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Nancy Grace
Young Ohio Couple Found Murdered by Boy`s Father
Aired February 04, 2011 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEAN CASAREZ, GUEST HOST: We begin with breaking news out of Ohio. A frantic 911 call by a mother absolutely hysterical over her missing son and his girlfriend. The young couple -- they`re just about to walk out of their home in the Toledo suburbs when they make a phone call to their friend. Well, suddenly, the phone drops and the 21-year-old son screams out, Who are you? What do you want? What are you doing here? Then they are never heard from again.
After two separate 911 calls to police, the family breaks down the front door to find the house ransacked and two bodies sprawled across the kitchen floor. The gorgeous couple, Johnny and Lisa -- they`re brutally murdered, bound with duct tape, plastic bags over their heads. Tonight, we have the chilling 911 calls.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You need to get the police out to Longacre Lane! My son is in the basement, tied up with a towel (ph). I just saw him through the window. The police were (EXPLETIVE DELETED) earlier and did absolutely nothing!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I ripped off the bag off my son`s head.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) both of them tied up (INAUDIBLE) bags on their heads!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And went to her and did the same.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Both cell phones are on the ground, and we can see the people. Him and his girlfriend are tied up in the basement!
911 OPERATOR: All right, we`ll get them out there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) out here! I told them earlier and they (INAUDIBLE)
911 OPERATOR: Ma`am, you need to calm down. We`ll get them out there. But yelling at me isn`t...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They`re unconscious, ma`am!
911 OPERATOR: OK. You said they`re unconscious?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: Good evening. I`m Jean Casarez of "In Session" on the truTV network, in for Nancy Grace. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. A gorgeous young couple brutally, brutally murdered inside their home in the Toledo, Ohio, suburbs, bound with duct tape, plastic bags over their heads. And they fought hard to survive. We have just obtained the shocking 911 calls.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
911 OPERATOR: Lucas County 911.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God! We just called the police here...
911 OPERATOR: On Longacre?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. But we need a rescue squad! He`s got a bag over his head! We can see through the window! Please!
911 OPERATOR: We`ve got them on their way already, OK?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. Yes, I`m sorry!
911 OPERATOR: That`s all right. Stay on the line. I`m going to transfer you, OK?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God!
911 OPERATOR: OK?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK!
(END AUDIO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We beg you, come forward, come forward and let us all have some peace. And that poor girl! They did not deserve to die.
911 OPERATOR: Cell phones on their bodies?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With cell phones on their bodies!
911 OPERATOR: She`s unclothed with (INAUDIBLE) pants on.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She only has pants on! And their hands are tied!
911 OPERATOR: OK. All right, we`ll get them out there, ma`am.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God!
911 OPERATOR: I need you to calm down. We`ll get them out there, OK?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God! Please hurry!
911 OPERATOR: All right. We will.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Longacre Drive! Longacre Lane!
911 OPERATOR: I have the address. We`ll get them out there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good-bye!
(END AUDIO CLIP)
CASAREZ: Let us go straight out to David Lohr, crime reporter for AOL.com, joining us tonight from Ohio. David, what happened?
DAVID LOHR, AOLNEWS.COM (via telephone): Well, Jean, this all started out with that phone call that you heard from Johnny Clarke`s mother. It was placed to the Lucas County sheriff`s office right after 1:00 o`clock Monday. And what had prompted that call was she had received a call from a friend of her son`s. The friend said that he was supposed to pick her up that night. She called him around 11:00 o`clock to confirm he was coming. Well, during that conversation they were having, it sounded like he dropped the phone. And she could hear him in the background saying something to the effect of, you know, Who are you? What do you want? What are you doing here? And then right after that, the phone went dead.
She tried to call back, couldn`t reach him. She got in her car, drove out there. The door was locked. The lights were on, but nobody was answering. She peered inside, you know, through a door window or something of that nature, and saw where it looked like things were out of order. So that raised enough concern within her that she contacted the mother, and then the mother contacted police.
CASAREZ: All right. To Alexis Weed, NANCY GRACE producer. Let`s go through these 911 calls because there wasn`t just one. There was a total of three of them, Alexis.
ALEXIS WEED, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Right, Jean, a total of three calls. Now, the first two are the most important. The first call was made by the mother to 911 at 1:21 in the morning. She calls, she says she`s concerned about his son. He`s not answering his phone. His girlfriend is not answering his phone, not answering texts.
The second call comes in at 2:07 AM. But police do respond to that first call. They send four cop cars out to the residence. This is Lisa Straub`s parents` residence. They look around. They ring the doorbell. They knock on the door. They peer into windows. And they say nothing`s unusual. They leave.
It`s not until 2:07, when that second call comes in, that things start to escalate and the concern rises.
CASAREZ: OK, so let`s go through this again. David Lohr, all right, Johnny Clarke and Lisa Straub, all right, 21 and 20 years old, they`re house-sitting because her parents are on a cruise. He gets a call because they`re going to go pick somebody up. And all of a sudden, the friend on the other line hears him say what?
LOHR: He says, who are you? What do you want? And what are you doing here? And then right after that is when the phone went dead.
CASAREZ: Right. And isn`t it probably, Who are you, what do you want and why are you here, right? So those are the three sentences that this friend hears. Now, Alexis, then the phone goes dead, and this friend, she keeps trying to call them back because she hears that something`s wrong. She knew something was wrong. She couldn`t reach them, so she goes over to the house, right?
WEED: Right, she goes over to the house. She drives over. She herself looks into the house. Now, she tells the mom, reportedly, that the house looked like it had been ransacked. We don`t know why she says that. We don`t know how much of a view she was able to get into this home. And that`s when the mother starts to place these calls.
CASAREZ: So how were bodies finally bound, Alexis?
WEED: Jean, they were found, unfortunately, by Johnny Clarke`s father. He eventually goes over to the house with the mother and a cousin of the mother. They boost the cousin up to peer into a very small opening of the window where the blinds were not closed. He looks in. He sees his son on the floor. And eventually, when cops do come back to the home for a third time, they find the couple bound, their hands bound by duct tape, plastic bags over their heads and duct tape around the neck area of both individuals.
CASAREZ: So they were able to see that peering in the home. So two 911 calls. Police went to the home two times. But they didn`t see what the family saw when they merely looked in the window.
Everybody, we want you to listen to some of this. This is the first 911 call.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hello?
911 OPERATOR: Toledo 911.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ma`am, my heart is beating out of my chest. I just got a call from one of my son`s friends.
911 OPERATOR: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her phone number, I have it right here. She just picked my husband up, too. My son and his girlfriend live out at Longacre Lane. I believe that`s Holland. This girl says she was on the phone with my son and his girlfriend. And he was supposed to go pick her up. He was telling her he was going out the door. And all she heard was the phone drop and heard my son saying in the background, Who are you? What do you want? What are you doing here? And she said she just drove by the house, and the house looked ransacked. All the lights are on. My son`s not answering and neither is the girlfriend.
911 OPERATOR: Is she still there?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, she just came by here to pick up my husband, my son`s dad. And I`m here with the other two younger kids.
911 OPERATOR: All right, what is your name?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My name is Maytee Vasquez-Clarke. Oh, my God! I have the girl`s phone number that he was talking to, that heard all this going on in the background.
911 OPERATOR: OK.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My son`s girlfriend`s parents are out of town. They left for Puerto Rico two days ago. I don`t know how to calm myself down. My heart`s beating out of my chest!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: And Joining us right now is a family member. Lisa Straub`s uncle is joining us from Detroit, Michigan, Jim Verbosky. Thank you so much for joining us. Mr. Verbosky, what are the police telling you tonight?
JIM VERBOSKY, LISA STRAUB`S UNCLE: First of all, thanks for having me on the show tonight. Mary Beth and Jeff are in daily contact with the -- with the local authorities, the Lucas County Sheriff`s Department, as well as the FBI. We really haven`t heard too much today as what has transpired as far as the investigation as of today.
CASAREZ: Do they believe that it is more than one person that launched this home invasion that resulted in the death of your niece and her boyfriend?
VERBOSKY: The investigators?
CASAREZ: Yes.
VERBOSKY: Or us?
CASAREZ: Both.
VERBOSKY: I think the way that both of those two were murdered, there`s no way that one person could have done what they did to both of them in the heinous way that they were both killed. So we believe -- we believe that more than one person was involved in this. As far as the investigation goes, we trust them and we`re sure that they`re going to carry this investigation out in the proper manner.
CASAREZ: Are you concerned at all -- is your focus at all that the police went out two different times, the second time saying 30 minutes, but did not go into that house?
VERBOSKY: Well, we`re here in northwest Ohio, and prior to Monday, we had about a half of foot of snow on the ground. The sheriff`s deputies indicated that there were no footprints, fresh footprints in the snow anywhere around the house, anywhere around the residence, which led us to believe that when -- that whoever was involved in this situation entered in through the garage door.
So as far as us -- as far as we are concerned, I believe that, you know, they did their job the way they should have done their job. They followed their own protocols as far as, you know, checking the residence, making sure everything was secure. So we don`t believe that was an issue.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ma`am, my heart is beating out of my chest!
911 OPERATOR: I understand.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God!
(INAUDIBLE) open the door so whenever (INAUDIBLE) gets here, you can let them in. I have to sit down on the bed, son. Oh, my God!
(END AUDIO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Four cop cars were already out at this residence. They`re not there, and her car is in the driveway. I want to know where my son`s at.
911 OPERATOR: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want to know where my son and his girlfriend are at. I want to know if they got abducted by whoever tried to assault them and rob them. And it`s pretty funny that this girl named Tiffany, which is there right now by the residence, waits two hours to call somebody to report this.
911 OPERATOR: OK. Well, like I said, we were out there. There was nothing going on there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, where is my son and his girlfriend, and her car is in the driveway?
911 OPERATOR: How would I know that, ma`am?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: I`m Jean Casarez of "In Session," in for Nancy Grace. Johnny and Lisa -- they were so in love, 20, 21 years old. Lisa was beginning nursing classes, to be a nurse, and Johnny was training to become a barber. Their bodies were found with duct tape around their hands, around their wrists, and a paper sack -- plastic bag over their head, with duct tape around the neck. Cause of death, asphyxiation.
We`re taking your calls live tonight. Cindy in Ohio. Hi, Cindy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Jean.
CASAREZ: Thank you for calling.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was wondering if they had any chance of escaping this at all, or if somebody was after them or if they was on cell phones when they made those 911 calls.
CASAREZ: Good question. To C.W. Jensen, retired police -- Portland police captain, joining us from Portland, Oregon. They didn`t have any way to escape, that`s what I say, because of how the bodies were found.
C.W. JENSEN, RETIRED PORTLAND POLICE CAPTAIN: Yes. Based on the description, it would seem that there was certainly more than one person that came in, confronted these two young people, and you know, then God knows what happened over that course of time. I`m sure it was frustrating for the police officers to get out there. I`ve gone on many calls like this in the past, and you go and you`re really limited on what you can do to go inside a house. You`ve really got to be able to articulate a problem.
I think it`s strange that this girl goes to the house, sees some things that disturb her, and she calls the mother instead of calling the police and being there and be able to explain what she sees in the house that`s suspicious.
CASAREZ: And waiting two hours to do anything. We hear that on the 911 tape. To Pat Brown, criminal profiler. We did some legal research to look at what the legal standard is in Ohio. It is an objective, reasonably based standard that someone in the house may need aid or attention. That allows officers to go in. That wasn`t done on two repeated 911 calls.
PAT BROWN, CRIMINAL PROFILER: Well, I`m a little concerned about that myself because there was clearly an indication that -- as long as they believed this girl, anyway, and what her phone call stated, that a stranger -- there are strangers -- and I believe there`s more than one -- strangers had gotten into the home that these two people did not know and they felt threatened. And then these two people were no longer answering the door or left the home. So I think there would be more reason -- I`d take a little bit more time looking around, as best I could, like the parents eventually did, you know, peeping in everywhere, to make sure there wasn`t something going on in there.
CASAREZ: Let`s go to the lawyers, Joey Jackson, defense attorney out of New York, John Manuelian, defense attorney joining us tonight from Los Angeles. Joey Jackson, do you realize that the police, in coming there two different times -- the first time, they stayed I think 11 minutes, the second time they came, 30 minutes. They knew that the 911 call said that the son had said, Who are you? Why are you here? And it`s the family that had to find the bodies with the plastic bags over the heads?
JOEY JACKSON, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: This is a horrific circumstance, by all means, Jean. You know, I mean, listen, in terms of probable cause or objective standard, whatever you want to call it, there`s more than ample here. You have a phone call to 911 repeatedly by the mother. You have the girl who`s describing the friend who is saying it`s ransacked. The lights are on. You have the car there. And they`re not there. It`s problematic. And even if you say there was no objective, credible reason or probable cause, Jean, what about an exigent circumstance? Something needed to be done. Something needed to be done immediately, and it wasn`t done and it`s unfortunate. And I hate to besmirch the character of our members in blue. They protect us. They keep us safe. But something is amiss.
CASAREZ: You know, Joey, I respect the police. I love the police. I applaud for what they do every day of our lives to protect us. But John Manuelian, there is plain view to look in a window to see what has happened. Now, we understand the family had to boost the cousin up on the shoulders of the father of Johnny to look in and see the bodies, but yet it was able to be done.
JOHN MANUELIAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Yes, it was, but you got to understand something. And I`m not trying to defend anybody at this point. But we don`t have the police reports. We don`t know what they did. It`s easy to start judging them at this point. It`s way too early in the investigation. They were there twice, one for 11 minutes, the other one for 36 minutes. I`m sure they did do all of the obvious things like checking the windows and so forth And I`m sure if they saw the house was ransacked, they would have went in.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
911 OPERATOR: Lucas County 911.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God. We just called the police here...
911 OPERATOR: On Longacre?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. But we need a rescue squad. He`s got a bag over his head! We can see through the window! please.
911 OPERATOR: We`ve got them on their way already, OK?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, ma`am. I`m sorry!
911 OPERATOR: That`s all right. Stay on the line. I`m going to transfer you...
(CROSSTALK)
911 OPERATOR: OK?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK!
(END AUDIO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
911 OPERATOR: OK, what did -- what did your son tell her?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My son was, like, Hey, Tiff, we`re on our way out the door. We`re coming to get you. And then all she hears is the phone drop and my son Johnny saying, Who are you? What do you want? What are you doing here? Who are you? And no more -- no more answers. That`s all she hears. And then she says that she starts getting worried because neither of them are answering the phone. And she goes out there by the house and she sees all the lights are on and the cabinets look ransacked.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
CASAREZ: I`m Jean Casarez of "In Session," in for Nancy Grace. A young couple in Ohio -- they weren`t only murdered, they had their wrists bound with duct tape. They had plastic bags over their head with duct tape to secure them so they would be asphyxiated.
We`re talking your calls live tonight. Dale in California. Hi, Dale.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Jean. This is very upsetting that the family had to find these people.
CASAREZ: It is. It definitely, definitely is.
To C.W. Jensen, retired Portland police captain. I know it`s difficult to make these calls and to make these judgments, but if it is an objective reasonable man standard that security may be an issue, or even a welfare check, it just seems as though something more could have been done. Don`t know if it could make a difference, so in reality, it may not matter. But in principle, another time, it could.
JENSEN: Well, I can tell you from my experience, sometimes it`s really frustrating because you do want to go into a residence, but that objective standard is fairly high. I can remember going on calls where people had an elderly relative that they hadn`t heard from them, and you know, you want to go in, but you just can`t go into everyone`s house any time you want.
I`m sure they went out there. They looked into windows. I`m sure they did a reasonable job. This isn`t the first, you know, suspicious kind of case like this that they`d investigated. And unfortunately, you know, hindsight being 20-20, obviously, they would have liked to have gone in there. As you said, who knows what they saw when they looked in there? Who knows what was taking place inside that house?
CASAREZ: Alexis Weed, NANCY GRACE producer joining us tonight from New York, what else did the family see when they looked inside the house?
WEED: Jean, like I said before, this cousin of the mother was propped up, looking in through a window. They see the son in there first. They also see cell phones thrown on the ground. And that`s when the father went back around to the front of the house, kicked in the door and found his son and the girlfriend lying there, hands bound, bags over their heads.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoever did do this...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Needs to pay!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... they planned it. They planned it because they went to that house with tape and bags. I hope and pray the cops find them before I do!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Listen, ma`am, I am a concerned mother. My son was at Long Acre Lane with his girlfriend house sitting. Lisa Straub lives there. Because her parents went to Puerto Rico two days ago.
I get a phone call about a half an hour ago from his friend Sherita that some girl named Tiffany called her saying that Johnny and Lisa were supposed to pick her up at 11:00, and she was on the phone with Johnny, my son, when he was walking out of his house, his girlfriend`s house, with his girlfriend to come get her and supposedly she heard a guy in the background screaming at my son. And my son saying, what do you want, who are you, get away from us and what have you.
OK, four cop cars were already out at this residence. They`re not there. And her car is in the driveway.
JOHN P. CLARKE, MURDER VICTIM JOHNNY CLARKE`S FATHER: UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I found them and I ripped off the bag off my son`s head. Then went to her and did the same.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: I`m Jean Casarez of "In Session" on the truTV Network in for Nancy Grace tonight. Thank you for joining us.
A young couple, in love, planning their lives together and now they are murdered. Who murdered this young couple? Johnny Clarke, Lisa Straub, who murdered them? Police are on an all-out search tonight to try to find out who the murderers were of this couple.
I want to go straight out to David Lohr, crime reporter for AOL.com, joining us from Ohio tonight.
Let`s look at this timeline and let`s start from the beginning. Everything started around 11:00 at night, right?
DAVID LOHR, CRIME REPORTER, AOLNEWS.COM: Yes, that`s correct. 11:00 is when the girl spoke with Johnny. For whatever reason, she waited two hours to call the mom. She called the mom at 1:00 a.m. then the mom calls the police department. The cops go out there shortly after that. It`s about 20 after 1:00.
As you mentioned, they were on the scene for 11 minutes. Left. She called them again around 2:00. They were there within 10 minutes, left -- stayed for about 30 and then left. And then it was after that that the parents finally went out there on their own and the third 911 call came in at 4:00 a.m. after they unfortunately found them deceased inside the home.
CASAREZ: All right. Joining us tonight is Lisa Straub`s uncle -- joining us, Jim Verbosky who is joining us from Detroit, Michigan.
Jim, thank you for joining us. Now you have said something before that really struck me. You said that no footprints were found in the snow. So it`s believed that the perpetrator or perpetrators entered through the garage.
JIM VERBOSKY, UNCLE OF MURDERED 20-YEAR-OLD NURSING STUDENT, LISA STRAUB: That`s correct. Like I said, we have about a half foot of snow on the ground here, and there were no fresh footprints anywhere in that house, and the layout of the house is, you would enter through the garage -- the garage door would have been up, then we would entered through the door and then gone right into the kitchen.
They did have a security alarm system in the home, but that was deactivated.
CASAREZ: Where was their car at the time? Would it have been in the driveway or in the garage?
VERBOSKY: I believe it was in the driveway.
CASAREZ: Do you know if police searched for tire tracks in the snow that were not Johnny`s or Lisa`s?
VERBOSKY: I don`t know that.
CASAREZ: Because if there weren`t any footprints in the snow, they had to get to that garage some way. I would think those tire tracks extremely viable to them.
Another question I want to ask you, your sister and her husband, Lisa`s mother, had planned I`m sure for a long time -- it was a 25th wedding anniversary cruise that they went on, right?
VERBOSKY: That`s correct. The driveway was dry at the time of this incident. We were kind of between two different snowstorms here. So the driveway was not snow covered at that time nor were the roads.
And yes, Mary Beth and Jeff, they did plan this cruise for several months obviously, and they left on Friday.
CASAREZ: Do you think the perpetrators planned this while they were away because it would have been much more difficult to have four people in the home versus two?
VERBOSKY: I would only be speculating if I gave you my opinion. But you know like I said, this was not -- this was not one person who did this.
CASAREZ: Now the home was in disarray, that`s what we`re hearing. When your sister and brother got home, and I know that the cruise stopped to allow them to fly back to Ohio immediately, did they tell you that anything was missing from that home?
VERBOSKY: When they got home, they arrived in near blizzard conditions here at Detroit, and then drove to Toledo. The following morning, they were interviewed by the local authorities and the FBI. Subsequently then they ended up going over to their home.
They walked through the home with the sheriff deputies and the FBI, and basically what was missing was two $20 bills out of a change jar. So this whole ordeal, whoever did this, got $40 out of this.
CASAREZ: To Kathryn Smerling, psychologist joining us tonight out of New York. I`m trying to find motive here. I`m trying to find out if this was a botched robbery. Two $20 bills is not a robbery. This is personal.
KATHRYN SMERLING, PH.D., PSYCHOLOGIST: It certainly does sound like a personal vendetta. And no parent should have to go through what these dear parents are going through right now. My heart is out to all of them. But this does sound like something that was planned, something that was premeditated and something that was very well organized by people that knew that they were alone.
CASAREZ: To CW Jensen, retired Portland police captain. I just got to get your take on this. What motive do you see to do this?
CW JENSEN, RETIRED PORTLAND POLICE CAPTAIN: Well, it wouldn`t surprise me that this whole thing was to be a robbery/burglary, strong arm robbery getting into the house. It`s not a coincidence that the adults, that the parents were gone. I would say that probably the suspects knew that they were going to be gone based on information they got from friends of the victims.
And they came there specifically because, A, they thought that no one was there, and maybe they were surprised that the young man and the young lady were there at the time. But I would be very surprised if the suspects weren`t known in some way to the victims.
GRACE: And I`ll tell you what I`m wondering. I`m wondering if that friend that immediately went over to the house, when she felt something was wrong, if the perpetrators were in some form or fashion still in there, got scared, and didn`t take anymore than the $20 or $40.
I want to go to Dr. Vincent Dimaio joining us tonight from Bexar County, San Antonio, Texas. He`s the former chief medical examiner.
And Doctor, so many, many questions but first of all, beside Lisa was a pool of blood that was found in that home, and beside Johnny, there was no blood. Can you explain the blood at all beside that one victim?
DR. VINCENT DIMAIO, M.D., FORMER CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER, BEXAR COUNTY FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST: She would have had to have been injured prior to being asphyxiated. Maybe she was struck on the head and had scalp laceration. Because if she had any injury to the head after the plastic bag was put on, it could have gotten out, would have been contained in the bag.
CASAREZ: When the bodies were found or when the father of Lisa ripped the bag off his daughter to try to see if he could be resuscitated, her face was very cold to the touch. Her body was cold. What does that tell you? This was about -- I think a little after 3:00 in the morning. What does that tell you about time of death?
DIMAIO: Well, usually you can feel a body being cold. It takes about an hour, an hour and a half, because you know it initially retains the heat. The rest of the time determination would have to be whether she was or he or she were in rigor mortis. That would have been an important analysis.
CASAREZ: Is there anything that you can use to determine time of death?
DIMAIO: You use a bunch of things, like the -- whether the body is cold, whether the body has stiffened into rigor mortis. But usually your time is very vague. It`s, you know, plus or minus maybe a couple of hours. It would suggest that the couple were dead for at least an hour, maybe two hours prior to death if the body felt cold.
CASAREZ: And the reason I`m touching on that is when this gets to trial, that can be important to corroborate with phone calls and times and other forensic evidence that they may gather from the scene.
To Joey Jackson, defense attorney. There is an all-out search tonight by police to try to find the perpetrators of this. They`re going to look for latent prints. What else do you see that may be incriminating to someone you could represent in this case?
JOEY JACKSON, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, certainly, Jean, if there was a struggle here, there would be a full body of DNA all over that place. And as a result of that, it would match the defendant or defendants to the actual crime scene. This is going to be problematic. And finally, as you know, Jean, this is a death penalty jurisdiction and I certainly would suppose if they catch them, they will apply it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYTEE VAZQUEZ-CLARKE, MURDER VICTIM JOHNNY CLARKE`S MOTHER: They weren`t in there, and they came out way too quick and I kept begging them, please, is my son alive, is my son alive. Lord, tell me my son`s alive. And he wasn`t.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my god. You need to get the police out to Long Acre Lane. My son is in the basement tied up in the house. I just saw him through the window. The police were (EXPLETIVE DELETED) out here earlier and did absolutely nothing.
UNIDENTIFIED 911 DISPATCHER: OK. All right. We`ll get them out there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Both cell phones are on the ground and we can see the people, him and his girlfriend are tied up in the basement.
UNIDENTIFIED 911 DISPATCHER: OK, all right. We`ll get them out there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) cops out here. I told them earlier. And they weren`t listening to me.
UNIDENTIFIED 911 DISPATCHER: OK. Ma`am, you need to calm down. We`ll get them out here. But yelling at me isn`t going to --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They`re unconscious.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They`re unconscious, ma`am.
UNIDENTIFIED 911 DISPATCHER: OK, you said they`re unconscious?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED 911 DISPATCHER: OK. All right.
VASQUEZ-CLARKE: They did not deserve to die. Nobody deserves to die this way. I could see a natural death, but a murder? You`re going to tie somebody up and put bags over their head, face and around?
CLARKE: They`re going to do something -- why don`t you just shoot them and leave them alone? They made them suffer. They made them suffer and lose their --
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: We are learning some news right now that search warrants have been executed on that home in Ohio. They found a key with the number 544 stamped on it. That was under the body of Lisa. What was that key to?
I want to go out to David Lohr, crime reporter, AOL.com joining us from Ohio. With the release of these search warrant affidavits, what else was collected at the home?
LOHR: Well, Jean, they seized a number of items. Cell phone parts was listed on there. It said that they were strewn about the home. So it sounds like possibly their cell phones were broken. So they took a bunch of items from the kitchen area and these are kind of interesting, they took Ziploc bag, pieces of white baggies and digital scales.
Some other things included security documents. Some foreign currency and other things like that. But as far as the most interesting thing I think is the key you mentioned with 544 stamped on it. I mean is that a motel key? Is it a locker key? It will be interesting to see where that key takes investigators.
CASAREZ: Alexis Weed, NANCY GRACE producer, what else can you tell us from these search warrant affidavits?
ALEXIS WEED, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Right, Jean. They also seized from the home DVDs, cardboard boxes, like David said, currency, Iraqi currency, as well as currency from other countries. They took DNA swabs.
And Jean, we also know that a lot of the items in the home were overturned when police finally came in and searched the home.
CASAREZ: You just have to wonder if they were searching for something they couldn`t find. The warrant also describes black, pink interband pants under the neck and the wrists were taped together, but not her ankles. We`re talking about Lisa right now.
But Clarke, Johnny Clarke`s ankles were taped. So he had more duct tape on him, maybe he was tougher to fight off, and so they duct taped his ankles, too.
We`re taking your calls live. Julie in North Carolina, hi, Julie.
JULIE, CALLER FROM NORTH CAROLINA: Hello.
CASAREZ: Thank you for calling. What`s your question?
JULIE: Hello. I`m an interrogator and I know they`re going to have a field day with this friend that didn`t call for two hours. I want to know what her motivation was to not call 911? She said she felt that there was something wrong when she called the mom. But she could have saved their lives.
And my question is, I was wondering how far away she was supposed to be when she made the call, when she heard them talking over the phone? And how long it`s going to take for them to get the pings off the tower to see if she was actually, you know, at a far away distance?
CASAREZ: Boy, Julie, you are a great interrogator.
Jim Verbosky, joining us tonight who is Lisa Straub`s uncle, from Detroit, Michigan.
Do we know why this friend took two hours to call another friend who then called the family?
VERBOSKY: Actually, we don`t. We know that -- we know what you know. We really -- prior to 6:00 in the morning, Lisa`s side of the family, our side of the family, we had no inkling that anything was even going on. I got up that morning to check the weather at 6:00 and our local news station was bringing the story live. That`s kind of how we found out about it.
CASAREZ: Gee, what a way to find out.
CW Jensen, retired police chief joining us from Portland, Oregon. The pings, this friend that didn`t call for two hours, authorities, in fact, she never really called authorities, she called a friend who called the family. The pings of where she was and when she went over to that home, that`s critical to this investigation.
JENSEN: Right. It`s interesting, you know, we have the story that she had this strange phone call and then made a series of phone calls to tell other people about this. Did that actually happen? Who knows? So I think that that`s what they`ll be looking at, her cell phone records, they`re going to be looking at -- to see where she was, what a normal person would do in that situation if they go to the house and see something wrong, they would call the police, they would wait for the police, and when the officers got there, that person would articulate to the officers why they thought it was ransacked in the house.
Because I don`t know how everybody else may have their house clean or unkept, so it would have been critical for her and normal for anyone to wait for the police. And so I`m sure that they`re looking at her story very closely.
CASAREZ: To Melissa in Illinois. Hi, Melissa.
MELISSA, CALLER FROM ILLINOIS: Hi, Jean. Thanks for taking my call.
CASAREZ: You`re welcome. Thank you for calling.
MELISSA: I agree with you, this seems like a very personal crime. Robbers typically don`t want to run into people in a home. And with her car parked in the driveway, they would have known that someone was there.
Did either the young man or the young woman have anybody that was romantically interested in them that was, you know, scorned or felt put off and would have done something?
CASAREZ: It`s a good question. I think this is a developing case. It is in its infancy. That`s a question investigators will look at.
Tonight "CNN Heroes."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Growing up in Texas, football is very important. It`s like a religion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You get the adrenaline going. You want to win.
EDDIE CANALES, CNN HERO: It was senior night. Chris was having the game of his life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was the fourth quarter. I made a touchdown saving tackle. I could hear my teammates saying, Chris, come on, let`s go. And I couldn`t move.
CANALES: You don`t want to even think that your son may never walk again. That was a hard pill to swallow.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Around my one-year anniversary I was going through a lot of depression.
CANALES: I said, let`s go to a football game.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We ended up watching another young man suffer a spinal cord injury.
CANALES: Chris, he turns to me said, dad, we`ve got to go help him.
I`m Eddie Canales. My goal is to be there for young men that have suffered spinal cord injuries playing high school football.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we hear about an injury, we go to the families as soon as we can.
CANALES: Since we started we`ve worked with 19 families just in the state of Texas. We help them with ramps in their homes, wheelchair accessible vehicles.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re ready to roll.
CANALES: It`s a very expensive injury. Someone injured on the professional level is going to be taken care of, but on the high school level it`s a totally different story. We wanted to make sure that these kids are not forgotten.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re a band of brothers.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: And now a look back at the stories making the headlines this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The Tampa mom looks physically shaking when police arrested her.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Accused of killing her two teenage children.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: She did it because they were mouthy.
CASAREZ: She said they were, quote, "mouthy."
NANCY GRACE, HOST: I`m sure it would be convenient for you to argue she, quote, "snapped"?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think what you`re alluding to is an insanity or a mental health defense. Probably --
GRACE: No, what I`m alluding to is premeditation in the form of first-degree murder. And with two bodies, that qualifies as mass murder, which qualifies for the death penalty. That`s what I`m alluding to.
This young girl seen literally forced, kicking and screaming.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, police, come right now. Kidnapped. She`s been run over by the van.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED 911 DISPATCHER: What happened?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right now.
UNIDENTIFIED 911 DISPATCHER: What happened, sir?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m watching a kidnapping going on. It`s a gray van.
GRACE: Michelle McCoy`s cousin, India, is joining us.
INDIA, MICHELLE MCCOY`S COUSIN: There`s really not too much that they can tell us.
GRACE: 20-year-old Michelle McCoy.
Mommy addicted to Facebook, specifically the online game of Farmville.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please, my son, he`s 14 weeks old. He`s not breathing.
GRACE: She bludgeoned the little baby in the head. With what else? Her computer.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He`s trying to breathe. He`s trying. I realize I do deserve consequences. Oh, baby. Come on. Oh, Dylan. The death of my son is a life sentence in itself.
GRACE: Lady, you can log on again in hell as far as I`m concerned.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We recovered the body of a small child whose physical description and clothing description matches that of our kidnapping victim.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Little Juliani.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don`t know what happened. I just want him back.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: Tonight, let us stop to remember Army Sergeant Michael Idanan, 21, from Chula Vista, California. Killed in Iraq. On a second tour of duty, he was awarded the Army Commendation Medal with Valor after rescuing a fellow soldier during combat.
His army buddies, they call him Big Mike. He loved reading the bible and dreamed of going to college. He leaves behind his mother, Naninga, and his younger brother, Jesse.
Michael Idanan, American hero.
Thank you so much to all of our guests, to you at home for being with us tonight. Remember the fourth annual Dancing for Joan Benefit taking place February 26th in Marietta, Georgia. It`s all to raise funds to fight lung cancer.
To find out more, go to dancingforjoan.org.
See you tomorrow night, 8:00 sharp Eastern. Until then, good night, everybody.
END
