. I`m Christi Paul.

GRACE: Michael Jackson back in court again today. The state`s case against him goes on. Jackson is still reeling from the Bashir testimony yesterday as well as that BBC documentary that showed him snugged up with the 13-year-old boy.

Let`s go straight to the courthouse. "Celebrity Justice" correspondent, Jane Velez-Mitchell, is with us.

Jane, I`m all ready. I have got my throat spray. I`m ready to do battle with you tonight. What happened in court?

JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL, "CELEBRITY JUSTICE": Well, it was a good day for the prosecution in court today, Nancy. They had a very feisty P.R. lady on who said she was hired after the Bashir documentary by Michael Jackson`s team for damage control. She said it was a disaster of 25 on a scale of 1 to 10.

And then she said she became very concerned by one of the unindicted co- conspirators, the alleged unindicted co-conspirator Mark Schaffel, who called her and said the family, the family that would later accuse Jackson, has fled Neverland. And he seemed very agitated. And she wondered why and became suspicious.

And then later he called back and said the situation has been contained, which made her more suspicious. She told a colleague, "Don`t tell me they`ve hunted this family down like dogs and brought them back to the ranch." And then later that colleague told her, "Don`t worry. We have the mother on tape. And we`re going to make her look like a" -- this is a quote now -- "crack whore."

GRACE: OK, wait a minute. Jane, you`re telling me that the witness today said that way back when Jackson`s people said they were going to make the boy`s mother look like a ho?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: That`s exactly what I`m telling you. This feisty lady got on the stand and said that. So that was a home run for the prosecution today.

GRACE: Chris Pixley, response?

PIXLEY: Well, you know, we`re leaving out the part of the story that involves the cross-examination of this woman. Some of the testimony, Nancy, is that she was hired by people other than Michael Jackson. She took her direction by people other than Michael Jackson. She never met Michael Jackson, never went to the Jackson ranch, never met the accuser or his family. And after being on retainer for less than a week, less than a week, she was fired because she wouldn`t sign a confidentiality agreement.

And what she`s she doing now? She`s testifying...

GRACE: Wait a minute...

PIXLEY: ... and telling the whole world that she was on retainer for Michael Jackson, and she is his P.R. person.

GRACE: Chris, Chris, if Jackson didn`t have anything to hide, why did he need her to sign a confidentiality agreement?

PIXLEY: Nancy, you know, when you sign up a P.R. person to help spin a story that`s put out there by you, good or bad, you know, you may very well want to keep those people from going around town and saying, "I`m Jackson`s P.R. person. He had a problem. This is what I fixed for him." There`s nothing wrong with that.

GRACE: Anne Renee.

TESTA: I think it`s a deflection. I think it`s just a deflection. That`s all. I mean, the idea that they`re calling her a crack whore. So what? So what if she was? So what if she was?

I think that the parents need to be hung up by their thumbs anyway, Nancy. I mean, they`re just as guilty as Michael is for what they did to allow their child to stay there.

GRACE: Well, right now, Jackson`s the one on trial, not the mother.

TESTA: Exactly.

GRACE: And what I`m asking you about, is there an attempt to smear this woman?

TESTA: Sure, there is. Sure, there is. If they make her look bad, then their child looks bad. Then they think that the child was let on to lie. And, in fact, I don`t believe that that child is lying at all. You can`t lie about stuff like that.

GRACE: Jane, how did the jury react?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, it was shocking, when you hear those kinds of words in court. It kind of throws you back. But, again, they are very stoic. They are taking notes. They are listening intently.

And Chris Pixley does make a point. Tom Mesereau had his own agenda on cross-examination. He is trying to distance Michael Jackson from these alleged indicted co-conspirators and sort of unhook that caboose, and leave it go. Because he tried to make the point that Michael Jackson wasn`t aware of any of the actions of these people and may have not only not been aware but that these alleged unindicted co-conspirators may have been scheming and plotting against Michael Jackson. So there could have been another conspiracy he was floating by the alleged unindicted co- conspirators against Michael Jackson. Hard to follow, but that`s what was presented in court today.

GRACE: OK, Jane, what does it say to you that at the very get-go Jackson`s people are saying, "The boy and his mother fled the ranch"?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, it certainly dovetails very neatly with the prosecution`s theory that there was this conspiracy, these 28 overt acts that they have alleged, to keep this family locked up at Neverland. And there are some other evidence that they`re going to present that there was a note at the security station saying, "Don`t let them off." And that this was part of the plot to whisk them away, away from the media, and off to ultimately Brazil. But, again, Tom Mesereau, on cross-examination, is now floating his own conspiracy theory. So we have dueling conspiracy theories at this point.

GRACE: Guys, take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN BASHIR, HOST OF BBC DOCUMENTARY: Is that really appropriate for a man, a grown man, to be doing that? How do you respond to that?

MICHAEL JACKSON, SINGER: I feel sorry for them because that`s judging someone who just wants to really help people. Why can`t you share your bed? The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: That`s the ABC version of the BBC documentary by Bashir.

Very quickly, to you, John Mobley, it seems as if they were holding the boy and his mom at the ranch. Their own words were, "Oh my god, they fled the ranch."

MOBLEY: Well, you know, I think when you think about that P.R. witness, you`ve got to take it with a grain of salt. Whenever you have a high-profile trial -- you look at some of the high-profile trials over the last decade -- there`s always somebody that wants to somehow profit from some knowledge they`re claiming about the case and be a star witness.

GRACE: How is this woman, Ann Gabriel, profiting from anything? She is not getting any money.

MOBLEY: Yet. Yet. For the same reason she wouldn`t want to sign a confidentially agreement. She could write a book...

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: Why don`t you just accept she could be telling the truth? Is that so hard for you?

MOBLEY: But you`ve got to concede, Nancy, that every high-profile trial, there are people that come forward that claim to have information to put them in the spotlight. That happens in every high-profile trial. You`ve got to understand that.

And that`s something -- and I think, unless her testimony is corroborated by the independent witnesses that don`t have any bias or financial motive, then I think that`s how she is going to be perceived.

GRACE: OK, Jane, what were the highlights of her testimony? What was the point of Ann Gabriel taking the stand?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, her point was to show that the prosecution has a real case, that there was this alleged conspiracy, that there`s evidence to back up this alleged conspiracy, that it`s not something that Tom Sneddon is just pulling out of thin air, that she herself saw evidence of it.

And we were calling her the iron lady, because she was feisty. Tom Mesereau conducted a very, very long cross-examination of this woman to the point where the judge scolded him at one point and said, "You`ve asked the same question ten times. Look at the jury. They`re getting tired of hearing this. Stop repeating the questions and just get on with presenting your case."

And so he was very contrite and he took that to heart. In fact, when he finished his cross-examination, there was applause in the jury -- in the overflow press room because it had gone on that long. But she stood up to her point and said, "This is what I heard."

GRACE: So, are you saying that Mesereau did not score a lot of points on cross?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: No, I think what he scored was, even though he didn`t get her to admit a lot of the things that he was suggesting, he got those ideas in the jurors mind, that the alleged unindicted co-conspirators were throwing Michael Jackson to the wolves, that they were letting him hang himself, that they may have had a plot, in fact, to let him fall on his face so that he would lose his share of the Beatles` catalogue.

GRACE: Jane, Jane, so, the defense is, "Everybody`s plotting against Michael Jackson"?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: You got it. Because...

GRACE: Even his own people?

(CROSSTALK)

VELEZ-MITCHELL: ... you`ve got to look and say, is everybody -- the family of the accuser`s out to get him. They want a mark. And now the alleged unindicted co-conspirators are all plotting to get Michael Jackson. Everybody`s trying to get Michael Jackson. And that may have a credibility issue down the road for Mesereau. I mean, how many people can be out to get Michael Jackson at any one time?

TESTA: Don`t you know? It looks like a big smoke screen to me. That`s all it is. Are we talking about pedophilia now? Every time that we talk about something else, about them being prisoners, about this or that, we are going away from the real topic, the real deal.

GRACE: Wait a minute. Now, remember, in this indictment, there`s all this these other counts like holding him hostage, feeding him liquor, so the prosecutor has got to prove all those other things, too, in addition to the molestation.

Everybody, quick break. We`re live in California for the latest in the Jackson case. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACKSON: When they`re going to sleep, I tuck them in. I put a little like music on, do a little story time, read a book. It`s very sweet. Put the fireplace on, give them hot milk. We have cookies. It`s very charming, very sweet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Well, the prosecutor says it was not charming at all, that it was child molestation. Welcome back, I`m Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with us.

Straight back out to California, Jane Velez-Mitchell, so in the end, how did Ann Gabriel come off?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: I think she came off as somebody who was determined to stick to her guns. And I think that ultimately the jurors probably respected that.

She did have credibility issues, though. She said she was an expert in crisis management. And then they asked her, "Well, how many other celebrities have you dealt with?" And she mentioned one guy that nobody had ever heard of. So people kind of scoffed at that.

But just for her sheer grit, she got some points. Because she was in that chair for a long time. And a lot of other people might have crumbled and just become very insecure. And she was feisty right up until the end.

GRACE: Hey, Jane, what do you think were her main points?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, her main points were that she became very alarmed after joining the Michael Jackson P.R. team about the goings on, the fact that this alleged unindicted co-conspirator would call and express such alarm and agitation. She said Marc Schaffel was highly agitated when he called and said the family had left Neverland. And she just wondered about that.

So you have to wonder listening to that why was he so agitated? What would be so wrong with this family leaving? So, in a sense, she does very much back up the prosecution`s story.

But she also said that she was very frustrated that none of these other people on the Jackson team would do anything that she suggested to help Jackson. She wanted to be proactive. She wanted to get out there after the Bashir documentary and do something, get on the talk shows and tell Jackson`s side of the story. And they stopped her at every turn. And that made her suspicious about their motivations. Why were they basically letting Michael Jackson out to hang himself?

GRACE: Well, Jane, did Mark Geragos` name come up today?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes, he did. And he was part of this Michael Jackson P.R. team. And she mentioned the fact that she was actually sitting down in a chair about to do an interview with a syndicated show when she claims Geragos called and said -- yanked her off, said, "Don`t do the interview."

And she was wondering why is a criminal defense attorney yanking me off the air and telling me not to do this interview? She was wondering why he was so involved with something like that. He also apparently was the one who was urging her to sign the confidentiality agreement.

GRACE: Jane, who are the other co-conspirators?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, we have Marc Schaffel, who was established in court today as a former gay porn producer. You have Ron Konitzer and Dieder Weisner (ph), the two Germans. You have Vinny Amen and Frank Tyson, who were the two...

GRACE: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The two Germans? Who are the two Germans?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, these two German businessmen featured very prominently in all of this. I mean, they are the ones who are handling Michael Jackson`s business affairs, according to the testimony we heard today, as the Bashir documentary airs.

And they`re the ones that she said were the ones who were not doing Michael Jackson justice, that seemed to be out to get him. And, in fact, Tom Mesereau got her to admit that she told sheriff`s investigators that she believed one of these alleged unindicted co-conspirators may have embezzled up to a million dollars from Michael Jackson.

Now, we have no proof of that. And we don`t want to say anything that is -- certainly they don`t have a chance to respond to, wherever they are. But that`s something that was mentioned in open court today.

GRACE: Okay, Jane, can you explain to the viewers in a nutshell -- Jackson`s on trial for child molestation, for feeding a kid wine, for keeping them there at Neverland against their will. That`s the gist of the charges. Whether the prosecution can prove them or not remains to be seen. But where do these other people fit in?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, they were the ones who were allegedly doing these 28 overt acts or many of them. In other words, Michael Jackson, as the defense is contending, wasn`t in the picture, so to speak. They were the ones doing the hands on things when this family had to get their passports to go to Brazil, their visas, when they were moved to a Calabasas hotel, when they were taken to the videographer`s home to do the rebuttal interview. All of these things required people to coordinate. And these alleged unindicted co-conspirators were allegedly doing all that coordination.

GRACE: Got you.

Hey, John Mobley, do you think any of these co-conspirators are going to crack and testify against Jackson?

MOBLEY: Of course. Don`t you know? Everybody`s out to get Michael Jackson. I`ll put it this way, Nancy...

GRACE: Oh, no, no, wait. Don`t start with me with the big conspiracy thing, OK?

MOBLEY: I`ll put it this way, Nancy: If I pick two people in the world to either sue or prosecute, it would be Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson, because the bottom line is, everybody hates them. Everybody thinks they`re weird. And whatever you throw against them is going to stick.

GRACE: OK, so the bottom line is your answer is, yes, you think they`ll crack?

MOBLEY: I`m certain they will.

GRACE: What about it, Chris?

PIXLEY: ... is that the reason that they are, quote, "alleged unindicted co-conspirators," is because the prosecutor really never had anything on them. There`s no teeth to this claim that the child and his family were held captive at the Neverland Ranch. And for that reason, they don`t need to testify. There`s nothing against them. There`s really no evidence against Michael Jackson.

GRACE: Hey, Chris?

PIXLEY: And when you lead with the woman, Nancy, that knew Michael Jackson or knew his camp for less than a week, you lead with her testimony, I think that you`ve got problems proving this false imprisonment claim.

GRACE: Well, Chris, I agree with you about leading with a strong witness. But they led with Bashir`s documentary which shows Jackson all snugged up with a little boy, OK? You know that hurt. But they could be taking it chronologically, Chris, where she came in at the beginning when all of this was about to crack wide open. I think they`re going chronologically.

And, Chris, what do you say to all those stewardesses that say they saw Jackson give the boy wine?

PIXLEY: Yes...

GRACE: You think they`re in on the conspiracy, Chris?

PIXLEY: You know, serving alcohol to a minor -- if the best that you can do is say that, well, I saw Michael -- you have got a flight attendant that saw Michael Jackson pouring wine in a coke can. The allegation isn`t that Michael Jackson was molesting children on airplanes or in airports. There`s just no teeth to that whatsoever. You`ve got to have somebody that says Michael Jackson -- I saw Michael Jackson using alcohol to ultimately reduce these children to a position where they were capable of being molested.

GRACE: Chris, Chris, I`ve got to go to break, but what I asked you was, "Do you think the stewardesses are in on it, too, that they`re part of the big plot against Jackson?" I`ll let you percolate on that just a moment.

We have got to go to break.

Tonight, update on the search for Jessica. Police are now focusing on a 3/4-mile radius around her home in Homosassa Springs, Florida. The Postal Service and NCME, Missing and Exploited Children, will deliver 42,000 flyers to homes and businesses in the area.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF JEFF DAWSY, CITRUS COUNTY POLICE DEPT.: This is just another piece of our investigative tools that we`re trying to use. I am very proud and honored that the postal authority would join us in trying to locate Jessie. I really believe that this may help. We need to reach out to some of the locals. They had to have seen something. Somebody had to know or have seen something. And this may just stir somebody that may have not seen the local or the national press, so...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Jessie went missing after her grandma tucked her into bed Wednesday. Next morning, her dad felt she was missing.

Any info, 352-726-4488.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: Welcome back, everybody.

Let`s go straight out to Chris Pixley. Final thoughts, friend?

PIXLEY: Final thoughts? Well, you know, it`s day two. I think ultimately Tom Mesereau probably is going to have to streamline his defense.

I, like you, Nancy, am concerned that if he`s pointing the finger at too many people the jury is going to become leery of his explanations for Michael Jackson. I think the focus needs to stay on the accuser and the accuser`s family for the defense.

GRACE: John Mobley?

MOBLEY: Tend to agree. Stay focused on the allegation. The bottom line is, if the person to whom this allegation was first made...

GRACE: John, John? You have to come up with something better than "Stay focused on the family."

MOBLEY: Well, it`s not the family, Nancy. Anyone that`s worked with child sexual assault cases knows, number one, that false allegations of sexual molestation do occur, first of all. The second things is, the most important part about allegations of sex abuse, sexual assaults, is the nature of how the allegations came out. And it`s not against the child, but against the source of that allegation.

GRACE: OK. Got you. Got you.

Dr. Anne Renee Testa?

TESTA: Nancy, as a psychologist, I can tell you, if you see the results of someone who`s been sexually abused, you have to take note. It ruins their lives. Their lives are done. They`re toasted. And I think that we have to go after this and have a look, a good, close look, and send him up.

GRACE: I want to thank all of my guests.

Jane Velez-Mitchell, Chris Pixley, John Mobley, and here in New York, Dr. Anne Renee Testa.

My biggest thank you to you for being with us tonight and inviting all of us into your homes. Stay tuned for headlines coming up next.

I`m Nancy Grace signing off for tonight. I hope you would join us here tomorrow night, 8 o`clock sharp. And, until then, good night, friend.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everyone. I`m Erica Hill with your "Headline Prime Newsbreak."

Kobe Bryant and the woman who accused him of rape have now agreed to a settlement in a civil suit against him. No financial terms have been released. Last year, the woman dropped plans to pursue criminal charges against Bryant.

A high school freshman is in custody in Tennessee, accused of killing a school bus driver as she was driving her route. Authorities say the 14- year-old who was charged with first-degree murder shot the female driver in front of 24 other students. A relative of the driver says she may have reported the boy the day before the shooting for using smokeless tobacco on the bus. The other students on board were not hurt.

A discovery overseas raises concerns about a possible terror attack against New York`s Grand Central Terminal. Spanish authorities uncovered a rough sketch of the train station during their investigation of last year`s Madrid train bombings.

We`re going to dive deeper into that coming up on "PRIME NEWS TONIGHT," when Mike Galanos joins me in just two minutes. We hope you`ll stick around.

END


Aired March 2, 2005 - 20:00:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
NANCY GRACE, CNN HOST: Tonight, a violent assault on the justice system itself. I thought I lived in America, not Colombia where judges are targets for retribution, even murder.
Tonight, was a federal judge the target of a Chicago double murder? We go live for the latest.

And closing arguments in the Robert Blake case. "Beretta" talks tough on TV, but he didn`t have the guts to take the stand. Then we go to California and the Jackson child sex trial.

Good evening, everybody. I`m Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with us tonight.

Is that former little rascal Robert Blake headed to the big house? Closing arguments are under way. Blake on trial for the murder of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.

Is the state off to a bumpy start in the Jackson child molestation trial? It`s kind of hard to believe that a superstar like Michael Jackson is on trial facing felony charges. Can the prosecution make a come back?

And a high profile double murder: In Chicago, federal judge Joan Lefkow came home to find her 89-year-old mother and the judge`s husband murdered. Both of them were shot to death execution-style.

With us tonight, Michael Lefkow`s friend and co-worker, Bill Spielberger, and friend and colleague of Judge Lefkow, Ken Cunniff, both from Chicago.

But first, Frank Main is from "The Chicago Sun-Times" with all the latest.

Hi, Frank. Welcome. What can you tell us tonight, friend?

FRANK MAIN, "THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES": Well, I can tell you that the police are looking at a lot of leads but they are honing on the white supremacy angle. As you may know, Judge Lefkow had presided over a case involving Matthew Hale, who is a white supremacist.

Hale was convicted of soliciting her murder and faces sentencing next month. And so there is a lot of concern that somebody might have been trying to get back at the judge because of a ruling that she made against him.

GRACE: Well, OK. Let me ask you this: Isn`t Hale behind -- I know Hale. Isn`t Hale behind bars right now for soliciting a hit on this judge?

MAIN: Hale is behind bars. He`s downtown Chicago right now. There`s a lot of security on him. His communications are highly restricted. So it`s a -- it would be a mystery to learn that he somehow put out a hit on this judge. But there is a lot of evidence that`s coming out that kind of leans toward the fact that her family might have been killed in an assassination-style hit.

GRACE: Well, let me ask you this: Was there any evidence of a robbery or sex attack in any way?

MAIN: No. The police tell us that there was no evidence of a robbery. Nothing seemed to be taken from the home. Judge Lefkow`s mother is 89 years old, and it doesn`t appear that there was any kind of sexual assault or anything like that.

GRACE: Oh, gosh.

Hey, guys. I interviewed Matthew Hale a couple of years ago. I interviewed him three times.

Hey, Elizabeth, can you roll that footage?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: What`s your plan for retaliation, Matt Hale?

MATTHEW HALE, WHITE SUPREMACIST: We will organize the white people of Decatur the same way Jesse Jackson has organized people he has bussed in from other cities. We will organize white people to stand up for their interests and not be pushed around.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Frank, clearly, he`s a nut, not insanity, in a legal sense of the word. But this guy, I mean, he`s behind bars for trying to order a hit on this judge.

MAIN: Well, I mean, is that there might be somebody out there who believes in the same things that he does and may have been involved in this. I mean, one thing we do know, we talked to Judge Lefkow today. A colleague of mine at the "Chicago Sun-Times" talked to her. She was tearful. She was somewhat angry, I mean, very angry, actually, about this.

She said that, quote, "If somebody was angry at me, they should have come after me." And what she also told us is that she received telephone calls on Sunday night. And on those calls, it indicated that the call was coming in from a correctional center somewhere in this country, not here in Chicago, but somewhere else. She wouldn`t talk anymore about the case because she didn`t want to jeopardize the investigation.

GRACE: Let me go to Ken Cunniff, a friend and colleague of the judge`s family.

Ken, excuse my voice. Can you tell me about the judge`s family?

KEN CUNNIFF, COLLEAGUE & FRIEND OF JUDGE`S SLAIN HUSBAND: The judge`s family was Michael and her four daughters. Michael was very close to the judge and to the four daughters. Michael was a very strong believer in his faith, his family and his friends. As you probably have heard by now, Michael was a Lay Minister in his church.

Nothing more was more important to Michael than hi relationship with his wife and with his daughters. Michael was very active in his community. He had friends which he had made over many, many years in this community. He also had numerous friends in his legal community. All are very saddened, obviously, by this very tragic, tragic incident.

GRACE: Gosh. You know, Bill Spielberger, when judges become targets and their families become targets, we`re in a lot of trouble.

WILLIAM SPIELBERGER, FRIEND & CO-WORKER OF JUDGE`S SLAIN HUSBAND: We are. In some ways, an assault on a judge and a judge`s family is an assault on our judicial system. In a way, it`s an assault on our entire democratic system. I just hope that this doesn`t have a carry-over effect on the way that justices administer in our federal and state courts throughout the country.

GRACE: Well, already people at the courthouse are afraid they`ll become targets.

SPIELBERGER: They are. I hope that that fear doesn`t extend to their life outside the bench.

GRACE: Back to you, Ken. Isn`t it true that the victim was very involved in indigent rights work, civil rights work?

CUNNIFF: Actually, he devoted his entire life to working with indigent people. I first met Michael when I was a freshman in law school and he was a staff attorney for the Legal Assistance Foundation.

He was working on making sure that people who were going to be moved in an urban renewal project for a college to be placed in a local neighborhood were getting the proper kinds of reimbursement that the law provided. And I watched Mike firsthand going out and talking to people, long into the night, and working with these people. Everything he`s done has always been for the betterment of the people with whom he was with.

GRACE: And you know what else, Ken? So many lawyers are just out for money. That`s all they care about is making more money. But this guy, her husband, was so different. He worked for the poor and the indigent. And she was a judge. Judges don`t make a lot of money. They`re public servants.

CUNNIFF: I agree with that. And, in fact, Michael not only worked with indigents but he really cared about what he did. I mean, two of Michael`s cases for his indigent clients he ended up arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court. That virtually never happens to any attorneys to have one case, much less two cases, heard by the Supreme Court.

Mike was tenacious. Once he started working on something, he continued until he got the results he wanted or until he could take no further action on behalf of the client.

GRACE: And very quickly to Frank Main.

Frank, you know, you have got one guy that ordered a hit on this judge, Matt Hale. He is an extremist. He is a bigot, a racist. He hated this judge. Do you think he is a lead suspect tonight?

MAIN: I can`t say that he himself is the lead suspect. In fact, the police, who are not releasing a lot of information about what they know so far, are saying they`re looking at all sorts of things. They are, of course, looking at the Hale connection. But like I said before, it would be very difficult for him to get communication out of the federal lock-up that he`s in at this moment. So I can`t say that.

GRACE: But Frank, Frank, he had an organization. Don`t you remember the World Church of the Creator?

MAIN: That`s what started this whole thing. And what`s really interesting about this is that it`s essentially a case of misplaced anger. Actually, Judge Lefkow ruled in his favor in a civil case in which the World Church of the Creator was being sued for using another organization`s name. The appeals court overturned her. She had to come back and rule against him. So, if this is because the judge had ruled against Matthew Hale, you know, she had initially found for him.

GRACE: Well, I can tell you this much: I have interviewed Hale many times and he is full of hate.

Gentlemen, thank you for being with us.

Quick break. We`ll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LESLIE CROCKER SNYDER, FMR. N.Y. STATE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: The only way you can expect judges, whether it`s in Iraq, Chicago or New York, to be able to do their jobs if they`re dealing with extreme roots or violent groups is to provide them the kind of protection I`ve provided by the New York City Police Department, because they take their job very seriously.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNYDER: And other than domestic disputes in which there are occasional violent outbreaks, I think that criminals who belong to lawless and extreme groups have absolutely no codes. And unlike the old "La Cosa Nostra," where, you know, they knew enough not to kill judges or cops because the full force of the law would come upon them, extreme hate groups don`t feel that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Welcome back everybody.

A federal judge, was her family targeted because of some of her rulings? This judge came home to find her mother and her husband murdered, execution -style. Not only what does it mean for her family, but what does it mean for our justice system?

Let me go straight back out to Frank Main with "The Chicago Sun- Times." Are there any clues, Frank, at all? What do we know tonight?

MAIN: There are a handful of clues, and nobody is sure they`re directly connected. One of the things that yesterday morning there were two guys that were parked in a red car nearby her house across the street from a church. Both had military-style hair cuts. They were smoking cigarettes. It`s about 8:00 a.m. And the administrator for the church came out and said, "You guys have got to leave. You`re in a no-parking zone."

He said it was really kind of unusual for somebody to be parked there, you know. Looking in hindsight at what happened to the Judge Lefkow`s family, you have got to wonder who these people were. That was also in the police report that was taken after the murder.

GRACE: What times were the shootings?

MAIN: The police believe that the shootings were sometime between 10:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. yesterday. The reason they believe that is that Judge Lefkow`s mother had spoken on the phone to her granddaughter about 10:30 a.m. And Judge Lefkow came home from work to find this horrific sight at about 5:30 p.m. yesterday. So, that`s the time frame that they`re working in.

GRACE: And another issue, Ken Cunniff, wasn`t her husband in a cast?

CUNNIFF: Right. Michael had injured his Achilles` tendon playing tennis and was walking around on crutches. That`s the only reason he was home. It was a total fluke that he was there, and as you`re aware...

GRACE: Oh, man.

CUNNIFF: ... the mother had just come to visit and had been staying there for a while. And nobody who would have been casing the house probably would have realized that Michael and his mother-in-law were present in the house when whoever it was broke in.

GRACE: But, Bill Spielberger, I don`t think anybody was casing the house to burgle it because burglars very rarely march two victims downstairs in the basement, make them lay down, face down, then execute them. I mean, can you imagine the scene? This is a 89-year-old lady, her mother and her husband in a cast, his leg in a cast.

Can you imagine these two hobbling down the stairs of the basement, then being forced to lay face down to be murdered? And you know the husband had to know what was about to happen.

SPIELBERGER: Yes. You think about the fear and dread that must have gone through both their minds before this terrible thing happened. Also, I think about Judge Lefkow coming home.

GRACE: Oh.

SPIELBERGER: And it must be everyone`s worst nightmare to come into a home, find it quiet, and then come upon that scene that she did. It`s just tragic.

GRACE: Can you imagine? I mean, just think about it. We talk about these cases like they`re just stories. But can you imagine coming to your home, calling out. Nobody answers. You start looking around. Finally, you have to go down to the basement to see your mom and your husband face down murdered like this.

This was not a burglary. This was not a sex attack. And it happened in broad daylight, between 10:30 and 5:00 in the afternoon.

Were there any other big cases, Ken Cunniff, that the judge was working on?

CUNNIFF: Not that I`m aware of. I mean, every federal judge handles a number of cases in which somebody`s going to walk away unhappy. And every federal judge...

GRACE: Yes.

CUNNIFF: ... has to sentence defendants to substantial jail times. And, obviously, those defenders were not happy. But the thing to keep in mind which is -- this is the first time to my knowledge we have ever had a situation in which the family of a sitting federal judge was ever murdered. There have been a few instances in which city and federal judges were murdered, but there never was an incident in which it reached the family. This is truly unusual. It`s truly horrific.

GRACE: Well, I know you guys don`t want to rush to judgment, but let`s get real for a moment, Frank Main, OK? You got Matt Hale, an admitted racist, an extremist full of hate. And he just tried to order a hit on this judge. And now, a hit takes place in the judge`s home.

MAIN: What I can tell you is that the authorities are looking at Hale and his family. I know they have spoken to his brother who is recently out of jail. They are, you know, they`re not leaving that angle uncovered. But I have no idea if he had anything to do with it. They`re not sharing that information with me. But, obviously, because he was convicted of soliciting her murder, it is something that they`re taking very seriously.

GRACE: And very quickly, Ken Cunniff, they have four daughters, right, and one is still in high school?

CUNNIFF: Correct. And, in fact, she was the one that came home in the midday to pick up some gym clothes. Thank god she didn`t stay around.

GRACE: And she didn`t see either her father or her grandmother?

CUNNIFF: It certainly would appear as though she didn`t.

GRACE: Man, what a story. And what this means to the rest of the judicial system, to our justice system, is overwhelming. When judges, and prosecutors, and public defenders quit doing their job because they`re afraid, this could be the death knell to our justice system until this killer is caught.

Gentlemen, thank you again for speaking out.

Let`s quickly go to "Trial Tracking." The prosecution rests in the Sarah Johnson trial. Remember the 16-year-old Idaho girl on trial for the murders of both parents? Her lawyers have now put on their own team of blood experts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL HOWARD, FORENSIC SCIENTIST: There was an extremely thorough examination done by several laboratories of Sarah Johnson`s clothing and absolutely no blood was detected. Reports indicated that there was absolutely no blood on Sarah, her hair. Swabbings were taken, the top of her socks. You simply cannot be in that shooting environment and not get blood on you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: No blood, no guilt, says her defense attorney, Bob Pangburn. I guess he hopes the jury`s going to forget about his client`s pink bath robe, remember that? The cops found her bath robe in the trash can covered in blood.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because that`s what this case is all about, the defendant getting what he wants. And if he can`t get someone else to do it, he`ll do it himself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: In L.A. today, closing arguments in the Robert Blake murder trial. Blake is facing life behind bars for the murder of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.

Tonight, from Atlanta, defense attorney Chris Pixley, in Charlotte, North Carolina, defense lawyer John Mobley, here in New York, psychologist Anne Renee Testa.

And Chris Pixley, I`ve got a little hint for you. I`m ready for you, buddy. I`ve got my Sudafed spray. I`m high on that. I`ve got my Tylenol Flu A.M. I`ve got my Halls cough drops. There`s no stopping me, buddy. So don`t think you`re getting anything over on me.

CHRIS PIXLEY, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I`ve been watching for the last 10 minutes thinking I might actually get a word in tonight.

GRACE: Just because I`m sick, forget about it.

ANNE RENEE TESTA, PSYCHOLOGIST: She`s a wild woman.

GRACE: Hey, Chris, what do you think about the closing arguments today? Did you see Blake sitting there looking all pitiful?

PIXLEY: Yes, I did see Blake. Actually, you know, Blake`s doing a good job as far as I`m concerned. He hasn`t jumped up and had anything to say. They didn`t put him on the stand. He certainly the most damage to the case in talking to Barbara Walters.

So, you know, I think strangely the closing argument for the prosecution takes four and a half hours in a case where they haven`t been able to tie Robert Blake in any way physically to the crime. I think they probably should have tried to get in and get out.

GRACE: Oh, I`m sorry. What about the gunshot powder?

PIXLEY: I`m sorry, the gunshot residue? The five particles found on his hand? Well, you know, when the defense ran a simulation using the actual murder weapon, the shooter had 2,400 particles of gunshot residue on his hand. I think that that strongly refutes the idea that Robert Blake was the shooter in this case unless he was wearing, you know, one of those suits that they wear down to the CDC to keep germs away. You know, it just isn`t possible.

GRACE: OK, good call, Chris Pixley.

But let me go to you, John Mobley. I think you can be a little bit more reasonable than Pixley. John, I bet if I did a gunshot residue on your hands right now, there wouldn`t be a speck of residue on them. Why? Because you haven`t fired a gun.

You and I both know that, with residue tests, if you shoot a gun and you do this, you can get rid of almost all of it. What was this man doing with gunshot residue on his hands?

JOHN MOBLEY, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, Nancy, you have to keep in mind, number one, he does own a gun which presumes at some point either, a, he plans on firing the gun or has fired it in the past. I think it`s probably...

GRACE: In the past? In the past? John, please. I respect you. You know darn well he wouldn`t have gunshot residue on his hands unless he had just fired a gun.

MOBLEY: Well, the problem is, you know, as Chris indicated, it`s not a significant amount. And I don`t think what the prosecution has done is exclude any other reasonable hypothesis for how that small amount of gun powder residue got on the hands. And I think that`s a problem for them. It`s not strong enough.

GRACE: Well, I think between that and the time line -- he claims that a gun that he had in his pants went from his crotch to his ankle in the restaurant and he didn`t feel anything, then had to go back in to get the gun.

OK, Dr. Anne Renee Testa, help me out here. Dr. Anne Renee Testa is a psychologist. And, boy, do we need a shrink tonight. What do you make of it? And what about this crucifying Bonny Lee Bakley because she is a bad girl? She`s getting crucified in that court because they`re making her out to be some kind of a tramp and her life is somehow not as valuable as yours or mine.

ANNE RENEE TESTA, PSYCHOLOGIST: And you know what? What difference does it make? Suppose she is a tramp. Suppose it`s all of those things. She doesn`t deserve to be shot. She doesn`t deserve that. And they`re deflecting it.

GRACE: What about the time line?

TESTA: So what about the time line?

GRACE: Well, I think the time line is very damning for him. Because he is with her, he goes in the restaurant to get his gun, and he comes back in five minutes and she`s dead. That is a hell of a marksman.

TESTA: Yes, right. Well, but he is a marksman, isn`t he? Wasn`t he a marksman? Insofar as the gunshot stuff, I mean, that`s proof. That`s a big deal. That is a big deal.

GRACE: What about him not taking the stand?

TESTA: Taking the stand -- I think, frankly, if he took the stand, he would fry himself. I really do. And you know, if you notice, if you watch him, in the courtroom, he was sort of masturbating his hair. He was sitting there, and he was doing this constantly. He wanted to make sure...

GRACE: I did not say that. She said that.

TESTA: Well, look, you know, I`m a psychologist. He wanted to make sure that he was there and he was alive. He just kept on stroking his hair. Imagine putting him up on the stand.

GRACE: You know, you use different words than I would have used.

We`re taking a quick break. We`re going to look at not only Robert Blake but Michael Jackson, as well.

As you know, here on our show, we desperately want to help find missing people. Tonight, take a look at Rodrigo Rios. Nine-years-old, abducted June 2003, Carpinteria, California. If you have any information on Rodrigo Rios, please call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 1-800-THE-LOST.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everybody. I`m Christi Paul. Let`s get you your "Headline Prime Newsbreak" right now.

Kobe Bryant and the woman who accused him of rape have agreed to a settlement in the civil suit against him. No financial terms of that settlement have been released. But you might recall last year the woman dropped plans to pursue criminal charges against Bryant.

Well, he`s only been the job for two weeks, but new Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff says the threat of terror is very real. Today on Capitol Hill, Chertoff announced plans to review what works and what doesn`t in his department. Chertoff says terrorists think outside the box, and that`s what he wants his staffers to do.

And if you have not filed your taxes yet, here is something that may inspire you. The Internal Revenue Service reports that federal tax refunds have jumped an average of $200 for early filers. The IRS has also seen more returns filed electronically this year with e-filing. You can get your return in half the time.

That`s the news for now. I`m Christi Paul.

GRACE: Michael Jackson back in court again today. The state`s case against him goes on. Jackson is still reeling from the Bashir testimony yesterday as well as that BBC documentary that showed him snugged up with the 13-year-old boy.

Let`s go straight to the courthouse. "Celebrity Justice" correspondent, Jane Velez-Mitchell, is with us.

Jane, I`m all ready. I have got my throat spray. I`m ready to do battle with you tonight. What happened in court?

JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL, "CELEBRITY JUSTICE": Well, it was a good day for the prosecution in court today, Nancy. They had a very feisty P.R. lady on who said she was hired after the Bashir documentary by Michael Jackson`s team for damage control. She said it was a disaster of 25 on a scale of 1 to 10.

And then she said she became very concerned by one of the unindicted co- conspirators, the alleged unindicted co-conspirator Mark Schaffel, who called her and said the family, the family that would later accuse Jackson, has fled Neverland. And he seemed very agitated. And she wondered why and became suspicious.

And then later he called back and said the situation has been contained, which made her more suspicious. She told a colleague, "Don`t tell me they`ve hunted this family down like dogs and brought them back to the ranch." And then later that colleague told her, "Don`t worry. We have the mother on tape. And we`re going to make her look like a" -- this is a quote now -- "crack whore."

GRACE: OK, wait a minute. Jane, you`re telling me that the witness today said that way back when Jackson`s people said they were going to make the boy`s mother look like a ho?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: That`s exactly what I`m telling you. This feisty lady got on the stand and said that. So that was a home run for the prosecution today.

GRACE: Chris Pixley, response?

PIXLEY: Well, you know, we`re leaving out the part of the story that involves the cross-examination of this woman. Some of the testimony, Nancy, is that she was hired by people other than Michael Jackson. She took her direction by people other than Michael Jackson. She never met Michael Jackson, never went to the Jackson ranch, never met the accuser or his family. And after being on retainer for less than a week, less than a week, she was fired because she wouldn`t sign a confidentiality agreement.

And what she`s she doing now? She`s testifying...

GRACE: Wait a minute...

PIXLEY: ... and telling the whole world that she was on retainer for Michael Jackson, and she is his P.R. person.

GRACE: Chris, Chris, if Jackson didn`t have anything to hide, why did he need her to sign a confidentiality agreement?

PIXLEY: Nancy, you know, when you sign up a P.R. person to help spin a story that`s put out there by you, good or bad, you know, you may very well want to keep those people from going around town and saying, "I`m Jackson`s P.R. person. He had a problem. This is what I fixed for him." There`s nothing wrong with that.

GRACE: Anne Renee.

TESTA: I think it`s a deflection. I think it`s just a deflection. That`s all. I mean, the idea that they`re calling her a crack whore. So what? So what if she was? So what if she was?

I think that the parents need to be hung up by their thumbs anyway, Nancy. I mean, they`re just as guilty as Michael is for what they did to allow their child to stay there.

GRACE: Well, right now, Jackson`s the one on trial, not the mother.

TESTA: Exactly.

GRACE: And what I`m asking you about, is there an attempt to smear this woman?

TESTA: Sure, there is. Sure, there is. If they make her look bad, then their child looks bad. Then they think that the child was let on to lie. And, in fact, I don`t believe that that child is lying at all. You can`t lie about stuff like that.

GRACE: Jane, how did the jury react?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, it was shocking, when you hear those kinds of words in court. It kind of throws you back. But, again, they are very stoic. They are taking notes. They are listening intently.

And Chris Pixley does make a point. Tom Mesereau had his own agenda on cross-examination. He is trying to distance Michael Jackson from these alleged indicted co-conspirators and sort of unhook that caboose, and leave it go. Because he tried to make the point that Michael Jackson wasn`t aware of any of the actions of these people and may have not only not been aware but that these alleged unindicted co-conspirators may have been scheming and plotting against Michael Jackson. So there could have been another conspiracy he was floating by the alleged unindicted co- conspirators against Michael Jackson. Hard to follow, but that`s what was presented in court today.

GRACE: OK, Jane, what does it say to you that at the very get-go Jackson`s people are saying, "The boy and his mother fled the ranch"?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, it certainly dovetails very neatly with the prosecution`s theory that there was this conspiracy, these 28 overt acts that they have alleged, to keep this family locked up at Neverland. And there are some other evidence that they`re going to present that there was a note at the security station saying, "Don`t let them off." And that this was part of the plot to whisk them away, away from the media, and off to ultimately Brazil. But, again, Tom Mesereau, on cross-examination, is now floating his own conspiracy theory. So we have dueling conspiracy theories at this point.

GRACE: Guys, take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN BASHIR, HOST OF BBC DOCUMENTARY: Is that really appropriate for a man, a grown man, to be doing that? How do you respond to that?

MICHAEL JACKSON, SINGER: I feel sorry for them because that`s judging someone who just wants to really help people. Why can`t you share your bed? The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: That`s the ABC version of the BBC documentary by Bashir.

Very quickly, to you, John Mobley, it seems as if they were holding the boy and his mom at the ranch. Their own words were, "Oh my god, they fled the ranch."

MOBLEY: Well, you know, I think when you think about that P.R. witness, you`ve got to take it with a grain of salt. Whenever you have a high-profile trial -- you look at some of the high-profile trials over the last decade -- there`s always somebody that wants to somehow profit from some knowledge they`re claiming about the case and be a star witness.

GRACE: How is this woman, Ann Gabriel, profiting from anything? She is not getting any money.

MOBLEY: Yet. Yet. For the same reason she wouldn`t want to sign a confidentially agreement. She could write a book...

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: Why don`t you just accept she could be telling the truth? Is that so hard for you?

MOBLEY: But you`ve got to concede, Nancy, that every high-profile trial, there are people that come forward that claim to have information to put them in the spotlight. That happens in every high-profile trial. You`ve got to understand that.

And that`s something -- and I think, unless her testimony is corroborated by the independent witnesses that don`t have any bias or financial motive, then I think that`s how she is going to be perceived.

GRACE: OK, Jane, what were the highlights of her testimony? What was the point of Ann Gabriel taking the stand?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, her point was to show that the prosecution has a real case, that there was this alleged conspiracy, that there`s evidence to back up this alleged conspiracy, that it`s not something that Tom Sneddon is just pulling out of thin air, that she herself saw evidence of it.

And we were calling her the iron lady, because she was feisty. Tom Mesereau conducted a very, very long cross-examination of this woman to the point where the judge scolded him at one point and said, "You`ve asked the same question ten times. Look at the jury. They`re getting tired of hearing this. Stop repeating the questions and just get on with presenting your case."

And so he was very contrite and he took that to heart. In fact, when he finished his cross-examination, there was applause in the jury -- in the overflow press room because it had gone on that long. But she stood up to her point and said, "This is what I heard."

GRACE: So, are you saying that Mesereau did not score a lot of points on cross?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: No, I think what he scored was, even though he didn`t get her to admit a lot of the things that he was suggesting, he got those ideas in the jurors mind, that the alleged unindicted co-conspirators were throwing Michael Jackson to the wolves, that they were letting him hang himself, that they may have had a plot, in fact, to let him fall on his face so that he would lose his share of the Beatles` catalogue.

GRACE: Jane, Jane, so, the defense is, "Everybody`s plotting against Michael Jackson"?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: You got it. Because...

GRACE: Even his own people?

(CROSSTALK)

VELEZ-MITCHELL: ... you`ve got to look and say, is everybody -- the family of the accuser`s out to get him. They want a mark. And now the alleged unindicted co-conspirators are all plotting to get Michael Jackson. Everybody`s trying to get Michael Jackson. And that may have a credibility issue down the road for Mesereau. I mean, how many people can be out to get Michael Jackson at any one time?

TESTA: Don`t you know? It looks like a big smoke screen to me. That`s all it is. Are we talking about pedophilia now? Every time that we talk about something else, about them being prisoners, about this or that, we are going away from the real topic, the real deal.

GRACE: Wait a minute. Now, remember, in this indictment, there`s all this these other counts like holding him hostage, feeding him liquor, so the prosecutor has got to prove all those other things, too, in addition to the molestation.

Everybody, quick break. We`re live in California for the latest in the Jackson case. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACKSON: When they`re going to sleep, I tuck them in. I put a little like music on, do a little story time, read a book. It`s very sweet. Put the fireplace on, give them hot milk. We have cookies. It`s very charming, very sweet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Well, the prosecutor says it was not charming at all, that it was child molestation. Welcome back, I`m Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with us.

Straight back out to California, Jane Velez-Mitchell, so in the end, how did Ann Gabriel come off?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: I think she came off as somebody who was determined to stick to her guns. And I think that ultimately the jurors probably respected that.

She did have credibility issues, though. She said she was an expert in crisis management. And then they asked her, "Well, how many other celebrities have you dealt with?" And she mentioned one guy that nobody had ever heard of. So people kind of scoffed at that.

But just for her sheer grit, she got some points. Because she was in that chair for a long time. And a lot of other people might have crumbled and just become very insecure. And she was feisty right up until the end.

GRACE: Hey, Jane, what do you think were her main points?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, her main points were that she became very alarmed after joining the Michael Jackson P.R. team about the goings on, the fact that this alleged unindicted co-conspirator would call and express such alarm and agitation. She said Marc Schaffel was highly agitated when he called and said the family had left Neverland. And she just wondered about that.

So you have to wonder listening to that why was he so agitated? What would be so wrong with this family leaving? So, in a sense, she does very much back up the prosecution`s story.

But she also said that she was very frustrated that none of these other people on the Jackson team would do anything that she suggested to help Jackson. She wanted to be proactive. She wanted to get out there after the Bashir documentary and do something, get on the talk shows and tell Jackson`s side of the story. And they stopped her at every turn. And that made her suspicious about their motivations. Why were they basically letting Michael Jackson out to hang himself?

GRACE: Well, Jane, did Mark Geragos` name come up today?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes, he did. And he was part of this Michael Jackson P.R. team. And she mentioned the fact that she was actually sitting down in a chair about to do an interview with a syndicated show when she claims Geragos called and said -- yanked her off, said, "Don`t do the interview."

And she was wondering why is a criminal defense attorney yanking me off the air and telling me not to do this interview? She was wondering why he was so involved with something like that. He also apparently was the one who was urging her to sign the confidentiality agreement.

GRACE: Jane, who are the other co-conspirators?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, we have Marc Schaffel, who was established in court today as a former gay porn producer. You have Ron Konitzer and Dieder Weisner (ph), the two Germans. You have Vinny Amen and Frank Tyson, who were the two...

GRACE: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The two Germans? Who are the two Germans?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, these two German businessmen featured very prominently in all of this. I mean, they are the ones who are handling Michael Jackson`s business affairs, according to the testimony we heard today, as the Bashir documentary airs.

And they`re the ones that she said were the ones who were not doing Michael Jackson justice, that seemed to be out to get him. And, in fact, Tom Mesereau got her to admit that she told sheriff`s investigators that she believed one of these alleged unindicted co-conspirators may have embezzled up to a million dollars from Michael Jackson.

Now, we have no proof of that. And we don`t want to say anything that is -- certainly they don`t have a chance to respond to, wherever they are. But that`s something that was mentioned in open court today.

GRACE: Okay, Jane, can you explain to the viewers in a nutshell -- Jackson`s on trial for child molestation, for feeding a kid wine, for keeping them there at Neverland against their will. That`s the gist of the charges. Whether the prosecution can prove them or not remains to be seen. But where do these other people fit in?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, they were the ones who were allegedly doing these 28 overt acts or many of them. In other words, Michael Jackson, as the defense is contending, wasn`t in the picture, so to speak. They were the ones doing the hands on things when this family had to get their passports to go to Brazil, their visas, when they were moved to a Calabasas hotel, when they were taken to the videographer`s home to do the rebuttal interview. All of these things required people to coordinate. And these alleged unindicted co-conspirators were allegedly doing all that coordination.

GRACE: Got you.

Hey, John Mobley, do you think any of these co-conspirators are going to crack and testify against Jackson?

MOBLEY: Of course. Don`t you know? Everybody`s out to get Michael Jackson. I`ll put it this way, Nancy...

GRACE: Oh, no, no, wait. Don`t start with me with the big conspiracy thing, OK?

MOBLEY: I`ll put it this way, Nancy: If I pick two people in the world to either sue or prosecute, it would be Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson, because the bottom line is, everybody hates them. Everybody thinks they`re weird. And whatever you throw against them is going to stick.

GRACE: OK, so the bottom line is your answer is, yes, you think they`ll crack?

MOBLEY: I`m certain they will.

GRACE: What about it, Chris?

PIXLEY: ... is that the reason that they are, quote, "alleged unindicted co-conspirators," is because the prosecutor really never had anything on them. There`s no teeth to this claim that the child and his family were held captive at the Neverland Ranch. And for that reason, they don`t need to testify. There`s nothing against them. There`s really no evidence against Michael Jackson.

GRACE: Hey, Chris?

PIXLEY: And when you lead with the woman, Nancy, that knew Michael Jackson or knew his camp for less than a week, you lead with her testimony, I think that you`ve got problems proving this false imprisonment claim.

GRACE: Well, Chris, I agree with you about leading with a strong witness. But they led with Bashir`s documentary which shows Jackson all snugged up with a little boy, OK? You know that hurt. But they could be taking it chronologically, Chris, where she came in at the beginning when all of this was about to crack wide open. I think they`re going chronologically.

And, Chris, what do you say to all those stewardesses that say they saw Jackson give the boy wine?

PIXLEY: Yes...

GRACE: You think they`re in on the conspiracy, Chris?

PIXLEY: You know, serving alcohol to a minor -- if the best that you can do is say that, well, I saw Michael -- you have got a flight attendant that saw Michael Jackson pouring wine in a coke can. The allegation isn`t that Michael Jackson was molesting children on airplanes or in airports. There`s just no teeth to that whatsoever. You`ve got to have somebody that says Michael Jackson -- I saw Michael Jackson using alcohol to ultimately reduce these children to a position where they were capable of being molested.

GRACE: Chris, Chris, I`ve got to go to break, but what I asked you was, "Do you think the stewardesses are in on it, too, that they`re part of the big plot against Jackson?" I`ll let you percolate on that just a moment.

We have got to go to break.

Tonight, update on the search for Jessica. Police are now focusing on a 3/4-mile radius around her home in Homosassa Springs, Florida. The Postal Service and NCME, Missing and Exploited Children, will deliver 42,000 flyers to homes and businesses in the area.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF JEFF DAWSY, CITRUS COUNTY POLICE DEPT.: This is just another piece of our investigative tools that we`re trying to use. I am very proud and honored that the postal authority would join us in trying to locate Jessie. I really believe that this may help. We need to reach out to some of the locals. They had to have seen something. Somebody had to know or have seen something. And this may just stir somebody that may have not seen the local or the national press, so...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Jessie went missing after her grandma tucked her into bed Wednesday. Next morning, her dad felt she was missing.

Any info, 352-726-4488.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: Welcome back, everybody.

Let`s go straight out to Chris Pixley. Final thoughts, friend?

PIXLEY: Final thoughts? Well, you know, it`s day two. I think ultimately Tom Mesereau probably is going to have to streamline his defense.

I, like you, Nancy, am concerned that if he`s pointing the finger at too many people the jury is going to become leery of his explanations for Michael Jackson. I think the focus needs to stay on the accuser and the accuser`s family for the defense.

GRACE: John Mobley?

MOBLEY: Tend to agree. Stay focused on the allegation. The bottom line is, if the person to whom this allegation was first made...

GRACE: John, John? You have to come up with something better than "Stay focused on the family."

MOBLEY: Well, it`s not the family, Nancy. Anyone that`s worked with child sexual assault cases knows, number one, that false allegations of sexual molestation do occur, first of all. The second things is, the most important part about allegations of sex abuse, sexual assaults, is the nature of how the allegations came out. And it`s not against the child, but against the source of that allegation.

GRACE: OK. Got you. Got you.

Dr. Anne Renee Testa?

TESTA: Nancy, as a psychologist, I can tell you, if you see the results of someone who`s been sexually abused, you have to take note. It ruins their lives. Their lives are done. They`re toasted. And I think that we have to go after this and have a look, a good, close look, and send him up.

GRACE: I want to thank all of my guests.

Jane Velez-Mitchell, Chris Pixley, John Mobley, and here in New York, Dr. Anne Renee Testa.

My biggest thank you to you for being with us tonight and inviting all of us into your homes. Stay tuned for headlines coming up next.

I`m Nancy Grace signing off for tonight. I hope you would join us here tomorrow night, 8 o`clock sharp. And, until then, good night, friend.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everyone. I`m Erica Hill with your "Headline Prime Newsbreak."

Kobe Bryant and the woman who accused him of rape have now agreed to a settlement in a civil suit against him. No financial terms have been released. Last year, the woman dropped plans to pursue criminal charges against Bryant.

A high school freshman is in custody in Tennessee, accused of killing a school bus driver as she was driving her route. Authorities say the 14- year-old who was charged with first-degree murder shot the female driver in front of 24 other students. A relative of the driver says she may have reported the boy the day before the shooting for using smokeless tobacco on the bus. The other students on board were not hurt.

A discovery overseas raises concerns about a possible terror attack against New York`s Grand Central Terminal. Spanish authorities uncovered a rough sketch of the train station during their investigation of last year`s Madrid train bombings.

We`re going to dive deeper into that coming up on "PRIME NEWS TONIGHT," when Mike Galanos joins me in just two minutes. We hope you`ll stick around.

END