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Nancy Grace
11-Year-Old NH Girl Missing From Bedroom
Aired July 27, 2011 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DIANE DIMOND, GUEST HOST: Breaking news tonight. We go live to New Hampshire. Beautiful 5th grader Celina Cass is in her bedroom around 9:00 PM, as her parents say good night. But Celina is just playing on her computer. When they come to wake her up the next morning, she has vanished. Authorities quickly mobilize but haven`t been able to find Celina. A family friend says the girl has never left home before without her mom or her older sister.
So now how does a beautiful little 5th grader disappear without a trace from the safety of her own bedroom? Tonight, authorities say they have searched by air, by land and by water. So where is little Celina?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She was on the computer in her bedroom the night before, but when 5th grader Celina Cass`s parents went to wake her up in the morning, she was gone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her parents told authorities they went to Celina`s room to wake her up and she was not in bed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s an awful lot of unknowns here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody is trying to figure out what happened.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) left the house before without her mom.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police quickly descend on the family home. Authorities say they find no signs of a struggle. What happened to 5th grader Celina?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A search has been under way near Celina`s home.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Authorities combed the area.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Law enforcement searches by air, by water and land.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No sign of the girl was found.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We know that people are working very hard to find our sister and bring her home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re doing everything we can.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hoping to reunite Celina with her family.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DIAMOND: Also tonight, Casey Anthony fights an order to appear for a deposition where she`ll be forced to testify in the lawsuit filed by the real Zenaida Gonzalez. What secrets is Casey hiding? Is Anthony trying to get out of giving a free interview before she cashes in with one of the networks? Reports surface about a bidding war for Casey Anthony`s first interview, but top TV networks deny that they`re involved. So who the negotiating? And what about that reported $1.5 million payday?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lies, distinct, separate lies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not guilty.
CASEY ANTHONY, CAYLEE`S MOTHER: Life`s not fair.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cindy says that once all the secrets are revealed...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why? Why is that a secret?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Young Caylee Marie Anthony. The search for her went on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Convict her on that.
GEORGE ANTHONY, CASEY`S FATHER: Shut up! Shut up!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I will adjudge you to be not guilty.
CASEY ANTHONY: It`s ridiculous.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People don`t make accidents look like murder. There`s just no reason to put duct tape over the face of a child, living or dead.
JOSE BAEZ, ATTORNEY FOR CASEY ANTHONY: She`s a liar. Well, I told you she was a liar the first day.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She never said it was an accident.
CASEY ANTHONY: I can`t sit here and be crying every two seconds.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why won`t you, you know, allow us to see Caylee?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Caylee was already in her resting place.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DIAMOND: Good evening, everyone, and welcome. I`m Diane Diamond, filling in tonight for Nancy Grace. Breaking news, and shades of the Elizabeth Smart case. This time, the mystery is set in rural New Hampshire, just one mile from the Canadian border. Fifth-grader Celina Cass says good night to her parents, and in the morning, she is not in her bedroom. She is nowhere to be found.
Let`s really drill down into this baffling mystery. We bring in now as our first guest Charlie Jordan. He is the editor of the local newspaper there, "The Colebrook Chronicle."
Charlie, I`m a little confused here. There are some published reports that are saying that this air and land, ground search is over, but you say that might not necessarily be so.
CHARLIE JORDAN, "COLEBROOK CHRONICLE" (via telephone): I think, Diane, what`s happened here is they`ve kind of shifted gears a little bit. They`re continuing on with the search, but about, I would say, 4:30 this afternoon, the case took a dramatic change. Suddenly, law enforcement, which has set up a command post about two doors down from the family`s home, walked up to the home with police tape, asked everyone to leave, and proceeded to surround the house with police tape.
Now, the difficulty here is the police have not been able to talk very much to the media or the family. So we`ve left (ph) to do a lot of conjecture.
DIAMOND: Yes, and that`s always dangerous for all parties involved.
JORDAN: It sure is.
DIAMOND: You know, Charlie, I know that the FBI is involved now, and I`m learning that they may be concentrating more on what she left on her computer and maybe the phone?
JORDAN: Well, I think this is like the worst-case nightmare for any parent -- I mean, putting your child to sleep, you know, and saying good night, and the next morning, the child is gone without a clue.
DIAMOND: I can imagine.
JORDAN: What we`ve heard is that the last person to see Celina was her mother, about 9:00 o`clock at night on Monday. And Celina, an 11-year- old 5th grader, was at her computer, as many, you know, young people are.
DIAMOND: And this is a good girl, right, no habitual runaway? This isn`t...
JORDAN: Yes. This is not a typical pattern of behavior for her. We had an interview today where -- we saw, actually, an interview today with the superintendent of schools, and Celina is identified as a very well- liked student. She`s an athlete. Many of the pictures that have been circulated show her in her basketball jersey...
DIAMOND: Right. Right.
JORDAN: ... a very -- you know, very outgoing, lovely girl, actually.
DIAMOND: Very pretty little girl. Let`s go out to Michael Board. I know that you at WOAI Newsradio -- you`ve been drilling down on her FaceBook page and finding some interesting messages that she`s left behind.
MICHAEL BOARD, WOAI NEWSRADIO: Yes, as Nancy likes to say, bombshell tonight.
(LAUGHTER)
DIAMOND: Bombshell.
BOARD: We`ve learned that she -- bombshell. She does have a FaceBook page, which, you know, isn`t all that surprising. But the fact is, she`s a 5th grader. It`s a little bit young. But we know she`s been chatting with people on her FaceBook pages. She`s left messages talking about love and relationships. We`ve dialed (ph) down into that FaceBook page.
And here`s where it really gets disturbing. There`s people on her FaceBook page -- remember, this is a 5th grade girl...
DIAMOND: Right.
BOARD: ... looking at her pictures and telling her she looks hot in her FaceBook pictures.
DIAMOND: Oh, my.
BOARD: Now, I know we live in an oversexualized world. That`s not a secret. We all know that. But when you take a step back and realize that this is a young girl who is in her room alone on a FaceBook page, you know, Lord knows who she`s talking to on that page.
DIAMOND: Yes, and...
BOARD: And also, it gets really disturbing on this page -- you know, we`ve looked at some of the things she`s posted on her FaceBook page. She talks about, you know, specific times on there. You know, I`m thinking about going out for a walk. Now, you hate to think like a predator, but in a case like this, if there`s a young, vulnerable woman talking about going out for a week at nighttime?
DIAMOND: Right.
BOARD: If you`re a predator, you know where she is...
DIAMOND: Or any time. Any time of the day or night, Michael.
BOARD: Or any...
(CROSSTALK)
DIAMOND: And you know what? This is a very cautionary tale to parents out there who allow their children to have FaceBook pages. Our producers here at HLN got on her page right away and had full and complete access. So as Michael says, watch out.
Michael, real quick, what was the message she left about loving your family, living with your family?
BOARD: Well, if people are familiar with FaceBook, when you set up your profile, you`re allowed to tell a little bit about yourself. And she left a quotation. I don`t know what it is exactly, but it`s her favorite quotation on there. It said, you know, basically, you know, to the effect of, you know, Sometimes you hate your family, but at the same time, you can`t live without your family. So...
DIAMOND: Yes. It`s on the screen. "You can`t stand to live with them, but you can`t stand to live without them." Right.
BOARD: And that`s a normal thing. I mean, that`s -- if she`s, you know, a 5th grader, you can imagine a lot of 5th graders her age have that same feeling. But at the same time, you know, you hear everybody talking about how she`s the perfect girl and no problems and everything is great at home. But then they read something like this on her FaceBook page, and you say, Well, you know, maybe there was something going else (ph) on on line. She wouldn`t be the first girl her age to be living a double life, where something great`s going in one place, and then on line, it`s something completely different.
DIAMOND: Right. And Mom and Dad say good night and she says, Let`s see what I can do on FaceBook.
Pat Brown is a profiler. You know her. She has written a great book called "The Profiler." Pat, there`s no indication that there was a break- in on this ground-floor apartment. Her bedroom is in the basement. I don`t know if a window was left open to let the air in, or what. But if someone got in and abducted a 5th grader, what`s on their mind?
PAT BROWN, CRIMINAL PROFILER: Well, Diane, you would think there would be some evidence of that. The police have said there is none, but there are those strange circumstances where somebody can disappear and not leave any evidence behind. A predator, you know, might have been watching, a next-door neighbor, somebody right close by, or like you point out, somebody that she`s been communicating with on her page.
But the police have to go back to ground zero. They have to examine the family. They have to talk to the family, see if there`s any problems there, look at the alibis. Then they have to move out to the neighbors, her phone, her computer, and see if it`s somebody from the outside. They`ve got to look at all the angles because, yes, 11-year-olds shouldn`t just go missing out of their houses in the middle of night.
DIAMOND: And of course, what they did right away was bring in the K9 handlers. I want to bring in our next guest. Tracy Sargent is a K9 handler. Tracy, time is really of the essence right now, isn`t it?
TRACY SARGENT, K9 HANDLER: Yes, it is. Especially when you have a young child missing, time is absolutely critical. Dogs are a great resource to get out there, start searching for her, and they can offer a lot of things and provide a lot of information to the investigators. So the sooner they call in dogs, the better.
DIAMOND: You know, it`s a real rural area, Tracy. And we know this girl likes to go out for a walk. At least one report said that there were -- dogs alerted on wooded area sort of near her house, near the Connecticut River. Are there such things as false alerts? Might it be that she took a walk there a week earlier and that`s what the dog was smelling?
SARGENT: Sure. Depending upon what the dog is trained for, if you`ve got a tracking dog and they`ve got her scent article, yes, she could have been in that area maybe a day or two earlier, and her scent is still there and the dog is responding to that. However, if you use a dog that is trained to detect any human scent, the dog could be responding, let`s say, to searchers or law enforcement officers that were in the area earlier that day.
DIAMOND: Oh.
SARGENT: So depending upon what the dogs are responding to and what they`re trained for would determine the importance of the dog`s response.
DIAMOND: Dr. Marty Makary is with us. Doctor, let me ask you -- I was just up at the Canadian border with a bunch of girlfriends going to Niagara Falls. And it was very warm there. But in this area of New Hampshire along the Canadian border, gee, it got down to 46 degrees overnight. Could this -- if she somehow is sleep-walking or got out on her own, is she in physical danger?
DR. MARTY MAKARY, PHYSICIAN, JOHNS HOPKINS: Yes, absolutely. Even if she just went out for a walk to think, take some time, be alone, there`s extremes in temperature. And we know from weather reports that it can get as low as the 40s at night and it can be as hot as the 80s during the daytime. So there`s risk for both hypothermia and hyperthermia.
And of course, what happens when you experience those things is you lose your orientation. That`s the first thing that people often complain about, along with being thirsty and fatigued. So you may actually sort of lose track of what`s north and south and your way home, and of course, that`s a possibility here.
DIAMOND: Yes. Well, we will see. The police say they have absolutely no clues. When we come back, what do you do as a law enforcement official when you have no clues?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The community is worried. How does a 5th grader vanish from her own room? Authorities combing the area for clues. What happened to 5th grader Celina Cass?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you seen 5th grader Celina Cass?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My understanding is, is that this is not typical behavior for this girl. She hasn`t run away in the past and things of that nature.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) her mom and her sister.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her family says she`s playing on her computer in her own bedroom. But when they wake her up the next morning, they tell authorities, she`s gone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police have been combing the area in their investigation. Early in the evening, a low-flying helicopter was examining the area.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don`t understand why she`d just take off and leave in the middle of the night, you know, not let anyone know where she`s at or anything.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Multiple law enforcement agencies now converging on the remote area, desperately searching for Celina.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re doing searches both in the residential area along the Connecticut River and in the woodlands surrounding.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Celina, 5-foot-5, 95 pounds, with brown waist- length hair and hazel eyes, last seen wearing a pink shirt, pink pullover and blue shorts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DIAMOND: Oh! As the mother of a daughter, I cannot imagine. Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I`m Diane Dimond, sitting in tonight for Nancy Grace.
Let`s go out to Charlie Jordan. He is the editor of local paper there, "The Colebrook Chronicle. Charlie, I understand you local reporters there are waiting for a late-breaking news conference? Tell me about that.
JORDAN: Yes. The assistant attorney general here in the state of New Hampshire is expected in front of the home to be giving some new information. She came out briefly about 5:30 and spoke to the press off- camera. And our guess is it`s a little bit more of the same.
You know, there`s been a lot of press out there, so we`re going to hear that the -- you know, the investigation is continuing. But hopefully, we`ll find a little bit more why things changed rather dramatically as far as the home was concerned, what they may have come upon there.
DIAMOND: Right, and putting up all that yellow crime scene tape.
JORDAN: Yes...
(CROSSTALK)
JORDAN: You know, Diane, I was going to say one thing. You know, we`ve been talking about FaceBook. And it`s -- for us journalists, it`s such a double-edged sword because, you know, we`re all talking about here`s a young girl on FaceBook. But interestingly, that`s how our newsroom first learned about this.
DIAMOND: Oh, interesting!
JORDAN: About two or three hours -- before law enforcement even issued a press release, this thing started snowballing on FaceBook up here, and messages about Celina and pictures of her. So you know, again, you`re dealing with something that can be a real plus and it could be a real frightening experience, as well.
DIAMOND: You know, Charlie, you bring up a good point. Pat Brown, let me bring you back in. I am a little perplexed about the way local law enforcement has responded to this. There was no Amber Alert because they have no car or no one she was last seen with to report. They haven`t had a big press conference where they hold up the pictures. The family and some other organizations have done some leaflets out and whatnot, but the local police there are being very, very quiet. Is that a good strategy?
BROWN: Well, it`s a good strategy if they believe they have an idea of who is connected. It`s not a good idea for a stranger. You know, if it was a stranger abduction, you want to get out to the community (ph) as quickly as possible to find out who out there could have done it. But if they`re looking at somebody in the family or somebody right next door, they may be quieter.
And I do think there was a very odd thing, kind of just kind of made me go, Oh, well, what is that about? The stepfather said -- his response was, Get her butt home.
DIAMOND: Yes, someone asked him...
(CROSSTALK)
DIAMOND: Yes, what would you tell her if you could talk to her, and that was his response...
BROWN: Right.
DIAMOND: ... Get your butt home.
BROWN: And I thought, that is weird because, first of all, the first thing you`d think is you`re terrified that this child is in danger, somebody`s kidnapped her. It`s almost like they`re either saying, You`ve done this before, you`ve run away before, we know you`re just playing around -- so either there`s something (INAUDIBLE) history, or he lacks compassion, which is another concern, which would mean the police might be looking at him, saying, Why are you so not compassionate?
DIAMOND: Oh!
BROWN: So it doesn`t mean necessarily anything particularly, but those are the things the police might be looking at that we don`t know yet...
(CROSSTALK)
DIAMOND: That`s why you`re the profiler, Pat.
Real quick, let`s bring in Dr. Brian Russell. He is a forensic psychologist. Brian, really quick here, this little girl`s biological father is in the picture, although he`s in the hospital and he`s very ill. Does that denote to you a child who would run away? It sounds like this child would want to stay there so she could be checking on her father.
BRIAN RUSSELL, FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST: That`s a great point, Diane. I think we`d have to know more about the dynamics of the particular family to know how much of a factor that was. I feel bad for the guy because people like Beth Holloway will tell you it`s hard enough when they can actually go help search for their child. If you`re confined to a hospital bed, just imagine what that would do to your anxiety.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Celina Cass was last seen at her home in West Stewartstown. When her parents went to wake her up, she was gone. That set in motion a massive search on the ground and also in the air, using a helicopter provided by the U.S. Border Patrol. But no sign of the girl was found.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you seen 5th grader Celina Cass?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody is upset and everybody is trying to figure out what happened.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She was on the computer in her bedroom the night before.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When her parents went to wake her up Tuesday morning she was gone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Searching for 11-year-old Celina Cass, who was last seen on her computer at her family`s home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The community is worried. How does a 5th grader vanish from her own room?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There were no signs of struggle at the house. Police are hoping that new leads come in to help bring the young girl back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DIAMOND: Welcome back. I`m Diane Dimond, sitting in tonight for Nancy Grace. We are on high alert. There is a member of the New Hampshire attorney general`s office set to give a news conference any moment. Charlie Jordan, the editor of the local newspaper, is monitoring that for us right now, to see what the latest is in this mysterious case.
It`s really sort of reminiscent of the Elizabeth Smart case. A little girl goes to bed. In the morning, her parents walk in and she has vanished.
Your calls are coming in, so let`s take some now. Stella is calling from Canada. Hi, Stella.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Diane. How are you?
DIAMOND: I`m great. What`s your question? I bet this is the talk of the town up there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, it is, because we`re right on the border. Yes, that`s all we`re talking about, seeing her. Lots of people are trying to look for her coming over our border.
DIAMOND: Do you have a question for one of our panel tonight, Stella?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. I`d like -- wouldn`t you agree with me that 99 percent of the time, the stepmonster (ph) had something to do with it?
DIAMOND: The "stepmonster" in this case being the stepfather. I don`t know. Let`s bring Brian Russell back in. Brian, you`re the psychologist in the group here. This stepfather is an interesting character. Pat Brown talked about him. He`s former military. He was in the Air Force. He has a DUI on his record fairly recently. When asked what he would say to this missing stepdaughter, he says, Get your butt home. And you know what? I`m embarrassed to say, but when you look at his FaceBook page, it`s full of, well, very well-endowed lady friends called Candy and Brandy and Cindy and Angel and things like that.
Is this a guy we should be looking at?
RUSSELL: Well, I think it`s always important to look at the closest others to somebody who`s gone missing. I will say that I think the stepparent-stepchild relationship is one of the most difficult relationships, one of the most fraught with complications relationships in all of the human condition.
And so whether the relations between this stepfather and stepdaughter were good or bad, we don`t know. I don`t think it`s 99 percent.
DIAMOND: Right. Right.
RUSSELL: I don`t think it`s that high in a case like this, as the investigator suggested. But I certainly think that the police ought to be looking in that, as well as lots of other directions.
DIAMOND: Yes, and we don`t want to blame anyone here. But Dr. Makay (SIC), wouldn`t you agree that the -- it usually is some dynamic inside the family home if the child leaves voluntarily, as opposed to being kidnapped?
MAKARY: Yes, I mean, I personally think that it`s always something that is not obvious on the surface. And oftentimes, the dynamics play in with some sort of psychiatric disorder that`s hidden, and it`s manifested after things are looked at in retrospect.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Last seen on her computer --
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: At her home in west Stewartstown.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Her parents last saw her --
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: They went to wake her up, she was gone.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Missing from her home.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Nearly 15 search and rescue crews.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A great deal of time has gone by.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Desperately searching for Celina.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Trying to find her on the ground --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s an awful lot of unknowns here.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: -- and from the air.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Converging on the remote area.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Missing child posters.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: A massive search.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: With seven dog teams.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: A helicopter --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any areas of high probability or even low probability.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Combing the area for clues.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Trying to figure out what happened.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don`t know what the circumstances are.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: No sign of the girl. What happened to fifth grader Celina Cass?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it`s difficult because of the unknowns.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So many unknowns at this point.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
DIANE DIMOND, HLN GUEST HOST: What a mysterious and fast breaking case we have here. Now it is time to unleash the lawyers.
Susan Moss is a child advocate and a family law attorney. Joey Jackson is a defense attorney. And Pilar Prinz is also a defense attorney.
All right, everybody, weigh in here. You are called by a family like this, like Celina Cass`s family, and they`re say, what do we do?
Susan Moss, what do you tell this family?
SUSAN MOSS, FAMILY LAW ATTORNEY & CHILD ADVOCATE: Step one, she was last seen on that computer. You`ve got to get that computer checked for all e-mails that register. Maybe she`s with a star of "To Catch a Predator".
You know those perps are really convincing, and they start on the computer, they contact these girls in chatrooms or on Facebook. They gain their trust, they try to convince them that I`m a friend or I`m lonely just like you, maybe somebody convinced her to leave her house. Maybe that person has an electronic fingerprint on her very computer.
DIMOND: So Joey Jackson, do you tell this family cooperate fully, even say that you`ll take a polygraph test, for example?
JOEY JACKSON, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Oh, absolutely. I think the family has to cooperate because what is their interest? The interest is in getting her back and getting her back safely.
And Susan is right, you do want to analyze the computer, but you don`t want to stop there. You want to speak to a friend. What do they know? Could she have confided in anyone? Did she have any type of phone which would indicate a text message or something else?
But it seems as though, Diane, that she potentially was lured out of that home based on the fact that there`s no sense of a struggle there or anything else.
DIMOND: Right. No break in.
JACKSON: So all indications -- right. So all indications are that someone preyed upon her potentially and got her out of there unless she ran away which that`s being discounted at this point. But cooperate and cooperate they must.
DIMOND: And Pilar, what if you have a couple that comes to you like this and they don`t want to cooperate, then what do you do as a defense attorney?
PILAR PRINZ, DEFENSE ATTORNEY, FAMILY ATTORNEY: Well, Diane, obviously, if they don`t want to cooperate, then you as a defense attorney have to have a strategy for this family and it`s going to really be to deflect.
You`ve got to be giving information to suggest that something else was going on outside of the home that perhaps this child is communicating, that is where I think you do look to Facebook. You want to be looking at external clues that are outside of the family.
So you`re looking at people she`s talking to on Facebook, possibly older men. People that they may not have known, anything that really is going to take the focus outside of this home and suggest that this little girl left this home on her own.
DIMOND: Right.
We are going to take your calls, so please stand by, Lakisha, Vicki, Nancy in Pennsylvania, you hung up so I can`t go to you. But stand by a minute, because Charlie Jordan, the editor of the local paper, has been watching for a news conference that`s coming up.
But Charlie, you`re worried that now the police might be looking at not when she went missing but the time before she went missing?
CHARLIE JORDAN, EDITOR, COLEBROOK CHRONICLE: Right, I mean when you get a case like this, you try to -- you try to read between the lines, especially when you can`t get a lot from authorities and you look at virtually every word.
And the latest press release that they issued about 5:30 added into the picture that they are now looking for people with information about the -- her whereabouts and activities on the 24th, the 25th and the 26th. So three days into her disappearance.
So that would indicate to me that this -- they anticipated that this was something that might have been building. And I do agree that -- I mean there was no forced entry into the building, she must have left there knowingly on her own for some reason.
DIMOND: Charlie, did -- did she have a boyfriend? Does any -- do any of the people in the neighborhood say she had a boyfriend?
JORDAN: Well, that`s -- you know, that`s part of the problem with something like this is that rumors start flying. I have heard that. I have heard that. But I think -- you know, one of the things again with Facebook, I`m looking at her Facebook page and she`s got 35 friends. They were all listed there. And I`m sure that the police are working their way down through the list.
They mostly look like students. They`re fellow students and friends in the area, I recognize some of the faces here of these kids from her classes.
DIMOND: Right. But you know what, Charlie, because her Facebook is completely open -- parents listen to me, do not let your underage children have a completely open Facebook page. We don`t know what happened in this case but it could have been that some perpetrator contacted her and she felt, well, I`ll just go outside and say hello. And now we cannot find her.
Let`s go to Lakisha in Indiana.
Lakisha, thanks so much for waiting. Do you have a question?
LAKISHA, CALLER FROM INDIANA: I`m sorry I had to turn my TV up. But, yes, Diane Dimond, I love your name, that`s a beautiful name. (INAUDIBLE) another night when I heard your name it`s beautiful.
DIMOND: Thank you.
LAKISHA: But my heart goes out and my prayers go out to Celina Cass`s family.
DIMOND: Yes.
LAKISHA: They need -- they should have never started social media Web sites. That`s our biggest problem in the world.
DIMOND: Do you have a question for -- do you have a question, Lakisha, for one of our panelists?
LAKISHA: Yes, my question is, are they investigating and doing polygraph tests on the family, like the mother and the father and everybody?
DIMOND: Let`s ask Charlie Jordan to come back in here.
Charlie, any indication that any polygraph equipment going into that house?
JORDAN: We haven`t seen that but what the big shift has been rescue equipment going to this command center to family members and friends who have been going in and out. I know the mother was brought in about midmorning and she was there for about two hours, and then brought back in again.
But again, this is not under police -- you know she was not apprehended, not handcuffs.
DIMOND: Right.
JORDAN: She was willingly going. I`m sure to be questioned. But something happened during the early afternoon to lead the police to walk up the street, clear the building and put yellow tape around it. Something they found out in those discussions.
DIMOND: Right. And we should remind you that this is a multi-home family, an apartment building.
JORDAN: Right.
DIMOND: So other families are affected by this. And the news conference we are waiting for, it is overdue at this point, with a top member of the attorney general`s office there in New Hampshire is to take place right outside the home of this little missing girl.
Let`s go to the phones and Vicky is calling in from Florida. Hi, Vicky.
VICKY, CALLER FROM FLORIDA: Hi, Diane. Thank you for taking my call.
DIMOND: Sure.
VICKY: The question that I had was regarding the relationship with her biological father and also the relationship with the stepfather. I feel that you had answered it, but you know, it just -- it seems like that the parents are allowing these kids to get on Facebook and it`s heart- breaking.
DIMOND: Right. Facebook and MySpace.
Vicky, there`s so many of them. It`s -- there`s LinkedIn and Facebook and MySpace and all of that.
Michael Board, lets bring you back in here, because I know you`re like me, you`re very curious so you went right to that Facebook page. What do you think about that? Are there any clues there? Any -- you mentioned someone wrote in that they thought she was hot? An 11-year-old?
MICHAEL BOARD, REPORTER, WOAI NEWSRADIO: Yes, it was --
DIMOND: Who was that?
BOARD: It was one of her -- exactly. And you know, you and I both know we live in an era where it`s hyper sexualized, so, you know, you take that with a grain of salt. What really struck about me this, and you know, you cover enough of these cases and you see something like this and it`s a red flag.
On her Facebook page, she plays a lot of these games, whether it`s -- I don`t know the exact name of the games. I think she played --
DIMOND: Yes. "Who Do You Love" --
BOARD: Like Farmville or --
(CROSSTALK)
DIMOND: Right.
BOARD: Yes, exactly. They have a bunch of games. Now I know for a fact in other cases that I have covered, that predators use these games to look for prey. They don`t have to be friends with them, but they use the game as an in to make friends with young women.
DIMOND: And you found evidence -- you found evidence that she was playing those types of games online?
BOARD: Those were all over her Facebook wall. In fact that was the majority of her wall were these different games.
DIMOND: Brian Russell, what`s the message to parents out there? Because I get all flustered. I can`t even tell people strongly enough, don`t let your kids on these sites.
BRIAN RUSSELL, PH.D., FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST: I`m so glad you asked that, Diane. Social networking is a fact of our lives. It`s not going away any time soon. You don`t want your children to find out about dangers in the world for the very first time when they leave your house for college and they`re no longer having your guidance and supervision right there.
So what you do is whenever you decide your individual child is old enough to start getting involved in these things, you have extreme parental guidance and supervision at the beginning. Nobody in fifth grade should be doing anything on the Internet that is outside the watchful eyes of the parents.
And then over time as the child develops a track record of behaving responsibly, hopefully by the time they leave your house at 18, they`re ready to assume full responsibility. But nowhere close to that age.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s just devastating that a little girl that age --
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The fifth grader --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Could just come up missing.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Vanished from her own room.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody is just really worried.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Searching for 11-year-old Celina Cass.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody is in shock.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: She was on the computer in her bedroom the night before, but when fifth grader Celina Cass` parents went to wake her up in the morning she was gone.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Her parents told authorities they went to Celina`s room to wake her up and she was in bed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s an awful lot of unknowns here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody is trying to figure out what happened.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The house before without her mom.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Police quickly descend on the family home but authorities say they find no signs of a struggle. What happened to fifth grader Celina?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A search has been underway near Celina`s home.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Authorities comb the area.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Law enforcement searches by air, by water and land.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: No sign of the girl was found.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We know that people are working very hard.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
DIMOND: All right. This is a top official from the Attorney General`s Office in New Hampshire, let`s listen in.
JANE YOUNG, SENIOR ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: The disappearance of Celina Cass remains ongoing. Earlier today the FBI joined the investigation trying to locate her. We are marshaling all sources available to us, state, federal, local, both in New Hampshire and Vermont.
The goal of this investigation is to bring Celina home safely. We ask for your help and the public`s help. Anybody who has any information about her whereabouts on Monday or Tuesday are encouraged to call police.
I`m going to introduce the FBI and have them make a brief statement. Kieran?
KIERAN RAMSEY, FBI SPECIAL AGENT, NEW HAMPSHIRE: Good evening. My name is Kieran Ramsey. K-I-E-R-A-N, Ramsey, R-A-M-S-E-Y. I am the supervisory special agent for the FBI here in New Hampshire.
Earlier today the New Hampshire State Police requested the FBI`s assistance in their investigation to locate and bring home safely Celina Cass. Since that time, we have deployed our Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team which consists of multiple special agents which specialized experience in child abduction cases and they are able to provide specialized technical and other resource assistance to state and local law enforcement.
They are also in close contact with our Behavioral Analysis Unit, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes and other technical specialized units at FBI headquarters and down at Quantico, at the FBI laboratory.
All right this point as I would like to reiterate Assistant Attorney Young mentioned, we are asking for the public`s help and the media`s help to safely locate and bring home Celina Cass. Right now we believe that the media and the public are law enforcement`s best ally in this effort. And we ask the people of New Hampshire and the surrounding states to remain vigilant and assist us to bring home Celina Cass safely.
YOUNG: And I have a recent photograph of Celina that`s a closer photo than the last one you received. I will pass this out. I will ask you if you could distribute it to your viewers and to your listeners and to your readers. That would also be grateful.
Thank you very much.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Can you give us any indication as to what you -- what was going on?
YOUNG: We`re not going to take any further questions at this time. I have made my statement. I will just again reiterate, please, if anyone has any information, please provide it. We are working this case 24 hours a day, we have marshaled all the resources available to us. We are still --
DIMOND: Well, that`s a very interesting live breaking news -- news conference outside the home of this missing fifth grade little girl. But you know we didn`t learn a whole lot.
And, you know, Pat Brown, I want to bring you in here as a law enforcement profiler. I am the last one to jump on the cops, but this little girl was reported missing Tuesday early morning. It is Wednesday late night. And all of a sudden now they say the media and the public are best ally to try to bring her home? This is a little late, isn`t it?
PAT BROWN, CRIMINAL PROFILER, AUTHOR OF "THE PROFILER": It is very confusing. I always have an objection when you get this kind of statement where you stop and go and what are you not telling us? For example they want to know where she`s been. What`s -- nobody is getting a timeline of any sort. They could say the family has said this and a person outside the family has seen her last here. She frequented this place.
DIMOND: Right.
BROWN: We have nothing. It`s like a big, huge blank. And yet if you know anything. So it`s like what are they not telling us? And that gets very confusing, but of course, all you can hope is that they have some good reason for doing it and that somebody in the community has seen something in those last couple of day. Something that built up to this point, perhaps.
DIMOND: Right, right.
BROWN: And exactly when she went missing.
DIMOND: And we`ll try to get that picture that the attorney general`s official was handing out as soon as we can. Although we did learn from Kieran Ramsey, he`s a special agent with the FBI, that their Child Abduction Rapid Deployment unit has been called in. Child abduction.
Dr. Makary, what does that tell you, and tell me what a little fifth grade girl -- just 11 years old -- might be feeling and thinking if she has in fact been abducted. I can`t imagine.
DR. MARTY MAKARY, PHYSICIAN, PROF. OF PUBLIC HEALTH, JOHNS HOPKINS: Well, the main thing is anxiety will just take over, and we see people that run away from home and show up at the emergency room one or two days later. It`s usually about 12 to 24 hours when it really hits in. They`re disoriented. They may not get back.
And I just want to say, you know, Facebook and Twitter and these venues, they can serve a purpose and, say, disseminating news, but they also just add to the anxiety that kids have. It gives them a false sense of, say, having 500 friends, when they really don`t have 500 friends. And they`re constantly being over-simulated by what`s on the screen and what the next message is that it just further adds to the anxiety disorders that can then be exacerbated in being missing.
DIMOND: And you know remember back when you were a child and you did something wrong, and the consequences started to crowd into your little brain, and this is probably where this little girl is right now. I hope she is safe and sound.
Sue Moss, you are dying to get in here, what do you think?
MOSS: What really angers me, what really gets me is that this little girl has been missing for 48 hours and only now they`re taping off the last known place where she was? That place should have been taped off immediately. There should have been a thorough investigation of her home. It`s like the modern day JonBenet. The fact that the police waited so long to look into that house with excruciating detail was a huge, huge mistake.
DIMOND: Sue, no rime this time? I was waiting for the rhyme there. But I agree with you entirely.
Let`s go to the phones, our phones are burning up here. Brittany is calling from Georgia.
Hi, Brittany, what`s your question?
BRITTANY, CALLER FROM GEORGIA: Hi, Diane. I love your work.
DIMOND: Thank you.
BRITTANY: I was -- I was calling that prior to her unfortunate disappearance, they had any correlation between those big shift in her mood and her online activity. And I also wanted to know if the people, the 35 friends that she has are actually her friends or a pedophile that stole their identity and is perpetrating themselves to be one of her friends?
DIMOND: We`ll see. You know who knows the answer to that? But that`s a very good question. As Michael was telling us from News Radio. There are 35 friends and their pictures -- or may it was Charlie Jordan. Their pictures are there, and they look like children. But again, as we all know, the reality and the Facebook picture may not mesh.
Hey, Charlie Jordan, you were listening with us to that news conference from your State Attorney General Official there. What struck you?
JORDAN: Well, I guess it was -- what struck me is what my initial sense about 5:30 came true, is that there`s nothing really that they`ve revealed here. I do agree. I wonder why it took them so long to -- you know, stabilize that scene there, because there were people in that driveway, in that house, in and out, for at least 24 hours.
But, you know, the one thing I do want to say, this girl had a lot of friends who showed up at a candlelight vigil last night. And these were real faces, real people, in her community. So she has a lot of love out there. If it`s not in that house, I don`t know. But there are a lot of people that are rooting for her, wherever she is.
DIMOND: Let`s hope she is safe. We`ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
YOUNG: The disappearance of Celina Cass remains ongoing. Earlier today, the FBI joined the investigation trying to locate her. We are marshalling all resources available to us, state, federal, local, both New Hampshire and Vermont. The goal of this investigation is to bring Celina home safely. We ask for your help and the public`s help, anybody who has any information about her whereabouts on Monday or Tuesday are encouraged to call police.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
DIMOND: Keep Celina Cass in your prayers tonight. We have this much time for a couple more phone calls.
Let`s go to Kim in Oklahoma. Hi, Kim. Thanks for waiting.
KIM, CALLER FROM OKLAHOMA: Hi. Thank you, Diane, for taking my call.
DIMOND: Sure.
KIM: I just -- I wanted to share with you something that`s similar that happened to us about six weeks ago. I have a 12-year-old daughter. And she went to spend the night with a girlfriend. They were up at night, up on Facebook, mom had gone to bed. And they were talked out of the house by a friend of the friend on Facebook.
DIMOND: Oh my.
KIM: She picked up at the end of the driveway. The next thing I know the mother is bringing my child home at 5:00 in the morning. The kid that picked them up had been speeding, about 20 miles away. The cops got a bad vibe. And when the girls admitted that they were 12-year-olds, they`re not 16-year-olds, he pulled them from the car, and took them to the police station and gave them a ticket or citation.
DIMOND: Now if that --
KIM: Curfew violation.
DIMOND: You know, Kim, thank you so much.
KIM: And she was walked away.
DIMOND: Thank you so much for calling and giving us that real-life experience, Kim. I wish we had more time to talk to you.
Parents, everywhere, if you have a child that is underage, monitor what they do online. I cannot say it enough. Our guests here tonight have all said it to you. Go in to the computer, right now, and ask your child what they are doing.
All right. We`ll take a breath here.
Tonight, we remember Army Specialist Manuel Holguin. He`s 21 years old from was Wood Lake, California, killed in Iraq. He was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Iraqi Freedom medal, War on Terrorism medal, and two Combat Infantry badges. He loved playing soccer and baseball, enjoyed watching the Oakland Raiders. Driving his 2005 Silverado SS pickup truck and his 1996 Impala SF. He leaves behind his father, Manuel sr., mother Lydia, and his brother Javier.
Manuel Holguin, a true American hero.
Thanks to all of our guests for being with me her tonight sitting in for Nancy Grace. And a special happy birthday to Nancy`s husband, David. What a teddy bear. Love that guy.
Happy birthday, David. Hope you`re back here tomorrow night at 8:00 sharp eastern. I`ll be back on Friday. Until then, have a great evening.
END
