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Details of Massacre in Afghanistan; Scientists Discover New Species of Humans; Box with the Bones of Jesus Christ Discovered?

Aired March 17, 2012 - 22:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DON LEMON, CNN HOST (voice-over): Afghan outrage. Hundreds rally. They want an American soldier accused of a massacre to face justice their way.

Deep dive, Hollywood style.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Am I an explorer who does films on the side or am I a film maker who does exploration? I have a hard time deciding.

LEMON: This famous movie maker takes to the scene again. He goes where few have gone before.

Saturday Night Mystery. This discovery could change our view of human evolution, and your family tree. That and more, right here, right now on CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Good evening. I'm Don Lemon. Is he a mass murderer? One accused of massacring sleeping children in Afghanistan, all while he wore a U.S. army uniform. Well, it is Robert Bales who we are talking about. And have a picture of him as a senior in high school years before he took his military oath to serve our country. You'll see it in moments.

The military brass says, Bales, now a U.S. army staff sergeant walked house to house in the middle of the night, opening fire on Afghan villages. When the rampage ended, 16 people were dead, and the U.S. mission in Afghanistan had been shaken to its core.

Tonight, CNN's Susan Candiotti has gotten exclusive access to some of the people who know Robert Bales the best and the image they painted the man is not that of a mass killer.

Let's go now to Susan. She is standing by for us in Ohio, at the soldier's home state.

Susan, you've been talking to a man who had a special relationship with Robert Bales. Who is the man and how did he know Bales? SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi Don. This man's name is Bob Durham and he goes way back to know this family. In fact, he knew Sergeant Robert Bales ever since he was a little baby. And he has a special relationship because he said that sergeant Bales, when he was a teenager, always took care of Mr. Durham's very special son. He's a special son because he's severely disabled. And even though he said Bales was a very popular football player, for example, he wouldn't think twice about take thing young man out, was never embarrassed to be with him, and really took good care with him, was a giving person, Don.

LEMON: And does Bob Durham think that the Bobby Bales, the Bobby Bales he knows could be capable of this sort of action?

CANDIOTTI: You know, he says he absolutely cannot fathom how this possibly could have happened. He said that the man he knew was a caring young man who he knew through adulthood and even from the time when he worked in the business world and then went on to serve in the military after 9/11.

He said that if something somehow caused him to snap, for example, no one knows what happened. He said that if doctors are able to find out and get him to understand that in actuality that children and women had been killed, that he doesn't think that his friend, sergeant Bales, would ever be able to come to grips with that could ever change - Don.

LEMON: And Susan, the last time he spoke with him was back in December. It's been fairly recently, correct?

CANDIOTTI: That's right. He called him because -- sergeant Bales called Mr. Durham from Afghanistan to console Mr. Durham about the loss of his own father. And so he felt very badly about it. And he said they still have a very special bond. He's close to sergeant Bales' entire family. And so, when he heard this news, he is trying to make sensitive like everybody else. Here's part of what he told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB DURHAM, BALES' FAMILY FRIEND: I love the guy. He's a part of my family. He's been -- I've known him since the day he was born. It crushed me. It crushed me. Regardless of what happened, Bobby has been changed forever. If the Bobby that I knew ever gets well, comes back to it and realizes what has happened, and realizes that children and women were killed, I don't think he can live with it. He'll never be the same. And that he's such a great person. That just - that crushes me. I don't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: And Susan, he must have a lot of questions of his own about what exactly did happen.

CANDIOTTI: That's right. I think there are some of the same questions a lot of people had. For example, he didn't know about this injury that he had where sergeant Bales lost part of one of his foot in an explosion overseas. He also didn't know about this apparent brain injury that he suffered. And so, he wants to know like so many other people do, if he had these injuries, why was he sent back on active duty? He's looking for answers like everyone else's.

LEMON: All right, CNN's Susan Candiotti. Susan, thank you very much for that.

Coming up tonight on CNN, a man who says he was held in Iraq for months. We'll get the latest on him, a U.S. army member, as a matter of fact.

And also, a teenager shot to death while walking in a Florida gated community.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CALLER: He just said he shot him. Yes, the person is dead laying on the grass.

9/11 DISPATCHER: Just because he's laying on the grass.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CALLER: My God.

(END AUDIO TAPE)

LEMON: The admitted shooter here the head of the neighborhood watch, claims he did it in self-defense. But do 911 calls back him up? That story is next on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. Protests in Florida tonight, over the shooting of an unarmed teen by someone, who was supposed to protect the neighborhood. 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was walking home from a store in gated community when a neighborhood watch captain confronted him. He told 9/11 operator that the youth looked suspicious, and there are sounds of a possible scuffle on that 911 tape, then a gunshot that killed the young man. Police have not charged the shooter, George Zimmerman, who claims self-defense.

In an earlier conversation with our legal analyst, Holly Hughes, she calls what happened shocking.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HOLLY HUGHES, CNN CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I don't know why this man has not been arrested.

LEMON: That's the first thing you said to me. Why he has never arrested? And you're a former prosecutor.

HUGHES: Right. Exactly. I'm a defense attorney now, but I can look at a situation and say, every report has told us this young man was unarmed. Now we hear the tapes and what do the police dispatchers say to George Zimmerman? Do not follow him. We don't need you to do that. He was given strict instructions to stop following this young man. Leave him alone. The police will investigate. Instead, he continues to follow him, and this poor child ends up dead.

LEMON: Everyone is saying - for people are saying, we don't know who it is on the 911 call. Who is screaming for help? But after the shots, there are no more cries for help.

HUGHES: Ok. Well, ask yourself this, one guy has a gun, and one guy doesn't have a gun. Who do you think is yelling for help? Come on. This young man goes to the store to buy skittles for his brother and next thing we know, he's shot dead because he looks suspicious? What does that mean, really?

LEMON: So, I'm going to ask you then.

HUGHES: Yes.

LEMON: You've worked these cases. Why hasn't he been arrested?

HUGHES: I would love to know. All I think of --

LEMON: You don't know?

HUGHES: I have no idea. I can't think of why he has not been arrested. Because typically, sometimes if it's who done it murder case, you don't want to arrest too fast, because of the speedy trial demand. But here, we know who done it.

LEMON: What I'm getting at, do you think it's fishy about it? Obviously, you know, you said, one was armed, one wasn't to you.

HUGHES: Right.

LEMON: Its one plus one equals two.

HUGHES: Exactly.

LEMON: Is there something fishy going on that you believe?

HUGHES: It doesn't pass the smell test. It stinks to high heaven. This is the same man mind to you. The defendant I'm talking about, Zimmerman, who had charges against him dropped when he committed violence against the police.

LEMON: This neighborhood watch captain, Holly, he had a gun and none of this would have happened if he had not approached Trayvon Martin. And how much would you say he was told by the 911 operator not to approach. How much isn't that going to a play into - isn't that a big factor? Where they said we told you not to do it and now you --.

HUGHES: Of course it is, because it goes to intent. You know, every crime, you have to have two things. You have to have an action and an intention. And this shows the intent of Zimmerman, the defendant right, the shooter. He's not a defendant yet, excuse me, I miss term. He should be a defendant, but he's not yet. That shows you his intent. He was looking for a fight. He went after this young man even after the 911 dispatcher said, do not follow him.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: That was Holly Hughes.

Meantime, let's talk about some politics now. The Republican presidential hopefuls have been out and about on the St. Patrick's Day. Rick Santorum had seven events scheduled today across Missouri and Illinois. And he didn't hold back this morning in his criticism of Mitt Romney.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICK SANTORUM (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He gives away that issue. He put forward the bill that was the model for Obama care and then advocated that at the federal level, and then denied that he did it. Not only was his policies' bad, you can't trust him to tell the truth about what he advocates.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: For his part, Mitt Romney wrapped up a quick spring through Puerto Rico today when -- then he headed for Illinois for an event that wrapped up just a few hours ago. Romney said he's optimistic about a win in tomorrow's Puerto Rico primary. Illinois will hold its primary on Tuesday.

Meantime overseas now, there a developing story tonight, out of Iraq. A U.S. state department official confirms that the United Nations has transferred a U.S. citizen to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. How he got to Iraq and where he's been is raising a whole lot of questions.

Earlier today, a man identified by the name of Randy Michaels met with reporters alongside political leaders of a movement led by radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-SaDr. He did not provide his name but said he deployed to Iraq in 2003. Deployed to Iraq in 2003, which would lead you to believe he's a member of to U.S. military.

Well later, he said he moved into a civilian job posting and was taken hostage last year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RANDY MICHAELS, FORMER SOLDIER (through translator): I was taken inside Baghdad and have been kept around different locations within the city by (INAUDIBLE). It was explained to me that my release has been for more of humanitarian reasons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Well, Michaels' identification card was also shown to reporters. Now the Pentagon is investigating all of this, but a defense department official says to the best of their knowledge, no active U.S. duty military personnel missing had been missing in Iraq. Interesting story there, we will follow up for you. Some of those who are forced into the sex trade are trafficked across international borders on commercial airlines. One flight attendant said that people who do her job can be the first line of defense to fight human trafficking. And she's doing just that. Her story is next on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: A Nazi prison guard convicted as an accessory to the murder of more than 27,000 Jews has died. The 91-year-old, John Demjanjuk was free while appealing his conviction and died today in a nursing home in southern Germany. Demjanjuk was a retired Ohio auto worker when he was accused of being the notorious prison guard Ivan the terrible in a Nazi extermination camp. He was convicted in his row but later released and sent back to the U.S. when another person was found to be the notorious guard.

Last year he was convicted again in Germany for his involvement at a World War I death camp in Poland.

Smuggling people into slavery often involves crossing borders, traveling to far places. That means often, the first people of to see signs of human trafficking are flight attendants.

CNN went inside, airline ambassador international's first training design for airline crews.

Thelma Gutierrez has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETRA HENSLEY, TRAFFICKING SURVIVOR: Who are the victims?

THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Petra Hensley's from the Czech Republic.

HENSLEY: I was grabbed off the streets and I was drugged, beaten and raped by more men than I could count.

GUTIERREZ: She says she was 16 when she was trafficked into the sex trade. Eight hundred thousand victims are trafficked across international borders each year. Many are brought from far away countries, quite literally, flying under the radar into the United States.

SANDRA FIORINI, FLIGHT ATTENDANT: I was boarding a flight in London, and these two young kids come over to me and say, can you help us get this girl to Dulles airport? They said, someone has handed her off to us, and she's traveling from Mongolia and speaks no English.

GUTIERREZ: Sandra Fiorini has been a flight attendant for 40 years. Nancy Rivard has 35 years of experience.

NANCY RIVARD, AIRLINE AMBASSADOR INTERNATIONAL: On a flight from Costa Rica to Miami, a man got on a flight with a little girl 9-years- old. And again, he was in control of her. And she seemed quite scared.

GUTIERREZ: Over the years they've seen things on flights that just didn't seem right. But back then few people knew much about human trafficking.

FIORINI: This young boy gets on and he's got a day-old baby. The baby still had the umbilical cord, no wife. He had two diapers in his pocket and one bottle. I ran off the plane. I called the police and I said, please, come here. I'm sure this baby has been either kidnapped or stolen. Their response to me was we're not getting involved.

GUTIERREZ: Fiorini says she and her colleagues and the airline industry are the first people to come into contact with victims of trafficking who are flying into the country. She also says they should believe the first line of defense.

FIORINI: The only way that I can help is by alerting the flight attendants, training the flight attendants, telling them what's going on.

GUTIERREZ: That's just what Fiorini did. She partnered with the nonprofit organization, innocence at risk. Along with Rivard, they created comprehensive training for flight attendants.

This week, airline workers are learning how to spot potential victims or traffickers, what behaviors to look for and what to do about it.

Wendy Hogue has been a flight attendant with the major airline for 36 years. She attended Nancy's training and learned how to deal with suspicious passengers.

WENDY HOGUE, FLIGHT ATTENDANT: To go up and just start having some small talk. Is this your son? Where are you going, business or pleasure? And to just feel it, which is what flight attendants do.

GUTIERREZ: Exactly why Sandra was determined to lead the charge.

FIORINI: When you know what's going to happen and you walk away, you're just as guilty as that guy that's selling them. I don't look away.

GUTIERREZ: Thelma Gutierrez, CNN, San Francisco.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Some researchers say they believe they've discovered a human ancestor, one we didn't even know about. Saturday Night Mystery's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: You know what that means. It's time for "Saturday night mysteries." And actually, this is our special extreme dive seven miles under water is coming up in just a few minutes. And undoubtedly, there are mysteries hidden at the bottom of the Mariana Trans, more on that in just a moment.

Jacqui Jeras has a couple of other mysteries, including one that we may have discovered a new ancestor. What is this all about? Does this change history?

JACQUI JERAS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, it doesn't change history but it might change the process. We're looking at evolution here.

LEMON: OK.

JERAS: There are actually two really important parts to this whole thing. The first one is really exciting, is that, potentially as scientists have discovered a new species of humans. So they are relatives but they don't come from the direct line of modern man. And this is the sketch that you are looking at, what they may have looked like, and they're being called the red deer cave people. Only, they were found in two separate caves in China and they got that name because they like to eat a lot of deer meat. OK.

LEMON: OK.

JERAS: There was evidence that the caves that they have cook to vanish him. And have some common features with common man and some others that are totally unrelated to any other members in the human evolution tree.

So, let's talk about some of those features, such a kind of interesting. They had prominent brow ridges. They have thick skull bones. They have flat upper faces and broad noses. The jaws jutted out and the cheekbones flared out widely, and that would to create space for larger chewing muscles.

(LAUGHTER)

JERAS: Yes. So, that's the first part.

And so, the second part of it is how young they were, surprisingly young. This dates back to somewhere between 14,000 and 11,500 years ago. And so, that's like the end of the ice age. And while that might sound old, that's actually very young, and we're talking about the youngest population ever to be found anywhere in the world that doesn't fit within the range of modern human.

LEMON: Really?

JERAS: Yes.

LEMON: So when they say there's nothing new under the sun, maybe not so.

JERAS: Maybe not so. So, they probably walked the earth at the same time as early Chinese farmers. So, we don't know if they interactively of each other o maybe they competed with each other for resources. There are going to be some DNA testing to find out if this is a hybrid species or new species.

LEMON: Maybe it's just a link we don't know about. We don't know everything.

JERAS: We don't know everything. There's a lot we don't know, especially about evolution.

LEMON: OK. That's why we say it's a mystery.

JERAS: It is a mystery. Yes.

LEMON: So, the next mystery, it involves a box that some say contain the bones of Jesus, right? And this went to court to prove authenticity. What happened?

JERAS: Jesus' brother, yes, James. So we go from evolution to creationism, so to speak. And you night heard about this case because -- we had to go back ten years to get to the beginning of this thing. And there, you can see this is an Israeli collector. His name is Odit Golen (ph) and he came out in 2002 saying that I have this burial box. It's being hailed as the oldest archaeological link to Jesus Christ, and inscribed on it there in Aramaic. It said James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.

So, if real, that would be more than 2,000 years old. But immediately, as soon as the thing has displayed, everybody was skeptical. You know, scientist, archeologist, they said, how can you prove that this is real? And it came down to, that he was charged for allegedly leading an international forgery ring. They're saying he faked this whole thing.

So it went to court in Jerusalem and the ruling came in just last week. And they basically said they can't tell for sure. It's impossible to rule whether or not it was authentic or genuine or fake.

LEMON: Mystery.

JERAS: So we still don't know.

LEMON: OK. I love it when like octopus and squid -- when the octopus predicted the world cup. And now, we have this colossal squid that has supervision. So what is this about?

JERAS: These are just a mysterious in general because they're so huge and they are so creepy and really there's nothing small when it comes to a giant or colossal squid, from their tentacles to 40-foot bodies. But scientists have always wondered why their eye is so big, because they live so deep in the darkest part of the ocean. They like why they had such a big eye. And they had really a hard time getting their hands on one of these things.

So, about a year ago, a fisherman actually caught one, they froze it. Now, scientists are looking at it. And they think they needed such a big eye to be able to see something so large very far away, which is their predator, which is the sperm whale.

LEMON: Mystery.

JERAS: Mystery. LEMON: Interesting. Calamari.

JERAS: It's so big. It's like the size of your head. It's like a size of a general plate.

LEMON: We got to run. I'm Don Lemon. She's Jacqui Jeras.

CNN's "Extreme Dive, Seven Miles Under Water," starts right now.

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