Return to Transcripts main page

Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Earthquake Shakes Southern California; Aruba Disappearance; Ford Vehicle Fires

Aired June 16, 2005 - 19:00   ET

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

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


ANDERSON COOPER, HOST "ANDERSON COOPER 360": Good evening, everyone.
Another earthquake rattles California and shakes the nerves of the entire West Coast. 360 starts now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(voice-over): An earthquake rocks Southern California, tremors from L.A. to San Diego -- and it's the third one this week.

They met in a casino; and later at a bar. Two lives intersecting the night Natalee Holloway disappeared. Tonight, we retrace her steps and uncover details about the suspect thought to have last seen Natalee.

Cars bursting into flames while they're parked.

KEN WHELPLEY, TRUCK CAUGHT FIRE: How do you park a vehicle, go to bed, and in the morning, it's on fire?

COOPER: Tonight, what's causing it, and is enough being done to prevent it?

And, the mysteries of King Tut revealed. What the boy-king looked like, and how he really died.

ANNOUNCER: Live, from the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, this is ANDERSON COOPER 360.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER (on camera): And good evening, again.

It happened earlier this evening. For the third time this week, an earthquake has shaken California. You're about to see a live aerial view right now from affiliate KTTV. A 4.9 magnitude quake hit the L.A. area a little more than a couple hours ago.

CNN's Peter Viles is in L.A. Peter, what's the latest?

PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, a little bit of a pattern here, three in five days, as you point out. Originally, they said this was a 5.3 magnitude. Tthey've since down-graded it to a 4.9 magnitude. Hit at 1:53 in the afternoon out here, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles, in a bedroom community called Yucaipa, a place of about 45,000 people.

We have no reports yet of serious injuries or damages out there, but I can tell you, this one was felt all over what they call the Los Angeles basin -- up north, almost to Santa Barbara, down south, almost to San Diego, you could feel this.

In our building here in Hollywood, which is 70 miles from the epicenter, it was as if someone took the building and gave it a good shake. It only lasted about a second or so, but the building really did move underneath you.

Again, though, the headline, no injuries or damages that we've heard of, and there have been some aftershocks which you would expect. We're told, at least 25 aftershocks, the biggest of those, a 3.5, which is not super-big, but this is something to watch.

Three earthquakes in California in five days, two of them just 60 miles apart, Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, Peter, we're going to look at if any of them are connected in any way, coming up a little bit later on 360. We'll check in with you again. Peter, thanks.

Investigators on the island of Aruba continue piecing together the puzzle of what happened to Natalee Holloway. The 18-year-old American girl remains missing and a 17-year-old Dutch boy is in custody along with two friends accused of having had something to do with her disappearance.

CNN's Karl Penhaul has been covering the case practically since it began. He's come to know many of those involved. Karl, what's the latest?

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Law enforcement sources, Anderson, say that the suspects are continuing to point fingers at one another. There are three suspects, the two Kalpoe brothers, Satish and Deepak, and the son of a prominent island judge from a very well- respected family. He's the 17-year-old Joran Van Der Sloot.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): ... facing the judge, is led away in handcuffs, Dutch-born Joran Van Der Sloot. His mother was there when police arrested the 17-year-old in a dawn raid.

ANITA VAN DER SLOOT, SUSPECT'S MOTHER: He said, mom, don't be upset because everything will be fine. I know I'm innocent. I didn't do anything. You know, in a very, almost naive way, he was very open with us, told us everything, what happened.

PENHAUL: Van Der Sloot's mother, Anita, talked to CNN just after her son, the oldest of three children, was arrested in connection with Natalee's disappearance.

VAN DER SLOOT: I'm praying. I'm praying. I'm thinking about her, about her family. We're all thinking about her, and I don't know what to do more right now.

PENHAUL: Her husband, Paul, a judge and former prosecution service official in Aruba, declined to speak to CNN.

Days after Natalee's disappearance and just before his arrest, Van Der Sloot graduated from Aruba's prestigious $12,000-a-year International School. The school Web site described him as an honor student who had been accepted at a number of colleges in Florida.

VAN DER SLOOT: His favorite subject is physical education, sports, and he's an athlete (ph), as well as in tennis and soccer, and he enjoys being active. And he's just a very spontaneous, open, 17- year-old teenager.

PENHAUL: He's Internet-savvy and visited his friend and suspect Deepak Kalpoe at a Cyberzone Cafe where Deepak worked.

ANGELINA REPPAS, CYBERZONE CAFE BOSS: He's a good friend of Deepak's. He comes on the Internet after school sometimes.

PENHAUL: In fact, Van Der Sloot had his own Web site where he posted photos with family, friends, girls and parties. Hours after his arrest, the Web site was taken down.

Schoolmate Leonardo Rivera says he had been a good friend of Van Der Sloot's until they had a falling out. Before the disagreement, they used to hang out at the beach and in bars.

What would you be drinking?

LEONARDO RIVERA, SCHOOLMATE: (INAUDIBLE)

PENHAUL: That's a mixture of vodka and fruit punch.

What kind of buzz did he used to get when he was a little bit drunk?

RIVERA: Normal.

PENHAUL: Was he an angry drunk?

RIVERA: No.

PENHAUL: Happy drunk?

RIVERA: No, funny, funny, funny guy, yes.

PENHAUL: Did he used to smoke a little something, or...

RIVERA: No, he didn't do drugs.

PENHAUL: Smart and athletic, Rivera says Van Der Sloot also fancied himself as a ladies' man.

RIVERA: He used to have a girlfriend -- girlfriends, yes. He liked to play around. PENHAUL: His mother insists he's innocent, but says she's confounded by her son's arrest.

VAN DER SLOOT: We are parents that know our kids. We try to educate them well. We try to care for them, warn them. And it's devastating that these things happen.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PENHAUL (on camera): Van Der Sloot and the other two suspects, the two Kalpoe brothers, should, under normal procedures, appear before a judge by Sunday, in order that he will decide whether to keep them in custody for a further 10 days. Also at that stage, one would expect formal charges to be lodged.

Anderson?

COOPER: Now, how long, theoretically, can they be kept in custody without charges being filed? Because, I know that it's a Dutch system. It's very different than the United States.

PENHAUL: As you say, very different from the U.S. But technically, at the end of this eight-day custody period that they're now into, then at that stage, the judge will have to hear the charges against them. That's when the prosecution will have to lodge those formal charges and then under a series of guidelines they could be held technically up to 116 days before this case comes to trial, Anderson.

COOPER: All right. Karl Penhaul, appreciate it.

The island of Aruba is about the size of the city of Washington, D.C. It's home to 70,000 to 80,000 people, but every year it's visited by many times that number of tourists who come, of course, for the white sand beaches and its free-wheeling nightlife and its friendly people.

Needless to say those hundreds of thousands of visitors invariably go home when their vacations are over. For one of them, of course, sad to say, for Natalee there, 18-years-old, from Alabama, she's not gone home. She has been missing now on that island of white sand beaches for more than two weeks.

We're joined live in Aruba by Pierre Kock, one of the many volunteers who has spent time searching for Natalee. Thank you very much for being with us, Pierre.

What sort of searches have you been involved with thus far?

Pierre, can you hear me? This is Anderson in New York. Obviously, we can't get in touch with Pierre. We'll try to get in touch with him and bring you that interview in a little bit.

360 next, inside the police investigation on Aruba. A look at what is known about Natalee Holloway and the three suspects, a timeline hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute, and day-by-day since she disappeared, what exactly do we know at this point in the investigation?

Also trying to bring you that interview with the search and rescue man.

Also tonight, driver beware. Is your car or truck at risk of catching fire, even when the engine's off? You won't want to miss this special CNN investigative report.

Also, the latest on the California quake, the third this week. Are they connected? We'll take a look. All that ahead.

Your picks, first. The most popular stories first on CNN.com right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: More now on the developing story out of Los Angeles. That's a live picture there of downtown L.A. A 4.9 magnitude earthquake hit the L.A. area a little more than a couple of hours ago. It wasn't a major earthquake, and as far as we've heard, it has not caused any significant damage.

The fact that it's the third California quake, however, in a week, does raise concerns that another one could be on the horizon, and some fear it might be even bigger.

CNN's Peter Viles takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VILES (voice-over): Is it a wave of earthquakes? Sunday, 5.2 magnitude in the California desert. Tuesday, 7.2 off the Northern California coast. Then, Thursday afternoon, 4.9 in the suburbs east of L.A. And there were others. Monday a big one in Chile, Tuesday a swarm of quakes in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Come here, let's get in the car.

VILES: What's going on here? Is this all a coincidence or a dangerous pattern in the giant quake and volcano zone that's known as the Ring of Fire? The official government explanation from the U.S. Geological Survey is that it's all a coincidence, but other experts aren't so sure.

Kate Hutton is known as the Earthquake Lady in Southern California.

KATE HUTTON, CALTECH SEISMOLOGIST: And Crescent City is right in here.

VILES: She says it's possible that these quakes are actually triggering each other.

HUTTON: Where one very large earthquake, such as the 7.8 in Chile yesterday, sends out very strong seismic waves that pass through the crust, if it encounters a fault which is about ready to break anyway, it might set it off. And we're looking into the possibility of a scenario like that to explain why we've had so many earthquakes in the last day.

VILES: And at the University of Southern California, which helped produce this model of a quake underneath downtown L.A., one expert says it's possible the quakes are all part of a single event, up and down the massive Pacific plate.

TOM HENYEY, USC GEOPHYSICIST: These three earthquakes that have occurred recently are all along the margin of the Pacific plate, and it's possible that the Pacific plate has moved as a unit, very suddenly, all at once, and these earthquakes occurred where the stresses happen to be high.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: That was Peter Viles reporting. We're going to be continuing to monitor the situation out of L.A. We'll bring you any updates as warranted.

Erica Hill from HEADLINE NEWS following a couple of other stories for us tonight. Good evening, Erica.

ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: Hey, Anderson, nice to see you.

We start off with the dramatic end to a hostage standoff at a school in Cambodia. Gunfire erupted when police overpowered the four gunmen and arrested them as they tried to escape. During the nearly six-hour standoff, a Canadian boy was shot and killed by one of the hostage takers. Government officials say the gunmen were drug-addicted bandits who demanded money, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and safe transport to the border with Thailand.

Philadelphia, Mississippi. Murder trial on hold. Former Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen is hospitalized after leaving the courthouse this morning in a stretcher. His lawyer says there's concern about his blood pressure. The 80 year old is accused of planning the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964. The case is dramatized in the movie, "Mississippi Burning."

And out of Santa Barbara, California. A police chase, this one, though, ending peacefully. The driver had been on the move for more than an hour, had three of his children in the SUV with him. Police say he might have taken the kids after getting into a fight with his ex-wife. But he did surrender after stopping at a dead end. So at least it ended without any shots fired or anybody getting hurt.

COOPER: Wow. All right. Erica Hill, thanks. We'll see you again in about 30 minutes.

Coming up next on 360, young people want change in Iran. They want it less oppressive, and they have the power in numbers to make it happen. So why aren't they voting? Go deep within Iran's borders to find out. Also tonight, centuries after his death, King Tut showing he's still got that charisma, that charm. We'll tell you about his tour and the mystery surrounding this ancient mummy.

And car trouble. Millions of American-made cars and trucks may be at risk of bursting into flames. We'll have the troubling report that every driver needs to see.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Tonight's "World in 360," the hope for change in a country President Bush once labeled as a member of "the axis of evil."

Tomorrow, Iran will hold elections to choose a new president. Now, young voters there perhaps have the most sway. Half the country's population is under the age of 25, which is remarkable if you think about it, and many of them want reform.

But as CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour found out, a lot of those young people are deliberately not voting.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the sound of love and heartbreak. Love for a profession that brings five young musicians to lonely practice sessions, tucked away in a tiny room on a rooftop. And heartbreak, that they're not allowed to play in public, that rock 'n roll, the universal language of youth, is not approved by Iran's Islamic Republic, that they feel well and truly outside the system.

The band is called Oriental Silence. And like all of them, drummer Amir Ali Kaheri, will not be voting Friday.

AMIR ALI KAHERI, DRUMMER (through translator): No, although I would have liked to. But I can't vote for these candidates. I don't like them.

AMANPOUR: The same goes for lyricist Payam Eslami.

PAYAM ESLAMI, LYRICIST (through translator): I want the rights and freedoms everyone is entitled to. Normal rights, nothing more.

AMANPOUR: If these young people feel shut out, these young people at Pars Online, Iran's biggest Internet service provider, are very much working the system, riding the Internet and IT boom that's just rolled around to Iran, and being paid above average wages.

MOHSEN LUTSI, IT ENGINEER: It makes me feel that we are moving forward as the world goes forward.

AMANPOUR: Twenty-three-year-old Mohsen Lutsi is among the company's young employees who returned from the U.S. and Europe to work here. With another million young Iranians about to hit the job market, presidential candidates this time are talking mostly about the economy, not Islam.

(on camera): With high unemployment and sensing deep social dissatisfaction, even the conservative candidates are speaking the language of reform and democracy. This, the legacy of the outgoing, reformist but hapless, President Mohamed Khatami.

CIAMIK NAMAZI, ANALYST: A lot of us have been pretty critical of President Khatami for all the things we hoped he could achieve and didn't, but perhaps this is the one achievement that we have to hand to him, that essentially the dialogue and the discourse, the political discourse that he created, the legacy lives on.

AMANPOUR: The mournful lament of Oriental Silence perhaps sums up feelings about a campaign that's being marked by threats of boycott and predictions of a lower turnout than usual, by people who hope but don't believe their vote will change much.

TAHERI (through translator): There may be small changes, but nothing major. But I really hope things will get better, because they must.

AMANPOUR: Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Tehran, Iran.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): Cars bursting into flames while they're parked.

WHELPLEY: How do you park a vehicle, go to bed, and in the morning, it's on fire?

COOPER: Tonight, what's causing it, and is enough being done to prevent it?

They met in a casino; then later at a bar. Two lives intersecting the night Natalee Holloway disappeared. Tonight, we retrace her steps and uncover details about the suspect thought to have last seen Natalee.

And the mysteries of King Tut revealed. What the boy-king looked like, and how he really died. 360 continues.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, imagine this. Your car's turned off, it's parked, and suddenly, with no one around, it just bursts into flames. That's exactly what's happening to some Ford vehicles built before 2004.

Just yesterday, one family filed a wrongful death suit over a fire that family members say started in a 1996 F-150 pickup, parked in the garage attached to their Iowa home. That's the picture there. The fire killed 74-year-old Darletta Mohlis and injured her 76-year-old husband.

Investigators for Ford and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spent hours earlier this week poking through the rubble of the house. NHTSA had no comment on the investigation, but Ford specifically denied the fire was caused by the truck.

Ford admits, however, it has a problem with some of its vehicles catching fire when parked and turned off. Ford's already recalled more than a million of its cars, trucks and SUVs. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it's investigating nearly 4 million more vehicles for the same problem -- 4 million more vehicles.

Now, in this exclusive report, CNN investigative correspondent Drew Griffin has uncovered new information on just how many more Ford vehicles may be at risk.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

911 OPERATOR: Fire rescue. What is your emergency?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please, my house is exploded. Something in my car -- my house is on fire.

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A frantic call to 911 at 5:00 in the morning.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my gosh.

GRIFFIN: A mother in a panic. Her 15-year-old daughter's bedroom wall is in flames.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My house is on fire! Please!

GRIFFIN: She makes several more calls to 911 before fire trucks arrive. Within minutes, the fire burned down the Kissimmee, Florida, house of Nestor Oyola and his wife Laura leaving their daughter Rotsenmary scarred.

ROTSENMARY OYOLA, HOUSE BURNED DOWN: It's difficult. But you know, we have to accept it.

GRIFFIN: So what went wrong? What could have possibly caused this much destruction?

NESTOR OYOLA, HOUSE BURNED DOWN (through translator): I bought the car on Monday. And Wednesday it burned everything.

GRIFFIN: The insurance investigation showed the 2001 Ford Expedition Nestor just bought his wife caught fire while it was parked and turned off in the garage.

Ken and Michelle Whelpley of Winterhaven, Florida, had a similar experience.

WHELPLEY: How do you park a vehicle, go to bed, sleep all night, and then in the morning, it's on fire? GRIFFIN: It sounds unusual, but CNN has learned fires like this have occurred all across the country. A neighbor took this picture of the Whelpley's truck.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Flames were shooting all the way up to the top of the garage. I couldn't believe it. I mean, just could not believe it.

GRIFFIN: In Orlando, a used car dealer's surveillance camera caught this car bursting into flames. It had been parked overnight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just come in the morning like a regular day and I see a car all burnt up. I'm like, what the -- it was a shock. I didn't know what to do. I lost all the money.

GRIFFIN: And with many of the cars and trucks sitting in garages, houses are being burned down, too.

WHELPLEY: What if we'd have died in this mess?

GRIFFIN: Four investigations by the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration have compiled 559 reports of Ford fires. And those investigations are focusing on one part under the hood.

HARVEY MICHEL, FIRE INVESTOGATOR: Sometimes when we're digging through this, we find the remains that failed.

GRIFFIN: Harvey Michel (ph) is a fire investigator and says he's seen about 30 of these Ford cases in just the last year.

MICHEL: Tire damage is more severe on top.

GRIFFIN: We asked him to look at the Whelpleys' burned, 2000 Ford F-150 pickup. Within 30 minutes, he finds what he says is the cause.

MICHEL: Here's the part. That is typical of the failure of the switch.

GRIFFIN: It's the cruise, or speed control deactivation switch. This is what several fire investigators hired by major insurance companies and auto engineers consulted by CNN say is causing the cars and trucks to ignite.

How? The pressure switch disconnects the cruise control when the driver steps firmly on the brake. That switch is attached to the brake master cylinder on one end and wired to the cruise control on the other.

Ford designed the switch to be powered -- or hot -- at all times even when the vehicle is off and the key is out of the ignition. What separates the electrical components from the brake fluid inside the switch is a thin film barrier. Investigators say the film can crack, allowing droplets of brake fluid to come in contact with the hot electrical components, sometimes, say investigators causing a fire.

And those fires can happen whether the vehicle is moving or even parked with the engine off. Firefighters in Deltona, Florida, say you can see it happen in this video. A firefighter was changing a fuse when he noticed the switch in his 1995 F-250 begin to smoke. A co- worker grabbed a video camera.

CHRIS NABICHT, DELTONA CHIEF FIRE MARSHAL: Had we allowed it to continue, it would have burst into flames and it would have consumed the vehicle.

GRIFFIN: Chris Nabicht is chief fire marshal for the city of Deltona. He says he's seen at least a half a dozen similar Ford fires.

NABICHT: The concern for people's lives and how fast this can occur. Whether you're in the vehicle or not in the vehicle, is kind of scary.

GRIFFIN: Houston attorney Mike Jolly agrees. He represents clients whose vehicles have caught fire while parked.

MIKE JOLLY, ATTORNEY: There's no reason to wire the switch hot, because you don't need to turn off the cruise control when the car is stopped and turned off and parked in your garage.

GRIFFIN: Five different auto engineers tell CNN the design is unique to Ford. And Ford has responded to the fires by issuing two separate recalls. The first in 1999 recalled nearly 300,000 Crown Victorias, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Cars.

Then, just this past January, Ford issued a second, larger recall 792,000 vehicles, including 2001 F-Series Super Crews, and 2000 Expeditions, Navigators and top selling F-150 pickups.

(on camera): Beyond those recalls, the federal government is investigating an additional 3.7 million Ford vehicles for the same problem. Now CNN has obtained this Ford document, which the company handed over to federal investigators. It shows a total of 16 million Ford cars and trucks have been built with what the company acknowledges is the same or similar switch.

(voice-over): The list includes recalled and non-recalled Expeditions, Explorers, F-Series pickups, Crown Victorias, Town Cars and Grand Marquis, some as early as 1992 and as recent at 2003. Also included are thousands of Tauruses, Econoline vans, Rangers and Windstars.

Ford declined our requests for an on camera interview. But in a statement to CNN, Ford says its records show the risk of fire differs for make, model and year. They say -- quote -- "it's important to understand that all speed control systems are not identical in Ford vehicles. In those populations with an increasing fire report rate, we stopped using the switch through the recall process. The switch has performed well in many models for many years."

Nearly half of those 559 Ford fires reported to the government safety agency as originating in the cruise control switch were in cars and trucks from model years not recalled. That includes the Expeditions owned by the Oyolas and that Orlando car dealer. NABICHT: They've taken the step by recalling certain models of vehicles. I think the recall probably needs to be much broader than what it is.

GRIFFIN: Ford's response to that? "We have been asked why we have not expanded the recall. The last thing we want to do is make an important safety decision on incorrect or incomplete information."

So what does Ford say is the reason the switch catches fire? Again, Ford wouldn't agree to be interviewed for this report. But this is what the company told us in an e-mail.

"We have not determined at this time that there is a defect with the switch. But for reasons we still do not understand, the switch is failing. And we are trying to understand why."

Ford says it's cooperating with a federal investigation into the fires. As for the switch, Ford has stopped using it. And is now using a new switch as of the 2004 model year. In the meantime, the Oyolas who made that desperate 911 call when their non-recalled SUV caught fire, are left to pick up their lives.

LAURA HERNANDEZ, HOUSE BURNED DOWN (through translator): Here, there is nothing to replace, nothing. I was left with nothing.

GRIFFIN: Firefighters found the family cat burned to death in this corner.

This is where Laura's daughter Rotsenmary dialed 911, as the Expedition was burning in the garage just a few feet away. She escaped with burns to her legs.

For Nestor Oyola, as a father, it's hard to talk about it. The night before the fire, he moved his wife's Expedition in the garage, hoping to keep it safe. He says he'll never forget it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: Anderson, the Oyolas are trying to rebuild their lives, but it hasn't been easy. Their insurance will not cover the full cost of rebuilding their home. They are hoping that a claim with Ford will be paid.

Anderson.

COOPER: So Drew, someone who thinks they may have a car with this switch, what should they do?

GRIFFIN: It's a good question -- one we did ask Ford. And Ford had no recommendation. Neither did the federal investigators who say they couldn't comment, or give any advice while the investigation is going on.

But experts that CNN has been dealing with say if you are concerned about this problem, you should probably take your vehicle down to a Ford dealership like this one, and have them disconnect the cruise control system. And at the very least, you should park your vehicle away from your home.

COOPER: What it does Ford say about the Iowa death that we mentioned earlier?

GRIFFIN: They went to Iowa. They sent their investigator and came back saying it wasn't their fault at all. In fact, they sent us this e-mail -- if I could read to you, Anderson -- that says "unfortunately, fires happen every year in all makes and models of all manufacturers for a number of reasons, including faulty repair, improper modification to the vehicle with aftermarket parts and wiring, or prior accident damage, even arson." So Ford not admitting fault in this particular fire in Iowa, and certainly not in any of the other hundreds of fires that we've been reporting on here.

COOPER: And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, what are they saying about the 16 million cars with this switch?

GRIFFIN: They have multiple investigations going on, Anderson. And each time they get close to issuing some kind of warning, Ford issues a recall. Currently NHTSA is telling us they are investigating and taking reports on the rest of these 16 million Ford Cars and trucks, asking Ford for any documents related to this. But NHTSA will not comment while the investigation is going on.

COOPER: All right. Drew Griffin, appreciate that exclusive report. You can go to CNN.com for more information about the story, you can see details on the cruise control switch, and you can get some answers to some questions you might have about the investigation.

Coming up next on 360, what exactly happened the night Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba. We're going to break it down for you hour-by-hour as police continue to search for clues.

Also ahead tonight, King Tut visits America. We're going to take a look at the mummy, his mysterious death centuries ago, and what we know now.

And a little later, more on today's earthquake in California, the third in just a week. We'll have a live report from L.A.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: I want to go back for a moment to the case of Natalee Holloway who went missing on the island of Aruba on May 30. Three young men remain in custody as suspects in her disappearance.

And what exactly happened that Monday night three and-a-half weeks ago? The pieces are starting to come together.

CNN's Karl Penhaul turns back the clock.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Neon lights pulling the gamblers and the curious. Drawn by the ringing of quarters in the slot machines, the spin of the roulette wheel, the roll of the dice. JAN VAN DER STRATEN, CHIEF POLICE COMMISSIONER: They meet each other in the casino the day before.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That day? Or a previous day? Or...

VAN DER STRATEN: The day before.

PENHAUL: Police say Natalee Holloway was here in the Holiday Inn Casino on Saturday night, May 28. It was her first known contact with one of the suspects, Joran Van Der Sloot, the 17-year-old son of an Aruban judge.

More neon lights, this time outside Carlos 'N Charlie's bar. Holloway came here to party the following Sunday night. She was with high school friends. She may not have realized she was taking a gamble of a different kind.

The bar is in Aruba's capital, Oranjestad, about 15 minutes' drive from the Holiday Inn where Holloway and her classmates were staying.

Joran Van Der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe seen here in photos printed in an Aruban newspaper showed up about 10:45 according to statements the Kalpoes made to investigators and seen by the defense attorney for another man who has been cleared of Natalee Holloway's disappearance.

CHRIS LEJUEZ, ATTORNEY FOR ABRAHAM JONES: And one of them stated that Joran danced with her.

PENHAUL: According to police it was around 1:00 a.m., closing time early Monday, when Natalee Holloway's friends watched her walk out of the bar and into a silver gray car with Van Der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers.

What we know about what happened next comes from those who have read the Kalpoe brothers' statements.

LEJUEZ: After they get in the car, one of them says she wanted to see the other side of the island, and the other one says she wanted to go have a look at the sharks.

PENHAUL: You can make it to the lighthouse from Carlos 'N Charlie's in around 20 minutes. The Kalpoes were said to be up front, Holloway and Van Der Sloot in the back.

LEJUEZ: They say that he was not only kissing her, but fondling her sexually.

PENHAUL: It's called California Lighthouse. It's a tourist attraction by day, by night an isolated romantic rendezvous. It's not clear the car even stopped, but even in the moonlight from here, it would have been tough for Holloway to see any sharks.

LEJUEZ: One said they drove by the lighthouse. The other said they did not get out of the car. PENHAUL: As they looked back, they would have passed Arashi Beach. Experts say if you dump an object here, the current will drag it west toward open ocean.

According to Lejuez, the suspects' statements deny stopping at the beach, but the area was searched shortly after Holloway's disappearance.

From Aruba's northwest tip, Lejuez says the Kalpoe brothers' statement describes heading back to the Holiday Inn.

LEJUEZ: One of them states that she fell asleep and they had to wake her up to ask her at what hotel she was staying.

PENHAUL: When they dropped off Holloway, Lejuez quotes the same of one of the Kalpoe brothers saying she was drunk and stumbled from the car. The other statement, Lejuez says, describes Holloway talking to a security guard dressed in black pants and a T-shirt.

Based on the statements, two security guards, Mickey John, and Abraham Jones, were arrested six days after Holloway went missing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do nothing. I fear nothing.

PENHAUL: They were released late Monday night after prosecutors decided there was no hard evidence against them.

Van Der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers were arrested around dawn last Thursday. Prosecutors formally accused them of murder one, murder two and kidnapping leading to death, but Dutch law is different from American law, and they've not yet been formally charged.

Defense lawyers for the three young men maintain their clients' innocence.

ANTONIO CARLO, JORAN VAN DER SLOOT'S ATTORNEY: My client is maintaining that is he innocent.

PENHAUL: Law enforcement sources close to the investigation say cracks are peering in Van Der Sloot and the Kalpoes' stories -- a view shared by one of the freed security guards who spoke to Deepak Kalpoe in the jail.

ABRAHAM JONES, FORMER SUSPECT: He told me that story of dropping the girl at the Holiday Inn was all made up. He dropped the Dutch guy with the missing girl close to the Mariott. And he and his brother went home.

PENHAUL: Those law enforcement sources say their accounts may be murky and their description of the facts not quite the same, but one indisputable fact, Natalee Holloway is missing without trace.

Karl Penhaul, CNN, Oranjestad, Aruba.

(END VIDEOTAPE) COOPER: Well, and these suspects in custody are supposedly pointing the fingers at one another. But we don't have any more details on that.

For an update now on the search in Aruba for Natalee Holloway, we go live to Palm Beach and Pierre Kock, one of the many volunteers who spent time doing that very difficult work. Pierre, thanks very much for being with us.

You specialize in searches in water. How hard is it to find an object that has been dumped in the water, especially say around Arashi Beach?

PIERRE KOCK, ARUBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE: Well, it depends. If we were called right away, you could get something floating within three or four miles. But the thing is, it has to be done early, because once it takes very long, it's going to be drifting outside on the northwest area and probably end up in the area of Panama.

COOPER: So something dumped, a body or an object, would not necessarily come back onto the shore, it would be swept, as you said, to Panama?

KOCK: Yeah. Correct. It will be heading northwest in that area. And it's going to be drifting all the way to the Panama area. We've had that with boats happening -- boats being lost that drifted all the way to Panama.

COOPER: And does it matter what time of day? I mean, if it's at night or very early in the morning in terms of the tides, do you know at what point what way the tides are going then?

KOCK: Well, it's basically heading in that direction, most of the tide in that area is heading in the northwest direction. So it really doesn't matter the time of day.

COOPER: When you conduct these searches, what kind of direction do police -- or have they been giving you?

KOCK: Well, we've coordinating very close to the police. They've been giving us search areas. We basically searched the north area of Aruba. We did a complete search on that. We did a bird sanctuary which was asked by the police for us to help over there. And out to the Frenchman's Pass. So, we basically covered most of the island.

COOPER: What do you think about the pace of this investigation, the pace of the search? Are there more areas that you wish you could get to? Do you feel like you've covered just about all there is?

KOCK: Well, basically we have covered the complete island. We did, together with (ph) lot of volunteers, we covered basically the full island. And anywhere that we could have checked, we've basically checked.

COOPER: Do you have a sense -- what do you think has happened? KOCK: Really, I don't know. I mean, we're still searching for Natalee. And it will be going on, but to the details I have, I have no idea about that.

COOPER: Fair enough. Pierre Kock, it's a thankless job. We appreciate what you're doing. And appreciate you joining us tonight. Thank you.

KOCK: Thank you.

COOPER: Erica Hill from HEADLINE NEWS joins us with the latest at about 13 to the hour. Erica.

HILL: Anderson, we start off in Iraq where an Iraqi judge and four police commandos are dead, killed by insurgents. The commandos were attacked by a suicide bomber in Baghdad's dangerous Airport Road, 22 others were hurt.

In the meantime in Mosul drive-by shooters killed the chief judge of the city's criminal court while he was on his way to work.

Near Boston, Massachusetts, a standoff ends with heavily armed suspects still on the run. The standoff happened after three men allegedly tried to rob an armored car with AK-47s. Now police thought they had two of them holed up in a house, but when they stormed it, they came up empty.

In Newman Lake, Washington, look at this poor little guy, its head got stuck in a small pipe. But luckily after two-and-a-half hours of slow and very careful pipe cutting the little kitten was freed. And we're told she's doing fine. She even has a new name, Knucklehead. Lucky little girl.

COOPER: Well, Erica, I see your cute little kitten cat story.

HILL: Oh, really?

COOPER: And I raise you a smoking chimp.

HILL: Yes!

COOPER: There it is, the smoking chimp who, I guess people would throw cigarettes to this chimp and it started taking up smoking.

HILL: Picked up some bad habits. I should have showed you a picture of my kitten. I just got a new kitten on Friday that we found. She was also abandoned.

COOPER: Oh, really?

HILL: But really, I'm just happy you didn't ambush me of video on spring break, when I was like 18, and had my parents waiting to look at it.

COOPER: Is there such video, because if there is?

HILL: No, it doesn't exist. And even if it did, I'd tell you it didn't.

COOPER: Yeah, I'm sure you would. Erica Hill, thanks very much. Let's get research on that right now, guys.

All right. 360 next, California rocked by yet another earthquake. We're going to go live to L.A. for the latest.

Also tonight, the return of the king, we're talking about King Tut. Funky Tut, will travel to his Egyptian Crypt to uncover how he may have died.

And tomorrow a 360 special, "Choose To Lose": inspiring stories of people went to extreme measures to lose the weight and kept it off. We'll tell you how.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: I want to update you now on our developing story. For the third time in just five days an earthquake has hit California. That's a live picture of a hazy-looking L.A. Measuring 4.9 it did, came just a few hours ago. It struck in the L.A. area.

CNN's Peter Viles is live in L.A. with the latest. Peter?

VILES: Anderson, it struck 70 miles east of here in a place called Yucaipa. Originally, they said this was a 5.3. They've since, as you said, downgraded it to a 4.9. So, they've down-graded it from originally saying it was moderate, to now saying it was light. They say, now -- the government does say there's a 5 to 10 percent chance that we'll see aftershocks as big as the original one or bigger.

But, the question everybody's asking, is, wait a minute, was this itself an aftershock? Are the three quakes we've had in five days somehow related? Here's how the scientists are answering that question right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LUCY JONES, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY: Obvious question everybody is asking, because we're having quite a few earthquakes. These are not direct aftershocks. They're a bit too far away. We do, you know -- when you have two fives a few days apart, you start wondering. But we've done this before and not had it lead onto anything else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VILES: But you heard her say, when you have two fives together like this, you start wondering. Well, and back to this one -- people out in Yucaipa tell us it lasted seven, eight, nine, 10 seconds, and that it started off kinda slow, but then it sustained itself, if you will. Felt like a horizontal push, one homeowner out there told us.

Here in L.A., 70 miles away, we felt it. It was much quicker than that, Anderson, maybe a second or two, but you definitely felt it and people felt it from almost Santa Barbara all the way down to San Diego, so a big area felt this. Anderson. COOPER: Catching a lot of people's attention. Peter Viles, appreciate it.

360 next, the golden boy comes to life. Born in Babylonia, moved to California, King Tut, Funky Tut, on tour and on 360 next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Seems only fitting that the town obsessed with youth would host the return to the first child star, the kid with all the bling. Put your hands together for King Tut. His new world tour opened today in L.A.

As the boy-wonder wows the crowd, scientists and the National Geographic Channel traveled to Egypt to explore the mysteries surrounding Tut's death, using state-of-the-art techniques to answer a more than 3,000-year-old riddle.

CNN's Rudi Bakhtiar has more in tonight's "Current."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BAKHTIAR (voice-over): In Egypt, nestled in the Valley of the Kings, is arguably the most famous tomb in the world, the tomb of King Tutankhamen, or King Tut. And buried with him are the secrets of his life and death. He became king when he was just 9 years old. Revered as half-man, half-God, ruling Egypt for almost a decade until he died at the age of 19. He was laid to rest over 3,000 years ago, virtually unknown to history until 1922, when an English archaeologist named Howard Carter made a discovery.

CHRIS JOHNS, EDITOR, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: They went into the burial chamber, and here are 3,000 antiquities in there, gold everywhere, an incredible sarcophagus. I mean, can you imagine this? Then you find Tut.

BAKHTIAR: And with that discovery, a mystifying legend was born. Chris Johns is the editor-in-chief of "National Geographic" magazine. They sent a team of scientists to Tut's tomb, armed with a CAT scan machine and cameras, determined to solve the mystery surrounding the boy king, particularly the legend of his assassination.

JOHNS: One of the long-held theories was that he had been struck in the back of the head. That somehow it had been a palace coup possibly. No one knew for sure.

BAKHTIAR: The first step of knowing for sure was carefully extracting Tut, who was encased in a solid gold coffin weighing almost 250 pounds. And then the scans, 3D images revealing ailments from the mysterious -- like these severed ribs -- to the mundane -- an impacted wisdom tooth. But they say, no evidence of murder. Rather it's this fracture in his left leg that most likely caused Tut's untimely death, from a war injury perhaps. The scientists believe that King Tut most likely died from an infection within five days of breaking his leg.

JOHNS: It was not a murder. He was not killed by a blow to the back of the head.

BAKHTIAR: The 3D imagery also provides a map of Tut's skull. The first glimpse of what we may have looked like. Working off the scans, artists complete the picture. And elongated egg-shaped head, a narrow face, and a small cleft pallet. Standing just 5'6" tall, he hadn't finished growing. Egypt's most famous king was barely even a man.

JOHNS: Giving Tut a face, puts a face on history. Every human being wishes, I think, that at some point in their life at least, that they were immortal. And I think Tut's an example of that.

BAKHTIAR: Rudi Bakhtiar, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Fascinating. You can watch the entire documentary June 20, on the National Geographic Channel.

I'm Anderson Cooper. Thanks for watching 360. CNN's primetime coverage continues now with Paula Zahn.

END

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired June 16, 2005 - 19:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, HOST "ANDERSON COOPER 360": Good evening, everyone.
Another earthquake rattles California and shakes the nerves of the entire West Coast. 360 starts now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(voice-over): An earthquake rocks Southern California, tremors from L.A. to San Diego -- and it's the third one this week.

They met in a casino; and later at a bar. Two lives intersecting the night Natalee Holloway disappeared. Tonight, we retrace her steps and uncover details about the suspect thought to have last seen Natalee.

Cars bursting into flames while they're parked.

KEN WHELPLEY, TRUCK CAUGHT FIRE: How do you park a vehicle, go to bed, and in the morning, it's on fire?

COOPER: Tonight, what's causing it, and is enough being done to prevent it?

And, the mysteries of King Tut revealed. What the boy-king looked like, and how he really died.

ANNOUNCER: Live, from the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, this is ANDERSON COOPER 360.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER (on camera): And good evening, again.

It happened earlier this evening. For the third time this week, an earthquake has shaken California. You're about to see a live aerial view right now from affiliate KTTV. A 4.9 magnitude quake hit the L.A. area a little more than a couple hours ago.

CNN's Peter Viles is in L.A. Peter, what's the latest?

PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, a little bit of a pattern here, three in five days, as you point out. Originally, they said this was a 5.3 magnitude. Tthey've since down-graded it to a 4.9 magnitude. Hit at 1:53 in the afternoon out here, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles, in a bedroom community called Yucaipa, a place of about 45,000 people.

We have no reports yet of serious injuries or damages out there, but I can tell you, this one was felt all over what they call the Los Angeles basin -- up north, almost to Santa Barbara, down south, almost to San Diego, you could feel this.

In our building here in Hollywood, which is 70 miles from the epicenter, it was as if someone took the building and gave it a good shake. It only lasted about a second or so, but the building really did move underneath you.

Again, though, the headline, no injuries or damages that we've heard of, and there have been some aftershocks which you would expect. We're told, at least 25 aftershocks, the biggest of those, a 3.5, which is not super-big, but this is something to watch.

Three earthquakes in California in five days, two of them just 60 miles apart, Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, Peter, we're going to look at if any of them are connected in any way, coming up a little bit later on 360. We'll check in with you again. Peter, thanks.

Investigators on the island of Aruba continue piecing together the puzzle of what happened to Natalee Holloway. The 18-year-old American girl remains missing and a 17-year-old Dutch boy is in custody along with two friends accused of having had something to do with her disappearance.

CNN's Karl Penhaul has been covering the case practically since it began. He's come to know many of those involved. Karl, what's the latest?

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Law enforcement sources, Anderson, say that the suspects are continuing to point fingers at one another. There are three suspects, the two Kalpoe brothers, Satish and Deepak, and the son of a prominent island judge from a very well- respected family. He's the 17-year-old Joran Van Der Sloot.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): ... facing the judge, is led away in handcuffs, Dutch-born Joran Van Der Sloot. His mother was there when police arrested the 17-year-old in a dawn raid.

ANITA VAN DER SLOOT, SUSPECT'S MOTHER: He said, mom, don't be upset because everything will be fine. I know I'm innocent. I didn't do anything. You know, in a very, almost naive way, he was very open with us, told us everything, what happened.

PENHAUL: Van Der Sloot's mother, Anita, talked to CNN just after her son, the oldest of three children, was arrested in connection with Natalee's disappearance.

VAN DER SLOOT: I'm praying. I'm praying. I'm thinking about her, about her family. We're all thinking about her, and I don't know what to do more right now.

PENHAUL: Her husband, Paul, a judge and former prosecution service official in Aruba, declined to speak to CNN.

Days after Natalee's disappearance and just before his arrest, Van Der Sloot graduated from Aruba's prestigious $12,000-a-year International School. The school Web site described him as an honor student who had been accepted at a number of colleges in Florida.

VAN DER SLOOT: His favorite subject is physical education, sports, and he's an athlete (ph), as well as in tennis and soccer, and he enjoys being active. And he's just a very spontaneous, open, 17- year-old teenager.

PENHAUL: He's Internet-savvy and visited his friend and suspect Deepak Kalpoe at a Cyberzone Cafe where Deepak worked.

ANGELINA REPPAS, CYBERZONE CAFE BOSS: He's a good friend of Deepak's. He comes on the Internet after school sometimes.

PENHAUL: In fact, Van Der Sloot had his own Web site where he posted photos with family, friends, girls and parties. Hours after his arrest, the Web site was taken down.

Schoolmate Leonardo Rivera says he had been a good friend of Van Der Sloot's until they had a falling out. Before the disagreement, they used to hang out at the beach and in bars.

What would you be drinking?

LEONARDO RIVERA, SCHOOLMATE: (INAUDIBLE)

PENHAUL: That's a mixture of vodka and fruit punch.

What kind of buzz did he used to get when he was a little bit drunk?

RIVERA: Normal.

PENHAUL: Was he an angry drunk?

RIVERA: No.

PENHAUL: Happy drunk?

RIVERA: No, funny, funny, funny guy, yes.

PENHAUL: Did he used to smoke a little something, or...

RIVERA: No, he didn't do drugs.

PENHAUL: Smart and athletic, Rivera says Van Der Sloot also fancied himself as a ladies' man.

RIVERA: He used to have a girlfriend -- girlfriends, yes. He liked to play around. PENHAUL: His mother insists he's innocent, but says she's confounded by her son's arrest.

VAN DER SLOOT: We are parents that know our kids. We try to educate them well. We try to care for them, warn them. And it's devastating that these things happen.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PENHAUL (on camera): Van Der Sloot and the other two suspects, the two Kalpoe brothers, should, under normal procedures, appear before a judge by Sunday, in order that he will decide whether to keep them in custody for a further 10 days. Also at that stage, one would expect formal charges to be lodged.

Anderson?

COOPER: Now, how long, theoretically, can they be kept in custody without charges being filed? Because, I know that it's a Dutch system. It's very different than the United States.

PENHAUL: As you say, very different from the U.S. But technically, at the end of this eight-day custody period that they're now into, then at that stage, the judge will have to hear the charges against them. That's when the prosecution will have to lodge those formal charges and then under a series of guidelines they could be held technically up to 116 days before this case comes to trial, Anderson.

COOPER: All right. Karl Penhaul, appreciate it.

The island of Aruba is about the size of the city of Washington, D.C. It's home to 70,000 to 80,000 people, but every year it's visited by many times that number of tourists who come, of course, for the white sand beaches and its free-wheeling nightlife and its friendly people.

Needless to say those hundreds of thousands of visitors invariably go home when their vacations are over. For one of them, of course, sad to say, for Natalee there, 18-years-old, from Alabama, she's not gone home. She has been missing now on that island of white sand beaches for more than two weeks.

We're joined live in Aruba by Pierre Kock, one of the many volunteers who has spent time searching for Natalee. Thank you very much for being with us, Pierre.

What sort of searches have you been involved with thus far?

Pierre, can you hear me? This is Anderson in New York. Obviously, we can't get in touch with Pierre. We'll try to get in touch with him and bring you that interview in a little bit.

360 next, inside the police investigation on Aruba. A look at what is known about Natalee Holloway and the three suspects, a timeline hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute, and day-by-day since she disappeared, what exactly do we know at this point in the investigation?

Also trying to bring you that interview with the search and rescue man.

Also tonight, driver beware. Is your car or truck at risk of catching fire, even when the engine's off? You won't want to miss this special CNN investigative report.

Also, the latest on the California quake, the third this week. Are they connected? We'll take a look. All that ahead.

Your picks, first. The most popular stories first on CNN.com right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: More now on the developing story out of Los Angeles. That's a live picture there of downtown L.A. A 4.9 magnitude earthquake hit the L.A. area a little more than a couple of hours ago. It wasn't a major earthquake, and as far as we've heard, it has not caused any significant damage.

The fact that it's the third California quake, however, in a week, does raise concerns that another one could be on the horizon, and some fear it might be even bigger.

CNN's Peter Viles takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VILES (voice-over): Is it a wave of earthquakes? Sunday, 5.2 magnitude in the California desert. Tuesday, 7.2 off the Northern California coast. Then, Thursday afternoon, 4.9 in the suburbs east of L.A. And there were others. Monday a big one in Chile, Tuesday a swarm of quakes in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Come here, let's get in the car.

VILES: What's going on here? Is this all a coincidence or a dangerous pattern in the giant quake and volcano zone that's known as the Ring of Fire? The official government explanation from the U.S. Geological Survey is that it's all a coincidence, but other experts aren't so sure.

Kate Hutton is known as the Earthquake Lady in Southern California.

KATE HUTTON, CALTECH SEISMOLOGIST: And Crescent City is right in here.

VILES: She says it's possible that these quakes are actually triggering each other.

HUTTON: Where one very large earthquake, such as the 7.8 in Chile yesterday, sends out very strong seismic waves that pass through the crust, if it encounters a fault which is about ready to break anyway, it might set it off. And we're looking into the possibility of a scenario like that to explain why we've had so many earthquakes in the last day.

VILES: And at the University of Southern California, which helped produce this model of a quake underneath downtown L.A., one expert says it's possible the quakes are all part of a single event, up and down the massive Pacific plate.

TOM HENYEY, USC GEOPHYSICIST: These three earthquakes that have occurred recently are all along the margin of the Pacific plate, and it's possible that the Pacific plate has moved as a unit, very suddenly, all at once, and these earthquakes occurred where the stresses happen to be high.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: That was Peter Viles reporting. We're going to be continuing to monitor the situation out of L.A. We'll bring you any updates as warranted.

Erica Hill from HEADLINE NEWS following a couple of other stories for us tonight. Good evening, Erica.

ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: Hey, Anderson, nice to see you.

We start off with the dramatic end to a hostage standoff at a school in Cambodia. Gunfire erupted when police overpowered the four gunmen and arrested them as they tried to escape. During the nearly six-hour standoff, a Canadian boy was shot and killed by one of the hostage takers. Government officials say the gunmen were drug-addicted bandits who demanded money, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and safe transport to the border with Thailand.

Philadelphia, Mississippi. Murder trial on hold. Former Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen is hospitalized after leaving the courthouse this morning in a stretcher. His lawyer says there's concern about his blood pressure. The 80 year old is accused of planning the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964. The case is dramatized in the movie, "Mississippi Burning."

And out of Santa Barbara, California. A police chase, this one, though, ending peacefully. The driver had been on the move for more than an hour, had three of his children in the SUV with him. Police say he might have taken the kids after getting into a fight with his ex-wife. But he did surrender after stopping at a dead end. So at least it ended without any shots fired or anybody getting hurt.

COOPER: Wow. All right. Erica Hill, thanks. We'll see you again in about 30 minutes.

Coming up next on 360, young people want change in Iran. They want it less oppressive, and they have the power in numbers to make it happen. So why aren't they voting? Go deep within Iran's borders to find out. Also tonight, centuries after his death, King Tut showing he's still got that charisma, that charm. We'll tell you about his tour and the mystery surrounding this ancient mummy.

And car trouble. Millions of American-made cars and trucks may be at risk of bursting into flames. We'll have the troubling report that every driver needs to see.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Tonight's "World in 360," the hope for change in a country President Bush once labeled as a member of "the axis of evil."

Tomorrow, Iran will hold elections to choose a new president. Now, young voters there perhaps have the most sway. Half the country's population is under the age of 25, which is remarkable if you think about it, and many of them want reform.

But as CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour found out, a lot of those young people are deliberately not voting.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the sound of love and heartbreak. Love for a profession that brings five young musicians to lonely practice sessions, tucked away in a tiny room on a rooftop. And heartbreak, that they're not allowed to play in public, that rock 'n roll, the universal language of youth, is not approved by Iran's Islamic Republic, that they feel well and truly outside the system.

The band is called Oriental Silence. And like all of them, drummer Amir Ali Kaheri, will not be voting Friday.

AMIR ALI KAHERI, DRUMMER (through translator): No, although I would have liked to. But I can't vote for these candidates. I don't like them.

AMANPOUR: The same goes for lyricist Payam Eslami.

PAYAM ESLAMI, LYRICIST (through translator): I want the rights and freedoms everyone is entitled to. Normal rights, nothing more.

AMANPOUR: If these young people feel shut out, these young people at Pars Online, Iran's biggest Internet service provider, are very much working the system, riding the Internet and IT boom that's just rolled around to Iran, and being paid above average wages.

MOHSEN LUTSI, IT ENGINEER: It makes me feel that we are moving forward as the world goes forward.

AMANPOUR: Twenty-three-year-old Mohsen Lutsi is among the company's young employees who returned from the U.S. and Europe to work here. With another million young Iranians about to hit the job market, presidential candidates this time are talking mostly about the economy, not Islam.

(on camera): With high unemployment and sensing deep social dissatisfaction, even the conservative candidates are speaking the language of reform and democracy. This, the legacy of the outgoing, reformist but hapless, President Mohamed Khatami.

CIAMIK NAMAZI, ANALYST: A lot of us have been pretty critical of President Khatami for all the things we hoped he could achieve and didn't, but perhaps this is the one achievement that we have to hand to him, that essentially the dialogue and the discourse, the political discourse that he created, the legacy lives on.

AMANPOUR: The mournful lament of Oriental Silence perhaps sums up feelings about a campaign that's being marked by threats of boycott and predictions of a lower turnout than usual, by people who hope but don't believe their vote will change much.

TAHERI (through translator): There may be small changes, but nothing major. But I really hope things will get better, because they must.

AMANPOUR: Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Tehran, Iran.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): Cars bursting into flames while they're parked.

WHELPLEY: How do you park a vehicle, go to bed, and in the morning, it's on fire?

COOPER: Tonight, what's causing it, and is enough being done to prevent it?

They met in a casino; then later at a bar. Two lives intersecting the night Natalee Holloway disappeared. Tonight, we retrace her steps and uncover details about the suspect thought to have last seen Natalee.

And the mysteries of King Tut revealed. What the boy-king looked like, and how he really died. 360 continues.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, imagine this. Your car's turned off, it's parked, and suddenly, with no one around, it just bursts into flames. That's exactly what's happening to some Ford vehicles built before 2004.

Just yesterday, one family filed a wrongful death suit over a fire that family members say started in a 1996 F-150 pickup, parked in the garage attached to their Iowa home. That's the picture there. The fire killed 74-year-old Darletta Mohlis and injured her 76-year-old husband.

Investigators for Ford and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spent hours earlier this week poking through the rubble of the house. NHTSA had no comment on the investigation, but Ford specifically denied the fire was caused by the truck.

Ford admits, however, it has a problem with some of its vehicles catching fire when parked and turned off. Ford's already recalled more than a million of its cars, trucks and SUVs. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it's investigating nearly 4 million more vehicles for the same problem -- 4 million more vehicles.

Now, in this exclusive report, CNN investigative correspondent Drew Griffin has uncovered new information on just how many more Ford vehicles may be at risk.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

911 OPERATOR: Fire rescue. What is your emergency?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please, my house is exploded. Something in my car -- my house is on fire.

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A frantic call to 911 at 5:00 in the morning.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my gosh.

GRIFFIN: A mother in a panic. Her 15-year-old daughter's bedroom wall is in flames.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My house is on fire! Please!

GRIFFIN: She makes several more calls to 911 before fire trucks arrive. Within minutes, the fire burned down the Kissimmee, Florida, house of Nestor Oyola and his wife Laura leaving their daughter Rotsenmary scarred.

ROTSENMARY OYOLA, HOUSE BURNED DOWN: It's difficult. But you know, we have to accept it.

GRIFFIN: So what went wrong? What could have possibly caused this much destruction?

NESTOR OYOLA, HOUSE BURNED DOWN (through translator): I bought the car on Monday. And Wednesday it burned everything.

GRIFFIN: The insurance investigation showed the 2001 Ford Expedition Nestor just bought his wife caught fire while it was parked and turned off in the garage.

Ken and Michelle Whelpley of Winterhaven, Florida, had a similar experience.

WHELPLEY: How do you park a vehicle, go to bed, sleep all night, and then in the morning, it's on fire? GRIFFIN: It sounds unusual, but CNN has learned fires like this have occurred all across the country. A neighbor took this picture of the Whelpley's truck.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Flames were shooting all the way up to the top of the garage. I couldn't believe it. I mean, just could not believe it.

GRIFFIN: In Orlando, a used car dealer's surveillance camera caught this car bursting into flames. It had been parked overnight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just come in the morning like a regular day and I see a car all burnt up. I'm like, what the -- it was a shock. I didn't know what to do. I lost all the money.

GRIFFIN: And with many of the cars and trucks sitting in garages, houses are being burned down, too.

WHELPLEY: What if we'd have died in this mess?

GRIFFIN: Four investigations by the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration have compiled 559 reports of Ford fires. And those investigations are focusing on one part under the hood.

HARVEY MICHEL, FIRE INVESTOGATOR: Sometimes when we're digging through this, we find the remains that failed.

GRIFFIN: Harvey Michel (ph) is a fire investigator and says he's seen about 30 of these Ford cases in just the last year.

MICHEL: Tire damage is more severe on top.

GRIFFIN: We asked him to look at the Whelpleys' burned, 2000 Ford F-150 pickup. Within 30 minutes, he finds what he says is the cause.

MICHEL: Here's the part. That is typical of the failure of the switch.

GRIFFIN: It's the cruise, or speed control deactivation switch. This is what several fire investigators hired by major insurance companies and auto engineers consulted by CNN say is causing the cars and trucks to ignite.

How? The pressure switch disconnects the cruise control when the driver steps firmly on the brake. That switch is attached to the brake master cylinder on one end and wired to the cruise control on the other.

Ford designed the switch to be powered -- or hot -- at all times even when the vehicle is off and the key is out of the ignition. What separates the electrical components from the brake fluid inside the switch is a thin film barrier. Investigators say the film can crack, allowing droplets of brake fluid to come in contact with the hot electrical components, sometimes, say investigators causing a fire.

And those fires can happen whether the vehicle is moving or even parked with the engine off. Firefighters in Deltona, Florida, say you can see it happen in this video. A firefighter was changing a fuse when he noticed the switch in his 1995 F-250 begin to smoke. A co- worker grabbed a video camera.

CHRIS NABICHT, DELTONA CHIEF FIRE MARSHAL: Had we allowed it to continue, it would have burst into flames and it would have consumed the vehicle.

GRIFFIN: Chris Nabicht is chief fire marshal for the city of Deltona. He says he's seen at least a half a dozen similar Ford fires.

NABICHT: The concern for people's lives and how fast this can occur. Whether you're in the vehicle or not in the vehicle, is kind of scary.

GRIFFIN: Houston attorney Mike Jolly agrees. He represents clients whose vehicles have caught fire while parked.

MIKE JOLLY, ATTORNEY: There's no reason to wire the switch hot, because you don't need to turn off the cruise control when the car is stopped and turned off and parked in your garage.

GRIFFIN: Five different auto engineers tell CNN the design is unique to Ford. And Ford has responded to the fires by issuing two separate recalls. The first in 1999 recalled nearly 300,000 Crown Victorias, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Cars.

Then, just this past January, Ford issued a second, larger recall 792,000 vehicles, including 2001 F-Series Super Crews, and 2000 Expeditions, Navigators and top selling F-150 pickups.

(on camera): Beyond those recalls, the federal government is investigating an additional 3.7 million Ford vehicles for the same problem. Now CNN has obtained this Ford document, which the company handed over to federal investigators. It shows a total of 16 million Ford cars and trucks have been built with what the company acknowledges is the same or similar switch.

(voice-over): The list includes recalled and non-recalled Expeditions, Explorers, F-Series pickups, Crown Victorias, Town Cars and Grand Marquis, some as early as 1992 and as recent at 2003. Also included are thousands of Tauruses, Econoline vans, Rangers and Windstars.

Ford declined our requests for an on camera interview. But in a statement to CNN, Ford says its records show the risk of fire differs for make, model and year. They say -- quote -- "it's important to understand that all speed control systems are not identical in Ford vehicles. In those populations with an increasing fire report rate, we stopped using the switch through the recall process. The switch has performed well in many models for many years."

Nearly half of those 559 Ford fires reported to the government safety agency as originating in the cruise control switch were in cars and trucks from model years not recalled. That includes the Expeditions owned by the Oyolas and that Orlando car dealer. NABICHT: They've taken the step by recalling certain models of vehicles. I think the recall probably needs to be much broader than what it is.

GRIFFIN: Ford's response to that? "We have been asked why we have not expanded the recall. The last thing we want to do is make an important safety decision on incorrect or incomplete information."

So what does Ford say is the reason the switch catches fire? Again, Ford wouldn't agree to be interviewed for this report. But this is what the company told us in an e-mail.

"We have not determined at this time that there is a defect with the switch. But for reasons we still do not understand, the switch is failing. And we are trying to understand why."

Ford says it's cooperating with a federal investigation into the fires. As for the switch, Ford has stopped using it. And is now using a new switch as of the 2004 model year. In the meantime, the Oyolas who made that desperate 911 call when their non-recalled SUV caught fire, are left to pick up their lives.

LAURA HERNANDEZ, HOUSE BURNED DOWN (through translator): Here, there is nothing to replace, nothing. I was left with nothing.

GRIFFIN: Firefighters found the family cat burned to death in this corner.

This is where Laura's daughter Rotsenmary dialed 911, as the Expedition was burning in the garage just a few feet away. She escaped with burns to her legs.

For Nestor Oyola, as a father, it's hard to talk about it. The night before the fire, he moved his wife's Expedition in the garage, hoping to keep it safe. He says he'll never forget it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: Anderson, the Oyolas are trying to rebuild their lives, but it hasn't been easy. Their insurance will not cover the full cost of rebuilding their home. They are hoping that a claim with Ford will be paid.

Anderson.

COOPER: So Drew, someone who thinks they may have a car with this switch, what should they do?

GRIFFIN: It's a good question -- one we did ask Ford. And Ford had no recommendation. Neither did the federal investigators who say they couldn't comment, or give any advice while the investigation is going on.

But experts that CNN has been dealing with say if you are concerned about this problem, you should probably take your vehicle down to a Ford dealership like this one, and have them disconnect the cruise control system. And at the very least, you should park your vehicle away from your home.

COOPER: What it does Ford say about the Iowa death that we mentioned earlier?

GRIFFIN: They went to Iowa. They sent their investigator and came back saying it wasn't their fault at all. In fact, they sent us this e-mail -- if I could read to you, Anderson -- that says "unfortunately, fires happen every year in all makes and models of all manufacturers for a number of reasons, including faulty repair, improper modification to the vehicle with aftermarket parts and wiring, or prior accident damage, even arson." So Ford not admitting fault in this particular fire in Iowa, and certainly not in any of the other hundreds of fires that we've been reporting on here.

COOPER: And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, what are they saying about the 16 million cars with this switch?

GRIFFIN: They have multiple investigations going on, Anderson. And each time they get close to issuing some kind of warning, Ford issues a recall. Currently NHTSA is telling us they are investigating and taking reports on the rest of these 16 million Ford Cars and trucks, asking Ford for any documents related to this. But NHTSA will not comment while the investigation is going on.

COOPER: All right. Drew Griffin, appreciate that exclusive report. You can go to CNN.com for more information about the story, you can see details on the cruise control switch, and you can get some answers to some questions you might have about the investigation.

Coming up next on 360, what exactly happened the night Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba. We're going to break it down for you hour-by-hour as police continue to search for clues.

Also ahead tonight, King Tut visits America. We're going to take a look at the mummy, his mysterious death centuries ago, and what we know now.

And a little later, more on today's earthquake in California, the third in just a week. We'll have a live report from L.A.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: I want to go back for a moment to the case of Natalee Holloway who went missing on the island of Aruba on May 30. Three young men remain in custody as suspects in her disappearance.

And what exactly happened that Monday night three and-a-half weeks ago? The pieces are starting to come together.

CNN's Karl Penhaul turns back the clock.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Neon lights pulling the gamblers and the curious. Drawn by the ringing of quarters in the slot machines, the spin of the roulette wheel, the roll of the dice. JAN VAN DER STRATEN, CHIEF POLICE COMMISSIONER: They meet each other in the casino the day before.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That day? Or a previous day? Or...

VAN DER STRATEN: The day before.

PENHAUL: Police say Natalee Holloway was here in the Holiday Inn Casino on Saturday night, May 28. It was her first known contact with one of the suspects, Joran Van Der Sloot, the 17-year-old son of an Aruban judge.

More neon lights, this time outside Carlos 'N Charlie's bar. Holloway came here to party the following Sunday night. She was with high school friends. She may not have realized she was taking a gamble of a different kind.

The bar is in Aruba's capital, Oranjestad, about 15 minutes' drive from the Holiday Inn where Holloway and her classmates were staying.

Joran Van Der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe seen here in photos printed in an Aruban newspaper showed up about 10:45 according to statements the Kalpoes made to investigators and seen by the defense attorney for another man who has been cleared of Natalee Holloway's disappearance.

CHRIS LEJUEZ, ATTORNEY FOR ABRAHAM JONES: And one of them stated that Joran danced with her.

PENHAUL: According to police it was around 1:00 a.m., closing time early Monday, when Natalee Holloway's friends watched her walk out of the bar and into a silver gray car with Van Der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers.

What we know about what happened next comes from those who have read the Kalpoe brothers' statements.

LEJUEZ: After they get in the car, one of them says she wanted to see the other side of the island, and the other one says she wanted to go have a look at the sharks.

PENHAUL: You can make it to the lighthouse from Carlos 'N Charlie's in around 20 minutes. The Kalpoes were said to be up front, Holloway and Van Der Sloot in the back.

LEJUEZ: They say that he was not only kissing her, but fondling her sexually.

PENHAUL: It's called California Lighthouse. It's a tourist attraction by day, by night an isolated romantic rendezvous. It's not clear the car even stopped, but even in the moonlight from here, it would have been tough for Holloway to see any sharks.

LEJUEZ: One said they drove by the lighthouse. The other said they did not get out of the car. PENHAUL: As they looked back, they would have passed Arashi Beach. Experts say if you dump an object here, the current will drag it west toward open ocean.

According to Lejuez, the suspects' statements deny stopping at the beach, but the area was searched shortly after Holloway's disappearance.

From Aruba's northwest tip, Lejuez says the Kalpoe brothers' statement describes heading back to the Holiday Inn.

LEJUEZ: One of them states that she fell asleep and they had to wake her up to ask her at what hotel she was staying.

PENHAUL: When they dropped off Holloway, Lejuez quotes the same of one of the Kalpoe brothers saying she was drunk and stumbled from the car. The other statement, Lejuez says, describes Holloway talking to a security guard dressed in black pants and a T-shirt.

Based on the statements, two security guards, Mickey John, and Abraham Jones, were arrested six days after Holloway went missing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do nothing. I fear nothing.

PENHAUL: They were released late Monday night after prosecutors decided there was no hard evidence against them.

Van Der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers were arrested around dawn last Thursday. Prosecutors formally accused them of murder one, murder two and kidnapping leading to death, but Dutch law is different from American law, and they've not yet been formally charged.

Defense lawyers for the three young men maintain their clients' innocence.

ANTONIO CARLO, JORAN VAN DER SLOOT'S ATTORNEY: My client is maintaining that is he innocent.

PENHAUL: Law enforcement sources close to the investigation say cracks are peering in Van Der Sloot and the Kalpoes' stories -- a view shared by one of the freed security guards who spoke to Deepak Kalpoe in the jail.

ABRAHAM JONES, FORMER SUSPECT: He told me that story of dropping the girl at the Holiday Inn was all made up. He dropped the Dutch guy with the missing girl close to the Mariott. And he and his brother went home.

PENHAUL: Those law enforcement sources say their accounts may be murky and their description of the facts not quite the same, but one indisputable fact, Natalee Holloway is missing without trace.

Karl Penhaul, CNN, Oranjestad, Aruba.

(END VIDEOTAPE) COOPER: Well, and these suspects in custody are supposedly pointing the fingers at one another. But we don't have any more details on that.

For an update now on the search in Aruba for Natalee Holloway, we go live to Palm Beach and Pierre Kock, one of the many volunteers who spent time doing that very difficult work. Pierre, thanks very much for being with us.

You specialize in searches in water. How hard is it to find an object that has been dumped in the water, especially say around Arashi Beach?

PIERRE KOCK, ARUBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE: Well, it depends. If we were called right away, you could get something floating within three or four miles. But the thing is, it has to be done early, because once it takes very long, it's going to be drifting outside on the northwest area and probably end up in the area of Panama.

COOPER: So something dumped, a body or an object, would not necessarily come back onto the shore, it would be swept, as you said, to Panama?

KOCK: Yeah. Correct. It will be heading northwest in that area. And it's going to be drifting all the way to the Panama area. We've had that with boats happening -- boats being lost that drifted all the way to Panama.

COOPER: And does it matter what time of day? I mean, if it's at night or very early in the morning in terms of the tides, do you know at what point what way the tides are going then?

KOCK: Well, it's basically heading in that direction, most of the tide in that area is heading in the northwest direction. So it really doesn't matter the time of day.

COOPER: When you conduct these searches, what kind of direction do police -- or have they been giving you?

KOCK: Well, we've coordinating very close to the police. They've been giving us search areas. We basically searched the north area of Aruba. We did a complete search on that. We did a bird sanctuary which was asked by the police for us to help over there. And out to the Frenchman's Pass. So, we basically covered most of the island.

COOPER: What do you think about the pace of this investigation, the pace of the search? Are there more areas that you wish you could get to? Do you feel like you've covered just about all there is?

KOCK: Well, basically we have covered the complete island. We did, together with (ph) lot of volunteers, we covered basically the full island. And anywhere that we could have checked, we've basically checked.

COOPER: Do you have a sense -- what do you think has happened? KOCK: Really, I don't know. I mean, we're still searching for Natalee. And it will be going on, but to the details I have, I have no idea about that.

COOPER: Fair enough. Pierre Kock, it's a thankless job. We appreciate what you're doing. And appreciate you joining us tonight. Thank you.

KOCK: Thank you.

COOPER: Erica Hill from HEADLINE NEWS joins us with the latest at about 13 to the hour. Erica.

HILL: Anderson, we start off in Iraq where an Iraqi judge and four police commandos are dead, killed by insurgents. The commandos were attacked by a suicide bomber in Baghdad's dangerous Airport Road, 22 others were hurt.

In the meantime in Mosul drive-by shooters killed the chief judge of the city's criminal court while he was on his way to work.

Near Boston, Massachusetts, a standoff ends with heavily armed suspects still on the run. The standoff happened after three men allegedly tried to rob an armored car with AK-47s. Now police thought they had two of them holed up in a house, but when they stormed it, they came up empty.

In Newman Lake, Washington, look at this poor little guy, its head got stuck in a small pipe. But luckily after two-and-a-half hours of slow and very careful pipe cutting the little kitten was freed. And we're told she's doing fine. She even has a new name, Knucklehead. Lucky little girl.

COOPER: Well, Erica, I see your cute little kitten cat story.

HILL: Oh, really?

COOPER: And I raise you a smoking chimp.

HILL: Yes!

COOPER: There it is, the smoking chimp who, I guess people would throw cigarettes to this chimp and it started taking up smoking.

HILL: Picked up some bad habits. I should have showed you a picture of my kitten. I just got a new kitten on Friday that we found. She was also abandoned.

COOPER: Oh, really?

HILL: But really, I'm just happy you didn't ambush me of video on spring break, when I was like 18, and had my parents waiting to look at it.

COOPER: Is there such video, because if there is?

HILL: No, it doesn't exist. And even if it did, I'd tell you it didn't.

COOPER: Yeah, I'm sure you would. Erica Hill, thanks very much. Let's get research on that right now, guys.

All right. 360 next, California rocked by yet another earthquake. We're going to go live to L.A. for the latest.

Also tonight, the return of the king, we're talking about King Tut. Funky Tut, will travel to his Egyptian Crypt to uncover how he may have died.

And tomorrow a 360 special, "Choose To Lose": inspiring stories of people went to extreme measures to lose the weight and kept it off. We'll tell you how.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: I want to update you now on our developing story. For the third time in just five days an earthquake has hit California. That's a live picture of a hazy-looking L.A. Measuring 4.9 it did, came just a few hours ago. It struck in the L.A. area.

CNN's Peter Viles is live in L.A. with the latest. Peter?

VILES: Anderson, it struck 70 miles east of here in a place called Yucaipa. Originally, they said this was a 5.3. They've since, as you said, downgraded it to a 4.9. So, they've down-graded it from originally saying it was moderate, to now saying it was light. They say, now -- the government does say there's a 5 to 10 percent chance that we'll see aftershocks as big as the original one or bigger.

But, the question everybody's asking, is, wait a minute, was this itself an aftershock? Are the three quakes we've had in five days somehow related? Here's how the scientists are answering that question right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LUCY JONES, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY: Obvious question everybody is asking, because we're having quite a few earthquakes. These are not direct aftershocks. They're a bit too far away. We do, you know -- when you have two fives a few days apart, you start wondering. But we've done this before and not had it lead onto anything else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VILES: But you heard her say, when you have two fives together like this, you start wondering. Well, and back to this one -- people out in Yucaipa tell us it lasted seven, eight, nine, 10 seconds, and that it started off kinda slow, but then it sustained itself, if you will. Felt like a horizontal push, one homeowner out there told us.

Here in L.A., 70 miles away, we felt it. It was much quicker than that, Anderson, maybe a second or two, but you definitely felt it and people felt it from almost Santa Barbara all the way down to San Diego, so a big area felt this. Anderson. COOPER: Catching a lot of people's attention. Peter Viles, appreciate it.

360 next, the golden boy comes to life. Born in Babylonia, moved to California, King Tut, Funky Tut, on tour and on 360 next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Seems only fitting that the town obsessed with youth would host the return to the first child star, the kid with all the bling. Put your hands together for King Tut. His new world tour opened today in L.A.

As the boy-wonder wows the crowd, scientists and the National Geographic Channel traveled to Egypt to explore the mysteries surrounding Tut's death, using state-of-the-art techniques to answer a more than 3,000-year-old riddle.

CNN's Rudi Bakhtiar has more in tonight's "Current."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BAKHTIAR (voice-over): In Egypt, nestled in the Valley of the Kings, is arguably the most famous tomb in the world, the tomb of King Tutankhamen, or King Tut. And buried with him are the secrets of his life and death. He became king when he was just 9 years old. Revered as half-man, half-God, ruling Egypt for almost a decade until he died at the age of 19. He was laid to rest over 3,000 years ago, virtually unknown to history until 1922, when an English archaeologist named Howard Carter made a discovery.

CHRIS JOHNS, EDITOR, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: They went into the burial chamber, and here are 3,000 antiquities in there, gold everywhere, an incredible sarcophagus. I mean, can you imagine this? Then you find Tut.

BAKHTIAR: And with that discovery, a mystifying legend was born. Chris Johns is the editor-in-chief of "National Geographic" magazine. They sent a team of scientists to Tut's tomb, armed with a CAT scan machine and cameras, determined to solve the mystery surrounding the boy king, particularly the legend of his assassination.

JOHNS: One of the long-held theories was that he had been struck in the back of the head. That somehow it had been a palace coup possibly. No one knew for sure.

BAKHTIAR: The first step of knowing for sure was carefully extracting Tut, who was encased in a solid gold coffin weighing almost 250 pounds. And then the scans, 3D images revealing ailments from the mysterious -- like these severed ribs -- to the mundane -- an impacted wisdom tooth. But they say, no evidence of murder. Rather it's this fracture in his left leg that most likely caused Tut's untimely death, from a war injury perhaps. The scientists believe that King Tut most likely died from an infection within five days of breaking his leg.

JOHNS: It was not a murder. He was not killed by a blow to the back of the head.

BAKHTIAR: The 3D imagery also provides a map of Tut's skull. The first glimpse of what we may have looked like. Working off the scans, artists complete the picture. And elongated egg-shaped head, a narrow face, and a small cleft pallet. Standing just 5'6" tall, he hadn't finished growing. Egypt's most famous king was barely even a man.

JOHNS: Giving Tut a face, puts a face on history. Every human being wishes, I think, that at some point in their life at least, that they were immortal. And I think Tut's an example of that.

BAKHTIAR: Rudi Bakhtiar, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Fascinating. You can watch the entire documentary June 20, on the National Geographic Channel.

I'm Anderson Cooper. Thanks for watching 360. CNN's primetime coverage continues now with Paula Zahn.

END

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com