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CNN Live Today
Unanswered Questions in Child Sex Abuse Case; Another Day of Courtroom Chaos in Hussein Trial
Aired January 30, 2006 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(NEWSBREAK)
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: To Alabama now. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about this man and his companion, who are accused of abusing a toddler and a teenager. Police fear there may be more victims around the country.
The suspects are now behind bars and are telling two different stories. CNN's David Mattingly got Jack Wiley's side of the story in a jailyard interview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Separated from other inmates for his own protection, the man calling himself Jack Wiley visits the yard of the Conecuh County Jail under constant guard. He is charged with two counts of rape and one count of sodomy, involving a three-year-old child he has at times called his daughter or granddaughter, as well as a 17-year-old boy he's described as his son.
When approached by CNN producer Mike Phelan (ph) for comment, an emotional Wiley denied wrongdoing.
JACK WILEY, SUSPECT: I'm worse than Charles Manson right now, as far as the country is concerned, but if I could get two doctors that would -- and a good attorney, not some backwoods high school drop-out public defender, I believe I can win with my story. Now, if they want to send me to prison for, you know, killing the president or something, I don't care, but they are not going to do it this way.
MATTINGLY: Wiley is being held along with his female companion Glenna Faye Marshall, who is charged with child abuse. She previously told others that she was Wiley's daughter, leading to confusion in a case where authorities in Alabama aren't sure anyone is who they claim to be.
SHERIFF TRACY HAWSEY, CONECUH COUNTY, ALABAMA: He's held by his alias that he has used in the past, and he's used at least up to eight, that we know of now, in changing Social Security numbers up.
MATTINGLY: Investigators are more certain of where the couple has been. They were driving a beat-up old Chevy Suburban with a Washington State tag, recently registered to a man in Olympia. According to the Sheriff Tracy Hawsey, Marshall admitted the couple once had sexual contact with a 12-year-old in Kentucky. SHERIFF TRACY HAWSEY: There was a 12-year-old boy, who they had sexual contact with.
MATTINGLY (on camera): Both the man and the woman?
HAWSEY: That's correct. That's by her admission. Now, the city or the county that this took place, she cannot remember or that's what she tells us.
MATTINGLY: These photographs, taken into evidence also, place Wiley and Marshall along the Gulf Coast, apparently after Hurricane Katrina. Conecuh County resident Bill Fryant gave the couple and the two children a place to live, when they twice claimed to be homeless and almost penniless after major hurricanes.
BILL FRYANT, CONECUH COUNTY RESIDENT: They were gone for a year, and then they came back. I never thought I'd see them after they left the first time, and then they came back, well, we need a place to stay for a little while. Do you mind if we stay here? And I said, I guess so. I just didn't want to -- I mean, I was just too nice to say no.
MATTINGLY: At the time of their arrest, Fryant says they were on the verge of leaving for an annual tour of the NASCAR circuit where authorities say the couple made and sold these beaded key chains as they traveled from race to race. Investigators hope these photos will produce new leads. Dozens of pictures showing Wiley smiling next to the girl he's accused of harming. Apparently at several different racetracks.
Wiley, however, says those pictures showed times of happiness and a child who would still want to be with him.
WILEY: If you look at all my NASCAR pictures, been to 58 races, all you see is us together, and if she was here right you know, she would dive into my arms.
MATTINGLY: Wiley claims medical evidence that authorities say indicate rape is actually the result of spider bites and boils the children have recently had. Both the three-year-old girl and the 17- year-old boy are in state custody. DNA testing is under way to determine their true relationship to Wiley and Marshall.
(on camera): And the Conecuh County sheriff says they believe the couple has been together for 17 years and in that time, they have no doubts that they are very well traveled, with evidence they have been in states from Florida all the way to Alaska.
David Mattingly, CNN, Evergreen, Alabama.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: To Georgia now. A Georgia woman is getting credit for her help in the arrest of Jack Wiley and Glenna Faye Marshall. Tracie Lee Dean saw the 3-year-old girl in an Alabama gas station earlier this month. The girl was with the man who turned out to Jack Wiley.
Dean told CNN that she sensed something was wrong.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRACIE LEE DEAN, HELPED SAVE 3-YEAR-OLD GIRL: So when she went around the store and came back to me, you know, I asked her, does your mommy work here? Because I thought surely her mom must work here. She's alone in the store. She seems like she comes in here a lot or something. And that's when the man from across the room said, Elizabeth. And he walked over and said, are you trying to find a new mommy?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: Dean placed a number of phone calls to authorities and even took a long trip back to the gas station to view the surveillance tape. Her efforts paid off with the couple's arrest. Now Dean says she would like to adopt the girl.
A program reminder here. AMERICAN MORNING airs weekdays beginning at 6:00 a.m. Eastern.
More reason to criticize the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina. One cabinet level department says it tried to offer help, but FEMA said no. That's ahead.
Also they call themselves the women of the storm. Victims of Katrina, more than 100 of them, on Capitol Hill today. Their message to congressional leaders after a break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: This week, CNN begins a year-long look into your future. Amazing developments are just around the corner and will change the way we all work and play. So we're going to begin our series with a look at cutting edge medicine.
Our first story is one that could affect millions of working women. Welcome to the future of fertility.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDREA MILLER, FOUNDER & PRES., TANGO MEDIA: My name is Andrea Miller. I'm 34. And I'm the founder and President of Tango Media. I'm in a great career. But nevertheless, I really feel that ticking clock.
Right now I probably average about 16-hour days. Like any entrepreneur will tell you, you live it and breathe it. Years go by and that's essentially all you do. When I thought about being a mom, it was one of these things that you just feel like, well, of course I'm going to be. But I'm one of these people, I think, like a lot of women, who, frankly, hadn't planned. And suddenly you're 34 and you're trying to have a child and the doctors are saying, hey, guess what.
I think our lifestyle timeline has gotten out of sync with our fertility timeline. So my wish for the future would be for science to advance to the point where women had many more options and had more control of their fertility.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR (on camera): Andrea represents an entire generation of working women who want to further their careers and yet someday still have kids. How close are we to the day when they can have it all?
(voice-over): This man believes he has the answer. Dr. Alan Copperman is a fertility specialist at New York's Mount Sinai Medical Center. Every day he sees patients just like Andrea whose careers may be rising but whose prospects for pregnancy are falling fast.
DR. ALAN COPPERMAN, MOUNT SINAI MEDICAL CENTER: Most of that is really related to a decline in egg quality with aging. When you're 21, 90 percent of your eggs are chromosomally normal. And when you're 41, 90 percent of the eggs are chromosomally abnormal.
O'BRIEN: For a woman who wants to postpone pregnancy, in vitro fertilization is an option. And thousands of babies have been conceived from frozen embryos. But what if you don't have a partner and want to wait until you do to conceive? Copperman says this is the future, freezing a woman's actual eggs.
COPPERMAN: We can thaw them out, fertilizing them by taking a singular sperm and putting him right through this egg which has been frozen and thawed and then implanting them.
O'BRIEN: But does it work? Worldwide, fewer than 200 babies have been born from frozen eggs, though several recent clinical trials suggest the success rate is growing.
And it's not cheap. The procedure today costs $10,000 and up. But in the future...
COPPERMAN: The hope is that the cost is going to come down to make this more affordable and that the success rate is going to get better and better. Ten years from now it's my hope that I could sit there with a patient, like Andrea or anybody else, and say that it is safe and it's effective.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: So, how are the markets looking this morning? We'll check in live at the New York Stock Exchange just ahead. And American carmakers aren't having too much luck on the road these days, but they're flying high in cyberspace. We'll explain.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MARKET REPORT)
KAGAN: American car makers are stuck in idle when it comes to sales compared to overseas rivals, but they're doing laps around the competition in the online world. An Internet survey shows the makers of Cadillac, Hummer and Jeep have the highest Web site satisfaction rate. The study looked at how easy it is for consumers to navigate the site and whether there were broken links or errors. Chevrolet, GMC, Honda and Mercedes-Benz came in a close second. Researchers also found out that 60 percent of online customers use auto manufacturers Web site to learn more about their vehicles.
A group of women say they're not interested in politics; they just want their home state of Louisiana to improve and recover. We'll talk to them just ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: A tough new judge and unruly defendants combine for another day of courtroom chaos at the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
CNN's Aneesh Raman has details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANEESH RAMAN, CNN BAGHDAD CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It took less than an hour for the trial of Saddam Hussein to once again descend into chaos, sparked this time by a new chief judge with a new set of rules, intent on ending the now-familiar diatribes of the defendants.
RAOUF ABDEL-RAHMAN, CHIEF JUDGE (through translator): We are not interested in political speeches. This courthouse is not for political speeches. We would like everyone to stick to the rules. As for the accused, any accused who oversteps the line will be thrown out of this court and will be tried in absentia.
RAMAN: In a matter of minutes, that exact scenario played out. First from the dock to speak, Barzan Hassan al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's half-brother, explaining he had cancer and has not received adequate medical attention.
But when the judge tried to cut him off, Barzan called the court "the daughter of a whore." The judge then had Barzan forcibly removed from the courtroom. That, not shown on the video feed to hide the identity of the guards.
Up on their feet, the defense lawyers screamed in protest. One was ejected, and then the rest of them walked out, with the chief judge warning that none would be allowed back. In minutes, new court- appointed defense lawyers were brought in. Saddam Hussein then took center stage, rejecting the lawyers, calling them evil and berating the judge.
SADDAM HUSSEIN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF IRAQ (through translator): I led you for 35 years. How can you tell them to get me out? Shame on you.
ABDEL-RAHMAN: I am the judge and you are the...
HUSSEIN: Shame on you.
ABDEL-RAHMAN: I am the judge and you are the defendant. And you are disrespecting the rules of the court.
HUSSEIN: Shame on you, do not say get him out. I asked to leave.
RAMAN: Saddam then decided he would leave the court. The chief judge said he was removing him anyway. Also leaving, the former Iraqi vice president and the country's former chief judge.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not going to appeal the court. He has to apologize to our lawyer, has to apologize to everyone. If he wants to conduct it, he has to conduct from the proper procedures. He's not impartial, he's not independent, and this procedure is absolutely wrong.
RAMAN (on camera): The previous chief judge stepped down after being criticized for not keeping better order in the court. But this new judge clearly intent on establishing his authority, has provoked yet another crisis in this long-running trial.
Aneesh Raman, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: Saddam Hussein's trial is scheduled to resume on Wednesday. However, the Associated Press reports Hussein and his lawyers plan to boycott that session to protest what they call bias from this new chief judge.
Back here in the U.S., more fall-out from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. New documents obtained by CNN show FEMA never took up an offer for critically needed resources during the search and rescue efforts.
A Department of Interior official says the agency tried to give FEMA boats, helicopters and workers experienced in water rescues, but FEMA never accepted the offer. E-mail also shows that FEMA decided to ground its search and rescue teams because of security concerns three days after the storm hit, but the Interior Department had already offered hundreds of specially-trained officers to help with that effort. The documents are part after Senate investigation into the government's response to Katrina.
And once again, we'll be talking to a group called Women of the Storm. A hundred women descending on Washington, D.C. today, encouraging much help for a recovering Louisiana coastline.
"The Dukes of Hazzard" isn't exactly Oscar material, but it's a prime picking for a Razzie. Just announced today, the nominees for the worst performances on the big screen in the past year. Some big names among the dishonored. We'll run down the list when CNN LIVE TODAY returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: This just in to CNN. The Associated Press reporting that playwright Wendy Wasserstein has died at the age of 55. She was best known for her works like "The Heidi Chronicles" and "The Sisters Rosensweig." She died at 55. Apparently she had been suffering from lymphoma. Once again, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, according to the Associated Press, has died from cancer at the age of 55.
Also from the entertainment world, you know how you can feel really gypped after seeing a really bad movie? Well, you can take heart. The Razzies are making them pay. Today the annual Hollywood movie spoof released what it deems the worst of the silver screen.
The film "Son of the Mask" leads the pack with eight nominations in the worst movie category. The box office flop starred Jamie Kennedy as a new father whose son is born with the shape-shifting that Jim Carrey had in "Mask." "The Dukes of Hazzard" is also a worst picture contender, along with "Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo."
The Razzies aimed a lot of venom at Tom Cruise in its worst actor category. He earned three Razzies for his work in "War of the Worlds" and two for a new category this year, most tiresome tabloid target. Jennifer Lopez nabbed a nomination in the worst actress category for "Monster-in-Law."
The Razzies will be announced the day after the Academy Awards. I don't know if congratulations are in order, but good luck to all the contenders.
(WEATHER REPORT)
KAGAN: It was the first in a string of massive corporate scandals, and now four years later, the trial of Enron's head honchos finally gets under way. We'll go back live to Houston for the latest.
Also, a desire to do his job right may have put ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff in danger. We'll take a look at that and update you on Woodruff's condition. The second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY begins right now.
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