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Team Reacts to Sterling's Reported Cancer; Attorney: V. Stiviano's Friends Sold Tape; Teen Planned Attack on Family, School; Amanda Knox Defends Self

Aired May 02, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The reports that LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling has been battling prostate cancer has seemed to catch everyone off guard. The Clippers charge off the court in Oakland last night resigned to playing a game seven in their playoff series against the Warriors. Minutes later, the team would hear news about their banned owner.

Rachel Nichols host of CNN's "UNGUARDED" joins me now to tell us more. So it hadn't been public that Mr. Sterling has cancer?

RACHEL NICHOLS, CNN HOST, "UNGUARDED": Well Carol Donald Sterling is 80 years old and he's gotten a more puffy appearance in the last year. There have certainly been whispers he might not be well, so this isn't a complete shock, but it was still quite disconcerting for players to hear right after a very emotional playoff game and they reacted with surprise, but also with class. I want you to take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLAKE GRIFFIN, LA CLIPPERS: It is true, you know, my thoughts and prayers are with him, nobody deserves to go through something like that.

CHRIS PAUL, LA CLIPPERS: Yes that's a first I've ever heard of that and that's truly unfortunate.

DOC RIVERS, LA CLIPPERS COACH: I didn't know it until just now. You know, I don't have a reaction to that. I hope it's not true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NICHOLS: This is a good window into what kind of people make up this team, Carol. They're known as a particularly classy group inside that locker room and honestly, it's part of why people around the NBA felt so badly for Chris Paul and Doc Rivers when this whole incident happened in the first place. In the wake of this news, they've made it clear, they don't wish terrible things on Donald Sterling, they just don't want him owning their team.

COSTELLO: OK so, what's the latest on that?

NICHOLS: Well you know, people are gearing up for a possible fight. The NBA owners' advisory committee, which is ten of the owners, voted unanimously to move forward with the termination process. But interestingly, they didn't vote to notify Donald Sterling yet that they are moving for termination.

So, it's interesting. They're kind of in limbo here. And what could Donald Sterling do to fight it? Well inside the NBA he might try to make some calls, sway some fellow owners, but Adam Silver is making such a push. That is unlikely. You've got to think that they are going to vote him out.

However, in the court system, well that's a whole different story. The court system tends to protect sports leagues saying it's up to the league with their constitution and their arbitration process except when dealing with antitrust laws. So he may try to go making end the round and file an antitrust case. And if he does that, think about the depositions that are going to end up in this case Carol.

You've got maybe Donald Sterling his side starting to detail bad behavior of other owners making the comparison, saying gee, this is what I did as bad as what they did? Other owners don't want that. Here's the other end of the round of that Donald Sterling may try. We know that he and his wife are separated. If one of them files for divorce, under California law, the team is community property.

All of a sudden, the team is tied up in the California legal system and the family court system and the NBA might not be able to force a sale while it is under the jurisdiction of the California courts. This could drag on and on and on and we have seen this with Donald Sterling before. Delaying is one of his big tactics because he knows that it's going to cause the NBA a whole mess of problems.

COSTELLO: Rachel Nichols reporting live for us this morning, thank you. Of course not just Sterling involved in this scandal. There's also his supposed girlfriend and employee, V. Stiviano you know the woman who recorded that racially charged conversation.

To talk about her role in this scandal, I'm joined by CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin and civil rights attorney Avery Friedman. Welcome to both of you.

SUNNY HOST, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Thanks Carol.

AVERY FRIEDMAN, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: Nice to see you Carol.

COSTELLO: OK so, everybody's wondering, was it legal for V. Stiviano to record her boss boyfriend and we don't really know which one it is, without his consent because he says he doesn't even -- he's not sure it's him on that tape, so it kind of sounds like he would deny that she had the right to tape him. Am I correct in that, Avery?

FRIEDMAN: Well Stiviano's lawyer says no, she had consent, which is dubious at best and frankly, if the case is going to be prosecuted, the only witness on consent Carol is Donald Sterling and he's a legal cockroach so the DA is not going to wind them calling and prosecuting this case. And secondly, Stiviano is not going to testify because she has a potential of self-incrimination, so at the end of the day, the only way you're going to find out, maybe picking up on Rachel's package on this, maybe through civil litigation we'll find but it's certainly not going to be a criminal prosecution.

COSTELLO: Well Sunny there interesting thing in the "L.A. Times" is reporting that according to Stiviano's attorney, quote, "V. Stiviano gave copies of the now infamous recording of Donald Sterling making incendiary racial comments to a handful of friends for safekeeping and she believes that one of them sold the tape. Is that believable Sunny?

HOSTIN: Oh, my, my. You know I don't know what is believable. I mean, at one point, she said she is his archivists, whatever that means, which means perhaps she had consent because she was archiving their conversations or his history. I don't think that we know what to believe at this point Carol, but the bottom line is that he is going to claim of course that he did not consent to these tapes. She says he did consent to the tape. I agree with Avery ultimately, this is going to be a civil matter. It's not the last that we've heard about these tapes and about V. Stiviano or whatever her name is, apparently she has several aliases.

FRIEDMAN: He does, too.

HOSTIN: But it's a -- I think it's an interesting turn of events.

COSTELLO: But Avery, she insists she was a paid archivist and if she was and she was taping all of these conversations for posterity and he hired her to do that and she can provide proof, then where's the wrong?

FRIEDMAN: Yes, right. She was hired as an archivist based on her academic credentials, apparently. She's no more of an archivist than the man in the moon. I think that's what she's saying but the fact is that there still needs to be consent and I suppose the argument as well, I guess I did because I was employed by him. She never was employed. All she got was Ferraris and Range Rovers, and housing and about 140k in cash. That's a pretty well paid archivist. And it suggests to me that really she wasn't.

COSTELLO: OK, your best guess, Sunny. I'll let you have the final word your best guess because Donald Sterling's litigious -- right? So, you would expect him to file some sort of suit against her because she's pretty much destroyed him now, right?

HOSTIN: Yes I mean you already have a suit that Shelly Sterling filed against her asking for that property back that Avery just listed and I suspect he uses the law as sport. He uses suit as sport and so, he is going to sue her and she's not a noble character in this. Let's face it. Probably sleeping with a married man or perhaps sleeping with a married man, but I think she sort of did everyone a favor right. She did this country a service. His racism is now exposed. She's effectively taken him down when others haven't been able to do this.

FRIEDMAN: That's true.

HOSTIN: He's had tons and tons of litigation you know detailing his apparent racist views and racist practices and housing and so, you know, perhaps she is somewhat of a hero. A shero in this.

COSTELLO: Oh man I will leave it there.

FRIEDMAN: Yes in a strange way of looking at it right.

COSTELLO: Holy cow, Sunny Hostin and Avery Friedman thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, disturbing new details about a teenager who was planning to kill his family and his classmates in a massive shooting spree.

Up next, how investigators stopped him.

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COSTELLO: Disturbing details this morning about a Minnesota teenager who police say was plotting a killing spree. According to officials this man, this young man, John LaDue seen here playing his guitar at his teacher's -- at his music teacher's studio. He had a plan to kill his family before setting out to shoot students at a local high school.

Nick Valencia has been following this story. Tell us more.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very disturbing a violent plot thwarted by a watch school resident who believed that she saw suspicious activity at the local storage facility. Carol that led people to the 17-year-old John LaDue and inside his locker, bomb making materials, everything from a pressure cooker, to steel ball bearings, guns and ammunition. In a local press conference police outlined the plans that LaDue has with those materials.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The plan was to kill his family members, starting a diversionary fire in rural Waseca to distract first responders and travel to the Waseca Junior/Senior High School. Once there, he intended to set off numerous bombs during the lunch hour. Kill the school resource officer as he responded to help, set fires and shoot students and staff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: This was a very real plot. Police believe he had the resources to do it. Their investigation began in late March, Carol, when police began discovering devices at a local elementary school that seemingly was LaDue's testing ground.

You see here -- you're looking at what his plans were with those materials. To kill his family, start a diversionary fire for first responders so that they were distracted so he can continue his plot at this local junior/senior school. COSTELLO: He had a plan. He had 180 pages detailing this plan.

VALENCIA: He did and it goes on to be even more chilling. He was inspired by events like Columbine High School, that heartbreaking shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school. And if his Facebook page is any indicator, he had a very partial side -- he's very partial to the dark side. He liked heavy metal music. He was very into gory movies. He likes pages of assault rifles. And you know, he really listed a lot in there that could be an indicator to his very dark side. You see there him playing a guitar with a skull on the strap of that guitar.

Police have charged him with four counts of attempted first degree murder and six counts of possession of an explosive or incendiary device.

COSTELLO: Nick Valencia -- thanks so much.

VALENCIA: You bet.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM -- Amanda Knox defending her innocence once again. That as an Italian appeals court explains why it believes Knox is guilty of murder.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANDA KNOX, FOUND GUILTY OF MURDERING ROOMMATE: I -- I did not kill my friend.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: After a break, hear Knox explain why the evidence and not the speculation proves her to be innocent.

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COSTELLO: Amanda Knox says, I did not kill my friend. The convicted murderer spoke to CNN's Chris Cuomo for the first time since an Italian court released the explanation of her conviction in the death of her roommate in 2007. This Italian court says it believes Meredith Kercher was killed by multiple attackers, including Knox' boyfriend, the man in the middle and another man, Rudy Guede, that's him on the left. But the report says it was Knox herself who delivered the fatal stab wound during an argument over money.

In this exclusive interview with CNN, Knox says if she was at the scene of the crime, forensic evidence would have proved her guilt.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KNOCK: I -- I did not kill my friend. I did not wield a knife. I had no reason to. My entire adult life has been weighed down and taken over by this tremendous mess.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COSTELLO: Joining me now from New York is Nina Burleigh. She's an investigative journalist and the author of a book on Amanda Knox called "The Fatal Gifted Beauty".

Good morning Nina.

NINA BURLEIGH, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Good morning. How are you Carol?

COSTELLO: I'm good. Thank you for being here. I know you've been following this case for several years. In watching this interview with Chris Cuomo, some people have said that Amanda Knox seemed coached. In your view, what was her demeanor like?

BURLEIGH: Well, you know, she's been in -- this case has gone on for seven years and surely, she doesn't say very much now without her lawyers having vetted it; I would imagine especially on national television. So, I would expect her to have been coached. And I think you know, still, there's you know, a sense that we're looking at somebody's demeanor here as opposed to the facts in the case. And we should really be focusing on the facts as they were presented and as they were taken apart by the appeals court when this acquittal happened because I am not her lawyer.

I'm not her advocate. I'm a journalist who spent a year over there writing a book about it. I interviewed everybody involved. I interviewed the prosecutor repeatedly. The facts, the evidence, does not add up.

They've done here with this latest case is they've just taken the material that was in the trial that was all dubious and that was debunked in the appeal and they stuck it right back up as though it's news and we're discussing it again and that's actually what they want to have happen, I guess, because --

COSTELLO: Let's pause there and address what you're saying because Knox does address the judge's claim that an argument over money and accusations that she stole from her roommate led to the murder, so listen to what Knox says about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KNOX: Absolutely not. He's getting this from Rudy Guede, who is coming up with these sorts of things for self-interest. And the truth of the matter is one, I had no criminal record, so I am not the type of person who's going to violently kill someone for any reason. And further more, I -- I had saved up to go to Italy. I was not in need of stealing any money.

Unlike Rudy Guede, who was a known thief, who was a known burglar, who did this on a regular basis to survive; and why they would think that I was a thief when in Meredith's own purse, there are Rudy Guede's fingerprints. It's based on nothing.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COSTELLO: The other thing that the court brought up was somehow the presence of a second knife that Amanda Knox supposedly used to deliver that fatal blow, but they can't produce the knife and they're just, if they can't produce the knife, how do they know there was a second knife?

BURLEIGH: You know, these are things that I can't answer. There were so many mistakes made by the scientific police that were clarified and cleared up in the appeal when they were acquitted and when they let her go home. You know, we're just going back over these things and you know, they've been proven wrong. They've been debunked.

I mean looking at the case as a whole, Carol, what we have is a walled mountain town, a small town in Italy where the prosecutor made a mistake. They were rushing to judgment. They grabbed these two students. Then they figured out whose fingerprints and DNA were all over the body and crime scene and that the guy had a motive. And instead of saying, oops, we made a mistake, the whole international media was in there and this is a small town. They're not used to having CNN and ABC and BBC watching them. They couldn't turn the ship around.

Just like prosecutors across the country in the United States, when they make a mistake, it's very difficult and it takes a very strong person, you know, very ethical people, to stop that and they didn't stop it and now, what's happening is you see the Italian justice system circling the wagon and it's you know, it's shameful what they're doing, really.

COSTELLO: Nina Burleigh thanks so much for your insight. I appreciate it.

BURLEIGH: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: Still to come, 50,000 gallons of oil still unaccounted for after a fiery train crash that sent cars full of crude into the river. Did officials ignore warnings that something like this might happen?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: In Virginia crews are still working to pull rail cars from the James Rivers two days after a freight train derailed and oil sheen is coating a nine-mile stretch of the river nears Lynchburg.

Now the train jumped the track and it caught on fire on Wednesday and now some 50,000 gallons of crude are unaccounted for.

Let's bring in Bill Hayden. He's with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality -- welcome Bill.

BILL HAYDEN, DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY: Thank you. Good morning.

COSTELLO: So people in this area are really worried about their drinking water. Should they be worried? HAYDEN: There's really no indication of any problems with the drinking water. We've been working with the localities in the area along the river and haven't really seen any indication of drinking water being affected at all.

COSTELLO: This still, there's the sheen on top of the water. That has the concern you.

HAYDEN: Well, it is a concern. The sheen indicates that not all of the oil was captured. We're tracking that sheen along the river to see how far it goes. It is beginning to break up, but it's a short- term situation because the river is flowing fairly quickly and whatever is on the surface could dissipate before too long.

Is there any way to figure out what happened to these tens of thousands of gallons of crude?

HAYDEN: Well, the way we're working this is estimating how much was in the cars that fell into the river, how much it actually recovered and then sort of going backwards from there as to how much was actually left in the river. We'll probably be able to get some idea of what that was. The latest amount of the most recent estimate I've heard is that they were between 20,000 and 25,000 gallons that left the rail car. So we'll be working to see how much we can get on exactly what was in the river.

COSTELLO: Environmentalists have long warned against trains hauling oil downtown Lynchburg. They had a point obviously so were the warnings ignored?

HAYDEN: I think the warnings were certainly taken seriously under the rules that we operate in Virginia, we need to be prepared for any type of emergency situation and that's what this situation was. It was and is still an emergency and we were able to respond to it, keep the pollution to a minimum and hopefully avoid any environmental harm.

COSTELLO: I hope so. Bill Hayden thanks so much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it.

HAYDEN: OK. Thanks.

COSTELLO: And thanks to all of you for joining me today.

I'm Carol Costello.

"@THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA" starts now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: "AT THIS HOUR" big news about the economy. Hiring goes up -- way up.