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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

A Look at BTK code not completely figured out; Kobe Bryant Settles Civil Suit

Aired March 02, 2005 - 22:00   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.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone. Thank you, Larry.
We begin tonight with a story that couldn't be told, not all of it, not until now. It is a story built out of a puzzle that form a picture of a serial killer, BTK, pieces that in so many words and objects may also amount to a confession or, at their very least to a case for the prosecution.

So, we begin tonight again in Wichita, Kansas and CNN's David Mattingly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At first look, it appears to be a nonsensical mess of 323 letter and 14 numbers but look closer and you'll see why some now believe this is a BTK code, possibly revealing his tactics and maybe even his identity.

(on camera): When you started looking at this, how did you find all this information on here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Basically, everyone in the newsroom started looking at it as a puzzle too and, you know, it's like a crossword or like one of the word games and you just started looking for words. What's absolutely amazing in this, though, is unlike any other crossword or any other word game where you're looking for words, as you start to see these words, the reactions of people here in the newsroom is, oh my God.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He talked about the relationship in the scouts.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): The code was delivered to Wichita station KAKE almost a year ago, withheld from the public until now. It seems to spell out a three part chapter, a how-to guide for BTK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After the suspect had been apprehended and they had somebody in custody we felt like the benchmark for what we could and could not release, you know, was certainly lowered.

MATTINGLY: The first section seems to describe how the killer stalks a victim. Some words are easy to find, prowl, spot victim, follow, fantasies, steam builds, and go for it. Another section suggests possible disguises, realtor, insurance, serviceman, fake ID and handyman.

JEFF HERNDON, KAKE ANCHOR: Probably what he pretended to be to perhaps gain entry into some of these homes. Interesting enough maybe he's spilling out his story right here in this word puzzle. There's part of his address on there. We've seen Dennis Rader, D. Rader.

MATTINGLY: Overnight, it has become the hottest word puzzle in Wichita. Viewers of the KAKE Web site contact the station with their own surprising findings in the BTK code.

(on camera): And what are you finding here?

DAVE GRANT, KAKE ASST. NEWS DIRECTOR: It's a strange reference to a number 2043 that this writer says also is a reference to a chemical term. If you notice, the initials are BTK.

MATTINGLY: BTK.

(voice-over): But the most surprising finding of all may be in a small set of numbers, 622 and 0, slightly out of sequence but identical to the house number of BTK suspect Dennis Rader.

TIMOTHY ROGERS, "THE WICHITA EAGLE": Would you have seen it before Mr. Rader was arrested, probably not. Now that it's there, hey, someone should have seen it, you know.

MATTINGLY: Are we possibly reading more into this than we need to?

ROGERS: I think you could be or it could have been his way of trying to provide the clues and saying, hey, it was all there in front of your face. You just didn't see it.

MATTINGLY: Also a recipient of numerous BTK communications over the years, the "Wichita Eagle" newspaper reports finding 130 words, numbers and phrases in the code but many seem to have no connection to the case or do they? What is clear to those who have poured over these cryptic communications is that the killer seemed to enjoy playing games.

ROGERS: Maybe that situation was like "I handed you what I was doing or how you could find me. You just weren't smart enough to put it together."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The reporting by CNN's David Mattingly in Wichita.

For all the hints that the killer dropped it may have been something he never intended to be seen that ultimately did him in, a file on a floppy disk in the most recent batch of items he sent. He might have thought that file was gone, deleted, so might anyone.

Here's CNN's Daniel Sieberg.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The oldest rule in the book for cyber sleuths is delete doesn't mean gone. It's John Mallery's mantra. Part of his job as a computer forensics consultant is to make technical stuff understandable.

JOHN MALLERY, COMPUTER FORENSICS EXPERT: You have a library and for those of you that remember card catalogs. If you take a card out of the card catalog, the book is still in the shelf. When you delete a file, the pointers go away. The data still stays there. It can stay there for five seconds. It can stay there for years. It stays there until the operating system decides to write over that deleted file with new data.

SIEBERG: Having lived in Kansas for 17 years, Mallery is familiar with the BTK case. Press reports say data on a floppy disk was critical for investigators. Mallery gives me a rudimentary but effective demonstration of how deleted data can be recovered.

MALLERY: We'll look at the flop here. In this case you have a deleted Word document. I'm going to scroll down and what you're looking at here is the contents of this deleted Word document.

There's additional information added to the file when you create a document, so the user name can often be added to that document, the company name, the computer name, the original location. In the BTK case that might have been what helped law enforcement track this person down.

SIEBERG: So, if I delete something is it gone, deleted?

MALLERY: If you just delete something, no it is not gone.

SIEBERG: And if I empty the recycle bin?

MALLERY: It's not gone.

SIEBERG: And if I format the hard drive?

MALLERY: It's not gone.

SIEBERG (on camera): This is basically what the hard drive on your computer might look like and, believe it or not, you could take a sledge hammer to it and you still may not destroy everything that's on it. Even a fire may not do it. In fact, forensics experts say the only way to guarantee that all the information is gone is to shred, smelt or pulverize it.

(voice-over): Any time you turn on a computer, open a file, type a key, send a message there's a record.

MALLERY: The only safe computer is one that you never turn on and you bury in the ground six feet underground.

SIEBERG: Daniel Sieberg, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: Whatever part computer science plays in all of this it almost certainly only plays a supporting role. The real star in this case, the real fascination is the machinery of the mind and the motivation and where it all comes unstuck.

N. G. Berrill is a forensic psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice right across the street pretty much, nice to have you with us. This guy, whoever this guy is, I mean I don't know if they have the right guy or not, we'll find out eventually, but somebody is sending these hints and these puzzles and these pleadings. What is that about? Why?

DR. N. G. BERRILL, JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE: People that normally, if you want to call it normally, commit these types of crimes, serial murders suffer in part from a terrible grandiosity. In other words, it's perhaps not even enough to have the power over life and death, you know, chasing people like prey, hunting them down and killing them.

So, when that no longer provides the thrill they're looking for, perhaps it's time to flirt with the press or to tease the police department a little bit and let them know that, you know, "Hey I'm out here. You know I'm out here and you don't really know who I am and how to catch me," so it's part of the game.

BROWN: But they're not psychotic.

BERRILL: No, they're not, no.

BROWN: Sociopaths?

BERRILL: Sociopaths, I like, you know.

BROWN: And the difference being?

BERRILL: The difference being if you're talking about psychotic you're talking about a mentally ill person, perhaps the way they look, the way they behave overly, you know, you can tell something is terribly wrong.

BROWN: Yes.

BERRILL: Something very peculiar. A psychopath or antisocial individual is able to definitely keep these impulses, murderous impulses to themselves. If they're going to act on them and actually begin stalking people, it's not in their best interest or self interest to flag that to anybody. After all, you're going to get caught. People are going to stop you.

BROWN: The one I've known in my life, Ted Bundy, I mean I actually knew...

BERRILL: Sure.

BROWN: ...was the most among many ordinary traits was extraordinarily manipulative outside of the homicidal rages. I mean just when you dealt with him he was manipulative. Is manipulative a trait?

BERRILL: Absolutely. You know the idea that I'm brighter than you are and I perhaps want to put on the charm but the end result of that is to get you to do things or get you to behave in ways that give me a little bit of a kick.

BROWN: Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming in.

BERRILL: Sure, absolutely.

BROWN: Thank you.

Other news tonight, a Chicago federal judge's husband and elderly mother were shot to death on Monday. I spoke tonight to the "Chicago Sun Times." Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow is quoted as saying, "If someone was angry at me, they should go after me. It's not fair to go after my family. It was just cold-blooded. Who would do this? I'm just furious."

The judge's mention of somebody angry at me could well reference a white supremacist who threatened her life. More on that part of the story in a moment but first the murder investigation that has transfixed Chicago.

Here's CNN's Keith Oppenheim.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Late Wednesday evening, Chicago Police released these sketches of what they call two people of interest, people who could lead to answers as to why the husband and mother of Federal Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow were shot to death in the family's home.

It's the latest update in a continuing story. The "Chicago Tribune" reports a broken window, a possible point of entry, has a fingerprint on it and that a blood shoeprint suggests the killer or killers tried to clean up the scene before leaving.

The "Chicago Sun Times" reported that a witness saw a suspicious car with two men in it parked outside Lefkow's home and says the Lefkow's received a series of phone calls Sunday night which may have come from a correctional center in Chicago.

The significance of that is last year Matt Hale, a white supremacist, was convicted of plotting to kill Judge Lefkow. Hale is now behind bars in Chicago awaiting sentencing.

However, prison officials tell CNN that in general outgoing phone calls are permitted but must be on a pre-approved list and may be monitored. Still, as the information about this case is flooding the Chicago media, investigators are making one thing consistently clear they're not jumping to conclusions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It could be anything from a random act of violence to somebody that the judge handled to somebody that her husband, who was a very prominent lawyer, handled. We just don't know and it's too soon to make an assessment on that.

OPPENHEIM: Judge Lefkow's husband Michael was an attorney who largely handled cases about employment disputes. His downtown Chicago office, where everything on his desk rests just as he left it, is down the hall from his business partner Bill Speigleberger (ph). Speigleberger wonders if someone from Mike Lefkow's past could be involved in these killings.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't at all know that it's happened but given the fact that Mike Lefkow had such a long legal career, it might be a wise thing to look into some disgruntled people that he's had to deal with over the years.

OPPENHEIM: In the meantime, the case has set off a reaction from the federal bench where threats to judges are nothing new. Still, veteran appellate Judge Bill Bauer says blanket protection for judges isn't warranted.

WILLIAM BAUER, FEDERAL JUDGE: You're not going to be absolutely safe no matter where you are or what you're doing and you cannot protect yourself entirely from that -- from crazy people.

I am overwhelmingly sad.

OPPENHEIM: Judge Wayne Anderson is shaken not by the dangers to judges but by the danger to their families and he believes what happened in Judge Lefkow's home calls for a security review.

WAYNE ANDERSON, JUDGE: I feel there ought to be a discussion led by the attorney general of the United States with respect to what, if any, measure should be taken by judges individually, by us as families, and by the system as a whole to protect the third branch of government.

OPPENHEIM: And no doubt the third branch has been shaken but it may take time before it's clear whether the murders in Judge Lefkow's family were connected to what she or her attorney husband did for a living.

Keith Oppenheim, CNN, Chicago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Next month, Matt Hale will be sentenced for plotting to kill Judge Lefkow. Although he's been in jail for quite a while, people who keep track of white supremacists say his incarceration likely has not diminished his influence.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Matt Hale liked to make himself out as a sort of renaissance man of hate, an intellectual racist. He called himself "Pontificus Maximus" and he was the supreme leader of the grandiosely named World Church of the Creator.

MATT HALE: Our morals, our beliefs, our horizon is white. BROWN: Mark Potok monitors hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: They're essentially neo-Nazis. They believe that Jews are behind every evil that they manipulate the world.

BROWN: Hale once claimed to have 80,000 followers. In reality, Potok's group says there are more like 100. But, if they were few, they could be deadly. In 1999, Hale was denied a law license by Illinois authorities who felt, oddly enough, that he didn't possess sufficient moral character. One of Hale's followers then went on a killing spree, randomly shooting people apparently because they were not white.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have to then ask you if you do not in some way feel some responsibility.

HALE: No, we don't for the same reasons that the pope in Rome does not feel responsible for abortion clinic bombings.

BROWN: Hale evaded prosecution that time but in 2001 he was caught on tape soliciting the murder of Judge Lefkow, who had ordered his church to change its name as a result of a copyright dispute. Here's Hale responding to a man named Tony Evola about getting the judge's address. What he does not realize is that Evola is an FBI plant.

SECRETLY RECORDED CONVERSATION DECEMBER 5, 2002

EVOLA: It got a way of getting it. When we get it, we going to exterminate the rat?

HALE: Well, whatever you want to do.

BROWN: Matt Hale was convicted this time and was already in jail awaiting his sentence when this week's murders in Chicago took place. Potok says that if, and he emphasizes the if, this is a case of domestic terrorism he thinks it would be a case of one of Hale's followers acting on his own. In Potok's world, they call that sort of person a lone wolf.

POTOK: This is a threat that has absolutely not gone away since 9/11.

BROWN: He points to Timothy McVeigh as the prime example of the lone wolf and says just because there is more emphasis on stopping al Qaeda these days, the threat from these homegrown terrorists is still very real. In fact, he warns that the disintegration of groups like Hale's or others, like the Aryan Nations or the National Alliance may put the rest of us in greater danger.

POTOK: And as ironic as it might seem, leaders of even the most extreme groups have in many instances in effect acted as a break on members in the groups. You know they tend to say things like, you know, "Yes, we're going to kill all the Jews but that will be next week. You know, keep your guns holstered this week."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Again, Matt Hale will be sentenced next month in Chicago.

More to come on the program tonight, starting with Kobe Bryant. He and the woman who says he raped her have settled their lawsuit, a civil lawsuit.

Also tonight, a young man with a gilded background who did foul deeds then tried to keep living the good life.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He would have spent more time on the run in Europe than actually incarcerated.

BROWN (voice-over): He's a convicted rapist and he could be getting out of jail soon. Next, the fight to keep Alex Kelly behind bars.

For 50 years, the mystery tormented a family.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gordy (ph) was my little brother. He was three of five and he went to Korea and disappeared.

BROWN: Fifty years later a mystery solved.

A day later, how telling the story of anysoldier.com has turned into a story of generosity and dedication to the troops far from home.

And from Washington, the story of baseball, triumph and race comes home to the White House, meantime we'll stay right here because this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Late word out of Denver tonight, basketball star Kobe Bryant has settled a civil lawsuit brought by the woman who claims that he raped her in 2003. Mr. Bryant has maintained that their sexual encounter was consensual, though he has apologized and he said he now understand that she didn't see it as consensual. Criminal charges were dropped when the woman refused to testify. So, the settlement brings an end to the matter but something happened to Kobe Bryant along the way. His image has lost its luster.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): For most of his career on the basketball court, he has been sublime, made rich on the court, richer off it. If Allen Iverson was hip-hop, Kobe Bryant was Madison Avenue by design.

JOHN WERTHEIM, "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED": With the exception of Michael Jordan, you're unlikely to find a basketball player who is more meticulous about his image, everything from how he appears in public. He's very selective about his endorsements. BROWN: But one night in Colorado changed all of that. At the very least, it led to a public and messy admission of adultery and far worse to charges of rape. Kobe Bryant went from the perfect transition, from the era of Michael, to an accused sex offender and even in these days sex offenders don't sell much soda or candy bars.

WERTHEIM: This has done irrevocable economic harm to Kobe Bryant and it also has does harm in that sort of ineffable, incalculable sort of buzz image factor.

BROWN: Whatever exactly happened in Colorado that night he is, to be sure, no longer the NBA's golden goose, not untouchable exactly but no longer money in the bank either. His jersey used to be a top seller, no more.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've got Lakers merchandise but not Kobe, no and I probably wouldn't right at the moment to be honest.

BROWN: When opinion turns on you, it turns hard. Today, Bryant gets blamed for everything gone wrong with his once storied Lakers. He couldn't get along with the team's other star Shaquille O'Neal. He couldn't get along with the coach either. He wanted the spotlight all to himself, the writers write, a sort of death by column inch.

WERTHEIM: Quite apart from the legal issues, I just think on the floor Kobe isn't regarded as the player he once was. You combine that with all he's gone through and the bloodless coup of Phil Jackson, who of course is a storied coach who Kobe basically sort of cut loose and you put all that together and I think you could certainly make the case that it will take something really remarkable for us not to look back on him and say that his career peaked in 2003.

BROWN: Which doesn't mean he won't be rich and famous. It doesn't mean he won't be an all-star or win more championships but it does mean something. It means he won't be like Mike or Larry or Magic.

Whatever exactly went on in that room in Colorado, whatever went on that led to a rape charge that led to an apology that led to tonight's settlement, whatever it was virtually guarantees that if nothing else.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Almost 20 years ago, Alex Kelly was a gifted athlete, a high school wrestler, a child of privilege and then came charges of rape. Alex Kelly, the golden boy, fled the country evading justice for years. Eventually, he was convicted, sentenced to 16 years in prison.

He's now served half that time and tomorrow he'll ask a parole board in Connecticut to set him free. His victims will testify as well and you'll hear from them in a moment, first, CNN's Chris Huntington on the beginning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the face of a convicted rapist. In 1986, Alex Kelly was a popular 18- year-old high school wrestling star in Darien, Connecticut, one of the wealthiest towns in the nation.

SHEILA WELLER, AUTHOR, "SAINT OF CIRCUMSTANCE": The context of that town at the time was privileged kids having keg parties, having, you know, cutting school. It's a lot of drinking, a lot of feeling they could -- they could walk on water so to speak. But and in the midst of this was somebody with a real problem.

HUNTINGTON: In February, 1986, Kelly, who had a record as a juvenile offender, was charged with raping and choking two girls, one from his high school another from a nearby town.

But just before his trial was due to begin, Kelly fled to Europe, skipping out on $200,000 bail. For eight years, he lived on the lam and lived well with money wired from his parents, shown here, visiting him in Sweden.

But in January, 1995 with authorities closing in and his U.S. passport about to expire, Kelly surrendered in Switzerland. He was extradited to the United States with bail boosted to $1 million to make sure he didn't take off again. Kelly's attorney at the time publicly accused the girls of lying.

THOMAS PUCCIO, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I think you'll see when these allegations are scrutinized under cross-examination that they'll fly away.

HUNTINGTON: But two years and two trials later, Alex Kelly was convicted of raping one of the women and he pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting the other.

Kelly was sentenced to serve 16 years in Connecticut State Prison but now having served only half that sentence he is up for parole, a beneficiary of a recent state court decision on just how much time felons must serve. Prosecutors have filed their objections with the parole board.

DAVID COHEN, STATE ATTORNEY, STANFORD, CT: We believe that he should serve every day of that sentence. He would have spent more time on the run in Europe than actually incarcerated.

HUNTINGTON: Sheila Weller, who has written extensively about the case, says Kelly's conviction shatters a number of common stereotypes.

WELLER: You can be a good-looking, well bred, you know, young Republican-looking handsome young man from the best town in the country and be a rapist.

HUNTINGTON: And nobody knows that better than Alex Kelly's victims.

Chris Huntington, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The two known victims of Alex Kelly, there's always been suspicion that there were others who never came forward, have both grown into strong young women. In them you sense no misguided sense of shame, no hiding.

They look you in the eye when they talk about what happened to them when they were kids. Both women will be at tomorrow's hearing. They have vowed to do everything they can to keep their attacker behind bars.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): It can be said and it would be true that Alex Kelly raped the wrong women. Strong and unforgiving they will do what they can to keep him in prison.

HILLARY BUCHANAN, RAPE VICTIM: I'm doing this to, you know, to protect other women. I feel he's a sexual predator. I don't look to the past and say, well you know, I'm not bringing it all back up again. I'm just trying to fight for what's going on now.

ADRIENNE VAK, RAPE VICTIM: I don't believe he should be granted his freedom when he took my freedom from me for so many years. I spent a long time, ten years of my life, without any freedom, looking behind my shoulder, wondering if he was going to come after me, not knowing where he was, scared. I was a prisoner of fear every day for ten years and now he wants his freedom when he took mine away.

BROWN: They were children of privilege in that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) part of Connecticut. He was a rich, good-looking kid, the kind of boy who could have most any girl. He was something else as well.

BAK: I believe that he's a sexual predator and a serial rapist who without hesitation after raping me, knowing that I told and was going to do something about it, simply went out and raped somebody in less than four days.

BROWN: To date, Alex Kelly has spent less time in jail than he spent abroad as a fugitive, living the high life, the wealthy young playboy living on his parents' money. His victims think about that little fact a lot. He was out there all those years, a rapist, living it up and they were growing up trying to cope with what he did.

BUCHANAN: It was almost like a paid vacation. He was playing in the Alps and skiing and having fun and, you know, I just think that it's just -- it's like salt in a wound really, I mean when you're trying to get this guy to have some kind of punishment for the brutal crime that he committed against Adrienne and I and now he's actually having more fun than most people do in their entire lives.

BAK: It's really sick to think that you would go to those means to try to protect and aid and abet your son who's done these terrible crimes. It's -- I think they're just as guilty as he is.

BROWN: Alex Kelly's parents still live in Darien. They did not respond to our request for comment. On behalf of their client, Kelly's lawyers said they would no statement and no comment. But he has written a letter to the parole board. To the victims he wrote, "I am truly sorry. I know these are empty words to you" he goes on "but you deserve to hear them."

BAK: If he even tries to tell the court that he's a different man than he was then, it's going to be outrageous because he hasn't changed one bit from the time in 1987 to the time in 1997, so how can we expect that he's changed from 1997 to today?

BROWN: Soon for the first time since their testimony sent him to prison, they will meet again, not kids anymore, not him or them face- to-face again.

BUCHANAN: You know, it -- it puts some butterflies in your stomach. It's a little tough in the beginning. But when I really think about him, I just kind of think of him as a nonperson.

BAK: Well, it's going to be frightening, I think. I asked if he could be restrained. I'm concerned. I don't know what he's feeling or how dangerous he's going to -- he could potentially be or how angry, agitated he could get, based on what I might have to say.

BUCHANAN: He's a bad judge of character, because both Adrienne and I have turned out very strong. And we're amazing, I think. And both of us, you know, when we talk on the phone, I just -- it's a great feeling that the two of us have come out on the other side of this being great and OK.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The hearing is tomorrow in Connecticut.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT tonight, 50 years ago, he disappeared on a mission over Korea -- how the mystery was finally solved, what it means for his family and his country.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Sad marker tonight. The U.S. death toll in Iraq reached 1,500 this week. Most of the troops killed have died battling the insurgency.

For their families, every soldier's death is cloaked in questions. Unanswered, the questions can haunt. Those who are lucky, if you can call it that, learn how and where their loved one died. They're able to say goodbye, hold a proper burial. They have a grave to visit. For more than 50 years, though, the Cope family had none of that. They had no answers at all. But today, remarkably, they do.

Here's CNN's Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) STARR: Troy Gordon Cope was just 29 in September 1952 when he took off in his F-86 fighter named Rosie, after his wife, and headed for the Yalu River, dividing North Korea and China. He never returned.

CARL COPE, BROTHER: Gordie was my little brother. He was three of five. He went to Korea and disappeared.

STARR: For half-a-century, his family could only wonder and hope. Troy Cope was one of more than 8,000 Americans missing in action during the Korean War. Jerry Jennings leads the effort to find out what happened to American troops missing in action from all the nation's wars.

But this case became special, a case with coincidences, mysteries, and unprecedented international cooperation. So, on a cold winter day, Jennings and his team came back to the very place Cope fell to thank the Chinese government for helping find him and to tell the story of a half century search.

JERRY JENNINGS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Captain Cope and his wingman, Captain Karl Dittmer, encountered four MiG-15s near the Yalu. Karl Dittmer was able to chase away several of the MiGs, but he lost radio and visual contact with Captain Cope in the dense clouds. Captain Cope was never heard from again.

STARR: A trail of clues led to this site, a mountainside in China, now the front yard of a new house. This is where the remains of Troy Cope were found, the first American MIA of the Korean War ever recovered from China. The first break came in 1995.

JENNINGS: An American businessman who had visited the regional military museum here in Dandong reported that had seen a medal identification tag or dog tag.

STARR: It was Cope's dog tag, proof he had crashed over China. But where?

(on camera): North Korea is just across the Yalu River from here in modern-day Dandong, China, where Troy Cope was shot down half a century ago.

(voice-over): On that day, Captain Cope had one of the most dangerous missions of the war, to engage North Korean MiG fighters before they could attack U.S. bombers.

But Troy Cope flew into the jaws of an enemy he never expected. The U.S. discovered they were facing highly trained Russian pilots, not inexperienced North Koreans. This led to another discovery three years later. American investigators examining Russian military archives were stunned to find a description of a ferocious dogfight written by a Russian pilot, the report noting, "The aircraft banked sharply to the left and started to fall out of control. The pilot, together with the aircraft, crashed into a Chinese peasant home." The details led to only one conclusion. This was Troy Cope and this was where he fell. For years, Troy Cope's nephew, Chris, met each year with Pentagon officials about the fate of the uncle he never knew. In May 2004, unexpected news. The U.S. team was going to begin excavating in China. He was determined to be there.

CHRIS COPE, NEPHEW: When I saw his boot heel, I knew. There was no question in my mind that that was Gordie. Even though we knew that he perished in the crash, I knew where he was. I knew the circumstances of what caused his death. I knew there was an explosion on impact. You know, so all the pieces fit together.

STARR: For Troy's brother Carl, closure brought home by his own son.

CARL COPE: After he told me what they had found and that he actually saw it, he was convinced that it was my brother. And that, of course, I felt was good.

STARR: More than 52 years after his plane went down, Captain Troy Cope will be laid to rest in this Texas cemetery, a chapter closing, but a family changed forever. Troy's father died without ever knowing what happened to his son, and his mother committed suicide, the family convinced, a direct result of her son's unknown fate.

CHRIS COPE: There's no question in my mind that it was.

STARR: One last twist in this tale. Brigadier General Ralph Jodice, the defense attache in China, was once the commander of the 335th Fighter Squadron, Troy Cope's unit.

BRIG. GEN. RALPH JODICE, DEFENSE ATTACHE TO CHINA: He will be remembered forever for paying that ultimate sacrifice.

STARR: For the U.S. military, the 52-year hunt is a message to today's G.I.s. No one is left behind on the battlefield.

Barbara Starr, CNN, along the China-North Korea border.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Pretty remarkable story, huh?

Getting back to Iraq for a moment, we don't get many great news stories these days, but we had one last night. And when we do, it makes a lot of difference around here. We suspect to you, too. Last night, Beth Nissen introduced us to AnySoldier.com, the work of the Horn family, a Web site and shipping operation that allows people to send the troops in Iraq or troops anywhere cherish, the little things that keep them happy, candy bars, toilet paper, toys for Iraqi children, connections with home.

We got an awful lot of e-mail about the story last night. And even better, Marty Horn is getting a lot of hits on his Web site, so many, in fact, that the server they have couldn't handle it all. So their I.T. folks came in today and did what I.T. folks do. They fixed it all. So, once again, if you'd like to help -- and your mail to us says you do -- the web address is www.anysoldier.com. That's one word, anysoldier.com. And log on to it, if you're so inclined, and they'll pretty much walk you through the process.

Ahead on the program, the life of another American hero. What's the astronaut former Senator John Glenn up to today?

And also honoring the man, that man, who broke baseball's color barrier, Jackie Robinson.

And we'll wrap it up with morning papers, as we always do.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In 1962, John Glenn did something no American had ever done before. And 36 years later, he made history a second time.

As part of CNN's anniversary series "Then and Now," we look back tonight at John Glenn's remarkable story and where he is today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Godspeed, John Glenn.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): He's got the right stuff. The first American to orbit the earth, John Glenn became an instant American hero. Later, inspired by Bobby Kennedy, he ran for political office, becoming a U.S. senator from Ohio. He served for 24 years until 1998. Glenn left Capitol Hill and the surly bonds of earth one more time. At the age of 77, he became the oldest person ever to go into space. Now 83, Glenn is far from retired, dividing his time between Ohio and Washington, where he serves on a NASA advisory board.

JOHN GLENN, ASTRONAUT: I don't think retirement would be much fun anyway.

O'BRIEN: He and his wife Annie have founded the John Glenn Institute for Public Service at Ohio State University, where he serves as an adjunct professor.

GLENN: Mainly involved with letting students know the value of public service and public participation in politics.

O'BRIEN: Glenn is also still involved in politics, serving as a delegate at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

GLENN: It's been a very active life and one that I could not have foreseen at all when I was a kid growing up back in New Concord, Ohio.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Two threads of a story came together at the White House today. It is perhaps the longest-running story the country has. The story is such without a final chapter. But the chapter written today makes it just a little easier to believe we are getting there. The fact that it also involves baseball and perhaps the bravest man who ever played the game is just a bonus.

Here's CNN's Ed Henry.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Bush welcomed the Boston Red Sox to the White House to celebrate their World Series victory.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And welcome to the citizens of the Red Sox nation.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

HENRY: An hour earlier, the president attended a Capitol ceremony honoring Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color barrier in 1947.

BUSH: His story is one that shows what one person can do to hold America account.

HENRY: Both ceremonies about baseball. But there's another thread binding them together. Robinson wanted to play for the Red Sox and never got the chance because of the color of his skin. So, the new owners of the Red Sox worked behind the scenes to get the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously awarded to Robinson.

LARRY LUCCHINO, PRESIDENT & CEO, BOSTON RED SOX: So many things are bestowed on a baseball team. We have a responsibility to do something positive with that recognition, with that notoriety, and it seemed to me that it was long overdue.

HENRY: In 1945, the Red Sox brought Robinson in for a tryout at Fenway Park, a tryout that was, in truth, only a sham. A team official allegedly shouted a racial slur from the stands, making it clear there was no intention of signing the future hero.

(on camera): How does that make you feel, knowing that happened?

LUCCHINO: Well, we knew when we acquired the team in 2001 that we were acquiring a lot of wonderful things, the beloved ballpark, the great history and legacy of the Red Sox, but we knew we were also acquiring a team that had a checkered history with respect to race relations.

HENRY (voice-over): Boston was the last Major League team to integrate its roster in 1959, a dozen years after Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. This legacy led the team to push Senator John Kerry and other home state lawmakers to secure the Gold Medal for Robinson, which pleased the late ball player's widow.

RACHEL ROBINSON, WIDOW OF JACKIE ROBINSON: I think any sign that an organization is turning around and trying to do the right thing is important.

HENRY: Current Red Sox players also applauded the award, with slugger David Ortiz noting that Robinson's legacy still resonates.

DAVID ORTIZ, BOSTON RED SOX: He's just one of the biggest things that ever happened in baseball for all of us. And we all really appreciate that.

HENRY: Former Negro League player James Tillman, 85, proudly attended the ceremony and said the Red Sox erased some of the stain.

JAMES TILLMAN, FORMER NEGRO LEAGUE PLAYER: I really think it helps immensely. It's a good thing. That's what I can say, a very good thing.

HENRY: And, as Jackie Robinson once said, a life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Ed Henry, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. Not much time tonight, so we'll do this very quickly.

"Chicago Sun-Times," we'll come back to this at the end. "I Do Believe It Was a Hit" is the headline. "In Emotional Interview, Judge Lefkow Says She Fears Murders of Her Family Linked to Her Job." A couple of sketches of people of interest. This is a great and sad story.

Sports stories all over the front pages today, if I could get them. "The Rocky Mountain News." "C.U." -- that's Colorado University -- "Finger-pointing, Tempers Flare, Barbs Fly. A.G. Declares It's Time to Get to the Bottom of Controversies." This involves the football program at Colorado.

"The Examiner of Washington." "First Game, First Win. Nats" -- that would be the Washington Nationals -- "Defeat the Mets 5-3." It doesn't count yet. On the other -- oh, got to go, really? "Cable Cars Halted in San Francisco."

Weather tomorrow in Chicago, "spritely."

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: "PEOPLE IN THE NEWS" special on the release of Martha Stewart here tomorrow at 10:00.

We'll see you again on Friday. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.


Aired March 2, 2005 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone. Thank you, Larry.
We begin tonight with a story that couldn't be told, not all of it, not until now. It is a story built out of a puzzle that form a picture of a serial killer, BTK, pieces that in so many words and objects may also amount to a confession or, at their very least to a case for the prosecution.

So, we begin tonight again in Wichita, Kansas and CNN's David Mattingly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At first look, it appears to be a nonsensical mess of 323 letter and 14 numbers but look closer and you'll see why some now believe this is a BTK code, possibly revealing his tactics and maybe even his identity.

(on camera): When you started looking at this, how did you find all this information on here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Basically, everyone in the newsroom started looking at it as a puzzle too and, you know, it's like a crossword or like one of the word games and you just started looking for words. What's absolutely amazing in this, though, is unlike any other crossword or any other word game where you're looking for words, as you start to see these words, the reactions of people here in the newsroom is, oh my God.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He talked about the relationship in the scouts.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): The code was delivered to Wichita station KAKE almost a year ago, withheld from the public until now. It seems to spell out a three part chapter, a how-to guide for BTK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After the suspect had been apprehended and they had somebody in custody we felt like the benchmark for what we could and could not release, you know, was certainly lowered.

MATTINGLY: The first section seems to describe how the killer stalks a victim. Some words are easy to find, prowl, spot victim, follow, fantasies, steam builds, and go for it. Another section suggests possible disguises, realtor, insurance, serviceman, fake ID and handyman.

JEFF HERNDON, KAKE ANCHOR: Probably what he pretended to be to perhaps gain entry into some of these homes. Interesting enough maybe he's spilling out his story right here in this word puzzle. There's part of his address on there. We've seen Dennis Rader, D. Rader.

MATTINGLY: Overnight, it has become the hottest word puzzle in Wichita. Viewers of the KAKE Web site contact the station with their own surprising findings in the BTK code.

(on camera): And what are you finding here?

DAVE GRANT, KAKE ASST. NEWS DIRECTOR: It's a strange reference to a number 2043 that this writer says also is a reference to a chemical term. If you notice, the initials are BTK.

MATTINGLY: BTK.

(voice-over): But the most surprising finding of all may be in a small set of numbers, 622 and 0, slightly out of sequence but identical to the house number of BTK suspect Dennis Rader.

TIMOTHY ROGERS, "THE WICHITA EAGLE": Would you have seen it before Mr. Rader was arrested, probably not. Now that it's there, hey, someone should have seen it, you know.

MATTINGLY: Are we possibly reading more into this than we need to?

ROGERS: I think you could be or it could have been his way of trying to provide the clues and saying, hey, it was all there in front of your face. You just didn't see it.

MATTINGLY: Also a recipient of numerous BTK communications over the years, the "Wichita Eagle" newspaper reports finding 130 words, numbers and phrases in the code but many seem to have no connection to the case or do they? What is clear to those who have poured over these cryptic communications is that the killer seemed to enjoy playing games.

ROGERS: Maybe that situation was like "I handed you what I was doing or how you could find me. You just weren't smart enough to put it together."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The reporting by CNN's David Mattingly in Wichita.

For all the hints that the killer dropped it may have been something he never intended to be seen that ultimately did him in, a file on a floppy disk in the most recent batch of items he sent. He might have thought that file was gone, deleted, so might anyone.

Here's CNN's Daniel Sieberg.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The oldest rule in the book for cyber sleuths is delete doesn't mean gone. It's John Mallery's mantra. Part of his job as a computer forensics consultant is to make technical stuff understandable.

JOHN MALLERY, COMPUTER FORENSICS EXPERT: You have a library and for those of you that remember card catalogs. If you take a card out of the card catalog, the book is still in the shelf. When you delete a file, the pointers go away. The data still stays there. It can stay there for five seconds. It can stay there for years. It stays there until the operating system decides to write over that deleted file with new data.

SIEBERG: Having lived in Kansas for 17 years, Mallery is familiar with the BTK case. Press reports say data on a floppy disk was critical for investigators. Mallery gives me a rudimentary but effective demonstration of how deleted data can be recovered.

MALLERY: We'll look at the flop here. In this case you have a deleted Word document. I'm going to scroll down and what you're looking at here is the contents of this deleted Word document.

There's additional information added to the file when you create a document, so the user name can often be added to that document, the company name, the computer name, the original location. In the BTK case that might have been what helped law enforcement track this person down.

SIEBERG: So, if I delete something is it gone, deleted?

MALLERY: If you just delete something, no it is not gone.

SIEBERG: And if I empty the recycle bin?

MALLERY: It's not gone.

SIEBERG: And if I format the hard drive?

MALLERY: It's not gone.

SIEBERG (on camera): This is basically what the hard drive on your computer might look like and, believe it or not, you could take a sledge hammer to it and you still may not destroy everything that's on it. Even a fire may not do it. In fact, forensics experts say the only way to guarantee that all the information is gone is to shred, smelt or pulverize it.

(voice-over): Any time you turn on a computer, open a file, type a key, send a message there's a record.

MALLERY: The only safe computer is one that you never turn on and you bury in the ground six feet underground.

SIEBERG: Daniel Sieberg, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: Whatever part computer science plays in all of this it almost certainly only plays a supporting role. The real star in this case, the real fascination is the machinery of the mind and the motivation and where it all comes unstuck.

N. G. Berrill is a forensic psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice right across the street pretty much, nice to have you with us. This guy, whoever this guy is, I mean I don't know if they have the right guy or not, we'll find out eventually, but somebody is sending these hints and these puzzles and these pleadings. What is that about? Why?

DR. N. G. BERRILL, JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE: People that normally, if you want to call it normally, commit these types of crimes, serial murders suffer in part from a terrible grandiosity. In other words, it's perhaps not even enough to have the power over life and death, you know, chasing people like prey, hunting them down and killing them.

So, when that no longer provides the thrill they're looking for, perhaps it's time to flirt with the press or to tease the police department a little bit and let them know that, you know, "Hey I'm out here. You know I'm out here and you don't really know who I am and how to catch me," so it's part of the game.

BROWN: But they're not psychotic.

BERRILL: No, they're not, no.

BROWN: Sociopaths?

BERRILL: Sociopaths, I like, you know.

BROWN: And the difference being?

BERRILL: The difference being if you're talking about psychotic you're talking about a mentally ill person, perhaps the way they look, the way they behave overly, you know, you can tell something is terribly wrong.

BROWN: Yes.

BERRILL: Something very peculiar. A psychopath or antisocial individual is able to definitely keep these impulses, murderous impulses to themselves. If they're going to act on them and actually begin stalking people, it's not in their best interest or self interest to flag that to anybody. After all, you're going to get caught. People are going to stop you.

BROWN: The one I've known in my life, Ted Bundy, I mean I actually knew...

BERRILL: Sure.

BROWN: ...was the most among many ordinary traits was extraordinarily manipulative outside of the homicidal rages. I mean just when you dealt with him he was manipulative. Is manipulative a trait?

BERRILL: Absolutely. You know the idea that I'm brighter than you are and I perhaps want to put on the charm but the end result of that is to get you to do things or get you to behave in ways that give me a little bit of a kick.

BROWN: Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming in.

BERRILL: Sure, absolutely.

BROWN: Thank you.

Other news tonight, a Chicago federal judge's husband and elderly mother were shot to death on Monday. I spoke tonight to the "Chicago Sun Times." Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow is quoted as saying, "If someone was angry at me, they should go after me. It's not fair to go after my family. It was just cold-blooded. Who would do this? I'm just furious."

The judge's mention of somebody angry at me could well reference a white supremacist who threatened her life. More on that part of the story in a moment but first the murder investigation that has transfixed Chicago.

Here's CNN's Keith Oppenheim.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Late Wednesday evening, Chicago Police released these sketches of what they call two people of interest, people who could lead to answers as to why the husband and mother of Federal Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow were shot to death in the family's home.

It's the latest update in a continuing story. The "Chicago Tribune" reports a broken window, a possible point of entry, has a fingerprint on it and that a blood shoeprint suggests the killer or killers tried to clean up the scene before leaving.

The "Chicago Sun Times" reported that a witness saw a suspicious car with two men in it parked outside Lefkow's home and says the Lefkow's received a series of phone calls Sunday night which may have come from a correctional center in Chicago.

The significance of that is last year Matt Hale, a white supremacist, was convicted of plotting to kill Judge Lefkow. Hale is now behind bars in Chicago awaiting sentencing.

However, prison officials tell CNN that in general outgoing phone calls are permitted but must be on a pre-approved list and may be monitored. Still, as the information about this case is flooding the Chicago media, investigators are making one thing consistently clear they're not jumping to conclusions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It could be anything from a random act of violence to somebody that the judge handled to somebody that her husband, who was a very prominent lawyer, handled. We just don't know and it's too soon to make an assessment on that.

OPPENHEIM: Judge Lefkow's husband Michael was an attorney who largely handled cases about employment disputes. His downtown Chicago office, where everything on his desk rests just as he left it, is down the hall from his business partner Bill Speigleberger (ph). Speigleberger wonders if someone from Mike Lefkow's past could be involved in these killings.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't at all know that it's happened but given the fact that Mike Lefkow had such a long legal career, it might be a wise thing to look into some disgruntled people that he's had to deal with over the years.

OPPENHEIM: In the meantime, the case has set off a reaction from the federal bench where threats to judges are nothing new. Still, veteran appellate Judge Bill Bauer says blanket protection for judges isn't warranted.

WILLIAM BAUER, FEDERAL JUDGE: You're not going to be absolutely safe no matter where you are or what you're doing and you cannot protect yourself entirely from that -- from crazy people.

I am overwhelmingly sad.

OPPENHEIM: Judge Wayne Anderson is shaken not by the dangers to judges but by the danger to their families and he believes what happened in Judge Lefkow's home calls for a security review.

WAYNE ANDERSON, JUDGE: I feel there ought to be a discussion led by the attorney general of the United States with respect to what, if any, measure should be taken by judges individually, by us as families, and by the system as a whole to protect the third branch of government.

OPPENHEIM: And no doubt the third branch has been shaken but it may take time before it's clear whether the murders in Judge Lefkow's family were connected to what she or her attorney husband did for a living.

Keith Oppenheim, CNN, Chicago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Next month, Matt Hale will be sentenced for plotting to kill Judge Lefkow. Although he's been in jail for quite a while, people who keep track of white supremacists say his incarceration likely has not diminished his influence.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Matt Hale liked to make himself out as a sort of renaissance man of hate, an intellectual racist. He called himself "Pontificus Maximus" and he was the supreme leader of the grandiosely named World Church of the Creator.

MATT HALE: Our morals, our beliefs, our horizon is white. BROWN: Mark Potok monitors hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: They're essentially neo-Nazis. They believe that Jews are behind every evil that they manipulate the world.

BROWN: Hale once claimed to have 80,000 followers. In reality, Potok's group says there are more like 100. But, if they were few, they could be deadly. In 1999, Hale was denied a law license by Illinois authorities who felt, oddly enough, that he didn't possess sufficient moral character. One of Hale's followers then went on a killing spree, randomly shooting people apparently because they were not white.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have to then ask you if you do not in some way feel some responsibility.

HALE: No, we don't for the same reasons that the pope in Rome does not feel responsible for abortion clinic bombings.

BROWN: Hale evaded prosecution that time but in 2001 he was caught on tape soliciting the murder of Judge Lefkow, who had ordered his church to change its name as a result of a copyright dispute. Here's Hale responding to a man named Tony Evola about getting the judge's address. What he does not realize is that Evola is an FBI plant.

SECRETLY RECORDED CONVERSATION DECEMBER 5, 2002

EVOLA: It got a way of getting it. When we get it, we going to exterminate the rat?

HALE: Well, whatever you want to do.

BROWN: Matt Hale was convicted this time and was already in jail awaiting his sentence when this week's murders in Chicago took place. Potok says that if, and he emphasizes the if, this is a case of domestic terrorism he thinks it would be a case of one of Hale's followers acting on his own. In Potok's world, they call that sort of person a lone wolf.

POTOK: This is a threat that has absolutely not gone away since 9/11.

BROWN: He points to Timothy McVeigh as the prime example of the lone wolf and says just because there is more emphasis on stopping al Qaeda these days, the threat from these homegrown terrorists is still very real. In fact, he warns that the disintegration of groups like Hale's or others, like the Aryan Nations or the National Alliance may put the rest of us in greater danger.

POTOK: And as ironic as it might seem, leaders of even the most extreme groups have in many instances in effect acted as a break on members in the groups. You know they tend to say things like, you know, "Yes, we're going to kill all the Jews but that will be next week. You know, keep your guns holstered this week."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Again, Matt Hale will be sentenced next month in Chicago.

More to come on the program tonight, starting with Kobe Bryant. He and the woman who says he raped her have settled their lawsuit, a civil lawsuit.

Also tonight, a young man with a gilded background who did foul deeds then tried to keep living the good life.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He would have spent more time on the run in Europe than actually incarcerated.

BROWN (voice-over): He's a convicted rapist and he could be getting out of jail soon. Next, the fight to keep Alex Kelly behind bars.

For 50 years, the mystery tormented a family.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gordy (ph) was my little brother. He was three of five and he went to Korea and disappeared.

BROWN: Fifty years later a mystery solved.

A day later, how telling the story of anysoldier.com has turned into a story of generosity and dedication to the troops far from home.

And from Washington, the story of baseball, triumph and race comes home to the White House, meantime we'll stay right here because this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Late word out of Denver tonight, basketball star Kobe Bryant has settled a civil lawsuit brought by the woman who claims that he raped her in 2003. Mr. Bryant has maintained that their sexual encounter was consensual, though he has apologized and he said he now understand that she didn't see it as consensual. Criminal charges were dropped when the woman refused to testify. So, the settlement brings an end to the matter but something happened to Kobe Bryant along the way. His image has lost its luster.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): For most of his career on the basketball court, he has been sublime, made rich on the court, richer off it. If Allen Iverson was hip-hop, Kobe Bryant was Madison Avenue by design.

JOHN WERTHEIM, "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED": With the exception of Michael Jordan, you're unlikely to find a basketball player who is more meticulous about his image, everything from how he appears in public. He's very selective about his endorsements. BROWN: But one night in Colorado changed all of that. At the very least, it led to a public and messy admission of adultery and far worse to charges of rape. Kobe Bryant went from the perfect transition, from the era of Michael, to an accused sex offender and even in these days sex offenders don't sell much soda or candy bars.

WERTHEIM: This has done irrevocable economic harm to Kobe Bryant and it also has does harm in that sort of ineffable, incalculable sort of buzz image factor.

BROWN: Whatever exactly happened in Colorado that night he is, to be sure, no longer the NBA's golden goose, not untouchable exactly but no longer money in the bank either. His jersey used to be a top seller, no more.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've got Lakers merchandise but not Kobe, no and I probably wouldn't right at the moment to be honest.

BROWN: When opinion turns on you, it turns hard. Today, Bryant gets blamed for everything gone wrong with his once storied Lakers. He couldn't get along with the team's other star Shaquille O'Neal. He couldn't get along with the coach either. He wanted the spotlight all to himself, the writers write, a sort of death by column inch.

WERTHEIM: Quite apart from the legal issues, I just think on the floor Kobe isn't regarded as the player he once was. You combine that with all he's gone through and the bloodless coup of Phil Jackson, who of course is a storied coach who Kobe basically sort of cut loose and you put all that together and I think you could certainly make the case that it will take something really remarkable for us not to look back on him and say that his career peaked in 2003.

BROWN: Which doesn't mean he won't be rich and famous. It doesn't mean he won't be an all-star or win more championships but it does mean something. It means he won't be like Mike or Larry or Magic.

Whatever exactly went on in that room in Colorado, whatever went on that led to a rape charge that led to an apology that led to tonight's settlement, whatever it was virtually guarantees that if nothing else.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Almost 20 years ago, Alex Kelly was a gifted athlete, a high school wrestler, a child of privilege and then came charges of rape. Alex Kelly, the golden boy, fled the country evading justice for years. Eventually, he was convicted, sentenced to 16 years in prison.

He's now served half that time and tomorrow he'll ask a parole board in Connecticut to set him free. His victims will testify as well and you'll hear from them in a moment, first, CNN's Chris Huntington on the beginning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the face of a convicted rapist. In 1986, Alex Kelly was a popular 18- year-old high school wrestling star in Darien, Connecticut, one of the wealthiest towns in the nation.

SHEILA WELLER, AUTHOR, "SAINT OF CIRCUMSTANCE": The context of that town at the time was privileged kids having keg parties, having, you know, cutting school. It's a lot of drinking, a lot of feeling they could -- they could walk on water so to speak. But and in the midst of this was somebody with a real problem.

HUNTINGTON: In February, 1986, Kelly, who had a record as a juvenile offender, was charged with raping and choking two girls, one from his high school another from a nearby town.

But just before his trial was due to begin, Kelly fled to Europe, skipping out on $200,000 bail. For eight years, he lived on the lam and lived well with money wired from his parents, shown here, visiting him in Sweden.

But in January, 1995 with authorities closing in and his U.S. passport about to expire, Kelly surrendered in Switzerland. He was extradited to the United States with bail boosted to $1 million to make sure he didn't take off again. Kelly's attorney at the time publicly accused the girls of lying.

THOMAS PUCCIO, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I think you'll see when these allegations are scrutinized under cross-examination that they'll fly away.

HUNTINGTON: But two years and two trials later, Alex Kelly was convicted of raping one of the women and he pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting the other.

Kelly was sentenced to serve 16 years in Connecticut State Prison but now having served only half that sentence he is up for parole, a beneficiary of a recent state court decision on just how much time felons must serve. Prosecutors have filed their objections with the parole board.

DAVID COHEN, STATE ATTORNEY, STANFORD, CT: We believe that he should serve every day of that sentence. He would have spent more time on the run in Europe than actually incarcerated.

HUNTINGTON: Sheila Weller, who has written extensively about the case, says Kelly's conviction shatters a number of common stereotypes.

WELLER: You can be a good-looking, well bred, you know, young Republican-looking handsome young man from the best town in the country and be a rapist.

HUNTINGTON: And nobody knows that better than Alex Kelly's victims.

Chris Huntington, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The two known victims of Alex Kelly, there's always been suspicion that there were others who never came forward, have both grown into strong young women. In them you sense no misguided sense of shame, no hiding.

They look you in the eye when they talk about what happened to them when they were kids. Both women will be at tomorrow's hearing. They have vowed to do everything they can to keep their attacker behind bars.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): It can be said and it would be true that Alex Kelly raped the wrong women. Strong and unforgiving they will do what they can to keep him in prison.

HILLARY BUCHANAN, RAPE VICTIM: I'm doing this to, you know, to protect other women. I feel he's a sexual predator. I don't look to the past and say, well you know, I'm not bringing it all back up again. I'm just trying to fight for what's going on now.

ADRIENNE VAK, RAPE VICTIM: I don't believe he should be granted his freedom when he took my freedom from me for so many years. I spent a long time, ten years of my life, without any freedom, looking behind my shoulder, wondering if he was going to come after me, not knowing where he was, scared. I was a prisoner of fear every day for ten years and now he wants his freedom when he took mine away.

BROWN: They were children of privilege in that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) part of Connecticut. He was a rich, good-looking kid, the kind of boy who could have most any girl. He was something else as well.

BAK: I believe that he's a sexual predator and a serial rapist who without hesitation after raping me, knowing that I told and was going to do something about it, simply went out and raped somebody in less than four days.

BROWN: To date, Alex Kelly has spent less time in jail than he spent abroad as a fugitive, living the high life, the wealthy young playboy living on his parents' money. His victims think about that little fact a lot. He was out there all those years, a rapist, living it up and they were growing up trying to cope with what he did.

BUCHANAN: It was almost like a paid vacation. He was playing in the Alps and skiing and having fun and, you know, I just think that it's just -- it's like salt in a wound really, I mean when you're trying to get this guy to have some kind of punishment for the brutal crime that he committed against Adrienne and I and now he's actually having more fun than most people do in their entire lives.

BAK: It's really sick to think that you would go to those means to try to protect and aid and abet your son who's done these terrible crimes. It's -- I think they're just as guilty as he is.

BROWN: Alex Kelly's parents still live in Darien. They did not respond to our request for comment. On behalf of their client, Kelly's lawyers said they would no statement and no comment. But he has written a letter to the parole board. To the victims he wrote, "I am truly sorry. I know these are empty words to you" he goes on "but you deserve to hear them."

BAK: If he even tries to tell the court that he's a different man than he was then, it's going to be outrageous because he hasn't changed one bit from the time in 1987 to the time in 1997, so how can we expect that he's changed from 1997 to today?

BROWN: Soon for the first time since their testimony sent him to prison, they will meet again, not kids anymore, not him or them face- to-face again.

BUCHANAN: You know, it -- it puts some butterflies in your stomach. It's a little tough in the beginning. But when I really think about him, I just kind of think of him as a nonperson.

BAK: Well, it's going to be frightening, I think. I asked if he could be restrained. I'm concerned. I don't know what he's feeling or how dangerous he's going to -- he could potentially be or how angry, agitated he could get, based on what I might have to say.

BUCHANAN: He's a bad judge of character, because both Adrienne and I have turned out very strong. And we're amazing, I think. And both of us, you know, when we talk on the phone, I just -- it's a great feeling that the two of us have come out on the other side of this being great and OK.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The hearing is tomorrow in Connecticut.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT tonight, 50 years ago, he disappeared on a mission over Korea -- how the mystery was finally solved, what it means for his family and his country.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Sad marker tonight. The U.S. death toll in Iraq reached 1,500 this week. Most of the troops killed have died battling the insurgency.

For their families, every soldier's death is cloaked in questions. Unanswered, the questions can haunt. Those who are lucky, if you can call it that, learn how and where their loved one died. They're able to say goodbye, hold a proper burial. They have a grave to visit. For more than 50 years, though, the Cope family had none of that. They had no answers at all. But today, remarkably, they do.

Here's CNN's Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) STARR: Troy Gordon Cope was just 29 in September 1952 when he took off in his F-86 fighter named Rosie, after his wife, and headed for the Yalu River, dividing North Korea and China. He never returned.

CARL COPE, BROTHER: Gordie was my little brother. He was three of five. He went to Korea and disappeared.

STARR: For half-a-century, his family could only wonder and hope. Troy Cope was one of more than 8,000 Americans missing in action during the Korean War. Jerry Jennings leads the effort to find out what happened to American troops missing in action from all the nation's wars.

But this case became special, a case with coincidences, mysteries, and unprecedented international cooperation. So, on a cold winter day, Jennings and his team came back to the very place Cope fell to thank the Chinese government for helping find him and to tell the story of a half century search.

JERRY JENNINGS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Captain Cope and his wingman, Captain Karl Dittmer, encountered four MiG-15s near the Yalu. Karl Dittmer was able to chase away several of the MiGs, but he lost radio and visual contact with Captain Cope in the dense clouds. Captain Cope was never heard from again.

STARR: A trail of clues led to this site, a mountainside in China, now the front yard of a new house. This is where the remains of Troy Cope were found, the first American MIA of the Korean War ever recovered from China. The first break came in 1995.

JENNINGS: An American businessman who had visited the regional military museum here in Dandong reported that had seen a medal identification tag or dog tag.

STARR: It was Cope's dog tag, proof he had crashed over China. But where?

(on camera): North Korea is just across the Yalu River from here in modern-day Dandong, China, where Troy Cope was shot down half a century ago.

(voice-over): On that day, Captain Cope had one of the most dangerous missions of the war, to engage North Korean MiG fighters before they could attack U.S. bombers.

But Troy Cope flew into the jaws of an enemy he never expected. The U.S. discovered they were facing highly trained Russian pilots, not inexperienced North Koreans. This led to another discovery three years later. American investigators examining Russian military archives were stunned to find a description of a ferocious dogfight written by a Russian pilot, the report noting, "The aircraft banked sharply to the left and started to fall out of control. The pilot, together with the aircraft, crashed into a Chinese peasant home." The details led to only one conclusion. This was Troy Cope and this was where he fell. For years, Troy Cope's nephew, Chris, met each year with Pentagon officials about the fate of the uncle he never knew. In May 2004, unexpected news. The U.S. team was going to begin excavating in China. He was determined to be there.

CHRIS COPE, NEPHEW: When I saw his boot heel, I knew. There was no question in my mind that that was Gordie. Even though we knew that he perished in the crash, I knew where he was. I knew the circumstances of what caused his death. I knew there was an explosion on impact. You know, so all the pieces fit together.

STARR: For Troy's brother Carl, closure brought home by his own son.

CARL COPE: After he told me what they had found and that he actually saw it, he was convinced that it was my brother. And that, of course, I felt was good.

STARR: More than 52 years after his plane went down, Captain Troy Cope will be laid to rest in this Texas cemetery, a chapter closing, but a family changed forever. Troy's father died without ever knowing what happened to his son, and his mother committed suicide, the family convinced, a direct result of her son's unknown fate.

CHRIS COPE: There's no question in my mind that it was.

STARR: One last twist in this tale. Brigadier General Ralph Jodice, the defense attache in China, was once the commander of the 335th Fighter Squadron, Troy Cope's unit.

BRIG. GEN. RALPH JODICE, DEFENSE ATTACHE TO CHINA: He will be remembered forever for paying that ultimate sacrifice.

STARR: For the U.S. military, the 52-year hunt is a message to today's G.I.s. No one is left behind on the battlefield.

Barbara Starr, CNN, along the China-North Korea border.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Pretty remarkable story, huh?

Getting back to Iraq for a moment, we don't get many great news stories these days, but we had one last night. And when we do, it makes a lot of difference around here. We suspect to you, too. Last night, Beth Nissen introduced us to AnySoldier.com, the work of the Horn family, a Web site and shipping operation that allows people to send the troops in Iraq or troops anywhere cherish, the little things that keep them happy, candy bars, toilet paper, toys for Iraqi children, connections with home.

We got an awful lot of e-mail about the story last night. And even better, Marty Horn is getting a lot of hits on his Web site, so many, in fact, that the server they have couldn't handle it all. So their I.T. folks came in today and did what I.T. folks do. They fixed it all. So, once again, if you'd like to help -- and your mail to us says you do -- the web address is www.anysoldier.com. That's one word, anysoldier.com. And log on to it, if you're so inclined, and they'll pretty much walk you through the process.

Ahead on the program, the life of another American hero. What's the astronaut former Senator John Glenn up to today?

And also honoring the man, that man, who broke baseball's color barrier, Jackie Robinson.

And we'll wrap it up with morning papers, as we always do.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In 1962, John Glenn did something no American had ever done before. And 36 years later, he made history a second time.

As part of CNN's anniversary series "Then and Now," we look back tonight at John Glenn's remarkable story and where he is today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Godspeed, John Glenn.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): He's got the right stuff. The first American to orbit the earth, John Glenn became an instant American hero. Later, inspired by Bobby Kennedy, he ran for political office, becoming a U.S. senator from Ohio. He served for 24 years until 1998. Glenn left Capitol Hill and the surly bonds of earth one more time. At the age of 77, he became the oldest person ever to go into space. Now 83, Glenn is far from retired, dividing his time between Ohio and Washington, where he serves on a NASA advisory board.

JOHN GLENN, ASTRONAUT: I don't think retirement would be much fun anyway.

O'BRIEN: He and his wife Annie have founded the John Glenn Institute for Public Service at Ohio State University, where he serves as an adjunct professor.

GLENN: Mainly involved with letting students know the value of public service and public participation in politics.

O'BRIEN: Glenn is also still involved in politics, serving as a delegate at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

GLENN: It's been a very active life and one that I could not have foreseen at all when I was a kid growing up back in New Concord, Ohio.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Two threads of a story came together at the White House today. It is perhaps the longest-running story the country has. The story is such without a final chapter. But the chapter written today makes it just a little easier to believe we are getting there. The fact that it also involves baseball and perhaps the bravest man who ever played the game is just a bonus.

Here's CNN's Ed Henry.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Bush welcomed the Boston Red Sox to the White House to celebrate their World Series victory.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And welcome to the citizens of the Red Sox nation.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

HENRY: An hour earlier, the president attended a Capitol ceremony honoring Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color barrier in 1947.

BUSH: His story is one that shows what one person can do to hold America account.

HENRY: Both ceremonies about baseball. But there's another thread binding them together. Robinson wanted to play for the Red Sox and never got the chance because of the color of his skin. So, the new owners of the Red Sox worked behind the scenes to get the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously awarded to Robinson.

LARRY LUCCHINO, PRESIDENT & CEO, BOSTON RED SOX: So many things are bestowed on a baseball team. We have a responsibility to do something positive with that recognition, with that notoriety, and it seemed to me that it was long overdue.

HENRY: In 1945, the Red Sox brought Robinson in for a tryout at Fenway Park, a tryout that was, in truth, only a sham. A team official allegedly shouted a racial slur from the stands, making it clear there was no intention of signing the future hero.

(on camera): How does that make you feel, knowing that happened?

LUCCHINO: Well, we knew when we acquired the team in 2001 that we were acquiring a lot of wonderful things, the beloved ballpark, the great history and legacy of the Red Sox, but we knew we were also acquiring a team that had a checkered history with respect to race relations.

HENRY (voice-over): Boston was the last Major League team to integrate its roster in 1959, a dozen years after Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. This legacy led the team to push Senator John Kerry and other home state lawmakers to secure the Gold Medal for Robinson, which pleased the late ball player's widow.

RACHEL ROBINSON, WIDOW OF JACKIE ROBINSON: I think any sign that an organization is turning around and trying to do the right thing is important.

HENRY: Current Red Sox players also applauded the award, with slugger David Ortiz noting that Robinson's legacy still resonates.

DAVID ORTIZ, BOSTON RED SOX: He's just one of the biggest things that ever happened in baseball for all of us. And we all really appreciate that.

HENRY: Former Negro League player James Tillman, 85, proudly attended the ceremony and said the Red Sox erased some of the stain.

JAMES TILLMAN, FORMER NEGRO LEAGUE PLAYER: I really think it helps immensely. It's a good thing. That's what I can say, a very good thing.

HENRY: And, as Jackie Robinson once said, a life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Ed Henry, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. Not much time tonight, so we'll do this very quickly.

"Chicago Sun-Times," we'll come back to this at the end. "I Do Believe It Was a Hit" is the headline. "In Emotional Interview, Judge Lefkow Says She Fears Murders of Her Family Linked to Her Job." A couple of sketches of people of interest. This is a great and sad story.

Sports stories all over the front pages today, if I could get them. "The Rocky Mountain News." "C.U." -- that's Colorado University -- "Finger-pointing, Tempers Flare, Barbs Fly. A.G. Declares It's Time to Get to the Bottom of Controversies." This involves the football program at Colorado.

"The Examiner of Washington." "First Game, First Win. Nats" -- that would be the Washington Nationals -- "Defeat the Mets 5-3." It doesn't count yet. On the other -- oh, got to go, really? "Cable Cars Halted in San Francisco."

Weather tomorrow in Chicago, "spritely."

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: "PEOPLE IN THE NEWS" special on the release of Martha Stewart here tomorrow at 10:00.

We'll see you again on Friday. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.