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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Illinois Cop Suicide; Britain Delays Planes; Florida Plane Fire; Teen to Get Treatment After School Massacre Plot. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired November 04, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

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[12:00:04] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

We're going to begin with some legal breaking news. Stunning revelations in the shooting death of an Illinois cop. Authorities calling it the ultimate betrayal. They announced at a news conference just a short time ago that Lieutenant Joe Gliniewicz took his own life in what they said was a carefully staged suicide, and that he had been embezzling money for seven years.

You may recall, Gliniewicz was found dead in early September, shot twice with his own gun, after he had radioed in that he was pursuing three suspicious men on foot. Investigators explained earlier how they came to this conclusion that, in fact, he died by suicide.

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GEORGE FILENKO, COMMANDER, LAKE CO. MAJOR CRIMES TASK FORCE: The investigation found Gliniewicz had been stealing and laundering money from the Fox Lake Police Explorer Post. This had been occurring over the past seven years. Gliniewicz was also found to have forged signatures on official documents. Thousands of dollars were used by Gliniewicz for personal purchases, travel expenses, mortgage payments, personal gym memberships, adult websites, facilitating personal loans and unaccounted cash withdrawals. The documents discovered with forged signature were requisitions for federal surplus equipment and official police explorer documents.

We recovered electronic messages that were deleted from Gliniewicz's personal and work cellular phone, including incriminating statements that had been deleted prior to his suicide. A selection of those deleted messages is available in your media handout packets as well.

Our investigation has determined conclusively that Gliniewicz intentionally left a staged trail of police equipment at the crime scene. Analysts determined the trail of equipment consisting of pepper spray, a baton and his personal glasses was an attempt to mislead first responders and investigators to believe this was a homicide scene. It was learned through investigation Gliniewicz had significant experience staging mock crime scenes for police explorer training. The FBI's behavioral analysis unit has concurred that this was a

staged scene, in part because there were no sign of Gliniewicz being dragged after the initial shot and no physical signs that he fought for his life. We have also concluded that Gliniewicz strategically aimed the first of two shots from his own weapon at the lower abdominal area striking his cellular phone and bulletproof vest, which absorbed most of the impact of the first shot. Advanced ballistic testing with the use of ultraviolet photographic equipment conducted by the Northern Illinois Regional Crime Lab confirmed both gunshots were fired at close range. Gunshot residue was found in the interior of Gliniewicz' bulletproof vest cover when the second fatal round was fired, which indicates the gun was placed underneath the vest carrier when the fatal round was fired.

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BANFIELD: CNN's Rosa Flores was standing by live at that news conference, and she joins me now from Fox Lake.

These are just stunning revelations that came. One after the other. And there was another nugget in there, Rosa, that really stood out, that two other people, people, not officers, people are still under investigation. What do we know about them?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, investigators are not going into that investigation per say, but, Ashleigh, I got to tell you, everyone in that room was completely stunned. People in this community are going to be completely stunned because you and I know from to get- go there were so many rumors and speculation about what was going on because investigators withdrew the massive manhunt about 24 hours after those three suspects were supposedly out on the loose. That raised a lot of questions. And so one of the very tough questions to this commander were from the reporters saying, wait a minute, why did you take this much time to make that determination? Now, he did say that about a week and a half ago is when he first truly believed that suicide was probably going to be the result of this investigation. But then, of course, he said that they had to wait for all of the information to reveal before they actually made this announcement.

[12:05:11] Now, Ashleigh, I've got to share with you some of the e- mails and some of the text messages that we were handed out because this really tells the story as to how, according to investigators, Gliniewicz was getting away with laundering money with the explorers program. And I'm going to be as brief as I can, but just to kind of give you - give you a sense here. And I'm going to quote. This says - this is from Gliniewicz and this is a text message from back in June. It says, quote, "I'm sticking my neck out there with loaning you over $2,377 to fix your truck," specifically.

I'm going to go down about a paragraph. "So if called on the carpet, I can say, quote, we give our explorers and advisers loans from time to time if it is need, and this is proof it is being pad back," and probably paid back, it's a misspell. "You get where I'm coming from?" And then he says, "this village administrator hates me and the explorer program. This situation right here would give her the means to crucify me," "crucify me" is in all caps, "if it is discovered. Compound that with if I was selected for chief of another town, I would be leaving here and would have to turn this account over to someone else." And let me finish right here, "the $1,600 is unaccounted - undocumented," excuse me. "It was cash from boot camp, so there is no check trail to follow, only our sheet that indicates who attended and if they paid." Again, investigators said that there was about a six-month period before Gliniewicz' suicide where the stresses had been culminating, the financial setbacks had been culminated, that culminated to that suicide. And, Ashleigh, you said it best, everyone is stunned with these revelations.

BANFIELD: It's just so remarkable. And again, to be very clear to our audience, an audit, the village audit was likely to discover these thousands of missing dollars over the seven years that he is said to have been embezzling this money, and that he felt the stress and the pressure, and that that is what led to this suicide after which the investigation found all of these text messages.

I know there are thousands of page, Rosa, so I'm going to let you go so you can continue reading through and we'll come back to you when you find other, you know, texts that are so incredibly incriminating.

Joining me now to discuss these bombshell announcements, CNN law enforcement analyst Cedric Alexander, and CNN contributor and forensic scientist, Lawrence Kobilinsky.

Welcome to you both.

Dr. Kobilinsky, I want to begin with you. When the medical examiner took to that podium and described forensically how this suicide was staged, it really stood out to me as an extraordinarily painful way to die. But also that this was a man who, through his training, knew how to stage a crime scene yet did not do well enough.

LAWRENCE KOBILINSKY, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Absolutely. It certainly complicates things for the first responders and the evidence collection team who go to the scene and try to determine what happened. I mean their goal is to reconstruct events. And when you have a staged scene, sometimes you can tell it's staged. But if it's done by somebody who's had a lot of experience, like Gliniewicz did, it's very, very difficult. It just complicates things.

As far as the trauma to the body, we heard from the coroner that the first round never really entered the body. It penetrated the cell phone and it impacted on the vest, but it never entered the body. It left a very large bruise four inches by four inches. But it's that second round that was inside the vest, and we know that based upon what we have - a special kind of photography. Infrared photography will tell you where the gunshot residue pattern is. And you can tell if it was a close-in shot or a distant shot. But that bullet track tells us it penetrated the lung, major blood vessels, pulmonary blood vessels, blood filled the lungs, you can't breathe, it's clearly a very painful way to die. Obviously, when you're doing that shooting and committing suicide, you don't know how painful it's going to be. But it surely was painful. It didn't happen instantly. It takes time to die from a trauma like that. BANFIELD: And one report, Dr. Kobilinsky, saying it might have taken

up to two minutes for him to actually suffocate and bleed out in this staged suicide.

[12:10:02] Let me bring in Cedric Alexander, if I can. This is - this is remarkable, chief, the fact that it took 150 separate investigators, 25,000 hours of investigating, 430 leads, 250 pieces of evidence, to ultimately come to this conclusion after hundreds of officers had turned out to honor him at his funeral, full honors at his funeral. What impact will this have on all of those officers?

CEDRIC ALEXANDER, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, certain it's going to have an impact not only on officer that he worked with, Ashleigh, but on the community as well, too. This is very sad and very unfortunate and certainly is very embarrassing, I'm quite sure, to that community.

But beyond that, let's look at this point. And I think it's important to take note that in this particular case, with this lieutenant who went the distance to plan his death the way that he did certainly could speak to a number of things. And clearly he must have been struggling with a great deal of pain and uncertainty and shame himself and maybe trying to find a way to exit from this situation for him is what he concluded. But I will say this, and I've worked with a number of police officers over the years as a psychologist, Ashleigh, and I know too that over a certain amount of time stressors on the job and a certain variety of other things can create that kind of depressed mood. But what we can't account for and what we cannot excuse is the fact that there was criminal activity involved in here, involved in this particular case, which really paints a very, very different picture of this officer.

BANFIELD: Yes.

ALEXANDER: But I think that being said as well too, I think it's important to note to the family, to his family still and to that community, our condolences go out to them and we certainly - certainly would hate for anyone to lose their life, but this particular suicide just has created a whole different view of everything that occurred.

BANFIELD: Yes. And there will be those questions of the pension.

ALEXANDER: Absolutely.

BANFIELD: Whether his family will be, you know, able to collect on a pension if this was a staged suicide, et cetera. I haven't seen the fine print.

ALEXANDER: Right.

BANFIELD: Every department is different.

ALEXANDER: Right.

BANFIELD: Every policy is different. But thank you both for your insight. We're going to continue to watch this. We're checking through all the documents that they've released. There are thousands of pages. We will get through them as soon as we can.

I also want to bring this to your attention. Coming up, some important new clues of the crash of that Russian jet that - that went down in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.

And a startling revelation about that airliner that caught fire on the Florida tarmac a few days ago. You won't believe where it caught fire and why.

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[12:16:57] BANFIELD: Investigators in Egypt have started analyzing the so-called black box data from the Metro Jet disaster in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. The search for clues and wreckage now covers more than 15 square miles. That's double the area that was being searched yesterday. And the biggest clue so far, apart from the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, is the plane's tail which came to rest three miles from the rest of the debris field. And that could point to a long delayed failure of repairs from a rough landing 14 years ago. Of the black boxes, which are typically orange in color, the Egyptians say the contents of the data recorder have been, quote, "validated," but that the voice recorder is damaged and extracting its contents will take some time.

I just want to add this as well, because the office of the British prime minister has just put out a release that is curious at best and telling as well. David Cameron's office says, that "as more information has come to light, we have become concerned that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device." And the statement continues that by warning as a precautionary measure the U.K. has decided that flights that are due to leave from Sharm el Sheikh in the Sinai, where this plane took off from, will, in fact, be delayed on Wednesday evening to allow for a U.K. team of aviation experts to head there and actually make security arrangements to look at that airport to see just how safe it is. They're also saying that there will be no more flights from the U.K. to Sharm el Sheikh on Wednesday as well.

David Soucie joining me now, our CNN aviation expert and former FAA investigator.

Those are strong words from the prime minister's office. They are mitigating that somewhat, David, I should say, by saying it cannot categorically be said yet why this - this jet crashed. But in the interim, they're suggesting this very well could be some kind of explosive device.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, I think it's a responsible assessment of risk. I think that the prime minister coming out in doing this speaks volume of the - his concern over safety and the flying public from their country. I wish that Egypt would understand the same thing and start increasing their security as well.

Regardless of whether you know this or not, it increases the risk. The chance that it might be, isn't it just the chance that it might be worthwhile looking into and taking some measures to at least validate that your security is sufficient? I think it's a very wise move.

BANFIELD: I also want to ask you about the - about the fire in Florida. We covered it live. It was a remarkable image. The Dynamic Air jet catching on fire on the tarmac. And now we're learning that that aircraft was in storage, something called dry storage, for over two and a half years. And the first thing I thought of was, you don't drive a car that's been in a garage for two and a half years. What is that - what is that all about, dry storage, and should that be a concern in this investigation?

[12:20:02] SOUCIE: Well, this - dry storage is something that happens a lot with aircraft that are used for charter services like this company does. So when they took it out of dry storage - let's back up though, two and a half years ago. When you put it into dry storage, there's a very extensive procedure for doing that, for making sure that the fuel is out of the system so to make sure that that doesn't continue to erode or corrode things that are inside of it. That's step one. Then you have to fill it back with inert gases or with inert fluids to make sure that they don't continue to erode these fittings and attachments.

So now then you take it out of storage, which was just done back in September from what I understand, and at that point you inspect it again. You fill it with fuel. You operate the airplane and then you check it for leaks. I'm certain that that would have happened. However, something happened during that dry storage to cause this fitting to come loose and allow that fuel to be pumped out.

BANFIELD: Distressing photographs. We should remind people, one person was seriously hurt in the emergency exit, 21 others were slightly hurt. But this certainly could have been so much worse.

David Soucie, thank you for your expertise on both of those air stories, because they are still developing. Appreciate that.

And then also this, coming up next, imagine for a moment if you found out that your son was planning a massacre even worse than Columbine, plotting to kill classmates and also your whole family.

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STEPHANIE LADUE, MOTHER OF JOHN LADUE: I've always thought my son loved me. I've always believed he did. So that's a real hard pill to swallow.

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[12:25:54] BANFIELD: We are hearing from the parents of John LaDue, who at age 17 had a pretty sinister plan, kill his entire family, set off bombs at school, and then mop things up by shooting the students who survived the bombs. A massacre of epic proportions worthy of whom he called his idol, the Columbine shooter Eric Harris.

It never happened thanks to a woman who noticed that he was up to something suspicious and a woman who called 911 about it. And now because of a plea deal, LaDue's criminal case is closed. And after treatment, he will be reintroduced into society. CNN spoke with LaDue's family on the shock over the plan itself and their dilemma on what to do next.

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STEPHANIE LADUE, MOTHER OF JOHN LADUE: I'll tell you, it started out like a dream that I couldn't wake up from. I got a knock on the door. We were told, you need to leave your home right away. Your son has been involved in a plot to kill you, kill your husband and his sister and blow up the school basically.

ON SCREEN TEXT: A school massacre foiled?

S. LADUE: I was told that there are bombs in our house, and we need to leave immediately for our own safety.

OFFICER: Today's date is April 29, 2014. I'm Officer Schroeder with the Waseca Police Department and I'm here with John LaDue?

JOHN LADUE: Yes.

S. LADUE: I was scared. Mostly scared for my son.

J. LADUE: Sometime before the end of the school year, my plan was to steal a recycling bin from the school and take one of the pressure cookers I made and put in the hallway and blow it up during passing period of time.

CHELSIE SHELLHAS, ALERTED AUTHORITIES: This is where I was doing dishes and this is the window that I seen the boy walking.

ON SCREEN TEXT: (INAUDIBLE) off (INAUDIBLE) noticed a suspicious person at a storage facility.

SHELLHAS: He was here, you know, fiddling with the lock trying to get in.

ON SCREEN TEXT: Officers arrived at the storage park and found LaDue among an assortment of gunpowder, pyrotechnic chemicals, ball bearings and a pressure cooker.

ON SCREEN TEXT: John LaDue was 17 years old when his plan was discovered. He was originally charged with four counts of attempted murder, two counts of first-degree damage to property, six counts of possession of a bomb by someone under the age of 18.

J. LADUE: I am the one who is responsible for the CO2 bombs at Hartley Elementary School. Even though my intentions never were to hurt anyone, I just wanted to test out the devices. I have created many other similar devices to those and set them off over various periods of time in town.

DAVID LADUE, FATHER OF JOHN LADUE: They want to talk about this as a - as though this was a Columbine that was stopped. OFFICER: Do you have brothers and sisters?

J. LADUE: Yes, sir, I have a sister. She's one year older than me.

OFFICER: So you would have done this stuff while she was at school as well?

J. LAUDE: I forgot to mention a detail. Before that day, I was planning to dispose of my family, too.

S. LADUE: I've always thought my son loved me. I've always believed he did. So that's a real hard pill to swallow.

VALERIE LADUE, SISTER OF JOHN LADUE: I just couldn't see that happening, honestly. As close as my brother and I were, that my brother would come to me one day, face-to-face, and end my life. I personally don't believe it would ever happen.

ON SCREEN TEXT: A Minnesota judge said the state failed to show that LaDue had made a substantial step toward committing the crimes.

The attempted murder and property damage charges were dismissed.

OFFICER: Why would you dispose of your family? What - what have they done?

J. LADUE: They did nothing wrong. I just wanted as many victims as possible.

D. LADUE: John had a journal, a plot. Had been, you know, going over this plan and actually writing it out. But I'm glad he didn't do them, and I don't think he was going to do them or wanted to do them. I assume that's why John was very eager to talk to the police when they showed up.

OFFICER: What do you have at your house?

J. LADUE: I have three unexploded ones in my room. They are ready to go off with just the light of a match.

[12:29:46] S. LADUE: John went through a lot of changes as he was growing up. When he was young, he had a great sense of humor. My son had a set of toy hatchets or knives or something that he got as a - I think it was a Christmas present from his dad or his grandma. We have a tree out in the front yard that is an old, useless tree. And my son made up a little target. He was just going to, you know, throw these things at the target at the tree. Didn't see it as a problem.