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CNN Live Saturday

Third Man Arrested in Connection With D.C. Area Sniper Shootings

Aired October 26, 2002 - 17:02   ET

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

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


HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Investigators looking at the sniper killings have arrested a third man. 26-year-old Nathaniel Osbourne was taken into custody in Flint, Michigan as a federal material witness. He is the co-owner of the 1990 Chevy Caprice sniper suspects John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were nabbed in. Linsey Davis with CNN affiliate WJRT is in Flint, Michigan now, with more on Osbourne's arrest. Hi, Linsey.
LINSEY DAVIS, WJRT CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Heidi. We're standing outside the Genesee County jail, where Nathaniel Osbourne is being detained following his arrest at 9:30 this morning by the FBI on a material witness warrant.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): The screech of tires preceded the departure from the FBI building at Flint, Michigan of yet a third suspect arrested in connection with the Maryland area sniper.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As you are aware, the FBI arrested this morning Nathaniel Osbourne on a material witness warrant out of Baltimore.

DAVIS: Nathaniel Osbourne was the name registered on the 1990 blue Chevy Caprice that John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were found sleeping in prior to their arrests early Thursday morning. The vehicle is registered to 1400 Sheridan Street in Camden, New Jersey. The FBI has not yet disclosed the Flint connection.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Osbourne is currently in custody. Mr. Osbourne will have his initial appearance in front of a magistrate tomorrow morning, hopefully in Flint, Michigan. We are coordinating that right now, and there will be no appearance this afternoon, as you may have been led to believe earlier.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DAVIS: Police have stressed that Osbourne is not a subject of the investigation as far as the shootings are concerned, but that he may have aided the shooter by providing a car for the attacks.

For CNN in Flint, Linsey Davis, WJRT News.

COLLINS: All right, Linsey, thank you very much. The last victim killed in the sniper spree is being buried today. Funeral services are being held in Silver Spring, Maryland for bus driver Conrad Johnson. This comes amid debate over judicial issues in the case and which jurisdiction will prosecute first.

For more on that, let's go ahead now to CNN's Daryn Kagan. She's in Montgomery County, Maryland. Hi, Daryn.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Heidi, hello to you. You almost need a score card to keep all the groups straight who would like a chance at prosecuting these two men.

Basically, you have three groups -- you have Maryland, Virginia and the federal government. Let's run down those. First Maryland. Maryland being the first to file charges against John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo. They claim first dibs on getting to prosecute the men because seven of the shootings and six of the fatalities happened here in Montgomery County.

Two catches, though. Maryland currently has a moratorium on the death penalty, and, also, under Maryland state law, they cannot go after the death penalty in the case of the 17-year-old, which it would be with Malvo.

In Virginia, three people died; two people were wounded in shootings there. For federal charges, there are unnamed sources saying that they are very upset with the district attorney here, Doug Gansler, who announced that he was going to file charges, saying that goes against an agreement they had, waiting for Attorney General John Ashcroft to get back in the country. He has been traveling in Asia.

As for Virginia, there are some concerns in Virginia about the federal government filing charges, because the way the state constitution is written there, there might be a double jeopardy situation, that if the federal government prosecutes, that would prevent Virginia from prosecuting. And, keep in mind, Virginia has the most -- one of the most aggressive death penalty statutes in the country. Also, they are able to go after John Lee Malvo, as the 17- year-old, and go after the death penalty in his case.

And finally, if that is not enough, in Montgomery, Alabama, where an unrelated shooting took place some days before this shooting spree began, they have already filed capital murder charges against the two men. However, they realize they are probably last in line before the last three.

Well, the prosecution looks forward. Now we have a chance to look backward a little bit with the letter, a chance to look at the letter that was left a week ago today in Ashland, Virginia, the site of the shooting at the Ponderosa steakhouse. There were some clues in that letter, and Jeanne Meserve gives us a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Four pages, studded with clues, clues that police apparently did not see immediately.

The letter tells police to be at the Ponderosa steakhouse phone at 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning, October 20. But sources say police had not even opened the plastic-wrapped letter by then. It was still at a lab being tested for forensic clues and to make sure it wasn't contaminated.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We do things very meticulously, so to ensure we're doing things the right way may take longer than people may expect. So I don't think there was anything else we could have done there.

MESERVE: The delay and missed deadline explains why Chief Moose urged another communication Sunday night.

CHIEF CHARLES MOOSE, MONTGOMERY COUNTY POLICE: Call us at the number you provided.

MESERVE: The letter details a call to a priest and a call to CNN's Washington bureau. CNN says, to our knowledge, no one at CNN received such a call. It also gives specifics of six attempts to reach law enforcement to start negotiations, referring to police incompetence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In some instances, there were some phone calls that may be linked to the sniper or the snipers, but please understand that there were about 60,000 phone calls that were received from the public to the tip line alone, and there were many others to other law enforcement agencies.

MESERVE: The letter says there was a grim consequence. Quote, "these people took calls for a hoax or joke, so your failure to respond has cost you five lives."

But by this time, the sniper had killed nine. The Ponderosa victim would have been the 10th, had he died. Does this indicate the attempts to reach police began much earlier? Perhaps after the murderous spree on October 2 and 3? And could the author have been trying to call to ask for money?

He does here, spelling out a non-negotiable demand for $10 million to be put in a Bank of America account connected with the stolen credit card. Sources say the account had been deactivated, which explains another cryptic communication from Chief Moose.

MOOSE: We found it is not possible electronically to comply in the manner that you requested.

MESERVE: Investigators who once dismissed money as a motive are now choosing not to comment.

(on camera): The letter begins, "for you, Mr. Police, call me God" and ends with a threat, "your children are not safe anywhere at any time."

In between, there are phrases and references that could indicate a Jamaican background or a military one. Between them, John Lee Malvo and John Allen Muhammad had both.

Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: I will tell you, for millions of people who live in the Washington D.C. area this weekend is about getting life back to normal, about not being afraid to leave your home, and even something as simple as filling up your gas tank without looking over your shoulder. We're going to have a chance at 10:00 p.m. Eastern to visit with a couple of parents and their kids and talk about life getting back to normal. For now, Heidi, back to you.

COLLINS: All right, Daryn, what a wonderful relief. Daryn Kagan, in Montgomery County, thanks.

And to help us make as much sense as we can of this bizarre crime story, let's turn now to former New York investigator Lou Palumbo, director of The Elite Group, a security agency comprised of active and former law enforcement agents. He joins us now from New York. Lou, thank you for being here today.

LOU PALUMBO, THE ELITE GROUP: Thank you, Heidi.

COLLINS: I want to go ahead and stick with this letter that Jeanne Meserve was just telling us about. Right off the top, it said, "meet me at 6:00 a.m. at the Ponderosa steakhouse." But they didn't open that letter, because it was still going through lab testing. Do you think this was a mistake? Is this just protocol? How do you see it?

PALUMBO: Actually, it's part of protocol. As was interviewed just in your interview, the forensics on the envelope and the correspondence are crucial. That is kind of normal, standard operating procedure. They didn't really deviate from anything that would have been normally done.

COLLINS: So it is very difficult for them to go ahead and try to get new clues that they don't even really exist, that they know exist anyway, as far as trying to get more information -- if they don't know it's there, what can they do?

PALUMBO: Nothing, quite frankly. I mean, the unfortunate part of this whole equation right now, Heidi, is that we've gone into kind of like the Monday morning quarterback mode, and what everyone really needs to realize is that when you're dealing with a case that is related to the safety and the security of people in an area or an individual or even, you know, any sort of circumstances, the amount of pressure on you is just almost indescribable, so I don't really think that if what we're perceiving now to be a mistake or something we're questioning was something that they did with the intent of overlooking anything.

Just simply stated when they acquire a piece of information like this in correspondence form, they do very thorough forensic checks on it. I know that from having been involved with something that we were fortunate enough to have the FBI assist us where a similar procedure was actually done.

COLLINS: Tell me maybe, if you could, Lou, why they didn't release this portion of the letter? Do you see any verbiage in there that might be a little different from some of the other letters or some of the other portions of the letter? In particular we did hear the portion that said, "your children are not safe anywhere any time," but not this particular portion. Can you tell us why that might be?

PALUMBO: What particular portion are you making exact reference to, Heidi?

COLLINS: The part about meet me at 6:00 a.m. at the Ponderosa steakhouse.

PALUMBO: You know, quite frankly, I couldn't render an intelligent answer to that. You know, I think it's rather unusual that these two individuals who were clearly attempting to avoid apprehension would even suggest that they meet someone at the Ponderosa, and, quite frankly, I don't think they've dismissed it. I just think it would have been a little reckless or irresponsible to divulge that, because I'm certain just that the mere suggestion of a 6:00 a.m. meeting at the Ponderosa, the law enforcement agencies probably set up on that location, regardless of whether or not it was confirmed or not.

COLLINS: Can you tell us a little bit more about Nathaniel Osbourne? What do you think the connection might be here?

PALUMBO: Well, quite frankly, that's still under investigation. Really, what they're trying to do right now is determine a level of complicity. I mean, if he -- if they can establish, in fact, that he had knowledge that they were perpetrating these acts, he is going to be charged as a -- in being complicit to these acts.

So, you know, it's still in a kind of wait and see mode. In theory, if he had knowledge of the fact that they were going to murder people and he facilitated it, they could in theory charge him with murder.

COLLINS: All right. Lou Palumbo, thank you so much for joining us today from New York. We appreciate it.

PALUMBO: Thank you, Heidi.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com





Shootings>


Aired October 26, 2002 - 17:02   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Investigators looking at the sniper killings have arrested a third man. 26-year-old Nathaniel Osbourne was taken into custody in Flint, Michigan as a federal material witness. He is the co-owner of the 1990 Chevy Caprice sniper suspects John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were nabbed in. Linsey Davis with CNN affiliate WJRT is in Flint, Michigan now, with more on Osbourne's arrest. Hi, Linsey.
LINSEY DAVIS, WJRT CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Heidi. We're standing outside the Genesee County jail, where Nathaniel Osbourne is being detained following his arrest at 9:30 this morning by the FBI on a material witness warrant.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): The screech of tires preceded the departure from the FBI building at Flint, Michigan of yet a third suspect arrested in connection with the Maryland area sniper.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As you are aware, the FBI arrested this morning Nathaniel Osbourne on a material witness warrant out of Baltimore.

DAVIS: Nathaniel Osbourne was the name registered on the 1990 blue Chevy Caprice that John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were found sleeping in prior to their arrests early Thursday morning. The vehicle is registered to 1400 Sheridan Street in Camden, New Jersey. The FBI has not yet disclosed the Flint connection.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Osbourne is currently in custody. Mr. Osbourne will have his initial appearance in front of a magistrate tomorrow morning, hopefully in Flint, Michigan. We are coordinating that right now, and there will be no appearance this afternoon, as you may have been led to believe earlier.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DAVIS: Police have stressed that Osbourne is not a subject of the investigation as far as the shootings are concerned, but that he may have aided the shooter by providing a car for the attacks.

For CNN in Flint, Linsey Davis, WJRT News.

COLLINS: All right, Linsey, thank you very much. The last victim killed in the sniper spree is being buried today. Funeral services are being held in Silver Spring, Maryland for bus driver Conrad Johnson. This comes amid debate over judicial issues in the case and which jurisdiction will prosecute first.

For more on that, let's go ahead now to CNN's Daryn Kagan. She's in Montgomery County, Maryland. Hi, Daryn.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Heidi, hello to you. You almost need a score card to keep all the groups straight who would like a chance at prosecuting these two men.

Basically, you have three groups -- you have Maryland, Virginia and the federal government. Let's run down those. First Maryland. Maryland being the first to file charges against John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo. They claim first dibs on getting to prosecute the men because seven of the shootings and six of the fatalities happened here in Montgomery County.

Two catches, though. Maryland currently has a moratorium on the death penalty, and, also, under Maryland state law, they cannot go after the death penalty in the case of the 17-year-old, which it would be with Malvo.

In Virginia, three people died; two people were wounded in shootings there. For federal charges, there are unnamed sources saying that they are very upset with the district attorney here, Doug Gansler, who announced that he was going to file charges, saying that goes against an agreement they had, waiting for Attorney General John Ashcroft to get back in the country. He has been traveling in Asia.

As for Virginia, there are some concerns in Virginia about the federal government filing charges, because the way the state constitution is written there, there might be a double jeopardy situation, that if the federal government prosecutes, that would prevent Virginia from prosecuting. And, keep in mind, Virginia has the most -- one of the most aggressive death penalty statutes in the country. Also, they are able to go after John Lee Malvo, as the 17- year-old, and go after the death penalty in his case.

And finally, if that is not enough, in Montgomery, Alabama, where an unrelated shooting took place some days before this shooting spree began, they have already filed capital murder charges against the two men. However, they realize they are probably last in line before the last three.

Well, the prosecution looks forward. Now we have a chance to look backward a little bit with the letter, a chance to look at the letter that was left a week ago today in Ashland, Virginia, the site of the shooting at the Ponderosa steakhouse. There were some clues in that letter, and Jeanne Meserve gives us a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Four pages, studded with clues, clues that police apparently did not see immediately.

The letter tells police to be at the Ponderosa steakhouse phone at 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning, October 20. But sources say police had not even opened the plastic-wrapped letter by then. It was still at a lab being tested for forensic clues and to make sure it wasn't contaminated.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We do things very meticulously, so to ensure we're doing things the right way may take longer than people may expect. So I don't think there was anything else we could have done there.

MESERVE: The delay and missed deadline explains why Chief Moose urged another communication Sunday night.

CHIEF CHARLES MOOSE, MONTGOMERY COUNTY POLICE: Call us at the number you provided.

MESERVE: The letter details a call to a priest and a call to CNN's Washington bureau. CNN says, to our knowledge, no one at CNN received such a call. It also gives specifics of six attempts to reach law enforcement to start negotiations, referring to police incompetence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In some instances, there were some phone calls that may be linked to the sniper or the snipers, but please understand that there were about 60,000 phone calls that were received from the public to the tip line alone, and there were many others to other law enforcement agencies.

MESERVE: The letter says there was a grim consequence. Quote, "these people took calls for a hoax or joke, so your failure to respond has cost you five lives."

But by this time, the sniper had killed nine. The Ponderosa victim would have been the 10th, had he died. Does this indicate the attempts to reach police began much earlier? Perhaps after the murderous spree on October 2 and 3? And could the author have been trying to call to ask for money?

He does here, spelling out a non-negotiable demand for $10 million to be put in a Bank of America account connected with the stolen credit card. Sources say the account had been deactivated, which explains another cryptic communication from Chief Moose.

MOOSE: We found it is not possible electronically to comply in the manner that you requested.

MESERVE: Investigators who once dismissed money as a motive are now choosing not to comment.

(on camera): The letter begins, "for you, Mr. Police, call me God" and ends with a threat, "your children are not safe anywhere at any time."

In between, there are phrases and references that could indicate a Jamaican background or a military one. Between them, John Lee Malvo and John Allen Muhammad had both.

Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: I will tell you, for millions of people who live in the Washington D.C. area this weekend is about getting life back to normal, about not being afraid to leave your home, and even something as simple as filling up your gas tank without looking over your shoulder. We're going to have a chance at 10:00 p.m. Eastern to visit with a couple of parents and their kids and talk about life getting back to normal. For now, Heidi, back to you.

COLLINS: All right, Daryn, what a wonderful relief. Daryn Kagan, in Montgomery County, thanks.

And to help us make as much sense as we can of this bizarre crime story, let's turn now to former New York investigator Lou Palumbo, director of The Elite Group, a security agency comprised of active and former law enforcement agents. He joins us now from New York. Lou, thank you for being here today.

LOU PALUMBO, THE ELITE GROUP: Thank you, Heidi.

COLLINS: I want to go ahead and stick with this letter that Jeanne Meserve was just telling us about. Right off the top, it said, "meet me at 6:00 a.m. at the Ponderosa steakhouse." But they didn't open that letter, because it was still going through lab testing. Do you think this was a mistake? Is this just protocol? How do you see it?

PALUMBO: Actually, it's part of protocol. As was interviewed just in your interview, the forensics on the envelope and the correspondence are crucial. That is kind of normal, standard operating procedure. They didn't really deviate from anything that would have been normally done.

COLLINS: So it is very difficult for them to go ahead and try to get new clues that they don't even really exist, that they know exist anyway, as far as trying to get more information -- if they don't know it's there, what can they do?

PALUMBO: Nothing, quite frankly. I mean, the unfortunate part of this whole equation right now, Heidi, is that we've gone into kind of like the Monday morning quarterback mode, and what everyone really needs to realize is that when you're dealing with a case that is related to the safety and the security of people in an area or an individual or even, you know, any sort of circumstances, the amount of pressure on you is just almost indescribable, so I don't really think that if what we're perceiving now to be a mistake or something we're questioning was something that they did with the intent of overlooking anything.

Just simply stated when they acquire a piece of information like this in correspondence form, they do very thorough forensic checks on it. I know that from having been involved with something that we were fortunate enough to have the FBI assist us where a similar procedure was actually done.

COLLINS: Tell me maybe, if you could, Lou, why they didn't release this portion of the letter? Do you see any verbiage in there that might be a little different from some of the other letters or some of the other portions of the letter? In particular we did hear the portion that said, "your children are not safe anywhere any time," but not this particular portion. Can you tell us why that might be?

PALUMBO: What particular portion are you making exact reference to, Heidi?

COLLINS: The part about meet me at 6:00 a.m. at the Ponderosa steakhouse.

PALUMBO: You know, quite frankly, I couldn't render an intelligent answer to that. You know, I think it's rather unusual that these two individuals who were clearly attempting to avoid apprehension would even suggest that they meet someone at the Ponderosa, and, quite frankly, I don't think they've dismissed it. I just think it would have been a little reckless or irresponsible to divulge that, because I'm certain just that the mere suggestion of a 6:00 a.m. meeting at the Ponderosa, the law enforcement agencies probably set up on that location, regardless of whether or not it was confirmed or not.

COLLINS: Can you tell us a little bit more about Nathaniel Osbourne? What do you think the connection might be here?

PALUMBO: Well, quite frankly, that's still under investigation. Really, what they're trying to do right now is determine a level of complicity. I mean, if he -- if they can establish, in fact, that he had knowledge that they were perpetrating these acts, he is going to be charged as a -- in being complicit to these acts.

So, you know, it's still in a kind of wait and see mode. In theory, if he had knowledge of the fact that they were going to murder people and he facilitated it, they could in theory charge him with murder.

COLLINS: All right. Lou Palumbo, thank you so much for joining us today from New York. We appreciate it.

PALUMBO: Thank you, Heidi.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com





Shootings>