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Police Say Murder Suspect Darren Mack is in Mexico; Watching Kids On the Web; Doctors Unable to Determine Cause of New Medical Mystery; Pentagon Releases Video of Airstrike

Aired June 22, 2006 - 14:30   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get straight to Fredricka Whitfield. More on that story out of Reno. Actually, a story we covered a couple weeks ago -- Fred.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Ten days ago is when the alleged shooting death of his wife and the shooting of a judge took place. Darren Mack has been a man that officials have been looking for for ten days now. A press conference is under way out of Reno, Nevada, where officials have said that significant developments have come about.

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CHIEF MICHAEL POEHLMAN ... and expressed a desire to surrender. Reno police officials have been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, inside of Mexico to facilitate the return of Mack to the United States, while those negotiations with Mack have been under way.

Mack, who is believed to also have been using the names of Darren Stone (ph) and John Smith (ph), was believed to be on the west coast of Mexico last night at 1800 hours when we last communicated with him. He is believed to have been in the Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarata areas of the west coast of Mexico this week. There was a credible sighting of Mack in Cabo San Lucas on June the 15th, and we believe he had also been in La Paz on June 17th on the Baja Peninsula.

If you'll look at the map here, we've highlighted those areas of La Paz on the top, then Cabo down below and then across Mazaltan and down below, Puerto Vallarata, where he was to have surrendered this morning. And again, he failed to show.

The investigators are working closely with FBI officials inside Mexico to locate and apprehend Mack, who may have moved since his last contact. It's been over 12 hours since we had our last contact. And he could obviously travel a great distance in that time. In addition to the warrant for his arrest for the murder of Charla (ph) Mack and the federal warrant charging unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, we, the police, have probable cause now to arrest Mack for the attempted murder of Reno family court Judge Charles Weller (ph) and the sniper shooting of the judge in his third-floor office on June the 12th.

The Reno Police Department is asking for the public to continue to look for the silver-colored Ford Explorer, with California license plate 5POR-272. That's five, Paul Ocean Robert, two, seven, two, sought in connection with the Mack case. This vehicle has been listed in the National Crime Information Center computer system, and has been made available to interpool for any law enforcement agent or officer who might run it.

The day of the shooting on June the 12th, the Reno Police Department assembled a team to investigate the murder and shooting. That team was made up of federal, state, and local agencies to insist -- assist with the investigation. Team members were assigned on 24- hour, seven-day-a-week shift basis. Those resources have been grouped to focus on the hunt for Darren Mack, the investigation into the murder of Charla Mack and the shooting of Judge Weller, and assessing information received from the public and the media through the Reno Secret Witness Program, directly to the Reno Police Department and to other law enforcement agencies.

I need to express my thanks, deep appreciation, to a number of agencies that have been working with us. The Washer (ph) County District Attorney's Office, the Federal Bureau Of investigation (AUDIO GAP)

WHITFIELD: All right. We're trying to straighten up that audio problem, taking place out of Reno, Nevada, where you're hearing the Reno police chief say that they have located and heard from Darren Mack, who has been most wanted for the past ten days now for attempted murder of a judge, a family court judge, in Reno, Nevada, as well as the death, the shooting death, of his wife, Charla Mack.

Officials were expecting to see -- see Darren Mack this morning surrender, because of ongoing negotiations that have taken place between Mexican authorities and United States authorities and Darren Mack since he was located about a week ago in La Paz and Cabo San Lucas, to name a few, in the western part of Mexico. But he was a no- show earlier today and so now Reno authorities are saying they are pursuing, trying to extradite him, once he's located out of Mexico back to the United States.

Darren Mack. This search has been intense for the last ten days, Kyra, and that's where we are right now.

PHILLIPS: All right, Fred. Thanks.

Well, online meeting places are all the rage for kids right now, but often a source of outrage for parents. One popular site is giving itself a safety overhaul. How effective is it?

Details, straight ahead.

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PHILLIPS: Big Brother is watching you. That's so "1984." Now big mother can catch you online. Vicki Courtney says it's not only her right, but her duty to keep track of where her kids go and what they do on the Internet. She joins me live from Austin, Texas, to explain how and why she's a Web monitor.

And of course we're talking you to, because of all these stories that have been out lately about MySpace and MySpace allegedly trying to secure that site. A lot better nowadays. Let me ask you why you monitor your kids and how you do it.

VICKI COURTNEY, PARENT AND AUTHOR: Sure. A couple years back, I began to see just how prevalent the Internet is in our kids' lives, our teen's lives. I have an organization that reaches over 150,000 teen girls, and I write to that audience, so I kind of saw it coming down the pike with my own kids, and rather than stand by and watch it happen, I took action. I knew that they needed to be monitored.

You know, our teens will type things that they would never in a million years say to someone's face, and so it's -- I feel that it's irresponsible of parents not to be monitoring what their kids are doing online, especially given the statistics that one in every five kids has been solicited for sex online now.

PHILLIPS: So tell me how you monitor. I know you've got a 13- year-old, a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old. The 18-year-old, you don't, because you say your 18-year-old has proved trustworthy, but your 13-year-old and your 16-year-old, how do you monitor what they are doing online?

COURTNEY: Sure. I have one program that I use called SpectorSoft, and it tracks mainly their I.M. messages. It won't record every keystroke that they make, but I mostly am interested in SpectorSoft and their eBlaster program so that I can see logs, if you will of their i.M. conversations. Forty-five percent of teenagers say now that they would rather communicate with their friends after school via instant messenger than face to face.

And so I wanted to know, who are they talking the to, who are their friends, who is contacting them and the beauty of this program is that you load in it your computers. You can load it remotely. You don't have to have a disk or anything, and you plug in your e-mail address and in almost real-time, I start receiving conversations or logs of conversations that they are having. It's maybe one or two minutes delay.

PHILLIPS: Do your kids know that you're doing this and are they upset with you?

COURTNEY: Initially they did not know. And I had to blow my cover because I actually had a situation where my -- he's now 13 years old, but when he was in sixth grade, 11 or 12, I let him do a little bit of instant messaging when he would have his homework does after school, and I wanted to make sure he was able to handle that responsibility.

I went over some basic ground rules, never click through on links that people send you, never go to chat rooms. Sure enough, someone he was conversing with, one of his friends from his private school, sent him a link and said, this is so funny. I'm in this chat room. You have to see what they are talking about.

And so I was right there in the next room, I could see him on the computer. I held my breath to see if he would do as he was told. And he did. He did exactly as I told him. He told this young lady, I'm not allowed to click on links, I can't go into chat rooms.

Unfortunately, she then chose to cut and paste some things from the chat room and send it to him through instant messenger. And so at that point, I realized that even as a caring parent who has taken every measure possible, it's not 100 percent fool safe or foolproof.

I had to sit him down after that. I blew my cover. I told all three of my kids I've got this tracking software. It's not because I don't trust so you. I commended my 13-year-old, at the time 12, for doing the right thing. But I also pulled back on the instant messaging at that age, again, not knowing what's going to come in from the other end.

PHILLIPS: So let me ask you this -- do you think there are any advantages for your kids being online? Are there advantages to MySpace? Are there advantages to instant messaging? Why even allow your kids to do it?

COURTNEY: Sure. I -- actually I do. I've seen set up a screen name through AOL Instant Messenger and I converse at times in the house, you know, with my daughter, who is in the next room. Now, we have a great relationship. We talk all the time face to face.

But, again, that same principle that introduced earlier that our kids will often type things that they would never say face to face even holds true parent to child, and so I've got an account. I talk to my kids. I don't really talk to anyone else with it. That's primarily why I have it.

And then I have allowed my daughter, who is 16, to have a MySpace page, and a lot of -- I'm an author, a lot of what I write about is coming up with safety tips that -- so you're not being extremist. I write to parents and then I write to teen girls, and I tell parents don't be extremist and we all have that tendency to throw the computer out of second-story window, but I've had some great, teachable moments with my daughter.

See I've given her principles that I share in the book. You know, set your page to private. There's absolutely no reason why our kids today should not be setting their page to private. Only let friends come in that are real friends, not strangers. Never share your last name, your school name. Don't post your e-mail address, your screen name or your cell phone number. Don't give anyone a means to contact you one-on-one.

And then I have a MySpace profile that's just a dummy profile. You would never find me on there, but I primarily set it up so that I could go in, my daughter added me to her friend list, and not more than two days goes by and I haven't checked her site. So I check it at least every other day, and I know exactly who is talking to my daughter, who she has added as a friend and what they are saying to her.

PHILLIPS: Vicki Courtney and, of course, if you want to see her books, you can go online. Thanks for your personal story today.

COURTNEY: Great, thank you.

PHILLIPS: Well, will curiosity kill the chat? Thanks to all the recent news about Internet predators, some parents might want to reboot the family computer right through the window.

Coming up on LIVE FROM, we heard Vicki's personal story. Now we're going to talk a more sensible approach to cyber safety. We've got an expert on new software you might want to check out.

Well, it's creepy, but is it real?

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They are just these awful little black things that intertwine and you'll see where they erupt through the skin.

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PHILLIPS: The truth is out there, a live report on this medical mystery next. You're watching CNN, the most trusted name in news.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Another terrorist dead, new video is out, Barbara Starr has the details from the Pentagon -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, the Pentagon has just released video of an airstrike it conducted in Iraq Friday morning, the same day that those two U.S. soldiers were captured apparently in Iraq on Friday night. This is the video. Let's show it to you.

This is shooting one of al Qaeda's top five operatives in Iraq. He was in a car. The helicopters chased him down and killed a man named Sheikh Mansur. This man is believed by the U.S. military to be one of the top five operatives in al Qaeda in Iraq.

They had not released many details about the hit on him, because they had hoped that his death would lead to more disruption in the al Qaeda network and they might be able to learn the whereabouts of other al Qaeda in Iraq leaders.

But you can see, some of the resolution in the video here is really quite extraordinary. They tracked him, and as they were tracking him on this road, helicopters basically tracked him down and killed him.

There are some details that were coming out a few days ago, very, very few details. There had been pictures that had been shown at briefings by Major General William Caldwell, the chief spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad. And we want to let everyone know that General Caldwell is a guest this evening on Paula Zahn's program. He will talk more in-depth about this, and he will talk about the latest in the investigation into the death of those two American soldiers -- Kyra? PHILLIPS: All right, Barbara Starr, thank you so much. As Barbara mentioned, Paula Zahn will have that interview with Caldwell on her show at 8:00 Eastern tonight.

Well, something weird is happening in Tulsa.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are blue, they are red. They sometimes move, which is really bizarre.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This didn't seem like anything I had ever seen that was coming out of a human body.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kind of bluish.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Medical mystery gives patients the creeps and leave doctors baffled. Details, next on CNN.

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PHILLIPS: Well, a medical mystery with a creep factor worthy of science fiction. CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen on the case.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kind of bluish.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's kind of a semicircle. On the top is kind of reddish.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It sounds like something from "The X-Files."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The very first one was kind of a creamy white.

COHEN: People claim they have strings, not hairs, but strings, growing out of their skin.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's all a system. They are all connected together.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They are just these awful little black things that intertwine and you'll see where they erupt through the skin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is this black spot back here.

COHEN: Doctors and nurses can't believe what they're seeing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are blue, they're red. They sometimes move, which is really bizarre. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This didn't seem like anything I had ever seen that was coming out of a human body.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a mystery. It really is.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: All right. Is it real? Is it something just totally bizarre that they haven't been able to figure out yet?

COHEN: Well, most doctors, I would venture to say, would say that this is not real. Doctors who we talked to really feel that these people scratched these sores into existence and then took some fibers from their coat or from their sweater and stuffed it in and created what you're seeing here.

And that really is what doctors think. They think it is Munchausen's in a big way that's a syndrome where people fake illnesses. But the few doctors who have actually seen these patients and examined them say, no, it is real. They've seen these fibers and they say the fibers aren't right in the sores, they are under unbroken skin. So they are convinced these doctors from Tulsa and some others from other parts of the country, that this really is a real illness, that people have strings that are under their skin that erupt out of the skin and that they other symptoms. They often feel very sick and exhausted. Now people have been bugging the CDC to investigate this, the patients have. And finally the CDC says yes and they are going to investigate it.

PHILLIPS: So are these patients all in one area? Are they spread out across the U.S. and how many patients, do we know?

COHEN: They're in a variety of areas, and the patient group that represents these people says it's thousands of patients. You do find a lot of them in Georgia, Texas, California, but they are in various parts of the country.

PHILLIPS: So it's called Morgellon's, right?

COHEN: Morgellon's. It's named after a historical figure who allegedly had these same symptoms.

PHILLIPS: Oh, well that's interesting. Can we talk more about the historical figure, or is that going to take a little more research? Now it's more mysterious.

COHEN: Well it's not even clear who exactly this guy is or exactly what symptoms they have, but when these patients started having these symptoms, they went back through medical literature and they went back through research and they said, "Oh, well maybe this is what he had, let's name it after this." But it's not officially a real official disease. Your doctor cannot officially diagnose you with Morgellon's.

PHILLIPS: Can they treat it? COHEN: They have tried. The few doctors that actually believe these patients have tried to treat it. They've tried to give them antibiotics and anti-parasiticals, anti-parasitics and anti-fungals. And they have found a little bit of success with antibiotics. Patients sometimes feel better, but then often they start to feel worse again. Most doctors say that a psychiatrist ought to be treating them.

PHILLIPS: All right Elizabeth, thanks so much.

COHEN: Thanks.

PHILLIPS: You can find out more about this medical mystery tonight on "PAULA ZAHN NOW." It's at 8:00 Eastern, right here on CNN.

COHEN: Well, timing is everything. Therapy, when the patient needs it, not when the doctor's in. The story, in the third hour of LIVE FROM. Stay with us.

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