Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

White Supremacist Faces Two Murder Charges; Boston Remembers Anniversary of Marathon Bombing; New Book Looks at Boston Bombing; Challenges of Deep-Sea Searches; Underwater Vehicle Technology; Student Captured Boston Bomb Blasts on Camera

Aired April 15, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And the man accused of killing three people in Overland Park, Kansas, will face at least two charges of murder. Frazier Glenn Cross has been charged with one count capital murder, one count premeditated murder.

He could -- could face the death penalty. Prosecutors haven't made that decision yet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE HOWE, JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS, DISTRICT ATTORNEY: It is too early to make that decision. That is an option under the first count of capital murder.

The options for the sentence are life without parole, or if we choose, we file a notice of requesting the death penalty.

That is something that we don't have to file when we file the charges.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: No hate crime charges have been filed yet, but the U.S. attorney is still investigating.

And one year ago today, the nation started hearing a new way to describe how Americans rise up, and unite in the face of terror, two words, "Boston Strong."

It was April 15th, 2013. Those two bombs went off on Boylston at that finish line, really feet from where I'm standing today, 12 seconds apart.

Three people were killed that day, more than 260 wounded, and then an MIT police officer shot to death during the pursuit of those two suspected bombers.

And during a tribute in Boston that is still happening here, Vice President Joe Biden told the audience, Boston has become the face of America's resolve against terrorism.

And that resolve was evident in the first-responders at the scene. And days after the bombings, I was here. I talked to one of them, a firefighter who raced toward the explosion, raced toward the danger, and when he did, he saw what became the worst day of his 41-year career.

I'll never forget this interview as long as I live. This is Charlie Buchanan, Jr., from Engine 24.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES BUCHANAN, JR., VETERAN BOSTON FIREFIGHTER: I saw another girl that another guy grabbed. Her leg was severed on the right leg.

And behind her, was a little person that had to be this little boy that they talked about. And they couldn't do anything for him. His name was Martin, and we put a sheet over him, just out of respect for him.

We stopped an ambulance, and the ambulance was full, but we said, you have to take this girl. And they were great. They were Boston EMS.

And this firefighter said, you know, if she needs a tourniquet, we've got a tourniquet small enough. I mean, her leg was as big as your arm, all right?

So, as they put her inside the ambulance, but as you say, the only thing that I could see, and see to this day, are her little eyes looking up at me. That's it, all right? And me thinking -- thinking about my own grandson, Malachi.

And my Malachi is the same age as this young girl, who was 6-years old. The first thing he did was give me a big hug when I went home. And Malachi is named in The Bible as the messenger of God.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Forty-one years on the force, the man had never done an interview, granted me that one, and I'm honored, will forever be honored for him sharing that story.

A year after the Boston bombings, we are still learning about every angle here of this story.

Two Boston-based writers have written a new book. It's called "Boston Strong." And so David Wedge is the former chief investigative reporter for "The Boston Herald." He wrote this book with Casey Sherman. And David is joining me right now.

So, nice to see you again. I know we chatted a year ago. You really had a fascinating look, thousands of hours of research into first- responders and survivors and investigators.

Let me just ask you first, what was missed? What was handled wrong?

DAVE WEDGE, CO-AUTHOR, "BOSTON STRONG": I think we're still learning that. And I think we saw with 9/11 we're going to be learning about what happened at the Boston bombings for a long time. The Obama administration report that came out this past week made some indications that the FBI got some information from the Russians, asked for more information, but the Russians didn't provide it.

So, they're kind of pointing the finger at the Russians, that the Russian intelligence community failed.

You know, and then, tangentially, the Boston folks in the joint terrorism task force here are saying that that information never trickled down to them.

So, the cops on the street that could have actually gone and sat on the houses of the Tsarnaev brothers and watched to see what they were up to --

BALDWIN: They never got that information.

WEDGE: Exactly. It's an information-sharing issue, like it was with 9/11.

BALDWIN: In terms of the manhunt -- my goodness, it's windy and rainy here.

WEDGE: Welcome to Boston.

BALDWIN: Welcome to Boston.

In terms of the manhunt, there was -- I mean, I'll never forget it. It was -- surreal is the word I keep hearing. It was this eerie quiet on the streets.

At the time, did they know who they were looking for? Did they really know where they were looking and we the public just didn't know?

WEDGE: I don't think so. I think that -- you know, obviously, when that car was originally carjacked from Cambridge that the brothers were in, they had no idea that they was the two marathon bombers. They just thought it was a carjacking that happened in the city, which is not all that uncommon.

It wasn't until that car stopped on Laurel Street, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev got out and started firing his gun at Officer Joe Reynolds and at his team that they knew it was something bigger.

When the bombs started falling then they knew, these were the guys. They had no real connection to Watertown. They lived in Cambridge. It wasn't that far. But they didn't know what they were dealing with. They walked into an ambush.

BALDWIN: Walking down Franklin Street where it all happened, where the boat was just yesterday, and you just would never imagine in a million years such a quiet, quaint, new England neighborhood.

In terms of survivors, I've kept in touch with the folks over the year. You have talked to a lot of people. You and Casey got this amazing opportunity to go on what was sort of dubbed this healing cruise in France with, what, 100 people?

WEDGE: Yeah, there was -- it was a hundred survivors and their families.

BALDWIN: How was that? Were you nervous at first? This was Christmastime.

WEDGE: It was two weeks before Christmas when I first got the call that they wanted us to come. I was nervous, because you're going to be on a boat with 100 people that survived this horrible tragedy.

I think a lot of the people that even went were ambivalent. Some of the people I talked to said they almost backed out at the last minute because they were afraid to be spending ten days talking about the marathon over and over again right before Christmas.

What we wrote about in our piece for "Esquire" and will be in our book is the power of that cruise was really amazing. These people met each other, they bonded. It was like a floating group therapy where they shared their experiences --

BALDWIN: Floating group therapy.

WEDGE: They would look at pictures and figure out, that's me; oh, my gosh, that's you right next to me at the bombing scenes. And they bonded over that.

BALDWIN: You have this book, "Boston Strong," comes out in the fall, you and Casey's book.

And, so, at one point along the line -- we all know the movie "The Fighter," really well-known, of course, in this neck of the woods. You're from Massachusetts. One of the folks from "The Fighter" from Watertown, she was in lockdown with the rest of everyone else.

When did they approach you and say, hey, we want to do something with this?

WEDGE: Shortly after we decided to do the book, and the news kind trickled out, they got in touch with Casey, my co-author, who had a prior relationship with them from other projects.

And they said, you know, we want to adapt your book into a screenplay for a movie.

And, obviously, you know, our first thought was maybe it's a little too soon, and some of the same thoughts that a lot of people had.

But when we really thought about it, we have a team of people that really understand Boston, get Boston, and will do this story justice, and we're in a unique position to tell it properly.

So, that's why we decided to do it.

BALDWIN: This is your home. This is personal for you.

WEDGE: Very personal for me.

BALDWIN: The book is called "Boston Strong." We'll look for it this fall. Thank you, sir.

WEDGE: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Appreciate you coming by.

And coming up next here, back to our breaking news in the search for Flight 370, this Bluefin-21, going into uncharted territory here after this aborted mission.

Do investigators think the Bluefin is up to the task, and if not the Bluefin, what can find this missing plane? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: We are just about 20 minutes away from the Closing Bell. Let's take a quick peak here on Wall Street and see how the numbers are looking.

Up in positive territory, the Dow up 70 points, stocks started on a high point boosted by positive earnings reports from companies like Coca-Cola, did fall a little bit during the day.

So, again, always check the numbers at CNN.com/money.

Meantime, this, the southern Indian Ocean, really pushing the limits of the world's best underwater technology. The U.S. Navy's submersible, the Bluefin-21, forced to return to the surface after completing only just a fraction of its intended mission Monday.

So, to Washington we go to CNN's Tom Foreman in our virtual room. And, Tom, I know this Bluefin is back in the water for Day Two, but why is this mission seemingly so challenging for this thing?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If you think about it, Brooke, we really are dealing with uncharted waters, a very difficult depth to work at.

We've talked a lot about the idea in the deepest area here the Bluefin should be able to get down around 3 miles, but think about this -- if somebody said to you, Will your car go 120-miles-an-hour, and you said, Yes, it can, it doesn't mean you routinely drive it at that level.

So, they're asking the Bluefin to function well down here in the zones that are near the limits of its capability. And in this case, they found it went beyond the limit.

On top of which, we don't really know what's down here. We don't know if it's mountainous terrain like the Grand Canyon. We don't know if a lot of it's flat. We don't know exactly the slopes of it. That's why they're down there.

They don't know what the situation is with the silt at the bottom here, whether or not anything they're looking for is sitting on the top, where it can be seen, or if it's buried underneath a lot of silt where it can only be sensed through some type of metal detector or something, or if the pinger had been working.

That's the reason this is difficult. We've been talking about this with graphics like this, as if this is a simple matter of going out and doing it. It's not.

This is more along the lines of being nearly an experiment than simply a rendering of a process, because they're working at the very edges of the capability of this equipment.

BALDWIN: An experiment, huh?

Tom Foreman, thank you, sir.

FOREMAN: You're welcome, Brooke.

Just ahead on CNN, we'll take you underwater to see how the Bluefin-21 works in freezing temperatures, mountainous underwater terrain and total darkness.

We put a GoPro camera on the Bluefin to see what it sees when it's searching under the surface, next.

Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

The underwater vehicle being used to look for Malaysia Flight 370, it is back in the water. We can report that this afternoon, after a brief setback earlier today, they pulled the device from the ocean after it reached its maximum depth without hitting the ocean floor.

Officials say the second try in shallower waters, to quote them, is "so far, so good."

Randi Kaye visited the company that makes the Bluefin and saw firsthand exactly how this thing works.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On board the RV Resolution in the Boston Harbor, we have come here to see for ourselves how the Bluefin AUV operates.

WILL O'HALLORAN, MARINE OPERATIONS ENGINEER, BLUEFIN ROBOTICS: AUVs like the Bluefin-21, they are the tools you would use to conduct a wide-area side-scan survey in ultra deep water.

KAYE: Will O'Halloran is a marine operations engineer for Bluefin Robotics which designs and builds these autonomous underwater vehicles in Quincy, Massachusetts.

If this were a mission, a real mission what it would it be doing?

O'HALLORAN: So the next thing that would happen is the radio instructions received through that red antenna there.

The vehicle would say, OK, I'm going to start this mission. The propeller would spin up and then it would dive.

KAYE: Here in the Boston Harbor, the water only 40 feet deep which is easily manageable for the Bluefin because this autonomous vehicle is used to working in depths several miles below the surface.

The Bluefin-21 can dive about two and a half miles, but Flight 370's wreckage in the Indian Ocean may be deeper than that.

It takes about two hours for the Bluefin to reach the bottom where it can operate for another 16 hours

It scans the ocean floor as if it's mowing a lawn, using side-scan sonar, which identifies objects that stand out from the seabed.

When it's working with the side scanners it is not actually taking pictures, right? It's measuring sound?

O'HALLORAN: Correct. What it's doing is it's actually -- it's converting sound to electricity and then turning that electrical value into numerical value, then turn it into an image.

KAYE: When it returns to the surface, scientists download the sonar data to computers. The results may look something like this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looking at here, for example, this is a shipwreck in Boston Harbor. You can see how it's different than the area around it. You can see there's parts of the steam engine right there.

KAYE: If something catches their eye, the Navy will send down a high resolution camera on the Bluefin-21. It can take black and white photos, covering about 15 square miles a day

It's a slow process, moving at just three nautical miles per hour, only made worse by horrendous conditions, freezing temperatures, mountainous terrain and complete darkness.

But even diving blind, there is much hope the Bluefin-21 AUV will see something.

Randi Kaye, CNN, Quincy, Massachusetts.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Randi Kaye, thank you so much.

Coming up next, this might have been the first picture you saw of the Boston marathon bombing.

In a couple of minutes, I'm going to speak with a young man here, a Suffolk University senior, took the photo near the finish line. He was just around to see his aunt and uncle running. And little did he know what would happen next.

And you'll hear a special tribute through the voice of Boston-born James Taylor.

Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Back here live in Boston, it was one year ago. Daniel Lampariello was at the finish line of the Boston marathon, not too far away from where we're standing here on Boylston Street.

He was there cheering on his aunt and uncle who were running that 26.2 miles, had his iPhone, snapping a couple of pictures, when he captured what could be one of the most famous images of that second, deadly explosion.

Here it is. It was a photo that was retweeted a couple thousand times, became one of the most memorable pictures from that tragic day, one year ago. He's a senior here at Boston at Suffolk University and he joins me now.

And, so, Daniel, here we are, a Massachusetts native, this was personal for you.

DANIEL LAMPARIELLO, TOOK PHOTO OF BLAST AT FINISH LINE: Yes.

BALDWIN: You were out wanting to have a good time like so many people were. Take me back to that moment a year ago.

LAMPARIELLO: Patriot's Day in Boston is supposed to be such a great day. Never would I have imagined that something terrible like that would have happened on such a day that's supposed to be full of such joy and strength.

The Boston marathon is -- "Boston Strong," that's what people use that for. I mean, it's a sign of strength here in Boston.

BALDWIN: It's the Red Sox game. It's the marathon. It's the day to be in Boston.

LAMPARIELLO: Exactly.

BALDWIN: And then, of course, this happens and you were taking pictures.

Can you just describe what went through your head for you to just begin snapping photos of, clearly, an explosion?

LAMPARIELLO: Looking the opposite way, I wasn't looking at the finish line because I'm waiting for my aunt and uncle to come past us so we can take pictures of them.

And then the first explosion went off, turned my head, and all you can see is smoke up near the finish line. And it just sounded like a cannon went off. It shook the ground. It shook everything around you. So, I just turned around, and my instinct is to just start taking pictures of it. I didn't know what it was. I had no idea what had happened, and I just started snapping photos of it.

And, you know, with an iPhone you can keep going, keep going. And I took one fast enough, that I caught the second explosion go off.

BALDWIN: And so you actually, when at the time they were looking for the perpetrators of such a heinous crime, and it was the FBI saying, please send us photos, you had the conscious of mind to send the FBI this picture that you took.

LAMPARIELLO: I sent them about 15 photos that I took during that day. I mean, I figured that was my duty. They were asking for them. I wanted to help catch these people who did this.

And I sent them all to the FBI. No one reached out to me for the photo, so I sent it myself.

BALDWIN: You, next Monday, I heard the vice president saying 36,000 people will be running the marathon. It will be the biggest and the best ever.

LAMPARIELLO: The biggest yet.

BALDWIN: Your aunts and uncles are running again?

LAMPARIELLO: They are.

BALDWIN: You are choosing not to come down, your family not coming down. How come?

LAMPARIELLO: It was a day for us that leaves a lot of memories behind, and I don't think personally for me I'm not ready to come back down here yet.

I've walked down here. I walk down here every day. I live here in the city. But for that day I think it's going to take me a little while to come back down.

BALDWIN: Daniel Lampariello, good luck with journalism, student at Suffolk University. Thank you --

LAMPARIELLO: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: -- so much.

And before I let you go, really the tribute to marathon victims and survivors has officially ended with the ceremony, but let's be real. It will never end here in Boston.

And let's just take a look back at what Boston and the nation really have overcome, and it begins with Boston-born James Taylor singing "Fire & Rain" at a "Boston Strong" benefit concert nearly one year ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES TAYLOR, SINGER: Lord knows that the cold wind blows, got to turn your head.

Yeah, there's hours of time on the telephone line, talking about things to come, sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.

But I always thought I'd see you somehow one more time again -- again.

I thought I'd see you one more time again.

There's just a few things coming my way this time around.

I thought I'd see you -- I thought I'd see you -- fire and rain.

Thought I'd see you just one more time, Suzanne.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Something about James Taylor has that healing quality in his words.

He told me before that show he didn't even hesitate when asked to sing for this amazing city.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. Boston, thanks for having me. I'll be back, I can't wait, for marathon Monday.

In the meantime, let's go to Washington, D.C. "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.