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Official: Divers To Search Waters Near Dock Where Suspect's Car Found; Suspect's Cell Phone, A Note Found As Manhunt Unfolds. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired October 27, 2023 - 11:00   ET

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

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[11:01:34]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Sara Sidner in Tel Aviv, Israel. Some news on the dozens of hostages that are in the hands of Hamas in Gaza, we are learning there has been significant progress in the push to release the more than 200 hostages. We have the latest on the war on Israel.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Berman in Lewiston, Maine where authorities are searching ground, air and now water for the suspected mass killer. We just got an important update from law enforcement, divers going into a river to search for a possible body.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Kate Bolduan in New York. A focus also on the 18 lives lost in this tragedy. We're learning more about the victims and how they're being remembered today. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BERMAN: All right, we just got an important update on the manhunt for mass shooting suspect, Robert Card, who was still very much at large. It's been nearly 40 hours since 18 people were murdered in two locations here in Lewiston, Maine. It is still an active manhunt. There is still a shelter in place order that covers some 700 square miles, tens of thousands of people. And we just got key new information about what authorities are doing today in this manhunt.

One of the focus is this morning, just one will be the boat launch where the suspect's car was found not long after the shootings took place. The boat launch on the Androscoggin River, there will be a great deal of activity there in the coming hours. I want to get right to CNN's Omar Jimenez. He is outside the location where the shootings began at the local bowling alley. Omar, why don't you run through what we just learned moments ago?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so we learned a lot. But we're also left with a lot of questions. For starters, investigators are pleased. It gave us the scope of the leads and tips that they've been getting, obviously a multitude. They laid out a number over 530 tips and leads that they've gotten, obviously varying in maybe what was credible versus what wasn't. That gives you an idea there. Also they gave some clarity to what happened last night. But in the context of moving forward, what happened last night was FBI and other law enforcement were outside of the house, shining a light on it saying, come out with your hands up. We learned that that was a routine execution of a search warrant. They say we're likely going to see a little bit more of that in places across the area.

And they say that it could be because someone's there or it could not be it's part of their process. And they also laid out a multifaceted approach by land, by air to search for this person and not just on the water but literally in the water. Take a listen to Maine's Public Safety Director.

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MIKE SAUSCHUNK, COMMISSIONER, MAINE DEPT. OF PUBLIC SAFETY: We will be putting a divers in the water. This is going to look like a major focus today with a lot of people. We have a lot of other irons in the fire. So I'm not see you're saying that the suspect we know the suspect is in the water and this is what we're doing. What I'm telling you is you're going to see a lot of activity here. And I'm going to tell you that in advance. We've got nothing to hide in that regard at all. So then you're going to have some sonar as well that's going to be utilized here.

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[11:05:01]

JIMENEZ: And one of the interesting things he said there as well as that they've been working with the power companies that control the dams around here. And so they actually were able to slow or they're hoping to use to their advantage slowing the flow of the water to make it easier for these investigative divers to get in there and look for hopefully, some clues that get them closer to finding this suspect. Now that's on one plane of the investigation, maybe the priority at this point.

The other plane is really trying to figure out what happened at these particular venues. And also what may have led this suspect, as police say to go on this shooting rampage. For starters, at these venues like at the bowling alley, a little bit past this caution tape here. They say they are continuing to piece through every square inch of this particular venue. They say every shell casing from a bullet could be a clue that helps them out here.

But also, they are trying to process what was over 70 witness statements here that can aid them in that forward looking investigation. So a lot of work to be done there. And the other piece that I alluded to was that the family of Card, the suspect, has been on the whole cooperative, though he wouldn't get into specifics. That said, we were able to get down a statement from a sister-in-law of the shooting suspect who said essentially, we are absolutely heartbroken. This is beyond belief. We are doing all we can with law enforcement, giving all the information we can, their hearts and prayers are constantly with these poor families. They say they won't be making any further statements at that time. But it alludes to really what has shaken this entire community to its core, communities that remain under shelter in place into the second day. And among those questions, they said we still had questions was when that shelter in place order will be lifted and when these people can feel like they can go back to some semblance of normalcy, even if they haven't found the person who caused them so much harm, John, a lot of questions here.

BERMAN: Yes. And the answer to that they said was we're just going to take that on a day by day almost moment by moment basis, but the shelter in place order is still in effect. Omar Jimenez at the bowling alley. Meanwhile, the bar behind me, Schemengees, I should say again, law enforcement a greater presence there today. They are processing the crime scene doing what Omar was just talking about, every bullet, every shell casing, every car in the parking lot they are going through to try to piece together exactly what happened, Kate, as best they can.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely right. And while the crime scene processing happens and the search for the mass shooting suspect continues, we are learning more about the lives tragically lost now including a beloved interpreter for the deaf. Joshua Seal, his employer, Pine Tree Society, says that he was taking part in the cornhole tournament for the deaf community at that bar and grill, Wednesday night, when he was killed there.

They say that he was a husband and a father of four and that he was a tireless advocate for the deaf community. He gained widespread recognition during the pandemic actually serving as one of the lead interpreters for the deaf in the Maine -- in Maine governor -- in the Maine Governor's pandemic briefings.

We also know more about father and son Bill and Aaron Young. We've learned that they were bowling together when this tragedy unfolded. And according to Reuters, neither of them survived. Aaron was just 14 years old. And then there was Arthur "Artie" Strout. He was at Schemengees, Wednesday night. He was there with his father. His dad left the restaurant just 10 minutes before the shooting began, we're told and "Artie's" dad says that his son is now survived by five children.

Also at Schemengees was 39-year-old Peyton Brewer-Ross. His brother is telling CNN that Peyton loved being a dad more than anything else. His daughter, El (ph), we've learned as just turned two years old. Thirty- nine-year-old Tommy Conrad was a manager at the bowling alley. He was also a dad. And we're told he survived by his nine-year-old daughter.

I want to bring in Jason Carroll now who's learning more about the other victims, the names, the stories, it go on and on and there's --

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's painful when you have to read through all of them, hear about their lives. You know, these victims came from all walks of life, all ages, one of them you mentioned, a young boy, just 14 years old. And as we learn more about them and what happened that night, Kate, what we're learning, is that how so many of these victims tried to stop what was happening, tried to protect other people.

I mean, you look at the case of Joseph Walker, for example, he was a manager at the bar. We spoke to his father. His father is speaking to CNN. He says that his son tried to stop the gunman with a butcher knife. He leaves behind a wife, children and grandchildren. Leroy Walker, his father, when he spoke to CNN talked about his son and about how he remembers him.

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LEROY WALKER, SR., SON JOSEPH WAS KILLED IN MAINE MASS SHOOTING: Loved by many, loved by myself, and he would love back to everybody. So I know he would do such a thing to try to save lives, and not let somebody hurt the people that he loved and this was family. For someone to do this to so many families as well as mine, it's just crazy. It leaves you an empty hole that I don't know how it will ever be filled. Pray for everybody. Pray for the people that passed away with my son. Pray to the Lord that this doesn't happen again in our community.

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CARROLL: Leroy Walker showing incredible strength to speak about his son. I also want to tell you about Tricia Asselin. She worked part time at the bowling alley. And her family says that she tried to do her part. Apparently she went to the counter, tried to call 911 when the shooter took her life.

Also, there's Brian MacFarlane, you were just speaking about the death -- the deaf community. I spoke to his sister last night. She is deaf. Bryan was deaf as well. He was there for the cornhole tournament, his life taken as well. And then there's also Michael Deslauriers II. His father says he and his friend were killed when they tried to stop the gunman, trying to protect their wives, trying to protect other children. His father's saying they made sure their wives and several young children were undercover when they charged the shooter.

What is also striking about this, Kate, is as you know, is how these families when dealing with mourning, and dealing with so much find the strength to talk about their loved ones in this type of situation. It's incredible.

BOLDUAN: It's just -- and it's just maddening what they're going through, and what you know, that they went through in those final moments. Jason, thank you so much. We're going to continue to cover there are more victims that have not yet been identified. And we'll be bringing you more when we get them. Jason is following that for us. I want to turn back to the big focus for law enforcement and the community there, all of these communities as well, which is finding Robert Card. John Berman, back with me as always.

Joining us also is Daniel Brunner. He's a retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent and Chris Swecker, a former Assistant Director of the FBI. Chris, thanks for coming in. Chris, let me ask you, we just had this briefing. We learned more about where they're going to be searching. But it's also clear that at least publicly they are not talking about the -- about there are no known leads. And they do not to appear to -- they're not reporting having any sightings at all. Is that a -- do you see that as a problem this far out? Or could this just or should people not read into that?

CHRIS SWECKER, FORMER FBI ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: No, I think you can read into that they really don't have a lot of viable leads. There are only three things that could have happened where that car seen. One, is there's switch car, and he's long gone. Two, he goes into the woods, either by boat or foot, and has three or four hours of lead time and covers a lot of distance to a presumably preposition, pre-selected location.

The third is that they introduced today, which I think is highly, highly unlikely, is that he killed himself while he was in the river or at the side of the river. And that, to me seems like a very elaborate box checking exercise. So I've got to hope and think that they are have set up a perimeter around all the roads going into that vast wooded area. This reminds me very much of the search for the Olympic bomber, which I led back in the late 90s. And I see -- I really see that as the most viable option. And if that is the case, it's going to be a while before he's caught.

BERMAN: I will say it doesn't from what we can tell and our teams have been going around on the ground. It doesn't look like there's a perimeter set up really anywhere, no roadblocks in place really anywhere except around some of the specific search areas like the boat launch area or when they go into a neighborhood where the houses are. So Daniel Brunner, can you tell us what you take away from that?

DANIEL BRUNNER, RETIRED FBI SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT: Well, I think that the investigative teams trying to determine a location as they said in the press conference, you don't want to send everyone out into various areas and hopefully run into something. There's a lot of wooded areas, a lot of rivers, so focusing our energy on the where he was, utilizing, finding out his cell phone and looking at that cell phone track because everywhere you go, your cell phone is providing a position to the cell phone provider.

[11:15:12]

I'm sure the investigative team is looking at that cell phone over the last two years. They want to look at everywhere he went, every store he went to, and then they're going to go visit those stores. What did he buy on such and such a date? Where did he go? Did he go into the woods? And they can find those positions, as to where he went on the river. Utilizing that historical area and historical work that he was doing, possibly in preparation will reveal more clues as to where the investigative command center can focus their energy.

Utilizing tips from the public, every single tip will be looked at. Looking at a lot of where he was, will reveal where he could be right now.

BOLDUAN: And Chris, on the cell phone that they -- that belonging to Card that they have found, the note that he left behind. John Miller says that the sources he's talking to is described as a suicide note not speaking to actual motive for these heinous crimes. Do you -- could that be a break? Or is this or just as this add more to the picture?

SWECKER: I think -- I know, John, I think he has -- he's very credible. I think it just adds to the picture. I mean, he did, this killer made no effort to put on a mask or disguise himself. He went in there knowing full well he would be identified. So by its very nature, he knows that he's not going to come out of this, you know, it's not going to end well for him. So I can see him writing a farewell note. Some may say a suicide note. I'm going to describe it probably as a farewell knowing, you know, he did want to escape. He made elaborate efforts, obviously to escape.

He create a lot of confusion by hitting two sites. And then he had probably three or four hours of lead time to cover a lot of ground. So he -- his survival instincts are there and were there. So I know, you know, I don't see this immediate suicide or suicide shortly after the act as something that's viable right now. But of course, that's why they're by the river. And you will see what how that turns out. But I don't think they're going to come up with anything right there by that river where the car is.

BERMAN: So Daniel, I want to talk about the shelter in place order that still in effect over the 700 square mile area, but mostly focused on Lewiston, where I am some 40,000 residents, the second most populous city in Maine, also Bowdoin, and Lisbon smaller towns. At this point, realistically, how much longer can they keep those shelter in place orders in effect? And who is it really for? Is it for the safety of the individuals? Because look, if you're in your home, quote unquote, sheltering in place, someone with a gun can still come to your door? Or is it to make the search efforts for law enforcement go more easily?

BRUNNER: Absolutely, it's to make the search efforts a lot easier, because if you have cars that are out there, and people commuting back and forth, or people walking in their yards, that adds more activity that the police have to investigate. Does that person look suspicious? Does that person look that they could be relatively matching the description of the subject?

It just adds more investigative need. It takes a strain away from the law enforcement teams, the tactical teams that are out there, or the investigators that are out there, it just adds more. But additionally, more importantly, it's for the safety of the community. As we saw in the Pennsylvania fugitive search, he walked into a garage that was open and he grabbed a rifle from a person who was just in his garage and he exchanged gunfire with that individual, telling the people to be sheltered in place, lock your doors produce -- provides, you know, not giving him a resource, the fugitive, a resource to maybe get into a house, maybe steal somebody's car. It just makes his life more difficult.

If you make his life more difficult, he creates an opportunity where he makes a mistake. And then law enforcement can jump on it, exactly like the Pennsylvania fugitive. And then law enforcement can close in on him.

BOLDUAN: You know, Chris, the kind of -- everyone can you hold on just one second? We have Shimon Prokupecz. I want to bring -- I'm going to get back over to him. He's on scene. Shimon, where are you? What are you seeing?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME & JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: So we were just driving back into Lisbon to the boat area, that boat launch area. And as we were driving, we saw a ton of officers racing to this area. So I'm going to get out from the camera you can see there in the distance. Officers here from the Lisbon Police Department but surrounding police departments have gathered here, we don't know why they're all out here with their long guns.

We saw the officers all racing here. They reached through this dirt area here. And now they're just sort of gathered there. What's been happening a lot and we don't know if that's what happened here is that the police department has been receiving 911 calls, tips from community members of suspicious activity. And perhaps this is what they're responding to here.

[11:20:20]

But this is the neighborhood. This is the community of Lisbon, where he dumped his car, it's not far from here, and where police have been doing a lot of the searching. So that is why we're seeing this kind of response here. You're now seeing more officers gathering there. I can tell you there are officers here from the Federal Protective Services, other law enforcement agencies, which we have not seen before, gathering here.

And I think they're, Kate, what's happening is they're trying to figure out the next steps. We don't see any helicopters, or drones in the air. But right now, all we're seeing here are the several officers gathered here. You can see they're talking, I assume, trying to figure out what they're going to do. I'm assuming this is all relative to some kind of a tip that they receive.

BOLDUAN: Sorry, I was just going to ask you, can you describe what, where they -- like what that -- is that like a greenhouse or a -- what do you think -- where do you think this, like what do you think this is?

PROKUPECZ: Yes. So this looks like a farm. It looks, it says, hey, there's a sign out here that says, let us be your farmer. So perhaps, some kind of a farm, you could see the sign here. And now we're just waiting to see if more officers gathered. I think, Kate, what's happening is they're trying to figure out what they're going to do.

You know, again, we don't know what brought them here. But right now, as you can see, they're standing around. And as they've been doing a lot here, they've been responding in this way. So the response is a little bigger here than we've seen in prior occasions. So perhaps something significant has occurred here. And so they're trying to figure out. And you could see now the offices are moving towards a location, so they're going to be out of our view here. We now hear a helicopter over here.

BOLDUAN: Yes. I was just going to say, I can hear it too.

PROKUPECZ: So what we're going to do is we're going to try move to the left. Yes. We're going to try to move here to the left to see if we could get a better shot looking down here from another vantage point here by this house, so we can take a look down. So we're far enough back that the officers know that we're here. They saw us. They told us this is the area they told us to stand in so we can see what's going on.

I'm going to try to see if we can see here. Well, we can see and, yes, so there's definitely a helicopter now over here. So you see this is, yes, there we see them there. Bob, you could see them they're walking towards an area. And so they're continuing to walk into, it looks like a, like I said some kind of farming. There's more media here now gathered, as the officers continue to move towards an area here, I think they're out of our view now. And so now they're out of our view.

BOLDUAN: OK.

BERMAN: -- your team, please stay safe and stay out of the way of law enforcement here. Can you just give us a sense of the distance between the boat launch where the car was found? And where you are, how long it would be if someone wanted to walk from the boat launch to where you're now situated?

BOLDUAN: John, Shimon might have lost eye. He -- I think he might have lost connection.

All right, so I think we lost just our IFP connection with Shimon. We're going to get back to this and continue watching this. We're going to get back to it all. We're going to -- he's going to reposition his camera. And we're going to continue bringing those developments. As you can see, as they're moving around, you can see the police presence there. We're going to bring you updates from Shimon on the ground there. John Berman, we're going to get back to him.

We're also going to get back to Israel. Because coming up word of as it's described, significant progress in talks to free hostages who are still being held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza. That comes as Israel makes more targeted raids in Gaza and is preparing for the next steps in the war. We're going to get to that.

[11:24:48]

And also, Republican Congressman George Santos says that he will not resign, even though his Republican colleagues are trying to toss him out of Congress. The latest from Capitol Hill on that is also ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BERMAN: All right, welcome back. John Berman in Lewiston, Maine. We want to take you right now to Lisbon which is about 15 miles from here to a farm where you can see law enforcement set up there. That farm is not terribly far from the boat launch for suspect, Robert Card's car was found the night of the mass shootings. Here our Shimon Prokupecz standing by where there seems to be some law enforcement activity taking place. Shimon tell us what you're seeing?

[11:30:07]

PROKUPECZ: Right. So John, right now what we're seeing is are these are the --