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American Morning

Jury Deadlock in Killen Case; Holloway Investigation Continues

Aired June 21, 2005 - 08:00   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A massive five alarm fire rips through a historic area of Detroit, burning through the night, destroying several buildings.
On the verdict watch in the KKK murder trial, the jury splits but the judge orders them back to work. Will justice be served today, 41 years to the day since the crimes were committed? A live report is ahead.

And tracking Osama bin Laden. Does the CIA chief really know where the world's most wanted man is? And if yes, why not just go get him? We're on "Terror's Trail" on this AMERICAN MORNING.

ANNOUNCER: From the CNN broadcast center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Bill Hemmer.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good first day of summer shot out there, huh?

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, it's a beautiful day.

M. O'BRIEN: Eighty degrees, you're happy.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: And we appreciate it.

S. O'BRIEN: It's going to be a beautiful day. We have lots happening in the news today. We want to first get right to Carol Costello. She's got a look at some other stories that are making headlines this morning -- hey, Carol, good morning again.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.

Good morning to all of you.

Now in the news, investigators in Detroit are looking into what may have sparked a massive fire. Some 150 firefighters battled the flames throughout the night. This fire is apparently under control right now, but it is still smoldering. And you can see why. Most of the four story warehouse has been destroyed. At least two firefighters have been treated for minor injuries.

The search starts up again this morning for a young Scout who went missing from a Utah campsite. The Summit County sheriff says he's launching a criminal investigation into the disappearance of Brennan Hawkins, but stresses there are no signs of foul play at the moment. We're going to hear from the sheriff just ahead.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas are holding talks today in Jerusalem. It is their first meeting in months. The two leaders announced a cease-fire agreement in February. Israel's planned withdrawal from parts of Gaza is expected to dominate today's discussions.

John Bolton's nomination to the United Nations is back on hold. The Senate fell six votes short of the 60 needed to cut off debate on the nomination. Democrats say they want proof Bolton was not trying to spy on his rivals in the Bush administration and will continue to block his nomination until the White House produces those requested documents.

And Charles Jenkins is saying he's sorry. You might remember him. He's the former U.S. Army sergeant who deserted his squad and defected to North Korea some four decades ago. Speaking from his boyhood home in North Carolina, Jenkins said: "I let my soldiers down." He also called North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, an evil man. Jenkins is set to return to Japan today and he says he will never again come into the United States.

Remember, you can view more CNN reports online. Just visit cnn.com and click onto watch to check out free video from our most popular stories -- back to you.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, Carol, thanks a lot.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: Appreciate it.

Well, the judge in the Mississippi murder trial of a former Klansman has ordered the jury back to deliberations today even though members said last night that they were split six to six. Eighty-year- old Edgar Ray Killen is accused of being the mastermind in the murders of three civil rights workers 41 years ago today.

District Attorney Mark Duncan is prosecuting the case in Neshoba County.

He's in Philadelphia, Mississippi this morning.

It's nice to see you.

Thanks for talking with us.

After three hours, as we mentioned, six to six. The jurors say we're split.

How surprised are you by this?

MARK DUNCAN, NESHOBA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Well, I'm not really surprised, Soledad. It's really too early to get a handle on exactly where the jury is. They've only had the case a few hours. They've barely had time to go through all the jury instructions. So I expect they're near the beginning of their deliberations and hopefully they'll make some progress today and we'll get a verdict.

S. O'BRIEN: At the same time, legal experts, legal analysts say it's not a good sign to have even the movement toward a potential deadlock for the prosecution because, of course, we're talking about a six-six split, not, you know, an 11-1 split.

What do you think they're stuck on? What do you think is something that didn't resonate in your argument to them?

DUNCAN: Well, I think that it's really kind of useless to speculate on what they're considering at this time. I think it's important to remember that we don't know how they're split. This jury has three options that -- three different verdicts that they could reach and obviously they're split on two of them, but we don't know which two they are.

S. O'BRIEN: There are factors, of course, that make this case particularly unusual. As you well know, the case is old, very old, 41 years -- the 41st anniversary today. The defendant very frail, falling asleep sometimes in the courtroom, has to be nudged by his own attorney to kind of wake up. And then, of course, you're talking about opinions that could be really well ingrained in people.

To what degree are those three factors playing a role in the decisions that the jury is making today?

DUNCAN: Well, I can't speak for the jury, but all those things that you mentioned are things that we knew that we would have to deal with when we started the case. And what we tried to do is get the jury to focus on the evidence. And they promised us in jury selection that they would ignore those things and decide the case on the evidence that they heard.

And I think that they will honor that and work hard toward getting a verdict that they feel is fair.

S. O'BRIEN: Do you think Killen's condition, the fact that he's frail, is getting sympathy from jurors, potentially?

DUNCAN: Well, they, it could be. I mean we're all human and we have natural sympathy for older people and people who are having some kind of health problems, that type of thing. But, again, we have cautioned this jury to set those things aside. And hopefully they will.

S. O'BRIEN: Today is the 41st anniversary, as I mentioned, of the murders of James Cheney and Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. One of the brothers of one of the victims was quoted as saying: "There is an underlying current of fear."

What do you think he meant by that? Do you think that he's talking about as this trial goes on, right now, people are still fearful in that community? DUNCAN: I don't think so. The Klan is pretty much non-existent here, maybe a straggler here or there. I think for the biggest problem that we've had to deal with has been that people here have viewed the attention that this case has brought over the years as a negative. And they see that, you know, a lot of people do see that the bringing of these charges now is kind of a here we go again attitude.

But there's also a lot of support for it in the community. And, again, that's something that we talked to the jurors about before they were empanelled and hopefully they will be able to set those things aside, too. And if they can just reach a verdict based on the evidence, I'll be satisfied.

S. O'BRIEN: What if they can't reach a verdict? What if, at the end of the day -- and I recognize that we're very far from this point -- but what if they can't reach a verdict and at the end there's no clear message from the jurors about where this stands? Is that sort of the worst case scenario, they neither have innocence or guilt?

DUNCAN: Well, I think everybody would like to see a verdict one way or another. And I'm sure this jury will work hard to try to do that. If they can't reach one, then we'll have to deal with that, also. But we'll wait until that happens and go from there.

S. O'BRIEN: Mark Duncan is the Neshoba County district attorney, joining us this morning.

Thanks for your time.

We appreciate it.

DUNCAN: OK.

Thank you for having me.

S. O'BRIEN: My pleasure -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: The family of a missing Alabama girl is calling on a private search and rescue group to help look for her. eighteen-year- old Natalee Holloway has been missing for more than three weeks now.

Chris Lawrence is live in Palm Beach, Aruba -- Chris, is there any hope at this point that she'll be found alive?

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the police -- a short answer -- the police say they still consider that one of the possibilities. But when we asked prosecutors about that fourth suspect who was arrested on Friday, they said he's accused of the same crimes as the other three -- murder one, murder two and kidnapping leading to murder.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

LAWRENCE (voice-over): Suspect Steve Croes covered his face with cuffed hands as police brought him to court. A judge ordered him kept in custody for up to one more week while his ex-wife waited anxiously with their young son, convinced Croes is innocent.

JANET CROES, SUSPECT'S EX-WIFE (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): He's a charming person, a very good father and very hard working. I'm 100 percent sure he's not involved in this case.

LAWRENCE: Croes works as a D.J. on this Aruba party boat. His boss says he's an able seaman, but wouldn't tell us whether the boat was out to sea the night Natalee Holloway disappeared three weeks ago. Prosecutors won't explain how Croes is tied to the case.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm sorry, I can't tell you.

LAWRENCE: But Natalee's family is still confident police are making progress.

GEORGE "JUG" TWITTY, NATALEE HOLLOWAY'S STEPFATHER: They know that the people they have in custody and the judge know more than they're saying. And it's a matter of, you know, bringing out the truth.

LAWRENCE: The judge is Paul Van Der Sloot, who was in no mood to talk as he rushed home from the police station last weekend. He was questioned two days in a row, but only as a witness. Van der Sloot's son Joran and two friends were seen walking out of a bar with Natalee the night she disappeared. All three are being held as suspects in the case.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where would you hide an object?

LAWRENCE: Natalee Holloway's family still hopes to find her alive. They've been searching this small island, looking for anything investigators may have missed.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

LAWRENCE: And to give them a hand, that Texas search team will be flying in tonight with three certified search dogs and some sonar equipment -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Chris, give us a sense of what the relationship is like between the Holloways and the Aruban authorities. The fact that they have hired a private team to engage in the search might show that they have some problems and might cause some friction down there.

LAWRENCE: Well, hired a private team to help, not replace the efforts of the police. The relationship is actually pretty good. Some people have been reporting that the family has filed a lawsuit against the police. That's not true. They sent a letter to prosecutors basically asking to join the prosecution's case as the victimized party. It's a pretty common procedure under Dutch law that gives them access to more information on how the case is progressing. And it's automatic. No one even has to rule on it.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Chris Lawrence, thank you very much -- Soledad. S. O'BRIEN: Well, it is a beautiful day in the neighborhood, if you're here in New York City. Less beautiful if you're down South in Florida, right, Chad -- good morning.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I was going to say, Soledad, it depends on what neighborhood you're in, exactly.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: Still to come, the search for a missing Scout enters its fourth full day. The sheriff on the case tells us whether it's time may be running out.

S. O'BRIEN: Also, the director of the CIA says he has an excellent idea where Osama bin Laden is. But what exactly does that mean?

M. O'BRIEN: And cracking the code on a sculpture made famous by best-selling novel. We'll meet the artist behind the mysterious Kryptos.

That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: This morning there is still no sign of an 11-year- old Cub Scout in Utah and a criminal investigation is now underway. Brennan Hawkins was last seen on Friday afternoon. He was at a popular Scout camp in a rugged mountain area just east of Salt Lake City.

Dave Edmunds is the Wasatch County sheriff.

He joins us near the Uinta Mountains.

Nice to see you again, sheriff.

Thank you very much for talking with us.

I know the search yesterday was a little bit disappointing. Give me a sense of what the focus is for today.

SHERIFF DAVE EDMUNDS, WASATCH COUNTY, UTAH: You know, we've been concentrating on the river the last couple of days and there's so much ground to cover there. We're going to be focusing a lot of our attention again on the river. We feel like we've knocked down a lot of the lower ground area, the flat ground or what we're calling down from the ridge, pretty much we've knocked that out and we've eliminated most of those areas.

We're now looking for some high probability areas and we have ways that we go about determining that. But, you know, right now, in this little valley that we're searching near the Scout camp, the vast majority of the high probability areas have been, they've been covered. So the river is one of the big areas that we still need to cover. S. O'BRIEN: Let's talk a little bit about what's known about Brennan's last movements. He had been part of this climbing wall. And I guess he took off his equipment and headed down less than a quarter of a mile to the mess camp at this entire campsite. It seems like it, or at least it sounds like it from descriptions that it's kind of a straight shot.

Where do you think he could have gone off the path?

EDMUNDS: Well, again, it's all speculative at this point. We just don't know. We don't know if he decided maybe to return back to his tent. We don't know if he decided to maybe go to another portion of the camp. Right now those are some of the questions that we're trying to get answered. We're talking to folks that were in the area, both Scouts and some of the leaders, and trying to determine who saw him and when and we're trying to nail down a time line right now. And that's part of what my detectives are working on.

S. O'BRIEN: I've heard you're also doing background checks on the adults at the camp.

Is that correct?

EDMUNDS: Yes, that's something that we are doing and we'll continue to do. We want to make sure that we don't have any predators up there or people that may have slipped through the cracks. But, again, you know, it's important to note that at this point we don't have any information related to that. But we're just being, you know, prudent investigators and looking at every possible angle on this.

S. O'BRIEN: Sheriff, you had thousands of folks out over the weekend searching for this little boy. I know that number has dwindled into the hundreds.

Are you concerned that people are losing interest in this case and not helping out with the search?

EDMUNDS: You know, I haven't seen any of that. Most people are very interested in this case. It's kind of taken over the state here in Utah and there's been a large number of volunteers that have come up and helped. And obviously on the train search and rescue end, which I am in charge of, you know, we need professionals. We need search and rescue folks to get in the river. We just absolutely can't use the volunteers where we're searching and where we're focusing today.

But, you know, we certainly can use the volunteers with the efforts of largely who's in charge of that other search, and doing a great job down there. And we -- they've helped us eliminate a lot of the area. So they've been extremely helpful and we're happy that they're here.

S. O'BRIEN: The boy's parents obviously distraught. We've heard from them a little bit.

Thank you for talking with us and updating us on the search this morning.

Sheriff Dave Edmunds this morning.

EDMUNDS: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning, cracking the code on the last hidden message of the CIA's Kryptos. And what is the famous sculpture's link to the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code?" We've got some answers to those questions just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: A follow-up to a story we first told you about earlier this month about two Cuban brothers and one's sacrifice for the other. Well, Bernardo Heredia and his brother Fidel are back together. They're now in Las Vegas.

Bernardo was stranded in Cuba after he let Fidel use his U.S. residency card to get out of the country. Well, Fidel sent the documents back to Bernardo, but then he was detained in Cuba because authorities were onto him.

Well, after a flurry of international news stories, the Cuban government allowed Bernardo to fly back to Mexico on Sunday. That's where he was reunited with his wife and his daughter. And that happened on Father's Day. So, some good news and some conclusion there -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: A good way to spend Father's Day.

Well, now that we know who Deep Throat was, there's another longstanding Washington mystery that needs to be solved.

And as David Ensor reports, clues in the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" have unleashed thousands of amateur code breakers on a sculpture at CIA headquarters.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is called Kryptos, which is Greek for "hidden." On the sculpture at the CIA are several secret messages. Fifteen years after it was created, just one tantalizing section remains to be decoded.

Artist Jim Sanborn created Kryptos.

(on camera): Does anybody know, besides you, what that says?

JIM SANBORN, SCULPTOR: Not really.

ENSOR: Nobody?

SANBORN: I don't think so.

ENSOR (voice-over): Since the CIA would not let us meet him at its site, Sanborn showed us the unsolved secret section on a sister sculpture of his at Washington's Hirschorn Museum.

SANBORN: Those last characters begin right here with this question mark. Go with these three characters...

ENSOR: O-B-K it starts with.

SANBORN: That's right. This line and then this line and then it ends with CAR right here.

ENSOR (voice-over): Code crackers, professional and amateur, are obsessing over solving the mystery since Dan Brown's best-seller "The Da Vinci Code" featured Kryptos references on its cover. His publisher's Web site heightens the intrigue. "Disguised on the jacket of "The Da Vinci Code," it says, "numerous encrypted messages hint at the subject matter of Dan Brown's next novel."

SANBORN: There's a woman named Elonka Dunin who has a Web site on the Kryptos sculpture and before "Da Vinci Code," she was getting like 50 hits a day on the Web site. And now she's getting thousands, basically. So it's a pretty stunning change.

ENSOR (on camera): How did you, a novice, come up with a code that nobody's been able to break today?

SANBORN: Listen, I'll tell you, codes -- I mean we all have codes. I mean, you know, what's your ATM PIN number?

ENSOR: I'm not going to tell you.

SANBORN: Thank you.

And so, you know, I mean we all have our codes. And so this was just -- this was one that I did and I don't think it's unusual to design a code that's difficult to crack. I don't think it's hard, either, really.

ENSOR: Could somebody decipher this last clue from this sculpture at the Hirschorn or would they need to know things that are only on the CIA piece of work?

SANBORN: You still haven't given me that ATM code yet. This piece does give you pretty much everything that's on the CIA sculpture.

ENSOR (voice-over): One of the sections of Kryptos that has already been decoded was a quote from the description by an archeologist of the moment when he discovered the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen.

SANBORN: "With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner and then widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in."

I don't presume to think the Kryptos sculpture has the import that finding Tutankhamen's tomb would have, but it's that same magic of finding something. So I just wanted to somehow demonstrate that magic.

ENSOR: Jim Sanborn's Kryptos -- 15 years and still a mystery.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: Now, the first man to solve the first three parts of Kryptos was a CIA analyst. It took him three years using pencil and paper. Pencil and paper. You know, you would think he'd feed into a computer somehow and...

S. O'BRIEN: And have it like that.

M. O'BRIEN: You know, some kind of deal like that.

I guess it (INAUDIBLE)...

S. O'BRIEN: Wow! It will be so interesting. I wonder what the message is at the end.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, yes.

S. O'BRIEN: I hope it's deep and intense as opposed to something mindless and silly and having wasted 15 years of the CIA's energies in finding it out.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, it's interesting, too, that, you know, all this interest kind of came from outside. The CIA people passing by there every day seemingly uninterested in what's going on there.

S. O'BRIEN: Right.

M. O'BRIEN: They've got other things to worry about.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, they're busy guys and ladies.

M. O'BRIEN: More important issues. Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, an interesting story there.

Still to come this morning, the CIA director says he has an excellent idea of where Osama bin Laden is. So why has the terrorist not been caught? We're on "Terror's Trail" ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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