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Detained American Returns To U.S.; Suspected Serial Killer Due Now in Court; Michael Brown Autopsy Details Revealed; UNC Braces For Academic Fraud Report

Aired October 22, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, just moments ago in West Carrollton, Ohio, a really happy family reunion. I'm glad to be bringing you these pictures. That's Jeffrey Fowle. He's been held captive in North Korea for five months and suddenly for some reason the North Korean leader released him.

He flew into Wright-Patt Air Base in Dayton earlier this morning and just a short time ago, he returned to his home in West Carrollton, which is near Dayton and you can see Jeffrey Fowle, his three boys and his wife in this big happy reunion.

He didn't say very much. Miguel Marquez was there to witness it all, but his lawyer did say a few words. What did he say, Miguel?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, clearly he was bursting to say how happy he was to be back. I mean, he was smiling as he walked up. The kids were all smiles, the wife, everybody clearly extraordinarily pleased.

The concern that they have is that there are two other Americans being held in North Korea at the moment and they don't want to complicate things for them. His lawyer, Tim Tiep spoke to us in a very surprise and impromptu press conference just moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'd like to thank God for his hand of protection over Jeff these past six months and for providing strength and peace over his family in his absence. The family would like to thank the U.S. State Department, the Embassy of Sweden, former Ambassador Tony Hall and many others and all the people who offered their love, support, and prayers during this time.

Although we are overjoyed by Jeff's return home, we are mindful that Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller continue to be detained in the DPRK and understand the disappointment their families are experiencing today that their loved ones did not return home with Jeff.

Jeff would like you to know that he was treated well by the government of the DPRK. That he's currently in good health. The past 24 hours have been a whirlwind for Jeff and his family. Jeff needs some time right now to get adjusted to his life at home. We respectfully request that he and his family be given some time and spice by the media. We are aware of the intense interest in talking with Jeff and plan on deciding the best time and place to be available for further comment and questions. Thank you all very, very much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: We did ask him a couple of questions and this is the lawyer here leaving Mr. Fowle's residence. We did ask him a couple questions after that statement and he did give us a thumb's up. He wanted to say how he was feeling.

There was a point during -- when his lawyer was reading that statement that it was almost like Mr. Fowle was about to break into tiers because he knows how important this is for those other families and you can feel they do feel a sense of regret for those other families that he is out today and they are still there.

That line in his statement about that he was treated well by the government of the DPRK clearly meant to send the signal that they did no harm and that they are fine and upstanding and hoping that will release the other two individuals who are there right now.

But an extraordinarily happy day for the individuals here, they are inside getting to know each other all over again and it looks as well, another bit of good news for him, we spoke to the city attorney for Moraine where he works, and it looks like he can reapply for his job. It's still there and if he wants it he can have it -- Carol.

COSTELLO: That's awesome. Miguel Marquez, thanks so much. There's a look at the family again. Awesome.

Turning now to news on a suspected serial killer, right now, Darren Vann is due before a judge on charges that he killed a teenager and left her body in a motel room. But police say 19-year-old Afrikka Hardy may not be Vann's only victim but rather his last.

They say he confessed to six previous murders and even led cops to the bodies dumped in abandoned homes. Police fear there could be more victims. CNN's Poppy Harlow has details from Gary, Indiana.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The grim duty of searching for more possible murder victims in Gary, Indiana.

(on camera): Why are you in this area specifically?

SGT. WILLIAM FAZEKAS, GARY, INDIANA POLICE: We're in this area for the reason is the bodies, some of the bodies of the victims were found in this immediate area.

HARLOW (voice-over): Abandoned homes here used as a dumping ground for at least six women murdered in cold blood. Police want to know if there are more.

FAZEKAS: The individual that committed these crimes, his MO was to put people in the abandon -- these dead women in abandon houses.

NATE WILSON, GARY, INDIANA RESIDENT: They just need to get the houses away. People are getting killed in these houses.

HARLOW (on camera): Do you know any of the women that have been found dead?

TATIANA FOSTER, GARY, INDIANA RESIDENT: No, but I don't leave the house past 8:00 because it's so dark out here. They call this scary Gary.

HARLOW (voice-over): The prime suspect for the murders, 43-year-old Darren Vann who led police to the six bodies after admitting he strangled 19-year-old Afrikka Hardy to death at this Motel 6 Friday and left her lying nude in the bathtub.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're somebody's daughter, somebody's mother, somebody's sister.

HARLOW: The son of a woman married to Vann for 16 years spoke with CNN Tuesday.

UNIDENTIFIED CALLER: I told the guy is a nut case, he is. And I didn't allow him in my kids or home because he just creep me out.

HARLOW: Darren Vann's criminal history spanning at least a decade from Texas to Indiana is brutally troubling. In 2004, he threatened to burn his then girlfriend up while holding a lighter and a gas can, a felony that landed him in jail for 90 days.

In 2009 he was convicted of aggravated rape and served five years in jail. Gary, Indiana's police chief says Vann, a registered sex offender, was monitored in September by the sheriff's department.

CHIEF LARRY MCKINLEY, GARY, INDIANA POLICE: They go out and they check their place of residence and see how they're living and see if they're still in compliance with what they need to be doing.

HARLOW (on camera): Given the fact that Darren Vann was monitored as recently as September and everything you're saying checked out, do you think the system needs to change so something like this doesn't happen again?

MCKINLEY: Well, it's a possibility that it can always be tweaked and there can always be changes.

HARLOW (voice-over): It's an understatement to say Marvin Clinton would agree with that assessment. His girlfriend of nine years, Teara Batey, is one of the murder victims.

MARVIN CLINTON, BOYFRIEND OF VICTIM, TEARA BATEY: She was a loving kind person, good heart, big hearted person. It's really sickening because of the fact that you have a convicted sex offender, registered sex offender and I feel that any sex offender should be monitored closely by any state that they live in.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Darren Vann is making his initial court appearance this morning. He is a registered sex offender, but in the state of Texas where he raped a woman, the Department of Public Safety deemed him low risk. The sheriff's department here only checked on him once because they said that is all that was required by law -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Poppy Harlow reporting this morning.

A blockbuster new report seems to back a Ferguson police officer's account of what happened before Michael Brown was shot and killed. If this new development stands up, it is possible Officer Darren Wilson will not be indicted in Brown's death.

Now, this was first reported by the "St. Louis Post Dispatch" and now confirmed by CNN. We do have details on the St. Louis County's autopsy on Brown. The autopsy shows Brown was shot in the hand at close range.

Reports say Brown's blood was found on Wilson's gun and Brown's tissue was found on the exterior of Officer Darren Wilson's vehicle. As you know, Officer Wilson said there was a scuffle inside his squad car and that he feared for his life.

One expert who reviewed the autopsy says it does support that there was a significant altercation at the car. The "Post-Dispatch" also obtained the toxicology report accompanied the autopsy. That report found Brown had been using marijuana.

Of course, the grand jury is still meeting in Missouri. No decision has been made yet on whether or not to indict Officer Wilson. But the governor of Missouri is preparing for that day of decision. CNN's Sara Sidner is in Ferguson this morning. Good morning, Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you. Today, like every day, there are people outside protesting the Ferguson Police Department and protesting what happened on August 9. I can tell you that while it is fairly quiet here, there is a lot of social media traffic on this.

A lot of people already talking about this latest leak and every single time there has been a leak and there have been quite a few over the last few days, there has been a reaction and that reaction has been that people are quite upset that these things keep leaking out.

They believe some of these leaks are being put out to try to get people to see what the grand jury is seeing and try to get them to understand that there may not be an indictment. Of course, the grand jury is supposed to be looking at all of this in secret, but those secrets keep coming out.

Let me talk to you a little bit about what we heard yesterday from the governor, Governor Jay Nixon, talking about a Ferguson commission that he plans to put in place. But their role is not going to be to look independently at the investigation into what happened in the death of Michael Brown. But instead to look at some of the underlying economic and social conditions that are causing some of this unease. Here's what he had to say a little bit about that commission.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Are you worried about what might happen when the grand jury decision is made and announced?

GOVERNOR JAY NIXON (D), MISSOURI: When you have this level of energy and when you have what has happened over the last 73 days, you can rest well assured that we are focused and concerned about what could be the most problematic of scenarios.

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SIDNER: So you heard that. There is concern. They are preparing. The police certainly are also preparing and so are the protesters. The protesters are saying, look, we are going to be here, we are upset, we don't like what we are hearing and we're going to be here because we believe there was an injustice.

The police for their part have said that Officer Wilson was simply defending himself, but the grand jury will have to look at all of the evidence, all of the witnesses and make its decision -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Sara Sidner reporting live from Ferguson this morning. Thanks so much.

Back to that autopsy report, again, experts say it indicates there was, indeed, some kind of altercation between Brown and Officer Wilson inside that police car. There was reportedly blood on the officer's gun and skin on the outside of the car.

There was also residue on Brown's hand, possibly indicating he was shot at close range. But, remember, remember what multiple eyewitnesses told CNN about the shooting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PIAGET CRENSHAW, WITNESS TO MICHAEL BROWN SHOOTING: From my point of view I could not tell exactly what was going on, but it just looked as if he was trying to pull him almost into the car.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who pulled?

CRENSHAW: The officer pulled Michael Brown.

DORIAN JOHNSON, WITNESS TO MICHAEL BROWN SHOOTING: Big Mike very angrily is trying to pull away from the officer. He turned around with his hands up, beginning to tell the officer that he was unarmed and to tell him to stop shooting. But at that time the officer was firing several more shots into my friend.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: With me now, St. Louis Alderman Antonio French. Welcome, sir.

ANTONIO FRENCH, ST. LOUIS ALDERMAN: Good morning.

COSTELLO: What do you make of the county's autopsy report?

FRENCH: Well, you know, I think it describes an awful way to die and I think it also describes a situation where a young man who is unarmed was shot nine times. What I'm alarmed by is that the way this is being tried in the public and that information is being leaked out and we're not getting a clear picture of everything.

I think one of the things that we've asked for from the beginning is that the only way this thing can happen in a way that actually gives the community what they're asking for is a public trial and I'm concerned that the way this information is being leaked out that it really does not give much credence to the process and it doesn't restore faith in the process.

COSTELLO: Well, it's bound to become more confusing because a third autopsy result has yet to come out, done by the federal government, right? There was a private one, now the county one and the federal one is to come.

I want to focus on the county one for just a bit more. Because "hands up" has become a symbol of the Brown movement, but experts who reviewed the county's reports say there's no indication Brown had his hands up when Brown took that shot to the forehead and I'm going to quote something from an expert.

She says "a sixth shot that hit the forearm traveled from the back of the arm to the inner arm, which means Browns palms could not have been facing Wilson as some witnesses have said. That trajectory shows Brown was probably not taking a standard surrender position with arms above the shoulders and palms out when he was hit."

Another expert, though, signals caution. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. BILL MANION, MEDICAL EXAMINER, BURLINGTON COUNTY, NEW JERSEY: A person can be up like this about to punch you, to assault you and the gunshot wound can go from front to back. A person can be surrendering. So you have to be very careful looking at these and I think we have to look at these wounds in the context of the other wounds.

If all of the other wounds are from front to back, why would this one be from back to front or be totally different than the trajectory of all the other gunshots?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So if Brown did not have his hands up, would that change things for you?

FRENCH: Well, I don't know what happened there and the point is, is that the only way this is going to be resolved is in a public trial. The way that this is being done now with the information dumps, either leaks or the way the prosecutors decide to do it with the grand jury, which is to dump a tremendous amount of information on them is not going to get us the result we want to see.

So to ask for a trial, which is what protesters have been asking for, is not to predetermine guilt. It's to say the only thing that's going to satisfy this community is to get all the information done out there in a fair way and so that we can get a clear picture of what happened. But this piecemeal approach is not helping the situation at all.

COSTELLO: Because you have to wonder, what if the grand jury does not indict? What happens?

FRENCH: Well, I worry about our community. We have both the short term and the long term and in the short term we have to worry about the hours and days following an announcement that the grand jury would not indict.

But in the long term our community has been really ripped apart and we've got a lot of healing to do. We have people that need to come together at the end of the day because we all have to live together.

And the only way we're going to lay that ground work for a better future, I think, is to do this in a fair way that gets all the information out there and most reasonable people can feel somewhat satisfied that the process worked and I don't think we're seeing that right now.

COSTELLO: Alderman Antonio French, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it.

FRENCH: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Thank you, sir. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the University of North Carolina bracing for a report from a former federal prosecutor who's been probing the school's handling of student athletes. Did team officials tell them to take fake classes so the best athletes could stay on the field? A live report from Chapel Hill, next.

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COSTELLO: An academic fraud scandal that has rolled the University of North Carolina will take center stage in Chapel Hill this morning where the school's Board of Governors is due to meet with former federal prosecutor, Kenneth Wainstein.

Wainstein was hired by the university to conduct a probe of so-called paper classes that supposedly only existed on paper. A whistle-blower who has since resigned claims UNC steered athletes towards these paper classes that never actually met and required very little work all with the goal of keeping players academically eligible to play ball.

The story gained national attention after CNN Sara Ganim talked with that whistle-blower. Sara is on the phone live from Chapel Hill. What do we expect this report to reveal?

SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Well, the expectation is that the report will finally answer the question of whether there has been systematic cheating at the University of North Carolina for several decades.

The reputation of one of the greatest possible coaches here, Dean Smith, and the reputation of a very prestigious school, this is after all where Michael Jordan played and, you know, it's always been a place that it was thought to be that academics and athletics went hand in hand.

All of that is being called into question with these allegations that players were not academically up to par to go to school, were brought in and were put into classes where no work was required?

COSTELLO: So the scandal has been ongoing since 2010. Why is it taking so long?

GANIM: That's what's been so frustrating to people here is that this has been going on for five years. An entire class has come through here and there have been very few answers. UNC said this is the doing of one professor and they even blamed some of the athletes who were in the classes.

But quite frankly, Carol, that's hard for many people here to believe. There's a lot of anger here about the way that the university has responded to this in the last five years. There's the feeling that it was dragged out because the university didn't address key questions.

You know, this is the seventh internal investigation that has been done. Before this, there were six other internal reports, six. And each of those really led to more questions than answers so people here are hoping this is it. This is the one that will finally give everyone a full picture of what happened and who was involved?

COSTELLO: Sara Ganim reporting live from Chapel Hill this morning. My next guest was a member of UNC's championship basketball team in 2005 and claims he would have been academically ineligible for that team had it not been for these so called paper classes.

Rashad McCants joins me now live from Atlanta. Welcome, Rashad.

RASHAD MCCANTS, FORMER UNC BASKETBALL PLAYER, 2002-2005: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: What do you expect the report to say today?

MCCANTS: It's hard to say. I don't know much about what they're investigating, what kind of information they're looking for, but I can say that the book "Cheaters" written by Mary Willingham will be out and it will cover anything left out from this investigation. So I'm looking forward to that book being released.

COSTELLO: You've said you made the dean's list in 2005 despite not attending any of the class, which is you might straight A's in. At the time, didn't you find that strange?

MCCANTS: Most definitely. But at the same time as an athlete we weren't really there for an education, we were there to enhance in our athletic abilities. As an athlete you get a scholarship to the university to play basketball and they didn't steer us in the direction of educational enhancement. So it wasn't that I wasn't capable of making it, it was that I clearly didn't go to any classes.

COSTELLO: So what did you do instead?

MCCANTS: I mean, usually we worked on the play book or worked out and usually sleep in until there was practice.

COSTELLO: Was it one professor involved? Was it more more than one professor?

MCCANTS: In this particular case, it's more about the system. It's not really about who is involved. It's the system is available for the university to exploit these athletes and I was inside of this platform and this system where all these athletes were taken advantage of just to make money.

The universities make money off of us athletes and they give us this fake education as a distraction so we're not paying attention to what's really going on under the table.

COSTELLO: In fairness, I have to pass this bit of information along to our viewers. Sixteen former UNC players issued a statement responding to your claims and it reads in part, quote, "with conviction, each one of us is proud to say that we attended class and did our own academic work. We want to state that our personal academic experiences are not consistent with Rashad's claims." How do you respond to them?

MCCANTS: Well, I don't have any claims. I never had any claims. The report was already done before I stepped forward. Mary came forward, I just put a bigger face on this picture and for these athletes to come forward and have anything to say as far as their own personal experience, I'll say again, show your transcripts.

I mean, those people who were not involved in this system, it will show on their transcripts and those who were, it will. And I think this is an overall problem around all universities, not just the University of North Carolina and, you know, people try to make it out to be this athletic thing between me and the university and it's not.

I'm an advocate for education reform and I'm doing everything I can to help these college athletes, these student athletes get better education and be treated better.

COSTELLO: Were you in any way involved with the investigation that went on at UNC? Did they approach you and ask you to participate in any way?

MCCANTS: I was not reached out to at all. The sad thing is, you know, Carolina came out with a new program called Carolina First or Carolina Program or something that allows the student athletes that have gone on without finishing college or their degrees to come back and participate in their degrees and I think this was just a coverup to show that there is a fraudulent system set up.

COSTELLO: We'll see what the report says. It comes out later today. Rashad McCants, former UNC basketball player, thank you for joining me, I appreciate.

MCCANTS: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, American school girls allegedly trying to join ISIS. Three Denver girls made it all the way to Germany. They were on their way to Syria. CNN's Pamela Brown is following that story for us. Good morning.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning to you, Carol. That's right, these three girls made it halfway to their journey allegedly to fight in Syria. Coming up, we'll tell you how they were able to make it so far.

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