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Nancy Grace
Break in Disappearance of TV Anchor
Aired May 09, 2006 - 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, after 11 long years, is there finally a break in the disappearance of a beautiful 27-year-old Iowa TV anchor, Jodi Huisentruit, last seen on her way to the TV station for work? Major development, tonight, an Iowa man says the mystery may end near his lake cabin. And also tonight, Boston police investigating a string of murders, including the sadistic killing of a 19-year-old high school cheerleader, Dominique Samuels.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our family is completely and utterly devastated over the loss of our precious daughter, who was our family`s teddy bear.
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GRACE: Good evening, everybody. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us tonight. Tonight, the town that was home to one of the most notorious serial killers in U.S. history, the "Boston Strangler," now gripped in fear, another killer stalking the streets of Boston, the seventh and latest known casualty, a 19-year-old high school cheerleader.
But first tonight, breaking news in a decade-long mystery of a 27- year-old rising TV star last seen en route to work. And tonight, we are taking your calls.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For 11 years, we`ve watched the video of 27-year- old Huisentruit hard at work building a career in television news, and we`ve wondered who interrupted that career one morning in 1995, as she left her Mason City apartment. Who kidnapped her? Who probably killed her?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) unaware of anybody who didn`t love her. I don`t know of anyone that didn`t like her (INAUDIBLE) she was such a joyful, joyful person.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She was an all-American young lady that pulled her own, very, very good person.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody who saw her every morning woke up to their coffee and had breakfast with her.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Straight out to Milwaukee and Mitch Teich, the executive producer of "At 10." Mitch, what happened the morning that Jodi went missing?
MITCH TEICH, EXEC. PROD., "AT 10," WUWM, MILWAUKEE PUBLIC RADIO: Well, the morning she went missing, Jodi actually called into her Mason City TV station to say she was running late for work. She was the morning anchor on KIMT Channel 3 in Mason City. And she called in, and then she disappeared. She never showed up for work. And after the show aired and her co-workers realized she wasn`t coming in, they called police. And police found at her apartment a variety of her personal effects scattered by her car, but no Jodi Huisentruit.
GRACE: Let me get this straight, Mitch. I thought that her producer called her in the early morning hours to make sure she was coming in.
TEICH: Well, that`s right. Her producer -- when Jodi didn`t show up as early as she normally did, her producer did call Jodi`s apartment. And Jodi apologized and said she was running late for work. And again, the rest happened as I said. She never showed up.
GRACE: Mitch, let`s put it in context. It`s not like this was a slacker. What time did she normally report to work?
TEICH: She normally reported for work a little after 4:00 AM, if my memory serves correct. She was a pretty regular -- she showed up -- she showed up when she should, and so when she didn`t get there on time, her producer and good friend was really surprised that she wasn`t there. And that was why the concerned phone call, to begin with.
GRACE: And we are getting a report in right now that police have agreed to dig in a lakeside location for the body. That has been hotly contested throughout the past few weeks. Take a listen to this.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We received an emergency phone call and -- from Mason City. And right away, I thought that Jodi had probably been in a traffic accident because she kind of did have a heavy foot. However, when I got on, Captain Halvorson (ph) said, Is your mother sitting down? Are you sitting down? Jodi is missing.
We never thought anything like that, never thought along those lines. It was very, very shocking for us.
She just loved her work there. She loved the people. She was really going places. She was very into her career, very goal-oriented.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Back out to Mitch Teich, executive producer of "At 10" with Milwaukee Public Radio. Mitch, surrounding the time of her disappearance, it was early in the morning, 3:00, 4:00 AM. She didn`t show up on time, early for her show. They called her. She said she was sorry, said she was on her way in. What happened then?
TEICH: Well, what happened was she never made it to work. And when police went to the apartment complex in Mason City where she lived, they found a variety of her personal effects scattered around her red Mazda Miata, things like her shoes, things like her hairspray, her earrings, a variety of things that she would have taken to work with her, if she, indeed, was on her way to work. And so that`s why there was some initial suspicion that she just wasn`t in a car accident or hadn`t just -- hadn`t just taken a detour on the way to work and gotten lost or something.
GRACE: Now, you said some of her effects, some of her belongings. What was scattered?
TEICH: It was things like her hairspray, her car keys, her earrings, her shoes that she would have -- that she would have worn to work, things that typically would have been in a handbag -- her hair dryer, I think, is one of them -- things that just normally would have been with her. And any -- any TV anchorwoman, especially one on their way to work in kind of a small city, small-market TV station, she would have brought those things with her.
GRACE: Elizabeth, hold that up just one moment -- a bent key found in the car door lock, blood evidence at scene showing a struggle, red dress shoes, purse, hair dryer, hair spray, earrings found at scene, palm print on car.
Now, that says to me she never got into her car. The key was found distorted in the lock. Obviously, her outfit that she planned to wear when she got to work -- it`s my understanding, normally, she would wear something, you know, rattier to work and then change into her nice clothes when she got there. All of her belongings that typically you`d take to work as an anchor, lying beside her car.
What type of blood evidence, Mitch?
TEICH: You know, I`m not familiar with the blood evidence. I know of the palm print that was found at the scene, and from my knowledge, that was the most direct piece of evidence that they had found. The blood evidence may have been broken nails or...
GRACE: Yes, yes.
TEICH: ... something along those lines. I do remember that...
GRACE: What about the palm print? What about the palm print, Mitch? Where was the palm print?
TEICH: The palm print, I believe, was on the car. And that has been sort of the one material piece of evidence that they have been using, the investigators have been using to either rule out suspects or not rule our suspects, as the case has progressed. I know there was a -- there was a convicted sex offender who lived in Austin, Minnesota, that was one of the police`s prime suspects in the case. And they were able to rule him out based on the fact that his palm print did not match the print that was found at the scene.
GRACE: Take a listen to what a man named Duane Arnold said. This guy has property on Eagle Lake. That`s about 30 miles from Mason City, where she went missing. And he is convinced that this news anchor is buried somewhere near his lake cabin.
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DUANE ARNOLD, THINKS MISSING TV ANCHOR`S BODY IS BURIED NEAR HIS CABIN: I really, truly believe she`s right there somewhere. It didn`t dawn on me at that time.
I got to know. I got to know. It`s just -- it`s eating me up. I`ve lost a lot of sleep. You can`t get it out of your mind.
The reading on the penetrating radar was right in the general area, as I remember it, from 10-and-a-half years ago. It`s up to the Hancock County sheriff now. They got a backhoe. I just -- I can`t do it by hand. I`m too old.
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GRACE: GPR, ground-penetrating radar. Let`s go to Jeff Daniels. He is an expert in that field. He`s a professor of geological studies, Ohio State University. What is GPR? Explain.
JEFF DANIELS, GROUND-PENETRATING RADAR EXPERT: Well, the easiest way to explain GPR is use the analogy to radar up in the sky, looking at airplanes. Basically, if you look up into the sky with radar, the GPR and electromagnetic signal goes up, it bounces up to the plane, then comes back to the ground. With GPR, we just take that radar unit and turn it into the subsurface, and we scan along the subsurface to look for changes in the subsurface, changes in features and objects in the subsurface.
GRACE: I want to go to Tad Jude. This is Jodi`s cousin. Tad, thank you for being with us. Now, this gentleman, Duane Arnold, says that he noticed a grave-shape digging on his property near his lake cabin just days after Jodi went missing in 1995. Tad, do you know whether Arnold went to the police at the time, or during the last 11 years, did he go to police, or did he just suddenly this past week go to police?
TAD JUDE, MISSING TV ANCHOR`S COUSIN: Nancy, thanks for having this program. I understand that Duane Arnold had gone to the Mason City police 11 years ago, when Jodi disappeared, and the Mason City police and the Hancock County sheriff`s office did do an examination back then. They have done it again during the last 24 hours. They have done some excavating on that site, and they are convinced that Jodi is not at that site. However...
GRACE: But you know, Tad...
JUDE: ... the family is very thankful...
GRACE: Tad, they...
JUDE: We`re very thankful that Duane Arnold reported, you know, his lead to the police and that the police followed up on it.
GRACE: But Tad, all along, from the very beginning, before they agreed to excavate, police seemed to pooh-pooh this whole idea. And apparently, the ground-penetrating radar suggested that something there was buried of the same dimensions as a body.
To Jeff Daniels, the expert in this field. Can this GPR determine whether the item is a body, a decomposed body, or a solid mass such as rock or metal?
DANIELS: It cannot distinguish between those two. And I think that`s a general misunderstanding of GPR, that it can directly detect certain objects in the subsurface.
GRACE: Can you see what we are showing the viewers? Liz, if you could put that picture back up? That is the actual photo. We are showing them the photo, the ground-penetrating radar results. And can you see that, Jeff?
DANIELS: I cannot see that.
GRACE: Darn.
DANIELS: Unfortunately.
GRACE: Because we can see where items are showing up, but I can`t determine the size of them relative to the picture.
Back to Tad Jude. This is Jodi`s cousin. The day she went missing, what was the family told, Tad?
JUDE: You know, of course, we were told that she was missing. We didn`t know exactly what had happened. We did not fear the worst at the time, of course, and over time, I think we`ve come to realize that Jodi`s not coming back. But you know, we`ve always had some hope and we still have hope that we`ll see Jodi again and she`ll come home. But you know, we depend on the public to do what Mr. Arnold did, and that is to give leads to the police department. And we`re just hoping that...
GRACE: Tad...
JUDE: ... we get leads from property owners and police follow up on it.
GRACE: Tad, did she have a boyfriend?
JUDE: You know, Nancy, Jodi did not have a steady boyfriend. She was a very social person. She belonged to the Optimist Club, and she liked to socialize. She was a leader in the community, in Mason City, and she participated in a lot of civic events and I think contributed a lot, met a lot of people.
And I personally suspect that whoever did this knew her schedule. So she did not have anyone living with her, certainly. She did not have a guest in her apartment. But you know, we`re convinced, at least I`m convinced, that whoever did this did know her schedule.
GRACE: To clinical psychotherapist Mark Hillman. It would seem as if it`s someone that knew Jodi. Tonight, police now agreeing, we have learned, to dig for possibly the remains of this rising TV star, has reignited the search for Jodi Huisentruit.
Back to Mark Hillman, clinical psychotherapist. It seems as if it was someone that knew her. The reality is, Mark, isn`t it true that, typically, when someone is murdered, the perpetrator is someone you know? And who else would be standing out beside her car at 3:00 or 4:00 o`clock in the morning?
MARK HILLMAN, CLINICAL PSYCHOTHERAPIST: I concur 100 percent with what you`re saying, Nancy. Clearly, this person premeditated, knew her schedule, somebody very close to her that would know exactly what time she would be coming out in terms of her schedule. It`s sad. It`s unfortunate. What kind of disturbs me is that when people heard screams, they didn`t report it for three hours later.
As tragic as this is, we have to learn something from this, and the family, that any time you`re being abducted or you`re being grabbed, you always yell "Fire." That`s what we need to understand from this. Take something away from this as a teaching point for other single women. They are vulnerable. We need to understand that.
GRACE: Dr. Hillman, you`re absolutely correct. In fact, that`s what young children are taught in school, to either yell out "Fire" or "This is not my dad" or "This is not my mom" because the people hear a general scream or an uproar, they don`t follow up on it. It`s a known suggestion to children and women all over the country.
We`ll be right back on the latest for the search for Jodi Huisentruit, that case reignited tonight, police agreeing to dig for the possibility of this anchor`s remains.
Let`s go to tonight`s "Case Alert," Elizabeth. A Duke University report states the school underestimated rape allegations against members of the Duke lacrosse team. Why? Durham police initially claimed the accuser changed her story.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s so easy to look back on the situation and second guess and realize what could have been, should have been.
It did not appear as though this case was really going to go very far because there were some real inconsistencies in some of the information that the alleged victim was providing.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) resident Duane Arnold hired a company with ground radar to search at the edge of the reeds one more time. He claims they found something consistent with a burial, and he wants the Hancock County sheriff`s department to dig again.
ARNOLD: I got to know. I got to know what`s there. It`s eating me up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She was declared legally dead many years ago, but at each mention of her name, Mason City-ans (ph) hope that somehow, the pretty young anchor who just vanished into thin air may finally be found.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A person (INAUDIBLE) just disappear without absolutely any trace.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: The so-called cold case now on the front burner tonight, local police agreeing finally to dig up in a spot near a lakeside cabin, where a man up in his 70s, Duane Arnold, is convinced clues to this TV star`s disappearance will be found.
Right now, a very special guest is joining us. It is a primetime exclusive. The last person to speak to Jodi, Amy Kuns, is with us. Welcome, Amy. Thank you for being with us.
AMY KUNS, LAST PERSON WHO SPOKE TO TV ANCHOR BEFORE DISAPPEARANCE: Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.
GRACE: Hi, dear. Could you recount to the viewers the last time you spoke to Jodi?
KUNS: Yes. Being in the morning, we kind of took care of each other. If one of us overslept, we`d give the other a wake-up call. I called her probably -- she`s usually at work between 3:30 and 4:00. I called her at about 10 after 4:00, and it was very obvious that I had just woken her up. I mean, she sounded very groggy, like I`d just woken her from a deep sleep. She asked me what time it was. I told her, and she`s like, Oh, I`ll be there in, like, 20 minutes, half an hour.
And that would usually be the case. You know, she`d come to work with all the items that were found in her bag -- you know, the hair dryer, her shoes, her makeup, things like that. She`d usually have her dress clothes on, but her hair would be wet, you know, just freshly showered, and she`d style it -- dry and style it when she got to work. We just would work really hard on getting the show done right away. So she was just concerned about coming in to work.
GRACE: Did you notice anything unusual in the days preceding this? Did she have a concern? Did she have a stalker? Was there a problem, a pestering boyfriend, anything?
KUNS: No stalkers that she talked about. I did notice a couple days in the weeks prior to her disappearance that she seemed very, very tired. And one time I walked into (INAUDIBLE), and she looked like she was -- actually had fallen asleep. I don`t know if that`s just because she hadn`t gotten much sleep or -- I really don`t know what that was.
But she never talked about any stalkers to me. That doesn`t mean that she hadn`t talked to family members. I`m not sure. But no, no concerns that I knew of.
GRACE: Did she have a boyfriend?
KUNS: She did not have a boyfriend. She had kind of been seeing a guy named John Van Size (ph), but I don`t know if they actually officially dated or not. But he had just thrown her a big birthday party about a week before she disappeared.
GRACE: John Van Size.
KUNS: I don`t think they were dating. She had told him that they just -- she just wanted to be friends.
GRACE: Now, did he want more of the relationship?
KUNS: I`m not sure. I would think yes, but I don`t know. All know is that Jodi had told him that she just wanted to be friends and left it at that. I don`t know many other details.
GRACE: Now, Elizabeth, is a shot of John Van Size?
ELIZABETH YUSKAITIS, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Yes, that is him.
GRACE: OK. Let me repeat, Van Size not a suspect. But he had just thrown her a big birthday party?
KUNS: Yes, he had just thrown her a big birthday party a week before she disappeared. And he was -- you`re right, he was never listed as an official suspect.
GRACE: When you did realize something was wrong?
KUNS: Well, like I said, I had called her about 10 after 4:00, and she still wasn`t there in half an hour. I thought, well, I`d give her, like, 20 more minutes. It got to be 5:00 o`clock, 5:30. And at that point, you know, I`m the only person in the building besides our master control operator because it`s a small TV station. I didn`t have time to call -- I called her a couple more times, no answer. I didn`t have time to call police or anybody else. At that point, I was just concerned about getting the show on the air. We couldn`t put in black.
I went on the air for her. And then one of our creative services guys walked through the studio at about, I would guess, somewhere between 6:00 or 6:30. And I told him, Dave, Jodi`s not here. Go to her apartment. Call the police, whatever you need to do, but she`s not here and I`m really worried. And that`s when we kind of got the ball rolling.
GRACE: Let`s go to the lines, Elizabeth. Let`s go to Erica in Washington. Hi, Erica.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi. If for some reason -- if they do end up finding her on the property, where do they go from there, as far as finding a suspect and collecting evidence and all that stuff?
GRACE: To Dr. Daniel Spitz, forensic pathologist. At this juncture, 11 years later, there`d be no soft tissue left. Unless there was a gunshot wound into the bone or a stab wound that hit a bone or a broken neck bone, how could we determine cause of death?
DR. DANIEL SPITZ, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST: Well, you`re right, you`re going to be left with bones. Certainly, there`s going to be no soft tissue left. And short of a gunshot wound to the bone or other type of injury to the bone, you`re going to be left with, really, a homicide where you have an undetermined cause of death.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The cause of the death and the manner of the death have not been determined. The one thing that we can say at this moment is that the burns were inflicted after she died. I`m not certain that it is gasoline, per se. It is an accelerant of some sort. I wouldn`t limit it to gasoline. That`s why I say if there are businesses open that time of morning that would sell anything that could be considered an accelerant, I`d be interested in knowing about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: That`s the Boston story we are bringing you next, so stay with us.
Right now, back to a story that was called a cold case, now reignited after local police agree to dig what could be the remains of this rising TV star.
Let`s go straight back to the last person to speak to Jodi Huisentruit, Amy Kuns, her producer, her then producer. What was done at the time to try to find Jodi?
KUNS: Oh, all sorts of things, anything from -- there was a river right behind her apartment. We had boats going up and down that river. We had dogs brought in, to see if they could sniff anything out. Local FBI, the police department, sheriff`s department, anybody and everybody who had anything to do with law enforcement was there trying to find her.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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CHIEF JACK SCHLIEPER, MASON CITY POLICE: Right now, we have followed up on a lot of leads, a lot of tips, over 1,000, 1,500, and conducted a little over a 1,000 interviews with individuals. And, at this point in time, there`s nothing that would lead us conclusively to a suspect.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: We are talking about the case -- cold until just recently -- of missing anchor, a TV rising star, Jodi Huisentruit. The 27-year-old beauty went missing, last known to be on her way to the TV station for her early-morning on-air shift.
To Mitch Teich, executive producer at "At 10" at Milwaukee Public Radio, Mitch, explain to me, who are the people that they have looked at over the years and have they been cleared?
TEICH: Well, there are a number of people that police have looked at. The one name that surfaced a number of times was a man named Tony Dejuan Jackson, who is a convicted serial rapist who is currently serving a life prison sentence in the Twin Cities in Minnesota for a series of rapes in Minnesota.
He`s repeatedly said that he has nothing to do with this case. And, to this date, I don`t believe police have been able to make any clear link.
I mentioned earlier there is a convicted sex offender from southern Minnesota who is in a state prison hospital in, I think, St. Peter, Minnesota, right now, who had been looked at as a potential suspect. His palm print did not match the palm print that was found at the scene.
Those were two key leads that thus far haven`t panned out. There have been a number of other -- a number of other leads that they`ve looked at, some skeletal remains that were found in this creek bed near Jodi Huisentruit`s apartment, and they did not match those -- it wasn`t her.
GRACE: Who was it?
TEICH: I believe it was a white male. And the information that I remember said that they weren`t able to determine a cause of death, but they were pretty sure it was not the body of a female.
GRACE: You know, it`s amazing to me, Pat Brown, that someone as high- profile as Jodi Huisentruit could just go missing, vanish into thin air, taken out of a parking lot, for Pete`s stake, her keys still stuck in her car, and nobody knows anything.
What is your take on now suddenly digging in this area? According to Duane Arnold, who is an elderly gentleman, he`s been asking police to come for years.
PAT BROWN, CRIMINAL PROFILER: Well, Nancy, let`s first go back to the crime scene. What I`m seeing here is the fact that Jodi screamed a lot. And if you know the person, even slightly, you tend to argue with them or say, "What are you doing? Why are you even holding a gun to me? What are you trying to do to me?"
When you start screaming like that, it means you probably do not really know the person. My guess is that person came from the complex, somebody when watched her come and go. I mean, young women who are in apartment complexes are much in danger when they have routines going to their vehicles in the morning.
I want to look back at the palm print. If there is not blood on that palm print, that palm print does not prove it`s from the actual suspect. It may be, but it may not be the killer. It may just be somebody who leaned against the car, so we can`t rule anybody out.
Whoever took her was a sexual predator, Nancy. They took her some place; they did something horrible, probably, to her, and then got rid of her body. Now, the question is: Where did they do that?
And if you`re in that apartment complex, you obviously don`t have a home to go, you know, put cement outside and put them underneath the porch, so you have to find some place, a ravine, perhaps, an empty location. Usually, then, the body is found at some point within a year or two.
In this case, what did they do? Maybe they went to a family farm, a corner where they could bury somebody and no one would question it, and you would have to get a search warrant, or maybe they found a very isolated place.
Mr. Arnold, I don`t know, maybe he did see something. Maybe he just really wished he could help out. There`s a lot of, you know, well-meaning people out there who are a little bit...
(CROSSTALK)
GRACE: Well, good lord, Pat Brown, if you look in your backyard and you suddenly see a digging that looks like a grave, I guess you do get a little suspicious and call police.
BROWN: You could. But the question is: Did he really see that? We don`t know.
GRACE: Well, who wouldn`t? I could. Wouldn`t you?
BROWN: Well, if I saw that in my backyard, I would definitely call. Mr. Arnold may be right on the money, and they may have the wrong place, or he may just thought he saw something, and that`s what the police have to deal with. They don`t know if he`s telling the truth or he`s, as I say, wishful thinking or he`s looking for attention.
They`re going to have to figure that one out. But, you know, they get so many tips. And the question is: Do you dig up every place? Who do you believe? It`s a really big chore, as far as that goes, and unfortunately we didn`t find anything yet.
GRACE: Well, hold on a minute. Hold on. Hold on.
BROWN: Sure.
GRACE: To Mitch Teich with Milwaukee Public Radio, have they dug anywhere else but here, Mitch?
TEICH: Not to my knowledge.
GRACE: So it`s not like they`re really exhausting their resources digging?
TEICH: Well, right. But you have to remember Mason City is in a pretty rural part of Iowa. There are infinite numbers of farm fields. And, you know, it`s just a physical impossibility to dig up every possible site that her body could be found.
So, I mean, I guess, in the defense of law enforcement, it`s only leads like this that really tell them you should really dig here because, otherwise, you know, there is no shortage of places to hide a body.
GRACE: Listen, listen, Mitch, look, you`re talking to a farm girl, OK? Came from the middle of middle Georgia. But if suddenly you see a grave-looking digging in your backyard, I guess the sheriff should follow up on it.
I`m a little surprised -- if they find something or don`t find something -- what took them so long to follow up on it? I see that there`s no reason for this elderly gentleman to make up, to fabricate the whole story. Now they`ve used this GPR, and they have found something in that area.
Hold on. Let`s go to the lines, Mitch. A lot of people have questions for you. Let`s go to Maryanne in Ohio.
Hi, Maryanne.
CALLER: Hi, Nancy. Thank you very much.
GRACE: Yes, ma`am.
CALLER: I watched the Jodi Huisentruit case 10 years ago, and I`ve watched it off and on. At the time, did the police do an adequate job gathering trace evidence? And I believe Jodi Huisentruit had a stalker she did not know. She`s very petite and vulnerable. And if she knew the stalker, she would have told someone.
GRACE: You know what? Interesting point.
Mitch, with us is Mitch Teich from Milwaukee Public Radio, do we know whether she had a stalker? Had she gotten letters or phone calls? And what are her dimensions, how tall? How much did she weigh?
TEICH: She was -- and I can`t put an exact height and weight -- but I believe she was in the neighborhood of 5`3", 5`4", and she was a relatively petite woman.
But, to our knowledge, she hadn`t gotten the kind of stalking letters or phone calls that you often hear about. But that was really the odd nature of this.
I should say that I was a reporter in southern Minnesota at the time this all happened, which is how I came to be covering the case in the first place. And that was what was perhaps the creepiest part of it all, was that there were so many young women reporters in the market there, that the fact that this happened, really, I think, caused a lot of people to grow up about what they were doing, and going to work every day, and doing, and realizing that this was not just a case of people, you know, of anchorwomen waking up, and going to work, and doing their job, and coming home.
They were actually going into people`s living rooms and making a connection with people that they didn`t realize that they were making. And I think that that was what really unnerved a lot of the reporters in the area, and not just the women.
GRACE: To Michelle Suskauer, veteran defense lawyer, you know, Michelle, though, it`s Trial 101, when you`re talking about a corpus delicti, the body of evidence, the dead body, no body, no case. That`s simply not true. A murder case can be proven, even when there`s a not a body, Michelle.
MICHELLE SUSKAUER, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: That`s true. But we really don`t have anything else here, other than what`s in her purse, the fact that her car was there, the palm print. We don`t have any suspects. We don`t -- I noticed, by the way, you talked about her boyfriend. And I know no one brought up the fact that I think he had a polygraph and he passed...
(CROSSTALK)
GRACE: He had a private -- he says he had a private polygraph.
SUSKAUER: I don`t know how much that was followed through with, in terms of was his palm print taken?
GRACE: Yes.
SUSKAUER: This could have been more than one person who abducted her, too. But going back to what you said, Nancy, in terms of if we didn`t have a body, that`s still OK, but we really don`t have anything else. And if there`s nothing underneath the ground, we still have a cold case.
GRACE: Well, I think you`re absolutely right about something, Michelle. Yes, you can go forward without a body, but you`re at such a loss. You don`t have any physical evidence. You don`t have any cause of death. You have nothing, really, to show a jury, unless you`ve got an eyewitness.
But it`s simply not true, Randy Zelin, also a defense lawyer, that, just because there`s no body, she`s out living it up in Tijuana off her life savings.
RANDY ZELIN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Absolutely not. But the difficulty, as you just raised, Nancy, is simple no body, no murder weapon, no motive. You have so little to go to a jury with, you almost have built-in reasonable doubt. How do you know that this woman isn`t going to walk into the courtroom door in the middle of the trial?
GRACE: That is so tired. That is so tired, when you say to a jury, "Wait, she`s coming," and if they look, then you say, "A ha, got you." Did you have reasonable doubt whether she`s dead? Don`t jump up with that, Randy Zelin.
But, OK, yes, you`re kind of right.
Very quickly to Dr. Daniel Spitz. At this juncture, if her body is found, what would we find?
SPITZ: All you would find is bones and little else. At this point, 10 years is a long time, and there would be no soft tissue, so the bones would have to tell the story. And, unfortunately, they don`t always tell you a whole lot.
GRACE: The tip line: 515-421-3636. If you have any information on Jodi, a cold case now warming up, call this number.
Very quickly, Elizabeth, let`s go to tonight`s "Case Alert." Texas parole department, you are in contempt! Multimillionaire Robert Durst now reports just twice a month instead of daily to his parole officer. He`s no longer subject to electronic tracking.
Durst, acquitted of murder in November 2003, even though he admits to killing, then dismembering his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, 74 years old. Now, the multimillionaire is free to travel at will through the great state of Texas. Lock your doors.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our family is completely and utterly devastated over our loss of our precious daughter, who was our family teddy bear. There is no expression, verbal or written, known to man that can express our feelings. Needless to say, our family will never be the same again.
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GRACE: How she can stay so composed at a time like this, I do not know. Seven murders, seven days in the city of Boston. One of them, a 19- year-old former cheerleader, Dominique Samuels.
Straight out Laura Grimaldi, reporter with the "Boston Herald," Laura, welcome. What the hey is going on?
LAURA GRIMALDI, REPORTER, "BOSTON HERALD": Thank you for having me. Dominique Samuels was found in a wooded area in Franklin Park on April 30th by an elderly gentleman who was strolling by. It was the beginning of a really hard week in Boston, in terms of violence. There have been seven killings in seven days. And today, the police commissioner resigned.
GRACE: Well, you know what? I guess so. I mean, I`m not crying over him resigning. Laura, I wish you could see this map.
Elizabeth, can you put the map up of where the bodies are located? Seven murders, seven days in the great city of Boston.
Back to our reporter Laura Grimaldi with the "Boston Herald," who are the victims?
GRIMALDI: Well, the victims, one is a Dominique Samuels. The latest victim is a gentleman named Alex Mendes. His brother, Bobby Mendes, was actually killed 10 years ago after a mugging very close to where Alex Mendes was also killed.
GRACE: You know what? We`re showing a map of their names and locations. Let`s see, 24 years old, 25, unidentified, a 40-year-old, a 22- year-old, a 32-year-old, and now Dominique, 19 years old.
Here`s what police have to say.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The area where Ms. Samuels was found is accessible both by foot and by car. The BPD has not ruled out the possibility that Ms. Samuels may have been brought to this location from another location.
The office of the chief medical examiner has yet to determine the manner and the cause of death. However, evidence at this time suggests that an accelerant was used during the incident. The one thing that we can say at this moment is that the burns were inflicted after she died.
The accelerant is an issue that we`re interested in. We`d like to call people`s attention to area gas stations. Again, this discovery was very early on a Sunday morning.
I`d like to call the attention to people who may have been in or around gas stations or businesses that might have been selling accelerant of different kinds to pay particular attention to anyone purchasing those items at that time of the morning.
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GRACE: We are talking about the death of a 19-year-old girl. She is a beauty. Liz, can you show her photo? Dominique Samuels, former cheerleader.
Mark Hillman is with us, clinical psychotherapist. Dr. Hillman, it`s bad enough to kill a young girl with her life before her, but to burn her body? Apparently when she was found, her body still smoldering. You need to shrink that.
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HILLMAN: Can you say "sociopath"? This guy is demented if it is, in fact, a guy. This person is bizarre, has a tremendous amount of rage, has real problems as a misogynist with women. This is so reprehensible and so heinous of a distortion, not only the murder, but in the tragedy and the effect on the whole family and the community.
You know, and now, all of a sudden, they beef up all the police and investigation and those kinds of things. But this goes back, Nancy, to the teaching points before and after. She pleaded with everybody: Don`t be alone. Be with somebody. Watch your patterns. Stay focused on what it is.
And don`t tell me about pepper spray and mace. What are you going to do say, "Wait a minute, let me reach into my pocketbook"? We need to be aware of our surroundings and pay attention to it.
GRACE: But one thing about this -- and you`re absolutely right, Dr. Hillman.
But to Pat Brown, her body still smoldering was found just a short distance from the rental she had. She was in a house with a bunch of other students where they each rented a room or rooming house. So it`s not as if she were like out on the town, wearing hot pants, drinking booze, and smoking pot. This is a short distance from where she rented a home.
BROWN: You`re right, Nancy. And the sad thing is, when you`re young and you`re struggling in life, you usually stay in places that aren`t like the Ritz, you know. You don`t have your own private property; you don`t live in the high-security building. You live where you can live.
GRACE: What does the burning suggest? What does the burning suggest to you?
BROWN: The burning suggests to me that somebody needed to cover up evidence. I don`t think that was so much of a misogynist thing. I think that the person who attacked her probably was a sexual predator. But once he had something to her, he said, "Oh, my god, they`re going to find the evidence." And burning a body is one good way to get rid of evidence, and we learn all that from the news and we learn that from the movies.
So if you can get the body some place and light it up, you can kill off the evidence. So my guess is the police are going to be focusing right in on that rooming house to see who there wanted to cover up what happened.
GRACE: And Kenneth in Tennessee, we`ll be right with you, we`re taking your calls.
But please stay with us as we remember tonight Army Specialist Carlos Gonzalez, just 22, Middleton, New York, killed by mortar, Iraq. Gonzalez leaves behind his parents, wife, and a one-year-old daughter. Carlos M. Gonzalez, an American hero.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The family and I would like your continued prayers, your special understanding and forgiveness, at our need to initially insulate ourselves as a family as we begin this journey through a very long and arduous grieving process.
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GRACE: Seven murders in just seven days in the city of Boston. We are taking your calls. To Kenneth in Tennessee, hi, Kenneth.
CALLER: Nancy, how are you doing?
GRACE: I`m good, sir.
CALLER: Yes, my question tonight is: Do you think this is a rebirth of the Boston Strangler, with a more sadistic message, or is it another murderer trying to send his own message with...
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GRACE: You know what, Kenneth? At first when I heard seven murders, seven days -- there is the Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo -- I immediately thought, just like you did, it`s got to be a serial killer, but then I learned quickly that the victims are different ages, different sexes, and the M.O.s are different.
So I don`t think we`ve got a serial killer on our hands, at least I don`t think that yet, but that was my first thought, Kenneth in Tennessee.
To Joe in Florida, hi, Joe.
CALLER: Hi there, Nancy. It`s more than coincidence that seven murders in seven days. Wouldn`t there be an awful lot of the possibility of forensic evidence on those bodies?
GRACE: Good question. What about it, Laura?
GRIMALDI: Well, it seems that all of this murders are unrelated. There have been shootings. One gentleman was stabbed. Dominique today, the police announced that they`ve determined that she was strangled. So there really isn`t any concrete evidence linking any of these incidents together. They`d also took place in very different parts of the city.
GRACE: Already, the year 2006, 14 murders.
Very quickly to Michelle Suskauer. I know it`s anecdotal, but all the years I`ve prosecuted, I swear the murder rate goes up come summer and springtime.
SUSKAUER: It seems that way. And, you know, I went to school in Boston. I don`t remember there being such a problem there. But I know that, with Dominique`s case...
GRACE: Hey, Michelle.
SUSKAUER: Yes?
GRACE: Don`t go to your college reunion, OK? Don`t. You stay right there where you belong in Miami...
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SUSKAUER: Oh, because it`s very safe here, OK? We don`t have any crime here at all.
GRACE: I got to go, Michelle Suskauer (INAUDIBLE) thank you. But thank you to all of our guests. Our biggest thank you is to you for being with us. Nancy Grace signing off for tonight. See you here tomorrow night, 8:00 sharp Eastern. And, until then, good night, friend.
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