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Manhunt Underway for School Shooting Suspect's Parents. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired December 03, 2021 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: OK, back now to our breaking news. There is a manhunt underway right now for James and Jennifer Crumbley. Those who are the parents of the suspected school shooter. They were charged earlier today with involuntary manslaughter, and now they are missing.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: All right, let's bring in defense attorney Page Pate, CNN Shimon Prokupecz, in Michigan, also, with the CNN law enforcement analyst --

CAMEROTA: He's working the phones.

BLACKWELL: -- Anthony Barksdale. He's on the phone. We have him with us now. Let me start with you, commissioner, now that you're with us. Listen, the sheriff told us just a few minutes ago that we knew that they weren't at home, right, they were not at their home. He could not tell me the last time that he knew where the Crumbleys were, and this is northern Michigan, right? I think we have a map to show you just how close this is to the Canadian border. They could be anywhere.

ANTHONY BARKSDALE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Look, they're on the run. If the police don't have them in pocket right now, if they don't have them, then they could be anywhere. So, if they went to Canada, OK, fine. If they want to run, fine. Because I'm going to go back to what's been mentioned before, the U.S. marshals are in this game. The FBI is in this game. So, if we're going to have a manhunt, they're dealing with the best that the United States has.

CAMEROTA: Yes, Page, the last time that we know of them being seen is what're showing on our screen right now. This was during their son's arraignment. They're clearly in a car -- which as Victor has pointed out -- could have tipped off people that they were on the move, at least. But that was Wednesday. So, that was Wednesday. So, today is Friday, and the sheriff was -- I mean, I really appreciate this sheriff and how forthcoming he has been with information this whole time, but Page, I mean, he admitted he couldn't tell us when these folks were last seen.

PAGE PATE, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Right. Alisyn, I mean, I think we've talked about it and it bears repeating. You really should have surveillance in place if you're about to issue an arrest warrant for someone because they do panic, they do stupid things. They try to run away. That's exactly the wrong thing to do in this case. I mean, if these parents would step up and accept responsibility for their role in all of this, they probably wouldn't be looking at a decade in prison.

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So, the opposite of a good strategy here is to try to run or not face responsibility. Because that's just going to make the charges, not just more serious -- because that's a separate crime, trying to evade law enforcement -- but it's also going to make the ultimate punishment more serious. The longer it takes them to accept their role in this, the worse it's going to be in the end.

BLACKWELL: So, you say that there could be additional charges based on what we know now.

PATE: Absolutely. Yes, if they're a fugitive, they're aware the arrest warrant is out, and they're somehow hiding from law enforcement, evading law enforcement, potentially obstructing in some way law enforcement, that could lead to additional charges.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Shimon.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I'm just trying to look at some -- I think we're getting in some new information. I'm just trying to pull it up here.

CAMEROTA: OK, I'll give --

PROKUPECZ: They just issued a BOLO. Alisyn, I have it. You guys may have it already too. But they have just issued a what basically is the type of car they're -- yeah, but the type of car they're looking for and I'm reading a release here for -- from the police here saying that the sheriff's detectives are looking for fugitive parents charged with felonies in connection with the Oxford High School deaths. And then they issue some information about who they're looking for.

But locally they've put out this BOLO. They told everyone around this area, and outside of this area. The Canadian border, that is something we here have talked about. Alisyn, since the day of their son's arraignment. Seeing that video of the parents in the car, knowing the fact that prosecutors were moving towards filing charges, this morning when they finally announced the charges we asked where are the parents, and all we were told is there's going to be an arraignment. It will be this afternoon. But they never had them in custody. So, now there is this manhunt, and it's significant.

When you think about the resources that they now need to put into trying to find them, from the FBI to the U.S. Marshals, and this is going to be a top priority for the U.S. Marshals. The fugitive task force, some of the best in the country. So, a lot of work here to do. This could be going on for days. They could be on the road for days.

CAMEROTA: Shimon, very quickly, in the BOLO, did they say the name of the car, the make of the car, did they give any details about that?

PROKUPECZ: No, so yeah, yeah. So, there is a make of the car. Not the car but it is the type of a car it is, and it looks like an SUV from what I can tell. I can't really make out the make on it, but it looks like a SUV. And they've also issued -- well, they also issued two photos. One obviously of the father and then the mother as well in their press release here.

BLACKWELL: Shimon, you have made clear over the last couple of days of reporting there, just the level of frustration the people have had with the school and not calling. Just detail for us now on top of what has happened now that the parents are fugitives.

PROKUPECZ: The parents are fugitives. The fact that the school, right, the fact that the school had information, these drawings, the fact that he was looking at video on his cell phone of ammunition. These two things combined that the school never notified the police. There is a sheriff's deputy that's assigned to the school, has a relationship with the school, and part of that is because of these types of situations. They never told the sheriff's deputy.

And this is frustration, and anger that the sheriff here feels, that the deputies who ran into that school. When that call came over that there was a shooting at the school, and they all ran to that building, and then to find out that night and the next day that the school had information that perhaps could have prevented this, and no one told the authorities. It's really angered a lot of people here.

We have yet to hear from the families. You know, we're respecting them, as we should. But imagine for these families who are sitting on this information now knowing they sent their kids to school. Yes, there's problems with this kid's parents obviously. But there should have been another sort of safety check in place that was not followed through. And so, there is a lot of frustration, and a lot of anger in this community over all of this. And now you have the police, really the sheriff here who are supposed to be tracking the movement of these folks, now they're telling us, well, we don't know where they are.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I mean, commissioner, you know, in your vast experience in law enforcement, these are parents that are -- were not respecting the law before this. According to the prosecutor she posted -- the mom posted mother and son day. For his new Christmas present. A 15-year- old is not legally allowed to possess a gun in Michigan, but she was flouting that.

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And when he was in trouble at school for looking up ammunition during a class, she said LOL, she texted him, LOL, I'm not mad at you, you have learn not to get caught. So, what do you think the likelihood is that these two are going to be captured in the next 24 hours?

BARKSDALE: I don't know about the next 24 but I do believe they'll be captured and I don't think it should be extended. I don't think it should go beyond maybe 70, 80 hours. I say that because of dealing with the Marshals and everything like that. To think that they're going to stick with their vehicle that they left in, I don't know. I don't know their financial situation. But I would expect them to try to swap out the vehicle. I would expect them to try to drop their cell phones at some point in time, but they're dealing with the Marshals. They're dealing with the FBI. The right resources are now in this manhunt, and I'm very optimistic that these two parents that -- these two parents will be captured in my opinion.

BLACKWELL: All right, we do have more information about the vehicle that they are searching for. They may be in, according to this BOLO, a black 2021 Kia Seltos. It's an SUV, there is a tag number. Somebody has that. Give it to me in my ear because I don't have it in my e-mail in front of me.

But again, they're searching for these parents. Give me the tag -- DQG 5203. Again, a black SUV. It's a 2021 Kia Seltos, that's the vehicle that they believe they're in -- DQG 5203, Michigan state license plate. Page Pate, Shimon Prokupecz, Anthony Barksdale, thank you so much for helping us through this breaking news.

CAMEROTA: Yes, we really appreciate it, guys, and of course we'll continue to follow this breaking news. We'll bring you all of the latest developments. It's obviously changing very quickly. In the meantime, we're going to take a quick break, and we're going to bring you our panel of independent voters next. How they feel about another possible Donald Trump run for office and President Biden, that's next.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF MICHAEL BOUCHARD, OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN: We have -- yes, we have a host of detectives out, including our partners with the FBI and the U.S. Marshal Service. My fugitive apprehension team, like I said, if they think they're going to not come with their attorney but going to run, we're going to remedy that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK. We are back now with our breaking news. There is a manhunt underway right now for James and Jennifer Crumbley, they're the parents of the suspected school shooter in Michigan. They were charged earlier today with involuntary manslaughter, four counts each, and now they are missing.

BLACKWELL: Joining us now, criminal defense attorney Page Pate, CNN's Shimon Prokupecz in Michigan, also with us CNN law enforcement analyst Anthony Barksdale, and CNN senior law enforcement analyst and former FBI deputy director, Andrew McCabe.

Andrew, let me start with you, and what this search looks like now as these parents are fugitives.

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, Victor, I think, you know, the comments you have been discussing thus far are spot on. The prosecutor has been telegraphing this move, these indictments, these charges for the last few days. So, the fact that these folks weren't maybe under surveillance during that time is going to be the cause for a great question after the fact.

But right now, I can tell you at the FBI, they are -- analysts in the office are putting together every piece of information that's known about these two individuals from their address to former addresses, family members, friends, work addresses, telephone numbers, social media accounts, any known e-mails, credit cards, anything. And all of that information is being coursed over to distill leads that will be pushed down to the street for agents and task force partners to execute

So, people are being interviewed, locations are being looked at not just around their residence and in this area in Oakland County but any place around the country that they have a history of frequenting, going on vacations, relatives, any sort of things like that. So, there is a big dragnet that is beginning to expand over this issue.

CAMEROTA: And Andy, I mean, obviously the FBI is so good at this. The FBI finds fugitives all the time. They have such a long history of success in this field, and the fact that you -- we have a car description. I mean, at the moment, the sheriff wasn't clear in terms of whether their vehicles were missing from the house. All he would say is that they are not in their house and the sheriff's deputies have not been able to find them.

But the car -- we're going to put it up right now -- is a black 2021 Kia Seltos SUV, Michigan license plate number DQG 5203, and we all know how effective it is putting their pictures, the fugitives' pictures and the car pictures up on TV, and even just talking about it like this. Because we have a lot of people listening right now on the radio to us.

So, Andy, I mean we don't even know when they were last seen. They were last seen on this video, on arraignment which you can see right there, their faces. That was Wednesday. So, how far is the dragnet of the FBI looking for them right now?

MCCABE: Yes, you know, Alisyn, that's where they were last seen, and it kind of surprised me when we saw that video a few days ago that they were in their car at that time. So, they could have been anywhere during that arraignment video.

It's pretty -- I don't want to say easy --but there are a lot of tools to use to search for a vehicle now. There are so many cameras, traffic cameras, you have police vehicles equipped with license plate readers, you have E-Zpass and electronic toll subscriptions that can track where vehicles have been.

So, there's a lot of ways that you can look for that car. The smartest thing they could do obviously is get rid of that car and start traveling in some other vehicle.

It's much harder to get rid of your access to cash, so it would be tougher for them to get rid of credit cards and debit cards that they'll need, if in fact, they are on the run to support that effort.

We talked about this in the Brian Laundrie issue, to stay on the run, to avoid law enforcement takes an enormous amount of money and support and kind of pre-planning. So, two people who have just been thrust into this at the point of, you know, as a result of a tragedy are unlikely to be successful for very long.

BLACKWELL: Andy, I mistakenly earlier suggested that this was in northern Michigan. It is not, but I know from being in Detroit that Windsor in Canada is just a short drive away. The Canadian border still is not far from Oakland County. What's the coordination with Canadian officials?

MCCABE: So, you know, the proximity of that international border doesn't make things any easier, but in this case, it's with Canada, and we enjoy great relationships with Canadian law enforcement services.

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These are the sorts of things that the FBI and their Canadian counterparts cooperate on all the time. The Canadians have pretty good visibility on the major traffic crossing points certainly in that area at the border. So, if they attempt to cross into Canada that is one place they could potentially be picked up. If in fact, they are picked up anywhere in Canada, there is of course extradition treaties in place that would enable them to be returned.

CAMEROTA: Page, a couple of interesting things here, the sheriff told Victor that he doesn't think they have any other minor children. They may have other children who are not living at home, but their son is in custody. So, they may have just been willing to leave him behind languishing in custody. That's one possibility. And as you pointed out, now that they have eluded law enforcement, once they were charged, other charges will be heaped on them when they're captured?

PATE: That's certainly possible, Alisyn. I mean they are making a series of stupid mistakes. Almost every decision they are making is counterintuitive and not in their best interest.

I mean here's the thing. An involuntary manslaughter charge, you're probably going to get a bond. Once you turn yourself in, get processed, go in front of a judge. Now that they are a flight risk, they're not going to get a bond once they finally are apprehended.

So, it's stupid. And I think if they are talking to any competent lawyer, that lawyer will tell them, let's contact law enforcement immediately. Let's arrange your voluntary surrender now. The longer you refuse to do that, the more difficult it will be for you to ever get out of custody. I don't know why they're doing it.

BLACKWELL: The sheriff is on another network or was on another network and suggested that thus far, there have been no tips that have come in. But Andy, let me come back to you. He also said that he would have liked to have gotten some heads-up that he could have done something electronically to avoid this. I think we all got the heads-up three days ago when the son was charged. There was the suggestion that Shimon reported that there were going to be charges for the parents, and last night we all knew that they were pending, they were imminent.

MCCABE: Yes, Victor, I mean if the heads weren't up, I'm not sure where they were. It's as I said, the prosecutor has been telegraphing this for days. There have been front page articles in, you know, even in the paper here in the Washington area for -- about it. So, yes, I think this was an entirely predictable outcome.

And it does raise a question as to why the residents and the parents weren't placed under some sort of surveillance pending that, you know, very public release of that indictment. You don't always surveil a subject before they're indicted but, in most cases, and certainly the federal cases that I worked in the FBI, people aren't really aware that they are being indicted. So, it comes as a surprise when you knock on their door. In this case, quite the opposite was true. I think they probably had pretty good reason to believe that this was coming.

CAMEROTA: Commissioner, I think we might have some new photos of the -- in a minute. As soon as the police -- the sheriff's department has put out that be on the lookout for alert, and that includes some new photographs of the parents that we'll put up as soon as we can.

But commissioner, isn't it just sort of standard operating procedure where deputies sit on a house as Shimon was describing where you just have a car some place -- this is interesting. These are the pictures. These look like dated pictures of them because they certainly looked different than we saw them in the -- oh, these are their driver's license pictures that we're showing right now of the suspected shooter's parents who are now on the run. This is Jennifer and James Crumbley. These are their driver's license photos so we don't know how many years old --

BLACKWELL: It looks nothing like the video that we saw on Wednesday in the car. I think that actually is probably is more valuable in the search for those parents. So yes, these are the photographs that have been issued from the state. This is what they looked like on Wednesday as they were attending the arraignment of their son.

CAMEROTA: And again, be on the lookout for that black SUV.

But commissioner, isn't it -- am I wrong? Is it just standard operating procedure to just put a deputy's car there kind of unobtrusively keeping an eye on it?

ANTHONY BARKSDALE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: When you have an incident, a tragedy like this, you invest your resources wisely. If you are headed towards charges against the parents you need to stick with them. You need to have your team conduct surveillance. This is inexcusable. I don't know what happened here.

But we see the results of not keeping them under surveillance. So, what we hear about it, I feel that it's already done now. We have to focus on their capture, but this is a fumble that needs to be looked at, and there must be accountability for this mistake.

[15:55:02]

BLACKWELL: Shimon, we're also learning that the sheriff said that he got no heads-up from this new prosecutor that the charges were coming. He was asked if that was frustrating. He said that's an understatement, she's new.

Help us understand the interaction, the cooperation between those two and now the finger-pointing begins as they're trying to find the Crumbleys.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: So, I have gotten the sense just from being here for the week that they don't have the best relationship, right? He's elected. She's elected, whatever, politics aside.

But I have certainly gotten the sense that it's the relationship is not the best. He has not been present at her press conferences. She was present at a press conference that he had yesterday. This question came up yesterday at the press conference and, obviously, they said we'd have more maybe in the next 24 hours. Remember, she was standing next to him when that all started. And then again, she was on last night. The prosecutor with Anderson Cooper indicating that something was coming.

So, we all knew. You don't need to necessarily communicate between two people, you know, they should be communicating. They have been working really well in this investigation. So, but, you know, this has been out there for the last several days as we've all been saying.

So, I don't know. You know, I don't know where this breakdown occurred but we've been -- honestly, Victor, both me and my producer Carolyn Sung, we have been asking them with the last two days, do you know where they are because we knew this was coming.

So, we were trying to figure out, well, are you going to announce this before they are in custody or are you going to do this after they're in custody? And we, frankly, thought this was the scenario that was likely going to occur.

And here we are today. Here we are right now with these two on the run. The sheriff's office did the entire investigation here, right. So, they went out, they've done all the investigations and they had to present everything to the prosecutor. So, as far as that goes, they have been working well together -- Victor.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Yes, it is possible that they show up at their arraignment. Maybe they're just missing at the moment. So, we will keep an eye on it, their arraignment is coming up. We'll see what happens. Thanks to all of you, we really appreciate your help with all of this breaking news.

BLACKWELL: All right, and the breaking news coverage continues on "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper after a quick break.

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