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Search for Escaped Prison Inmates; Afghan Parliament Attack; Being Black in Charleston; Authorities Have Collected DNA Evidence from Escaped Convicts; Taylor Swift Takes on Apple. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired June 22, 2015 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:31:20] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Right now, police are scouring a wooded area in northern New York for two convicted killers after a witness told police a cabin had been burglarized. An official telling CNN a man was seen running out a cabin's back door into the woods on Saturday. The possible sighting happened in Franklin County. That's just about 25 miles away from where Richard Matt and David Sweat broke free. For more than two weeks now, the escaped inmates have managed to evade capture.

In the meantime, new questions are emerging about a second prison employee. Over the weekend, officials spent 14 hours questioning a 57- year-old prison guard who apparently had one of Matt's paintings hanging in his house. The worker's attorney says his client is cooperating with police and had no idea about the escape plan.

Let's bring in CNN's Alexandra Field. She is on the ground in Friendship, New York, where police were focused over the weekend.

Good morning.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

Every lead is worth a good look. That's what state police have been saying all along. They have received hundreds and hundreds of tips. And one of those tips forced them to mobilize a number of their resources 300 miles southwest of the prison over the weekend. Three hundred law enforcement officers were on the ground here in Friendship trying to cover this area, trying to get a good handle on whether or not the fugitives could be here in Allegheny County. This as a result of a woman who called in a tip saying that she had seen two men who appeared to match the fugitives' description.

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BRANDY THOMPSON, SAYS SHE SAW INMATES NEAR RAILROAD: A man with a red scruffy beard, a dark blue hoodie, was working his way up the tracks. My dog started barking. He immediately turned around, pulled up his hoodie, did not want to be seen. They looked very dirty, like they've been out there for a while. I can't never be sure. I was so far away from them. It did resemble them. And to be safe than sorry, I did call. Now there's a loaded 3006 (ph) on the kitchen table and it's no coming unloaded any time soon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FIELD: Police mobilized assets in the air and on the ground. There were canine searching in the woods and along railroad tracks. There were roadblocks where cars were being searched and even some homes that were being searched. But, Carol, after two days of searching, police called it off saying that the investigation in this county is wrapped. They are, however, keeping patrols in place as a precaution.

At the same time, Carol, we are watching the search effort intensify in northern New York and another development in the investigation. Officers have been speaking with a corrections officer who they believe received a painting from Richard Matt. That corrections officer, according to his attorney, has been fully cooperative with police, but the attorney maintains that the officer had no knowledge whatsoever of that escape plan, Carol.

COSTELLO: OK, so another question about the search because I'm just curious. A number of these sightings have taken place around the railroad tracks. Are investigators looking into whether these two men are following the railroad tracks through the state of New York and into Pennsylvania, perhaps?

FIELD: Yes, it's a really good point, Carol, and it's something that police have been talking publicly about. Initially, you remember, that they were focused on the area around the prison. They were doing grid searches in the area where they expected that the prisoners might be moving through certain areas, clearing them and moving on.

What we heard at the end of last week from state police was that instead of that they would focus on possible escape routes from the area of the prison, which could include railroad lines. so when you get tips, and this tip came from a caller who believed that she saw the fugitives walking near railroad tracks, this is something that, you know, might rise as far as the level of concern that police have when they're screening these tips.

Also, Carol, this tip about these men in this county walking along the tracks reportedly, it came on the heels of two prior tips made a week earlier in a county just east of here where two other callers had reported seeing two men apparently fitting the description also walking near the railroad lines. So it seems that police are certainly taking those tips that have anything to do with railroad tracks and giving them a close look right now as they consider whether or not it's, you know, a possible means of escape from the Dannemora area.

[09:35:24] COSTELLO: All right, Alexandra Field reporting live this morning, thanks so much.

So let's talk about all of this with Gerard McCann. He's a former senior inspector for the U.S. Marshal Service.

Thank you so much for being with us this morning, sir.

GERARD MCCANN, FMR. SENIOR INSPECTOR, U.S. MARSHAL SERVICE: Thank you, Carol. Happy to be here.

COSTELLO: Happy you're here.

So what do you make of this latest sighting?

MCCANN: You know, this -- it's a potential game-changer. The fact that there were no earlier reports that there were any break-ins or thefts or assaults or anything of that nature would kind of tend to indicate that they might have left the area. But if they've got a credible sighting and a break-in at a cabin that's -- that's big news.

COSTELLO: It is big news, but, you know, over the weekend, the search was focused near the New York/Pennsylvania border and today police are back near the prison in upstate New York. So while that's a great lead, in some ways this search still feels like a wild goose chase.

MCCANN: Well, you have to understand that there's -- there's probably hundreds and hundreds of tips coming in. There's a tremendous amount of media attention on this. Their faces are everywhere. And the community, rightfully so, is concerned and they're on edge and they're going to -- they're going to pay particular attention to anything that seems even remotely out of the ordinary. So a couple of guys walking down the tracks that they've never seen before? Sure, call it in. And law enforcement has to respond to that.

COSTELLO: I want to talk a little bit about this new prison worker who also accepted a painting of one of the inmates. What do you make of that? Is that normal?

MCCANN: That's not something -- I don't know terribly much about the inside on the corrections, but I can imagine that the workers and the inmates can develop relationships. If you have a particularly skilled artist -- you know, if you look back, even serial killers like John Wayne Gacy, he was an artist and his paintings sold for pretty good money. So it's hard to say what drives people to do the things they do.

COSTELLO: You're not kidding. And just a -- just a final question. Your best guess, where are these guys? Are they long gone? Are authorities looking in the right places? What do you think?

MCCANN: I think they're doing what they have to do, which is -- which is run down every lead that's out there. There's -- without a -- without a confirmed, you know, 100 percent sighting, these guys could be anywhere. And law enforcement has to keep looking everywhere. You can't just stop one side of it and, you know, decide we're not going to look there anymore. You've got to keep -- you've got to keep an open mind and take every tip as though it's a possible, credible tip.

COSTELLO: All right, Gerard McCann, thanks so much for your insight, I appreciate it.

Tomorrow, CNN takes a deeper look into the New York prison manhunt now in its third week. It's a CNN investigation tomorrow night, 9:00 p.m. Eastern. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, it starts with a suicide bomber, then

militants fired rockets and set off explosives. More on the Taliban attack on the Afghan parliament after this.

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[09:43:05] (VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: I'll only say that guy has nerves of steel. Taliban militants detonate explosives and fire rocket-propelled grenades in a complex raid on the Afghan parliament. The siege included a suicide bomber at the outer wall of the government compound. Six gunman also tried to raid the building. Afghan security forces stopped and killed the insurgents, but not before they injured 31 civilians.

CNN's Nic Robertson is live in London with more for you.

Hi, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, hi, Carol. I mean you can see just from that blast how close the suicide bomber with a vehicle full of explosives must have been to literally blow dust and debris across that room where the lawmakers were speak. They were, at that moment, voting on a vote of confidence in the new defense minister, and that does seem very like why the Taliban targeted the parliamentary buildings at that time because it sends a very strong message, you can talk about who's going to be defense minister, but we're still here on the streets of Kabul.

The reality is, though, it was civilians that bore the brunt of that. A woman and a child killed, 28 other civilians injured, nine of them women and children. What happened was the security forces in Kabul managed to stop the Taliban getting in. The six gunmen with rocket propelled grenades, automatic weapons, they holed themselves up in a building. But the Afghan security forces able to take them on and defeat them there.

Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Nic Robertson reporting live for us this morning, thank you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, we're going to lighten up just a bit and talk about empowerment. It's a little thing, but it's mighty. Taylor Swift takes on Apple and wins. How she shamed the tech giant into doing the right thing.

[09:44:55]

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COSTELLO: Checking some top stories for you at 49 minutes past the hour. Defense Secretary Ash Carter kicks off a week-long European trip in Germany today where he'll attend his first NATO meeting on secretary. On Sunday, Carter spoke candidly about the bleak outlook for relations with Russia, saying the U.S. and its NATO allies are preparing for a fight that could outlast Vladimir Putin's presidency.

A plane about to take off from Newark Airport last night was stopped on the runway after the pilot noticed one of the engines sparking. Fire crews responded but United Airlines says no one was hurt. It's not clear what caused the sparks. The flight was headed to Savannah, Georgia.

[09:50:02] All 41 passengers were taken off the plane and most were rebooked on other flights.

An estimated 20,000 people came together last night to honor the nine people killed in that massacre at Charleston's Emanuel AME church. The group formed a unity chain on a bridge that links the city of Charleston to the nearby town of Mt. Pleasant. That was followed by a nine-minute moment of silence.

And while tourists know Charleston as a city rich in history and southern charm, some local would say tell you that southern charm is hiding deep-seated racial tensions.

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WILLIAM BILL SAUNDERS, FOUNDER, COMMITTEE ON BETTER RACIAL ASSURANCE: You would believe that everything is going smoothly, that it's all just so neat and everybody is just so nice and it's the best place to be. Most people that come here got no idea how Charleston functions. Dogs got a hell of a lot more rights in Charleston than black people have. Everybody looking out for their dogs and cats, but there is no protection at all for blacks.

My name is William Bill Saunders and I am really a troublemaker in the Charleston area, making sure that people get a chance to take a look at what's going on.

I think that right now we got so many enemies all over the world, yet the most important fight we got is on segregation and integration.

RICHARD DESHIELDS, CHARLESTON RESIDENT: Charleston is great for tourists because they love they tourists, but if you're black in Charleston, it's not a good place to be.

WILLIAM PUGH, CHARLESTON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: I feel like Charleston, it's a great place to live, I love living here, but there definitely are a lot of underlying issues that we have. And unfortunately they're just not talked about.

JOHN DAVID ANDREWS, CHARLESTON RESIDENT: It's a beautiful place with a lot of history, and you only see that. You see the glitz and the glamour, and everything else is literally pushed to the other side of town.

SAUNDERS: I would never go straight home or I would go through a park or a yard somewhere, because I always felt like somebody might be waiting to kill me. And those are the kind of thoughts that I have been through for so long. PUGH: I feel like this problem can be fixed many ways. It starts

with my generation stepping up to the plate and saying we're not going to put up with this. Our grandparents might have, our parents might have, but it's time for us to really buckle down, sit down, talk, and fix some things.

SAUNDERS: One of the things that I wanted to be all my life, since I was about 12, 13 years old, is to be a man -- not a black man, I wanted to be a man. There's no way ever be a man in Charleston, South Carolina. I would always be a boy to the system.

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[09:57:04] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

COSTELLO: All right. Some encouraging news to report to you right now about those escaped killers in upstate New York. Investigators now believe they are close on the trail of those two escapees from that New York maximum security prison, and it all stems back to that cabin in the Mountain View area of Franklin County, New York. That's about 30 miles from where the prison is located.

Two law enforcement sources say evidence was collected from that cabin, and DNA testing was completed within 24 hours. And guess what? DNA from both fugitives was found on personal items. That's according to one of these sources. Alexandra Field is on this new development. We'll check in with her in just about three minutes. But, again, new credible leads in the search for those escaped killers. Investigators now believe they are close on the trail.

In other news this morning, Apple may be the most powerful company in the world, but they caved in just one day after pop star Taylor Swift threatened to withhold her latest album from the company's streaming music service over how much money they dish out to artists.

CNN's senior media correspondent Brian Stelter joins me now to talk about this. Go, Taylor.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Yes, go T. Swift. This was really -- I mean, nobody besides Taylor Swift has this kind of tower. Here's the Tumblr post she put up yesterday morning. She wrote, "It's not too late to change this policy. We don't ask you for free iPhones, so please don't ask us to provide you our music with no compensation."

She's talking about that three-month free trial period, where Apple wasn't going to pay artists. She said it wasn't about her; it was about young artists who need the money. Obviously she doesn't need the money at this point.

So you can see her letter here. This goes up at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday. Nobody is paying attention, except of course for Taylor's of hundreds of thousands of fans. So this goes viral, and by the end of the day Apple came out and said we agree with Taylor, we have called her, we've talked about this. I mean, bottom line, pardon the pun, Apple couldn't shake this off. This was something that Apple had to pay attention to.

COSTELLO: She was doing some Apple shaming, right?

STELTER: She was, and it worked. By the end of the day, she was declaring victory. She wrote on Twitter, "I'm elated and relieved. Thanks for your words of support today."

Now, she hasn't actually said yet she's going to put her music back on Apple Music's service. But I have a feeling they'll announce that later this week. This service comes out at the end of the month, so this has become good publicity for Apple instead of bad PR for Apple.

COSTELLO: Let's hope so for Apple's sake, right? Brian Stelter, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

All right, the next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

COSTELLO: And we begin with breaking news. Good morning to all of you. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

We do begin with that breaking news on the desperate manhunt for those two convicted killers. Two law enforcement officials confirm to CNN that authorities have collected DNA evidence from those escaped inmates, Richard Matt and David Sweat, after searching a burglarized cabin in Franklin County, New York. That's about 25 miles away from where those two men broke free more than two weeks ago now.

So let's get right to CNN's Sara Ganim. She's on the ground in Owls Head, New York, with more on this. What can you tell us, Sara?