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Search for Escaped Killers Shifts; South Carolina Reopens After Massacre; Jordan Spieth Wins 2015 U.S. Open. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired June 22, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:32:14] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The search for those two convicted killers on the run more than two weeks is shifting again this morning. The manhunt for Richard Matt and David Sweat refocusing from the edge of Pennsylvania, look at your map here, to Owls Head, New York. That's about 300 miles back towards the prison from which they escaped. Witnesses reporting a surge of police activity there with Vermont state police joining that search.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: The Emanuel AME Church in Charleston reopened. Worshippers gathering Sunday to remember the nine victims who are gunned down there. One reverend making it clear, quote, "No evildoer can close the doors of God's church."

Why the 21-year-old terrorist would commit this hate crime seems clear from a racist online manifesto authorities discovered, characterizing African-Americans as inferior to whites.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Investigators are trying to determine why a United flight's engine began sparking as it was about to take off from New Jersey's airport Sunday. Luckily, the problem was detected before that Georgia-bound jet was in the air. All 41 passengers taken were off the plane, rebooked on other flights. United tells us n one was injured in that incident.

CAMEROTA: Take a look at this very special Father's Day shout-out. This is the first lady sharing a throwback photo of a shirtless Barack Obama.

PEREIRA: Really? Did you have to say it like that?

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: All right. Let me rephrase that, this is in honor of Father's Day. He's on the beach with daughters Sasha and Malia. The president had to spend the day away from his girls because they were wrapping up a trip in Europe with their mom.

PEREIRA: It was fun to follow along on social media, a lot of people posted pictures of themselves with their pops. It's been really special. I know it was a tough one for you yesterday.

CUOMO: Thank you.

You think it's bad for him to not have a shirt on?

CAMEROTA: In general, I don't like --

PEREIRA: Do you think it's the way she said it.

CUOMO: I couldn't tell if she was like ooh or ahh.

CAMEROTA: I couldn't tell I was either, to tell you the truth, because I think in general, we shouldn't see our elected officials shirtless?

CUOMO: Why?

CAMEROTA: It's too much flesh. I feel the same way about us.

PEREIRA: I kind of feel weird going to a spa. People don't need to see their news anchors semi-naked.

CUOMO: Don't they?

PEREIRA: I don't think they do.

CUOMO: Tweet us.

All right. So, this kid is barely old enough to drink, but arguably the best golfer in the world. His name is Jordan Spieth. Learn it. He just won the second consecutive major. He's 21 years old. Nobody wins two majors, let alone a 21, and then consecutively?

Am I right, Andy Scholes on this morning's bleacher report?

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: You are right, Chris. Hope you had a great Father's Day, by the way.

CUOMO: You too, brother.

SCHOLES: But Jordan Spieth -- yes, thank you -- he's been awesome this year. He's the youngest golf ever to win the Masters and U.S. Open in the same year. He's half way to winning golf's grand slam.

But, you know, he didn't run away with it. We had some high drama at the end of this tournament.

[06:35:01] Let's take a look at it. Here is Spieth on 16. He's going to knock down this birdie put to move him to six under par.

However, he would double bogey 17. That opened the door for Dustin Johnson. Johnson, he had this eagle putt to win the U.S. Open on 18, but he misses it. All he had to do was tap in a four footer to send it to a playoff that would have been today, but he misses that to Spieth. He ends up celebrating with his family as he wins his first ever U.S. Open.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JORDAN SPIETH, 2015 U.S. OPEN CHAMPION: It's beyond what I dream, what I've ever dreamt of. I mean, this is -- what an incredible week, handling kind of the nerves and just the grind that is the U.S. Open and to come out on top and just a weird day and a weird finish, but an exciting one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: The U.S. national team will be back on the pitch tonight as they take on Colombia in the knockout round of the women's World Cup. The U.S. is heavy favorite in this game, but Colombia has a puncher's chance, and I mean that literally. Their star player, Lady Andrade, once punched Abby Wambach in the face during the 2012 Olympics. She is guaranteeing victory tonight because she says the U.S. is simply overlooking Colombia. The U.S. players declining to get into the war of words saying, they will let their play speak for itself. Kickoff tonight is at 8:00 Eastern.

Michaela, the U.S. four wins away from winning their first World Cup since 1999. Let's hope they get it done.

PEREIRA: Exciting time and hopefully, there'll be no fisticuffs. Andy, thank you for that.

SCHOLESD: All right.

PEREIRA: The suspected gunman in the South Carolina church massacre is linked to an online racist manifesto filled with hate. Is it going to help investigators figure out why he carried out such an unthinkable act? We'll dig deeper.

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[06:41:01] CAMEROTA: The latest now on the suspected gunman in Charleston. He, of course, behind the church massacre there. Investigators are looking into a Web site featuring a racist manifesto and 60 photos of Dylann Roof for clues to a positive motive behind the devastating attack. The text details the philosophy of white superiority, referring to the Trayvon Martin case as, quote, an awakening.

Joining us now is former ATF agent and senior vice president and chief security officer of FJC Security Service, Matthew Horace.

MATTHEW HORACE, FORMER ATF AGENT: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: Hi. Nice to see you.

HORACE: Good to see you.

CAMEROTA: So, when -- as an investigator, when you find some sort of manifesto online or in a suspect's bedroom, I mean, that must be a treasure trove of clues for investigators.

HORACE: Well, it is. But remember several things, number one, we don't investigate people because of their views, we investigate people because of their crimes. In many cases, with these sort of groups, people who espouse or convey these messages, it's their predicate crimes, the firearms crimes, the explosive crimes, and other things that get us into the group. I mean, this groups have existed for quite some time and they still do, but the manifesto is just a small part of what we look at.

CAMEROTA: But I guess what I mean is that does -- you know, we always search for motive even though you don't necessarily need motive in court, in court, it still helps to have motive. And does this provide that?

HORACE: Well, let's face it, all last week, the world is wondering what could have inspired someone to do this? Certainly, we go back and see what he was reading and absorbing and processing. This gives insight to what he was doing, what he was reading and what he was thinking.

CAMEROTA: So, let's look at that. I mean, I want to look at this website. At least the website that is now linked to him had this 2500 word manifesto. I do want to read a portion of it, not to aggrandize him or his mindset in any way, but because we always do look for a window. Everybody always does want to know why.

And it sounds as though the Trayvon Martin case was an ignition switch for him. He believed, because of that case, he believed George Zimmerman was in the right and it represented black on white crime. So, here is what he wrote, and this is where he just spells out his motive very clearly. Let me read it.

"I'm not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I choose Charleston because it is the most historic sight in my state and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything, but talking on the Internet. Well, someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world and I guess that has to be me."

Do you see that as his motive spelled out in that paragraph?

HORACE: Well, it doesn't have to be. You know, in law enforcement, we become desensitized because we see this sort of thing all the time, whether it's this group, this person, or other groups. So, the fact he is using this as what turned his head and made him do things doesn't mean that it actually was. It could have been anything or a million thing that did it. That was written in the manifesto and that's what he was saying. What we really can't believe the logic of someone that does this anyway.

CAMEROTA: Tragically, we have seen the mass shootings all too often. And you think that they all -- the people who perpetrate these have common characteristics. How do you define this?

HORACE: Well, we go back and we look at what happened in each individual case. There was always something, there were always clues to others that things like this could happen. They didn't pick up before things did happen. Look at Columbine, look at the Aurora movie theater, white male, certain age, certain beliefs. And we always want to go back and say like mental health might have been an issue.

There was no mental health issue in this. This was a 21-year-old adult who told people and forecasted he was going to do this and espouse racist views.

CAMEROTA: So, what can investigators do beforehand? I mean, this is where it gets so tricky. He had pictures of himself burning the American flag, hoisting the Confederate flag, holding a weapon. You know, these are all now red flags.

[06:45:00] Now, it all seems to sort of make sense. Of course, with our freedom and First Amendment, is there anything investigators can do when they stumble upon something like this online?

HORACE: When investigators receive the information, there are things we can do. But remember, we are not investigating views and viewpoints, we are investigating crimes. I think the bigger issue is, what can people do?

In every single case of an active shooter, there's been clues, there's bee little red flags and people around these individual that is said we knew something wasn't right.

I looked the other day, the gentleman said, we knew there was a problem, but we gave him his gun back. All right?

Those are the sort of things I think we need to look at, what are the people around this individual seeing?

CAMEROTA: And what can people do?

HORACE: Well, they can notify police, they cannot give a gun back to a person. They can try to get them help. They can notify the authorities that someone that has explosives and guns in their home and now is seeming to take a turn mentally, they can notify authorities that they're seeing some problems.

CAMEROTA: That would help. Matthew Horace, thanks so much for all the information. Great to see you.

HORACE: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's get over to Chris.

CUOMO: You know, Alisyn, you are right. There's such a curiosity about why, who does these, is a pretty simple analysis. Mass shootings, disturbed, evil, sick, young white man. The two go together all too often.

This is not a coincidence. One of America's top forensic psychiatrists will explain, ahead.

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[06:50:37] CUOMO: Are young, white men more likely to commit mass shootings? It certainly seems that way, right, at least anecdotally, and it's now being debated after the most recent mass murder of nine people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Now, here is a man who is a friend of the show, who understands the issues of going into the crimes better than most. His name is Dr. Michael Welner, and he's one of America's top forensic psychiatrists.

It's always good to have you here, Doc, even under these pained circumstances.

DR. MICHAEL WELNER, FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST: Good morning, Chris.

CUOMO: Is it something to be dismissed as coincidence or is there something formulaic here in mass killing, white, deranged young men?

WELNER: Well, it's hard for me based on professional experience to say that because I have worked on three separate cases of mass homicide or attempted mass homicide involving a black male, worked on a case involving an Asian male.

So, I do think there are a lot of crimes in which black victims are not covered, where you see four or five in a horrendous crime. I work on it. Nobody talks about it.

So, I think that some element of this is affected by what the media chooses to focus on. But I think this is a cultural crime. I don't think it's a crime that isolates itself according to someone base or ethnicity, but it is an American culture crime.

And I think we are on to something when we say young men are primarily the perpetrators, certainly males. And that's a cultural issue. Certainly an age group when broad community is targeted as opposed to workplace mass shootings, which involve an older perpetrator.

CUOMO: So, you don't think there's anything to the fact they are also white, other than media interest?

WELNER: Well, look, I have worked on cases involving black mass shooters. What do you do in those cases especially if they're not outliers that --

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: Numerically, how do they lineup?

WELNER: You had a navy yard shooter last year. You had a tailor in Pittsburgh, (INAUDIBLE) in Tennessee, which was an attempted mass shooting that was stopped.

So, I think if we really drill down into all the instances, if there was a difference in the population, it would not equate with the amount to the attention we give to Isla Vista and the amount of attention that we give to Adam Lanza. These cases have attracted a hyper-focus.

CUOMO: All right. So, then you get to, all right. So, that's who it is. Now, why do they do it? Very often we have this dilemma. Is this person just bad or are they sick? What do you see as the balance here? This case is more obvious. This

person just seems to be a hate-filled individual. He may be even playing with suboxone, but I don't think that it winds up screaming mental illness. How do you break the two down?

WELNER: You are only going to get answers from a psychiatric examination that gets into the dimensions of paranoia and resentment and dimensions of hopelessness because those are two most important emotionally relevant conditions. But, but, here is a useful way to break this down. Mass homicides differ from other murders, and that there's actually a lot of common qualities among mass killers.

Some mass killers target the workplace. And workplace mass killers are their own type of group. Some mass killers target the general community and those individuals are their own type of -- have their own qualities. Many of which are, again, the young, male, socially alienated, sexually frustrated, un-integrated, dead-ender.

But among those are people who pick an ideology and say that's my issue. And they wrap themselves in that. The common denominator with the community and the ideologically motivated people is they want us talking about them. They are irrelevant. They want to be relevant. Some people say, I'll be relevant because I have killed so many people. Some people say, I'll be relevant because this issue will get people talking and even if they are not talking about me, they are talking about me, whether it's Breivik in Norway or whether this person.

CUOMO: So, that's why you're always cautioning, don't pay too much attention to who did it?

WELNER: Oh, I think that it's -- I think we do public safety a disservice getting overly immersed in this for two reasons.

[06:55:00] One, because the ideologically motivated mass shooter is copied by others who haven't done it yet. And they watch us talking about his fetish, he would say, hey, I have a beef. I have a grievance. More importantly, they have a yin to kill.

This guy, like others whom I have worked on and studied, this is where you come to learn it, they have a yin to kill. They identify their masculinity -- this is why young males are involved -- with the idea that if you are destructive, you're the man. And if you are the person who is destructive who has this ideology, the thing about what came up with your last guest, when you are the man because you are the one who does something.

But, the point is, it would not be this ideology, it would be another ideology. The key here is white supremacist ideology.

What's peculiar to white supremacist cases, and this is also from professional experience, when you drill down into the communities of people who are extremists, they know they don't have the numbers. They know they are vastly outnumbered in terms of public consciousness. The only way to gain a foothold is if they trigger a race war. And so, their writings and their rantings that get tapped into by somebody looking to tap into something to give himself his own mental justification because again, he wanted to kill, taps into the idea, well, if I do something and people get stirred up, well, these people react and these people react.

No. No. You're not relevant. What's relevant? Somebody rose up and said, I forgive you. I forgive you.

And that's the point. The victims are relevant. If the victims define the discussion, we take away the social incentive to any aspiring mass killer, to say you know what? You want to go out and kill a lot of people? Nobody will pay attention to you. You may get the death penalty. It's necessary because it's a deterrent for some mass killers based on professional experience.

You want to get the death penalty? You want to be in prison the rest of your life? You want to be totally forgotten, except parenthetically by people who pray and who are religious?

You are not going to get attention. Your cause won't get attention. We will put the people who were victimized on a pedestal because they forgave and they were larger in life than in death.

CUOMO: All good strong points and needed very much right. Doc, as always, I appreciate it.

Dr. Welner is inviting you, the audience, and the general public, to participate in a landmark research project, what do you think makes a crime depraved? Your opinions are wanted at depravitystandard.org. We'll have it on the Web site as well.

This is obviously a big story for a lot of reasons, but there is news for you this morning. So, let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: Potential sighting for the two escaped killers in New York.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Richard Matt and David Sweat are now on the U.S. Marshals' most wanted list.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On the run for more than two weeks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They told us, stay home, lock your doors and windows.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A manifesto captures the 21-year-old's words.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The manifesto was about 2,000 words long.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got to use this heartbreak in the most positive way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In this life, we are going to live to the fullest according to your divine word.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That symbol has to come down. That symbol must be removed from our state capitol.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm ready for the fight to bring the flag down.

CROWD: Bring it down! Bring it down!

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone.

We do begin this hour with the intensifying search for those two dangerous killers on the run from prison. Investigators believe new leads are helping them close in on those fugitives. The manhunt covering more than 300 miles now from the edge of Pennsylvania back to upstate New York. Helicopters scouring the area from overhead and state troopers setting up roadblocks.

CUOMO: So, is this new search area, about 25 miles west of the prison, is this going to be the end of the line for Richard Matt and David Sweat? We are following every development in the search.

Let's begin with CNN's Sara Ganim. She is at the site of the latest surge of police activity. That's Owls Head, New York.

Sara, what's spurring.

SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

Like you said, we are about 30 miles due west of the prison facility, in a very wooded area in the Adirondacks of New York. I just got off the phone with the Franklin County district attorney, the D.A. here. He told me what started all of this.

He said, on Saturday, a witness who was checking on a cabin, remember, there are a lot of vacation homes and unoccupied homes here, checking on a cabin, saw a man run out a back door into the woods. He said the cabin was obviously burglarized. He said, based on that, the search was concentrated in this area, the Mountain View area near -- off of Wolf Pond Road. It's a road nearby that actually leads to another road that leads to Dannemora, where the prison facility is.