Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Saturday Morning News

Michelle Knight Slips Out of Sight; Criminal Probe into Plant Explosion; Spacewalk Planned to Fix Space Station; Bomb Suspect's Final Resting Place; Woman Rescued after 16 Days;

Aired May 11, 2013 - 07:00   ET

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


BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Brianna Keilar in Cleveland. It is 7:00. Thank you so much for joining us.

We may know who, but of course we're all struggling with why. An FBI profiler and a psychologist piece together what we know about alleged kidnapper Ariel Castro and what perhaps may have driven him to the heinous crimes that he is charged with committing.

Plus, the Texas explosion that was at first thought to be an accident, but new information there may tell us that a crime has been involved. We have the details about what investigators are uncovering.

And later we are taking you live to space. An ammonia leak at the International Space Station is prompting a very urgent space walk. We'll tell you what is at risk and how astronauts there are preparing.

The Cleveland man accused of holding three women captive for almost a decade is now locked in a 9-by-9 foot cell. Officials say tests of Ariel Castro's DNA confirmed he is the father of that 6-year- old girl who is born to kidnapping survivor Amanda Berry. Police also have boarded up Castro's home to preserve the crime scene. Meantime, the prosecutor handling the case says he plans to charge Castro for, quote, "each and every act of sexual violence that he carried out."

Castro also could face murder charges related to claims that he starved and punched Michelle Knight to induce at least five miscarriages. And this morning, while relatives of Berry and Gina DeJesus continue to celebrate their safe return, Knight's family doesn't know where she is. The 32-year-old woman has been released from the hospital, but a family spokesman says police won't tell them where she went.

So let's bring in CNN's Pam Brown.

What happened here? Do we know where she is? Do we know why perhaps she may not or authorities may not want her in touch with her family?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We don't know where she is right now, Brianna. I spoke to the stepbrother of Michelle Knight last night, and he says that police knows where she is, but -- and he said, we want police to tell us where she is. We don't know. We've been looking for her, he said. Michelle Knight's mom Barbara has been trying to make contact with her and hasn't spoken to her. She went to the hospital to see her. She's been trying to reach her after she was released and still no luck on that front. The stepbrother said the mom loves her, misses her, wants to see her, and said that she hopes to get a call from Michelle Knight on Mother's Day, which is, of course, tomorrow.

The grandmother went to the house of Gina DeJesus yesterday after Michelle was released from the hospital. She showed up with van full of balloons only to find out that Michelle was not there at the home. But the grandmother was told that she would probably be there and was disappointed to learn that Michelle wasn't there and still doesn't know where she is. Here's what the grandmother had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(CROSSTALK)

DEBORAH KNIGHT, KIDNAPPING SURVIVOR'S GRANDMOTHER: We were told she had been released and that she was coming over here. So we wanted to come over here and show our support for her. We haven't seen her. Plus Gina's parents have been wanting to meet us.

(CROSSTALK)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So Barbara Knight is not with the grandmother, but we know that she is in Cleveland still trying to make contact with her daughter.

KEILAR: The other thing that we've learned is that Cleveland Police brought off or sort of didn't reinforce having Michelle Knight's name on the FBI's missing persons list? Is that right? Was that maybe an oversight? Was that on purpose? Do we know what happened?

BROWN: It's not an oversight according to Cleveland Police. Basically police -- were saying that they just followed protocol. According to their orders, a name must be removed from the FBI missing person's database if a family member is not able to give a definitive answer if a person is missing.

But what's interesting here, Brianna, is that the case still remained open with Cleveland Police, and, in fact, we have the missing persons report, and it shows police tried contacting family at least 12 times as early -- as recently as last November. But then last January, we noticed on this missing persons report, it says validated. So we're trying to find out, does that mean they did reach a family member and they did learn that she was still missing? And if so, why wasn't she put back on the missing persons database?

We know that Michelle Knight's disappearance did not garner as much attention as the other two, Gina DeJesus and Amanda Berry. So the family does seem like they're upset about this, talking to the stepbrother last night. He said we want to learn more about this. We want to see that missing persons report.

KEILAR: All right. Pam Brown, following this story for us here in Cleveland. Thank you so much for that.

In West, Texas, in other news that we are following, that investigation into the fertilizer plant explosion has taken a bit of a different turn. Investigators say they're now launching a criminal probe into last month's fire and blast that left 14 people dead. And they've made an arrest of one of the first responders to the tragedy for having materials used to make a pipe bomb. But it's far from clear whether there is a link between the two.

CNN's David Mattingly is in West, Texas, for us.

David, do we know anything about this arrest? What can you tell us?

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- was one of the people involved with the Emergency Medical Services at the time, responding to that tremendous explosion that rocked West, Texas, several weeks ago. But what we're being told, according to what happened in federal court on Friday, he was arrested for possession of materials to make a bomb. And authorities were tipped off to this by a resident of the area who was described as having unwittingly taken possession of these materials from Bryce Reed.

Now these materials included a small pipe, caps, a fuse, also some powder chemicals that are used to make a bomb. Officials at this point are not saying if there's any connection between this arrest and the explosion at the plant. But Reed was a very high profile figure in the days after the explosion, speaking to CNN, giving a national televised interview talking about how upset everyone was in the community, how devastated everyone was by this disaster.

He was also a very high profile, delivering a eulogy for one of the fallen firemen. But at this point, authorities are saying -- are not speculating on any link whatsoever between this arrest and that explosion, but very serious charges here. They could carry up to 10 years in prison if he is convicted.

KEILAR: Obviously, very serious potential charges there, David. Do we have a sense of what caused the fire? Are we any closer to learning the cause?

MATTINGLY: Well, we've got a couple of investigations going on now. State officials launching a new criminal investigation yesterday. They're saying they want to leave no stone unturned. In fact, the county sheriff also saying this is a matter of public confidence. They want to make sure that everyone knows that they're asking all the questions, that they're looking at every possible angle.

As far as the investigation into the cause of the fire itself, we were hearing from state fire officials about that earlier in the week. They're saying they're going to have to push back a couple of weeks. They had originally expected to soon be able to determine what the cause of that was, but they're saying they're going to have to push that back a couple of weeks because they're continuing to look into every possible cause.

They were able to rule out several factors here, including natural causes and weather, things like that, but they have not been able to rule out the possibility that this was an -- a deliberate act or caused by some sort of human factor. So that investigation pushed back a couple of weeks. On top of that, we now have the criminal investigation by state and county officials.

KEILAR: David Mattingly for us in West, Texas. Thank you for that report.

And next hour we will speak to the landlord of arrested first responder Bryce Reed. He will be sharing with us some of those details about Reed's past. You may be surprised by what we learn.

And the White House is defending itself against accusations that it tried to cover up key details of last year's deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in that attack on September 11th. A source tells CNN that in the days following the assault, administration officials agreed to remove from government talking points an initial CIA assessment that group -- that a group with links to al Qaeda was involved in the attack.

The House committee held hearings on the Benghazi attack this week and the e-mails have been turned over to Congress as well. Republicans want them to be made available to the public. The White House, though, insists there has been no cover-up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The White House changed the intelligence community's assessment of what happened. Did the White House tell the intelligence community to say that there were demonstrations? And the underreported fact of all the revelations today is that these documents bear out what we've said all along? And the answer is no.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: We call on the president to release these unclassified, interagency e-mails, so that the American people can see them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: We've heard from the administration and also from Republican leaders there. So far, though, the CIA is not commenting.

In other story, the IRS admits mistakes were made in the handling of tax requests from conservative groups. But a director for the service denies the, quote, "political bias," unquote, played a role. Several Tea Party groups accuse the IRS of discrimination when they face delays in requesting tax exempt status. The director said that of the 300 groups singled out for review, 75 were picked because they had the words Tea Party or patriot in their name. On Friday the White House called those actions by the IRS, quote, "inappropriate."

At least one lawmaker says Russia dropped the ball on the Boston bombing suspect, the handling of the suspect, we should say. A law enforcement source tells CNN that Moscow withheld key details about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, like texts that he sent his mother telling her he wanted to join a militant group.

A member of the House Intelligence Committee told "the Wall Street Journal" that that intel could have changed everything. But sources tell the paper the U.S. probably would have withheld that information, too.

And let's head back to Atlanta now for Victor Blackwell, telling us a little bit about something going on a little farther away from earth -- Victor.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the International Space Station, Brianna. In about an hour, NASA astronauts will start an emergency space walk there to fix an ammonia leak at the ISS.

I think we have video of the ammonia leak actually. See the little specks there neat the bottom of the screen. That's the ammonia. In that environment, it falls like snow.

CNN's John Zarrella is covering this from Miami.

John, just how big of a problem is this leak and is it a safety concern for the crew at the ISS?

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, it's not. I mean, right -- first thing we have to say is the crew was never in any danger from this. It is not a safety issue for the crew. But it's certainly a critical system issue that they want to get fixed. You don't want ammonia coolant leaking out of the space station. And they've had a similar problem in this very same area not long ago, but they weren't able to actually identify where it was exactly coming from or to be able to fix it.

As you mentioned, they had been able to eyeball it this time, and they can see those tiny white flakes, which is ammonia, leaking from what they believe is around a pump area on the space station. So what they decided to do was to go out right away, very quickly put together the space walk.

The reason they're doing it so quickly -- one reason certainly is because once all the ammonia leaks out from wherever that leak is, they won't be able to find it again that were -- because of the pinprick hole, whatever, the size is so small. So they want to be able to go out there and hopefully they'll be able to identify it, find it. They may even replace a pump while they're out there if it's determined that the leak is coming from that pump.

So right now Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy, the two U.S. astronauts, are in the quest air lock. They are doing the pre- breathing, cleansing their bodies of nitrogen so that they can get out there, and in just about an hour from now, they should be egressing the hatch there and beginning what is expected to be, Victor, a 6 1/2 hour spacewalk to try to isolate, find the problem, and hopefully to fix it -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right, John Zarrella for us in Miami. And following the command of Chris Cassidy -- Chris Hatchell, rather, online, and he says, "Complex and vital day on the space station as Tom and Chris suit up and go outside to help fix the ammonia leak."

John, we'll check back with you in just a --

ZARRELLA: Sure.

BLACKWELL: But an hour in this all-star. Again the emergency spacewalk is scheduled for the next hour, 8:15 Eastern. Of course we'll bring that to you when it happens.

And another amazing story. A courageous young woman's battle to live. She survived for more than two weeks in the rubble of a nine- story building that collapsed on top of her. This is in Bangladesh. From her hospital bed, she is now describing what she did to survive. That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is now buried in a Muslim cemetery in a rural stretch of Virginia between Washington and Richmond. Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lived, refused to allow his burial there but officials and residents in Caroline County, Virginia, are asking why here?

CNN's Paula Newton is in Boston with more details on that. This is sort of almost, Paula, maybe a random place, you might think, for the bombing suspect to be. Yes?

PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (via phone): Absolutely. I mean, I'm speaking to Tamerlan Tsarnaev's uncle, Ruslan Tsarnaev INAUDIBLE), I mean, they tried everything. The problem was no cemetery, no community wanted to take him.

What happened here is very strange in the sense that a woman by the name of Martha Miller, who is a Christian, decided that this was not right, that -- and everyone deserves a burial. And she got together with what they're calling an interfaith coalition in her community, that is in rural Virginia, and they offered the plot.

Ruslan Tsarni, who is the uncle, who was desperate at this point to find a place to bury his nephew, said that he was very grateful that he could be buried there. And as you say, Brianna, it was inevitable. Anywhere that he was buried was going to cause some controversy. You know the sheriff in the community was very blunt. If I'd known this was going to happen, I would have done something to try and stop it. He said if I could undo it, I would. But he said he had absolutely no prior notice.

But, you know, Brianna, this entire situation has been a bit of a circus, and for the victims and their families, it's not been a very welcome distraction. They have very mixed feelings of how he was buried, where he is buried, but at the end of the day, it takes away energy, and it's, you know, it's just too much of a distraction when they're still trying to recover.

KEILAR: Has anyone said, Paul, they may be concerned about the fact that there is a physical plot of land where this bombing -- where the alleged bomber, where the Boston bomber is buried. I know this has been a concern, you know, in other cases where we've seen terrorists and them having a physical burial plot, that there may be a concern that this could cause attention, that people may show up, that they could, you know, deface the area.

Has anyone raised that concern?

NEWTON: Many have raised that concern. And of course, everyone is hoping it doesn't happen. The bottom line is the family of Mr. Tsarnaev have said, look, we are Muslim and it's forbidden -- cremation is forbidden. We wanted the traditional Muslim burial.

You know, I asked Tamerlan's uncle about that as well, and he said, look, if anybody does that, you know, he says well, what can I do? What can I say? He said, but at this point we wanted this just kind of burial.

I think that many here in Massachusetts, many in the Virginia community are hoping that he has now been laid to rest and that everyone can move with recovering from the terror attack and that hopefully many will forget where he's buried.

You know, some have pointed out that Adam Lanza, the shooter in Newtown, is buried somewhere and not much was made of where he was buried or how it happened. Again, to try and move on with focusing on the victims and their recovery and the city's recovery and not focusing on the bombing suspect himself.

KEILAR: Paula Newton for us on the phone for us. Thank you for that, Paula.

Meantime, rescuers searching through a crumbled building had almost given up hope. Then they heard the cries of a woman. She was buried alive for more than two weeks. Her incredible rescue next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: Twenty-three minutes after the hour now. And listen, with all of the tragedy that we're following in Boston and in Cleveland and the factory in West, Texas, this is a story about survival. This is a story about optimism, and it almost seems too incredible to believe. For more than two weeks, a young woman was buried alive in the rubble of a factory that had crumbled around her.

This is in Bangladesh. She had nothing to live on but biscuits and water and there wasn't much of that.

CNN's Mary Snow is following her remarkable story. Mary? MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Victor, it's a rescue that no one expected. The woman who survived is a garment worker, a wife and mother. She was able to attract attention by moving a stick through a hole in the debris. And when rescue workers reached her, she said, please save me.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SNOW (voice-over): Her name is Reshma, and her story is extraordinary. Sixteen days after a building collapse in Bangladesh that killed at least 1,000 people, rescuers who long gave up hope of finding any signs of life discovered her in the rubble. Not only did she survive, but she is talking.

The 19-year-old woman says she rationed two bottles of water, according to reports, and obtained the water and some dry food thrown into the debris by rescuers after the collapse. There was also an air pocket. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta says a lack of major injuries also helped save her life.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So no crushed bones or broken bones, no deep gashes. That's important because the energy to heal those wounds can sometimes take away from your overall survival.

SNOW: The lack of major injuries has also been seen in other remarkable rescues, like one after the 2011 earthquake in Turkey when an 18-year-old man survived in the rubble of his crushed apartment complex for four days. In Haiti, there were a number of rescues called miracles. This man survived in the rubble of a hotel for 11 days.

GUPTA: The body will do a lot to try and survive. It will literally start to digest itself. It's tough to think about, but you know your muscle, other sources of calories in the body, they all start to make themselves available. I mean you hear about people who lose incredible amounts of weight in a situation like this. It's because the body will seek out energy anywhere it can find it.

SNOW: And there was the case in Haiti of Edwin Muncie who was believed to have survived for nearly four weeks in the debris.

GUPTA: Is the medical doctors, I remember when I was down in Haiti would -- they were calling them miracles. And you know when you think of miracle, you think this is one of the most rare things obviously that we've ever heard of. They are -- every time we hear about this in the medical community, it is a single, you know, usually anecdotal story. They're very, very rare.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SNOW: The young woman reportedly told doctors she ran out of food and water two days before her rescue. The dark space where she was trapped was said to give her enough room to sit and stand, but not enough room to lie down -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: Wow. Mary Snow, thank you.

Recovering from years of captivity. Coming up, we'll examine the psychological road to recovery for the three kidnapping survivors in Cleveland.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Bottom of the hour now. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Brianna Keilar in Cleveland, Ohio.

The man accused of holding three women hostage for almost a decade is now locked in a 9-by-9-foot cell.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR (voice-over): Officials say tests of Ariel Castro's DNA confirmed he is the father of that 6-year-old girl born to kidnapping survivor Amanda Berry. Meanwhile, the lead prosecutor says he may charge Castro with murder related to claims that he starved and punched Michelle Knight to induce at least five miscarriages.

And this morning while relatives of Berry and Gina DeJesus continue to celebrate their safe returns, Knight's family doesn't know where she is. The 32-year-old woman has been released from the hospital, but a family spokesman says police won't tell them where she went.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Let's go now to CNN's Victor Blackwell for a look at some of the other stories making news.

Good morning, Victor.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Brianna, thank you.

New Jersey police have been negotiating with a gunman who has taken three children hostage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL (voice-over): Now, this standoff has been going on for more than 13 hours. He barricaded himself in his home in Trenton, and so far he is still communicating with police, but authorities say this started on Friday.

They're not sure why. And they also are not sure of the relationship the children have with this man holding them. We'll keep you updated as soon as we get more on this.

Police in Mexico City are investigating the possible murder of Malcolm X's grandson. They think that Malcolm Shabazz was badly beaten at a bar. He was in Mexico, meeting with a recently deported leader of an California activist group. The grandson of the civil rights icon was 29 years old. Sandy Hook Elementary School should be demolished, and a new school should be built in its place. That is the unanimous recommendation coming from the Sandy Hook task force. They say that tearing it down will help the community erase some of the emotional scars left behind after last year's mass shooting. Twenty-six people were killed in the shooting in December.

One World Trade Center is now officially the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. That spire was installed on Friday, and it made it the new record holder at 1,776 feet. Of course, you get the 1776 reference.

The chairman of the Port Authority called the building, quote, "a national symbol of hope and strength in the face of tragedy."

Now when the first of the Twin Towers was built in 1972, it was the world's tallest building. Good to see that spire go up. Let's go back now to Cleveland and Brianna Keilar.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Brianna?

KEILAR: Thanks, Victor.

Recovering from years of captivity: as we continue to learn details about those three women held against their will for nearly a decade, one can only imagine the mental and physical torture they endured and what it will take for them to put their lives back together.

Joining me now to talk about that, clinical psychologist Jeff Gardere; criminologist Casey Jordan.

Jeff, I want to start with you, because when Amanda Berry broke free, the other two women, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, stayed behind. Some people may look at that and say why did they do that? But obviously there's something going on here to explain that.

What can you tell us about their state of mind?

JEFF GARDERE, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, I think what may have been going on is Amanda Berry not only had to save herself but also had to save her daughter. So there were two lives at stake as far as she was concerned.

Everyone has a different psychological makeup, a different personality. So she may have had that kind of personality, where she had reached a breaking point and was willing to take the chance and go out.

The other two are heroes, just like she is, and perhaps they may have been more intimidated, maybe a little bit more fearful, but it could have been coordinated where she was the one who was the catalyst who got them out, knowing that eventually they would follow her. KEILAR: And before I turn to Casey, Jeff, I want to thank you about Amanda Berry's daughter, because the difference here is we're talking about a child who's only known one reality, and that is living under these circumstances, unlike her mother and the other two women here.

What kind of damage might she have experienced? And especially now we're learning that her father is indeed, according to DNA evidence, the alleged kidnapper Ariel Castro.

GARDERE: Well, what we certainly can surmise is that this little girl saw a lot of the horrors that were taking place, never became part of society, had a very skewed, aberrated view as to what life would be, and certainly saw her mother and these other women being tortured.

So at this critical moment of her maturation, she got to see the most horrific things. So it will take a very long time to get her into society, but also to try to get her to understand what normal relationships are all about.

KEILAR: Casey, can you talk to us a little bit about the suspect, Ariel Castro, and some of his behavior? It seems that he treated these women differently. He threatened Michelle Knight, allegedly, to ensure the birth of Amanda's baby. There are reports that he beat her and caused multiple miscarriages.

Also, that he handled this 6-year-old girl as a daughter. There were trips outdoors into public.

How unusual is it for kidnappers to bond with their victims, and is it unusual for them to treat multiple victims differently?

CASEY JORDAN, CRIMINOLOGIST: Well, let's point out we have almost no precedence for exactly this sort of situation. The bottom line is that we've seen sexually motivated captors take captives before, but not so many at once and not for such a long duration. So we don't have a whole lot to compare this to.

But it would appear that Ariel Castro had favorites. It is completely -- it flies in the face of the idea that he would make Michelle Knight save Jocelyn when she was born by giving her mouth-to- mouth resuscitation while at the same time Michelle Knight reports that he starved her and beat her pregnancies until she miscarried.

So why Michelle, not allowed to be pregnant, if that is indeed true, and why was Amanda allowed to have a child? Perhaps Michelle, he'd grown tired of her. We know that he was replacing these girls almost -- once every three years he got a new girl.

And you have to wonder, since he admits he had no exit plan, if he actually developed favorites.

The Stockholm syndrome that Jeff is talking about appears to be most heavily experienced by, of course, Gina and Michelle, who didn't flee. But my concern, of course, is for that 6-year-old child. We know that, when she fled the house with her mother, Amanda, Charles Ramsey said that the little girl was asking for her father. So it's her psychological development that is probably going to be extremely challenged, because she does think of her captor as her father.

KEILAR: Casey, when you look at something like this, when you look at this suspect, Ariel Castro, do you say there must be something in his past that would have prompted this kind of aberrant behavior?

JORDAN: Yes, a lot of focus in the last day or two has been on that so-called suicide note or diary, from almost 2004, almost nine years ago. He wrote extensively about his guilt and how consumed he was with the reality that he was a sexual predator. He didn't want it. He didn't like it, but he believed he was -- acted impulsively, compulsively and could not control it.

This is where he wrote that he preferred to die, that if he died he would want his assets to actually go to the victims, showing some level of remorse, which again flies in the face of a theory of sociopathy.

But at the same time, he says that this came from his early childhood sexual abuse. This is completely in keeping with what we know about sexual sadists, that almost invariably they have horrible histories of abuse.

And the real question we will walk away from, apart from disgust for the captor, will be how do we break the cycle of brutalization? How do we get people who were abused as children to get the help they need so that they don't perpetuate the cycle and become abusers themselves?

KEILAR: And, Jeff, as we try to make some sort of sense of what was behind some of what happened here in this horrible captivity of these three women, talking to people here in Cleveland, some of them have said to me they hope that these women, being that they are so young, that they can go on and have important moments in their life and really, I guess, recover from this horrible thing that they have been through.

What do you think their healing process may be like?

What might help when you're talking about these women and also this 6-year-old girl?

GARDERE: Well, certainly getting the individual therapy. Family therapy is also going to be very helpful. But I think their families are the key here. Their families need to understand that these young women are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, will have nightmares, will have flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, eating disorders possibly, sleeping issues.

And we've seen situations where people in this position have been sleeping on the floor. They can't sleep in a bed. They have problems with trust. And, as Casey talked about with the Stockholm syndrome, that they may show some ambivalence around the captor; instead of demanding a death penalty, they may say, well, maybe he should live.

So the family needs to understand it's not that these women have particularly strong feelings for this monster, it's just part of that psychological process where they have to be deprogrammed.

Certainly, he brainwashed them. They're young, yes. Therefore, there's some resilience, but it's a double-edged sword because they were taken at critical moments in their development -- 14, 16, 19.

So he had certainly a very horrific but strong impact on their psychological development, and we need to undo a lot of that and allow them to have the potential to grow a very strong personality and be more than survivors, but also be in many ways victors.

KEILAR: They have a long road ahead, and we certainly hope that they do get those resources that you say they need. Jeff Gardere and Casey Jordan, thank you guys for joining me. I really appreciate it.

Hail the size of baseballs pounding parts of Texas, and you will not believe the incredible video of it.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL (voice-over): Listen to this. This is hail. This is hail in Pearsall, Texas. Now some hailstones here are the size of baseballs. This is big enough, if it hits you in the head, it could knock you out.

This was taken by Tracey Yanez from our affiliate KSAT. This is her backyard. And I was taking to meteorologist Karen Maginnis. We'll talk to her in a moment, that the hail here doesn't look like it's falling. It really looks as if it's being thrown into that pool. So very dangerous and destructive.

This storm ripped through the San Antonio area and also knocked out trees and caused some power outages. But amazing video from Texas.

More storms, though, are brewing for this Mother's Day weekend, unfortunately. Let's get to Karen now in the CNN Weather Center with today's forecast.

One, unbelievable what's happening in Texas or what happened in Texas. But we're expecting some colder air.

KAREN MAGINNIS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: We've got some colder air that's already in place. But you won't believe how this is going to change as we go into the middle of the work week. But still did see some very powerful storms even at this hour along the coastal sections of Louisiana and Texas. Big thunderstorms firing up here, so much so that they have seen some localized flooding in places like Beaumont and Port Arthur, extending on down towards Brownsville and Harlingen and Kingsville. This is an area that has seen such drought conditions over the last several years.

So the rainfall is welcome, but when it comes all at one time, it can be devastating. Look at some of these rainfall totals, between six and eight inches right around Lake Charles, also around Houston, and headed up towards that northwestern corner of Arkansas.

Well, the severe weather across the mid-Atlantic day all the way down to right around Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. You could see some strong thunderstorms. Back-to-back frontal systems will keep that cold air in place across the Midwest.

As we go into Mother's Day weekend, look for those temperatures in the Southeast in the 70s. Could see showers and storms coming up for Boston.

And for the International Space Center, this is a whole different atmosphere that we're talking about. An ammonia leak was detected on Thursday. Now the crew wasn't in any danger, but they looked and they saw what looked to be snowflakes outside. But that was the ammonia leaking out into space.

So right about 8:15 this morning I think they're expected to do a spacewalk to kind of fix it. And they are saying that they don't expect anything difficult to come of this. But they want to get the problem fixed before it continues very much longer. It's part of the production of electricity.

Back to you.

BLACKWELL: All right, Karen, thanks. Again, that's emergency spacewalk set to happen in less than 30 minutes at 8:15 Eastern. Of course, we'll show that to you when it happens.

Next we'll go back to Cleveland and examine the legal consequences Ariel Castro may be facing, including the possibility of the death penalty for murder.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This will be the 40-megawatt solar field.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: They told him he could never do it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is a disruptive idea.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He said someone's got to bring solar energy to this place, and I was like, please, not you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It will be the field with the best security in the whole world because we have two armies guarding it.

GUPTA: Yosef Abramowitz and Israel's next solar field on "THE NEXT LIST."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Whatever he can envision, he can then figure out how to make it happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's (inaudible).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If he can see it, he can do it. It's incredible.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Like a bulldog. He just put his teeth in something and doesn't give it up.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR (voice-over): We have breaking news, just in to CNN, the Secret Service is evacuating the West Wing of the White House; that is, of course, where the president's Oval Office is. Agents are stressing that this was done out of an abundance of caution as authorities investigate the source of smoke that they believe is coming out of a mechanical closet.

So again, evacuation of the West Wing. We don't actually know that this is necessarily something going on in the West Wing. It could be part of the greater White House complex, but we will continue to monitor this story and bring you details as soon as they are available to us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Meantime here in Cleveland the Ohio man accused of holding three women hostage for nearly a decade could face even more charges.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR (voice-over): Ariel Castro is already being held on $8 million bond on rape and kidnapping charges. The prosecutor says he may seek murder charges from Castro stemming from allegations that he forced miscarriages on the victims.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN legal contributor Paul Callan joining me now.

What do you think, Paul? Do you see murder charges being filed here, and if they are, do you think there is a chance for a successful case to be made?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think this is the most interesting question in the entire case, Brianna. Ohio is one of the few states in the United States that has a law that says if you force somebody to abort or you force a woman to have a miscarriage, the death of that fetus is murder.

And under certain circumstances -- and those circumstances appear to be present in the fact pattern here -- that can be an aggravated murder for which you can get the death penalty.

The real issue though is how do you prove it? Michelle Knight, who is the person we've heard may have been pregnant as many as five times and miscarried five times, how do you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she was in fact pregnant, since she never went to a hospital and had it formally diagnosed?

And also how do you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she miscarried? You will have her testimony subjectively and I'm sure most women will say we know when we're pregnant.

But the question that judges would look at ultimately is, is a woman's subjective belief that she is pregnant sufficient, as well as a woman's subjective belief that she has miscarried, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the death of a fetus?

So a very interesting question, but it raises the stakes enormously because instead of facing 11 years as he is on some of these kidnapping counts, he'd be facing life in prison, possibly without parole or the death penalty if prosecutors can sustain murder counts.

KEILAR: Let me ask you this, too, Paul. He's facing kidnapping charges for obviously the three women, but also this 6-year-old who DNA tests confirm now is his daughter.

Will the kidnapping charge hold when it comes to the child? Is it -- I mean, obviously it's heinous, but to the letter of the law, would that be considered kidnapping, since she is his child, even though she is conceived allegedly through rape?

CALLAN: I think Brianna, there will be a very difficult road here for prosecutors to sustain that particular kidnapping charge.

I mean, the question -- and it's really an astounding question when you consider it -- is does a rapist have parental rights with the child who was conceived through the rape? Essentially his criminal conduct in kidnapping the women, imprisoning them and then forcibly raping a woman has led to the birth of a child.

Now does he have parental rights? There's been some debate about this throughout the United States; two-thirds of America's states have no laws about the issue of whether a rapist has rights when a child is born from the rape.

So the question is, could a judge look at this and say it's not written specifically in the statute, but he shouldn't benefit from his crime -- which, in effect, he would be by not facing the kidnapping charges.

So I think you'll see an argument in court about it. In the end, I suspect prosecutors will drop that particular kidnapping count. They've got a lot of other counts that are easier to prove and, of course, they're going to wrestling with the murder count, which I think is the most interesting legal argument in the case and means the most to the case because it could mean death for Castro.

And certainly a lot of people would say the crime is sufficient to warrant it.

KEILAR: It is an unprecedented crime and it is going to bring up a whole lot of legal questions that may not have been considered before. Paul Callan, thank you for breaking it down for us.

And thank you to everyone for starting your morning with us. We've got much more ahead on "CNN SATURDAY MORNING," which starts right after a quick break.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)