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Nancy Grace

Armed, Dangerous and Wanted by FBI

Aired December 29, 2005 - 20:00   ET

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


NANCY GRACE, HOST: Tonight: Armed, dangerous and wanted by the FBI. One man, believe it or not, a firefighter wanted for a horrific triple murder, the second a man who starred in big-screen movies and on TV, wanted for the murder of his live-in girlfriend and the kidnap of their own baby boy. Tonight, we take to the airwaves for your help to bring Robert William Fisher and Mark Everett to justice.
Good evening, everybody. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us. Tonight, we reach out to you for your help tracking down two wanted criminals. First, a star, a star of the big and the small screen, Mark Everett, AKA Manuel Benitez (ph), on the run, wanted for killing his live-in love, Stephanie Spears (ph), taking off with the couple`s baby boy.

Also tonight, Robert William Fisher, wanted for the April 2001 murders of his 38-year-old wife, Mary, and two children, 13-year-old Britney (ph), 10-year-old Bobby, Jr. Police say Fisher shot his wife in the head, slashed her throat, then slashed the throat of his own children. Police say Fisher tried to cover up the crime by allegedly rigging his Scottsdale, Arizona, home to then explode. Fisher on the FBI`s Most Wanted list, white male, 6 feet, 190 pounds, blue eyes, brown hair.

Tonight, from Scottsdale, Arizona, Mary Fisher`s father, Bill Cooper. From the Scottsdale, Arizona, Police Department, Detective John Kirkham. And from the Arizona FBI agent Bob Caldwell.

But first let`s go to "Arizona Republic" reporter Holly Johnson. Holly, what happened?

HOLLY JOHNSON, "ARIZONA REPUBLIC": Robert Fisher is accused, as you said, of murdering his wife and children and then rigging a natural gas explosion to cover up the crimes, then led police on a massive manhunt throughout northern Arizona and has not been heard from since. There have been numerous sightings, and police and the FBI are still working jointly together to try and track down Fisher.

GRACE: Holly, what do we know about motive? Why would he suddenly commit these murders and take off?

JOHNSON: Investigators believe that Fisher had contracted a sexually transmitted disease from a massage therapist.

GRACE: Oh, good Lord!

JOHNSON: Yes. And his wife had apparently wanted a divorce, and he was just not willing to buy that. So that`s one of the possible motives that they`re looking at.

GRACE: To Bill Cooper. He is the father of Mary Fisher. Bill, did you notice anything wrong with their marriage?

BILL COOPER, FATHER OF MARY FISHER: No, we didn`t at all, Nancy. It was just -- as far as we were concerned, that was the best thing that was going. I mean, Robert was so nice to us. He was just sweet. I could just mention that for the last year, he and Mary had been going out double- dating with my oldest daughter and her husband, and they didn`t know anything was going on. Mary kept everything to herself, for whatever reason, I don`t know, but I think a lot of it was to protect us.

GRACE: Well, Bill, that`s one of the last -- if I may call you Bill - - that`s one of the last things you want to go home and tell your father -- Hey, Dad, I got an STD from my husband.

COOPER: Yes. You bet.

GRACE: Why would she want to tell you that? You know, the first thing I should have told you? I`m sorry. I`m sorry for what you`re going through, not only losing your girl, but these two beautiful grandchildren.

Rosie (ph), could you show that video we were just looking at? They are absolutely gorgeous.

What happened that day, the day that you found out the family had been wiped out, Bill?

COOPER: Well, we really didn`t find out. I was -- I`m a retired school principal, and I was working full-time at the junior high school where we now live, out in the East Valley here in Phoenix area, and I got a telephone call from my wife. And she was just upset to beat the band, and she said, Honey, we just got a call from church. Our church is just a few blocks from where Mary`s house was. And she said, Mary`s house is on fire. It exploded.

I just dashed out of that place, went home, got Ginny (ph), and we went in and we just prayed the 30 miles all the way in there that, Please, Lord, make sure that nothing`s happened, nothing`s wrong. And when we got there, this house was still just a mess of flames.

GRACE: Oh!

COOPER: Oh, Nancy, it was terrible.

GRACE: Oh, Mr. Cooper, I`m looking at it right now. I cannot even imagine!

Now, let me go quickly to John Kirkham. He`s the lead investigation with the Scottsdale Police Department. That took a lot of planning, not only to commit a triple homicide, but Officer, to then plan out the way this home exploded. Explain how he allegedly set the home on fire.

DET. JOHN KIRKHAM, SCOTTSDALE POLICE DEPARTMENT: Oh, absolutely, it took a lot of planning. What we were able to find out after the fire was out was that the flex pipe on the furnace had been removed in a manner that it couldn`t have ever been put back. And later on, we were able to determine that there was an ignition source placed in the home. And it was probably...

GRACE: An ignition source?

KIRKHAM: ... about eight hours went by.

GRACE: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. You`re talking like a cop. An ignition -- an ignition -- what are you talking about? How did he do it?

KIRKHAM: Well, we think that he placed the candle on a stand in the hallway, and as the home filled with natural gas over a period of eight to ten hours, the gas would slowly come down to the level of the candle and then ignite the gas.

GRACE: Mr. Cooper, what kind of a heart, of a mind, would kill a woman and two little children, then go through all of this elaborate scheme to burn the evidence?

COOPER: Nancy, I`ve talked to myself about that many times. He was a man who said that he loved his wife, that he loved his two kids. But how can a man who loved his wife and his kids so much put a bullet in my daughter`s head, slash her throat and then slash Britney and Bobbie`s beautiful little throats? And I only come up with one conclusion -- he`s not a man, he`s a monster, Nancy. He`s a monster.

GRACE: You know, Mr. Cooper, the way you describe your family, you`re -- it sounds like so many -- everybody here on the floor at the show is shaking their heads. It sounds like our families, all of us getting together for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, you name it, being happy, just being together. When you got there to the fire, did you know that your daughter and grandchildren were in the home?

COOPER: You know, Nancy, that was a very confusing morning. Nobody knew what was inside the house. We had called the elementary school where Bobby attended, and we were told that he was in school, so that made us feel good. Robert`s truck was up into the driveway, and Mary`s SUV was gone, so maybe she had gone somewhere else. We don`t know.

When they called the middle school where Britney attended, we found out that Britney was not in school. So well, we assume maybe Britney`s with Mary. Who knows? We knew that when Britney started to go to middle school, she (INAUDIBLE) time to drop Bobby off at school and another little neighbor boy at the elementary school, and they would go to this place and have a bagel and coffee and orange juice before they had to drop Britney off.

So so many things went through our mind that maybe things were still OK. But where`s Robert? Where`s Robert? His truck`s there. Maybe Robert`s in the house. Maybe something happened. We don`t know.

And all that morning and into the afternoon, we didn`t know. And it was toward the afternoon when, evidently, the house was cool enough that people could go in. Then we started hearing from a very nice man with the Scottsdale Police Department who was a chaplain, and he`s the one that shared with us that there were three bodies, that they went...

GRACE: Oh, good Lord!

COOPER: Whatever happened, they went quickly. Well, that didn`t help me either, OK? But he was really a nice man that dealt with us and...

GRACE: The thought of you watching the house burn all that time and smelling it and not realizing that your daughter is in there...

COOPER: Yes.

GRACE: ... with the two children, it just -- before we go to break, I want to make it to FBI field officer Bob Caldwell. How did the feds get in on this?

BOB CALDWELL, FBI AGENT: We got involved once Scottsdale Police Department had had some probable cause to believe that Robert Fisher fled the state. They looked -- at first, it was -- we believed Robert was missing, didn`t know if he may be also a victim in this crime, at first. And then as the forensic evidence started to get developed, it was determined and started leaning towards that Robert Fisher was actually the suspect in this case.

GRACE: Now, when you say the evidence began to be developed, what do you mean? What evidence led you to Fisher?

CALDWELL: When they forensically started to look at the bodies and they actually determined that these throats had actually been slit and actually slit deep enough to actually cut the vertebrae in the back of the neck.

GRACE: We are showing you a picture of some victims, a family basically wiped out. Rosie, as we go to break, can you please show me a picture of Robert William Fisher? There`s $100,000 reward for this man, believed to have murdered his wife and two beautiful children. Please stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just want you to know that we`re going to miss them so much. They were such a joy to my life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Welcome back, everybody. I`m Nancy Grace. Tonight, we need your help. We are taking to the airwaves to try to solve two unsolved mysteries involving murder.

Let me go straight back out to Holly Johnson, reporter with "The Arizona Republic." Holly, after Fisher disappeared, leaving behind his dead wife and his two dead children -- by the way, how old were the children, Holly?

JOHNSON: They were 13 and 10 at the time.

GRACE: Britney and Bobby, Jr. What can you tell me about this guy, Mr. Fisher?

JOHNSON: Well, by all accounts, you know, as Mr. Cooper said, he was devout in his religion, he was devoted to his family. Robert Fisher was a man who, by all accounts, was also devoted to his job. He kept to himself a lot. He was an avid outdoorsman. He just -- he was someone that you wouldn`t really peg for a crime like this.

GRACE: Well, this tragedy, the deaths of two little children and their mother, then the explosion of the home to cover up the evidence, really shook the community. Take a listen to the minister.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of Bobby, the word that came to mind first was goofy, and then shy and quiet. He loved his mother. She`s a good friend. She was fun. Strength, leader, commitment, devoted -- that`s what Mary was like. Of Britney, the first word that came to mind was smile. That was Britney.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: With us tonight, Mary`s father, Bill Cooper, the grandfather of those two beautiful children. Mr. Cooper, I appreciate what your minister had to say, but you know, you can`t pick up the phone and call a cherished memory. You can`t have dinner or Father`s Day or Sunday afternoons with a cherished memory. I mean, I hear that your son-in-law was devout, was very religious. Was there any indication that he had a very dark side to his personality?

COOPER: We`ve found out since then that he was just double-sided.

GRACE: You mean living two lives, living a double life?

COOPER: Exactly.

GRACE: Well, what about that, Kirkham? John Kirkham is the lead investigator of the Scottsdale Police Department. Is that true? Was Fisher leading a double life?

KIRKHAM: Oh, absolutely. What we were able to find out from friends, families, co-workers, was that by day, he was one person, and then, depending on the situation, he changed. He was different with his hunting buddies. He was different when he was with his family. And then there was this other side to him that -- the darker side that we`ve now come to find out about.

GRACE: Well, what did the darker side do?

KIRKHAM: We know that when he was with his hunting buddies that there was some bizarre behavior. He`d take animals and just kill them for no reason. We`ve got one picture that we got out of the home where he`s covered with blood from his head down to his pants, kind of like a trophy picture that he had taken. So that`s just some of the bizarre behavior that we found when he was with his hunting buddies.

GRACE: What forensics lead you to believe that he is guilty?

KIRKHAM: Well, we know that the home was set to explode to cover up this crime. When myself and the firefighter arson investigators were going through the rubble, finding the bodies, we noticed that there was something wrong almost immediately. As we cleared the rubble away from the bodies, they were badly charred. We moved the bodies over onto one side and found that there was blood that had been protected in the bedsheets under the bodies, shouldn`t have been there. We noticed the lacerations on the neck. And as we went from one body to the other, they all had the same forensic evidence, the slash to the throat, the blood underneath the bodies. We knew that this wasn`t a result of a fire.

GRACE: To Bob Caldwell with the FBI. Bob, that`s clearly not someone rummaging through the house to steal something, not rummaging through the house after a sex attack. You don`t stab the person, shoot the person, and then have an elaborate and timely cover-up such as this explosion. That is not a random chore (ph), coupled with the disappearance of the husband, Fisher.

CALDWELL: Right. It`s definitely abnormal. And of course, the first thing we do, as in any investigation, you start to, you know, put the puzzle back together, and he is the missing link. And as the Scottsdale Police Department started determining through their investigation that he`s gone -- where is Robert? He left his brand-new pickup truck in the driveway, but Mary`s vehicle was missing. Also, many of Robert Fisher`s personal items in the home were also taken. His clothing, all the male clothing belonging to him was gone. So if it was a random...

GRACE: Yes, exactly, why would they only take his belongings? And why hasn`t he come back to the home to find out about his family.

When we come back, we`re going to take a look at where Robert William Fisher may be today. There`s a $100,000 reward on his head. Robert William Fisher, there`s a shot of him. Please take a look.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`ve come here in love to tenderly recall our memories of Mary and Britney and Bobby Fisher. There was so much that was lovable and beautiful and commendable and genuine in each of them. Those who knew them are deeply grieved by their untimely deaths.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Welcome back. A wife and her two young children dead, shot, stabbed, the house burned down to hide the evidence. The only thing missing, the husband, Robert William Fisher.

Let`s go straight out to John Kirkham, lead investigator of the Scottsdale Police Department. Any leads on where Fisher is today?

KIRKHAM: We get hundreds of leads every day, and nothing that is conclusive.

GRACE: Bob Caldwell with the FBI also with us, also on Fisher`s trail. How long can Fisher stay underground?

CALDWELL: You would think by now, after four years, he would have to surface at some time. He`s going to need money. He`s going to need a way to survive. As far as we know, the night before the murders occurred, he took $280 out of his bank account. And whether or not he may have had a stash of money in planning this -- he very well could have. But right now, that money would have run out. So he needs to come out and get supplies, get the normal things that we need to live with day by day.

GRACE: Right. You know, Eric Rudolph, after all the bombings, stayed underground for years before he was found.

To the father of Mary Fisher, Bill Cooper, the grandfather of Britney and Bobby, Jr. What do you miss the most about your girl, Mary?

COOPER: So many things. She was the instigator of so many things, of getting us together. We`d still came in for church on Wednesday night, and she and our oldest granddaughter from our oldest daughter would always go out somewhere to eat. Sunday afternoons after church, we`d always go somewhere, and it was always Mary and Stacy (ph) who would plan all what to do. And we just had so much fun.

The last time we saw them, we had gone out to basically celebrate Grandma`s birthday, and we went to a restaurant. And oh, I just have so many precious memories of all those kids interacting with each other and having a blast. I mean, we just -- I have a hard time going back to that restaurant. It was such a wonderful experience.

And I can think back of so many times I`ve seen my daughter at church up on the platform. She was so involved with kids` work and the ladies` ministry there. And I see Britney up on the platform and Bobby in the bell choir. And I don`t see Britney playing basketball anymore. She started at the Scottsdale Boys and Girls Club, and all she wanted to do was make the junior high team. And oh, she was a good little athlete, but first of all, she was a super student, one of her goals. She set goals. She was really only 12 when she was murdered, and she was 13 at the end of the month of April. And she had a goal that she never wanted to get a B, and she never did. But she wasn`t a nerd. She played softball. She played basketball. She was a soccer player. And she was just an all-around super little girl.

And their middle school started a Britney Fisher award in her name, and it`s all the different characteristics that Britney had and -- first of all, is on there you have to have a 3.7 grade point average to be considered, and then you have to be involved in extracurricular activities and community activities and these things. And what a precious way to keep her memory alive.

They also planted a tree outside the library there. We got to -- we got to be a part of that because they`ve renovated that campus, but the library was there and that tree is there in her memory. And we got a chance last week to go to that ceremony and talk a little bit to the kids because that was Bobby`s graduating class, his 8th-grade class.

And the elementary school Bobby went, they set up a deal -- Bobby played the trumpet. I can still remember him trying to blow that thing. And the homeroom teacher there set up a program to buy one trumpet in Bobby`s honor. And those kids that I talked with last week didn`t know it, but they didn`t buy one trumpet, they bought three trumpets that are the Bobby fisher trumpets, that if a kid wants to use a Bobby Fisher trumpet, they have to go through an essay with their mom and dad, and the band teacher then decides who gets the Bobby Fisher trumpet.

So -- and there`s so many things about Mary that -- the hardest time (INAUDIBLE) is when you wake up at night. And an old man, I wake up a lot, and that`s hard. It`s really hard because -- we have a great faith. We serve a great Lord. And Mary and Britney and Bobby knew them -- knew Jesus as their personal saviour, and without that faith, we wouldn`t be where we`re at today. I know for assurance that we`ll see them again some day.

Why it happened? I don`t know. When we get to heaven, I`m not going to ask the Lord why, I`m just going to be happy we`re together.

GRACE: Mr. Cooper, my thoughts are with you and my prayers are with you, and you are an inspiration. Thank you, sir, for being with us.

COOPER: Thank you, Nancy, so much.

GRACE: Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN WALSH, HOST, "AMERICA`S MOST WANTED" (voice-over): In 1996, when he was 26, Everett met Stephanie Spears. Eventually, they`d move in together and have a baby boy, who they named Benjamin. Despite the fact that they had a child, there was a lot Stephanie didn`t know about Everett. He never talked about his past with Stephanie and her family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: A lot she didn`t know about his past? That is putting it mildly. Stephanie is dead. Their little boy, Benjamin Spears, just three years old, is missing.

Now, this is an incredible story of a child actor that hit bottom. You may not recognize him as an adult, but this was a star of the big screen and the small screen. That`s Mark Everett, a child actor, appearing in the `85 movie "Pee Wee`s Big Adventure." Everett now wanted for murder.

I want to go straight out to the reporter with "America`s Most Wanted," Ed Miller. Ed, what happened?

ED MILLER, "AMERICA`S MOST WANTED" REPORTER: No one is exactly sure what happened to him. That`s a big part of Mark Everett`s story is that he is so secretive. But cops believe that, at about the age of 18, he started using drugs and then eventually selling drugs. And that was the end of his career.

But we need to explain that this was not a -- Hollywood`s a tough town. This was not a kid that just got one part. From the age of 9 to 18, he got part after part after part. So he actually had quite the career going for himself and then threw it all away.

GRACE: I understand that he speaks up to five languages. I don`t buy it. How could a child star that never even finished high school, to my knowledge, like a lot of child stars, how could he learn five languages? Cantonese, Spanish, are you kidding me?

MILLER: Well, from the age of 18 to about 26, there`s an entire area of his life that is just a vacuum. No one knows exactly what happened to him, and they`re not sure whether or not, you know, he did go to school or whether he was self-taught.

But the thing about him being secretive is nobody in Stephanie Spears` family knew about this whole acting thing, which is totally bizarre. I cannot imagine somebody not saying, you know, especially a young guy trying to pick up girls, "Hey, listen, I used to be in the movies. I used to be a television star."

No one knew anything about this. As a matter of fact, when I was researching the story, I kept going back to the cops and saying, "Are you sure this is the same kid, this is the kid that was in all the movies and television, because nobody knew anything about this?" And they said, yes, when they went through the house, they found a couple of old publicity photos and some of his old work, press clippings and that sort of thing. But nobody present day, any of his associates, knew anything about this former life of his.

GRACE: Mark Everett, child actor, there in the `88 movie "Stand and Deliver." Everett now wanted for murder. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We didn`t know anything about his childhood acting career. And now that I think about it, I think this is what made him a great liar was being an actor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: You know, it reminds me very much, Dr. Robi Ludwig, of two other guys that we know of that built a house of cards and then killed their wives when it fell in. Mark Hacking, of course, who killed Lori Hacking, has pled guilty, and then this famous radio personality James Keown who told everybody he went to Harvard and he had all these radio jobs. Next thing you know, his wife is poisoned to death. Explain.

DR. ROBI LUDWIG, PSYCHOTHERAPIST: What`s interesting about the person that we`re talking about is that most people talk about lives to aggrandize themselves. And one would think, if you`re talking about your childhood acting career, that that would be a way to put yourself in a better light.

So one wonders why he wouldn`t talk about something that would seem to put him in a better light. People don`t talk about things that are painful. And so I wonder if in some way it was a painful experience and he felt like a failure in adulthood compared to what he accomplished in childhood.

GRACE: Ed Miller, what do you know about the scene of the murder? How do we know he`s responsible?

MILLER: Well, police believe -- this was quite the murder scene, I might add -- but police believe that he was trying to sneak out of the house, that -- in other words, there was a confrontation. This was Father`s Day weekend 2004. She had told co-workers, "This is it. I`m breaking up with him."

They had clearly gone in different directions. She was going up. He was going down. And so they had some sort of confrontation, and he picked up a barbell, a dumb bell, exercise weight, and then beat her to death.

Now, the really shocking part about this --

GRACE: Where was the baby during all of this?

MILLER: Well, this is what is really shocking, is they found the little baby footprints in her blood...

GRACE: Oh, no, no...

MILLER: ... which means that child probably witnessed his mother being beaten to death. So that`s the really shocking part about the crime scene itself.

Then, of course, he escaped with the child. Now, police are baffled - - are somewhat baffled by this whole thing, that they`ve not been able to catch him, because the three of them are traveling together...

GRACE: Wait, wait, wait, three of them?

MILLER: Mark Everett, his elderly mother, and small, biracial child.

GRACE: What? He took his mother?

MILLER: He took his mother, Elizabeth Velasco. She`s disappeared. So they believe the three of them are traveling together, and cops also thought, you know, the three of them would not be able to blend into a crowd, that they would stand out.

So they`re somewhat baffled over the fact that "America`s Most Wanted" has profiled them at least a half-dozen times. They`re all over our website. And yet, lots of tips, nothing has panned out.

So what does that mean? Well, maybe they`ve split up, they`ve gone to Mexico, or, even worse -- and this is the worst case scenario -- that something has happened to little Benjamin, that maybe he`s done something to Benjamin.

GRACE: Here`s what police had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re not sure what happened to his acting career, but we believe he started using drugs. We believe that she confronted him while leaving with the child and, during that confrontation, he became enraged.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: To defense attorney Renee Rockwell, I think your theory was, how do we know he committed the crime? Explain to me who else would have absconded with the mother?

RENEE ROCKWELL, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Nancy, he was deeply involved with drugs. Now, this is a guy that doesn`t have a car, doesn`t have a cell phone, doesn`t have a credit card, doesn`t have a job. As deep as he is in this drug dealing, who`s to say that he was not also a victim?

Now, if somebody is putting pressure on him, "Where`s the money? Where`s the dope?" They could have come, killed his wife, taken him and his child, and the mother, and taken them off somewhere. How do we know he`s still alive, Nancy?

GRACE: Renee, how can you say that with a straight face?

ROCKWELL: I can say it, Nancy, because this is not a...

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: So they drive to another location, to the trailer where the grandmother lives, and decided, "Hey, let`s let her ride shotgun"?

ROCKWELL: How do we know that somebody didn`t drive them there? If you`re a drug dealer, and you`ve got somebody putting pressure on you because you need to return drugs, you need to pay money, you`ve got an unsettled debt, they`re not going to go and kill him. They`re going to go put pressure on him...

GRACE: OK, can I ask you something, Renee? In all seriousness, not some line you might feed to a jury, hoping they would buy it, but in all seriousness, how many times have you seen, over a drug debt, the death of a doper`s wife or girlfriend?

ROCKWELL: Nancy...

GRACE: Don`t say Nicole Brown Simpson.

ROCKWELL: No. You can see situations, Nancy, where everybody in the room was murdered over a drug deal.

GRACE: I`m listening to where -- no, no, actually, I have never seen -- I`ve heard defense attorneys say it, that the big, bad Colombian dope dealer went back and killed the doper`s wife and children, but let him walk. Uh, no, never seen it, except in a movie.

ROCKWELL: OK, Nancy. Well, here we go. We`re dealing with a movie star.

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: We`re dealing with a movie star, that`s your answer? Just name one, name one. You`re on the hot seat. You agreed to come on the show. Name one.

ROCKWELL: Can I tell you what bothers me about the finger being pointed at him?

GRACE: OK, note to audience: She`s totally dodging the question.

ROCKWELL: OK. Why would he have done this right in front of his child and let the baby walk in the blood? That presents a problem to me.

GRACE: Robi?

LUDWIG: Because people who murder somebody that they`re intimately involved with are not thinking clearly, especially if they`re drug addicts. They`re not thinking, "Oh, maybe I`ll get caught," or, "Oh, maybe this will be traumatic for my child."

They`re thinking, "I`m enraged. I`m in pain. This person wants to annihilate me, and I`m going to do it to them first."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

APRIL MORRIS, STEPHANIE SPEARS` MOTHER: I believe that Benjamin saw what Mark did to Stephanie, because, at the crime scene, it was baby`s footprints all in Stephanie`s blood. So he was there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: That`s a shot of 3-year-old Benjamin now missing. His mother found bludgeoned to death. Shockingly, police believe this man is responsible, Mark Everett, child star. Here he is in "Pee Wee`s Big Adventure." Everett now wanted for murder.

Right now, joining us is a very special guest, April Morris. This is the murder victim, Stephanie`s, mother.

Thank you for being with us, Ms. Morris.

MORRIS: You`re welcome.

GRACE: Ms. Morris, you`re hearing a lot of speculation that someone other than Mark Everett committed this crime and killed your daughter. What do you have to say to that?

MORRIS: I don`t believe that. No one can tell me that because, over a drug deal, they went in there and killed Stephanie. If that was the case, they would have killed Stephanie, Mark, and Benjamin. They wouldn`t have just killed her. Mark is responsible for Stephanie`s death. And I truly -- and I know that.

GRACE: What was their relationship like, Ms. Morris?

MORRIS: Mark was always on the quiet side. Stephanie was, like, always outgoing. She was happy. She was nice to people. Their relationship seemed good, but Mark didn`t want to do nothing. He just wanted to sit at home. Stephanie was going to school. She had got her degree to be a teacher, and she just got a five-year scholarship from college, and...

GRACE: You`re kidding.

MORRIS: She was going places. No, five years.

GRACE: Stephanie had a five-year scholarship to go to school?

MORRIS: Scholarship, yes, to any university or college she wanted to go to. And she was working at a preschool. She was a teacher. She was going to be something. And she told me that she was going to leave him on Father`s Day because he didn`t want to do nothing. She didn`t want to be with him no more.

GRACE: When you say he didn`t want to do anything, you mean, like, work?

MORRIS: He didn`t want to work. He didn`t want to get no I.D. He didn`t want to get no Social Security card.

GRACE: Didn`t want to get an I.D. or a Social Security card?

MORRIS: No.

GRACE: That`s the first I`ve heard with that.

Let`s go to Ernie Allen with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Ms. Morris, please don`t move.

Ernie Allen, that`s a very -- as a trial lawyer, that`s a very disturbing wrinkle, friend, when you`ve got a guy suspected of murder, and now I find out, not only does he have an alias -- his real name is Benitez -- but he didn`t want to get an I.D., a Social Security card?

ERNIE ALLEN, NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN: Nancy, it`s really troubling. There is no question that most of these guys we track down through the use of images and information. And here`s a guy who didn`t want anybody to know who he was or where he was.

GRACE: But to you, Renee Rockwell, you`ve also handled a lot of deportation matters. How could this guy work as a child star? Renee, this guy -- you may not recognize him as an adult, but he has been in multiple movies on the big screen. How did he work without a Social Security number?

ROCKWELL: Nancy...

GRACE: That`s wrong.

ROCKWELL: If he`s a child star, of course, he`s got -- you know he grew up in a foster home, right?

GRACE: Yes.

ROCKWELL: So he`s got somebody that`s pushing him, pushing him, pushing him. He gets the name Marcus Everett and comes forward, and I`m sure that they bent all the rules to keep this -- look at how gorgeous he is -- to just keep him on the screen and keep him working.

But here`s a guy that speaks German, French, Spanish, Cantonese. It is amazing, and it`s mysterious how he would learn all that, if this is, in fact, true.

The thing that bothers me the most about the entire thing, Nancy, though, that I think a defense attorney is going to have trouble with is the fact that she was sharing with her mother, who just spoke up, and her friends that, "Tonight, I`m doing it, tonight, I`m going home and I`m breaking up with him," and then she turns up dead. So that`s going to be the biggest hurdle that a defense attorney has.

GRACE: Back to Stephanie`s mother, April Morris, did you have any idea how famous he was as a child actor? He was on not only in the movie "Stand and Deliver," "Pee Wee`s Big Adventure," he was on TV in the series "Trapper John," "Galactica," "Highway to Heaven." Those are just the ones I can name off the top of my head. Ms. Morris, did he ever let on that he had been a child star?

MORRIS: No. Actually, we didn`t even know anything about his childhood as a child actor. He always told us that he didn`t know where his mother was, that he was in a foster home, that his mom was on drugs, and that he was abused all his life. So he never told us that he was an actor, that he had any type of career at all.

GRACE: Now, you`re seeing right now...

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: ... Everett appearing in a 1988 movie, "Stand and Deliver," a huge hit. Everett now wanted for murder.

To Robi Ludwig, you know, if you take a look -- and this is not about child stars, OK? This is about finding a wanted killer, all right, allegedly.

LUDWIG: Right.

GRACE: But when you think about child stars, a whole mind game, you`ve got Todd Bridges, "Different Strokes," Dana Plato, "Different Strokes," Corey Feldman, Corey Haim, the whole cast of "Family Affair." Do I have to go on? What happens? What`s the psyche?

LUDWIG: They`re separated from their peers. We don`t know if some of these child stars wanted to go into acting on their own or whether they were actually pushed into it. And it`s a career that they don`t necessarily choose to leave.

Once they reach adulthood, they`re basically told, "Bye-bye." They`re burnt out. They may not have any skills to exist in the real world. And in some cases, it`s really the parent-child relationship that can either help them or hurt them. If they have supportive parents that help buffer them, they can survive, but this kid didn`t have any of that.

GRACE: To Ernie Allen, with NCMEC, National Center Missing and Exploited Children, Ernie, how many children a year abducted by family members? And do most of them come home safely?

ALLEN: Nancy, about 200,000 a year abducted by other family members; 98 percent come home safely. But there are thousands of kids a year exactly like little Benjamin who are taken out of anger or revenge. These kids are at enormous risk.

GRACE: You know, Ms. Morris -- with us is Stephanie`s mother, Benjamin`s grandmother -- when I think of those little footprints of his, those bloody footprints running around the body of his mother, when did you learn your daughter had been murdered?

MORRIS: Actually, I learned later on that night. I was on my way to work. And my brother seen it on the news. And he called me, because I work at night, so I would sleep all day. And, actually, I learned through the TV. And that was kind of hard.

GRACE: Ms. Morris, if you had to speculate where he has taken Benjamin, where do you think they are, Mexico?

MORRIS: You know, me personally, I don`t think he`s in Mexico, but he might be in Mexico. But Mark was the kind of person that he can go inside of a house, he can be right out in Santa Monica somewhere. He can go inside of a house and he don`t have to come out. As long as he got something to eat or something to watch, he was the kind of person -- he was a house person. He will hardly ever...

GRACE: Guys, take a look at Benjamin Spears. Please, help us bring this baby boy home to his grandmother.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: Welcome back, everybody. We are actually looking for a child star turned adult killer. That`s right. His life-in love, Stephanie Spears, had a five-year scholarship to go to school to teach, dead. Their baby boy just three years old, Benjamin Spears, his bloody footprints found around the mom`s body. Incredible to me.

Back to Ed Miller, "America`s Most Wanted" reporter, Ed, when you take a look at this, the fact that he`s a child star, well up into his teens, made a lot of money, isn`t it odd that his family didn`t even know his background? This is a shot of him in "Stand and Deliver." Go ahead, Ed.

MILLER: Yes. And also, Stephanie`s family says that he would disappear for periods of time and then come back with a bag full of cash. So that`s, of course, where they got the idea that he was selling drugs.

It`s unclear what happened to that money, whether it was all squandered away, the money from acting, or whether he, you know, it was stashed away somewhere.

The entire past -- I want to reiterate -- the entire past of this man is subject to question because he lied so often. Was he really in a foster home, or was he really brought up by Elizabeth Velasco? It`s very unclear. He lied all the time.

But the real danger here -- I want to get back, and I don`t mean to minimize the death of Stephanie Spears -- but the real, real danger now is the child, because we have a chance to save this child, if this child is still alive. And this story tells you everything you need to know about Mark Everett.

About a year before Stephanie was murdered, Mark was taking the child out for a walk in a baby stroller, and cops went to approach him. He grabbed a backpack of guns and pushed the baby out into the street.

GRACE: Oh, no.

MILLER: In other words, he was more concerned with guns than his own child.

GRACE: You know, Ed, I had forgotten that story about him. Everyone, we were just showing you shots of the `88 movie, "Stand and Deliver," with child star Mark Everett in it, now wanted for murder.

Thank you to all of my guests. Our biggest thank you to you for being with us, inviting us and this story into your home.

Coming up, headlines from all around the world. I`m Nancy Grace signing off for tonight. See you right here every weeknight, 8:00 sharp Eastern. And until then, good night, friend.

END