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Forensic Video Analyst: Video Evidence in Teen's Gym Mat Death "Altered"; Golfboarding Combines Skateboarding with a 4-Wheel Drive Battery-Powered Caddy; Plane Crash Survivor Heals with Hoops

Aired November 22, 2013 - 14:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour, I'm Brooke Baldwin. There is a new twist today in a story CNN has been following from the beginning. The death of Kendrick Johnson, the 17-year-old student athlete whose body was found rolled up inside of a high school gym mat back in January. So all these doubts about the investigation into his death, they have continued to grow.

First, when Johnson's death was ruled accidental, his parents suspect murder. Their suspicions then grew when details suggesting sloppy forensic work came to light, not to mention the treatment of Johnson's corpse, which had been emptied of internal organs and stuffed with newspaper, newspaper.

But the doubts deepened when his family and CNN obtained surveillance video from the high school cameras. CNN has spent the past few weeks sifting through these pieces of video. Today, we have our exclusive results of the efforts and what this video says and also doesn't say about Kendrick Johnson's death and the investigation into it.

One note here, in these clips you'll about to see, we have deliberately blurred the faces of the other students, but here is CNN's Victor Blackwell.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JACQUELYN JOHNSON, KENDRICK'S MOTHER: That's my child, and we're going to fight until it's all over, until we get the truth. That's all we ever asked for, the truth about what happened to Kendrick Johnson.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jacquelyn Johnson and her husband, Kenneth, hope to find that truth in the hundreds of hours of surveillance video recorded the day investigators say the 17- year-old died. Look carefully. There he is in the white t-shirt and jeans carrying a yellow folder.

The Johnsons now have this video as the result of a lawsuit. CNN filed its own motion to get access to all the video. Investigators in Lowndes County, Georgia told the Johnsons and their attorneys Kendrick climbed into a gym mat reaching for this shoe and his death was an accident.

BEN CRUMP, JOHNSON'S ATTORNEY: They know their child did not climb into a wrestling mat, get stuck, and die. Where is that video?

BLACKWELL: The sheriff's office says that moment was not recorded. The Johnsons also question moments in the surveillance video like this one. Kendrick is seen running in the gym, and then another image appears showing other students. It jumps from one moment to another. The Johnsons' attorneys say they can't tell from the surveillance what happened to Kendrick and when the other students enter.

CHEVENE KING, JOHNSON'S ATTORNEY: We don't have any time code with which to synchronize the events that are shown in the video.

CRUMP: Either the camera did it on its own or a human being interacted to make this camera do these things.

BLACKWELL: An attorney for Lowndes County Schools tells CNN what we produced to the sheriff is a raw feed with no edited. The attorney for the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office tells CNN, my client has confirmed that the video was not altered or edited by anyone within the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office.

CRUMP: We believe somebody corrupted this video because it just does not make sense to us.

BLACKWELL: So who's right? To find out, we took our copy of the video provided to CNN by the attorney for the sheriff's office to an expert.

(on camera): We brought the hard drive more than 2,300 miles here to Spokane, Washington, to deliver it to the leading expert in forensic video analysis, Grant Fredericks. He's a former police officer, a consultant for the U.S. Department of Justice, and a contract instructor at the FBI Academy in Quantico. We are here to get an answer. Has this surveillance footage been altered?

GRANT FREDERICKS, CERTIFIED FORENSIC VIDEO ANALYST: Those files are not original files. They are not something that investigators should rely on for the truth of the video.

BLACKWELL (voice-over): CNN hired Frederick's company, Forensic Video Solutions, to analyze the surveillance video.

(on camera): The first thing that the attorneys and the family were concerned about, they didn't see a time stamp, and you found one.

FREDERICKS: Yes.

BLACKWELL: How?

FREDERICKS: The time stamp is in another stream of video. So you have to be able to access it using special code x. You have to pretty know where to find it, but it's there. Once the time stamp is located, you can then begin to make sense of it and begin to track people.

BLACKWELL (voice-over): By piecing together the time codes, Frederick's team found more than 18 minutes of surveillance showing Kendrick on January 10th, starting at 7:31 a.m. as he entered school, ending the last time he was seen alive at 1:09 p.m. in the gym.

FREDERICKS: The motion video we're looking at here, and the fact that we skip time periods when there's no motion is very common. So I'm not really concerned about that part of it.

BLACKWELL: But what about the blurred image, the only angle that shows the corner where Kendrick Johnson was found dead?

(on camera): The Johnsons and their attorneys believe this was intentionally blurred to hide something. What is your expertise telling you?

FREDERICKS: Yes. This is not intentionally blurred. This is likely the camera itself has probably been hit and the lens has been pushed out of focus for some reason. If you look very closely, you can see the defined lines that are inherent in digital video. Those lines are still intact, so they have not been blurred. Therefore, it was actually the lens that's blurred. The blurriness actually has the defined lines. So this is clearly just a blurred lens.

BLACKWELL (voice-over): Clarity about the blur the time stamp revealed and an explanation for the jumpy video, which made them suspicious the video had been edited, but Fredericks has a bigger concern.

FREDERICKS: This video is not the best evidence. It's been changed and altered so that we're missing information and what we have been provided is not the best quality.

BLACKWELL: Altered by copying, but also raising questions about whether everything was copied.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Stay with me because that's just one of two parts of Victor's exclusive reporting because coming up on the other side of the break, we investigate this new mystery as that expert in Spokane says what appears to be missing from that surveillance video and why it could be critical to the case. That plus Victor Blackwell himself in studio, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: All right, let's begin where we left off. It is an exclusive investigation into the death of the Georgia teenager, Kendrick Johnson, whose body was discovered in a rolled up wrestling mat in his high school's gym. CNN's Victor Blackwell has more on what the surveillance can tell us how he died and maybe as important here, what is missing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL (voice-over): CNN has hired Grant Fredericks and his team at Forensic Video Solutions to analyze the hundreds of hours of surveillance from Lowndes High School. Although he doesn't believe the jumpy video is the result of editing, he says there are some other major problems.

FREDERICKS: Those files are not original files. They're not something that an investigator should rely on for the truth of the video. They have been altered in a number of ways, primarily in image quality, and likely in dropped information, information loss. There are also a number of files that are corrupted because they have not been processed correctly and they're not playable. So I can't say why they were done that way. But they were not done correctly, and they were not done thoroughly. So we're missing information.

BLACKWELL: Fredericks says that's likely due to how investigators acquired the surveillance video.

FREDERICKS: Right now, what they have done is they have left it up to the school district to define what it is they want to provide the police, and I think that probably is a mistake.

BLACKWELL: According to Lowndes County Sheriff's Office incident reports, a detective watched a portion of the surveillance video the day Kendrick Johnson was found. Then he asked the school board's information technology worker for a copy of the surveillance video for the entire wing of the school with the old gym for the last 48 hours. Five days later, that I.T. worker provided a hard drive, and according to the incident report, the detective verified it contained the requested surveillance video.

FREDERICKS: The investigator's responsibility is to acquire the entire recording system and have their staff define what they want to obtain. You don't want somebody who might be party to the responsibility to make the decision as to what they provide the police.

BLACKWELL: And after hours of analysis, Fredericks questions whether Lowndes County Schools provided all of the surveillance video from the old gym to investigators.

FREDERICKS: There's a hole of time where none of the cameras provide any record that I have been provided.

BLACKWELL: Fredericks has all the camera angles and all of the video released by the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office.

FREDERICKS: There are four cameras in the gym that records motion from when the lights turn on in the morning until the lights are turned off at night, except for the area of interest.

BLACKWELL: The moments before Kendrick Johnson enters the gym, look what happens to the recorders from these four cameras, the time is recorded with the video. The first camera captured images from the start of the day until 12:04 p.m. then nothing. It picks up again at 1:09 p.m. there's consistent surveillance from the second camera until 11:05 a.m., and then it stops and picks up more than two hours later at 1:15 p.m. The third camera also drops at 11:05 a.m. and picks up at 1:16 p.m. and the fourth camera, no recording for more than an hour, then it picks up again at 1:09 p.m.

FREDERICKS: I would absolutely expect there to be some record of that activity, and we don't have any here.

BLACKWELL: Here's why Fredericks would have expected the motion activated system to record during that time. During that hour and 5 minutes, several students are seen walking into and out of the old gym from the surveillance camera just outside the gym door. We count seven male students and three walk into the gym within three minutes prior to Kendrick Johnson walking in.

FREDERICKS: I can't tell you whether there was no information recorded in the digital video system, or whether somebody made an error and didn't capture it, or whether somebody just didn't provide it.

BLACKWELL: When surveillance in the gym resumes at 1:09, we see just these few frames of Kendrick Johnson running in the gym. Here's the moment from all of the cameras in the gym, although there's a record from only two, and the camera just outside the door. Notice the hall camera timestamp appears to be 10 minutes behind and there's no confirmation either time matches the exact time of day. It is the last time his image is captured on video. For the next hour, there are multiple gaps in the video surveillance in the gym.

(on camera): That's crucial, a really important time.

FREDERICKS: It really is the only option to answer the question of what happened.

BLACKWELL (voice-over): And there's no video showing the initial discovery of a body in the gym. The next time we see Kendrick Johnson is the following day when he's being wheeled out of the gym in a body bag.

(on camera): Do you believe it's a coincidence that that time period in the gym is missing?

FREDERICKS: Investigators are always suspicious and should be suspicious, and it's suspicious that that time period is not there. So yes, I would be suspicious. And until I have the digital video system in my hand, until I can say or an investigator can say everything is intact, this was what was recorded, I would still be highly suspicious of this.

BLACKWELL (voice-over): So after fighting for months on a city street corner and in the county courthouse to get the surveillance video, Kendrick Johnson's parents still do not know who was in the gym before Kendrick ran in nor who if anyone was there or what happened in the moments after.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Victor Blackwell joins me now. It is stunning two pieces, incredible reporting, but just to hear him at the end take the deep breath and say it is suspicious. Now armed with your knowledge from this expert, what response have you gotten from the sheriff's department in Valdosta and from school officials? BLACKWELL: We sent them a lot of direct quotes from Grant Fredericks and a list of questions a week ago to the attorney for the school district, the attorney for the sheriff's office. The sheriff's office attorney has not yet gotten back to us, but we have a response from the attorney for the school district.

Two words, no comment. But we do know that that attorney has offered to make the hard drive from the school available to the court. Of course, the Johnsons want to make sure everything the school had was given to the sheriff's office and everything the sheriff's office was then given to them.

BALDWIN: So you bring up the hard drive. The next question is it possible the video, the missing video, would still be on the hard drive.

BLACKWELL: It's possible, but it's not guaranteed. And here's why, Grant Fredericks tells us that these systems are designed to at some point record over old information. They can't keep everything forever. Kendrick Johnson disappeared. We're told he died on the 10th, found on the 11th. The request from the family's attorney to pull the hard drive and preserve it was not sent until February 26th, 46 days.

So if the system is set to record over information after seven days or 30 days or even 45 days, that information could be gone, but again, we won't know until that initial -- the original hard drive is handed over to the court.

BALDWIN: Victor Blackwell, thank you.

BLACKWELL: Sure.

BALDWIN: Thank you very much. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Do you remember pro golfer Bubba Watson's the hover craft that made a huge splash this summer. Mike Galanos says they have a new way to get around the greens now. Check it out in today "Technovations."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE GALANOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These guys are teeing off then taking off on the newest way to play golf. It's called the "Golfboard," a four-wheel drive battery powered skateboard and caddie combined.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It feels like a cross between snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing.

GALANOS: Flip the switch on a remote control and off you go. Riders simply lean to make turns and the engineers created an innovative system of wheel mounts so the board stays flexible.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is totally proprietary to the golf course, but it allows new riders to get on a board that is very stable.

GALANOS: Its top speed is 12 miles an hour, and the designers say it won't damage the grass on the course. If you want one, it will cost you $3,500, but it creators say they plan to sell directly to golf courses so you might able to rent one for your next round.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's about 40 boards we built to date, but we're gearing it for mass production. We anticipate 6,000 boards by the summer out in the marketplace.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: All right, you remember those be like Mike commercials featuring NBA's superstar Michael Jordan? Well, coming up, if you can't be like Michael Jordan, you can at least live like him. We'll tell you how, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: The young survivor of two plane crashes is using basketball to help recover from those tragedies. Joe Carter joins me in the studio with more on that story, "The Bleacher Report," -- Joe.

JOE CARTER, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: I tell you what, Brooke, this is a story of ultimate survival through unthinkable tragedy. Back in 2003, Austin hatch lost his mother, his brother, and his sister in a plane crash. Eight years later in 2011, another plane crash killed his father, his step mother, and left him in a coma for eight weeks.

Basically, both of his parents are dead and both of his siblings are dead. He spent the last two years learning -- relearning how to eat, breathe, and even walk and through all this experience, he never gave up hope of becoming a high-level basketball player again. All the hard work, the rehab, it finally paid off when he signed on to play college basketball for the Michigan Wolverines this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AUSTIN HATCH, PLANE CRASH SURVIVOR: I told people I said I'm going to play basketball again. There are people who doubted me. I basically say, thank you for your opinion, but I'm going to prove you wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARTER: All right, you know Lakers star Pau Gasol, pretty good power forward for him. He's got a little extra incentive to score points tonight. He plans to donate $1,000 for every point that he scores.

BALDWIN: That's great.

CARTER: He's going to send all that money to the Philippines typhoon relief fund. Gasol averages about 13 points per game, but I'm thinking his teammates are going to give him a few extra shots tonight. You know you can't play like Mike?

BALDWIN: I can't? CARTER: No, but you can certainly live like Mike. Maybe you have to get a loan. The basketball hall of famer is putting up his suburban Chicago mansion on auction today. This is not your typical house. This has nine bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, a fuel basketball court, a gym, a poker room, a garage that fits 14 cars.

BALDWIN: What?

CARTER: It's 56,000 square feet. The property taxes on this bad boy, $178,000 a year.

BALDWIN: That's a home for some people.

CARTER: Holy cow. Now, it's going up for auction today. You have to have $250,000 up front just to get into the auction. So you have to put down a deposit of a quarter million dollars. We have a video for you on "Bleacher Report" that you can watch the entire thing and dream as you watch and look at this amazing estate.

BALDWIN: The ceilings very high?

CARTER: The ceilings are high.

BALDWIN: He's a tall guy. Remind us the fine institution he attended for college?

CARTER: Somewhere in Carolina. Chapel Hill.

BALDWIN: Thank you very much, Joe Carter, "Bleacher Report." Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Now, top of the hour, roll it.