Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Possible Deal Over Iranian Nuclear Program May be Reached; Investigation Continues into Death of Georgia High School Student; Michael Jordan's House Soon Up for Sale

Aired November 23, 2013 - 14:30   ET

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

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. Welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. It's getting down to the wire to reach a deal with Iran. The sun has set in Geneva, Switzerland, but talks between Iran and foreign leaders including Secretary of State John Kerry continue. Both sides indicated a deal is within reach, but they haven't given hints about just how close they might be. Listen to what the British foreign minister said earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM HAGUE, BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY: Well, there is a huge amount of agreements, and it remains the case that a huge amount of progress has been made in recent weeks on this, and's that the state of this negotiation is entirely different from a few months ago with Iran. That's positive. But some of the difficult areas remain very difficult.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: After Geneva, Secretary Kerry is scheduled to go to London tomorrow. So if there is going to be a deal, its seems today would be the day.

North Korea confirmed to Swedish diplomats that it is detaining an American citizen. The family of 85 year old Korean War veteran Merrill Newman saying the country has been holding him since October 26th. His wife is pleading for his release saying he only had enough heart medicine for the 10-day tour he was on. North Korea hasn't said white they're holding Newman. It is possible that authorities mistook him for a different Merrill Newman decorated for his Korean War service.

Back here in the United States, millions of Americans are bracing for wicked weather over the next five days, just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. Meteorologist Karen Maginnis is tracking the storms from the CNN weather center.

KAREN MAGINNIS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Fred, we have deteriorating weather conditions across extreme southwest Texas, into New Mexico. Snow and ice, problematic along Interstate 10 in Texas. Also some black ice in New Mexico. We see rainfall spreading across the Gulf Coast region. This is in the overnight hours.

Take a look at this. In the Metroplex of Dallas, could see an icy mixture, maybe some sleet, some freezing rain, maybe a rain-snow mix. Right now the forecast is fairly uncertain with regards to this. But we'll look for that wintry mix traveling up the Appalachians.

Then we go into Monday and Tuesday. The exact track of this system, we're not certain. Could be a nor'easter for New York City and Boston, or we could see snowfall across sections of interior northeastern New England. Right now, the forecast track is not very well precise or forecasted at this point, but we know that the cold air is in place. Look at these highs, temperatures only around freezing, and New York City and Washington D.C. And right now in Fargo it is only eight degrees. And that's the warmest temperature in North Dakota. Chicago, 23 degrees. Across the southwestern United States, well, we did see record-setting rainfall. In Phoenix, Flagstaff, you could see an additional two to four inches of snow.

That's a look at your weather. Fred, we'll stay on top of it.

WHITFIELD: Thanks so much, Karen.

So everything is running smoothly for travelers at Los Angeles International Airport today, but that definitely wasn't the case last night. There were two separate scares there. They took place right around the same time, one at terminal 4, the other at terminal 5. At terminal 4 had an apparent prank call to police that caused this chaotic scene. It began when a caller reported a gun at the airport, and that prompted this response from police.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone on the ground!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody get down!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: So police then had to evacuate that entire terminal, but they didn't find anything suspicious, and then eventually would give the all-clear. And then earlier, just moments in terminal 5, an SUV crashed, triggering a panicked reaction from passengers inside. They were frightened by that sound, that banging sound from that accident, and then threat the terminal. Police say the driver was suffering from a medical condition. She is hospitalized and is currently in good condition.

So four people have now been arrested in New York for allegedly playing that knockout game. The game might seem like a prank to some, but it is real and very dangerous, and it involves sucker punching unsuspecting victims. The New York incident is one of many being reported around the country.

And now this update on the story of the four bodies found buried in a California desert earlier this month. Investigators have identified the two children as joseph and Gianni McStay. The two adults had already been confirmed through dental records as their parent, Joseph and Summer McStay. The family went missing back in 2010. And coroner officials have now declared all fourth deaths homicides. For months, CNN had been looking into the mysterious death of Georgia teenager Kendrick Johnson. He suffocated to death after authorities say he fell into a rolled up gym mat at his high school. Johnson's attorneys think someone tampered with the surveillance video that officials have released, and they're not getting any answers from authorities. So we did our own forensic analysis.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: For more than six months, CNN has been investigating the death of Kendrick Johnson, and CNN's Victor Blackwell got the story right out front and did a lot of the digging. The south Georgia high school student died in January. Investigators claim he suffocated after falling head-first into a rolled wrestling mat. They said his death was an accident, but his parents believe he was murdered.

Four cameras in the gym and more than 25 others on campus captured almost 300 hours of security footage. Johnson's parents say someone tampered with some of the images. So CNN had a video forensic analysis done to get some answers. Here now 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 was the truth about what happened to Kendrick Johnson.

BLACKWELL: Jacqueline Johnson and her husband Kenneth hope to find that truth in the hundreds of hours of surveillance video recorded the day sheriff's 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 of the video.

Investigators in Lowndes County, Georgia, told the Johnsons and their attorneys Johnson climbed into this gym mat reaching for this shoe and that 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' attorney say they can't tell from the surveillance video what happened to Kendrick and when the other students entered.

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 something on their 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 was a raw feed with no edits." The attorney for Lowndes County sheriff's office tells CNN, "My client has confirmed the video was not altered or edited by anyone within the Lowndes County sheriff's office."

CRUMP: We believe that 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. We've brought the hard drive more than 2,300 miles here to Spokane, Washington, to deliver 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're not something that an investigator should rely on for the truth of the video.

BLACKWELL: CNN hired Fredericks' company, Forensic Video Solutions, to analyze the surveillance video.

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

FREDERICKS: Yes.

BLACKWELL: How?

FREDERICKS: Well, the timestamp is in another stream of video, so you have to be able to access it using special codex. So you have to know where to find it. But it's there. Once the timestamp is located, you can then begin to make sense of it and begin to track people.

BLACKWELL: By piecing together the time codes, Fredericks' team found 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 that 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?

The Johnsons and their attorneys believe this was intentionally blurred to hide something. What is your expertise tell you?

FREDERICKS: Yes, this has not been 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 there 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: Clarity about the blur, the timestamp revealed, and an explanation for the jumpy video, which made the Johnsons and their attorneys 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 are 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)

WHITFIELD: And in just a moment, part two of Victor's investigation into the death of Kendrick Johnson. Was surveillance video from that high school gym altered? Hear more of what a forensic expert had to say.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right, more now on CNN's exclusive investigation into the death of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson. CNN obtained hundreds of surveillance video from Johnson's school including some that showed the moments leading up to the teen's death. We had an expert scoured more than 300 hours of recordings and he says it's not what's in the video that's so important, but what's missing. Here's CNN's Victor Blackwell.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: 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 does not believe the jumpy video is the result of editing, he says there are other major problems.

FREDERICKS: Those files are not original files. They're not something an investigator should rely on for the truth of the video. They've been altered in a number of ways, primarily in the image quality, and likely in dropped information, information lost. There are also a number of files corrupted because they've 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've done is they have left it up to the school district to define what it is they want to provide to 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 digital video recording system, and then 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 school provided all of the surveillance video from the old gym to investigators.

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

BLACKWELL: Fredericks has all the camera angles and all the video released by the Lowndes sheriff's office.

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

BLACKWELL: The moments before Kendrick Johnson enters the gym, look at what happens to the recordings from these four cameras in the gym. The time is recorded with the video. The first camera captures 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 again more than two hours later at 1:15 p.m. The third camera also drops at 11:05 a.m. It picks up again at 1:16 p.m. And from the final camera, there's surveillance until 12:04 p.m., no recording for more than an hour, and 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 it here.

BLACKWELL: Here's why Fredericks would have expected the motion- activated system to record during that time. During that hour and five minutes, several students are seen walking into and out of the old gym from just outside the gym door. We count seven male students, and three of them 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 a record for 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.

And that is crucial. It's really an important time.

FREDERICKS: Well, it really is the only option to answer the question, really what happened.

BLACKWELL: 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.

Do you believe it's a coincidence that that time period in the gym is missing?

FREDERICKS: Oh, boy. 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's recorded, I would still be highly suspicious of this.

BLACKWELL: 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 those moments after.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Now, we sent a long list of questions to the attorney for the Lowndes County sheriff's office and the attorney for Lowndes County schools. We have not yet received a response to those questions from the attorney for the sheriff's office, but we have received a response from the attorney for the school district -- "No comment," although that attorney has agreed that they school district will make the original hard drive available to the court. Now, the Johnsons want to make sure that all the information from school's hard drive was then given to the sheriff's office, and then, of course, given to them. Fred?

WHITFIELD: Thanks so much, Victor.

And we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right, let's talk real estate, shall we? Michael Jordan's massive Chicago estate was supposed to be auctioned off yesterday. The company running the auction says they put it off because demand is stronger than expected. Jordan's estate, take a look in Chicago's Highland Park suburb, 56,000 square feet, and it's got a nice little, I guess, pond, or swimming pool, of course an indoor basketball court. Bidders need to put up, guess what, a quarter million dollars deposit just to be able to place a bid on this house. Incredible indoor theater, you name it.

All right, we're joined by Michael Corbett, a real estate expert and author of several books, including "Find it, Fix it, Flip it." Michael, so what have you heard about the delay? Nobody's going to buy this and flip it. We know that, or at least we suspect.

MICHAEL CORBETT, AUTHOR, "BEFORE YOU BUY!": Probably not.

WHITFIELD: Yes, and revel in living in it. But what do you know about this delay? Just as simple as that, demand was high?

CORBETT: Here's the deal. This went on the market last year back in February at $29 million. Then a little while later they tried to price chop of $8 million. So it still didn't sell. So what's happened is they put it up for auction.

Now, according to the auctioneers that they have said and the news release last night, is that there was a great demand, so people wanted more time to be able to preview the property and get a chance to put in their money, because you have to put up a quarter million dollars just to play in the game.

WHITFIELD: When you say preview, is this like a virtual tour, or do people who are serious and interested get to go to the house, walk through it, you know, do as anybody would, if they were trying to buy a house?

CORBETT: Well, you know what, with a $29 million price tag, personally, I would want to go in there.

WHITFIELD: You would? Or would not?

CORBETT: I would definitely want to see it. Are you kidding?

WHITFIELD: Yes. Me, too.

(LAUGHTER)

WHITFIELD: You want to see where your money's going.

CORBETT: People wanted to have the opportunity. And supposedly so it's now on December 16th. So if you didn't get your $250,000 starting bid in there, you better do it now.

WHITFIELD: Wow. This is unusual, right, because there are other houses out there on the market, celebrity names are attached. We understand Charlie Sheen's house is on the market, and even Kid Rock, different locations. But when a house is on the market, and it mean as celebrity once lived that, that in and of itself increases the market valley, doesn't it?

CORBETT: Well, here's the deal. It really doesn't increase the value of the home. But what it does do is it increases the media attention. It increases the volume of traffic. That's key in selling a property. So the celebrity cachet sometimes doesn't always translate into the bigger bucks, but it does translate into a faster sale and possibly a slightly higher amount for the sale price. And also, depends on the celebrity.

WHITFIELD: Yes. And I guess there are some people, you know, who have the money to spend, who really do want, I guess, kind of a trophy house. They want it to have a history. They want, you know, to know there was a celebrity that, you know, lived there?

CORBETT: Oh, yes, absolutely. With the Michael Jordan house, here's the interesting thing, that in the Chicago area, for the past 25 years, there have only been eight homes that have sold for more than $10 million. This was on the market for $29 million. So you've got to want to have a really big trophy in Chicago to buy that house.

WHITFIELD: Whew, deep pockets indeed. Michael Corbett, thank you so much. Lots of fun to do our little version of a virtual tour, appreciate it.

CORBETT: You got it.

WHITFIELD: And I guess we're going to talk again, once you know, the bidding begins.