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Questions Arise Over California Kidnapping Case; Michelle Knight on California Kidnapping; Arizona Wildfire Threatens Sedona; Two Planes Come Within 400 Feet of Each Other
Aired May 23, 2014 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM --
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UNIDENTIFIED PILOT: I have no idea what was going on up there in the tower, but you know, it was pretty gnarly looking.
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COSTELLO: Danger in the skies.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop right there, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop your turn. Stop your climb. Stop your turn.
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COSTELLO: Two United Airliners narrowly miss each other in the sky.
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UNIDENTIFIED PILOT: Do you know what happened there?
UNIDENTIFIED PILOT: Basically crossed directly over the top of each other.
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COSTELLO: Also --
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Holy cow. Look at that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It seemed like all hell broke loose.
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COSTELLO: Holy hail. Damaging winds and flooding just as the holiday weekend begins. But first, a decade-long kidnapping saga. A woman taken when she was a teen now free and she's finding support from someone else who knows the horror of being held captive. Ariel Castro's victim, Michelle Knight.
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MICHELLE KNIGHT, KIDNAPPING SURVIVOR: Just because you're not chained up and you're not locked in a basement, doesn't mean you ain't trapped.
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COSTELLO: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. A California man accused of kidnapping a girl and holding her hostage for ten years sits behind bars this morning. His attorney says he didn't do it and that the victim is lying. Isidro Garcia is being held on $1 million bail facing charges of kidnapping and rape, but Garcia's attorney says the young woman was never held against her will and that the couple was actually in the process of a nasty divorce.
Sara Sidner joins us live now with more. Good morning, Sara.
SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. The district attorney seems to have seen enough evidence to charge Isidro Garcia with some very serious crimes including forcible rape and kidnapping with the intent to commit a sexual offense among other felonies, five in total. But his defense attorney, of course, and neighbors and friends who knew this couple say they simply don't believe the entire story that the victim has told police.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bail in your case is set at $1 million.
SIDNER (voice-over): The 42-year-old, Isidro Garcia, now faces 19 years to life charged with rape, kidnapping and lewd acts on a minor. Garcia initially arrested for allegedly holding this California woman in captivity for a decade until she walked into a police station Monday.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm so happy to be with my family.
SIDNER: She tells a CNN affiliate, KABC, she didn't have a life.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was very afraid about everything because I was alone.
SIDNER: The 25-year-old woman says Garcia kidnapped her in Santa Ana when she was 15 years old. At the time, he was her mother's boyfriend. The alleged victim says throughout the next ten years he raped her, changed her identity to marry her and they had a child together.
FARRAH EMANI, SPOKESWOMAN, ORANGE COUNTY D.A.: She was told her family wasn't looking for her. She was told that he was her only ally.
SIDNER: But these photos from the alleged victim's Facebook page appear to show a normal couple. A husband who neighbors say treated his wife like a queen. A couple that rejoiced at news they were having a baby.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was really happy. She was really happy that she was pregnant.
SIDNER: This is the family neighbors say they knew and not believing what they are hearing now.
(on camera): Never any indication there was something wrong going on and she had been kidnapped?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Never. That's what we're in shock. She had her own car. She could go to work with the little girl, stop by the police station and say I feel threatened.
SIDNER (voice-over): Garcia's defense attorney argues the alleged victim had certain motives for reporting her husband.
CHARLES FRISCO JR., GARCIA'S DEFENSE ATTORNEY: People break up. People say things that aren't true and in this case that's probably what happened.
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SIDNER: Now police point out this is not like all marriages and all couples because this girl was reported missing in 2004 by her mother and at the time, she was 15 years old. Police say she told them that she was threatened by him, twice beaten when she tried to escape and because she had come into the country illegal by from Mexico, he threatened if she went to police she would be deported. All things keeping her psychologically controlled by the suspect -- Carol.
COSTELLO: And Sara, I want you to stick around because we're going to talk more about this in just a bit. But first, I want to let people hear what Michelle Knight had to say. The fact that some people are questioning the California woman's story is quite upsetting to Michelle Knight. She's the young woman who was held captive herself for ten years.
You remember Knight. She bravely faced her abductor, Ariel Castro, in court months after her ordeal ended. Today, she cannot believe people question women who describe terrible things that happened to them. Knight had a very emotional conversation with NEW DAY's Kate Bolduan.
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KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR, "NEW DAY": It must be hard, I've been thinking, for you to retell your story over and over again especially on your book tour. Has it been difficult for you?
KNIGHT: It's been difficult but like I said, I'm trying to help other people and if I can help just one person by my story or more than one person, I'm welcome to do it.
BOLDUAN: You hear of this story and possibility of another woman being held, abused for ten years. Taken when she was 15 years old. What went through your mind and what goes through your mind when you hear about this?
KNIGHT: Right now what's going through my mind is people shouldn't judge people by what they see and what they hear because there's a lot of people out there that go through pain and they can't stop it. They don't know how to cope with it. They don't know exactly how to go through it. People shouldn't say anything about what they can't explain because it may be difficult for that woman. That woman that went through this.
It's very hard for her when people are saying bad things about her and saying that she's lying. You don't know what went through her head. You don't know what that dude was doing to her. You have absolutely no clue what she went through to say things and say that she was lying or she's doing this. You're making her life not able to function or heal properly when you do these things to people.
You're making people not want to come out. Not want to say anything. You're making people want to sit there and keep it to themselves and go through abuse when you say stupid crap like that. I need a break.
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COSTELLO: Well, Michelle Knight did take a break, but she's a courageous woman because she wanted to continue. She has advice for this California victim.
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BOLDUAN: This hit so close to home. This is so hard.
KNIGHT: Yes, it does. It hits really close to home. I want to let her know that I care. I understand and don't let anybody break you down. Don't let what people are saying about you hurt you or make you feel ashamed. Push through it. Ignore them. They're just ignorant. Understand that there are people out there that are going through the same pain you are and going through the same struggle regardless if they are man or woman. Understand. Come forward. Don't be ashamed. You did nothing wrong.
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COSTELLO: All right, let's talk about this. Sara Sidner joins us once again with psychiatrist, Gail Saltz. Good morning to both of you once again. Sara, I want to start with you. This is a difficult conversation to have. As a journalist, you have to ask questions and this is not a simple story, is it?
SIDNER: No, it isn't simple. Each and every one of these stories is very different. As you've seen reported, there are other cases and other people who have gone through similar things but not exactly the same. One of the big difficulties is obviously trying to get to the alleged victim and trying to talk to the suspect as well. That usually doesn't happen very quickly. So you go about trying to find other people who knew them, their friends, their family members, where they worked.
You try to get that information as best you can. I think one of the things that's happened here also according to police when the initial missing persons report was filed, the police in Santa Ana told me that basically the mother had come in saying she believed that her daughter had run away with the mother's boyfriend.
Now, that's a creepy situation because he's 16 years her senior and so something is very wrong there. To use the words run away, that has a much different connotation than kidnapped. Police found out she was kidnapped when the alleged victim walked into the police department and used those very words saying that she had been drugged and taken away and moved all over the place.
One more thing to remember, she was here. She about been here only a few months and had come from Mexico illegally so he did have quite a bit of control over her according to police in keeping her from going to authorities making her very afraid to do that -- Carol.
COSTELLO: OK. So, Dr. Gail, let's talk about this being 15 years old and whether you run away with a man 16 years your senior or whether you're abducted by him, he has a certain measure of control over you, right?
DR. GAIL SALTZ, PSYCHIATRIST: More than a certain measure, 15. You're a child. You're a child who is just arrived in a new country. We also don't actually know what her circumstances were before she arrived from that country. We also don't actually know what her circumstances were before she arrived from that country. You know, did they leave because their situation was so horrendous before? A family invested in getting out, a child, you know, no matter what happened, that is actually under duress I would say. However she left would be not a reasonably balanced situation at all.
COSTELLO: So, Sara, if for example, my mother thought at 15 I ran away with a man 16 years my senior, she would want the police to look for me. She would be very concerned about me. Did police look for this girl at that time?
SIDNER: The mother did come to the police department. She did file a missing persons report and she did go on television with a Spanish language television to talk about this and ask the public to help her find her daughter. What police did with that information, went to look for her. One of the difficulties in this case was that police say apparently the suspect went and got falsified documents from Mexico so changing names, changing birth dates and perhaps changing social security numbers.
So a lot of things here making it very difficult and we know that they moved several times around Southern California to different places. What is striking here is that the alleged victim was just about 30 miles away from where her mother lived so very, very close.
COSTELLO: So let's get at the heart of this, Dr. Gail. Michelle Knight very upset. How could you question a victim in this particular way this soon when you don't know all the facts. This is making other women in similar situations fear coming forward. Does she have a point?
SALTZ: I think she has an excellent point. It is hard for people to understand who were probably around. Every time there are one of these stories, Carol, everybody questions why didn't she break free at this time or that time? They don't understand the psychological chains that essentially a perpetrator exerts on a victim that telling the victim often I'm going to get your family deported, I'm going to kill your family.
Your family doesn't care about you. Your family is gone. I'm the only one here for you which creates this Stockholm syndrome. This psychological situation where the person believes the only person they have to rely on is their perpetrator and they have to stay. And so it's not a matter of whether they have a moment to break free physically, psychologically they cannot break free. I think people have a hard time understanding that. It's a scary concept.
And in doing so, they doubt the person. I think they doubt the person because they want to believe that if they were in a situation like that, they would be able to escape or they don't want to believe horrible things like this happen. At the end of the day, it really undermines the victim. It's really -- we shouldn't be doing that. Honestly, it's up to police to understand what really happened and if someone is a victim, you have to support them.
I think -- I agree with Michelle Knight and obviously it's painful to her. There probably were people that questioned why she didn't try harder to break free. That really undermines someone who is already probably struggling with their own shame and guilt in terms of why did this happen to me?
COSTELLO: Dr. Gail Saltz, Sara Sidner, thanks so much.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM, just as the Southwest kicks off the summer touring season, a wildfire threatens a national treasure in Arizona. Ana Cabrera live near this massive slide fire. Good morning, Ana.
ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Carol. The 7,500 plus acres are now burning. This fire largely uncontained with hundreds of homes still threatened. You see crews gearing up to head back to the fire lines. We'll take you there and give you a look at some of the challenges and conditions facing firefighters today.
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COSTELLO: One of the country's most beautiful landscapes has been turned to kindling. Hundreds of firefighters are battling the flames threatening bone dry Sedona, Arizona. The fire scorched 7,500 acres in Oak Creek Canyon and forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes and resort cabins across the area.
Ana Cabrera joins us live near the command center in Flagstaff. This is a shame because this is one gorgeous area.
ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Tough to see such a beautiful place burning, Carol. And firefighters are just now going back out to the fire lines. We're seeing a lot of activity. You might remember this parking lot behind me was full before the break, but all these crews just wrapped up with their morning briefing. We were there. We got mostly good news.
We are seeing crews from six different states out here helping in this fight, nearly 1,000 firefighters. This morning conditions are good. You see me wearing a jacket, much cooler conditions. Humidity is up. The smoke plume much smaller because winds have died down. Crucial hours in the next few hours still just 5 percent contained as these fire crews work to save hundreds of homes.
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CABRERA (voice-over): The tender dry conditions through region are textbook for fires to burn out of control.
CAPT. BILL MORSE, FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA FIRE DEPARTMENT: Fire gets into that steep terrain with heavy fuels and wind-driven, it is a bad combination for potential for a catastrophic wildfire.
CABRERA: Planes and choppers swoop in, spraying water while hundreds of firefighters are on the front lines battling the fire that is threatening over 3,000 residents.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is my home, property and livelihood, everything.
CABRERA: Frank Garrison owns 20 rental cabins in the area, a popular tourist destination.
FRANK GARRISON, RESIDENT: We were able to get all of our employees out. My family out and our guests out.
CABRERA: Residents are bracing for the worst.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm getting ready to get the hell out of here.
CABRERA: Rushing to grab whatever belongings they can before evacuating.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I hear it is close, coming, zero percent contained at this point so we have some -- trying to be ahead of the game.
CABRERA: One woman desperately trying to find all of her cats.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're just trying to round them up and get them to a safer place. So I have three right now and we're looking for about six.
CABRERA: Authorities say the cause of the fire is under investigation, but that it was probably started by a person.
MORSE: It is a big fire, a bit of a beast.
CABRERA: A beast at the beginning of a fire season that authorities fear could be long and destructive.
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CABRERA: You're looking at the Prescott Hotshots as they gear up to go out to the fire lines. We understand there are nearly 20 Hotshot teams here on these fire lines. These are guys and gals that are doing some of the hardest, dirtiest, most physical work on the fire. Very dangerous work. It was right here in Arizona just about a year ago, Carol, where we lost those 19 Hotshot firefighters. That's in the back of all these guys' minds.
I talked to the Prescott team this morning and I asked them about that specifically. He said, you know, this is our job and that's what we're focused on this morning.
COSTELLO: I know such brave men and women. Ana Cabrera, many thanks. You heard Ana say, it is cooler in Arizona today so that will make the firefighting a little bit easier. Indra Petersons is here with more on what crews will be up against in the coming days. Good morning, Indra.
INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Carol. It's a little tricky because there's a fire risk in the region because there are thunderstorms. People think thunderstorms. Great. Rain. It's tricky. It's so dry most of the rain evaporates before it hits the ground. What are you left with?
The threat of lightning. We call it dry lightning which could set more fires in the region. We talk about low humidity, 22 percent this morning. That's never a good thing. There will be a little bit more moisture in the air so we could see numbers go up over the next several days. It's only going to last a couple of days.
You can see these are only days they will get a chance assuming they don't get dry lightning and more fires out there, these are going to be better days. By the time we go through Sunday we'll start seeing warmer temperatures and even 90s out there. That's going to be the concern moving forward.
The other story we've been talking about across the country in the northeast you may have heard about, look at reports of hail and wind damage that came across in the last 12 hours. Tons of it out there. People heading out for Memorial Day. There's severe weather but not as widespread. Looking around Wilmington and Columbia and tiny section around New Mexico and Texas today.
Not a big deal unless you are under one of those major thunderstorms. You can tell very light. That's what we see across the area except for heavy stuff in the southern plains. Good news for them because they have needed the rain. There's what it looks like across the country. Much better Memorial Day looking a lot clearer.
COSTELLO: I'm glad it's going to be much better because, you know, in places like Ohio it's been raining and raining and in fact in many cities in North Eastern Ohio it's flooded. I'm sure you have seen this video from Ohio near Dayton. This is Route 70. The highway. Look at that man. He's rescuing a baby from a car under water.
PETERSONS: Carol, I have to tell you. This is my biggest pet peeve ever. There are more deaths from flooding than any other severe weather event combined. Think of everything you know. Tornadoes, hurricanes, everything added together, more people die from flooding trying to cross floodwaters. Half of those people die in their vehicles.
It is not worth it. I don't care how much your car cost, get out of that vehicle and search for higher ground in case you find yourself in a situation like this. It happens so quickly. No one thinks it will happen to them. Get out of the car. It saves lives.
COSTELLO: Good advice. We'll listen. We promise. Indra Petersons, many thanks.
Still to come in the NEWSROO, another close call in the skies. Two planes just seconds from hitting one another on takeoff. Why does this keep happening? We'll talk next.
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COSTELLO: It's happened again. Two commercial jets packed with passengers coming within seconds of slamming into one another in the sky. This time a pair of United Airlines airbus A-320s came within 400 feet of one another taking off from Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport. This happened two weeks ago. Passengers didn't notice anything, but the sound from the cockpit shows how close these planes came to disaster.
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UNIDENTIFIED PILOT: 601, do you know what happened there?
UNIDENTIFIED PILOT: Basically cross directly over the top of each other. That's what it looked like from my perspective. I have no idea what was going on up there in the tower. It was pretty gnarly looking.
UNIDENTIFIED PILOT: I'm guessing he was supposed to give us a left turn.
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COSTELLO: It's the second near collision we're learning about this week. CNN aviation correspondent, Rene Marsh is here with more on this. Good morning.
RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION AND GOVERNMENT REGULATION CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. This is not good. This is not supposed to happen. When it comes to these situations, it comes down to two things. It's either pilot error or controller error. We can tell you just heard it there. It happened again two planes with passengers on board get too close in the skies and this morning we know the FAA is now investigating.
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UNIDENTIFIED TOWER: United 601, a right turn.
MARSH (voice-over): Two more passenger planes get too close in the skies. On May 9th, United Flight 601 and United 437 took off from Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston at roughly the same time. Shortly after takeoff, Flight 601 is told to turn right putting it in the path of the other plane. Moments later, the controller seems to realize the mistake.
UNIDENTIFIED TOWERA: 601, stop the turn right there, sir. Stop your turn. Stop your climb. Stop your turn 601.
MARSH: The two planes came within nearly a mile of each other. The roughly 300 passengers on both flights may not have been aware of the close call but the pilots were left with questions as to what went wrong.
UNIDENTIFIED PILOT: 601, you know what happened there?
UNIDENTIFIED PILOT: Basically crossed directly over the top of each other. That's what it looked like from my perspective. I have no idea what was going up there in the tower, but it was pretty gnarly looking.
MARSH: This is the third incident in recent weeks where passengers planes got too close for comfort. A similar incident over Newark Airport and another one over the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii all involving passenger planes.
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MARSH: All right, well, Carol, you know, in order to know if this is a trend from year to year, we would need 2013 numbers but the FAA -- we've asked them for it. They say they're not ready yet. We have 2012 numbers to go off of. Those numbers show that planes came too close nearly 4,400 times a year. That's more than 12 times a day. We should point out 41 of those were considered high risk -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Rene Marsh reporting live from Washington this morning.
