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Castro Take Plea Deal; Sybrina Fulton's Speech; Spanish Train Driver in Custody; Allegations of Kisses, Groping, Headlocks

Aired July 26, 2013 - 14:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Suzanne, thank you so much. Have a great weekend.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. Top of the hour.

We begin with big news out of the Cleveland today. Ariel Castro has accepted a plea deal that will save his life. Here he was this morning. The Cleveland man admitted today to kidnapping those three women, raping them repeatedly and holding them hostage in his home for a decade. And for the very first time, Castro talked publicly about, and I'm quoting him, "his sexual problem."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CASTRO: My addiction to pornography and my sexual problem has really taken a toll on my mind. I knew I was going to get pretty much the book thrown at me. There's some things that I have to -- I don't comprehend because of my sexual problem throughout my whole (ph) years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: OK. Lawyers say this plea deal, which calls for him to be sentenced to life, plus 1,000 years, is exactly what his victims wanted. Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus probably would have had to face Castro in court, testify against him, if that case had gone to trial. So we've now gotten this statement. A law firm representing Castro's victims released this. Let me read it to you in part. "Amanda, Gina and Michelle are relieved by today's plea. They are satisfied by this resolution to the case. They continue their desire -- the desire of privacy."

Under today's deal, Castro's home, where the women were in prisoned for some 10 years, will be torn down.

I want to bring in Lydia Esparra in Cleveland. She is a close friend of Gina DeJesus' family, a weekend anchor there in Cleveland at WOIO.

Lydia, great to see you. We met, we talked when I was covering the story some months ago in Cleveland.

You have spent time with Gina and her family. The news of this plea deal, the news she will not have to spend a second in court with this man, how are they feeling? LYDIA ESPARRA, WEEKEND ANCHOR, WOIO: Well, I haven't talked to them probably since she's been released because they have that attorney. So they've been working through the attorney. But prior to that, her mom was saying that she forgave him, but they understand that they were going to wait for the judicial system to take its place and do what it had to do. I can tell you, they are probably very happy about this because no one wanted to relive the horror that went on in that home for the past decade.

BALDWIN: Let me go back to something you just said. They have already forgiven this man?

ESPARRA: She had said it in a news conference. Her mom said that, you know, they're very Christian people and they already forgave him. They forgave him for what had gone on. But that doesn't mean they didn't want him punished. Initially when I talked to Nancy Ruiz, which is Gina's mother, she said, yes, we forgive him, and she said it at a news conference.

BALDWIN: How -

ESPARRA: But certainly she did want the judicial system to take its course and for him to be punished.

BALDWIN: Now we know he'll be getting life plus 1,000 years. It could -- had this possibly gone to trial, he could have been put to death. Did they ever intimate (ph) that that was something they wanted to happen to him?

ESPARRA: No. They -- they really didn't. Just that he should be punished. And I can tell you, too, that in working with Tim McGinty, I've known him probably for the last 15 years. He's a prosecutor. He used to serve -

BALDWIN: The prosecutor.

ESPARRA: Right. He's the prosecutor. The Cuyahoga County prosecutor. He's been here as prosecutor since November. And I can tell you, he served on the bench for 18 years. And I don't believe for a second that he wanted this to go to trial. I think he did want to spare the girls, he wanted to spare the community, and certainly the families.

BALDWIN: I want to get to the community in just a minute. But I have to ask, just journalists to journalist, you've covered this story for years in Cleveland. And just to, as we all did, sort of stop wherever we were and watch the man speak in court. Let me just play a little bit more of Ariel Castro.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you plead to the sexually violent predator specification to that count?

ARIEL CASTRO, PLEADED GUILTY TO 937 CHARGES: I don't care for the wording, but I will plead guilty to that. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was there any advice given to you by your attorneys that you don't understand? Any questions you have for me at this point?

CASTRO: Not right now but I pretty much understand everything. I put my trust in them because I know they're good lawyers. So I -- there is some things that I have to - I don't comprehend because of my sexual problem throughout my whole years, but pretty much, yes, I understand what they have been telling me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: You watched him this morning. What was your visceral reaction?

ESPARRA: First of all, Brooke, when I first saw him, he was talking. He was very chatty. In the past, he hasn't. He had his head down. Today he had his glasses. He seemed more open about the situation. I was surprised that he admitted that he wanted to work with the FBI. So all along he's been wanting to work with authorities and almost admitting his guilt.

Now, what I thought was interesting, I believe I talked to you about this earlier, Brooke, that he says, oh, I don't think I'm a violent sexual predator. Well, that really confused me because how the heck did you get those girls in your house to begin with?

BALDWIN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

ESPARRA: So violence had to get them in there. So he's denying that he's not a violent, sexual predator. So I thought that was interesting. But his whole demeanor has seemed to change over the whole process. And then he even said today that he was on some medication and that made him sleepy and maybe that's why he was so tired. But I don't know, it was more like he was more accepting of what was going on and he was resigned to the fact that this was going to be his fate, which is 1,000 years.

BALDWIN: And just quickly, Cleveland, this community, the neighborhood, the house is going away. How is everyone feeling?

ESPARRA: Oh, my gosh, you can only imagine, Brooke, they're going to be elated.

BALDWIN: Yes.

ESPARRA: The last time I was in the community, neighbors were saying, it's such an eyesore. You still have people coming back and forth looking at the house of horrors. And the people who live there, just want to go on. They want to live their normal lives. And really they're getting tired of people asking them, how did you not see what was going on? Well, there's a lot of people that didn't see it. He hid everything. And if you saw the neighborhood, there's a lot of abandoned properties to the side, behind the home. So certainly it would lend itself that people didn't know. But they want their lives back. And certainly they want these women, who are now women, some of them were kidnapped when they were girls, they want them to be able to go on with their lives and just move forward and forget about what happened in that home for the last -- past decade, even though you know that's going to be very hard and that's not going to happen.

BALDWIN: Yes.

ESPARRA: But certainly you can move forward.

BALDWIN: It's incredible just walking around Cleveland and seeing the missing posters from years ago still posted on the same telephone poles. Wow. Incredible for the family and for these young women. Lydia Esparra, thank you so much. Great seeing you and talking to you.

ESPARRA: You're welcome.

Also today, and minutes ago, Trayvon Martin's mother spoke before a huge crowd. This was the National Urban League. Here she was, Sybrina Fulton. She made her speech just a day after a juror, the only member of the jury who was a minority, broke her silence on the deliberations that let the man who shot her son go free. She is juror B29. She is one of six women who acquitted George Zimmerman. And she revealed her face to ABC News. They only referred to her with her first name, Maddy. She said that the law forced her to vote not guilty, but her heart, she says, told her otherwise.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBIN ROBERTS, ANCHOR, ABC NEWS "GOOD MORNING AMERICA": And you said earlier that you are the juror that could have made it a hung jury.

MADDY, ZIMMERMAN TRIAL JUROR B29: Oh, yes.

ROBERTS: Do you have regrets that you didn't?

MADDY: Kind of. I want Trayvon's mom to know that I'm hurting. And if she thought that nobody cared about her son, I could speak for myself. I do care. I couldn't do anything about it. And I felt like I let a lot of people down. And I'm thinking to myself, did I go the right way? Did I go the wrong way?

I know I went the right way because by the law and the way it was followed is the way I went. But if I would have used my heart, I probably would have went a hung jury.

George Zimmerman got away with murder. But you can't get away from God. And at the end of the day, he's going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with. The law couldn't prove it, but, you know, you know the world goes in circles.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Back to Trayvon Martin's mother. Crime and justice correspondent Joe Johns, he's been listening to her speech at the National Urban League conference in Philadelphia.

Joe, I was watching right along as well and what struck me is her -- she was just saying, you know, use me. Use my story. Learn from this.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think you can say this was just a deeply emotional speech from Sybrina Fulton. She was, of course, speaking before the National Urban League in Philadelphia. She talked about the absolutely worst telephone call a parent can receive. She talked about life without her son, about the not guilty verdict for George Zimmerman, the man who shot him. And she blames the Stand Your Ground law in the state of Florida for the outcome of the case. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SYBRINA FULTON, TRAYVON MARTIN'S MOTHER: No prom for Trayvon. No high school graduation for Trayvon. No college for Trayvon. No grandkids coming from Trayvon. All because of a law. A law that has prevented the person who shot and killed my son to be held accountable and to pay for this awful crime. What is my message to you? My message to you is, please use my story, please use my tragedy, please use my broken heart to say to yourself, we cannot let this happen to anybody else's child.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: Now, in those remarks, Sybrina Fulton did not talk about the juror you just heard from in the case who went public saying she owed the Martin family an apology and that George Zimmerman got away with murder. She did, though, address it in an earlier written statement. She said it's devastating for her family to hear the comments from juror B29. Comments which she says she already knew in her heart to be true. This new information challenges the nation, she says, once again to do everything we can to make sure something like this never happens again, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Joe Johns, thank you.

The big story overseas. In Spain, the driver of that train that hurtled the tracks, killing scores of people, is now in police custody. In fact, we have video of him. Here he is. Bloodied, being led from the wreckage. This was Wednesday. Today a top police official referred to the crash as a crime. The current death toll is at least 78. American Stephen Ward survived the crash. In an exclusive CNN interview, he describes how this entire nightmare unfolded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN WARD, TRAIN CRASH SURVIVOR: Basically, I was writing in my journal. I kind of looked up and saw the speed and thought, oh, that's funny. I thought it might have been an error or something. And then we went around a sharp turn. And all of a sudden like you could tell one set of wheels left the rails. We were kind of just riding on one set of wheels for two or three seconds.

And there wasn't really screaming. Most people were kind of like, oh, but no one got super scared about it. A few things of luggage started falling off the racks. And then after one or two seconds, you could feel us leave the other set of tracks and the whole train rotated about 90 degrees. And I blacked out before we hit the ground, which was very lucky for me. And the next thing I knew, they were helping me out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: CNN's Karl Penhaul still at the scene of the crash there in Spain, northwestern Spain.

And, Karl, the driver, as we see, now in custody. And from reports we're reading, he seems to have fancied himself as a bit of a speed demon.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we have seen reports of that off his FaceBook, for example, but still bear in mind that this train that had the accident was an express train. It was a fast train designed in some parts of the track to run at 155 miles an hour. The question is, though, quite obviously, whether it should have been running as fast as it was at this point in the track. And that is certainly a factor that the investigation are taking into account. And when we heard from a regional police chief here today, he said that, yes, the train driver was being investigated for possible crimes related to this accident and then went on to describe the driver as being engaged in recklessness.

But, of course, beyond the investigations, there's still the human dramas of this. Yes, stories of death, stories of survival, stories of tremendous solidarity. And today I was also talking to one of the first responders, one of the first firefighters who arrived on the scene. This is what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIGUEL ANGEL BELLO, FIREFIGHTER (through translator): There was a young woman. She was trapped under an axel of a train. Trapped. While she was trapped, she was conscious and she was saying, "please, get me out of here. Get me out of here. Why aren't you helping me get out of here?" She didn't realize what she had on top of her. That's when you truthfully feel it a bit, but you have to go on. You have to keep trying to help her. But, of course, that axel wasn't moving without a crane. She later died. She was about 22 years old.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PENHAUL: You know, that young girl and, of course, many more did die. But many survived, too. And a lot of that was thanks to the rescuers and also neighbors who live here down by the tracks today as well talking to a couple of pensioners, 69 years old. And they say that when they heard the crash of the train, they took their own bed sheets and raced down to the tracks here to wrap the injured so that they didn't get cold and to mop away their blood, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Wow. Incredible. Karl Penhaul for us in Spain. Karl, thank you. Unwanted kisses? Groping? Head locks? Yes, head locks. More women coming forward with very specific allegations against the mayor of San Diego. And CNN just spoke with one woman who says she was victimized.

Plus, we just learned the mayor has announced a news conference in less than an hour to address the allegations. What will he say? We'll talk about all of that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: As the mayor of San Diego stands by his story here, the number of women saying it's time to go keeps on growing. Four more women have now come forward, bringing the tally to seven. Seven women who say Bob Filner made unwanted sexual advances toward them. And CNN's Poppy Harlow just talked to one of these alleged victims about what she says Filner did to her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MORGAN ROSE, ACCUSING MAYOR FILNER OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT: I don't remember if he directly asked for a kiss or tried to kiss me, but it became -- it was very uncomfortable. And I was saying to him initially, what would your wife do if she was sitting here? And he laughed a very crazy laugh. And then, for the next few minutes, I just remember him trying to get my face towards his to kiss me on the mouth. And what we now know from the stories of the other women, it wouldn't have been on my mouth, it would have been more likely in my -- in my mouth or down my throat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: I want you to watch the entire interview. Join Poppy tomorrow morning, 6:00 a.m., "New Day Saturday." The sex scandal involving Mayor Bob Filner.

Happening at the same time, you have Anthony Weiner, candidate for New York City mayor. He's grappling with his own accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior. And the message from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to these two men? Get a clue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), MINORITY LEADER: Let me just say before I leave that, let me be very clear. The conduct of some of these people that we're talking about here is reprehensible. It is so disrespectful of women. And what's really stunning about it is, they don't even realize it. You know, they don't have a clue. And it is really -- if they're clueless, get a clue. If they need therapy, do it in private.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: CNN's Casey Wian actually tracked down the San Diego mayor for a comment.

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, the four new women who have come forward with allegations of unwanted sexual advances against Mayor Bob Filner are pillars of the community here in San Diego.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WIAN (voice-over): Four more women came forward Thursday to accuse San Diego Mayor Bob Filner of inappropriate sexual conduct. They include a university dean and a retired Navy rear admiral. They spoke with KPBS News.

RONNE FROMAN, REAR ADMIRAL, U.S. NAVY (RET.): And Bob stepped between me and the doorway and he stopped me and he got very close to me. And he ran his finger up my cheek, like this, and he whispered to me, do you have a man in your life?

PATTI ROSCOE, BUSINESSWOMAN: He would come in and try and kiss me on the lips and I'd have to squirm to get away. And just as recently as a few months ago, this happened. And I turned and he just slobbered down my chin. And I was so violated.

WIAN: A total of seven women have now publicly accused Filner of unwanted groping, kissing, even headlocks. Thursday, Filner showed up at a trolley station groundbreaking.

WIAN (on camera): Why are you still keeping your job?

WIAN (voice-over): For several minutes he walked aimlessly, refusing to even acknowledge reporters' questions.

WIAN (on camera): That's a bad message to the city of San Diego that you are not addressing these allegations directly right now?

WIAN (voice-over): Filner has admitted treating women badly, but denies sexual harassment.

WIAN (on camera): Mr. Mayor, what do you have to say to these women who have come forward and publically accused you of inappropriate behavior?

WIAN (voice-over): Finally the mayor said this.

BOB FILNER, MAYOR OF SAN DIEGO: There is a legal process by which all this will be decided. And that's what we'll be dealing with. There'll be no other statements regarding except for the legal process.

WIAN: One woman has filed a lawsuit while the mayor tries to make light of the controversy.

FILNER: I see you found a wonderful way to attract media attention for our efforts on the trolley.

WIAN: Thursday night the county Democratic Party voted to urge the mayor to step down.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIAN: In just a little while, a group that is launching a recall campaign against Mayor Bob Filner is expected to hold a news conference and announce their plans. They've set up a FaceBook page already. That page has more than 6,000 likes.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Casey, thank you.

And as I mentioned at the top of the hour, we have now learned here at CNN that Mayor Bob Filner will be making a public announcement at the top of the hour. So in just about 40 minutes from now. We, of course, will be there. We will bring it to you live as it happens. So, stay tuned.

Coming up next, it is an iconic monument that honors one of our nation's most famous presidents. But, you see that? Cleanup crews are now on the scene after someone splattered green paint on the Lincoln Memorial. Why police say they're confident they will catch the vandal.

And the pope taking a special trip to meet with prisoners today. Hear his message to those behind bars.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Now to some of the hottest stories in a flash. We call it "Rapid Fire." Roll it.

Like any other city, certainly D.C. has its share of graffiti. But having lived in Washington, this one makes me furious. Have you seen this? Police say vandals splashed this green paint at the base of the statue of the Lincoln Memorial. This happened last night. Officials have closed down the memorial. It'll reopen once they scrub the stuff off. Police say they are reviewing surveillance video to try and catch the vandal.

At this hour, the Egyptian capital, Cairo, in an outdoor mass of humanity here, look at these, all these people fathering. The country's military leader called supporters into the streets. And they're giving him a mandate he said to fight terrorism. Not to be outdone, backers of the overthrown president, Morsy, have marshaled their forces as well. So far it is peaceful. We're watching.

And thousands turning out to catch a glimpse of the pope in Brazil today. Pope Francis lunching with youngsters just a short time ago. Still kissing those babies in Brazil. He also brought his message of hope to prisoners in Rio just before that. The pope has been getting rock star treatment in his first international trip since being chosen to lead Catholics. Just last night he worshipped with a million young people on Copacabana Beach.

Newborn Prince George of Cambridge might have the coolest uncle ever. And if I may, this guy's not ugly, this prince here. He's the fresh prince of Britain, Prince Harry. He saw his nephew for the first time since he was born Monday. Prince Harry talking to reporters outside a charity event there in London, saying that his nephew was crying his eyes out when he met him, but that's OK because the so-called party prince had a little fun in store for his little nephew. And I do mean that literally. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRINCE HARRY: Keeping him out of harm's way. And make sure he has fun. The rest of it I leave to the parents.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: As for babysitting, in so many words, Prince Harry says he's not sure William and Kate can afford him.

Coming up, is it OK to advertise controversial messages near sporting events? A new advertisement says yes. And this message will greet hundreds of thousands of Nascar fans this weekend. But not everyone is happy about this. We'll discuss, next.

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