Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Victim's Father Speaks Out; Shooter Left Ranting Rambling Suicide Note; Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired August 27, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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


[10:00:02] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

This morning haunting words from the father of the woman murdered on live television. Andy Parker vows that his daughter, Alison, and her colleague Adam Ward, will not remain the victims of yet another senseless killing. Angry at times and choking back tears at others, he says their deaths must open a new national dialogue on gun violence.

CNN's Chris Cuomo is live in Roanoke this morning. He spoke to him just a short time ago.

Tell us more, Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR, NEW DAY: Well, he says, Carol, that he is forcing himself to deal with the media, and as you know it's one of the tough calls for us is whether or not you take someone who's in pain and put them on television, but he is aware of his pain, all too aware, and he also is aware of the opportunity and he says he wants people to know who his daughter was and more importantly he does not want her death to go without meaning. Not just to his family but to the reasons why he thinks this happened. But listen to him in his own words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDY PARKER, FATHER OF KILLED JOURNALIST: I could be better. Yesterday I really didn't think I would be making the news round circuit and just had no -- had no intention of doing so. And then as I reflected during the day I realized that, you know, Alison was a journalist. She does what you guys did -- did you what you guys did. And she would want me to do this. So that's why I'm here. But I've gone through, you know, the usual emotions of being numb and then, you know, uncontrolled grief and sobbing all day long. And then, you know, anger. But, you know, my soul has been crushed.

CUOMO: In one of your statements yesterday you said something I hope you're feeling as well as saying which is the measure of solace you get from knowing that while your daughter had such a young life at 24 years of age, she touched so many people and she made so much of the time she had. Is that helping? CUOMO: In one of your statements yesterday, you said something that I

hope you're feeling as well as saying, which is the measure of solace you get from knowing that while your daughter had such a young life at 24 years of age, she touched so many people and she made so much of the time that she had. Is that helping?

PARKER: It is. The outpouring from the community and, you know, I think the nation at large -- obviously this is a big story nationally, and you know, it -- that has been a comfort. But she was. She was such a special person. She -- you know, she loved everybody that -- you know, she was loved by everyone and, you know, it was -- and she touched a lot of lives. And obviously it shows in the tributes that have come her way.

And you know, I got to tell you I've not watched any television. I -- you know, I didn't see any of the recounts. I didn't want to. But I -- you know, after the fact I'm hearing just, you know, how much -- you know, how much she has been loved. And, you know, I certainly -- it doesn't surprise me.

CUOMO: Part of how you want your daughter to be remembered is that you want something to come out of this situation. You were very strong last night when you were talking about how you think we need to be better after a situation like this. What do you want now?

PARKER: Well, her life was cut short. She had so much potential. And, you know, it's senseless that her life and Adam's life were taken by a crazy person with a gun. And you know, I -- if I have to be the John Walsh of gun control and -- look, I'm for the Second Amendment, but there has to be a way to force politicians that are cowards and in the pockets of the NRA to come to grips and make sense -- have sensible laws so that crazy people can't get guns. It can't be that hard.

And yet politicians from the local level to the state level to the national level, they sidestep the issue. They kick the can down the road. This can't happen anymore. Because Alison was one of you guys. This has got to hit home for journalists. And if journalists -- you know, journalists are targets, and we're not talking about, you know, someone going to Syria and being in the crosshairs of ISIL.

We're talking about two kids that were -- two young people that were doing a benign story about a marina opening, or a celebration, and someone -- and a crazy person with a gun shoots them. And I know that the NRA, their position is going to be -- I can hear it now. They're going to say, oh gee, well, if they were carrying, this never would have happened.

[10:05:06] I've got news for you. If Alison or Adam had been carrying an AK-47 strapped around their waist, it wouldn't have made any difference. They couldn't have seen this thing coming. So I don't want to hear that argument from the NRA and you know that's going to happen. And I'm going to take it on.

I got a call from Governor McAuliffe yesterday and I told him exactly what my plan was. If I have to be a crusader on this, I'm not going to rest until I see something that happen. And he said, Andy, he said, you go for it. I'm right there with you. We've got to have our legislators and our congressmen step up to plate and stop being cowards about this.

CUOMO: You're being motivated obviously by the loss of your daughter. You know there's been a great outpouring of support for her and the eyes of the country are on this story. What do you want them to know about your daughter?

PARKER: That she was -- she was kind and she was sweet and she touched everybody. And that -- you know, I'm standing here now, and I -- you know, I've got to see her in action and, you know, doing stories like this with the camera set up.

She loved us and we loved her. And I talked to her every single day. Every single day I talked to her. And right now -- she would be texting me right now saying, Dad, what did you think of my story? You know, what did you think of it? And I'm not -- I'm never going to hear that again.

She was -- she was so loved by all. And -- you know, my heart is broken. But I want to try and do something that will change that and make her life -- will do something meaningful for her life so that this doesn't happen to someone else again. But she was a special young lady and I think people across the country and certainly around here realize that.

CUOMO: Now often maybe the best thing that comes out of a situation like this, Andy, is that people get a respect for the victims who were involved and what is lost when somebody decides to take out their anger the way that this madman did. And your daughter, in her own way, is becoming the best example of how precious life is. And you got to see it even in her boyfriend, Chris, who you know so well, the love he had for your daughter and the love she had for him. That is one way that your daughter will live on in the hearts of the people who loved her.

PARKER: It is. And, you know, we can at least take solace in the fact that she lived -- you know, she was only 24. She just turned 24 last week. And she had -- she packed in a great life in 24 years. She did a lot of things. And she was -- most of all she was happy with what she was doing. She loved what she was doing. She loved her family. She loved Chris very much.

And at least we know -- and from what I know from the law enforcement officials, she didn't suffer. And, you know, she led a happy life. But I just -- I just wish I could touch her soul right now because -- I'm sorry.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: I told Andy not to be sorry for sharing his pain. He's trying to give a purpose to his pain. He's trying to take this opportunity, as difficult as it is for him, to let people know what was lost and in his opinion let them know why things were lost, and the job then becomes for us obviously, Carol, in all of these cases, and there are so many, to create an urgency through an intimacy with those who are lost, in this case Alison and Adam.

And her boyfriend, Chris Hurst, is a talented young anchor here at WDBJ and he talked to us about the love of his life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HURST, ALISON PARKER'S BOYFRIEND: Our love story, I think, is just like Adam and Melissa's. And real quick, Adam was the best boyfriend and fiance I could ever imagine. Way better than me. His spontaneity to show his love, going the extra mile to prove his love to Melissa was something that I have never seen before. And the way he proposed to her was elaborate and well executed. And they were going to be a wonderful married couple.

CUOMO: What did he do?

HURST: He just -- he set it up so that she was exactly where they wanted to be, got down on one knee, and always just made Melissa feel special. And those were two people just like myself who maybe never thought that they would get that kind of love and we got it.

[10:10:01] And for me, you know, it was at the station Christmas party last year, the way she looked. I mean, Chris, you've seen her on television.

CUOMO: Beautiful. Beautiful.

HURST: Stunning. And --

CUOMO: And the energy that came out of her also.

HURST: And that, too. Inside and out. And so I saw her at the Christmas party wearing this gold sequined dress. And everyone always said she kind of looked a little bit like Taylor Swift and she had this beautiful red lipstick on. And I just stood in the corner, I said, Chris, you've got to do something or you're a fool. And something came over me. And I went up and made my move and asked her out a couple of days later. And we had our first date on January 1st.

CUOMO: And you said you felt tremendously lucky. You couldn't believe that she returned the affection.

HURST: Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm not one to -- I'm not one to really put myself out there for dating. And, you know, it's a tough job that we have. And you don't get a lot of free time. People in the business tend to know each other and tend to get each other and we got each other. And -- but something came over me and I decided that I had to go for it. And we were both so lucky that that occurred because she told me and her parents told me last night that I was the love of my life and she's the love of my life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: So where is the hope? Why do these keep happening?

Carol, you said it makes you angry, and you know what? I have a better answer for you now. Of course you're angry. You're angry because you know that there are solutions to this. These are not impossible problems. Are they intractable, are they difficult, do they deal with the frustrations and problems of politics? Yes, but none of those are reasons for no solution. Of course there's a better way to deal with guns in this society than we are. Any fool would know that.

But what the preferences are for those solutions or lack thereof is where we get caught. Could we do better with the mentally ill? Of course we can. You ask any clinician, you ask any politician who's taken time to study it, of course we can. Of course there's better monitoring, there's better treatment, there are better revenues.

Representative Tim Murphy has a bill right now that's going nowhere in Congress. Of course the gun policy doesn't make sense right now. Of course it doesn't. And that's why you're angry because there is a necessary frustration when you're faced with situations that are so obvious that don't change over time.

I have been in 20 different states covering this since Columbine. I have been to far too many. The questions are always the same and the answers don't come and we know they don't come. And that's why you're angry, Carol. The question is, what do you do with that anger?

COSTELLO: That's right.

CUOMO: What will make a difference.

COSTELLO: You know, the other frustration is, you know, we live in a country with unbelievably smart people who can find solutions. Yet we all sit back and say, what can you do? There are evil people in the world. Well, of course there are, but to say there's nothing we can do about it, that's just the coward's way out. That's not the American way. I just don't understand that. There are solutions. We just have to sit down and talk about them like reasonable people.

CUOMO: Well, the question is, who are we? And I mean that in two different ways. One is who are our leaders and what are they really interested in and how does that really manifest? And also there's a second we, which is, and this will sound amorphous or Pollyanna and people will think that it's off point, but it's fact -- the core of the point.

How we treat each other. What you said America is. America has always been about sweet strength. Where is that in our society today? What is our culture about violence? How do we treat one another? That may seem nebulous and academic and off the point. It isn't. All of these cases come down to that. When people are angry, when people aren't one with themselves, what do they do? It comes down to respect. It comes down to how we care about each other.

COSTELLO: That's right.

CUOMO: And that's at the root of all of these problems.

COSTELLO: And you know -- and I'll just say, I'll just button it up here, Chris. You know, when I was -- when I was a girl, I lived in rural America. I had a gun. I'm not against guns. But I don't understand why responsible gun owners don't want to do anything to get the bad gun owners, the irresponsible gun owners, out of the way. To make sure that guns don't land in the wrong hands because those irresponsible, violent gun owners give everybody a bad name, including responsible gun owners. And they should be leading the fight, and I don't understand why they're not.

CUOMO: You understand why they're not. You understand the politics that are involved.

COSTELLO: Right.

CUOMO: The question is, what will make the difference? Because you'll hear them come out and say the right things right now, but what happens tomorrow, what happens next week, what happens a month from now when you have parents like Andy all over this country wanting something to be different for everybody else's kids than what happened to their own.

COSTELLO: Chris Cuomo, many thanks. I appreciate it.

The WDBJ news team has shown so much grace in covering this difficult story. Their morning team held a moment of silence for their fallen colleagues, and we will, too.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was yesterday around this time that we went live to Alison Parker and photojournalist Adam Ward. They were out in the field. The story was like so many others that they did all the time, reporting on our hometowns. They were at Bridge Water Plaza near Smith Mountain Lake to report on a happy event, the 50th anniversary of the lake, just a future.

[10:15:07] And it was during a conversation with Vicky Gardner about another reason why we love living here when the peacefulness of our community was shattered. As we approach that moment we want to pause and reflect and we want to share with you once again what made these two so special not just to us but to all of our hometowns that WDBJ 7 serves. Please join us now in a moment of silence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: We're learning new details about the man who killed two Virginia journalists before taking his own life during a police chase. The shooter called himself, quote, "a human powder keg waiting to go boom."

[10:20:04] He made that statement in a ranting, rambling, and disjointed suicide letter that he faxed over to ABC.

Chief media correspondent Brian Stelter is following that part of the story. Tell us more, Brian.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: I hate having to go into the mind of a killer like this, Carol, but the mind of this man is very evident in the suicide note. It goes on and on and like you said it was faxed to ABC about an hour and a half after the shooting yesterday. He then called up the station, called up the network to make sure they got it apparently and then hung up.

Now we can read to you a part of it. I think it's notable that he goes into a rambling detail about his life talking about his past employment as a teen model he says and a male escort and then a television news reporter. He talks about being a black man and a gay man and feeling discriminated against and harassed.

I think one of the most important quotes he's talking about race. He says he admits to be somewhat racist. This is a quote. Quote, "Somewhat racist against whites, blacks, and Latinos." At one point he refers to the Charleston church shooting as one of the final elements that triggered him to go out and buy a gun and prepare for this attack. He then said, "If you wanted a race war, you've got a race war." So there were racial overtones to this. And I know some people have started to call it a hate crime.

And he also describes being inspired by past killers, past mass murderers, including the killers in Columbine many years ago, and in Virginia Tech in 2007. He actually refers to them by name and says they inspired him to commit his act of crime.

COSTELLO: Just unbelievable.

Brian Stelter, thanks. I appreciate it.

The killer's admiration for other mass murderers has reignited the debate over guns in America. Not that it matters because you know talk is just talk. But there is a small sign that something more than talk is happening at Wal-Mart. The retailer announced it will stop selling military-style semiautomatic weapons, including AR-15s. Wal- Mart made that announcement on the same day two journalists were gunned down. Gun control advocates have been fighting for this, but listen to what Wal-Mart's CEO told us recently.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOUGLAS MCMILLON, CEO, WAL-MART: Our focus as it relates to firearms should be hunters and people who shoot sporting clays and things like that, so the types of rifles we sell, the types of ammunition we sell should be curated for those things and we believe in serving those customers. We have for a long time and we believe we should continue to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Now to be clear, gun sales have been strong this summer. The FBI conducted 1.6 million background checks in July alone. That includes all types of guns. And, no, the killer in Virginia did not use an AR-15, but he is another example of a troubled, volatile person able to easily purchase a gun.

As "The New York Times" points out, more Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history.

Yes, try to wrap your head around that one.

With me now to talk about all of this, Dave Cullen, the author of the book "Columbine," and Colin Goddard, the survivor of the shooting rampage on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Welcome to both of you.

Colin, you survived the carnage at Virginia Tech. You still have three bullets in your body. When you hear this Virginia killer admire the man who shot you, what goes through your mind?

COLIN GODDARD, VA TECH MASSACRE SURVIVOR: It's incredibly disturbing and, frankly, you know, none of us should be thinking about admiring these people or giving really them any thought or any notoriety that they don't deserve. So, you know, my mind on that is pretty short. What I then focus on is how do we stop the next series of shootings that's going to happen in this country because we've done nothing since the last one? And that's where I spend most of my focus.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. And I want to talk about that, but I want to pause for a moment because this killer in Virginia also expressed admiration for the Columbine killings, and Dave, that's your area of expertise. Columbine continues to inspire mass murderers. Why is that?

DAVE CULLEN, AUTHOR, "COLUMBINE": Well, it's sort of the template. I mean, it kind of kicked off this whole series of these copycats. It wasn't the first one, but it was the one that brought it to a new level and really kind of showed these people the level of notoriety that they could get, what it could sort of do for them in terms of fame, infamy, and really how much the media would make a TV movie out of them, would be, you know, all coverage all the time for about a week as we're doing now and make them the center of attention.

I'm really glad that in this case more so than other cases we have seen more of an emphasis on the victims this time. You know, in some ways it helps for us as media people, but there's just two of them. Because when you've got 10 or 15 people, you can only do like little, you know, vignettes of 30 seconds or something. When there's two, we can really focus on them. We need to figure out a better way of doing that because we always say we want to focus on the victims.

COSTELLO: Well, let's focus on that for just a second.

CULLEN: But we need to do it.

COSTELLO: The notoriety that these mentally ill people derive from doing these vile, evil acts.

[10:25:02] And, Colin, I want to go back to you because on the New York tabloids this morning feature frame by frame shots of Alison Parker's killing because as you know this killer wore a Go-Pro to tape what he was doing.

Did the New York tabloids go too far? I mean, I think they did. But I just wondered, I wanted to hear it from you.

GODDARD: I mean, in a basic way I think, you know, when you watch the live feed that happened yesterday morning, I mean, it shows you a small glimpse of what a shooting is really like. I mean, you heard the gun shots. You heard the screams. You could see the blood. I mean, you felt how horrible it is and that's just a small part of how truly terrifying these examples are. And so when the conversation around guns or gun deaths and look at the bigger statistics can get lost in numbers and talking points, those moments bring back the reality of this is the situation that we're trying to avoid.

This is what we're actually trying to prevent from happening to other people, and so it's incredibly difficult to watch, particularly people who have experienced it themselves, and I think, you know, to a certain extent people, you know, should see that, but at the same time we should not be giving it repeated, repeated air time that we are to then give the notoriety to these people who want to -- who had the whole purpose of doing that in the first place.

COSTELLO: Right. And I hear what you're saying and CNN has chosen not to air any of those images anymore and we did so sparingly even yesterday.

Colin, I want to like -- I want to talk about something you just said because the mayor of Roanoke, I interviewed him earlier this morning, and he, too, said these images might bring home the carnage and make people really understand that we need to deal with this problem. Is that sort of what you're saying as well?

GODDARD: Yes. You know, 88 other Americans dealt with what Alison and Adam and Vicky dealt with yesterday on an average American day. 88 of us will deal with that same kind of scenario again today. Right? And so that is the reality that we are dealing with in this country in 2015. And the disconnect is the American public wants something to be done but we have elected officials who give talking points and then nothing, and we let that be the case repeatedly and we have the same conversation over and over again.

So instead of having -- you know, frankly, pointing the cameras at us to talk about this, you should be pointing the cameras at the elected officials who sit on the committees who refuse to hear bills on this subject, who refuse to even have a discussion or a hearing on gun violence in America. Those are the people who should be held accountable at this point in time.

COSTELLO: Colin, did you hear Alison Parker's father and what he said to Chris Cuomo?

GODDARD: Incredibly moving what he said. I couldn't believe it myself so soon after what happened. You try to make sense of something that doesn't make sense, and you want to know why did this happen, and I think the father knows that he will never really know why. But what he's trying to understand is how, how did this happen, how did this situation come to be. How do -- how is it such that dangerous people continually get their hands on guns easily in this country. And so he's on point when he says a background check is something that

we should require on all sales. We only do that for some sales right now. It's not done for all sales. That ought to be done and the fact that the father at this point in time was willing to say that and champion that is incredible and something that Americans should rally behind.

COSTELLO: Well, I want to ask you a bit more about that because, you know, after your own tragedy, you vowed to fight for stricter gun control laws, and nothing much has happened. What has that been like for you?

GODDARD: Nothing much has happened here in Congress which is just frankly unacceptable and needs to change. However, there is progress happening on the state level. The state of Washington passed background checks on all sales by a vote of the people last fall. Even just this year Oregon became the 18th state to do background checks on all sales through their legislature. So there is movement happening.

We certainly need a hearing in the House of Representatives here in Congress. Like I said, the fact that there's nothing there repeatedly is unacceptable. And so that's where we are going to focus all of our attention to keep building on the local level and forcing our elected officials to do something here in D.C.

COSTELLO: I can see the anger behind your eyes, Colin.

GODDARD: We've been in this situation before, Carol, and when you continually get media requests asking what are your thoughts, how do you feel about what happened, what can be done and you repeat the same things over and over again it can get a little infuriating when you realize that unless the conversation pivots to those people who are sitting in those chairs in those committees, we're going to have this same conversation again until that happens. So let's go do that.

COSTELLO: All right, Colin, thank you so much.

And Dave, I don't mean to neglect you. So just going back to your point about, you know, how not to inspire these mentally unbalanced people to commit acts of horrible violence. So I don't know if there's any one answer because I do believe people have the right to know, you know, who shot someone else. I believe they have the right to know everything.

CULLEN: Well, I think --

COSTELLO: But --

CULLEN: Yes. I think there are some answers.

COSTELLO: So where is the line?

CULLEN: Well, I think it's a matter of scaling back in how we do it.