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WikiLeaks Under Fire; Murder in Beverly Hills; Urge to Cheat; Burgers Are Back

Aired December 04, 2010 - 22:30   ET

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

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DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Now, murder in Beverly Hills. A special report tonight on the cold-blooded shooting of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen. Two weeks after being gunned down after leaving a star- studded movie party, a person of interest, an ex-con takes his own life, shooting himself in the head while police questioned him. CNN talks to his neighbors and investigate Chasen's so called strange family tie.

And good evening, everyone, I'm Don Lemon. We will have more on this Hollywood murder mystery in just a moment, but first now a look at your top stories.

PayPal has announced that it has suspended WikiLeaks online donation account causing the whistleblower Web site a vital source of funding. PayPal says WikiLeaks has violated its policies which state that PayPal cannot be used to, quote, "encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity." On its Twitter page, WikiLeaks said, "PayPals action was a result of U.S. government pressure."

The Senate tried and fail twice to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class in a rare Saturday session today. Senate Democrats were leading the push, but they came up seven votes short of the 60 votes needed. Republicans want all of the tax cuts extended including those for the wealthy. The tax cuts are set to expire at the end of the year.

The U.S. has cut a huge trade deal with South Korea. President Barack Obama says the agreement will increase U.S. exports by $11 billion and support 70,000 American jobs. It's the same trade deal that fell through during the G-20 Summit several weeks ago. If approve by Congress, the deal will eliminate terrorist on over 95 percent of industrial and consumer goods within five years.

Former rap mogul Suge Knight is no stranger to the jailhouse. Now he is in trouble again after being arrested last night in Los Angeles. A deputy stopped Knight, ran his name and found he was wanted on a minor traffic warrant. Authorities took him into custody, but released him early this morning after he agreed to be in court two months from now.

Gruesome allegations out of Mexico tonight. A ruthless drug cartel may have recruited a child, a 14-year-old boy, as a hit man. The boy was recently taken into custody in central Mexico and reportedly was carrying a U.S. birth certificate. Now, according to Mexico's state-run news service called Notimex, the boy told authorities he had carried out four killings on orders of the Pacifico Sur drug cartel.

And police in Beverly Hills thought they might have much-needed break, a much-needed break in the murder of Ronni Chasen. But that person killed himself before police could talk to him. It's not at all clear tonight whether he even had any connection to the Chasen murder.

With us from Los Angeles right now to sort through all of this, this mystery, is Attorney Lisa Bloom. She is the founder of the BloomFirm.com. And then CNN producer, Alan Duke is with us.

So I will start with you, Lisa. Who was this person of interest and why did police want to talk to him.

LISA BLOOM, ATTORNEY: Harold Smith was someone with a criminal history that includes burglary and robbery. And apparently he said to one person in his building that he was responsible for the killing of Ronni Chasen and he's going to collect a large sum of money for it. However, that person's credibility is in dispute.

On the side that says look, maybe he is not the killer, he seems to be a low level criminal, somebody who does not seem to have been involved in any violent crimes that I'm aware of, any crimes against a person. And this was a targeted shooting in my view. Somebody who took a gun right up to the car of Ronni Chasen, just about eight feet away through an open window and shot four times, killed her, did not take anything and escaped. To me this is probably somebody more along the lines of a professional killer. Probably not this Harold Smith, but we really just don't know. It's an open question.

LEMON: OK so police have not been able to link this Harold Smith to the Chasen murder in any way, Lisa?

BLOOM: Well, except, as I said, apparently, there is one person in the building who is now saying that Harold Smith told that person that Ronni Chasen was killed by him, but that person's credibility is in dispute.

So I think this is still a wide open investigation. I think police have to look at videotapes of all the businesses along Sunset Boulevard, including here at CNN, we're in Sunset Boulevard, and we have video cameras. They've got a lot of information to comb through, including Ronni Chasen's computers, her cell phone, any electronic devices that she had. We have to look at her will. I think there's a lot for them to sort through.

LEMON: Yes. And what I was saying, there's no hard evidence to someone saying this.

Alan, you talked to some of the neighbors who lived in the apartment complex. What are they saying about this man? ALAN DUKE, CNN PRODUCER: Well, first of all, let me say that it's a diverse group of neighbors. And some of them I really don't think are very credible. Not all of them. I've certainly found some. In fact, a former lieutenant governor candidate for the Tea Party in Alaska was living there for the past month and he has seemed very reliable as the source of information. But some of the people who are saying that they heard this gentleman, Mr. Smith, say things connected to the death of Ronni Chasen. I am not sure I'm buying those, because they changed their stories several times in interviews that I have done with them. So it's still a big mystery there.

LEMON: Let's talk about some reports that are out there and what others are saying here Alan about Ronni Chasen's estate. One part of her will seems to suggest that there might be a bit of bad blood among her relatives, especially leaving her nieces not a lot of money, $10.

DUKE: Well, it is kind of odd that the will that was written 14 years ago gave only $10 to one of her nieces, Jill Gatsby, who by the way just last week uploaded a YouTube song in honor of her deceased aunt. We don't really know what that dispute was about, but it was 14 years ago.

Now, what Lawrence Cohen, Ronni's brother has said is he believe, and he said this in court filings, that there was another will that would supersede that one anyway, a 2006 will that he thought was in a bank safe deposit box. He had the key. Yesterday a judge gave him the authority, special administrator of her will, her estate, to open that and look for the new will and perhaps her niece will get more out of that. We'll see.

LEMON: OK. One has nothing to do with the other. Nothing to do with her murder.

DUKE: Right.

LEMON: This is just an interesting background that's coming out.

Lisa, talk about a prevailing theory about why Ronni Chasen was killed? Could it have been road rage?

You said that you believe that it was more of a professional hit because of the way it was carried out.

BLOOM: That's right. We don't see this kind of road rage incident along Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills. To me this was a woman who was targeted. Although many people say she had no enemies. She's a very successful woman with a multimillion-dollar estate. And anybody at that level of a success, who runs their own business is going to have competitors, employees, ex-employees and others who are disgruntled for one reason or another. She may have had people in her personal life who had antagonism towards her for their own reasons.

That's who I think the police are going to look for, because this, as I say, was a targeted hit. She was shot dead in her own car. Leaving an event that everybody knew she was going to attend. A film premiere. It would have been very easy for somebody with animosity towards her to follow her from the event, wait until she's at this dark corner and shoot and kill her. Nothing was stolen from her car. Not her jewelry, not her cell phone, not the car itself.

LEMON: Police and people who know her are being very tight lipped about this.

Thank you to Lisa Bloom and also CNN's Alan Duke.

BLOOM: Thanks.

LEMON: Let's talk other news now.

President Barack Obama has granted the first pardons of his presidency to nine people convicted of a range of crimes. One of the most notable recipients. Ronald Foster of Pennsylvania, former Marine sentenced to a year probation in 1964 for cutting pennies into dimes to use in vending machines on the base at Camp Lejeune.

Among others on the list is James Bernard Banks of Utah, sentence in 1972 to two years probation for illegal possession of government property. And Laurens Dorsey of New York who got five years probation in 1998 for making false statements to the FDA.

Oh boy, it is a mess out there. Travelers in the Midwest were not in a forgiving mood today as the first snowstorm of the season. Force flight cancellations at many airports and wreck havoc really on the area. The accumulation was enough to force cancellation of 300 flights in and out of Chicago this morning.

Jacqui Jeras joins me now for the very latest in the CNN severe weather center. A lot of upset people today.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. You know, it's tough to travel when you're getting this. And it's the first snowfall really of the season. The first significant one that a lot of folks were dealing with across the Midwest and into the Ohio Valley. And that was a lot of the trouble.

These are pictures from Chicago where you had more than five inches of snowfall. Don mentioned all those flight cancellations and those of you that did have flights, a lot of them were delayed. You can see the streets were really wet and mushy. This is a heavy wet snow.

We also saw quite a bit of snow which was falling in other parts of the country. There you can see. I guess it's more Chicago stuff. Well, there we go. That's Madison that we're looking at. The street plows were out in full force. A little bit lesser snow fall amount in Wisconsin. And here are a couple totals that we have from across the Midwest. Champagne, Illinois, the highest number I could find at 8- 1/2 inches of snowfall. And Rockford, 6.3. There you can see O'Hare. Bloomington, Illinois 3.8 and 2.6 in Indianapolis. So it was pretty widespread for a whole lot of these folks.

Now the system moving off to the east, and even though for the most part of the system is out of here, we're still getting some lake- effect snow showers with the northerly flow.

Now as we head through the overnight hours for tonight, those winds become a little bit northwest, so we will be watching for heavy accumulations from Elkhart down towards Fort Wayne. In fact we could see as much as maybe even 10 inches of snow before all is said and done here.

So here's the big forecast as you head into tomorrow. Our system very quickly makes its way off shore just dealing with snow from the lake and that's about it. But our low is going to hook up with another one from the northeast and this is going to be impacting you, guys, into early to the middle part of next week with some major winds so that's something that we're going to have to be watching out for.

And the temperatures had been really cold behind this front, too. Look at this high as tomorrow across the upper Midwest, including Minneapolis only in between.

Speaking of cold temperatures, take a look at this iReport. This is from Oak Hollow, Florida, yesterday morning. Eve Ghigliotti sent this to us. And she said it was 28 degrees at the time of the photo. Don't be fooled. That's not snow that you see there in Oak Hollow. That's the frost that she scraped off from her windshield, Don.

LEMON: A frost man.

JERAS: A frost man, I like that. Frosty the Snowman for real, right? There you go.

LEMON: Thank you, Jacqui Jeras. We appreciate it.

A boat disabled in icy waters off the Alaskan coast. The 20- member crew stranded with heavy cargo of crude oil on board. How long will they have to wait for help to arrive?

And speaking of rescues. A man falls on a subway tracks. This is in Spain. Look at that video. Wait until you see just how close the train comes. It's going to make you gasp.

And we're online. You can reach out to us there. Join us on Twitter, Facebook. Join our blog at CNN.com, or we're on FourSquare.com as well.

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LEMON: Two men are claiming to be the new president of the Ivory Coast. The incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo was sworn in today despite pleas from world leaders for him to step aside. Preliminary results showed his opponent, Alassane Ouattara won the runoff election last Sunday. He also declared himself president today. The political chaos is raising fears that the country will plunged back into civil war.

Right now a 20-member crew needs rescue off the Alaskan Coast. They're aboard a huge trader that lost power in the icy waters. The boat is carrying hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil, but we are told help is expected to arrive soon.

I'm sure they will be happy about that.

A rescue in the nick of time in Spain captured on videotape. Watch this. A man fell off the train platform and on to the rails just seconds before a high-speed train pulled into the station. An off-duty police officer jumped into the tracks and dragged the man to safety. There you see it right there. The officer just graduated from a police academy two months ago.

Well, some of you are probably getting ready to hit the bars and the clubs tonight, and you know there is plenty of temptation out there on the dance floor. But if you have a guilty one-night stand or worse, you end up cheating on someone but it may not be your fault. Seriously.

A new study from Binghamton University claims that a genetic variant is responsible for cheating and promiscuous behavior. Here is what both the psychologist and the author of the study had to say about it.

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JUSTIN GARCIA, STUDY AUTHOR: It turns out everyone has the gene. The gene is called DRD-4. It's a dopamine D-4 receptor. We all have it, but we vary in the type variant that we have for the gene. So everyone has got it. I kind of imagine like height. We all vary in our height. The same thing is true with the genes. It varies in its length. And the one particular variant -- people who seek dopamine more. They're more likely to need thrills, and want to jump out of airplanes and extreme sports. They're more likely to gamble and abuse alcohol and we found they're also more likely to have uncommitted sex.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: All right. Before I let Dr. Walsh -- I know she wants to get in here -- answer this question for me. Was it different between men and women?

GARCIA: We did not find differences between men and women.

LEMON: OK. Dr. Wendy, what do you make of this? Could we call this the Tiger Woods gene or the Tony Parker gene or --

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: You can go on and on and name off a number of people. But we don't hear about too many women.

DR. WENDY WALSH, PSYCHOLOGIST: Right. Don, this is fascinating. But we have to remember, with all due respect to Jason, that it is a small study, 181 participants. So we can't generalize the whole population. But what we can see here is there's a genetic component, a biological predisposition to all kinds of human behaviors.

(LAUGHTER) Now whether we act them out has a gender piece, a cultural piece. I mean, you're not going to be promiscuous if your culture is going to cut your hands off for doing it for instance. And with women, traditionally, even if they carry the gene, they may not have expressed it as much -- and I'm talking about infidelity -- because they had too much to lose, an unwanted pregnancy, germs that could cause an STD, publish shame because of the double standard, the sexual double standard. Women just had more to lose.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: So, Doctor, are you saying all those things don't matter to guys, they take more risks any way?

WALSH: Well, women are more at risk physiologically to a sexual encounter. I mean, you guys don't get pregnant and you actually don't accept as many deposits of fluids.

(LAUGHTER)

So we are more at risk physiologically. And we used to be more at risk socially, shame based. But now the double standard is changing. Remember the duke grad who wrote her F-list thesis?

LEMON: This should not be an excuse, especially for men? Because, you know, honey, I'm a man and I'm just a man and it doesn't mean anything. It just fell out.

WALSH: And that's --

(LAUGHTER)

And that's when I say, oh, so you're an animal and not a human? You have no brain, no ability to have self-control?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: All right. Let's talk some food now and possibly going out.

OK. For our West Coast viewers, if you have not had dinner yet, sorry, we are about to make your stomach growl here.

Burgers have come a long way from the drive-thru. We will look at why they are so big right now and chow down right here in our studio.

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LEMON: Now for "What Matters" tonight. Jared Williams. He knows what it means to persevere and what it means to have good friends. Jared's former high school football teammates gathered at his new home in Dallas today to install landscaping. It's a home they raised money to build. You see, last year Jarred was injured in a game, paralyzed from the waist down. Jared says he's struggling but determined and thankful. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JARED WILLIAMS, RECEIVING NEW HOME: I try not to give up, but it's a hard journey. And I just keep my head up and just don't give up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Jared and his mother will move into their new home just before Christmas. Good luck to them.

Well, you can call it comfort food. Call it classic. The hamburger, well, it never really went away, but maybe you've noticed all these new hip burger joints popping up everywhere. We invited the guys from one of my favorites here, it's a new favorite in Atlanta. It's called Yeah Burger. We asked them to join us here in the studio.

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LEMON: What caused the resurgence of the burger?

SHAUN DOTY, EXECUTIVE CHEF, YEAH! BURGER: I think it's a combination of obviously the economy, people were looking for something less - the more affordable but also come out with just a return to simplicity. So people, there was so much, with the economy, it was booming and people were going out and they were spending a lot of money and then I think people came back to reality a little bit and said let's get back to basics. And even as a chef that's what I've done. I mean, I've invested all of my career into creating this concept. I think this is really something that's very sustainable.

JERAS: What should people expect to pay for a burger like this? You know, are we talking 20,30 bucks? Are you talking five bucks?

DOTY: Our signature burger, double stacked Georgia beef, American cheese on it. $7.50.

JERAS: $7.50.

LEMON: You could go. Because I've gone to restaurants, you get burger on the menu, 20, 25 bucks.

JERAS: I know.

LEMON: This is good.

ERIC MAIER, MANAGING PARTNER, YEAH! BURGER: That is actually one of the things that started the whole craze. You know, in New York City they had $30 burger. Not everybody can - (CROSSTALK)

JERAS: $50 burgers.

LEMON: The economy on everybody's mind this is a fun thing to do. It's not just Yeah! Burger. There is a bunch of them. So go check them out. They are very healthy. Not supposed to eat with my mouth full. I mean talk with my mouth full. So thank you guys. (END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: The man once known as the Unabomber doesn't need a place to live anymore. Ted Kaczynski is locked up in a maximum security prison. The Montana property where he once lived is up for sale. We'll tell you the asking price.

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LEMON: Every weekend, we like to bring you some interesting news items that you might have missed during the week. Up first, the secluded property where the infamous Unabomber created his deadly bombs is up for sale. A Lincoln Montana Realtor is handling the sale. The asking price has recently been cut from $154,500 to $69,500. It's a lot. It's a big cut. It's listed under the heading, "Own a Piece of U.S. History. Home of the Unabomber." One thing not included in the sale price is Ted Kaczynski's cabin. It was hauled away for evidence and is now located in the museum in Washington.

Kaczynski pleaded guilty in 1998. He killed three people and wounded 23 between 1978 and 1995. He is serving a life sentence in the federal super max prison in Colorado.

One of the most infamous homes in the movies, up for sale, right now. Take a look at it. You recognize it? It's the Corleone's Family's sprawling estate from the 1972 mob epic "The Godfather." The asking price is get this, $2.9 million. It's a lot of cash, but there's a lot of history there as well.

I'm Don Lemon at the CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta. I'll see you back here tomorrow night at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. Eastern. Make sure you have a great night. "LOSING LENNON: COUNTDOWN TO MURDER" is coming up next here on CNN.

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