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Manhunt for Escaped Prisoners Continues; Russian Jet Comes within 10 Feet of U.S. Aircraft; Parents Rally for Cure Brain Disease. 10:30-11a ET

Aired June 12, 2015 - 10:30   ET

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

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[10:33:15] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Bloodhounds, choppers, and thermal imaging -- those are just some of the tools being used to hunt down two convicted killers still on the loose in upstate New York. Police say search dogs have picked up the scent of Richard Matt and David Sweat at a gas station. That location just one mile away from the prison.

We're also learning new details about prison worker Joyce Mitchell. Two law enforcement sources telling CNN she gave the inmates escape tools, including hacksaw blades, before their elaborate getaway.

Let's talk about all of this with CNN contributor and forensic scientist Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky. I'm also joined by CNN commentator and legal analyst Mel Robbins. Welcome to both of you.

DR. LAWRENCE KOBILINSKY, FORENSIC SCIENTIST: Hi.

MEL ROBBINS, CNN COMMENTATOR: Hi Carol.

COSTELLO: Doctor, I want to start with you because these dogs have been amazing. It's just amazing that these dogs could pick up a scent days after these men escaped.

KOBILINSKY: When it comes to the sense of smell, there's nothing better than a dog. You know, dogs have -- they come in different types, long noses, short noses, but essentially they have hundreds of millions of chemical detectors, olfactory detectors in the nose. And when they breathe in, air comes in, of course, for breathing, but the rest of it goes to the sense of olfaction.

And if you examine the brain of a dog, there's probably 40 times larger area devoted to the sense of smell than human beings, so they can smell things in one part per trillion, which let me put it another way. If you had, let's say, a small amount of salt in a teaspoon and you put that into two Olympic size swimming pools, dogs can detect that salt. So they're amazing creatures, and they can track drugs.

[10:35:08] They're cadaver dogs, and obviously they can track people and that's what we're seeing here.

COSTELLO: So investigators also found these candy wrappers at this site. So what will they do to determine whether these inmates actually used the candy wrappers.

KOBILINSKY: Of course, we're assuming they were at these sites, this bedding site, this gas station. Finding these wrappers tells me there's touch DNA. You can do pretty rapid analysis and determine for sure if it was Matt or Sweat, if they were there, if they handled that candy wrapper. So we can then tell, we could absolutely say with great certainty they were there.

COSTELLO: Interesting. Ok. So, Mel, questions for you about Joyce Mitchell, this prison worker. Investigators say, two sources telling CNN, she actually smuggled in hacksaw blades, drill bits, and safety glasses with lights. Knowing what these men were found guilty of, it's just mind boggling.

ROBBINS: Well, it's mind boggling when you are looking from the outside of the prison, but, you know, even though a lot of prison workers get training, it's not uncommon for folks that work inside of prisons to develop some sort of relationship, whether it's a friendship or in this case everyone is speculating some sort of romantic interest, with the people that you work with day in and day out.

This is a workplace. These are two convicted criminals, Carol, that are cunning, that know how to manipulate people, and I'm sure they probably manipulated her. Now, look, that does not in any way excuse what she did. It might help explain it, for bringing in all that illegal contraband, Carol.

She's probably only facing a misdemeanor. For helping these guys escape though, she could be facing up to seven years in prison. And the fact that she didn't show up doesn't help her because she didn't call the police, Carol. So this woman is in a serious amount of deep water.

COSTELLO: Well, it's interesting, as far as we know she doesn't have an attorney representing her just yet but she's met with authorities nearly every day.

ROBBINS: Well, I think that's incredibly dumb because what she wants to do right now and she needs legal counsel to be effective is obviously if she knows anything about what their plans were, because clearly their plans were to hop in a car that she had arranged for them to get into and speed away and now they're on foot, they're ill- prepared, they were not expecting to have the plan go awry like this, so if she can cooperate and give information, that may help in the disposition of her case.

But she is an absolute idiot for not having legal counsel right there to, A, protect her rights, and, B, make sure she gets the most effective deal out of helping the police find these two convicts.

COSTELLO: So, Doctor, what's your sense? Do you think that these guys are still in the area because I talked to a neighbor today who read a Facebook post from one of his neighbors who claims her parents saw these two guys jump over a fence five miles away from the prison and run into the woods. KOBILINSKY: I think it's very likely they're in the area. I think

they're tired, they're hungry, thirsty, desperate. I think if anybody sees them, they need to stand back, stay away, call the police. I suspect they will be captured within a day or two. I don't think they can stay out in that forest for very long. It's treacherous.

COSTELLO: So police have now searched a five square mile area. They've searched 333 homes within that area. They're continuing to search homes. They have search dogs in the woods. They have forest rangers helping them out. You would think that they would have found these guys now if they're still in that area.

KOBILINSKY: You would think so but the terrain is rugged. Anybody who has been in a forested area like that knows how difficult it is. It's like it's finding a needle in a haystack. It's very hard. You've got to look behind every tree. You have got to turn over every stone. You have got to follow the leads, and with over 500 people searching, they will find these people.

COSTELLO: I hope so. Thank you very much, Dr. Kobilinsky, Mel Robbins. I appreciate it.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, just ten feet. Details on a dangerously close encounter between a Russian fighter jet and a U.S. military plane.

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[10:43:49] COSTELLO: A close call in the skies over the Black Sea. A Russian fighter jet coming within ten feet of an American reconnaissance jet as it flew over international waters last month. Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is following the story for us. Good morning.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. It happened on May 30th, but the information just now coming to light here at the Pentagon. What happened was a Russian fighter jet launched over the Black Sea and tried to intercept an American reconnaissance plane, an Air Force RC-135 flying in international waters. This was about 300 miles north of Turkey.

We are told that this Russian fighter jet flew within ten feet of the American plane, very dangerous. The question now, of course, is why are the Russians doing it? The plane was fine, nobody was hurt. No evasive action was taken, but in the skies, of course, this is very, very dangerous airmanship.

The U.S. says, you know, pure speculation, maybe it was pilot aggressiveness on the part of the Russians, maybe it was directly ordered by Moscow. They don't really know, but it's really interesting because it follows a very similar incident just a few weeks before that on April 7th off the coast of Lithuania, up in the Baltic in northern Europe.

[10:45:11] Again an American reconnaissance plane approached an unsafe -- in an unsafe practice very closely by another Russian plane. A lot of pickup in military air traffic in both these areas, the Black Sea and the Baltics. NATO allies, the U.S. flying a lot more out there sending a signal to the Russians in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine that NATO and the U.S. are out there defending Europe, defending Eastern Europe.

So they're seeing the Russians respond a lot more but two incidents now very concerning to the Pentagon -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Barbara Starr reporting live for us this morning. Thank you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, parents get some help from Hollywood in finding a cure for their children's rare brain disease.

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[10:50:44] COSTELLO: I want you to take a look at these two sisters. Their names are Charlotte and Gwyneth Gray. At four years old and two years old, they're in the fight for their lives. They're battling Batten disease, an extremely rare brain condition. It's fatal. There is no known cure, but their parents are not giving up.

Gordon and Kristen Gray say there is a doctor who has found success in treating Batten disease in animals. The Grays have set up a foundation to raise money. And it's drawing national attention. Gordon produces movies and he's generated support from his friends in Hollywood but the amount of money they need is a lot -- roughly $10 million.

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KRISTEN GRAY, MOTHER: You're looking at your very healthy, vibrant children who are living life right now who could potentially lose all of that joy in a very short time. So we have a very short window to try and save them.

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COSTELLO: To the learn more about the disease and the efforts to save Charlotte and Gwyneth, are Gordon and Kristen Gray who join me now. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me.

K. GRAY: Thanks for having us.

GORDON GRAY, FATHER: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Thanks for being here. Kristen, what is Batten disease?

K. GRAY: Batten disease is a neurodegenerative brain disease. (INAUDIBLE) And there are many of these out there. And there are many different forms of Batten disease. It's kind of an umbrella term.

There are eight different forms starting at one and going all the way up to nine, and our girls have CLN-6.

COSTELLO: And Gordon, when did you first notice there was a problem? G. GRAY: You know, our daughter, charlotte, we felt like was an

exceptional child. She was hitting her milestones early. She walked before the age of one. She was very active, sharp, funny, and we felt like she was showing signs of becoming a great athlete.

The first signs for us were really a little speech impairment. It wasn't quite a stutter but she was getting stuck on words and then ultimately her sentences went from nine or ten words down to five and four. Then she went from being a little less aggressive as an athlete. She used to jump off the highest hot tub into the pool, and then it got to a point where she would only dip her toe into the water.

She started to lose interest in playing sports. She'd run off the field in soccer and go hide by the trees. I could tell going up and down the stairs she was a little more tentative. Those were all the early signs for us.

COSTELLO: And, Kristen, both of your daughters have this condition, and it's so rare. Many people probably wonder how that's possible.

K. GRAY: We wonder that, too. You know, Batten disease, 1 out of every 200,000 births, but specifically with our form, the CLN-6 mutation, and we've only really heard of around ten in the United States and, you know, I'm sure there are more outside of the United States, but, you know, we've only heard of a couple.

I have spoken to one woman in Portugal and I think there's maybe a couple in Germany, but it's hard to access and get the information unfortunately. So we don't know, you know, how many that carry our mutation.

COSTELLO: So, Gordon, tell us how we can help.

G. GRAY: You know, because Batten disease and especially CLN-6 is rare, it doesn't get a lot of attention, and attention for us is funding. We're trying to fund a cure. We're told that we need in excess of $10 million to save our girls. So we're trying to spread the word, raise money, and accelerate the research, get money in these scientists' hands so that we could an save our daughters. There are many rare diseases out there, and, you know, they don't get a lot of attention unless someone gives them attention so that's why we're sitting here.

COSTELLO: And then where --

K. GRAY: This platform has given us --

COSTELLO: Go ahead.

K. GRAY: I was going to say this platform has given us now access to a lot of these other orphan disease families, and they have reached out to us and so, you know, we're hoping obviously not only to help the Batten family but all these other orphan diseases.

[10:55:07] COSTELLO: Thank you so much for sharing your story and my prayers are with you. Thank you so much.

G. GRAY: Thank you.

COSTELLO: And to make a donation to the foundation, you can visit cureBatten.org. I'll be right back.

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COSTELLO: The President has left the building. His last-minute Capitol Hill meeting with House Democrats on trade has ended. The President leaving with Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. No word on how productive this meeting was, but the President did tell reporters, quote, "I don't think you ever nail anything down around here. It's always moving."

Also new details just into the newsroom about those two convicted killers on the run after escaping from a maximum security prison in upstate New York. Authorities believe they're still together choosing not to go it alone after breaking out. We're also learning that an officer saw someone entering the woods on Wednesday near where the dogs picked up the scent prompting officers to set up a perimeter.

[11:00:10] Of course, we'll continue to follow this story throughout the day.

Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"@THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND BOLDUAN" starts now.